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   Shell Games and Yellow Herrings by vanillicose

   Fandoms: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)  

   • Mature
   • Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
   • Gen
   • Work in Progress

   06 Jul 2026

   Tags

   • Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
   • maturing/evolving friendships
   • Dirk & family
   • Todd Brotzman & Dirk Gently
   • Farah Black & Todd Brotzman & Dirk Gently
   • Bart Curlish & Dirk Gently
   • Bart Curlish & Ken
   • Todd Brotzman & family
   • various original characters with canon characters and each other
   • Eddie Black & Farah Black
   • big cast with lots of relationship things happening under the plot
   • Can be read as Gen or as the world's slowest burn Brotzly pre-slash
   • Todd Brotzman/Dirk Gently
   • Todd Brotzman's Family
   • Original Project Blackwing Characters (Dirk Gently)
   • Osmund Priest
   • Lieutenant Assistent (Dirk Gently)
   • Original Characters
   • stealth appearances by Friedkin
   • Season 3
   • Case Fic
   • heist case
   • Blackwing is Up To Stuff
   • a mysteriously severed head
   • genuinely obscene mollusks
   • misuse of nautical tropes
   • grappling with the implications of Universe-influence
   • awkward family things for Todd
   • Pararibulitis (Dirk Gently)
   • eventual angst
   • Wendimoor
   • where did all those prophecies come from?
   • Black Book
   • Chaos Theory
   • universe mechanics
   • Experiments
   • Magic
   • Running from the past
   • letting go of what might have been
   • what’s in the box?
   • cell phone shenanigans
   • questionable museums
   • Wasted Ice Cream
   • super questionable lawfirms
   • supernatural-ish creatures
   • Missing cats
   • Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently)
   • Dirk Gently Needs a Hug
   • Drunk Dirk Gently
   • actions have consequences
   • Canon Compliant
   • Canon-Typical Violence
   • Strategic No-Truthing
   • Other Additional Tags to Be Added
   • world's worst self-storage facility
   • oblique references to elements from the Dirk Gently books
   • literally everyone is just awful at communicating
   • Emotional Manipulation (Blackwing-style and otherwise)
   • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
   • Causal Roles
   • fractals
   • Free Will
   • occasional CWs directly in chapter notes
   • a good deal more swearing than in the show if that bothers you
   • Slow Burn

   Summary

   He huffed in disgust. “I solved the bloody case.”
   Todd’s eyes went wide. “You… usually seem a little happier about that, when it happens.”
   ----

   Five months after Bergsberg, the Holistic Detective Agency is finding a groove, and Dirk is maybe—just maybe—starting to trust a good thing to last. But a bout of cat-subsidized calm draws to a sharp close when Dirk and Todd find an impossibly-severed head on a rare day off. Unbeknownst to the Agency, the ever-accumulating Rowdy 3, or even the enthusiastic new leadership at Blackwing, a decades-old play for control is poised to ripple across a fractious, fractured, and fractal Universe. Survival will mean holding true to oneself, even in the face of friends and family—whether given, chosen, or fatalistically entwined.

   A longform take on The Season 3 That Never Was; 6/2026 WE'RE BACK BABYYYY

   Language:

   English

   Words:

   284,620

   Chapters:

   91/105

   Comments:

   409

   Kudos:

   165

   Bookmarks:

   48

   Hits:

   7,512

   Bookmarked by rockonnaissance

   08 Aug 2025