Gift Fic (Holmestice, Winter 2016): The Design of the Four

Playing catch-up: the story written for me in this season's Holmestice exchange was a delight -- all the cheerful roguery of the movie from which it's derived, plus bonus "Mary Morstan" and several cartons of canonical Easter eggs. 

The Design of the Four
Written by: SCFrankles
Fandom: Without a Clue (1988)
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Reginald "Sherlock Holmes" Kincaid, John Watson, Lily "Mary Morstan" Aspinall (OC)
Words: ~7800
Warnings: none
Additional Tags: Humor, Community: holmestice

Having recovered from the shock of Dr. Watson being the true detective and ‘Sherlock Holmes’ being an actor, Watson’s publisher has become more enthusiastic about the fictional aspect of the stories and is insisting Watson insert some romance by finding himself a temporary fiancée.

Luckily Kincaid has an old friend he believes is perfect for the job, and so ‘Miss Mary Morstan’ makes her entrance. True love does not ensue, but she does turn out to be most useful in the work that they do.

 

 

Fic (Holmestice, Winter 2016): A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One

And here's the story I wrote for this latest round: hologram!Moriarty several years on, not where (or who) you'd expect him to be. I did a good deal of chuckling with evil glee when I was writing this one.

A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One
Fandoms: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Professor Moriarty Series - Michael Kurland, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: James Moriarty, Madeleine Verlaine, Katherine Pulaski
Warnings: None for triggers.  Significant spoilers for ST:TNG episodes “Ship in a Bottle” and “Elementary, Dear Data”.
Words: ~2200
Additional Tags: Holodeck Character, Sherlock Holmes References, For Science!

"I must say, Professor, you've come a long way since we first met. I daresay nowadays you sound more like Sherlock Holmes himself than you do an evil mastermind."

"As it happens," Moriarty said, "there's a reason for that, but it will probably confuse you."

 

Gift Fic (Yuletide 2016): Oz & Faerun (yes, I got two)!!!

An especially joyful Yuletide this year for me: I had been morally certain that the count showing two Yuletide stories for me was a system bug (the second showed up right after the restore of all those accidentally purged assignments), but lo and behold I discovered two stories under my virtual tree when the archive opened. And both of them are seriously nifty....

First we have Oz (well, technically, mostly Philadelphia with an eventual excursion ending up in Mo), featuring a really thoughtful and engaging look at two of my favorite characters, a very neat interpolation between several relatively obscure parts of Baum canon, and just exactly the right amount of emotional subtext between our protagonists.  I have certain suspicions about the authorship of this one....

Twin Properties
Written by: ??
Fandom: Oz - L. Frank Baum
Characters: Button-Bright, Polychrome
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~4900
Warnings: none
Additional Tags: Reunions, Pre-ship, (if you want to read it like that)

When Polly gets lost in the US, she seeks out her only mortal (actually, only in general) friend.

AKA How Button-Bright ended up in that popcorn snowdrift.

 

 

 ////

And then we have an equally entertaining tale of my very favorite Forgotten Realms characters -- this one mostly sorcery rather than swordsmanship, with deviously complicated magic and a cleverly executed meeting between arch-wizard and arch-rogue that catches both characters very well indeed.  I have absolutely no idea who may have written this one, but I'm extremely happy to have gotten it.


The Amethyst Gate
Written by: ??
Fandom: Forgotten Realms, Songs & Swords - Elaine Cunningham
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~4500
Warnings: none
Characters: Arilyn Moonblade, Danilo Thann, Elaith Craulnober, Khelben Arunsun

It's an ordinary-looking magical portal - but when Danilo steps through, it collapses in on itself, leaving Arilyn with a mystery that even the Archmage of Waterdeep and a guardian of Evermeet may not be able to fully unravel.

I hear the Russians are coming....

A quick note relative to current developments on the LiveJournal side (specifically, concerns about LJ's servers being migrated to Darkest Russia):

This journal has for some time been mirrored on both DW (where I write most/all of the posts) and LJ (where I started), and I read my friends-lists/circles regularly on both sides of that mirror.  I expect to continue to do just that for as long as the lights are on.  Any content I post will be available on the DW side if the lights go off on LJ, and given that this is almost purely a fannish journal, I see little likelihood that Koschei the Deathless et al will choose to come after me.

Having said that: I do encourage anyone on the LJ side who is concerned to create a DW presence (there are tools whereby one can import an existing LJ over to DW essentially intact, thereby preserving the content), to add me to your DW reading page, and/or to let me know if you have a non-mirrored DW account to which I ought to connect.  The DW visual interface is as highly customizable as LJ's is (being built from the same base code), and though the vocabulary is a little different, the underlying structure is much the same.  At the moment, one need not have an invite code to create a DW account; if that changes (which it might if there's a mass exodus), any spare invite codes I happen to acquire will be mentioned here and available by request.