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Huge revelation about the Sherlock special
Jan. 8th, 2016 06:33 amAm about to read all comments from last night but -- I just realized that the only story actually name-checked in the special had a twin theme!
Legionseagle made a good start but I thought it would be fun to make a collaborative list of all the homages and shout-outs in The Abominable Bride to canon and other Holmes versions
(I'm seriously considering making a list of all the stories that were directly quoted and giving it to Sherlock fans who haven't read canon if they'd like to hunt 'em down in a reverse Easter egg hunt.)
Anyway... here's what I've got in no particular order. Sing out in comments ( Spoilers, sweetie! )
Legionseagle, where's the Rathbone reshoot?
I would have sworn that "regulation tread" was a quote, but I can't find it. The bit about bad/missing breakfast is also a homage, but all I remember of the original quote is "love romance" and googling "Sherlock Holmes" "love romance" gets... interesting... results.
(I'm seriously considering making a list of all the stories that were directly quoted and giving it to Sherlock fans who haven't read canon if they'd like to hunt 'em down in a reverse Easter egg hunt.)
Anyway... here's what I've got in no particular order. Sing out in comments ( Spoilers, sweetie! )
Legionseagle, where's the Rathbone reshoot?
I would have sworn that "regulation tread" was a quote, but I can't find it. The bit about bad/missing breakfast is also a homage, but all I remember of the original quote is "love romance" and googling "Sherlock Holmes" "love romance" gets... interesting... results.
Adventures or Hound?
Mar. 7th, 2015 04:46 pmI'm having a lively conversation over on Facebook and I want to bring it here. If you had to choose between Adventures of or Hound to introduce someone who had never read Sherlock Holmes to the canon, which would you pick?
I ask because... well, I solemnly swear I am up to no good.
[Poll #2002494]
I ask because... well, I solemnly swear I am up to no good.
[Poll #2002494]
GRIDLOCK DC
Jan. 17th, 2015 07:43 amI can't believe how often I have to redecide to NOT go to the Book Thing today. The simultaneous problems are that it always has something unique and interesting - but also that I Have. No. More. Shelf. Space. Not even on the Little Free Library shelves, as the neighborhood itself chipped in and stuffed it full last week.
So, I'm going to try to distract myself past the time I should leave by talking about GridlockDC. Who's going?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
azriona, will we finally get to meet?
It's at the top of my mind because I've been suggesting panels for it. In part by scanning through the 221B Con panel list going "yup, don't wanna miss this, don't wanna miss that..." but also combining some things.
The suggestions I've made so far:
Canon/Fanon 101: Where the book fans explain why "The Geek Interpreter" is so funny and the media fans explain hedgehogs and red pants.
Why are there lemons in the planters?: There has always been overlap between Holmes and other fandoms, moreso now that fans are blending all the shows that the actors have been in. Discussion of why these fandoms relate to Holmes: Doctor Who, Star Trek, Cabin Pressure, The Hobbit, etc.
Misogyny in the Holmesverse: Canonical Holmes is often accused of misogyny, but how did he treat women in canon? How is the treatment of women in Sherlock and Elementary better -- or worse?*
*That one is not quite on the 221B Con list, which does have a more generic "Women in canon" but I think we could really get our teeth into that one as a panel. If it gets picked for Gridlock and works, I'll suggest it for a future 221B.
I also really, REALLY hope I get picked for a panelist for the The Woman panel at 221B Con. I. Have. Opinions. Not just on canonical Irene, but how she's handled in the 21st Century.
So, I'm going to try to distract myself past the time I should leave by talking about GridlockDC. Who's going?
azriona, will we finally get to meet?It's at the top of my mind because I've been suggesting panels for it. In part by scanning through the 221B Con panel list going "yup, don't wanna miss this, don't wanna miss that..." but also combining some things.
The suggestions I've made so far:
Canon/Fanon 101: Where the book fans explain why "The Geek Interpreter" is so funny and the media fans explain hedgehogs and red pants.
Why are there lemons in the planters?: There has always been overlap between Holmes and other fandoms, moreso now that fans are blending all the shows that the actors have been in. Discussion of why these fandoms relate to Holmes: Doctor Who, Star Trek, Cabin Pressure, The Hobbit, etc.
Misogyny in the Holmesverse: Canonical Holmes is often accused of misogyny, but how did he treat women in canon? How is the treatment of women in Sherlock and Elementary better -- or worse?*
*That one is not quite on the 221B Con list, which does have a more generic "Women in canon" but I think we could really get our teeth into that one as a panel. If it gets picked for Gridlock and works, I'll suggest it for a future 221B.
I also really, REALLY hope I get picked for a panelist for the The Woman panel at 221B Con. I. Have. Opinions. Not just on canonical Irene, but how she's handled in the 21st Century.
England 3: Sherlock Holmes
Oct. 25th, 2014 05:38 pmWednesday was spent mostly at the Victoria and Albert and Thursday was mostly spent haunting the area around Covent Garden (and speaking of hauntings, every night I wasn't in the theater I was taking a different ghost tour).
