The Massive Post-Mortem
I was bored. It was write a post-mortem for For Every Closed Door, or clean the kitchen. Which would you choose?
This was one of those stories that came up unsuspectingly and tackled me to the ground. I'd gotten into House this past winter, while hanging out with my sister in Vermont over Christmas. I'll also credit her with getting me into House/Wilson fic (and slash in general, but that's another story).
My former roommate Tahnee (who is currently helping me with my karaoke fic), is the one who got me into Dead Like Me, which I'd never heard of before moving into the Cedar Haus.
In the preceding months, I'd been going through a bit of a dry spell, writing wise. I'd hacked out a rather raw one-act play (At The Window, Two Girls) in the winter, and that whole process (the writing as well as the staging of it) left me kind of exhausted. The idea of writing a crossover had been niggling at me since the end of January, when everyone in the house got sick and we mostly sat around watching television on DVD and Dolly Parton movies. Two things we watched a lot of were House and Dead Like Me. (I rang up a huge amount of late fees from Blockbuster, as I recall.)
The muse had seemingly up and left town, as the fickle bastard is wont to do, and I was content to take a break from the written word. I had school and work and then more school to deal with, along with a bunch of people visiting with me. Not to mention being sort of depressed and dealing with my own personal brand of gender confusion. Anyways…
I can still actually remember the day I came up with a plot. I was walking home from class, taking the forest path back to my house. It was raining, as it does in the Northwest. I was walking along, minding my own business of getting steadily soaked, when the story came up out of nowhere. The plot came to me mostly full formed, one of those rarities. I fought it for a second; I had never written any House fanfic, and have never actually finished a longer story at all, in any genre. I didn't want to make my debut into the fandom by writing a long crossover with an obscure show that, I'd assumed, very few people knew about. More than that, though, I'd gotten lazy about writing. I didn't want to undertake another huge project while there was all this other crap crowding my brain.
But the muse, despite being a total flighty jerk, can also be very persistent when he so chooses. I ran the rest of the way home and wrote an outline.
One of the first things I decided on, after figuring out the basic premise of the story, was to have an original character as one of the main players in the story. I didn't know that there was a kind of anti-OC sentiment in fandom, though I'd heard about the Mary Sue phenomenon. I got into fandom through LOTR slash, and the boylove in that movie is just too powerful to ignore.
I knew from the beginning that this was a H/W story, and besides that, I'm a total slasher at heart. Het has to be exceptionally well done for me to want to read it. I did toy, for approximately thirty seconds, over having a horribly awkward drunken sexual encounter between House and Kay (who I hadn't named yet), but I very quickly killed that off. (In my outline, it says, "Ew, is there going to be het? Comfort sex? :P")
Interestingly, I wrote Kay as being an Irish immigrant before I even came up with a name for her. Make of that what you will.
The second thing I wrote was a sketch of the ending. That never happens with me, but dear god, I wish it would more often. Knowing how it would end made the entire process a lot easier.
And so, I started writing the first chapter. I'd assumed this would be a long-ish short story, a novella at most; I'd originally planned on having seven chapters. In retrospect, that is such a joke. If I'd known how long it would be (14 chapters, 4 interludes, and 1 epilogue?!) I probably would have been too nervous to even start. The longest thing I'd written to date was about 60 pages.
Characters:
House and Wilson-
One of the recurring themes in Dead Like Me is George's ethical battles over her position as a Reaper. She gets all squicked out by what she views as killing an innocent person.
It never crossed my mind that House would do the same thing. He hardly ever faces culpability in the show for the actions he is guilty of, and one thing he doesn't seem to possess much of is a sense of personal responsibility. It was easy to decide that this was not going to be a fic about House's inner moral struggles.
But what was his struggle going to be? Why shouldn't he just kick back, do his reaps with a minimum of fuss, and watch television in the downtime?
That's where Wilson comes in. Easy as pie. Wilson’s line in Chapter 14 sums it up: “Of course you would find a way to mess with my head from beyond the grave!”
There was also a line in one of the earlier chapters, which says Wilson is one of the only people House would want to allow into his after life. I think that's true in canon as well. I’ll assume that if you’re reading this, you already like and have heard all the reasons why they totally belong together (or deserve each other, depending on how you think of it), so I’ll spare you all that rant.
It was weird writing a House and Wilson fic when for most of the story, there was no real interaction between them. And then, when they finally do get together, Wilson doesn't see House as House, he sees him as the strange man that is Mika. Except he knows, somewhere deep DEEP down inside, that Mika is really House. He just can't acknowledge it, because that would mean readjusting his entire view of reality. It was a really strange line to walk. Still, I had fun.
A note about Smoking!Wilson:
Of all the zillions of fics I’ve read, I’ve only ever found one other one where Wilson smokes cigarettes,
_ares ’ “In Succession.”
There’s a plethora of incredibly obvious reasons for this: he's an oncologist, he's anal, he's a square. I hadn't previously planned on writing Wilson as smoking in this story. It was very much a whim, an impulsive decision I made while writing chapter 4, that became something of a defining characteristic for his character. I consider Wilson's smoking a symptom of a much deeper self-destructive urge.
Also, come on; I think RSL would look hot while smoking. Is that not a pretty picture? Or am I the only person who fetishizes tobacco users?
