![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
100 days of enemy recs: 8. The Thick of It
For some of the fandoms on my list I put a pairing. For some of them I just put a character. For this fandom I just put Malcolm Tucker. Malcolm Tucker had the well-honed ability to turn anybody he met into a mortal enemy in about ten seconds flat. It's amazing to watch. And he had strung-tight bastard sexual chemistry with all of them.
The Thick of It was a satire/drama show about British politics in the late 90s/aughts. It was really good but has become to depressing for me to rewatch as politics in RL has slowly circled the drain since then. But Malcom Tucker is still compelling. He is the party's PR wizard, and every possible HR violation in one expletive-wrapped package. He has zero ethics but a giant heart, which he takes out and stomps on occasionally to keep it in line. The enemy vibe here is that he hates everybody and respects nobody, except the people he kind of secretly doesn't despite trying his best, and everybody hates and fears him, except the people who don't quite manage it despite trying their best, and everybody is theoretically working toward the same goals but they've all massively betrayed each other at least twice.
Coming up with recs here was surprisingly hard because when I go to the tToI tag I just kind of descend into a fugue state of obscene Scotsmen and don't remember anything after I emerge, but here are three that stuck with me enough to track them down again. These are all Nicola/Malcolm; I had some Malcolm/Jamie and Julius too but more of this fandom than I realized is archive-locked and/or share-button-disabled, and I try not to rec archive-locked stuff if I notice? But those ships are good to. (Nicola/Malcolm is particularly good though because it's always sweetened by knowing she's the only one who managed to fight him all the way to mutual destruction in the end.) (These three all coincidentally involve Nicola cheating on her husband but he's a scumbag so we don't care.)
The Thick of It was a satire/drama show about British politics in the late 90s/aughts. It was really good but has become to depressing for me to rewatch as politics in RL has slowly circled the drain since then. But Malcom Tucker is still compelling. He is the party's PR wizard, and every possible HR violation in one expletive-wrapped package. He has zero ethics but a giant heart, which he takes out and stomps on occasionally to keep it in line. The enemy vibe here is that he hates everybody and respects nobody, except the people he kind of secretly doesn't despite trying his best, and everybody hates and fears him, except the people who don't quite manage it despite trying their best, and everybody is theoretically working toward the same goals but they've all massively betrayed each other at least twice.
Coming up with recs here was surprisingly hard because when I go to the tToI tag I just kind of descend into a fugue state of obscene Scotsmen and don't remember anything after I emerge, but here are three that stuck with me enough to track them down again. These are all Nicola/Malcolm; I had some Malcolm/Jamie and Julius too but more of this fandom than I realized is archive-locked and/or share-button-disabled, and I try not to rec archive-locked stuff if I notice? But those ships are good to. (Nicola/Malcolm is particularly good though because it's always sweetened by knowing she's the only one who managed to fight him all the way to mutual destruction in the end.) (These three all coincidentally involve Nicola cheating on her husband but he's a scumbag so we don't care.)
- The Nobel Prize of Bad Decisions (5057 words) by Monksandbones
Fandom: The Thick of It (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nicola Murray/Malcolm Tucker
Additional Tags: Mildly Dubious Consent, Remix, POV Female Character, Office Sex, Infidelity, Complicated Relationships, Not Quite Hatesex, Talking About It Almost Like Grownups, Season/Series 03
Nicola and Malcolm snap and fuck in his office in the middle of a fight, and the worst part is that it's good. - Unsteady Ground (10108 words) by mardia
Fandom: The Thick of It (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nicola Murray/Malcolm Tucker
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Season/Series 03, Infidelity
Nicola finally files for divorce. It's not because of what happened with Malcolm, but it's not not about that, either. - (I Move A Little Bit Closer) For Reasons Unknown (7688 words) by Tricki
Fandom: The Thick of It (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Nicola Murray/Malcolm Tucker, James Murray/Nicola Murray
Additional Tags: Dresses, Political Parties, Black Tie, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Protectiveness, Between season 3/4, Newspapers
They dance.