babydraco | Entries tagged with cabbages and kings

TJ versus Jack

This gifset makes an interesting point TJ is Joseph, not Jack.

Makes perfect sense.

Meanwhile, it's so cold I'm having trouble typing, which is why I'll leave it at that. It's May. Some people say it snowed last night.

Oh New England....

Jack Benjamin gets sent to war, held hostage, and has to be rescued by his best friend again. ( I know this isn't meant terribly literally, it's more of a reference to the fact that they're played by the same actor).

Steve and Bucky (and we're talking mostly about the 2011 movie here) certainly have a David and Jonathan vibe. But more in the traditional Bible sense, not as much the "Kings" version. Bucky starts out as Steve's protector, the confident, successful one. Steve has the heart of a warrior but no one wants him on the battlefield. And then when Steve eclipses him via Deus ex Machina, and becomes a potent national rallying symbol in war time, Bucky, just like Jonathan, graciously deals with it like a grownup and accepts his supporting role because he loves him that much. As anyone who has seen Kings knows, this is not how Jack Benjamin reacted to David being praised as the hero while he was given a desk job and told the hostage situation was his own fault. He's not at all proud of David for turning out to be just as awesome on the outside as he always knew David was inside.

( He didn't...actually know David before David rescued him )

I'd like to mention that that hot fic I linked to earlier, it's gone. This makes me sad and disappointed and a little freaked out. Why is it gone? What happened?

http://pinterest.com/pin/66428163223869990/

http://pinterest.com/pin/46724914854050831/

http://pinterest.com/pin/212302569904082078/

Basically, they're Polyvore sets for a Rule 63 Sebastian Stan...

HAH! I love it (and I am totally requesting that for the Porn Battle). They seem more based on his characters than anything (#1 Jack, #2 Carter, #3, obviously Alice in Wonderland themed) but then, I think his personal style is harder to pin down. Cause sometimes he wears stuff like this Although I think #2 works well.

Where's the Bucky and Chase Collins outfits though? (I will be right back)

a few weeks ago, I made some outfits for Jaqui Benjamin, based on/inspired by his outfits on Kings (and some totally made up ones from the Fic) and a Jefferson. I am actually going to try and find reasonably priced versions of the Jefferson outfit pieces, because I actually want to wear that to my next cosplay opportunity. For Halloween and/or Arisia I have found that it's best to dress in layers (Arisia is in Boston in midwinter, and no one ever wants to drive me so I always have to come on the train and walk to the hotel from there) and more cost effective to use pieces that I can reuse later.

Did you know, we have the same birthday? I don't know how I kept missing that info, but yes, same day, one year apart.

Why yes, I'm not writing like I'm supposed to be, how did you guess? I need to get outside and clear my head.

Later, I'll try to pull some thoughts together on last night's Once Upon a Time.

Re that whole "fics where Sebastian Stan characters are all reincarnations of each other" phenomena... no one has brought up exactly why this would happen to someone. And I figured it out- Chase Collins did it. And his spell backfired really, really, really badly. He probably liked being Carter best, because Carter had no real problems and didn't meet a bad end (yet).

Some kind of task he has to finish but never gets the chance, "help the hero, and get it right this time". And Chase Collins screwed up by being, well, pretty evil.

( Get it to work, get it to work, getitowork. )

Since I am shipping Mad Swan (one of the few het pairings I've encountered in semi canon of anything where I'm genuinely, authentically like "I'll be in bunk") I have read a lot of fic about them. Which brings me to a pet peeve that only grows stronger every day.

Stop saying he's tall. Geez, seriously, stop it.

He's not tall. He's not so short that you could put him in your pocket or anything(he's taller than Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Jr, I believe) but he's certainly not tall enough to ever be described accurately as "tall". we've been through this already

look at him standing next to both Lana Parilla and Jennifer Morrison in 'Hat Trick',. He is taller than them but not by enough for it to be something worth remarking on, just in the general way men are often taller than women.

And yet a lot of OUaT het fics go out of their way to make sure we know Jefferson is "tall". I ran across a random fic that had Emma and Ruby describing him as "six foot three". In what alternate universe where he is played by a different actor?

It's like the opposite of that slash trope where writers make/draw one of the guys- usually the uke/bottom as extra short. And use of the word "little" has appeared in some Hatter slash (he's almost always the bottom in OUaT slash). But Kings fic usually correctly observes that Jack and David Shepherd were nearly the same height.

Other young men on OuAT as their heights compare to Jefferson:

Josh Dallas (David/Charming) is six foot one.
Colin O'Donahue (Hook) is five foot eleven
Eoin Bailey (August) is six feet
Jamie Dornan (Sheriff Graham) is six feet
David Anders (Dr Whale) is six feet

Not only is he not six foot three (at five eleven, he's below average and one of the shorter guys in this cast), none of these guys are. It wouldn't surprise me if they deliberately tried to make sure Prince Charming was the tallest guy in the cast. And notice, Josh Dallas is not even six foot three. Do these writers not understand how tall six foot three actually is?

