No. No, no, no, no, and just in case you were wondering, no.

What makes Sherlock Holmes iconic? Oh, I dunno, could it be his powers of observation and his clever deductions? Reboot, don't reinvent. At least not if you want your central character to be Holmes and not some original character who happens to share the same name. Want a Conan Doyle character who might credibly swashbuckle? Try Professor Challenger instead. Or move further afield to Allan Quatermain. All of those characters have baggage, but I'm sure Guy Ritchie can blithely ignore it.

(Discovered via agilesreader.)

PS to all concerned: Hugh Laurie is already playing Holmes weekly, on American television. If he's smart, he'll find new territory.

Title: Baritsu
Pairing: none
Rating: FRT
Prompt: nutterbudgie wants "Holmes! Giles snark at! Maybe w/Buffy being snark-supportive?"
Summary: Buffy demands an explanation.
Word count: 1000
Notes: In the universe of The Adventure of the Displaced Watcher. Just a tad cracky.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I claim no ownership and am making no money.

( Something crashed in the room upstairs. )

About the game: Rules and previous ficlets
Next up: First responder to this post gets to pick the Giles-related prompt for the next.

( Because I keep relaxing them, a brief rules review... )

Holmes and Watson, original poster children for slashy UST. And yes, I see the slash there. But... I cannot write it, and now I find that I cannot read it, either. Especially when it gets gooey. My ship there is friendship.

Carry on!

With Giles in it, of course. And Ethan. And Giles brings Buffy back this time, and there is much comedy.

Have been skimming around in dammit_holmes, which is a community about the Laurie R. King Holmes/Russell books. About which I have mixed feelings. Apparently the one I haven't read yet, the newest, is annoying a lot of smart readers, who feel it carries Russell from mere quite-Mary-Sue-ish to over-the-top Sue, and inconsistent to boot. Though I am likely oversimplifying the objections.

Sigh.

I disagree with the criticisms of LRK here, in re a lack of research about skin dye. This seems to me to be like Hamlet dispensing with his opposition off-stage so he can head back to Denmark. (R&G, they're dead, you know?) It's not important to the story, so nod to it and move on. Okay, avoid blatant impossibilities, but I'm okay with the suggestion that "yucky skin dye exists; they use it; it works". An SF writer might have pickier reader standards to live up to, but not a mystery writer who's repurposing Holmes to give him a love interest.

An example of a detail that does not particularly need to be perfect to keep the fictional dream chugging. Though perhaps she's a sloppy writer in other ways.

But in the end I come down on the same side as singer_d: Doyle's Holmes is a very different man from King's Holmes. She's writing fanfic (cough, excuse me, pastiches) so that's fine. We're all okay with it. But I prefer the original.

Probably because I am fond of Watson.

Draft complete. I still have that warm feeling, that "goodness, this one might not suck" glow that you get and sometimes enjoy for a day or two before realizing that no, in fact everything you write still sucks. I'm sure you know the feeling. And if you don't, please go away because your smug contentment with your lot in life might well move me to implode.

I am having that "must show to others" feeling that I have been attempting to cultivate in myself. Am resisting giving into it. Must practice sending things to a beta reader. Must remain calm.

Me & scansion: not good friends.
In fact, I'd say we're locked in a struggle to the death at the moment, and I'm not winning.

On the plus side: Holmes-Giles revision finished any second now. Perhaps shortly after I scrounge up some dinner for myself. And wow, this draft was worth it, 'cause it's better now. Possibly it's even readable.

Draft 1.5 is now well underway. I figure I must fix the stuff I know to be problems before I let a beta-reader see it. This has nothing to do with my neurosis about letting other people read my stories. Nothing at all. I assure you.

The scary thing about draft 1.5: sequel potential is now solidly in place. There are loose ends that I will leave dangling, attractive nuisances.

Need Holmes-Watson-Giles icon. Or at least Watson-Giles icon. Must commission one. How does one go about doing that? Find artist, beg, I guess.

My husband is now starting to press me to finish the Holmes story. This morning, on his way out to walk the dogs, he said, "Are you done yet?"

"I thought you said it needed a line-editing pass!"

"Well, have you done it yet? I thought it was pretty close to being finished. You know, many perfectly good stories have been ruined by their fourth and fifth drafts."

Okay, okay!

This Saturday I'll be making BPAL-scented soap with a friend, and road-tripping to Santa Cruz, but Sunday is free and clear for Holmes-ing. Alas, our soap-making will not be preceded by a daring midnight raid on liposuction dumpsters, nor by macho posturing with lye. Since this is my first time, there will be no lye at all. But it should involve a lot of sniffing and squeeing.

I did in fact just finish a draft of the Holmes story. 17.5K words. It's not so bad. There's a darling I have to cut, and the Latin incantations still to write, but that stuff can be done any time. I'm still not sure I want to let other people read it just yet. Not until I've had a chance to read it start to finish, cold, and iron out the worst of the infelicities in the prose.

