Guessing Post

[holmesticemods]

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 December 21st. 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 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.


796116311389 / redpenrevolution
a_different_equation
alexcat
belle82devart
colebaltblue
disheveledcurls
dogandmonkeyshow
dovahlock221
dryadinthegrove
elwinglyre
fridaythegowerstreetcat
gardnerhill
graycardinal
hp_swl_cumbercookie
ireallyshouldbedrawing
iwantthatcoat
keenir
bererjs
lamplighter1890
language_escapes
luthienberen
merindab
mightymads
milverton
monkiainen
nottoolateforthegame
orchid314
pagimag
penaltywaltz
phoenixfalls
pipmer1
rachelindeed
sanguinity
sanspatronymic
scfrankles
shinychimera
smallhobbit
starfishstar
tassynicole
tei
tripleransom
trobadora
venusinthenight
whoufflelover24
write_out


Go forth and leave love for your fellow Holmestice authors, artists, and vidders, and keep an eye out for the upcoming treats. See you again on the 21st, when we reveal who made what!

Comments

[starfishstar]

Hello! I'm back! I have guesses! Oh boy do I have guesses. :-)

(We've talked before, right, about the irony that Holmes never guesses, yet we spend a week after each round doing nothing but?)

Part 1 is...

FIC: THE RAREST 'VERSES

GRANADA: Ore of Silver – tassynicole, because this is the only fic that matches their offers and also isn't on AO3. AND, if I'm remembering the right person of Three Patch Podcast fame, they're a doctor in real life, so writing about doctors fits too, maybe?

RATHBONE: Recovery – luthienberen (by process of elimination of others I'll list elsewhere)

MY DEARLY BELOVED DETECTIVE: re-write the future / start from scratch – ooh, this was the gift to me, but I'm still not quite sure who wrote it. But by process of elimination elsewhere, and maybe also the title, I guess phoenixfalls

221B BAKER TOWERS:
Two fics and only one person who offered! It seems almost too obvious to guess Tei, the only offer-er...but I suppose I'm going to do that anyway. Which fic, though? The one where the author thanks hp_swl_cumbercookie, someone Tei appears to also be friends with. :-)
Deduction, Translation, and Other Domestic Arts – tei
Do You Observe? – yes, yes, I know you're all guessing me for this, but that's missing the crucial piece of evidence that not only did I 1) not offer the 'verse (despite requesting it!) but 2) as recently as in the sign-ups themselves, I was publicly admitting to sanguinity that I didn't feel qualified to write it. For sure I could have decided to write it even though I'd only requested and not offered...but that position is also true of venusinthenight or language_escapes

A STUDY IN EMERALD: The Evil Men Do – it's driving me nuts that I can't figure this one out – only one fic in this 'verse, I should be able to do it. But after some process of elimination elsewhere, I think I'm down to either alexcat or Belle82DevArt. Purely on the fact that they've written in this 'verse before (an admittedly flimsy basis!) I'll go with alexcat

HOWARD HOLMES: The Case of the Perfect Husband – the mention of Peepolykus clinches it – a_different_equation :-) (who admittedly didn't offer this 'verse, but the author's notes show the author really went out of their way to write something super rare for their recipient!)

CHRISTOPHER LEE FILMS: Bright Sons of the British Empire – keenir, as the only person besides the recipient to offer this 'verse

MISS SHERLOCK: Kintsugi – gardnerhill, another only offer-er

1994 BAKER STREET: The Next World – sanguinity, as the only person besides the recipient to offer it; though I didn't necessarily recognize it as Sang otherwise, and I've read enough of Sang's work that I really should be able to know it on sight! Then again... a gen fic in a super rare 'verse, where two people are sometimes prickly but overall try to do their best by each other and show their caring? With real-world history about the AIDS crisis, plus delightful bonus science bits (tardigrades!)? Yeah, maybe it's Sang after all. ;-)

THE NEWLY DISCOVERED CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: The Empty Audience – ohhhh, man, I can't stop pondering this one! No one but the recipient offered this 'verse, so someone has been wonderfully sneaky.

