Reading Miss Fisher: Phryne in alternate universes
Phryne with feather -- not from bowerbird or magpie, though.
One of the things that excites me about fanfiction is the AU:s, alternate universes, because they truly make use of that mindset of ”what if” that I adore so much. I have before talked about collections of short fic in AU:s, now I’ll talk about some longer ones. There is a patchy line between AU:s and other ”what if this would happen”. Probably, it would be fair to say that AU has to be an alternate either within canon time, or completely outside of it -- if something is post-canon (post the rusty plane) I will count it as more of a continuation. The AU:s go in so many different and creative directions, shaping very different stories. Here I will talk about some AU:s; in a future post I will talk about a specific version, the modern AU:s.
First, a lovely story that is fully outside canon time, which means it is very properly an alternate world, @fahye’s ”fighting vainly the old ennui” (2014, 1 chapter). Here, the meeting of Phryne Fisher and Jack Robinson is completely rethought, as Phryne is turned into a kind of cheeky Robin Hood-type of thief (”the Bowerbird”) that leaves feathers of magpie and eludes and teases the inspector. This fic makes such a fresh and fun take on the story, keeping the personalities but changing the circumstances, and it is lovely to see how the different characters are protrayed with this slight alteration: Dot a fiercly loyal maid to the bowerbird who covers up her thefts; Dot and Hugh getting to know each other under other circumstances; a wonderfully wry Jack who comes to have Mac as a drinking buddy – a lovely combination and their dialogue is wonderful (”"You can relax, Inspector," she said. "Rest assured, I have no designs on your virtue"; "I don't allow self-pity in my drinking acquaintances"). We follow Jack’s POV -- it is really in many ways a charachter study of him -- and as he gets acquainted with all the others, we get new introductions and views of them, which is lovely. Phryne has contact with Jack in two ways, both socially as Miss Fisher and incognito as the Bowerbird, and there is delicious tension in both encounters. The communication between the Bowerbird and Jack is done via letters, as she starts to leave notes addressed to him on her crime scenes, and here – and nobody will be surprised to hear that I like this – literary quotes play a quite important part, among others ”Antony and Cleopatra”, Victor Hugo, and Dorothy Parker. The Bowerbird turns out to be a lovely and teasing pen pal, even though Jack never gets a chance to answer in this one-way communication (”He wanted to catch her, he was going to catch her, if only because he had so much to say.” :-)) and Mac a lovely and kind friend:
Jack smiled. Neither version of himself, before or just after the war, would have recognised him as he was now, with a lady physician as his foremost drinking companion and a jewel thief having replaced his mother as his most regular correspondent. People, lives, never could stop changing.
Finally, there is an encounter where Jack realizes that Miss Fisher and the thief are the same person, and in mortal danger, and this is a shock to his system: “A dam months in the building had been knocked to splinters in his gut. He wanted to yell at her, and undress her, and pour poetry into her mouth with his own.” So beautiful and sweet.
Another kind of AU is where most of the show’s world is kept, but with the exception that Phryne and Jack actually have started a proper relationship. So the question is “what if they already started a relationship?” or “what if they are phracking behind our backs?”. @phrynesboudoir/sassasam’s story ”Possibilites” (2015, 5 chapters so far; only available for logged in users) explores how this could fit into the show’s canon, starting with the last scene in “Murder and Mozzarella”. This turns into a both sweet and fun exploration of how they could be falling in love, using details in the show with a different tension and in a different fashion -- for example casting doubts on the identity of Phryne’s dance partner Francois, and creating the promised scene where Phryne actually does ‘psychoanalyze’ Jack. Likewise, in @omgimsarahtoo’s “One Gaudy Night” (2016, 13 chapters), there is also an in depth exploration of a relationship, in a slightly different manner. This story is made from the premise what could have happened if Jack gave in to the gaudy night suggestion in “Murder in the Dark" -- as a kind of comfort thing, without any pretence of a relationship or idea of a second time, but still without breaking their partnership or changing the rest of the story too much. “Just one night,” she agreed, “and then we are as we were before—partners and friends.” /---/ “That’s what friends are for, Jack”. That is an interesting angle, and means that the sexual relationship precedes the feelings. As the “gaudy night” is already in S1, this gives the writer so much to work with and challenge and adjust -- and so much that then comes to change because of “Blood at the Wheel” and its aftermath. Here there is plenty of opportunity for heartbreak, sorrow and insecurity, as well as questions on how to proceed from that. Interestingly, it is not until in the chapters of S3 that the story starts to diverge from the canon to a larger degree.
A first meeting.
One of the most elaborate AU:s of Miss Fisher’s world that is @firesign23’s “A Glass Splinter" (2016, 32 chapters). This story is partly similar to @fahye’s, in that it reconfigurates the settings of the story, and partly similar to @phrynesboudoir‘s and @omgimsarahtoo’s, in that it follows the show’s storyline kind of closely. The reconfiguration is “what if Phryne never inherited all that money? -- How would her life be, and how would she be as a person?” This turns into a long and completely intriguing exploration of how a very active and enterprising Phryne handles a massive amount of things, being a kind of lady detective but without some of the Miss Fisher flair.
The story starts with her going to Lydia Andrew’s home, where John Andrew’s has just been murdered, the big difference being that Phryne is not an old friend and in the same social class as Lydia, but rather a person wanting to invest in the business. And then, the Miss Fisher story is ON.
Phryne mostly meets the same persons, and a large part of the story is also here her meeting Jack and working cases more or less together. But she meets him from another position, less unequal in a class-sense, they don’t hit it off as easily as partners (her first thought about him is ”good-looking, she thought, with a serious sort of air that meant he'd be no fun at all”) and the tension between them takes on a slightly different quality. There are so many inspiring choices made here – for example, Phryne has chosen to marry Charlie Freeman, which means it is only a marriage of convenience and they are both free to pursue their own desires. This means that she is still in most ways a free woman (and if Charlie wasn’t in canon I would shout “OMG of all names you named her Freeman, that is so perfect!” :-)). This makes for a kind of shocking experience to me as a reader, as she is referred to as “Mrs Freeman”, but as she becomes widowed she goes back to “Miss Fisher” -- and throughout she is kind of slowly progressing in the fic towards becoming the Miss Fisher we know.
Also in this version, Phryne was a nurse in the war, but she never lived in England. Another change compared to canon is that Phryne and Jack start a sexual relationship already in what is the equivalent of S1, but it is neither a very happy nor a very romantic relationship, rather the ground for incredible and beautiful amounts of angst and heartbreak. It is such an interesting detail that when they do have sex, it is almost always because one of them is hurt and sad and in some kind of need.
The story alternates between Phryne’s and Jack’s perpectives, and the inner thoughts work very well both to illuminate these versions of them, and the show’s versions. Like Phryne’s first assessments of Hugh and Dot:
The weak link was probably the constable she saw in the entrance as she came in; very green and a little sweet, and probably terrified by Phryne's forms of flirtations. That maid that had greeted her was still hovering by the doorway with a tea tray though, and that showed promise.
There are too many clever details in this story to discuss here. Suffice to say that it is this alternate universe’s version of “Blood at the Wheel” (chapter 26) that has the haunting use of a Shakespeare sonnet that I mentioned in an earlier post.
(images from here)
