Regarding Holmes' refusal to tell the truth to Mary Sutherland in IDEN: I wonder if at the time of this case Holmes was like…. still kinda uncomfortable with people having strong emotions in his vicinity, especially women, and felt like he didn't know how to deal with it, and that's why he's being avoidant here. Of course in other stories he's shown to be very good at comforting distressed people etc, but maybe that was like…. a skill he had to learn over time? (Plus generally becoming more empathetic and less inclined to look down on women.) Of course this story is set after Watson's marriage, so it's not THAT early…. just a thought.
Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors by James Lovegrove
The fourth book in the Cthulhu Casebooks series -- this one deals with Holmes' interactions with the alien Mi-Go. It's generally similar to the others in the series -- there are a couple moments of decent horror but Lovegrove mostly pulls his punches too much (also with respect to the h/c lol). The bit where Holmes allows an alien fungus to parasitize him for Reasons had a lot of potential -- Holmes messing around with dangerous alien shit and fucking himself up is Exactly what I want from this series -- but the book didn't go as far as I wanted with either the whump or the horror of the situation.
Enjoyability: 3/5
Shippiness: 3/5 - There's a bit... as h/c-adjacent stuff goes it's got a couple instances of Watson thinking Holmes is hurt/dead and being horrified etc, but of course it turns out to be a trick and he's fine.
Crackiness: 4/5 - In addition to the general crackiness of Lovecraft, contains many silly twists on canon, including Irene Adler as a shapeshifter. Also apparently Violet de Merville was actually Billy the page in disguise (incidentally Billy is trans and he appears not to age because he's never gone through male puberty).
lol I actually kind of ended up reading one of these by accident... picked up this book called The Watson Chronicles by Ann Margaret Lewis because the summary indicated it dealt with Watson's second marriage and its effect on his relationship with Holmes... I'm a sucker for angst and Holmes being lonely and jealous lol so of course I had to pick it up. But it turned out to be a total Mary Sue thing all about how the young woman who becomes Watson's wife is this angelic beauty who everyone loves and who magically influences all the canon characters to overcome (what the author sees as) their flaws and personal problems, while also preaching the author's religion (Catholicism). Like she gets Mycroft to lose weight and become more sociable and more open to religion.... seriously, Mycroft fucking Holmes gives a whole speech about how wonderful this woman is and how she's made him realize that his life is empty and meaningless without real human connection and (Christian-coded) love/charity. She's also an opera singer and impresses Holmes with her amazing voice! She could be a star but she's too humble to take a lead role! She even meets the king and like everyone else he's totally charmed by her and can't stop fawning on her and singing her praises. She's also half Watson's age (Watson being in his fifties here), which at first I thought was whatever, of course the author wants her self-insert to be young and beautiful, but then at one point Watson justifies the age gap with "well I guess it's better to have a younger wife since after all the purpose of marriage is Making Babies". And they do indeed have a baby at the end, also Holmes is implied to be romantically interested in Maud Bellamy, which would make for another large age-gap relationship and babies ever after for everyone!!
It's kind of a shame because in a lot of ways the book is well-written, certainly better than many pastiches I've read in terms of like basic prose quality and plotting etc. But this is just not the version of these characters that I am looking for.
they should make a video game where you play as an autistic character and there is a meter that shows you how close to a total meltdown you are due to the overwhelming stimuli and another matter that shows you how much of a weirdo you look like to others and you have to try to balance between having a meltdown and completely masking. and also you’re trying to solve a murder or something
A few years ago I had a conversation with a RL friend where he asked what I was reading on my phone and I said it was people talking about Sherlock Holmes. He assumed I was referring to BBC Sherlock and starts talking about the most recent season or whatever and I'm like "No, not the show, there were a bunch of stories written by this guy Doyle like a hundred years ago, maybe you've heard of them??"
And he's like "How could people still have anything to say about that stuff after so much time?" lmao. And I'm like "Are you not aware of what fans are like?" My sweet summer child......
