Absolute Nonsense Hours

Fandom grandma (21+), she/her. Current obsessions: Baldur's Gate 3, Dracula, Dimension 20

[toscrollperchancetomeme]

[marvelousiz]

Meanwhile, somewhere else in Night Vale:

Happy Pride to the original gay podcast people

[8d2t]

apprentice uniform for brushbuddy too so they dont feel left out

[fangirlsovertoomanythings]

The way that most of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories’ most horrible villains are rich dudes that are abusive to women, in a time such as the 1880’s, compels me.

[gardnerhill]

There’s a whole subset of Sherlock Holmes stories that could be labeled Asshole Guys Try to Control Women’s Money.

[three--rings]

Yup, there’s a huge number of times where Sherlock Holmes is the ONLY person to take a young woman’s complaint or worry seriously and finds out someone is up to some serious evil.  Holmes also shows a lot of compassion and empathy with the victims over and over again.  (This is why I find “Secretly a woman” or “Trans” Holmes headcanons much more convincing than “sociopath” Holmes.)

[waterhobbit]

I am never going to shut up about how much I specifically love The Adventure of The Copper Beeches because it is literally Sherlock Holmes listening to a young lady he does not know except as a potential client, agreeing with her that a potential job she has interviewed for that she thinks is SUPER SKETCHY is, indeed, sketchy as fuck and when she says she’s probably gonna take the job anyways because the money is good and she needs it going “OKAY I GUESS but for the love of god please write to us so we know you’re okay we will literally drop everything and jump on a train if you want us to”.

The job turns out to indeed be sketchy as fuck, she writes to them, Holmes and Watson drop everything and jump on a train when she asks them to. I read this story for the first time when I was twelve and it made a HUGE impression.

[three--rings]

This is also the basis for a lot of speculation about Holmes’ family life.  The idea that he has been a victim of abuse, or his mother was abused (or even murdered by his father.)  There’s definitely SOMETHING that makes him very aware of how dangerous isolated families can be, and the dark things that can happen behind closed doors.  Plus, of course, the motivation to devote himself to stopping crime.  And yes, so much of it is of the personal type. 

[volkswagonblues]

dude see this is one aspect of the original books i NEVER understand why modern remakes (cough cough) don’t go all in on. Like, in the 21th c we HAVE all the dumb forensic shit that made Victorian Holmes stand out, but we STILL DON’T HAVE uh….you know, compassion for women and minorities, or the willingness to believe them, adequate community support for domestic violence or hate crimes, etc. etc. which you’d think is exactly where a renegade consulting detective would come in handy. A good modern day Sherlock Holmes remake, instead of trying to convince us that Holmes is some super genius for being better than fingerprint analysis or whatever, could have him just be…a good person who helps out people the police can’t and won’t help. There you go. That’s how to write a relevant modern Holmes.

[fahbee]

One thing that annoys me is how much the BBC version of Sherlock (and the fandom around it) focus on police cases or cold cases.  In the stories, Holmes’ bread and butter cases had fuck-all to do with the police and in a few stories, he actively works around/against them, or outright lies to them.  Of the many, many things I wish that show had done differently, this is one is particularly obnoxious since it’s such a gimme.

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

There were very few actual murder cases in the Canon, and Holmes handled them either one of two ways:

Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)

Option two: The victim was murdered to protect someone that the victim was abusing, or for vengeance, see Boscombe Valley, Devil’s Foot, Abbey Grange. Conclusion, Oops, I don’t know who the killer is, I am suddenly incompetent, oh look a pheasant.

[faejilly]

#my favorite murder in holmes canon#is when they straight up witness a lady murder her blackmailer#do nothing except destroy his other blackmail material#and then straight up lie to lestrade about it#sherlock holmes#more of this in modern adaptations pls (via @cactusspatz )

[muffinworry]

Let’s not forget the time Holmes helps a young woman who’s being catfished by her own stepfather to steal her inheritance, and when the villain sneers that the law can’t touch him, Holmes grabs a horsewhip out of sheerest chivalry.

[smokingtigerhiddengun]

So, the most canon-accurate iteration of Sherlock Holmes in the last few decades is actually Benoit Blanc….

