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crack_van2011-11-09 07:51 am
sonora-coneja.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2011-11-09 07:51 am
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The A-Team Movie!verse Fandom Summary
Hi, all. This is the fandom post for the A-Team movie!verse. The A-Team started as a television show in the 1980s and is largely remembered in pop culture consciousness as being the show that brought us Mr. T. A movie remake was released in the summer of 2010. The fandoms for the two aren't divided, per se, but there are some significant differences that do need to be highlighted in order to fully enjoy the movie!verse fics.
The Players
The A-Team
The A-Team itself consists of Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, the leader, Lieutenant Templeton "Faceman/Face" Peck, conman, Captain H.M. Murdock, pilot, and Sergeant B.A. Baracus, driver and mechanic. In the movie, the A-Team are all highly trained Army Rangers, and are known as the best covert team in the entire U.S. Army. They're usually dispatched to accomplish the impossible, and at the opening of the film have completed 80 successful missions.
There are several other important characters in the movie - Lieutenant Charissa Sosa, Face's one-time girlfriend, General Russell Morrison, who commands the team and betrays them to the movie's two villains - Pike and Lynch.
Hannibal
Hannibal serves as the team's leader, in more ways than one. He is known for his catch-phrase, "I love it when a plan comes together." His nickname is derived from the ancient Carthaginian who marched a bunch of elephants over the Alps. Like the classical Hannibal, Hannibal Smith is known for achieving the impossible, producing plans that are incredibly complex and yet always successful. We know little of his background, besides the fact that he is widely known amongst the Rangers. In addition to serving as commander, Hannibal is a father figure/mentor to the rest of the team, who are all younger than him. In the movie, he is portrayed as preternaturally intelligent and possessing a rather twisted sense of humor. He is also physically tough, and will do anything for the members of his team. His confrontation with Morrison towards the end of the film shows Hannibal's vulnerability, here, he is upset that his oldest friend would betray him and his team.
Face
Face is the requisition officer of the group, and he has a special gift for getting anything needed, no matter the circumstances. Often, this is done through cons - though Face shows a great deal of loyalty to his team and to the Army, as he is the one most upset by their betrayal. Again, we get little of his background; the movie doesn’t even use his character’s first name, Templeton, at all. The movie!verse fandom has largely adopted this information from the TV show, where Face grew up in a Catholic orphanage after being abandoned by his mother and joined the Army as soon as he could. In the movie, we learn that he speaks several languages and also serves as the team’s marksman when needed. Face is witty and comes across as light-hearted, though he also has a serious side. Often, he's the team's joker. He is also a compulsive flirt and womanizer, though his reaction to the reappearance of his old girlfriend, Sosa, shows he also takes relationships seriously.
Murdock
Murdock is the team's pilot, and he's also crazy - though this is generally left up for debate, since he is also a genius and it is possible he is just putting on a facade. In the beginning of the movie, however, he is taken from a psychiatric hospital as he mounts yet another escape. Murdock's craziness manifests as him using a variety of voices and accents, taking on disguises to portray different characters, and often having an irreverent take on things. However, he is shown to be an amazing pilot with the ability to fly helicopters (the opening helicopter chase is amazing) and planes. He shows a vulnerable side as well as he seems to be the one most affected by Morrison's betrayal, and he also opens himself up to Face before the execution of their final plan.
B.A.
B.A. is the team's driver - of the notorious black van, which has its own cameo - and mechanic, responsible for making what the team needs from what they have available. He is also incredibly strong, in addition to being a highly trained soldier. The character is most known for the line "I pity the fool," which is not uttered in the movie, but B.A. often calls Murdock a "fool" and also has pity and fool tattoed on his knuckles. B.A. seems to keep himself under-wraps, though he shows a light-hearted side with his delight over making an invention work. Like the rest of the team, he will do anything for his teammates and is fiercely loyal.
Sosa
Sosa is Face's ex-girlfriend who returns at the beginning of the film to warn the team not to take a mission she is responsible for. She later pursues them when they are on the run, after the first jailbreak. Face, under Hannibal's instruction, gets back in contact with her and enlists her help. Initially suspicious of their intentions, Sosa eventually assists the team with their mission to clear their names, and even passes Face a key to their handcuffs after their second arrest at the end of the film. Sosa, like Amy and Tawnya from the TV show, has both her fans and her detractors in the fandom. The argument for or against her seems to revolve around the way Jessica Biel portrayed her in the movie; strong or bitchy, take your pick. She also has two sergeants, Gammons and Ravech, working as her minions, who sometimes pop up in fics as well.
