mutiny, i promise

Tortured

sarken — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 11:03:03 GMT

In Tortured, way back in season four, Elliot's on about how -- unlike a victim's husband -- he'd be out looking for his spouse if she didn't come home. It's not normal to be unbothered.

Olivia's like, dude, there are lots of nights you don't go home and don't even call.

Part of the reason I'm writing this down is it sort of puts Kathy's reaction in Wildlife into perspective, but mostly I'm writing it down because... well. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Challenge #9

sarken — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 10:39:08 GMT

Fandom Snowflake Challenge #9.

What are your top five fandoms for 2021 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?

Hamilton/Turn/American Revolution RPF
Law & Order: SVU/Law & Order: OC
The Closer/Major Crimes
Good Omens RPF

What are your top five fandom spaces in terms of time spent? (AO3, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Dreamwidth, and others)

OTW volunteer workspaces
Twitter
Tumblr
Dreamwidth
AO3

What are the top five ways you interacted in these fandoms? (Reading fanfic, writing, commenting, watching videos, chatting with friends, making art, or anything else you can think of).

Tweeting
Reading fic
Writing

What are the top five things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time? Did you write? Comment? Send positive energy into the universe? Create art?

General AD&T co-chair stuff, e.g. cross-committee liaising, pointing folks at tasks, documenting things, writing news posts
Testing, coding, and code review
Database tickets
Tweeting
Writing

What things did you create that took the most time?

Chapter 3 of Dying in L.A.
A bunch of unfinished Hamilton/American Revolution RPF fic
Updated tester documentation, still in progress
A pull request related to gifts that was way more involved than I expected
The Elliot/Olivia/Kathy A/B/O fic I didn't get done for the challenge deadline

Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Lunacy

sarken — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 09:33:15 GMT

Paternity enjoyed a nice 11 day run as my favorite SVU episode, but it's over now; my new favorite is Lunacy.

IMDb was like, "Stabler runs into an old friend when the team investigates the rape and murder of an astronaut," and I was like, "Boring, I have already seen the X-Files episode Space and do not need to do that again, ever," but it turns out it was an episode about how Olivia and Elliot and Elliot's older astronaut friend Dick were going to have a threesome until the guy turned out to be a murderer.

Definitely better than Space.

This episode had it all, though: giggling Elliot telling the story of how he met Dick, Olivia in two dresses (one with a blonde wig), the reveal that Elliot and Kathy have been lying to their kids about when they got married, Olivia and Elliot and Dick killing what appears to be half a bottle of whiskey at work... everything.

Definitely a solid 9.8 out of 10. Could've been a 9.9 if Olivia had gotten to sleep with Dick before the murderer reveal, or a 10 if both Elliot and Olivia had slept with him. (Legit, Dick was asking Olivia out and she was like, "Can I bring Elliot?" but alas, Elliot had already pulled the "I'm married" card while he and Dick were tipsily checking out Olivia's ass, so Dick had to tell her no. I am not making up a single word of this.) Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

As Nottingham Was to Robin Hood

sarken — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 07:25:37 GMT

Meanwhile, on Organized Crime... Everyone is just out there, trusting cyber security expert Richard Wheatley!

It's... great fun, actually? Because Elliot can't prove shit but he doesn't trust Wheatley and can't/won't hold his tongue about it and Wheatley is baiting him and trying to make Elliot seem irrational and hotheaded and of course everyone believes Elliot is irrational and hotheaded because he's Elliot Stabler, Ahab and Energizer Bunny in one!

Yes, really, Wheatley referred to him as both Ahab and the Energizer Bunny in one scene. A scene in which he's just warning his new BFF the governor of New York about Elliot being the kind of renegade cop the governor should want off the force.

The thing I'm going to take away from this episode, though, is blue balls. As in, Wheatley saying to Elliot, "I got the love of my life back, and what do you got? Blue balls?" That is not an exact quote, but "love of my life" and "blue balls" were the important parts. Just... Wheatley taunting him about not being with Olivia yet, and the show --

Okay. Here's the thing. OC has tried, I think, very hard to earn people's trust regarding Elliot and Olivia. It has said multiple times that Elliot loves Olivia, and even though each time has had some wiggle room where a very tired and world-weary shipper could say they didn't really mean it, every time, the show comes back and says, "We said what we said." I am, at this point, willing to trust them... unlike SVU.

So my point is, that was not just Wheatley taunting Elliot, that was the show acknowledging the pain of people who've been shipping this for 23 blessed years.

And now comes the part where I may regret trusting the show! Next week! Next week, Elliot is going to fake romance Angela to provoke Richard? I shit thee not, the preview had him saying, "I thought I'd pretend to be in love with you," as he and Angela had a big romantic scene in the front window of a restaurant while Richard watches and then Richard and Angela being all, "What were you doing with Stabler?"/"It's none of your business," later and then Elliot head-butting Wheatley in an elevator to the tune of, "I'll have your badge"/"I had your wife."

HELLO.

I'm pretty sure anything Elliot felt for Angela is long fucking gone now that she blew up (um, pardon the expression) Kathy's murder trial and he knows she was faking her decline, so I'm not too nervous, but making men think with the wrong head is Angela's superpower, so! You never know. (I 100% do not care if he sleeps with her for real; I can totally buy Angela only agreeing to go along with the fake date if it ends in sex. And, hey, better that he put in some practice and learn some new tricks so he can live up to Olivia's standards when the time comes.)

Anyway, this is all very problematic and maybe I should be offended and defending Elliot against this character assassination but... I cannot wait. And I would like fandom to cough up some Elliot/Richard because that's all pretty gay.

Hm, you know, it occurs to me... what does Richard say to provoke Elliot into laying hands on him? 🤔 Looking forward to finding out! Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Urgh

sarken — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 04:56:06 GMT

How about if we start the episode with some religiously based hate crimes set to Christmas music and end it with Olivia shooting someone in the head on Christmas.

