sakura_no_miko

Title: Absurdly Simple and An Ideal Husband

Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (canon/Victorian-verse)

Rating: R

Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Irene Adler/Violet Hunter

Warnings: explicit sex (gay and lesbian), prostitution and discussion of abuse of sex workers, homophobia (historical context), blackmail, a case involving infidelity issues, angst

Other notes: case fic, blackmail, cross-dressing, drama

Length: 12k

Summary: Holmes is investigating a blackmail case and won't tell Watson who the client is; Watson does a little digging and finds out a lot of stuff he really should have known already.

So, first off, I’m probably going to talk about An Ideal Husband more. I was originally only going to talk about that fic, but Absurdly Simple has some nice points as well.

Absurdly Simple is, as it says, a lovely tale of blackmail, and puts canon-era Holmes in a rare vulnerable position. I love the details of the story, almost more than the main plot–the look into the lives of the prostitutes, and how the prevailing homophobia of the time is dealt with. The “case” itself isn’t really the focus–the reader will cotton on to what’s going on before Watson does, and the solution ends up being fairly quick. Still, it’s a nice prelude to An Ideal Husband.

I admit, I picked An Ideal Husband because it’s one of the few front-and-center femslash stories I have bookmarked. I really need to go and read more. Admittedly, some of the PoV changes and the intricacies of the case itself confused me the first time I read it, but I was blindsided by how much of Irene and Violet’s development we get in such a relatively short fic. It’s love at first sight, gender-bending confusing, and refreshingly angsty.

Irene, as a character, tends to get a lot of people arguing over her. She is, in canon, the one woman who bests Sherlock Holmes, but a lot of adaptations gloss over the fact that she does it because of her great love for her husband. This ends up being another fic where her husband is summarily written off, but I found the damaged, vengeful Irene fascinating, especially against Violet’s relative innocence. Canon? Maybe not, but Irene is written in so many different ways I can’t really fault yet another take on her character. She’s still strong here, still clever and plotting and yet vulnerable.

Also, the sex is pretty damn hot. The cross-dressing is hot. The last line of the story is so perfect: