hound of the dastard skills

mads | {they/he} i have a special interest in the sherlock holmes stories and i'm about to make it everyone's problem

[noa-nightingale]

My Granada Holmes rewatch continues with The Solitary Cyclist!

It gets to me a little bit that Watson is so kind towards Violet Smith. He seems to genuinely care, there is just a certain warmth and concern for her there.

One moment that made me laugh out loud (like, literally, audibly) is when Violet Smith says that she will marry at the end of summer and Holmes replies "We wish you joy". He sounds so fucking insincere, it's hilarious.

"Try the nearest public house. Always a good center for country gossip." - "Thank you, Watson! Capital notion!" Lmao. Look, I want Holmes to be nice to him but this is a delightful little interaction.

And there is also the scene where Watson stops the horse drawing the empty trap (i.e. the carriage) and Holmes goes "good man" kind of intensely, which - after he told him earlier he did "remarkably badly" - just makes me feel emotions.

There have already been said a million words of praise for Jeremy Brett's performance, all of them deserved, but man do I love David Burke as Watson. I want to highlight this moment here - the Solitary Cyclist shows up, drops his bike and draws his gun; and Watson is the first one to turn around. He grabs Holmes' wrist and says "Holmes" in a quiet, warning and kind of soft voice, it is just SUCH a good delivery.

"You're too late. She is my wife!" - "No. She is your widow." Not gonna lie, that is one hell of a line.

God look at him. This is just so sweet.

The more I watch him, the more I appreciate Burke's Watson, and his chemistry with Jeremy Brett is just so good and works so well.

[its-always-sunny-in-city17]

acd

[findingsherlock-deactivated2012]

January 31st, 1953  from the Illustrated London News

No you haven’t been smoking opium (I hope), that is a Sherlock Holmes ballet you are seeing … beautiful isn’t it?

Watson’s mustache here is uniquely alarming.

[sherlockismyholmesboy]

I think I just broke a rib from laughing.

JESUS CHRIST HOLMES AND WATSON

WHAT ARE YOU DOING

[its-always-sunny-in-city17]

fellas

[holmesoverture]

In A Study in Scarlet, Watson describes Holmes as having sticking plasters all over his hands.  Therefore, every modern adaptation from now on must have Holmes with an endless band-aid collection featuring everything from Iron Man to Hello Kitty

[the-guilty-monographer]

Alternatively: When they first meet, Holmes just keeps a stash of plain boring band-aids that he is always running out of because he can’t be bothered to buy more. Watson ends up doing the runs to the store for more band-aids (and neosporin. and tea, because he is trying to wean Holmes off those horrible energy drinks) and while he doesn’t mond running Holmes’ errands TOO terribly, his act of petty revenge is to buy a decorated variety of bandaids because if Holmes doesn’t like it then he can darn well get his own next time.

His plan backfires, as Holmes take a liking to them, and it is not long before they have amassed a collection featuring everything from dinosaurs to disney princesses.

Watson has learned to gauge Holmes’ mood based on which bandaids he picks for himself.

He never can break Holmes of the energy drink habit though

[holmesoverture]

Headcanon ACCEPTED

[not-equippedforthis]

every adaptation that thinks holmes is the unpredictable freak in the relationship forgets when watson picked up a chair to throw at a blackmailer and had to be stopped by holmes, who was then forced to let watson come with him to rob said blackmailer's house. who they watched get murdered. and covered up said murder. and lied to the police. and then watson was like 'breaking the law is so fun lol' and published it in the strand.

[sesamestreep]

I guess I’m not done talking about Milverton yet, because like I know Watson explicitly says he’s not giving dates for any of it to protect the people involved, so it could conceivably fit anywhere in the canon, but I like to imagine it’s still post-hiatus, post-final problem/empty house, post-Holmes’s return because it makes this scene much more poignant to me

I know Watson uses the word “adventure” here but I can’t imagine his main concern is being in on the action (right after he basically says that Holmes disappeared for several days IN DISGUISE and Watson asked zero questions about that) for the sake of the story (especially knowing with hindsight that he won’t write it or publish it for a long time). I think the obvious reason he wants to go is to protect Holmes (I mean, what else can “You can’t tell what may happen” mean, right?)

Anyway, imagining this conversation in a post-reichenbach setting is more compelling to me (although, as I said, you can imagine it anywhere thanks to Watson’s intentionally vague timeline) because it puts the “then you are not going” into a heartbreaking context. How many times during Holmes’s absence when he was presumed dead has Watson condemned himself for not being there when Holmes needed him? How can a man whose honor clearly means so much to him not blame himself in some way for what happened? Especially knowing that Holmes knew the letter that took Watson away from him before his confrontation with Moriarty was a fake, how many arguments do you think they had once Holmes came back (that Watson chose not to include in his stories) about Holmes not running headlong into danger by himself AGAIN?? “Other people beside you have self-respect and even reputations” !!! John Watson, the MAN YOU ARE.

[moroniccats]

Holmes can’t go by HIMSELF. Watson is going to go die with him, at least.

