In which I am as the White Rabbit...

[glyph of Mary Poppins gazing sternly and brandishing her umbrella]

Why yes, I am still alive (and signed up, as of just now, for both Unsent Letters and the new round of Holmestice). But. I am unconscionably late in acknowledging the outcomes of both Yuletide and the prior round of Holmestice, and the estimable Ms. Poppins would be wholly justified in thwacking my knuckles with her umbrella handle.

So. Multiple posts incoming, in the interests of catching up.

Holmestice Winter 2024: Written & Received

Per immediately prior post, this is disastrously late - all the more embarrassing given that my gift for the prior round is genuinely exceptional. It's very much what it says on the tin - a post-ACD letter from Watson to Holmes, describing in eloquently researched detail (complete with a generous set of bibliographic links) the former's activities as a military medic during WW I:

A Letter From France
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Author rabidsamfan
Rating: General Audiences
Category: gen Warnings: none
Words: ~4600
Relationship: Holmes & Watson
Character: John Watson
Additional Tags: Ambulance Trains, Battle of the Somme, Correspondence, Watson knows Holmes can read between the lines, World War I

Watson writes to Holmes after becoming the commander of an Ambulance Train just before the Battle of the Somme.

For my part, I committed a more-than-usually ambitious fusion, merging elements of Laurie King's Mary Russell universe with those of Elementary....

The Really Final Problem
Fandoms: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King; Elementary
Rating: General Audiences
Category: gen, f/m
Warnings: none
Words: ~7600
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Joan Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes & Sherlock Holmes
Characters: Sherlock Holmes (x2), Mary Russell, Joan Watson, Estelle Holmes
Additional Tags: crossover, fusion

Joan Watson's Sherlock Holmes has just come back to life.

Mary Russell's Sherlock Holmes has just come home with a copy of Joan Watson's book.

One Holmes is looking for an inheritance; the other has already bestowed it.

Yuletide 2024: Written & Received

I received two stories for Yuletide this past winter, and (as with Holmestice in the prior post) am horribly late in acknowledging their creators. Technically speaking, one was a gift and one a treat, but I'm in the camp that loves its treasures equally irrespective of that sort of labels.

Both works are short (though no less delightful for their conciseness) character-sketch pieces arising from the new CBS series Elsbeth starring Carrie Preston as the sparkling (for multiple values of the word) Technicolor-garbed title character, an attorney-turned-sleuth presently attached to the NYPD. (I did not follow either The Good Wife or The Good Fight, which featured our protagonist as a secondary character; the new show, luckily, is fully self-contained.) Here, Elsbeth Tascione is a delightfully quirky Columbo for the 21st century, supported by an engaging ensemble and - very much as Columbo did - solving murders that we in the audience see firsthand in the opening scenes, often with A-list performers as the killers-of-the-week.

Kaya Blanke's Night Off
Fandom: Elsbeth
Author innie
Rating: General Audiences
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~1600
Relationships: Kaya Blanke & Elsbeth Tascione, Kaya Blanke & Captain C. W. Wagner, WEslbeth Tascione/Jake Turling
Characters: Kaya Blanke, Elsbeth Tascione, Captain C. W. Wagner, Jake Turling

Kaya and Elsbeth have a night off.

////

All Kinds of Music
Fandom: Elsbeth
Author FanchonMoreau
Rating: Teen
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~2600
Characters: Elsbeth Tascione, Kaya Blanke, Detective Donnelly, Teddy Tascione, Dr. Yablonski

"You didn’t hear this from me," Detective Donnelly began, "but the real Little Italy isn’t on the Lower East Side. It’s in the Bronx.”

Elsbeth takes a day off.

////

My contribution for the round was for Gargoyles; I've written several stories in the fandom, but had never previously focused on Elisa Maza, so this was a chance to stretch a bit...and ended up giving me an opening I hadn't expected to play a bit with the show's backstage connections to the Star Trek franchise.

Thrust and Parry
Fandom: Gargoyles
Rating: General audiences
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~1500
Relationship: Elisa Maza & Puck | Owen Burnett
Characters: Elisa Maza, Puck | Owen Burnett
Additional Tags: missing scene

Puck would claim afterwards that he'd intended to out-Vogel Preston Vogel.

Neither he nor Elisa ever mentioned the theory she'd floated much, much earlier....