Cop shows
1. With the latest DF anon meme futzing, I've written something like 15,000 new words of fiction in the last month. Since when do I write 15,000 words of fiction in a month?
The other day I got part of Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle One Art stuck in my head (it's one of my favorite poems and I have it nearly memorized) so I think I am going to try to make this my motto, at least for awhile: Write something every day. Accept the fluster / of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. / The art of writing isn't hard to master. // Then practice writing farther, writing faster: / places, and names, and where it was you meant / to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
(filking that poem that way has really complicated resonances - since the original conceit, of course, is that losing is as much an art as writing, but of course, part of the way she's mastered loss is through writing, and yet: what I need to do is, having made a start on mastering loss, is have the courage let there be things lost in my writing: I wrote two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,/ some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. / I missed them, but it wasn't a disaster. // --Even writing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident / the art of writing's not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.))
2. People keep saying I should write more of the non-BBC-Sherlock modern-day Holmes AU in Chicago, and since I seem to have moved on from writing about people in London to writing about people in Chicago, well, fine, whatever. Here is a tiny ficlet more, in which we get a glimpse of modern Holmes' detectoring methods:
(One of the many things I am disappointed in with BBC Sherlock - and no, I still haven't watched it yet, though between staying up till five AM listening to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lindentreeisle and, like, everyone else I know, I feel like I have - is that Sherklock in it is just a forensic-focused private eye. The thing about Holmes' forensics in the originals is that he was at the bleeding edge or beyond it with the forensic work he did. He was doing stuff that the police hadn't even thought about considering doing yet, and inventing techniques and creating resources to make it possible. A modern-day Holmes doing standard forensic work is not at the cutting edge, and so he just becomes one more private detective.
So my modern-day Holmes got his start when Lestrade came to the university's Comp-Sci department looking for help with a confiscated hard drive, way back when the police didn't have much of a computer capacity of its own, somebody jokingly sent him to Holmes, who realized he had an aptitude for it. But it quickly became clear that his real avocation wasn't retrieving files, it was it data mining and social networking - he could take the information and make it dance; he could take a kilobyte of encryption code, go on the net, and come back a few days later with an entire chain of connections leading back to the Russian Mob. And he was an absolute artist of sockpuppetry. Even if his tendencies to lazyweb confidential crime scene information and go on chatrooms to taunt the pedophilia task force really annoy the CPD.)
3. Speaking of Chicago and London: When is somebody going to create a fun* fandom (*fun = not entirely about murder, gang warfare, grinding poverty, and/or desperation and despair, jfc) set in Baltimore, so that I when I get the yen to write about a post-industrial city full of dark alleys, tiny neighborhoods, losing baseball teams and rusting Victorian ironwork, I can write about a city I actually know?
4. Speaking of Internet detectiving, yesterday I posted some old vacation photos from my grandparents to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
factfinding, and yay, it's actually working! I have IDs for almost a quarter of them already! (I am surprised that I couldn't find a community specifically for IDing old unlabelled photos, but factfinding seems to work!)
5. I don't actually watch the new Hawaii 5-0, and don't foresee myself ever doing it, but I do read the fic sometimes when I see a rec that seems to be good old-fashioned buddy fic. And. Please tell me the fic exists where someone else on the team (I don't care who. They could tag-team it,) says, "McGarrett first returned to Honolulu on the trail of the killers of his father, and for reasons which don't require exploring at this juncture, remained attached as the leader of a special police task force under the command of the Governor."
The other day I got part of Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle One Art stuck in my head (it's one of my favorite poems and I have it nearly memorized) so I think I am going to try to make this my motto, at least for awhile: Write something every day. Accept the fluster / of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. / The art of writing isn't hard to master. // Then practice writing farther, writing faster: / places, and names, and where it was you meant / to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
(filking that poem that way has really complicated resonances - since the original conceit, of course, is that losing is as much an art as writing, but of course, part of the way she's mastered loss is through writing, and yet: what I need to do is, having made a start on mastering loss, is have the courage let there be things lost in my writing: I wrote two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,/ some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. / I missed them, but it wasn't a disaster. // --Even writing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident / the art of writing's not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.))
