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mightypog · 11 years ago

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Massive Rec List #6

It’s been a LONG damn time since I did a rec list, (epic year that resulted in a successful Kickstarter campaign, a complete album, two national tours, four bands, and a successful application to a very exclusive grad school program, so well spent, but had to jettison all non-life support activities) and my list, as a result, has gotten drastically long. For that reason, I’m going to narrow it down two ways.

I am not going to rec anything on this list that has more than 500 kudos on it on AO3, because chances are you’ve already read it.

I’m also going to not rec things that are still a WIP. I’ll just wait until they are done.

That said, this list could be a lot longer, but i have to start somewhere. There will be a Rec List #7 someday!

A word on my tastes; I do love long, multi-chapter fics that can draw me into a world. You won’t find much PWP here; I love character development and exploration and development of the characters, but I certainly like tasteful and emotional explicit material as much as anyone else :). I am not among those who shy off case fic. At the heart of the franchise that Sherlock Holmes has become in a century or so are in fact great mystery stories. I like a good OC, too, and don’t really know why some people don’t like them, they can add a great deal of fun to a fic. I can enjoy childlike Sherlocks, but not enough to include them here, and I’m really shamefully uninterested in alternative pairings for these two. Johnlock or die.

Post-S3

Yep, Season 3 happened. Most, but not all, of these fics are pre-S3. There are, however, a couple really great new ones. I’m liking the trend. The new ones seem to be really mature, thoughtful pieces, because they deal with John’s marriage, and marriage and the evaluation of the merits thereof are complex and murky topics.

Here are a couple of the new ones that I thought were excellent:

All the Kings Horses

by Miasmatrix

14,700 words, first of a series. Second part has 22,800 words.

Second part more explicit than first, but for mature audiences

This amazing post-S3 fix-it starts out with Mary eight months pregnant and missing, and John’s house blown up. That’s the first four paragraphs.

This is also a Sherlock POV, which I love, and a pining Sherlock, which I love above all else. This Sherlock is the more emotionally perceptive one of Season 3, who is capable of helping John process an enormous amount of grief.

I read an enormous number of fics where Sherlock is deer-in-the-headlights lost when it comes to emotions, people, love, etc. This Sherlock might be inexperienced, but this is the sharply intelligent and even sometimes wise Sherlock of my head canon. He has to feel his way, but he’s good at that. The extent to which he puts John’s wellbeing before his own is wrenching at times.

Not much happens in the first half of the series, the action is all in Sherlock’s thoughts and reactions to John’s grief, and it’s still unfinished at 11 chapters (I can’t see what more it would need though). But it’s emotionally realistic and affecting. And the end is a massive cliffhanger, so thank God the writer posted the second part of the series right away.

Part 2, All The King’s Men, changes gear instantly from thinky emotional narrative to a hell of a case fic, and she’s baaaaa-aaack; or is she? This part introduces John’s POV, which enriches it, and John’s a BAMF. Mycroft is cool in this one, and the end is an aw-shucks moment.

The King Is Dead

SilentAuror

40,900 in one long chapter

Explicit

SilentAuror is one of the best in the fandom. I’ve read every Johnlock she’s written. This is an awesome S3 fix-it.

This is one evil Mary. This Mary is truly villainous. This is one of the fics in which John’s forgiveness of Mary is a sham; it starts in the hospital with gunshot Sherlock and carries through and past Magnusson, and then goes full-roar into resolving all the mysteries with Moriarty, CAM, Janine and everyone. These are mature characters, well realized. Über-realistic internal process on John’s part. This rings so true. And when it happens for the guys, it flat-out scorches.

I highly recommend reading this one, and then reading everything else she’s got on AO3.

Law Like Love

Plaid Adder

52,200 words, 28 chapters

Explicit

Plaid Adder is simply one of the best writers we’ve got. She’s also so consistently underrated I wonder if she only posts at 3 a.m. or something, and somehow flies under everyone’s radar.