Morrison
Hannibal calls General Russell Morrison his oldest friend, and he is the general in command of the team. He claims the best military asset he has at his disposal is the team, and he tries to keep Hannibal from taking the mission he know will lead to his portrayal, though Hannibal wins in the end. He "dies" in a car accident but is later revealed to be alive and still working with Pike until he actually gets blown up in an airstrike.
Lynch
Lynch - aka Vance Buress - is the CIA agent who, along with Pike and Morrison, collaborates to steal U.S. government money printing plates and screws the team over in the process, having them take the fall. Lynch services as the main villain and is a great character - irreverent, sassy, and fairly bratty. He's also fairly slimy, and has no problem throwing people under the bus if he needs to. He helps get Hannibal out of jail to chase down the plates because Morrison and Pike screwed him over and out of the money.
Pike
Brock Pike is a member of Black Forest, a private military contractor organization. He is the third member of the conspiracy to steal the plates, and comes across as no-nonsense and uncompromising, though he has his comic moments. Pike's pretty much the classic villain - tough, terse and obstinate. He is primarily known for his amazing eyebrows.
Overview
The movie has a lot of twists and turns, and I'm going to outline the main plot points here before getting into the fandom. It essentially serves as a prequel, explaining how the team comes together and how they ended up going on the run and offering their services to those who need it - which is what they were doing during most of the TV show's seasons.
We begin with Hannibal in Mexico, who meets B.A. in the middle of the desert while he is trying to save Face from a drug lord they've been trying to take down. B.A. and Hannibal arrive just in time and as part of their escape, release Murdock from his mental facility and have him fly them back to US airspace. We then cut to Iraq, where Lynch tells Hannibal about the mission to retrieve the currency printing plates from the Iraqis, who have stolen a mint and will, with the plates, be able to print U.S. government money. It was originally Pike's mission, but Hannibal convinces Morrison to give it to him. After the team is successful, Morrison fakes his death in a car accident, and no one knows about their mission. They are tried and discharged and sent to separate military prisons.
Lynch goes to see Hannibal six months later, offering to break him out if Hannibal will help get the plates back. Hannibal sees this as an opportunity to clear their names, and summarily breaks out the other men. They have several close calls as they pursue Pike and Morrison to get the plates while Sosa and the U.S. Army are on their trail. Eventually, Lynch is revealed to be a traitor and tries to blow the team up - he only succeeds in actually killing Morrison. Face calls Sosa to convince her of their innocence, and she agrees to help them in a showdown in L.A. Lynch and Pike are now working together to stop the team. A lot of things blow up - A LOT - but eventually justice prevails, the A-Team proves their innocence, and...the Army decides to send them back to prison for breaking out of prison. Fortunately, Sosa slips them a key by kissing Face, and they escape again.
Fandom
This is a fandom wide open to slash possibilities. The allure, for many, is the fact that the characters are tough, traditionally masculine, and bad-ass yet are also portrayed as having an incredibly tight bond with one another. This, combined with the great man-candy in the film, inevitably leads to slash. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the team’s actors all seem to have really good chemistry with each other, on and off screen.
There are basically two main pairings in this fandom - Hannibal/Face (H/F) and Face/Murdock (F/M), with the OTP's from each justifying them using various moments in the movie, all of which are likely a result of the sex and sexiness Bradley Cooper was oozing everywhere.
The H/F fics tend to play around with the father/son relationship between the characters, and often feature a more inexperienced Face beginning a relationship with Hannibal which allows him to develop into a stronger, tougher character. Sometimes this manifests in a mentor-student relationship that develops into more. And sometimes this plays into a favorite trope in the fandom of Face!whomp, either having the character be injured, sexually abused (in the present, and in the past), tortured, etc. This often develops into h/c, with Hannibal to the rescue.
