The rules of this circulating challenge are as follows: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world. tag as many writers/artists/etc as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

I haven’t been tagged for this, but I have seen this challenge go around during the last few days, and then decided to do this anyway, to give myself a little boost of morale.

Because, I have been struggling lately, to make progress with and let alone finish any of my fanwork projects. And as I came across this challenge, I thought I hadn’t completed five fanworks (gifs, edits, fics in my case), let alone more than five, in the last year.

But when I went and checked what I had created between May last year and May this year, I was surprised to find that I had created more than five fanworks, and that I even found it a little difficult to choose just five out of them.

So, here they are.

The first four are gifsets, the last one is a fic. (Just click on the underlined text, and it will lead you to the respective gifset or fic.)

In addition to linking to them, I am also going to use the opportunity and talk a little bit about what the works mean to me and about the thought processes which lie behind them.

1)

A gifset of Sherlock and John repeatedly ignoring Jim Moriarty at the pool (in TGG) and communicating with each other instead, via words, nods, looks.

This one actually forms a nice pair with another, second gifset that shows Sherlock and John communicating in their very own kind of language/ways.

(Yes I know, I am cheating a bit, putting two gifsets under point one, but these two sets just belong together.)

Recently, “myfirstisthefourth” commented on the second of the two gifsets in the following way: “YES!!!! The quiet subtleties of their relationship are practically Screaming. #communication #we have an understanding #a different kind of intimacy”

I couldn’t express it better myself, what these two gifsets are about. The intimacy and love between John and Sherlock, visible in the subtle ways they communicate with each other. And this is such a big part of what love and intimacy are about, aren’t they? To know and understand one another, and those times that one doesn’t, wanting to try and gain that understanding?

2)                                

The second fav I choose is one of the first gifsets I ever posted and also my most popular one to date. It’s a collection of Sherlock’s little appreciative smiles when John is being bold and clever, and/or supportive.

And I love this one myself, because, it raises the spirits, it shows how much Sherlock loves and appreciates John, how competent and intelligent John actually is, and, last but not least, it shows how well John understands Sherlock and how supportive he is of him.

Take the second gif, for example. Sebastian Wilkes has just demonstrated his disinterest and disregard for Sherlock’s deductions and for Sherlock himself.

John however, knows that Sherlock didn’t ask Sebastian’s secretary about his trips around the world. That Sherlock said that just to “irritate” Sebastian. John tells Sherlock that, and Sherlock smiles.

And then, John tops it all of with, unlike Sebastian, actually showing interest in Sherlock’s deductions, asking him, “How did you know?”

3)

My third fav is a gifset inspired by the song “Renegades” and Sherlock. 

This one is actually very personal and means a lot to me, even if that might not be apparent on first glance.

The song’s lyrics are a beautiful illustration of what Sherlock, the series, is about for me, of who Sherlock, the character, is in my eyes, and, consequently, of why I fell in love with both the series and the character. (I am not much of a fan of series 3 and series 4, but I still love series 1 and 2.)

At the beginning of ASIP, John's afraid to deviate from the norm, of not fitting in, that people will talk. He tries to live a normal, ordinary, civilian life, to function in society, but that's not who he is or what he can be.

On his blog, John describes Sherlock as someone who “sees through everything and everyone in seconds.”

And this is what Sherlock does when he first meets John, what he does for him. Sherlock sees him, really sees him, understands what kind of a person he is, the way he works, who he is.

Then he makes a plan of how to stop John’s leg hurting, of how to stop John hurting. Of how to give him back his agency, his confidence, and also fun and happiness in his life.

Sherlock comes along, gets John up on his feet again, and basically tells him: “People will always talk, that's what people do, but it's okay to be yourself, it’s okay to be different. And you are not alone, you can be different with me together. From now on, it's just us against the rest of the world.”

4)

Like the gifset before, this gifset, a crossover between Sherlock and the poem “Alone” written by Edgar Allan Poe, is also very personal and means a lot to me.

It is about Sherlock as a character. About him being and feeling out of sync with the world and other people. And the boredom, sadness, and loneliness he feels as a result.

I chose certain lines of the original poem and rearranged them, changing their chronological order. Then I matched them with gifs from certain scenes of Sherlock, illustrating them, and extending the meaning of both the lines themselves and the scenes.

5)

Last but not least, I choose my fic “ Sources of Light and Warmth” which I wrote and published in late summer/early autumn of last year.

