#i just thought it would be fun for it to be the day after acd's

[skyriderwednesday]

Still liable to changes, but I have at last placed every single story into my chronology! I have also made some changes to the order of stories placed previously, based either on new information or their vibes. Comments and feedback are much appreciated.

The ‘Gloria Scott’ - Summer 1875 [1] (Framing: Winter 1882-3?)

The maths as stated don’t work, as 1855 + 30 = 1885, and these events can’t occur after A Study In Scarlet. 1875 would have to be Holmes’s second year of college. 

The Musgrave Ritual - Spring 1879 (Framing: Winter 1882-3?)

It is stated to have been four years since Holmes last saw Musgrave. Holmes mentions telling Watson about the events of ‘Gloria Scott’. Watson must be living at 221b at the time, as his intro describes Holmes’s extremely messy habits in terms of lodging with him.

A Study In Scarlet - January to March 1881

Watson states the date he discovered Holmes’s profession explicitly as the 4th of March, which was several weeks after they moved in together. I find it likely that it was at most mid-January when they met, and that Watson spent February observing Holmes’s habits and trying to figure him out.

The Resident Patient - October 1881

Watson describes these events as being ‘towards the end of the first year during which Holmes and I shared chambers’, and then specifies that it was October.

The Valley Of Fear - January 1882 [2]

It is stated to be ‘in the late eighties’, but Holmes appears to still be getting used to Watson’s sense of humour, which he claims is ‘developing’, which points to it being earlier while Watson is still recovering from his illness. Any later and Holmes would already be very familiar with his closest companion’s personality. It cannot be any earlier than 1882 however, since January 1881 is taken up by the events of A Study In Scarlet.

The Speckled Band - April 1883

The Yellow Face - Summer 1883

The Beryl Coronet - February 1884

The Copper Beeches - Early Spring 1884

Charles Augustus Milverton - Winter 1884

I get the feeling this is an earlier case, as Watson’s attitude is oddly naïve when it comes to morality and the ability of the law to handle Milverton. I cannot see him behaving like this/holding these beliefs if he has already experienced Moriarty with Holmes for instance. He is also very jumpy while he and Holmes are performing their burglary.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles - October 1885 [3]

Mortimer’s stick is dated 1884, and Holmes notes this was five years ago (making it 1889), but Watson neither appears to be married nor in medical practice, and since this story was explicitly written as to have occurred before Holmes’s ‘death’, this precludes it being set after 1888.  

The Greek Interpreter - Summer 1886?

The Reigate Squires - April 1887

The Sign Of Four - July 1887 [4]

It is stated to be July (later mistakenly stated as September) 1888, but this contradicts both SCAN (March 1888) and FIVE (September 1887). There also appears to be a pearl missing as Mary describes their delivery. 

The Cardboard Box - August 1887

Holmes mentions both A Study In Scarlet and The Sign Of Four by name -- which implies that Watson is a very speedy writer, as this would be only a few weeks later. However, this may be taken as self promotion on Watson’s part.

The Noble Bachelor - Autumn 1887

This story is dated to 1887 via Lord St. Simon’s age, but Watson is soon to be married -- which is not possible if he has not yet met his fiancée. Dating SIGN to July 1887 fixes this discrepancy. 

A Scandal In Bohemia - March 1888

Watson explicitly dates the start of this case to the 20th of March 1888, and states that he hasn’t seen Holmes for several months after his marriage (which would be in the late autumn to winter of 1887)

The Stockbroker’s Clerk - June 1888

Watson states that he acquired his practice ‘shortly after’ his marriage, and that he was too busy to visit Holmes at Baker Street for three months. Counting most of March as the first month (per SCAN), that takes us to the June he states, which is the first time Holmes has visited Watson at his practice. 

The Naval Treaty - July 1888

[The Second Stain - July 1888**]

I take it that the story of this name is heavily if not entirely fictionalised. This is when the real events that inspired it occurred.

The Crooked Man - Summer (August?) 1888

The Five Orange Pips - September 1888 [5]

It is stated to be September 1887, but even if SIGN occurred in July of that year, Watson and Mary have not married yet for him to be ‘staying at Baker Street’ while she is away visiting her (dead) mother.

The Boscombe Valley Mystery - Spring 1889

The Man With The Twisted Lip - June 1889

I place this after BOSC, as Holmes takes it as a given that Watson’s wife will not object to him sending a note and running off on a case in the middle of the night. (I suspect he’s wrong and will be due a bollocking after breakfast)

The Engineer’s Thumb - Summer 1889

The Dying Detective - November 1889

Watson describes this as happening in his ‘second year of marriage’, which, 1888 being his first, works out as 1889.

A Case Of Identity - September 1890

Holmes comments in REDH that the case of Mary Sutherland occurred ‘the other day’. 

The Red-Headed League - October 1890

The Blue Carbuncle - December 1890

Watson states it to be ‘the second morning after Christmas’, making it the 27th. When discussing cases that didn’t involve a crime, Holmes cites the events of SCAN, IDEN, and TWIS. This also lines up with the publication order, BLUE being the seventh short story, and Watson states that of the ‘last six cases’ he has written up, three of them were legally free of crime (morally however…)

The Final Problem - April to May 1891

Holmes has apparently been working in France since ‘the winter of 1890’ when he suddenly shows up in Watson’s consulting room on the 24th of April. His ‘death’ occurs on the 4th of May. 

The Empty House - March 1894

The Norwood Builder - Summer 1894

Stated to take place ‘several months’ after Holmes’s return. Watson has moved back to Baker Street and sold his practice. 

Silver Blaze - Late Summer 1894 

(I would like to set Silver Blaze to be after NORW, since I think Holmes and Watson deserve a fun case after that one. I believe it to be post-hiatus since Watson is evidently resident in Baker Street and does not appear to be in practice at this time.)

The Golden Pince-Nez - November 1894

The Red Circle - Winter 1894

Watson is living at Baker Street, and Holmes refers to his medical practice in the past tense. 

The Solitary Cyclist - April 1895

The Three Students - 1895

Black Peter - July 1895

The Bruce-Partington Plans - November 1895

The Veiled Lodger - Early 1896

The Shoscombe Old Place - 1896

The Missing Three-Quarter - February 1896-7?

Described as occurring ‘seven or eight years ago’ from the time of writing, presumably 1904. 

The Devil’s Foot - March 1897

The Abbey Grange - Winter 1897

Wisteria Lodge - March 1898 [6]

It is stated to be March 1892, but this is impossible as Holmes is presumed dead at that time. It also can’t be March ‘91 as Holmes is too busy at that time, and referencing REDH eliminates March ‘90 or any year earlier. Further, Holmes complains of boredom due to a lack of cases, which eliminates 1894 due to a very high number of cases in that year (he also would only have been back about two weeks at that point). Holmes is also busy in March ‘95, ‘96, and ‘97. It is not until 1898 that there may be time to be bored by March.

The Six Napoleons - Late May/Early June 1898

It must be the end of May or the start of June, as Beppo was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison in late May of the previous year. (I’d like to set this one near DANC, since Holmes deserves the praise. 

The Dancing Men - July 1898

Mr Cubitt says that he met his wife while in London ‘for the jubilee last year’, and that Elsie received a letter from America ‘about a month ago, at the end of June’. 

The Sussex Vampire - November 1898

I date this story to after 1897, as that is the year vampires rose significantly in the public consciousness.

The Retired Colourman - Summer 1899

Amberley married his wife in 1897, and Holmes comments that the events that have resulted in their contact with him have occurred ‘within two years’.

The Priory School - May 1901?

Years listed with regard to Lord Holdernesse date the story post 1900, and wording makes it seem that that is not the present year.

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax - Spring/Summer 1901?

The Problem Of Thor Bridge - October 1901

The Three Garridebs - June 1902

The Illustrious Client - September 1902

The Blanched Soldier - January 1903

Holmes claims that Watson has ‘deserted [him] for a wife’. 

The Mazarin Stone - Summer 1903

Watson is visiting Baker Street, and comments that nothing has changed in his absence, which infers this to occur after his second marriage. He also comments that a dummy of Holmes has been ‘used before’, referencing the events of EMPT. 

The Three Gables - 1903?

Watson has not seen Holmes ‘in some days’.

The Creeping Man - September 1903

As originally published, the date is stated as September 1902, but when collected in Case-Book, this changes to 1903. I place it in 1903 as Watson is not living at Baker Street at this time, having been summoned by a note from Holmes.

The Lion’s Mane - July 1907

Holmes is retired

His Last Bow: The War Service Of Sherlock Holmes - August 1914

Holmes has been undercover for the past two years.

Additionally:

This chronology was started in direct opposition to and due to frustration with Baring-Gould's chronology. Any comments or suggestions based on it will be disregarded.

It is my aim with this chronology to take into account all stated dates, and take them as correct except for where they blatantly contradict others. (e.g. SIGN being dated to either July or September 1888, when FIVE references Watson's wife in September 1887 and SCAN refers to his marriage in March 1888; Wisteria Lodge being dated to March 1892 when Holmes is 'dead' at this time)

It is also my intention that Watson is only married twice, the first time to Mary Morstan in late 1887 and the second to an unknown Mrs Watson in early 1903 (being strictly canonical, my own headcanons of him retiring to Sussex with Holmes aside)

I estimate that Holmes was born January 6th 1857, making him 18 at the time of GLOR and 24 at the time of STUD. Also by this estimate he would be 57 at the time of His Last Bow.

I estimate that Watson was born 23rd May 1853, making him 27 at the time of STUD. This would make him 61 at the time of His Last Bow.

#sherlock holmes #acd canon #acd holmes #i reject your chronology and substitute my own #watson's birthday is pure headcanon #i just thought it would be fun for it to be the day after acd's #i have not got my maths wrong for his age in study by the way - he just hasn't had his birthday yet

[mulderscully]

“taylor has to act out alex acting” exactly bestie you nailed it. i feel like it’s so obvious when taylor is alex claremont-diaz (tm) and when he’s just alex and he does different acting for both. i think a lot of people don’t understand that alex plays the former a lot! even with the people he loves! even when he’s with nora or his dad he still puts up his acd front especially in the beginning of the movie. i just really love moments where alex lets himself be vulnerable like the coming out scene with ellen or the lake house breakfast scene with oscar. compare those scenes with how alex acts with his parents in the beginning and the difference is also clear.

absolutely! and i think a lot about how like, alex never really had a normal life. he's had to start doing this since a young age since his parents are politicians. even in 2004, that picture with his mom is still about her campaign. the OLDEST he could be there is like 10. his dad is a congressman. anything he does or doesn't do reflects on them, and that's a lot of pressure and could be part of why he compartmentalized his sexuality in high school even though he and liam fooled around a lot. it was just easier to not think about what that means if your mother is gunning to be the first female president of the united states and pretend it doesn't matter.

& i'm always kinda amazed by that scene with him and oscar! the nervous and almost defensive way he asks, "so you like him?" feels like he's prepared to argue about it even though his parents are politically left and pro-lgbt, he still is worried about how they would react to him being in a relationship with a man.

it's such a great moment of him introducing the real henry to his dad, but also introducing the real version of himself too. it's subtle but sooooo good.

and with nora, i really love it cause you're totally right. in the beginning he's definitely still not fully himself with her and then in texas is when they really become friends, which he is kinda shocked by in the book! and it makes me sad because i don't really think alex has ever had close friendships before like this.

sidebar. i love how texas symbolizes freedom for them and how that's special because at the end of the day texas is mexico and represents authenticity for alex; and authenticity is what he and alex bring to each others lives. it's special that henry feels at home there as much as alex does because what henry needs is to be away from his home and find a new one because he never fit in with the royal family. what makes rwrb different to other prince/commoner stories like the prince and me or ever after etc is that it isn't about alex becoming a royal, it's about henry leaving the royal family and becoming an ordinary person as much as he can be.

tldr: taylor read that book multiple times and played alex perfectly but since the book is alex's pov i think some people don't understand that we are literally reading his thoughts, but while watching we have to see those things play out instead of sort of being part of the experiences. they're just different perspectives but it's really fun to match them up to each other!

like, i just love these moments so much, where you can see alex's walls come down in front of henry and henry knowing he's anxious when i don't think anyone else would

#reply #rwrb posting #casey really did THAT i'm glad they didn't stop writing this book in 2016 #bc it's a fantasy and escapism and not real at all and that's what makes it special as a queer romcom

[boypussydilf]

i was not kidding. after hours of work over days i have made ayame mikotoba REAL!!!!!! and thusly joined the ranks of dgs fans who go “…so does this count as an OC or what.” also bonus susato who turned out really well. the joke in the second image i stole from @vacuumtan

bonus & design notes under the cut <3

thats the right way to introduce people to a character you made yourself and barely know anything about right? OK now ill ramble about her design a bit

thats the right way to introduce people to a character you made yourself and barely know anything about right? OK now ill ramble about her design a bit

i decided very early on i wanted her main color to be purple to go w susatos being pink and yuujins being blue but everything else was up in the air until i came up with the impressionist painting-style kimono design… and then i made the maple leaf design and realized i liked it way better. but my first design deserves some love too

the sleeves of that first design are supposed to look like stars. in both my outfit designs for her she has kind of a nature theme going on. i guess that works!

i went looking in susato’s concept art for inspiration right away and some of the poses i drew were referenced from concept susatos. her hair specifically is based on stuff from concept designs, the way it looks from the front is taken pretty much directly from one. the ponytail also was inspired by some concept art

speaking of which i was never able to decide between the ponytail and the bun or if i should give her another hairstyle completely… when i was coming up with them i worried the ponytail would make her look too young and the bun would make her look too serious, but i think i like them both

oh yeah i gave her a hairclip bc i thought she should have the mikotoba family crest on her somewhere and also bc im addicted to giving characters fun little accessories, but then i only drew it once lol

designing her face i wanted her eyes to invoke That Kind Look Susato Gives as, like, a perpetual state. i don’t think they really turned out like THAT, but i’m really happy with how the design for her face turned out still. if only i had been able to draw it again after this one time.

OH YES! i forgot to actually talk about Her.

We know… literally nothing about her in canon, so I have to build her from the ground up completely, but there are two places ive looked for personality ideas: the other mikotobas, and mary morstan. because. sure, there’s no reason to make an equivalency between ayame & the wife of john watson from ACD canon. but there’s also no reason Not to? and the kickstart is helpful. not that we really know a ton about mary, either, i think.

but we do know some! she’s described as “sweet and amiable”, “refined and sensitive”, and as the sort of person other people turn to when dealing with Big Painful Emotions. this isn’t much but applying these ideas to ayame makes her slot in nicely with the other mikotobas. family made entirely of beacons of kindness.

being an ace attorney character she will, of course, also be distinctly Weird. i’m just. still figuring out what kind of weird, exactly.

i think that covers everything??? if you read this far thank you i love you

#i worked so hard on this. i should probably not be posting it at ass o’clock in the dead of night. please appreciate it #the great ace attorney #dai gyakuten saiban #ayame mikotoba #i must be one of the first people to ever use that tag. if not the first i dont know #i might as well use it very liberally as an organizational tag #though im not sure ill be posting about her THAT much #basilposting #basil’s museum #i guess this can go in my oc tag ??? that ive only used once ?? #funny little guys tag #< I THINK THAT WAS IT LOL

[ultraviolet-ink]

Hi hi, I've never done an ask thing on tumblr before so sorry if I do it wrong somehow, lol. ~

I was going to get caught up on your long fic tonight but AO3 is broken, so instead I'm going to gush about how much I've been enjoying it so far! I have just a couple chapters left until I'm caught up, and I'm stoked to read them as soon as I can! I absolutely adore your writing style, it's been such a pleasure to indulge in.

-

I feel like you've captured the characters so well in your writing. Absolutely love seeing how you've portrayed Mikotoba's many conflicting feelings. When I was playing the game I was like, okay but I need to see more of exactly why he left Japan and what that was like, and you've captured exactly what I wanted so well! Reading about his journey to London was so much fun, and I've loved seeing him develop even more as he's gotten more accustomed to being there! And watching his relationship with Sholmes progress has been such a delight. And ahhh the letters from back home! And baby Susato! I love them!

-

I've finally been getting around to reading the original ACD stories and seeing all the references to them has been so much fun. I love love love reading the cases you've been including in the stories, but the little domestic day to day journal entries are delightful as well!

-

I can't wait to read more and see how the story progresses further. Thank you so so so much for your writing, I desperately wanted fanfics after finishing the games and this fic has not disappointed! So stoked to see where it goes next! ^u^

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for this!! <3 This is an absolutely lovely ask to wake up to, you are absolutely too kind, thank you so much! :D I was definitely in the same boat as you were when I decided to start the fic, I really wanted to explore why Yujin would leave when Susato was so young, and especially how it affected him! From what we see in the games, he really does care for her greatly, and is quite doting to the point where he would literally help her break the rules lol! He's such an interesting character to me, especially since we don't get to see much of him until close to the end of TGAA2. Part of the fun for me is all the research that I've been able to find! I'm a big fan of day to day life, especially when it makes you realize "wow, these were just people, they had their errands and they had games, and they got bored too!", makes you think that you could easily be friends with someone from well over 100 years ago, and I really find that beautiful! Baby Susato's pastiches are also some of my favorite parts to write too haha! I get really excited for her birthday chapters because I get to show her growing up <3 ACD canon is so great, I love it a lot (obviously lol XD), and it's been a fun challenge to diverge from them! My personal favorite is The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton because of how evil and smarmy the villain is (and, unlike Moriarty, he manages to get a name drop in the title...! That's how you KNOW he's someone you shouldn't take lightly) Thank you once again for your lovely and thoughtful ask, it's truly humbling, and I legitimately can't stop smiling omg omg omg! <3 I'm really happy that you are enjoying my fic so much, and like you, I hope Ao3 gets back up soon!

#ask #fic ask #thank you so much for this omg! #you are too kind <3

[victorianpining]

Hello Rebekah,

Feel free not to answer me, you probably have better things to do. ^^

I'm pretty new to the Tumblr Sherlock fandom, even if I've been a johnlocker since S1 aired (I had no idea Tumblr existed at the time, aha). I've binge-watched your "TJLC explained" videos this past week, and I wanted to know if you still believed that it was possible to have TJLC come true in S5 (if we ever get one)? Also, I read that some theorists thought TFP/S4 happened in John's mind (honestly would be better than the actual season imo - I despised TFP), do you have an opinion on that matter? Euros's story doesn't make sense at all to me, but maybe I'm just bitter because I didn't like where the show was going.

