The Second Stain: A Clash of Kin

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: The Second Stain
Title: A Clash of Kin
Author: hisietari
Rating: G
A/N: My second round of 60s will concentrate on the Moriarty family. You can find a family tree and some explanation in my journal, but please feel free to ask, too. Knowledge of previous stories might be required.
Narrated from Sherlock Holmes's perspective. This one's a bit more complex than advisable in sixty words, so I'm rather leaving it here as an experiment. But there's a very short explanation here.

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The incident revealed a much greater net than Watson would report. In this bizarre rondo of relation, an eldest brother, already too sure of his henchman’s success, would be precluded by his family’s Mercy. One of her countless agents among wives and courtesans released the document, while the advises the sister in Mycroft’s employment gave to Lady Hilda returned it.

Comments

[ennui-enigma.livejournal.com]

A complex web of deceit and treachery! I was a little bit confused who Mycroft's trump might be - Lady Hilda or someone else? Your explanation helped clear that up. I like the idea of the littlest sister and her band of wives and courtesans! Clever and very useful if one wants a spy network :-)

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the very spot I couldn't overcome and finally gave up on. I simply couldn't find anything to hint at Jane properly, and whatever I tried would have mingled her with Mercy. I guess I'll keep working on this one until it's more direct. Thanks for the input!

Mercy's network is half-based on the image of a counterweight to all those cliques of (male) fellow-students who'd stand up for one another for the rest of their lives, and then merged into legends of female spy networks such as the kunoichi.

The idea for this whole thing arose with that rather racist and misogynist report about the "insane" lady: "Mme. Fournaye, who is of Creole origin, is of an extremely excitable nature, and has suffered in the past from attacks of jealousy which have amounted to frenzy". I thought it much more interesting if Madame Fournaye used those ugly stereotypes for cover, acting on Mercy Moriarty's command.

[ennui-enigma.livejournal.com]

It crossed my mind that Mme. Fournaye might not have been insane as well. Who's to say she was not using it as a cover up?

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I think that was quite opposite in the original.

Second version is up by the way.

[ennui-enigma.livejournal.com]

Yes, new version less ambiguous. Though I might change the last line just a bit to something along the lines of "the advice of the sister in Mycroft's employment helped Lady Hilda return it".

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah, I see what you mean. A temporary draft went that way, but it implied indirectly that Jane actually wanted to help Hilda, while I don't think she'd ever care about her. Acting in Mycroft's interest is not due to sympathy for anybody, but because her own interests happen to be the same in that one situation.
Lovely bunch, those Moriartys. ;P

[ennui-enigma.livejournal.com]

Those Moriartys are a complex matrix of devious plans! Friends beware :-P
You could always change the word 'help' to something less altruistic.

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

I definitely appreciated the explanation, but once I'd read it I felt clued in, no problem.

You've got a really interesting world swirling around canon here, amazing...

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Seriously, this was an easy one to plot, at least before I realised I only had four lines to squeeze it all into. *lol* Next week will get a filler, I'm afraid. But there can be fun in those.

[debriswoman]

I like the web of influence which you have woven around the Moriarty clan. Jane and Mercy are working hard!

I think you also ought to know that today I noticed, written neatly amongst all the graffiti in the ladies' washrooms behind Notre Dame, the words "Moriarty was real".

Any explanation?

:-)

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

They didn't have TV back then. ;P

Well. Logically, it's obvious that Moriarty is real as there are at least several thousand people in this world who go by that name, so we can safely assume that at any time there's a Moriarty around. The interesting aspect is the use of past tense, which implies that Moriarty was real at some point, they are not anymore. The resulting question is: how can not just the life, but the actual reality of a person be erased, but still remembered? Now, there are a couple of options for this case, from a shifting of parallel realities to time cracks and resulting accidents. Without further data and a good scan or two I'm afraid I can't fully reply to your question, but there's always the chance that either a word was missing, or the artist in question simply couldn't finish their (her?) graffiti along the lines of "Moriarty was real cool". ;P

[debriswoman]

I'm going to go with the shifting of parallel realities and will send you a photo of the washroom message to analyse further on my return from Paris...(Now that isn't a sentence I use very often!)

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

You're too kind! I'd come myself, but I'm afraid my shipping box needs mending. ;P

[debriswoman]

And I am not suspicious at all that you might already be in a neolithic hut in...Montmartre or suchwhere.

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Oh no, as delightful as it sounds, I couldn't quite manage such a trip right now. Too busy stuffing my half a dozen sonic pipes with solid soap bubbles.

[debriswoman]

Gosh, that certainly doesn't sound like a job you could abandon halfway for a jaunt to Paris!

60 words for 60 cases, week 7: The Second Stain

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User spacemutineer referenced to your post from 60 words for 60 cases, week 7: The Second Stain (http://dispatch-box.livejournal.com/198993.html) saying: [...] by A Clash of Kin [...]

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Such an elaborate web woven!

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

I could but include scraps. ^^"