Open Skies: Meta
Feb. 19th, 2012 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
uberniftacularJust some thoughts I had when writing Open Skies that I thought I'd share with the class.
My vision for the world in which Open Skies takes place is your typical Victorian steampunk fantasy universe. The year is approximately 1895, the technology is steam-powered, and the fashions include a fabulous quantity of top hats and buttoned boots and long swishy coats. The world also does contain a little bit of magic, hinted at with Lila’s Talent. Talents are basically supernaturally good versions of your typical abilities, and they’re fairly rare. The airship-building guilds actively seek out and recruit people with shipbuilding Talents – this little bit of magic is what enables these fairly large, steam-and-propeller-powered (as opposed to dirigible) airships to fly. For people with these or other Talents, job hunts are actually somewhat of a risk: it’s a gamble to figure out whether it’s safe to reveal whether they’ve got it or not, because for as likely as it is for a Talent to land you a steady and better-than-average-paying job, it’s almost equally as likely for the dishonest to try to take advantage of you, like what happened to Lila. As a general rule, though, people with Talents are few and far between, so the magic isn’t really a major focus in this universe.
So. This whole thing kind of came about because I wanted to cast Seamus Dever in something (he’s my New Favorite. This will likely change within the next 6 months.)
And then somehow the idea of doing something steampunk grew out of that. I’m not 100% sure where the train of thought came from (but I’m willing to bet it went something like this: Seamus Dever --> Castle --> Nathan Fillion --> Firefly --> steampunk!). And the next logical step in casting a steampunk show would be to put Jaime Murray in it, right? (Okay, I’ll admit, the only thing I’ve really watched her in is Warehouse 13. BUT. That gives me pretty steampunky screencaps of her to work with! But I know she’s had guest spots in about a zillion other things as well, more on that later.)
Also, this started out with the idea that maybe it was going to be a cop show. A steampunk cop show. But then…I dunno. Apparently I can’t write cop shows?
When casting, I try my hardest not to cast too many people all from the same show, and I also try not to cast people who would be too “obvious,” or who are particularly “popular.” Don’t ask me why, I’m just stubborn like that. But, this is kind of why I haven’t cast Nathan Fillion as anything, even though he would seem the most obvious for a steampunk show. Trust me, it took a lot of willpower to only cast ONE main Firefly cast member here. Well, and Mark Sheppard, because I will forever associate him with Firefly (well, it’s the first thing I ever saw him in.) Though apparently he is in ALL THE SHOWS EVER.
Mark Sheppard being in all of the shows, combined with Jaime Murray also being in all of the shows, was the deciding factor as to who the main characters were going to be. Because both of them DESERVE THEIR OWN SHOW, DAMMIT. So I’m letting them have this one.
Some of my character ideas were pretty obvious. I knew from the start that Jaime Murray would be the captain, for instance, just like how Allison Scagliotti is the mechanic (goggles, anyone?) and that Molly Quinn plays her sister (pretty gingers!). Other character ideas, frankly, were heavily based on the pictures I found of the actors. Seamus Dever’s character, for example: the pic I’m using for him is one of the few I managed to find that didn’t completely scream “COP! LOOK, IT’S A COP!” It actually looks…steampunk-plausible, kind of. And this particular image just *screams* upper-class, therefore, he’s the rich passenger with millions of frequent-flyer miles. (This picture is actually part of a screencap from the film noir episode of Castle that just aired, but I found the picture itself a couple weeks before the episode happened, so I didn’t know that at the time. And hey, change the regular suit jacket to a frock coat, and it’s pretty steampunk, yeah?)
The other character idea that was heavily influenced by the actor picture is Rebecca Gayheart’s character. I really wanted to cast her, because I quite liked her on Dead Like Me and was sad when her character left after only 5 episodes. But when scrolling through pics of her online, most of what’s available for her are shots from events, which I honestly kind of hate. And then there was this pic of her looking very rich and old-fashioned, at which I went “GIMME!” The problem was, what kind of character to base on that image? I already have a token rich person in Seamus Dever’s character, I really don’t need a second one. So I sat there staring at the picture for what felt like ages, trying to figure out who the heck she is. (No joke, I’d put a note under her picture in my file that just said, “Who’s she?”) And then the obvious answer hit me: nobody else on the show knows who she is either! Let’s just ignore the plausibility issues of randomly appearing and disappearing from an airship on a trans-Atlantic voyage, shall we?
Also, yes, there are a lot of women in this cast. I like casting pretty ladies, all right? This is a steampunk alternate reality, I’m choosing to invent a reality in which women actually got to do cool shit in the Victorian era.
Also, I do apologize for how very white this cast is. I'm usually better at diversity! My only (flimsy) excuse for this is that I only had a few weeks to think about the cast this time, instead of months and months like I did with my other shows.