2. People keep saying I should write more of the non-BBC-Sherlock modern-day Holmes AU in Chicago, and since I seem to have moved on from writing about people in London to writing about people in Chicago, well, fine, whatever. Here is a tiny ficlet more, in which we get a glimpse of modern Holmes' detectoring methods:
John looked at the paper Holmes had handed him to carry to the police. He blinked. "You have the the guy's name. And address. And school records back to kindergarten. And cell phone number. And facebook accounts under three different names, including all the locked content. And e-mail password."
"Yeah," Holmes said, blinking at him over his coffee.
"How do you have this already? You got the USB drive from Lestrade at 9 PM last night, you spent four hours breaking the encryption on the photo archives, I know this because I heard you shouting about how you were 'the man', and you went to bed directly afterward. And then you got up this morning, checked your e-mail, and printed all of this out. How? Did he happen to take a photograph of all that and file it with his highly incriminating photos of the murders?"
"No, of course not," Holmes said scathingly. "But, among his myriad other perversions, he also vivisected a cat in his kitchen and photographed it." He made a face. "Some people make me really thankful for mood stabilizers."
John had this vague feeling that discussing feline vivisection over pop-tarts and juice at 7 AM would not be normal in any other household, but he pressed on. "So what? Did you read the cat's entrails?"
"I let the Irregulars handle it."
"...you let the Irregulars handle it. Please tell me you don't have a secret army of adorable street orphans."
Homes shrugged, and grinned. "Nah, man. Too much hassle. I just posted the cat pictures on /b/."
(One of the many things I am disappointed in with BBC Sherlock - and no, I still haven't watched it yet, though between staying up till five AM listening to
lindentreeisle and, like, everyone else I know, I feel like I have - is that Sherklock in it is just a forensic-focused private eye. The thing about Holmes' forensics in the originals is that he was at the bleeding edge or beyond it with the forensic work he did. He was doing stuff that the police hadn't even thought about considering doing yet, and inventing techniques and creating resources to make it possible. A modern-day Holmes doing standard forensic work is not at the cutting edge, and so he just becomes one more private detective.So my modern-day Holmes got his start when Lestrade came to the university's Comp-Sci department looking for help with a confiscated hard drive, way back when the police didn't have much of a computer capacity of its own, somebody jokingly sent him to Holmes, who realized he had an aptitude for it. But it quickly became clear that his real avocation wasn't retrieving files, it was it data mining and social networking - he could take the information and make it dance; he could take a kilobyte of encryption code, go on the net, and come back a few days later with an entire chain of connections leading back to the Russian Mob. And he was an absolute artist of sockpuppetry. Even if his tendencies to lazyweb confidential crime scene information and go on chatrooms to taunt the pedophilia task force really annoy the CPD.)
3. Speaking of Chicago and London: When is somebody going to create a fun* fandom (*fun = not entirely about murder, gang warfare, grinding poverty, and/or desperation and despair, jfc) set in Baltimore, so that I when I get the yen to write about a post-industrial city full of dark alleys, tiny neighborhoods, losing baseball teams and rusting Victorian ironwork, I can write about a city I actually know?
4. Speaking of Internet detectiving, yesterday I posted some old vacation photos from my grandparents to
factfinding, and yay, it's actually working! I have IDs for almost a quarter of them already! (I am surprised that I couldn't find a community specifically for IDing old unlabelled photos, but factfinding seems to work!)5. I don't actually watch the new Hawaii 5-0, and don't foresee myself ever doing it, but I do read the fic sometimes when I see a rec that seems to be good old-fashioned buddy fic. And. Please tell me the fic exists where someone else on the team (I don't care who. They could tag-team it,) says, "McGarrett first returned to Honolulu on the trail of the killers of his father, and for reasons which don't require exploring at this juncture, remained attached as the leader of a special police task force under the command of the Governor."
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Sherlock uses social networking and internet in his investigations! Not as well as your version though, obviously.
Scully's mom lives in Baltimore! And just a few weeks ago Angela Montenegro said she was born there. I think fictional-Baltimore suffers from proximity to fictional-DC. But if you put Mulder or Brennan in Baltimore, I would totally read that.
