ALL THINGS FRIDAY: Postcards From The Edge (Or: Clint and Natasha Trot the Globe)

[alphaflyer.livejournal.com]

Greetings, oh Best Of All Bars!  This is my first time hosting All Things Friday and it would be an epic understatement to say that I’m not known for my LJ savvy, so thanks in advance for bearing with me!  :-)

It is a well-known fact that our favourite assassins do a ridiculous amount of travelling for … emmm … work.  Fanfiction is rife with throwaway lines like “ever since Bishkek …”; “… during that casino job in Nice…” or “after that clusterfuck in Rome …”.  Not to mention the Mother of them all, “You and I remember Budapest very differently.”

With all that gallivanting about the globe, I’m pretty sure Clint and Natasha will have certain places they’ve come to shudder at the mere mention of; others they may actually like, or have had memorable sex in onderful memories of; and some that they have completely opposing views on.  And remember that time when American Airways wouldn't let Clint take his bow in the hand luggage?

So.  Here's today's challenge:  Let’s have your recs for the best “on location” fics (not just Budapest, although that too!); non-sequitur snippets from your own head canon, old or newly made up; postcards to Doreen from the cafeteria (she likes them, and Clint knows that she'll let him have extra dessert whenever he sends one:  "Hey Doreen. New Mexico is boring as hel …"); icons of one or both of our assassins in front of the Great Landmarks Of the World ...  Here’s your chance to let Clint and Natasha wreak havoc in a place you've always loathed.  Just what was it about Cologne that made Natasha swear she’d never go near the place again?  Why is Clint persona non grata in the Kyoto shrine?  Exactly why does Cleveland suck, and Chicago rock

As we say in currently rather snow-bound Canada, I’m sure you catch my drift.  To start you off, under cut below is an (abridged) blip from my own repertoire (story "In the Service", at http://archiveofourown.org/works/543070):  Georgia as seen through the eyes of Clint Barton; the place where he and Natasha will meet moments after this snippet ends.  It’s also my own personal love letter to a place that, for some reason I have yet to figure out, captured my heart.

Tbilisi/Georgia

In the three or four weeks he’s been there to set up the mission, Clint has taken a reluctant liking to Georgia.  It kind of reminds him of himself:  Pretty thoroughly fucked up -- thanks to a mixture of catastrophic circumstances, malevolent outside machinations and innate pigheadedness -- but trying to make a go of it against the odds.  

The country shows off its thousand-plus-year old cathedrals, fortresses and religious icons with as much pride as it does the tacky Stalin rugs you can find in the markets (Georgia's most infamous son just won't go away).  Add to that a people capable of heart-stopping warmth and hospitality on one hand and instant, brutal violence on the other, and you get a place that simply refuses to fit into any kind of template.  Thanks to simmering conflicts with two separatist republics – both essentially run by Russian organized crime – Georgia is full of guns and people without qualms about using them; add to that the Chechen terrorists and Al Qaeda fighters hiding in the Pankisi Gorge and what you get is a toxic stew, in which three or four diverse interest groups are liable to butt heads with each other in never-ending variations.  For a professional assassin, the place is a veritable smorgasbord, one-stop-shopping and trick-or-treat all rolled into one.  His target has been busy harvesting opportunities for weeks.

It’s a mild evening in May, and the archer is sitting in the shadows on a crumbling balcony on the second floor of an old abandoned house, rendered uninhabitable by the last earthquake.  Despite the ominous cracks in the walls and the dusty rubble piled up in front of the house, someone has installed a satellite dish on the balcony; the wire leads into a ground floor apartment across the street. The dish makes a perfect screen.  Clint would like to be higher up, but here in Tbilisi’s Old Town two or three stories is about as high as you get.  Many of the top floors are rickety and barely level; building higher would be lunacy in a place where the earth shakes as often and as violently as the political landscape

Clint sits on a pile of loose bricks from what used to be a wall, his flak jacket tossed beside him.  His bow sits on top of the jacket – wouldn’t want to get that dusty, now.  He is absently chewing on a hunk of khachapuri, oblivious to the bits of crumbly cheese filling that dots the black leather of his vest.  (The Hawk has decided that next to the alabaster-skinned women with their angelically arched black eyebrows, the food is definitely the best thing about Georgia.)

