So Apparently I Have A Novel Idea?

[anarfea]

One of the most amazing parts of 221b Con this year was that I went to the "How to Scrub Your Fanfic" panel which was hosted by Carnation folks and Elinor Gray. And while I was at said panel I realized that I actually have a project that I can scrub? I had been thinking I had nothing because I was mostly looking at my novel length works published on AO3, which are with the exception of the Omegaverse one I co-wrote (which is way too dark for a conventional publisher) heavily canon compliant. However, I realize that there is a Sherlolly story which I wrote a couple years ago and took down because my sensitivity reader said it was not coming across how I intended it and that I really needed to expand the story to articulate the issues I'm trying to express. And I realized that this story, which is a TAB AU and is therefore Victorian and therefore not particularly recognizable as BBC Sherlock, might be something I could expand into an original novel.

So the backbone of this story is basically that Molly Hooper is trans, and trying to come to terms with their identity. They had a past relationship with Emilia Ricoletti, and in that relationship, Emilia saw them as a masculine woman, dressing as a man in order to get through med school. But then after Emilia dies Molly starts to feel that they are actually a man, which is how Sherlock perceives them. So Sherlock perceives Molly as male, and Sherlock is mostly gay, and Molly and Sherlock have sort of a rivals to lovers arc, and Sherlock ends up taking Molly around to the Victorian London queer scene. And Molly is really liking being seen as male and given access to this gay male space, but they don't feel like this really feel like this male identity is all of how they are either. The climax of the story is where Molly finds the photo of Irene Adler in Sherlock's possession. And they ask, "hey, did you have feelings for this woman," and Sherlock says "I found her attractive but nothing came of it," and Molly presses him about his attraction to women, and Sherlock says basically that he's spent his life in a very masculine world, with no sisters and a tutor instead of a governess, and that he doesn't really understand women and they're mysterious to him, but that he could tell with Irene that he could be with a sufficiently clever woman. So then Molly tells him that they still feel like a woman sometimes, and Sherlock decides he can be okay with that.

There's a side plot with Mycroft trying to convince Molly to marry Sherlock and have a lavender marriage and be socially acceptable, but Molly doesn't want to give up their career or male identity. So Molly and Sherlock end up living together as "bachelors" and Molly is sometimes female presenting with Sherlock in private, but continues to have this public male identity.

There was also a sideplot involving Molly and Emilia and Janine (who owns the house where Molly and Emilia were lodging) being suffragettes. I intend to keep this, but get rid of the ridiculous TAB plot with the ghosts and instead have Molly and Emilia and Janine frame Emilia's former lover for her murder (Molly actually pulls the trigger. Sherlock figures this out but decides it wasn't murder so much as assisted suicide, and that anyway the guy deserved it). So there is an actual plot to this, but it's mostly about Molly and Sherlock's relationship and Molly's identity.

Anyway, the good thing about this novel idea is that it exists. I've been wanting to write an original novel for some time, but felt like I couldn't because I didn't have any ideas. Now I have an idea! And Carnation is potentially interested in my idea.

The downside is that this story is about a trans protagonist, and I'm cis. And there are all these #ownvoices wankers who say that you should never write about any minority identity if you don't share it, or at the very least if you write diverse characters you should never write about issues of identity, and that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm writing about a genderfluid character coming to terms with their identity, and I'm cis.

However, I think there are a couple of saving graces about this. 1) Carnation does not care. So I have at least one publisher that's fine with me being cis and writing a trans character. 2) It's a Victorian setting, so while I've said that I'm headcanoning Molly as genderfluid, the reality is that that would be anachronistic and that I won't actually have them claim any sort of modern trans identity label. So it's harder to say that I'm writing it wrong if I don't say how they identify (I also won't use they/them pronouns because I think that's also anachronistic. I'm writing in first person, so Molly will refer to themself as "I" and other characters will refer to them by either "she" or "he" according to how they're presenting at the time). 3) This is not tragedy porn. There is some period typical transphobia, especially coming from Mycroft, but nothing to dire and no transphobic violence. And happy endings all round. I don't feel like I'm exploiting someone's identity for drama or feels. 4) I know lots of trans people who have already agreed to help me with questions or sensitivity read. So, yeah, I'm basically just going to bite the bullet and go for it and try to be as respectful as I can.