[the-bedheaded-league]

New Sherlock Holmes adaptation idea: Watsondoes a voiceover narration of the story and it frequently contradicts what’s happening onscreen. Sometimes it’s literally just blatant lies. Watson also frequently looks into the camera like he’s on the office. It’s set in the original Victorian era so this should not be possible. He’s the only character who does this.

[unclassyfied404]

*Holmes and Watson are making out passionately on screen*

Watson's narration: After long day of hard work, me and my friend spend a delightfull evening together, drinking tea and enjoying some music 😊

[the-bedheaded-league]

Occasionally, Watson’s narration is interrupted by an interjection from Holmes complaining about how he wrote things. The scene abruptly changes to Holmes and Watson back at baker street, where Holmes is reading over the latest copy of Watson’s manuscript. Watson makes some snarky comment about how if Holmes wants to tell it differently he’s welcome to submit his own account to the Strand any time he likes. Holmes scoffs and Watson goes “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes-“ and the scene abruptly changes back to the middle of the action where they left off.

The only other person allowed to interrupt the narration is Watson’s long-suffering editor, Mr. Doyle, who has already slashed out three paragraphs worth of Watson describing Holmes’ long, thin fingers and is always in a state of tearing his hair out.

[moroniccats]

I think Holmes is inherently queer because he’s not into women.

I interpret Watson is queer because he’s SO into men

[veryfastnighuncatchable]

On this auspicious May the Fourth, let us not, in our celebration of the space battles, forget the 134th anniversary of that most terrible day in Switzerland. Happy "Arthur Conan Doyle Tried his Best" day folks!

[bokkunmann]

Lesson

[the-bedheaded-league]

It’s crazy to me that people read Sherlock Holmes’ obsession with Irene Adler as romantic when it is so clearly the same kind of obsession that gay men have for Lady Gaga

[noxidae]

@insertfandomrefhere

[insertfandomrefhere]

[janistarred]

You can’t tell me this wasn’t the hottest shit ever for Watson

[ch33p0]

blah blah blah… place name, proper name, backstory stuff..

omg ive never properly drawn sherlock like this (how i imagine them from acd lore)

[friday411]

⬆️ Yesss!!! ⬆️

[bl4ckb1rd13]

I literally CANNOT with the BBC radio dramas anymore because what the hell was The Devil's Foot. like. do you really mean to tell me that Holmes and Watson sit on this cliff overlooking the sea and Watson's nagging at Holmes for being gloomy and tells him that the view is romantic, and out of nowhere, Holmes just recites this bit from Wagner's Tristan and Isolda: "so let us die, and never part; together, for the rest of time; no more waking, no more fearing; nameless, endless, loving, sharing; existing only in each other; rapt in love and death and darkness" like. what do you mean Sherlock Holmes casually recites poetry with Watson next to him in the most romantic place ever? and THEN, you would think that it'd be enough for the BBC and their queer coding of every single episode, but NO, they go even further and MAKE HOLMES SAY IT WHEN HE'S HALLUCINATING BECAUSE OF THE POISON. like. sir. what the fuck. he's losing his mind, literally dying next to Watson and we hear that whole poetry bit again. "so let us die, and never part" they are dying, HELLO???? "rapt in love and death and darkness" when indeed he and Watson are in that moment rapt in love and death and darkness. what the FUCK.

and do NOT make me started on the delivery of "I thought I knew my Watson" because it made me go absolutely feral. fucking hell. someone sedate me after this.

[sarahthecoat]

@may-shepard here is the link i have, on bbc sounds:

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Sherlock Holmes - Available now

Available episodes of Sherlock Holmes

these are with carleton hobbes i think, but i'm pretty sure i have also heard the clive merrison radio dramas on bbc sounds, it might take some poking around, or they might come and go while these stay up? anyway, you can listen to DEVI (it's a few pages in) and see.

[may-shepard]

@sarahthecoat thank you!! Hooray!

[sarahthecoat]

i went into the "all" tab, and the clive merrison ones are in there too, they just aren't available to stream right now. but keep an eye on the "next on" tab in case they decide to run them again.

[i-dont-talk-for-days-on-end]

The Clive Merrisson episodes are on the Internet Archive!

Sherlock Holmes BBC Audiodramas - Clive Merrisson : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

AUDIODRAMAS

[moonlightandpalmtrees]

I’m always so fascinated by how Watson accidentally became an interesting character. He was supposed to be a blank slate! Narratively he’s just there to follow Holmes around and ask questions

and then stuff just. Kept being added and we slowly start getting the outlines of an interesting character seemingly by accident. His army time ptsd, his war wound, his relationship with his brother, his want to follow Holmes around and solve crimes with him + his insistence that he’s not that interesting and he’s sooo normal, him canonically telling us he’s an unreliable narrator in the sense of changing names and then all of ACD’s story inconsistencies accidentally creating ‘the game’, “three continents Watson” + how the hell many times has this been man been married, him canonically being a hunk, his gambling problem, the fact that the fanon of his middle name being ‘Hamish’ is so well accepted because ACD forgot his first name, the list goes on

[the-bedheaded-league]

I’m seriously considering making a small zine that talks about reading Holmes as queer and then slipping them into all of the copies of Sherlock Holmes at the library. Literally just for fun. Should I do this