Sorry for all the yammering today. Six posts. Jeebus.

It's a GIP! I've been icon-hunting while Mr Pedia reads the Holmes story and complains that I need to make my ACD/Watson voice more florid.

Check out artintheblood's Holmes & Wimsey icons. Nice, nice. The icons include this lovely one featuring the wonderful Eric Porter as Moriarty. Of course I am all about Porter's Soames Forsyte, Mr Sulky, but I also think his Moriarty was appropriately reptilian.

I am assailed with doubts about my plot. Gonna try to push through them and finish a draft anyway, even if it turns out I must tear it to pieces. Bwaaah! I'm not good enough to be writing this story!

Not a bad day's writing. Wrote the first-attempt-at-mumble scene, which leaves our heroes in a worse pickle than they were to start with. Fiddled around a little bit with the parts that are already writtten. >15K words.

Mostly what remains is the climactic scene. I have that well blocked-out; shouldn't be too bad. I know its starting point and endpoint, so I don't think I'll encounter any surprises as it goes. I also have some magic incantations to write and then painfully translate into Latin, dictionary & grammar in hand.

I should be able to finish a first draft tomorrow, if I can't tonight. Right now I need a break.

Wow, that was a decent day of writing. Nearly 12K words into the Holmes-Watson-Giles thing. Several sections remain to be written, including the climactic scene with fisticuffs and magic. Which scene I am putting in Watson's capable hands. I did write the final Giles diary section, then a third-person epilogue, so I know what I'm aiming for. I might yet cut the epilogue as being sentimental tripe, but I can wait until I'm reviewing the whole thing before I make that decision.

The writing has been going well, which probably means it's crap.

I wonder if I should Anglicize all the spelling. Suppose I can also wait to make that decision.

My regular Sunday morning bath featured some Lush chocolatey bubble bath and a reading of "A scandal in Bohemia". I read sections of it aloud to Mr Pedia. This is a wonderful thing to do with prose, by the way. I mean, not taking valuable books and reading them in the bath, which always makes the spousal unit blanch, but reading the words contained therein out loud.

( Worrying over ACDoyle... )

I was just doing some quick reading on Wilkie Collins, to see if Giles and Watson might be likely to have a conversation about his novels. Watson would be interested, since The Moonstone is usually labeled the first English-language detective story. (The two might discuss Huck Finn, but I think Watson unlikely to have read it.)

What a whacky weird life Collins led, huh? Opium addiction, ongoing long-term relationships with two women, big buddies with Dickens.

[Edit] More with the research! YouTube, home of pirated video, has a crappy selection of G&S. Practically the only decent clip is this song from Patience, featuring the excellent Bunthorne of Dennis Olsen. (NB: Giles and Watson go to see the Mikado in its final month at the Savoy. Which is the bit I'm writing now. Perhaps for (cough) research I will go re-watch Topsy-Turvy)

The jetlag has been useful. I woke up at 5 this morning and had several hours to write before I had to go anywhere. The morning writing turned out well. I wrote the next section of the Giles-meets-Holmes story today. Third section, Giles journal excerpt, covering Giles' visit to the Council and his attempt to convince them he's a Watcher from their future. I have the story sketched out, so I know what happens in blurry detail, what all the crisis points are and so on, but not in great detail. Was somewhat surprised by what I ended up putting in this section. Going well. Has a working title: The adventure of the displaced Watcher. Prosaic, but serves to remind me of just what the heck I need to stay focused on.

I also made a ton of notes about how the Core Four story needs to be modified, and even did some of the work. And then allthejellies prompt set 6 set off a Core Four sequel bunny. Eek.

And then while watching a build tick by at work, synapses started firing on the topic of the Novel-Length Bond Story aka N-LBS. I'll probably spend my writing time this evening on that.

I'm clearly in one of those creative burst phases. I've been in them before, with software instead of fiction. Brain sparking constantly with ideas; constant desire to work; massive burst of overall productivity. Must milk it.

Or maybe it's just summer daylight-induced mania.

PS: I need a good Holmes icon!

Last day in London before we fly back tomorrow, and I have chosen to spend it flat on my back with a bad cold. Bleah, bleah, bleah, and a thousand curses. The husband is off at the Tate Britain, my second favorite London museum. I might stagger out to get some decaf something or other, just to get myself out of the hotel room for a couple hours. And I'll probably work on the Holmes story.

I've gotten most of the way through the deductions set piece. I'm at the required "Holmes explains the deductions to Watson" phase. Giles, who is familiar with the great man's methods, does not need the explanations, but is in a state of bemused awe as he watches the familiar process in person.

