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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Part 3: Fic
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.
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.
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.
This is another one that I guessed based on punctuation.
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.
The word choices are similar to some of estelraca's fics.
The blank line between paragraphs says flowing_river to me.
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.
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).
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.
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.
This fic has the author’s note in the main text, as Kameo (Brainygiirl) is wont to do.
This is the most random thing: This fic has a blockquote in the summary, which is something kingstoken sometimes does.
lxvenderjewel’s a pinch-hitter who hasn’t written any Holmes fic outside of the Sherlock & Co fandom.
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?
Yeah, I have no clue for this one, but I couldn’t come up with any other guess for mom2boys.
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.
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.
This is another one that I guessed after narrowing down the pool of possible authors to almost nothing.
The style of this fic matches a previous fic tepidspongebath wrote in the same fandom.
This guess is mostly based on the fact that Vulgarweed’s written Cthulhu crossovers before.
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.