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AMAZING
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I like your notions about modern!Holmes. And I can understand why you'd be disappointed, absolutely. I guess I'm okay with it mainly because it seems like Sherlock isn't, at his core, about forensics- which are just another tool he can use to collect data. He's more about observing things that other people don't notice, and putting data together in ways that wouldn't occur to a regular detective.
Any road, I think you should really watch the show, so you can criticize it properly.
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Yeah, and SPN had a couple of Baltimore episodes, and -- but none of them really have Baltimore as a character, you know? The way Chicago is a character for Dresden and dueSouth, the way DC is for Bones and XF (kinda); the way NYC is for Pundit fandom...
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(I think he also has a locked message board with a special cohort, recruited from /b/ and various other places, where he posts stuff even he doesn't think belongs on the open Web. The members of it may or may not believe they're actually part of an Alternate Reality Game.)
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Yeah, I don't necessarily think what they're doing with Sherlock's detectivinng is bad or anything, it's just that I don't really see (from the fanfic) how he's different in fundamental qualities from any other private detective. Which, I like detective stories, so fine, there's just lost potential there.
Someday I will probably watch the show. (After I watch the new Dirk Gently which is also sitting on my hard drive.) I think
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Oneof the writers is quoted as saying something like, "Detectives have cases. Sherlock Holmes has adventures." I'm not sure if that actually addresses your problem but I love it anyway.
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The detective I'm reading right now just rapelled from a helicopter onto a moving freight train in order to help a mob boss steal the Shroud of Turin for great justice. Lord Peter Wimsey went undercover for a year as a magical forest spirit/ad executive and worked for MI6 against the Nazis. Brother Cadfael sneaks into castles under siege to spirit out prisoners of war, stopping by secret bandits' hideouts on the way. Nancy Drew digs up buried treasure hidden under the Nazca Lines, dodging bad guys every step of the way. The Bobbsey Twins go on safari in Kenya and rescue kidnapped giraffes. Amelia Peabody is like Indiana Jones and Lawrence of Arabia combined, only with more murders. Temperance Brennan takes down motorcycle gangs single-handed and fights off wild coyotes to break into the headquarters of cannibalistic dark-magic cults in the depths of the Ozarks. (And that's only listing ones where the detectives stay on Earth...)
I guess what I'm saying is, when it comes to adventuring Holmes is only slightly more experienced than two six-year-olds from upstate New York. :P That is not what makes him special. Heck, I am told that even Nero Wolfe occasionally emerges from his brownstone to go back to being the international man of action he was in his youth.
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.. but speaking in-universe, it isn't his methods that make him uniquely useful to the police but the speed at which he applies them. He can see in minutes what might take Lestrade (or Agent Booth or Gwen Cooper) to get from a week of poring over evidence bags and photos. (I bet Lord Peter'd give him a run for his money though.)
Yeah, missed opportunity, but it's still good. And the production - artistic direction especially, also magnificent performances, good story with just the right amount of callbacks to the original, and a soundtrack I want to own - is really well done.
(What is this about a Dirk Gently series? Should I bother? Last time I read the book I'm afraid I found it a bit dull.)
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And in Dresden fandom people actually write sweet, schmoopy Harry/Moriarty. Um. I mean Marcone.No, I totally get that they didn't miss any of the fandom catnip checkboxes. :P
The Dirk Gently thing was a one-hour event; I think it was a pilot for an attempt to create another Sherlock, but AFAIK they aren't making any more. I haven't watched it yet, but have heard good things. (I really loved the first Dirk Gently novel - the one I later discovered was based on a couple of unfilmed Doctor Who scripts, so possibly no surprise there - but I had no patience for the second one, tbh.)
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.. I keep coming back to, more than three episodes is really quite necessary.
I remember loving Dirk Gently when I read it after HHG back in the day? But sometime last year I started rereading and barely made it through the first one, it was ... dull and predictable and not as funny as it thought it was and overall disappointing. Or possibly it didn't age well. I don't remember, I've erased it.