FIC: Chiaroscuro
For the first time, I'll be posting a fic only on fanfiction.net. It's probably better suited for the search and find audience there and I assume few on my friends' list will be interested in reading it, if the reaction of my nearest and dearest is anything to go by. *snort*
Chiaroscuro is the first part of of a two-part series based on Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, the films. (waits moment for gasps of horror.)
I can still remember walking out of Silence of the Lambs (in 1991!) utterly exhilarated. I'd just learned a lesson of perception. I had fully expected some man to rescue Starling. Now, mind you, I'm not a woman who looks around for some man to open jars for her and protect her. At that moment, I was walking up a dark, late-night Market Street in San Francisco with my male roommate, but if a mugger had jumped out, it would have been I who would have stepped in front of John without a thought, not the way around, bless his non-violent soul. And yet I'd been trained well by years of films and TV shows. A woman in distress must be rescued by a man.
Until Clarice Starling, who'd saved her own ass, and that of the other woman in distress. Ironically, I didn't watch The X-files for years because the topics didn't interest me, but if I'd known that Dana Scully was Clarice Starling, I would have been there in a heartbeat.
The characters had their hold on me, but I watched the next film's inception with trepidation. Of course it had to be sexed up. Of course it became about the male lead. I didn't even bother to see Hannibal (even the title went from being about Starling to being about Lecter) in the theater. Finally I happened to see the DVD and was pleasantly surprised. Julianne Moore stepped into the role perfectly and the ending still maintained the character's strength and dignity. My little fanfic mind started to whir.
Then I read the book. I will say, at least I burst out with laughter at the ending, rather than outrage. Of course Lecter was the way he was because of denial of the breast. Or the Nazis. Or both. Because you know, boobs and Hitler are to blame for everything. *head, desk*
And this canon whore was now in a quandary. Are the books part of the canon? Do I have to accept this and use it? Just as I was wrestling with that and trying to write, Hannibal Rising came out and really frakked with what I'd written even more. Plus I just wasn't comfortable with the direction the story was headed; I couldn't find the answers to the questions I had for my own work.
So this has been sitting on my HD for years. Yes, one of those! Maybe I did some maturing--more miles on these tires have gotten me to a place to finish it. Maybe I don't like to leave things unfinished. (Have no fear, readers of my other hanging WIP's!)
But I did feel as though it was a story I had to finish, for better or worse, three readers or thirteen. I'm about to prove that I write for my own pleasure. :D Fortunately, since it's mostly written but for those quandaries, it won't take too much of my time away for saner commitments!