221B Recs

Title: Leveling Up
Author: philalethia
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Length: 36,961 words
Rating: Mature
Warnings: None
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: John plays video games, Sherlock writes a guide on GameFAQs, and they get on quite well together... eventually.

Told entirely through emails, text messages, and voice chats.

Reccer's comments: This fic definitely doesn’t need a rec—it’s more an opportunity for me to talk about how much I admire it. It’s essentially to do with the tag ‘Internalized Homophobia’. I’ve seen it here and there on Sherlock fics and I’ve never been quite sure what to make of it: whether it was a warning, an explanation or simply a description. And I’ve always mentally translated it—I appreciate this is unfair—as ‘John gets a telling off from the author for not immediately jumping into bed with Sherlock’.

This is the first time though I’ve seen someone explore why a person might be experiencing internalised homophobia. To go off a tangent for a moment: I tend to prefer when reading Sherlock/John fics to have the situation John is a straight man whose sexuality has expanded to include Sherlock. Because I’ve always loved that scene in the power station between John and Irene Adler. And though you can fiddle about with the semantics of ‘I’m not actually gay’, in terms of pragmatics John clearly means ‘I’m not attracted to men at all’. To me this had to be the truth because why would a brave man like John be lying about it? And in this fic the author says: here you go then—here are some damn good reasons.

‘Homophobia’ is not generally used in this sense, but of course the point about a phobia is that, while it may be a fear that’s got out of control, it does have its basis in a rational fear. And John’s fears are rational. Coming out isn’t all smiling friends congratulating you. Sherlock has his own problems to work through in this fic but it’s John’s part of the story that moved me the most. It made me look at him in a new way.

Because the fic is told ‘entirely through emails, text messages, and voice chats’ we have no body language and no access to John and Sherlock’s internal worlds. All scenes where they’re physically together are off-stage. And John and Sherlock don’t always say what they mean: they lie to each other, they say the wrong thing, they hurt each other. It’s pleasing that the author trusts the reader to look underneath those words and try and fill in what’s going on in John and Sherlock’s minds.

This may make the fic sound rather dry. But there’s wonderful humour, there’s sex—pretty impressive on the author’s part, seeing as there’s never being a scene where John and Sherlock are physically together—and most of all, this is a touching and realistic romance. All the problems these men go through to get to a relationship, they go through them because they love each other.

What I always admire most about philalethia’s fics is their psychological depth and their originality. And I loved seeing in this fic a version of John I don’t think I’ve ever quite seen before.

Title: Everything is Watson
Author: gardnerhill
Pairing: Gen
Length: 2,897 words
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Verse: Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles [AKA LEGO Hound of the Baskervilles (Tuzarfilms)] / The LEGO Movie (2014)
Author's summary: Watson is still recuperating from his last adventure – he’s not so sure he wants to be The Special.

Reccer's comments: I was introduced to Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, AKA LEGO Hound, last autumn and I loved it. (It’s a delightful little film on YouTube—only 42 minutes long. There’s a link in the author’s notes if you want to take a look.) And when I signed up for Holmestice the following month, more in hope than expectation I added it to my list of wants.

So I was thrilled when my assigned author chose to write something in this ‘verse. The film is deliberately cracky but the makers clearly love Holmes and Watson and their relationship, and have huge respect for their source material. In her fic gardnerhill keeps that delicate balance so well. And her idea of doing a crossover with the official LEGO Movie was inspired. I must admit I still haven’t seen that but I found a quick look at the trailers and other info on IMDB got me caught up enough. And you really don’t need to have seen either film to enjoy this story.

The fic begins just after Holmes and Watson have returned back to London from Dartmoor. They are confronted by a strange young woman who—somewhat to Holmes’ chagrin—seems to think Watson is the special one. And so a very funny adventure begins, filled with wonderful characters and brilliant lines—and Watson remaining resolutely and amusingly unimpressed throughout by The Prophecy that says only he can bring down the villain...