Oh goodness. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to read this much about my extensive guessing process, but, nonetheless, here we continue…
Forever Turning Corners (BBC) – discordantwords
There’s still a part of me that wants to put rachelindeed here… I was moved by the emotional depth and empathy, which I usually take as a sign that I’ve stumbled on rachelindeed’s fic even if I don’t know it yet! But it maybe didn’t seem *quite* like Rachel (e.g. rated M), and I feel halfway confident about having placed Rachel elsewhere, so this joined that final set of BBC fics I was wrestling with right until the end. The tags here seemed to match discordantwords, as well as a very particular piece of formatting involving a single asterisk ;-) and it doesn’t hurt that I remember being similarly moved by discordantwords’ entries in some previous Holmestices! I feel very confident about this guess. :-)
The Keuka Horror (Elementary) – oldshrewsburyian
I built this guess purely on a close scrutiny of some very specific tags that match oldshrewsburyian but don’t match gardnerhill (and by that point I’d already placed all other potential Elementary candidates elsewhere). Oh, and some m-dash formatting. ;-) It is flimsy evidence and yet I have confidence in it!
Some Rest in the Country (ACD, art) – natrix_natrix
This match is probably obvious to everyone, but I spent So Long hunting up past examples of art by both natrix_natrix and strampunch and yet STILL not being sure. Once strampunch’s art posted near the end, though, I felt more confident about matching these two beautiful works of art to their two distinct creators!
The Talking Cure (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution) – rachelindeed (though it *could* be sanguinity or gardnerhill, and I can’t rule out any of the three conclusively)
Auggggggh, this fic! The author’s notes are 100% rachelindeed. But the fic didn’t feel quite like rachelindeed; if anything it felt maybe more like sanguinity. I don’t *think* it’s gardnerhill (it creates a fix-it in a way I’ve long wanted for this fandom, but which I don’t think I’ve seen gardnerhill lean toward) but I can’t conclusively rule it out. (gardnerhill has eluded any easy guessing in several different corners of Holmestice this round!) There are some real hard feelings between characters at the start, which didn’t align with my usual experience of Rachel’s writing, and it did have that stamp of characters-striving-to-do-their-best-by-each-other that is so very sanguinity. Could Sang have written it, then deliberately mimicked rachelindeed’s style of author notes?? (I wouldn’t put anything past a long-time Holmestice-er and guess-evader like sanguinity.) I considered putting Sang here, and rachelindeed in the mix for those recalcitrant last BBC fics, and gardnerhill…well, elsewhere, which we’ll get to! But it didn’t work, only because of math (if Rachel went to BBC, then everything else refused to fall into line). And thus I am registering rachelindeed as my official guess here. Only because of math. I hope you’re happy, sanguinity!
In The Heat Of Battle (BBC, crossover with Harry Potter) – monkiainen
Again, BBC fics are hard! So many candidates! But this has Mystrade and is a crossover with Harry Potter, and a check of various people’s works suggest that both of those things match monkiainen. :-)
Infinite Variety (ACD) – saki101
I admit it, I got here *only* by elimination, because saki101 was kind enough to leave kudos on almost everything else! :D (We really have created an unfortunate accidental culture here, where we hold back on giving each other kudos out of fear of revealing our own authorship!) But once I got to this guess, I saw some matches in formatting, and also in saki101’s delightful enthusiasm and many exclamation points in answering readers’ comments! (Ha, and you all thought I was the most enthusiastic.) ;-) Oh, and the touch of magical realism seemed to fit, too!
A Jelly Good Show (Whitehead) – sanguinity (yes, I dare to claim sanguinity that wrote puns! though with also an outside possibility of gardnerhill)
HERE WE HAVE IT! THE MOST WONDERFULLY THORNY FIC TO GUESS OF ALL! This fic is not only ALL PUNS, it also has the anthropomorphism that SCFrankles loves. This author knows SCFrankles, 100%. It’s also in a quite rare fandom (Whitehead), which rachelindeed was the sole person to offer. (Well, aside from sanguinity of the “I’m the matching mod and thus don’t have to say which fandoms I offer,” who has written Whitehead before, and did *request* it this round. But we know sanguinity doesn’t do puns!) What with the cheerfulness and good humor here – I was very confident in assigning rachelindeed. But then she left kudos! And commented with *such* enthusiastic praise that I didn’t think it could be a ruse, even if Rachel had done an iwantthatcoat-style feint of creating a fake account. My initial notes did also say “maybe sanguinity (if she sought help with the puns??)” but…sanguinity doesn’t do puns! We know this very well! So I scrutinized who else could have matched to SCFrankles’ requests, and found gardnerhill matched on several fandoms, including a very rare one (Whale!Holmes) that the matching mod might indeed have decided to prioritize. So gardernhill was confidently written in as my guess until almost the end. But then there was that math that didn’t quite work, and I still couldn’t shake the instinct that said “sanguinity!” against all reason. So I decided – fully expecting to be laughed at for even suggesting it – that YES, the pun fic is sanguin-“I don’t understand puns”-ity. I think she enlisted the help of a beloved co-conspirator (grrlpup? language_escapes? colebaltblue? all three??) and had an absolute blast finding out just how many puns could be packed into one diminutive fic.