Well, if they don't like that, we can start the next episode with Olivia's kid getting locked in a dog cage wearing a collar -- and her seeing it! -- and then we can can ignore it for 57 minutes, and finally we'll wrap it all up by having the kid come out as bi so everyone will be happy and forget the rest. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

ROTPS again

sarken — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 11:27:28 GMT

If I fixate on a different detail of ROTPS, Kathy's last moments annoy me less.

She makes that comment about how Olivia and Elliot were still so in sync, just like the old days, and then is like, "You two really haven't spoken in ten years?"

When Olivia says she hadn't even known Elliot was back on the job, Kathy says Elliot had told her that and she hadn't believed him.

Oh. Oh. Okay. Insisting they go to Olivia's award ceremony and then making a comment about how in sync they still are makes so much sense if Kathy thought Elliot had been lying to her and pointedly not mentioning communication with Liv. Maybe it's not her being weirdly invested in them; it's her being suspicious of them and trying to catch them in a lie.

And god damn if that doesn't explain the contents of the fucking letter. (Especially if you combine it with my firm belief "you would've loved it" implies Elliot spent no small amount of time in a fantasy land -- excuse me, he prefers the term "parallel universe" -- where Olivia was with him in Rome.) What we were too each other wasn't real. I hope you have a nice man like you deserve. Oh.

It's not a particularly kind reading of her, but at least it's coherent. Or maybe it isn't unkind: if you think your husband is having a long distance emotional affair, it's not unreasonable to try to find the truth and end it. Sure, Elliot said they'd been happy, but Elliot has a long track record of being Mr. Denial O. Blivious about their marital issues.

Anyway, for now, I am into this theory. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Why am I just now having this idea

sarken — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 11:31:54 GMT

Note to self: AU where Elliot stops wistfully thinking about Olivia and picks up a damn phone and the result is Liv flying to Italy every other month to get absolutely railed by both Stablers. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Paternity

sarken — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 04:11:56 GMT

I have seen it! Finally! Paternity! The best episode of SVU!

The thing is, sometimes when you're trying to up the drama on your show by throwing ridiculous shit at the wall -- hello, guy in the previous episode who jumped off a building and got crushed in a garbage truck -- you hit something brilliant. Something like "What if Elliot isn't there for the birth of his child, so Olivia takes over his role?"

And the way they did this was by having Olivia and Kathy get in a car accident while Olivia was taking Kathy to a doctor's appointment (because Elliot got so invested in a case he forgot the appointment until Olivia said something, which I find a bit hard to swallow in terms of plausibility, but I'll give them a pass).

The really great thing is that it wasn't about Elliot at all. Killing Kathy in season 23 was all about the Elliot angst, but T-boning his pregnant wife and the one true love of his life? Nope. All you're getting is Fin coming to get him, telling him to get in the car, and absolutely none of Elliot being told and reacting to what happened. Meanwhile, please enjoy like 15 or 20 minutes of Olivia petting Kathy's hair and calling her honey and sweetheart and Kathy begging Olivia not to leave her and Olivia holding baby Eli before Elliot ever gets to. (I really want tearful Olivia saying, "She's my partner's wife," to ring in my ears forever, or at least alternate between that and Kathy telling Elliot, "Olivia's taking really good care of me." And they definitely stuck Elliot's speakerphone voice thanking Olivia in there because "I love you, too" sounded like "I love you two," change my mind.)

In theory, this would've been great commentary on how close partners are and how integrated into the Stabler family Olivia is. In theory. In reality, for that to have worked, we'd have needed to have seen Olivia being a fixture in Stabler family life. What do we have before this, though? Olivia mentioning in season one or two that she bought Kathy's birthday present, and then perhaps season eight with Kathy asking Olivia to get Elliot to sign the divorce papers. I guess you could also cite Elliot almost immediately telling Olivia that Kathy was pregnant.

It feels more like the beginning of something than a natural extension of or commentary on something that already existed (especially since Eli's birth was all about a new beginning for Elliot and Kathy). A pity given the state of the follow-through, but whatever, I'll be over here writing the Elliot/Kathy/Olivia that canon didn't give me. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

with the safety switched off

sarken — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 11:26:09 GMT

Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Relationship: Olivia Benson/Elliot Stabler
Summary:

"I don't want to be here," Elliot says, head still down, but looking into her eyes.

"Yeah, well. That's what the Jameson's is for."

Elliot, Olivia, and a party to celebrate Kathy's pregnancy.

Title: Something to Get Through
Author: Sarken
Rating: R

Author's note: Oh, boy, do I have some things to say about this. Might be time to revisit the old days of DVD commentary for fic.

Also available on the Archive of Our Own.

***

Elliot doesn't tell anyone Kathy's pregnant. Olivia is careful to keep his secret, but when Kathy drops by the precinct with her round belly, the cat is officially out of the bag. The energy in the room shifts: there are nudges and head tilts and whispers and barely suppressed excitement that explodes not ten seconds after Kathy walks back out the door.

Olivia leans back in her chair and watches with a smirk while Elliot takes the back-slaps and congratulations and ragging for his silence with a tight smile and bright pink cheeks.

"Should have a party," Fin declares, and the general murmurs of agreement drown out Elliot's objections.

"I don't want to say anything," Munch says, leaning against the edge of his desk and crossing his long arms and legs, "but someone's being awfully quiet at her desk over there." He fixes his gaze on Olivia; Fin and Lake look, too.

"You knew," Lake accuses, but he's grinning. "How long?"

"'Bout as long as Stabler himself, I'm betting," Fin says.

Elliot throws a stack of Post-Its at him; it flies through the air end over end. "Hey, I waited almost an hour."

And that's how Olivia gets stuck with party planning duty. It's not much of a punishment, really, because it's not much of a party. It's celebratory drinks after work, involving every cop friend of Elliot's who doesn't have somewhere else to be.

Even on short notice, it's enough to almost fill the bar.

"You should schmooze," Olivia tells him over the din. He's been sitting with her twenty minutes now, ever since they walked in, his hand on her back. "It's your party."

"Exactly," Elliot says and takes a swig of his beer. "They can come to us."