Delia
Delia was originally going to be a one-shot character. I didn't consider making her Kay's love interest until about around Chapter 4, though I'd known they would have been close. The idea of her trying to shape things from the other side, through Wilson's dreams and maybe a bit of pressuring on those damn Powers That Be (which is unmentioned in the story, but that's what I think happened) didn't come up until the second Wilson interlude.
Of all the characters, she's the most enigmatic to me. She gets very little screentime, (pagetime?) but does manage to have an influence on the events, both through the ways mentioned above, and through Kay's actions.
Kay
Okay, big egotistical confession: Kay is based on me. A little. She developed her own personality very quickly, but certain things, such as the smoking, the love of eating, her absolute devotion to Hennry's (which is based on The Reef diner in Olympia and Oasis Diner in Burlington, VT), are all aspects of my own personality. And yeah, that scene where she's drinking with House? Totally based on my own drunken conversations.
Her "boss" attitude, on the other hand, is totally inspired by Cuddy. That's kind of lame of me, but I needed someone who could handle House. There's not many of those people around. I just left out all the sexual tension.
But as I said, Kay definitely developed her own thing. The whole relationship with Delia, for one. I've never sustained an unrequited love for very long. She is also a hell of a lot more patient than I am, but again, she's almost a hundred years old. Same with her poker face; I can't lie worth a damn. I also suck at trying to subtly manipulate people.
One of the things I toyed with, but never could get into the fic, was what Kay would have done with her 60 plus years of being undead. I had the notion for a while to make her a black belt in multiple martial arts, but had no earthly idea on how to work it in. Maybe House would try and punch her and she would pull some crazy aikido move on him? Or piss her off enough that she would punch through a stack of cement bricks like Bruce Lee? Oh well.
Colby
Colby is every nerd I have ever had a crush on. He manages to be both gullible and devious, which I love. And he dresses in polo shirts and Converse. I imagine him with a ridiculous amount of foofy curly hair, but I don't know if I ever actually described him as such.
Also, it must really suck to be stuck indefinitely in an eighteen year old's body. Ugh.
Ada
Ada is another character that got an unfortunately small amount of time in the spotlight. I had a lot of plans for her, but unfortunately, none of them ever made it fruition. We don't even find out how she died. Another lame dead end.
Deleted and abandoned scenes:
I had a whole plan for House to have to do a Reap in PPTH. First it was going to be the clinic. Then it was going to be one of the Coma Guys (probably the one that he gave the migraine medicine to in Distractions: Wouldn’t that be a fun confrontation?). Then I had a whole plan for him to volunteer with Ada to help out the Terminal Disease Division of Reapers. I even started writing the last one before scrapping it. I also pondered having House get shot and then forced to go to the emergency room, and having Chase as his intensivist. Then Chase would be all "WTF, mate? You're healing at a miraculous rate!" But that was way too complicated. The basic plot points of these ideas, a confrontation with Wilson/his past life and then having to juggle a Reap with being with Wilson, split up and became chapters 7 and 11, respectively.
I also had the notion to insert a younger character into the story. Family!fics are a secret guilty pleasure of mine, and I thought it would be really funny to watch House interact with a twelve year old who's actually as old as he is. A kid like that would have a massive chip on his shoulder (forty years old and still suffering puberty? Who wouldn't?) But it was too complicated, so it also got scrapped.
There were quite a few people who were pushing for ghost sex between House and Wilson. Or voyeuristic House watching silently as Wilson does it with some nameless male hooker, whom he calls House. Or just voyeuristic House watching Jimmy masturbate. Unfortunately, that just wasn't a direction I was ready to take. Sorry guys, but smutty scenes like that would require a defter hand than mine.
The epilogue left quite a few scenes out. Cuddy’s death, for one, which would have been fun but exhausting to write. The fates of the three ducklings, and other people from the hospital. When the other Reapers passed on. What happened when Wilson left House to go to Seattle for a year and a half. How they staved off boredom for 80 years. I decided not to write any of those scenes, because I just wanted to leave them to the readers’ imagination. And a few people have asked if they could write these scenes. So hey, I think I did right.
And just for the record, to combat boredom House and Wilson…
-Tried out every position in the Gay Men’s Kama Sutra. And had a lot of other kinds of sex too. Duh.
-Wrote seven pornographic stories between the two of them, three of which were published by gay men’s magazines, and another two of which were published by Hustler.
-Wrote four unpublished articles about the social study of Reapers
-Wrote two blood-and-guts thriller novels, and a three part science fiction series.
- House taught Wilson to play the piano and guitar, and taught himself the violin and the clarinet. He also bought a set of bagpipes, but had them only for a week before Wilson ripped a bunch of holes in the bag, and then set fire to it for good measure.
-Wilson taught House how to cook and blow smoke rings.
-Wilson took up yoga and tai chi. House trained for marathons, scoffed whenever he saw Wilson’s yoga mat, but still didn’t complain about the other man’s newfound flexibility.
-Joined an S/M club for three weeks, before House got annoyed with the people you find in sex clubs. Wilson kind of liked it, but didn’t say anything.
Boo, hiss! Bad fic writer!
Here's a few of my own disappointments with this fic.
1.) Ducklings, anyone?
They got a mention once, in the funeral scene, and then they were completely abandoned for the rest of the story. Cuddy got all of three scenes, which was sad (because I love her, really, I do...). But because House never really made it over to PPTH (except for the quick scene in the morgue), I had no idea how to work them in.