But Friday was the two biggest events: Sherlock Holmes and Poppies.
Lynne had been to the Sherlock Holmes exhibit the night before because she was one of the sponsors (The Other M has a photo of her pointing at her name on the "Thank you" board. And it's why I'm not bothering to anonymize her). So she had gotten to go to the big 'do the night before, tweeting things like "Standing next to Mark Gatiss. Ho, hum, another night in London" and not tweeting about wanting to lick either the exhibits or Ian McKellen.
The next day, we were the second group too, the rest of the group being rounded out by one of the 221B Concom and one of the Tin Boxers (both studying in London), a couple of Lynne's local friends and a couple of mine from the Staggering Stories podcast.
Bring a camera; although we all got busted for taking photos in the exhibit (which is prohibited) there are two things which you can take photos of, as shown below.
( photo cut )
( Exhibit details below. Spoilers, sweetie! )
Mind you, for anyone who buys souvenirs - the ink on neither the tea towel nor the mug will last long without flaking. I was extremely disappointed by that; I like the motto "SHERLOCK HOLMES: the man who never lived and will never die" and planned on giving that mug hard use. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the deerstalker in the exclusive Cristy's "Sherlock" tweed was reasonably priced. Frankly, I expected it to be 100 pounds or more, and it's slightly less than 50.
But Friday was the two biggest events: Sherlock Holmes and Poppies.
Lynne had been to the Sherlock Holmes exhibit the night before because she was one of the sponsors (The Other M has a photo of her pointing at her name on the "Thank you" board. And it's why I'm not bothering to anonymize her). So she had gotten to go to the big 'do the night before, tweeting things like "Standing next to Mark Gatiss. Ho, hum, another night in London" and not tweeting about wanting to lick either the exhibits or Ian McKellen.
The next day, we were the second group too, the rest of the group being rounded out by one of the 221B Concom and one of the Tin Boxers (both studying in London), a couple of Lynne's local friends and a couple of mine from the Staggering Stories podcast.
Bring a camera; although we all got busted for taking photos in the exhibit (which is prohibited) there are two things which you can take photos of, as shown below.
( photo cut )
( Exhibit details below. Spoilers, sweetie! )
Mind you, for anyone who buys souvenirs - the ink on neither the tea towel nor the mug will last long without flaking. I was extremely disappointed by that; I like the motto "SHERLOCK HOLMES: the man who never lived and will never die" and planned on giving that mug hard use. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the deerstalker in the exclusive Cristy's "Sherlock" tweed was reasonably priced. Frankly, I expected it to be 100 pounds or more, and it's slightly less than 50.
221B Con Poll
Mar. 11th, 2014 05:19 pmI did not get it in gear this year to do a special booklet of canon favorites for 221B Con. But Dover Thrift is, well, thrifty, and I've decided to buy 40 of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Hound of the Baskervilles, or a mix of the two. Which way should I go?
[Poll #1960259]
[Poll #1960259]
Thanks to patience and luck at the Book Thing, my Lord Peter collection - originally a series of yellowed college-era paperbacks - now looks like this:
(I know it's not the full series. It's the parts of the series I like enough to keep.) If I can get my mitts on matching versions of Clouds and Poison I'll buy them, but until then I at least have nice ones.)
Yesterday I also scored Volume I of the Doubleday 1950s* Complete Sherlock Holmes, which completes that set, as I'd snagged Vol II months ago. Both of them are hardbacks without dust jackets and in poor condition, which is, believe it or not, exactly what I wanted. Not only were they free; by the time I've used half a roll of book tape to keep the covers on and the pages in, I don't feel that I'm "ruining" them to use them as a grow-your-own annotated edition with marginalia and highlighter. And just in time too; the next Tin Box meeting is coming up and I'd like to start my ad hoc notations with the story du jour -- Copper Beeches, which is one of my favorites.
(It is, by the way, surprisingly hard to find copies of Volume 1 of any split version of the complete canon around here. This is mildly surprising because it's Vol 2 that has all the stories you still have to pay for in America, but only mildly so because Vol 1 has most of the famous stuff in it.)
*Vol I is 1956 with "Susan Saffer, Feb 19, 1957" neatly inked on the flyleaf; Vol II is from '53 with no notes.
(I know it's not the full series. It's the parts of the series I like enough to keep.) If I can get my mitts on matching versions of Clouds and Poison I'll buy them, but until then I at least have nice ones.)
Yesterday I also scored Volume I of the Doubleday 1950s* Complete Sherlock Holmes, which completes that set, as I'd snagged Vol II months ago. Both of them are hardbacks without dust jackets and in poor condition, which is, believe it or not, exactly what I wanted. Not only were they free; by the time I've used half a roll of book tape to keep the covers on and the pages in, I don't feel that I'm "ruining" them to use them as a grow-your-own annotated edition with marginalia and highlighter. And just in time too; the next Tin Box meeting is coming up and I'd like to start my ad hoc notations with the story du jour -- Copper Beeches, which is one of my favorites.
