So for Reasons the phrase "Laurent of Vere, Boy Detective" popped into my head this morning which immediately led to "Oh my god, what if Captive Prince but Sherlock AU" WHICH THEN immediately led to "Oh no oh no what if there were two Damen-Watsons and one of them was Jam Watson oh nooooooo"
I need my brain to stop hijacking my thoughts with crack ideas thx
So I finally finished the dumb fanfic audiobook about Jam Watson.
Let me tell you just how ludicrous this story gets. This is really long, but stick it out, because you can't imagine yet the ways Jam Watson will amaze you.
So, to recap: in 1888, Jam Watson has lived and worked with Sherlock Holmes for seven years. Then the Jack the Ripper murders begin, and Holmes often runs off to work alone for days at a time, after informing Watson he's not smart or strong enough to help. On one occasion after his return, he demands personal information from Watson to verify he is the true one (as true as Jam Watson can be) before relaxing, since he explained that he was almost murdered by an excellent impostor whose only slip-up was limping on the wrong leg.
Holmes also believes that Jack the Ripper is actually Moriarty. At first I thought this was a pathetic lack of creativity on the part of the non-Doyle author, but it turned out he had a reason.
So, not long after the anecdote about the impostor, Jam Watson and Holmes and most of the London police force are out patrolling because Holmes believes that the Ripper will strike again that night. Holmes and Watson are out together, until Holmes thinks he spots Moriarty and decides to give chase, telling Watson to go back to the station and fetch Lestrade. But Watson is like NO, I'm tired of being left behind, and he decides to follow Holmes who is following Moriarty, because he thinks that has any chance of that not ending in catastrophe. Just in case you had any doubt we were dealing with Jam Watson.
Long story short, after temporarily losing both his quarries, later that night he spots Holmes with his hands and forearms bathed in blood, humming a ditty as he mutilates a prostitute in the goriest fashion.
Watson loses his minds for the next several hours, which I'll grant is understandable. Then he manages to find his way home, where he finds a telegram from Holmes, announcing he's chasing Moriarty out of the country. This gives Watson some time to flail around in angst and decide what he's going to do. He considers circumstantial evidence and decides that while his heart can't believe it, his eyes/brain can't believe any other explanation. At no time does he consider this might be another case of IMPOSTOR!, even though his view of the room was only lit by one candle and the fireplace.
So when he gets another telegram from Holmes a week later, saying he overthrew Moriarty and will be returning shortly, he runs away to get married and manages to avoid seeing him at all for the next few months. He gets a few letters from Holmes, with which he persuades himself that Holmes has recovered his mind through his travels and is no longer a danger to anyone. They eventually meet again, and it's like old times; Watson keeps it together, Holmes does not seem like a psychopathic serial killer.
A couple years pass. They do a few cases together, but Watson distances himself, focusing more on his home and practice.
Then the Ripper murders start again, and Watson receives a coded letter from Holmes that Watson thinks is the product of drug-addled delirium, because this is Jam Watson.
Soon after, Holmes breaks into his home in the middle of the night, claiming to be chased closely by Moriarty, and that Watson's long-time gardener is one of Moriarty's creatures, and Holmes hasn't slept for more than an hour in two weeks. He asks for Watson's help, and Watson promises it, and Holmes promptly passes out.
Watson immediately injects Holmes with a solution to make sure he stays asleep, then goes to investigate the house across from Baker Street, that Holmes claimed had been occupied by Moriarty. There, in a secret compartment, he finds DAMNING EVIDENCE: a long knife, organs and a fetus in jars, and a mocking poem about killing people without a care in a world, that was apparently a basardization of some hymn or something. There was nothing -- of course not even fingerprints -- to link Holmes to these objects, but there's no longer any possibility of doubt in Jam Watson's mind.
Apparently what he found was so ghastly that it justifies his next course of action, which was not to go straight to the police or anyone else, or even to confront Holmes immediately, but instead:
To inject himself with cocaine -- for the first time -- on a daily basis in order to stay awake and watch Holmes forever. Because that is the only way to prevent Holmes from committing more diabolical murders. And also with the idea of eventually confronting Holmes, "when the time is right."
Because Sherlock Holmes won't notice his constant companion's new drug habit or any change in his behavior. Or the fact that he doesn't sleep.
Jam Watson, everyone.
(Although I should mention that on returning to the room where he left Holmes, Holmes hits him with a poker with a blow that would have taken Watson's head off, and Watson only attributes his survival to his newly drug-heightened reflexes. Take that as you like. And he wakes up to find Holmes begging to know if he's all right, and blaming Moriarty for driving him to such a state that he would almost kill his dearest friend out of suspicion.)
So for the next two weeks Holmes led an increasingly coked-up Watson on an exhausting and random trek across Europe, eventually ending up -- at Reichenbach Falls. Precisely at the time that Watson runs out of cocaine, since his Constant Vigilance and the wackiness of their travels prevented him from restocking.
