#7-percent

COMPLETE!

My guide and I came on that hidden road to make our way back into the bright world; and with no care for any rest, we climbed. 

(Inf. 34.133–136)

Out of the Inferno, Sherlock, John, and Roberto emerge.

For those of you who won't read a WIP, it is now completed on Ao3. Start from the beginning here.

“What do you reread?” asked @notjustamumj recently, here on tumblr. What do you reread?

When I thought “reread for comfort,” one list formed itself instantly in my head.

But when I thought “reread for inspiration,” a completely different list formed. At the top was 7PercentSolution’s Just Dance (6/6, 22,783 words), set between the Watson wedding and the minute Sherlock accosts John in a drug den.

So many plotholes in that month. Ever wonder

• how CAM’s PA came to be Mary’s maid of honor?

• how Sherlock ended up in a doss house frequented by John and Mary’s neighbor’s kid?

• why Mycroft would forbid Sherlock to go after CAM?

@7-percent makes sense of all of it.

At times I just stop reading and say: “Of course. Of course that’s what must have happened.”

7Percent has so much going on between and behind the scenes we saw. She shows us the interior landscape of Sherlock’s external behaviors, shows us how his great mind (with occasional miscalculations) meshes with his great heart, how each can sabotage the other.

The intricate steps of ballroom dance, which Sherlock uses to woo Janine, mirror the intricacies of the plot. But it’s not just a clever metaphor; we get to see behind the scenes of the dance steps, through how it’s taught: something drawn from her own long experience.

7Percent shows us how it’s done: how to write a story that works within a set of incoherent Moftiss constraints, and one that—for character development and plot elaboration—leaves them in the dust.

Tagging a few Sherlockians here and in the tags:

PLEASE REBLOG!

And of course, the celebration includes @7-percent and the teamwork we're all love and looking forward to.

The Drawn to Stars series is not only one of my all-time favourite comfort stories, but Silvergirl was one of the very first people who welcomed me with open arms in a fandom that became family.

Therefore, my thank you includes the family of 221b, days in Bologna, and a winter trip to Venice.

Prompt was drink. I took it literally - a short history of John's drinking life. And bonus points for the pic. for @fluffbruary

It's also here:https://archiveofourown.org/works/37152175

Vintage John

John had his first beer when he twelve. Stolen from his grandfather's fridge on a dare, he carried the bottle to school the next day, wrapped in an old jumper and buried in his backpack beneath his maths homework. Hiding behind the garden shed after school, he and Tommy Leith passed the bottle back and forth between them, laughing and belching loudly. They buried the empty bottle under a rock when they were done. John pocketed the cap for luck and carried it in his back pocket all through secondary school.

The first time he got drunk, he was sixteen and had a crush on a girl who barely knew his name. He'd just finished reading a Hemingway novel in which every character drank to forget the pain of unrequited love. All he could find at the back of the pantry was a half-empty bottle of peach schnapps and a dusty bottle of Celteg elderberry wine. He grabbed both bottles, tucked them beneath his flannel jacket, and headed to the woods behind the house. He was a quarter way through the bottle of elderberry wine when the trees began to blur. He liked the feeling of a world less solid than the one he was used to. He liked how the wine filled that part of him that had always felt hollow. He was three quarters the way through the bottle when he threw up all over the library's copy of "The Sun also Rises." It was dark when stumbled home, singing "Anarchy in the UK" before vomiting, one last time, in his father's boots.

By his third year at uni, he drank every weekend at local pubs, listening to cover bands and playing it cool. He learned to love the burn of scotch against his throat, the slow fire it fueled in his gut. He liked how the music sounded when it was filtered through a haze of cigarettes and whisky. The first time he kissed a man – in the alley behind the Pig and Whistle in the middle of February – he was drunk on Highland Black Whisky and the dangerous feeling of his hard-on pressed up against another man's cock.

Home from Afghanistan, he drank every day. One shot because he was thirsty, two because it had been a bad day, three because that's how many it took to blur the jagged edges of his life. Six and he didn’t care anymore that his job, his flat, his life was complete shite. He knew it was becoming a problem when Harry told him she was worried about his drinking.

It was Sherlock who introduced him to good wine. He taught him about Pinot Noir and Beaujolais and Cabernet, about balance and nose and finish. How to identify the parts that made up the whole, like the notes of a sonata. Sherlock showed him that good wine wasn't always expensive, and expensive wine wasn't always good. That Chardonnay tasted better after sex. That bad wine was worse than no wine.

Later, Sherlock taught him that drinking never cured a broken heart.

Four years later, when he and Sherlock were finally finding their way back to each other, John kept a bottle of Glenlivet under the sink in the kitchen. He called it scotch tape – they only seemed to drink it when they needed help putting together the broken pieces of their lives.

Blaze

Digital Art using Procreate

Please do not repost without permission.