(It is, by the way, surprisingly hard to find copies of Volume 1 of any split version of the complete canon around here. This is mildly surprising because it's Vol 2 that has all the stories you still have to pay for in America, but only mildly so because Vol 1 has most of the famous stuff in it.)
*Vol I is 1956 with "Susan Saffer, Feb 19, 1957" neatly inked on the flyleaf; Vol II is from '53 with no notes.
A sudden realization on Holmes canon
Apr. 8th, 2013 10:37 amI'm listening to Edward Hardwicke reading the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes while I work, and in the middle of Copper Beeches, I realized something. From The Red-Headed League onwards, Holmes canon is just riddled with people doing dumbass things for money, even when the money comes so high or so easy that someone with 5 functioning brain cells would hear all kinds of warning bells.
BUT!
The men all take the money and come to Holmes afterwards, after things inevitably fall apart.
The only woman to get a offered a deal like this, Violet Hunter, comes to Holmes FIRST, saying "I really need this money, but this stinks on ice. I need your advice."
Copper Beeches has long been a favorite because Violet is smart and proactive, but this is the first time I realized that she is not only smarter than the antagonists in her story, but also than about a third of the men in canon.
BUT!
The men all take the money and come to Holmes afterwards, after things inevitably fall apart.
The only woman to get a offered a deal like this, Violet Hunter, comes to Holmes FIRST, saying "I really need this money, but this stinks on ice. I need your advice."
Copper Beeches has long been a favorite because Violet is smart and proactive, but this is the first time I realized that she is not only smarter than the antagonists in her story, but also than about a third of the men in canon.
Why Moriarty Sucks
Feb. 6th, 2013 04:44 pmI'm not waiting for the next link roundup to pass this one on because it articulates everything I hate about the Moriarty character, from canon onwards: I'd Prefer Less Moriarty.
It's hard to sample the article and not just copy the entire thing, but here is the meat of it:
"Moriarty is always portrayed as an End Boss, the ultimate mastermind behind whatever the sinister plot is. He’s the baddest badass the Holmes character ever meets, and when he shows up, boy is it on. You know the stakes have risen.
Except that’s not what’s appealing about Sherlock Holmes in the stories (emphasis added). ...
The thing that bothers me about Moriarty, and especially when it came to Sherlock and now Elementary is that not only does he come in as the big bad, he also brings with him the old personal vendetta. He’s not The Napoleon of Crime, he’s The Guy Who Really Effin Hates Sherlock Holmes, and he doesn’t just do crimes, he has it in for Holmes specifically. Once he walks on stage, Holmes stops solving crimes and starts a deadly game of cat and mouse where this time it’s personal. What we tuned in to see is cast aside: we know who the bad guy is (Moriarty) and what the endgame is (defeat Holmes)."
So. Much. This! I LOATHE Moriarty as a character in canon and moreso in spinoffs and pastiches. He warps far more interesting and smart canonical characters into minions, or they're ignored because we're all supposed to be more impressed by and afraid of The Big Badass.
Dave then goes on to nail the heart of the problem with turning detective stories into mano-a-mano thrillers:
"It also bugs me at this point because it turns the plot into exactly the kind of plot I hate, the one where the good guy and the bad guy just have a giant pissing contest around the city and usually a bunch of faceless innocent nobodies get caught in-between. I hate this story. I don’t like it when the hero is in a situation where, honestly, we’d be better off without him."
Moriarty is not only a fairly uninteresting character, he diminishes Holmes. We already KNOW what's going to happen, just like we already KNOW what's going to happen when Superman fights Lex Luthor, Batman fights the Joker, the Doctor fights the Daleks, etc., etc., etc.
This is not interesting storytelling because there is no actual tension in reaching a predetermined outcome!
Moriarty sucks. Moriarty sucks precisely because we already know what's going to happen the moment he shows up. And what's going to happen is not what we signed up for - no deductions, no "singular" cases, no twists. Just the overwhelming stench of ammonia and testosterone.
PS - This is also proof that I can read and rec a pro-Elementary, anti-Sherlock article without bursting into flame. Just in case anyone wondered.
PPS - Yes, I know that the "fic rec sherlock" tag really doesn't have a lot to do with fic these days.
It's hard to sample the article and not just copy the entire thing, but here is the meat of it:
"Moriarty is always portrayed as an End Boss, the ultimate mastermind behind whatever the sinister plot is. He’s the baddest badass the Holmes character ever meets, and when he shows up, boy is it on. You know the stakes have risen.
Except that’s not what’s appealing about Sherlock Holmes in the stories (emphasis added). ...
The thing that bothers me about Moriarty, and especially when it came to Sherlock and now Elementary is that not only does he come in as the big bad, he also brings with him the old personal vendetta. He’s not The Napoleon of Crime, he’s The Guy Who Really Effin Hates Sherlock Holmes, and he doesn’t just do crimes, he has it in for Holmes specifically. Once he walks on stage, Holmes stops solving crimes and starts a deadly game of cat and mouse where this time it’s personal. What we tuned in to see is cast aside: we know who the bad guy is (Moriarty) and what the endgame is (defeat Holmes)."