[marzipanandminutiae]

I think it’s also important to note, and complicates our ideas about what the highly patriarchal/misogynistic society of 19th century England looked like, that these stories SOLD

they were POPULAR

the Victorians LIKED reading about women who won out over shitty men in their lives, even when that plotline reaffirmed a woman’s power and agency or put an active sexist in his place (ie Irene Adler besting Holmes)

which is fascinating in light of. you know. [gestures broadly at all of Victorian gender dynamics, laws, etc.]

[figtreeandvine]

One of my favorites is one where the woman’s husband is actually a good person, the Adventure of the Yellow Face.

Husband comes to Holmes, tells him that someone is blackmailing his wife and she refuses to him who or why, but can Holmes help his wife?

The story turns very Gothic for a bit–wife going pale at the sight of a “hideous face” leering at her from the upper window of a neighboring house, mysterious letters, strange payments of large sums to unknown people, her sneaking out in the middle of the night to visit the house with the face. Holmes and Watson and husband force their way into the house to confront the blackmailer….

Turns out the “hideous face” is a child wearing a mask. Her daughter from her first marriage in the US, in fact. To a Black man. The money was spent getting her child to Britain and setting up a home for her so the wife could see her, because she thought her new husband wouldn’t accept a mixed-race child.

Husband’s response:

…when [Munro’s] answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door. “We can talk about it more comfortably at home,” said he. “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

Holmes’s response:

Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.

[mister-dancer]

As a Black guy in an Interracial relationship, it’s hard to express how much reading this story as a kid, meant to me – then, and now. That’s not to say Doyle has anything like a modern understanding of why Racism sucks; he was Knighted, after all, for writing a very pro-British history of the Boer War. There’s a horrific amount of Sadian Orentalist ideas in his works, including at least one “fun” foray into Phrenology.

But then you get a story like this one. Or the anti-KKK message of the Five Orange Pips. And I think there’s more to this than the kind of “don’t bring your toxic Otherness to Britain” approach that some Sherlockian scholars have accused ACD of. Just because he and Stoker were friendly doesn’t mean they were playing with the same themes.

Holmes praises the US at at least one point. Irene Adler – The Woman – is an American! Doyle does dive into racist (and gendered!) stereotypes, but he also weirdly does this bits of nuance that speak of something more enlightened, like he’s not just another Victorian-era man.

He is, and allows Holmes to be, a man of complexities. Not fully of them moment he lived in, and not really seeing what we see today, save thru the idea of sheer human decency to the least of us.

Doyle wrote works that, from time to time, transcend the age they came from. That’s a hell of a legacy.

[mckitterick]

[rip-quizilla]

[clerkrard]

going to start saying "it's ok i have the blood of akasha in me" when faced with any kind of problem at all

[tarmairons]

idea from dmthinkr on twitter

[kairithemang0-fm]

Reblog if you're transmasc, support trans men, or want a chocolate chip cookie

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[samtf]

reblog to give a strawberry to the person you reblogged this from

[nepofledgling]

I think it’s kinda funny when people write devils minion and daniel is great at communicating and using like therapy language with armand. daniel molloy the double divorced rude disrespectful asshole whose kids don’t speak to him? that daniel molloy?

[nepofledgling]

using what he learned in rehab for evil lol

[transienthearts]

Black Sails S1E3 “III.”

[were--ralph]

this sleeper tweet

[fluorescentbrains]

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

[insomniac-arrest]

I work at a bookstore and hearing one of my male coworkers call smutty romantasy "the downfall of society" because it's "literally just porn" radicalized me

Men have an entire industry. Entire industries dedicated to their sexualities. Let women have fantasy sex. there's not even a camera crew involved.

[furiousfurious]

Left this in the notes

[insomniac-arrest]

😂

[goodattellinglies]

[bowlifecomics]

It makes me happy when they listen

[cheap-pink-mints]

[bowlifecomics]

YES. YES YES YES THANK YOU

[shigure]

i'm sorry i never did your tag game. i love you

[anxiousbiscuit]

I was talking about Sherlock Holmes with my cool weird 42 year old coworker the other day and he said that he had read other works by ACD but not any Sherlock Holmes. ACD is smiling down from heaven on his one and only true fan.