Fic: The Descent of Man [Sherlock]

[jjpor]

Yeah, I know. I have other things I should be writing, but I... Yes, I committed Sherlock fic. Hopefully when this is finished it will be out of my system. The original Holmes story this is based on is one of my favourites, even if it seems to be poorly regarded by a lot of fans. It's like the Holmes equivalent of Creature from the Pit, then. ;D

Comments

[ryanbrendonlove]

Oh god I am so in love with this.

The original is a favourite of mine too (even though it freaks me the fuck out), so when I got to: “What would you say if an otherwise placid dog suddenly attacked somebody that it knew well?” I may possibly have squealed. AND THE DOG IS STILL CALLED ROY. This pleases me irrationally.

"It’s going to be too bad when we have to dissect his brain.”

A brief, embarrassed pause descended over the room at that. Well, you can see why.
I snorted so hard I choked.

And the comments! Absolute brilliance, all of this. So looking forward to the rest of it, thank you <3

(And I don't know if it was intentional, but the snooker deductions, a canon reference? Not investing in any South African securities in the near future, eh Watson!)

[jjpor]

Thank you! Thank you very much, I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! :D

It is just a creepy, unsettling premise for a Holmes story - and even more so for what it hints at (editorial rules obviously being stricter in the 20s when it was written). People tend to write off the later stories as not as good, writeen by a disinterested ACD (quite apart from the cracky sf element in that particular one), but the thing that strikes me about them is that while they're not as brilliant as the early ones, they are a lot darker and quite experimental compared to the mid-period ones. It would be interesting to speculate as to how much of this was down to the effect WW1 had on the author...

Ahem.

But yeah, he's got to be called Roy! XD And glad you liked the jokes. I'll see what I can do about the next bit.

And yeah...I was going to try to work in something about John keeping his chequebook in Sherlock's drawer...but really there's no way this John would let Sherlock anywhere near his chequebook, is there? :D

[jjpor]

Plus, the Jeremy Brett TV version of this story scared the bejeesus out of me when I saw it as a kid. And it still kind of does now!

[akashasheiress]

*cracks wip*

[jjpor]

Yes, sorry mistress! I haven't forgotten, mistress! Ow!

[marag]

Oooooh, this is really intriguing. I love a good casefic and this is a great start!

[jjpor]

Thank you! Well man (or woman, for that matter) does not live by slash alone, right? :D Thanks for reading; I'll try and get this finished soonish.

[ravenskyewalker]

Okay, I'll definitely have to read this later. Though I adored Jeremy Brett's Holmes, I've never read the stories until now, and I'm loving them. I hope to catch the updated "Sherlock" whenever it comes my way. With this fanfic, I was bad and read the end comments, with Holmes being cranky about spelling, etc., and got a big grin out of that section. :-)

[jjpor]

Heh, thanks! I love the Jeremy Brett versions, and I like the stories a lot too. I think I've read all of them now, and this is based on one of them, as the Sherlock TV episodes where. I liked Sherlock a lot; I don't think it was perfect, but it certainly provided a distraction for a couple of weeks between Doctor Who! I look forward to your opinions when you get round to reading this.

[clocketpatch]

Oh my goodness. The blog by itself was brilliant, but the reply comments had me rolling on the floor. I wish I knew a good Sherlock archive site, because this ought to be posted to one.

And I think I vaguely remember the story this is based on, enough to think I know where this is going anyway...

[jjpor]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it! I thought...just one Sherlock fic couldn't hurt, could it? I've wanted to write Holmes for ages (half-did a Holmes/Weng-Chiang crossover once, but never finished it), and this is the next best thing. Maybe get it out of my system...

Yeah, any ideas? The only archive site I use really is Teaspoon. I looked at Fanfiction Net, but I sort of disapprove of them since I heard they won't allow certain types of stories or something...

Aha, yeah, the original story is That One... I love it for its crackiness and also for the quite dark, freaky stuff going on under the surface. Arthur Conan Doyle did turn out some messed-up stories in the latter part of his life...

[clocketpatch]

Grief, a reputable site please, not the pit. The problem there isn't that they disallow certain types of stories (they don't allow heavily sexually explicit stories for legal reasons, or anything with underage content. There's also a list of creators who have asked that derivative works using their characters be removed. It's all in the FAQs) the problem is that the site is just so bloody big and ambitious and well known that there is absolutely no way to mod any of the stuff coming in, so they can disallow until blue in the face, but people just relabel and the end result is that you don't know if what you're clicking on will be good a good fic or something highly disturbing.

Though, I have been informed that there is some kind of coded warning system involving fruit (not that half the posters know what it is/use it).

That's not to say there's not good stuff on there (and I've been taking the plunge in my on-going search for good Eleven fic) but the typos and unlabelled smut you must wade through. Egads.

[jjpor]

Yeah...let us never speak of it again...

But yeah, I don't really read non-Doctor Who fic except here on my lj flist, so other than specialist DW archives I don't really know of anywhere (reputable!) I could post this other than here. There are probably Holmes fanfic archives out there, but I don't know how they'd take to Sherlock stuff swamping them (as it probably is right now).