In retrospect, that seems out of character for House. He would be curious, at the VERY least, to know what his fellows and Cuddy were up to. I think House, in the show, is almost as focused on Cuddy as he is on Wilson, and on the ducklings only slightly less. But I was too focused on the H/W dynamic to try and figure out a way to work them all in.
2.) Continuity? What's that?
So there's a few threads in the story that I started in earlier chapters, promptly forgot about, and they kind of withered away. The most prominent in my mind was Wilson's tie, at the end of Chapter 5: Wilson throws it on the floor, House grabs it as he's fleeing, and it's a wonderful tender moment. And then I never got back to it.
Also, I started writing this before Resignation aired. I set it for some undefined point in the spring, before Foreman gave his notice. Unfortunately, details from the later episodes seeped in a bit, mostly through Wilson's interludes.
3.) Boy, I'm lazy, I started this in May, and it took me more than three months to finish it. And honestly, I don't think I would have finished it at all if I hadn't been posting and constantly receiving feedback on it. (And thank you, to those whom actually spent time telling me what they thought of it, and for pointing out all my stupid typos and grammatical errors, or both. You all get cookies.)
Random Stuff
-The Phil Ochs song. I was listening to Phil Ochs’ album, morbidly titled Rehearsals For Retirement, some time midway through writing this. Phil Ochs was an interesting guy; he started off as a journalist in college, became an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene, got kicked out of Bob Dylan’s limousine for criticizing one of his songs (and with whom he had a very stormy relationship with for the rest of his life), was loved and then despised by critics, wrote songs about unions, socialism, JFK and Jesus, and draft dodging, became completely disillusioned in the aftermath of the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, testified at the hearing of the Chicago 7, went kind of nuts, commissioned a gold lame suit from one of Elvis’ costumers and started performing in it, traveled around the world, was attacked by robbers in Africa which resulted in damage to his vocal cords, got even more depressed, developed an alternate personality named John Butler Train, and eventually hanged himself in 1976, a year after the Vietnam War ended. A few years later, it was revealed that the FBI had a 410 page file on him and his activities. They also misspelled his name several times in the documents.
Basically, he seemed like somebody House would have been interested in. And in my mind, the song “My Life” from Rehearsals For Retirement describes House rather eloquently. And so it became a theme.
-James Taylor. I kind of like James Taylor, though I have to be in a very specific mood to want to listen to him. I really don’t have anything against him, he was just kind of the first artist I could think of to decapitate House.
-Wilson’s hygiene habits. I think in ¾ of the chapters he’s in, Wilson takes a shower. I didn’t notice this until after I’d posted the last chapter.
-Hennry’s. As I mentioned earlier, Hennry’s is based off of two different diners: The Reef here in Olympia, and The Oasis, in Burlington Vermont. Both of these places are kind of like my Fortress of Solitude; I go there when I need to both be alone but around other people, drink tons of bad coffee, recover from a hangover or heartbreak, eavesdrop on conversations, and flirt with waitresses older than my mother. Everyone needs a Hennry’s. Kay’s attachment differs slightly from mine, because hers is connected with memories of Delia’s, but a crappy diner is an essential for well-balanced emotional health.
-Mika. I never really provided a visual reference for Mika. Well here he is.
He's about fifteen years older than the first picture, and about twelve years younger than the second. Just try and imagine.
Oh, and BTW, that's Gary Snyder.
Favorite Lines
"Industrial accidents in 1931 were not pretty. I was dead before my blood hit the ceiling. What was left of me could have been scraped into a five gallon bucket." (Chapter 2)
So gross it’s good. Kay’s right to be proud.
"You're dead. Welcome to the past tense." (Chapter 3)
This line kind of sums it all up, doesn’t it?
"Wilson was standing on the side of a building in his Pulp Fiction suit, the tie loosened just slightly, and smoking furtively, looking around to make sure nobody would catch him." (chapter 4)
Can I get an amen? How hot is that image?
"People should have more regard for the fact that their dearly departed were trying to eavesdrop on them." (chapter 4)
What I would be thinking if I were a ghost.
"That's what you get for dining and dashing. And exposing yourself in public. And kicking me. You're lucky it's not poisoned." (chapter 5)
She'd finally set her cat on him, dropping tuna treats into the space between the couch and his pillow. There was nothing like waking up to a fat orange tabby sniffing enthusiastically at your ear to start your morning. (chapter 6)
LOVE that image. I woke up to the same thing this morning, except it was a small, black fuzzy almost kitten.
"Here's to being undead, then. It's not great, but at least we don't get hangovers," Kay retorted.
"I'll drink to that," House said, putting the bottle to his lips. (chapter 7)
Because really, what else have they got going for them? Poor House and Kay.
Whoever it was that said drowning was a pleasant way to die was full of more shit than the average Irritated Bowel Syndrome patient. (chapter 9)
Poop is always funny.
And there was this one position from the Kama Sutra, I’ve only read about it, I think it was called ‘Plowing the Fresh Alfalfa Fields’ or something-” (chapter 11)
Not actually the name of a sexual position, but it should be.
“Oh yeah. Who’s that bad-ass mother- shut your mouth! Only talking about House,” he sang in his best Issac Hayes impression, as he sat down at the table.
“I can dig it,” Kay said obligingly. (chapter 11)
Hey House writers! Put this in the damn show!