Anyway, I hope you're well, and I thank you for what you've done for the fandom. I love your videos so much, I learned so many things and not only about Sherlock and ACD's canon, but also about the art of analyzing subtext and literary references. I'm so grateful for that.

I'm so sorry if this Ask is annoying, or even if you don't want to talk about Sherlock at all anymore.

I hope you have a lovely day, take care :)

Hi anon! I cover this in depth in the A Better Story series on the channel but since that is like 13 hours long I'll give you the short version.

I personally have no emotional investment in TJLC happening at this point, but I understand why some people are more certain about it. That's just not a road I personally want to go down again and I also want to learn from my own mistakes and use whatever platform I still have at this point to encourage others to be careful with themselves and manage their own expectations.

On the other hand, after working through my baggage, I've discovered that I still find theorizing about Sherlock through a TJLC lens to be a lot of fun and personally rewarding, even if I don't expect to be right. So I'm still hanging around working on projects mostly because it's extremely cathartic for me to be able to engage with the show in this more measured way. And hopefully I can be a living example that people's only options aren't being All In or burning the show to the ground. There are middle grounds if you want to find them. But if you don't want to, that's fine too!

Anyway if you'd like my full in depth take on a TJLC reading of S4 I'd recommend Part Seven of A Better Story. I hope you have a lovely day too!

#asks #also to you specifically and to people more broadly I just want to thank you all for being so considerate and delicate about this topic #there was a long time where I DIDNT want to think about the show and you all were very respectful of that #ive always been so grateful that most of you seem to realize i am a person and have been kind enough to extend me a lot of grace #i dont take it for granted and it means a lot to me so thank you

[actualbird]

I got distracted reading 4-04 and 4-05 i totally forgot the actual thing i was supposed to ask you today, what are your thoughts on the kinds of shows the nxx team wouldve watched as kids growing up. MC and Luke have apparently watched animes and even dressed up as characters but i have this need to know the finer details. LIKE. WHAT DID YOU WATCH SPECIFICALLY?? And i remembered you said luke was the one who probably understood most of the terms zangr was saying so like?? Luke do you like these kinds of things?? -Marsh

MARSH, thank you so much for this ask and for the SPECIFIC WORDING "watched as kids growing up." because that makes me have to go back in time and thusly uncovering by far my favorite yet most under-utilized and never-brought-up detail of tears of themis:

the story of this game takes place in the year 2030

DO U HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FUNNIER THIS MAKES SHIT???? AND ALSO HOW MUCH MORE SENSE STUFF MAKES??? let me explain myself by going thru all the boys one by one

luke pearce

YEAH HE SAID HE AND MC WERE RLLY INTO ANIME AS KIDS. luke pearce who is 24 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2018-2021. this period of time, anime started getting more and more accessible, most notably getting on netflix and stuff like this. so like all the anime on netflix rn? yeah luke's watched them.

though because i kin luke, imma say that his fave is fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood. ive got no characterization proof for this, i just want to give him this honor

additionally, luke is a HUUUUGE fan of the original Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle novels (ACD Sherlock) and i think this would have pushed him to watch like, just every popular sherlock media adaptation there is. he personally liked Elementary better than BBC Sherlock. he generally just gravitates to the adaptations that dont forget about the heart of all of the characters.

also also also, luke likes action movies ranging from "hey this is "good" to critics" to "this is a shit movie but MY GOD IS IT FUN!!!"

artem wing

artem wing who is 29 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2013-2016. but also artem is a MOVIE SNOB LMAOOO, hes That Guy with the Opinions On Film and you bet that his analytical ass was into just the most extra shit to watch those days because no teenager is chill, every teenager has some kind of ego, i dont know what movies he would have watched at that point to be the Smartest Teenager About Movies, but he sure did watch them

though artem also is very into sci-fi literature and 2013-2016 had a BUUUNCH of huge sci-fi movies. Pacific Rim, Gravity, Interstellar, Arrival. Arrival is deffo artem's fave, dont fight me on this, i can explain further but not in this answer bc it will get LOOONG LOL

artem also is into "classics" which uh. wait artem what do you Mean by that, what is a "classic" for somebody born in 2001??? i dont really know exactly what he means by "classics" so i just take it to mean he's a slut for period dramas which leads me to my closing point

"Once upon a time, when [Artem] was younger, around 17 years old, he pondered identifying as asexual or as one of the subsets under that term, but he put that aside after he first watched Pride and Prejudice (2005). He had then acquired a recurring fantasy in which he would be sensually accosted by Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in a secluded study after months of furtive, charged glances, lingering, split second touches, double entendres classily and subtly masked but still implying a repressed yet voracious—Moving on." -an excerpt from my comedy smut fic where artem goes thru a crisis. yeah. yeah. Pride and Prejudice dir. Joe Wright was his bisexual awakening.

MOVING ON!!

vyn richter

vyn richter who is 27 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2015-2018 but honestly that doesnt help me AT ALL LOL BECAUSE VYN IS A TOUGH NUT TO CRACK.....

like honest to god i cant even imagine vyn as anything other than an adult KJBSJKFS (which is depressing, if i think about it more... but also what vyn would want, i assume he would hate for people to have known him as a child, imperfect and shunned.....which is ALSO DEPRESSING. VYN, U GOOD???)

okay yknow what im not studied enough in Vyn Richter Studies so i will come back to this once ive gotten more of his story and know more of his (what im theorizing to be a SHITASS TERRIBLE) childhood history. so vyn, i guess ur safe from me....ur safe FOR NOW, THAT IS....

marius von hagen

marius von hagen who is 21 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2021-2024. good fucking lord, marius was born in 2009 and that makes him so young that his Important Media Ages arent even DONE HAPPENING IN OUR CURRENT TIMELINE, JESUS....

2021 is an interesting era of entertainment because it is getting steadily more and more apparent that corporate greed is trying to swallow up good storytelling; movies and shows are made as fast food products to be consumed immediately and thrown away just as fast. there are smarter posts and articles talking about this, but my point here is that marius "believes SO MUCH in art and art's capability to make a difference" von hagen would HATE THIS SO MUCH and, through spite, get into a lot of indie medias that dont necessarily sell. smaller movies, tv shows that got cancelled way before they should have.

oh, hey, MARIUS WAS 12 YEARS OLD IN 2021, yeah he could have watched The Owl House and threw a fucking FIT when disne/y nerfed the show's third season. he has not forgiven and he has not forgotten.

regardless of his age, marius, at some point in his teens watches Vincent and the Doctor (s5 e10 from Doctor Who). for those who dont know this episode, it involves Vincent Van Gogh and a bunch of sci-fi stuff but, at the end, a scene where Van Gogh is taken to the future and shown the impact his art has made on people. please watch it, if you havent it, it's very good and no words can do the experience justice.

anyway yeah marius watches it and it makes him FUCKING SOB

yeah so these are my takes kdjbfdsjfs

#tears of themis #luke pearce #artem wing #vyn richter #marius von hagen #hc

[transsexualhamlet]

omg please talk more about your lewis and tolkien bsd ocs

kaksdfhgf;shdagih;as the thing is i never really used them for anything so they're not super developed however I just. I really wanted to make author ocs because I love so many authors and since the order of the clock tower exists its imperative i get my say in the awful british men

this is going to turn into a session of my advanced made up bsd lore so uhhh hope you enjoy

(on that note, I kind of wanna make like. a terry prachett oc too. i love that man. he did so much good in the world)

Oh and I can't stand lewis btw. He sucks but I just thought it would be fucking hilarious to make both tolkien and lewis cause they had so much Beef and idk how i could have a tolkien oc without a cs lewis too :pensive:

Also they're both OLD and CRUSTY and natsume's age because that's just necessary. I watched the movie about Tolkien when it came out and I thought it was amazing as well as just. Yknow. Lord of the rings my beloved but yknow.

His inspiration comes from the movie about him, his actual history, and yknow, his writing, but also it's just yknow. I need to fit him into the bsd universe so it is absolutely imperative that he be a queer elder

So I never actually got around to drawing Tolkien, but I imagine him as being around 5'6'' with brownish/goldish eyes and greying blond hair with a green/blue/gold color palate. He basically dresses like your classic hobbit. Comfy cozy cloak time.

He's also autistic with a special interest in languages (clearly) and a widowed old bi ace

He's affiliated with the order of the clock tower, although he generally doesn't agree with their methods and mostly stays around because without him it would be impossible to keep the peace and the world would probably fall to pieces. His main job is a Latin professor at Oxford. He also stays in the order because Arthur Conan Doyle needs to be kept in fucking check (yeah. I made an acd oc as well) and without Tolkien his adoptive dad Doyle would get reckless and die of death after meeting the Detectivecule (mushitarou, ranpo, and poe) or something.

Tolkien mostly stays out of the whole war business because he was also in The War TM as a young whippersnapper and was super overconfident and then all his friends fucking died so he's trying to not do that anymore and to just make sure that. Yknow. No one else dies

CS Lewis is not nearly as much of a developed character as tolkien is, I really just created him so that Tolkien could have Beef lmao. But CS Lewis is also someone in the order of the clock tower and he continues to this day to be high in the order along with Agatha Christie. His ability makes him able to go into any closet and come out of any other closet after going through a space similar to that of Nikolai's cloak. But like. Only if he's thinking Good Thoughts which everyone constantly makes fun of

CS Lewis has ties with Hawthorne in the guild and constant beef with Tolkien, because they were exes back in The Day TM. Yes I said it.

Tolkien's wife was one of those people that died in the war- she was a very strong blacksmith and her ability was to be able to imbue the metal she worked with with supernatural powers to the wearer/wielder. She no longer is alive, but Tolkien still has two of the things she made- the One Ring and Sting, obviously a ring and a sword. The downside to this is yknow. The one ring gives you invisibility but also depression and the sword gives you more strength but it also takes your strength away once you finish using it. Tolkien ideally would not want to use either of those, but the world just keeps getting more and more fucked, and he keeps having to bring those out to fight to protect the people in the order that he loves. So he's terminally ill and dying because of that. He's not gonna be around much longer.

He obviously still has that incredible proficiency in languages and that he can basically read/understand any language and infer a good amount about the culture of the people that used the language, and he is registered in the order of the clock tower as that being his ability. However like Ranpo he is lying and he's just really talented and autistic. However, he does have a real ability- The Book of Arda! (tolkien's 'earth') Yes! The Book! His ability is the book that creates the infinite universes of anything written in it! He obviously doesn't tell people this for security reasons.

How did this book come to be in Yokohama then, you ask, considering Tolkien is British? Well, Tolkien and Natsume are old friends, yknow, from The War. (Tolkien and Fukuzawa also often got tea together in the old days, though Tolkien is too ill for that now.) And after the war that all their friends died in, they came to the conclusion that it needed to be hidden so that Certain People (read: fukuchi and other shitty world leaders) didn't get their hands on it. Natsume was told to seek out someone who had characteristics similar to Tolkien's to entrust the book to before Tolkien dies.

And in comes Oda! Natsume sees Oda as like a younger version of Tolkien, one who went through the same revelation of 'maybe war and killing is not actually a good thing' as him and has the same love for storytelling and for the children of the world. He somehow managed to get his hands on Tolkien's writing, and Natsume knew then he was the guy!

Oda is entrusted to write the end of the original story of the book, since Tolkien is yknow, occupied with dying and all that, and basically, his soul is tied to the book itself. He gets some of that funky ability feedback with the book since (although not as great of a singularity towards the book as dazai's) his ability interacts with the book in an Interesting way. He got some knowledge of the futures of various timelines, including Beast. So yeah, um. He feels that pain too. He doesn't ever see his own death, but he does feel that he probably will die, and he does see everyone else's. He knows he can't actually write the ending of the book even though he wants to, because yknow... things happen, as we all know. He does create Sigma though, to carry on for him in the future shortly before his death. No one knows Oda was the one who like. Did that. He didn't tell anyone, because Natsume told him to be quiet about it for good reason. But he certainly did!

So, um, yeah. I love these guys. I'm going to insert them into my bsd fics for no good reason

#rowan gets yelled at #anon #i should really do more with these guys

[glass-rose-paperweight]

The Mysterious Case of Queerbaiting

BBC Sherlock

There’s one thing about BBC Sherlock that has never made sense to me. As I’m sure many of you are aware (and something I’ve talked about before), BBC Sherlock has been accused of Queerbaiting, of intentionally setting up John and Sherlock as being attracted to each other but never following through with that or even intending to do it. And it’s one of those things that has just always baffled me; I can’t make it make sense. A lot has already been said about the way things are portrayed in the show and what the subtext behind a million different things could mean (seriously, I love that I am part of a fandom with so many perceptive and intelligent people; watching the show is only half the fun) and how none of it makes sense. Today, I would like to use my powers of deduction get to the bottom of this mystery.

The way I see it, there are 3 possible explanations.

1. The Producers of the Show Queerbaited

I have to admit, this seems unlikely given that one of them is literally a gay man. Why would a gay man knowingly and intentionally engage in something like this? Why would a gay man write a script that constantly pokes at Watson’s sexuality if the only point was to make it into a joke? To say ‘oh, no, the poor straight guy is constantly mistaken as gay. Look at how defensive he is getting, hahaha, what a funny joke’. That just makes no sense. It makes no sense for Mark Gatiss to have gone to the lengths he has gone to within the show, from whatever direction he gave the actors so that they portray an obvious chemistry between Sherlock and John to having a jealousy trope at John and Mary’s wedding except it’s Sherlock getting Jealous over John’s ex commander to this interesting thing about the best man speech to Mary saying ‘neither one of us were his first’ or ‘the man we both love’ or ‘I know what the two of you could become’ to Sherlock putting John Watson face on The Ideal Man to all the gay artwork in TBB (I could not for the life of me find this meta even though I know I saved it, and I am so distressed) to a thousand other things that the fandom has discussed over and over and over again. Who puts that much effort into queerbaiting? Especially when you would have a vested interest representation? So, it just doesn’t make sense for those directly involved with the show the be the reason.

2. Higher Ups at BBC Told Them No

This seems much more plausible to me, however I still doubt it. I can’t say I know just a whole lot about BBC, but I do know they have tended to be on the more progressive side of things, and I just really can’t see any of the higher ups just flat out refusing to allow the writers to make Johnlock canon. The first season gets a pass because I’m pretty sure that openly same sex couples weren’t allowed in media at the time (I think it was allowed in 2011, but I’m honestly not sure. I’m in the US, not the UK, so if I’ve gotten this detail wrong, please correct me). But they had 3 other seasons and another 7 years to make it happen, and I just don’t think that the higher ups at BBC would have just flatly said ‘no’. So, that leaves the last explanation.

3. Someone Other Than Those Involved With The Show Stopped Them

The majority of the Sherlock Holmes stories are in public domain. Copyright expired in 1980 in Canada and in 2000 for the UK (X). This would seem to make it a pretty cut and dry case: in the UK, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the Sherlock Holmes stories. But it’s no quite so simple. The US works a little different because copywrite law isn’t the same (isn’t he US just great?). As it stands, there are still 6 stories today that the Conan Doyle Estate still has the exclusive rights to in the US. If I understand how the copywrite law works correctly, that would have been 14 stories back in 2010. But, that shouldn’t have affected anything going on in the UK, right? Theoretically, no. The Conan Doyle Estate wouldn’t have had any legal rights to coveting the characters and the stories in the UK. However, that doesn’t mean that those involved with the show wouldn’t have been extremely apprehensive of the power that the Estate wielded, especially considering the previous decade of legal battles. Only 3 cases are listed here, but the Conan Doyle Estate is very protective of its copyright of the work (as evident by the fact that they are literally trying to sue Netflix, among others, for portraying characters in a way they supposedly weren’t portrayed until later books). There were other court cases after 2010, however. A decisive court case in 2013 declared once and for all that the stories written prior to 1923 were completely in public domain and that a license wasn’t needed to create things based on any of the stories prior to those dates (something the Estate had convinced BBC of when they first created BBC Sherlock). However, an appeal by the Estate was later made, stating “Sherlock Holmes is a ‘complex’ character, that his background and attributes had been created over time, and that to deny copyright on the whole Sherlock Holmes character would be tantamount to giving the famous detective ‘multiple personalities.’” The appeal was, thankfully, thrown out. But it’s the attempt that matters. 

Oh, and here’s a fun little tidbit, the 2 stories that have, perhaps, the strongest evidence of there being more than just friendship (this quote, this quote, and this quote (which was said after Holmes stated that, if he had hypothetically loved someone, he would kill the person that killed the person he loved)) come from the stories The Problem of Thor Bridge (the first quote) and The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (the last 2), which both belonged to the Estate in the US until after the final season of the show.

So, let’s get into the minds of BBC, for a moment. Someone has decided they want to reimage Sherlock in a new and unique way: modern day. The Holmes Estate has been fighting legal battles in America for the past decade and has won all of them, and has also issued the verdict that to make stories, you need a license. You say ‘okay’ and go along with it because you’re a big corporation that can afford to do such a thing. When the first season of the show airs, it isn’t legal to have openly gay characters, so everything has to be regulated to subtext. You outright state that being gay is okay because you want to let people know you are in full support of homosexuality, even if it isn’t legal yet. The writers and producers of the show are huge ACD fanboys and BIG fans of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, so, yeah, there’s some gay subtext. By the second season, hey! Homosexuality is legal! Except the 2 stories with the biggest indication of Sherlock and John’s attraction towards each other are still very much in the hands of the Estate, who has spent the past decade fighting legal battles. You may be able to pay for a license, but a lawsuit really isn’t something you’d like to go through. Whether the Estate has any legal standing to do such a thing or not, a lawsuit would be a long, messy battle. By the third season, a court case in America has decided that anything written prior to 1923 doesn’t need a license (damn, that’s 2 seasons of being successfully intimidated into a license). However, the two stories with greatest evidence still belong to the Estate, and the Estate tried to weasel their way into owning more of Sherlock than they should by arguing about his character. They probably wouldn’t take well to an openly gay Sherlock, would they? By season 4, the same problem still exists. Cut to 2020. Both of the stories with those quotes have entered public domain. But, uh oh, a month, a month before the 10th anniversary of your show, the news breaks that the Estate is filing yet another lawsuit, this time against multiple different parties, one of them being the mega corporation of Netflix (god, that’s some balls right there) that what they did broke copyright law because it portrayed characters in a way they supposedly weren’t portrayed until later stories, stories the Estate still owns (that is some balls right there). So you might feel the need to cover your ass a bit. Despite the past decade of saying that they characters you have portrayed are nothing but platonic, the fans don’t seem to buy it, and, in hindsight, there’s a lot of reasons not to. Maybe something needs to be created that subtly tells fans that they really are just looking too far into it. And, what great luck, a YouTube channel is asking you to make something for the 10th anniversary. 