This is part five of the unbelievably outstanding Wild About Harry series, and if you like a likable Harry, click the link now and don’t bother with the rest of this review, just go read it.

I don’t know where to begin with the incredible series, but at least Law Like Love can stand alone, so I can narrow my focus a bit.

Here’s what the writer had to say: “Six months after Sherlock didn't go off on that mission to eastern Europe after all, all is well at 221B Baker Street. Little Rachel is just beginning to sleep through the night (Yep, there’s a kid, sort of; that’s a hangover from the previous four parts of the series, but it’s not a huge plot point). John and Sherlock are sleeping with each other. Charles Augustus Magnussen is alive and unwell and just about bankrupt. And Mary is nowhere in sight.”

Not to put you off, but this story moves backward, each chapter the prequel to the one before it. The reason that works so exceedingly well is that in that way, the puzzle is gradually unraveled. It takes a write of incredible skill to pull this off; I don’t think there’s many at any level of celebrity who could do it. We’ve reason for pride in Plaid Adder’s membership on the fan fic team.

This is the story of how Harry the utterly ass-kicking attorney conspired with Sherlock and John to wreak the perfect revenge on Magnusson. The story starts out with the verdict; Magnusson is defeated and ruined. The rest of the story is the delightful unfolding of how that came to be.

The love story is no less appealing for that it’s an established relationship; good writers can mine the inevitable complications of those (think Diana Gabaldon) to keep a romance going like an eight-day clock.

Not only can Plaid Adder plot better than most screenwriters, and writes action like a regular Ian Fleming, she’s funny as hell. If you don’t love this series, I’ll buy you lunch.

How to Lie

Kedgeree

Words: 4,120

Very explicit

John demands that Sherlock show him how to fake passion with Mary, to deceive her until the noose can be drawn around her to catch her. Cue an ironic lesson in lying; Sherlock pretends to fake a passion for John that is perfectly real. John responds as he’s tutored, but is he faking it or not?

Ouch. A bitter little piece, but with an excellent punch line.

The Light of Day

Allonsys_girl

7,260 words, four chapters

Mature

Sherlock's leaving after the dance at the wedding, but this time, John goes after him and demands to know what's wrong. Sherlock actually tells the truth. And John requites him.

From there, they deal with how John is going to end his brand new marriage, and Sherlock basically falls apart while John works it out.

This is actually a two-part series; the first is the painful but exhilarating process of working things out, and the second is the explicit part, and it smokes.

Pre Season 3

Even though there’s a whole 50 percent more canon this year than there was last, there’s still a lot of great undiscovered Pre-Season 3 fics out there, and I still enjoy them. Hell, I still enjoy Season 1 fics. I just love the guys in any well-written ‘verse.

I Know Nothing

btch_sprinkles

4,600 words, one chapter

Not explicit. A bit of M/M kissing is all

This is an altogether startlingly fresh interpretation of the relationship between Mycroft and Sherlock, told from Mycroft’s point of view. It gallops over more about three decades in a surprisingly few words, portraying Mycroft as a complex character, neither bad nor good at first, who grows better over time, and who is haunted by a terrible guilt. There’s an understated Mystrade relationship, but it’s not really about that. John and Sherlock are also together, but it’s not about that either.

The cool thing about this fic is the amount that takes place off screen that the author trusts the reader to infer. Ultimately, the fic is about forgiveness and growth, a complex little tale for people interested in Mycroft and Sherlock’s relationship.

Reconciliation

Abrae

13,200 words, two chapters

Only barely explicit until part 2, which is most adult.

This is in large part John’s backstory, and well-written it is, richly imagined although sparely written. It’s the story of a sexually confused young man struggling not to love men, carries through the fall and John’s soul-killing misery that follows, although this is a John that is more prone to survive than the one rendered in many fics. Sherlock returns in a fairly trope-free manner, and the rest of the tale is John coming terms with what Sherlock means to him.