Olivia laughs, but it works. Fin and Lake swing by first, just long enough for a quick and unsentimental toast, and then comes a guy a little older than Elliot, who--even in a bar full of off-duty cops--looks remarkably like an off-duty cop.

"Hey, Elliot, congrats," he says, voice full of Staten Island. He's probably got a wife at home, couple of teenagers, maybe a GSD. "What is this, number four?"

"Five," Elliot says. "Three was twins." Then he gestures to Olivia with his bottle. "My partner Olivia. Liv, this is Mike Wetzel, outta Fort Pitt."

"Nice to put a face to the name," Olivia says. Tomorrow, she won't be able to pick this guy out of a lineup.

"Olivia," Mike repeats, thinking. "You sent the email, right?"

"I did."

He scoffs and waves a dismissive hand at her, but in a joking way. "Gotta be your first. Got to a point, we were so sick of celebrating this guy's swimmers making it upstream, we took up a collection, bought him a TV for the bedroom. Guess the damn thing finally busted." He laughs, open-mouthed and loud and ugly.

Elliot rubs the back of his neck.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, Mike," Olivia says with her biggest, fakest smile. Friendliness as a cover for showing her teeth.

"Yeah, yeah," Mike says. He turns away, then back with a pointed finger. "See you for number six." Laughing too hard, he walks away, and inserts himself immediately into another conversation.

"Wouldn't bet on that," Olivia says under her breath. She washes the bad taste out of her mouth with what's left of her beer, then gestures to Elliot's. "You want another?"

He shakes his head. "Jameson," he says. "Double."

She can't fault him for that, and when she comes back from the bar with whiskey for both of them, she finds Cragen in her chair. She sets Elliot's glass on his left, to the far side of Cragen.

"Oh, sorry, Liv," he says, quickly vacating her seat, always a gentleman. "I better get going anyhow. Congratulations again, Elliot. Give my love to Kathy."

"Thanks, Cap," he says, smiling genuinely, warmly.

Olivia sits back down, and Elliot clinks their glasses lightly before taking a small sip.

"Kathy wants you at the baby shower," he says, looking at the scratched tabletop. "Invitation's in my desk; remind me to give it to you."

"Yeah, okay," she says. She rubs her finger across a ring of water, breaking the circle. She doesn't know if she means the reminder or the party. She can't not go, she knows that, just like she knows how god-awful it's going to be, sitting in a room with Kathy's friends and family, playing shower games and answering so how do you know Kathy with oh, I'm Elliot's partner.

"I don't want to be here," Elliot says, head still down, but looking into her eyes.

"Yeah, well. That's what the Jameson's is for."

"Elliot!" A booming voice and the approach of its owner interrupts their combined misery. "Long time, man."

"At least two kids ago," Elliot agrees, smiling at the man. He has a kind face and an infectious grin; Olivia likes him better than Mike. "Mac, my partner, Liv. Liv, this is Mac. We met in boot camp, then again at the academy."

Mac tips his Miller Lite in her direction as a hello. "From the email, right?"

Olivia smiles. "From the email." Next time Fin wants a party, he can send the email.

"Damn, man, you keep lucking out," Mac says.

"I know it," Elliot says. "Liv's the best."

"And how's Kathy?"

"Ah, you know. Says she feels like a whale, but she loves it. The other day..."

Olivia tunes them out there, cannot possibly listen to fairy tales about Elliot's happy, pregnant wife. She scans the room, looking for--well, she doesn't know what. Looking for someone who's not here for Elliot, maybe. Someone she could start a conversation and end the night with without it feeling like a betrayal.

"How about you, Liv?" Mac asks, drawing her attention with her name. "Any kids?"

Elliot takes it for her. "I keep trying to pawn my teenagers off on her, but she knows too much about 'em."

Mac laughs. Olivia tries to.

"Teenagers, man," he says, in the voice of a father. "Anyway, great seeing you. I find Dave, I'll send him over. I know he's around somewhere."

Elliot gestures goodbye with his glass. "Mac's a good guy," he says to Olivia, though she doesn't doubt that. She knows it's just something to say.

"I'll keep him on the guest list for next time, then." It doesn't come out quite as light as she wants. She takes a drink, doesn't enjoy the burn of the whiskey tonight so much as she suffers through.

She takes another to feel it again.

"Hey hey, Stabler!" This guy's dressed young for his age, arms thrown wide, and Olivia immediately likes him and his rounded Yankee cap just slightly less than Mike. "Decade plus in sex crimes, you still ain't figured out how to use a rubber?"

"Yeah, well, that's the thing about being married," Elliot says. "You don't wanna, you don't gotta. Should try it sometime."

The guy gestures with both hands, grins a shit-eating grin Olivia wouldn't mind taking a swing at. "What, you think I haven't?"

"Marriage," Elliot corrects in his settle down voice. "Joey, this is my partner--"

"Olivia," Olivia finishes. "From the email." She pushes her chair back, plants her fists on the table, knuckles down, and looks at Elliot. "Much as I love a conversation about birth control, I'm gonna go pee."

As she turns away, she sees him out of the corner of her eye, sliding her glass closer to him, resting his hand lightly over the top.

There's no line for the bathroom and no one else inside--tonight, she might be the only woman here--and she takes a shuddering breath as she stares at her reflection over the sink. She feels hot, like she could cry or puke. Like she can't go back to that table, to Elliot, to the person he's pretending to be for the people who no longer know him, to the endless congratulations about an accident. She just wants to get out of here, and she doesn't want to do it alone.

She'd take an accident at this point; it would feel like a miracle.

"Liv?" His voice through the door makes the first tear fall; she squeezes her eyes shut so it's the only one.

"I'm okay," she says, raising her voice. It sounds hoarse.

He opens the door. "Liv--"

She shakes her head. "Don't, Elliot. This isn't--it's not fair." She opens her eyes. The light hurts, refracted through her tears. "You don't have to sit by me all night."

