holmestice | Guessing Post

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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, our twentieth round -- especially given how tumultuous these last months have been. Being in this community with you is a joy and an honour.

Reveals and the Master List go up on June 20th. Until then, please enjoy and comment on all the lovely fanworks. Creators, please do NOT respond to Dreamwidth comments or post your works elsewhere on the Internet until reveals go up in the community. You may of course reply to comments on AO3, which preserves your anonymity.

In the meanwhile, stay tuned: treats are coming up! For anyone thinking of making a treat, we will accept treats right through until reveals, so if there's a prompt that inspires you, please have at it! Just use the regular submission guidelines and send your headers to holmesticemods@gmail.com.

If you'd like to guess who created what in this round, here's a list of all the contributors for the main gifts. (You'll have to put in some extra work to guess the treat-makers!) Go ahead and take a guess! It's all in good fun.

alexcat

apprenticeofdoyle

bakerstmel /

Callie4180

cam_elot (used to be thefrenchweirdone)

discordantwords

dryadinthegrove

evilinsanemonkey

fleetsparrow
fridaythegowerstreetcat /

gowerstreet

gardnerhill

graycardinal

iwantthatcoat
Keenir/Rodlox/Anthony

language_escapes

mafief

milverton

monkiainen

natrix_natrix

oldshrewsburyian

pipmer1

rachelindeed

saki101

sanguinity

sanspatronymic

scfrankles

simplyclockwork

smallhobbit

starfishstar

strampunch

tepidspongebath

trobadora

twicecurvedspine /

eyes-on-stilts

urbanhymnal

write_out

Go forth and leave love for your fellow Holmestice authors, artists, podficcers, and vidders! See you again on the 20th, when we reveal who made what!

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First batch (chronological order!):

hands full of matter (BBC) – write_out

This was in a final set of just 5 or so BBC fics that I was still struggling with last night, even after I’d assigned guesses to everything else. So some of these BBC fics are going to be my shakiest guesses of all! Here I matched merely on some tenuous formatting things (use of a graphic at the start of the text, sometimes using lower case titles, some similar tags). So it’s one of those guesses where I think I’ve got a reasonable match, but I’m equally aware I could be 100% wrong!

This Meeting of Like Minds (Mary Russell, art) – iwantthatcoat (?)

Another shaky guess, because art (and vids) are the things I’m least able to comment on or analyse in any useful way! I would have thought OldShrewsburyian or rachelindeed (known fans of the Peter Wimsey series, which is the crossover ‘verse here), but they both left kudos! Well, or sanguinity, but Sang is noted as beta here. Oh, and cam_elot is the sole person who offered graphics – and seems to maybe even have a similar style – but they offered only BBC (and I think made a vid!) so this seems less likely. Which leaves me with…known chameleon extraordinaire iwantthatcoat! Who didn’t offer the Mary Russell ‘verse, no, but did offer art, and is known to leap at a new and confounding challenge each round of Holmestice. And could have matched on recipient language_escapes via ACD and Bert Coules, but then decided to try something different instead.

Old Dog Waltz (ACD) – twicecurvedspine

Mostly by elimination (none of the other possibilities seemed to fit in terms of punctuation etc.); also twicecurvedspine offered Holmes/Watson/Other, as well as Holmes/Watson and Watson/Mary, which seems to fit here. :-)

The Choices We Make (BBC) – pipmer1

Again, part of the final set of BBC fics I struggled with! But the use of some specifics like the tag “Alternate Universe – Supernatural Elements” and the Mycroft/Lestrade pairing, put me at pipmer1 as my best guess. I’m far from sure, though!

A Conductor of Light (Ritchie) – alexcat

Another one I was very unsure about, but alexcat could be a match in terms of tags and e.g. style of summary (short, present-tense sentences). Why yes, some of my evidence *is* quite slim. But I’ve got to grasp at something! ;-)

The Adventure of the Dying Private Investigator (Watson and Holmes) – iwantthatcoat (with maybe sanguinity as an outside option)

Okay, I realize this may conflict with what I wrote above, but I do think iwantthatcoat wrote my wonderful gift, set in the rare ‘verse of the Watson and Holmes/A Study in Black comic! Only two people offered this ‘verse, and gardnerhill was quickly eliminated through leaving kudos. I do think it *could* also be sanguinity (who has developed a rather devious habit of just putting “tbd” for which fandoms she’ll offer, which makes her hard to guess!), who certainly could have decided to match herself on me based on the various very rare fandoms I requested. I think I’ve placed Sang elsewhere, but I did have a lot of trouble pinning her down this round (again!) so she’s still a possibility here, especially if I’m wrong about iwantthatcoat here, but right about iwantthatcoat above.

