#so i was clearing my bookmarks on my browser because i had SO many dead links saved. i went through all of it one by one

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[thanks-mike-stamford]

Fics that inspire my writing - Part III

This is Part III (the last). Click for Part I or Part II.

So... hahaha I forgot to post the last part. Also: when I was finishing the last paragraph my browser refreshed tumblr and deleted almost the whole post, so this is a rewrite *deaded*.

I also kept changing the shortlist. Choosing just 10 fics was painful, there are just so many great works out there.

Reminder, this is a fic about writing, not necessarily favourites. This is explained better in Part I.

Here we go.

Part III

Collared by VelvetMace

Let's not talk about how Chameleon was never finished when it was right on the story climax and never brought from live-journal to AO3 like this author's other fics. In some ways I feel like Collared is Chameleon's kid, getting all the ambiguous feelings it's supposed to create on the reader, but making it better.

While both fics are supposed to make the reader uncomfortable, Collared made it better by removing a clear villain. Mycroft and Sherlock are still pretty on the fence, you can't quite place if they are supposed to be good or not. But the absence of someone clearly bad to contrast with them is genius. This fic makes me think a lot about morals in stories. While moral lessons seem a good idea for educational purposes, it's also a tiny bit patronising. They are for children's stories. This is not a story for kids at all. Mind me, there's definitely an entity of evil, namely the institutions that maintain slavery. But this is an abstract thing that you can't quite touch. There's no way to single out someone responsible for it. This means that both sides have ways to deal with it that will spillover to people that have nothing to do with it. There's also the factor of the romantic tension happening between John and Sherlock, that makes you oh so conflicted. It's not supposed to be right. It's probably not a relationship you'd approve in real life. And yet you want it to happen. It makes you be critical of some of John's decisions against better judgement. Suddenly you realise you're not thinking about the morality of the situation at all.

For appreciation of fiction in its pure form - removes your obligation of trying to be good and makes you just enjoy whatever is happening, this is the fic to go. I really want to work with something on this area in the future.

Among the Secret Things by Kate_Lear

You all must know that this fic is actually inspired by Lacuna by coloredink. It's actually the same story, except that the original one is told from John's POV and this one is Sherlock's POV. In the story, John loses all his memory from after he's deployed, including Sherlock.

I actually went with this one instead of the original exactly because of the change in POV, which is my main point here. In some stories the change in POV honestly doesn't matter, as the events are experienced in the same way. In those stories the only difference is the inner monologue. But not this one. Here the change of narrator perspective is essential. In the original one there's a plot twist that can only happen in John's POV, it wouldn't work otherwise, so I understand why the author went with that. But for me, the emotional impact is always what grabs me in a story, more than plot intricacies, even if they are satisfying and clever. And for the emotional impact to happen, we needed Sherlock to be the narrator. Mind me, of course John is going through a difficult time, but thanks to amnesia, he doesn't really know why. If he had chosen to move out and restart his life somewhere else along with his new memories, it wouldn't have made a difference. But Sherlock remembers what he lost, even with John still living with him, he's the one who hurts about their past, which they can't recover. We know what's going to happen in this fic, of course, because we read the original one, but that's not the point. Since we have Sherlock's POV, the same story becomes a different experience, this time more from the emotional side. It's genius.

This fic has taught me about the importance of choosing well your POV. If you want a specific type of impact, you need to know who in the story can deliver that.

Comorbidity by merripestin

It's funny, and it happens a lot to me, when you realise that you think you don't know an author and then you check your bookmarks and there are several fics from them. When I was shortlisting for this post, I noticed that there were two fics from this author. I ended up choosing this one (the other was Safe Distance by the way).

The two fics are not very similar, except for the fact that John indulges Sherlock just to keep him happy. Comorbidity is not so much about a kink considered deviant even by the kinky person themselves, but about the feelings of everyone involved. I feel like this fic specifically embodies everything I talked about in this series of posts. It uses sort of a dark theme, conflicted feelings from both the characters and the readers, plays with the morality of the situation, changes POV when it's important for the flow, uses non-linear narrative in a very clever way, it even shows character development and it's a short story. Some would say it's fucked up, but I feel like despite everything it proposes, it's so tender. A study in contradictions. The deviant kink is treated with respect, with conflicting views. There's no judgement, it's just "ok let's try to understand this". There's no characters compromising to each other or negotiation, instead we have "I want to do this for you even if I don't entirely approve of it myself". Nobody asks for anything, but they are given anyway. A fic about a kink but not in a sexual way, even if there's a lot of sex. During sex scenes the focus is mainly on their emotions and perceptions about each other than the acts themselves. It's a short story, but it has all the complexity that some novel-length works lack.

