fic: the theory of narrative causality (epilogue)

[falling_voices]

cute enough to shoot you down (jumperfkr) wrote, @ 2011-10-16 20:07:00

big bang fic: masterpost
HELLO HELLO BIG BANG FIC.

So this was really enjoyable to write — I mean, I love this 'verse, it's great fun, and I'll probably write more in it if I don't get derailed (again) — and of course cons_detective's fantastic art makes it about twenty-five times better than I could have imagined. We've had five brilliant months of putting this up together and getting to know each other better (oh, shut up), so this was really a fantastic challenge. I think it's the beginning of a lasting partnership, us.

Without further ado, I give you:

Title: Backlight, Beyond Compare (the BBC 'verse)
Author/Artist:jumperfkr /cons_detective
Pairing: Holmes/Watson (ACD!AU)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Violence, gore, serial killings, very graphic sexual situations, mention of drug use. Potentially unhealthy and codependent relationship.
Word Count: 61,563. IKR.
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson were created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Beta thanks: to ssarah_s, for thwacking me over the head when I was being a Stupid White Male; storm_ford, for getting my wonky plot structure to hang together; cons_detective, for everything.
Summary: John Watson is an danger-junkie ex-army medic with a psychosomatic limp and a blog. Sherlock Holmes is his genius flatmate with an addiction to mobile phones, nicotine patches, and bloody crime scenes. Together, they fight crime. [modern!day AU]

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Epilogue

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To: John Watson

Stop worrying.

SH

To: Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock, we're not even in the
same bloody room!

To: Sherlock Holmes

Why are you even texting me?
you're just downstairs.

To: John Watson

You've been restless since we
posted BBC early this afternoon.
You've snapped at me thrice in six
hours, forgot the milk at Tesco's,
tripped over your own feet on our
sixteenth step when you returned,
and flicked through the channels
all evening without even settling
down for that hospital show you
seem to like so well. You made
yourself tea three times and
dropped the sugar in the bin, and
forgot to ask me if I wanted some.
You went to bed one hour early,
paced around our bedroom for ten
minutes — the floorboards creak,
before you ask — and you have
been utterly unable to sleep
ever since.

Yes, you're worried.

SH

To: John Watson

My experiment is reaching its
completion stages. I can't
abandon it to come speak to
you directly; texting is better.

SH

To: Sherlock Holmes

Right, well. That's all true, actually.
You just can't stop, can you?

We've been working on this for
over five months, Sherlock. Of
course I'm bloody worried.

To: John Watson

I have no intention of turning
off my brain.

SH

To: John Watson,

Don't be worried.

SH

To: Sherlock Holmes

That'd be the day.

To: Sherlock Holmes

And that's easier said than
done.

To: John Watson

I shall just have to distract
you, then.

SH

To: Sherlock Holmes

Oooookay, right. Go on,
hit me.

To: John Watson

Fine. I should be done with this stage
of my experiment in ten minutes and
sixteen seconds. I will then go into
the bathroom, wash, brush my teeth
and change into my dressing-gown.
The blue one, silk. Nothing else.
You'll be in bed, waiting, listening,
and by the time I come in you'll be
quite aching to be kissed. I have a
mind to touch you everywhere tonight.
It'll be good for you, I'll make it good,
I promise. I'll slick up two fingers,
maybe three, and push them inside
you while I swallow your cock. You'll
come from that alone, my mouth and
my fingers, until you forget yourself
quite enough to grasp my hair and
start fucking my throat.

Distracted yet?

SH

To: Sherlock Holmes

I. Christ. Yes, I should say so.

Come to bed, love.

goodnight, mr sherlock holmes (lass_sirene) wrote, @ 2011-10-17 14:43:00

the BBC 'verse: a rec in progress
GUYS. GUYS. GUYS. If you haven't read jumperfkr's latest epic. What are you still doing here. This is one of the most amazing things to have happened to this fandom. It's going to make history.

So we've had many great modern updates over the years in this fandom — we've had our boys as graduates arguing over the remote, as a DI and a forensic medic, as kids in kindergarten, as counselors in summer camp, as a fashion designer and his model, as singers in a band, as workers in a MacDonald's, and even as LiveJournal users writing Supernatural fanfiction. (SO. MUCH. META.)

This, though, doesn't just takes the boys and places them in a modern setting, sometimes making them solve cases — it actually tells their story all over again, starting from STUD, and going forward through the cases, all in a modern update. It's brilliant. Also, if you don't want to be spoiled, I'd advise not reading what follows.

jumperfkr's Holmes is amazing — cool and aloof, but snarky in a deadpan, arrogant sort of way, and striking up a familiar and informal relationship with his Watson: by the end of the first part they're basically giggling like schoolboys on a prank project, LOLing at crime scenes.

Watson is interesting in this that he is deeply misleading; the way jumperfkr describes him at first sort of sets him down as someone whose life is the most boring thing ever after the thrill of war, and who becomes, by extension, a very boring person as well. But then he meets Holmes, and our entire perception of the character suddenly shifts. jumperfkr's clearly invested in the character interpretation in this, which gives us a very three-dimensional John Watson, a far cry from the Jam interpretation, a true BAMF. I won't tell more for now, as most of the storyline relies on his character and what his relationship with Holmes makes him do and think and feel, but I do think he's quite unlike any Watson we've seen before.

