Content Creator Interviews 2019: Master List (Complete with gratuitous gif of Sherlock looking hot, just because)
As some of you know, early this year a group of people in the Sherlock and Sherlolly fandom got together to conduct a series of interviews focusing on fan content and its creation. The result was twelve interviews, posted over three months, where writers and artists talk about their work, the fandom and show, and their own processes. I’ve finally gotten around to doing a master list of them to make it easier for anyone who’d like to read through them. Check out the links below:
OhAine interviews likingthistoomuch
Likingthistoomuch interviews OhAine
theleftpill interviews kstewmanipulation
thisisartbylexie interviews writingwife-83
ellis-hendricks interviews geekmama
geekmama interviews ellis-hendricks
ashockinglackofsatin interviews sunken-standard
vermofftiss interviews mizjoely
writingwife-83 interviews artbylexie
OhAine interviews ashockinglackofsatin
lilsherlockian75 and mrsmcrieff interview each other
Since I had three sets of prompts with significant overlap, I combined them:
Requested by @mistykins06:Dear one. I'm incredibly late to the latest Drabble challenge so I shall throw 86 (You’re cute with glasses) and 96 (I could’ve gone pro) at you to do with what you will. Love, Mistykins06
Requested by @mizjoely: If you're still taking prompts, 20, 21 & 22 would be fab (together, apart, whatever floats your boat!) - When’s the last time you smiled?/ Stop being such a brat/ If I wanted one, I would have gotten it myself
Requested by @theleftpill: For the drabble meme - I have no idea what the phrases are since I don't have the original list, so I'm choosing numbers for personal reasons: 86 (You’re cute with glasses ), 20 (When’s the last time you smiled?), 22 (If I wanted one, I would have gotten it myself)
Set in The Cheese Stands Alone ‘verse.
"You’re cute with glasses"/ "I could’ve gone pro"/ "When’s the last time you smiled?"/ "Stop being such a brat"/ "If I wanted one, I would have gotten it myself"
"Stop being such a brat and just come back," Molly said, her ancient cordless phone wedged between her ear and shoulder as she refilled the salt shaker. She always tidied her kitchen when she was using her land line, it was ridiculous. Who still used a land line anyway? Her one remaining friend from the Tom-era and former colleague 'Meena,' apparently. Dull. "Three is old enough to stay home alone for a few hours while you take a shift in the lab. Just give him a little Benylin and put him in a dog crate with a blanket over it, turn on the telly for some noise, he won't even know you're gone."
Ah yes, the future mother of my children, Sherlock thought dryly.
"Pfft, unfit. And if I wanted one, I would have got it myself. No, it's not baby-snatching if you leave something of equal value in the pram, like a puppy or a bag of apples."
He glanced up and she was smiling that little dimply, impish smile of hers. She was trying to murder him; cause of death—ironically unrequited love and cuteness.
"I'm telling you, the new techs they send in just keep getting worse. I don't know where they're getting them, but..." A pause while Meena said something that made Molly's lips twist into a half-smile, half grimace. "Oh, he was a dope, but at least he's not a creep. This new one, Gaz—yeah, I know, right?—spent his entire first day staring at my tits like he was trying to make eye contact with them to assert his dominance or something."
He's not going to last long, Sherlock thought darkly. His eyes drifted to her chest, her bra-less breasts wobbling rather enticingly under her t-shirt. Molly would find a way to take care of it, she always did, but if she didn't, he could arrange for 'Gaz' to accidentally fall down some stairs or something else equally violent and debilitating. One of the many perks of associating with the criminal classes.
Molly snapped her fingers in front of her chest to get his attention, then pointed rather pointedly to her eyes while pursing her lips. They're up here.
Shit. She'd caught him looking. And rather than being flustered or flattered or—best-case—ready to throw the phone down and whip her t-shirt over her head to let him have a go at them, she just looked annoyed.
She laughed at something Meena said and went back to tidying the worktop.
*
"Ugh, my ear feels like it's going to fall off," she said, flopping down next to him on the sofa. It was a Herculean effort not to watch her breasts bounce as she did it; now that she knew he looked and she wasn't happy about it, it was all he wanted to do. Well, more than he normally did, which, to be fair, was a significant amount of time anyway.
He looked at her ear, instead, which was quite red from where it had been pressed to the phone for the last hour and change.
"Now you know why I don't like lengthy phone conversations."