That’s part one. Part two, Speechless, is a 1050-word chapter that supplies the rest of that last evening, thank God. It includes Sherlock’s point of view, and makes for a nice resolution.

The Phoenix and the Dove

Professor Fangirl

2,000 words

Tastefully explicit

Professor Fangirl, who I had the pleasure of meeting and dining with one evening in Seattle, raises the bar. When she writes, suddenly she throws a light that makes neighboring fics washed out and pale.

This short fic is as simple and powerful as a crossbow. Sherlock is back, and shows John how to look at himself through Sherlock’s eyes.

“Human beauty is not a matter of art, John, it’s a matter of life,” he says.

As always with PFG, who beta’d one of my fics and was invaluable in developing theme, there is a weft of metaphor, in this case fire, the luminescence of Sherlock as John sees him, and John as Sherlock sees him, and as John learns to see himself.

This is absolutely poetic.

Bibliophilia (series)

Velma68

Four part series, spans S2 and S3. About 65,000 words in all.

Not explicit at all

One of the great gifts a good writer can give an audience is knowledge of some esoteric subject of which she is expert, and this writer is expert in antique books. This fic is delightful for many reason, not the least of which are the wonderful photographs and illustrations that appear throughout.

This opens with a ripping good mystery involving stolen antique photographs and horse racing, and all the while Sherlock and John are teetering on the edge of something unspoken, which does create a nice tension. When it’s resolved, it’s beautifully done. Gorgeous location, wonderful imagery, touchingly innocent.

Part 2 is a drabble set three months later, appropriately entitled “Grief.”

Part 3 is another mystery, this one a very imaginative reworking of the Musgrave Ritual of ACD canon. The first two parts of the series were excellent. This is fantastic. This writer really knows England and Wales, in a way that makes it depressingly apparent for those of us who write elsewhere how important such knowledge can be in fan fiction. This work again offers a look into a world, in this case Wales, that allows us to understand something of it we otherwise would never have had the opportunity to know.

One thing that lends her writing maturity is that her villain in this one is nuanced, not wholly bad, which makes his crime even more awful. It starts out a mystery and winds up a tragedy, in a vastly creative and very visual way.

The whole time, Sherlock and John are processing the hiatus, and it’s excruciatingly painful, and masterfully written. It resolves, finally and happily, and concludes with the fourth part, a drabble, that is clever and endearing.

His Best Man

westernredcedar

11,150 words, two chapters

Teen and up

I love the post-Reich fics in which John figures it out. This one takes John to an unusual setting (Cornwall coast, where he surfs) as he awaits Sherlock’s return and tries to assist from afar, and it’s well-written and fast paced. This is just atmospheric and good. It lingers with you, a bit.

A Waste of Breath

by Chryse

95,700 words, 25 chapters

Explicit

This absolutely wonderful novel-length fid made for a nice morning! The whole morning; actually as I started at 7 a.m. and finished at noon, and I read at Mach 2.

Starts after Season 1 and the pool. Sherlock, on a case and a bit desolate as his unrequited attraction to John grows, embarks on the kind of rough sexual relationship for which he’s got a taste. John comes to suspect that something is wrong, and he is correct. That’s a slow-developing narrative, though, that takes place against a backdrop of cases that are truly engaging. This is absolutely Sherlock as we know him from the show, to the last hair-pulling, “oh. OH!” and sarcastic comment that you somehow find at once appalling and endearing.

Halfway through, we meet the villain of the piece, who is an ultimately horrifying Moran, all the more so for his odd human moment at the end.

if hurt/comfort is your thing this is the grade A uncut pura fina, because Sherlock, who is both as hard and fragile as glass, gets hurt, and John is awesome in this, understanding and wise. The little refrain of, “Oh, the cleverness of me,” will alternately charm you silly and break your heart. This is Aspergers!Sherlock, and it's really well played. And I adore fics in which Sherlock turns out to be extremely physically affectionate. The adult scenes are truly electric, too. It takes the guys a while to work their way around to the good stuff, but HUGE payoff in the last chapters. Brilliant ending, perfect lump-in-your-throat resolution for all the characters.

