Ruth Sadelle Alderson

A friend asked me if I had any favorite Sherlock fic, so here is a whole post of recs. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive rundown of every Sherlock story I've liked, or even all the ones I've loved, but just a sampling of things I really like to get you started.


Nature and Nurture (203273 words) by earlgreytea68
Chapters: 57/57
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Harry Watson, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, Molly Hooper, Sarah Sawyer, Mike Stamford
Additional Tags: Babylock, Parentlock, Kidlock, cloning
Series: Part 1 of Nature & Nurture
Summary:

The British Government accidentally clones Sherlock Holmes. Which brings a baby to 221B Baker Street.

What I liked: John and Sherlock raising a clone of Sherlock and falling in love! The baby learning to talk! Everything about this was delightful. There are also some fun timestamp things in the rest of the series.


An Avalanche Of Detour Signs (56053 words) by gyzym
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Molly Hooper/Lestrade (Inspector), [Molly Hooper/Jim Moriarty], [Molly Hooper/Sherlock Holmes (unrequited)]
Characters: Molly Hooper, Lestrade (Inspector), John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Anthea (Sherlock), Sally Donovan, Anderson (Sherlock)
Summary:

In which Molly Hooper gets a job, gets a degree, breaks a heart, has her heart broken, falls in love, keeps a secret, saves a life, runs a morgue, falls apart, pulls it together, and finds exactly what she didn't know she was looking for--not necessarily in that order.

What I liked: This is a really good Molly story and I also greatly enjoyed her relationship with Lestrade.


Indecorous (55424 words) by Basingstoke
Chapters: 25/25
Fandom: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Mary Morstan/John Watson
Characters: Harry Watson, Lestrade (Inspector), Dimmock (Inspector), Mrs. Hudson, Ella Thompson, Mummy (Sherlock), Mycroft Holmes, Sally Donovan
Additional Tags: Asexual Character, Bondage, Squirting, Hangover, Nightmares, PTSD, Threesome - F/M/M, Triggers
Series: Part 2 of Yes Yes Yes
Summary:

In which John learns to balance a kinky girlfriend, an asexual boyfriend, a ten-inch cock, his sister, the neighbours, his friends, and his blog. Some are more balanced than others.

What I liked: This has some really interesting kink and kink negotiation, plus a wholly different Mary than most. (Written before Mary appeared on the show, of course.)


Series: At Least There's The Football by sheffiesharpe
Words: 178,992
Works: 14
First story:
Aftermath (5617 words) by sheffiesharpe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mycroft Holmes/Lestrade (Inspector), Lestrade (Inspector)/OMC
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Anthea (Sherlock), John Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Lestrade (Inspector), Sally Donovan
Additional Tags: one Holmes is as difficult as another, Getting to know you, talking about football, Snark, dry socks are important
Series: Part 1 of At Least There's The Football
Summary:

Lestrade arrives at the pool after the explosion and finds someone else is already there.

What I liked: So many feelings! Family (found and blood), Anthea backstory, cooking.


Series: The Sustain Stories by maybe_amanda, onemillionandnine
Words: 151,422
Works: 4
First story:
Sustain (or Concerto for the Famished in D Minor) (70679 words) by maybe_amanda, onemillionandnine
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, Sarah Sawyer/John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper, John Watson, Sarah Sawyer, Lestrade (Inspector), Mycroft Holmes, Mummy (Sherlock), OCs
Series: Part 1 of The Sustain Stories
Summary:

"So now you're behaving like a six year old 'cause he didn't take you along on his honeymoon?" Lestrade said. "Grow the hell up."

What I liked: This series is so good. Kidfic, Sherlock's thought processes, multi pov, casefic. Do be forewarned that the case later in the series has offscreen violence toward women and some onscreen Moriarty violence/creepiness.


Precious Things (people) (5663 words) by rozurashii
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock/Lestrade
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes
Summary:

Few things cause Sherlock to feel uncomfortable.

What I liked: This is a soft, lovely thing set after The Great Game, with cuddling.


Self Service (9478 words) by Calico
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Lestrade (Inspector)/John Watson
Additional Tags: Threesome m/m/m, Double Penetration, Barebacking, sub!Lestrade
Summary:

Gratuitous porn, remixed as a favour from another fandom's double penetration prompt. Yeah, I'm not sure what the redeeming feature is either...

What I liked: This is super hot. I also liked the framing where we know what's happening from the beginning, but when we get into it with Lestrade, we also forget that it's not real.


