EnigmaticPenguin (of death)

The Delights of MyJohnLock

or Excuse me while I inflict my love of their OT3 on you

Do you find yourself reading a fic where Mycroft stumbles into and then quickly out of the middle of a post-case Sherlock ‘n’ John shag in the living room of 221B, only to wish that he’d stuck around and lent a hand? Do you enjoy a spot of Johncroft but feel sorry if John is shown quite clearly pining over the other Holmes he’s left at home? Do you like Holmescest and think that hey, wouldn’t it be fun to stick an unsuspecting John in the middle of this crazy-as-a-bag-of-super-intelligent-angry-cats sibling relationship?

Well what is a pervy Sherlock fan to do when they find that they enjoy the three fine ships of Johnlock, Johncroft and Holmescest, but want to mix things up or take it that little bit further? The solution is clear - you hoist the sails and smash open a bottle of champagne on the prow of an OT3 ship that combines the lot - MyJohnLock ahoy!

You may or may not have come across it before, but this is not a new ship. Over on AO3 entanglednow was posting fic for the trio within a few weeks of the BBC series first airing, and there are 57 fics in total under the Mycroft/Sherlock/John tag as well as more floating around on the kink meme or on livejournal or tumblr. And some really pretty art. And otter ‘n’ hedgehog fun. And hey did someone say shipping gifs?

From my experience of delving happily through MyJohnLock fics you’ve got the traditional split of porn-centric work versus wider relationship building, but even where sex is the major theme it’s very rare to find something completely ‘porn-without-plot’ - at the least you usually get a good exploration of character through sex, because you’ve got three such different characters to work with, and you need at least a brief explanation of how they suddenly ended up pining over or shagging each other. And yes threesome porn is all well and good in itself, but for me MyJohnLock allows for an exploration how Sherlock and Mycroft interact with each other as well as with John in such a situation - are they still sniping away and chiding at each other, is there jealously or are they teaming up to take John apart, how is John coping with this often very sudden shift in dynamics, do they each respond to things in the same way, who retains control, who is more impatient? There is a universe of possibilities and some fantastic fic out there.

John tends to be the viewpoint character - at least in the majority of fics - and is usually somewhat unsuspecting until he either gets pounced on or has a very business-like proposition put to him by the manipulative evil geniuses he shares a flat/cups of tea and the odd kidnapping with. This is understandable when you consider that for John to propose things off his own bat he would have to overcome both Sherlock and Mycroft’s sibling relationship and their general antagonism towards each other (at least in public) - social conventions and hurdles more easily tackled first by the Holmeses between themselves - but there are a whole variety of different ways this can go.

In some fics, such as entanglednow’s Modern Warfare and Armistice, there are pre-established relationships between Sherlock and John and Mycroft and John, and the brothers eventually concede to share John rather more concurrently. Extremely concurrently in that first one. In other fics, such as chasingriver’s Occasionally and Dinner Date, there is a pre-established relationship between Sherlock and Mycroft and either the Holmeses decide to invite John to participate or a rather more proactive John requests permission to join them. In yet others still, the unfortunate John ends up in the middle of an ongoing emotional battle between the brothers and acts as something of a substitute - such as with the Love, Lust and Alliance and Legwork series. All are good things, and now I wish to inflict some further recs on you.

Some of the more unusual MyJohnLock fics I’ve personally enjoyed include Satisfaction with Two which involves a fem!Joan Watson and is distinctly leg-wobblingly erotic, No Place Like Home which is MyJohnLock brilliantly in the context of a League of Gentlemen crossover, London Triptych which is a slow-burn with case fic, a most rare thing indeed, like a lost lamb returning to the fold which is a fragment of vampire AU and don’t I cry because it’s only a fragment, The Holmes Dilemna’verse which is over 140k words and allows for a heck of a lot more exploration of the relationship than you usually find, The Fine Art of Distraction which is mind-altering and just about impossible to describe but read the warnings carefully, and the Asteroidea series which is a His Dark Materials fusion and oh-so-lovely.

Other fics that I would just generally recommend because they be awesome include Watching Me Watching You (unf), Recompense (double unf), Catalyst (alas for John that’s what he is here), Decadent (in which Sherlock is a manipulative sneaky sod plus cake porn), Office Politics (sex in Mycroft’s office is always a good thing), Share (which is just so sweet), Desperate Measures (less of the sweet, more of the ganging up on Mycroft to teach him not to be such a control freak) and Lend Your Brother a Hand (technically John is only watching but this is brilliant and hilarious so shush).

If you’ve never explored the wonderful possibilities of the ship before I hope that you might like to give it a go to see if it sparks an interest - and if you already know it’s your cup of tea then maybe there’s a biscuit or two of ficcy delight here you haven’t tried before, perfect for dunking.