"Did you know that dolphins have prehensile penises?" (chapter 12)
This is true, by the way. And House seems like he’spent time researching animal’s genitalia and sexual habits. Remember All In?
"Quit being an ass," Wilson said. "She's dressed too well to be a missionary." (chapter 13)
I am going to use this in conversation some day.
"The way you give head is- oh fuck, that's good- is pretty damn divine. In my honest - Jesus, Wilson- and impartial opinion." (chapter 13)
Lol. Do I even need to say anything about this?
"You want him to wear his death for the rest of eternity? Maybe he won't be burned like she was, but he'll wake up screaming just the same if his soul is still tied to his body when he dies." (chapter 14)
Just the rhythm of this sentence. And the image of a person wearing their death. I like it.
"Hurry up," House mumbled against his lips. "I want to see you in a real halo." (Epilogue)
It seemed like a House-worthy parting shot to his One True Wilson.
Edit:
Additional (and sort of long-winded) musings, mostly about death:
shutterbug_12 mentioned that there were several times in the story where she actually stopped and started thinking about death. I rather appreciated that.
I don't think of myself as an especially morbid person, but I do spend a lot of time musing about human mortality. Kay's and House's death are the kind I'd kind of like for myself. Quick, but rather spectacularly messy. Something that would make an amusing anecdote for the afterlife.
Those kind of deaths form the backbone of Dead Like Me. I like it, because it treats death as something so inevitable that you're forced to look at the comedic as well as the tragic side of it. I'm a big believer in laughing at whatever scares you the most, and for most people, death is the ultimate phobia. Nobody knows what happens afterward, not definitively, but everyone who ever lived will get a chance to find out. The way I think about death is inspired by Peter Pan: "Death would be a great adventure." I'm sort of an optimistic fatalist, if that makes any sense.
Looking back, I realize I worked through quite a bit of personal grief in this story. Quite a few people I've known have died in the last few years; old friends, distant family, former roommates, a woman who took care of me a lot when I was growing up. Because I've moved around so much, and now live on the opposite side of the country I grew up on, I hardly ever got to go to any of the funerals. With no other way of processing it, my grief ends up in my writing. In this story, most particularly the Wilson interludes.
My grandmother died this winter; before she did, I got to see her, briefly, while I was on the east coast for Christmas. Seeing her was one of the sadder things I've done. There was a desolate beauty in it, and in her. She was on morphine, but still awake and aware of what was happening to her. She was an exceptionally intelligent woman, and knowing that she wouldn't leave the hospital alive must have been frightening.
Silently, because of the tube in her trachea, she told me that she was dying and she loved me. My mother and I stayed for half an hour, then had to leave. We were driving back to Vermont (this was in Pennsylvania), and a couple of days later, I'd be flying back to the west coast. I knew it was the last time I'd ever see her, and that I wouldn't be able to go to her funeral.
I'm an atheist, and I don't believe in heaven; not in the monotheistic versions of Christianity, Judeaism, or Islam, nor the eventual Nirvana of Buddhism, nor in the kind of tongue-in-cheek pantheistic picture of them I've painted here, with help from DLM. I'm not saying anyone who does believe in those things is wrong, just that I personally don't believe in it. I've often heard that people who do believe can't imagine it otherwise, that it must be lonely and frightening to go through life thinking that there is nothing waiting for us afterwards.
I don't agree. I'm almost an anti-transcendentalist. I love this life and this world fiercely, and for me, it's enough. Beauty, in my mind, is tied up in diversity, and I have trouble imagining a more beautiful world than this one. Yes, there's tragedy and suffering and despair, and I've had my share of it. It sucked, obviously, and there will be more to come. I'm only twenty-two, and I'm not that much of an optimist. (Though I know how privileged I am, to have a warm place to sleep and clean water and more than enough food, not to mention a supportive family and awesome friends. Nobody is threatening me with death or dismemberment for being who I am or speaking freely, and my continued existence is, if not ensured, then at least likely. But that could all change in an instant, couldn't it?)
There are moments that are almost overwhelming in beauty and joy, and why shouldn't I dwell on those at least as much as the shit that has been flung my way? Now, for instance; I'm sitting on my back porch. The sun is out and it's warm enough that I've taken my sweater off, but there's still a breeze from the nearby inlet that shakes the leaves on the trees and makes the sunflowers my roommate planted wave on their stalks. One of these is almost twice as tall as me and still growing, and still hasn't bloomed yet. It's as high as the roof now, all of its many leaves turned towards the sun.
No, it's not fantastic in any way. Certainly not in a very memorable way. Still, I'm appreciative. In life and in writing, details are often just as important as the bigger picture. FECD could have been distilled into a paragraph, but who would have wanted to read that? I wouldn't have wanted to write it.
Days like this are terrifying and wonderful in their possibilities. So if there is such a thing as heaven, it has a lot to live up to. So hey; L'Chaim, right? I think we honor our dead by living at least as much as by mourning them. I remember my grandmother, and all of those I've known who've died, with love and fondness and occasional grief at their absence in my life. And whether or not I ever "see" her again, I feel assured that I'm inevitably going to end up in the same place she is.
But just for the record, my heaven would totally be Vermont in a perpetual autumn. Leaf piles, horse rides, cool sunlight, and bonfires.