Ain't Seen the Sunshine (Since I Don't Know When) (26592 words) by emungere
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: John/Lestrade pre-slash
Characters: John Watson, Lestrade (Inspector), Mrs Hudson, Anthea, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes
Series: Part 1 of Ain't Seen the Sunshine
Summary:

"I have two sons," she said. "Ages five and twelve. They're very bright, and I don't say that as a doting mother. I say that as someone who's seen their IQ scores and discovered that the elder was writing essays for a number of university students at fifty pounds a paper."

What I liked: This is an age difference AU where John becomes Mycroft and Sherlock's nanny. I love stories where John comes into their lives and is not here for whatever nonsense they've been allowed to get away with so far. There are some sequels, and also an associated blog.


The Adventure of the Three Bedirrags (11238 words) by marysutherland
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Lestrade (Inspector), Sherlock Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Characters: Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, John
Additional Tags: Case Fic, preslash
Summary:

A policeman's work is never done, even when he's supposed to be on leave. Lestrade casefic gratuitously ripped off from ACD's The Three Garridebs.

What I liked: I really liked watching Lestrade do casework, and his relationship with Sherlock is fun.

Summary: Molly knows the sex was never really about her. She makes the choice to keep the baby anyway. She's not, to her surprise, alone in raising her son.

Notes: Title from Florence and The Machine's "Between Two Lungs."

Story on AO3


( the breath that passed from you to me )

Summary: Molly's pregnancy is a surprise, but not to Sherlock.

Warning: Miscarriage.

Story on AO3


( Empty Arms )

I'm home sick today, so this seems like a good time to pull out all of these miscellaneous plot bunnies into a post. As usual, these are things I'm not going to write. If anyone else wants to write them, please do! (And link me to them so I can read them.)

Hawaii Five-0

There should be a story where Danny refuses to move in with Steve because his house is too dangerous and he won't let Grace live there.

Sherlock

( There are enough of these to put behind a cut. )

Suits

( Kind of a lot of these too. )

Star Trek/Sherlock RPF

( Just one, but it's long. )

Teen Wolf

There should totally be a story where Stiles is feeling kind of sad and left out about Scott and Allison and asks Derek if werewolves mate for life like some other species of wolf. Derek says yes, and then when Stiles is even more sad, he says, "But they don't always mate with just one person," and then things happen and eventually Scott, Stiles, and Allison live happily ever after in a poly V relationship.

Stupid Commercial

I kind of want to write fic about this Verizon Droid Razr ad that explains why it takes two people to carry two phones out to the showroom.

Summary: Molly stops smiling politely at her. She turns her back and sits down on the coffee table in front of Sherlock. "What do you need?" After a moment of looking at his face, she amends the question. "What do you need that I can give you?"

Disclaimer: Not mine, no money being made.

Notes: Spoilers for "The Reichenbach Fall."

Story on AO3


( We'll See )

Summary: Molly meets Owen seven months after Sherlock jumps off the roof of the hospital.

Disclaimer: Not mine, no money being made.

Story on AO3


( What Love Is )

Writing
The only thing I've written this week is Sherlock fic. Sherlock fic! I do not feel qualified to be writing this - I'm not British and I don't think I'm up for the kind of plot it actually demands - and yet I have.

AO3
I'm fascinated by what it's like to have things on AO3. Watching what people kudos is totally interesting. Also fascinating: my top three stories by hit count are Angle of Refraction, which is Sherlock Holmes movieverse threesome fic that I wrote just after the movie came out, when it was likely to be noticed; Pick Yourself Up and Get On With Your Life, which was my Yuletide story and therefore likely to get noticed; and The Task At Hand, which I wrote for bandgirlsbang, which means people noticed it because of that. Even above and beyond that, what I find interesting is that two of those are stories where I consciously and deliberately worked to match the tone of the source material. I suppose that paid off!

Meme
Last time I did this meme, the only person who answered said she had a question about "The Task at Hand," which I was still writing and not ready to talk about. But now it's done, so let's do this again! Meme originated with disarm_d:

I've heard people say that writing is hard because you have to make decisions, but we never really talk about the decisions we make with stories or why we make them. We talk about plot bunnies, but not about how we actually turn them into a story.

And it seems like a lot more fun to do that than to work.

So, if you wanted, ask me questions! Anon commenting is on, if you feel shy. Or ask your flist to ask you questions.

What were you trying to do [here]? Why did you decide to ____? This is what I thought about xyz, is that what you were going for? What made you write ____? And so on.

