Dreamtime

09:18 pm - Sherlock Master list

Understanding.  Summary: abusive!Mycroft really is Sherlock's arch enemy
Five Minutes: Summary: John Watson is missing.
Tin Man: sequel to the abusive!Mycroft fic Understanding. Summary: there's a fine line between being annoying, and being annoying enough
Unnamed Comment Fic in which we learn of Dr Watson's double O past, and the identity of - Mummy!
Paint sequel to Five Minutes.  Special appearance by Graham Norton. 
Woodstock Mrs Hudson reminisces
Head Set in the "Five Minutes" 'verse.  There's, you know, a head.  In the fridge.
Meet the Calvers Summary: Naked.  Silk Sheets.  Hmmm... (Not nearly as interesting as that makes it sound, by the way!)  Never been happy with this one.
Unnamed Secret Santa fic: slash.  Warning for rape scenario and the appearance of partner betrayal.
A Bouquet of Barbed Wire  Bad guys want information from Sherlock. All John knows is, it hurts. And no, he won't run. Warnings Blood, broken bones, pain, some burnt bits. (This was also remixed by the lovely sprl1199 here)
Assassin You're a dead man.  Warnings: au, medical coma, possible claustrophobia/pyrophobia triggers
Malone A remix of brighteyed_jill 's story Desdemona
Conversation A Sherlockmas giftfic, as well as a sort of sequel to the Unnamed Comment Fic.  In which Mycroft and John have a kind of conversation, as do John and Sherlock.  Slashy but more sentimental than explicit.
And I also wrote a batch of snippets for the 2011 Fandom Stocking which I have posted as one entry here: there are three which are Sherlock-based: 

1. For shinyjenni a Sherlock/Dr Who crossover.  Locum doctors with a moment to exchange war stories
2. For meteorfire a Sherlock/Torchwood crossover, in which a stolen Tardis is gathering Heroes
3. For dellessa, a Sherlock/Harry Potter crossover in which Nymphadora Tonks appears in the fireplace.

07:59 pm - Scandal in Belgravia (spoilers)

I'm a bit conflicted.

As a Sherlock fan, I absolutely adored this episode.  It had everything.   #Sherlyinasheet, "shoot Dr Watson", "how many times did he fall out of the window?"  Plot.  Characters.  Action.  Wit.  Grace.  Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch.  And a riding crop.

As a fan, I say a big old SQUEE.

As a feminist...

...look, why can't there be one - just one - female character with some agency outside of her sexuality?

Irene Adler?  Yes.  She's Sherlock's equal... who makes her living as a dominatrix, who outwits Sherlock's attempts to read her by confronting him naked, who has to be rescued in the end.

Molly?  Unrequited cringeworthy fangirlishness that is almost literally unwatchable.

Mrs Hudson?  Dotty old lady who does "mummy in peril" and astonishes by having a second of unexpected competence.

Not-Anthea? Sex object wafted in front of John to enable Irene to abduct him.  Might as well be a carrot on a string in front of a cartoon donkey.

Jeanette the Boring Teacher: (John's girlfriend) existing purely as the punchline of a "Sherlock has no manners" joke.  Well, and a "neither has John".

And that's it.  

Where are the women who are people? 

Update: this in the Guardian blog, also identifies the original Adler's hallmarks as intelligence and agency. Quite.

12:56 am

Click for 12 days of new Sherlock fics @ sherlockmas!

09:54 pm - Help me, Obi Wan!

I have promised to turn in a fic for the Sherlockmas Xmas exchange but I don't have a beta reader - can anyone help please????  It's due on 15th and it'll be, erm, finished by then.  No, really (!)

Seriously, it's currently about 1500 words and growing a bit.  I'm British, so it doesn't need a Brit-picker but just a general dust-down and nit-pick.  Anyone???  Pretty please?

12:08 am - Fandom stocking

If anyone's feeling like cheering me up, I have a fandom stocking over at http://fandom-stocking.livejournal.com/195844.html and would be very pleased to hear from you. End shameless plug!

08:01 pm - Fanfic Master List

If you know me at all, you'll know I'm not good at the detail, completer/finisher kind of stuff. Nevertheless I'm going to have a go at putting all of my fanfic from various fandoms onto An Archive of Our Own, and as I do so it's my intention to list them here.

