OK, still catching up on reading and commenting but some to start off:
The Adventure of the Quiet Tenants: This is my wonderful gift fic. Coming up with a possible creator was pretty easy, as this author apparently hasn’t obscured their identity in any way. Must admit I was off investigating their named beta’s Tumblr even before I settled down to read the fic. So, looking at who is apparently a close friend of the beta, the very fact the beta has been named in the first place, the tags on the fic - specifically “Literary References & Allusions”, and the writer’s excellent semi-colon game... Also, I’m not a H/W shipper, I’m primarily interested in female characters, and I asked for gen, which all goes to make me hard to match - this person’s sign-up fits my requests pretty well. Putting it all together, I think the fic is by oldshrewsburyian.
The vid, Underwater: Who could this possibly be by…? Of course it is by rachelindeed. Rachel herself has mentioned she prefers to have a close connection between lyrics and images in vids, which fits here. And there is the ending to the vid - she has mentioned on a couple of occasions how much she approves of the fact that in the Ritchie!verse, Holmes lets Watson know as quickly as possible that he’s still alive, instead of letting him mourn for years.
The Apprentice's Beekeeper: This is so on the nose somebody’s style, that for a long while I genuinely believed it was someone else pretending to be this particular writer. The writer I’m thinking of has an online persona that always makes me think of an erudite professor who has learned English as a foreign language - that is, they always use a fairly formal tone, and when selecting a synonym, go for the one that has me discreetly reaching for a dictionary. I got caught up on the word “scarier” in their notes, which I felt didn’t sound like them. I honestly thought the fic might be by sanguinity - that little aside that the mods might be behind the piece, the fact that sanguinity has commented on it but not actually praised it, “and it's not the story you were originally going to get, either” - sanguinity had mentioned having another go at her Holmestice piece. But in the end, I think sanguinity has written something else, and sometimes the simple answer is the correct one. I think this is by graycardinal.
No Price Too High to Pay (For Freedom or for Love): I think this is by armchair_elvis. Their sign-up is a good match for their recipient’s requests. And taking a look at their work on AO3, I could see in at least one of their fics they use ellipses to separate the sections, as this fic does.
A Lesson in Love: I think this has to be by mercuryandmoonlight. Apart from their recipient, I think they are the only participant to explicitly mention Miss Sherlock. As back up evidence, the fic is locked on AO3. I can’t see any compelling reason why this specific fic should be locked, so I think this must be something the writer does by default. And indeed mercuryandmoonlight does seem to lock all their fics.
Seeking High-Energy Self-Starter, Flexible Schedule: I think this is by sanguinity. The fic has a very similar tone to another MDBD fic - “Mr Green and the Adventure of the Ten Gallon Hat”, which sanguinity is very definitely the author of.
The Finality Problem: I think looking at that pairing, and the quality of the writing, that has to be by trobadora.
The Winds of Change: I think this is by mightymads - I must admit purely because they’ve made the name of their recipient bold in their notes, as mightymads as done for their beta’s name in their WAdvent fic notes.
Reminiscence: I think the writer gives themself very clearly away in their own notes. A native Spanish speaker, who likes the original Star Trek? A look at DW and Tumblr confirms this fic is by nahirholmes.
Hubble Bubble: Going by the punctuation, I think that’s by dryadinthegrove.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-16 06:33 pm (UTC)The Adventure of the Quiet Tenants: This is my wonderful gift fic. Coming up with a possible creator was pretty easy, as this author apparently hasn’t obscured their identity in any way. Must admit I was off investigating their named beta’s Tumblr even before I settled down to read the fic. So, looking at who is apparently a close friend of the beta, the very fact the beta has been named in the first place, the tags on the fic - specifically “Literary References & Allusions”, and the writer’s excellent semi-colon game... Also, I’m not a H/W shipper, I’m primarily interested in female characters, and I asked for gen, which all goes to make me hard to match - this person’s sign-up fits my requests pretty well. Putting it all together, I think the fic is by
The vid, Underwater: Who could this possibly be by…? Of course it is by
The Apprentice's Beekeeper: This is so on the nose somebody’s style, that for a long while I genuinely believed it was someone else pretending to be this particular writer. The writer I’m thinking of has an online persona that always makes me think of an erudite professor who has learned English as a foreign language - that is, they always use a fairly formal tone, and when selecting a synonym, go for the one that has me discreetly reaching for a dictionary. I got caught up on the word “scarier” in their notes, which I felt didn’t sound like them. I honestly thought the fic might be by sanguinity - that little aside that the mods might be behind the piece, the fact that sanguinity has commented on it but not actually praised it, “and it's not the story you were originally going to get, either” - sanguinity had mentioned having another go at her Holmestice piece. But in the end, I think sanguinity has written something else, and sometimes the simple answer is the correct one. I think this is by
No Price Too High to Pay (For Freedom or for Love): I think this is by
A Lesson in Love: I think this has to be by
Seeking High-Energy Self-Starter, Flexible Schedule: I think this is by
The Finality Problem: I think looking at that pairing, and the quality of the writing, that has to be by
The Winds of Change: I think this is by
Reminiscence: I think the writer gives themself very clearly away in their own notes. A native Spanish speaker, who likes the original Star Trek? A look at DW and Tumblr confirms this fic is by
Hubble Bubble: Going by the punctuation, I think that’s by