Okay, so "Little Mr. Marker" was supposed to be my only slash story; and then "Thief of Hearts" really was supposed to be the last; and then "The Fire This Time" was really, truly absolutely supposed to be the last slash story I ever wrote; and then I got the idea for Redux. Redux is my Victoria-returns entry. I haven't yet read one -- gen or slash -- that I believed: she's usually just way too psychotic or violent, or too pathetic. And Victoria is obsessed, vindictive, and generally colder than ice -- but she's also a fascinating three-dimensional character, who probably thinks she's actually in love with Fraser.

Frankly, "Victoria's Secret" is probably the most perfect 2-hour episode of any television series I've ever seen. The snow metaphor, the complicated plot, the incredible photography and editing -- it's breathtaking. I love the way the same actions the viewer "awww"s over on first viewing are so chilling on the second, and the third. I also love that the movie Victoria and Fraser rent -- "North By Northwest" -- is tailor-made to set up a Mountie who thinks he's in love. This is one episode that has gotten better and better, every time I've seen it. (Watch "You Must Remember This", "Victoria's Secret", and "Letting Go" back to back sometime, if you haven't; it's easier to see how Fraser could make himself believe that his relationship with Victoria is similar enough to the relationship between Ray and Suzanne Chapin, that he ought to be able to make it work.)

I tried to bring Victoria back in a plot complex enough to be worthy of her. And, believe me, it took some doing! I had to read up on con artists, and cons; and then I had to sit down with actual money to figure out the rather pathetic thing the junkie does to slip the twenty to Ray; it's my own creation, and it might work, if you're really good, and the mark is really stupid. The criminal who towed a safe behind his car was real; I know somebody on the jury. It struck me that all anybody really trying to screw up these guys needed to do was use people nobody would find again, to plant evidence or get Ray in the right place -- simple moves, actually.

It was fun to work in all the references to "To Windhover", the poem Fraser doesn't realize he knows as perfectly as he does (if you haven't noticed, it's what he begins to murmur after Ray shoots him in "Victoria's Secret"; listen, and you can hear him say, "king/ dom of daylight's dauphin."). I quote the poem a couple of places: where Fraser is thinking about Ray, and where Fraser is thinking about Victoria. He uses the images casually, not realizing that he actually heard and memorized the poem as Victoria repeated it over and over at Fortitude Pass. I also included a tribute to Sherlock Holmes: "Rache", he points out in "A Study in Scarlet", is the German word for "revenge." It was fun to bring in references to Frank Capra movies (Bailey and Sullivan, the two IA guys, come from "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Sullivan's Travels" -- also the movie shown in prison in the episode, "The Witness"). I also had a good time bringing in references to snow and cold I'd used in earlier stories in the series. I didn't know when I wrote them that they were going to be a setup for this, but I had a good time with them. One way I tried to tie the stories together is the opening sentence. Originally, it was just supposed to tie together the first two stories. Then I thought it would be fun to start every work in the series the same way. It was just my good fortune that I could also end the series with the same image.

This story was also an answer to all those Ma-Vecchio-finds-out stories where she welcomes the Mountie into the family, and everything's okay. A slew of these popped up around the time I was writing this, and all I could think was, "Never met an Italian mama, have you?" I thought it would be fun if she found out around the time Victoria starts working back into Fraser's life. ("Fun", slash writer's definition: "noun; something that the writer enjoys, which the characters in the story probably do not.")

I had a really good time with this one: I really let loose with the passion and the sex. And the references to other episodes (what slash writer can resist putting Fraser and Ray on top of a train full of Mounties, after "All the Queen's Horses"?). And the asides about America in the '90s; one of my favorite lines is still Lipkowitz's, about the coffe, condoms, and cigars. And the New World Order stuff.

Lots of fun. (See above definition.)

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