Pedestal: Sherlock Fic & Fanmix (part two)
Part one can be found here.
On the fifth of September, you enter the police station at precisely thirty-two minutes and twenty-seven seconds past eight. You have had roughly seventy-six minutes and fifty-five seconds of sleep. You are struggling on this case; there have been three bodies in the past five days and while it has been agreed that for ( Read more... )
Let me just dive in and tell you my thoughts.
1. I don't normally go for second-person POV because most of it isn't done well. Most of it comes across as scolding or superior, and this story didn't feel like that at all. It read as if a dispassionate narrator was merely reciting facts. But it was related in such a way that the facts forced the reader to see the emotions behind them.
2. This is how I feel about every single person who has ever played Lestrade. The man works hard, tries hard and takes life very seriously. He is not the brightest of investigators, but he will stick with a case until he has the answers. And, unlike a lot of people in that position, he puts pride aside and asks for help, even if the help is a pain in the ass. I think Doyle meant for Lestrade to be synonymous with shoddy and incompetent thinking, which is really unfair because most police officers are neither. But I suppose he did so to make Sherlock appear to be even more brilliant in comparison.
3. You didn't let Lestrade give in. That's important. Despite his enormous personal problems and crushing loneliness, he has his pride and sometimes that's all a person has. It would be very easy for him to fall for someone like Sherlock, but that affection would be unrequited - for the most part. Lestrade doesn't let himself take the easier route because he knows that route would eventually become rutted and impassable.
4. The story kept me on edge. I very much wanted to know what would happen next and I think your spare style has a lot to do with that. I can't find a thing that's superfluous. You obviously took care to make every word count.
I'd pick out especially fine passages, but I can't choose between my favorites. In short, this is an excellent fic. Thanks again for posting it on this comm. If you've written more Sherlock fic, I'd be pleased to read it if you have time to give the links.
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I wasn't sure about Lestrade at first - I went a bit silly over Watson when I first really got into Sherlock Holmes - there was a BBC Christmas special of The Silk Stocking, which I recorded on VCR and watched avidly. I didn't really get into Sherlock Holmes until my sister went absolutely mental over the 2010 BBC version and I decided to read the books. It does annoy me slightly that Lestrade is basically meant to showcase how brilliant Sherlock is.
I admit, when I first started writing this, I thought "It's got to have a happy ending!" before I realised that actually, there's no way that there could really be a happy ending. I tried to make it seem throughout this almost as if Sherlock was trying to figure out what Lestrade was up to, because Lestrade's acting so differently. Having said that, I did worry a lot about whether Lestrade was acting in character - I'm still not sure about 3/4s of that dialogue!
Thank you. I think my father nearly killed me - I worked on it for three days and two nights with about six hours sleep in between. It wasn't so much the plotline that was bothering me - my problem is that I tend to rush things and even now, I think that 4000 words doesn't really explain things in great detail. Having said that, I didn't want to explain every single day in 1000 words, because I felt that it would be distracting, if that makes any sense.
Basically, thank you very much. This was my first piece of Sherlock fic (alright, it was my first piece of fanfiction if I don't count a 300 word Harry Potter fanfiction written when I was eleven), so hearing that it's at least a tiny bit in-character is really helpful.
Sorry for the essay!
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