holmestice | Guessing Post

Thank you so much for another wonderful round of Holmestice! The mods want to say THANK YOU to all the creators who joined us for this round. You put in a lot of hard work and made some really great fanworks.

Reveals and the Master List go up on June 28th. Until then, please enjoy and comment on all the lovely fanworks. Creators, please do NOT respond to Dreamwidth comments or post your fanwork elsewhere on the Internet until reveals go up in the community. (You may of course reply to comments on AO3, which preserves your anonymity.)

But we're not done yet -- treats are coming right up! We'll continue to accept treats right through until reveals, so if there's a prompt for which you want to whip something up, please do! Just send it to holmesticemods@gmail.com using the regular submission guidelines.

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

ETA: Eeep! The earlier version of the list of creators had some errors, but it should be right now! (We hope!)

a_different_equation

alexcat

ancientreader

angelqueen04

camillo1978

clearinghouse

colebaltblue

discordantwords

dogandmonkeyshow

dryadinthegrove

gardnerhill

graycardinal

ireallyshouldbedrawing

iwantthatcoat

marta_bee

monkiainen

nairobiwonders

nottoolateforthegame

oldshrewsburyian

rachelindeed

sanguinity

sanspatronymic

tazlet

trobadora

valdavermillion

write_out

Go forth and leave love for your fellow Holmestice authors, artists, vidders, and podficcers. See you again on the 28th, when we reveal who made what!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I may actually be getting better at this Spreadsheet of Doom business...but we'll see. The good news is that a sizeable chunk of the work is done; the bad news is that almost none of it appears to have done much good in narrowing the pool on the ACD-canon side of the equation. If the columnar data is to be believed, the half-dozen recipients of ACD stories map virtually exactly onto the half-dozen writers of ACD stories, which seems entirely too tidy to be plausible -- and yet, there it is.

So: herewith guesses for all the non-ACD prose entries plus the podfic. ACD and artwork will be along later....

Vid
Shut Up and Drive:

sanguinity

Even if there weren't only one vid offer in the spreadsheet, this one would be ridiculously obvious.

Podfic
Mentor:

marta_bee

My problem here is that of the three people who offered podfic, one is this gift's recipient, one has left a comment and kudos over on AO3, and I'm almost certain the third has to have written one of the "Study in Emerald" fics. By extrapolation, that means the podfic is either a double work or a pinch hit, and I choose to guess the latter.

BBC/Sherlock
Carpe Vinum:

discordantwords
Lilacs:

write_out
One Tale in Four Books:

dogandmonkeyshow
Untold Stories:

dryadinthegrove

Despite not actually having seen much BBC/Sherlock, I think I'm getting a handle on the writers of such in our little pond. (Also, one of these can be deduced from external data, and that helps sort out the others.)

Elementary
Case of the Missing Detective:

magnetic_pole

Study in Emerald
Making a Case:

trobadora
Charon's Obol:

oldshrewsburyian

This pair of guesses is extrapolated partly from known Moriarty partisanship and partly from reconsideration of signup material.

Enola Holmes
By Any Other Name:

marta_bee
Norbury Possibility:

angelqueen04

Two Enola Holmes stories, three offers...but

gardnerhill is committed elsewhere, and while it's theoretically possible

sanguinity wrote one of these in addition to the vid, the overall math says that's unlikely. That says one of these may be a pinch hit. (It also says I may be wrong about the podfic guess, but what can you do?)

Houdini vs. Holmes
Escapade:

clearinghouse

To judge from the signups, the likeliest writer of this story is its recipient...except that multiple datapoints make that impossible. This is my next-best guess.

Solar Pons (etc.)
The Retired Novelist:

tazlet

I almost assigned this elsewhere, but then I happened to glance back at the signups, and I do believe my estimable creator gave the game away with certain remarks about one of the crossover characters in this delightful romp.

Rathbone films
The Blue Parrot:

gardnerhill

Having concluded that

gardnerhill didn't write my gift story, this is the only other piece in the round that strikes me as having the particular buckle and swash that we've come to associate with the Queen of Versatility....
[ETA: Except of course that they left the first comment on this story, and I don't think we've gotten that sneaky around here even yet. Must rethink....]

Ritchie films
Time Best Spent:

colebaltblue

Instinct drives this guess. Instinct has not always served me well in these endeavors, but there you are.

Edited 2018-06-22 05:30 (UTC)

Nope!

Oh, good, the pointing and laughing has begun!

No, seriously; as

sanguinity has often noted, half the fun of the guessing phase is the byplay as people shoot down each other's theories and attempt to deflect suspicion from themselves. And like Holmes in the Russellverse, I am perfectly happy in the role of occasional comic relief.

(Even if certain people know too much to file guesses as such, I am astonished at the lack of attention given to my earlier clues....)

Oh, the delighted laughter has been going on throughout! But I have been determinedly sitting on my hands to keep from replying to your hints and guesses, because sadly, every reply I've wanted to make is a spoiler. But do please know that I am highly entertained. :-D

Edited 2018-06-23 16:26 (UTC)

Hmmmmmmm.

Two truths and a lie:
1) one of the creators above did, in fact, create one of the stories you named above, but your guess is incorrect as to which one
2) that creator created two gifts, the other which is also incorrectly guessed at
3) I am lying above one of the above facts

Hmmmmmmmm.

(Wait, there's an echo in here....)

#1 is practically a foregone conclusion.
#2 and #3 mirror one another.
(If #2 is true, #3 is a lie; if #2 is a lie, #3 is true.)
That being the case, there's not much else to be reasoned from these statements.

A very, very late observation, with respect to "The Retired Novelist":

In leaping on the Dr. Strange references in

tazlet's signup, I overlooked a singular and non-trivial clue in the anonymous author's reply to my comment over on AO3 -- namely, their reference to the character of Diana Winthrop and the nod in the story to some of that character's relatives. That clue points in an entirely different direction, because it very strongly indicates that the author is a reader either of my own DW journal or (more likely) the

fic_corner exchange's DW community.

And that clue points not only away from

tazlet, but toward a writer no one else has tagged for the story: namely,

sanguinity herself.

I am torn. I don't think it's impossible; she's done multiple gifts before, and is certainly capable of having written the story, but the style is somewhat different from her usual, and I have been severely misled before in assigning work to

sanguinity that's not hers at all.

OTOH, it would explain a great deal about some of the conversations in the guessing post this round....

*mysterious smile*

Tell me, what convos would it explain?

For one thing, it could put a new light on

colebaltblue's two truths and a lie, because that might make their #1 the lie, a possibility I had not seriously considered -- and which would make the triad a considerably more specific nudge-wink, rather than the very general bit of logic it is in either of the other two cases.

And it might also explain why

colebaltblue brought out the popcorn during my exchange with

scfrankles about "The Retired Novelist", since if you're the author that thread has both of us being hopelessly wrong....

Edited 2018-06-26 20:43 (UTC)

A more parsimonious explanation of these things is that

colebaltblue is an agent of chaos. Which she is.

Sadly, no, I didn't author "Retired Novelist"! I've read the Solar Pons story, but I confess to ignorance re Guardians, Infinity War, and Diana Winthrop. I am, however, flattered by the guess. :-)

Guessing Post

Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)

Re: Guesswork of Doom (Act I)