Tobacco Samples.
I had the incredible pleasure of getting to contribute work to the @very-sincerely-yours-zine . The final collected book is outrageously good, and I feel very fortunate to have been included alongside the rest of this book. Huge shout-out to the organizers Minh and Sher, who were very gracious about some health stuff that cropped up for me during production and who put together a really terrific project.
If you're a Holmes fan, strongly recommend checking out the leftovers sale on now. If you're in Toronto, you can also find a copy in the ACD Collection at the public library (!!!😭cool)
We don't have a canonical date for when John was born, but his fans are resourceful, and July 7 is one of the extra-canonical dates when his birth is celebrated, possibly chosen because that is the death date of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in 1930. (Not a great reason, but these are the same people who decided Watson had six wives.)
August 7 is also celebrated, because William S. Baring-Gould uses this date in his biography, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. BBC's Sherlock chose April 23, for reasons unknown. It seems that Sherlock knew this, but missed the party because he had a 'thing.'
I'd like to celebrate today by quoting some of my favourite descriptions of the good doctor from fan fiction. 🥳 (And thereby recommending some favourite stories to you!)
Berty / @bertytravelsfar, from This Time:
For John to be here, with a memorised speech in a room full of strangers, apologising for who the hell knew what, must be hellish for a man like him. He's a private man - outwardly respectable and affable, inside he is a complex mess of recklessness, caring, conflicting drives and misdirected anger. He's a ticking time bomb of a man and Sherlock thinks it will take more than a new therapist to defuse him. He has known John for some time. He has seen him at his highest and lowest and all points in between. He’s seen him defeated and broken, exhilarated and euphoric. Sherlock has seen John cry, seen him angry, seen him helpless and aroused. Sherlock knows John's face better than he knows his own. He appears to be in earnest - he's making eye contact but not excessively so, his hands and breathing are relaxing now he has begun, and his voice, though low and quiet, is sincere and not strained.
John Watson is the biggest short man in London, but you wouldn’t know it now. He has taken down men more than a foot taller than him, faced down serial killers and taken the piss out of the British government to his face. John Watson is not intimidated or diminished by anything that Afghanistan or London has thrown at him, but to look at him now it would be easy to assume that he has been defeated in most every sense of the word.
2. Fangs_Fawn, Worth the Wounds:
John Watson’s nature was made up of fascinating contradictions. The same hands that skillfully healed horrific battlefield injuries were equally skilled at dealing them out. His affable personality, kindness and instinctive compassion so made people think of him as warm and friendly that it took them a long time to notice that he held his cards close, giving very little of himself away. He came off as an easygoing, always-in-control, laidback bloke, but underneath he was an adrenaline junkie.
3. @weeesi, Edge of the Sea:
John thinks about himself and considers, not for the first time, that he’s not someone people deeply care about, really, or remember unprompted out of the blue. He’s the type of person who can slip through the cracks: he’s sufficiently present when he’s present, forgettable to people the moment he isn’t.
To most people, he thinks. To everyone but Sherlock, he used to think. But then Sherlock hadn’t deemed him sufficient after all, had slotted him firmly into the forgettable side of things when he’d made the decision to send John away, after using John’s compulsion to care to his advantage, and climbed those winding steps to the rooftop alone. John had cared in the wrong direction that morning and look where he is now.
4. @raina-at, Nothing Gold Can Stay
"Nobody’s ever stuck with me. My whole life, nobody’s ever chosen me over anything. Harry fucked off as soon as she had the chance, and I don’t blame her for it, but she left me alone with our parents, and didn’t look back. My dad split when my mum got sick, and then my mum died. And do you want to know why you never heard about Sholto before? Because he sent me one text when I was in the hospital and then never bothered with me again. People don’t stick with me, Sherlock. They never do. And now there’s this intelligent, beautiful, reliable woman, who loves me…” John’s voice breaks, and he runs a hand over his face to try to keep his emotions in check. “And next Saturday, she’ll promise to stick with me. No matter what. And that should make me happy. It should make me fucking ecstatic that someone wants to stick with me for once. And yet. Fuck, and yet, all I feel is dread.”
“Why?” Sherlock asks, gently, quietly.
“Because…” John’s voice is almost gone, but he clears his throat and continues, looking down at the ducks paddling away from them, “because I’m holding on to something. And I’m as afraid of letting go as I am of looking it in the face.”
5. Glenmore / @glenmoresparks, Albion and the Woodsman
John Watson has a special smile he uses when he is about to maim or kill you. It looks like an ordinary closed lipped smile, and can be mistaken as quite friendly until you see his eyes, which will be filled with mayhem and lethal conviction.
And:
John Watson always wants a cup of tea. It is one of his factory settings.
Bonus: @hitlikehammers has a wonderful backstory for John in Chapter 1 of The Architect of Solitude. I can't quote the whole thing here, but it begins:
In the ninth year of John Watson’s life, he learned a magic trick, and he starred in a play.
Go read some fanfic and thank the talented writers who have given life to John Watson and Sherlock Holmes!
Do you have any fun facts about my beautiful majestic gorgeous amazing stunning queen Ragatha??
She 100% referred to Zooble exclusively as she/her the first few weeks of them being there, and once she learned they were nonbinary from everyone else, she apologized relentlessly for three solid days.
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