"You don't like any phone conversations," she contradicted, pulling that scornful face of hers that made her look like she should be wearing a ball gown, surrounded by birds and anthropomorphic mice and talking teapots.
"Texting is easier."
"Not when I'm in the middle of a post-mortem."
"That's why you have assistants."
"I have assistants to assist with the post-mortem. Not to answer questions like, 'Could you, in theory, fit three Walnut Whips in your mouth at once?' Though really, can't complain about that one, the next day I had seven of them on my desk because apparently Ann told everyone in the department and they all wanted to know. So, I mean, free chocolate. Oh, don't make that face."
"What face? This is my normal face." He might have been making a face; that text was actually supposed to be private, since it wasn't for a case and more a matter of personal curiosity. He'd also been eating a Walnut Whip at the time and was having other, entirely less innocent thoughts about her eating one, too.
"Well, yes, but it's a glower. When's the last time you smiled?"
"Yesterday, though it may have just been wind," he answered dryly.
It had the desired effect; she couldn't help herself and snorted. Molly loved a fart joke. Maybe he could get her to watch some Monty Python again later.
*
"I really wish Meena would come back. She was so good at her job—no accidents, always there on time, never ran the wrong tests on the wrong samples. And she was so much fun! She was the one who dared me to wear her glasses when they did the new ID badge photos. We were talking about how no one ever checks them anyway and I could probably wear a clown nose and a rainbow wig and no one would even raise an eyebrow," Molly said, her tone wistful.
"Mm, always wondered why you had them in that picture," he murmured distractedly, deftly applying a second coat of red varnish to her middle toenail. Being her stand-in girlfriend wasn't all bad all the time; at least he got to be physically close to her and she talked to him. "You look cute with glasses."
Bollocks, he thought. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. He hoped she'd just take it as a girlfriend thing, like telling her her hair was on point or those shoes were hot or whatever it was women said to each other to be supportive.
"Oh, ah, thank you," she said. It was almost a question.
"You're welcome?" he answered, making it a question himself.
He finished applying the varnish in excruciating silence; he was very aware of Molly watching him as he picked her foot up off his lap to blow on her still-wet nails. It was a heavy moment.
"You're, ah, really good at that. Pedicures, I mean," Molly said, her voice strained.
"Had a case once for a nail salon owner. Industrial espionage, more or less—well, less, more than more, they had their own line of varnishes and care products that were being tampered with. Learned how to do it there. She said I could've gone pro. I even got to keep the tips," he babbled, realizing he'd been swiping his thumb over Molly's ankle.
"Just the tips?" Molly asked, and he really wasn't sure if she was making a sex joke or asking a genuine question; he swallowed hard against the implication of the former and the very vivid image his brain supplied him with.
"Actually got a bottle of nail varnish, too. I used it in an experiment. It was purple." I carried a watermelon.
Good thing she didn't know he'd actually seen (and liked) Dirty Dancing; he could at least maintain the illusion of having a working pair of testicles. There had to be an appropriate joke in there about the colour blue as well, but he was having a hard time (ha) thinking past the smoothness of her skin. She'd shaved just the night before.
"How is your ankle, by the way?" he asked, changing the subject to something safe.
"Much better, barely feel it now. Bruising's almost gone," she said too quickly, grateful that the conversation was moving away from weird, at least.
"I see," he said, pushing up her trouser leg under the pretence of inspecting her ankle.
"I mean, you can still wait on me hand and foot and carry me up the stairs, if you're still feeling guilty," she joked. "Wouldn't mind a bacon butty right now. Or a glass of wine. Or both."
He turned to her with a look of appalled affront at her gustatory choices, then let it drop. "Actually, do you have any bacon in? I'm a bit peckish myself."
"No, but I've still got plenty of cheese."
"Grilled cheese it is, then. Goes better with the wine, anyway," he said, easing himself out from under her feet.
*
"Mm, God, this is gorgeous," she said, using her finger to swipe a gooey string of cheese off of her chin. "Since when do you know how to cook things that aren't potentially explosive or otherwise hazardous?"
"I'm a man of many talents," he said before biting into his own sandwich. Using the sliced apple in it had been a stroke of brilliance if he did say so himself. "I know how to both boil and fry an egg, too," he added.
"With skills like that, you'll make some lucky woman very happy one day," she said lightly. "You can certainly fill out an apron." She gave him an amused mock-leer from where she was leaned against the sink with her plate.
The apron was rather ridiculous, but he wasn't going to ruin a £300 shirt with grease splatter.
