Sherlock Season Four and Fanfic Ramblings
It seems like a new season of Sherlock has nearly sneaked up on me!
I've been thinking for a while, how cool it would be, now that I'm active in at least the fanfic side of fandom and clearly capable of churning out flashworks, how cool it would be to actually take advantage of the new-season rush and write a fic-a-day challenge or similar during January. I'd love to create a whole lot of new content, and it'd be fun to contribute to the early speculations of what everything means. And I got a whole lot of new followers while I was doing JWP solely for spending so long near the top of the 'recent additions' pile--I would imagine the result might be simlar while there's new content being actively paid out that people want to start exploring.
I'm thinking about it, anyway. I don't know if it would work, or if I could spin stuff out while I'm still reeling from being hit with it.
And I don't know how the new season will strike me. I'm a bit concerned, to be honest, because one of the things I like best about Sherlock is how much of the angst and character development lives under the surface. How the craziness and the fun and the physical and intellectual action of the cases almost drowns out those fleeting glimpses of deep soul underneath the masks and in between the cracks in the relationships, leaving the fans freeze-framing and spinning crazy theories to prove it was real, and gasping for more. The S4 trailers... do not look like that. Which is somewhat of the nature of a TV show as it goes along. The network of interelationships between every character becomes more complicated, the deep dark secrets become deeper and darker, and the whumps need to be whumpier to register. Still. I'm hoping--very much hoping--that they've cherry-picked the trailers for a particular effect, and that the Sherlock I love is still in there.
I should trust the Moffat. And, I should remember to approach it in the best way I've discovered to approach any new instalment of canon in my current favourite fandom: as another layer of fanfiction--which does not have to provide me with the perfect canon anymore, because I already have that (hint: they had me at Reichenbach). They can't take that away from me just by outdating it--that's the best thing about fanfiction. If I want, it can always be 2011. Season 4 will not automatically be better than every fanfic idea I've ever read, nor will it even be better--to me--than many of the ideas I've written. But what Season 4 will provide is a whole new set of fresh, alternate ideas to explore about the characters, stories and ideas from the best freaking author in fandom, stories that I'm allows to play with too, if I want! Yes. In that light, I am very much looking forward to Season 4.
And we can just see how the writing idea goes. I'd like to produce some new content as it goes, let's just leave it at that.
In the meantime, it is the last week of December, and Hubby's got the week between Christmas and New Year off. It's the only time of year it ever happens. We don't go away: the end of the year is the time to take a load off, relax, blob around at home, eat pizza and fish fingers, let the kids watch as much TV as they like, and let the house get messy. Last year I had a whiplash injury and spent the whole time laid up in bed while Hubby raced around like a frantic chicken trying to keep the kids out of my hair and ended up less rested than he'd started, which was... not ideal. This year, it's absolutely perfectly blobby for both of us.
And I've been getting wonderfully into some writing. Mustn't forget to post Hubby's song for the flashwork amnesty before the end of December--but mostly I've realised I should be getting onto crossposting some of the fics I've been hoarding before S4 puts them Officially Out Of Canon.
Throughout this year I've been doing flashworks, and a lot of them. It's been awesome, for keeping my hand in and keeping my head out of my rear end. Publish or perish, as they call it in academia. And a lot of them have been pretty short--I've been increasingly managing to make them pretty short, which is good for my sanity--but a few have taken my inspiration and run with it and ended up a little longer. (The Wrong Kind of Snow, I'm looking at you.) I've fallen into a pattern, which I've liked, of tidying the fics up before crossposting one when I get a spare Saturday morning. Which is lovely, and I've been enjoying, for the little fics, but a couple of the longer fics (The Wrong Kind of Snow, I'm looking at you!) have sent me into panic attacks at the idea of going back to edit them, so I've left them to simmer in their own juices until I'm ready.
And this week, I've been ready. I was brave enough to open up The Wrong Kind of Snow, among others, and do a readthrough and realise it's really not as bad as I remembered. Too big a concept for the time limit, is the only problem. When I edit it, it'll probably double or treble in length. That's fine. It's got some great content, and the bits that I thought dragged weren't nearly as draggy as I thought. (Which is good because when I edit it, those bits in particular will probably expand tenfold.) There's things it's missing, narrative absences and character motivations that haven't been set up. But it's a solid framework. Thumbs up me, I'll be back there, and I'm looking forward to it.
