All in and all good! Plus guessing post

[tweedisgood]

So that's the last offering for this round, thanks so much to all of you lovely contributors. The reveal post (and traditional ACD Holmesfest reveal post fic penned by yours truly) will go up on the 31st.

Anyone who cares to take a guess at the authors of particular pieces, do feel free in the comments to this post...

Comments

[rachelindeed]

*cheers! applause! confetti!* Congratulations to everyone! I've had a wonderful time reading so many beautiful stories, and I still have some to catch up on, so the party isn't over yet! As it happens I am one of the volunteer recc'ers at the 221b-recs comm this month, and I just want to mention that they have an open post where everyone is invited to share their favorite stories from this fest before the big reveal!

Now let me see, I do have quite a few guesses for this round...

*rubs hands, furrows brow*

I will start with the ones I feel fairly sure about. A Mother's Adventure seems to have scfrankles's name written all over it. The canon details, the delightful matronly protagonist, the humor mixed with love and courage, and the compassionate approach to the human failings of the husband and the renewal of this marriage despite its problems -- I see her hand in all those lovely elements.

The gorgeous texture, atmosphere, and detail of His Every Mood strikes me as saki101's inimitable style. I adore the originality, the unusual eroticism, the intriguing casefic, and the vivid moments of travel and music. But most of all the nuances of Holmes and Watson's relationship, revealed through their smallest gestures, mark this as Saki's work in my eyes.

Upon a Ring is surely sanguinity's, isn't it? Bringing Mary to life as such a three-dimensional person, exploring her relationships with both John and Kate, drawing out the conflict inherent in deciding how to trust her husband without putting the privacy and reputations of others at risk. The intelligence, the period detail, the exploration of possibilities and roads not taken. It must be sanguinity's.

Okay, those are the only ones I feel fairly sure about, so from here on out it's going to get a lot more speculative!

I have been saving this story for Halloween, but JUST FROM THE SUMMARY AND TITLE I am going to guess that The Adventure of the Creeping Midlife Crisis belongs to gardnerhill! Who else could have written this? WHO ELSE??

I have been trying to guess who could have written the marvelous Autumn in Wimpole, and thankfully the wealth of well-deserved comments has narrowed the field for me. I am going to guess that it's sans_patronymic's beautiful work.

The strength, clarity, and realism of the writing style (and the fact that there is an android fic in her back catalogue!) makes me think Right Hand Man belongs to mistyzeo.

There is something about the luxuriant richness of the description in La Fee Verte Ancienne that makes me think of inamac's writing style.

Number 94, with its deep historicity, its enlivenment of two of canon's neglected female characters, its to-die-for lyrical style, and its exquisite romantic and sexual tension...I'm calling tweedisgood for this one.

And after all that, I STILL CANNOT GUESS who wrote my stunning and glorious gift fic, Scars! But because it feels wrong not to at least try, I am going to very tentatively name spacemutineer as my best guess. Something about the tenderness of the scene, the intensity of emotion, and the striking turns of phrase reminds me of their writing.

So many great authors, so many great stories! It's hard to feel certain of any guesses amid so many fantastic gifts, and I look forward to the reveal with great excitement :)

[scfrankles]

Congratulations to all participants, and thank you to the mods for all your hard work! The fest is certainly back with a bang - such a lot of good stuff this time.

And so to the guessing - I’ve been waiting for this. *stops champing at the bit and starts typing*


The Adventure of the Maidservant's Revenge - I was the recipient for this wonderful story ^___^ I have to say the style doesn’t really jump out at me as being someone in particular but looking at other clues… There is an intriguing typo - Holmes says ‘capitol’ instead of ‘capital’. Suggesting a US writer perhaps? Which admittedly doesn’t on its own really narrow things down. But in the notes the author says I hold with those who date [CHAS] early, partly because of the athletic feats Holmes and Watson perform during the story, but mostly because I think Holmes must have been of a suitable age to appeal to Aggie. (unlike poor Jeremy Brett). Again, being familiar with the Granada series hardly narrows things down for the writers in this exchange, but there is one writer who I think of as being a major fan of Brett. So I’m going to guess tripleransom.