It's kind of a neat writing challenge: Imitate first-person Watson style, as seen in his journal. Which doesn't have to quite be the same as the published stories, but needs to be close. Through Watson's writing, show off Holmes, and Watson's attitude toward Holmes. Show Giles, and Giles' reactions to the famous men in the room with him, in terms that would be natural for Watson but give my clued-in modern readers more information than Watson himself gleans. And we can't help but learn all about Watson, so get that right too.

This is a standard first-person viewpoint writing problem, now that I think about it. Fun fun fun!

The Giles bits are easier, I think, because he has more information to start with. He's closer to the viewpoint of the reader. I can also make him more self-reflective than Watson might be. Or so I'm thinking right now.

Greenwich: visited. Prime meridian: straddled. Many miles of London streets: walked with my husband. My husband's approach to cities is quite different from my sister's. She liked taking subways. He comes from a train buff family, a model railroading family, so he approves of trains. But what he really likes to do is just walk through cities. He'll pick a vague destination and then head off in that direction, with me in tow.

I've seen lots of London in the last two days. I unfortunately have blisters on the back of my heels from the day I got soaked in Oxford, but otherwise this walking tour is awesome. I have seen many neat places this way.

Tonight we walked into Islington and I giggled. The husband asked why, and I said that that I had just one literary association with Islington: the telephone number of a flat, where Arthur Dent met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with. We then found an Italian restaurant that had good food but horrible service, in contrast with the Italian restaurant we ate at a few days ago, which had merely okay food but endearingly crankily good service.

Then we trudged back to the hotel, where we sat in the bar with our Powerbooks and worked on projects and drank. I had some whisky. I figure that will either kill all the germs lurking in my sore throat, or make me really amazingly sick tomorrow.

And, finally reaching an item that you are interested in, dear readers, I also got a really good start on writing the Giles-meets-Holmes story. I did the first Giles journal section, and have made excellent headway on the first Watson journal section. This is the section that has the set piece where Holmes examines Giles and makes deductions about him, so it's the one that intimidates me the most. I'm just plowing on through it, though. My Conan Doyle imitation needs a little work, but that's okay.

Write a first draft. Don't worry if the first draft sucks or not. It probably does. That's the job of a first draft: to suck. You can make it better later. Don't panic! Just keep writing.

I have the Holmes story outlined, with the basic shape of the mystery in place. I have a setting (January 2001 -> January 1886) and a mechanism to set the plot in motion. I also know how to write it: alternating first person viewpoints of Giles and Watson. Perhaps in the form of journal entries written by each. (I was pretty sure I'd do that for Watson; just now occurred to me that I need to do it for Giles as well. Okay, I'm committed.) I keep wanting to write action-adventure with Giles. The climactic scene is fisticuffs at night as the three men burgle a house to recover an artifact essential to Giles' return.

I am amused to note Holmes's fanonical birthday, as mentioned in the excellent wikipedia article, is January 6, 1854. Therefore he's nearly exactly 100 years older than our man Rupert.

I have Baring-Gould at home. Must skim it, as well as re-read the stories set in that year. Though I remember "The resident patient" pretty well. The Holmes chronology is so screwy. Pardon me for saying this, because I do love him, but Conan Doyle was such a freakin' hack. Couldn't keep Watson's marriages straight; couldn't keep the location of his war wound straight; couldn't keep his damn middle name straight. The dates I can cope with. We can just pretend that Watson was playing games with dates to obscure identities. But really, that war wound...

Don't want to deep-end on research, though. I think I need to just fling myself into that Holmes-inspecting-Giles scene.

I just had a scene run in my head in full technicolor: Giles bursting into Holmes' study, with a pretty little problem for Holmes to solve. If Giles can first solve the problem of convincing Holmes that he's not a madman, that is. Which he does, in the scene I'm seeing, mostly by standing still and letting Holmes take in the details of his dress and speech. That's the part I really want to write, the Holmes mind in action when presented with a man from 110 years in the future.

Setup can be pretty standard: Ethan gives Giles a booby-trapped artifact. Zap across time. (Let's play the Game and assume that Holmes was a real historical personage in the Buffyverse.) Somebody steals the artifact from Giles. He needs it back so he can get back. Who else to turn to in this hopeless case but the specialist in hopeless cases?

Standard Doyle mode: Watson writing first person, so we get Giles first-hand from Watson, then second-hand in what Holmes chooses to say about him. Set it mid-1880s, pre-Reichenbach Falls. Giles can be a little thrilled to see Gilded Age London-- take in G&S at the Savoy, visit interesting locations destroyed in the Blitz, be appalled by the experience of the Tube, visit a tailor, become impatient with some social issue (probably to do with feminism, which Giles will take for granted). And of course he visits the Watchers of the time. (Interesting question to answer: why doesn't he go to the Watchers first instead of Holmes?)

Oh dear, this plot bunny has a twitchy little nose.