Mostly what I've been working on this week is Good for the Soul (as I titled it on fan_flashworks) or (as I accidentally copied it according to my working title on AO3) Five ways to confess to your flatmate. I'm still not sure if I should go to the trouble of changing the title, for a few reasons. First, because as it turns out it's got seven, maybe eight chapters? The next one due to post has absolutely zero confession content in it. Which, I could smush into the next chapter and post them together, but the story is screaming CHAPTER BREAK at me and sometimes you just plain have to listen to a story when it says that. Perhaps I could subtitle it as an interlude. Okay that at least works, and further excuses the slight shift in tone for that section.
I also kind of like the idea that it's a spiritual successor to Five ways to look after your flatmate (although I haven't set up a series), and look, a few weeks ago, it kind of was. But then everyone got so excited when I posted the first chapter, and I kind of freaked out at the thought that what I had mightn't be satisfying, or... no, less than that. Just that I knew it could be more satisfying, and I could just tidy up a few obvious things and make it a bit better.
Famous last words for The White Lily.
So I thought, why don't I fill this case out a bit better, flesh out the OCs, pay out my clues a bit more carefully rather than dumping them all in the second to last paragraph, stop treating this as a silly cracky thing and give it some substance. And I did. Oh, I did.
Except all the oomph I found is angsty oomph. (Colour me surprised.) And now my fic has schizophrenia. Instead of light silly loveably-oblivious-narrator stuff going on--or alongside it--the case has gritty true-life issues and Macbeth references, and I have absolutely NO idea to bundle up the ending in a neat little go-away-now-case-because-it's-time-for-John-and-Sherlock-to-snog bundle.
See, here's what I'd kind of forgotten in my zeal to make the case worthwhile: investing John in some of the characters was a great way to bring some life to them and set out the dramatis personae of the case... but the previous resolution kind of hinged on John (and the reader) being substantially emotionally UNinvested in the case. It was a side-note, and it worked that way. But now it's more than that, and unless I change the way this thing works somehow, this case is going to rip John's (and the reader's) heart out--and a happy-silly ending simply doesn't work anymore. Something's gotta give. This story ain't big enough for the both of them.
The next chapter due to be posted--the one with no confession content in it--is the point of no return. It's entirely new content, and it's good. Or at least I like it. But then I've got a bit of a sour-tooth. *grins* I want to make this story work somehow, without having to lose any of this new substance I've given the characters and new material I've given the story. And also without losing the lightness. And--thanks to some of the disconnected rambling here that's still here, and some that's since been deleted--I think I've worked out how to do it, in a way I'm pleased with. A way that will even have a happy ending. *fist pump*
Thanks for listening to my incoherence, folks, as always it's been a pleasure.
I've been thinking for a while, how cool it would be, now that I'm active in at least the fanfic side of fandom and clearly capable of churning out flashworks, how cool it would be to actually take advantage of the new-season rush and write a fic-a-day challenge or similar during January. I'd love to create a whole lot of new content, and it'd be fun to contribute to the early speculations of what everything means. And I got a whole lot of new followers while I was doing JWP solely for spending so long near the top of the 'recent additions' pile--I would imagine the result might be simlar while there's new content being actively paid out that people want to start exploring.
I'm thinking about it, anyway. I don't know if it would work, or if I could spin stuff out while I'm still reeling from being hit with it.
And I don't know how the new season will strike me. I'm a bit concerned, to be honest, because one of the things I like best about Sherlock is how much of the angst and character development lives under the surface. How the craziness and the fun and the physical and intellectual action of the cases almost drowns out those fleeting glimpses of deep soul underneath the masks and in between the cracks in the relationships, leaving the fans freeze-framing and spinning crazy theories to prove it was real, and gasping for more. The S4 trailers... do not look like that. Which is somewhat of the nature of a TV show as it goes along. The network of interelationships between every character becomes more complicated, the deep dark secrets become deeper and darker, and the whumps need to be whumpier to register. Still. I'm hoping--very much hoping--that they've cherry-picked the trailers for a particular effect, and that the Sherlock I love is still in there.
I should trust the Moffat. And, I should remember to approach it in the best way I've discovered to approach any new instalment of canon in my current favourite fandom: as another layer of fanfiction--which does not have to provide me with the perfect canon anymore, because I already have that (hint: they had me at Reichenbach). They can't take that away from me just by outdating it--that's the best thing about fanfiction. If I want, it can always be 2011. Season 4 will not automatically be better than every fanfic idea I've ever read, nor will it even be better--to me--than many of the ideas I've written. But what Season 4 will provide is a whole new set of fresh, alternate ideas to explore about the characters, stories and ideas from the best freaking author in fandom, stories that I'm allows to play with too, if I want! Yes. In that light, I am very much looking forward to Season 4.
And we can just see how the writing idea goes. I'd like to produce some new content as it goes, let's just leave it at that.