It also turned out that he knew canon Holmes dies by falling off a waterfall but thought the part where he comes back afterward was made up by the show??
I love the early Baker Street Journal because of course they're all playing the Game, where the characters are all real, and sometimes a person will try to promote their headcanons by submitting a "letter" they supposedly received from a minor canon character or an OC who totally knew Holmes and who claims to offer the true solutions to various canonical conundrums. Then if you want to dispute this person's headcanons you have to come up with some argument for why the letter is a sham. The October 1947 issue has a letter from Holmes' dentist, who apparently knew him really well and helped him with research and stuff and hints at having secret intel on Holmes' love life that even Watson didn't know about (after taking the time to debunk the idea, argued by Manly Wade Wellman in a previous issue, that Holmes was romantically involved with Mrs. Hudson).
Since the BSI themselves love to make the comparison of their fandom to a religion, I have to add that this part of it kinda reminds me of the practice in early Christianity where people would promote their preferred doctrines by writing a new gospel supposedly from the pen of Jesus' closest disciple, whether that be Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene or an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" and with whom he shared secrets that he didn't confide in anyone else (but which are now ready to be revealed to the world).
Of course in this case it's all in good fun. At least there haven't been any excommunications over it, anyway...
Date of Meeting: 26th April 2025 Location of Meeting: The Sherloft, My House, Portsmouth, UK Attendees: "The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas
The Ghost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Season 1, Episode 8: The Haunting at Stoke Moran
Last night, while asleep, I caught a new TV show that I thought may have been of interest to other Holmesians. I've done my best to write it up exactly how I dreamt it:
CONTINUITY ANNOUNCER: And now, we join paranormal investigators Sherlock Holmes and Dr John H. Watson as they investigate ghostly goings on at the Roylott family home…
[HOLMES and WATSON are outside Stoke Moran, the ancestral home of the Roylotts]
HOLMES [to camera]: There are things in this world that we will never fully understand.
WATSON [in a peculiar voice]: Understand.
HOLMES: We want answers. When you have eliminated the improbable, whatever remains, no matter how impossible, must be... ghosts...
Until Holmes reaches the part of the investigation that will clarify everything, and Watson suddenly can't accompany him because it would spoil the dramatic reveal.
On reaching Scotland Yard, however, it was more than an hour before we could get Inspector Gregson and comply with the legal formalities which would enable us to enter the house.
Interesting that despite the urgency of the situation Holmes does wait around to get a warrant, and the result is that they are only able to save one of the victims and the other perishes. I feel like this experience might have led Holmes to be bolder in the future (e.g. in LADY) about not waiting for a warrant when someone's life is in immediate danger.
I've been playing The Beekeeper's Picnic, it's very cute and fun! I love the characterization of Old Man Holmes, both the writing and the voice acting <3
Holmes adaptations/fanfics/etc will often include the common trope where a sidekick character (in this case Watson) cluelessly makes some random comment that triggers the hero/detective to have a crucial realization about the case (and then they jump up and yell "THAT'S IT!!" or "OF COURSE!!!") but I don't think this happens even a single time in the actual canon.
One thing I've always had a weakness for in Holmes fandom is the plethora of Alternate Reichenbach Theories. Much has been said about the apparent implausibilities in the canon account (like both Holmes and Moriarty agreeing to settle their differences by having an unarmed fist fight, because ??? reasons ???) which seem to cry out for an alternative explanation. But I also just think there's something kinda fascinating about the fact that FINA is the closest thing the Holmes canon as a whole has to like a "climax" in narrative terms -- and certainly adaptations etc tend to treat the Moriarty stuff as like a central component of the Holmes "mythos" -- and yet that event which is arguably the climactic moment of the whole series happens entirely off-page, while the story gives us obvious reasons to question the explanation we're given of what actually occurred in it. As if there's an unsolved mystery right at the center of the whole canon. At least if you choose to view it that way lol.