Sometimes I run into a place with a project where I know that it’s not what I envisioned, but it’s the best I can do with where I am right now...

___

Autumn always makes me nostalgic. A month and a year ago, I decided to give *that* show on Netflix another try. A year ago, I was ears deep in some of the most incredible fics I’ve ever read on AO3. Among them were AUs and case fics about a posh boy who rides English, dressage even, on a black Friesian, or in one case, said posh boy was the Friesian... my long dormant artistic senses began to tingle.

I used to draw horses incessantly as a child. I’m talking reams upon reams of copy paper devoted to my love of all things equine. And I read up on all things horse too. I practically memorized my copy of Judith Draper’s Horse Breeds of the World. But there’s truth in the statement that riding, especially the gleaming horses with their manes and tails braided in the dressage ring, is a sport for society’s upper crusts...

Still, one can dream and draw, can especially dream and draw and read about beautiful horses ridden by beautiful consulting detectives and his ilk. This fandom has given me so much this past year, not just equine-related, but I’d like to give a shout out to a few horse-related fics that were on my mind whilst drawing this.

__

@7-percent‘s Musgrave Blaze is possibly the fic that started it all. Not only was this the first fic in the “7-percent-verse” that I read (it’s not the first one folks, so if you plan to start, start at the beginning and get ready to have the world shift under your feet), the story’s respect of past trauma reframed a lot of those cliched “overcoming one’s fear of riding” stories that I think kind of define the “genre,” if you will. Sherlock and Pirate will always have a bit of my heart.

I don’t think one can talk about horse-related sherlock fanfic without bringing up @khorazir‘s The Horse and his Doctor? I will admit to being a bit skeptical at first (is this story really going where I think it is?), but I was quickly enamored (it really is going there! and it’s incredible!!!). The gorgeous artwork certainly didn’t detract. (can we talk about the illustration at the end of this chapter?) Khorazir really does justice to luscious Friesian curls in a way which I have clearly opted out of...

And finally I can’t post this without talking about one of my current favorite WIP obsessions. We don’t really see much of Sherlock in his jodhpurs (or breeches) and hunt coat, but I’m definitely not complaining about the getups of equestrian!lock and cowboy John featured in @dulcimergecko​‘s absolutely brilliant The Devils’ Blaze. I just can’t wait to see what John’s reaction to Sherlock in those tight white pants will be when we (hopefully) get there.

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Phew. Long post. These are just a few that I’ve read and loved. I’m sure there must be more. Please send more horse related fic recs my way if you have them!

Hey Nonny!

Ah, I believe they're two different Bloggers, but the author is one of them :) I know that @7-percent is the AO3 author 7PercentSolution.

I was tagged by @silentauroriamthereal and @7-percent. Thank you.

He sighed, running his hands over the smooth material of the jersey, before picking it up. “Into battle, Watson,” he told himself quietly.

From the first chapter of my upcoming Tour de France AU Slipstream. I’ve written about 3k words on the train on my way to London, and am feeling pretty pleased with myself. John and Sherlock are professional cyclists in this story. There is going to be art for this fic, too, of course. I mean, pretty men in tight-fitting cycling gear ...

Art by a victorian_girl for FTH 2024

I'm such a fan of Silvergirl (@totallysilvergirl on tumblr)as are so many in the fandom, especially her amazing Drawn to Stars story that way back in 2021, I approached her about co-writing another story in that ’verse.

It was very cheeky of me but I am delighted to say that Silver said yes, please.

By July 2021, we had a firm idea of the setting and context; by December, we had a plotting table. For me, it has been what I so love about co-authoring - me contributing an adventurous case fic to be combined with the intensity of emotional arc in Silver’s wonderful characterisation of Sherlock and John in an established relationship.

Warp and weft, we wove the story.

But... RL kept throwing grit in the lens! Almost perfectly non-overlapping crises of health, loss, stress, turmoil, etc kept this story from being completed until now.

But Inferno is done! On 15 October we’ll start posting. It’s set in 2022, when John and Sherlock take Rosie to Italy for a long-delayed holiday: an Italian course for her in Sorrento, intimate holiday for them in the areas surrounding. A case intrudes, bringing with it friction and crisis, danger and organised crime, and to John’s indescribable displeasure, Roberto Zanardi.

We will be updating twice a week, and the story will wrap in late December 2025. The story can be read as a stand-alone (that is, it doesn’t depend on knowing the Drawn to Stars series, but it will help to explain the backstory of Sherlock and the OMC Roberto Zanardi).

Please do reblog—that is such a help!

tagging @sgam76, @calaisreno, @khorazir, @keirgreeneyes, @kgreen200, @meetinginsamarra, @ninasnakie, @naefelldaurk,@copperplatebeech, @ceruleanmindpalace, @ihrinchelsea,@dragonnan.