"Well, if you ever come across a woman who doesn't mind the occasional potentially explosive or otherwise hazardous dinner, enjoys solving crimes, and can provide me with human body parts for experimentation, then do give her my number," he said, skirting the edge of actually flirting by injecting just a hint of sarcasm into his tone. It was either that or drop to his knees and beg her to just give him a chance to make her happy; he'd rather not ruin the evening, though.
"I don't know, a woman like that sounds awfully dangerous. Probably has a few bodies buried in her back garden. Could have had an ex-boyfriend that was a criminal mastermind. Maybe he's even buried in her back garden." She smirked before taking a bite of her sandwich.
He was hit with the memory of when he'd told her Moriarty was dead and she needed to do something with the body until Mycroft could arrange disposal; Shall I just bury him in my back garden, then? had been her incredulous response. Hadn't been nearly as amusing at the time.
Wait, was she flirting? Or was she just going along with the joke?
"I like a woman who knows her way around a shovel. Graverobbing's always much more fun with two."
"I thought that was housebreaking."
"That too. Lots of things are better with two. Vandalism, confidence tricks, footraces, most board games..."
"Sex," she supplied.
"Probably," he agreed.
He could almost hear the needle scratch across the vinyl before she scrutinized him.
"I mean, with one person it's not really sex as such and three or more is just too many, so two for sex. Two is the magic number there. Two people. Having sex," he stumbled to clarify, anything to cover the fact that he had no first-hand knowledge of the act.
"Ohhh-kay."
And it was going so well there for a minute.
*
"Sherlock," she said, pulling her calves away from his still-cold feet.
"Hm."
"If I, ah, ever did meet a woman like you described before, or, I mean, someone I thought you might like, would you, ah, ever want me to introduce you? Because, I—I would."
"Thank you, but no."
"Women not your area, married to your work, right."
"No, that's just what I tell John when asks annoying, invasive questions." Because it was dark and he was turned away from her and there was always something about the night-time that made confessions easier, he said it. "To be quite honest, I'm not interested in meeting any women. I've already met one and I can't really imagine anyone else being able to hold a candle to her."
"Oh," she said quietly, sadly. "If you, ah, ever want to talk about it, I mean, it must be hard to keep up long distance for so long..."
Long distance? What was she—oh. Irene Adler, John's blog and the lie he'd told about the witness protection scheme in America.
Really though, what he had with Molly could be considered long distance; the other side of the bed may as well be the other side of the world for all the distance between them.
"It can be trying at times, but every moment I do get with her is precious," he said sincerely. It was probably a cruel thing to do to make her think it was someone else, but maybe, just maybe, if he could get his feelings out like this, he could tell her the truth someday. Or else he was shooting himself in the foot.
She reached over and gave his arm a gentle squeeze.
"I'd spend every hour of every day with her if I could. Sleep next to her every night. Apart from the cold feet, I don't think she'd mind."
"She probably doesn't mind the cold feet as much as she pretends to," Molly said, her voice taking on that gentle, heartbreaking tone of hers when she was clamping down on her own misery to ease someone else's.
He'd maybe made a bit of a mistake, miscalculated how deeply buried the feelings she used to have for him still were. He didn't want to hurt her.
He wiggled backwards a bit and pressed his feet against her again; this time to the outside of her leg, one foot from her ankle to mid-calf, the other above it.
"Or maybe she does mind it, but she puts up with your bullshit because she loves you too much anyway," Molly said, poking him in the back.
His heart sped up with the thought of Molly loving him in return; what a wonderful thing that would be.
"I do sometimes wonder if she does. She's never said it. Not in so many words, at least."
"Have you ever said it to her? I mean, assuming you do love her, which it sounds like you do."
"Oh, I do. More than I ever thought possible. Never found the right moment to actually tell her, though. The timing's always bad."
"Mm. Yeah." A pause. "I'm sure you'll find the right time and the right words one day."
"One hopes," he dismissed.
They settled back down to sleep, both lost in their own thoughts.
"Molly—"
"Hm?"
"Goodnight." He just couldn't do it. Wanted to, but couldn't.
