Every ten years, a random person in the kingdom is selected to journey to the temple at the mountaintop. Inside is an altar with two levers. If one is pulled, a plague will be released upon the land. If the other is pulled, the plague is delayed by ten years…but doubled in strength.
Oh, him? That is Marco. He is the wise one, the reason we are all here. He was the first to stay on purpose.
Yes, on purpose - oh, the first ever? No, that was me. I was - ha! I was foolish. I was trapped by fear, fear of doing wrong.
You made the journey; you understand. Those of us here understand that fear better than most. Do we bring pain down on everything we hold dear now, or do we curse them all to a greater pain tomorrow?
If we push off the suffering, and then the next also pushes it off, and the next - are we eventually dooming the whole world for our own comfort? But if we impose that suffering now, are the people ready for it? How many times has the plague been delayed already? How can we know? Agony.
And then the guilt, of course. Whichever choice you make, it is your fault. The lottery chose you but you chose the lever, hm?
Well, it took me days of that before I was able to do anything at all. I was a gardener down below, and there were seeds in the offerings, so I put my hands to work in the hope that it would put my mind at ease. It didn't, of course. But that's how I stretched out the supplies: months, and then years. All the time, agony.
I spent weeks writing down all the arguments I could imagine for one side; the philosophers, the methods, everything. And then, weeks for the other side - you can still see some of that scratch on the wall, I think. But never a decision. And then: Marco.
It had been ten years. My hair was a mess, let me tell you. But he arrived, and he looked at me, and he looked at the wall, and my garden, and the two levers, and he saw what I could not.
"We don't actually have to pull either one, do we?"
No but for real. Your brain is one of the most advanced machines known to exist. It's a computer capable of running a sapient intelligence on - and I cannot stress this enough - 25 watts of broccoli and stew. What the fuck.
[REALLY NORMAL AND WELL-ADJUSTED VOICE] well you never know maybe it COULD have saved me. if i ever actually achieved perfection. it could have happened then. if i was actually ever enough. Which i was not
Apparently my stepdad and I are fucking psychically linked because ?? every single time he makes chili for dinner I get a migraine. Without fail. And it became like a ha ha running joke because it happened so many times but now I’m living 3 hours away from my parents and I just texted my mom and
as a child being told "the moon controls the tides" with no additional explanation was like. oh okay. you want me to believe in magic? you're talking about magic right now? okay. fine
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
#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 )
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.
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.]
When I read “space...the final frontier” there’s a small part of my brain that is that audio of Patrick Stewart saying it but with a ridiculous french accent that makes it “eh-spay-zeh...ze final frahn-tee-aire” while Jonathan Frakes absolutely loses it in the background.
this is a highly controversial opinion, I have no doubt King Arthur was bisexual but I think he was one of the few people in Camelot not interested in fucking Lancelot. he wanted to retain him as an employee but it did not cross his mind that Lancelot was fucking his wife because Lancelot is such a weird little twerp that he did not perceive him as a sexual being. my interpretation.
So true. The Galehaut/Lancelot relationship was like a dynastic marriage to resolve the conflict between two imperial powers. I like to imagine Galehaut was like “I have decided to abandon my plans of capturing [what is now] all of southern England and surrender to you despite my military advantage, all for the love of my achingly beautiful and spectacular new male wife, Lancelot du Lac.” and Arthur was like “Okay. Weird. Not homophobic or anything but Lancelot? You’re in love with Lancelot?”
Co-signed. That’s some real shit you said. Also, unlike Arthur, he was willing to yield and share his lover for everyone’s benefit. And then he died for love. A real freak. One of the best freaks in 13th century French literature.
