#zenana

[morsesnotes]

Endeavour Morse + crouching

[morse-perez-and-davenport]

Shaun Evans filming Endeavour S7F3 Zenana, October 28th 2019, Radcliffe square Oxford

© endeavourneverland

[esriteiatha]

I rewatched Zenana :D

[hurricane-eva]

Thursday: you're off the towpath case

Morse: k

Narrator: Morse was not, in fact, off the towpath case

[galathea-snb]

I’ve made an appalling mess of things.

[snappyjenkins]

ZENANA.

[kindaeccentric]

I obviously don't have energy right now to write it, but consider a rewrite of season 7 of Endeavour in which:

Ludo, immediately after meeting Morse starts to seduce him (or rather, it's not just subtext this time)...

...and after the wine drinking date Morse is tipsy enough for his guards to go down a bit and they go outside, where Ludo's compliments from describing Morse's mental capabilities start to describe his physical attractiveness in Ludo's typical innuendos Morse doesn't have enough info yet to understand fully.

Like, 'Are you single? Women must like that youthful charm you exude. Sink their perfectly manicured claws into the tender meat.' and, after a very suggestive look, 'You should arrest me for what I just thought of doing to you.' But Morse is a praise-hungry thing and he's not going to arrest a man for talking 'nonsense', especially when he finds that nonsense pleasant, to his own surprise. Still, he rejects Ludo's advances at first, but when he comes over to Morse's house he kisses Morse, who isn't as scandalized as he should be, just a moment before Strange appears.

Then he learns Violetta is Ludo's wife, so every time Ludo comes over or invites him somewhere he's trying not to slip up, so he's sweet and compliant, and in result ends up in a weird situation in which he keeps his romance with Violetta going, but gives in to Ludo as well.

Morse finds excuses why he does it, is conflicted, confused, a bit scared, but not because he isn't attracted to them, but because of all the taboos he's breaking. Ludo, on the other hand, abuses Morse's feelings for him by being a rather demanding, borderline selfish lover. One time they talk in bed and Morse briefly mentions Jakes as the one that got away to show it isn't a sudden change in Morse, but it gets addressed for the first time.

Eventually Morse starts to think he understands why Violetta seems afraid of her husband, but doesn't tell her they are having an affair. In the scene in the restaurant when Morse confesses he loves Violetta he also suggests that the three of them could work it out, but Ludo is a possessive piece of sh*t and still a villain after all, so he says he knew from the start and that he seduced Morse as a revenge on them both, to dominate him and shame him, a man who tried to take away *his* wife got taken and made *his*. 'Did you tell her you were gasping my name into the same pillow she was lying her head on?' Violetta still picks Ludo and they leave.

When Morse, twice heartbroken, and shocked, realizes they are responsible for the series of murder accidents and goes to Venice when he talks with Ludo in the cemetery, Ludo, upon describing Morse as just his toy, would reference what he said at their first dinner date that he found all of Morse's weaknesses and he had fun exploiting each of them and that he wishes he could keep him as his pet, but alas. 'I didn't want to hurt you, but I never promised I wouldn't and that I won't enjoy it.'

The rest remains the same only is all the more dramatic.

[drusilla-951]

Endeavour, il Cimitero di San Michele, fic writing and plot holes!

So I had a supposedly great idea, to write the sequel of Zenana. (One likes to aim high and have ambitious projects. And, NO, it’s not part of this AU fic series.)

And then, I got stuck, 10 minutes and half a page after I began. (No wonder.)

How the mighty and cocky have fallen!

But not because my plot bunnies ran so fast I couldn’t catch them.

Because the cemetery of San Michael in Venice got me baffled.

 I’ve just spent 2 hours puzzling about the lay of the land, rererererere(.....you got the idea)-watching the ep, scratching my head, looking at pics or satellite photographs of the real cemetery, exhuming my memories of Venice from my tired brain and all. And then WHAM!!!!

Exciting thought it was watching that part of the episode, if I want to build my post-canon fic onto Russ Lewis’ script for, I’ll have to be creative.

A lot.

Because, to tell it frankly, Reality pulverised TV Fiction into smithereens.

QUESTION: Don’t you see a glaring impossibility in that screen shot?

ANSWER: The cemetery closes at 16:00 between October and March… (see the opening hours at the bottom of the map) and the appointment was at 17:00.

Unless they all manage to get locked up in the place, I don’t see how they could manage be in time for that fateful rendezvous… And then what? Spend the whole night among the tombs afterwards?

FACT: The gravestone sporting Ludovicus Talenti sacerdotus 1460-1527 is is historically impossible.

The cemetery was a project commissioned by Napoleon in 1807… but it wasn’t in use before 1837!!! So how could this gravestone be here? Previously, Venetians were buried in the parish cemeteries in the city… And the gravestone looks real enough. Unless Ludo took care to have one erected in that place to taunt Morse? But no, he wouldn’t have the time to devise and install one…

The place shown in Zenana doesn’t even remotely look like the real cimitero di San Michele. There’s a cloister up North, but none near the area of the appointment… The real area is quite bare, with a few trees and average looking tombs. The funerary chapel closer to the area belongs to another recibio (enclosure)… so all that running and shooting couldn’t really take place as the cemetery is enclosed by walls or fences. Still, Ludo could exit towards the left of the picture through the gate (leading towards another recibio).

Creative writing, you said? Wish me luck.