Well. That was fun and informative. And probably TMI, but whatever. This is my farewell to this fic verse.
This was one of those stories that came up unsuspectingly and tackled me to the ground. I'd gotten into House this past winter, while hanging out with my sister in Vermont over Christmas. I'll also credit her with getting me into House/Wilson fic (and slash in general, but that's another story).
My former roommate Tahnee (who is currently helping me with my karaoke fic), is the one who got me into Dead Like Me, which I'd never heard of before moving into the Cedar Haus.
In the preceding months, I'd been going through a bit of a dry spell, writing wise. I'd hacked out a rather raw one-act play (At The Window, Two Girls) in the winter, and that whole process (the writing as well as the staging of it) left me kind of exhausted. The idea of writing a crossover had been niggling at me since the end of January, when everyone in the house got sick and we mostly sat around watching television on DVD and Dolly Parton movies. Two things we watched a lot of were House and Dead Like Me. (I rang up a huge amount of late fees from Blockbuster, as I recall.)
The muse had seemingly up and left town, as the fickle bastard is wont to do, and I was content to take a break from the written word. I had school and work and then more school to deal with, along with a bunch of people visiting with me. Not to mention being sort of depressed and dealing with my own personal brand of gender confusion. Anyways…
I can still actually remember the day I came up with a plot. I was walking home from class, taking the forest path back to my house. It was raining, as it does in the Northwest. I was walking along, minding my own business of getting steadily soaked, when the story came up out of nowhere. The plot came to me mostly full formed, one of those rarities. I fought it for a second; I had never written any House fanfic, and have never actually finished a longer story at all, in any genre. I didn't want to make my debut into the fandom by writing a long crossover with an obscure show that, I'd assumed, very few people knew about. More than that, though, I'd gotten lazy about writing. I didn't want to undertake another huge project while there was all this other crap crowding my brain.
But the muse, despite being a total flighty jerk, can also be very persistent when he so chooses. I ran the rest of the way home and wrote an outline.
One of the first things I decided on, after figuring out the basic premise of the story, was to have an original character as one of the main players in the story. I didn't know that there was a kind of anti-OC sentiment in fandom, though I'd heard about the Mary Sue phenomenon. I got into fandom through LOTR slash, and the boylove in that movie is just too powerful to ignore.
I knew from the beginning that this was a H/W story, and besides that, I'm a total slasher at heart. Het has to be exceptionally well done for me to want to read it. I did toy, for approximately thirty seconds, over having a horribly awkward drunken sexual encounter between House and Kay (who I hadn't named yet), but I very quickly killed that off. (In my outline, it says, "Ew, is there going to be het? Comfort sex? :P")
Interestingly, I wrote Kay as being an Irish immigrant before I even came up with a name for her. Make of that what you will.
The second thing I wrote was a sketch of the ending. That never happens with me, but dear god, I wish it would more often. Knowing how it would end made the entire process a lot easier.
And so, I started writing the first chapter. I'd assumed this would be a long-ish short story, a novella at most; I'd originally planned on having seven chapters. In retrospect, that is such a joke. If I'd known how long it would be (14 chapters, 4 interludes, and 1 epilogue?!) I probably would have been too nervous to even start. The longest thing I'd written to date was about 60 pages.
Characters:
House and Wilson-
One of the recurring themes in Dead Like Me is George's ethical battles over her position as a Reaper. She gets all squicked out by what she views as killing an innocent person.
It never crossed my mind that House would do the same thing. He hardly ever faces culpability in the show for the actions he is guilty of, and one thing he doesn't seem to possess much of is a sense of personal responsibility. It was easy to decide that this was not going to be a fic about House's inner moral struggles.
But what was his struggle going to be? Why shouldn't he just kick back, do his reaps with a minimum of fuss, and watch television in the downtime?
That's where Wilson comes in. Easy as pie. Wilson’s line in Chapter 14 sums it up: “Of course you would find a way to mess with my head from beyond the grave!”
There was also a line in one of the earlier chapters, which says Wilson is one of the only people House would want to allow into his after life. I think that's true in canon as well. I’ll assume that if you’re reading this, you already like and have heard all the reasons why they totally belong together (or deserve each other, depending on how you think of it), so I’ll spare you all that rant.
It was weird writing a House and Wilson fic when for most of the story, there was no real interaction between them. And then, when they finally do get together, Wilson doesn't see House as House, he sees him as the strange man that is Mika. Except he knows, somewhere deep DEEP down inside, that Mika is really House. He just can't acknowledge it, because that would mean readjusting his entire view of reality. It was a really strange line to walk. Still, I had fun.
A note about Smoking!Wilson:
Of all the zillions of fics I’ve read, I’ve only ever found one other one where Wilson smokes cigarettes,
_ares ’ “In Succession.”
There’s a plethora of incredibly obvious reasons for this: he's an oncologist, he's anal, he's a square. I hadn't previously planned on writing Wilson as smoking in this story. It was very much a whim, an impulsive decision I made while writing chapter 4, that became something of a defining characteristic for his character. I consider Wilson's smoking a symptom of a much deeper self-destructive urge.
Also, come on; I think RSL would look hot while smoking. Is that not a pretty picture? Or am I the only person who fetishizes tobacco users?