So. Much. This! I LOATHE Moriarty as a character in canon and moreso in spinoffs and pastiches. He warps far more interesting and smart canonical characters into minions, or they're ignored because we're all supposed to be more impressed by and afraid of The Big Badass.
Dave then goes on to nail the heart of the problem with turning detective stories into mano-a-mano thrillers:
"It also bugs me at this point because it turns the plot into exactly the kind of plot I hate, the one where the good guy and the bad guy just have a giant pissing contest around the city and usually a bunch of faceless innocent nobodies get caught in-between. I hate this story. I don’t like it when the hero is in a situation where, honestly, we’d be better off without him."
Moriarty is not only a fairly uninteresting character, he diminishes Holmes. We already KNOW what's going to happen, just like we already KNOW what's going to happen when Superman fights Lex Luthor, Batman fights the Joker, the Doctor fights the Daleks, etc., etc., etc.
This is not interesting storytelling because there is no actual tension in reaching a predetermined outcome!
Moriarty sucks. Moriarty sucks precisely because we already know what's going to happen the moment he shows up. And what's going to happen is not what we signed up for - no deductions, no "singular" cases, no twists. Just the overwhelming stench of ammonia and testosterone.
PS - This is also proof that I can read and rec a pro-Elementary, anti-Sherlock article without bursting into flame. Just in case anyone wondered.
PPS - Yes, I know that the "fic rec sherlock" tag really doesn't have a lot to do with fic these days.
Holmes Rec: "Why the BSI is not a fandom"
Nov. 30th, 2012 07:27 pmAt some point - probably the point where I catch up on everything from Holmesian_news for the last 8 or 9 days - I'm going to have a full fic/essay rec. But I'm not going to wait to pass on one of the best straight-faced sporkings I've ever read: Lyndsay Faye's scholarly essay Upon the Clear Distinction Between Fandom and the Baker Street Irregulars
Excerpts:
------
Note: for the purposes of this intellectual exercise, the possibility that the BSI may potentially be a storied and erudite literary society and a happily thriving fandom simultaneously will be ignored. This decision was made in light of the fact that a noun cannot be two things concurrently, the way the Empire State Building is not both a functioning office tower and a tourist destination, and the way Bill Clinton is not both a former president and a saxophone player.
----
Denizens of the fandom community fail to confine their “avid enthusiasm” to mere discussion of hobbits and tribbles; they also, as a group, have a marked tendency to collect memorabilia relevant to their favorite characters, spending precious funds in pursuit of items such as action figures and animation cells. ... Irregulars of my acquaintance have amassed collections of Sherlock Holmes art, Sherlock Holmes books, Sherlock Holmes knickknacks, Sherlock Holmes pins, Sherlock Holmes translations, Sherlock Holmes reference volumes, and Sherlock Holmes talismans such as magnifying glasses or pipes, but as these are clearly objets d’art, they find no equivalency within the realm of fandom.
----
It just gets better; do read the whole thing. It's only a pity that Issac Asimov isn't around anymore to get a giggle out of his invocation therein.
Excerpts:
------
Note: for the purposes of this intellectual exercise, the possibility that the BSI may potentially be a storied and erudite literary society and a happily thriving fandom simultaneously will be ignored. This decision was made in light of the fact that a noun cannot be two things concurrently, the way the Empire State Building is not both a functioning office tower and a tourist destination, and the way Bill Clinton is not both a former president and a saxophone player.
----
Denizens of the fandom community fail to confine their “avid enthusiasm” to mere discussion of hobbits and tribbles; they also, as a group, have a marked tendency to collect memorabilia relevant to their favorite characters, spending precious funds in pursuit of items such as action figures and animation cells. ... Irregulars of my acquaintance have amassed collections of Sherlock Holmes art, Sherlock Holmes books, Sherlock Holmes knickknacks, Sherlock Holmes pins, Sherlock Holmes translations, Sherlock Holmes reference volumes, and Sherlock Holmes talismans such as magnifying glasses or pipes, but as these are clearly objets d’art, they find no equivalency within the realm of fandom.
----
It just gets better; do read the whole thing. It's only a pity that Issac Asimov isn't around anymore to get a giggle out of his invocation therein.
Misc. Links
There is now a tumblr called 221 Baking Geeks
Olympics video is being pulled down as fast as it goes up, but The Montreal Gazette has the Benedict Cumberbatch opening sequence. (And do not even START me on NBC's coverage. The only thing that could have been more offensive than NBC's censoring of the tribute to terrorist victims is NBC's patronizing response to being called out on it.)
Folk on Twitter: Tomorrow a twitter-based online murder mystery goes live.
John Finnemore has a Cabin Pressure FAQ up on his blog. Yes, there will be a 4th season, with the same cast... whenever he can get his mitts on the cast and writes the episodes. His comment on unsolicited scripts and fanfic is a masterpiece of diplomatic humor.
Holmesian Canon Links
The Mystery of 221 B Baker Street - mapping out where the original flat was, and how it was supposed to look, with photos of various recreations.
Abbreviations Reference Card. Holmesians tend to refer to the canonical stories with a 4-letter code taken from the title. (As you've noticed; that's extended into Sherlock fandom, with references to the episodes, in order, as PINK, BANK, GAME, BELG, BASK, and FALL.) Fortunately, there's enough wriggle room in multi-word titles to distinguish between The Canon and Sherlock canon: The Hound of the Baskervilles is HOUN, so The Hounds of Baskerville became BASK. Equally, Scandal in Bohemia is SCAN, while Scandal in Belgravia is BELG.
Sherlock Links
Misc
Another theory on "IOU" in FALL
Heartbreaking post-FALL painting We Are Always Under the Same Sky
Downloadable Sherlock Clue(do) game board
Fic:
What She Saw Molly's POV watching one character react to another's death, because she's seen this before. The sole warning is for character death; as someone who recently put a pet to sleep, I would have appreciated a warning for those extended scenes, so here that warning is.
For once I'm not reccing slash because of the slash part - TBH, I think the final set of "we're gonna get it on" texts is the weakest part of On Lacuna and Conjunction. It's all the texts leading up to it that amuse me.
Speaking of amusing me, here's an AU with a twist: John is John. Sherlock is the monster under the bed. Bump in the Night and its Mycroft-centered sequel, My Brother's Keeper. Mycroft makes an even better monster-under-the-bed than Sherlock: Scaring a child in their bedroom is a petty pleasure, intimidating whole countries with a few words and a tilt of his head in an utter joy.
Chutzpah award to whoever turned a robot vacuum review into Sherlock fanfic.
There is now a tumblr called 221 Baking Geeks
Olympics video is being pulled down as fast as it goes up, but The Montreal Gazette has the Benedict Cumberbatch opening sequence. (And do not even START me on NBC's coverage. The only thing that could have been more offensive than NBC's censoring of the tribute to terrorist victims is NBC's patronizing response to being called out on it.)
Folk on Twitter: Tomorrow a twitter-based online murder mystery goes live.
John Finnemore has a Cabin Pressure FAQ up on his blog. Yes, there will be a 4th season, with the same cast... whenever he can get his mitts on the cast and writes the episodes. His comment on unsolicited scripts and fanfic is a masterpiece of diplomatic humor.
Holmesian Canon Links
The Mystery of 221 B Baker Street - mapping out where the original flat was, and how it was supposed to look, with photos of various recreations.
Abbreviations Reference Card. Holmesians tend to refer to the canonical stories with a 4-letter code taken from the title. (As you've noticed; that's extended into Sherlock fandom, with references to the episodes, in order, as PINK, BANK, GAME, BELG, BASK, and FALL.) Fortunately, there's enough wriggle room in multi-word titles to distinguish between The Canon and Sherlock canon: The Hound of the Baskervilles is HOUN, so The Hounds of Baskerville became BASK. Equally, Scandal in Bohemia is SCAN, while Scandal in Belgravia is BELG.
Sherlock Links
Misc
Another theory on "IOU" in FALL
Heartbreaking post-FALL painting We Are Always Under the Same Sky
Downloadable Sherlock Clue(do) game board
Fic:
What She Saw Molly's POV watching one character react to another's death, because she's seen this before. The sole warning is for character death; as someone who recently put a pet to sleep, I would have appreciated a warning for those extended scenes, so here that warning is.
For once I'm not reccing slash because of the slash part - TBH, I think the final set of "we're gonna get it on" texts is the weakest part of On Lacuna and Conjunction. It's all the texts leading up to it that amuse me.
Speaking of amusing me, here's an AU with a twist: John is John. Sherlock is the monster under the bed. Bump in the Night and its Mycroft-centered sequel, My Brother's Keeper. Mycroft makes an even better monster-under-the-bed than Sherlock: Scaring a child in their bedroom is a petty pleasure, intimidating whole countries with a few words and a tilt of his head in an utter joy.
Chutzpah award to whoever turned a robot vacuum review into Sherlock fanfic.
Musings on Mary Morstan Watson
Jan. 18th, 2012 01:58 pm(Note: SPOILER-FREE essay but comments have spoilers for Sherlock S2 & Game of Shadows)
I was rewatching The Case of the Silk Stocking last night -- which, frankly, did not hold up, but its deficiencies are not what this post is about. It's about Mary Morstan, the woman Watson marries at the end of The Sign of the Four and how she's handled by various movie/TV adaptations.
Mind you, it's a rare adaptation that interrupts the Holmes/Watson "there's no sub to that thext" dynamic in the first place. Sherlock BBC gave Watson a completely different love interest in S1, and Sarah has dubious staying power as she is neither mentioned in GAME *and* John mentions that he's "been particularly unemployed lately" - a bad sign, considering that Sarah was his boss. It's been a long time since I've seen Granada, but I know they skip the engagement at the end of The Sign of Four, and I don't recall any stories where Watson is explicitly married. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes doesn't mention her; IIRC neither does The Seven Percent Solution. As far as all of these are concerned, it's hoyay all the way, explicit or not.
The canon is wobbly on Mary. Watson goes on and on about how sweet and loving she is... but he's always ready to dump her company in a heartbeat to go running after Holmes, and she may not be particularly attached to him considering the infamous night she called him by the wrong name. (A lot of canoncial errors are chalked up to Watson being an unreliable narrator - this is, after all, the guy who either doesn't know or won't admit where he got shot - but surely he knows his own name!) Eventually she gets tidily killed off, just in time for Watson to move back in with the newly resurrected Holmes. And while there will be future mentions of Watson being married, he makes it such an unimportant part of the story that technically we don't know if he's referring to Mary or another woman. It eventually took the more obsessive fans to work out 3 Continents Watson's love life and assign potential names to his spouses.
Side note: reading the stories in publishing order shows an amusing set of trends. First, they're just stories. Then, while they're really popular and Doyle is relishing that, he adds all sorts of things to show the Victorian/Edwardian audience what good friends his protagonists are (which read as pure slashy fanservice now, like the times Holmes holds Watson's hand. But then Doyle is tired; you can just feel the "WHY won't you let him die? DIE! DIE! DIE!" creeping in. It's during this phase that Doyle starts smashing everything; he can't kill Holmes, but he can retire him at a staggeringly early age and shove him out to pasture like a horse. And it's now that Watson gets serious about staying with his wife, whoever the heck she is.
She isn't Mary, Mary's dead. Unless Mary also faked her death, or Watson has taken a sharp left turn into seriously gothic horror. But I digress.
Silk Stockings showed a couple of scenes of Mary, but for all the respect she was given, I rather wish they hadn't; all that really could be said about her is that she had a loud voice, a hat so large as to be vulgar, and Watson showed no particular emotion regarding her. (Admittedly, few people in that movie showed emotion; I thought Rupert Everett played Holmes as an advertisement for lithium.) She seems to like, or at least tolerate, Holmes but there's not much to her character.
Which leaves the Mary of the Ritchie films. Arguably, this woman is not the sweet angel of canon; she's a worldly-wise woman earning a genteel but not easy living in the first Ritchie movie and Holmes, showing a furious jealousy not in the books, tries deliberately to blacken her character to Watson as a gold digger. But, to repeat what I've said so often, for all the slam-bang steampunk-turned-up-to-11 of the movies, two things are very clear: Watson loves her. She's not just there because she shows up in the books (the overwhelming feeling that I got from Silk Stocking), Watson *really* loves her. And more than that, she not only loves him back, she understands (even more deeply than Sarah Sawyer seems to) that Watson also really loves Holmes and always will.
And the thing is, I think that's the OT3 that Doyle was trying to write, in his own Victorian way. Canon Watson did love Mary, and he loved Holmes too. It's not an either/or situtation. Ritchie!Watson obviously has a trope for very intelligent people; canon!Watson needed the angel of the hearth and the excitement of the chase in his life. To leave her out, or to leave her as a characterless plot complication/disposable footnote is, I think, a diminishment of the character of Watson, because it says that he doesn't have a heart big enough for both of them.
I was rewatching The Case of the Silk Stocking last night -- which, frankly, did not hold up, but its deficiencies are not what this post is about. It's about Mary Morstan, the woman Watson marries at the end of The Sign of the Four and how she's handled by various movie/TV adaptations.
Mind you, it's a rare adaptation that interrupts the Holmes/Watson "there's no sub to that thext" dynamic in the first place. Sherlock BBC gave Watson a completely different love interest in S1, and Sarah has dubious staying power as she is neither mentioned in GAME *and* John mentions that he's "been particularly unemployed lately" - a bad sign, considering that Sarah was his boss. It's been a long time since I've seen Granada, but I know they skip the engagement at the end of The Sign of Four, and I don't recall any stories where Watson is explicitly married. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes doesn't mention her; IIRC neither does The Seven Percent Solution. As far as all of these are concerned, it's hoyay all the way, explicit or not.
The canon is wobbly on Mary. Watson goes on and on about how sweet and loving she is... but he's always ready to dump her company in a heartbeat to go running after Holmes, and she may not be particularly attached to him considering the infamous night she called him by the wrong name. (A lot of canoncial errors are chalked up to Watson being an unreliable narrator - this is, after all, the guy who either doesn't know or won't admit where he got shot - but surely he knows his own name!) Eventually she gets tidily killed off, just in time for Watson to move back in with the newly resurrected Holmes. And while there will be future mentions of Watson being married, he makes it such an unimportant part of the story that technically we don't know if he's referring to Mary or another woman. It eventually took the more obsessive fans to work out 3 Continents Watson's love life and assign potential names to his spouses.
Side note: reading the stories in publishing order shows an amusing set of trends. First, they're just stories. Then, while they're really popular and Doyle is relishing that, he adds all sorts of things to show the Victorian/Edwardian audience what good friends his protagonists are (which read as pure slashy fanservice now, like the times Holmes holds Watson's hand. But then Doyle is tired; you can just feel the "WHY won't you let him die? DIE! DIE! DIE!" creeping in. It's during this phase that Doyle starts smashing everything; he can't kill Holmes, but he can retire him at a staggeringly early age and shove him out to pasture like a horse. And it's now that Watson gets serious about staying with his wife, whoever the heck she is.
She isn't Mary, Mary's dead. Unless Mary also faked her death, or Watson has taken a sharp left turn into seriously gothic horror. But I digress.
Silk Stockings showed a couple of scenes of Mary, but for all the respect she was given, I rather wish they hadn't; all that really could be said about her is that she had a loud voice, a hat so large as to be vulgar, and Watson showed no particular emotion regarding her. (Admittedly, few people in that movie showed emotion; I thought Rupert Everett played Holmes as an advertisement for lithium.) She seems to like, or at least tolerate, Holmes but there's not much to her character.
Which leaves the Mary of the Ritchie films. Arguably, this woman is not the sweet angel of canon; she's a worldly-wise woman earning a genteel but not easy living in the first Ritchie movie and Holmes, showing a furious jealousy not in the books, tries deliberately to blacken her character to Watson as a gold digger. But, to repeat what I've said so often, for all the slam-bang steampunk-turned-up-to-11 of the movies, two things are very clear: Watson loves her. She's not just there because she shows up in the books (the overwhelming feeling that I got from Silk Stocking), Watson *really* loves her. And more than that, she not only loves him back, she understands (even more deeply than Sarah Sawyer seems to) that Watson also really loves Holmes and always will.
And the thing is, I think that's the OT3 that Doyle was trying to write, in his own Victorian way. Canon Watson did love Mary, and he loved Holmes too. It's not an either/or situtation. Ritchie!Watson obviously has a trope for very intelligent people; canon!Watson needed the angel of the hearth and the excitement of the chase in his life. To leave her out, or to leave her as a characterless plot complication/disposable footnote is, I think, a diminishment of the character of Watson, because it says that he doesn't have a heart big enough for both of them.
Scion-ic Screwdriver
Jan. 11th, 2012 11:20 pmThe title barely has a thing to do with the post; I just couldn't resist. Also, I need to make a classic Holmes icon.
Today was One Of Those Days, but I did accomplish two things of note: I put in reservations for the next meetings of both local scion (Holmes canon fanclub) meetings. At the end of the month I'll be attending Watson's Tin Box's "Mycroft" - a pot luck dinner and quiz. I'm to bring a dessert. If one of my three different Sherlock Holmes cookbooks fails me, I'm sure one of my historical cookbooks will step up; I can't imagine a better way of introducing myself than through food.
Then in March I'll be attending the Red Circle's next dinner. That one'll be catered, but we're all to come with a 1-minute presentation (ending on a discussion question) for The Abbey Grange, to be followed by a ABBE-centric quiz and a general presentation/discussion of "Holmes in Film." I'll Saturday Sherlock ABBE the week before to make sure it's fresh in my mind. (The Saturday Sherlock is probably not going to become a weekly thing, but I'm going to try to use it as a springboard/refresher before meetings like this.)
I do, however, want to clear out the backlog of fic recs I'm building. There's some lovely crack for the latest season (spoiler warnings will be deployed) plus some AUs I should probably be ashamed about except I love 'em and keep rereading 'em.
Today was One Of Those Days, but I did accomplish two things of note: I put in reservations for the next meetings of both local scion (Holmes canon fanclub) meetings. At the end of the month I'll be attending Watson's Tin Box's "Mycroft" - a pot luck dinner and quiz. I'm to bring a dessert. If one of my three different Sherlock Holmes cookbooks fails me, I'm sure one of my historical cookbooks will step up; I can't imagine a better way of introducing myself than through food.
Then in March I'll be attending the Red Circle's next dinner. That one'll be catered, but we're all to come with a 1-minute presentation (ending on a discussion question) for The Abbey Grange, to be followed by a ABBE-centric quiz and a general presentation/discussion of "Holmes in Film." I'll Saturday Sherlock ABBE the week before to make sure it's fresh in my mind. (The Saturday Sherlock is probably not going to become a weekly thing, but I'm going to try to use it as a springboard/refresher before meetings like this.)
I do, however, want to clear out the backlog of fic recs I'm building. There's some lovely crack for the latest season (spoiler warnings will be deployed) plus some AUs I should probably be ashamed about except I love 'em and keep rereading 'em.
I cannot stop rewinding this video of Study in Pink dubbed in different languages
I haven't learned all the 4-letter abbreviations for the canonical stories, but I endorse this movement to use 4-letter abbreviations for Sherlock episodes (SPOILERS for S2 titles, which are plot spoilers themselves). PINK, BANK, and GAME are quite clear regarding the S1 episodes. This scheme has the virtue of making at least the first acronym for S2 non-spoilery, on account of it doesn't map to anything known... in fact, probably makes no sense out of context.