Impersonation - Must admit it wasn’t the style of the fic that gave away the writer to me. The ideas and the quality of the writing could have meant quite a few people but I couldn’t have narrowed it down any further. However, the header and the formatting were more objective clues and I guessed the writer from those. But I was still left puzzled for a while. This particular author had clearly stated they didn’t want to write a gen fic. And though they could have changed their mind, they shouldn’t have been matched with capt_facepalm, who only wanted gen. The penny eventually dropped though that they’d been matched on gen art. Which confirmed for me that the author was garonne.


The Case with the Bogus Clergymen - Though this fic isn’t a Watson/Lestrade fic, you could perhaps argue that it is a Watson & Lestrade fic. And I only know one person who has ACD Watson/Lestrade as a OTP. Also, I do know her style pretty well by now and the way the dialogue has been framed in this fic seems very familiar. My guess for the author is smallhobbit.


The Adventure of the Creeping Midlife Crisis - I read this and immediately knew who it was as I remembered a certain writer writing a 60 for CREE in which Watson is injected with honey badger serum. However, I then began to doubt myself. Because a notable thing about this story is that it’s an omegaverse fic that isn’t an omegaverse fic. I began to wonder if it was by mistyzeo - because I remembered her championing the idea of using omegaverse, and this fic is such an elegant compromise between the modern trope and the classic use of canon. Also, I remembered Okapi writing an omegaverse abecedarian poem using the Greek alphabet, featuring an alpha who was a writer and an omega who was a beta (isn’t it odd how you can tell so much about a person just from one piece of work?) and my original choice of author, after heartily complimenting Okapi on her poem, mentioned she didn’t read omegaverse fics. But after a bit more thought, I decided that this writer might see it as a challenge to take a trope that isn’t their thing and make it into their thing - make it into something that slips rather neatly into canon. Like Rachel, my guess for the author is gardnerhill.


Upon a Ring - Again agreeing with Rachel.sanguinity has written previous fics in which Mary and Kate Whitney were lovers, though the situation was somewhat different than in this one. And she loves to write about the female characters in the canon. Also, there is obviously a large amount of research that has gone into this fic to make the setting seem so real, which makes me think of her. And there is a great deal of heart too - the characters trying to understand each other and being kind to each other.


Right Hand Man - I wasn’t sure about the author of this one at first. But after having a final look at my list and doing a final swap round, there seemed only one likely candidate. And having looked back at my comment, I once again compliment this author on their ability to make a world seem real and - well, the recipient herself has rather solved it. She links to a piece of art on Tumblr that ‘could almost be an illustration of your story’. If you scroll down the notes a bit, someone has reblogged this from [ ] and added ‘i want a fic for this’. [ ] is of course mistyzeo. (And once again, I’m agreeing with Rachel ^^)


And speaking of Rachel… Rewriting History - An astonishing piece of work. Full of so many fresh ideas and so much heart. I found it difficult to leave a comment on it because there’s just so much to talk about. There’s clearly a great deal of work and research that’s gone into the fic but it reads just effortlessly. And there is the clue that one particular writer hasn’t commented but to be honest I guessed it was hers on first reading, not long after the fic was posted. She doesn’t normally write something this long but I do remember her saying on Tumblr that she probably wasn’t going to take part in Holmestice because she’d just finished her ACD Holmesfest fic and was feeling ‘tired’. Perhaps because she’d had to put even more effort than usual into her writing? And this author is always keen to expand her horizons. I think the author is rachelindeed.

And so, in conclusion, just let me say: bloody hell, Rachel ^^”

[tripleransom]

I have to admit that I haven't read all of the fics in this round yet and several of those I have read, I have absolutely no clue about. There was one that I was so sure of and then I saw the comments and perforce, changed my mind.

All this waffling about leaves me with only one guess that I'm going to commit to and that's my own gorgeous prezzie, Number 94, which has to have been written by Tweedisgood.

[sanguinity]

The actual author of that story is giggling at both of us, I'm sure. I have my suspicions as to who it might be, but I want to read more before committing a guess.