Delia
Delia was originally going to be a one-shot character. I didn't consider making her Kay's love interest until about around Chapter 4, though I'd known they would have been close. The idea of her trying to shape things from the other side, through Wilson's dreams and maybe a bit of pressuring on those damn Powers That Be (which is unmentioned in the story, but that's what I think happened) didn't come up until the second Wilson interlude.
Of all the characters, she's the most enigmatic to me. She gets very little screentime, (pagetime?) but does manage to have an influence on the events, both through the ways mentioned above, and through Kay's actions.
Kay
Okay, big egotistical confession: Kay is based on me. A little. She developed her own personality very quickly, but certain things, such as the smoking, the love of eating, her absolute devotion to Hennry's (which is based on The Reef diner in Olympia and Oasis Diner in Burlington, VT), are all aspects of my own personality. And yeah, that scene where she's drinking with House? Totally based on my own drunken conversations.
Her "boss" attitude, on the other hand, is totally inspired by Cuddy. That's kind of lame of me, but I needed someone who could handle House. There's not many of those people around. I just left out all the sexual tension.
But as I said, Kay definitely developed her own thing. The whole relationship with Delia, for one. I've never sustained an unrequited love for very long. She is also a hell of a lot more patient than I am, but again, she's almost a hundred years old. Same with her poker face; I can't lie worth a damn. I also suck at trying to subtly manipulate people.
One of the things I toyed with, but never could get into the fic, was what Kay would have done with her 60 plus years of being undead. I had the notion for a while to make her a black belt in multiple martial arts, but had no earthly idea on how to work it in. Maybe House would try and punch her and she would pull some crazy aikido move on him? Or piss her off enough that she would punch through a stack of cement bricks like Bruce Lee? Oh well.
Colby
Colby is every nerd I have ever had a crush on. He manages to be both gullible and devious, which I love. And he dresses in polo shirts and Converse. I imagine him with a ridiculous amount of foofy curly hair, but I don't know if I ever actually described him as such.
Also, it must really suck to be stuck indefinitely in an eighteen year old's body. Ugh.
Ada
Ada is another character that got an unfortunately small amount of time in the spotlight. I had a lot of plans for her, but unfortunately, none of them ever made it fruition. We don't even find out how she died. Another lame dead end.
Deleted and abandoned scenes:
I had a whole plan for House to have to do a Reap in PPTH. First it was going to be the clinic. Then it was going to be one of the Coma Guys (probably the one that he gave the migraine medicine to in Distractions: Wouldn’t that be a fun confrontation?). Then I had a whole plan for him to volunteer with Ada to help out the Terminal Disease Division of Reapers. I even started writing the last one before scrapping it. I also pondered having House get shot and then forced to go to the emergency room, and having Chase as his intensivist. Then Chase would be all "WTF, mate? You're healing at a miraculous rate!" But that was way too complicated. The basic plot points of these ideas, a confrontation with Wilson/his past life and then having to juggle a Reap with being with Wilson, split up and became chapters 7 and 11, respectively.
I also had the notion to insert a younger character into the story. Family!fics are a secret guilty pleasure of mine, and I thought it would be really funny to watch House interact with a twelve year old who's actually as old as he is. A kid like that would have a massive chip on his shoulder (forty years old and still suffering puberty? Who wouldn't?) But it was too complicated, so it also got scrapped.
There were quite a few people who were pushing for ghost sex between House and Wilson. Or voyeuristic House watching silently as Wilson does it with some nameless male hooker, whom he calls House. Or just voyeuristic House watching Jimmy masturbate. Unfortunately, that just wasn't a direction I was ready to take. Sorry guys, but smutty scenes like that would require a defter hand than mine.
The epilogue left quite a few scenes out. Cuddy’s death, for one, which would have been fun but exhausting to write. The fates of the three ducklings, and other people from the hospital. When the other Reapers passed on. What happened when Wilson left House to go to Seattle for a year and a half. How they staved off boredom for 80 years. I decided not to write any of those scenes, because I just wanted to leave them to the readers’ imagination. And a few people have asked if they could write these scenes. So hey, I think I did right.
And just for the record, to combat boredom House and Wilson…
-Tried out every position in the Gay Men’s Kama Sutra. And had a lot of other kinds of sex too. Duh.
-Wrote seven pornographic stories between the two of them, three of which were published by gay men’s magazines, and another two of which were published by Hustler.
-Wrote four unpublished articles about the social study of Reapers
-Wrote two blood-and-guts thriller novels, and a three part science fiction series.
- House taught Wilson to play the piano and guitar, and taught himself the violin and the clarinet. He also bought a set of bagpipes, but had them only for a week before Wilson ripped a bunch of holes in the bag, and then set fire to it for good measure.
-Wilson taught House how to cook and blow smoke rings.
-Wilson took up yoga and tai chi. House trained for marathons, scoffed whenever he saw Wilson’s yoga mat, but still didn’t complain about the other man’s newfound flexibility.
-Joined an S/M club for three weeks, before House got annoyed with the people you find in sex clubs. Wilson kind of liked it, but didn’t say anything.
Boo, hiss! Bad fic writer!
Here's a few of my own disappointments with this fic.
1.) Ducklings, anyone?
They got a mention once, in the funeral scene, and then they were completely abandoned for the rest of the story. Cuddy got all of three scenes, which was sad (because I love her, really, I do...). But because House never really made it over to PPTH (except for the quick scene in the morgue), I had no idea how to work them in.