The Musgrave Mystery

Lilith (Citrine)

34,000 words, 14 chapters

Mature

This is first off a great modern retelling of the Musgrave Mystery of ACD canon. A wealthy pain-in-the-ass of a toff has had a bit of Nazi loot lifted off him and he thinks the butler did it, to a snicker form John. They go to the country estate to try to solve the case, and get put up in the same room, whereupon John is frankly actually rather a bit of a homophobic prick and Sherlock capably conceals his attraction and hurt. But once John knows Sherlock is gay, he starts thinking about it.

That simmers along as the case unfolds, and the decaying castle and grounds make a nice backdrop for both narratives. John is pretty clumsy with Sherlock in this one, but really, it’s one of the more realistic of the John-thinks-his-way-to-gay accounts.

Turn Left At the Park

Glenmore

37,500 words, 28 chapters

Tastefully explicit toward the end

This fic was so awesome I decided after I read it not to read anything else for a while, because nothing else was likely to be half as good and it would be a profitless exercise in disappointment.

The premise is simple: John walks past Stamford that morning and he and Sherlock don’t meet for another year.

Half of the piece is a long portrait of extreme loneliness. Each of them is successful in his own way (and the OCs in this are hilarious) but it’s empty. John’s best friend is a cat named Rhonda who brings him gifts of small animals. John is as close to Edmund Dantes as it’s possible for a free man to be. He finally decides to end it.

That’s when he meets Sherlock.

If the first part of the work made you feel despairing and gloomy, rejoice, because the next part undoes that in equal measure. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a fic that made me feel more healed and optimistic.

Glenmore also write the recently-completed kid fic Albion and the Woodsman which was so OOC I was surprised that I loved it and eagerly opened every chapter as it got to my inbox. These versions of the characters ring quite true, however, and if ever there was a feel-good fic, this is it.

How John Watson Comes Home

Ark

6600 words, one chapter

Explicit with some BDSM material

This one is not all sweetness and light. In fact, it’s a hurt-a-thon at first. John is married, but not happily. He can’t stop returning to bed with Sherlock, and we wonder why he ever left in the first place, until it’s revealed halfway through, and damn, did they waste a lot of time over a misunderstanding.

This writer is a wordsmith. This is pleasurable for the use of language alone.

This is what John feels as he surveys Baker Street after a too-long absence:

“He wants to tear pillows from chairs, rip blankets by their seams, smash all the porcelain in the kitchen, knock everything free from the mantle, make it a war zone. He wants to stay standing right there in the messy perfection of it all forever, never moving, like a fly caught in solidifying amber. He wants to never move again, to only stand there by the door and look at this space that started everything.”

This is also screamingly explicitly sexual, a story told through touch, and it’s for grownups for more reasons than that; moral lines are not brightly drawn here, which is how the world actually really does work.

Enjoy.

Shopping List

Morianon

54,300 words, nine chapters

Explicit

Ah, Morianon can write character. Witness this evocative description of the post-war life of John Watson: “John closes his eyes and the world spins, because that’s just what the worlds do, don’t they, they spin and spin and spin and they don’t ask anyone if spinning this way is alright, and years pass and pass and pass and John Watson gets older, more dangerous, more sad, more alone.”

John loves Sherlock madly from the outset. Sherlock dies at the end of Chapter One. In Chapter Two, Mycroft makes an assassin of a mad-with-grief John. John finally rallies in a grim and joyless sheer-bloody-will sort of way and carries on like a solider with an empty canteen and a 50-pound pack crossing the Gobi, and begins a crusade to clear Sherlock’s name. Chapter 4, Mary Morstan. Can I just admit how much I quail in dismay at the appearance of Mary Morstan in any fic? She’s actually kind of awesome but not around long, and by now the reader can be forgiven for being a bit tired of watching this agonizing and endless suffering.