The fandoms in which I have been active are:

seaQuest - ah, my first fandom! I took all my seaQuest fanfic down on the death of Jonathan Brandis in 2003. In the unlikely event that (a) I can find the files again and (b) anyone still wants to read them, I'll consider archiving them.

Hercules - most of my Hercules fiction is still up and about in various places but I'll try and pull together the links and put them systematically into the AO3 archive over time.

The Sentinel: this is the fandom in which I was most active and I'll try and post things onto AO3 as I come across them. If you have a special favourite you want me to dig out, feel free to ask. The ones I've put up so far are:
Bugg This was, I think I'm right in saying, the first Sentinel fanfic I wrote so it's only fair to have it go up first.
Jim and Blair's Excellent Terminator Adventure Ah, this one was always a favourite child.  It's a sublimely cracky story which puts Jim and Blair in place of Bill and Ted in the Excellent Adventures universe, with added Terminators.  There will no doubt come a time when the last line will require annotation, and at that point I'll really know I'm old!
Cold War which I've always thought of as the quintessential Sheffield fanfic: Blair Sandburg, kidnapped four times in forty-eight hours, by three different sets of people.  And I've always resented the way no-one laughed at the moose.
Another Life I was really pleased the Wayback machine still had this one, because I couldn't find it in my files at all.
Junkho This is the prequel to Another Life.  There's a half-written Part 3 in my files too... if I could only remember how it was supposed to end....
Bagpipe: Darkfic.  Crossover with The X-Files.  When Alex Krychek meets Alex Barnes

Sherlock - this is where I currently do most of my writing, although because it's an LJ based fandom I'm known as "sheffsfic" rather than "Sheffield".  If you want Sherlock stories they're already on this site, but I'll archive them (she promised rashly) for the sake of completeness.  The only one there so far is
Assassin which is going to be the first of a series.  Honest.  Eventually.  Probably.  No, really.  Sigh.

Miscellaneous fandoms

I'm a bit of a crossover fiend, so you'll find odds and ends of other fandoms popping up here and there, and I'll try to be organised about listing them here.  Although I'm not entirely sure that, for example, Excellent Terminator Adventure really needs listing under Bill and Ted and Terminator as well as Sentinel but, hey, that's for the Future Archivists of Fandom (I envisage someone sitting in the Library of Congress in 2056 with OCD and an ancient set of computer disks of all shape and sizes - ah, remember disks! - and, maybe, a propellor beanie, trying to make sense of the cats cradle that is fandom)

But I have committed Vorkosigan fanfic here, in Stealth Ninja Cats: A Vorkosigan Snippet

If you're actually interested, you should probably bookmark this page because the intention is that I'll update it.  Watch this space.  But please note that the last time I was actually on top of my game as far as the internet goes I was posting on mailing lists and archiving on Geocities.  If you have any helpful suggestions (in Very Simple English.  Preferably with diagrams) I'm very happy to be educated, assisted or indeed reminded.  Bribery works, too!  Enjoy.

10:13 am - Stealth Ninja cats: a Vorkosigan snippet

"It's a cat," Gregor said.
"It's a *stealth Ninja cat*," Miles said, sucking the blood off the back of his hand. 
From his position behind the sofa the Emperor of Barrayar regarded his protector fondly. Miles - armed now with a fluffy pink cushion, one of the new signs of Empress Laisa's taste gradually superseding his Aunt Alys' - attempted to corner the cat between the sideboard and the drinks cabinet. The beast had appeared, apparently, from nowhere and gone straight for the ankles.  Now it hissed alarmingly, twisted heroically, and slashed a curved set of clawmarks in a zigzag pattern like a scimitar wound down Miles' ankle.

Miles was, however, the lord and master (or at least the feeder and enabler) of Zap the cat, the original feline stealth Ninja. He feinted with the cushion and pounced with the other hand. The cat was pinned to the floor - where it continued to writhe under his hand, succeeding in drawing blood again.