In retrospect, that seems out of character for House. He would be curious, at the VERY least, to know what his fellows and Cuddy were up to. I think House, in the show, is almost as focused on Cuddy as he is on Wilson, and on the ducklings only slightly less. But I was too focused on the H/W dynamic to try and figure out a way to work them all in.
2.) Continuity? What's that?
So there's a few threads in the story that I started in earlier chapters, promptly forgot about, and they kind of withered away. The most prominent in my mind was Wilson's tie, at the end of Chapter 5: Wilson throws it on the floor, House grabs it as he's fleeing, and it's a wonderful tender moment. And then I never got back to it.
Also, I started writing this before Resignation aired. I set it for some undefined point in the spring, before Foreman gave his notice. Unfortunately, details from the later episodes seeped in a bit, mostly through Wilson's interludes.
3.) Boy, I'm lazy, I started this in May, and it took me more than three months to finish it. And honestly, I don't think I would have finished it at all if I hadn't been posting and constantly receiving feedback on it. (And thank you, to those whom actually spent time telling me what they thought of it, and for pointing out all my stupid typos and grammatical errors, or both. You all get cookies.)
Random Stuff
-The Phil Ochs song. I was listening to Phil Ochs’ album, morbidly titled Rehearsals For Retirement, some time midway through writing this. Phil Ochs was an interesting guy; he started off as a journalist in college, became an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene, got kicked out of Bob Dylan’s limousine for criticizing one of his songs (and with whom he had a very stormy relationship with for the rest of his life), was loved and then despised by critics, wrote songs about unions, socialism, JFK and Jesus, and draft dodging, became completely disillusioned in the aftermath of the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, testified at the hearing of the Chicago 7, went kind of nuts, commissioned a gold lame suit from one of Elvis’ costumers and started performing in it, traveled around the world, was attacked by robbers in Africa which resulted in damage to his vocal cords, got even more depressed, developed an alternate personality named John Butler Train, and eventually hanged himself in 1976, a year after the Vietnam War ended. A few years later, it was revealed that the FBI had a 410 page file on him and his activities. They also misspelled his name several times in the documents.
Basically, he seemed like somebody House would have been interested in. And in my mind, the song “My Life” from Rehearsals For Retirement describes House rather eloquently. And so it became a theme.
-James Taylor. I kind of like James Taylor, though I have to be in a very specific mood to want to listen to him. I really don’t have anything against him, he was just kind of the first artist I could think of to decapitate House.
-Wilson’s hygiene habits. I think in ¾ of the chapters he’s in, Wilson takes a shower. I didn’t notice this until after I’d posted the last chapter.
-Hennry’s. As I mentioned earlier, Hennry’s is based off of two different diners: The Reef here in Olympia, and The Oasis, in Burlington Vermont. Both of these places are kind of like my Fortress of Solitude; I go there when I need to both be alone but around other people, drink tons of bad coffee, recover from a hangover or heartbreak, eavesdrop on conversations, and flirt with waitresses older than my mother. Everyone needs a Hennry’s. Kay’s attachment differs slightly from mine, because hers is connected with memories of Delia’s, but a crappy diner is an essential for well-balanced emotional health.
-Mika. I never really provided a visual reference for Mika. Well here he is.
He's about fifteen years older than the first picture, and about twelve years younger than the second. Just try and imagine.
Oh, and BTW, that's Gary Snyder.
Favorite Lines
"Industrial accidents in 1931 were not pretty. I was dead before my blood hit the ceiling. What was left of me could have been scraped into a five gallon bucket." (Chapter 2)
So gross it’s good. Kay’s right to be proud.
"You're dead. Welcome to the past tense." (Chapter 3)
This line kind of sums it all up, doesn’t it?
"Wilson was standing on the side of a building in his Pulp Fiction suit, the tie loosened just slightly, and smoking furtively, looking around to make sure nobody would catch him." (chapter 4)
Can I get an amen? How hot is that image?
"People should have more regard for the fact that their dearly departed were trying to eavesdrop on them." (chapter 4)
What I would be thinking if I were a ghost.
"That's what you get for dining and dashing. And exposing yourself in public. And kicking me. You're lucky it's not poisoned." (chapter 5)
She'd finally set her cat on him, dropping tuna treats into the space between the couch and his pillow. There was nothing like waking up to a fat orange tabby sniffing enthusiastically at your ear to start your morning. (chapter 6)
LOVE that image. I woke up to the same thing this morning, except it was a small, black fuzzy almost kitten.
"Here's to being undead, then. It's not great, but at least we don't get hangovers," Kay retorted.
"I'll drink to that," House said, putting the bottle to his lips. (chapter 7)
Because really, what else have they got going for them? Poor House and Kay.
Whoever it was that said drowning was a pleasant way to die was full of more shit than the average Irritated Bowel Syndrome patient. (chapter 9)
Poop is always funny.
And there was this one position from the Kama Sutra, I’ve only read about it, I think it was called ‘Plowing the Fresh Alfalfa Fields’ or something-” (chapter 11)
Not actually the name of a sexual position, but it should be.
“Oh yeah. Who’s that bad-ass mother- shut your mouth! Only talking about House,” he sang in his best Issac Hayes impression, as he sat down at the table.
“I can dig it,” Kay said obligingly. (chapter 11)
Hey House writers! Put this in the damn show!
