Wrapping up Summer 2015

[holmesticemods]

Though we're all done with this round of Holmestice we have a few extra treats coming up in just a minute.

But first, the mods want to say THANK YOU to all the creators that joined us for this round of Holmestice. You folks put in a lot of hard work and made some really great fanworks. And thanks for sticking with us through the adjustment to using AO3. We think it's a really great system and we'll do better with ironing out the kinks next time. :)

Reveals and the Master List go up on June 21st, but until then read and comment on all the lovely fanworks here and on the AO3 collection.

If you'd like to take a guess at who created what in this round, a list of all the participants is below the LJ cut. Go ahead and take a guess. It's all in good fun.



amindamazed
biswholocked
blackbird_song
camillo1978
cathedralcarver
cherrytide
cleflink
colebaltblue
dioscureantwins
dognmonkeyshow
fleetwood_mouse
fyliwionvilyaer
gardnerhill
garonne
graycardinal
huntingospray
jolinarjackson
kestrel337
koshartu
lyricaxxx
meredydd
monkiainen
morelindo
oboetheres
saki101
sanguinity
scandalbaby
sherlockholmes
sherlockian4evr
snarryfool
solrosan
swissmarg
time_converges
vanetti
verdant_fire
x_disturbed_x
xfdryad
zerdavulpes



Go forth and leave love for your fellow Holmestice authors, artists, and fan mixers. See you again in the fall!

Comments

[ancientreader]

Fingering fleetwood_mouse for "The Ghosts of Our Old Loves."

(And shame on me for not including thanks and applause for the mods in the first version of this comment! I plead delirium, because I had just read "The Ghosts.")

[dioscureantwins.livejournal.com]

Sadly I haven't had time to read all the stories yet but I'm looking ahead to reading the rest. Thank you again, mods, for organising this.

[jolinarjackson.livejournal.com]

Thank you for organising this. It was great fun!
Haven't read all the stories yet, but they're bookmarked for catching up.

[cherrytide.livejournal.com]

Thanks mods, it's been great!

Also guessing wise - did sanguinity maybe write Setting the Sail, I wonder? It reminds me a bit of 'So Keen a Sympathy' from last Holmestice. In any case, both excellent ACD femmeslash pieces giving life to minor characters :)

[graycardinal]

I quite liked "Setting the Sail" myself, but if your guess is accurate then sanguinity may have had a very busy Holmestice, as I have come to believe that (despite an expert attempt at misdirection) "Echoes of the Past" is her work.

[cherrytide.livejournal.com]

The plot thickens!

[amindamazed.livejournal.com]

I still have a lot of reading to do, but universe notwithstanding, Echoes doesn't read like Sanguinity to me...

also unless there are heroic attempts at misdirection I would expect her to post on AO3

[graycardinal]

I admit to wondering about the posting-on-AO3 thing, too (and the tag-wrangling wackiness involving that other Holmes-in-the-future story initially confused matters even further -- if sanguinity didn't do mine, I think there's a chance she might have done that one).

In any case, I think there's definitely misdirection going on in that comment thread. If she didn't write "Echoes", I'd lay dollars to the proverbial doughnuts that she was its beta.

[sanguinity]

This comment thread amuses me. Would it be more fun to make honest guesses or to engage in (possibly further) misdirection? Such a difficult decision!

However, here is some additional data for your consideration: when I saw amindamazed this spring, I sat her down on the couch and made her watch several eps of SH22, enough that she has adequate knowledge to have written "Echoes." Furthermore, given that she offered Mary Russell, she might have been your match.

Means, and potentially the opportunity.

[amindamazed.livejournal.com]

this is all true.

[sanguinity]

Thank you. I suspect that graycardinal has begun to view me as something of a poisoned well.

Whereas you have never left a misleading comment on anything in your life, and you certainly don't know me well enough for us to possibly be in cahoots. :-)

[graycardinal]

[laughing]

No, no. When the accounts of this Holmestice are written and recorded for posterity, the story will begin this way:

"To graycardinal, she is always the woman."...

...and she will, of course, necessarily refer to sanguinity.

[sanguinity]

Aw. I can only hope that kind association survives the reveal. :-)

[graycardinal]

Ah, but *if* the suggestion that amindamazed wrote "Echoes" were true, and *if* her supposition that I wrote "A Matter of Memoirs" is also true (which might or might not actually be the case), then we'd be looking at a scenario in which amindamazed and I were each other's recipients. And that seems a trifle more...symmetrical than one would expect of our Beloved Moderators.

Also, I forget now where I read it, but I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the Holmestice message-stream there was a modly comment expressing pleasure at the prospect of Russell!fic this time around, which suggests to me that at least one of said Beloved Moderators is probably *also* literate in the Russellverse. And if that's the case, then that supplies at least one additional Russell-qualified writer....

