Discussion Post: The Hound of the Baskervilles

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

It's our first novel, Hound of the Baskervilles! As always, here are a few thoughts and questions to get you started. Please add your own and discuss away!

- After a long stint of short stories, how did you find diving into a novel? Did you like it more or less than the shorter cases? I loved getting in-depth with the case and characters first-hand, but it's hard not to love The Hound of the Baskervilles. It has it all: action, love, danger, suspense.

- HOUN skirts the line of the horror genre with a spectral demon dog roaming and killing, a notoriously brutal murderer on the loose, and a foggy mire swallowing horses live and screaming. Did you like that dark, scary tone? What did you think of the possibility of the supernatural here? Could a true Sherlock Holmes story ever actually have the paranormal, with Holmes being such a devoted realist? What would happen if he did have to confront the unnatural?

- Watson is terrific in HOUN. He gets volunteered on a moment's notice to take a trip for weeks on end to escort a man under likely mortal danger. And he's excited to do it. It's wonderful to have so much time with him alone for a change and discover more about him and his kind, sturdy character.

- HOUN has an enormous number of film/tv/radio adaptations, and it's interesting to see how they vary from the text. There's a lot of excitement here so it lends itself well to media adaptation. What's your favorite version? I'm partial to Granada's overall, but I actually have a soft spot for Ian Hart's Watson in that BBC tv movie version. He's valiant and tender and he stands up for himself just as well as he stands up for others. If only he had a more worthy Holmes in Richard Roxburgh.

- Any predictions for how they'll handle HOUN on BBC's Sherlock in the next series, if you're watching that?

The Hound of the Baskervilles - Reflections

[methylviolet10b]

Author: methylviolet10b
Rating: PG
Character(s): Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Stapleton, Sir Henry Baskerville, Inspector Lestrade
Summary: 60 word snippets based on each chapter of HOUN.
Warnings: Spoilers abound for HOUN, so if you haven't read it, you might not want to read these. Besides, what are you waiting for? HOUN is one of the best of the Holmes stories!
Word Count: 60 x 15, plus some quotes from HOUN, in italics
Author's Notes: 60 words of my own inspired by one of the canon stories.
Disclaimer: I don't own them.

This week I took a slight deviation from the usual format. Since each chapter of HOUN is about the length of one of the Holmes short stories, I wrote one 60-word story for each chapter. Some of them also include direct quotes from the story, in italics. Those words don't count towards the 60, of course. :-)

HOUN -- The Hound of the Baskervilles

( Fifteen 60-word stories, behind the cut... )

The Hound of the Baskervilles: Inspector Lestrade Reflects

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Title: Inspector Lestrade Reflects
Author: thesmallhobbit
Rating: G

As the November fog comes down in the city I am reminded of the other fog that time on the moors.  Here street lights struggle to penetrate the gloom, there no lights at all, until the hound himself appeared with his awful devilish sheen.  Even now, if a guard dog barks on a foggy night I feel myself shudder again.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

[flawedamythyst.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Author: flawedamythyst
Rating: PG
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Watson/Baskerville

The dream came the first night Watson was away. He was laid out naked on a bed, exactly as Holmes had seen him so many times, but instead of Holmes's lips and fingers caressing all the most intimate and beautiful places on his body, it was Sir Henry Baskerville's.

Holmes made plans to travel to Dartmoor the very next day.


*

The Dying Detective

[flawedamythyst.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: The Dying Detective
Author: flawedamythyst
Rating: PG
A/N: The last one I need to catch up on. Been putting this one off a bit, because the story just makes me so angry on Watson's behalf.

I stayed hidden behind the Great Detective's bed for far longer than was necessary. I might have emerged from concealment at the moment that Inspector Morton arrived, but I was frozen with disbelief that someone I counted as my closest friend could abuse me in such a cruel way, followed by a burning anger I had to fight to control.


*

The Hound of the Baskervilles: Guard

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Title: Guard
Author: spacemutineer
Rating: G

Dark smoke poured from the engine into the sky in a twisting spire as the train shrank into the distance. Sir Henry was in the best hands I could leave any man, but he and his dependable guard were treading into dangerous, uncharted waters. My brain fixated itself upon the Satires of Juvenal. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, if not myself?


[Quis custodiet ipsos custodes = Who will guard the guards themselves? / Who watches the watchmen?]