Because I'm stuck on The Fast and the Furious.

[rsadelle]

Phrase without context: Tough-slutty Letty and girly-girl Mia.

I don't know why I'm so fixated on The Fast and the Furious. I wasn't before, but then Joanne asked somewhere about Mia/Letty, and I started wondering how that could be done, and now I walk around doing roomchecks for work thinking about Mia and Letty making out and how Mia would deal with Dom being in jail and her father being dead. And what would happen to her? Dom was, what? 17, 18? when he went to jail. Mia's probably at least two years younger, if not more, which would make her too young to stay in their house alone. So what happens? We never hear about their mother, so I tend to assume that she's dead or disappeared, and once their father dies, Mia and Dom are all alone.

Once Dom's in jail, someone has to take care of Mia, unless she can get herself declared an emancipated minor. So maybe she moves in with Letty's family. They live in the neighborhood, so she can still go home when she wants to. The problem here is that while I can imagine them getting used to each other, I can't imagine them being very close friends. If they were close, then there would be a lot of resentment on Mia's part when Dom and Letty became a couple. Not only would she no longer be the most important woman in Dom's life, but she'd lose some measure of her closeness with Letty. That would make the resentment that comes out when she tells Brian that it's nice to be first for once even sharper.

I'm troubled by Mia's books. Is she in school? Was that homework she was working on? If she is in school, is it a community college, UCLA, correspondence school? What would she major in? And why would she do that? She's not really part of the team, but it's clear that she loves to drive, and Dom's making sure that she never has to worry about money. I think he'd make sure she never has to worry at all. So maybe school is recreational for her, something to do, and more importantly, something to do that's hers and hers alone.

I spent part of this weekend reading The Fast and the Furious fic. The main problem I see with it is that the authors can't seem to write both Letty and Mia. Either Mia gets a personality and a storyline, or Letty does. Dom, of course, always gets both. Both a personality and a storyline, I mean, although I would like to see Dom get both Letty and Mia. But more than that, I would like to see both Letty and Mia get their own personalities and storylines, or their own personalities and a shared storyline. And before someone throws my own advice back into my face, I am working on writing some of that, but I do sometimes want to read things I didn't have to write.

Comments

Re: Some thoughts...

[coneyislandbaby]

You know why I said English lit? I think it’s because I associate English lit
with the kind of books you study in that kind of class, like the Brontes and Jane
Austen. Which have, generally, wealthy characters. So maybe that was why.

Of course, I have no idea what a rich bitch would study, either.

There are a few Dom/Letty, one or two Dom/OFC (although I’m coming to the
conclusion that a Mary Sue exists more in the reader’s mind than the writer’s, so
one person’s OFC is another’s Mary Sue). When I said scads of Dom/Letty, I mean
in comparison to most movie fandoms where there’s a few stories at best. I would
say in most movies you get one or two stories that are worth reading, in this one
it’s five or six (not including slash, see below), which in comparison to most
movies that I’m actually interested in reading fic for is scads.
I’ve also seen one or two Brian/Mia stories that I’ve liked.

Well I never thought there was anything wrong with an easy slash pairing.
I’m a little puzzled, because you said that one of the difficulties with
Mia/Letty was because it wasn’t easy enough. I suppose there’s a line
between the too easy and not easy enough pairings, though. The ones that you see
as possible, but not obvious, perhaps.

Unfortunately, most of the stories I’ve seen that were worth reading were
Dom/Brian. There are a few aside from the ones that have been posted to
Rareslash, on a couple of Vin Diesel lists I’ve joined. There was also one
missing scene Dom/Letty that I really liked, but I can’t remember the title. I
can send you the URL or title via email if you would like them. I could send a
copy of the story, but it messed up when I saved it as .txt.

That’s probably a part of it too. I suppose if a writer doesn’t find a character
interesting, it’s more difficult to find writing about them interesting. I know
it has been for me.

Personally, I thought the character interaction was much more interesting than
the cop stuff. I actually think most writers feel that way, because most of the
post-movie Brian/Dom I’ve read seems to be more about the character interaction,
with brief mentions of betrayal and that kind of thing, something I’ve been very
grateful for.

Odd, considering that both movies had the same director, though I’m not sure
about writer, perhaps that’s a part of what made the difference if they had
different writers.

Now that’s a movie that I’d like to see slashed. I did quite like the het pairing
in it too, but the slashiness was certainly as compelling. It’s like slashers
haven’t seen it, or something, though there’s a sort of thread that I’m about to
contribute more to on Rareslash about it. Still, it’s been out on video here for
ages, you’d think slashers would have seen it by now. Maybe there’s something
preventing people from writing it. Maybe it is the het relationship. I’ve noticed
that sometimes, a good het relationship can limit the slashers willing to write a
fandom. I like it on one level, and then again, I wonder if their imaginations
are that limited that they can’t write around the relationship. And of course,
there’s always the option of doing it m/m/f, though I think many slashers find
that a turn-off as well, for whatever reason. I’m considering writing some m/m/f
for it, but I need to find time to watch it again, and I also have a couple of
stories I want to finish first.

