Fic Rec: Equinoxes & Solstices

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Title: Equinoxes & Solstices
Author: afrogeekgoddess
Pairing: Gen
Length: 611
Rating: T
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC

Author's summary: Molly/Spring, Irene/Summer, Sally/Autumn, Anthea/Winter. Portrait poems of the women of Sherlock, centered around the four seasons.

Reccer's comments: Vivid and compelling portraits of four of the female characters in the series.

One of the best things about fanfiction is that it can explore the complexity of the characters in ways unaddressed in canon. Through her potent imagery, Afrogeekgoddess subverts the stereotypes that the series' male writers invoke: sweet girl with a crush, oversexed villainness, angry woman of color, and sexy secretary of a powerful man.
For example, AGG suggests the depths of Molly by reminding us that the new growth of spring is made possible by death:

Molly loves the growing spring, when the world is
sodden, unfurling its secrets from the ground....
when the colors she loves so dearly—rose golds,
dusty pinks, the splashes of vermillion and violet
she wears on her skin and paints on her blog—
dance across her eyes; when the buds break
through the dirt like saws through chest cavities,
lay their bright, juicy blossoms out for her
to measure and weigh

Although Molly is often depicted as someone soft and sweet, if you consider her chosen profession, both life and death must fascinate her. Darkness and death are not something to be feared, but generate things of stunning beauty: flowers in this poem, data and solved mysteries in the world of Sherlock Holmes.

Each woman is competent, powerful, and beautiful: Sally who knows the victory of capturing a perp and recognizes her value as a person despite pervasive racism ("the whole of London loves the colors of her body/(she knows it won't last, knows the white faces who adore/the changing leaves won't give her brown body/a second admiring glance)"); Irene the Domme, who willingly lets herself by dommed by the most powerful Female in the solar system; and Anthea, whose "elegant avalanches,/smothering and deadly" and "secrets encoded in crystal" protect the British Government.

Fic Rec: In the Deep

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Title: In the Deep
Author: professorfangirl
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Length: 3288
Rating: M
Warnings: none
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: Consciousness is an ocean; Sherlock dives too deep:

He remembers indigo. He remembers searching out indigo, harder to find than evidence; you could only come across it at a certain hour just approaching dusk, when the light was heavy and diffuse over London. You had to time it precisely, you had to catch John by a window and say his name so that he turned his head at just the right angle to the light, and raised his eyebrows, and there in the moment before he said “Yeah?,” if you were very observant and very fortunate, you’d catch it in his eyes, perfect, fathomless: indigo.

He drowns in it now, when he’s lucky.

He can climb out any time he wants to.

He doesn’t.

Reccer's comments: ProfessorFangirl explores the mysteries of the ocean, of drifting human consciousness, and of love in this gorgeous post-hiatus one-shot. The interlacing of deep-sea animal life with Sherlock's (imagined? real?) memories supports an extraordinarily effective irregular structure. The facts about the sea and its creatures never become pedantic or gratuitous. Nor does the angst become overwrought, kept in check by the vibrant imagery, the dissociation Sherlock feels as he swims through memory and dream, and yes, even a bit of humor:

“Sherlock, what. The screaming green fuck. Is that?”

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