"Did you know that dolphins have prehensile penises?" (chapter 12)
This is true, by the way. And House seems like he’spent time researching animal’s genitalia and sexual habits. Remember All In?
"Quit being an ass," Wilson said. "She's dressed too well to be a missionary." (chapter 13)
I am going to use this in conversation some day.
"The way you give head is- oh fuck, that's good- is pretty damn divine. In my honest - Jesus, Wilson- and impartial opinion." (chapter 13)
Lol. Do I even need to say anything about this?
"You want him to wear his death for the rest of eternity? Maybe he won't be burned like she was, but he'll wake up screaming just the same if his soul is still tied to his body when he dies." (chapter 14)
Just the rhythm of this sentence. And the image of a person wearing their death. I like it.
"Hurry up," House mumbled against his lips. "I want to see you in a real halo." (Epilogue)
It seemed like a House-worthy parting shot to his One True Wilson.
Edit:
Additional (and sort of long-winded) musings, mostly about death:
shutterbug_12 mentioned that there were several times in the story where she actually stopped and started thinking about death. I rather appreciated that.
I don't think of myself as an especially morbid person, but I do spend a lot of time musing about human mortality. Kay's and House's death are the kind I'd kind of like for myself. Quick, but rather spectacularly messy. Something that would make an amusing anecdote for the afterlife.
Those kind of deaths form the backbone of Dead Like Me. I like it, because it treats death as something so inevitable that you're forced to look at the comedic as well as the tragic side of it. I'm a big believer in laughing at whatever scares you the most, and for most people, death is the ultimate phobia. Nobody knows what happens afterward, not definitively, but everyone who ever lived will get a chance to find out. The way I think about death is inspired by Peter Pan: "Death would be a great adventure." I'm sort of an optimistic fatalist, if that makes any sense.
Looking back, I realize I worked through quite a bit of personal grief in this story. Quite a few people I've known have died in the last few years; old friends, distant family, former roommates, a woman who took care of me a lot when I was growing up. Because I've moved around so much, and now live on the opposite side of the country I grew up on, I hardly ever got to go to any of the funerals. With no other way of processing it, my grief ends up in my writing. In this story, most particularly the Wilson interludes.
My grandmother died this winter; before she did, I got to see her, briefly, while I was on the east coast for Christmas. Seeing her was one of the sadder things I've done. There was a desolate beauty in it, and in her. She was on morphine, but still awake and aware of what was happening to her. She was an exceptionally intelligent woman, and knowing that she wouldn't leave the hospital alive must have been frightening.
Silently, because of the tube in her trachea, she told me that she was dying and she loved me. My mother and I stayed for half an hour, then had to leave. We were driving back to Vermont (this was in Pennsylvania), and a couple of days later, I'd be flying back to the west coast. I knew it was the last time I'd ever see her, and that I wouldn't be able to go to her funeral.
I'm an atheist, and I don't believe in heaven; not in the monotheistic versions of Christianity, Judeaism, or Islam, nor the eventual Nirvana of Buddhism, nor in the kind of tongue-in-cheek pantheistic picture of them I've painted here, with help from DLM. I'm not saying anyone who does believe in those things is wrong, just that I personally don't believe in it. I've often heard that people who do believe can't imagine it otherwise, that it must be lonely and frightening to go through life thinking that there is nothing waiting for us afterwards.
I don't agree. I'm almost an anti-transcendentalist. I love this life and this world fiercely, and for me, it's enough. Beauty, in my mind, is tied up in diversity, and I have trouble imagining a more beautiful world than this one. Yes, there's tragedy and suffering and despair, and I've had my share of it. It sucked, obviously, and there will be more to come. I'm only twenty-two, and I'm not that much of an optimist. (Though I know how privileged I am, to have a warm place to sleep and clean water and more than enough food, not to mention a supportive family and awesome friends. Nobody is threatening me with death or dismemberment for being who I am or speaking freely, and my continued existence is, if not ensured, then at least likely. But that could all change in an instant, couldn't it?)
There are moments that are almost overwhelming in beauty and joy, and why shouldn't I dwell on those at least as much as the shit that has been flung my way? Now, for instance; I'm sitting on my back porch. The sun is out and it's warm enough that I've taken my sweater off, but there's still a breeze from the nearby inlet that shakes the leaves on the trees and makes the sunflowers my roommate planted wave on their stalks. One of these is almost twice as tall as me and still growing, and still hasn't bloomed yet. It's as high as the roof now, all of its many leaves turned towards the sun.
No, it's not fantastic in any way. Certainly not in a very memorable way. Still, I'm appreciative. In life and in writing, details are often just as important as the bigger picture. FECD could have been distilled into a paragraph, but who would have wanted to read that? I wouldn't have wanted to write it.
Days like this are terrifying and wonderful in their possibilities. So if there is such a thing as heaven, it has a lot to live up to. So hey; L'Chaim, right? I think we honor our dead by living at least as much as by mourning them. I remember my grandmother, and all of those I've known who've died, with love and fondness and occasional grief at their absence in my life. And whether or not I ever "see" her again, I feel assured that I'm inevitably going to end up in the same place she is.
But just for the record, my heaven would totally be Vermont in a perpetual autumn. Leaf piles, horse rides, cool sunlight, and bonfires.
Well. That was fun and informative. And probably TMI, but whatever. This is my farewell to this fic verse.