Also, I'm super nervous about writing a novel set in Queer Victorian London, which is a setting I know very little about. However, there are a lot of people in Sherlock fandom who do know about this topic. I talked to Redscuddery and doctornerdington at 221b Con. They are both Victorianists. They helped me narrow down my time period to the 1890s and gave me a reading list. So, I'm going to get started on my research. I've researched stuff for fic before. Maybe not on this scale, but I know I can do it. And I'm interested in the topic. So that's going to be my next phase, get as much research done as I can. Then I have to pick names for Sherlock and Molly, think about how to scrub the more Sherlock-y aspects of my story, and get writing.

So yeah guys! I'm writing an original novel!

Comments

[marcceh]

oh yay!! sounds like an interesting project to sink your teeth into

[anarfea]

Thanks, I'm excited.

[donut_donut]

that sounds like a fun project!

I'm a bit disappointed that your beta talked you out of publishing it as fanfic, because I've been looking for a story that explored TAB-Molly's queerness, and it sounds like this would have scratched that itch pretty well. I asked around the big Sherlolly fic-reccers for something similar, and no one could think of *anything*. Which I interpreted somewhat cynically as, "I guess Sherlollians are only interested in totally het-cis dynamics". But now I wonder if more people would have written this kind of story (which BBC canon so clearly was *handing* to us) if they weren't nervous about writing outside their identity.

(Which, sidebar, seems strange to me since isn't 90% of fandom made up of people writing outside their own identity??? e.g. women writing gay men. And no one bats an eye at that, and indeed will defend it up and down as feminist. Does it have to do with perceived oppression rankings? like gay men > straight women > gay/bi women > transmen, and you're only allowed to write a group that's less oppressed than yours? Is that the logic?)

[anarfea]

So I actually did publish this as a fanfic but not under my name. So like, there was some kind of Sherlolly challenge. I think it may have been for Sherlolly Smuttember a couple of years back? Anyway all the fics were published anonymously and people voted on which one was the best in whatever category. So I posted mine to the challenge but then took it down after the challenge was done.

I think the problem was that the thing I really wanted to express was that Molly is not entirely comfortable either with being seen as a woman in men's clothes or as a man. Whereas my beta was saying that the way I'd written it, it seems like Molly is trans masculine and then finds out that Sherlock is into women and decides she's a woman now? And that's not the dynamic I wanted at all.

I took it down intending to expand it to a novel length fic and put it back up. But then I started thinking that if I'm going to do all this work to make it into a novel I might as well scrub it.

Re the identity thing, I don't think it's necessarily that there's "rankings" of oppression and you can't write about a group more oppressed than yours. I think it's more about how much of a kind of representation exists, and who the audience is for that type of representation. So, to go with your example, yes, a lot of women write about gay men, but they are writing this for an audience of primarily women who are used to reading stories about gay men written by women. And while some of those women, especially queer women, are really conscientious about how they are representing those gay identities, a lot of women are just writing what they like and don't care what gay men think of women's fanfic because they aren't the audience of that fic. And there are definite genre differences between m/m stories written by women for women and m/m stories written by men for men. And there absolutely are people who think that women shouldn't write stories about gay men and accuse the women, especially straight women, who do of "fetishizing" gay relationships. It's just so prevalent that a small group of detractors is never going to make the slashers stop. There's also a ton of this material out there, so people who are looking for stories about gay men have a huge variety of fics to choose from, and pretty much everyone is going to find something they like.