His tie is loosened; his arms hang by his sides, sleeves rolled up. He looks tired. "I want to. I--Liv, I wish... I want--"

"Yeah." She turns toward him. He can already see her red eyes in the mirror; he might as well have to meet them. "I wish and I want and all it gets me is a night sitting by your side while a bunch of cops congratulate you on your pregnant wife." She laughs, reaches behind her to brace her hands on the edge of the sink. "One time, you take her to bed. One time, and--" Her voice breaks, anger cracking open around grief. "It's not fucking fair, El."

He's holding her, then; more importantly, he's kissing her then, and as he sits her on the edge of the sink, she thinks this is funny, actually, how she found someone in this bar who doesn't know him and it's him. But she's going to his wife's baby shower, so she lets him stick his cock inside her while she grabs fistfuls of his wrinkled shirt and prays for an accident and a miracle.

(Two weeks later, in the cornflower blue of the Stablers' bathroom, she bleeds. She rests her forehead against the tile and breathes, takes it as her miracle.)

Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

SVU S8

sarken — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 06:33:52 GMT

Hey, quick question about season eight of SVU: what the fuck?

I feel like we'd all be better off if we placed this season directly in the bin and set it on fire. No Simon, no Stabler marriage reconciliation, no Olivia whimpering Elliot's name in her sleep, none of it. Just -- garbage, fire, scatter the ashes. When Dallas did that, they lost some important character development, but SVU? Nah, just douse it with kerosene, strike a match, and try again.

I don't even know what to tell you is wrong with it. It's a different show than the first seven seasons (and this is glaringly obvious because I just went back and finished S1), but it hasn't hit the so-ridiculous-it's-enjoyable mark that my favorite season 11 episodes hit. It's like they didn't know what to do, so they just did stuff for the hell of it? Or someone told them to make the show more character-driven, but they didn't really like the characters they were stuck with?

Actually, yeah, that's exactly it: it's got Major Crimes season six vibes and I'm bouncing off them hard. At least I've only got a couple more to go. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

If it comes back, it's yours

sarken — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 01:29:07 GMT

I'm writing a fic (I am writing many fics) and it is starting to come together! So I'm going to ruin that by talking about it.

It's a five things fic: "Five Times Elliot Stabler Lent a Hand" (because "Five Times Elliot Stabler Gave Olivia Benson a Totally Platonic Handjob" would be gauche). The last couple of days, I've been thinking about making it a 5+1, but the +1 ("(And One Time He Gave Her the D)") doesn't work unless I stick both their names in the main title ("Five Times Elliot Stabler Lent Olivia Benson a Hand") and that's just too much. No, I don't like it without his last name and no, I am not interested in workshopping it further.

Anyway, I started this fucker on October 25. It started with:

The call pulls Liv away from the good part of a date; Elliot would know that even if she hadn't huffed at him, blowing her bangs off her forehead, when he'd asked, "Bad time?" He gets paid to notice things, and it's hard not to notice her dark lipstick is gone.

She changes at the precinct, fidgets nonstop with the clingy white top that doesn't hide her lace bra. Fidgets next to him in the car, too.

He curls his fingers around the top of the steering wheel. "If you have to pee--"

"I'm fine."

"--we can stop at the--"

"Jesus, El, I said I'm fine."

Horny Liv's got a short fuse, and there's a reason he's not with FDNY. He's never held a lighter he didn't instinctively flick.

-

They trudge back into the precinct, snow and slush on their shoes. "We got a couple hours til that place opens," Elliot says, with all the forced offhandedness of someone who's been snapped at too many times. "Should grab some rack time."

He figures it's more polite than telling her to go stick her hand down her pants, rub one out for everyone's sake.

"What about you?"

He shrugs. "I caught some Z's at home."

And then it sat there until November 12, at which point I deleted everything and started fresh.

With the fourth, not first, of the five times.

Wild.

But it's working. "How did they get here?" has been driving the rest of the fic. I had the general concepts for the remaining scenes worked out, although not quite how they brought us to #4.

But two nights ago, you know what happened?

III.

The third time, work pulls her away from a date.

Yeah, the original idea came back around. (Different POV, different events, but same winter, same characterization.) I hadn't been expecting that (but I'm glad it usurped my new idea for #2, which was about to be forced into the #3 slot where it didn't quite fit). Nor had I been expecting it to provide a fix some issues I was having with time #1, but it did.

I have also realized that as much as I wanted to write a PWP, this isn't it. Is there graphic sex? Yeah, but it's not there to be hot. It's there, like Elliot, to get the job done.

And that's making this a lot easier to write. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Hey, my friend Olivia.

sarken — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 08:51:37 GMT

Ilene Chaiken has indeed ruined Christmas forever, just as she promised. There is no gift that can ever compete with The Christmas Episode.

But let's back the truck up.

We start with Olivia going to meet Elliot and the kids at Kathy's grave for some six-months-belated birthday thing? And then, hey, let's all go out for Italian, that was Kathy's favorite.

idk, the Stablers just keep making choices! That entire family! Choices out the wazoo!

Anyway, as the promo told us, Rafael Barba defends Wheatley at the trial. I have only seen three or so episodes with Barba and he didn't endear himself to me in any of those, so the whole "Liv's post-Elliot best friend is betraying her" thing was lost on me.

But, see, Liv was lucky Barba was defending Wheatley because unlike other lawyers, he wasn't going to make a big fuss over Olivia and Elliot's relationship and Olivia's history of bad choices when it comes to Elliot. Just a little fuss. Just a small one. Behold this video of the SVU captain letting the victim's husband into the interrogation room and then having to put herself between said husband and the suspect! He is not wrong.

There was stuff, it was a trial. Wheatley checked out Elliot's dick because there's some foeyay going on with them, Elliot pretended he was some sort of playboy to get under Wheatley's skin, whatever.

The important thing is we got Jolivia! And her telling Elliot he's a shithead! AND SAYING SHE WANTS TO TALK?? IN THE SAME SCENE.

