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!