It is a Johnlock fic, that imagines an alternative way of how Sherlock and John’s relationship could have progressed after s1.

This is how I summarized the fic on AO3:

Sherlock reopens his eyes to find John standing in the kitchen entrance, drying a mug with a towel and looking at him. “What were you thinking about?” John asks, a warm smile passing over his face. “You.”

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SAMINA BAIG – 5 FAVOURITE THINGS

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Five Favourites Thursday: February and March 2016.

As I didn’t do one of these for February and not a lot has happened this month, I thought I’d do a joint February/March FFT. Not only is today the last Thursday of the month, but it’s also the last day of the month, which always makes these Thursday Favourite posts all the more poignant for me. PUDDLE OF MUDD On Sunday my sister and I went to see Puddle of Mudd. Despite all the horror stories we…

Obviously I’m going to love anything about introducing someone to books. I also have a real soft spot for films which show elderly people to have full, enjoyable lives, with friends and interests and joys. And I love Gerard Depardieu. I think he’s brilliant in everything I’ve ever seen him in. This is available with English subtitles on Netflix UK.

2. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

After the first Hobbit film, which I didn’t enjoy at all, I wasn’t going to watch any more. However, my brother came to visit in November, and he talked me into watching this--and I loved it. I still have some of the same concerns about material being unnecessarily added, and I would much rather that they had made The Hobbit one excellent children’s film (in keeping with the spirit of the book) rather than a trilogy for adults, but I loved it all the same.

3. Monsters University

I wasn’t expecting to like this as much as I did--I’d seen mixed reviews. However, I always love campus films, and this was no exception. I especially liked all of the Harry Potter references.

4. Saving Mr Banks

Of course I loved this. It has Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, and Disneyland. I know they took massive artistic license with all of the facts. Don’t care.

5. Spy

Rather like the books, most of these were not new in 2015. (I’m not sure that any of them were). However, they formed the soundtrack to my year, in one way or another.

5) Rescue by Yuna.

I don’t have a lot to say about this song. I just really like it. It’s a great song for working out or going for a brisk walk. “Things were bad, but now she’s glad. Can’t you tell? She’s walking on air!”

4) Be Still, My Soul, by Katharina von Schegel, trans. Jane Laurie Borthwick (covered by BYU Vocal Point)

This will remain tied to my experience of reading Gilead, possibly forever. Beautiful song. This whole album was incredibly helpful for me during October/November this year when I was very sad, but I think this is my favourite song on it. “In every change, He, faithful, will remain.”

3) Simplicity by Rend Collective

This song has been very important in my relationship with God this year, especially the last couple of months. ”Give me a childlike heart/Lead me to where You are”.

2) Taylor the Latte Boy (covered by Kristin Chenoweth)

I don’t even care. This song is adorable and if you disagree I will fight you (probably I won’t really fight you). Also, I can totally understand falling in love with someone based purely on him providing you with coffee every morning. Spotify pointed me in this direction with my Discover Weekly playlist, and I’m so grateful. “Bring me java, bring me joy...”

1) Folding Chair by Regina Spektor.

I read very few 2015 releases this year, and I didn’t like the ones that I did read very much, so these are just books that were new to me this year that I loved the most:

5) Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. Immediately after I finished this, I wouldn’t have put it on my favourites list, but I read it back in February and I still can’t stop thinking about it--so it makes the list. Read this if you want to cry a lot and also if you like novels about women in WW2.

4) The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene. The only really chilling book I read this year--concerned with what happens if your belief system is based on external rules rather than internal values, and then one of your internal values and your external rules clash. It also explores issues of redemption from a very different perspective than my own. Gorgeous and sad and unputdownable.

3) Gaudy Night by DL Sayers. I have a soft spot for books set in the ivory towers of Oxbridge. This made me very grateful to be a female academic now, when, sure, there is still a glass ceiling in some fields, but so much of the groundwork has been done for me by the type of women who form the bulk of this book. I also really appreciated the way that Sayers worked to establish equality between Harriet and Peter before they entered into a relationship, particularly addressing the difference between “I worry about you but I know you have the confidence to cope with this dangerous venture” and “I’m worried about you, please sit at home like a proper little woman”. In fact, the Harriet/Peter relationship is one of my favourite in literature now--on a par with Benedick and Beatrice.

2) Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. This has cowboys in it and it made me feel like I’d gone on an adventure. Honestly, my analysis doesn’t go deeper than that. I’ll be rereading it. Probably quite a lot.