The F/M stories tend to be based on the fact that the characters are best friends. These fics tend to have Murdock be gay while Face is more unsure or bisexual, and another trope is that Murdock, despite all his silliness, is really good at sex. Most writers believe Murdock to actually have mental issues, and you will find fiction where he has breakdowns and deals with depression, anxiety, and lots of pills. Murdock!whomp is also quite common.
Other minor pairings are explored, as well - Murdock/B.A. in particular, and there are several Hannibal/Morrison fics. Additionally, because of the chemistry between all the boys, there is plenty of what was early on dubbed H-BAMF, with the BAMF coming from Bad-Ass Mother-Fucker, but the letters also worked as a description of each of the characters - these fics, therefore, portray the men in a four way relationship. There are a small amount of fics for Lynch/Pike, BA/Face, Hannibal/Murdock, and some femslash with Sosa or gender-swapped Face or Murdock as well.
While there are plenty of really good porn fics for the fandom, a lot of the stories are quite long, featuring intricate plots revolving around the team's various missions and interactions with characters, often with sex interwoven into the story. The time line is varied - some stories are from before the movie, others after, and some fill in spaces in the plot (holes) of the movie itself.
Some chief differences from the original TV!verse is the contemporary time period (affecting technology and tactics in mission!fics), the change from Special Forces to Army Rangers (especially with Murdock being a Ranger himself, instead of a pilot assigned to Hannibal for missions), the reassignment of Lynch and Morrison’s roles from the original series, and the addition of new characters Pike and Sosa. Writers in the movie!verse tend to pull a lot of their cues from the series - everything from Hannibal drugging BA’s milk to Face’s past as an orphan - and characters such as Amy Allen and Col Decker have appeared in movie!verse form. There’s no hard and fast fanon to speak of, although most writers seem to humorously agree that Hannibal is hung.
Resources
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ateam_prompts is the host of the A-Team Kink Meme, which has been active since the movie came out (disclosure - both ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sonora_coneja and snack_size are mods over there). It also serves as a community for posters. This is probably the most frequented website, and keeps track of things with both an archive and a filled prompts link page. Older stories can be found at a_team_kink - the new website was created after the mod for this one disappeared. Another LJ resource is ateamfanfic, although there’s quite a bit of crossover with ateam_prompts in terms of writers.
A-Team Fan Fiction is another good resource, as lots of writers will post links to stories they have posted on their Live Journals. AO3 also has quite a few posts for the fandom.
The Players
The A-Team
The A-Team itself consists of Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, the leader, Lieutenant Templeton "Faceman/Face" Peck, conman, Captain H.M. Murdock, pilot, and Sergeant B.A. Baracus, driver and mechanic. In the movie, the A-Team are all highly trained Army Rangers, and are known as the best covert team in the entire U.S. Army. They're usually dispatched to accomplish the impossible, and at the opening of the film have completed 80 successful missions.
There are several other important characters in the movie - Lieutenant Charissa Sosa, Face's one-time girlfriend, General Russell Morrison, who commands the team and betrays them to the movie's two villains - Pike and Lynch.
Hannibal
Hannibal serves as the team's leader, in more ways than one. He is known for his catch-phrase, "I love it when a plan comes together." His nickname is derived from the ancient Carthaginian who marched a bunch of elephants over the Alps. Like the classical Hannibal, Hannibal Smith is known for achieving the impossible, producing plans that are incredibly complex and yet always successful. We know little of his background, besides the fact that he is widely known amongst the Rangers. In addition to serving as commander, Hannibal is a father figure/mentor to the rest of the team, who are all younger than him. In the movie, he is portrayed as preternaturally intelligent and possessing a rather twisted sense of humor. He is also physically tough, and will do anything for the members of his team. His confrontation with Morrison towards the end of the film shows Hannibal's vulnerability, here, he is upset that his oldest friend would betray him and his team.
Face
Face is the requisition officer of the group, and he has a special gift for getting anything needed, no matter the circumstances. Often, this is done through cons - though Face shows a great deal of loyalty to his team and to the Army, as he is the one most upset by their betrayal. Again, we get little of his background; the movie doesn’t even use his character’s first name, Templeton, at all. The movie!verse fandom has largely adopted this information from the TV show, where Face grew up in a Catholic orphanage after being abandoned by his mother and joined the Army as soon as he could. In the movie, we learn that he speaks several languages and also serves as the team’s marksman when needed. Face is witty and comes across as light-hearted, though he also has a serious side. Often, he's the team's joker. He is also a compulsive flirt and womanizer, though his reaction to the reappearance of his old girlfriend, Sosa, shows he also takes relationships seriously.