Is this what happened? I don’t really know. I have nothing more than circumstantial evidence and guesswork here to go off of. I’m not privy to the private thoughts of Mark Gatiss or Steven Moffat or any of the head honchos at BBC. I don’t know what kind of executive decisions are made in the best interest of the company. All I know is that the Conan Doyle Estate is hanging on to whatever copyrights they can possibly manage, that they are willing to level lawsuits on, quite frankly, ridiculous terms, and that having a lawsuit put against you is no laughing matter and that those whose work revolves around Sherlock Holmes and creating stories about him would want to tread carefully. This explanation is, admittedly, far fetched. But it’s the only one that really makes sense. It’s the only one that would explain why a gay man and a generally progressive company would have a show that has layer upon layer upon layer saying that there is more between John and Sherlock than just friendship, as well as a rabid fanbase that they know ship it, and still not deliver, even attempt to squash such mindsets. 

There is, however, one final note I would like to end this on. I have talked before about how I think there will be another season, if the stars align and schedules allow such a thing. The best estimates of when another season might come out is 2022 or 2023, and I’m inclined to think the later year (god, that seems so far away). The year that the last story will become completely open to the public and the entirety of Sherlock Holmes will be public domain is 2023. So, maybe there is hope. 

#this took me way too goddamn long to write #while looking for metas and stuff i kept getting distracted #this is something I have been thinking about for a long time #trying to wrap my head around for a long time #so i finally decided to do some investigating after a friend sent me a post about the estate suing netflix #what i found was interesting and i felt the need to share #god i hope i'm right #sherlock #sherlock holmes #bbc #bbc sherlock #sherlock bbc #mark gatiss #steven moffat #conan doyle estate #meta #sherlock meta #season 5 #sherlock season 5 #sherlock season five #sherlock s5 #john watson #martin freeman #benedict cumberbatch #johnlock #queerbaiting #sherlockian #sherlock fandom

[therealsaintscully]

Mary and butterflies - the inevitability of death, murderous calling cards and collectors

Some ramblings with links to other people’s excellent meta, in which I suggest that butterflies (and/or moths) symbolize Mary as Moriarty’s reincarnation and or calling card, while also hint at her inevitable death.

Disclaimers: credits are below the cut. I’m not an expert in any of these topics. Thank you, @thewatsonbeekeepers​​ for the beta. In this post I’ll be using moths and butterflies interchangeably, apologies to any entomologists.

Mary’s appearance in the show brings with it new imagery we haven’t seen prior to The Empty Hearse - butterflies. Once Mary’s in the picture, there are butterflies in some very strategic locations, all are either visually or subtextually leading to her. The show has done that previous to season 3; Moriarty is connected to some well established symbols like magpies, apples and IOUs. 

When I first started reading meta I used to think these themes were a bit of a stretch, but I’ve since accepted  that this is a show that puts barely noticeable phoenixes in a restaurant scene that shows us Sherlock rising from his death.

Here are some of the butterflies I spotted so far:

Butterflies (and in the case of this piece of meta, moth) symbolize most commonly resurrection, change and renewal. Behind the symbolism stands the transformation of a small, ungainly creature into something full-grown and unbound. In that case, in the simplest way, one could argue that butterflies were chosen to symbolize her because the ‘Mary Morstan’ persona was a stillborn’s identity that was stolen and used ‘reborn’ to create a new person.

But more than this simplistic idea; butterflies carry multiple symbolisms. When it comes to Sherlock, I and many others tend to look at Victorian symbolism, considering the detective’s Victorian roots. 

I find the appearance of butterflies interesting in Mary’s context, much like I find the skull interesting in Sherlock’s. The skulls, in Sherlock’s case, serve plenty of purposes, but one of them is the idea of memento mori.

Memento mori (Latin for 'remember that you [have to] die') is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. These are representations that can appear in any form of art such as paintings, literature, poetry etc. It’s a concept that existed in many ancient cultures but is also deeply rooted in early Christianity. It serves to remind people of the inevitable; that even if we choose to ignore it, not think about it, it’s always there lurking, and the purpose is not to scare us but to encourage us to make good use of our time when we’re alive. Memento mori was the philosophy of reflecting on your own death as a form of spiritual improvement, and rejecting earthly vanities.

Victorians were obsessed with the concept (weren’t Victorians obsessed with everything?). They would take photographs of the dead and keep locks of hair of those who died in mourning brooches. It is said that they found these practices comforting. 

Another expression of the ‘remember that you must die’ concept was vanitas art;  vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. The Latin noun vanitas (from the Latin adjective vanus 'empty') means 'emptiness', 'futility', or 'worthlessness', the traditional Christian view being that earthly goods and pursuits are transient and worthless. It alludes to Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8, where vanitas translates the Hebrew word hevel (הבל), which also includes the concept of transitoriness. 

This concept reminds me, most especially, of the skull used in The Abominable Bride, which is actually Charles Allen Gilbert's 'All is Vanity' Illusion art.

Back to butterflies - butterflies are a staple component of vanitas art - paintings executed in the vanitas style were meant to remind viewers of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. They also provided a moral justification for painting attractive objects - in a way, it’s a justification for the vanity, or the human need of enjoyment of beautiful things.  Below is a vanitas by Jan Sanders van Hemessen:

But butterflies are also considered an omen of death: 

“Butterflies and moths were associated with death, sometimes merely as omens, sometimes as the soul or ghost.” These butterfly omens came in many ways.  For example, in the nineteenth century United States, some people thought that a trio of butterflies was an omen of death.” [x]

Oh.

But I also think there’s more to the butterfly symbolism than Mary’s imminent death; I suggest that, in keeping with @loudest-subtext-in-tv​ M-Theory (suggesting that Mary was planted in John’s life by Moriarty), they symbolize Mary as Moriarty reincarnated following his death in TRF. That Moriarty had indeed not disappointed Sherlock - there was a posthumous game after all! That Sherlock was supposed to understand that while one form of Moriarty died on that roof, another had emerged, continuing the mission of burning Sherlock’s heart. Mary is Moriarty’s calling card, left behind in the crime scene. They’re different, but not separate, which is why Sherlock is so obsessed with Moriarty between HLV-T6T; he’s both wrong and correct at the same time.

So far, what I’ve suggested is that in Sherlock, skulls are Sherlock’s symbolic memento mori - the skulls are associated with Sherlock in some very significant ways. 

However, Mary’s character was doomed from the start - she dies during Sherlock’s hiatus in ACD canon. I believe many fans assumed Sherlock’s Mary expected the same fate when she was introduced to the show. Although the story of Samarra is told by Sherlock, who expects his own death in T6T, Mary is the one who ends up dying. 

Butterflies in ACD canon

Searching for the significance of butterflies in the ACD and BBC canon led me to a number of interesting directions in meta written by others. 

The first and probably the best place to start is this meta post by @tendergingergirl​​, which I strongly suggest you read in full: Butterflies, Sexual Deviancy & The Bloodline Theory in The Hound of The Baskervilles. 

Stapleton also has a hobby. He collects bugs…Butterflies, to be exact. This can often be seen as purely academic, but depending on the actions of the hobbyist, they can indicate more disturbing things. That of holding something vulnerable captive, treating it as your hostage, pinning it down. The torture of animals has come to be a good indicator of someone who would do this to a human. He had already shown callousness by laughing as he recounts to Holmes of ponies wandering onto the Moor, becoming trapped, and dying. In 1974, there was a release of a new edition of Sherlock Holmes stories, with the forward of The Hound of The Baskervilles written by British author, John Fowles. He is responsible for several well-known works, including The French Lieutenant’s Wife. Another, was a novel that Mason finds himself wondering why Fowles doesn’t mention in his introduction, since the villain is such a close parallel to Stapleton.(but as we have learned through the study of ACD, most writers will not come right out and say where they got their inspiration. They like for you to guess!)

A lonely young man, works as a clerk, and collects butterflies, becomes obsessed with a pretty young girl, Miranda, an art student. He chloroforms, and kidnaps her, taking her to his cellar basement, to add Miranda to his collection. That book was called The Collector. But what else does it sound like?

“So yes, I googled. From an article on the release of the movie’s Documentary. "The docu proves a poor reference point for anyone who wants to understand the literary and movie links for “Lambs.” There’s no mention, for example, of how Harris partly based the butterfly-loving Bill on John Fowles’ kidnapper in “The Collector” …And here I thought Mofftiss added allusions to Silence of The Lambs into Sherlock just for fun. SMH.”

@tendergingergirl​ also added this photo to their post:

So what we have here is a chain of metatextualities/inspiration, starting with ACD’s THOB, where Jack Stapelton inspires a book about a disturbed butterfly collector (The Collector by John Fowles), which inspires a the author of Silence of the Lambs in creation of his character Buffalo Bill, a serial murderer who inserts a death's head moth into the victim's throat because he is fascinated by the insect's metamorphosis. Silence of the Lambs served as inspiration for Sherlock  as analyzed by @garkgatiss​ in Bond, Hannibal, and Holmes (I suggest you read the whole Hannibal section) . 

Let’s look again at some imagery from His Last Vow. Mary shoots Sherlock’s heart, essentially burning his heart out, and who does Sherlock meet in his Mind Palace in a very cocoon-like straightjacket? Yes, the dead dude who encourages him to die already (“one more push, and off you pop”).

What’s the next thing we as an audience see once Sherlock opens his eyes? Mary coming to the hospital to hear that Sherlock had, in fact, survived. And what is she wearing? Her butterfly scarf, one which will another appearance later in the episode, during the tarmac scene.

I also find it interesting that in the context of Sherlock and Silence of the Lamb, there’s an element of gender-switching between Moriarty and Mary. Buffalo Bill, the murderer from Silence of the Lambs, skins bodies of women to create himself a woman’s 'suit’; in Sherlock, Moriarty is a man-villain who transforms into a female-villain in the form of a bride and/or Mary. 

By the way, who else is obsessed with his suits?

Also, let’s not forget the worms, maggots and other such crawlers in the grave scene:

Now, let’s go over some of the photos I included in the beginning of this post a bit further.

Mrs. Hudson’s butterfly tea set is first shown in TEH - she uses it to serve John tea when he comes visiting her and tellis her about Mary. We also see it near John’s chair on the day of the wedding. This isn’t Sherlock’s set - his set is different, featuring the British Isles. Moriarty drinks from it in TRF. The next tea set we see, now that Moriarty is dead, is the butterflies one. In TLD, Mrs. Hudson uses Sherlock’s tea set - the butterflies are gone.

Mary’s bedroom wallpaper is very feminine, with flowers and butterflies, both complementing symbols while also very common in vanitas art. Much like Mrs. Hudson’s wallpaper in Baker Street, Mary’s wallpaper is supposed to show the contrast between Mary’s flat/Mary and Sherlock’s flat/Sherlock.

There’s an interesting moth reference in The Empty Hearse, which in my opinion, is Mary & Moriarty related. In short, in a previous piece of meta I wrote, I suggested that the Jack the Ripper case in TEH is subtext alluding to Mary’s skeletons, which Sherlock ignores because he’s upset by his reception by John. And what’s one of the first things Sherlock notices about the skeleton? New mothballs smell, hinting at an attempt to get rid of moth/butterflies - maybe a hint to  the fact that Sherlock has a chance to discover the truth about Mary but misses it. Also, in the context of Mary and the Jack the Ripper case, notice this transition:

Transitions are important on Sherlock - they’re nearly always there to draw our attention.

This, I think, is perhaps the most telling about a possible connection between Mary and Moriarty: we have both magpies (a Moriarty hint) and butterflies together here. This isn’t the only hint of Mary’s past we get in the wedding; there is, after all, the telegram from CAM.

Mary’s scarf is colorful, and it appears by the time Sherlock’s subconscious suspects Mary. Mary’s black butterfly dress - an ominous dress, I’d say - is the one she wears during the labour scene in the car. The third photo is a behind the scenes photo uploaded by Amanda Abbington, although I’m unsure whether this necklace is AA’s or Mary’s (but I couldn’t pass on including this).

Interestingly, the butterflies do not appear in Rosie’s context - either because it’s a telling sign that Mary won’t be with us much longer, or because Rosie is spared being considered a part of the ‘burning Sherlock’s heart’ plan. Sherlock, on the surface, seems to love Rosie and accepts her.

Also, another BTS photograph I came across during my research which I’ve never seen before and ties nicely to the vanity topic is this one (found here):

The Death's-head hawkmoth and ‘Death with Interruptions’

You’ll recall that I referenced The Collector and Silence of the Lambs, both featuring butterflies on their cover art. 

The Silence of the Lambs cover features Acherontia atropos, otherwise known as the death's-head hawkmoth. It gets its name from the sinister-looking skull shape on its back. In many cultures it is thought to be an omen of death. In a bit of another coincidental but stunning piece of symbolism, all three species of the Death's-head hawkmoth are commonly observed raiding beehives of different species of honey bee; A. atropos only invades colonies of the well-known western honey bee, Apis mellifera, and feeds on both nectar and honey. They can move about in hives without being disturbed because they mimic the scent of the bees and are not recognised as intruders.

Anyway, the use of Acherontia atropos reminded me of the book ‘Death with Interruptions’ by Jose Saramago. Interestingly, this is another book about a deathly collector with a butterfly on the cover:

In Death with Interruptions death is a woman, and she falls in love with one of her future victims. She decides to spare his life: Every time death sends him his letter [notifying him of his imminent death], it gets returned. death discovers that, without reason, this man has mistakenly not been killed. Although originally intending merely to analyse this man and discover why he is unique, death eventually becomes infatuated with him, so much so that she takes on human form to meet him. Upon visiting the cellist, she plans to personally give him the letter; instead, she falls in love with him, and, by doing so, she becomes even more human-like.

It’s pretty common to read theories about Mary who maybe was one of the assassins due to kill John both at the pool and in front of Barts. So we have a death harbinger trying to kill someone twice and failing. She then falls in love with him.

But how does the butterfly fit in?

Well, at some point in the story, death (that’s her name, sans a capital d), contemplates that using the death head butterfly, instead of a violet piece of paper, would have sent a much stronger message to those whose death is coming for.

And here’s another last bit of coincidental reference to Sherlock: I’d argue shades of purple, among them shades of violet, are associated with Mary and her secrets. There’s the purple dress she wears in TEH, her bridesmaids’ dresses include various shades of purple (including what I would argue was a violet sash) and let’s not forget:

Oh and, by the way, remember the song Donde Estas, Yolanda from TEH, about a woman called Yolanda? Always thought it was a bit of an odd choice for a song?

Yolanda is a female given name, of Greek origin, meaning Violet.

:)

Thoughts?

Credits: thank you @lukessense​ for directing me to @tendergingergirl​ meta about butterflies. Episode screenshots are from kissthemgoodbye.net.

@sarahthecoat​  @tjlcisthenewsexy​ @devoursjohnlock​ @inevitably-johnlocked​ @shylockgnomes​ @possiblyimbiassed​ @raggedyblue​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @gosherlocked​ @waitedforgarridebs​ @helloliriels​ 

#mary mosrtan #butterflies #silence of the lambs #the collector #meta #sherlock meta #tjlc #johnlockendgame #jim moriarty

[betweendoctorsanddetectives]

usually i ignore your tjlc contrnt bc I enjoy following you for other things but I'm curious: as a casual sherlock watcher who has never even engaged with shipping characters from the show, pulling a "s4 was fake all along" thing to me (and likely most casual watchers) would just feel like a desperate retcon after the hate that the season got. Also, intentional borderline-unwatchable storytelling is still borderline unwatchable, expecially if it requires conspiracy threads and pages of analysis to make it anything other than bad. I just don't think a network/producers would approve something like that?