Holmes delays their start up the mountain until the withdrawal symptoms start in earnest -- with auditory and visual hallucinations, just in case there wasn't already enough suspicion of the narrator's reliability.
But of course it turned out to be all deliberate timing on Holmes' part. Because -- brace yourself -- he had in fact noticed Watson injecting himself with cocaine three times a day. And he had concluded that Moriarty had long ago killed Watson and was now impersonating Holmes' closest friend. So he, too, had taken Watson up the mountain for a Final Confrontation where he demanded to now exactly when Moriarty had murdered Watson, and then to kill him with Jack's/Moriarty's own knife.
Before he pulled the knife, mind you, Watson tried to shoot Holmes repeatedly with his own gun, which he totally believed was loaded, but Holmes had removed the bullets, because, y'know, he didn't have the highest confidence in coked-up Watson's judgement.
So this all led up to the most moving scene in the entire book, when Holmes has Watson pinned to the ground (in addition to the new coke addiction, Holmes cited as evidence for Watson's falseness how his usual stout devotion had been absent the past few weeks; Holmes also simultaneously confessed to daily use of a special mix of cocaine-infused snuff) with the knife raised over him, and Watson screams out that Holmes should go ahead and kill him because Moriarty has won, and what a triumph it is to trick Sherlock Holmes into murdering his only true and loving friend.
That actually halts Holmes, who after a moment lowers the knife, pulls back, and very gently tells Watson not to worry, Moriarty will not harm him. And then he steps off the edge of the cliff, and Watson peers over to see his body strike an outcrop of rock.
So, as you can see, there's a certain amount of brilliance in how its set up with the open question as to whether or not Moriarty is to Holmes as Hyde is to Jekyll, and whether Holmes knew it in the end or not. And Watson never once glimpsed Moriarty in this version. But there's more than ample cause to doubt Watson's reliability.
But the story did not end there. The final, and biggest, shock of the book was the conclusion, which explained how Watson was determined to preserve the good image of Sherlock Holmes in the minds of the public, even to turn him into a myth, as a way of enshrining the good he'd done and burying the rest. And of course his chosen method of accomplishing this was arranging for Arthur Conan Doyle to write the rest of the Sherlock Holmes stories. (Why Watson would then account the whole true tale and put it in a vault to be opened in fifty years is beyond comprehension.)
So the entire story was all an elaborate set-up to dump on Doyle and the legacy of Sherlock Holmes.
But I didn't realize the real punch of it until, less than an hour after finishing it, I had to sit in a dental chair for two and a half hours, and I started an audiobook on my iPod to get through the ordeal. I only have four audiobooks on my iPod, and two of them are Sherlock Holmes, so I started playing "Valley of Fear" -- which happens to open with a discussion of Moriarty. And then, to my annoyance, I realized that the aspersions of the stupid fanfic had succeeded in shadowing my enjoyment of the canon, because I couldn't keep from double-guessing the events to see if there was any real confirmation that Moriarty was who Holmes claimed him to be.
Cringed all the way to work this morning, because (spoilers)
So, after Watson saw "Holmes" mutilating the girl, he didn't actually see his roommate at all for a week, because Holmes ran off after Moriarty to the continent for his Final Showdown. Watson thrashed around in angst for a week, even writing up a list of evidence for and against his theory that SHERLOCK HOLMES IS JACK THE RIPPER.
Then Holmes sends a telegram announcing Moriarty's defeat and his imminent return, and Jam Watson panics. He packs his things and runs away to get married.
He'd already been engaged to Mary, so it wasn't totally crazy, but he'd also been avoiding the subject of his fiancee entirely with Holmes because Holmes tended to have massive prissy fits whenever she came up, and Jam Watson is meek like that.
But he persuades Mary by telling her how anxious he is that she might be murdered next, especially without ~manly protection~ around her current house. And then he turns around and writes Holmes a letter explaining his sudden departure, specifically blaming female hysteria and Mary's dread of being the next victim, even though he had tried to reason with her, etc. He ends by apologizing and expressing the wish that they can catch up soon on how Holmes took Moriarty down (and also Watson thinks he's going to keep an eye on Holmes somehow, what).
Holmes wrote back with his congratulations and also to say that the catch-up will have to wait, as he'll be out of the country for several months at least, as Europe has more interesting cases and he's sick of London.
I'm starting to wonder if they are never actually going to have a reconciliation, oh my God. What if Watson actually locked up the manuscript with the belief and accusation that Holmes was really Jack the Ripper, and that's the reason for the consternation and the threats against publication in the 70s when it was finally revealed? My God, that would be stupid.
The whole thing is appallingly insipid -- that Watson witnessed everything he did, working seven years with Holmes, and can't spare the slightest skepticism for deceit of his own senses -- that he can't be bothered to actually stop and talk to his friend before jumping to extreme action -- it's just contrived, honestly.
Anyway -- I have The Golden Compass to start next, and at least I've read it before -- though several years ago -- and I know the daemons at least are cool.