There are like a lot of different directions you can go with this question of course, but I'll also confess that I have a particular weakness for the various theories along the lines of "Moriarty never existed" or "Holmes really was Moriarty all along".... I guess partly because Moriarty is such a cipher of a character, who's transparently only there as a plot device to kill Holmes off, and the canon spends rather more time emphasizing the parallels between Holmes and Moriarty than it does establishing Moriarty as a distinct character in his own right. And on the other hand as an angst fan I'm really into Holmes as like a kinda fucked-up and self-destructive character. So really what it comes down to is that the idea of "Holmes is his own worst enemy" is just more interesting and compelling to me than Moriarty as a separate character has ever been lol.
Despite all that though I've never really seen or been able to come up with a "Moriarty didn't exist" theory that's like fully consistent with everything Watson tells us in canon -- like the existence of a "brother" who could write to the newspapers defending the professor's innocence and the stuff in VALL indicating he has enough of an existence for Inspector MacDonald to have met him etc. The theories I've seen proposed before generally require Watson to have been involved in the cover-up and have deliberately lied to us about certain details, which as a canon stickler is always going to be a little unsatisfying to me lol.
HOWEVER I've finally come up with a theory that satisfies what I'm looking for in "alternate" interpretations of FINA (i.e. making it more about "Holmes versus himself/his own mental problems" rather than "Holmes versus some external enemy") while still allowing Watson to be telling us the entire truth as he understands it.
So in this theory Moriarty is real, and he really is a criminal mastermind. Holmes has been striving for months or years to bring him down, and at this point it's kind of all that he lives for. Before Moriarty came along he had been gradually falling into a deep depression... like many fans I like to headcanon that he became much worse off mentally after Watson married, both due to loneliness and to neglecting his health more without Watson there to take care of him etc. (I don't think Holmes was at all conscious of his dependence on Watson though -- he still thinks of himself as a machine who doesn't need nobody, and he doesn't notice the correlation between Watson's absence and the gradual deterioration of his own mental and physical health.)
Anyway Holmes has become very bored and depressed but the Moriarty thing gives him something to live for again. At the same time though he's torn between his eagerness to defeat Moriarty and dread of the day when the battle will be over. He begins taking even greater risks with his own safety than he ever has before, out of a combination of determination to bring Moriarty down at any cost and the fact that he feels like once this is all over he'll have nothing left to live for anyway.
But at a certain point things are coming to a head, Holmes is weaving his web around Moriarty's organization and arranging to have the police take them all down on a particular day, with Holmes himself planning to personally confront Moriarty and reveal his victory as theatrically as possible (while also deliberately exposing himself to some risk of a violent reaction on Moriarty's part, for the sake of ~the drama~ and also because while he wants to win and beat Moriarty he also kind of semi-consciously doesn't really want to survive it).
BUT! Before that can happen, Moriarty suddenly dies in a totally random and anticlimactic way -- like in an accident or from one of his own followers turning on him and assassinating him or something. This happens in such a way that nobody knows about it except Holmes (who happens to be present in disguise or whatever). If it was murder, the murderer either gets killed himself shortly after or else runs away and goes underground without telling anyone. Moriarty's death is of course a huge disappointment to Holmes as it takes away his adversary, the only criminal smart enough to interest him, without his even getting the opportunity to defeat him properly which is the only thing that's been keeping him going for all these months. (Not to mention that Moriarty getting randomly killed off by an underling or whatever kind of undermines the mystique of the professor's unique genius and the dramatic and "epic" nature of the battle between them which Holmes has been so invested in this whole time.) So Holmes, shocked and not ready for the "game" to be over just yet..... decides to cover up Moriarty's death.
Outwardly, everything proceeds as expected. Moriarty's lieutenants don't know what's happened to their boss, and assume he's just run away or gone into hiding or something. They keep this a secret from their subordinates, knowing the organization will collapse if it becomes known that the boss has fled. They manage to keep things going and pretend they're still receiving orders from him etc. Holmes finishes setting things up for the police to take down the gang, and then, knowing the dramatic final confrontation he's been anticipating is impossible now, he no longer wants to be present for the inevitable anticlimax. Possibly he had always intended to bring Watson in at the finale just to witness his triumph; now instead he takes Watson and leaves the country, running away from the truth so he can continue telling this story where Moriarty is still alive and after him, with Watson as the fully-believing audience to make it all seem real. His whole career with all its artfully-arranged dramatic reveals designed to impress an audience has always been at least half a performance anyway, so what does it matter if this time the whole thing is a fabrication? In his present questionable mental state (due to lack of sleep etc) maybe he even starts halfway believing in it himself.