And over here are just links to the fics! [x]

Inspired by 20 Things You May (or May Not) Know About BBC Sherlock - I bring you:

12 Things It May Delight You To Find Out About Mark Gatiss

I wanted to move a bit beyond the typical facts you find in the Mark tag; namely yes he’s gay, yes he’s married and yes he was once in Doctor Who with a blond wig and turned into a giant scorpion monster. This is some slightly more obscure or random Gatissian trivia, acquired from a range of interviews. The truthfulness of some of these tales rely on how much you believe the honest face of that chap up there.

• During the summer holidays home from college Mark worked as a gardener at the psychiatric hospital opposite his parents’ house, and prior to the League of Gentlemen taking off he worked on Rolf Harris’ Cartoon Club opening fan letters from children and forging Rolf’s signature on the replies, along with the odd rather rude doodle.
• Mark is a keen collector of fossils, having briefly wanted to be a palaeontologist as a child. It was by dragging the rest of the League of Gentlemen into a little shop near Brighton to examine the fossils in the window that they encountered a shopkeeper whose terrified reaction to their browsing would inspire Royston Vasey’s ‘local shop’ and the characters of Tubbs and Edward.
• He first met his husband Ian online, where Mark was wooed by his perfect spelling and they mostly chatted about grammar. In 2008 they got married in Middle Temple, in the City of London, underneath a portrait of Edward Carson QC, the man who prosecuted Oscar Wilde, and to whom Mark stuck two fingers up at during his speech.
• During the course of his life-long love affair with Doctor Who he has served on numerous occasions as author, screenwriter, audio writer, audio actor, screen actor, documentary narrator and subject; has portrayed both the Doctor (in a spoof) and the Master (in an audio drama) as well as villain of the week in the main series, and has acted alongside nine of the eleven actors to have played the Doctor.
• Mark was a vegetarian for 15 years before falling back into meat-eating ways when he became bored of the typical limited vegetarian choices available at most restaurants. Shortly afterwards he was called upon to judge an exotic meat eating contest in the guise of the League’s demon butcher Hilary Briss, which he described as one of the strangest and grimmest afternoons of his life.
• Mark and Ian have a seven year old golden Labrador Retriever named Bunsen, who guest-starred in Mark’s adaptation of The First Men in the Moon as Professor Cavor’s dog Faraday. Mark claims to have trained Bunsen extensively for the role with the enticement of carrots.
• Some years ago he wrote a work of historical erotic gay literature, set during the Civil War, published under a pseudonym. When asked about it by a journalist he said he had tried anything just to reach the word count, and that if you can write a pornographic novel you can do almost anything - it is so difficult.
• He built a Victorian-style laboratory in a previous house complete with blood-red walls, gas lamps, a stuffed cat in a bell jar and a variety of other curios, but couldn’t find a use for it beyond showing it off to dinner party guests. Apparently most of the contents of this room is now strewn throughout their house; a situation ‘tolerated’ by Ian.
• During filming for the League as hapless vet Mr Chinnery, Mark ended up in hospital after the special effects for an exploding dog (compressed air firing red jelly and gloop into his face) caused corneal abrasions.
• Mark is patron of the Undershaw Preservation Trust, a group established to help save the former residence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, of which Ian is also a volunteer.
• He ended up playing Mycroft at the suggestion of co-writer Steve Thompson, after Mark had recently auditioned for the role of British politician Peter Mandelson and they were exploring the idea of Mycroft sharing similar ‘reptilian’ characteristics. His now-trademark umbrella was Mark’s idea, initially just to create a good silhouette for the warehouse scene.
  
• Before meeting Ian he had a partner who lived in Vancouver, who he once surprised by secretly flying to Canada and turning up at his work disguised as a Mexican flower seller. Just sit for a while and picture this.

Mark Gatiss’s Speech to the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s Annual Dinner at the House of Commons, January 2006

Part witty childhood reminiscences about first falling in love with all things Holmesian, part setting the scene for a concept that would become Sherlock, all together steeped in canon and delightful. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I must begin with an apology. Whilst working on my speech last night, I rang the bell for some coffee to clear my brain. When I recalled that I don’t, in fact, have any servants I popped downstairs to get the Nescafe myself. Upon my return, a scant two minutes later, I discovered that the speech had vanished! Half-mad with anxiety I dashed into the street- bare-headed- and was the importuned by the most frightful apparition I have ever come upon: a two-foot tall mulatto Lascar with a wooden bottom and his ears pierced for rings. He pressed a telegram into my palm and ran off into the fog, his breath reeking of liquorice allsorts. ‘Come to the House of Commons at once, if convenient’, ran the cable. ‘If inconvenient, don’t bother’. I rushed to St Stephen’s Green and there, under a stained carpet, on the top of an underground train inside a battered tin-despatch box I finally found… the speech.

Read the rest at The Umbrella Organisation [x]

On YouTube here [x].

The opening titles look similar, but it’s the music that really makes it!