However, there is not a lot of material written about trans people. And I think it's fair to say a significant portion, if not the majority, of people who are interested in reading about trans characters are trans. And if they aren't trans, they're probably some other kind of queer. That's just who's interested in those stories. So, there's a much higher perceived risk of being told off for "doing it wrong" when you're writing for an audience of people who share the identity you're writing about. Also, since there are fewer of these stories, there's more pressure to write positive representation because that's what the audience for those stories say they want/need. That kind of pressure can make writing stories about trans characters really scary, which is why I think more people don't do it. I even know trans people who have said they won't write stories about trans characters because they don't want to be told that their character is the wrong kind of trans character because it would be like being told that they are the wrong kind of trans person. So yeah, kind of an emotional minefield.

I think the same goes for racial minorities. Again, it's usually assumed that only POC want to read stories about POC. I think that's less true than it used to be, but I still think it's true that POC are more likely to seek out stories about POC. So when you write stories featuring characters from diverse backgrounds, you're more likely to encounter readers of that background who are expecting you to get it right, which often times means writing the kind of representation they want to see and which they think represents their group in a positive light. I don't write stories about characters of color very often for this reason. Because even though I am a WOC, I'm afraid I'm not the "right" kind of WOC and that my experiences won't be considered valid. And I don't want to get dragged and called a racist.

Anyway, I think that people in fandom need to calm down, and that people should be allowed to write outside their own experience if it's done with empathy and respect. Like, yes, we absolutely should uplift writers of color, and trans writers (and they should be able to write about things other than their own identities), but that doesn't mean no one else should be able to write about those experiences. It stifles creativity and actually results in less diversity in fiction I think. Like I keep thinking how sad it is that publishers didn't want to touch Pennypaperbrain's fic about a Chinese-British bipolar character because she's not Chinese, because the result is that there are still basically no stories about Chinese-British bipolar characters. And that's sad, and everyone loses.

[eloquated]

Oh my gosh, I was just reading the description for this story, and I LOVE IT! I can't wait to see what the end result is like, because even the summary has me totally hooked.

You're a fabulous writer to begin with, and I know it's going to be amazing!

[anarfea]

I'm glad you're excited!

[signoftea]

That's exciting! The plot idea is very interesting and I would definitely read the novel.

I also wish there were more TAB fics exploring this aspect of Molly's identity as something more than a disguise.

[anarfea]

Yeah, I haven't seen more fics with trans!Molly. There is some art? That definitely explores either Molly as trans or Sherlock and Molly as a gay couple. But not much fic.

[clevermanka]

[anarfea]

Yay!

[iwantthatcoat]

I am really excited for this.
The whole notion of one having to belong to a certain group to get it right annoys the hell out of me. Some experiences are highly cross-relatable, and every minority experience is unique and this seems to bulldoze over that.
For example, a queer person can relate far more to my experience of growing up Jewish in a Catholic neighborhood than a Jewish person growing up in Brooklyn. The commonality often comes from the experience of hiding, or, in this case, of identity-searching. A Victorian experience of one’s gender identity is not the same as a modern one. There is so much variety to any person dressing as male’s experience during that time period. To make it a modern allegory would in many ways be a ridiculous concept...but that aspect is the one I think would require the most use of a trans perspective. The search for self-understanding is universally queer. Victorian male spaces are not modern male spaces. And Holmes’s frustration with understanding women makes perfect sense in modern times. Victorian women were....weird.

[anarfea]

Yeah, I hope that it will be well received. I mean, I know there are always going to be gatekeepers saying I'm getting it wrong, but I hope they are few and far between.

And yes, it isn't a modern story, but I certainly hope it will be relatable to a modern audience. And I think you're right that it isn't necessarily just a trans story but a story of Outsideness, which you are right I think is much more universal.

[vulgarweed]

I'm really, really looking forward to this! This is going to be so exciting - all the work and research as well as the writing part.

And scary too, stepping out of the comfort zone. But I have immense faith in you!