Wheatley told Liv to keep herself and Elliot's kids away from his ex-wife Angela's testimony, kinda implying that Elliot and Angela were doing the horizontal mambo on every available surface. So Olivia went to Elliot like, "Is there any reason I shouldn't be there for her testimony?" and Elliot is like, "Wheatley is just stirring you up," because Liv has a nasty jealous streak when it comes to Elliot and she does not hide it at all. (In 1.0, she went from zero to yelling at Elliot about keeping it in his pants because he looked at her female friend three times in an episode? Olivia Benson doesn't have much chill, either.) AND THEN shithead Elliot is like, "Besides, that's none of your business, or the court's" and "Why are you really asking?"

And Liv is just like, look, I get you're grieving, but COULD YOU MAYBE STOP BEING A SELF-CENTERED, MANPAIN-FEULED PRICK FOR FIVE MINUTES AND ASK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO ME WHILE YOU WERE GONE. (So my instinct to watch the Lewis episodes was pretty spot on. I should finish that.) She also asked him what the fuck he was thinking, giving her the letter Kathy wrote, and told him the thing that I think finally got through his skull: he showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night and it was scary for her.

I'm pretty sure Elliot would rather be shot than hear he'd scared Olivia. Like, 110% sure. Maybe 1000%.

Anyway, hung jury, mistrial, and suddenly Eli's missing!

Now the real fun can begin because we are safe in the embrace of Organized Crime, the superior show.

Eli (14?) goes off, meets an older girl (19!! the fuck!), does drugs and shots with her, and whoops, when he wakes up, the girl is dead. So he calls his dad from Ft. Lee and his dad picks up Olivia (and they hold hands in the car while he drives, but that was literally the least interesting development in either episode) and goes to find him. Meanwhile, Eli is standing on the edge of a bridge and a cop talks him down and they take him to the station.

The cops don't know about the dead girl, so they let Elliot talk to Eli, and Elliot looks at Liv and says, "Please," so she goes to talk to Eli with him. 😭 (Eli was like, "Why is she here," and neither Elliot nor Olivia said because she helped your mother give birth to you, you twit. But this feels like a potential future issue. Eli's too young to know Olivia.)

I loved this scene! Elliot is all concerned dad and Olivia is doing her best detective-ing. I actually thought Elliot was going to get pissed at her, but he didn't, and she was like, "I'll take care of this," and goes!! to!! the crime scene!! And tries to insert her whole self into an investigation outside her jurisdiction, where she knows the suspect! LIKE SHE DID NOT JUST GET TOLD ABOUT THIS SHIT. But Olivia cannot help herself when it comes to Elliot and his family. Cannot. I'm sure this isn't going to come back and bite her on the ass.

Anyway, shocking absolutely no one, Eli didn't kill the girl and Wheatley was trying to frame him. But Eli still needs a psych eval, so they send him off to the hospital, and. And.

And the show decided to just put a whole fanfic on the screen? (I'm getting the order of events slightly wrong here, idgaf.)

Elliot finds Olivia in a breakroom/longue/whatever, and he's like, "Okay, I want to know. Tell me about your life. Are you seeing anyone?"

And Olivia is like, "Ummmm... the fuck? Did we just switch genres? Did you hit your head? Your son is in the hospital for being suicidal? And you seriously want to know if I'm single?"

So Elliot, whose chill levels would need to increase to get to zero, is like, "Is that too awkward? Eh. But for real, how many guys did you fuck while I was gone?"

I SWEAR TO GOD. IT SOUNDS LIKE I AM MAKING THIS UP, BUT I AM NOT. ELLIOT ASKED OLIVIA HOW MANY MEN SHE HAD BEEN WITH SINCE HE LEFT. ~~Wait until he hears she's been with one since he got back.~~

THE WORDS "HOW MANY" LEFT HIS HORNY ALTAR BOY LIPS. TWICE.

So Liv, rather than killing him, says, "You want to know my dating history, detective?"

And he laughs and shakes a finger at her and goes, "You're being evasive."

INTERROGATION KINK CONFIRMED. THANK YOU FOR THIS GIFT, ILENE.

And she tells him about Tucker, sort of, and the doctor interrupts and blah blah, BUT. THE OTHER THING.

They're leaving and Elliot catches Olivia by the arm and thanks her for being there, and he says, "I want to find balance here. In this. Whatever this is."

And Olivia says, like 45 minutes after we heard her saying she couldn't quite trust him and that he scared her -- well, she tries a few times to speak, and finally says, "How about we call it a friendship? How's that for now?"

AND HE GETS THIS SMILE ON HIS FACE LIKE SHE JUST SAID SHE'D MARRY HIM. 😭 😭 😭 😭

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE

He gets his face muscles under control and says, "Hey, my friend Olivia, I'd like you and your son Noah to come on over to my place this weekend for a family Christmas get-together."

He sounds like a little boy with a crush, not even like a high schooler, and it is the sweetest? Fucking? Thing? I have ever heard or seen. AND THE PIANO VERSION OF THEIR LOVE THEME IS PLAYING AND IT'S NOT FINE AT ALL and she doesn't immediately say yes and he says, "Please," and she says, "Wow," and she'll have to think about it and "Can I let you know?" and he says, "Just come," and I am dead on the floor in my own home. ("Just come" will be making an appearance in at least ten different PWPs by the end of this weekend, judging from Twitter. I'm not mad about it.)

Anyway, we don't get to see if she comes, but. But. We get to see the Stabler house in chaos with Elliot's mom (who is named Bernie and who put a Bernie-Sanders-at-the-Inauguration ornament on the tree, and was that seriously less than a year ago?) and his kids and his grandkids -- ELLIOT HAS GRANDKIDS, I LOVE THAT FOR HIM -- and the doorbell rings and he is just! so! excited! because (he thinks) Liv and Noah are there. It is PRECIOUS.

I just love it so much? Elliot has always looked at Liv with these restrained heart eyes, but the restraints are fucking off. He's besotted, he's confessed his love to her like three times, and he's just going to let her and everyone else see that until she feels like she can trust him and it's safe to reciprocate. And she's told him what she needs from him to get there! A friggin' Christmas miracle, Elliot and Olivia have learned to communicate after twenty-three blessed years.

