Southland Rec Post
In honor of Southland's Season 2 premiere on March 2nd, I wanted to make a post of all my favorite Southland fandom-related things. This is not a comprehensive list; for the sake of my fingertips, this is a list of some of my favorites. If you feel I have missed anything (because I am terrible at the google or the delicious if my focus is not immediately apparent), drop me a link and I'll review and/or rec it.
Backstory
Southland cast:
Left to right, in the back: Officer Chickie Brown, Detective Daniel Sallinger, Detective Russell Clarke, partner to Detective Lydia Adams.
Left to right, in front: Officer Ben Sherman, rookie to Training Officer John Cooper, followed by Detective Sammy Bryant, partner to Detective Nate Moretta.
Not pictured: Officer Dewey Cox, Chickie's partner.
The three main characters are as follows:
Sherman and Cooper are Rookie and Training Officer. This is a relationship much like man and husband: The Arranged Marriage Version Where One Of Them Has Been Through This Like, A Hundred Times Before.
Cooper (played by Michael Cudlitz) is pretty much always teaching Sherman some kind of lesson, whether he's ragging on him or not. Cooper is a somewhat closed-off asshole who's a hell of a good person and a great cop. He is a gay, divorced, former Marine with a bad back whose problems are not so much about being a gay, divorced, former Marine. His back, though, has lead to a painkillers addiction that frequently flavors his interactions with much of society.
You might recognize Sherman from The O.C (Benjamin McKenzie). One of hackthis 's excellent fics paints the possibility of Sherman being a renamed Ryan Atwood who ran back to LA at the end of The O.C. All I have to say to that is, it is entirely possible. Sherman's a former rich kid down from 90210 - or wherever rich California kids live - with daddy issues bigger than the Jackson Five's combined.
This is Regina King's character, Detective Lydia Adams
Despite being one of the main characters, and getting a pretty big chunk of screen time dedicated to her, Lydia doesn't appear in a ton of fic, probably because there's a dearth of people awesome enough to pair with her. (Aside from Cooper and Sherman, but they've got their own little party going already.) She is extremely empathetic/sympathetic, and connects probably a little too much with the victims she works for. She's incredibly easy to love (on tv. I suspect, in person, she might occasionally expect just a wee bit too much from the people around her), and always gives more than she can afford to.
Network Drama
Now, if you watch Southland, or are reading this post, you probably know about Southland's move to TNT. For those of you who don't, in a few short sentences, what happened was, Jay Leno. When he was promised the 10 PM slot every weekday night, the dramas that NBC felt wouldn't work at the 9 PM slot were given the boot (after Southland had already filmed the first 6 episodes of their second season). Luckily, Southland got picked up by TNT and everyone seems to be very happy on their new network. However, if you want to backtrack and read up on the hullabaloo, you can do so here, at lj's southland site.
Michael Cudlitz, who plays Training Officer John Cooper, was probably the most outspoken of the cast and crew on his anger about the shitty treatment Southland received at NBC's executive's hands. He's done a number of interviews and began a massive Twiter campaign, but one of his more interesting interviews focuses more on his character and talks a teensy bit about season 2. AfterElton has the interview posted here, on their website.
If you lasted through that, you definitely deserve to see the promo for S2. And below are vid and fic recs!
Vids
Down by the Water, by danegen
Source: Southland
Character: Detective Lydia Adams
My favorite Southland vid would have to be danegen 's Down By The Water. Just because this is the only straight-Southland vid I have stumbled across does not make it any less beautiful or potent. danegen focuses on Regina King's character, Det. Lydia Adams (she's in sadly little fic, but she's got an incredibly rich presence on the show) and highlighted the way she connected with the victims, particularly the female victims Lydia felt were underrepresented. danegen managed to find all of the most stunning shots and use them in that vid.
If I were to come up with some sort of pairing for this, it would have to be Southland/Its Own Characters for the way the shots are framed and the care that is inherent in this vid. Watch it; you'll see what I mean.
ETA: Down by the Water is no longer the only Southland vid I've seen! Here's the second!
Eyes Like Bottles by newkidfan
Source: Southland
Characters: Sherman and Cooper
Warnings: The beauty might hurt.