[anarfea]

Thank you! I'm excited.

[pennypaperbrain]

That sounds like a great project! I’ve been impressed by Carnation in my dealings with them and they are clearly focused on publishing quality stuff above any other considerations.

Related to your point about how much of a kind of representation exists, and who the audience is, I think a lot depends on the size and established history of the minority community in question. Some minority groups, however monumentally crapped on they may be by outsiders, have a very strong sense of community identity, and lots of their own home-grown artists, writers and advocates. In that situation, rejecting any and all input from outsiders feels like power.

Smaller/more precarious groups don’t have that luxury; and at the same time the adjacent larger minorities may well be crapping on the smaller ones to boot, e.g. cis gays making out that transpeople are imposters/making them look bad. Rather than putting its own house in order, the larger minority (and allies who want a nice easy way of appearing supportive without having to do anything) will get into hyper-policing outsiders’ interactions with the smaller minority. Hence white American publishers not wanting to touch a book about a white-Chinese girl written by a white person, because they are projecting (what they think are) the interests of the large, vocal and organised US-Chinese community onto the nearly invisible and silent British Chinese population. I doubt the manuscript got near a single British Chinese person in publishing because I’ve only ever met one(!) and she’s my friend.

So I reckon if you get Mighty!Outrage! for (sensitively and intelligently) writing a trans character, then it will be coming mostly from cis gay people who think hassling you is a safer bet than taking the log out of their own eyes, and straight people who find the pile-on an easy form of superficial allying with gay people. There will be trans people out there who will treasure it.

Plus of course I wade around in the cesspit of commercial publishing (as an editor I have rubber boots on; as a writer I slosh around naked and act like I’m surprised when the acid hurts me). Small queer presses are a different ball game.

[anarfea]

Thanks so much for commenting. I'm glad you think this is a good idea and that you've been impressed with Carnation. I really have been, too, and they are having some recent successes with Doc's book and Char's. I think I may want to publish a mainstream novel one day, but for the first one, a small queer press feels safer?

Anyway, I think your comments about most of the gatekeeping not coming from the minority group itself are spot on. Like a lot of the accusations of racism I've seen in the Star Wars fandom are from White people, who say that like, shipping Rey and Kylo is racist because you should ship Finn and Rey instead, and I've seen those accusations of racism lobbed at WOC who ship Reylo. So yeah, I can see what you mean about how my criticisms might come from cis queer people rather than actual trans people. Although, from what I've seen of the trans community on tumblr, they attack each other a lot over what the "right" way to be trans is (e.g. transmen and transwomen shit on nonbinary people, people who transition medically shit on people who don't, etc.) so I'm sure I might get some criticism from within the trans community as well.

I'm so outraged on your behalf that cowardly publishers don't want to publish your book because it has a half-Chinese protagonist. Because I think you're right, actual British Chinese people would probably be thrilled for the representation.

But you are correct that I don't have to worry about that with Carnation. They are thrilled at the idea of having a book which is queer but not gay/lesbian. And it doesn't bother them that I'm not trans.

[pennypaperbrain]

Yeah, it's hard to miss communities ripping into their own on tumblr. I think the 'easy target' factor actually makes them more likely to attack each other than an outsider, though, at least until a book reaches a certain level of publicity which would be desirable but not that likely for a tiny press.

It's very validating that WOC out there think it was a good idea to write [my book]. I should say that I've no idea if the comment was from two US publishers or twenty. My agent just said 'some' American publishers didn't want a book by a white person about a Chinese girl; plus I know authors who have had similar experiences. The good news over here is that UK publishers aren't just knee-jerking like that any more but there's also a genuine increase in the amount of books by actual BAME (Black and Minority Ethnic, it's called over here) people coming out.

Good luck with Carnation. Lee is great.

