The Canon Quantity vs Silliness Theory of SidePairing Ecosystem (The Return of Headers & Summaries)

[cimorene]

About a week ago I was going through some of my extremely old bookmarks and was reminded of the existence of the Mycroft/Lestrade pairing from Sherlock. This was one of those minor pairings that often seem to me to arise when the cast contains two (fan favorite) male characters left over after pairing up the OTP and so default to putting them together. I have a theory that pairings of secondary, side or background characters where there's not as much canon material to work with are especially prone to a range of often wildly inventive deviations from canon, often in the form of AUs but also including experimental characterizations and all varieties of what was once referred to as 'crack fic': basically... silliness, I guess.

I had no idea at the time how active the Mycroft/Lestrade pairing was, nor how extremely well it bears out this theory. It's got more AUs, and much sillier ones, than the Hux/Kylo Ren fandom did at last viewing. The last time I found a source as rich as this of unbelievable headers was probably on livejournal at the height of bandom, when I worked my way backwards through every entry in the major MCR, FOB and bandom communities.

People who have followed me for that long may remember the headers & summaries I used to post from these communities; I haven't found any bodies of work that I wanted to read through just to appreciate the headers since 2014, going by my tag. But I've gathered so many recently that I've gotta share again.

1. Mycroft Holmes has a crush on Greg Lestrade, but he thinks it won't be reciprocated. He joins an anonymous dating website. His handle is limo_to_the_prostate. He starts chatting with Umbrella. Not realizing that Umbrella is really Greg Lestrade.


2. On Christmas Eve, Greg Lestrade accidentally swipes right on Mycroft Holmes.
   It doesn't matter though, does it? Because he won't see unless he swipes right too, and there's no way - there's no way -
   The thing about Christmas, though, is that unexpected things happen.


3. Mycroft Holmes was born in 60 B.C.E in the Roman empire, and found Greg in 27 B.C.E. Since then, they have lead several lives together, Greg always coming back to him throughout the centuries, but this time, when he finds the silver haired fox, turns out the man is already married.
   
   Series: Part 1 of Holmes Everlasting


4. Alternate Universe - Animals Minor Character Death What Have I Done Don't Examine This Too Closely
   
   Summary : The horse!AU no one asked for but got written anyway


5. Mycroft Holmes is covered in tattoos and Greg Lestrade plans to see them all

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Characterization? What characterization?

Pure idfic. LOL.

[krait]

I thought I was well-versed in idfic and hard to faze, but limo_to_the_prostate is making me reconsider that stance. That's a level of id that is more like a parallel dimension than an exponential of any iddiness I know!

[cimorene]

It's a fictitious pseud worthy of a volume of postmodernist and psychological analysis at minimum!