blah blah blah

Credit to wawa and 9cbffs for some suggestions in the Oz Magi discord!

• Typhoid Mary AU. Ryan O'Reilly is Typhoid Mary. He's Irish-American and he works in food service, what more do you want?! Mary Mallon was repeatedly put into forced quarantine in the early 1900s to stop her from working as a cook. Ideally, this is a genderbent AU, so Ríognach O'Reilly can be in a toxic yuri situation with Gloria Nathan, the pioneering woman doctor who's in charge of tracking her down and bringing her in...
• Some kind of AU where the cast of Oz are in some kind of residential mental health treatment - hospital, rehab, asylum. I was kind of thinking about the 90s Scottish TV show Takin' Over The Asylum, which features an un-institutionalized lead who is slowly revealed to be an alcoholic. I think it's an interesting idea to have Beecher be an outsider in an institutionalized setting, who on the surface seems to be completely different to those people but really has a lot of the same problems....The problem is that Takin' Over The Aslyum is specifically about a radio station in a mental hospital, and I don't know if I'm interested in fitting the Oz cast into that plot. There are some character ideas from that which I think could work very well for some of the Oz characters. Of course I could also look further afield for ideas for some kind of mental hospital AU, but.... [Waves at huge pile of research I would have to do before I would feel okay about writing fanfiction in that setting<]. Wawa said Girl, Interrupted could be a good base to start from.

Much to think about...Wawa also posted his ideas for an Oz "But I'm A Cheerleader" AU on dreamwidth :)

You can ignore my comment on that post, it just says what you already know if you're on this page (that I've posted some notes about my idea for a similar AU here).

These ideas pretty much all came out of discussions in the Oz Magi discord server. Credit is due to wawa, 9cbffs and probably other people...

• Oz Cruising AU. It's a dirty, sleazy, morally grey New York City setting with a big cast. Wawa nominated Kareem Said for the Al Pacino role which I think is a very good pick....
• O'Reily/Stanislovsky Astronaut/Cosmonaut AU. I saw a TV documentary and got ideas. They keep bringing up the Cold War in the show, why not make it more explicit?
• O'Reily/Stanislovsky hockey AU. Look, apparently that hockey romance tv show everyone is talking about is about an American (Canadian?) and a Russian guy. There you go!
• Gangs of New York AU! Rían and Cearbhall Ó Raghallaigh are fresh off the boat in New York. Vern Schillinger leads a Know Nothing gang but is in denial about his parents being German immigrants. Truman Goodson is the editor of an abolitionist newspaper. McManus is a phrenologist.
• Blazing Saddles AU. Kareem is the sheriff (I swear I will stop making him a cop), Beecher is his friend the alcoholic, Schillinger is in the KKK.
• Said: "A man drink like that and he don't eat, he is going to die."
• Beecher: [wistfully] "When?"


• Said: "What are your pleasures? What do you like to do?"
• Beecher: "Oh, I don't know. Play chess....screw...."
• Said: "....Well, let's play chess."
• ....That's it! For now anyway.

Another AU idea based on a movie about teenage girls.

Times Square is a movie about two runaways who become infamous punk outlaws in Manhattan. Let me quote the plot summary from Wikipedia:

Nicky Marotta and Pamela Pearl are two teenage girls who meet in the New York Neurological Hospital, where both are being examined for mental illness. Pamela is depressed and insecure, and neglected and exploited by her father, David Pearl, a prominent and wealthy commissioner running a campaign to "clean up" Times Square. Nicky is a tough-talking street kid with musical aspirations, sent to the hospital for an evaluation after an altercation with police. Sharing a room, the brash Nicky and shy Pamela become friends. Nicky admires Pamela's poetic spirit; Pamela admires Nicky's forthright attitude and resents the condescending way in which the doctors treat her. Nicky is released from the hospital and later returns, ostensibly for an appointment with her social worker Rosie Washington, but really to break Pamela out. Both girls escape the hospital, steal an ambulance, and hide out in an abandoned warehouse on the Chelsea Piers.