Murdock
Murdock is the team's pilot, and he's also crazy - though this is generally left up for debate, since he is also a genius and it is possible he is just putting on a facade. In the beginning of the movie, however, he is taken from a psychiatric hospital as he mounts yet another escape. Murdock's craziness manifests as him using a variety of voices and accents, taking on disguises to portray different characters, and often having an irreverent take on things. However, he is shown to be an amazing pilot with the ability to fly helicopters (the opening helicopter chase is amazing) and planes. He shows a vulnerable side as well as he seems to be the one most affected by Morrison's betrayal, and he also opens himself up to Face before the execution of their final plan.
B.A.
B.A. is the team's driver - of the notorious black van, which has its own cameo - and mechanic, responsible for making what the team needs from what they have available. He is also incredibly strong, in addition to being a highly trained soldier. The character is most known for the line "I pity the fool," which is not uttered in the movie, but B.A. often calls Murdock a "fool" and also has pity and fool tattoed on his knuckles. B.A. seems to keep himself under-wraps, though he shows a light-hearted side with his delight over making an invention work. Like the rest of the team, he will do anything for his teammates and is fiercely loyal.
Sosa
Sosa is Face's ex-girlfriend who returns at the beginning of the film to warn the team not to take a mission she is responsible for. She later pursues them when they are on the run, after the first jailbreak. Face, under Hannibal's instruction, gets back in contact with her and enlists her help. Initially suspicious of their intentions, Sosa eventually assists the team with their mission to clear their names, and even passes Face a key to their handcuffs after their second arrest at the end of the film. Sosa, like Amy and Tawnya from the TV show, has both her fans and her detractors in the fandom. The argument for or against her seems to revolve around the way Jessica Biel portrayed her in the movie; strong or bitchy, take your pick. She also has two sergeants, Gammons and Ravech, working as her minions, who sometimes pop up in fics as well.
Morrison
Hannibal calls General Russell Morrison his oldest friend, and he is the general in command of the team. He claims the best military asset he has at his disposal is the team, and he tries to keep Hannibal from taking the mission he know will lead to his portrayal, though Hannibal wins in the end. He "dies" in a car accident but is later revealed to be alive and still working with Pike until he actually gets blown up in an airstrike.
Lynch
Lynch - aka Vance Buress - is the CIA agent who, along with Pike and Morrison, collaborates to steal U.S. government money printing plates and screws the team over in the process, having them take the fall. Lynch services as the main villain and is a great character - irreverent, sassy, and fairly bratty. He's also fairly slimy, and has no problem throwing people under the bus if he needs to. He helps get Hannibal out of jail to chase down the plates because Morrison and Pike screwed him over and out of the money.
Pike
Brock Pike is a member of Black Forest, a private military contractor organization. He is the third member of the conspiracy to steal the plates, and comes across as no-nonsense and uncompromising, though he has his comic moments. Pike's pretty much the classic villain - tough, terse and obstinate. He is primarily known for his amazing eyebrows.
Overview
The movie has a lot of twists and turns, and I'm going to outline the main plot points here before getting into the fandom. It essentially serves as a prequel, explaining how the team comes together and how they ended up going on the run and offering their services to those who need it - which is what they were doing during most of the TV show's seasons.
We begin with Hannibal in Mexico, who meets B.A. in the middle of the desert while he is trying to save Face from a drug lord they've been trying to take down. B.A. and Hannibal arrive just in time and as part of their escape, release Murdock from his mental facility and have him fly them back to US airspace. We then cut to Iraq, where Lynch tells Hannibal about the mission to retrieve the currency printing plates from the Iraqis, who have stolen a mint and will, with the plates, be able to print U.S. government money. It was originally Pike's mission, but Hannibal convinces Morrison to give it to him. After the team is successful, Morrison fakes his death in a car accident, and no one knows about their mission. They are tried and discharged and sent to separate military prisons.
