Yellow Paper Snippet

Today saw a massive overhaul of The Masterfully Decorated Evil Lair of One Frea O'Scanlin, which usually turns up interesting artifacts (case in point: favorite hat!  second case in point: shrunken head of enemy from second grade) and today was no exception.  For indeed, I found a piece of yellow legal paper that seems to contain the original draft of part of Chapter 14: At the End of the Day.

Because I'm nice (and have nothing else to post today), I'll share it here (warning, some swearing!):

Outtake #8: From "Just Say the Word, Trouble"

I've talked a time or two that Chapter 33 kicked my butt while writing it.  Maybe I'll talk about why at some other point, but I've got to hand it to mxpw here.  The poor guy.  He's in the middle of a major move, and every time he gets online, it's to a message from me with the gist being, "I think I'm going to change what happens in 33."

In fact, mxpw is STILL probably suffering from whiplash, days later, and that'll be my fault, too.  Well, to be fair, he usually suffers from whiplash.  Having a conversation online with me is a little like dumping sugar and a cut up thesaurus into a barrel of monkeys and watching the carnage unfold (while it travels along a roller coaster - mxpw).  This chapter was just worse than usual because I swear, every day was a new change for him to hear about.

I'm including the original first scene from 33 because I still like it, even if it didn't fit.

Outtake #8: "Just Say the Word Trouble"

Takes place in the motel room

  

A Most Hallowed and Important Day

Many things happened on this day in history, but possibly the most important one to Chuck fans is that it's Yvonne Strahovski's birthday.

Wepdiggy and mxpw have responded:

 Interludes from Double Agent

Alone on Her Day

As has Crystal:

Chuck Vs. the Spotless Mind

And even Daddy Liam Justin stopped by to say hi on the blog, a momentous occasion.

I figured I don't have the internet being down excuse like Chris, I'd better get cracking, only I'm still buried in Fates and not showing that to anybody on the blog yet.  So I found this short little scene on my hard drive, and, given that it's Yvonne's birthday and that's like a national holiday to us, I thought I would share...

Outtake #6: Grandma's Attic

So, whenever we go on long car trips, my friends and family and I like to play this game called Grandma's Attic. One person starts off saying, "I went up to grandma's attic and I found...apples." And the next person follows, "I went up to grandma's attic and I found...a boomerang and apples." And it goes all the way until you get to the letter Z, reciting the answers backward each time.

If you haven't read Chapter 31 of What Fates Impose, you should read that first, then come back and read this outtake so that you know what's going on. For the purpose of this scene, just assume that Chuck and Sarah are brilliant with memorization (one has a damn near perfect memory) and recite it correctly each time--that way I don't have to type out each entry soooo many times.

But here it is, without further ado, Chuck and Sarah playing Grandma's Attic. While stuck in a car trunk. On the way to their deaths.

It takes all kinds.

Outtake #5 - "Borrowing Trouble"

So Chapter 30 had quite a few bits and pieces cut out of the overall chapter, which meant more for the blog! Here's the second of two outtakes.

"Borrowing Trouble - Outtake #2"
Takes place after the Thanksgiving picnic on Chuck's bed

Outtake #4 - "Borrowing Trouble"

Hey, all! So "Borrowing Trouble" got a lot cut from it -- at least two pages overall. And you know what happens to outtakes? They end up on the blog. I'll post this one today and hopefully remember to post the next (cuter) one tomorrow.

"Borrowing Trouble - Outtake #1"
Takes place during the Thanksgiving picnic on Chuck's bed

Outtake Scene

So this one doesn't fit after everything I've written in Fates and the plotlines coming up, but it's such a fun scene that it needs to be shared with the world, so it's being relegated to the blog. I picture this scene happening between 17 (The Halloween Chapter) and 18 (the Depressing Chapter).

Hella Prepared

The Original Pickpocket Scene

Fun fact: I didn't write this. No, this was written by the lovely and talented Crystal.Elements, who is just so freaking awesome, you have no idea. She showed me around Stanford and we talked about Fates and fanfiction (seriously, she's got a doozy in the works) for hours, so I offered her this scene and she more than rose to the task. Unfortunately, I had to change some things about it to fit it to the Fatesverse, but the original is so cute and so funny, I wanted to share it here in its full glory.

Pickpocket Your Battles

Outtake #3 - From "Tap-Dancing Through a Mine Field"

"I highly doubt that you're a drag, Chuck." Ellie turned away to close up the dumpsite.

“Really? Ask Sarah about the time I hit her with a tranq dart sometime, then.”

Ellie whirled, her eyes widening. “Why on earth would you ever have a tranquilizer gun?”

“Uh…training.” What made the lie worse was the fact that he had a tranq gun stuffed in his waistband that very moment. But he held up both hands, which did absolutely nothing to mollify his sister. “I’m just an analyst, but Washington wants us to keep up to date with, uh, basic self-defense, and Sarah was teaching me about how to use a tranquilizer gun, just in case, and I accidentally shot her. But I bought her flowers after!”

“Flowers?” Ellie frowned.

“Well, yeah, I wasn’t sure exactly what to get a girl after you knock her out with a tranq dart. I mean, I know I’ve had some dating disasters in my past, but even that’s a bit beyond the reach of ‘Duck, It’s Bartowski!’ So I figured flowers were safe.”

“Uh-huh.”


This was cut in the final draft because even though it's funny, it was a little bit off topic, also it's stepping just a little too close to one of those mines that the chapter title references.

Hope you enjoyed!

- Frea

Outtake #2 - From "Morgan and the Ninja"

Another outtake, this one more of an original draft of a scene that got changed for the better. Still, I had to cut some of my favorite lines to make it work.