And because of this, it's the one that closes this series of posts. I wish I could write something like this.

If you missed the previous posts, just click: Part I or Part II.

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Android Fans Rejoice, Vivaldi Has Arrived

It’s time for me to go all fanboy on you guys, because Vivaldi is on Android, ya’ll! Vivaldi the browser, that is. You know, the one made by former Opera devs, and which is aimed at power users who want loads of customization and choice, plus a little privacy.

It’s the browser I’ve been using and only mildly worshipping for a while, now. Look, it’s just best if we make it clear that I am biased. Though I do worry that too many browsers are based on the Chromium project these days, I give Vivaldi a pass because it’s just that good. It’s been my day-to-day browser on the desktop since version 2.0 released in October 2018, and now it’s going to be my main browser on my phone.

Well, I might wait until it’s out of beta. We’ll see.

So what do you get in this version of Vivaldi for Android?

Vivaldi Features

Encrypted Sync – You can synchronize all of your bookmarks, history, and other data with the mobile version, no problem. Not done reading an article you started on your desktop or laptop? Open the menu and hit “Recent Tabs”. Tabs from other devices will be there too.

Notes: This is end-to-end encryption, so the people that make Vivaldi never see your data. It won’t sync your extensions, for obvious reasons.

Lite Mode – This is a browsing mode designed to save you data while you’re on the go. Like Opera’s Turbo Mode before it, it routes your browsing through their own servers, where they compress the data you receive on your end. I have no idea if this is encrypted, though. I haven’t been able to find too much in-depth information on this feature.

Notes – The Notes app in Vivaldi’s desktop version made it to the mobile version. They’re dead-simple text based notes, but they do get synced across devices with everything else.

Page Capture – It does what it says on the tin. You can capture what’s visible on your screen, or you can capture the whole darned page. Keep in mind that mobile pages can get very, very long, as the page’s width gets squished down to mobile sizes.

Search Engine Nicknames – So when you’re typing in a URL bar, you can type “g ducks” to search on Google for ducks, or “w ducks” to search Wikipedia, or “b Google” for reasons that I’m sure you can guess.

Reader Mode – This is a great feature that many other browsers already have, but hey, it’s good that Vivaldi has it, too. Cut out all distractions, and just get to the article already with the push of a button.

Tab Management – Okay, let’s be real. It’s easy enough to browse through your existing tabs, recently closed tabs, and even tabs from other devices. Those features are all well and good, but you’re just not going to get the same depth of tab organization tools. At least… not yet. It’s a beta of the first version, so I’d expect more advanced tab management to come along, down the road.

(Oh, and in this beta version, tab previews don’t always load.)

Private Browsing – It would be dumb if they didn’t have it.

Important features they didn’t bother to mention – As with the desktop version, one of Vivaldi’s strongest selling points is the feature that you will probably use only once: the settings screen. They’ve got loads of options that allow you to customize how the browser works, particularly in regards to privacy.

First Impressions of Vivaldi for Android

It feels snappy. For context, my current phone is a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A; it’s not particularly high-end, but it’s not slouch either. Even so, I’ve had Chrome and even Firefox sometimes feel sluggish and annoying. I’ve just started using Vivaldi, but I can say that so far it feels faster and smoother.

Will it stay that way? Time will tell.

As it is, they also pay attention to detail, and they are considering the needs of a variety of users. Case in point: there’s a button that allows you to access the search/URL bar at the bottom of the screen, so you can use the browser one-handed. Heck, it even makes two-handed browsing easier, depending on the size of your phone.

The one thing I most miss from the desktop version is an ad blocker. That’s right, no native ad blocking with Vivaldi on Android. It’s very sad.

All in all, though, I believe Vivaldi’s mobile version is a strong contender.

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