That would be good to see.

I look forward to seeing them. I liked the snippet you have above this entry,
too. I love the whole Mia-as-tease thing. It seems to fit her very well.

Is the screenplay available online? I know there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t
come out of the dialogue, but the script can be of amazing help with writing fic
for a movie.

Re: Some thoughts...

[rsadelle]

I refuse to read Mary Sues, although I do kind of want to write a different sort of Mary Sue in this fandom, but I'll read anything Dom/Letty I can find. I'm greatly enjoying "How We Are," although the quality dips a bit in chapters 11-13, and "The Letty Diaries" and the accompanying "Dom...The Letty Diaries from his POV" aren't that bad either. There's also one at fanfiction.net (*shudder*) that's not too bad and has an interesting premise. I can't remember the title at the moment, and ff.net's down, so I can't look it up. I suspect, though, that it's headed into Mary Sue territory.

I haven't found any Brian/Mia, and I've only read two or so Dom/Brian stories, and only one of those was really worth reading. Please, please, please, tell me where you found things to read, either here or over e-mail.

What I said about Mia/Letty was that it was hard to write because they have almost no canon. Dom/Brian has too much. It's just not interesting anymore when it's that obvious.

I don't think The Skulls really needs any fan fic. I think it's one of those stories that's so complete in itself that you don't need to add anything to it.

I don't think I'm really going for Mia-as-tease. It's more Mia-as-aggressor. Most people who write her write her as a very passive, ultra-feminine type of woman, but we see flashes of things that contradict that. For example, the scene where she drives Brian home and she grins at him before stepping on the accelerator. I think maybe she's too much in Dom's shadow to be able to really assert herself. If she stays behind in LA while he runs to Mexico, maybe she'll have a chance to really shine.

Unfortunately, the script hasn't made it online yet, and it probably won't until it comes out on video and DVD.

Re: Some thoughts...

[coneyislandbaby]

What kind of Mary Sue?

Did you remember the title? Aside from the one on RedSith's page, I've read the other three you mentioned, and I think I've read another couple that were okay, but nothing spectacular, and I think they were on the sites I found the others on, so you've probably seen them.

I found the two stories I read by following links from links from links, which I haven't been able to retrace, and the titles were one-word and generic, so searches under them didn't help either. Of course I didn't think to save them, because I thought I'd be able to find them again.

Aside from Red Sith's page, and the ones you mentioned, everything I've seen has been on the Vin Diesel lists I've joined and 90% of the Fast & Furious stories are Mary Sue or OFC (I suspect so are 90% of the Pitch Black and Boiler Room stories, somehow), except for the Brian/Dom slash. They all came up under a search on Vin Diesel fan fiction on Yahoo. And the slash lists came up under Fast & Furious slash, except for the Diesel Slash list, which I was invited to join, but it's on Yahoo as well. I don't think it's an invitational list, but it is sometimes frustrating to debate on.

I didn't think they were so obvious that there's nothing there to write.

And it's not obvious if they didn't have sex on-screen. There's always that to add interest. I didn't even particularly get a "they want to" vibe, personally. But then again, slash is in the eye of the beholder.

Well, again, there's sex. And I don't mean as in NC-17 fic (though that would be nice), but as in the expression of the fact that the characters want to have sex. There's always that aspect to explore. I think it's a part of the changing nature of slash and even of perhaps deliberate homoerotic subtext (please, in the case of both these movies, it can't all be totally accidental or chemistry-based) that there's less work to do to convince the reader or writer that the characters want to have sex, but it's more that the writer has to bring that out for the reader, and the characters, rather than start from scratch.

Well, I was more referring to her conversation with Dom. She seemed to be teasing him, knowing full well that he saw them.

While we're griping, that seems to often be the trouble of some fic writers who write women in general. Even with enough women who aren't like that in RL, those stereotypes still exist, unfortunately. Then again, I also believe that women should be able to be feminine if they want to. I just think it should be a choice.

Which seems to be being delayed more and more. Of course if it's delayed in the US, that means it's delayed even more down here. But I won't rant about that. I could go on for pages about being behind on nearly every fannish show or movie if I started. There are occasional exceptions, too.

Re: Some thoughts...

[rsadelle]

Well, first of all, the Mary Sue's going to be her own person, not a previously unheard-of relative of one of the characters. And secondly, since I'm a lesbian, the Mary Sue is going to end up with Letty, not with Dom. The main problem I'm having with it is that I don't know what to do with Dom once Letty hooks up with the Mary Sue.

The thing at ff.net is "That's Life."

I didn't say that there's nothing to write about The Skulls. What I said is that it doesn't *need* anything else. It's such a well done story that it doesn't need any added explanation.