Oh! This is nothing short of fantastic! This is the reason I struggle to write Remix fic, for the chance of this sensation: reading themes and ideas I almost got on paper, done so much better than I could have imagined.
Firstly, I love the themes here. The use of tigers and jungles and danger. It's worked into this whole piece so well, so subtly, and it thrilled me. I also loved how you worked the idea of being an addict into the piece, because that was the thought behind the original story: that being an addict leaves permanent marks. It's not something you simply recover from, it's something you always *are*, something you have to always guard against, which Sam does with both humour and a cold vulnerability.
Maybe he flew his Lear Jet down to Saratoga …
… no. Not that one. Not even in imagination. Gambling's not his poison of choice, but an addict can't take any chances.
Secondly, I love your Sam. I love the way we get to see inside Sam like we never did in the series, the way his background is so satisfyingly fleshed out (without ever feeling like exposition dump, only feeling like *this is Sam* and *this is how Sam thinks*). I love the change in atmosphere between the three sections and the non-chronological order.
This notwithstanding, it used to amuse him sometimes, as he rode in from out of town and prepared to impose his own brand of order onto other people's chaos, to see himself as the mysterious stranger of romance: a lone gunslinger, steady of hand and flinty of eye, a hard-boiled private 'tec, a lordless samurai. One could even, at a stretch, think of him as a modern-day wizard, a conjuror who works his magic with facts and figures, with statistics and demographics and spreadsheets. Or – and this is perhaps the closest to the truth – a tamer of (lions and tigers and bulls and bears, oh, my!) wild beasts.
...
That's not exactly what it says on the job description. He's a TV ratings expert, part demographics analyst, part time-and-motion studies man, far too large a part a bullshitter who depends on a combination of blind luck and sheer chutzpah. Even he's not sure exactly how all those roles are divvied up. The only thing he knows is it's a winning combination; he has a knack for what will work and what won't, what makes good television and what doesn't, and he knows how to turn an underachieving, underperforming show around and, in a matter of weeks, have it claw its way up the ratings charts till it forces people to sit up and take notice.
I love the way he sees his job, both romanticised and not. Two aspects of the same job, both true in their way.
Sometimes he'll listen to Dan's calm voice and hear, somewhere very far away, the dying echo of a tiger's roar.
But then, other days Dan is just Dan: sweet, simple, straightforward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Kooky, quirky, harmless Danny, shouldering his way into Sam's office at half-past midnight, bearer of who-knows-what surprise gifts.
Thirdly, I love your Dan. I love the way that he's both the heart-on-his-sleeve Danny that's so easily likeable, and also the Dan who needs therapy, who can be in pain, can lash out, can need help more than anyone else on the show. I love that Sam's smart enough to see both, to understand that person can be *both* without either being a lie, and can accept it.
And last but not least, I love the way that the Dan/Sam pairing makes logical and emotional sense in this story. It's the perfect pay-off and it made me genuinely happy to read.
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Firstly, I love the themes here. The use of tigers and jungles and danger. It's worked into this whole piece so well, so subtly, and it thrilled me. I also loved how you worked the idea of being an addict into the piece, because that was the thought behind the original story: that being an addict leaves permanent marks. It's not something you simply recover from, it's something you always *are*, something you have to always guard against, which Sam does with both humour and a cold vulnerability.
Maybe he flew his Lear Jet down to Saratoga …
… no. Not that one. Not even in imagination. Gambling's not his poison of choice, but an addict can't take any chances.
Secondly, I love your Sam. I love the way we get to see inside Sam like we never did in the series, the way his background is so satisfyingly fleshed out (without ever feeling like exposition dump, only feeling like *this is Sam* and *this is how Sam thinks*). I love the change in atmosphere between the three sections and the non-chronological order.
This notwithstanding, it used to amuse him sometimes, as he rode in from out of town and prepared to impose his own brand of order onto other people's chaos, to see himself as the mysterious stranger of romance: a lone gunslinger, steady of hand and flinty of eye, a hard-boiled private 'tec, a lordless samurai. One could even, at a stretch, think of him as a modern-day wizard, a conjuror who works his magic with facts and figures, with statistics and demographics and spreadsheets. Or – and this is perhaps the closest to the truth – a tamer of (lions and tigers and bulls and bears, oh, my!) wild beasts.
...
That's not exactly what it says on the job description. He's a TV ratings expert, part demographics analyst, part time-and-motion studies man, far too large a part a bullshitter who depends on a combination of blind luck and sheer chutzpah. Even he's not sure exactly how all those roles are divvied up. The only thing he knows is it's a winning combination; he has a knack for what will work and what won't, what makes good television and what doesn't, and he knows how to turn an underachieving, underperforming show around and, in a matter of weeks, have it claw its way up the ratings charts till it forces people to sit up and take notice.
I love the way he sees his job, both romanticised and not. Two aspects of the same job, both true in their way.
Sometimes he'll listen to Dan's calm voice and hear, somewhere very far away, the dying echo of a tiger's roar.
But then, other days Dan is just Dan: sweet, simple, straightforward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Kooky, quirky, harmless Danny, shouldering his way into Sam's office at half-past midnight, bearer of who-knows-what surprise gifts.
Thirdly, I love your Dan. I love the way that he's both the heart-on-his-sleeve Danny that's so easily likeable, and also the Dan who needs therapy, who can be in pain, can lash out, can need help more than anyone else on the show. I love that Sam's smart enough to see both, to understand that person can be *both* without either being a lie, and can accept it.
And last but not least, I love the way that the Dan/Sam pairing makes logical and emotional sense in this story. It's the perfect pay-off and it made me genuinely happy to read.
So thank you.