I'm not expecting them to pull "s4 was fake all along" in the slightest and I don't know how I've given that impression (though if you ignore my tjlc content normally then I guess you don't know what I think?)

the rest under the cut because i talk a lot

I never found it borderline unwatchable, I can see why people think it was but it by no means Requires conspiracy threads or pages of analysis to make it good - the analysis is inherent to watching, if you thought it was bad that's a Good thing because it exists as the antithesis to the correct adaptation of sherlock holmes as a character and a franchise. so it succeeded in that if it felt wrong to you. i know that it might be difficult to grasp but the fact that it was bad is why it was good. 

as to understanding it without needing lots of analysis: at the end of the day all the subtext is there for fun, for the select few who want to be part of the great game! the show reads perfectly well at a surface level, and the audience can go through the narrative to it’s fruition without knowing what is coming or understanding anything deeper. the experience of the show is similar to that of acd canon in that it can be read and enjoyed on one level but also has more to discover and enjoy at a deeper level. 

nobody is expected to read into it, but its there specifically for fans of the great game (the experience of solving sherlockian stories) to delve into, and there’s lots built in to have lots of fun with. it comes back to the idea of “warm paste”, which is how mark gatiss refers to bland and mind-numbing television that requires no brains whatsoever to watch and has nothing of substance to it. obviously we all love a bit of shit tv from time to time but thats just the exact opposite of what sherlock is supposed to be! the show itself teaches you how to solve mysteries and then gives you a puzzle: “you were told but you didn’t listen.” 

understanding s4 gets as complicated as you want to make it, but if you aren’t willing to apply very basic narrative ideas to it, then no, it won’t make sense. it requires very little to understand it in the context of unreliable narration (you don’t need to look deeper than that, that part is for fun for people who want it), but if the audience is unwilling to put any effort whatsoever into the media they consume then sherlock isn’t for them. some people think that’s snobby and bad but whatever, that’s what the aforementioned warm paste is for. it doesn’t mean tv shouldn’t be intellectually stimulating or have anything to say

what i actually expect them to do instead of “s4 was fake” is actually “s4 existed in universe as john watson’s writing”. unreliable narration is established in the show, particularly with the cover-up of magnussen’s death, and there are theories abound among sherlockians that within acd canon there were hidden snippets of the Truth and that what was published by watson in-universe is actually heavily censored for a number of reasons such as where they perverted the course of justice by running on their own moral compasses or for political/legal reasons (in the context of the wilde trials, of course neither watson nor acd could ever publish content including outright homosexuality). so s4 is essentially going to figure into canon in the sense that it is in-verse fiction written by john on his blog to cover up some unpleasant or unable to be revealed truth. there’s lots more evidence for this, often referred to as “blog theory” or “alibi theory”, if you’d like to look into this

as to the network/producers approving it:

1) the producer, sue vertue, is moffat’s wife, so I don’t think she is doing anything to stop their hairbrained schemes

2) there has been lots of exploration into how the series came to be what it is. to put it very briefly, there was an investigation by the bbc into LGB representation in the media, in the sense that the bbc is a publicly funded channel and is supposed to reflect the nation that watches it. (obviously there’s debate to be had about the extent to which this achieved, but that’s not relevant right now) the report produced was all about how the bbc needed to do better at making LGB content and representing LGB people. the big takeaway is that the bbc subsequently had the intention of representing such characters in realistic portrayals that didn’t rely solely on stereotypes, to give these characters meaningful storylines, and to create watercooler or landmark content. 

by watercooler content they mean something genuinely groundbreaking, like, say, a show that has the investment of the wider public revealing that the main character(s) are gay in the late game, where those characters are actually a preexisting symbol of britishness and to make them gay with a meaningful build up would be literally groundbreaking. the cherry on top here is that the gay pilot of sherlock (so lovingly named because it is much much more openly gay and camp than the final product) was created before this bbc report was published, and following the publication the commissioner of the report recommissioned sherlock into what it is today - i.e. the show was reshaped from something that could have reached its gay fruition within three episodes and existed solely as a miniseries of that length into a multi-series show with film-length episodes that would span years of storyline in order to give the gayness a more nuanced long and meaningful build up that would culminate in watercooler content.

3) there is precedent for “unwatchable” media with regards to absurdism, and i don’t see why absurdism would not be approved by the network

4) john yorke - if they had this fella behind them and vouching for their plan at the bbc then its obvious how it would get approved. even without yorke personally encouraging this move, the plan they had, based upon yorke’s structure, would have been enough to convince people at the bbc that this was a thing worth doing. and the bbc weren’t wrong to let them! sherlock has been wildly popular and no doubt made both hartswood and the bbc lots of money and awards and s4 was also critically acclaimed and got millions of viewers - in no way has this turned out badly for the bbc

i know i jumped between ideas here but that was the easiest way to answer without spending ages drafting something well written. if there’s any concepts that don’t make sense then they’re probably explained within amy’s metas that i mentioned earlier (medium.com/@toxicsemicolon) so i suggest you give them a read. have links so some other sources on specific things (such as the seminal text softly, softly) so message if you’re genuinely interested in understanding, because i’m not doing citations on all of this right now (i’m tired i’ve been writing essays all month but i really do want to share information when people ask for it so please do if you want)

#haven't read through what i just wrote so apologies for any mistakes with grammar and such #i just got back from a big snowy walk

[concerningwolves]

I finished The Irregulars earlier this week and i was going to do a scattered, flippant bullet point “review” as i often do, but after stewing in my feelings about it for a few days i want to talk about this properly, actually.

Something I absolutely adored was the way people’s powers manifested / the way their monstrosity was directly connected to the monstrous things that had happened to them. The concept is that a rip has opened in the universe, which allows something to extend its power into our world. This power grants people supernatural abilities when they seek help by praying/asking spirit boards for guidance/seances etc. The in-world explanation for this is that the rip takes the darkest parts of people and brings those parts to the fore, thus making them do monstrous things. 

(I did feel like the show sometimes contradicted itself, one minute saying that when someone is made into a monster by the cruelty of the world they ought to be met with compassion, the next minute killing off these sympathetic monsters or subjecting them to cruel fates. The fact that Arthur Hilton, a man whose grief and trauma over the deaths of his wife and child drove him to abduct babies, was locked up in Bedlam in a windowless cell left a nasty taste in my mouth. I understand that they needed to have him there for Narrative Purposes, but after using the episode’s climax moment to reveal that this man is suffering – basically to tell us that he isn’t a monster, but someone who needs help – it felt very cheap to use him as a pawn for the plot instead of further exploring that sentiment.)

I’m a HUGE fan of the way the powers reflected the wielder, i.e., Clara (Ep. 4) was sexually abused and given syphilis, which took away her ability to have children. We learn as the episode unfolds that she’s obsessed with the idea of a family because she never had one of her own, and makes little taxidermy family scenes with dead animals. The syphilis made her hate herself and her own skin, so the rip granted her the ability to literally steal people’s faces and become them – an ability she then used to kill the men who abused her with the final goal of assuming the last man’s identity because he had a family. It was a really haunting exploration of monstrosity / what makes us monsters, and it made me go a bit feral with appreciation.

But when the credits of the last episode rolled, I just felt... dissatisfied. I was bitter at how although the casting was supposedly colour-blind, the main villain was a black man and the one “sympathetic monster” who gets killed off (Jean Gates / the Tooth Fairy) was a black woman, both with very dark skin. John Watson, meanwhile, is portrayed by a lighter-skinned POC and although he’s written as cruel, aggressive and threatening, he’s given the chance for a redemption while the Linen Man and Jean Gates get killed off. I’m not entirely comfortable talking about this aspect because i’m white and still very much learning about racist and colourist tropes, but I just kept thinking about the colourism and implicit bias in Bridgerton, and couldn’t help but feel that The Irregulars had fallen into the same or a similar trap? (If anyone has any more thoughts on this I’m happy to listen!)

I didn’t like the fact that the writers decided to acknowledge the homoerotic subtext in ACD’s Holmes canon by making John Watson manipulative and controlling, then justifying that as an act of his (unrequited) love for Sherlock. Like, it wouldn’t be so bad if there were other examples of queer love in the series (save for the one f/f couple at a fancy rich party), but when your only explicitly mlm named character is miserable, alone and pining for an oblivious/uninterested love interest – a love interest who is killed off, may I add – it’s Not Fun. Queer rep doesn’t have to be good and pure or whatever (NBC’s Hannibal, anyone?), but sure would be nice to have some positive representation first! It also seemed to me that John’s redemption was directly tied to him giving up his love for Sherlock, which I was in two minds about. On the one hand, it could be seen as him realising his love had become something deeply toxic and so he had to let Sherlock go (and that really excites me! Complex and angsty relationships are most delicious), but on the other hand it got very close to a Bury Your Gays moment so my feelings the entire time were just :/

Lastly I was super excited about Leopold because disabled character! But it seemed as if his disability just got put to one side unless it was relevant to character arcs and/or plot moments. His leg is absolutely fucked up from the first episode, but he abandons his cane? I did really appreciate the whole “you’re not broken” angle they took, though. I think it was a genuinely good-faith representation, it just didn’t quite hit the mark (which is how I felt about a lot of things in the show tbh, so... :shrugs:) 

To conclude this wall of text: monsters and the takes on monsters were very tasty, and the supernatural elements and worldbuilding filled me with glee; other bits like representation and narrative choices were dissatisfying. i am now tired and out of spoons, will probably come back and clarify this tomorrow.

#the irregulars #i uhhh idk what tag to sort this into #the hyperfixations tag #monsters & monstrosities

[theemptyquarto]

Abandoned WIP

Warstan (but John got killed off before the story starts) and purely platonic Sherlock & Mary.  Quite AU... John and Mary get together before Sherlock jumped off of Bart’s.  Maybe a little bit of hinted unrequited Johnlock, I honestly can’t remember if I was going there with this fic.  A “Mary is the new Watson” retelling of “The Adventure of the Empty House,” rated T.  This was written before S3 happened and I fell in love with BBC Mary and she actually made me view BBC John as an interesting character in his own right and I rejiggered my alignments.

I’m going to rant here, just briefly, about how ACD’s Mary Morstan is probably one of the most wronged-by-their-author characters that I can think of, which is why I started writing this fic where she takes the lead.

She appears for the first time in the second-ever (authorially, not chronologically) Sherlock Holmes story, “The Sign of the Four,” and is delightful.  Watson falls hard in love right away and acts like a huge dweeb about her, she’s courageous, clever, and kind.  Maybe without all the panache of the later Irene Adler, but a more traditionally Victorian heroine for our more traditionally Victorian junior protagonist.  Her next appearance, “The Adventure of the Crooked Man,” is significantly more tangential, but she sets the action of the story in play and is shown to be a helpful, kind figure.

And then all of a sudden Conan Doyle ships her off to visit her mother (she was established as an orphan), stops using her at all, and finally kills her off.

Not even on the page.  Between books.  And it’s mentioned so tangentially in two lines of “The Adventure of the Empty House” that you can easily miss it if you aren’t looking for it.

(Incidentally this sort of shit is why ACD fandom can’t agree on how many wives Watson had or who the subject  of his “sad bereavement” is.  The number ranges from 1-13.)

Why, Artie?  Why did you do that?  I mean I get if you want to park Watson back at Baker Street you probably do have to off her but you were a fairly good hack and doing it this way made you give up the opportunity to have some sort of emotional payoff in your stories.  Especially since you later introduce another wife character who is in no way distinct from Mary (a niche component of ACD fandom thinks that Mary didn’t die at all and Watson “abandoning (Holmes) for a wife,” was him and Mary reconciling after an estrangement.)

Anyway.  Don’t create cool characters and then kill them for no good reason.  That’s my point.

_____________

The Empty Flat (Mary)

I had been widowed for three months and was rather surprised at how badly I was doing with it. The snug three-bedroom garden flat in Maida Vale had been the perfect size for a not-quite-young couple planning on children.  Now it seemed vast and empty and utterly, utterly silent.  When I slept, which wasn’t all that much, I did it on the sofa.  Our bed still smelled faintly of his aftershave, and I couldn’t stand either to sleep there or to wash the sheets.  Arthur, the blue point Siamese cat who I had bought into the marriage, would curl up on my feet and awaken me with his yowls in the morning.

To some extent I had been able to occupy my mind with work, and the requirements of my job had kept me more or less a functional adult.  But the summer holidays had begun a week previous, and I was thus thrown entirely on my own resources, which were scant. What family I had left were all back in America, and the friends I had made in England seemed to have melted away since John’s death.  Some days, I thought that this was due to the universal impulse to avoid reminders of mortality.  Other days I decided it was more likely due to the fact that I deleted their emails and declined to answer their phone calls.

The truth, as always, was probably somewhere in the middle.  

Whatever the cause, my life was empty.  I ate when I remembered that I was meant to.  I wore pajamas all day.  I left the flat when I ran out of cat food, and at night I would turn on the tv and stare at it without paying attention until I finally sank into oblivion.

Presumably it was on one of those descents into the maelstrom of crap British late-night TV that I first took note of the murder of Ronald Adair.  The dead man was vaguely familiar to me, though I had never watched any of his shows personally.  He was a scion of one of those impoverished but very old-and-noble families that the English keep on out of sentiment. Showing unusual initiative for one of his class, he’d made a success of himself by appearing on a famous reality show, then on the “celebrity” version of that show, and parlaying that into one of those mysterious but apparently quite lucrative careers that consist mostly of having your picture taken.  

And now, he was dead, shot in the back of the head in his own bedroom on Park Lane.

The story struck me, for some reason.  John, when he’d been alive, used to take four daily papers and half a dozen weeklies, and I had not cancelled them yet.  I plucked a week’s worth out of the recycling where I had tossed them, unread, and scanned through them for articles about the murder.

Ronald Adair had been alone in his bedroom, drinking neat whiskey and updating twitter, when he died.  His last tweet (@JustLukeyA, “LOL C U @ Ibiza”) had been sent at 10:11 in the evening. His personal assistant had heard the sound of breaking glass, broken down the locked door that led into the bedroom, seen his body, and dialed 999 by 10:17.  The bullet had been a large caliber hollow point round that had done severe damage to the back of his skull, and he had most likely died almost instantly.

The entire affair was mysterious.  While the police hadn’t released any real statements, the personal assistant had been the only other person in the house at the time of the shooting, and had been released after questioning.  This would suggest the shot had been fired from outside, but the window in Adair’s bedroom, while open, was on the fourth floor.  There was no evidence to suggest anyone had climbed to the window, meaning that the shot had come from somewhere outside.  

This made no sense at all to the gossip rags.  The window faced directly over Hyde Park, and any level shot would have had to come from over a mile away.  And shooting from ground level would have been impossible: the Park was open, reasonably crowded given the warmth of the summer evening, and no one had heard a thing.  The American embassy was less than two hundred yards away, and even its overblown security hadn’t noted any unusual activity.  Essentially, it was impossible that he could have been shot, and yet there he was.

As I read through the papers, I thought how John would have gone through them at the breakfast table to try and figure out what had happened.  Although his professional interest in solving mysteries had died with Sherlock, he never lost his fascination with the more arcane sorts of crime.  He would have loved this one, and I could imagine the crinkles that would form around his eyes as he would describe the possible motives, mechanisms, and solutions.  It was a Sunday, and I suspected that he would have wheedled me into taking our normal long walk in the direction of the crime scene.  I’d have teased him, said he was morbid, but I’d have gone, and he’d have hypothesized happily for a while.

I could so clearly imagine it, and it made me smile, despite myself.  It had been difficult to like Sherlock Holmes, and very difficult to deal with the fact that their association put John into danger on a regular basis.  Yet, now that they were both gone, I found myself forgiving every thoughtless insult and sleepless lonely night the detective ever gave me, since he had made John so happy.  

Wishing to hang on to my happy memory, I decided, abruptly, to take the walk over to Park Lane myself, just as John and I would have done.  It was past time I actually started doing things again.  I would go and see where Ronald Adair had died, and I would try and solve the mystery, and I would remember John.  Quickly, before I could change my mind, I showered, dressed, and left the flat.

July, in London, is one of the few times of the year when it approaches being warm enough, and it was a beautiful day.  I took the long route around Kensington Park, since a straight shot would have taken me directly past St. Mary’s Hospital, where John had worked - and where his body had been taken. The trees were brilliant green, and it seemed everyone in London was sunbathing or playing football or falling in love around me.

Ronald Adair’s flat was adjacent to the Mariott, in one of the converted brick Georgian edifices that infest all of Park Lane.  I had forgotten to take note of the number, but it was easily identifiable by the flowers and stuffed animals heaped up on the low fence that surrounded it. There were a fair number of gawkers, and by asking, I found which window Adair had been shot through.  I was stumped, for the moment, but thinking logically, decided the best route was to see from where I could have made the shot.  The busy street and the shrubbery borders of the park being ruled out, necessarily, I confined my attention to the sidewalks.  I took pictures on my phone, and paced around, and tried to work out the trigonometry involved.  

Then I stopped.  There were half a dozen locations from which the shot could have come.  It would be the hell of a task: the window was small and high, but if it were dark out and the shooter were aiming into a lit room, it would be possible. I had hunted a lot as a kid, and might have been able to make it with a rifle.  John, who had been an excellent marksman, might have been able to do it with a handgun.  But to do it quickly enough to avoid notice in a busy neighborhood, to do it silently?  That was impossible.

All facts that were undoubtedly obvious to the police.  If John had been with me, it would have been a fun little mathematical exercise.  We’d have followed it with a walk home, dinner at the pub on the end of our street, and making tipsy love in the light of a summer sunset in our flat.  But he wasn’t with me, and he never would be again, and the day would end as all days did, alone with the cat and the television and the dark.  The whole thing was a pointless, futile exercise - a little girl’s attempt to play make-believe.

I knew, suddenly, that I was going to cry.  It happened a lot, and it wasn’t an experience I wanted to share with all London, so I spun around to depart and slammed full-force into a souvenir hawker who had been just behind me.  Grace has always eluded me.  The pole she carried, hung with ballcaps and other tat, fell to the ground, and she gave an indignant Cockney squawk of “Oi! Watch it!”  I bent to retrieve her pole and handed it back to her, mumbling, “Sorry, sorry,” and fled outright into the park, keeping my eyes firmly on the ground.  

Leaving the path, I hurried through the park, not really aware of where I was going as long as it was quieter and emptier.  I reached a dim copse free of children, tourists, and lovers, where I sat down, and let the tears flow.

It’s easy to see why the ancient Egyptians thought that the heart, and not the brain, was the source of love.  True sadness isn’t felt in the head, it’s felt in the chest, and I could feel every choked beat of my heart as I sobbed and gasped and tried to catch my breath for what seemed like ages.  But from a pragmatic point of view, I’m sure I didn’t go for long.  Crying is too tiring to keep up for much time.  Of course, I had come out without any tissues, so I wiped my aching eyes and puffy face on the corner of my cardigan.  

At that moment, the hawker walked into the copse.  

“There you are!” she called out, “Wondered where you’d got to!”

I sighed.  “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry about knocking into you.  It was an accident.  If I’ve damaged anything I will be happy to pay-“

“Na, na, love.  Just a load of rubbish.  Can’t hurt it if it isn’t worth anything to start with.  But I saw your face and thought you might be in some trouble.”  The woman was elderly, with a mop of dyed auburn hair and a thick Docklands accent which I would love to render in text, if it didn’t look so silly.  But her blue eyes were kind, and she handed me a miniature water bottle marked with “Souvenir of Hyde Park.”

“I’m – fine.  I just got a little upset.  Thank you.”  The water was lukewarm and tasted faintly of plasticizers, but it soothed my irritated throat.

The woman seemed to take this remark as an invitation, and placing her wares on the grass, sat next to me.  I have lived in London since I was twenty-five years old and I could tell what was coming.  There are two main personality types among the English: the type that is intensely uncomfortable with any sort of emotion, and the type that delights in every possible expression of sentiment and wishes to hear all about it.  They’re like New Yorkers in that respect.