My foremost guess continues to be scfrankles...no, hear me out! I know we don't think of Frankles as writing sex scenes (even in comedy form), but everything else about this is very Frankles (and rachelindeed did say above that Frankles has been wanting to branch into new styles): it's classic-style radio comedy and even written in radio script format, it's full of great jokes, there's a CABIN PRESSURE REFERENCE...and since no one could have matched with the recipient on this 'verse, they have to have matched on something else, and knowing the mods they surely went for the rarer match if possible, which surely means Whitehead, which means scfrankles, luthienberen, or sanguinity – of those, I say scfrankles. (Who, I'll point out, hasn't commented on this fic despite it being clearly of interest, as described above.) But...porn? and the American spelling of "traveling"? (I mean, if anyone would deliberately misspell a word to throw guessers off track, it's probably Frankles, but still.) And the author's comments on the fic don't quite sound like Frankles to me.

So then I thought of graycardinal, another known chameleon who knows literally more 'verses than can be listed in a Holmestice sign-up. gray_cardinal hasn't commented nor kudos on the fic...yet has responded to a comment. Suggestive. Also, the author pops up in the comments and starts daring readers to do things, which is very gray_cardinal!

Also, though, I just now thought of someone I should have thought of much earlier: iwantthatcoat, who has expressed enthusiastic willingness to write in 'verses unknown to them, as long as it's possible to catch up on the canon fairly easily. At only 6 radio episodes, Newly Discovered Casebook seems doable. (And coat knows Cabin Pressure!) But coat has kudosed and also commented on this fic...asking if anybody can share a link to the episodes. That would be some pretty extreme misdirection. (Then again, iwantthatcoat and scfrankles have a running detection-and-counterdetection thing going, so maybe!)

So either someone has been very sneaky, and they're one of the people I guessed above but have provided successful misdirection, or else someone has been very sneaky, is not one of the people I guessed above, and slipped past without leaving any clues. Whoever you are, my admiration!

[iwantthatcoat]

Did you say “pretty extreme misdirection”?
All’s fair in love, war, and Holmestice?
Apologies if I overstepped.

I do keep getting suspected by tiny errors ( my dashes, and now my “traveling”. My keyboard spellcheck is set to UK. It should have flagged that as a misspelling!).

[starfishstar]

YES. OH MY GOD, YOU ARE AMAZING!

I'm serious, I loved the fic and I'm bowled over by how sneaky you are. (And I'm very pleased to have it on record that I did at least guess you as one of the possibilities, despite the misdirection.)

And you wrote that comedic romp AND a dark fic about torture? You chameleon, you. All my hats off to you!

[iwantthatcoat]

You made my year.

[starfishstar]

Awww! You deserve it.

[graycardinal]

The Alternate Identity Maneuver is indeed wonderfully sneaky, but I don't think it's an overstep -- it is, as sanguinity points out elsewhere, simply a means of countering one technological shortcut with another. And it has the genuinely useful side effect of allowing one to comment freely during the initial stages without worrying that the comments will color your own evidence trail when the guessing phase comes around.

[sanguinity]

Meanwhile, is setting up an AO3 sock account in another tab...

[scfrankles]

I am so in awe of your brain ^___^ It was such an inspired and imaginative idea to use another persona for your fic.

I read 'The Empty Audience' and could see immediately it was by you. I sort of smugly rolled my eyes and thought, "At least try and make it difficult for me." Then I saw you'd left kudos... And went into a kind of frustrated logic loop ^___^ 'It's iwantthatcoat's fic, but it can't be their fic...' I tried to match it with someone else but of course you'd left 'anonymous creator' comments which didn't match anyone else I knew. And I even went as far as clicking on your kudos to see if I was misreading it and you'd created another account with a similar and misspelt form of your username. I didn't seriously think you'd done that but it was something to check off the list.

I just couldn't take my investigations to the logical conclusion. And I'd actually visited HarmlessMrsPorter's dashboard because they'd left kudos on my fic and I saw they'd bookmarked your Police of Penzance fic. It almost looks like a taunting personal message now: TO READ, for SCFrankles, Iwantthatcoat :P

All the applause - for the fic and the genius level of sneakiness! ^_____^

[iwantthatcoat]

:D
I had to do something! The format alone was a giveaway. Which is in part why I bookmarked Pirates. I *had* to bookmark a few Holmestice fics as this person would be new to Holmestice. Had I not created it back in July I would have given it up as far too obviously fake. But I was motivated. (Did you like my Sussex icon? I took that pic in Sussex myself a few years ago.)
TBH, I wasn’t sure many people would read my pinchhit—simply because the tags are harsher than they probably needed to be (They ae warranted, though much of it is off-screen). So this was my shot at legit not being recognized.
BUT:

I must know what gave me away this time!!! Or rather, would have, had I not taken extra, albeit extreme, precautions.

