The logical synthesis of fanfic.

So little time, so much to read.

And every month's listen to Three Patch Podcast brings just a little more added to the "I want to get to that someday" list. They have some pretty solid recommendations if you listen for what seem to be classics of the form. But sometimes, their discussions themselves become just as much fun as a good read. Case in point, the "We Ship It" segment for July, featuring the Jolto pairing (John Watson/James Sholto).

While Jolto is definitely going to be a hard genre for me to get to (as much as I love movies, war movies tend to be on my no-fly list, and this is all about soldiers), the fans on this audio panel (Cookie, Vanetti, Monika Krasnorada, and Bree) find it very hard to confine themselves to existing storylines involving Watson and Sholto, and just start coming up with completely new possibilities for the characters interacting. While amazed that a character with so little air time and a seemingly dead-end relationship with John Watson could be so fascinating, they just keep making James Sholto moreso as they ramble on . . . which is some perfect podcasting.

John Watson's war years and military service is one of those areas, both in BBC Sherlock and Doyle Canon, where a few skeletal details set up legions of potential tales. And just as Victor Trevor comes from Sherlock Holmes's college days to inspire wonder at that duo's time together, James Sholto comes in for Martin Freeman's Watson. (In the Doyle Canon, we'd have to place Murray in that "old army buddy" role.) Attempting to flesh out what happened in that time, around the few details that are presented, is not only classic Sherlockian brainwork, but classic Holmes detection as well.

"I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover the facts as far as we know them," Sherlock states during "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches." And what is an explanation but a story of how someone got from point A to point B, which Sherlock Holmes was constantly trying to work out. His results, when edited down to the one provable theory, were solutions and not prose narratives (at least until Watson got his pen going), but Sherlock was spinning fics about the characters of every drama he came across. Just like the "We Ship It" crew from this month's Three Patch.

There is a definite "new scholarship" angle to the work of fan fiction. Instead of going for dates and measurements to calculate the like of the Musgrave Ritual, there are explorations of personalities and relationships in ways that can only be done in fiction. And we have more of it going on now than any time before us in Sherlockian history.

It's fun to be able to hear some of that work coming together while doing a little cooking and washing up, especially for a Sherlockian who has been around long enough to have heard so many retreads of well-worn pathways over the years. And that was tonight.