Sebastian Stan has added muscle recently, but...your height is your height once you've reached it (he's twenty eight) until you get old and start shrinking. And he's five fricking eleven (in some places reported as five ten or even five nine but let's go with five eleven).

In Jacob Clifton's recap of this episode of Gossip Girl, he nicknames Carter Baizen "a wee sexy Hobbit".

Look at a lot of photos of Stan (as I have recently) and notice that he's often wearing boots with thick soles or a slight heel to them...

While Jefferson is not in the least evil, he lacks honor. We have seen that many of the "good" characters lack honor. Gepetto comes to mind.

If he had real honor, it would prevent him from entering into what is essentially a betrayal of an innocent party, Emma. Regardless of how much he wants to be with his child. Regina preys on people with a poor sense of honor.

Prince Charming is a character with an almost impossible sense of honor. Hence, he is incorruptible.

That's pretty much the cornerstone of Jefferson's “stupidly keeps trusting Regina” problem. Con artists say that the easiest people in the world to con are the ones who are dishonest themselves. It's exactly the same problem Jack found himself tangled up in when he got into bed with Uncle William. William preyed on the fact that Jack was desperately willing to do anything to win that crown, and when Jack wanted out, he couldn't extricate himself because he wasn't an innocent party. If William had chosen David (Shepherd not Nolan like it makes a difference) as his potential puppet, David would've been like “ Um, no thanks, Jack's Creepy Uncle, I don't want to be king of anyone.”

Biblical David definitely ended up corrupt, but largely on his own terms, because he had such a strong sense of agency. (B!David: "Oh, I'm totally going to end up corrupt, but only after everyone gives me All The Things because they think I'm a good person").

It seems that fans don't want a Wonderland spinoff if Sebastian Stan isn't going to be in it. Reading the Ausiello comments, it appears that there are only two other actors they'd even accept in the role (Andrew Potts or Seth Gabel), but mostly, people are baffled as to why the network thinks recasting will work. Fans adored Jefferson because of what his actor brought to the role, most people are saying that they'd rather wait until Stan is free to come back than put up with a substitute in the spinoff. It's the Hatter as played by Stan that people responded so well to, not the idea of Wonderland itself. I mean, Alice in Wonderland is always a safe, popular property for anyone doing, well, anything,(for me, it's absolutely one of my favorite stories ever- I had an Alice costume when I was little) but people would be more okay with not getting a spinoff than they would be with not getting Sebastian Stan back ever.

It's not just that he's a devastatingly good looking man with great chemistry with at least two of the show's actresses, it's that if he never comes back he's leaving a lot of plotholes. This is why I stopped watching daytime soaps, because they believe that you can simply replace one actor with another very similar one and it won't make a difference, and it does.

It'd be far better for ABC to sort out the current problems with Once, like their giant cast and numerous dropped plots, than spread themselves too thin with a spinoff.

( What does Thirty look like? )

Current Mood: gloomy

If they had brought Kings back for multiple seasons, that might not have been the best thing after all. It could've weirdly ended up preventing these actors from getting other work.

ABC wanted to do a Mad Hatter spinoff. It is going forward but will not star the Hatter after all. Sebastian Stan couldn't do it, because he just signed a six movie deal with Marvel. Yes, you read that right, he had to turn down the chance to star in his own tv spin off because he's been hired to costar in more movies in the Captain America franchise. Yeah, it's good to be Sebastian Stan right now... and he wouldn't be able to do any of that if he was committed to the fourth season of a seriously heavy drama series. Furthermore, if “Kings” was still airing at 8 pm on Sundays, that's the same timeslot as “Once Upon a Time”. Not only would Kings find itself competing with this huge hit, that is, in some ways, a similar show (but lighter and softer*) but it would mean that OuaT would have no Mad Hatter-as-memorably-portrayed-by-Stan. Because The Big Three networks are notoriously possessive of their employees and would never allow one of the major stars of a show to have a recurring role on a rival network's show that their show competes with for ratings. Another reason Kings should've been on cable.

I do really hope he can come back once in awhile to OUaT. I hope he's not so busy that they move on without him and we never get to find out what was up with him and Regina (exes? step or half siblings obsessed with each other a la Cruel Intentions?)or how he lost his wife and why he ended up poor or whether he will hook up with Emma. And what is his full name? Jefferson what?

And I just want to get something I want out of tv for once, because nothing else is going well for me right now.

( Kings and Hatters )

screencap is from here

**characters from a classic story lifted en mass out of their original setting and put down somewhere else.