The police coup goes off without a hitch (of course it does, with no genius professor there to counter Holmes' plans anymore), but they fail to capture Moriarty -- not realizing it's because he has already been removed from the gameboard. Holmes, again not wanting to admit that it's over and to have to return to his boring and empty existence (and lose Watson's attention again), continues to lead Watson on this wild goose chase of an "adventure".
(Sidenote: one minor thing that always bugged me a little about FINA is the part where Holmes tries to send Watson back to London and they argue about it but Holmes ultimately gives in... like, Holmes has to know that Watson would never voluntarily leave his side, and the presence of danger will only make him even more determined to stay. If he had really wanted to get rid of Watson for his safety or whatever he could have just snuck away in the middle of the night leaving Watson unable to follow. I realize from the Doylist perspective that it's just necessary to the story that Watson has to accompany Holmes up until the end, but the whole argument kind of seems like a performance on Holmes' part since he has to know that it's futile. But in this theory that's explained: it's all just part of the performance, Holmes does not actually want Watson to leave as he knows there isn't really any danger and this whole performance is for his benefit anyway.)
But he knows he can't draw this game out forever. So he stages a climax -- the dramatic final confrontation he had wanted but didn't get to have with the real Moriarty. With the dramatically ideal conclusion, in which neither of them survives. Holmes has been tormented by suicidal feelings for a long time, but sees suicide as a shameful and cowardly choice and one that he's far too proud to resort to. But now he sees a way out: arrange to die in such a way that the world (and Watson) will remember his death as a heroic sacrifice rather than a pathetic suicide.
So he sets the whole thing up, arranges the fake message to draw Watson away and makes the second set of footprints himself. The stage set, he prepares to throw himself off the ledge.... and for some reason is unable to go through with it.
ALTERNATIVELY: For maximum angst, he does throw himself from the ledge, but miraculously survives and washes up on the riverside with some broken bones and a bad concussion. In a state of confusion he wanders off into the wilderness, eventually making it to an isolated farmstead where he's nursed back to health etc etc. When he tells the story to Watson after his return he leaves this part out (though it would have fit perfectly well with the "duel with Moriarty" cover story) -- maybe because he wants to make it sound like he was more in control of the whole situation than he was, that faking his death was a calculated decision and not something that just sort of happened by accident. And/or he does intend to include his dramatic plunge into the falls and miraculous survival in the story but when he's actually narrating it all to Watson he suddenly finds himself unable to talk about that part for some reason (PTSD), so he quickly changes the story and throws in some nonsense about Moran throwing boulders at him as a distraction.
I guess MUSG is the only canon Holmes-POV story that I actually like... I mean it's the only one that actually has a decent mystery, and of course the framing device is perfection. But I just reread GLOR and honestly I find it so frustrating bc like... I don't feel like it was necessary for ACD to give Holmes an "origin story" in the first place; in fact one of the things I like about the canon is that the character's past is mostly a blank slate that fans can project whatever we want onto lol. But if he was going to give an account of Holmes' first case and how he got into detective work, did he really have to make it so boring? "I decided to become a detective because my buddy's dad suggested it" like really?? And the "case" itself isn't much to speak of either. Really feels like a wasted opportunity tbh. It's not like he was incapable of doing interesting stuff with the character's background when he wanted to, I mean when he decided to introduce one of Holmes' family members he came up with Mycroft, who is a terrific fun weirdo of a character! But at the same time Holmes works very well as a character with a mysterious past, so why destroy a part of that mystery if you're not even going to replace it with anything interesting?