Apparently I had found one of the latter variant.

“You get to see a bit of everything, my line of work,” she said, digging a battered packet of Silk Cut out of her pocket, “Care for one?”

I had officially quit smoking years ago, when I finished my doctorate, and stopped even having the occasional one when I started dating John, since he loathed the things.  Just at that moment, though, it sounded like heaven.  “Yes, thank you.”

She shook two out of the packet, and passed one to me before getting out a transparent plastic lighter.  She lit hers, and then handed over the lighter.  A brief breeze kicked up, and I bowed my head over the tiny flame, trying to make the cigarette catch, as she said, quietly, “Now, Mary, you need to remain calm.”

The cigarette caught, and I took that first delicious, poisonous drag, before the fact that this stranger knew my name really filtered into my mind.  

I looked over, and where the woman had been, sat Sherlock Holmes.

  The Sign of Four (Sherlock)

The art of disguise, as I have often remarked, is in context far more than it is in costume.   Truly approximating the appearance of someone else is only possible from a distance: in ordinary situations major alterations to the face appear theatrical and attract more attention than not.  If, instead, you select a character who would be entirely appropriate in the context in which he appears, you need make only minor changes to your own appearance.  The observer’s mind will then do ninety per cent of your work and you will be de facto invisible.  I intend to write a monograph on the topic when I have the time.

Mary Morstan may have had some subconscious understanding of this.  On the occasion of our first meeting, I observed that she was wearing a carefully calibrated disguise, although I doubt she would have referred to it as such.  Very high heels, but an intentionally prim and boxy suit, severe makeup and hairstyle, heavy-framed glasses.  She introduced herself with a flat, middle-American accent, only slightly sharpened by years of living in London.

Just after she arrived, John walked into the flat, his arms filled with carrier bags of groceries, which he set down with great rapidity in order to shake her hand.  

“Mary Morstan, my associate, John Watson.  Miss Morstan,” I said, “Teaches maths at Westminster School.”

She stared at me when I said that.  John, I noted, didn’t let go of her hand when her attention was distracted.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

I sighed, though in truth I always enjoy it when they ask for the reasoning.  

“You’ve obviously come straight from work, meaning that you work Saturday mornings.  Chalk dust on the right cuff, which is worn in a way that you only ever see with people who spend a great deal of time writing on blackboards.  There are traces of red ink on the heel of your hand and a splotch near the tip of your index finger.  Thus, teacher.”  

As I’d expected, she dropped John’s hand to examine her own.

“You took the tube to get here, and in those shoes you probably didn’t walk far before you boarded at Westminster station: there’s construction digging up the street there and the fresh splashes of yellowish mud on your left stocking are quite distinctive.  Half a dozen schools in that area, but your ensemble suggests older students and moneyed parents. Hence, Westminster School.”

The last was a gloss, as her ensemble suggested nothing of the sort.  It said quite plainly “I teach older boys.”  Her skirt was unfashionably long, her blouse was buttoned up to the neck, and her jacket was boxy in order to conceal her rather large breasts.  Having attended an all-boys senior school, I recognized the style, and the motivation behind it.  But since I was undoubtedly going to receive the ”abrasive” and “show-off” lectures after her departure, I saw no reason to add the “inappropriate” one, and simplified the matter.

“And… maths?”

I sighed again, this time sincerely.  The easy ones are never any fun.

“There’s a graphics calculator in the right pocket of your overcoat.”

At that, she laughed.  Giggled, really.  But almost instantly, she caught herself, cleared her throat, and dropped back into the lower vocal register that she had previously affected.  Everything I could ever have wished to know about Mary Morstan’s character was thus revealed in the first five minutes of our interview.  Nature had given her a respectable brain and deposited it in a body that was small, blonde, and rather fluffy.  Her disguise did a reasonable job of concealing this, but she would spend the rest of her life trying to make people take her seriously.

“That’s amazing,” she said, “I read in your blog, Doctor Watson-“

“John, please,” he interrupted.  Oh dear.

“John.  I read about this kind of analysis but it’s remarkable to see it in real life.”

“Can be a bit creepy if you’re not used to it, though,” John replied, which I thought extremely unfair, given that I had been very polite and not mentioned that her teeth demonstrated her adolescent bulimia or that her fingers and eyebrows strongly implied a mild obsessive-compulsive condition.  I maintained my dignity, and said only,

“Thank you, John.  State your case, Miss Morstan.”

“Right.  Well.   I suppose I have to go back to the beginning.  My father, Thomas Morstan, was English.  I was actually born in Sussex, but when I was two my parents divorced and my mother and I moved back to America. I never got to see him much, growing up, but he always kept in touch, by phone and letters, and then by email when that came around.  Sent birthday gifts and that sort of thing.  Ten years ago I finished grad school, and he offered to buy me a ticket to come and meet him in London.  I hadn’t seen him for several years at that point and I didn’t have a job so, obviously, I said yes.”

“Mmm.  Continue.”

“He’d booked us rooms at the Langham, which I thought was much too expensive for him, but he said it was a treat for my graduation.”

“What was his profession, then?”

“He started off in the Army, but he resigned his commission after the first Gulf War and joined the diplomatic service.”

“As?”

“An attaché.  Just an office job, basically.  Visas and helping distressed tourists and so on.”

“And his rank in the army?”

“Ah, he ended as a Lieutenant Colonel, I believe.

“Go on.”

“I flew to London, expecting him to pick me up at Heathrow, but he wasn’t there.  No answer when I tried to call him.  I took a cab to the Langham and asked if he’d checked in, and he had, but there was no answer when they called up to his room.  Eventually they agreed to open the door – he’d had a heart attack a few years before, and I was getting very upset - and all of his things were in there, but no sign of him.  I never saw him again.”

“Interesting.  Did the police investigate?”  John was patting her shoulder, sympathetically, which seemed excessive given that the death (and yes, it was death, almost certainly) was ten years in the past.  She should have been well beyond it by this point.  But upon closer observation, I could see that he was right: a slight swimminess around the eyes and the set of the jawbone indicating gritted teeth.  Oedipal complex.  She replied, calmly enough.

“Yes.  They didn’t find anything.”

“Of course they didn’t.  They never do.  Did your father have any acquaintances in London?”

“Only one that they could find: a Major Sholto.  He had no idea Dad was even in town.”

“Mmm.  I doubt a disappearance ten years ago would incline you to seek the services of a consulting detective today.  What has changed?”

Morstan cleared her throat and opened the battered leather attache case that had been sitting at her feet.  From a manila folder, she removed a broadsheet page of yellowing newsprint, with a quarter-page sized advertisement in the upper right hand corner circled in red ink.  The paper was the Omaha World-Herald, the date was May 4, 2004, and the advertisement simply stated:

“If Mary Morstan, daughter of Captain Thomas Morstan, will contact the address below, it will be to her advantage” followed by an email address.

“Half a dozen of my friends from high school saw this and forwarded it on to me.”

“And what did you do?”

“I sent them an email.  I said I was Thomas Morstan’s daughter, that I’d relocated to London, and asked what they wanted.”

“Any reply?”

“No.  And when I sent on a follow-up a few days later, it bounced.   It was just Hotmail… could have been anyone.  But then a few days after that, I received this in the mail.”

Reaching back into the attaché case, she pulled out a small pouch made of black jeweler’s felt. Loosening the drawstring, she tipped something small and square into her palm, and passed it over to me.

I could hear John inhale sharply through is teeth as I reached for my lens.  Mary said, wryly, “Yes, that’s pretty much how I felt.  It’s a three carat, blue-white, flawless diamond.  Probably dug up in India, if that’s any help.  It’s worth around $150,000, retail.”

“Unusual cut,” I murmured, looking at the magnified lump of crystallized charcoal, “It’s called the-“

“The old mine cut,” interrupted Mary, “Meaning it was most likely faceted sometime between 1700 and 1900.  I know.  After the police gave it back to me, I had it appraised at Sotheby’s.”

“You went to the police again?”

“I did.”

“Any good?”

“Not really.  They hung onto it a while, but nobody reported any similar gems lost or stolen, and then they gave it back.  Apparently it’s “not illegal to be given things.”  So after that I was on my own.  But I still didn’t feel right about it, so I had the appraisal to see if a real professional could find anything more useful.”

“Well done,” said John, heartily.  He was in a fair way to make an idiot of himself over this woman, although she seemed flattered by the compliment.

“Thank you,” Mary replied, “And then, the thing is, Mr. Holmes, that it didn’t stop with this.  Every year since then, on May 14, I get another one of these in my mail.  I’ve changed addresses and it didn’t make a difference.  Perfectly matched, very expensive diamonds.  I left the rest of them in my safe deposit box: even carrying one of them around makes me edgy.  And then, yesterday, there was this.”

She passed over a letter.  Fine, high linen content paper, no watermark, 10-point… Trebuchet font, printed on an HP laserjet printer. It read, “Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre on Saturday, July 9 at seven o'clock. If you are distrustful, bring two friends. You are a wronged woman, and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your unknown friend.”

There was no signature or address.

“Did you keep the envelope?”

“Yes, here.  And here,” she said, passing over a small heap of padded mailers sealed into plastic zip-topped bags, “Are the envelopes the diamonds came in.”

“Well, you do have the right instincts.  Not much to see here, though… the letter and the last three packages had their labels off the same printer.  The first four were from another.  It stretches credulity to think that there are separate groups doing this so we’ll assume for the moment it was simply a matter of replacing an outdated device.  The mailers can be bought anywhere.  Various London postmarks… thumbprint on this one, Miss Morstan, may I see your right hand please?  Thank you.  Your thumbprint. I’ll put them under the microscope later but I doubt there’ll be that much to learn.”

“And you’ve no idea at all who may have sent these?  No… admirers, things like that?” John asked.

She laughed at that.  “Generally, when men are interested in me they go more for things like asking me to dinner rather than anonymously sending me a million dollars in gems over the course of seven years.  I’m not that unapproachable.”  I rolled my eyes at their stale flirtation, although I don’t believe either of them noticed it.

“But…” she continued, more hesitantly, “Mr. Holmes, do you think that there’s any possibility that these are from my father?”

John was glaring at me, and so instead of saying “Of course not.  He’s been dead for ten years,” replied “I’m afraid it’s very unlikely.”

“I see,” Mary replied, quietly.  She drew a deep breath and continued, “Well, regardless, I had planned to go… unless you can give me a real reason not to.  If whoever it is wants to hurt me it seems like they’ve chosen a really baroque way of going about it.  I mean, they already know where I live so it’s not like there’s much point in avoiding them. And I’m getting sick of this mystery.”

“There are, however, a few points of interest in it.  As you are allowed to bring two friends and John is already planning on accompanying you, I believe I shall join him.”

She darted her gaze back and forth between us, smiling, “Really?  You will?  Both of you?  Oh, thank you, thank you so much! This whole saga has just been so shady and I didn’t know anyone who’d be any help with this kind of thing.  It’s such a weight off my mind. Thank you.”

She was gushing, and her voice had inevitably pitched up again.  I responded calmly with, “Yes, well.  Can you be here by five thirty on Saturday?  And leave us your contact information.”

“Of course!”

And, writing an email address and a phone number on a sheet of scrap paper, she disappeared in a whirl of gratitude.

John rose to escort her to the door.  I remained seated, and began texting.

“That, he said, picking up his carrier bags and taking them into the kitchen, “Was a very attractive woman.”

“Hadn’t noticed.”

“Really.  I knew you were a human adding machine but I never thought you were actually dead.  Sherlock, it’s an objective fact!  She’s got a beautiful smile.”

“Very short.”

“Oh, come on.  She’s an inch or two shorter than I am.”

While this statement would not actually exclude “short” from consideration, I simply raised my eyebrows and replied, “Women have developed this remarkable technology called shoes which they use when they wish to increase their height, John.  She’s no more than five feet tall.”

“Yes, well, shortness is not a handicap, Sherlock.  And she’s clever.”

“She’s adequate.”

“And brave.  She was going to walk by herself into a threatening situation just because she wanted to find out the truth.”

“So are you.  So am I, for that matter.  I fail to see why it’s so much more meritorious when it’s her doing it.”

“I’m a combat-trained military reservist, and you are England’s only consulting detective.  It’s our job.  She’s a very small maths teacher.”

I set down the mobile and glared at him, “Mary Morstan, John, is in no need of your protection.  This affair of the diamonds is a mere personal intrigue.  She’ll meet with the woman and resolve it without the benefit of your attention.”

He paused from putting the potatoes in the bin and inquired, “It’s a woman sending the diamonds?  You’re sure?”

In general, I don’t admit which of my deductions I’m certain of and which are (very good) guesses.  Maintaining a reputation as infallible isn’t a trivial exercise.  But John had repeatedly earned the truth from me, and so I said, “No, I’m not.  I’m reasonably confident, given the font choice, the computer used, and the wording, that it’s a woman, and a rather melodramatic one.  But there’s more – uncertainty in these things than I would like.”

John chuckled.  “I should take a picture of you right now and call it ‘Sherlock Holmes admitting he might be wrong’.  They’d love to have it down at the Yard.  So why take the case if you don’t think there’s any mystery?”

“Oh, there is one, just not the “why is someone sending me expensive gemstones” one she came in with.  Can you log on to the GRO database and look something up for me?  My email address and password will get you in.”

“Sure,” he said, walking back into the sitting room and picking up his laptop, “What?”

“Deaths.  Start by looking for “Sholto” in late April, early May of 2005.  If that doesn’t bring up anything, look for ex-military, older, in London, same time frame.”

“Right.  What are you going to do?”

I held up my mobile.  “I’ve done it.  I’ve sent a text to brother Mycroft.”

“Why?”

“Watson, when a man leaves a high rank role in the army to become a low-end functionary in the diplomatic service, what does that suggest?”

“Er, PTSD?”

“No. It suggests spy.  I want to find out exactly what Thomas Morstan did for a living.”  

A week after that, Mary Morstan arrived punctually back at Baker Street. She’d replaced the dowdy suit with trousers and a blue blouse cut low in the front, left off her glasses, and undone her severe bun to let her hair hang over her shoulders.  She had chosen flat shoes this time, which was a relief, as it showed the target of all this display was John rather than me.

Six hours after that, I saw that the display had been successful.  I had to physically restrain John from going to her as she was handcuffed and loaded into a black maria for the murder of Barbara Sholto.  As typical of Americans, she was explaining loudly and slowly to the arresting officer that there had been a terrible misunderstanding, clearly expecting this to rectify the situation.  

“John, look,” I said, sotto voce, as I pinned him to the wall of the alley, “If you go over there you’ll only be arrested too.  Athelney Jones has already picked up the entire domestic staff and Theresa Sholto and would be only too happy to increase his bag.  The man’s an idiot, even by the standards of the metropolitan police.  We’ll text Lestrade to let him know, and the worst she’ll have is a few uncomfortable hours, but we need to be on our way if we’re going to actually catch the killer which is the only thing that will do her any good.”

Even that early, I suspected that Mary would not be as swiftly forgotten as the rest of the girlfriends.

Three days later, Mary was a free woman again.   The lost crown jewels of the Russian Tsars, of which she had been offered a one-third share, were scattered along six miles of the bottom of the Thames.  She had accepted this development with equanimity.  As she said to John, “Even if they hadn’t been lost, it’s not like I was expecting to keep them.  I’m sure there’s still some Romanovs somewhere who’d like to have them back.  The whole time Teresa was telling me the story of how she got them I kept thinking “Yeah, this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in real life.””

I heard, while they were falling in love, enough of “The Things Mary Says” to gag a cat.  I heard about Mary’s feelings on politics, the arts, and current events.  I heard about Mary’s emotional turmoil on the discovery that her father was an intelligence agent who had taken the pay of so many competing nations and organizations that even now nobody could say who he had really worked for.  And that was apart from his being a jewel thief.  I heard enough recitations of her personal charm, intelligence, and integrity to gag a dog.

  Not being enamored of her, I was able to observe her far more clearly.  I saw that she omitted to mention during the investigation that she was already in receipt of seven perfectly-matched flawless three carat blue-white diamonds, pulled from a coronet made for some forgotten Tsarina.  I saw no reason to bring it up to anyone, if she had overcome her scruples about receiving stolen property.  I would rather the money have gone to John than to anyone else, and it was clear by that point that it would.

Over the next months, Mary incorporated herself into John’s life, and thus, into mine.  I grew accustomed to the scent of her cosmetics in the flat’s shared w.c. (she was a disgustingly early riser and had usually gone before I woke up), and the sounds of their post-sex conversation from the upstairs bedroom (they kept the actual lovemaking quiet, out of politeness, but the after-chat was quite distinct).  I drew the line, however, at allowing her to tidy the place.  She didn’t understand the system and would have made a hash of it.

Ultimately, just over six months after the day she rang the bell at Baker Street, I found myself ordering a round of tequila shots at the bar of the White Lion and slipping chloral hydrate into three of them.  Earlier, Mary had balanced on tiptoe to kiss my cheek and whisper in my ear “Can you please try not to let them get him too drunk?”  I carried the round back to the table where a flushed and grinning but not yet weaving Watson listened as a dozen of his Army and medical school friends speculated on whether Mary would qualify him as “Four-Continents Watson” or if the actual location of the coitus mattered more than the origin of the lady in question.  I passed the shot glasses around, judging that the administration of three Mickey Finns to three particular members of the party would bring the night to a graceful but early end in about an hour.

I judged, as usual, correctly.  After decanting the three dazed ringleaders into a cab, the party broke up, and John and I made it back to Baker Street with only slightly more difficulty than usual. The stairs did give him some trouble, but ultimately I was able to successfully deposit him on the couch.  I shook two aspirin from the bottle and handed them to him along with a glass of water.  He took both uncomplainingly.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.  For whatever you did back there.  I’d hate to be a mess tomorrow.”

“I looked up the duties of the best man and apparently making sure the groom is present and presentable are tops on the list.”

“And you even agreed to wear a tie!”  This non sequitur amused him, and he chuckled at his own joke for a moment, before sobering (comparatively), and staring around the flat.  “I’m going to miss all this.”