He knows he’s in for the long haul and doesn’t expect anything to happen until after dark, if the chatter Coulson has picked up on the internet and the wires is on the level; and so he sits in his nest and watches as dusk falls.  He represses his longing after the best grilled meat on the planet -- the smells wafting up from the restaurant down the street are torture -- and focuses on the sights and sounds below.  An enthusiastic soccer game has been ranging up and down the street for hours now, with stubby-kneed kids rotating in and out as they get hauled off for a dinner break.  There’s electricity tonight; the streetlights allow the game to continue past dark as the haunting melody of an ancient song falls from an open window down the block.

Clint wonders briefly what it’s like for the people who live here, carving moments like this out of a world too often shattered by men for whom peace means business lost

His target, according to information picked up by an informant on the Black Sea coast, has apparently been hired by one of the Abkhaz crime bosses to off a local contact.  Probably a deal gone sour, or the guy’s gotten too close to a rival – who knows.  The Black Widow is presently entertaining her mark in one of the restaurants down the street …

Have fun!  

Comments

[ashen_key]

Chicago rocks because it's where Natasha lived once she joined SHIELD and before she joined Clint in San Diego. Chicago is her (American) city, her home where she sorted a lot of shit out and refound herself in an organization and stopped being such a lonely mess. She doesn't miss the winters.

San Diego is Clint's home after he was kicked out medically discharged left the army, divorced his first wife, joined SHIELD - nearly twenty years in one place, and it's home.

São Paulo is where Barton caught up with Romanova, just after she assassinated two higher-ups in two seperate cartels, and accidentally started an underworld battle that lasted for days. It's where Romanova stopped to defend a child, and then other civilians, and it's where Barton decided that she might be someone who could change. He was ultimately wrong about that, but that's where he made his call.

Tokyo is a fic that dictator_duck and I need to finish and make pretty - Tokyo and the fallout is where Natasha and Clint's friendship started. Natasha hates Tokyo - she spent six months there trying to be a civilian after Clint spared her, and it didn't work to a humiliating degree. Clint, in contrast, daydreams about the wind-currents between the skyscrappers, because he's a geek like that.

Budapest was dinosaurs. There is a fic about it. It's not finished yet as it's giving me issues and every time I try and write it I want to scream, but that was Budapest - dinosaurs. The dinosaurs had feathers. And teeth. And claws. HYDRA's fault.

There is a town in Bavaria they don't talk about. Not a mission, but family - even if they are Red Room family, especially if they are Red Room - is complicated and painful.

I think I'm a bit contrary in that Clint and Natasha in my headcanon don't often work together (different skillsets that don't, actually, blend together well unless it's a quick mission), so a lot of places that they share are also downtime; Chicago, San Diego, Las Vegas where they got married, Överkallix in Swedish Lapland which is the closet town to Nat's cabin in the forest that has a supermarket (her cabin is her true home, found post-RR and years before SHIELD). Helsinki is where their mission got completely fucked up and they ended up having to tread water in the gulf (at least it was summer).

But I need to write/develop more headcanon for them and missions with Strike Team Delta, or even just 'Clint, I need you to back me up when I go to Ciudad del Este to ask a former Red Roomer for some intel', 'Nat, you speak Romanian, right?'

(An AU/Alternate Backstory version of Natasha that I'm sloooowly developing - child of a Russian criminal family (although that sounds grander than they are), ex-mafia and agnostic Jew - has a particular fondness for Brooklyn and Brighton Beach as home. Her parents still live there. She and Steve can bond over being working-class kids from Brooklyn, when/if I ever write things about it. The fic I'm mostly writing in that 'verse has six different cities as settings as it's a 'Five Times' fic, but I still need to work on it. Story of my writing life)

And re: your ficlet, I do enjoy a sharp Clint who is well aware of the political landscape of the places he's sent to. Yay professional secret agent actually doing his homework.

[alphaflyer.livejournal.com]

Feathered dinosaurs -- the Hungarian Ridgebacks. Damn things sure can wreak havoc on the goulash soup the tourists like to eat in the outdoor cafes on the Buda side, by the citadel ...

[ashen_key]

Aahahaahahah. They are actually Deinonychus (a.k.a. what they call 'velociraptor' in Jurassic Park - you cannot honestly tell me that someone wouldn't do JP in MCU-verse, MAD SCIENCE FOR ALL) but HYDRA-fiddled. And feathers! because research changes in nearly twenty years. It's going to be the best, as soon as it stops....failing epically *sighs at it*

(And also, your comment is doubly hilarious as I own a Rhodesian Ridgeback)

[shenshen77.livejournal.com]

I heart all of this so much, I can't even begin! I love both Chicago and San Diego, gorgeous cities and I can really see these two being home to Nat and Clint. They truly play to both their characters, Chicago is beautiful, seems a bit harsh and cold at first glance yet captures you with its soul once you see beyond the shiny glass facades. And San Diego is so homely, earthy and airy at the same time, I totally accept your headcanon regarding these cities :D

I would love to read about Tokyo, I can totally see Clint being a geek about the windcurrents ;)

Also, your AU/Alternate Backstory sounds really intriguing!

