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The initial idea of the Burn Notice fic was that it would be about 5k words, quick to write and get out of my head, and then I could move on. It's currently a little over 7k, and last week I thought I'd have a finished draft last weekend, or at the latest Monday, which is now four days ago.
The problem is that I wrote a line of dialogue that references something not that big a deal. And it's kind of a throwaway, humorous line. I'm 90% certain that the thing it references happened before the point in the series when my fic is set. But not 100%. And the thing is a small enough thing that reading through fandom wiki plot summaries isn't helpful.
So then I realised I'd have to watch through most of seasons 1 and 2 of Burn Notice again, just to find out when the thing happened. Which means watching about 17 hours of TV, during which the fic writing isn't happening. I could always write a different line of humorous dialogue. That would be the easy solution, obviously. But I LIKE the line dammit, and I like where the conversation goes from there. My brain flat out refuses to make my life easy.
Anyway, I've re-watched season one, and the most interesting thing is that despite my later revelations and thoughts on characters, nothing about season one has changed with hindsight. Early Fiona is exactly as obnoxious as I remember her. Michael is not yet obsessive enough to be obnoxious. And while Sam is a main character, he spends most of the first season stealthing around in the background, rather than making an impact. He's the contacts guy, the paperwork guy, and it's not until the very end of the season that he starts sliding into the more active Michael and Fiona world of things like kidnapping and occasional murder.
Which absolutely makes sense, but I'd forgotten-slash-wasn't paying that much attention on the first watch through. While Fiona's been a criminal her entire adult life, and Michael has spent years inhabiting the rather grey world of a government-sanctioned criminal, Sam's always thought of himself as a law and order type (however 'interesting' some of those orders might have been). Michael and Sam are incredibly good influences on Fiona, but Michael and Fiona are terrible influences on Sam.
Without the Michael factor, Sam would never have got involved in a life that involves committing multiple serious felonies on a weekly basis. The concept that there's almost nothing bad enough that he won't do it for a good enough reason is inherently Sam - it's the reason he doesn't have a job at the start of the series. But without Michael, he wouldn't have gone out actively looking for those things and those reasons, which is a rather different place to be.
The other good reason for Sam staying out of the messy stuff at first, of course, is because he's been living civilian life for the past two years. He'll definitely have been visiting the range, because ex-military people who still own guns don't just look at them. But for the rest of it, it's probable Sam doesn't know himself just how rusty he might be, and Michael certainly doesn't.
It's also interesting that the very first time they put Sam up high with a sniper rifle, he puts a bullet straight through someone. Which also makes sense, because that's the training. If you point a weapon at someone, you're willing to shoot them, and if you're shooting them, you're killing them; you're not scaring them or wounding them. And then I'm guessing Sam didn't sleep too well for a few nights, because he's not in the military any more and that's life in prison right there, and the rifle probably went to the bottom of the sea off the side of a fishing boat (an expensive piece of equipment to replace). After that, it's very rare to see Sam directly kill someone (maybe never? I'd have to check back on that.) Indirectly killing people is of course something else entirely...
The problem is that I wrote a line of dialogue that references something not that big a deal. And it's kind of a throwaway, humorous line. I'm 90% certain that the thing it references happened before the point in the series when my fic is set. But not 100%. And the thing is a small enough thing that reading through fandom wiki plot summaries isn't helpful.
So then I realised I'd have to watch through most of seasons 1 and 2 of Burn Notice again, just to find out when the thing happened. Which means watching about 17 hours of TV, during which the fic writing isn't happening. I could always write a different line of humorous dialogue. That would be the easy solution, obviously. But I LIKE the line dammit, and I like where the conversation goes from there. My brain flat out refuses to make my life easy.
Anyway, I've re-watched season one, and the most interesting thing is that despite my later revelations and thoughts on characters, nothing about season one has changed with hindsight. Early Fiona is exactly as obnoxious as I remember her. Michael is not yet obsessive enough to be obnoxious. And while Sam is a main character, he spends most of the first season stealthing around in the background, rather than making an impact. He's the contacts guy, the paperwork guy, and it's not until the very end of the season that he starts sliding into the more active Michael and Fiona world of things like kidnapping and occasional murder.
Which absolutely makes sense, but I'd forgotten-slash-wasn't paying that much attention on the first watch through. While Fiona's been a criminal her entire adult life, and Michael has spent years inhabiting the rather grey world of a government-sanctioned criminal, Sam's always thought of himself as a law and order type (however 'interesting' some of those orders might have been). Michael and Sam are incredibly good influences on Fiona, but Michael and Fiona are terrible influences on Sam.
Without the Michael factor, Sam would never have got involved in a life that involves committing multiple serious felonies on a weekly basis. The concept that there's almost nothing bad enough that he won't do it for a good enough reason is inherently Sam - it's the reason he doesn't have a job at the start of the series. But without Michael, he wouldn't have gone out actively looking for those things and those reasons, which is a rather different place to be.
The other good reason for Sam staying out of the messy stuff at first, of course, is because he's been living civilian life for the past two years. He'll definitely have been visiting the range, because ex-military people who still own guns don't just look at them. But for the rest of it, it's probable Sam doesn't know himself just how rusty he might be, and Michael certainly doesn't.
It's also interesting that the very first time they put Sam up high with a sniper rifle, he puts a bullet straight through someone. Which also makes sense, because that's the training. If you point a weapon at someone, you're willing to shoot them, and if you're shooting them, you're killing them; you're not scaring them or wounding them. And then I'm guessing Sam didn't sleep too well for a few nights, because he's not in the military any more and that's life in prison right there, and the rifle probably went to the bottom of the sea off the side of a fishing boat (an expensive piece of equipment to replace). After that, it's very rare to see Sam directly kill someone (maybe never? I'd have to check back on that.) Indirectly killing people is of course something else entirely...