[rachelindeed]

Hee hee, I am so delighted to see that we are filling in some of the gaps in each other's lists while also concurring on a few usual suspects :) I have been looking forward to this guessing post, too, because I think I'm going to be spectacularly useless at the guessing post for this upcoming round of Holmestice. There are so many new people, which is fantastic, but for someone like me who can't really guess unless I know someone's writing fairly well ahead of time, it's going to be impossible! But I actually knew a lot of the writers here, so I have been a bit more daring than usual in my guesses.

Your detective work is, as usual, impressive! I can neither confirm nor deny, naturally, but I can tell you that my tiredness after writing for this round of the Holmesfest was largely due to a prosaic problem: I got sick for a chunk of the time I'd set aside to write, and then as soon as I got better my son got ill in his turn! When it rains it pours. So it was a little chaotic, but everything worked out in the end.

I echo your bloody hell with pleasure, and let me toast you in turn with this nice bottle of gin...

[mafief]

I completely agree that The Case with the Bogus Clergymen is written by smallhobbit.

I know you can't reveal, but I think you wrote Scars. ;)

Still working on the rest.

[starfishstar]

Oh, thank you for mentioning that open post at 221b_recs! I'd forgotten about that, and that's perfect. I almost never post recs, largely because there's so much good fic out there that I just don't even know where to start... But right now I actually *do* want to make a rec, and wasn't sure where to turn.

(I feel bad that I've read some of this fest but haven't really commented – thanks to grad school destroying my concept of free time – so at the very least I can contribute by making a rec!)

Also, just in general KUDOS to everyone who wrote for this fest!! What an excellent collection of stories, truly. Really impressive.

[scfrankles]

I hope you're not going to hog that gin, madam ^__^

Crikey, I'm sorry you and your son weren't well, but I'm glad everything turned out all right with your fic. (Whichever one it might be... :P)

I'm just about to have another go with the guessing, and I'm afraid I'm going to disagree with you on one or two counts... ^__^

[scfrankles]

*waggles eyebrows*

[scfrankles]

Another go - and I’m going to start by disagreeing with Rachel ^___^

She says that La Fee Verte Ancienne reminds her of inamac's style. And I would have been happy to agree with that but… Twenty people signed up - only nineteen gifts have been posted. And there hasn’t been a gift posted for inamac. That suggests to me that inamac dropped out early enough to be omitted from the matching altogether, and so didn’t write a fic for the fest.

I was instead going to guess violsva for this fic, but then I realised they’d commented, via a reply to someone else’s comment. So I had to look elsewhere for what they’d written. Like Rachel, I had sanspatronymic down for Autumn in Wimpole, but I decided to have a closer look at the styles of these two writers. violsva unashamedly uses ‘said’ to frame their dialogue; sanspatronymic doesn’t (as often, anyway). And Autumn in Wimpole has 7 ‘said’s in about 2,000 words; La Fee Verte Ancienne has one, in about 1,500 words. (I don’t get out much, you know.) So, I’m going to swap these two authors over:

La Fee Verte Ancienne is by sanspatronymic.

Autumn in Wimpole is by violsva.


The Adventure of the Devil’s Snare - The style and the quality of the writing could be a few people, but going by a process of elimination and by the author’s interest in writing about a specific canon story, I think this is by methylviolet10b.


Camelot - I’m pretty confident this is by capt_facepalm. They are exceptional at writing engrossing and well thought out case fics and this fits the bill perfectly.

[rachelindeed]

Ha ha! The guessing post is heating up, I love it!

Gosh, I hadn't noticed that inamac did not have a gift posted. However, if they dropped out, usually they would still have a gift written for them...you may be correct that they dropped out so early that no one was ever matched with them. But it makes me wonder whether the person assigned to write for them might have been the one who had to drop out when it was too late to secure a pitch hit? I hope all's well, whatever the situation.