I'm about to hit season eight in my 1.0 viewing, and I super don't want to. I think I have to take a break and just roll around in the season 23 joy. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Mambo number five, Pfizer number three

sarken — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 21:23:53 GMT

Booster achieved!

I... forgot my vaccine card. I looked next to the stove, it wasn't there, I forgot about it. Dumbass. But they gave me a new one and that's now in my wallet, which it doesn't fit in, as I'm sure you've heard.

I would complain about how long the experience took, but I'm the dumbass who forgot the card and I'm sure that contributed to it being a 40 minute experience, so.

The pharmacist was about 12 years old and pushed the needle into my arm as slowly as humanly possible -- I had time for multiple full-sentence thoughts -- but it didn't feel like anything, and I didn't get dizzy or hot or faint or anything afterwards.

Anyway, that was 7:00 last night. I did not fucking sleep at all. I have lost three hours of sleep a night every day since... Sunday? Monday? I no longer know. I was figuring the vaccine would hit me like a train and knock me out, but no. No fever, tiredness, muscle aches, headache. I feel as good as a person who hasn't slept can feel. Just a slightly sore arm, and by slightly sore, I mean I spent a bunch of sleepless hours lying on it and it was fine, but it's a little hard to reach up and put my contacts in or my hoodie on. So maybe more "stiff" than "sore."

(ngl, I blame pretty much most of last night's sleeplessness on the Supreme Court. I'm attempting to cope with the impending death of Roe by writing SVU 28th Amendment fic. That's bleak.) Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Ashes to Ashes

sarken — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 11:18:08 GMT

Having watched Ashes to Ashes again, I think I'm sincerely supposed to believe Flutura does not know Albi is gay. Uh-huh.

But I will say that everything that happened on the damn boat sure as shit makes more sense knowing that Albi is gay and the thing Elliot promised him is that he wouldn't out him.

Also! Kilbride is a... vice president in the Marcy Killers? Nova is a vice president now and reported something about Kilbride, aka Mr. Taylor, but I have already forgotten exactly what it was. The more important part is he thinks Ayanna feels so indebted to him that she'll do favors for him.

That's going to be fun. I assume we'll have to cook up a reason for Ayanna to pretend to be a dirty cop for a while; I can't imagine we're going to bust Kilbride the first time he asks for a favor.

Elliot doesn't know squat about this yet, I don't think, so if Ayanna doesn't tell him, things could get interesting between the two of them. I would prefer it did not.

Of course, everything depends on how The Christmas Episode shakes out; Elliot might have a complete breakdown and need to go live in a yurt somewhere off the grid for another ten years. Regardless, I suspect there won't be a lot of developments with the Kilbride storyline until next year. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

tfw you can't find the thing you want to read but it probably exists

sarken — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 04:59:51 GMT

There was an old SVU I watched the other day where a woman had a brain tumor and it made her unable to suppress her impulses. I wasn't fully paying attention because I was playing Animal Crossing and had already figured out the twist was coming, but I looked up at one point and she was kissing and possibly groping Elliot, who shoved her. Anyway, IAB showed up to talk about this use of force, and Olivia got up in Tucker's face and told him it was justified because Elliot had been sexually assaulted.

I'm sure it'll come as a shock when I say canon did nothing with that.

But now I have a mighty need for fic that does actually explore that. Not necessarily this instance in particular, but.

I assume someone at some point in this fandom's 23-year existence has written the fic -- someone wrote one for Third Watch -- but it definitely didn't make it onto AO3. It might be buried in the 17,000 fics on FFN, but I'm not going to click through like 700 pages to find out. (We won't talk about the SVU archive that lost all of its fic or LJ or how there were probably Geocities pages, too.)

I don't have a particular point other than sometimes an unsearchable pile of fic spanning almost a quarter of a century is just as bad as virtually no fic. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Little bit more OC catch up

sarken — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 06:02:07 GMT

Ah-ha! I am indeed where I am supposed to be with the Kilbride story. Ayanna saw Nova in Kilbride's office, met up with her, and asked what was up. Nova says he got her into the Marcy Killers because he knows... someone whose position in the gang I'm not perfectly clear on... from way back, but other than that, it's above her pay grade, and now Ayanna wants to keep it quiet while she works out what's going on.

Which I'm sure is going to go great and not backfire at all.

However, now I have a new question. Nova wanted to know who Ayanna was with at Kilbride's office, and then she got kind of funny when Ayanna said it was her wife. Is Nova just sad because it reminded her the woman she wanted to marry got killed? Or is there going to be something between Nova and Ayanna? Considering this was shortly after Ayanna asked if she could keep Nova on the task force, I'm sort of thinking the second one. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Her Negotiation/Surrender Benson

sarken — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 11:35:34 GMT

I watched the first two William Lewis episodes! What the fuck! Why did I do that!

Her Negotiation was like one giant pacing issue? It was the kind of thing that should've been woven in as a subplot over several episodes. But "one giant pacing issue" is a good descriptor of almost every episode of SVU I have seen so far. The show constantly rushes things. I did enjoy the attempt to show everyone having a slow day off, though.

Surrender Benson was not an episode with a pacing issue. It was actually less graphic than I was expecting, and it's not like I was expecting it to be very graphic: it is, after all, a network show. You could probably almost put it in the psychological thriller category?

Anyway, a few days ago I watched an episode where Elliot found Olivia standing over a dead suspect who'd been stabbed or something and -- once he was done yelling at her about being impulsive or reckless or whatever word he used that was just extremely rich coming from him -- he said he never thought she killed the guy because he knew she would've shot him. I just think it's interesting that he was very wrong and she decided to go with -- oh. Oh, Jesus, I did not realize until I was typing this sentence.

She decided to go with beating the guy to death with a pipe, which is exactly the thing she fantasized about Elliot doing to the guy. Jesus. She put down her gun -- the gun with Elliot's mini badge on it -- and decided to beat the guy to death with a pipe, minutes after telling the guy her old partner would've used the pipe on him.

What the fuck, SVU writers. What. The. Fuck.

