OGSherlockHolmes

Waiting for true story to be told…

[blinddetective]

every sherlock holmes fan i see on this site is a middle aged lesbian

[iphigenesis]

in a way john watson is a fantasy (what if you had this brilliant enigmatic friend and what if he liked you in particular and what if he offered you the excitement of youth and adventures and a way out of boring society life and all without having to actually give up your status as a gentleman so you could have the best of both worlds) and in a way sherlock holmes is a fantasy (what if someone never got tired of you despite your various strange habits and mood swings and instead of simply tolerating you they genuinely liked you and what if you didn’t have to live alone forever and what if you never had to give up doing the things you love) and of course there’s the most fantastical part of it all (what if you could afford london housing prices)

[prokopetz]

You are an unreliable narrator because your coping mechanisms for your deep-seated trauma forbid you from acknowledging the reality of the situation. I am an unreliable narrator because I sincerely have no idea what the fuck is going on.

[automatonwithautonomy]

greatest dynamic in the world IS strange, eccentric asshole and their normal and polite friend who on closer inspection is actually worse in deeply weird and unexpected ways

[meowmeowvader]

Happy Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈🌈💖

[icantbotherwithusernames]

so i don't remember if ive ever shared this but an incredible consequence of reading Sherlock Holmes as a kid was me imagining them as even gayer than they are in canon.

so here's the deal, when i'd asked my mother what a "dressing gown" was, she explained to me that it was basically a bathrobe. so, my knowledge of bathrobes being 'clothes you put on your naked body after a shower as a comfortable alternative to a towel', my mind of course conjured Holmes and Watson walking around their flat in nothing other than a dressing gown on. like this:

and kid me went "huh, that's awfully intimate. theyre definitely SOME sort of great friends." I am honestly pretty ashamed to admit i only realized they actually wore normal clothes under their dressing gowns when i started searching for Sherlock Holmes fanart and saw people drawing it. oops.

[inevitablies]

granada holmes x the onion

[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.]

[sailor-hobbiton]

So yes, Benoit Blanc is the best modern Sherlock.

[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.

[toothfairyinc]

never let the fact that you were born a girl stop you from being the gayest man alive

[iphigenesis]

in a way john watson is a fantasy (what if you had this brilliant enigmatic friend and what if he liked you in particular and what if he offered you the excitement of youth and adventures and a way out of boring society life and all without having to actually give up your status as a gentleman so you could have the best of both worlds) and in a way sherlock holmes is a fantasy (what if someone never got tired of you despite your various strange habits and mood swings and instead of simply tolerating you they genuinely liked you and what if you didn’t have to live alone forever and what if you never had to give up doing the things you love) and of course there’s the most fantastical part of it all (what if you could afford london housing prices)

[ogsherlockholmes]

I was sorting out my room today and all of my many, many paper documents that I needed to get rid off. Felt quite a bit like Holmes after Watson forced him to sort out his old case notes, but rather than it ending up in me telling my lover roommate about an old creepy family ritual, I just realised that I procrastinate throwing things away.

[seekingdeduction221]

Me explaining to Conan Doyle why it's vital that I draw Sherlock and John making out crazy style to keep the future generations interested in his works

[the-bedheaded-league]

I fear that if you told him this he would respond by asking you to kill him again and put him right back in his grave

[ogsherlockholmes]

This is a distressing throught but bear with me: imagine if ACD had, as he planned, stopped writing after The Final Problem. That was it, Sherlock Holmes was without a doubt dead. I've already seen a few posts around here about how obviously devastating that would have been for the audience, for Watson and Holmes and all the characters, and all of this I whole-heartedly agree with.

But at what point did Holmes become iconic? What triggered the fact that he is still a cultural figure today, borderline a household name, not just in England, but all over the world? I mean, literally on my bookshelf, I have editions of the stories in Italian, French and Vietnamese. But what made this character and these stories so popular and widespread? Aside from, you know, being printed in different languages. And, yes, the adaptations play a part too, but how did it get to have so many adaptations?

If the stories stopped being written after The Final Problem, there would be no Hound of the Baskervilles, which is supposedly the most famous story. Then there's no Empty House, or The Lying Detective, and so on. But we still have the first two novels, which were pretty successful in their own right. And, if we're being very judicial about it, supposedly the first collections of stories are better than the ones that were written after the Fall (this isn't my personal opinion, but it's a general consensus I've gathered from different documentaries). Would it still be feasible for Sherlock Holmes to be as famous as he is if we only got two novels and twenty four short stories?

I mean, Dracula is one book, and he's quite well known. Same with Frankenstein. Even Hamlet only appeared in one play (same with Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc.).

I don't know, maybe this isn't a worthwhile question to ask at all, but I wonder where our focus would be if Sherlock Holmes had just died when ACD wanted him to. In some ways, he might have ended up seeming more human- in a tragic way, yes, but rather than having a resurrection, he dies at the end of his story and that's that. Given that nearly every adaptation includes this plotline, they'd have to focus on something else instead.

I might add to this, maybe not. Honestly, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but I do love to think about Sherlock Holmes way too intensely, so it's not the biggest issue.

[jeremybrettholmes]

One of the finest and most beloved Watsons ever to grace the screen has passed away. David Burke was 91 years old, just shy of his 92nd birthday, and he is survived by his wife Anna Calder-Marshall and his son Tom Burke.

By all accounts, he was a gentleman and a wonderful human being. He could have stayed on to play Watson much longer, which would have made many of us very happy, but he chose to leave the show to be nearer to his family, especially since Tom was very young at the time.

His was not the first intelligent and competent Watson, but this version marked a turning point in mainstream depictions, from comedic sidekick to a hero in his own right.

RIP, dear sir. You will be missed. Thank you for everything.

~*~

To read a longer and moving tribute, please check out the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere website: https://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2026/05/david-burke-first-watson-of-granada-era.html. The tribute includes a link to the interview that the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast conducted with David and his wife a few years ago.

[ghostbees]

The Problem of Thor Bridge

“Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox & Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.”

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[the-bedheaded-league]

Holmemes pt. 37

I finally played Sherlock Holmes Chapter One and he’s the babiest baby boy I’ve ever seen. My tiny son. My sweet little traumatized child. He’s never done anything wrong ever.