Sherlock Fic Recs

[neadods]

ETA: I forget who it was on the flist who was squeeing over a female Sherlock Holmes character, one invented as direct publishing competition to the ACD stories. What was the name of said character? I think I downloaded one of her books and now I can't find it in the clutter on my HDs and don't remember what I'm looking for. ETA2: I was thinking of Madelyn Mack, but check comments for links to another juicy gender-bending knockoff written at the same time.


Before I get to fandom, a quick shout-out to my oil company, of all people. They came to replace a valve (estimate $400) and were able to get the old one working again (cost under service contract, $0) The downside is that to get water through the system again, I've got to have the heater running full bore for another hour at least. It's getting hot in here.


Another downside is that you would not BELIEVE the amount of fic I've slogged through this week, and yet there are only 4 being passed on, and two of them with heavy warnings. Signal to noise in fandom was not the best this time around. Also, I haven't worried about spoiler warnings before, but now I know someone reading this who is waiting for the US airings, so I'll start giving said spoiler warnings for the next couple of weeks.



First up, sadbhyl's got a nice gen piece where gives Sherlock an earful about calling himself (wrongly in John's opinion) a sociopath: DSM-IV. No spoiler warnings for the fic itself, but Blind Banker and Great Game warnings for the discussion of sociopathy the fic spawned over on the main comm


Then there's the rather cracky Daily Diary of Mycroft Holmes. (Full season spoilers)
Dr. Watson refused spy money. Sherlock will be disappointed; he needs a new suit. So does Dr. Watson. Should not be allowed to dress himself.


And then there are two commentfics from the meme that are warning city. Non-con. Multiple sexual kinks, graphically described. Attempted suicide. Basic premise that one character is far, Far, FAR more deeply fucked up than seen on screen.

So why am I reccing A Thorough Examination and In Depth (which should be read together if read at all)?

Because in a fandom that is (as most of 'em) awash in kink fic written by people who don't have a clue other than what they've read in fic written by people who don't have a clue, this is absolutely dead on about what headspace is really like. From both sides, even if one of those sides is having trouble processing and accepting those desires. Actually, in part *because* of that problem too. Heavy-duty kink is not blithely fallen into.

Comments

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Signal to noise in fandom was not the best this time around.

Word. I've been mainly staying away from the sherlockbbc comm, with a few exceptions.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I tend to go to the main comm when recced there - mostly because I'm already spending too much time online reading and abandoning fic.

[melusinehr.livejournal.com]

I will not click on those links just yet, but thank you for the spoiler warnings! I've been going through your previous recommendations and picking ones that seem non-spoilery; so far I've managed not to stumble across anything I don't want to know. What a thoroughly lovely show!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Off the top of my head I haven't been reccing things that are massive spoilers (at least without saying things like "Right after The Great Game..."), but there is one title that is, on sober reflection a Big Honkin' Spoiler. If it's slipped by, I'm not going to point it out.

[melusinehr.livejournal.com]

I will try my best to wait patiently for a week and a half. :)

[fyrdrakken]

I'm still wading through the backlog from the past few weeks -- oh, and today I started reading Sherlock Holmes and the Ravenclaw Codex, bookverse Holmes but I'm enjoying it nonetheless.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I've got a couple bookverse and Ritchie recs that I've been keeping in the linksdump posts. I do like a bit of ACD after all, and I loved the movie.

[fyrdrakken]

After linking the above, it occurred to me to wonder if I'd gotten the original link from you in the first place -- I save the stories to my thumb drive and read them when I get around to it, which may be quite some time later. (Why I'm so enthralled with reading fic on the Blackberry -- I've been going through my saved fic backlog at a much improved rate!)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

For a while I was using Tubso the same way, but then I'd get halfway through and think "I went to all the effort of epubbing THIS?" So now I only archive the ones I really like.

[fyrdrakken]

I admit it can take a while for the files to be added to Calibre, and then converted, and then saved in MOBI format, and then copied to the Blackberry. But while I'm waiting, I'm probably going ahead and reading some of it, whether off the Blackberry itself (not attached until the final stage of the process) or in the files I'm working on -- or else I'm doing it in front of the TV and knitting while processes are running. (There was one day where I had read a single story by an author and made a special point of going back to her archive page, downloading everything, setting up pretty much all of it for converting and uploading in batch, and then spent the waiting period reading most of the shorter stories and eliminating them from the set when I reached the next step of the process.)

Definitely a difference in that the Blackberry isn't the final archive, but I've been saving fic to the thumb drive "for later" and moving the read stories to a different folder for archiving as a matter of habit. I'm willing to go through the runaround if it means these things actually get read -- and, an added benefit, the book-buying budget has been slashed since I'd already gotten into the Kindle habit and suddenly all the profic I haven't gotten around to yet is competing with the fanfic backlog.

I think in my last-but-one batch I loaded far too much fic -- basically just went through the downloads folder and grabbed everything I knew for sure was Sherlock (in any incarnation) that wasn't already loaded -- so there's a certain added pressure to getting as much as possible read and then deleted from my media card, because MobiPocket now takes for-freakin'-ever to load up.

But, yeah, this is part of why I love it when a fic is an AO3 link rather than LJ. I can download directly from AO3 to my ebooks folder without going through all the netbook processing. (Been making a special point of bookmarking a lot of the fics I've been finding there but not loading them to the BB yet, because of the already-crammed library.)

[inamac.livejournal.com]

There were a lot of 'Rivals to Sherlock Holmes' (and an ITV TV series of that title which introduced them to a wider public.

I expect you're thinking of Baroness Orczy (she of Scarlet Pimpernel fame) who wrote the 'Lady Molly of Scotland Yard' stories - All 12 of which can be read here

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Oooo! I was, in fact, thinking of Madelyn Mack (who I found and downloaded), but I didn't even know about these! *makes grabby hands*

[inamac.livejournal.com]

And I didn't know about Madelyn Mack - so we've both learned something.

My favourite detective of that era is R Austin Freeman's Thorndyke - which is much more CSI to Holmes' Columbo.

And I'm currently reading August Derleth's 'Solar Pons' stories - which are pure Holmes pastiche/fanfic and demand plagarising ;)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I didn't know about Thorndyke either. Hmmm... I wonder if I can find his stuff online. (I do love good CSI.)

There's also a parody called "Schlock Holmes" in which all of his deductions were very logical and completely wrong. I remember loving it around age 12, but I haven't revisited it since.