I am actually mad about how brilliant that was? Having Olivia subdue her torturer, then pace around and fantasize about having Elliot there to avenge her in specific, brutal ways, and then -- oh. Oh, again.

Even as he was cuffed to the bed, Lewis was taunting Olivia about not knowing what she wanted, but she did. She didn't want to burn him or shoot him; she wanted Elliot to beat the shit out of Lewis... but it was just her there. So she did it for herself.

Play whack-a-mole with my id, writers, it's fine.

Also, final note: hearing Olivia do that thing with her voice as she pleaded with Lewis to keep her around because she could get him off? Absolutely the hardest part to watch. The more I think about it, the more I am coming to the realization it was a calculated move, but it was still just horrible.

I'm not sure if I'll watch the rest. Trial stuff bores the hell out of me and Russian roulette is... not generally my favorite thing to watch on TV, actually. But I might skip the trial episode and do the Russian roulette one anyway; who knows! Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

I'm gonna stop watching December TV, stg

sarken — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 22:08:00 GMT

Ilene Chaiken -- yes, she of The L Word, did I neglect to mention that? -- is out here joking about the SVU/OC crossover ruining Christmas for all time and I, a person for whom Christmas really was a little bit ruined by Major Crimes season six, do not need this!!

However, I guess my next move is definitely watching the Lewis arc. I've had this vague feeling for a few days that I should watch it on the off chance it comes up, because I would be very annoyed if it did before I actually saw it. Now that I know we're doing kidnapping, I assume the odds of it coming up in the near future have increased dramatically. I mean, mid-investigation would be an entirely inappropriate time for them to have this conversation, but that seems to be their thing. Your wife got exploded so let's talk about you how much you hurt me when you left; I am drugged out of my gourd so let's talk about how we're together in a parallel universe.

Anyway, kudos on the promo that managed to break the fandom without even revealing this plot, and many thanks for holding onto it until now so we only have like sixteen days to work ourselves up.

~~So help me baby Jesus in the manger if they kill a Stabler child in something entitled "The Christmas Episode."~~ Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Season two catch-up

sarken — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 01:10:47 GMT

I've seen the season two episodes I missed, but still need to rewatch one or two of the ones I've seen. I feel... somewhat less confused about the Kilbride stuff? Or at least I feel like I'm the proper amount of suspicious and confused now. Something is up there, and I am still not sure what it is, but I think that's where I'm supposed to be.

I vaguely recall Ayanna meeting with Nova in one of the more recent episodes, possibly related to seeing Nova in Kilbride's office, but I was too busy being confused about who Nova was to follow, and I can't remember if it was before or after. Maybe seeing that again with the knowledge Nova is undercover will clear things up a bit more. (Nova is great, y'all. Her nickname is Nova as in Casanova 'cause she got all the girls... until she found the one, who naturally got murdered in front of her. I think that was the moment my mother got into the show, judging from her gasp.)

I'm so mad I didn't figure out Albi was gay. So mad! I should've figured it out as soon as Flutura asked Eddie!Elliot if he was queer. (Eddie is supposedly not queer.) I loved everything about that, though? Elliot follows Albi, finds him in a gay club, and Albi sees him and is like, "Welp, you know my secret so I'm going to have to kill you," and Elliot is standing in his own grave with a shovel and his only way to save himself is to convince Albi he doesn't give a damn he's gay and he'll never, ever tell anyone. And it wins Albi over so much it not only saves his life in that moment, but again later with Kosta? Spectacular. Can't wait to watch that final scene with Albi again knowing all this.

(Flutura knows Albi is gay, right? She talks about him being with other women, but... she definitely knows it's men and is just protecting his secret. Like, I am 90% sure that's why she asked Eddie!Elliot if he was queer.)

But, okay, the Elliot and Olivia nonsense. Or more specifically, the letter nonsense.

I watched the scene with the letter before I got sucked into these shows because I saw people screaming about it and I could not for the life of me understand what happened. His wife was dead and had written a letter to Olivia -- had written it as Elliot! -- saying what Elliot and Olivia had been to each other hadn't been real and they were actually bad for each other, but then Elliot had stuck another note in the envelope saying "In a parallel universe, it will always be you and I"? It made no fucking sense.

Good news! Even in full context, it still makes no fucking sense! None! At all! There is no point except to make Elliot's very nice dead wife into a horrid bitch. The letter was supposed to make it easier for Olivia and Elliot to talk? On what planet!!

It could've just been a letter full of generic nice things and apologies; that parallel universe note was a bombshell on its own. It didn't need to contradict the letter to be interesting or to be something they needed to talk about.

But also! We've got Reggie's mom reading Elliot's coffee grounds and asking why he doesn't tell Olivia he's in love with her, and then Elliot calling Olivia up to leave a voicemail about how he loves her before the meeting where he thinks Kosta is going to kill him? Something really needs to happen on December 9 (lol, be fucking careful what you wish for, Sarken) because this is actually getting a little boring. Elliot loves Olivia, we got it. Now what are you gonna do with it? Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Onward to season two

sarken — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 02:17:13 GMT

Okay, I have watched the first season of OC. I was hoping it would enlighten me about the Congressman Kilbride stuff Ayanna is into, but I guess that's more season two. At least now I have seen the Wheatley stuff and am ready for the trial.

But also: I have seen the Wheatley stuff.

And, okay. Elliot almost sleeps with ~~Cam from Bones~~ Wheatley's ex-wife Angela, who is in love with Elliot, but who also inspired, but didn't technically order, Kathy's murder. ~~This is really a Law & Order series?~~ I'm not sure I buy Elliot as the kind of guy to jump into bed with someone else like six episodes after his wife of 40 years has been murdered, but okay, grief and PTSD, and also Elliot is not a man in possession of any chill whatsoever, so I guess.

Except. Except this is so Wheatley can tell Angela that when Elliot was looking into her brown eyes, he was thinking about someone else's. Not about her, or about his dead wife, but about the one true love of his life. And just in case you didn't understand who Elliot's brown-eyed one true love is, we're going to stick a shot of Olivia in the recap at the start of the next episode and have this as a voiceover. And if you missed that, Dylan McWheatley is going to see Olivia and tell Elliot he understands because she is a knockout.