Eyes Like Bottles is a very short vid - a minute thirty total - but it packs a punch like no other. It's a swift-moving vid that doesn't feel fast at all; it feels like a year and a day in a relationship with all the triumphs and failures and pissed-off moments that embody it. Despite itself, it still leaves you with hope. What they've built won't be easily rent, and I'm left believing they would fight with and for each other, gladly. Whether you read Eyes as slash or friendship, there is no denying that.
It highlights all these things that bring me back to Southland. The very real way it's filmed in - like a pair of eyes watching, watching, ever-present, always-aware. The camaraderie between these two, the tension, the bad choices they make and the strength they embody.
Insecurities like blemishes, decisions that ache and the second-guessing that comes hand-in-hand. Moments missed until you're overwhelmed by what-if's, friendship building and their constant, constant presence in each other's life, even when they're absent.
Quiet moments interspersed with everyday violence, the responsibility they carry sometimes a burden, sometimes a necessity. The things that go unsaid are sometimes the most important, the most powerful of them all.
Go. Watch. You won't regret it.
From what I know, there are a few other vids floating around out there that are multifandom and contain Southland footage: this is excellent. I, however, have no liinks for you because I fail. If you've got any, or want to pimp yourself out (always acceptable in my book), let me know and I'll edit the crap out of this section.
Fic
Since Yuletide 2009, fic quantity in the Southland fandom has gone way up - probably doubled what there was before. And since something around 10 or 15 Southland fics were written around Yuletide, that tells you just how small this fandom is. The lack of quantity, though, seems to work in favor of the quality of the fics.
hackthis , for example, has produced some pretty significant Southland fic. I will link you to her Southland tag page here, and I would certainly recommend reading all of her fic, but my favorites would have to be the following
Son is on a Midnight Run Like DeNiro, or, We're All Just Train Wrecks Waiting For The Crash, (John Cooper/Ben Sherman)
"And as soon as John stops laughing his ass off, he's going to make sure Sherman is okay. He really is. Except that Sherman's covered in carrot peelings and wilted lettuce and there's some orange sauce on his left sleeve, and oh god, John's lung capacity isn't prepared for this.
Then again, no part of John is prepared for Sherman to just strip off his shirt and his undershirt at the same time. The bright L.A. sun streams through the pine trees lining the driveway, casting patterns on Sherman's bare chest."
In a nutshell, Cooper is not prepared for Sherman's storming the castle walls. hackthis 's prose here is so gorgeous, so vivid that you would swear you've seen this Southland episode once you've read the fic. In fact, I want to know why the hell Biderman and her crew haven't written, produced and shot this episode yet. (If anyone has an inside track, maybe you could get them to do it? For me? Okay, I know you don't really know me, but I swear, I'm totally awesome. And I'll bake you something every single day for the rest of your life if you manage to get this made into real tv for me.)
To lend credence to my description of her visuals as vivid and gorgeous (got some more words for you: arresting, Jesus, just go read it already!), her research is top-notch. If you won't take my word for it, take thefourthvine 's. She writes:
"I live in Los Angeles. And this is Los Angeles. I can picture these places! I have driven down that street! I would kill Ben Sherman and eat his corpse to own his house! (No, not really, but I can find you a thousand people who would.) I have no idea if hackthis lives here or if she does really awesome research (I suspect the latter, mostly because I have long suspected that she lives in a secret space habitat orbiting the earth, where she creates superplants and bends them to her will), but either way: oh my god, this is SO Los Angeles. And I love it."
TFV has a lot of other great things to say, and you should totally check her out. But! Back to Southland: Son's on a Midnight Run focuses on the Rookie/TO relationship Cooper and Sherman have, and how they grow out of that. Cooper is your typical over-aggressive asshole at times, but he's genuine and insecure and so three-dimensional you'd swear he's climbed off the paper and is sitting in your lap. Sherman, on the other hand, is the guy who saves Cooper from himself. He, for all his youth, is more secure in his relationship with Cooper than Cooper is himself, something that probably stems from his youth, in fact. But he's still fallible, and prone to uncertainty and insecurity; he's such a good match for Sherman that you find yourself biting your nails, praying he won't leave Cooper to his passive-aggressive self.]