Lynch goes to see Hannibal six months later, offering to break him out if Hannibal will help get the plates back. Hannibal sees this as an opportunity to clear their names, and summarily breaks out the other men. They have several close calls as they pursue Pike and Morrison to get the plates while Sosa and the U.S. Army are on their trail. Eventually, Lynch is revealed to be a traitor and tries to blow the team up - he only succeeds in actually killing Morrison. Face calls Sosa to convince her of their innocence, and she agrees to help them in a showdown in L.A. Lynch and Pike are now working together to stop the team. A lot of things blow up - A LOT - but eventually justice prevails, the A-Team proves their innocence, and...the Army decides to send them back to prison for breaking out of prison. Fortunately, Sosa slips them a key by kissing Face, and they escape again.
Fandom
This is a fandom wide open to slash possibilities. The allure, for many, is the fact that the characters are tough, traditionally masculine, and bad-ass yet are also portrayed as having an incredibly tight bond with one another. This, combined with the great man-candy in the film, inevitably leads to slash. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the team’s actors all seem to have really good chemistry with each other, on and off screen.
There are basically two main pairings in this fandom - Hannibal/Face (H/F) and Face/Murdock (F/M), with the OTP's from each justifying them using various moments in the movie, all of which are likely a result of the sex and sexiness Bradley Cooper was oozing everywhere.
The H/F fics tend to play around with the father/son relationship between the characters, and often feature a more inexperienced Face beginning a relationship with Hannibal which allows him to develop into a stronger, tougher character. Sometimes this manifests in a mentor-student relationship that develops into more. And sometimes this plays into a favorite trope in the fandom of Face!whomp, either having the character be injured, sexually abused (in the present, and in the past), tortured, etc. This often develops into h/c, with Hannibal to the rescue.
The F/M stories tend to be based on the fact that the characters are best friends. These fics tend to have Murdock be gay while Face is more unsure or bisexual, and another trope is that Murdock, despite all his silliness, is really good at sex. Most writers believe Murdock to actually have mental issues, and you will find fiction where he has breakdowns and deals with depression, anxiety, and lots of pills. Murdock!whomp is also quite common.
Other minor pairings are explored, as well - Murdock/B.A. in particular, and there are several Hannibal/Morrison fics. Additionally, because of the chemistry between all the boys, there is plenty of what was early on dubbed H-BAMF, with the BAMF coming from Bad-Ass Mother-Fucker, but the letters also worked as a description of each of the characters - these fics, therefore, portray the men in a four way relationship. There are a small amount of fics for Lynch/Pike, BA/Face, Hannibal/Murdock, and some femslash with Sosa or gender-swapped Face or Murdock as well.
While there are plenty of really good porn fics for the fandom, a lot of the stories are quite long, featuring intricate plots revolving around the team's various missions and interactions with characters, often with sex interwoven into the story. The time line is varied - some stories are from before the movie, others after, and some fill in spaces in the plot (holes) of the movie itself.
Some chief differences from the original TV!verse is the contemporary time period (affecting technology and tactics in mission!fics), the change from Special Forces to Army Rangers (especially with Murdock being a Ranger himself, instead of a pilot assigned to Hannibal for missions), the reassignment of Lynch and Morrison’s roles from the original series, and the addition of new characters Pike and Sosa. Writers in the movie!verse tend to pull a lot of their cues from the series - everything from Hannibal drugging BA’s milk to Face’s past as an orphan - and characters such as Amy Allen and Col Decker have appeared in movie!verse form. There’s no hard and fast fanon to speak of, although most writers seem to humorously agree that Hannibal is hung.
Resources
ateam_prompts is the host of the A-Team Kink Meme, which has been active since the movie came out (disclosure - both sonora_coneja and snack_size are mods over there). It also serves as a community for posters. This is probably the most frequented website, and keeps track of things with both an archive and a filled prompts link page. Older stories can be found at a_team_kink - the new website was created after the mod for this one disappeared. Another LJ resource is ateamfanfic, although there’s quite a bit of crossover with ateam_prompts in terms of writers.A-Team Fan Fiction is another good resource, as lots of writers will post links to stories they have posted on their Live Journals. AO3 also has quite a few posts for the fandom.
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I also want to mention that while watching the movie, I got a distinct Murdock/BA vibe, something I never got watching the original series.
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I mean, of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I'm really upset that you've chosen to bash the film's only female character and actor in what is meant to be a brief overview to entice new people into the fandom.
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