The Mystery of the Misplaced Detective (ACD) – scfrankles

Gen, humor, tags that match SCFrankles, charming and clever? SCFrankles. :D

...Okay, that's the first batch. I'm going to be out for a while, but more when I'm back later this evening!

Could be right on both; I certainly have been known to pinch-hit.

WAIT WHY ARE YOU HELPING ME. Now I'm suspicious. ;-)

Hahahahahahahhaahahaha!
Just being helpful, is all ;)

Oh right. Of course you just want to be helpful. ;-)

I see you're doing a "graycardinal" and assigning your art to someone else... (:P) Clever mentioning that you "thought" it might be by Rachel - that was my immediate thought before she commented ^___^

I must admit, I'm a bit surprised that I occurred first to both of you for this one. The crossover verse might fit, but not the main verse. I'm never a good guess for Russell verse; I'm far too much of a Watson-centric Holmesian :)

*note to self that

rachelindeed is laying the groundwork for an eventual Russellverse contribution...*

*wiggles eyebrows ambiguously*

I mean, I have to admit that my *first* thought was "rachelindeed is so devoted to Watson; she would NEVER go for a fandom where he's sidelined like that!" But there were so few options, given the Wimseyverse crossover, and the art aspect as well, that I decided I had to think laterally! And expanding into an atypical fandom for the sake of a friend does seem like something you would do. :-)

Ha ha ha, you think it's that simple, do you? :D

By the way, I note you don't dispute my guess as to the authorship of "The Mystery of the Misplaced Detective"...

Edited 2020-06-16 03:32 (UTC)

I'm still catching up on the BBC fic, but I will disagree with you on write_out as the author of "hands full of matter." I think she's highly unlikely to have written a 20K entry.

I was torn between "Doggone Luck" and "Feel My Heart Banging Like a Gun" for her, but I think your guess of BakerStMel for "Feel My Heart" is a good one. Also, write_out is a huge X-Files fan, so much so that I regarded the author's note on "Doggone Luck" with suspicion -- would she draw attention to that connection so readily? But sometimes the simplest explanations are the best. Take into account as well her fondness for Donovan, who gets a nice shout-out in the story, and I'd say we have enough evidence to convict.

Doggone Luck = write_out

*sighs at self* Hmmm, I am already losing confidence in this guess. Two of my distinguished guessing colleagues have suggested tepidspongebath for "Doggone Luck," and although I'm not familiar enough with their work to feel very confident in recognizing it, the pattern of multiple short chapters does seem to fit their style more than write_out's. And apparently they are an X-Files fan, too! Our BBC enclave is rife with them, it seems, so there goes one of my clues!

So I guess I am pushed back to "Feel My Heart Banging Like a Gun" for write_out. There are some points to argue for it -- it begins with a music quote (a classic write_out move!), Sally plays a competent guest role, and it's unabashedly a Johnlock romance. I have absolutely no idea where that leaves Callie4180/BakerStMel, but here we are.

Feel My Heart Banging Like a Gun = write_out, until I talk myself out of it again!

Hmmm, I do think it's worth noting that the other person who guessed tepidspongebath for "Doggone Luck" is discordantwords...but discordantwords may have an ulterior motive here. Because discordantwords also put write_out for "Forever Turning Corners." Which I think discordantwords wrote! So, possibility that discordantwords assigned tepidspongebath to "Doggone Luck" only because they needed to shuffle write_out over to cover their own tracks on "Forever Turning Corners"??

I'm not sure if that helps or harms my guesses, but it might help yours. :-)

Oh yes, I agree that discordantwords borrowed write_out as an alibi to cover her own work :) But I extend the benefit of the doubt and assume she only fielded one disingenuous guess and was serious about the others!

You're absolutely right that write_out isn't a good guess for "hands full of matter"! From what I can see, write_out hasn't written anything explicit before, nor anything nearly this long. I was just stuck at a point where there were several M or E rated BBC fics, and decidedly not enough writers who seemed likely to have written them, and this seemed like the closest I could get to making everything line up. (But *really* what that probably means is that I'd already matched things wrongly somewhere else. This is why I rarely even try to guess the BBC fics...too many of them, and too little evidence to work with!)

...I'm going to have a bit of a ponder about whether I want to shuffle my BBC guesses around at all, now that I at least have everything laid out clearly & maybe it will be easier to see if some things might do better somewhere other than where they are now. :-)

This conversation has been quite fascinating to follow! :)

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Guessing Post

starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2

Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 2