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Just coming up to eighteen months ago my world of fanfiction was turned on it's head by the series and fandom that we all know and love.
I was an occasional fic writer, either solely in the Sherlock TV fandom and a couple of crossovers, mostly case fic with a little Johnlock or Mystrade thrown in at the end. I had some supportive comments from those who read them but there are a number of really well established writers in the Sherlock fandom which made it very difficult to get noticed. Still I wrote 23 fics in around nine years and the amount of interest I received in comments and kudos was gratifying, if small.
I must confess that while I was aware of the Heartstopper cartoons, I had, shall I say, never really 'got into them', and I kind of forgot they existed. When Heartstopper launched on Netflix I didn't watch the series right away because of this, but once I did, well, we all know what happened. I posted my first fic on 15/5/22 and the rest is history. Thirteen new stories in the ten weeks to the 31st July, and not a child in the house washed.
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I have no idea where the idea for Behind Endurance came from but perhaps I was missing case fic, perhaps I wondered what might have happened if there had been no Nick in school to come between Charlie and Ben, and maybe what might happen if Ben had unlimited resources and Charlie had very little.
Perhaps another influence was I went to the cinema with my eldest on 7th August to see 'Where the Crawdads Sing'. Spoiler alert - maybe there was something about the crime within the narrative and the ambiguous ending that struck a chord in any case by the 17th I had the first two chapters complete and an outline for ten more although I expected it might to go to 18-20 chapters in total.
Little did I know what I had started.
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If anyone is still reading this is where the indulgence really takes off.
As I said I started my AO3 journey in the Sherlock fandom, back in 2013 when Moftiss still had some credibility and before they torpedoed their brilliant show with a combination of queerbaiting and schoolboy high jinks. Most of my 2020 fics were to combat lockdown loneliness and an attempt to redeem the mess the creators had made.
But I still love the stories and have fond memories for at least the first two series of Sherlock and there are homages to them in BE as follows:
The first chapter of BE is called Dull and we are introduced to adult Nick Nelson, single, living alone, teaching at a primary school in a very small village in Kent. His is a mundane, quiet and ordinary life. Towards the end of the chapter, just as he is on the brink of his world colliding with Charlie's, he contemplates about asking one of his parents, a divorced woman with a child in his class, on a date, but decides against it. I deliberately echoed Watson, brilliantly played by Martin Freeman here
But then, what would they even talk about, he has to be the world’s most boring man, nothing ever happens to me.
As for the rest, Charlie quotes Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes in Chapter 37 in his conversation with Isaac.
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“That’s Conan Doyle, Charlie. It is also known as the Holmesian fallacy because it has been disproved. It is impossible to know for certain that something is completely impossible, so you can never eliminate every possible scenario.
Mark Gatiss's Mycroft is quoted by Ryan in Chapter 48 where the police discuss the unsatisfactory outcome of the trial.
Ryan “Remember what Mycroft Holmes has to say about coincidences.”
“The universe is rarely so lazy.” Pud supplies.
There is certainly more than a little of Rupert Graves' Lestrade in DCI Wood
DCI Wood, Chip to his friends, Guv to his colleagues, Boss to everyone else, is eating lunch in his office, if you can call a cup of cold coffee and a doughnut lunch,
This being what Lestrade was doing when he was informed that Moriarty had broken into the Tower of London.
Two minor allusions, Anthea (the name Ben's mother adopts when she moves to the UK) is named for Mycroft's assistant in Sherlock - also not her real name.
As stated before, Will Dimmock, Tim-Nice-But-Dim, is named after DI Dimmock in the Sherlock episode 'The Blind Banker.'