[dictator-duck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Ash and I developed backstories together through... way too much time spent chatting, and all I knew was I really wanted Clint in San Diego. (She mostly handles Nat, I mostly handle Clint; but she writes an awesome Clint, and I... occasionally write Nat? Nat's scary.) Because it suits him, like you said! But also because every time I visit San Diego I do not want to leave.

(Wish fulfillment, man. There's a reason he lives in easy walking distance from Balboa. *laughing*)

[ashen_key]

As dictator_duck said, we develop our headcanon together pretty much, so *beams!* I'm really, really glad those two cities worked. I'm not sure why I was drawn to Chicago for Nat, just that in my mental conception of it, it seemed...Nat-ish. So, yay! :D

Tokyo is waiting for me to find my action brain <.< but it's just...it's how we view Clint and Nat and their relationship, so I should really get on that. It entertains me (oh, Natasha. Poor, angry, lost, 'I got fired! so I'm going to hack into SHIELD' Natasha *facepalms at her*). And Clint is totally a geek - sniper! He spends a lot of his career thinking about things like wind-currents! It's a challenge and pleases his obsessive soul (because really, that's what geekdom is)

*beams!* Exceeeeellent. I'm developing it because I read some comics!snob being all "MCU!Natasha has to share comics!backstory, she cannot possibly have living parents or siblings, and being a criminal is too mundane" (because, you know, Natasha's words to Loki could never imply that she was a mercenary before Clint spared her, and organized crime never does anything interesting...) so I went "...Challenge accepted!" in my head.

So, aside from her full Russian name and comics!birthplace, I'm trying to work out a backstory using only what she says in canon as things I have to include. The full name is mostly because 'Alian' is (as far as I can tell from google) a highly obscure Hebrew name, so I've always quietly suspected he was Jewish, and so in this 'verse I'm running with it. Everything else, I'm just seeing what else fits and having lots of fun with with it. But all the research required, so it's a side-project.

[dictator-duck.livejournal.com]

bee tee dubs, lower down conversation has convinced me you need to set a story in [hometown] (just realized idk how paranoid you are about locations).

EVERYONE WRITE A FIC IN THEIR HOMETOWN.

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

One thing that I've always very much enjoyed about this ship is how reading fic often feels like a globetrotting adventure. And it's awesome. In my own stuff I think I've exhausted just about every place I've ever been personally (not being a big traveler), but sometimes it's also fun to pick a spot on the globe, do a little research and take another trip in one's head. It's a bit like being a strange kind of travel agent; like planning for a vacation that you're not actually going to take (except that research is important, damnit, and just look at all those pretty, pretty pictures... **stares**)

I'm trying to think of locations that have stuck with me in fic. I think I'm more drawn to the mirco concept of place-- a safehouse in wherever, a quirky apartment, a tropical hideaway, a cabin off the grid (ha! couldn't resist :). It's about those small moments away from the geography per se, away from the missions and the gunfire and the destabilized regimes where we get a glimpse of who these guys are. And don't get me wrong, I love all that other stuff, and I love the quiet moments even more when they're set in such a context.

So I say all that to say.... I need to ponder recs some more.

Also? Coffee. Coffee is good. :)

[alphaflyer.livejournal.com]

Alaska! Cabins! Yeah, totally with you on that one ... :-)

[jacedesbff.livejournal.com]

Reading all of this made me think of my trip to Israel. I have got to figure out a way to have them go there! (Six years ago, btw - best trip in the history of ever!) :-)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

This is a great place to bring up just how intimidating this aspect of this fandom can be. "Clint and Natasha on a mission in a city" is indeed a huge feature of this fandom, and part of the charm of it is the elements that make that city unique and different from other cities on the globe, and how authors feature those in their stories.

Which is so freakin' hard for me! I envy authors who can assimilate a city into their stories this way. I don't know cities, don't register what makes them unique, or if I do, I'm thinking that only I would notice something like that because I'm a rube or a tourist, so I won't call attention to it. In the current exchange fest I had to specify that I couldn't possibly write Budapest because I don't know Budapest--and, in fact, I've started to favor writing in fictional cities for this fandom, because I can't be accused of getting something wrong that way. It's really intimidating!