It is truly difficult for me to change my formating, but I did atempt it

I know it is such a very, very British show with lots of name-dropping Teri Samée and Meg and Mark L are horrible name mutations, but trying to work the Brexit Chequers stuff that I really know next to nothing about made me feel liike I was screaming ‘American trying too hard!’ at everyone. And then I went and Americanized travel. But surely I am not the only one clumsy at that.

[scfrankles]

Oh, great heavens! Did Terri Samée sing her famous “Why Won't You Play At Chequers with Me”? Meg and Mark L! I’ve only just got it! ^_____^ (And here’s me berating sanguinity for not understanding puns ^^”)

I must know what gave me away this time!!!

To be honest, it wasn’t the formatting. (I suppose there is the idiosyncratic use of 5 dots in two ellipses to suggest a longer pause than usual but while that’s a nod towards you, it doesn’t definitely indicate the fic is yours.) It was several things all added together.

The writing of ‘The Empty Audience’ was particularly good, the writer had to be a More!Holmes writer that was willing to try new ‘verses as well as the ones they’d offered, and they had to be a More!Holmes writer that was comfortable with writing an explicit (albeit humorous and, paradoxically, partially veiled) sex scene. That rapidly narrowed down possibilities, and I had some of those writers assigned elsewhere.

And the fic seemed to have echoes of ‘The Police of Penzance.’ You were simply the most likely writer. And though in general I would never have guessed you weren’t a Briton (writing in a non-native version of English is tricky and I think ‘traveling’ is your only slip. And I didn’t even notice it until starfishstar pointed it out), there was one bit that jumped out at me and seemed to indicate that you weren’t British. I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding but at one point Watson says: And here, dear reader, is where I shall draw a veil over the scene, before we lose our BBC2 access. I assume he means, ‘or we will be taken off the air.’ But Watson thinks they are in a radio play and BBC2 is a TV station. It seemed an odd slip for a Briton to make. (I apologise if I’m not interpreting this part correctly.) So that did seem to allow the possibility that the fic could be yours.

And I do like your Sussex icon - it was a really lovely touch ^___^

[iwantthatcoat]

Thank you, that all makes perfect sense! I did add *more* ellipses because I couldn’t bear to take any out so I went crazy with them as a different disguising technique.
A lot a lot a lot of ellipses.

I need to fix that BBC2. I looked it up somewhere, but clearly messed it up. What should I put in its place? Radio 4? I think most of what I listen to is on Radio 4. When I can get it at all, that is.

[scfrankles]

It says on Wikipedia that the series originally aired on Radio 2. I never actually listened to the programme at the time but that does sound right to me, so I personally would go with that.

I do see where the confusion comes in with BBC2 - Radio 2's official name is BBC Radio 2. But nobody would ever call it that in everyday speech ^__^

[iwantthatcoat]

Changed! Much thanks!

[iwantthatcoat]

I was pretty confident my comments would end up giving me away, but...they ended up leading Graycardinal to Sang! That was unexpected.

[scfrankles]

There are some similarities in your and sanguinity's voices, I have to say. A swinging confidence...? ^__^

But she tends not to use multiple exclamation and question marks, and she uses noses in emojis. I seriously considered if she'd written 'The Empty Audience' but I could see she hadn't written those replies ^__^

[iwantthatcoat]

Ah! And my son convinced me to stop using noses because he said it dated me.

Look, Ma, no noses!

[sanguinity]

^___^

:) :) :)

*confidently swings away through the trees*

[starfishstar]

She uses noses in emojis...

The stuff you notice. Is amazing.

[starfishstar]

It's true that the multiple exclamation marks didn't seem quite like Sang, but all that cheerful issuing of dares seemed very graycardinal-and-sanguinity! The comments were part of what stumped me, in fact, because the fic sounded like scfrankles but the comments didn't, but I wasn't sure who else they *did* sound like... Clearly, I need to use the next months to get to know you better. ;-)

[starfishstar]

I can’t tell you how much I love that you two are still having this epic feint-and-counterfeint battle of the wits...please never stop! :D

[scfrankles]

I must admit I did do a little bit of judicious non-commenting this time... ^__^ I looked at 'The Empty Audience' and thought, "Well, this is a bit too clever to be by me, and there's the sex scene at the end... But otherwise it is the sort of thing I would write." So I held off on commenting and kudos-ing to see what would happen :P

I am still rather flattered you thought it could be by me - even though I was trying to manipulate people into thinking exactly that ^^"