The most amazing thing about these characters, actually, might just be that they aren't Ritchie!Holmes&Watson, and they aren't Granada!Holmes&Watson, and they aren't Rathbone!Holmes&Watson, etc. They're entirely new, a separate interpretation of the Doyle characters, as though jumperfkr and cons_detective were constructing their own new movie or TV series adaptation. And that's fascinating.

jumperfkr spins STUD, DANC, and BRUC perfectly into this modern update, twisting some of the key points but still remaining true to the original canon. (Rache, anyone?) There are hints back at several elements of the canon, even little things that no one would pick up at a first reading — the way Holmes keeps his letters knifed to the chimney-piece, and the unframed portrait on the wall of their living-room, and the fingers in the butter plate. But there are also modern updating of Victorian stuff: Watson writes his stories in his blog instead of the Strand, and Holmes' original The Science Of Deduction newspaper article is turned into a website; they both use modern technology to solve the crimes. There're tons more, but I'd still be there tomorrow if I tried to list them all. It must have taken a thorough rereading of the stories to include so many little details. And Moriarty — oh well, I won't be spoiling you for this either.

cons_detective's brilliant art completes the story perfectly; he's drawn so many pieces for this that the entire project almost reads like a webcomic with long stretches of text. He imagines both Holmes and Watson rather differently than you might expect, and both of them definitely younger than the way they're usually represented, keeping close to their probable ages in STUD. And that's very lovely. Also, the sex is really hot. Imagine every piece of porn he's ever drawn and then amp that up to eleven. Well, that's nowhere even close. Man.

Both the writing and the art compliment each other perfectly, and the ending... well, the ending. That ending is going to leave people both deliriously happy and screaming to the heavens. It certainly did it to me.

I very much hope they're going to continue working on this 'verse. There's so much they can do to any of the other stories in a modern!day world — MILV and DYIN and HOUN and SCAN and SPEC and omg, FINA and EMPT — and the relationship they've created between Holmes and Watson is a dangerous, potentially unhealthy one that could possibly go through staggering, heartbreaking ups and downs. I really, really want more of this. SO MUCH.

Right. Now that I've gone through this rec in a responsible and adult manner, I'll just — yeah.

OMG SO MUCH AWESOME YOU GUYS OMG BEST THING EVER I CAN'T EVEN.

BEST.

AU.

EVER.

GO READ/WATCH THE BBC 'VERSE. PLEASE. Even if you don't like modern!AUs, even if you don't ship Holmes/Watson, evenifevenif — do yourself a favour and don't deprive yourselves of such a magnificent experience.

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cute enough to shoot you down (jumperfkr ) wrote, @ 2011-10-18 23:19:00

in conclusion.
Well, cons_detective's finally asleep next to me (good thing too; he's been wide awake for two days), so I guess I can tune in here and tell you everything that's happened recently. I'd like to thank everyone who's commented on the BBC 'verse for the last two days; we were rather anxious about the result, and the feedback has been amazing. I'm currently going through the comments and answering them, but we've been pretty busy IRL, so don't worry if we're late in answering! but you should know that we love you anyway. :D

We're all moved in, finally — I don't have much myself, but cons_detective is the most chaotic bloke ever. (Seriously, why am I even surprised?) We've barely been here a week and you can scarcely see the flat under the mass of books and papers and chemical equipment he's keeping here. Shame, because it's a charming place — a bit old-fashioned, we've got an actual fireplace and the Most Amazing Tinted Glass Door between the kitchen and the living-room. So many doors we've got. There're doors everywhere.

The general layout looks a bit like the 221B rooms in the Granada!series, funnily enough; 's pretty much the same outline. We're sleeping in the room upstairs, next to the bathroom, in what would be the equivalent to Watson's room, and what would be Holmes' room we've agreed to turn into a bureau for the evenings, so that 1. I can write and blog on a real desk, not the coffee table, and 2. he doesn't contaminate the kitchen with his ~experiments.

Seeing as we've just spent the last seven evenings snogging on the couch, though, the bureau might just become the storage room for all the weird stuff he brings home. He brings home a lot of weird stuff.

Our poor, doomed kitchen.

God, I make it sound horrible. It's not — it's really quite fantastic, I'm just not quite over the shock yet. Our housekeeper (sorry, landlady) is wonderful, the flat is great, and my boyfriend is an arrogant, amazing genius. We're rather stupidly in love, and he's probably going to get us both killed one of these days. What could possibly go wrong?

Also, I've just realized that he's taken advantage of my dozing off earlier to draw tentacle!porn on my good shoulder, so I guess it's time for me to close the laptop and go scribble some mawkish fluff drabble on his bum now.

(A lovely little bum he's got.)

ETA: John, if this is your idea of a punishment, it's really quite faulty. I can't even read what you've written, and I doubt you'd like anyone but yourself to be able to see my naked arse.

Also, I find your What could possibly go wrong little bout of sarcasm quite challenging, for the record.

ETA2: It wasn't sarcasm. I really do believe we're going to survive this quite magnificently. Possibly by blowing up London. Or the Internet. Or both.

ETA3: Also, stop hacking into my account.

ETA4: It's not hacking if I know your password. It was ridiculously easy to deduce.

ETA5: Shh. Come here.

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fin.