I think violsva is certainly another very plausible guess for "Autumn in Wimpole" -- I often feel that violsva and sanspatronymic's sensibilities and styles are similar. However, take a look at sanspatronymic's sign-up, where they discuss their preferences: "I like writing fic that explores complicated interpersonal feelings, or is snarky, or filled with quibbling over little things, or all of the above." To me that seems to fit Autumn in Wimpole perfectly. So I will stand by my guesses until the truth is revealed! Fight, fight, fight! It adds spice to these guessing posts :)

On the other hand, I certainly agree with you about "The Adventure of the Devil's Snare" belonging to methylviolet10b. I thought about guessing the same in my original post, but it felt obscurely like cheating because I recognized it not so much from the writing style as from a distinctive formatting choice -- those embedded html links to some of the references mentioned in the story also appeared in methylviolet10b's fantastic Holmestice fic, "The Book of Life," a couple of rounds ago. I remember that detail because it was one of my favorite fics of that fest, and it struck me as an elegant solution to making the story more accessible to people with different levels of familiarity with the canon. So yes, I second your guess on that one.

[sanguinity]

Re no gift for inamac, I think the three most likely possibilities are:

1. inamac dropped before matching,
2. inamac dropped early enough that a mod didn't feel conflicted about asking whoever-was-assigned-to-inamac to drop their original assignment and become the pinch-hitter for whoever inamac was writing for, or
3. a mod was originally assigned to write for inamac, and when they dropped the mod just switched assignments rather than go through the folderol of finding a pinch-hitter.

/totally not speaking as a mod who sometimes has to find pinch-hitters
/also absolutely no one should use this to inform guessing on any other guessing posts that may someday happen :-P

/goes back to reading, because I STILL haven't read enough to commit to guesses yet and ARGH GUESSING POST I COULD ACTUALLY PARTICIPATE IN

[rachelindeed]

Oooo, thank you, it's very neat to glimpse the inner workings when it comes to modding an exchange like this. This is making me grateful all over again to the mods for coordinating everything, there's so much going on that we never even see!

/resists the temptation to sing ONE DAY MORE chorus from Les Mis...

[smallhobbit]

I am absolutely useless at guessing, so will just say Well Done to everybody.

And can someone nudge rachelindeed and scfrankles to pass the gin in my direction. Especially if Rachel is threatening to sing ;)

[rachelindeed]

*gasps*

*INCREASES VOLUME!!!*

(loses track of gin...)

[sanguinity]

Sing away! Never let it be said that I attempted to dissuade someone from expressing their joy in song!

[smallhobbit]

Finds gin.

*DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?*

[rachelindeed]

LOL!!!

[mistyzeo]

;D Guilty of steampunk and robot Watson fics.

[mistyzeo]

IT ME, I have wanted to write a story based on that Fullmetal Alchemist art for 10 billion years. Maybe I'll bring it fully to fruition rather than just burping up one little scene.

[sanspatronymic]

Hooray to us all! What a grand exchange--and what grand works we've made. (I am Ozymandias, king of ANTS. look on my feelers, ye termites, and despair, etc.).

I'm rubbish at guessing, but I'll say that I thought Rewriting History might have been violsva. Classical allusions, epistolary form, and just something about the tone?

[sanspatronymic]

Funny for people to put me and Violsva head to head, as a fun fact is that we DID meet for coffee on Holmesfest Prompt Day Eve. Maybe we Freaky Friday-ed ourselves? Or maybe I should never touch the word 'said' when there are so many juicy words crying out for use!

[sanguinity]

I still haven't read all the works, but I'm as close as I'm likely to come before the reveal. Sadly, I have no original guesses. So to echo several others...

At first blush, I thought A Mother's Adventure belonged to gardnerhill: she's a whiz at character voices, and has a penchant for taking female side-characters and making them the heroic and resilient centers of their own narratives. But multiple lines of evidence suggest it isn't hers. So who else has a strong sense of character voice? scfrankles does, that's who. "Mother's Adventure" also displays a finely-tuned sense of the ridiculous (the captial-D Disguise, the back-and-forth with the daughter, the inverted observations about manners), and while I'm used to seeing SCFrankles do more broadly comic pieces, she has a nice touch for pathos when she feels like it, and has always shown a heartfelt concern for the minor characters of canon. SCFrankles came very close to slipping this one past me, but I really do think it's hers.