In the meantime, it is the last week of December, and Hubby's got the week between Christmas and New Year off. It's the only time of year it ever happens. We don't go away: the end of the year is the time to take a load off, relax, blob around at home, eat pizza and fish fingers, let the kids watch as much TV as they like, and let the house get messy. Last year I had a whiplash injury and spent the whole time laid up in bed while Hubby raced around like a frantic chicken trying to keep the kids out of my hair and ended up less rested than he'd started, which was... not ideal. This year, it's absolutely perfectly blobby for both of us.
And I've been getting wonderfully into some writing. Mustn't forget to post Hubby's song for the flashwork amnesty before the end of December--but mostly I've realised I should be getting onto crossposting some of the fics I've been hoarding before S4 puts them Officially Out Of Canon.
Throughout this year I've been doing flashworks, and a lot of them. It's been awesome, for keeping my hand in and keeping my head out of my rear end. Publish or perish, as they call it in academia. And a lot of them have been pretty short--I've been increasingly managing to make them pretty short, which is good for my sanity--but a few have taken my inspiration and run with it and ended up a little longer. (The Wrong Kind of Snow, I'm looking at you.) I've fallen into a pattern, which I've liked, of tidying the fics up before crossposting one when I get a spare Saturday morning. Which is lovely, and I've been enjoying, for the little fics, but a couple of the longer fics (The Wrong Kind of Snow, I'm looking at you!) have sent me into panic attacks at the idea of going back to edit them, so I've left them to simmer in their own juices until I'm ready.
And this week, I've been ready. I was brave enough to open up The Wrong Kind of Snow, among others, and do a readthrough and realise it's really not as bad as I remembered. Too big a concept for the time limit, is the only problem. When I edit it, it'll probably double or treble in length. That's fine. It's got some great content, and the bits that I thought dragged weren't nearly as draggy as I thought. (Which is good because when I edit it, those bits in particular will probably expand tenfold.) There's things it's missing, narrative absences and character motivations that haven't been set up. But it's a solid framework. Thumbs up me, I'll be back there, and I'm looking forward to it.
Mostly what I've been working on this week is Good for the Soul (as I titled it on fan_flashworks) or (as I accidentally copied it according to my working title on AO3) Five ways to confess to your flatmate. I'm still not sure if I should go to the trouble of changing the title, for a few reasons. First, because as it turns out it's got seven, maybe eight chapters? The next one due to post has absolutely zero confession content in it. Which, I could smush into the next chapter and post them together, but the story is screaming CHAPTER BREAK at me and sometimes you just plain have to listen to a story when it says that. Perhaps I could subtitle it as an interlude. Okay that at least works, and further excuses the slight shift in tone for that section.
I also kind of like the idea that it's a spiritual successor to Five ways to look after your flatmate (although I haven't set up a series), and look, a few weeks ago, it kind of was. But then everyone got so excited when I posted the first chapter, and I kind of freaked out at the thought that what I had mightn't be satisfying, or... no, less than that. Just that I knew it could be more satisfying, and I could just tidy up a few obvious things and make it a bit better.
Famous last words for The White Lily.
So I thought, why don't I fill this case out a bit better, flesh out the OCs, pay out my clues a bit more carefully rather than dumping them all in the second to last paragraph, stop treating this as a silly cracky thing and give it some substance. And I did. Oh, I did.
Except all the oomph I found is angsty oomph. (Colour me surprised.) And now my fic has schizophrenia. Instead of light silly loveably-oblivious-narrator stuff going on--or alongside it--the case has gritty true-life issues and Macbeth references, and I have absolutely NO idea to bundle up the ending in a neat little go-away-now-case-because-it's-time-for-John-and-Sherlock-to-snog bundle.
See, here's what I'd kind of forgotten in my zeal to make the case worthwhile: investing John in some of the characters was a great way to bring some life to them and set out the dramatis personae of the case... but the previous resolution kind of hinged on John (and the reader) being substantially emotionally UNinvested in the case. It was a side-note, and it worked that way. But now it's more than that, and unless I change the way this thing works somehow, this case is going to rip John's (and the reader's) heart out--and a happy-silly ending simply doesn't work anymore. Something's gotta give. This story ain't big enough for the both of them.
The next chapter due to be posted--the one with no confession content in it--is the point of no return. It's entirely new content, and it's good. Or at least I like it. But then I've got a bit of a sour-tooth. *grins* I want to make this story work somehow, without having to lose any of this new substance I've given the characters and new material I've given the story. And also without losing the lightness. And--thanks to some of the disconnected rambling here that's still here, and some that's since been deleted--I think I've worked out how to do it, in a way I'm pleased with. A way that will even have a happy ending. *fist pump*
Thanks for listening to my incoherence, folks, as always it's been a pleasure.