“No, you won’t,” I predicted, climbing the stairs to fetch the blankets off his bed.  

“I will!” he insisted, “I’m happy, really happy, about Mary.  She’s wonnerful.  But I’ll miss this life.  And you.”

“It’s not as though I’ll be dead.  You���ll be ten minutes away.  I’ll be sure to call you whenever I need my cases blogged.”

“I love you, mate, you know that?  Even though you are- just such a prick.”

I smiled and pitched the blankets at his head.  “I do.  Tosser.  Now go to sleep.  You have a busy day ahead of you.”

He was out and snoring, wearing everything but his shoes, five minutes later.  I refilled his water glass and left it on the end table.

At noon the next day I (wearing not only a tie but my entire morning suit) stood at John’s left shoulder and watched Mary Morstan walk down the aisle.  I doubt she saw me: her eyes were fixed on John, who was sober, alert, and in full dress uniform, as requested.  The expression of love and joy on her face obliged me to concede that, at the moment, she was in fact a very attractive woman.  

I don’t think I could have given him up to anyone who loved him even a bit less.

At the reception I gave a speech which everyone said was very interesting, and drank one and a half glasses of inferior Prosecco.  I watched them cut the cake, noting that the new Mrs. Watson was far more comfortable with John’s ceremonial saber than he was.  She’d lost the callosities of the dedicated fencer, but the skill remained.  Then, as Molly Hooper was prowling around with an eye towards dancing and my actual duties were complete, I slipped out of the hall and walked back to Baker Street.

I stopped in at the chemists and bought a packet of cigarettes, then let myself into the flat.  There was a peculiar sensory illusion that it was larger and emptier than normal: nonsense, of course.  John was routinely absent when I was there.  The fact that the absence would now be permanent didn’t alter the actual physical size of the place.

There was always work, and heedless of my dress clothes, I went to it.  Three months later, I “died.”  And three years after that, I returned to a London which seemed larger and emptier than I recalled.  Sensory illusion again.  The softer emotions have a very negative impact upon accurate observation, and the world in general doesn’t change at all when a single person drops out of it. On an individual level, though, a single death can rip the bottom out of everything.  Such was the case with Mary Watson, who I encountered on a bright August day in Park Lane.  She’d lost a stone in weight, which was significant at her height, and was wearing an oversized camel-colored cardigan which I recognized with a pang as being one of Watson’s.  She had, in general, the appearance of a child’s toy where the stuffing had been pulled out.  I approached her, unseen, as her attention was on Ronald Adair’s flat.   When she lost her composure and fled, I hesitated.  Then I followed.  There were two reasons for this.  The first, as always, was John.  I couldn’t envision a situation where he would not have come to the aid of a crying woman.  In the particular case of Mary, he’d have sprinted to it.

As for the second, well…  On the occasion of the case of Neville St. Claire, John had said to me that, “People in trouble come to my wife like birds to a light-house.”

And I truly had nowhere else to go.   Chapter 3: The Death of Ronald Adair (Mary)

In general, I am not a fainter, and I didn’t faint then.  But a grey mist swirled in front of my eyes, and when it subsided I noticed I had dropped the cigarette onto the well-clipped Hyde Park grass.  I picked it up with numb, nerveless fingers.  With my other hand I reached out to Sherlock and pushed on the flesh of his bicep.  He was reassuringly solid.

“So I haven’t gone mad.”

“No.”

“Not dead, then?”

“Yes.”

I took a drag from the Silk Cut and asked, “Does anyone else know besides me?”

“Mycroft.”

“Of course.”

“And Molly Hooper.”

“That bitch!” I exclaimed, before I could stop myself.  I wouldn’t quite have called Molly a friend.  We didn’t see much of one another, but her quiet competence had gotten me through the hellscape of the funeral.  I found it startlingly painful to believe that she had been concealing a secret like this- especially from John.

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow at me and said, “You’re harsher on her than on Mycroft?”

“There is nothing that I would put past one of the Holmes boys.”

He sighed, and drew on his own cigarette.  The sun dipped below the treetops and set us into shadows.

“Sherlock,” I asked, eventually, “What do you want?”

“I need a gun.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.  Of course you do.”

“Mary, please-“ and he hesitated.  He and I had never been more than “friendly”, and he certainly had never been inclined to ask any favors of me.  

“You’re still in trouble, aren’t you?” I accused.

He hesitated again.

“Yes.”

“Right,” I said, brushing off my pants and rising, “We’ll talk.  Baker Street, or our place?  My place.”

“Baker Street is being watched.”

“Can we take a cab?”

“Probably.”

It was actually very impressive, how he collapsed his face into that of the Cockney souvenir hawker.  He even seemed to lose several inches in height.  The stage lost an excellent actor when he decided to go into detective work.

We walked in silence back to Park Lane, and took a cab (after he’d dismissed the first one that tried to stop).  He sat next to me in silence, until a horrible thought overtook me, and I said, “Oh, God, has anyone told you?  About-“

“Your… bereavement?  Yes.  I was… very sorry to hear of it.”

It was a relief.  It had already happened several times: some colleague or acquaintance who I hadn’t seen in a while would, in the course of ordinary chit-chat, drop, “Oh, and how’s John doing?” into the conversation.  And then I would have to watch their faces change from polite disinterest to horror and pity as I gave them the news.  I would say it was the worst thing I had to do, but I had developed an entire new suite of worst things in recent months and was somewhat spoiled for choice.

We didn’t speak any further until I let us into the flat.

“Have a seat.  I’ll just go get it.”

John, given that he was occasionally prone to physically violent nightmares, had always kept the Sig Sauer semi-automatic securely locked away in a box in the master bedroom closet.  I retrieved it, and returned to the living room.  Sherlock had installed himself in his old favorite spot on the sofa, and Arthur had climbed onto the arm next to him.  They were watching each other with matching expressions of flat-eyed distaste.

“I don’t know where the key is,” I said, passing the box over.

“It’s fine,” he replied.  And indeed, he materialized a lockpick from somewhere and opened it within ten seconds.

He’d removed his auburn wig, although he still had on an excellent shade of lipstick for his complexion: a glossy transparent berry-stain.  It was almost the only color on his face.  Whatever he’d been up to, it was doing no favors for his health.  I wouldn’t have thought he could have gotten thinner or paler, barring his contracting tuberculosis or vampirism.  And yet, he had managed.  At some point, he’d cut his hair off close to the scalp, and it was faintly peppered with grey.  Sherlock was a year or two younger than I, but at the moment I could see what he would be like as an old man.

“You know that thing’s illegal, right?” I said.

“It’s not something that’s a real concern just at the moment,” he returned, calmly.

“It should probably be cleaned.  It’s not been touched since… well, I’m not sure of the last time John cleaned it.”

“It will be fine.  They’re very simple instruments and Watson was always over-cautious.  I didn’t clean my old one for years and it never had any problems.”

“That’s because John would secretly do it for you every few months.”

One of the small pleasures in life that everyone should get to experience at least once is to watch Sherlock Holmes’ face when he is informed that one of the normals has gotten something past him.  I had to suppress a flicker of a smile at how thunderous he looked.

“Look,” I said, “Give it here and I’ll do it.  The cleaning kit’s on the top shelf above the stove in the kitchen, if you’ll reach it down for me.”

I could hear him rummaging around in the cabinet as I released the clip, disconnected the slide, and popped out the spring.  I laid everything down on the coffee table and accepted the kit when he returned and gave it to me.  When I sighted down the barrel, I could see ample dust, and a fair bit of corrosion from the soggy English atmosphere.  It only made sense, really.  When Sherlock had died, John had lost any professional reason to carry a gun, and gained a strong personal reason to lock it away and leave it to rust.  Dipping the cleaning swab into the wide-mouthed jar of solvent, I began passing it through the barrel.

“’In a self-defense situation, there will be many things you can’t control. The condition of your weapon is not one of them,’” I quoted.

“Did Watson say that?”

“No, though he’d have agreed with the sentiment.  That was my stepfather.  He was the one who taught me about shooting.”

Sherlock blinked at me.  “I didn’t know you had a stepfather.”

“Like everyone else, I do actually have an objective existence apart from the parts you find interesting, Sherlock.”

I sounded bitter, but I didn’t care.  I had been the one to put John back together after Sherlock’s quote-unquote death, and having him sitting calmly on my sofa irked.

“I only meant,” he replied, “That he wasn’t at your wedding.”

“He has congestive heart failure and travel is very difficult for him!” I snapped,

“Sherlock, why the hell did you do this?”

“Well, I had in fact been exposed as a fraud and-“

“Bullshit.  You have been more or less cleared for two years and I’m sure your brother told you that.  D.I. Lestrade had to demonstrate that you weren’t, in general, a criminal, because he wanted to keep his job. Fifty people, including me, by the by, came forward to tell stories of how you had solved cases that you couldn’t possibly have faked.  The only real mystery remaining is this whole affair with Richard Brook, and frankly the best person to justify that would have been you.”

He scrubbed his hands through the bristles of his hair.  “There was more.”

“So tell me.”

Sherlock sighed, and stared off into the space over my left shoulder.  “When the head of an organization is removed, the organization generally remains.  John Kennedy is shot, the United States persists.  The death of Jim Moriarty left a thriving multinational criminal organization with a vacancy at the top for which there were numerous keen candidates.  I have spent the last three years attempting to take advantage of this situation and dismantle its operations entirely.”

Something about the cold way he said “dismantle” made me think I really didn’t want to hear much about this process.  I asked, “And you couldn’t have done that in your own persona?”

“No.  Because- Moriarty was in many ways a remarkable man.”

The tone of this statement was pure admiration, and I rubbed my forehead where I could feel the old familiar “Sherlock” headache coming on. “How’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t want to say he founded a cult of personality, but in his immediate circle were several men who genuinely did admire him and support him in his goals, as opposed to the ordinary hangers-on who simply were in it for the profit.”

“So, his friends.”

“What?”

I sighed.  “Never mind.  Continue.”

#quarto's fics #warstan #Sherlock&Mary #major character death #Mary morstan #mary morstanning #ACD Mary in BBC Sherlock #which used to be a thing

[itsalwaysyou-jw]

2018 Fic Year In Review

I was tagged by the lovely @sherlockedcarmilla ! I know I’m crazy late to this party, but can we pretend I’m fashionably late? (Bear in mind I only started writing fic on 12 October 2018 so my numbers aren’t too impressive but we shall proceed nevertheless.)

Total number of completed stories: 12

Total word count: 72,811

Fandoms written in: BBC Sherlock and ACD Sherlock Holmes

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? Writing fic at all was a surprise to myself, honestly. In April, I had a vivid dream that inspired my original novel. When I finished writing that, I wasn’t quite up to editing but I’d already gotten in the habit of writing every day. I needed an outlet for my creative endeavours and I found fic writing. I loved everything about it, so I just kept going after that.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? This is an impossible one for me to answer... I’m fond of them all, but I do particularly enjoy these two:

Frost: John engages in a long-term chess match with a mystery player. AND Until Next Time:  John Watson has been stood up. Much to his dismay, those around him have noticed. When he's asked to give up his seat, a stranger comes to his rescue and pretends to be his date.

Did you take any writing risks this year? Definitely. I wrote my first smut piece, which was no small feat for me. I wrote High!Sherlock which was nervewracking because I got high (not on the same drugs as Sherlock, but nevertheless...) to write it and allowed the story to follow the same chaotic pattern that my brain was leading. I experimented with characterization, tense shifts, psychological exploration... everything, really. Many writing risks were taken.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? This year I’m going to write and complete Welcome Home (WWII Johnlock AU), which I hope will be 50-70k works. After that, I will be taking a break from fanfic to focus on my editing my original novel and submitting it to agents.

Best story of the year? Ahh, my Golden Child: One Second and a Million Miles. I cried buckets and buckets while writing it and it was the first piece that I finished and felt proud of afterwards. Also, it was the first time my writing made others cry. Originally a one-shot, it turned into a multi-chapter due to popular demand for closure. And, of course, its prequel: Colour of Your Eyes, which I love just as much, but definitely doesn’t get enough love.

Most popular story of the year? Surprise, surprise! Deck the Halls (The Johnlock Advent Calendar) was my most popular piece. However, that one was 24 chapters while the rest are one-shots. My most popular one-chapter work is (surprisingly) my very first fic: Until Next Time.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: When He Sees Me:  John Watson's attempt to meet men at a popular club has failed spectacularly. He is positive that leaving the raucous club will mean the end of his evening, but fate has other plans in mind. A handsome stranger outside the club ensures that John's night is far from over; it is just beginning. John can't be sure if he is on a date with the intriguing man across from him. He certainly hopes he is.

This one is in the middle of the pack for all my stats, but I love it so much. I always wished it had gotten more attention. 

Most fun story to write: Stupid With Love: When Sherlock Holmes agrees to join Lestrade for a drink, he allows himself to drink liberally. With the alcohol acting as a social lubricant, the pair bond over shared jokes and drunken conversation. Sherlock even permits himself to open up and expose those portions of his personality he typically keeps hidden- including his experience with love. Shenanigans ensue, and Sherlock realizes he doesn't only have one friend: he has two.

I was giddy while writing this. I honestly had so much fun writing it, I was even happy while editing. I have a soft spot for it.

Most unintentionally telling story: Sober: Sherlock Homles has resisted the pull of his drug addiction for years. But John Watson is married and Sherlock knows of only one way to cope with the pain.

I projected my own despair onto Sherlock a lot for this one. This is also an underappreciated fic of mine. It has the least kudos of everything I’ve written.

Biggest disappointment: Red. I’ve considered deleting it or orphaning it but people seem to like it. I still don’t care for it because it doesn’t live up to what was in my head when I came up with the concept.

Biggest surprise: The community of support. Holy shit. I never expected to find such a loving home in fic writing. All the comments I’ve received, friendships I’ve formed, and readers that have supported my work have taken me completely by surprise. I am humbled by the love that I’ve found in this hobby. I definitely didn’t expect writing (and specifically fic writing) to be so helpful in my battle with depression. Every single person in this community is wonderful and I never expected any of it. Thank you to everyone. <3

That’s all, folks! I’m supposed to tag other authors but I sincerely can’t think of any writer friends who had fics in 2018 haven’t already been tagged. If you’re a writer and haven’t been tagged, consider this your tag! :)

#my writing #ao3 #year in review #fic year in review #2018

[possiblyimbiassed]

Sherlock and the media – Part II

When I wrote this meta about media’s role in BBC Sherlock, I wasn’t really planning to write a ‘Part II’ of it. But then all these great and thoughtful additions to it (see rb notes to the link above) were so inspiring that I can’t resist doing a follow-up. To me it’s easier to see patterns if I try to summarize and structure the various observations and comment on them topic-wise, as well as on a couple of things we seem to agree on. And please feel free to correct me if I’ve gotten anyone’s ideas wrong.

1. The depiction of media in BBC Sherlock is indeed mostly negative

@whimsicalethnographies points out, in addition, that media has the potential to be a positive force in real life, but that’s often not the case; a free press is essential, but the ability to navigate it is just as important. There’s a “huge critique of the media AND the way we consume it” in this show.

And I fully agree with this; media can (and should) play an important investigative and educational role if and when it manages to be an independent source of information. But we mustn’t forget that most of the media is commercial, that its primary interest is to make money. Which means that when the choice stands between trying to be objective and respect people’s integrity on one hand, and bringing sensational news that sell on the other, the latter will often be priority. And as long as we as readers don’t apply critical thinking, a lot of dubious ideas and outright lies will pass for truth, and we’ll tend to consume them and believe them unquestioningly. And I think we see several examples of characters that fall for this in BBC Sherlock, with the results ranging from relatively harmless (Mrs Hudson is now convinced she should never wear the colour cerise because of something a celebrity said on the telly) to disastrous (The Chief superintendent of NSY proceeds to arrest a man who has helped them for years, based on speculations inside his corps and gossip in the media). 

So, source criticism is incredibly important.

I’ll leave the rest under the cut for more patient readers, because this is quite long. :)

@raggedyblue observes that the press never looks well in Sherlock; it’s a “very powerful, two-edged sword” which has “the power to change” when taken critically. But it can also “turn people into herds of sheep” (which I believe CAM condescendingly says right out: ‘a nation of herbivores’). 

@221bloodnun also sees an increasing role of media as villains in the show, where Mary appears to be the composite of them all. While John’s main problem is media’s representation of them, Sherlock’s problem is the villains, if I understand it correctly. 

So yes; together these things make a terrible adversary for our heroes. I think we have it all in BBC Sherlock; villains who use media as a tool for their crimes (Moriarty), villains who thrive on media (Smith) and media itself being the villain (CAM). And then we have the trickiest part; Mary, who is supposedly in opposition to media (seemingly attacking CAM, seemingly a victim of his blackmail), but actually a big part of the problem (a glossed-over murderer).

@raggedyblue also mentions that one of the few press-related characters in ACD canon is Langdale Pike, who is both source and receptor for gossip. (And “strangely very similar to the description of Mycroft, both are sitting all day in the same place, and despite this, they always know everything about everyone”). In The Adventure of the Three Gables, Watson refers to the press that propagate Pike’s reports as “the garbage papers which cater to an inquisitive public.” (I guess their modern equivalents would be the tabloids?) And in Sherlock T6T, observes @raggedyblue, Langdale appears among the government’s codenamed people who helped edit the video of Sherlock shooting CAM. “That’s not what happened at all. But it is what will be told”. We’re not told who of the five characters present at the hearing is supposed to be ‘Langdale’, but my bet is on Mycroft. :)

To the few media-related characters from canon I’d also like to add Mr. Horace Harker of the Central Press Syndicate, the journalist in The Six Napoleons, whom Holmes lies to in order to take advantage of media’s influence on the suspect. 

Holmes lets the journalist make a good story out of the idea that the police are on another track, and Watson comments it like this: “I could not but admire the cunning with which my friend had inserted a wrong clue in the evening paper, so as to give the fellow the idea that he could continue his scheme with impunity”. Manipulation involving media. Hmm.

2. The possibility that Sherlock might have faked his suicide to protect John from being destroyed by media, rather than snipers.