Thank God, Sherlock returns.

One thing here that I like in particular is that John is too overwhelmed with joy and relief to act on his anger. That’s my secret head canon, because that’s how I would be, I think; probably a bit mad at myself because I should be angry on my own behalf, but too crazy with love and relief to do anything but thank God and hold on.

From there out its some of the maddest love you’ll ever read.

The Experiment

Terebi_me

16,660 words, one chapter

Very explicit, but somehow not porn

I have no idea how this languishes with 40 kudos after a year and a half.

This excellent piece starts with Sherlock unceremoniously giving John an imperiously abrupt blow job, tersely explaining it as an experiment in pair bonding, and swanning off to other interests while John tries to process the experience.

This is one of those premises that lives or dies on the strength of the writer. This writer makes this into a creditable account of how John might actually feel about that if John was you, the reader. Anyone who has ever been in a friends-with-benefits relationship will recognize the negotiation of what you need and what you can live without in the face of an emotionally indifferent sexual partner that you have come to love.

Familiar scenes such as Sherlock on his computer while John watches telly are made fresh by excellent use of language and sheer imaginative work.

Sherlock is pretty much an arse throughout this, there’s no compromising the BBC character for the sake of romantic viability, but somehow it’s alright.

This is actually the first part of a series; the next is delightfully enough called The English Vice. Love the reference to Savage Love, Dan Savage is a Seattle guy! This installment continues to mine and expand upon the sorrows of loving someone who can not return it, and all the torment of thinking you see it and never being sure, and then hearing in no uncertain terms that you are not loved, and continuing to wonder anyway. Ouch. Been there.

Part 3, Look out, non-con with Moriarty. This one’s hard to take.

Part 4 is incomplete, two of five chapters posted, but thankfully they posted in April, so there’s hope for some resolution, which is badly needed, because it ends in a really, really bad place.

Humdingers and Melancholies

flawedamythyst

9500 words

General

This fic is the equivalent of curling up on the sofa with the fuzzy blanket you’ve had since you were 10. Sherlock and John retire, but unlike the usual retirement trope, it’s John who is purposeless and at loose ends. Sherlock’s completely absorbed in the hives, and takes a while to notice that John is failing to thrive.

His brusque thoughtfulness is charming, John’s proclivity for making terrible puns to provoke him amusing, and the eventual contentment of all most soothing.

Sparks Across The Sky

The_Circus

4200 words, one chapter

Not explicit (friendship fic)

I’m a hopeless Johnlock devotee, but sometimes a friendship fic is almost better, when I’m stressed out or too tired to process strong emotion.

The sheer kindness of Sherlock to his PTSD-afflicted friend will improve the worst day.

The Red Window

sigtryggr

19300 words

Not explicit because it’s a friendship fic

John takes a case of his own.

I like this fic a lot because John is really well-rendered as a man at loose ends who loves working with Sherlock but is too proud to play second fiddle forever. Sherlock is also horrid a lot, but it’s poignant in that he really, really doesn’t know how not to be and is frantic when he can’t figure out what he did wrong.

It’s enormously gratifying when John actually forges along, not as fast as Sherlock would have, but competently. Sherlock is losing it, because John won’t let him help and he can’t stand not knowing what John is doing. He’s really a case in this one, in an endearing way. He winds up sort of role reversing with John, being the proud bystander who worries.

Really mood enhancing fic. This was this writer’s first case fic, my God, written in a single week.

All Hearts Are Broken

writerfan2013

63,000 words, 35 chapters

Explicit in spots, but not a major focus

I would pay you to read this fic, that’s how awesome I think it is and how much I want people to know about it.