And, if you enjoy Son's on a Midnight Run, you'll enjoy this pornlet outtake from it, Sticky Fingers. Heh heh heh. What? No, that wasn't my dirty-old-man-laugh. Heh heh heh. (Sherman/Cooper)
John's pretty sure even prostitutes don't do tricks like this.
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romanticalgirl , an excellent, excellent writer, has given us such porn-filled delights such as 911 Call, and its sequel, 10-108. I would post a snippet, but I have a hard time finding a sentence that doesn't make me blush. In any case, her list of Southland porn - uh, I mean fic - is here in its entirety. (Sherman/Cooper)
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dsudis wrote a lovely long psychic!Ben fic for the series premiere on TNT called A Little Mental Yoga. (Sherman/Cooper, NC-17)
Sherman/Cooper. Explicit. 17,000 words.
post-Season 1. Telepathy and prescription drugs.
John was abruptly angry, the special anger that was reserved for the obviously guilty, because Ben had Yeah, I did it written all over him.
The inside of Cooper's head is just as layered, observant and intricate as one would hope. dsudis does an amazing job conveying that here, and of getting you to actually buy the premise of a psychic on a show as realistic as Southland. On a show where they ask actual ex-cons to play the gang bangers and the druggies and the dealers and any other criminal the writers can dream up, one of the cops turning out to be psychic should be ridiculous. Instead, it suddenly explains all these questions you never realized you had about the show's Sherman, and is another part of the show I demand be made into canon.
dsudis also wrote this beautiful little snippet that informs the metamorphosis of Sherman and Cooper's relationship from Training Officer and Trainee to Officer and Officer. This is completely gen, and is so strong on its own that, were the show to never have existed, I would still read hundreds of thousands of words based on this 1200-word piece. This is one of the few fics out there (aside from hackthis 's) that deals with Cooper being gay, and what that might mean to his fellow officers, how they react to and deal with someone else's sexuality. (Sherman, gen)
In an Instant
Ben mostly likes people. He knows that as far as Cooper's concerned that's right up there with wanting to help people and wanting to buy the fucking world a Coke, which Cooper accused him of on Friday. That's okay. Ben mostly likes people, but he doesn't like Cooper.
Ben realizes something.
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fated_addiction , a writer with whom I am sadly not very familiar, wrote a beautiful piece that explores Officer Chickie Brown, Dewey's much-abused partner and pretty damn cool officer. John, He Trains to Sing the Blues is gen, and gives Chickie a real backstory, something to explain her and her choices, and a little something to explain Dewey. (Chickie, gen)
The thing is, she's always wanted to be a cop.
A real good cop - the kind that actually does something, something tangible, and gets to come home at night and sleep it off to come back the next day, just 'cause she can do it again. And then, again.
She was eight then, skinned knees and pigtails.
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Just a Job, by proteinscollide (Sherman/Cooper)
Cooper drinks from his own bottle and closes his eyes, cursing his friend for putting thoughts into his head. He doesn't want to think about how cute his boot is. He's not allowed to. He spends hours each day in a cramped black-and-white next to the guy; the last thing he needs is to lose his focus or get hard or worse, get attached to someone who's going to be switched out for another kid who needs training in a couple of months.
proteinscollide gives Chickie a new partner and one hell of a speech in this fic.
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Of Paraders and Holsteiners, by shell (gen)
"You got something special planned for New Year's?" Cooper asked Sherman. It was the end of watch on December 5th, and they were on their way back to the station.
"Uh, I'll be down in Pasadena," Sherman said. He sounded a bit squirrely about it, Cooper noticed.
Conversations with some cuteness thrown in.
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Off The Chain, by willwork4dean (Sherman/Cooper)
Cooper loves to let Sherman off the chain.
This is listed as Cooper/Sherman, but it could very easily be pre-slash, or completely gen. Which ever way you read it, I re-read this story because there are so many instances in the show where Sherman chases the perps on foot and Cooper drives around to head them off at the pass, and Off the Chain, while short, gets me to picture Sherman panting and sweaty and oh-so-satisfied (okay, I'm making this sound like porn and it really...is. Who am I trying to kid? After a bust, Sherman looks so fucking pleased with himself, it's like he discovered the moon.). So, apparently my motivation for reccing this story is shallower than even I thought. Whatever. It's short. Read it anyway.