He looked at his hands - both now decorated with identical zig zag slashes like the ones on his ankles.
"A stealth Ninja cat trying to write its name in my flesh."
His mother was, he recalled with a familiar sinking feeling, working with Dr Vagen in the lab on an experiment involving cats...
"A stealth Ninja cat controlled by the the power of the mind..." Gregor had clearly had the same thought.  Some adaptation of jump ship pilots' implant technology.  One day it might allow paralysed patients to walk again, although at present it had yet to allow an experimental subject to remote-guide an implanted animal.  Gregor lifted his wrist-com.  "Imp sec.  Locate Countess Vorkosigan and put her onto this line *right now*," he said - and then reflexively added  "please."

Miles sat down abruptly, still wrangling the cat into submission.  His Emperor joined him, absently petting the now quiescent beast.  

It was a long silence.

"Took you long enough," Cordelia's voice came over the com.  "I'm all right, though, kiddoes - thanks for the rescue.  Poor old Dr Vaagen had a stroke, looks like, and the equipment jammed.  Took me nearly fifteen minutes to maneuver the beast out of the lab to your location.  Oh, and by the way Gregor, you might like to let those nice boys in Impsec know that they have a cat-shaped hole in their security field."



(happy birthday to the wonderful Philomytha

08:45 pm - Beta request

 I have committed the inevitable Sherlock/GDP crossover (the alternate reality Sentinel world where Guides are property of/abused by Sentinels?) and I could really use a bit of beta help, please?  I could probably use someone who IS familiar with the GDP universe (to check for consistency) and someone who ISN'T - to check for comprehensibility!

PM me or email me or just comment here if you're up for it, please?

Cheers

10:07 am - Malone

Sherlock Remix: Malone

08:59 am - Assassin

This is an au that popped into my head. I believe I stole the initial premise from a Dennis Hopper movie, and the thing about being shut in from recent newspaper articles about communicating with coma patients. There may be more, but it's pretty much a self-contained snippet.

Warnings: au, medical coma, possible claustrophobia/ pyrophobia triggers
Rating: pg13
Word count 500

Assassin

"You're a dead man."
The voice was velvet in the darkness. He tried to turn, to see...
"Don't.  I'm entirely serious about you being a dead man, I'm afraid.  Someone paid me a great deal of money to kill you."
He struggled but nothing worked...
"And I'm rather expensive. And rather good, of course. Whoever wants you dead also wants you to suffer. It's an impressively clever scheme, actually."
He couldn't breathe, couldn't blink...
"The drug I injected you with has made you locked in. You're paralysed, as you've no doubt realised. You look dead. You shouldn't pass a post mortem examination of course, but I gather a lot of interesting people have been bribed to expedite the disposal of your remains. You'll be cremated in a day or two, paralysed but quite awake and aware. The person paying really hates you, it seems."
He struggled, panicked, but nothing moved, nothing worked. He couldn't so much as blink. Please, god, don't let me die, not like that, not like this...
"Ah. Good. Your brain lit up like a firework at that thought, how interesting. So. We have established that you are dead. It appears that you aren't ready to go. And I am... Curious. Why you? I researched you, you're a very boring little man. And why like this? My commission was very specific and very anonymous. Curious. So I have a proposition for you. You're a dead man: your old life is over. If you agree, I'll keep you. You can stay alive, but you belong to me. You'll do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you.  You'll be my property, absolutely, to do with as I please. Think about it."
If he could tap his finger, blink his eyes, take a breath...
"No, that's no use, that's just panic. You're wired up. Concentrate. You have exactly one chance. Death, or becoming property. If you'd rather live, imagine you're playing a game of tennis... No? Hmmm. Working class hero, are we? Probably never played a game of tennis in your life. All right. Stop panicking and think. This is it. If you agree to my terms, imagine yourself stripping and cleaning a rifle."
Let me live, he thought. He imagined the rifle under his hands, the feel of it, stripping it down, the smell of the oil...
"Oh, excellent. Good. You intrigue me, John Watson. I shall enjoy discovering what makes you tick. Now, if I'm going to be paid you're still going to have to be dead, but don't worry. I'll steal your corpse before the cremation. See you in a few days. Oh, and we haven't been introduced, have we? My name is Sherlock Holmes."