The very best fics have A) excellent characters; mature, serious and powerful in their way; B) excellent plots and scenes; C) Enough angst, even sorrow, to make it bittersweet and all the more rewarding at the end, and D) a really satisfying conclusion.

This has every single element of an incredibly good fic in great measure. And chances are you haven’t even read it because it only has 309 kudos, which I will never understand.

John breaks Sherlock’s intense and devoted heart when he marries. Sherlock goes on to start a high profile relationship with a supermodel, and winds up married himself. John’s marriage quickly deteriorates. Sherlock’s is a sham; he’s on a Bond-worthy mission.

The romantic tension in this is, on a scale of one to ten, a twelve. There are fabulous European locations, there is a political thriller element, there is all the longing in the world, Mycroft is an über-BAMF, the original characters are interesting. I wish this was a movie.

Mind the Gap

sweetcupncakes

45,000 words, six chapters

Explicit

This is like a gorgeous, tragic piece of classical music. It’s Sherlock in first person, at various stages of his life. The first chapters are a vividly sense-rich exposition of a lonely childhood in a house tyrannized by an abusive father and haunted by a mentally ill mother. This writer knows something of the way children really act during and after confusing, poorly-understood traumas.

Carries through an excellent description of the cocaine experience. That’s a hard one to get right. I’ve tried a bunch based on altogether too much personal experience in younger years. I admire anyone who can capture it.

By the time John shows up, you are so aware of the exact John-shaped hole in Sherlock’s life it’s like a vast sigh of relief. And John doesn’t disappoint. He’s protective, patient, compassionate and exasperated all at once. It’s awesome to see him wait Sherlock out through Sherlock’s various manifestations of panic.

Poetic, tense, richly imagined and mature. Wonderful.

ACD (Arthur Conan Doyle canon-style fic)

Cryptology

JaneTurenne

Explicit (extremely)

27,150 words, three chapters

I love a good ACD fic. I’ve been listening to the canon on audiobooks, and Victorian English is an elegant language. This writer assumes the dialect very well. The story begins with Watson being warned that enemies of Sherlock’s within the force have bruited about that Holmes and Watson might be inverts, and that there might be an investigation. Watson, wishing with all his heart that there was such a relationship and despairing that Holmes could ever return his secret affection, takes the only step he can think of to spare them both, and marries.

The story is revealed through the device of a modern discovery of the way to decipher the code in which the two wrote intimate letters and confessional journal entries, and the publication thereof.

I really love well done epistolary fics, and this is a quality pastiche. Holmes’ journal is wrenching (and impossibly erotic. Holmes is nothing if not thorough in recording that which he observes).

There’s no denouement to this piece; one isn’t needed. We can infer the rest. It’s mostly one long, literate sexual memoir. Read this one alone.

Extra points to the author for the Latin, Catullus and Shakespeare quotes.

Arte Regendus

Violsva

Nine parts, one chapter each, averaging about 6,000 words each.

Explicit in spots

Sherlock Holmes, vain and autonomous, starts the series with a chapter in which he details how he came to accidentally fall for an oblivious Watson, and the unfolding relationship, including some quality case fic, is recounted by the two in alternating parts of the series.

The central part of the series deals with Holmes and Watson trying to resolve their conflict over Holmes’ drug use, and it plunges into industrial-grade angst and stays there a while.

This writer gets into the period well, also references Catullus*, as it seems any self-respecting ACD writer must, including, of course, ACD himself, who inserted a volume of Catullus in Holmes’ grand return. Good dialog, emotionally believable.

*For those unfamiliar with Catullus, he was a Roman writer of the 1st Century BCE who famously referenced gay erotic experience a few times in his body of extant work. In the Victorian era and earlier, the poetry of Catullus was something that only the educated classes had access to, and was probably for some the only literary reference to gay themes they would encounter in a lifetime. Catullus was a subject of snickering for Latin students, deemed shocking by those inclined to be shocked, and I remember reading that it was for a time sold wrapped in plain brown paper, and never sold to women.