Autumn in Wimpole has that paradoxical lavish-but-understated use of detail that I associate with so strongly with sanspatronymic's work. Furthermore, it hinges on the seemingly trivial domestic notes of a marriage, and is strongly reminiscient of the quiet-above-but-roiling-beneath third-person voice evidenced in Return. I'd be shocked, shocked, if Wimpole wasn't sanspatronymic's work.

Rewriting History is certainly consistent with rachelindeed's style -- the strong, clear command of language; the penchant for honest communication; everyone quietly and undramatically going about their lives while having the very strong feelings about it all underneath -- but I was not yet convinced that it had to be hers. And then Mycroft hove into view, and... Well. That is very much Rachel's Mycroft. And it is just like her to ask how Mycroft would be emotionally affected by the Great War -- and to return with this particular answer -- just as it was like her to ask how Mycroft was affected by the revelations of Murder by Decree, and come up with a similar answer there.

The Adventure of the Creeping Midlife Crisis... Even if I didn't recognize gardnerhill's particular touch with crack-not-crack, this is very much her kind of Watson: so extremely honourable, self-sacrificing, and stoic as to nearly flirt with absurdity (and yet very much not absurd), the kind of Watson we haven't seen on-screen since Robert Duvall.

I'm nowhere near as certain that capt_facepalm gave us Camelot, but I duly log the guess anyhow, and likewise that Bogus Clergyman belongs to smallhobbit.

Which brings me nearly to the end of authors whose work I know well enough to recognise as themselves. EXCEPT FOR GARONNE AND VIOLSVA, whose works are lurking somewhere in among the rest, and damn and double-damn if I can spot them.

[tweedisgood]

The actual author of that story is, in fact, me :-) Good guessing!

[methylviolet10b]

Excellent guessing, Sanguinity. I can tell you were speaking from experience....

Now that the reveal post is up, I can confirm that inamac did unfortunately have to drop out. I was originally assigned to write for her. We mods agreed that it made more sense if I switched to cover her assigned recipient rather than scramble to find someone else in the remaining time. :-)

[sanguinity]

Heh, I was typing that up and wondering how much I could extrapolate from stuff that's happened with us! The two exchanges are similar enough in form that I'd think we have similar problems (and at least sometimes that would mean similar solutions?) but I don't actually know. But I'm glad to know I didn't lead people too far astray.

And "Devil's Snare" was a scramble-to-fill-it pinch-hit? Wow. I'm impressed.

[tweedisgood]

Guilty as charged, m'lud.

[violsva]

We may have - my fic was inspired by this conversation!

[scfrankles]

I really hope you do ^__^

[gardnerhill]

I have no idea what makes my story "omegaverse" because I don't and have never read Omegaverse fic.

Is it because Watson initially takes the passive role in sex? All I had in mind for that first sex scene is to show Holmes and Watson indulging in comfy sleepy old-married-couple intercourse, where Watson is happy to oblige his spouse even if he's not currently as eager as Holmes seems to be.

[scfrankles]

No, it's absolutely nothing to do with the first sex scene - it's to do with the final sex scene ^_^

What put the idea into my mind was the reference to Holmes' "delicious scent", to a certain extent Watson's sexual feelings being out of his control, and the, ahem, "prolonged 'courtship rituals.'" But I remembered after making my initial comment that Omegaverse fics came into being via writers being inspired by werewolf fics. It was the werewolf aspect of your fic that made me think of Omegaverse - but werewolf fics came first in the history of fanfiction.

I hope I didn't offend you and I apologise if I did - it was just a connection that popped into my mind.

[gardnerhill]

Okay, that explains it. So I'm working off the same original source material that led to Omegafic. No, not offended, just bewildered that I could have written something that resembles a genre that I make a point out of avoiding!

[tweedisgood]

And isn't allowed at ACS Holmesfest - NOT, to be clear, by way of judgement, but because it is a modern fic trope.