My vision for the world in which Open Skies takes place is your typical Victorian steampunk fantasy universe. The year is approximately 1895, the technology is steam-powered, and the fashions include a fabulous quantity of top hats and buttoned boots and long swishy coats. The world also does contain a little bit of magic, hinted at with Lila’s Talent. Talents are basically supernaturally good versions of your typical abilities, and they’re fairly rare. The airship-building guilds actively seek out and recruit people with shipbuilding Talents – this little bit of magic is what enables these fairly large, steam-and-propeller-powered (as opposed to dirigible) airships to fly. For people with these or other Talents, job hunts are actually somewhat of a risk: it’s a gamble to figure out whether it’s safe to reveal whether they’ve got it or not, because for as likely as it is for a Talent to land you a steady and better-than-average-paying job, it’s almost equally as likely for the dishonest to try to take advantage of you, like what happened to Lila. As a general rule, though, people with Talents are few and far between, so the magic isn’t really a major focus in this universe.
So. This whole thing kind of came about because I wanted to cast Seamus Dever in something (he’s my New Favorite. This will likely change within the next 6 months.)
And then somehow the idea of doing something steampunk grew out of that. I’m not 100% sure where the train of thought came from (but I’m willing to bet it went something like this: Seamus Dever --> Castle --> Nathan Fillion --> Firefly --> steampunk!). And the next logical step in casting a steampunk show would be to put Jaime Murray in it, right? (Okay, I’ll admit, the only thing I’ve really watched her in is Warehouse 13. BUT. That gives me pretty steampunky screencaps of her to work with! But I know she’s had guest spots in about a zillion other things as well, more on that later.)
Also, this started out with the idea that maybe it was going to be a cop show. A steampunk cop show. But then…I dunno. Apparently I can’t write cop shows?
When casting, I try my hardest not to cast too many people all from the same show, and I also try not to cast people who would be too “obvious,” or who are particularly “popular.” Don’t ask me why, I’m just stubborn like that. But, this is kind of why I haven’t cast Nathan Fillion as anything, even though he would seem the most obvious for a steampunk show. Trust me, it took a lot of willpower to only cast ONE main Firefly cast member here. Well, and Mark Sheppard, because I will forever associate him with Firefly (well, it’s the first thing I ever saw him in.) Though apparently he is in ALL THE SHOWS EVER.
Mark Sheppard being in all of the shows, combined with Jaime Murray also being in all of the shows, was the deciding factor as to who the main characters were going to be. Because both of them DESERVE THEIR OWN SHOW, DAMMIT. So I’m letting them have this one.
Some of my character ideas were pretty obvious. I knew from the start that Jaime Murray would be the captain, for instance, just like how Allison Scagliotti is the mechanic (goggles, anyone?) and that Molly Quinn plays her sister (pretty gingers!). Other character ideas, frankly, were heavily based on the pictures I found of the actors. Seamus Dever’s character, for example: the pic I’m using for him is one of the few I managed to find that didn’t completely scream “COP! LOOK, IT’S A COP!” It actually looks…steampunk-plausible, kind of. And this particular image just *screams* upper-class, therefore, he’s the rich passenger with millions of frequent-flyer miles. (This picture is actually part of a screencap from the film noir episode of Castle that just aired, but I found the picture itself a couple weeks before the episode happened, so I didn’t know that at the time. And hey, change the regular suit jacket to a frock coat, and it’s pretty steampunk, yeah?)
The other character idea that was heavily influenced by the actor picture is Rebecca Gayheart’s character. I really wanted to cast her, because I quite liked her on Dead Like Me and was sad when her character left after only 5 episodes. But when scrolling through pics of her online, most of what’s available for her are shots from events, which I honestly kind of hate. And then there was this pic of her looking very rich and old-fashioned, at which I went “GIMME!” The problem was, what kind of character to base on that image? I already have a token rich person in Seamus Dever’s character, I really don’t need a second one. So I sat there staring at the picture for what felt like ages, trying to figure out who the heck she is. (No joke, I’d put a note under her picture in my file that just said, “Who’s she?”) And then the obvious answer hit me: nobody else on the show knows who she is either! Let’s just ignore the plausibility issues of randomly appearing and disappearing from an airship on a trans-Atlantic voyage, shall we?
Also, yes, there are a lot of women in this cast. I like casting pretty ladies, all right? This is a steampunk alternate reality, I’m choosing to invent a reality in which women actually got to do cool shit in the Victorian era.
Also, I do apologize for how very white this cast is. I'm usually better at diversity! My only (flimsy) excuse for this is that I only had a few weeks to think about the cast this time, instead of months and months like I did with my other shows.