Meme / RL

[deelaundry]

Here is a meme what I stole from Sabine and Topaz:

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from anything I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

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Real-Life: Last night's fun things included a live concert of an awesome singer/guitarist, enjoyed with an even more awesome friend. \o/ The chairs in the venue left a little to be desired, but on the other hands, the manager gave me free chips. \o/ \o/ \o/

Comments

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

If there are any questions you have about this passage, or if you want me to discuss any other topic, let me know.

House flung himself back in his chair and considered the ceiling for a second.

“Green” is the first friendship fic that I wrote, over the summer between Season Two and Season Three. It’s not unusual for most people to have more than one friend, so I had wondered what would happen if a new person came along who Wilson became friendly with. The answer I came up with was that House would do everything in his power to KO his “rival.” Although Wilson’s never been shown to have another male friend, I do feel my answers was confirmed by the driving off of Wilson’s love interests in Seasons Three and Four.

This is the first fic daisylily beta-ed for me, and it wouldn’t have been half as good without her wonderful suggestions!

The passage below is from the end of the fic. Wilson has just told House that the new friend, Charlie, is gay.

“Oh.” He looked back at Wilson and waved a hand in dismissal. “Then go have lunch with him. Knock yourself out. If you get to the cafeteria before noon, they might still have some chocolate pudding.”

The “chocolate pudding” line is one of my favorites from this fic. It gives the indication that House is really fine with Charlie now, in that he’s not only giving Wilson his permission but also a strategy for obtaining a treat that will make the lunch that more pleasurable.

“What? Because Charlie’s gay, you’ll let me be friends with him?” Damn, broke his own rule. Couldn’t be helped.

Wilson had told himself earlier in the fic that he wouldn’t let himself be distracted from his conversation mission: to get House to back off from Charlie.

“Yep.” House bent to turn on his iPod. Wilson put out a hand to stop him.

“I don’t get this. What are you talking about?”

“You have my blessing. Go. Have fun.” House picked up a medical journal from his desk and started to flip through it. Both his expression and tone were open and easy, with not a trace of sarcasm. It killed Wilson. Hands on hips now, he struggled not to scream.

Three gestures in a row of dismissal – wave of hand, lean toward iPod, pick-up of journal – so irritating for Wilson, on top of House’s turned-on-a-dime attitude change.

“Why are you acting like this? What is so different, with Charlie being gay?”

House looked up at him over the journal. “Well, obviously, he’s just making a pass at you, so nothing to worry about, right?”

So obviously I didn’t get House 100% correct, because as we saw in Three and Four he’s aggressive in driving off those who have romantic interests in Wilson, too. Eh.

“He is not making a pass at me!”

“Suuure he’s not.”

I don’t generally like adding extra vowels in to indicate tone, but this time I couldn’t resist.

“You think I’ll take him up on it?”

House snorted. “Irrelevant. It’s his intentions that matter, not yours. I know how to handle your groupies. Bros before hos, right?” He held out his fist.

I hate the expression “bros before hos” but House had used it before in canon, so I repeated it here.

One of Daisylily’s biggest questions after her first read of the earliest draft was why Charlie being gay stopped House from feeling jealous. I tried to edit to make that clearer, but in case I was not successful, here’s what I said to Daisylily at the time: “Wives, girlfriends, flings - none of them have taken Wilson away from House, so anyone in that category is not much of a threat. If Charlie can go in that category, then House knows how to deal. If Charlie's going to be a friend, make Wilson laugh, then he's direct competition.”

Wilson resisted the urge to slap the fist away and stormed out of House’s office.

Wilson doesn’t do as much storming out of House’s office as I have him do in fic, but it’s just so very in character for him. :D

And thank you, Shipper, for the great remix last year!

[hwshipper.livejournal.com]

That was really interesting, thank-you! I would love canon to show us Wilson having another male friend at some point, like in Green. It would throw up all sorts of interesting possibilities. I wouldn't beat yourself up for not anticipating House driving off Wilson's romantic interests; until Wendy, I don't think we had any reason to suspect House was so in love with obsessed with keeping Wilson all to himself. Rottweiler is an excellent parallel!

Your explanation to daisylily makes a lot of sense. I would have appreciated the same info when I first tackled the remix, although I think I did get there in the end! Because I was trying to reverse the situation with slash, I got hopelessly confused initially as to what on earth should happen here in the remix. In the beginning I had the revelation simply be as in Green, that Charlie had a partner, just a male one; but I couldn't get it to work and then, as you know, I decided it made more sense to reverse things entirely and have House think he was straight. And then it works - because as you say, House has nothing to fear from Wilson's wives :)