Holmestice Reveals

[phoenixfalls]

holmestice has wrapped up with its creator reveals masterpost, so I can now post my recap post and claim my fic! But first, I want to gush about my gift a little.

I received The Next World, a gen fic for the very obscure made-for-TV movie 1994 Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes Returns, in which Holmes was so bored after the defeat of Moriarty that he put himself in a cryochamber to sleep through a century in the hopes of the world producing a new master criminal for him to defeat in the meantime. He gets woken up in San Francisco in 1994, where he teams up with Amy Winslow, a motorcycle-riding trauma surgeon, to defeat one of Moriarty's descendants. I watched it a few years ago, after sanguinity very kindly sent me this YouTube link to the film in its entirety, and I immediately put a request for it into my Holmestice sign-up post, which I have simply cut and pasted each subsequent time I've signed up for Holmestice, not really expecting anything to ever come of it.

So to have a fic for the movie revealed for me this Holmestice was both shocking and delightful! I saw the post when I was getting ready for bed, but I immediately sat down to read all almost 8,000 words of it, and I was grinning the whole time. And then I stayed up waaaaaay past my bedtime composing the first part of my eventual three-part comment squeeing over it.

It was immediately obvious that the fic was by Sang. Beside the fact that we are the only two Holmestice participants I've ever seen mention the movie in their sign-ups, the whole thing was filled with details that Sang and I had discussed back when I first watched the movie, that I had only referenced briefly in my prompts so as to keep the possibility that someone not-Sang might one day be able to write in the fandom for me. There were also other themes I associate with Sang: a knowledge of and focus on queer/LGBT history, and a pair of protagonists that do their best by each other, even if that best is sometimes prickly and fraught.

But of course, Sang could neither confirm nor deny my suspicions! And of course, even if I *knew* it was Sang, there was always the outside chance that someone else had written this glorious fic for me. Sang had to have had her hand in it, because of those details that only she could know, but maybe she had simply consulted? So it was a very interesting task, finding a way to squee over the fic that both thanked Sang for everything she had clearly worked into it to please me, and yet still would be properly thankful if my author turned out to not be Sang!

Still. It is such a good fic, it was worth staying up late for. It's filled with lots of fun San Francisco worldbuilding, and little 90s touches that are excellent for a giggle, and there's an absolutely atrocious pun (because this Holmes puns!). There's this really delicately-handled exploration of the impact of the AIDS crisis; this Holmes is a theist and that character note is handled in lovely fashion; the background unrequited Holmes/Watson is just achey and good. And Holmes and Winslow are clearly at the start of what will be a marvelous partnership, already at the stage where they know how to hurt each other -- and try to refrain from doing so, even when they are hurting themselves. Everybody who has any sort of Holmes/Watson feelings should give it a try, whether they've seen the movie or not!

(And Sang has written up a post about writing the fic for me here, if you want some neat behind-the-scenes details!)

Moving on to what I created for Holmestice.

I was assigned to starfishstar , and we matched on another rare Holmesian fandom, My Dearly Beloved Detective. This is a Russian movie made in 1986 in which the Doyle stories were so popular that the owners of the real 221 Baker St. building put out an advertisement to hire some private detectives to staff the place, to do something with all the people constantly showing up on the doorstep looking for help. Shirley Holmes and Jane Watson answered the ad and enjoyed all the success of their namesakes, though with much less forbearance on the part of Scotland Yard than the fictional Holmes & Watson enjoyed. It is also available in its entirety on YouTube, if you're curious! Alas, it is no longer available on YouTube, but spiritcc on tumblr has made it available on Google Drive here.

I'd written in the fandom for a previous Holmestice, but in that one I leaned in hard on the angst (spoilers: Holmes & Watson break up at the end of the movie, *sob*); this year, starfishstar requested the happier side of things, and mentioned in their general likes "crackfic... [that] achieves emotional depth and realism despite the absurd-seeming premise." I hit early on the idea of de-aging Shirley and making that the impetus for a reconciliation fic -- I'd never actually written de-aging fic, despite playing with the idea in several other fandoms.