@sherlocks-salty-blog takes this even further: “That would explain why Sherlock is so willing to accept Mary in their life? to kill CAM despite of this could be a death sentence? why he was waiting his death in TST? And willing to acept Mary’s deathly advice to save John in TLD?“

Yes, I think you might be on to something there, @sherlocks-salty-blog. Sherlock behaves very differently in S3 and S4 in comparison to S1-2. He is far more passive towards John leaving him for another person than one would have thought after John’s string of girlfriends; Sherlock even organizes the wedding (something so ‘mundane’ that it would be the last thing I’d expected from him). And his acceptance of ‘Mary’ after her shooting and almost killing him is absurd, to say the least. And then even killing for her sake, telling other people that she is his friend in T6T, and taking blame and a beating from John for her death in TLD. Taken at face value, none of this in HLV and S4 makes an iota of sense. Which is why I believe that it’s all happening inside Sherlock’s head and that it’s actually about something else entirely; I think it’s about guilt, about The Fall and about ‘protecting’ John (and probably himself) from having to face the truth about their relationship, actually being honest to each other. It’s probably also fear of what the press might do to John if they would appear publicly as a couple. I think in general Sherlock feels haunted by the press, and he doesn’t like it one bit.

Another interesting observation from @raggedyblue is that CAM and the press are apparently not interested in Sherlock’s drug use; his relationship with John is seen as more scandalous and therefore pressure point. Yes I believe Sherlock learns this the hard way in HLV; you can’t always fool the media. Once they’ve picked up your scent they’ll keep digging. But the total disinterest from the press in Sherlock’s evident drug habits in TLD is still a bit suspicious to me; if anything, this is yet another piece of evidence that TLD happens inside Sherlock’s head. I think this might also be Sherlock’s internalized homophobia speaking; he has probably convinced himself that society will see his sexual orientation as worse than being a drug addict, thus he’s far more reluctant to talk to anyone about his true feelings for John, than about taking drugs. The drugs are rather the excuse, an escape from having to deal with his emotions.

3. As for Sherlock’s public persona, or ‘facade’, I definitely think media plays a role there:

@sherlockshadow recalls an interesting quote from TAB: WATSON: “That is the version of you that I present to the public. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up. But I do not believe it. You are a living, breathing man. You’ve lived a life, you have a past. Experiences. Impulses”. To me this confirms that Watson’s chronicles in canon, as well as what we see in the BBC Sherlock show in general, are elaborated products rather than any kind of objective ‘truth’. So it makes sense that the authors would let Watson address this in TAB, which is kind of a mix between BBC Sherlock and canon.

According to @sarahthecoat, The Strand Magazine has become the lens through which we see Holmes, while Holmes himself remains unseen, as exemplified by Holmes hiding in the hansom in TAB.

Yes, I agree, and I think basically the same goes for John Watson’s blog in our times (except for the last post). The interesting thing about BBC Sherlock, however, is that many things are rather shown from Holmes’ perspective. In fact, I believe the whole show is. ;)

4. On a meta level of this show, might there be a message about the media?

@gosherlocked offers the idea that media might symbolize certain parts of the public, of public opinion towards people who are different in one way or the other. 

Oh yes, I agree that this might definitely be the case; Sherlock says it himself about CAM (=media):

I think media’s behaviour in the show reflects the fact that the LGBTQ issue is constantly joked about and alluded to, but never addressed seriously. Kitty Riley’s prying into Sherlock’s love life or the papers calling John a ‘confirmed bachelor” in TRF are examples of this. I also believe that this is entirely intentional from the show-makers, because I think it’s meant as satire - maybe a kind of satire that (sadly) flies over the heads of most of their audience, and over real life media’s head in particular, but still satire; harsh, damning mockery. And I suspect that what they’re making fun of might be the hypocrisy of the public opinion, the parts of the audience that uncritically swallows whatever hetero norm rubbish of a storyline they’re served without even questioning it - including the part of traditional sherlockian fandom that would be apalled by the prospect of a gay Holmes. Seemingly ‘warm paste’ but subversive under the surface, I believe.

Another good point, made by @elldotsee, is this: “Oh! I also believe that TPTB are doing the same to us IN REAL LIFE. all the interviews, especially since s4 that insist that there was “never any romance” between John and Sherlock, that Martin and Ben never “played at being lovers”, etc etc. they’re using the media to make us believe the fairy tales, just like they told us they were going to in the show. Maybe this is their “big, ground breaking idea”.¨

Yes - that’s exactly what I think too, @elldotsee. I strongly suspect the writers are playing with us this way. In fact, I believe that the main purpose, the central message with this show is not ‘Johnlock’ per se; it’s not to give LGBTQ people their long due representation in the world’s most famous detective story (even if I do believe this will still be their endgame). No, I think this is a comment on the still very much lingering homophobia and heteronormativity, and just how easily people buy into media’s lies and fairy tales about it. I believe S4 is a Dystopia, as @tjlcisthenewsexy has pointed out earlier - a worst case scenario. But I think they’re very deliberately messing around with their audience, trying to teach us a lesson: ‘Think critically, do not just lap up everything you hear from media’. 

The cast and crew can say just about anything in interviews, and next time contradict it, and real life media can twist it around a million times; it’s still only the work that matters.

Therefore, If we want answers, we have to look at the actual show, not at what’s said about it in media.

(By the way @elldotsee , you wonder when John’s blog stops updating? As far as I know, that happens shortly after TSoT but before HLV, and Sherlock makes the last post when John is on honeymoon. I wrote about these things in my meta series ‘What happened to Sherlock?’ (X, X, X, X). John types on a jpg-file in T6T.)

5. About ‘straight-washing’

@tjlcisthenewsexy had a lot of interesting additions, some of which I replied to here. One of them was that S4:s function might be to ‘set the record straight’, just as Janine’s interviews about Sherlock being ‘as red-blooded as they come’, did in HLV, thereby denying any gay relationship between him and John. 

@sarahthecoat points out something similar; that Janine’s ‘straightwashing’ of Sherlock in the press in HLV could be seen as a parallel to Mary’s ‘straightwashing’ of John by marrying him. 

Come to think of it, that’s pretty much exactly the implications of ‘Mary’s role in canon and in Sherlock, according to this excellent analysis by @green-violin-bow: “And there you have it: the central problem of Mary Morstan/Watson, in both ACD canon and BBC Sherlock – she shoots Sherlock in the heart – or does she save his life?“ “Mary Watson’s presence provides Holmes and Watson with a lifesaving alibi”. 

Which was probably the only narrative option for them in the Victorian times, where they would have been imprisoned if found together (and that would go for the author writing about them too). While in our time the same solution seems to me like an infuriating backlash, something we should never tolerate.

6. About media and power

@elldotsee lifts several good points, of which I find this one particularly interesting: The name ‘Napoleon’ is associated with three different persons in this show: 1. CAM is referred to as the “Napoleon of blackmail” in HLV 2. Moriarty calls himself the “Napoleon of crime” in TAB 3. Craig the hacker in T6T says that “Thatcher’s like – I dunno – Napoleon now”

To this I’d like to add the conversation between Sherlock and Faith in TLD (transcript by Ariane De Vere, my bolding):

SHERLOCK:  D’you know why I’m going to take your case?  Because of the one impossible thing you’ve said. FAITH: What impossible thing? SHERLOCK: You said your life turned on one word. FAITH: Yes: the name of the person my father wanted to kill. SHERLOCK: That’s the impossible thing. Just that, right there. FAITH:  What’s impossible? SHERLOCK:  Names aren’t one word. They’re always at least two. Sherlock Holmes; Faith Smith; Santa Claus; Winston Churchill; Napoleon Bonaparte. Actually, just ’Napoleon’ would do. FAITH: Or Elvis? SHERLOCK: Well, I think we can rule both of them out as targets.

And instead, Sherlock eventually comes up with the word ‘anyone’ as a target for the serial killer. Yes, because Napoleon wasn’t exactly a target, was he? He was rather the aggressor. Well, in the ACD canon story The Six Napoleons, busts of him are repeatedly smashed of course, just as busts of Thatcher is destroyed in both the episode TST and John’s blog post The Six Thatchers. But in the quote above, Napoleon’s name is also placed beside Winston Churchill, a famous British prime minister. This, in combination with the linking of two villains and Thatcher to Napoleon’s name, makes one thing rather obvious to me: that Margaret Thatcher is also seen as a villain by Sherlock, and the show; maybe she’s even seen as a serial killer. I think there’s a reason why these two names – Napoleon and Thatcher – are so emphasized in the show. Because they link three things together: Homophobia (Moriarty), Media (CAM) and the government (Thatcher). All of them can produce death if their doings drive people to suicide.

7. Kitty Riley

@ebaeschnbliah points out something that I hadn’t noticed at all: that the words ‘Make Believe’  can be found on the wall of Kitty Riley’s room in TRF.

Wow - fairy tales… ;)

@tjlcisthenewsexy also brings up Kitty Riley and the bathroom scene, but then also says this:

“Sherlock WAS protecting John - protecting him from what Sherlock KNEW was coming very shortly. I mean it’s already in the show, really - “Sherlock is a fake” might as well read “They’re gay”. Kitty Reilly colluded with homophobia (in the form of Jim Moriarty) to put together that shaming article that supposedly lead directly to Sherlock’s suicide. Yep….it’s all in there”. 

I do agree with this, and I’d like to linger a bit longer on Kitty’s possible role here, because I believe there’s definitely more to these events than meets the eye. There are so many weird things about the scene in her apartment, and the events leading up to it in TRF, that I can’t help wondering which parts of it are actually ‘real’. So let’s have a closer look.

First of all, John hasn’t written anything on his blog about the central case of TRF - the case that meant Sherlock’s supposed death - except this:

And then this:  “But you know what happened? Sherlock saved the lives of two kids. Regardless of anything else, he did that. And they didn't even like him very much. If you really think that he was guilty or that Moriarty wasn't real then feel free to explain this “ (link to the post with Moriarty’s hacking of his blog).

But this makes me suspicious, because it doesn’t exactly make sense; why is it ‘too final’? Why is it so negative for John to write about this? Wouldn’t it be John Watson’s dearest interest to write up the truth about this case, trying to clear Sherlock’s name from media’s slander? That’s what he does in ACD canon, at least; he describes The Final Problem with the events at the Reichenbach Falls in detail, to let the world see that the slandering of Holmes by his enemies is completely false (excerpt from FINA, my bolding):

“It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand has been forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am satisfied that the time has come when no good purpose is to be served by its suppression. As far as I know, there have been only three accounts in the public press: that in the Journal de Genève on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter’s dispatch in the English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letters to which I have alluded. Of these the first and second were extremely condensed, while the last is, as I shall now show, an absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to tell for the first time what really took place between Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes”.

But apparently our modern John didn’t want to do this on his blog, in spite of having witnessed Moriarty’s whole performance in Kitty’s apartment. John must have plenty of evidence that show Sherlock’s real part in the case, and he and Molly assisted in the whole chemical analysis at Barts. And what about his own role; if Sherlock was arrested for kidnapping, wouldn’t John be his accomplice? But answering the vile attacks on Sherlock in his comment section John just says “Believe what you like”, and not a word about media’s role. In fact, the media is never even mentioned by John between TRF and Sherlocks return in TEH, in spite of having played such a damning role in Sherlock’s downfall. John does write up some other of their cases after this, but the kidnapping case seems taboo. I sense a kind of fear here; there must be things we’re not told. Was John under pressure? 

The circumstances around Sherlock’s arrest in TRF look odd to me, to say the least; apparently he’s a suspect for having figured out how to save the kidnapped children, and because one of the kids got frightened when she saw him. But there’s no actual evidence that we know of, only Donovan’s very dubious speculations about a possible motive, based on an upset child’s reaction. And Sherlock made his deductions about the place at the police station, in front of everyone. Basically, they had nothing on him to hold water in a court case. How can anyone be arrested for kidnapping on those grounds? And if Sherlock wanted to avoid being photographed by the media when brought in by a police car, why not just take a cab to the police station by himself? After all, that’s what he usually does!

But instead, he sits and waits to get collected, and then he escapes together with John, and drags both of them handcuffed in front of a bus, based on the extremely risky prediction that the assassin might save them. Is it really worth risking John’s life to prove a point about a computer code? Weird... And then there’s Kitty. Why break into her apartment? This guy is now wanted by the police, and the first thing he does is committing a crime at the very place of the journalist who has been slandering him in the press? Anyway, when John and Sherlock arrive at Kitty’s apartment, the wisest thing to do would be to use any tool in her kitchen to immediately get rid of the handcuffs, right? And then perhaps search her apartment for clues? Nope. Instead, they just sit handcuffed in the dark, waiting for the journalist with her door open. 

I think the symbolism of this is very apt; they’re closely and firmly bound to each other, but completely in the dark about it! :))) And then Media comes to reveal it...

More absurdities: Kitty shows them her still un-published article, as if this would be ‘proof’ that Sherlock is a fraud. Let’s take a closer look at it. This is her earlier brief news flash in The Sun, advertising the coming article:

Transcript:  SHERLOCK: THE SHOCKING TRUTH - EXCLUSIVE

(Close Friend Richard Brook Tells All)

SUPER-SLEUTH Sherlock Holmes has today been exposed as a fraud in a revelation that will shock his new found base of [ado]ring fans. Out-of-work actor Richard Brook revealed exclusively to THE SUN that he was hired by Holmes in an elaborate deception to fool the British public into believing Holmes had above-average ‘detective skills’. Brook, who has known Holmes for decades and until recently considered him to be a close friend, said he was at first desperate for the money, but later found he had no [...]

And this is the still un-published manuscript that Kitty shows Sherlock and John in her flat - the document that Kitty calls ‘conclusive proof’ (together with some loose papers from Moriarty which do not look like cuttings from newspapers; the paper is entirely white and there’s no logo or date or similar evidence that they have actually been published): 

Transcript: SHERLOCK’S A FAKE!

“He invented all the crimes” (Exclusive from Kitty Riley)

Out-of-work actor Richard Brook reveals exclusively to us that he was hired by Holmes in an elaborate deception to fool the British public into believing that Holmes had above average ’detective skills’. “He had the whole ‘Moriarty’ cover cooked up from the beginning and invented all the crimes”, said Brook. “All I had to do was learn my lines.” Brook, who has known Holmes for decades and until recently considered him to be a close friend, said he was at [...] desperate for the money but later [...] he had no choice but to continue the deception. I didn’t realise what I was getting into until it was too late. I’m not proud of myself, but at least now the world knows the truth about Sherlock Holmes”. In what will no doubt spark a massive internal investigation at Scotland Yard, Holmes has also fooled several high-ranking detectives into believing.

‘Well boy’, Uncle Pumblechook [...]

But a closer look at Kitty’s supposed manuscript reveals that this same text (except for the ‘Uncle’ part) is copy-pasted and repeated again and again – this is indeed fake news! And we never got to know what evidence they actually had on Sherlock, the incriminating facts that ‘only someone close to Sherlock could know’ and that Mycroft supposedly ‘blabbed’ about to Moriarty. What was it about? His drug problems? Youth crimes? Mental health issues?Mythomania? I’m still at a loss to see how these papers could prove that Sherlock was a ‘fake’ who had ‘invented all the crimes’ without further details. The fact that we never get any specifics is extremely suspicious to me; what crimes exactly? Is he supposed to have invented Jennifer Wilson’s murder? Eddie Van Coon? Alex Woodbridge? If the crimes weren’t committed, what had NSY been investigating? Fake bodies? And if Sherlock was suspected of having committed them all, why wasn’t John suspected as an accomplice? It doesn’t make sense...

It strikes me, however, that Kitty’s most juicy bit that she wanted to publish about Sherlock, the one about ‘you and John Watson - just platonic or?’ is no longer mentioned in all this. Not a word about the ‘confirmed bachelors’ anymore - why is that? This is all about Sherlock, not John. I very much agree with @tjlcisthenewsexy here; “Sherlock is a fake” might as well read “They’re gay”...

‘Real’ newspapers

To give a more complete picture of media’s role, I’ve made a quick research about the different newspapers shown in BBC Sherlock; which are they and what do they say? It turns out that most of them actually exist in real life. Below is a short presentation and some of their headlines in the show:

The Daily Express  (UK ‘middle market’, conservative tabloid)  

“Boy, 18, kills himself inside sports centre.” (ASiP) “Bachelor John Watson” (TRF) “Crime of the century” (TRF) “Moriarty walks free. Shock verdict at Old Bailey trial” (TRF) ”Shag-a-lot Holmes” (HLV)

Going by the insinuations about John’s sexual orientation, this paper is depicted as sensationalist in BBC Sherlock, which there’s also lots of evidence for in real life, in spite of being described as ‘middle market’ (see Wikipedia link above). It has been accused of xenophobia, among other things.

Sunday Express (belongs to The Daily Express. Known for controversies )

“Who wants to be a million-hair” (TBB)

Daily Star (’Redtop’ UK tabloid, known for controversies, same publisher as Daily Express) 

“World Exclusive Boffin Sherlock solves another” (TRF) “How was he ever acquitted” (about Moriarty; TRF)

The Daily Mail (British conservative ‘middle-market’ tabloid) REPORTER 3: Yes, but if they are murders, how do people keep themselves safe? LESTRADE:  Well, don’t commit suicide. (The reporter looks at him in shock. Donovan covers her mouth and murmurs a warning.) DONOVAN:  “Daily Mail.”  

