The Sign of Four: First of Seven

[sanguinity]

Canon Story: The Sign of Four
Title: First of Seven
Author: sanguinity
Rating: G
Warnings: unhappy wlw. :-(

 

I stroked the gold of the chain, of Kate's throat.

"Mary, you musn't. You might need it someday, it's the only thing you have."

I shook my head. The pearl was insufficient for our little house; I could have no other need for it.

"My something borrowed, then," she pleaded.

Both chain and throat blurred, just like our little house.

 

Author's Notes Set roughly four months before my 221B, Prologue, which is itself a prequel for something else. The original story had the implication of a happy ending; perhaps as we go I'll find the opportunity to write that happy ending in earnest.

Comments

[debriswoman]

Poignant and wistful
I looked at the linked fic too...fits so well with this.

[sanguinity]

Thank you. I kinda hate leaving them here; I'll see what I can do to get them to a happier place.

[debriswoman]

Please do:-)

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Chains, yes, chains will chain one, won't they? Very poignant memento.

I read the meta and the 2 other fics. I liked your Mary & Kate. And I was surprised by how kind and understanding Watson and Mary were to each other. That seemed the most 'alternate' part of the alternate universe. Pleasant surprise, don't get me wrong.

[sanguinity]

This is my comfort fandom, damnit. I want to believe that Watson and Mary love each other as much as he claims, and that he's also the sort of man who would rise to the occasion, as needed. Besides, immediate appearances to the contrary, I don't actually like writing unhappy lesbians. I much prefer to write stories where people love each other well -- with compassion and kindness and a heaping dose of generosity -- and that turns out to be mostly enough.

*cough* By which I meant to say: I'm happy to know the surprise was pleasant. This really is a bit of a grim entrance path for "So Keen a Sympathy"; I'm pleased it paid off for you.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

I love your attitude. And it wasn't a surprise in comparison to other fiction; it was a surprise in comparison to life. That depth of kindness just seems...other-worldly.

It reminds me of when I first learned theu term 'mary sue' and realized with much chagrin that all my ladies (even fem!Moriarty!) were 'mary sues' but then I thought, 'shit, real life is so bloody rude, why not spend time in a universe where people--even the villains--are polite?!" So I don't worry about it anymore.

[sanguinity]

Well, fwiw, I have seen that kind of kindness/compassion/generosity in the world, although it does require the planets to align first. It's much easier to pull off when no one is required to sacrifice any significant part of their own hopes and dreams.

Bah, Sherlock Holmes is a Mary Sue, and I'll fight anyone who says he isn't. The only quality he's missing is the gender. (And possibly the extreme youth!) But you could run down an arbitrary checklist of Mary-Sue-ish attributes, and tick them off one-by-one that man. The raven hair, the exotic name, the way the narration worships him, his ability to heroically solve the things no one else can solve because he is just that brilliant...

I've yet to hear a sound explication of what is supposed to be so wrong with a so-called Mary Sue; it always seems to boil down to "juvenalia," "not to my taste," or misogynstic double-standards. (The first is just cruel -- we should never mock young writers for their writing -- the second should really be between you and your back-button, and the third is something that one shouldn't attempt to justify in public.) And yet that term is such an ubiquitous and all-powerful flail, that I spend a lot of time inadvertently fretting that my characters are "too Mary-Sue-ish," even though I don't buy into the legitimacy of that criticism at all.

And countered against that charge of Mary-Sue-ism is what you say: there are sound reasons to want characters who exemplify our standards of heroism, or love, or what-have-you. Writing a version of the world we might want to live in...? I'll always defend that as a thing worth doing. It's not the only reason to write, but it is a reason to write, and it's a solid one.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Ah. Having made that kind of sacrifice I don't suppose I'll see it. Reminds me of the Cumberbatch Outside article where he says we're teenage girls who write Sherlock in a way that our hearts won't get broken and me thinking that my heart is probably the last thing that I'm worried about being broken if some of my little stories are discovered.

Well put and as usual I like how your mind works.

[sanguinity]

:-( at having had to sacrifice such things. And yeah, it would affect the lens through which you meet that story.

Hm, google isn't coughing up the interview. I'm not really in that fandom, but my impression is that he's never had much on-point to say about fanworks.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Ach. Poor women.

[sanguinity]

Yeah. I'll have to see what I can do about getting them to a happier place.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Oh, so sad.

And your stories do bring up a interesting point for all universes - why does a poor governess hang onto valuable pearls instead of selling them?

[sanguinity]

omg, that point gave me the worst trouble when I was trying to build any kind of coherent backstory for Mary Morstan. (And it was only exacerbated by the research materials on governesses that I had at my disposal, which all suggested that governessing was a pretty crap life.) Her actions are custom-tailored for the convenience of the story Watson/Doyle is telling, but they're difficult to explain in their own right. iirc, there's an annotation in Klinger where someone suggested Mary was a bit of a limp nothing based on her inaction about the pearls, and all this backstory originated in my rebellion against that charge: after all, grief can cause people to shut down and not do much for a while. Or push them to assidiously avoid stirring up triggers for that grief, either one.

All that said, I still want the version where she receives the first pearl and goes around to knock on the door of her missing father's only friend to see if he can shed some light on the matter, only to discover the house decked in mourning and a pair of brothers a bit off of their heads from the combination of grief, deathbed confessions, and missing treasure.

/tilts head, considers

...which is possibly the sixty I should have written, but meh, there's time enough to write many things.