Performance in a Leading Role by MadLori

Then I forgot about it, went on Ao3, looked for popular Sherlock fics, found this one and started reading. Having read the reviews, I tagged this as better-not. Yes, there's stuff that is repetitive-Sherlock is kind of insecure and can't logically explain falling in love, different versions of the conversation about commitment and reassurance come up repeatedly-but it's pure fluff and so that's okay. There's a great bit partway through that's transcriptions of interviews on talk shows and as far as I can tell (not having seen much of these shows) it's SPOT ON. The development of the relationship, the bumps and trials and Sherlock being sweet, are what's good about it-and the exploration of how friends, family, and Hollywood handle it, of course. (Another sign of a good fanfic-the trashy bits are not what you read it for.) As far as I'm concerned, it's character development that matters, and this certainly has that. It has some very explicit sex scenes, which frankly I think are the weakest part. Taking the characters of John and Sherlock roughly as drawn in the BBC show and translating them into an entirely different world is also rather neat. It's compelling, touching, sweet, and cute-basically, a comfort read.

The premise is that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are actors starring in a movie about a gay couple and life imitates art-which sounds AWFUL-and part of the beauty of this is that it's NOT. (.so my favorite childhood writer connected me with BBC Sherlock fanfic. I read it about a year ago November (so, November 2012) after seeing art from the scene where John comes to Sherlock's final show with flowers on Diane Duane's Tumblr. Okay, weird to find this on here, since it's fanfic, but since it's the best fanfic I've ever read, sure, I'll cop to it. *sigh* I skimmed most of the sex after 50%.Ī few scenes stand out, such as the accidental coming out and the Oscar ceremony, but apart from those scenes 2/3 of the book reads like an endless epilogue. Most of the time both guys were just unflappable, but whenever one did get flapped (usually, but not exclusively, at those same off-page events), things would get smoothed over with reassurances of love and devotion and follow up sex within a couple of paragraphs. Most of the dramatic things happening to them were also happening off-page on top of that (Sydney, family visits for both of them, Christmas Eve, etc), so we only got to see the subsequent discussion of said events, which is really not as engaging as taking the reader there 'live'. This was interesting, given the setting, but it stopped being fascinating.

This started out really good, but after the guys got together (at less than 30% into this long, long book) things stopped happening between them and started happening only to them.

Performance in a Leading Role by MadLori