[amindamazed.livejournal.com]

excellent point about a possible third Russell participant. however, last Holmestice my recipient also wrote my gift (and I see another pair among that set of Elementary gifts), so that sort of match-up can happen.

[colebaltblue.livejournal.com]

You are correct. Match-ups do happen. I do try to avoid them, and most of the time the occur by accident. It's interesting because they're less common than you might think even with rare pairs/fandoms since often what people are willing to write is broader than what they want to receive.

[sanguinity]

Hm. It's true that there's a mod on the participant list, despite said mod not having a posted sign-up. (*everyone turns to look at colebaltblue*) Are you thinking of this comment, or another?

[colebaltblue.livejournal.com]

Mods have been known to take the occasional pinch hit without posting the request to the community :-)

I will confess to 3 (exempting any unrevealed rounds, naturally) of my Holmestice productions to having been created as pinch hits.

[sanguinity]

Well done, you! And it was a pleasure to see this comment and know that you had remembered "Sympathy," let alone so kindly. :-)

[cherrytide.livejournal.com]

Yes, I got it right!

Of course I remember Sympathy left a lingering impression as did this one... two of my favourites from Holmestices past and present :)

[dogandmonkeyshow]

Thank you for organising this. It was my first holmstice and I may well be back for the next round as I enjoyed writing for this onr.

I hardly read any Sherlock fic so am not qualified to speculate on who may have written what, though I have a few suspicions and look forward to the reveal next week to see if they're correct.

[colebaltblue.livejournal.com]

Thanks for coming to play!

[colebaltblue.livejournal.com]

I think in terms of fandoms, this may have been our most diverse Holmestice ever. *brb going to check our stats*

[scandalbaby.livejournal.com]

Even from a casual glance it seems that way to me. There was far less BBC and a lot more of everything else that I saw. I was especially pleased with all the Elementary stuff! I have to settle in and read it all when I get over this cold.

As for my fic gift? I honestly have no idea who wrote it but I do very much bow down to them for being into as many iterations of Benedict Cumberbatch as I am. It really was a pleasant surprise, and the second round in a row where I've gotten a crossover pairing!

[graycardinal]

This is a pure guess, but I'll speculate that gardnerhill may be responsible for "On Verity and Verisimilitude", the TNG!Moriarty story written for me.

The story whose author I'm most curious about is "A Handsome and Generous People", because I know I didn't write it, I suspect sanguinity of having written too many other contributions to be responsible for it, and I very much doubt that its recipient (gardnerhill) wrote it. And that eliminates all of the best suspects. Except maybe TNG!Moriarty....

[amindamazed.livejournal.com]

I suspect you of writing "A Matter of Memoirs" for me for the simple reason that we were the only participants who mentioned Russell. As previously discussed that doesn't rule others out, but based on comments elsewhere, I've eliminated the same two ecumenical writers you just did: sanguinity (hasn't read them) and gardnerhill (doesn't like them).

[sanguinity]

Oh, wait, are reveals TODAY? Let's see if I can get my guesses posted before reveals happen, then. ;-)

Stitch in Time (Watson & Holmes): sherlockholmes
Lost Causes (Elementary): amindamazed
Missing (Elementary): time_converges
Conversations at Simpson's (ACD): garonne

...and everything else for which I'd submit guesses would be a spoiler, given the state of some of the comment threads above. (And we wouldn't want to spoil reveals when we still have, what, an hour and a half to go, would we?) ;-)

[time-converges.livejournal.com]

Oho, you are good at the guessing! :)

[sanguinity]

I was six-for-six this time (counting the guesses I didn't publish); last time, I missed them all, I think.

It helped immensely that I was assigned to garonne and that they wrote precisely the fic that they had requested. I read it and thought, "omg, you, mystery person whoever you are, you should have been assigned to garonne, this is so... one-hundred percent... on the... mark... for... including... even... WAIT."

As for you and amindamazed, she wrote as archetypically an amindamazed fic as I've ever read -- I don't think I was a half-dozen paragraphs in, before I had it pegged as hers -- and you included a "Telling the Bees" reference, which suggested that the author was perhaps someone I knew. (There are other ways of knowing about that custom, of course, but the detail was suggestive.)

As to the rest: there's not that many ecumenical writers in this exchange, and I already knew who authored the ones I wrote. :-P

[time-converges.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I pegged amindamazed's right away, too - hers was gorgeous and perfectly "her." And the telling the bees was totally from you. :)

[sanguinity]

Hers really was. :-)

And I was pleased and touched by the compliment, thank you. :-)