Tip for Holmes/Watson 09 fans
I have found an vast, untapped resource for long, plotty Holmes/Watson fic for the new Sherlock Holmes movie:
Holmes/Watson fic based directly on the Arthur Conan Doyle canon (or the older adaptations).
Well, duh, you say. Wait, hear me out! I was in Sherlock Holmes fandom for a brief period after reading up on the stories to learn how mysteries were conducted, and I batted around the idea of slash with the characters. But I discovered that my personal interpretation of the characters made reading Holmes/Watson fic based on the ACD canon an awkward experience, no matter how well-written they were. I wanted to enjoy them but I couldn't imagine Holmes being that handsy and affectionate towards Watson outside of a life-or-death situation. It was hard for me to think of Holmes as a sexual being at all, to be honest.
But after watching the movie and tearing through sherlockkink and the new holmeswatson09 community, I was still hungry for more fic--specifically long, plotty, satisfying fic--so I wandered back to the old H/W archives based on ACD canon. To my surprise, I found that the characterizations dovetailed perfectly with the movie versions of Holmes and Watson. RDJ's Holmes is handsy and affectionate, jealous and playful and sexy, and the old guard of Holmes/Watson writers captured this reading of Holmes well before the movie came out. The old H/W fic totally works for me now if I keep movie-Holmes and movie-Watson firmly in mind. (No disrespect intended to the ACD canon fic writers and I'm sorry for visualizing RDJ and Jude Law's portrayals when reading your fic! But now I can read your amazing stories and I love you for it!)
The trick is simply to visualize RDJ and Jude Law's portrayals of the characters and it works 100%. I just spent the day reading katieforsythe's wonderful Cauldron: A Love Letter and The Three Favours, which are, as well as being long and plotty and delightful, also eerily prescient:
Some of [the telegrams] inquired rather charmingly after my health. Some were dinner invitations, or notices that he had reserved a box at the opera. Others were terse and frankly exceedingly droll accounts of deductions made regarding acquaintances of ours at the Yard, or minor reflections upon passages in books, or ironic descriptions of how the plane tree visible from my old room was faring. I would calculate that a quarter of them were variously worded apologies, some amusing and others abject though never inappropriate. Finally, a further ten percent, perhaps, were summons to accompany him on cases of varying interest. I discarded each and every one of them, save the last.
I will not pretend that I did not read them. I threw one in a public dustbin without glancing at its contents and in a fit of unreasoning panic some two hours later returned to find it had already been incinerated. After that, I took care to read them through, whether they brought a horribly painful constriction to my chest or no, before I destroyed them. The less efficacious of them were crumpled and consigned to the nearest receptacle, and his more effective efforts I deliberately burned. Finally, at long last and after having received 196 telegrams from the same party, I jotted down a furious reply:
Cease writing me telegrams. You must give it up.
I had already received my quota for the day and was preparing for bed when a fourth was delivered to me, shortly before midnight:
I do not intend ever to give it up, even if the only beneficiary is the London postal service. Sleep well.
It slipped from my fingers onto my desk as I shook my head exhaustedly, and I vaguely wondered as I drifted off what I had done to deserve any of it, and what I ought to wear when I arrived at Baker Street the next morning to throttle the life out of Sherlock Holmes.
P.S. I'm always starving for good fic! Anyone got recs?
Holmes/Watson fic based directly on the Arthur Conan Doyle canon (or the older adaptations).
Well, duh, you say. Wait, hear me out! I was in Sherlock Holmes fandom for a brief period after reading up on the stories to learn how mysteries were conducted, and I batted around the idea of slash with the characters. But I discovered that my personal interpretation of the characters made reading Holmes/Watson fic based on the ACD canon an awkward experience, no matter how well-written they were. I wanted to enjoy them but I couldn't imagine Holmes being that handsy and affectionate towards Watson outside of a life-or-death situation. It was hard for me to think of Holmes as a sexual being at all, to be honest.
But after watching the movie and tearing through sherlockkink and the new holmeswatson09 community, I was still hungry for more fic--specifically long, plotty, satisfying fic--so I wandered back to the old H/W archives based on ACD canon. To my surprise, I found that the characterizations dovetailed perfectly with the movie versions of Holmes and Watson. RDJ's Holmes is handsy and affectionate, jealous and playful and sexy, and the old guard of Holmes/Watson writers captured this reading of Holmes well before the movie came out. The old H/W fic totally works for me now if I keep movie-Holmes and movie-Watson firmly in mind. (No disrespect intended to the ACD canon fic writers and I'm sorry for visualizing RDJ and Jude Law's portrayals when reading your fic! But now I can read your amazing stories and I love you for it!)
The trick is simply to visualize RDJ and Jude Law's portrayals of the characters and it works 100%. I just spent the day reading katieforsythe's wonderful Cauldron: A Love Letter and The Three Favours, which are, as well as being long and plotty and delightful, also eerily prescient:
Some of [the telegrams] inquired rather charmingly after my health. Some were dinner invitations, or notices that he had reserved a box at the opera. Others were terse and frankly exceedingly droll accounts of deductions made regarding acquaintances of ours at the Yard, or minor reflections upon passages in books, or ironic descriptions of how the plane tree visible from my old room was faring. I would calculate that a quarter of them were variously worded apologies, some amusing and others abject though never inappropriate. Finally, a further ten percent, perhaps, were summons to accompany him on cases of varying interest. I discarded each and every one of them, save the last.
I will not pretend that I did not read them. I threw one in a public dustbin without glancing at its contents and in a fit of unreasoning panic some two hours later returned to find it had already been incinerated. After that, I took care to read them through, whether they brought a horribly painful constriction to my chest or no, before I destroyed them. The less efficacious of them were crumpled and consigned to the nearest receptacle, and his more effective efforts I deliberately burned. Finally, at long last and after having received 196 telegrams from the same party, I jotted down a furious reply:
Cease writing me telegrams. You must give it up.
I had already received my quota for the day and was preparing for bed when a fourth was delivered to me, shortly before midnight:
I do not intend ever to give it up, even if the only beneficiary is the London postal service. Sleep well.
It slipped from my fingers onto my desk as I shook my head exhaustedly, and I vaguely wondered as I drifted off what I had done to deserve any of it, and what I ought to wear when I arrived at Baker Street the next morning to throttle the life out of Sherlock Holmes.
P.S. I'm always starving for good fic! Anyone got recs?