The Other Way of the World

Candle_Beck

12,650 words, one chapter

Explicit

Candlebeck is the best writer of anomie, of dissolution in a dark Victorian urban landscape, that I know. I adore Candlebeck but sometimes her work is so painful I flinch and read the tags carefully before tiptoeing in. Fortunately this ends well; with her you have to check.

The fic opens with Watson returning to Baker Street from a two-week appointment to find Holmes wordlessly and deeply disturbed. Holmes then vanishes. Worried, Watson learns from Lestrade that Holmes has done something seemingly unconscionable in pursuit of a killer. Watson goes in search of him as Holmes obsessively hunts a foe.

This is Victorian London in malodorous, brutal, industrial technicolor. And this is love between two very damaged men. I love Candlebeck.

Crossover and AU

All We Ought To Ask

achray

56,000 words, 12 chapters

Explicit

The setup: John Watson is a vicar. Sherlock is one of those Victorian free thinkers who called religion into questions. There were a number, including John Stuart Mill and George Eliot, and Sherlock is very suited to this portrayal.

John is an endearing character in this; he’s no prude, and he is very honest with himself.

Christians will find this painful; I am aware there are many people who can reconcile Christianity and gay love, and therefor I don’t find it difficult to imagine there are number of fan fic readers who cherish a faith. So be warned, faith takes a beating in this one.

Really good exposition of Victorian England, a John of enormous personal integrity, a wonderfully rendered Sherlock, and some important historic characters take a turn.

British Library, Cotton Domitian viii, Item IV, ff. 70-80: Historia Johannis

longwhitecoats

3900 words

Mature

Man, is this creative. The premise is that this is a fragment of ancient text, being carefully translated and transcribed by a scholar, and I’ll bet you the writer actually does this sort of work. It’s marvelously academic.

The ancient text is the tale of Johannis, or John, a shipwrecked sailor who in the year 1123 winds up on the Hebrides island of the hermit scholar Sherlock the Scot, whereupon the scholar teaches the sailor how to write by offering his body as a parchment. Be aware this fic is actually rather sad.

The fic is made by the clever interplay between the actual text and the “translator’s notes” that contribute to the story; Sherlock the Scot makes certain references and uses language that would be meaningful to the translator and expert in the era, for instance.

The commentary takes a turn to some shrewd skewering of academia when it references the raging debate over the relationship between the Sherlock and John, the kind of debate with which we are quite familiar in the cases of, say, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Whitman and others. Includes an excerpt from “queer theorist Katherine Winshaw’s article ‘Entering the Cave: Or, Sometimes a Stylus Is Not Just a Stylus.’”

The text, of course, is homoerotic as all hell.

What a sly, clever piece. Less than 100 kudos and it’s been up almost a year. There’s no justice.

Perdition’s Flames

I Ship An Armada

63,400 words, 21 chapters

Explicit

One of the joys of the post-Khan world is crossovers in which Sherlock is Khan. This one kills. The set up is that John was dying of cancer and Sherlock begs Mycroft into making John Baskerville’s guinea pig for the agent that makes mortals into super humans. Then, of course, he follows shortly thereafter.

Two hundred years later they wake up, and it becomes one long epic quest to get back to each other while foiling the machinations of people bent on exploiting their capabilities for ill. There’s no BAMF like a John Watson or a Sherlock given strength and endurance an order of magnitude above human standard. And the tension as Kirk and Spock try to reason out what’s happening and who is friend and who is foe, and whether John and Khan were in fact the villains history made them out to be, then trying to avert utter catastrophe, makes the whole thing a nail biter. There are some wonderful innovations in the plot, and a Molly-character takes a great turn. The restrained intensity of the two men when they are reunited is ten times more affecting than any florid emotional demonstration would be, and much more believable.

Even if Star Trek isn’t your thing, I recommend spending the afternoon and evening on this long, excellent crossover.

