![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
100 days of enemy recs: 20. Holmes/Moriarty
Holmes/Moriarty is another one of those odd ships: everybody who has been peripherally near Holmes fandom, it seems like, is aware that it's a ship and has always been a ship; everybody who has read The Final Problem understands why it's a ship. That I was fascinated by their relationship since the first time I read the books in elementary school should have been enough for me to deduce my own partiality. They are each other's perfect match! They can have full conversations, at their very first meeting, just by saying, "'All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,' said he. / "'Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,' I replied." They are both more than content to die, so long as it's in each others arms and together!
And yet, hardly anybody writes the ship!
I had so much trouble finding recs to list here. Of course, Sherlock BBC descended on all of Holmesiana like an atmospheric detonation - lots of light and heat and force and when it was over hardly anybody was left, wandering about dazed and wounded and changed forever; it will take at least another decade, probably, for Holmes fandom as a whole to truly recover. There is some Holmes/Moriarty in Sherlock fandom, but Sherlock's Moriarty was so changed that it's not really the same thing; and tbh I can't handle Sherlock in anything but very, very small doses. (I fled the fandom that was once home before the detonation and have hardly been back - I didn't watch the second Downey film because there was still so much ambient Sherlock around.) (I know I should watch Elementary if I want some good Holmes/Moriarty, but y'all convinced me the show was so good I wanted to watch the show and not just learn it from fic, and someday, surely, I will watch shows other than Buzzfeed Unsolved and Ask a Mortician? Not today though. Next year isn't looking good either.)
There seems to be a fair amount of Russian fic in the pairing on AO3 but that's no help for me. And apparently there's a relatively new anime out starring Moriarty? So that's a thing.
The most widely-rec'd pre-Sherlock Holmes/Moriarty fic (and the only one in my pre-AO3 bookmarks) seems to have only ever been up on the Holmesslash Yahoogroup. I'm told Holmesslash was archived before Yahoogeddon, but I don't think it's been archived anywhere public.
I always have this desperate feeling that there must be, somewhere, a hidden dispatch-box or something full of all the Holmes fic from before c. 1995, but it's so darn hard to find any!
So here, have three stories from three different continuities that are really as much about Watson and Moran - the sidekicks - as Holmes and Moriarty. Moran at least was mostly outside the blast radius (he's good at that.)
And yet, hardly anybody writes the ship!
I had so much trouble finding recs to list here. Of course, Sherlock BBC descended on all of Holmesiana like an atmospheric detonation - lots of light and heat and force and when it was over hardly anybody was left, wandering about dazed and wounded and changed forever; it will take at least another decade, probably, for Holmes fandom as a whole to truly recover. There is some Holmes/Moriarty in Sherlock fandom, but Sherlock's Moriarty was so changed that it's not really the same thing; and tbh I can't handle Sherlock in anything but very, very small doses. (I fled the fandom that was once home before the detonation and have hardly been back - I didn't watch the second Downey film because there was still so much ambient Sherlock around.) (I know I should watch Elementary if I want some good Holmes/Moriarty, but y'all convinced me the show was so good I wanted to watch the show and not just learn it from fic, and someday, surely, I will watch shows other than Buzzfeed Unsolved and Ask a Mortician? Not today though. Next year isn't looking good either.)
There seems to be a fair amount of Russian fic in the pairing on AO3 but that's no help for me. And apparently there's a relatively new anime out starring Moriarty? So that's a thing.
The most widely-rec'd pre-Sherlock Holmes/Moriarty fic (and the only one in my pre-AO3 bookmarks) seems to have only ever been up on the Holmesslash Yahoogroup. I'm told Holmesslash was archived before Yahoogeddon, but I don't think it's been archived anywhere public.
I always have this desperate feeling that there must be, somewhere, a hidden dispatch-box or something full of all the Holmes fic from before c. 1995, but it's so darn hard to find any!
So here, have three stories from three different continuities that are really as much about Watson and Moran - the sidekicks - as Holmes and Moriarty. Moran at least was mostly outside the blast radius (he's good at that.)
- Good For The Soul (3158 words) by HiddenLacuna
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/James Moriarty
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Trope Subversion/Inversion, Soulmates, Community: holmestice, Johnlock Roulette
A tragic soulmark AU. - The Strange Tale of Charon's Obol (5170 words) by ColebaltBlue
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/James Moriarty
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty, Sebastian Moran
In a darker London, Moriarty and Moran must team up with master criminals to take down a blackmailer. - Expectation (4294 words) by Lindentreeisle
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Sebastian Moran
Additional Tags: hurt/comfort bingo
Moran and Watson! Trapped together after a flood! Must learn to rely on each other!
no subject
Oh boy, is that frighteningly accurate.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I've written some for a few Holmesian fandoms, and yeah, the BBC version is pretty different. (But I love that one a lot, too.)
The most widely-rec'd pre-Sherlock Holmes/Moriarty fic (and the only one in my pre-AO3 bookmarks) seems to have only ever been up on the Holmesslash Yahoogroup. I'm told Holmesslash was archived before Yahoogeddon, but I don't think it's been archived anywhere public.
:( :( :( I'm pretty sure I was on Holmesslash at one point, but I don't remember any particular story and I have nothing archived from there either. :(
no subject
I saw your name turn up a lot on AO3 when I was looking for recs! I probably would have ended up with something you either wrote or inspired if I hadn't gone with the Moran & John theme in the end.
no subject
I probably would have ended up with something you either wrote or inspired if I hadn't gone with the Moran & John theme in the end.
"The Strange Tale of Charon's Obol" was written as a gift for me, so you still did. :D
no subject
no subject
I mean there's some of that in Sherlock fandom, but the Moriarty in Sherlock is so off-model that you can't really do it in a way that echoes with canon Moriarty very well. (And most of the Sherlock fic in the pairing tag is either a) OOC even for Sherlock's Moriarty or b) noncon that uses him to provide the H for someone else to C.) I'm sure there is some good stuff there but I'd have to know the canon a lot better.
no subject