[oulfis]

I want to second all of this! As a trans man I think you’re really right about the specific dynamics of minority groups. Trans representation in published fiction is at a stage where I think there’s still a lot of value in just having MORE STORIES by even remotely sympathetic authors. I don’t think I’ve yet read a trans representation in a published book that really rang true to my own experience but it still felt good to see them. Cis authors succeeding with sensitively-handled trans stories can even help pave the way for trans #ownvoices authors: I’ve heard of a lot of trans authors who have been told that their work simply can’t sell, and then having counterexamples is valuable.

The key is really just some level of sensitivity, preferably with a sensitivity reader or two. This is a good rundown on how NOT to do it: https://www.them.us/story/james-barry-ej-levy

But the lesson I take there isn’t “no cis people should write about trans people” but rather “pay attention to how trans people respond do your work and be ready to change if needed.”

[anarfea]

OMG what a horrible story. I had heard of James Barry but I did not know that there were biographers who were writing him as a secret woman or whatever. Gross.

I thought it was really interesting though, that idea of the "passing woman" who is using an assumed masculine identity to get ahead. I think that's what TAB Molly is *meant* to be in canon, but I thought, "wouldn't it be cooler if they were trans?" But I think that the characters who know that Molly is not a cis man think that they are a passing woman. Emilia is a lesbian (anachronistic and I won't use the label in the novel but it's easy shorthand here) and needs to see Molly as a woman because she is not attracted to men. So she basically sees them as a butch/femme type couple. She's fine with Molly's masculinity but it's important to her that Molly is still a masculine woman, not male. Mycroft I think understands that Molly's identity is tied to this masculine presentation, but still feels like they should live as a woman and marry Sherlock, and save the "male-drag" for behind closed doors. When I decided to scrub this piece, I was originally planning on making Mycroft Sherlock's father (I thought the brotherly relationship too obviously Sherlockian), but Tiltedsyllogism had the idea to make the Mycroft character a former lover of Sherlocks, an older gay man who had shown him the ropes and introduced him to queer London. So I think that would make his perspective perhaps more sympathetic and more poignant if it's coming from the place of him wanting for Molly and Sherlock to have the lavender marriage and the privilege that would come with it that wouldn't have been available to him and Sherlock as a gay couple.

Sherlock sees Molly as male and never questions that. And initially, Molly is thrilled, because they're coming out of their fraught relationship with Emilia, who saw them as female, which made them really unhappy. So for a while, living with Sherlock and doing the Victorian London gay scene is great. And I guess I could have just written Molly/Colin as a binary transman, but I wanted the internal narrative arc of the story to be a little more complicated than "transman has his identity validated and suddenly everything is roses." So the twist is that, while Molly is initially happy to express their masculine side, after time they start to miss femininity and particularly the solidarity between women that they felt at being part of the suffragette movement. So they still feel this kinship and identify with the cause of extending the rights of women even though they don't identify as a woman, which is fraught for them. And they want to express a feminine side of themselves sometimes, but are afraid of doing that because isn't Sherlock gay and doesn't he have disdain for women and won't that drive him away?

Spoiler alert: Sherlock previously assumed that he was exclusively homosexual but he's actually really a demi gray-ace that just had one meaningful relationship before Molly and that was with another man (the Mycroft character). And then he also sees Molly as male: conclusion--I'm into dudes. But it turns out that because he's already in a relationship with Molly, their gender doesn't actually matter to him that much he's just going to be in love with/attracted to them regardless of how they present. So Molly comes to realize that they can have it all, live as male most of the time to keep their medical career, and occasionally present as female in female spaces and sometimes privately with Sherlock.