Let me also repeat my own disclaimer from the first time, which still stands:

I've been hesitant about asking questions of the people on my friends list who have done this because the questions I want to ask people are the kinds of questions that I can imagine might be uncomfortable, so in addition to leaving anonymous commenting on, I want to invite you to ask me uncomfortable questions if those are the kinds of questions you have.

I'm feeling very between fandoms and non-fannish^* at the moment, which means I will probably go back to my between fandoms mode of occasional random fic posting and no discussion. (Watch: in two weeks I'll be in love with something new and won't be able to stop talking about it.)

In other fannish news, I have imported all my fic into AO3. Total number of stories: 409. Even taking into account the fact that that includes some permanently unfinished things, that's a lot of fic. I tried to count how many fandoms it was yesterday, but I got tired of counting at thirty. It's probably somewhere over fifty, even doing things like collapsing individual bands into bandom. I knew I had written a lot of fic in a lot of fandoms over the last thirteen and a half years, but that was possibly even more than I expected.

One more piece of unrelated fannishness: I have Netflix again for a while. (Thanks allegram and dedalvs!) My plan was to watch some TOS so I could get all the references in Star Trek reboot fic. Instead, I'm watching/rewatching (I haven't yet hit the point where I stopped watching the first time around) Grey's Anatomy. It's so soapy and sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in it, but I can't stop watching. I loved this show when it started - A soapy medical drama with lots of female characters? Totally my kind of thing! - and then at Escapade one year someone ruined it for me by saying hateful things about Meredith. (I gather she's generally not well-liked. I always liked her.) Alex/Izzie is my Grey's Anatomy OTP forever. I would take fic recs!

Other things I've been watching: Nikita (my favorite show on TV right now), Once Upon a Time (I wasn't into this week's ep; we'll see if that's the show or my mood), Hawaii Five-0 (I'm an ep behind, and I keep holding out hope that it'll get better, but we'll see how it goes), Revenge (love this show, and they hit the reveal I've been waiting for this week), Leverage (sometimes I love this show, sometimes it's just okay), Ringer (I still love this show for its interesting plot).


^* My heart and mind are completely occupied by Sherlock but (a) I don't feel qualified to write fic for it (pay no attention to the Google doc behind the curtain), (b) I don't want to talk about it as much as just hold it in my heart, and (c) I don't really want to read discussion about it because I know that if I do, someone will ruin it for me. [back]

This is not a place for discussion or deep thoughts. While I have added a few other excited utterances and a plot bunny below the cut, this is primarily for the sentence I thought it would be indecorous to yell in a thin-walled apartment.

( Spoilers )

Goals stated publicly here for accountability purposes. If I have not met them by Monday night Pacific Time, you have my permission to come back to this post and pester me about them.

Labor Day is one of the few holidays for which my place of employment is actually closed. (Technically, we're only sort of closed, but I don't have to work.) I am also having trouble giving myself permission to play with things that I don't want to do the work to turn into a giant story, so I was going to do prompt snippets. But then I started making a list of those kinds of things that are already in my head - or my snippets and such file - that could be completed/posted this weekend and thought, "Why not just write those things instead?" So that's what I'm going to do, at least three of them, even if I end up posting them all on Monday instead of one per day, and I'm giving myself permission for them to be the fun parts/snippets, and to not write everything that I could possibly do with the plot bunny. The thought that I should make them into real stories has been keeping me from working on them at all, so this is one of those times when something is better than nothing. Below is the list I made. Although I might still do whatever I want to do, feel free to comment with votes for what you'd like to see!

The List

• The third Gabe/Victoria/Bebe story.


• Post-episode seven melancholyish Suits gen (Harvey&Mike) with cake.


• Tom/Sean, Tom owns a collar.


• girl!Brendon/Sarah, crossdressing.


• Harry/Draco EWE pre-slash wherein Draco follows Harry around for a week.


• Evie runs away to the Human Lands: a fairy tale.


• Suits/Sherlock crossover (because Sherlock Holmes should meet Mike Ross).

Other things I'm going to do this weekend:

• Bake something. Bread and/or cinnamon rolls.


• Write/post an entry about Malinda Lo's Huntress.


• Finish the book I'm reading (Patti Smith's Just Kids) and write/post an entry about it.


• Take a second crack at the book I stopped reading earlier this week (Patricia Briggs' River Marked).


• Enjoy myself having lunch and seeing Colombiana with norwich36. (Okay, I admit it: this one is on here because I know I'll be able to do it, and it's always good to have something you're sure you can cross off your to-do list.)