All Fall Down (PG, between the mirror and the funeral)

[Shadow]

Shadow

First, you needn't worry about your muses being able to work their magic through the voice recognition software--works fine!

Alex truly did a wonderful job in that scene when he stood before the mirror. The emotions flowed across his features and gave us a picture of his feelings: fear and uncertainty gave way to acceptance and relief, then back to a measure of fear.

The idea of Tejada's daughter Nicole seeking out Mick to find her father's murdurer was quite wonderful! Life occasionally presents us with occurrences that really strain the notion of random chance and this may be one of those, unless Nicole was directed by someone at LAPD or someone else. Guess we'll never know, until you decide to write a sequel (hint, hint).

In any case, thank you for this!

Fabulous!!!!

Jenna

Jenna, thanks so much! It is great to hear that the voice recognition worked okay! It was really a very "different" experience using it.

Alex's expressiveness in those mirror scenes was very inspiring indeed. I was amazed at how different the scenes felt when all he was doing was looking in a mirror.

It is certainly possible that someone at LAPD might have felt sorry for Nicole and given her Mick's name, or as Rhonda suggested she could have read about him in the paper... Presumably his Facebook page wasn't up yet ...but I had the idea that since Mick likely has a rep with the wealthy folks of L.A., and Nicole is a wealthy girl, she would have gotten his name through her own social connections. (And if she had perhaps asked her cleaning staff for advice, she might have gotten his name that way as well, since Mick seems to take on a lot of unpaid work .... )

Thanks for reading!

[Shadow]

This is fantastic. It fits the whole scene so well. Josh was a good man and is dead. Tejada was a bad man and is dead. Mick is a monster AND a good man and is alive. How is any of that comprehensible? And now he sees that even Tejada had a side he didn't show, the side of a loving father. I wonder if Mick ever doubts his own role of judge and jury when he kills someone who "deserved" it.
Now he's gotten to thinking about Beth and if she would accept his dark side. It fits so very well. Love how you incorporate the scenes we saw in the dailies.
You write with so much emotion and insight. Thank you!!!

Ohh, francis, I love how you put Mick's dilemma ....a monster AND a good man and alive....and comparing himself to the man he killed, and also to the man he couldn't save. It is so much for him to have to think about, even before being confronted with the fact that Tejada was a loving father who left behind a grieving daughter.

I was so interested in your question of whether Mick ever doubts his role as judge and jury. As a vampire I never had the impression that he had such doubts...with vampire abilities, he must have a much better idea of the measure of any man than a human could have....and the vampire seems entirely confident about these things. However, if Mick had stayed human, I do wonder if we would have seen something quite different. I think human Mick WOULD have doubts....plus, it would be far less in his nature to kill. But we never got to see what might happen, there....

Thanks so much.

[Shadow]

Ah, Shadow; again you show me things in the show that were there, but undiscovered until you open them for me.

I _like_ the mirrors. One shows human Mick. One shows the guilt of surviving and becoming human while a decent man dies. And in the girl's eyes, he sees the monster that destroyed her family, as well as the loving father. As usual, none of these aspects are independent, and none are one-dimensional. Each aspect brings with it the uncertainty and greyness of real life.

Knowing how chaotic the show's production was, I'm amazed at how coherent the show seems to be. And I'm truly baffled whether the _show_ was coherent, or _you_ have pulled a straight thread through the wrinkles. It's a hall of mirrors, going on to infinity but made from just a few parts.

I am very happy to hear that you saw so much uncertainty and greyness in this story! The mirrors are there but they aren't always so very clear. It is good to know that you saw Nicole as one of the mirrors too, the most difficult and important one he looked in to....yet still tied in Mick's mind to the others.

A curious and interesting question about the show! While I would love to take credit for pulling a thread through the episodes ...well, in spite of some really jarring intervals between one episode and the next, I think the series as a whole was amazingly cohesive. Especially knowing all the chaos behind the scenes, I think they did a remarkable job.

Thank you!

[Shadow]

Wonderfully story and it ties so well into the actual episode.

Mick see himself so often of not being worthy of the gifts he recievces thinking monster don't get happy endingings. But even real monster's like Tejada have another side that someone loves and holds dear.

It was so great to see you come by again and leave another comment! And so great that you think it ties in so well to the episode. I do think that here in this situation Mick realizes that Tejada is the real monster, even with that one aspect of a good man....and that Mick himself has SO much worth it is beyond comparison. Thanks so much.

[allegrita]

Back for a reread of this wonderful story. I'm so glad you thought of having Nicole try to hire Mick to find her father's killer. It's so very, very Moonlight-ish for the strands of Mick's life to be woven together in different ways. And it's utterly believable that Nicole would try to get outside help when it was so obvious the police were happy her beloved father was dead.

The interval between Josh's death and his funeral has so many tantalizing spaces to fill in, and you've filled this bit perfectly. Your stories are always emotional and evocative, and I love the way you used the themes of walls, mirrors, and the title of the song to describe Mick's emotions as he contemplates life as a temporary mortal. One of the things I loved about Fated to Pretend was that Mick really was a different person when he was human. He was more impulsive, a little sillier, warmer, and less hard, if that makes sense. When he turned back, I think he made a decision to try to preserve some of those human traits. (At least that's how I've retconned the last four episodes, where the noir was missing and Mick became a much more public person.) Here, at the very beginning of his human week, Mick was already beginning to hope that he could pull down the wall around him--at least that part that separated him and Beth.

[Shadow]

Thanks so much for coming by to re-read, Alle! I totally agree with you about the way Mick was portrayed in FTP and what a completely different person he was while he was human. I expect that's why his human moment seemed like the proper time to have him think about starting to take down the walls that were surrounding him.

It's interesting how the rest of the episodes played out after that .... I don't imagine they did it deliberately, but it sure felt as if the reason the final episodes had such a different demeanor was because Mick's outlook on life had changed so much. He seemed so much more content to be a vampire after he'd changed back, and the angst as well as the noir seemed to fade away, at least for a time. After hearing about how chaotic things were in the production of Moonlight, I'm always amazed at how well the whole series came together and how reasonably it progressed. There were some bizarre transitions of course, but overall the whole series seemed well planned out ..... even though it seems as if this may have been mostly by accident!