The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

[lightreads]

The Angel of the Crows

3/5. Genderqueer Sherlock historical wingfic, subgenre angels, that eventually becomes Holmes canon wingfic, subgenre angels, also werewolves, vampires, hellhounds, and Jack-the-Ripper.

I care very little for Holmes-related everything, but did enjoy this to a point. That point comes when I start asking okay….but why does this cost $28 while nearly everyone else is posting theirs for free on the AO3? It should not be a surprise to anyone that there are multiple kinds of privilege at work in who gets to sell their fanfiction and who doesn't. AT least it’s a woman who gets to do it this time, which makes a nice change. And it's not like – hm. I always twitch a bit through these arguments, because it's not like getting paid is the same as selling out, and it's not like there's some automatic virtue in participating in the fanfic gift community, but it's hard to have these conversations about who gets paid without assigning a lot of moral valence to one path or another. (And don't even get me started on the tumblr contingent who think all art should be free always and being charged ever for anything they enjoy is class warfare. Lol okay, child, you institute a system where no artists get paid and then we can talk about class warfare).

But . . . I'm trying to put my finger on something here. There is something about the wall-to-wall indulgence of this book, how it is clearly stuffed full of all the loosely-related things the author likes at the expense of things like a through line and pacing, which makes it feel particularly like fanfic even when it isn't lifting scenes wholesale from Sherlock. And even when it isn't lifting scenes wholesale and is off sort of doing its own thing – which it does, a bit, with the Sherlock character in particular – it has a density of reference that goes past charming into something else. Like the almost entirely offscreen character named for a Sayers character. And there's something about the fanfictionness of this whole thing and the fact that it is for sale that turns the density of references from charming into . . . cliquish? More like in-jokes than easter eggs. A thing that keeps people out rather than a thing that invites them further in, because it costs $28. IDK.

So does this totally belong on the AO3? Yep. Does the author deserve to get paid for it? Sure. Do I have complicated feelings about the intersection of those facts? Yeah.

Comments

[rivkat]

I had a very similar reaction, though I'm less bothered by the making money part because fuck the claimants to the Holmes estate in particular--they have been overclaiming their rights, if any, for decades. But definitely the author's id didn't overlap with my id in this particular instance, even though I've enjoyed her work a lot before.

[sgac]

I loved the author's earlier Melusine series under a different name, which was also very iddy in a completely different way. Unfortunately our Venn diagram was not overlapping at all here. This is the problem with id-fic and id-lit. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work at all.