But despite being fairly immediately inspired, the writing process looked a lot like the last time I wrote MDBD fic. I kept writing in fits and starts, I had the beginning I wanted, and some scenes from the middle, and I knew how it ended up of course! But somehow it didn't feel like an organic whole.

I ended up asking for an extension. As I have every single time I've participated in Holmestice, if I recall correctly. Sang laughed at me when I asked if I had indeed signed up as a pinch hitter as I had intended to, because she said the mods weren't going to ask someone to write a pinch hit who still hadn't turned in their main fic!

As the deadline for my extension loomed, I was still holding all these little pieces and thinking well, but where do I actually put together the narrative? And then I looked again, and realized: Narrative? Who needs narrative! The bits and pieces hang together! They were doing all the things I wanted the fic to do already -- so what if there weren't very many actual *scenes*, this is fanfic! The point is the feeling evoked, right?

So I polished up my bits and pieces, made sure there were sentences that at least vaguely approached transitions, and submitted it. . . well, not technically on time, but Sang hadn't woken up and checked her email yet, so only the timestamp gave me away. :)

And so the fic I wrote for my Holmestice assignment was:

Title: re-write the future/start from scratch
Author: phoenixfalls
Fandom: My Dearly Beloved Detective
Pairing: Shirley Holmes/Jane Watson
Word Count: 1,457
Rating: General Audiences
Tags: Future Fic, Age Regression/De-Aging, Fix-It
Summary:
Mrs. Robert Summers, née Jane Watson, was just packing away the last of her widow’s weeds when a peremptory knock summoned her to her front door.

A strangely familiar girl stood on her doorstep, perhaps fifteen years of age, with reddish hair coiled neatly into a demure bun and large grey eyes that swept Jane from head to toe, coolly assessing. Jane bristled at the frank gaze; but then Mr. Green trundled up from the kerb laden with several suitcases, and the girl’s familiarity coalesced into startled recognition.
Link: On AO3

I was still in a writing mood, so I turned my eye to treating the next weekend. One of the more unique parts of Holmestice as an exchange (especially now that most exchanges run through AO3) is that the posting period stretches out over a couple weeks, a few fics being revealed each day, so there's a much longer stretch than usual for starting and finishing treats before author reveals -- and a treat posted late still gets its day in the sun!

But literally as I was browsing all the sign ups, Sang approached me as a mod and asked if I might be able to take on a pinch hit. I kept my cackle on the inside. There were very strong words about no extensions being possible, but when Sang told me it was for monkiainen, who I've written for before and who always has very interesting possibilities in their sign-up, I said absolutely!

I had in fact been eyeing their Morland Holmes/Joan Watson Elementary request for treating anyway -- the first time it appeared in their sign up, it kind of broke my brain; but it broke my brain in that really excellent way that meant it was a challenge I wanted to see if I was up to.

But the last time I wrote an Elementary rarepair for monkiainen, I ended up rewatching all of season 1, obsessing over canon-compliance. This time I had a hard and fast-approaching deadline; there was definitely no time to rewatch all of season 4. So I cast about for different inspiration and spotted their prompt of a werewolf AU in any fandom they requested. I was immediately taken with the idea of werewolf!Joan.

Of course I ended up with way more ideas for the little AU than I could write in the timeframe allowed; also I unexpectedly found myself writing something approaching action? It was strange! But I actually managed to turn it in on time, using the most generous possible interpretation of the deadline (Holmestice runs on "as long as it's <date> somewhere in the world you're on time" time), so yay!

And here's that fic:

Title: Hollow Moon (make a deal with the bad wolf)
Author: phoenixfalls
Fandom: Elementary
Pairing: Morland Holmes/Joan Watson, Sherlock Holmes & Joan Watson
Word Count: 1,701
Rating: Mature
Tags: Alternate Universe - Werewolf
Summary:
The first full moon after Morland Holmes takes up residence in New York City, Joan seeks him out. They may have made their positions clear to each other as humans, but now they must establish the pattern for their interactions as wolves as well.
Link: On AO3