"Times Square" is, quietly, a love story about two girls. Which is pretty remarkable considering when & where it was made. Pamela is looking for excitement and escape: Nicky is looking for someone she can trust. Pamela and Nicky share a bond that tips over into obsession. Nicky becomes frenzied with jealousy: Pamela ditches her in her time of need. Nicky has a mysterious troubled past and one of her friends died in dubious circumstances, though she swears it wasn't her fault.

So yeah, I can see this as a B/K AU. Beecher is Pamela, Keller is Nicky. I swear I will stop coming up with AUs where the middle aged men are teenage girls.

I would be very tempted to have them meet at the Clash's Bonds Casino Residency instead of the hospital. It's the right city, it's the right time period, and there was a near riot.

I won't link to the trailer or any clips from Times Square, because watching any scenes from the film makes this whole idea seem ridiculous. But it isn't, I tell thee. It isn't. Instead, let me suggest that you listen to Same Old Scene by Roxy Music, which is one of the songs on the soundtrack. It sounds great.

the "But I'm A Cheerleader" AU is a minor trope in internet fanfiction. Just check the tag on Ao3. Call it bad taste if you want, but the thought struck me that you could easily write an Oz/But I'm A Cheerleader AU. And by "you" I mean me. I wouldn't make anyone else do this (well, unless you're offering....)

In my imagination, this AU would involve a dodgy "troubled teen" camp (with a side order of conversion therapy - this is not unknown in the industry). There, Beecher meets various other Oz cast members, some of whom have been sent there by their parents, some of whom have been sent there by the courts (like Chris Keller).

I thought Vern Schillinger would probably run the camp. I picked him for the conversion camp counselor role since in the movie it's strongly implied that the camp was set up by the mom of a gay son, which mapped nicely enough onto Vern and his wastrel kids. Plus the "troubled teen" industry is so notoriously unregulated that I think it would be perfectly possible for a neo-nazi to a) set up a camp for vulnerable teenagers, and b) get a government contract to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents. Part of Toby's storyline is his efforts to sound the alarm about this heinous misuse of public funds.

Of course the troubled teen industry is real and really traumatizing. There are ethical issues around exploiting this irl political issue for fanfiction. There are ethical issues about exploiting the irl political issue of prisons and the prison-industrial complex as a setting for a soap opera as well, but Tom Fontana apparently did tons of research and interviewed people in prisons across America. I do not have the time or the money to do that for my fanfiction. So I don't know...

I used to make fun of the ridiculously crass historical AUs I came across when I used to read a lot of Les Misérables fanfics. A particular lowlight was the soulmate reincarnation au fic in which ExR got in the same elevator in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (!!!). But now I have become just like the very authors I made fun of....It happens to us all I guess.

Anyway, here's my rundown of the characters & their movie-equivalent roles. This idea could also be used for another ship, I'm sure.

• Tobias Beecher - Megan. A male cheerleader, just like fellow WASP George W Bush. I think Beecher would like the chants, because they rhyme.
• Chris Keller - Graham. Undergoing court-mandated treatment as an alternative to incarceration.
• Said and Arif - equivalent to the Rainbow Railroad in But I'm A Cheerleader. They run an interfaith alternative to Schillinger's programme with Sister Peter Marie and Father Ray, because I reckon Schillinger is probably claiming his programme has a faith based ethos.
• Uhhhh...
• That's all I've got so far!

Will this ever be written? Should this ever be written? I don't know, which is why I'm posting my notes here. Send me an email or DM me if you have opinions.