18 OCTOBER 2007
THE BACHELOR PAD
13:22 PDT

Though he expected that both Sarah and Casey would be using his absence to get some quiet office-time in, Chuck found Sarah sitting on the front steps of the Bachelor Pad, as she had coined his new apartment with Casey. Though she was staring out into the courtyard, completely relaxed, he knew better. She could probably rattle off a detailed and terse description of every person that had walked by, as well as any exit point to the courtyard, the temperature, a few facts about the weather, and fourteen ways to kill somebody with the potted plant next to her.

He approached warily, remembering her warning from the night before. “Hey, Sarah.”

“Hey yourself.” She took her time rising to her feet. Flip-flops today, he noted. She was really taking the Southern California thing seriously. “What on earth is that?”

“My new computer.” Chuck set the huge box on the front step and leaned against the post, grateful for a reprieve before he had to carry it upstairs. His body had spent the last two hours reminding him why people generally didn’t get into car accidents for the fun of it.

“Chuck, you already have a computer.”

“With thirteen different ways for the government to track my activities already pre-installed. Pass.”

“You found them already? You were supposed to be resting.”

Chuck moved a shoulder. “I was resting. Computer work is relaxing to me.”

“Nerd.” She smiled.

“Undeniably.” Chuck nudged his new computer box with the toe of one beloved chuck. “I purchased this one with my own money, for my own personal use. I’ll view any attempt to hack it, put a tracking program in it, or alter it in any way an invasion of my privacy.”

“You do know they’ll just order me to do it anyway.”

“Yes. Which is why I’m compromising. You and Casey will have access where you’ll be able to view my activity and make reports, but all files will be read-only.”

Sarah lifted an eyebrow. “Wow. You’ve given this some thought.”

It hurt his maligned body to sit, but he did so anyway. Sarah sat next to him, but she watched the courtyard rather than him. “You, me, Casey, we’re all three of us in a bad situation. I’m doing my best not to make it work. I’m not used to having to deal with other people anymore, so you’ll have to let me know when I overstep. But we’re all here for the same reason, so we might as well get along.”

“Is it so bad here?”

“For me, no.” Chuck shrugged. “I’ve got Ellie back, and Morgan, too. And his Wall of Chuck—”

“Wall of Chuck?”

“I’d describe it for you, but I don’t think you’d believe me. You’ll just have to see it sometime.” Chuck smiled. “We’ll make a day of it. You can visit all of my embarrassments from the third grade on.”

“And who says they’re not already in your file?” Sarah asked. She twisted just enough to pick up a takeout bag, which she set on his lap. “I brought you lunch because all you guys have here is microwaveable, and you really shouldn’t be putting that junk in your body.”

“Hey, they’ve started making Spaghetti-Os with real vegetables now, you know. It says so right on the label.”

“I bet you believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, too.”

“Don’t forget about the Easter Bunny. Everybody always forgets him. Give the bunny a break.”

Chuck pulled a white-wrapped bundle out of the bag, but didn’t unwrap it. “C’mon, we can eat at the table inside.”

“I say we should just eat this out here.”

Out here? Chuck’s eyes roved over the courtyard—everything seemed so open and far away, and who knew what sort of danger could come from that distance? He’d much rather be in the safety of the great indoors...

Outtake #1 - Back in the Bunker

The following is an outtake from "What Fates Impose," the fanfic I have going on up at ff.net. This is from the second chapter, titled Go Fish. The chapter already contains one flashback in the form of Chuck and Sarah have drinks and play cards in the bunker, and I had included this scene just to kind of show the Chuck of then just how hardcore the life of the spy was. It ended up dragging down the chapter, and even though I love this characterization of Chuck and Bryce being friends, the other flashback was much, much more important.

17 NOVEMBER 2005
BUNKER 77142135
16:42 OMST

Sarah didn’t emerge from the bunk room at all the afternoon she and Bryce arrived. Chuck really couldn’t say that he was surprised. It didn’t matter that Bryce had good tactical reasons for wanting his partner to meet their new tech support—promising a girl Cabo and delivering Siberia was just something even the incomparable Bryce Larkin couldn’t pull off.

“Give her time,” Bryce said at one point while he and Chuck faced off in Mortal Kombat, a game Chuck had rewired for his system. “She got winged on this last mission and—”

“She got shot?! Why isn’t she in the hospital?” Chuck half-rose as if to go drag her there himself.

Bryce, however, waved his hands in a frantic plea that Chuck shut up before he bodily hauled Chuck back into his seat. “Shh, for Pete’s sake—geez. She’ll hear.”

“What the hell is she doing here? Geez, Bryce, she should be in an ER or something.”

“I said she got winged. It grazed her. She’s been shot worse.”

“Either way.” This time Chuck did rise.

“Where are you going?”

“To go put the medical kit in an even more obvious position, just in case, duh.”

When Chuck returned from leaving the medkit in the middle of the table, Bryce hadn’t moved from the desk chair. He’d somehow even managed to prop his feet up on the desk, something Chuck’s height wouldn’t allow him to do in the confined space.

“Still the same old Chuck, huh?”

Chuck tucked a leg under himself as he returned to his own seat—and to Sub-Zero, his waiting fighter. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. Make me a promise—tell me they’ll never take that away from you.”

“This chair?” Chuck said, deliberately doing his best Eastwood. “Sure. They want this chair, they have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

Bryce laughed, and Chuck sensed an underlying edge of tension he didn’t trust.



But yeah, I also cut this because Sarah probably shouldn't be drinking with a gunshot wound, even a minor one.