Replies about health and work: @significanceofmoths @theleftpill thank you! :D @todayintokyo much appreciated -- and me, too! :) prospects are decent that I'll have some excited to visit, but not 100% certain yet. @anonsally I would like that! :D Not immediately, because mom is in town currently, and I'm also trying hard not to overbook while I'm figuring out a good health routine (especially because my back hurts constantly right now as I learn different ways to hold myself and walk, and I'm taking ALL THE NAPS)... But soonish! @bandersnatchmycummerbund ooh, good to know! How long did you go before feeling improvements? I may try again. I really hated the practitioner I tried... She was difficult to understand and very impatient with me, and just kept pushing me to say I felt better. So I'll need to look around for someone else.
Once you get this you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly, and send it to 10 of your favorite followers (non-negotiable). SPREAD POSITIVITY! ♡
Thanks leftpill! :)
1. People say that I’m a empathetic person. That I’m a good listener and can understand how they feel. It makes me difficult to operate in the society sometimes because people take advantage of me. But, it’s a trait that I’m proud of and I’ve started learning how to use my sensitivity for my own good and the good of others.
2. The way I’m close to my family, especially to my sisters.
3. My longtime loyal friendships.
4. Always wanting to learn.
5. And my hobbies. I have a lot of them to keep myself occupied. Reading, cooking and eating, decorating, gardening, drawing (not very good at it though) and just thinking and daydreaming. Even though I’m very close to my family and friends, I love and need my alone time. And I’m very good at using it. I always find a way to have fun and enjoy the day.
theleftpill replied to your post “I’m not going to wait for anyone to suggest a fandom, because we all...”
I'm curious as to why you like Mrs. Hudson the least. She seems to be a pretty benign character.
Maybe that’s why? Benignancy is not something I want from Sherlock.
I just find her a little thin, as a character. I know the writers have taken great pains to make all their characters, especially the female ones, feel fully-embodied, and for the most part I think they succeeded. Certainly big characters like Molly and Irene, but even characters we only meet briefly, like Sally and Lady Smallwood and Anthea and Mummy Holmes and Janine and Dr Stapleton... In each case, I feel like I have a real sense of their humanity, that I can easily imagine what they do with their days when Sherlock and co aren’t around.
Mrs Hudson, otoh... for all that they’ve tried to give her this exciting backstory, she still comes across to me as more a feminine archetype than a person: the sweetly doting maternal figure.
I hate to say it but some of the issue may be Una Stubbs. She’s a gifted comic actor, but maybe not accustomed to plumbing dramatic depths in her roles... I think the writers are attuned to that, so they tend to use her as broad comic relief, which is fine but not my favorite part of the show.
Behold, examples where Johnlock writers have treated Molly well in their fics - just a few of the many
In some of these, she’s in a healthy relationship with someone who treats her well and makes her happy - but *gasp!* It’s not Sherlock! How dare we!
In some, she has a great friendship with Sherlock untainted by anyone catching feelings.
In some, she has a very close and loving bond with John instead.
This is another response theleftpill’s baseless claims that johnlockers are just sooooo misogynistic and we treat Molly poorly in our fics.
When she made her “femfirmative blog,” she said it was just ohh soooo hard to find johnlock fics that treated the female characters well, so she took it upon herself to weed out our “misogynistic” writing and rec “female-friendly” fics for all the Sherlollians interested in trying out johnlock (*whispers* none of them were genuinely interested. It was just a childish jab that died out in a few weeks). And in another post, she claimed that she hadn’t read any sherlolly fics where John was treated poorly, but could recall “at least half a dozen” (that means 6) of our fics where Molly was an eternally sad, pining woman.
In case you’re wondering, we’ve never read ANY johnlock fics that present Molly as “eternally pining.” The closest they ever get to that is just having her exactly as she is in the show. If you think that’s misogynistic writing, theleftpill, then take it up with Moftiss, not us. If she actually read as much johnlock as she claims, she’d know that Molly is usually a good friend and/or is in a happy relationship.
Now disclaimer: On AO3 there are 5,707 fics Sherlock/John fics with Molly tagged as an additional character. If you combed through each and every single one of those, there’s a possibility you might find some where Molly doesn’t meet Sherlollians standards.
Likewise, there are 3,087 Sherlock/Molly fics that feature John Watson. Do you Sherlollians (particularly theleftpill) mean to tell me that in every single one of those, John is treated well, is a good bff for Sherlock, isn’t discarded or reduced to a Sherlolly cheerleader, isn’t a bumbling idiot, or an abusive, violent tyrant?
No? Okay then. Shut the fuck up about how Johnlockers treat Molly in their fics. Because I GUARANTEE you, we treat Molly FAR better than you treat John - both in fanfic and in general discussions/headcanons on tumblr.