Oz

• Beecher/Keller / Nowhere To Run. Every step I take, you take with me.
• Keller / Motorcycle Emptiness. Under neon loneliness, motorcycle emptiness [...] survival as natural as sorrow, sorrow....
• Schillinger / Cyclops Rock. It's a song about a pathetic monster with one glass eye who's stuck in a vat outside of New York. The chances of me making this are slim, but I think the idea is a good one.
• ....However, I worry about the valence of making a fanvid, even a "character study" type fanvid, about a horribly racist character like Schillinger....so I came up with the idea of making a companion vid that was a kind of fail compilation for the nazis in Oz, set to MDC's skinhead-bashing song S.K.I.N.H.E.A.D. I think it could work. However, everyone may be better off if I don't toy with fraught political & social issues for a funny video.
• Ensemble / Heaven. I dunno, I just feel like it would work. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

due South

• F/K / Get Over You. Dressed like that you must be living in a different world...

C6D

• Billy + Joe (Hard Core Logo) / Fairytale of New York. I realize what a cheesy idea this is but I really want to do it. In fact I want to teach myself how to edit fanvids this autumn so I can do this in time for Christmas. "I built my dreams around you".
• Hard Core Logo / The Masses Against The Classes. Success is an ugly word - especially in your tiny world....
• Billy + Joe / I've Been Down So Long (It Looks Like Up To Me). He's grown content to live on charity...
• Joe Dick / 500 miles. Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name. Lord I can't go back home this a-way...

The short answer is because it doesn't feature any of the primary C6D actors. The long answer is below...

"Zero Patience" is a 1993 film, Canada's feature film contribution to New Queer Cinema. It's not quite well known or beloved enough to be a cult film. The premise blends fact and fiction. Richard Francis Burton, an undead Victorian sexologist meets the ghost of "Patient Zero" in Toronto. (Although the character of Zero is clearly based on real life Aids scapegoat Gaëtan Dugas, and they share some biographical details, the real man's name and image are never used. The character is referred to solely as "Zero" or "Patient Zero": even his mother's name is listed under "Zero" in the phonebook).

Zero is lingering after death because he wants to live again. Burton, an unreconstructed Victorian "scientist" whose objectivity is...questionable, is working on a museum exhibit about disease and wants to exploit Zero's story. Unfortunately for Zero, Burton is the only other person who can see him. Eventually their unhappy partnership becomes a kind of romance. The flipside of the film is the ongoing struggle of a small group of Aids activists, some of whom knew Zero in life.

The film has its lovers and haters. It divided opinion on release: it's certainly uneven in tone and perhaps also in quality. Also, the puppets are terrifying. But I think it has something. Surely, there is no other film like it. Compared to the other New Queer Cinema films I have seen (not many, admittedly), it's embarrassingly sincere and a bit daffy. It sensitively depicts some fairly sophisticated ideas about media representation and memory, activism, politics and queerphobia. And the songs are very memorable. Did I mention it's a musical?

Now, from that summary above you can see why I associate this film with C6D and with due South. It's a dorky film, made in Canada, about a Victorian who's become unmoored in time and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a modern, edgy guy.

You might think a movie musical about a gay romance between an immortal Victorian and a ghost would have a big fandom, but it doesn't seem to! At least, there are precisely 2 works on Ao3, both fanvids, which is a pretty strong indicator that few people know about it. A bad Irish gay film that's close to my heart, Cowboys and Angels, has at least one fic. I think Zero Patience is just obscure, complicated and a bit strange, and maybe seems intimidating. I definitely thought it would be a more difficult watch than it ended up being. However, I think it could catch on.

Watch it yourself and see if you agree with me.

Some links!

• The climatic musical number, which gives a flavour of the rest of the movie, good and bad. Isn't Dianne Hetherington's voice great?
• The whole movie, which is on the Internet Archive for free.
• A 2025 interview with the director from the Cult Musicals YouTube channel.
• Killing Patient Zero, a documentary that tells the real Patient Zero's story, definitively debunks the myths about him, and exposes how he became the scapegoat for the Aids crisis in North America.

If I ever finish a certain Wilby Wonderful fic I've been writing, "Typhoid" Mary from Zero Patience will make a guest appearance.