The Times (British conservative newspaper; not regarded as ‘tabloid’)

John looks at the article reporting Beth Davenport’s apparent suicide. Next to a large photograph of Beth is a smaller one showing the man who just visited the flat and identifying him as D.I. Lestrade. (ASiP)

The Daily Telegraph (aka The Telegraph. British daily broadsheet newspaper)

Sherlock reading, headline invisible (TBB)

The Sunday Telegraph (owned by The Daily Telegraph)

Sherlock reading, headline invisible. Picture seems to show Connie Prince (TBB)

Daily Mirror (British ‘redtop’ tabloid)  

“Tragic Carl died doing what he loved” (Sherlock’s clip; TGG) “7 times a night in Baker Street” (HLV)

The Guardian (British daily newspaper known for liberal or left-wing viewpoints)

“Amateur detective to be called as expert witness. Scotland Yard calls upon ‘nation’s favourite detective’ in Moriarty trail” (TRF) “The case is riddled with irony and intrigue but perhaps reflects a deeper malaise that seems to be at the heart of a society” (TRF) “Shock verdict at trial”(TRF) “Moriarty vanishes” (TRF) “What next for the Reichenbach hero” (TRF) “Lord Smallwood suicide” (HLV)

The Sun (British ‘redtop’ tabloid, many controversies around misogyny, homophobia and Thatcherism)

“Sherlock – the shocking truth” (by Kitty Riley, TRF) ”Sherlock’s a fake! ‘He invented all the crimes’” (unpublished, Kitty Riley, TRF) “Suicide of fake genius” (TRF)

Global CAM News (Invented newspaper, as far as I can see)

“Trepoff  ‘Guilty’ Sensation!” (MHR)

The Independent (British newspaper, ‘social-liberal’; since 2016 it only exists online)

John reading, headline invisible (TRF)

When making this list, some of the newspapers reminded me of these lines from Tom Robinson’s satirical song from the seventies (my bolding):

Glad to be Gay (Lyrics) Pictures of naked young women are fun In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun There's no nudes in Gay News, our one magazine But they still find excuses to call it obscene Read how disgusting we are in the press The Telegraph, People and Sunday Express Molesters of children, corruptors of youth It's there in the paper, it must be the truth

Three of these six newspapers and tabloids are figuring in BBC Sherlock, one of them (The Sun) highly contributing to Sherlock’s Fall by carrying false and defamatory news about him. And there’s also this, in the rooftop scene at the end of TRF:

JIM: “Genius detective proved to be a fraud.” I read it in the paper, so it must be true. I love newspapers. Fairytales.

This may be a complete coincidence, of course, but I did find some other possible references to Tom Robinson too, which I described in this meta some time ago.

OK, this is already a monster-post, but just one more little observation:

I know we shouldn’t lend too much credibility to the media, right? But ‘you can’t kill an idea, can you’? Not once it’s made a home in your head...  :)

Headline in TSoT: “Potential freezing spell puts funeral directors on red alert”. So, maybe a ‘freezing spell’...

...should put us on ‘red alert’...

...and not ‘bury’ this show entirely just yet? I’ll leave you to your deductions. ;)

@ebaeschnbliah @raggedyblue @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @sagestreet @tjlcisthenewsexy @221bloodnun @elldotsee @mrskolesouniverse @whimsicalethnographies @sherlocks-salty-blog @fellshish

#Media's role in Sherlock

[sanguinarysanguinity]

2017 Fic (and things) in Review

tagged (some time ago) by @a-candle-for-sherlock and @a-different-equation, thank you!

Total number of completed stories (and things): 11 stories (although three were technically written during earlier years), 2 podfics and 1 vid.

Total word count: 57K words, which to my surprise is very much in keeping with previous years. (During 2014-2017 inclusive -- the period I’ve been ficcing in earnest -- I’ve been running a very steady 55K-60K/year. Right now I’m at 32K for 2018, right on track to continue the trend.)

Fandoms written in: Elementary, My Dearly Beloved Detective, New Russian Holmes, Whitehead Holmes, Sherlock Ferret, ACD Holmes, Professor Challenger, Yuri!! on Ice, Doctor Who, and Wonder Woman. And I vidded in Noah’s Arc, and podficced for Elementary and BBC Sherlock.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I was struggling with mental health stuff that came to a head in October, after which I spent far less time writing than I used to. Consequently, I ended the year thinking I had written less than usual? And yet my published total for the year is right in keeping with previous years. Brains, they lie sometimes.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Perhaps Mr. Green and the Adventure of the Ten-Gallon Hat. It hits exactly the tone I was aiming for -- melancholy and humorous, poignant and absurd -- and is likewise exactly the fix-it that I wanted for the film. (Of course Jane ran away from a conventional humdrum marriage to join the circus, and of course she came back to Shirley after.) It is a small story, but my pleasure in it is quite uncomplicated, which is a rarity for me.

Did you take any writing risks this year? Well, trying to finish a 21K story for an exchange (while simultaneously modding the exchange!) felt hella risky: there were a couple of weeks there when I was typing hell-for-leather, hoping I’d be able to wrassle the thing into some sort of finished state before that last, immovable deadline. (We the mods have a bad habit of not holding ourselves to the official due dates, and thus leaving ourselves no margin for error later on. It’s just a smidge more adrenaline-inducing than I quite enjoy.)

And in a different kind of risky, Upon a Ring was an intensely personal story, such that publishing it left me feeling hideously exposed and vulnerable, ugh. Happily, the fandom gave it a kind, thoughtful reception -- ACD fandom is a really lovely group of people.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? Due to a combination of issues, I wasn’t writing at all at the end of 2017; my major goal for 2018 was to see if I could get the creative engine restarted somehow. So far, I seem to be having trouble generating new story or vid ideas, and instead have been digging into my Dispatch Box of Unfinished Drafts (as @educatedinyellow called it) and working on those instead. Which has been productive, sure, but fucking challenging, I tell you. Everything that’s been left mouldering in there has been left so for a reason; none of it has been straightforward to finish. But the effort has been satisfying, too: stories and vids that had once upon a time caught me strongly enough to begin them, now slowly, one by one, coming to see the light of day. And presumably I’ll have levelled up by the time I’m ready to move on to new, fresh ideas (should they ever come).

And further, goal-wise: I was trying to outwrite my misery during 2016 and 2017; I’d like to find a new balance for myself here in 2018, one in which I’m still writing, but for happier reasons.

Best story of the year? Perhaps Nostoi, despite all its faults. I wrote it in a mad hell-for-leather dash, as mentioned above, and so it has ungainly bits, themes that could have been better brought into harness, and in many ways it feels like a retread of Holocene Park -- in subject matter, in scope, in themes and dynamics... Yet in terms of a satisfying, sink-your-teeth-into-it, story-story, it is perhaps the best of what I produced last year.

Assuming, of course, that what you want is a swashbuckling romp underpinned with earnest Holmes-and-Watson feelings! But if you instead want a delicately crafted, profoundly intimate story, Upon a Ring would be the best; if you want open and easy humor with a side of deep affection, The Case of the Six Marmalades would be the best. If you want some uncomplicatedly fun-and-sexy femslash, it’d be Etta Candy’s Last Stand. “Best” really, really depends on what you want from a story, you know?

Most popular story of the year? Etta Candy’s Last Stand -- it single-handedly earned over half of last year’s total kudos.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Honestly, I mostly try not to think like this, for the sake of my own sanity. I write a lot of gen and rarepairs in tiny or inactive fandoms, and unless such a story is an I-gotta-rec-this-right-now powerhouse that earns itself some champions, its readership will never extend beyond its initial circle of my subscribers. If one is going to write stories like that -- and I write a goodly number of them -- one has to be okay with light readership that doesn’t reflect the story’s quality.

Last year, I wrote three stories that fit that description: Sherlock Ferret & the Amnesiac Admiral, The Spanking Ghosts, and Mr. Green and the Adventure of the Ten-Gallon Hat. They’re all three gen or rarepairs in tiny fandoms, and their readership has been low, low, exactly as I expected. But while they haven’t had many readers, their readers have been warm and generous, which is always lovely.

Most fun story to write: The Case of the Six Marmalades! It was such fun dreaming up new ways for Holmes to lovingly and obliviously torture Watson, and for Watson to be grimly polite about it. :-D

Most unintentionally telling story: Eh, I knew exactly what I was doing with the personally telling ones. Etta Candy’s Last Stand is underwritten by that horrible summer of lovelorn pining when I first fell for @grrlpup and every last thing she did made me want to die of incoherent want. Nostoi has a whole lot of homesickness for my childhood, a good portion of which was spent on boats. Spanking Ghosts is rooted in personal experiences with homophobes-I-called-friends, topped with some earnest wish fulfillment. And so on. I put my life on the page a lot, and I very much recognize when I’m doing it.

Biggest disappointment: Those several months at the end of the year when tho words and ideas just... stopped.

Biggest surprise: How much I enjoyed recording As Romeo to Juliet. Beeblock and I haven’t gotten along for a while now, unfortunately, and I discovered while doing canon review for the voices that taking a break from the show hasn’t really lessened my antipathy. :-/ But @iwantthatbelstaffanditsoccupant’s story is tender and lovely, and it was a real pleasure trying to do well by it, to give it the same earnest, heartfelt treatment that the author did. Plus I enjoyed the fiddliness of the sound engineering, trying to get the violin’s voice just so... I’m rather pleased by the result.

Tagging: Is there anyone who hasn’t been tagged yet? If so, please consider yourself tagged.

#long post #my writing

[brilliantorinsane]

The Speckled Band (1931): a.k.a. Sherlock Wilde

Note: For this meta I tagged everyone who reblogged earlier posts in the series. However, as I certainly don’t want to shove my work at anyone who isn’t interested, from this point forward I will only only tag individuals who have shown continued interest by reblogging multiple posts, or who have specifically asked to be tagged. Thank you to anyone who has been or continues to be interested in any part of this series <3

Guys, I did it. I found the Gayest Holmes. Not the best Holmes, nor the best adaptation by any stretch of the imagination; but most definitely the gayest. Well, okay, the most stereotypically gay, and one of the most nearly confirmed as such in the explicit text of the film—a fact which has me reeling given that this film was released in 1931.

This is the third installment of my series on obscure Holmes adaptations and their depiction of our beloved duo both individually and in relation to each other. For the first two installments, see below:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Stoll Pitures, 1921–1923)

The Speckled Band on Stage: Yep, Still Gay

Production and Reception:

[Spoilers ahead. But unless you want to avoid spoiling the ACD cannon story The Speckled Band or his play of the same name, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s really nothing worth spoiling in this film]

This adaptation, released the year after Doyle’s death, is derived less from the cannon story of the same name than from a stage adaptation also written by Doyle. The play is wonderful, featuring a genuinely chilling villain, well-realized side characters, laugh-out-loud humor, the best Holmes and Watson, and allllll the gay subtext. You can read the script here, and my discussion of the play is linked above.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers’ 5 step adaptation plan appears to have been the following:

1. Keep the bare bones of the play, including some of the name changes, the emphasis on the Rylott household, etc.

2. Take the play’s uncomfortable undertone of Orientalism and make it the film’s prevailing atmosphere, then add casual pro-slavery rhetoric, just ‘cause.

3. Remove approximately 3/4s of what made Doyle’s script so good, then creatively undermine, dilute, and/or convolute the remaining 1/4.

4. Hire a promising actor to play Holmes, and then give him minimal interesting content.

5. Hire the actor who played Rylott in the stage play, because it can’t hurt to have one good thing.

Yeah … I’m exaggerating, but its not good. Which is disappointing on many levels, because it would have been fascinating to know how a flagrantly gay Holmes would have fared in the early 1930s. But as it is, this adaptation fails on so many levels that it seems impossible to theorize whether homophobia played a significant role in the fact that it made scarcely any impact in its day and has been entirely forgotten now. Sure, homophobia might have aided the process of erasure, but this film didn’t need any help sinking into oblivion.

Nevertheless, although the blaring racism makes it difficult to fully appreciate the filmmaker’s courage in not abandoning the play’s subtext, it is still worth being aware that filmmakers were paying attention to and actively portraying the ACD cannon subtext as early as 1931.

Raymond Massey as Sherlock Holmes

It really is a pity that this film didn’t give Raymond Massey the chance to show what he could have done with Sherlock Holmes. In his book Sherlock Holmes on Screen, Alan Barns argues that Massey might have created a Holmes to rival all his contemporaries, and whenever he appeared I paid close attention, always feeling as if he were about to get interesting. Unfortunately, he never quite did.

Massey’s Holmes spends the majority of the film in a deeply lethargic state. Depressive moods are as much a part of Sherlock’s character as his boundless curiosity, and I would have found it a rather interesting portrayal if he had ever woken up from his stupor. But although he has flashes of intensity, in the end he lounges about the crime scene as listlessly as he does 221B. Further, because we know too little about this Holmes to understand his lethargy, he never quite solidifies into a concrete or compelling individual.

In dearth of anything else, the most interesting thing about this Holmes is that he is definitely, definitively, flagrantly gay. To Massey’s credit, this is instantly apparent—my initial impression that, “wow, this Holmes is kinda a lazy dick,” was paralleled with a rather flabbergasted, “wait … is he playing him as gay???”

If I’d seen Massey’s Holmes without context, I may well have thought I was watching a film about Oscar Wilde—the stereotypical epitome of Victorian homosexuality. Even Barns, who has excellent things to say about Holmes adaptations but seems vaguely allergic to discussing the detective’s sexuality, describes Massey’s Holmes as an “aesthete” and speaks of his “almost Oscar Wilde approach” (266). And all of that registers before Holmes starts examining his fingernails, resting his hand on Watson’s leg a good few inches above his knee, and talking about marriage. But we will return to that last point shortly.

Athole Stewart as John Watson

Stewart as Watson in this film is … fine. Even good, comparatively speaking—Stewart’s Watson is hearty and kind and is not portrayed as an idiot, which really is an anomaly at this stage of Holmes adaptations. This is probably due in large part to his excellent role in Doyle’s stage play. Unfortunately, the film consistently sets up Watson’s strengths only to erase them.

Watson in the film is kind to Helen—that’s the one good quality that doesn’t get undermined. So, yay. But while in the play Watson stands up against Rylott’s tyrannical demands when he is summoned to examine the body of the first murdered sister, the film begins to replicate that scene only to have Watson give in after his initial protest. In both the play and film he initially appears to be a decidedly intelligent man who guesses exactly what is going on in the the Rylott household, but in the film this is undermined by his subsequent conversation with Holmes, in which it appears that he was entirely clueless and took everything at face value after all. The film makes an interesting but half-hearted attempt at introducing modern technology into 221B, and most of this has been installed by Watson; but Holmes finds it essentially useless for his work and relies on different tools entirely. In the play Watson himself kills the snake; in the film he … shines a light so Holmes can attack it.

In short, Stewart’s Watson goes through the motions of being a partner, but he is never quite allowed to do anything useful.

So … What About Johnlock?

Eh. I guess?

By all rights an adaptation with a gay Holmes ought to at least have one-sided unrequited Johnlock. But while its clear that Holmes is gay, it is not clear that he is in love with Watson.

Beyond the character’s aestheticism, mannerisms, and thigh grab, evidence of Holmes’s sexuality is blatantly but clumsily contained in two brief exchanges with Watson regarding Helen’s marriage to her fiancee. The first comes at the end of Holmes’s first scene, when he abruptly asks Watson to inform him when Helen becomes engaged, with an intensity which demonstrates some emotional investment in the event.

My initial (annoyed) assumption was that they were going to make Holmes out to be in love with Helen. But when Helen comes to Holmes for help two years later, it is clear that they have never met. Nor is there anything in Holmes’s treatment of her to imply some creepy at-a-distance infatuation. And yet we are definitely supposed to pay attention to his preoccupation with the wedding, because the final scene consists of Watson announcing Helen’s engagement to Glen Sternum, to which Holmes responds: “I was afraid that might happen.” Then when Watson, taking Holmes’s response for generalized cynicism, leaves the room with the amused assertion that “we all come to it [i.e. marriage],” Holmes waits until he is gone to respond with a melancholy, “not all, my dear Watson. Not all.” And that, apart from a final line about filing away the details of the case, is the end.

So what are we to make of Holmes’s sorrowful preoccupation with Helen’s marriage? Honestly, I’ve been unable to work it out. Is it is meant to refer to a generalized inability to attach a girl? But there’s no hint of that in the plot; and besides, why then would he be so concerned with this particular marriage? No, it makes more sense to suppose that Holmes’s queer-coded mannerisms are fully intentional, and he knows he will never marry because society will not allow him to marry a man. So was he afraid that Watson, a good friend of the family, might marry her? But then why is he still so sorry when she marries someone else? Is he secretly in love with the man she married (who, fun fact, is a slave-owner)??? Weirdly enough, that is my only theory which doesn’t directly contradict any of the facts, although it would make for incredibly vague and sloppy storytelling.

Just to complicate this further, Doyle’s play also contains a subplot about Holmes being sorrowful about a marriage (although the sorrow is a bit more subtextual)—but in the play it is Watson’s marriage. So basically … the filmmakers appear to have gotten the “Holmes is upset about Watson’s marriage because Holmes is in love with him but cannot marry a man because Homophobia” subtext, but—perhaps because showing Holmes being openly sorrowful over Watson’s marriage felt too obvious?—they clumsily redirected Holmes’s sorrow to a different marriage with which he textually has no connection.

As for Watson, there’s not much to say. There is an odd line in which Holmes asks Watson whether the housekeeper was good-looking and Watson answers “no” before pausing and, with an air of surprise, amending, “yes.” This could be seen as indicating that he is uninterested in the attractiveness of women. (This would make him out to be gay and not bi, which I suppose makes sense for the time). But it could just as easily be put down to the film’s sloppy writing, and if Watson is gay his cheery assurance that he and Holmes both will come round to marriage in the end indicates that he is entirely unaware of it, so … *shrugs.*

In conclusion: this film was probably made by people who Knew, at least about Holmes, but instead of creating Johnlock they gave us a Holmes who is almost definitely gay but only maybe in love with Watson; he could just as easily be in love with a slave-owner he never sees during the film or be sad about not being able to marry a man in general. Then they tossed in a narratively irrelevant Watson who might maybe possibly be gay but he definitely doesn’t know it.

It’s a mess.

Conclusion: Should You Watch It?

I mean … you could. A decent-ish recording is available on YouTube here. But while I feel like we ought to be aware of this first (as far I know) stumbling attempt at subtext, I’m not trying to talk anyone into watching it. If you’re interested in Raymond Massey’s portrayal of Holmes I suggest just skipping to his scenes, which add up to slightly over half of the 50min film. In particular I recommend his first scene, from 7.15–12.35, and the final scene, which begins at 47.30. And if you find a more coherent means of interpreting Holmes’s lines about marriage, please do let me know!

Well then. Yep. That is a thing. Which exists. 

The End

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#the speckled band 1931 #sherlock flim #Raymond Massey #Athole Stewart #sherlock holmes #John watson #johnlock #film adaptation #film criticism