I really hope this doesn't sound horrible and offensive, but I thought of Molly's genderfluidity as being sort of analogous to my own bisexuality. Like of course I'm bi all the time, but I'm married to a man so I'm sort of functionally straight or at least straight-passing most of the time, and then a few times a year I go to Cons or gay bars or whatever and I get to hang out with my queer friends and hook up with women or enbies and have that side of myself validated. That's sort of how I envision Molly/Colin. Like, Sherlock and Colin mostly live as gay men and hang out in Victorian gay spaces, but sometimes Molly needs woman time and goes and hangs out with their suffragette friends. And intimately, Molly mostly wants to be male when they're with Sherlock, but every once in a while, they want to be female when they're in that mood. And Sherlock is okay with that, and Molly is over the moon, and they live happily ever after.

I think the main reason my short story didn't work according to the trans sensitivity reader I had who read it, was that because it was so short, I just have this one scene where Molly is trying out their femininity on Sherlock, and they have vaginal intercourse for the first time (previously they mostly have intercurial intercourse or frot), and Molly's like, "oh hey it's nice that Sherlock is okay with this," and that was where the story ended. The guy who read my fic was saying that it felt like I was saying that that's who Molly was really all along, and that vaginal intercourse somehow fixed them. And I'm like "OMG no, that is the total opposite of what I want to convey." Like Colin really sees themself as male or mostly male like 90% of the time. But at certain times, with certain people who they are more comfortable with, they are female. Just because that part of them comes out when they're more vulnerable doesn't mean that that's their "true" identity. It's just that, for all intents and purposes, they live their life "rounding themselves up" to male because that's "close enough," and it's just so much less complicated to say "I'm male" with all casual acquaintances and only in very safe spaces with close friends do they even bother to try to explain that really their identity is "mostly male most of the time but occasionally female with certain people under certain circumstances" rather than "male." And even female Molly is not especially femme.

Anyway thank you for letting me rant at you about how very much my story is NOT about a "straight passing woman." It's in fact very much a rebuttal to that narrative. Because I for one cannot imagine why someone would go to all the trouble and risk of pretending to be a gender they were not 24/7 in order to gain economic advantage. It just doesn't make sense to me. I feel like people who are willing to do that are trans, and I wanted to tell a trans story.

I just happen to not be a trans person (though I have my own... gender issues? IDK. I don't like being a woman. I'm still pretty sure I'm cis, though). But I'm queer and I know and love lots of trans people and I want to tell this trans story, and I hope that my friends will help me write something that will at the very least not be offensive and will hopefully ring true to some trans readers.

[pennypaperbrain]

btw I hope you'll keep us updated on this?

[anarfea]

Yes, I will post updates as I work on the project.

[splix]

Congratulations! Sounds awesome.

I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that you should only write within your wheelhouse, as it were. That is incredibly stultifying.

[anarfea]

Thanks. I'm psyched.

Yeah, I do feel that it would be very sad if everyone wrote only about things they have personally experienced. A much less colorful literary world.

[doctornerdington]

I'M SO EXCITED!

[anarfea]

I'm excited too! Also, thanks so much for the reading list. I haven't made it to the library yet. Hopefully this weekend.

[solrosan]

Oh my god! That sounds absolutely wonderful! I'm so happy for you that you found this :)

[anarfea]

Thanks, I'm excited.

[oulfis]

I really like the sounds of this story!! I can see how some important tricky bits will depend a lot on the execution, to make sure you’re conveying what you want to convey, but it sounds like a really valuable and nuanced take on gender (and a fun romance). I had some of these ideas in mind (though from a binary trans POV) when I wrote Watson // Watson eons ago. I’ve never done sensitivity reading so I’m not a pro at it, and I am often really busy and shouldn’t take on big projects, but I’d love to be one of your sets of Trans Eyes as you work on this! I’m a pretty femme and gay trans man, more binary than your Molly character but probably still with enough shared experience to have something to offer? I can’t remember if DW allows direct messaging — if not, let me know and I can post my contact info for discord/gchat/whatever!

[anarfea]

OMG thank you so much??? I don't know when I will have something written, as I have much research to do before I need to write, but I'd love to have your perspective as you're reputed to be quite the beta. I'm honored you're interested in the project. I'll DM you.