acorn_squash: an acorn (Default)
Acorn_Squash ([personal profile] acorn_squash) wrote in [community profile] holmestice 2025-06-16 05:32 am (UTC)

Part 3: Fic

I've decided to try the thing [personal profile] starfishstar does, coming up with a guess for every work in the round. We'll see how I do.

[personal profile] a_candle_for_sherlock - 10 CCs of That

A_Candle_For_Sherlock doesn’t usually do this sort of format, but it has the quiet, subtle emotional stuff that she’s so good at. I think this is her, trying something new this year.

Alec - a study in violin

The punctuation matches (specifically, a comma placed after a dash), as does a fondness for the word shatter.

[personal profile] armchair_elvis - I’m the board, the lightning, the thunder

armchair_elvis wrote the only sign-up that mentions The Silk Stocking. gardnerhill is familiar with the fandom; however, I think anyone besides armchair_elvis who was inclined to write The Silk Stocking fic would gift it to armchair_elvis.

[personal profile] beamkatanachronicles - The Cantonese Interpreter

beamkatanachronicles offered Mycroft Holmes and has done this type of crossover for Holmestice before (The Adventure of the Gentleman and Players). They do dashes like-- this, but that would convert to em-dashes in the right word-processor. The comments are written in the style that she favors.

[profile] blistering_typhoons - The Decades

This is another one that I guessed based on punctuation.

[personal profile] cumbercurlygirl - When Life Gives You Grapefruits…

For this fic, it was the word “sensual” that tipped me off — it’s appeared in some of CumberCurlyGirl’s previous fic.

edosianorchids901 - Reinforcements

edosianorchids901 has written Granada Holmes hurt/comfort before in the same style.

[personal profile] estelraca - The Protection of Broken Wings

The word choices are similar to some of estelraca's fics.

[personal profile] flowing_river - Knives and Necklaces

The blank line between paragraphs says flowing_river to me.

[personal profile] gardnerhill - Traffic School

This kind of multiverse-gone-wrong thing is gardnerhill’s jam. Further, of this year’s Holmestice writers, gardnerhill was one of only three people to write Sally Donovan/Molly Hooper between 2017 and 2025. (After 2017 I got bored and closed the tab.) The others were penaltywaltz and the recipient. gardnerhill uses hashes as line breaks; penaltywaltz doesn’t.

[personal profile] graycardinal - The Affair of the Statutory Duel

The framing device used in this fic reminded me of a podfic from a previous Holmestice, so I went digging and found The Kincardine File (later recorded by flashforeward).

[personal profile] happyeverafter72 - Cunningly Fashioned

The obvious place to start is in the Polari tag. Three people participating in Holmestice this year have works tagged Polari and Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms. rudbeckia usually writes in the third person, and Iwantthatcoat can never truly be ruled out, but on balance, I think it much more likely this story was written by happyeverafter72, whose writing style is the best match.

For the sake of completeness, estelraca also offered Rathbone. However, estelraca’s Sherlock Holmes fics almost always contain one or more of a short list of tropes or keywords, none of which are in this fic.

[personal profile] iwantthatcoat - The Beekeeper's Picnic - A Sherlockian Fanfic; "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane"

The author gave this cryptic hint in the comments: “i think my Holmeses always feel like they deserve to be traumatised, which may be the biggest clue as to who I am.”

Only two people, aside from the recipient, offered The Beekeeper’s Picnic this year: Iwantthatcoat and EdosianOrchids901. An additional three offered “any” or “try me”: Vulgarweed, ghostofnuggetspast, and gardnerhill. Of those five, the fic writer must be someone who can write an excellent pastiche. Someone who is comfortable breaking the fourth wall. Someone who habitually writes dashes like— this. In other words: Iwantthatcoat.

I left a couple comments on Iwantthatcoat’s other fics, left a comment on this fic, and then left some more comments on Iwantthatcoat’s other fics, as a test to see what the replies would look like. I have a reply to my comment on this fic, no replies to the other comments I left at the same time, and a claim from Iwantthatcoat that she hasn't replied to any comments on her Holmestice fic(s)... and, honestly, I'm not in any way dissuaded from my guess. As Iwantthatcoat says, she lies a lot.

[personal profile] kameodouglas - The Pubs of London

This fic has the author’s note in the main text, as Kameo (Brainygiirl) is wont to do.

[personal profile] kingstoken - Singularly Unique

This is the most random thing: This fic has a blockquote in the summary, which is something kingstoken sometimes does.

[personal profile] lxvenderjewel - you had to go (i know, i know, i know)

lxvenderjewel’s a pinch-hitter who hasn’t written any Holmes fic outside of the Sherlock & Co fandom.

[personal profile] lxvenderjewel - A Secret Thought

I really do not have a good guess for this fic, but A Secret Thought is tagged in the exact same style and with some of the same tags as the fic I think is written by lxvenderjewel, so... weak evidence?

[personal profile] mom2boys - I Dream of Sherlock

Yeah, I have no clue for this one, but I couldn’t come up with any other guess for mom2boys.

[personal profile] penaltywaltz - Rumor Has It

This is the only Discworld fic in the Holmestice collection on AO3, so I couldn't try finding authors that way. I decided to look at crossover authors in general and found out that penaltywaltz has written over six hundred crossovers. Seems solid enough to me.

[profile] rudbeckia - The Adventure of the Baskerville Burglary

Only two people who signed up for Holmestice this year have previously written Raffles: Vulgarweed, rudbeckia, and the recipient. Also, oorsprong, rudbeckia’s perpetual coauthor, left kudos before anyone else. It's weak evidence, but at this point, I'll take it.

[personal profile] snycock - The Ballad of the Abbey Grange: because in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make

This is another one that I guessed after narrowing down the pool of possible authors to almost nothing.

[personal profile] tepidspongebath - Gone to Ground

The style of this fic matches a previous fic tepidspongebath wrote in the same fandom.

[personal profile] vulgarweed - Hole in the Sky

This guess is mostly based on the fact that Vulgarweed’s written Cthulhu crossovers before.

[personal profile] write_out - Afterglow

This one was hard to narrow down. I ended up settling on it on the grounds that, of the authors who offered sexual content, write_out is the only one who’s previously used the M rating like this. A seeming confirmation is that there’s no replies to comments yet.

Post a comment in response:

If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting