(no subject)

[In response to this]

It’s always adorable when someone else figures out how very little Doyle cared about Sherlock Holmes.

Snakes drink milk, right? Whatever. Watson got married in … 1888. Or 1889. Or maybe 1887. Who cares. Mary Morstan was an orphan who spent a lot of time visiting her mother. Does Holmes laugh a) frequently b) infrequently c) only when he’s caught a criminal d) all of the above? Who cares, we’re on deadline and I’m broke. One story takes place both in the middle of summer and in October.

Does Holmes know about anything non-essential to his work? No. Does he know the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus and spend his free time deciphering medieval palimpsests? Yes. In Study in Scarlet he doesn’t know who Thomas Carlyle is and in the Sign of Four he quotes him.

And this still led to the first modern fandom and over a century of extremely devoted readers.

Some of the devotion is because it’s confusing - people have spent way too much time trying to come up with chronologies (summarized by the amazing spacefall here). Maybe universes with more flaws naturally attract more fans, because there’s more room for interpretation and addition and filling in the gaps. It seems to work for Star Trek and the X Files and Harry Pottter. (And Greek mythology, if we want to talk about non-modern fandoms)

It should be maddening, but it really isn’t - it feels like opportunity. I really love the contradiction here, both the tiny contradictions within canon that make everything more interesting, and the larger contradiction of a character disliked by his creator but so brilliantly drawn. It makes one feel as if the reason everything works so well regardless is due to some actual animating spirit from the characters themselves. Sherlock Holmes is certainly more real to most people now than anyone who was actually alive at the time.

Or possibly I’m a little overly spiritual from lack of sleep. But I find it wonderful for some reason that 100 years after Doyle gave us that utterly indifferent permission we’re still marrying him, murdering him, and doing anything we like to him.

broke 1930s femlock

The rented room is dim and the sheets are stained and the blinds on the dusty window are broken and the lowering sun turns everything yellow and eye-straining.

Jane makes tea on the chafing dish and pushes her hair back. The wave has grown out entirely, twisting just the ends where they fall over her shoulders, unfashionably long and distracting.

“I could cut it for you,” says Sherlock, draped across the bed, between drags on her cigarette.

“It wouldn’t look any better.”

“I’ve done mine, yours wouldn’t be more difficult.”

“I mean, it’d still be straight. Boring.”

Sherlock shrugs. Jane pours the tea into chipped cups and brings one to the bed for Sherlock. Sherlock shifts her head to stay out of the sunlight.

“You’re not going to be able to afford to go to a salon any time soon. Or even a home kit.”

“Dammit, Sherlock -!”

“I’m sorry, dear, but we both know it.”

“Fine. I’ll cut it myself.”

“When I’m offering to help?”

Jane sighs, pours herself more tea, looks away.

“Maybe.”

Sherlock rolls her eyes expressively at the ceiling and stubs her cigarette out in her empty cup. “Maybe we’ll get a case.”

“If we do, it’s going to the rent.”

“We can make rent.”

Silence.

“Jane!”

“I don’t know. I thought we could. But - do you have anything you’re hiding away?”

“Of course I don’t. I’m not keeping secrets from you.”

Jane’s lips move. She rarely swears out loud, but it’s clear enough.

“Dammit,” says Sherlock. “Fine. We’re going out tonight, dear.”

Jane stares. “Out where?”

“Friends of mine. Do we have anything for dinner?”

Jane makes a face. “Tea. Oatmeal.”

“Tea it is, then.”

*

Jane watches Sherlock change into trousers without much surprise, and throws her threadbare coat on at Sherlock’s request.

“Don’t take it off.”

“All right.”

“And bring all the money we have.”

“What! Sherlock!”

“We’ll make more.”

“Where are we going, Sherlock?” Jane’s wary. Sherlock’s trousers, she thinks, eliminate the worst possibilities, but that just means she has no idea whatsoever what she intends.

Sherlock smirks a little. “Allison’s.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Come on. And for God’s sake call me Holmes.”

Sherlock turns with a flourish of her coat and starts off down the hall, and Jane, as always, follows after her.

(no subject)

So I cut this bit from Arte Regendus and it’ll probably never fit anywhere else, but I still like it:

I began keeping a diary when travelling from India to Afghanistan. Travel in that region was a thing of combined calm and anxiety; long stretches of quiet were livened by the awareness every minute of the possibility of bandits, rebels, or wild animals. Though I was with a group, it was not large enough to be wholly unafraid of predation by tigers, or more human enemies. I saw the landscape as an excellent setting for adventure, which had encouraged me to join the Army in the first place, but as I waited for that I used my time in writing a journal, which occupied me but could be put away at a moment’s notice should my medical skills be needed. I had vague ambitions of making a book of it. I kept up this record even when the lush landscape of northern India slowly turned into the dry empty hills of Afghanistan.

After Maiwand I was too ill to continue with it, and upon my return to England I thought despairingly that I should have nothing more of interest to record. And then I met Sherlock Holmes.