Poor dead Kathy.

But! That wasn't the worst of it. The worst was much earlier, when Mr. No Chill was telling Olivia about his life with Kathy in Rome and he thought it was somehow appropriate to say to Olivia, "You would have loved it." Elliot! No! She does not want to hear about how you take out your memories of her, swap her in for your now-dead wife, and play house in your head. Jesus, what is wrong with you, Mr. In A Parallel Universe It Will Always Be You And I.

In conclusion: this is terrible and I love every minute of it! I came out here to be attacked and I am honestly having a good time right now!

Also, unrelated and twenty years ago, but I'd really like to know more about the whole thing where Elliot gave Olivia his credit card to buy Kathy's birthday present. Like. What was being purchased and why did Olivia need to be involved. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Ashes to Ashes

sarken — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 07:51:08 GMT

LITERALLY the worst part about Flutura saying Elliot fucks like a horny altar boy having sex for the first time (but he lasts longer) is IT IS PROBABLY ACCURATE.

I mean, I feel like every third episode of SVU I've watched lately has Elliot being like, "MARRIED PEOPLE DON'T DO THAT, LIV." They don't use condoms, they don't have sex in parks, and I'm pretty sure there was a third thing.

Rethinking this ship, tbh. Liv deserves better sex. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Kathy Stabler

sarken — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 00:14:44 GMT

When I was on the outside looking in, watching EO fandom lose its collective shit over the letter, I was watching with a smidge of side eye even as I was cheering for them. Like, "So, the show's killing and vilifying his wife to get Benson and Stabler together? And everyone is just... happy with this?"

~~I was kind of relieved when the drama with the actress who played Kathy happened; it took so long I was doubting my perception of things.~~

But now that I'm actually watching the show, I decided last night it was time to really catch up on L&O: OC because I like it way more than I expected to. So I watched the episode of SVU where Elliot comes back and Kathy dies.

Let me get this straight.

It's been ten years since they've seen each other. Liv's getting an award or something and Kathy makes a big deal about how she and Elliot have to be there for it. Kathy gets exploded on their way there and, as she lies dying in the hospital, she can only talk about how long it has been since Olivia and Elliot last talked? Like, that is the last thing we hear Kathy Stabler talk about?

I hate everything about this!

You remember, idk, in the mid 2000s or early 2010s, when a chunk of slash fandom was like, "We need to not be such jerks about the canon female love interests!" and then decided that instead of killing the wives or making them terrible, the thing to do was make them understanding and supportive to the point where it was often comical?

It felt a lot like that, but it was happening on my TV screen, in front of my Twizzlers. And they killed her on top of that. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

What I wish I were reading

sarken — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 03:36:14 GMT

An incomplete list of recent fic wants! Mostly SVU, lolsob. I refuse to call them plot bunnies because that would imply I want to write these, and even I end up writing them, I don't want to.

Post-Major Crimes, Brenda waltzes into the bullpen like she belongs there. Andy is livid, takes her to task for not showing up for the wedding or the funeral. Sex happens, but I'm not sure if it's angry sex or missing Sharon sex or what. Just that there's a lot of emotions and none of them are really for each other.
Olivia Benson/Jo Marlowe/Elliot Stabler. Everything about Jo turning up was catnip for me. I just want to roll around in it. Elliot neglected to mention his ex-partner Jo was a woman! A very hot woman! Jo wants to know if Olivia has hooked up with Elliot, implying she might've done so herself! I'm not asking for a work of staggering genius; it just needs to be porn with a bit of jealousy and possessiveness and everyone having a good time and no one being on their best behavior.
You know Mulder and Scully going undercover in Arcadia as Rob and Laura Petrie? Like the dish? Elliot. Olivia. Same basic thing. Surely this exists? But it is not, as far as I can tell, on AO3! The fuck. I just need some longterm undercover as a couple with bed sharing and domesticity and totally expected feelings they shouldn't act on even though they have to do all the things they'd do if they were acting on them. Torture, in other words.
Olivia/Dana Lewis. My face when Dana was talking about having a husband. Like. What? No, Dana and Liv are lesbians who should be PWPing together.
I don't understand how Liv takes off her shirt calls Elliot daddy while pretending to be a prostitute and there's not five pages of porn about how this Awakened Something(TM) in them? Props to the person who turned it into a fuck-or-die thing, but I need my fuck-or-die to come with a few thousand words of angst and not talking about it afterwards.
Related, I just need some dark/unsettling/uncomfortable fic and about the constant exposure to sex crimes fucking with their own heads about sex. I'm not talking about making an explicit connection or whatever, just like... create a mood. Show something a little bad and how it steadily gets worse. Make me feel like "oh no."
Also, idk, just The Surgeon crossing paths with SVU for some reason?

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SVU

sarken — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 21:05:43 GMT

I put on a rerun of Law & Order: SVU, which I usually actively avoid due to subject matter, and it was one where Olivia was the suspect in a murder.

It would've killed someone to say to me, at any point in the past twenty years, "Single New York lady cop who owns a Mustang?"

I'm going to need Olivia Benson and Faith Yokas to do whatever together immediately. Dreamwidth: Comment | Read Comments

Upcoming entertainments

sarken — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 03:24:40 GMT

None of these are going to be available in time for dog sitting amusement, but today was filled with news of things with which I will be able to amuse myself in the future!

Good Omens audiobook!!! Did I have any desire before this announcement to read the book? Nope! But here I am! Please put David and Michael's book Crowley and Aziraphale directly in my ears posthaste.
Animal Crossing update!!! There's something called Brewster? He appears to be beloved. idk, I'm new here, and I'm just happy to get new content.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land!!! I have never played a Kirby game in my life. Actually -- wait. I think I played it for five minutes on a friend's GameBoy while sitting at his kitchen table more than 20 years ago? Possibly. But! The new game has an abandoned mall. I'm in, sold, take my money. I love abandoned cities.

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