[alphaflyer.livejournal.com]

Fictional cities are great, too! You can create all the mayhem you want, and no one will weep after the landmark you've just wrecked ... :-)

But there's another side to the intimidation coin (apart from everybody in this bar being so bloody proficient at EVERYTHING they do ... ;-) ) and that's getting carried away. I've been to loads of places, and have to be really careful not to let the descriptions take over the plot. There's also a danger of the author's voice taking over that of the character they are trying to create ...

[allisnow.livejournal.com]

This is a great place to bring up just how intimidating this aspect of this fandom can be.

Oh yeah. I've been to a total of ONE non-American city in my life, and that was Vancouver, BC, which according to some Canadian friends is pretty Americanized. I mean you can use U.S. currency there, for crying out loud ;)

Even within the U.S. I'm not all that well-traveled. So it's either set ALL my stories in the California Bay Area, or learn how to fake it.

All I can say is thank God for the Internet. Google Maps and Wikipedia... what would I do without you?

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

omg made up cities are the best! that way you can vague it up and not worry about screwing up actual facts or, you know, places. even with the most thorough research there's kind of no substitute for experience (and i always end up going light on the details for fear of overdoing it and getting it wrong.)

[ashen_key]

I research ALL THE THINGS! Also don't write a lot of missions *coughs* But there is more reason than just I like nomming languages that I research things - and then, yeah, there is the trick of sliding things into the fic so it doesn't look like I'm showing that reasearch and sounding like a wikipedia article. And I also try not to exotic-fy places, either - that's slightly very much uncool, and I know how much it sucks when people do it to Australia, so I try not to do it to anyone else. We can be slightly more classy than Old School Bond *g*

I'm Australian and have lived in or around one city my entire life (Canberra). Took one overseas trip yeeeeeears ago (Russia, Estonia, briefly Vienna) but that was just a holiday. It's ended up with I'm like the only person on the planet who prefers Moscow to St Petersburg, though, and I forget how those cities are in general Russian view (Natasha was born and raised in neither - and her RR was an old prince's palace the KGB took over in the middle of nowhere, which I still have to work out roughly where it is) and so what Natasha would think of them.

But I crawl around the internet a lot and read descriptions and pick up travelogue-books and then...cross my fingers and try and write things. But, as I've mentioned, I've got an AU where Natasha isn't RR at all, and so for Brooklyn things I'm freaking out. And should go and ask some online friends for help.

(My Budapest is set almost entirely in a made-up hotel, so I'm cheating there <.< )

[chrisfaithalin.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with some of you that it's hard if you haven't traveled to write about different places. My travel experience in US/Canada is limited to Washington, a smidge of Oregon, and Vancouver BC. I have had the luck to go to Spain once and France twice so I've used that to my advantage. But beyond that I have nothing.

One of the weird things that I think would help me write a mission story is of all things The Amazing Race. Does anybody else watch that show? I mean each season they travel all over the world and they have to navigate the different cities. Not that I would call myself an expert but based off what they show I think I could write about the congested streets of India or the humidity of Japan.

To me what is most important when reading mission stories is not necessarily that they have all of the physical locations down, but that they have the feeling of the area and they show a different way of life. This fandom has some amazingly smart people in it and I love when a story will incorporate information about say political instability in Africa or human rights violations. It's a weird thing to like I know, but to me it adds depth to stories.

[hufflepuffsneak.livejournal.com]

Huh, I never thought of the Amazing Race as research. I might have to start watching again. I just got really annoyed at how they sometimes described the locals as if they're mysterious objects/ curiosities instead of people.

I'm all about incorporating the feeling of an area. That's why I have a bazillion different weird google searches at the moment about Lima.

[alphaflyer.livejournal.com]

well, running the danger of self-promotion here, if you like to read about political instability and human rights violations, try one I wrote a while ago, "In the Service" (the Tbilisi bit in the beginning post is from Chapter 2, 1 is partly set in Congo and 3 in Abidjan). You can find it at http://archiveofourown.org/works/543070.