The Semantics of Crop Circle Formation: A case study by Sherlock Holmes [unpublished]

canolacrush

41,700 words, nine chapters

Mature

Told in Sherlock’s first-person narrative, this is actually a very unusual case fic. Crop circles are showing up in the summer of 2017, and Sherlock and John head to the country to identify the culprit.

This one’s almost impossible to review without giving away what makes it so clever, but that would be telling.

Suffice to say, it’s delightfully inventive, quite well-written, rich in information of the phenomenon of crop circles (in fact is foot-noted to hell and gone), has a fantastic plot, a wonderful John character and an equally wonderful romance.

The Detective Bride

fireheart93

27,000 words, 14 chapters

Not explicit

This is a Princess Bride/Sherlock fusion, which makes it geeknip.

It’s just absolutely wonderfully written in the specific style of a folktale, or a legend. Sherlock is moving up the ranks of the most intelligent people in the land as he grows up, and at 15 both catches the unfortunate attention of Moriarty and Moran and realized he is desperately in love with his handsome stable boy.

It’s really no good to describe the author’s voice. Here’s the setup for the first kiss that nicely represents the wittily irreverent tone of the thing:

“There have been five great kisses since the invention of the kiss in 1642 BC (before then couples performed a sort of glorified high five manoeuvre). And the precise rating of kisses has always been an area racked with controversy and inter-departmental feuds, because although everyone agrees on the basic formula of purity times intensity times duration, no one can agree on exactly how much weight each element ought to be given, leading to some very tense Christmas parties. But on any system, there are five kisses that everyone agrees deserve full marks.

This one left them all behind.”

It reminds very much of that brilliant Seattle writer of the sublimely absurd, Tom Robbins.

Fast-paced story telling, (be aware there’s an accidental duplicate chapter in there), and wonderful resolution, dastardly villains and a very heroic John.

Not-Sherlock

If your OTP is Johnlock and nothing else interests you, adieu until the next installation of the rec list. But after Star Trek Into Darkness came out, I had a brief fling with Spock/Kirk. I also dabbled a bit in Bond/Q.

Let me just say that the Sherlock fandom is vast and accomplished next to most others, even the Ur-fandom that is Star Trek. But there are, of course, many, many works of genius to be found in other fandoms. Here are the ones I found in the last year.

Spice

Eimeo

226,150 words so far, 47 chapters and counting.

Not very explicit but I have high hopes for the next chapter!

Holy Fuck, clear your calendar. This is LONG. But there’s almost nothing like it anywhere for sheer character development of true-to-life, complex, mature individuals who love and long and mourn what cannot be while maintaining Herculean personal dignity and integrity. This is The Thorn Birds for the space era.

It’s not even complete, but I’m reccing it anyway, because last week we finally got to the part we’ve been waiting 200,000 words for (well, at least half of the part, smile) and so you won’t have to endure the months-long gaps between chapters that I did. It also has more than 500 kudos, but chances are they aren’t mostly from the Sherlock fandom, so chances are lower that you’ve already read it.

The Rest is Silence

anotherusedpage

2354 words

Not explicit

I don’t know how I tripped on this little work of genius, but a year later it’s only got 18 kudos. It’s been up since 2009.

Probably because Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare don’t have a massive AO3 fandom. Maybe they should.

Kit Marlowe and Will Shakespeare are young, serious about their craft, and lovers.

This writer penned a very convincing Marlowe poem for this, a bit shocking, a lot gorgeous, and it fits the way I interpret a lot of Elizabethan and Renaissance art.

This is a bon bon for the literati of the fandom.

#sherlock #BBC sherlock #BBC sherlock recs #BBC sherlcok fic recs #johnlock #johnlock fic #johnlock fic recs #johnlock recs #sherlock and john #sherlock and john recs #sherlock season three #sherlock season three fic recs #johnlock rec list #sherlock and john fic rec list

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