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starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 3
Date: 2020-06-16 02:40 am (UTC)Forever Turning Corners (BBC) – discordantwords
There’s still a part of me that wants to put rachelindeed here… I was moved by the emotional depth and empathy, which I usually take as a sign that I’ve stumbled on rachelindeed’s fic even if I don’t know it yet! But it maybe didn’t seem *quite* like Rachel (e.g. rated M), and I feel halfway confident about having placed Rachel elsewhere, so this joined that final set of BBC fics I was wrestling with right until the end. The tags here seemed to match discordantwords, as well as a very particular piece of formatting involving a single asterisk ;-) and it doesn’t hurt that I remember being similarly moved by discordantwords’ entries in some previous Holmestices! I feel very confident about this guess. :-)
The Keuka Horror (Elementary) – oldshrewsburyian
I built this guess purely on a close scrutiny of some very specific tags that match oldshrewsburyian but don’t match gardnerhill (and by that point I’d already placed all other potential Elementary candidates elsewhere). Oh, and some m-dash formatting. ;-) It is flimsy evidence and yet I have confidence in it!
Some Rest in the Country (ACD, art) – natrix_natrix
This match is probably obvious to everyone, but I spent So Long hunting up past examples of art by both natrix_natrix and strampunch and yet STILL not being sure. Once strampunch’s art posted near the end, though, I felt more confident about matching these two beautiful works of art to their two distinct creators!
The Talking Cure (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution) – rachelindeed (though it *could* be sanguinity or gardnerhill, and I can’t rule out any of the three conclusively)
Auggggggh, this fic! The author’s notes are 100% rachelindeed. But the fic didn’t feel quite like rachelindeed; if anything it felt maybe more like sanguinity. I don’t *think* it’s gardnerhill (it creates a fix-it in a way I’ve long wanted for this fandom, but which I don’t think I’ve seen gardnerhill lean toward) but I can’t conclusively rule it out. (gardnerhill has eluded any easy guessing in several different corners of Holmestice this round!) There are some real hard feelings between characters at the start, which didn’t align with my usual experience of Rachel’s writing, and it did have that stamp of characters-striving-to-do-their-best-by-each-other that is so very sanguinity. Could Sang have written it, then deliberately mimicked rachelindeed’s style of author notes?? (I wouldn’t put anything past a long-time Holmestice-er and guess-evader like sanguinity.) I considered putting Sang here, and rachelindeed in the mix for those recalcitrant last BBC fics, and gardnerhill…well, elsewhere, which we’ll get to! But it didn’t work, only because of math (if Rachel went to BBC, then everything else refused to fall into line). And thus I am registering rachelindeed as my official guess here. Only because of math. I hope you’re happy, sanguinity!
In The Heat Of Battle (BBC, crossover with Harry Potter) – monkiainen
Again, BBC fics are hard! So many candidates! But this has Mystrade and is a crossover with Harry Potter, and a check of various people’s works suggest that both of those things match monkiainen. :-)
Infinite Variety (ACD) – saki101
I admit it, I got here *only* by elimination, because saki101 was kind enough to leave kudos on almost everything else! :D (We really have created an unfortunate accidental culture here, where we hold back on giving each other kudos out of fear of revealing our own authorship!) But once I got to this guess, I saw some matches in formatting, and also in saki101’s delightful enthusiasm and many exclamation points in answering readers’ comments! (Ha, and you all thought I was the most enthusiastic.) ;-) Oh, and the touch of magical realism seemed to fit, too!
A Jelly Good Show (Whitehead) – sanguinity (yes, I dare to claim sanguinity that wrote puns! though with also an outside possibility of gardnerhill)
HERE WE HAVE IT! THE MOST WONDERFULLY THORNY FIC TO GUESS OF ALL! This fic is not only ALL PUNS, it also has the anthropomorphism that SCFrankles loves. This author knows SCFrankles, 100%. It’s also in a quite rare fandom (Whitehead), which rachelindeed was the sole person to offer. (Well, aside from sanguinity of the “I’m the matching mod and thus don’t have to say which fandoms I offer,” who has written Whitehead before, and did *request* it this round. But we know sanguinity doesn’t do puns!) What with the cheerfulness and good humor here – I was very confident in assigning rachelindeed. But then she left kudos! And commented with *such* enthusiastic praise that I didn’t think it could be a ruse, even if Rachel had done an iwantthatcoat-style feint of creating a fake account. My initial notes did also say “maybe sanguinity (if she sought help with the puns??)” but…sanguinity doesn’t do puns! We know this very well! So I scrutinized who else could have matched to SCFrankles’ requests, and found gardnerhill matched on several fandoms, including a very rare one (Whale!Holmes) that the matching mod might indeed have decided to prioritize. So gardernhill was confidently written in as my guess until almost the end. But then there was that math that didn’t quite work, and I still couldn’t shake the instinct that said “sanguinity!” against all reason. So I decided – fully expecting to be laughed at for even suggesting it – that YES, the pun fic is sanguin-“I don’t understand puns”-ity. I think she enlisted the help of a beloved co-conspirator (grrlpup? language_escapes? colebaltblue? all three??) and had an absolute blast finding out just how many puns could be packed into one diminutive fic.