I promise the spoilerphobes that I will be using these acronyms as I talk about the episodes, keeping *only* the acronym above the cut... but absolute spoilerphobes may want to use the "do not show me this tag" feature on my LJ on account of it's not my fault they put spoilers in the title and at least one will be REALLY obvious even reduced to 4 letters!
I haven't learned all the 4-letter abbreviations for the canonical stories, but I endorse this movement to use 4-letter abbreviations for Sherlock episodes (SPOILERS for S2 titles, which are plot spoilers themselves). PINK, BANK, and GAME are quite clear regarding the S1 episodes. This scheme has the virtue of making at least the first acronym for S2 non-spoilery, on account of it doesn't map to anything known... in fact, probably makes no sense out of context.
I promise the spoilerphobes that I will be using these acronyms as I talk about the episodes, keeping *only* the acronym above the cut... but absolute spoilerphobes may want to use the "do not show me this tag" feature on my LJ on account of it's not my fault they put spoilers in the title and at least one will be REALLY obvious even reduced to 4 letters!
Sherlock: The Blind Banker
Dec. 18th, 2011 08:16 pmI just rewatched The Blind Banker instead of as part of working on my story. And while I can't defend it against overall race!fail, I must say, it's really quite canonical. After all, huge chunks of the canon were a pick-and-mix of:
1) Exotic locales (by the definition of a Londoner)
2) Secret societies
3) Fabulously expensive treasures in the form of jewels
4) Secret codes
(Although seriously, "The Deadly Chinese Spider Bird"? For a standard silks routine? Riiiiiight.)
1) Exotic locales (by the definition of a Londoner)
2) Secret societies
3) Fabulously expensive treasures in the form of jewels
4) Secret codes
(Although seriously, "The Deadly Chinese Spider Bird"? For a standard silks routine? Riiiiiight.)
I haven't been on the main comm to see if there's discussion there, but the news is slowly leaking out in the US and England that a Virginia school system has "banned" A Study in Scarlet for its depiction of Mormonism. I keep putting "ban" in quotes, because in a true school or library banning, the book is removed or otherwise restricted so that non-adults can't access it. In this case, the book is being left in the school library (not to mention the Internet) with unrestricted access; the complaining parent wanted it removed from a class's required reading list for "inaccurate depiction of an American religion."
And... he's right. Hell, he's understating it.
The Mormon men are depicted universally as rapists, murderers, and hypocrites (note that the wilder Elder sons are drunkards), the women are hapless victims, and the whole thing is presented as a coercive cult. It is prejudicial for any Mormon students to have that assigned *in class* as a depiction of their beliefs or the past history of their religion. Furthermore, unlike the contentious issues such as language in Huck Finn or violence in Lord of the Flies, Study in Scarlet can't be defended on the basis of being a springboard to a discussion of social themes. No matter how classic it has become, Doyle was writing a potboiler (and IMO, writing it excitingly but badly; that smash cut from London detective story to American wild west survival story is really a lesson in "what not to do to make your story coherent.")
There is no mention in the articles of any further action taken by the school, although mention is made that the complaining parent suggests an alternative required reading: The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I think that's the perfect suggestion for a fistful of reasons. It's not only a Holmes classic that avoids religious and racial stereotypes, it's arguably a more popular novel than SiS, it's shorter (I was all about the short books when I was forced to read them on schedule for class), and it even ties in with the uber-popular supernatural genre.
So no, I'm not going to get up in arms about A Study in Scarlet being "banned." The parent hasn't asked for a total ban, he's asked that prejudicial material be removed from a required reading list and suggested a popular substitute *by the same author.* As far as I'm concerned, that's so far away from a book banning as to not even be in the same zip code.
And... he's right. Hell, he's understating it.
The Mormon men are depicted universally as rapists, murderers, and hypocrites (note that the wilder Elder sons are drunkards), the women are hapless victims, and the whole thing is presented as a coercive cult. It is prejudicial for any Mormon students to have that assigned *in class* as a depiction of their beliefs or the past history of their religion. Furthermore, unlike the contentious issues such as language in Huck Finn or violence in Lord of the Flies, Study in Scarlet can't be defended on the basis of being a springboard to a discussion of social themes. No matter how classic it has become, Doyle was writing a potboiler (and IMO, writing it excitingly but badly; that smash cut from London detective story to American wild west survival story is really a lesson in "what not to do to make your story coherent.")
There is no mention in the articles of any further action taken by the school, although mention is made that the complaining parent suggests an alternative required reading: The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I think that's the perfect suggestion for a fistful of reasons. It's not only a Holmes classic that avoids religious and racial stereotypes, it's arguably a more popular novel than SiS, it's shorter (I was all about the short books when I was forced to read them on schedule for class), and it even ties in with the uber-popular supernatural genre.
So no, I'm not going to get up in arms about A Study in Scarlet being "banned." The parent hasn't asked for a total ban, he's asked that prejudicial material be removed from a required reading list and suggested a popular substitute *by the same author.* As far as I'm concerned, that's so far away from a book banning as to not even be in the same zip code.