Oh, and for the record, I've never been to either of the two Congos or Abidjan, but have been following the politics there and when it comes to figuring out where the hell the airport is located in Abidjan, as they say -- Google is your friend. :-)

[paksenarrion2.livejournal.com]

I *LOVE* The Amazing Race

see icon, one of the only times I will not use one of the myriad Avengers icons I have *g*

And yeah, it TAR is a good primer on being able to give some local flavor about many different locales. The trains in India for example-how extremely crowded they are. And how many men would lose their hands when they tried to pinch Natasha's ass??

[anuna-81.livejournal.com]

God I am tired right now, so I doubt I'll add much to what people already have said here. Reading C/N fics often does feel like one great big trip around the world, and sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's a rush, depending what the fic needs. I always admire people who convince me I am somewhere with them, I don't dare poking too much at it because a) I haven't been around a lot and b) I usually don't have too much time to research geography/I focus on the emotions of the characters.... geographic location usually ends up being just scenery and backdrop noise. But I try to get at least basic things about some location if I'm using it (imagination is awesome).

How about a self rec? I am not a native English speaker, my mother tongue in fact is more similar to Russian (Slavic languages FTW). During the promptathon this summer I wrote a fic set in my own country, Croatia: Li.ber.tas (http://head-on-home.livejournal.com/12957.html); and I set it in place I've been to. I used Croatian within the story, and details I've seen with my own eyes (and I used places I really love! Most of the fic is set in Dubrovnik, which is gorgeous.... google it and you'll see) so, if you're from anywhere but Croatia, this is a trustworthy postcard. Many things are wrapped in this fic, authentic locations, recent history, an interesting local legend - I am quite proud of it, in fact. It's my only fic where location(s) are a part of the story just like characters and things they're going through (it's set directly post movie, and Natasha is trying to help Clint deal with his post-Loki guilt and other issues.)

[frea-o.livejournal.com]

Heh, I wrote a crossover where they start in Dubrovnik and then head over to Zagreb (inspired by the fact that I will be in both of these locations in 10 months). I think the thing I liked the most was that there's a Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb (though I can't seem to get my traveling buddies excited about it at all, which is depressing).

I've written fic where the characters travel extensively and while it does help to have traveled, I think you're completely right in that imagination can go a long way. Let's face it: any version of any city you use, no matter if it's based in reality, is going to be some fantasy version of that city, colored by your own perceptions. It's not necessarily about how dead-on you can make those descriptions, but how you can ground them so that the reader understands what you want them to feel.

[hufflepuffsneak.livejournal.com]

I love traveling in the fandom and seeing the sights through the author's eyes. Everyone here has legit awesome headcanon, mine is kinda in line with most of the fanon. I think Natasha spent most of her time in the Red Room and post in Europe, because that's where most of her contacts are, but she's familiar with parts of Asia and the US. Traveling for her is a lot of fun- she reinvents a new persona most places, playing the naive tourist and whatever else by turns. She's all about trying the new and learning about different cultures. Clint, in comparison, spends a lot of time people watching where's he is sent, but sometimes forgets to experience the art/ non-desert food/ history of a place. He knows the US like that back of his hand from his days in the circus and most of his missions with SHIELD, and that's enough for him.

I guess my favorite bit of traveling headcanon is that after Natasha is brought into SHIELD, she gets assigned to be Clint's spotter while they're still deciding what to do with her. They travel to South America to carry out a few assassinations. She's never been before and barely knows the language (but after she spends time in the US she gets good at Spanish, because it's useful). Team bonding results.

[ashen_key]

SPOTTER. YOU ACTUALLY HAVE CLINT WITH A SPOTTER. <333333

And yesssss, I agree with you that Natasha finds travelling lots of fun and trying the new.

[lilac-ayame.livejournal.com]

Bandung, Indonesia. Two, three hours from Jakarta, and Nat would have a more difficult time in blending in than Clint. We don't see as much as foreigners as Jakartans and with her hair and coloring, we're more likely to stare. Clint is more like average Joe and it helps that he doesn't have the towering height of most Caucasian. (Us Asians are short! :D)

The streets are pretty confusing and the most effective public transport is small vans? with unique route. Their best bet to blend in is to act like typical tourist, shirts and tank tops, shorts and backpacks, we'll mostly leave them alone unless they ask us something, and most of our youngsters can speak english if they need to ask more about the area other than streets and landmarks.

Otherwise, it's a comparably peaceful city, can't see Nat and Clint having a mission there unless their mark moves from Jakarta.

I can helpif any of you brilliant writers happens to pick up any city in Indonesia for mission :D

[workerbee73.livejournal.com]

This is amazing! Now I kind of want to write a story set there...

:D