something queer going on

Within about 12 of hours of my telling myself, "I would love to read some Taskmaster fic once I'm caught up on the show, and maybe I'll request it for Yuletide, but I don't think I'll ever write any," I of course got a story idea.

The initial idea proved unworkable, but now I have a different idea that I'm liking a lot.

Thinking a bit about RPF and major real-world events in fic; under the spoiler cut thing.

I haven't written any RPF in a while, and now I'm thinking again about method. My current preference is to treat the show essentially as fiction: what's on screen is canon, while off-screen information such as interviews is not (though it can be incorporated if useful). It's a little bit tricky because I'm really really interested in the boundaries and bleed-through between stage personas and real life. But a lot of that is in the text already: onscreen we have Greg's adoring personal assistant Little Alex Horne, and sometimes something closer to what is presumably the actual Alex Horne who has a wife and kids and who is pretty much in charge of the show, plus a whole lot of gradations between them.

Maybe it's partly laziness: I don't want to do a research deep dive into Alex and Greg. Partly it's ostrich-ness: I don't want to find out that either of them is actually terrible (e.g. a homophobe, a TERF, a Tory). Partly it's my own preferences as a writer: I like having enough canon to inspire and not enough to constrain.

I used to be much more of a research fiend. Maybe I've been influenced by Our Flag Means Death to use what's interesting and leave the rest.

Another thing I've been musing on is how we include real life tragedies in fic. I just watched S10, the first season filmed during the COVID pandemic, and the story I want to write is, in part, about COVID. Specifically about COVID-related changes to how the show is made, and the effects COVID precautions have had on all our lives. It's not going to be about anybody getting sick. (And I did a cursory google to see if either Alex or Greg had family who died of COVID, and it seems they didn't. I would have shelved the idea if they had.)

On the one hand: using a mass death event as background to a story about other things, oh dear. On the other hand: COVID happened to all of us. A COVID fic isn't a disaster-tourism fic. COVID is, within certain boundaries, my story to tell as much as anyone else's. And I'm finding that I want to write about COVID. I want to begin reckoning with it. It's not over; its effects are ongoing, not just what looks like a new surge but the constant emergence of new long-COVID and post-COVID medical problems. But it's been three and a half years, and for better or worse, we have moved out of "beat the pandemic" mode and into "the pandemic is part of our lives forever." Many of us aren't the same people we were before, even if we were lucky enough to neither lose someone nor get seriously sick ourselves. We've had to consider togetherness and isolation, social ties and what they mean and what makes them real, in a way many of us never have before.

Thoughts welcome on any of this as I continue to ponder.

A quick final note: I finally realized what it is about Little Alex Horne that feels so familiar and appealing to me. The light dawned when Greg Davies made a joke about Alex's love for admin: LAH-Alex is Drumknott.* Or at least of the Drumknott type, with enough differences to keep it interesting.

(*Rufus Drumknott is secretary to the benevolent-ish tyrant Lord Vetinari in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. I wrote both a Drumknott/Vetinari ship manifesto and a longish fic about them. Admin is Drumknott's superpower; the climax of one novel involves him conducting an audit of a villain's business. I love him.)

I'm not sure how ranty these rants are, but I tried.

Spoilers are possible for any of the listed fandoms, although I've made huge/not ubiquitously known spoilers highlight-to-read.

brewsternorth asked about ( Raffles/Bunny )

biichan asked about ( Charles/Erik, X1-3 )

lilacsigil asked about ( Charles/Erik, XMFC )

executrix asked about ( Avon/Tarrant )

silver_sandals asked about ( Dax and Sisko, Deep Space 9 )

vandonovan asked about ( Spock/Uhura, any version )

ansketil_rose asked about ( Vetinari/Drumknott, Discworld )

mcicioni asked about ( Robbie Lewis/Laura Hobson, Lewis )

halotolerant asked about ( Tim Ferguson/Paul McDermott, Australian comedy RPS )

lady_twatterby asked about ( Holmes/Watson )

More responses to this meme. I got a bit verbose, but I guess that's sort of the point.

I've done my best to avoid major spoilers for recent or hard-to-find canon (sometimes by making them highlight-to-read), but minor spoilers abound and there may be spoilers in comments.

stunt_muppet asked about ( Antonio/Sebastian )

weird_cowgirl asked about ( Nicholas/Danny )

wolkendunst asked about ( Hornblower/Bush )

wolkendunst also asked about ( Vetinari/Drumknott )

silver_sandals asked about ( Three/Delgado!Master )

thevera asked about ( Giles/Oz )

Yesterday I proved my theory that the only way not to spend money is not to leave the house. I went out for non-book-buying purposes and nevertheless came back with a copy of Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals. I'd been resisting so nobly, and waiting for it to become available at my library! But I was 52nd in the library's queue, which has not moved at all in two weeks, and my patience finally surrendered to the urge to read it now.

So. Bought it, read it. It made me sad.

( major spoilers )