Steph!!! did you read the lost special: family matters (as do relationships) by @shirleycarlton ??? I just saw it recced in your 2021 bookmarks list and ?? does that mean you've read it??
if so I'm very excited because I know for a fact I've recced it to you (even tho I may not have been the first one doing so) uhhh don't remember when. late 2019 early 2020? maybe? anyways point is, I love that fic. it is still to this day my favourite (Sherlock) fix it, and I'm very happy you've read it. care to share some of your thoughts about it?
honestly I read it like uhh two years ago now and I have definitely lost interest in sherlock since but this fic still remains in a very special place in my heart. anyway, I hope you've enjoyed it as much as me, and thank you (again) for all your recs!
(referencing this post)
Hey Nonny!
Yes! I did finally read it when it was completed, just before I did the fandom hopping. I feel TERRIBLE because when I did start reading it, it was at the start of my prolonged period of massive stress from work and life in general. At the time I hadn't taken time off work since Feb 2021 (it was July), and I was the "go-to" person for everything at work, and I was working long LONG hours and felt no reprieve, and every time I tried to take time off, something always got in the way. THEN I got stuck working everyday all for 2 months, no break. I wasn't sleeping well because of the stress, AND to top it all off, I had a cancer, heart, and diabetes scare all around the same time. Oh yeah, and I broke my foot too. So yeah, I wasn't really on my A-Game.
Let me exaggerate here before I go into the following ramble: I LOVE THE FIC. I love the writing and the meta-style approach to story-telling, and I love the fix-it aspect of the story. And the length of it is generally what I can get through in a week or two.
However, because I made the mistake of reading this fic when my brain was having a REALLY difficult time processing ANYTHING, and it started feeling like a chore to read it; NOT on ANY fault of the author AT ALL. This was 110% all my doing.
As I mention in the referenced post, I tag while I read my Johnlock fics so that I can properly file the bookmarks onto the offline lists, and I think I just really underestimated how tired and beyond stressed I was while I was reading it. It wasn't just this fic either... after I finished it, I tried reading other Johnlock fics, and I GENUINELY could not process the stories enough to understand what was going on, and started getting grumpy about tagging the fics. This has NEVER happened to me before – I didn't know stress could affect you that much – and I was actually scared that I couldn't comprehend new stories anymore. I put those aside to try to read again this year. I've since re-read the fic while I've been off and yeah, I remember why I bookmarked it.
Even those fics I did bookmark in other fandoms, it was only after like 3 readings of them, but I also don't have to recall what lists I have to put stories on when I bookmark them so it made reading other fandoms... not feel like a job, you know? I dunno.
So yeah, that's the story of how I found out stress affects my reading comprehension, LOL. UGH. Kids, set boundaries with your day jobs, and also don't get a blood test nor break your bones while you're also stressed and running on 3 hours of sleep a day LOL.
I'm super grateful that my boss was really accommodating for me taking a month off work. This whole break has re-centred my brain, I love reading and tagging again and I am now super determined to get at least 50 Johnlock fics read this year :)
In all seriousness though, please do check out the fic, if you want a fantastic and twisty-turny rewrite of S4:
The Lost Special: Family Matters (As Do Relationships) by ShirleyCarlton (M, 144,688 w., 40 Ch. || S4 Fix It Fic / Meta Fic, Unreliable Narrator, John’s Mind Bungalow, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Demisexual Sherlock, Holmes Family, John Whump, Gay Mycroft, Misunderstandings, Drug Addiction, Parenting, TFP is a Nightmare, Virgin Sherlock, Slow Burn, Minor Character Death, Switchlock, John’s Past, Sherlock’s Past, Eurus, Love Confessions) – Sherrinford is not really the name of some high security prison. That was just a figment of John’s frantic coma dream. And Eurus is not actually Sherlock’s sister. That’s just something random she said to John before shooting him. Sherlock and John were never actually estranged. That was just their act to cover up what really happened to Mary – or Rosamund Moran, as her real name has turned out to be. Sherlock does have a secret sibling, though, and his name is Sherrinford. After finally eliminating Moran – though in a rather dramatically different way than they had envisioned – and exposing the truth about Eurus, John encourages Sherlock to delve into his past and to find out whether the reasons to keep Sherrinford away from Sherlock were the right ones, and to discover what really happened in 1981. Along the way, Sherlock and John gradually, finally, stop keeping each other at a distance, and eventually become a proper family of their own.
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There are two other meta-fics I want to read as well (victorianpining's and mamaorion's) but the former just finished the story so only recently has it been bumped to the top of my list, and mama's was one of the stories I mentioned above that I had to set aside temporarily. I'm hoping I can get both of those read this year :)
Thanks for telling your story, and giving me the opportunity to sort of explain why the eff I only read 18 new Johnlock fics this year LOL. I'm ashamed and embarrassed about my brain, oof.
It's always magical when you leave a fandom and you still have that ONE fic that always sticks with you! I've a few of those myself, hahah. I'm so glad that this was one of them for you :)
