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, 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!

Comments

interlude

[starfishstar]

By the way, we all agree that T. Rhymer, our anonymous haiku-ist, is graycardinal, yes? (With maybe an outside possibility of iwantthatcoat, I suppose, because you just never know what iwantthatcoat will do! Or sanguinity, who would be pretending to be graycardinal.)

Regardless, thank you, anonymous haiku-ist! I enjoyed watching your poetic commentary cropping up all over.

Re: interlude

[iwantthatcoat]

Ok I’m gonna be absolutely truthful here, for possibly the only time ever in a guess list, and confess I thought about being T Rhymer this time. I truly did. But I knew my work schedule would prohibit me from reading all the fic, and I wouldn’t want to comment on only a few of them.
Honest.

Re: interlude

[starfishstar]

I can't tell if this comment is reverse psychology or reverse reverse psychology. :D

Re: interlude

[rachelindeed]

I wouldn't guess Graycardinal for T. Rhymer, myself. Maybe I'm too influenced by hanging out at the sherlock60 poetry page for years, but I would say my top inside-fest suspects are gardnerhill and SCFrankles, and my top outside-fest suspect would be okapi. All three of them wrote so many poems for that comm that they truly honed their ability to turn anything into a limerick, haiku, or villanelle!

Re: interlude

[starfishstar]

OH WHAT!! You've thrown a wrench in my assumptions and I love it! Now I'm not certain at all, and I can't wait to find out.

(I did think, though, that it was probably someone who didn't leave kudos anywhere, since the whole idea of commenting anonymously is to be able to react to the works but without giving anything away about your identity/authorship... So if that's true, it would rule out gardnerhill and SCFrankles. But not okapi!)

Re: interlude

[rachelindeed]

See, my thought was that if their main goal was to remain unguessed as T. Rhymer, that goal would be significantly advanced if they commented anonymously AND as themselves on the same posts :)

Re: interlude

[starfishstar]

Ha ha ha, this is some truly next-level deception we're getting to these days! Sometimes I wonder where there is still to go from the high-level hijinks of past rounds, but there's always something. :-)

Re: interlude

[rachelindeed]

T. Rhymer is very next-level! They were around, under the same pseudonym, for the previous round of Holmestice, too -- for the winter round they left limericks for everyone rather than haikus -- and in the end they decided NOT to reveal themselves so that they could continue to play in this persona throughout future fests. So this commenter has kept their incognito intact for two rounds already and may stick around, mystery unspoiled, for more! :)

Re: interlude

[starfishstar]

Oh!!! I missed that entirely, because the entire previous round of Holmestice is a blank to me (it was in piled-up-family-crises + final-dissertation-deadline months, so I STILL haven't had a chance to even go look at the master list from last round. I still hope to!!) So I had no idea I was looking at a multi-round-spanning mystery. That's quite impressive!

ETA: Hmmm... possibility that T. Rhymer contains multitudes? Could one person have been T. Rhymer last time, then secretly handed it off to someone else? Now *that* would be a fascinating long con. (The Dread Pirate Roberts!)

Re: interlude

[rachelindeed]

Iwantthatcoat said they thought about seizing the identity this round! Dueling Dread Pirate Roberts-es!!

Re: interlude

[starfishstar]

That's what made me think of it! I suppose you're right that iwantthatcoat was probably talking about *seizing* the identity, but my thought was that they could just as easily be *ceding* it deliberately to someone else.

But oh, yikes, what if someone did try to wrest control? What if control of the T. Rhymer identity came down to who managed to get there first and comment first? What if some fics received visits from two T. Rhymers??

Re: interlude

[rachelindeed]

I'M SPARTACUS!

I'M SPARTACUS!

WE ARE ALL SPARTACUS!

I look forward to the future round in which we have T. Rhymers in triplicate :)

Re: interlude

[sanguinity]

*eyes the various T. Rhymers downthread*

I think it's already happened.

Re: interlude

[starfishstar]

THIS IS THE BEST THING.

Re: interlude

[graycardinal]

I'd have to go back and look, but I think there was a single haiku sprinkled among the limericks last winter...and I also believe I spotted a single limerick from the Rhymer in the present round.

This does raise the question of what they'll do come next Christmas, if not outed -- will it be limericks again, or something else entirely? (Somehow, I think villanelles are unlikely....)

Re: interlude

[starfishstar]

Oh, I would live for a round where everyone gets a villanelle as a comment!!

Re: interlude

[sanguinity]

It was mostly limericks last round, but as I recall, there was one work of such staggering and heartfelt beauty that Rhymer eschewed their customary limerick and offered a haiku instead.

Shall I deduce from this summer's limerick-to-haiku ratio that this was a round of staggering and heartfelt beauty?

Re: interlude

[(Anonymous)]

Beauty? If you like.
Or could it possibly be
I ran out of rhymes?

- T. Rhymer

Re: interlude

[iwantthatcoat]

Just a minute. Just a goshdarn minute. Okapi is here? I didn’t see Okapi on the list. What is Okapi’s other penname?

Re: interlude

[sanguinity]

1. rachelindeed said outside-the-fest suspect for okapi.

2. There are more people participating than are on the list.

Re: interlude

[rachelindeed]

No, okapi is my outside-fest suspect :) In other words, she didn't create for the fest, but it wouldn't surprise me if she's reading and commenting on the entries anonymously.

Re: interlude

[(Anonymous)]

Who was that masked one?
Surely not the Lone Ranger,
Nor Tonto either.

Re: interlude

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe it's Zorro
Or the French king's twin brother
V for Vendetta?

Re: interlude

[(Anonymous)]

No masked 'one,' perhaps?
A case of identity
multiplies quickly.

Re: interlude

[(Anonymous)]

They're looking for prints
From the engineer's thumb, or
One playing as two?