captivated by bbc Sherlock's fandom deducing the show, our hearts & canon; enchanted as well by good omens :-) ~ "the universe is made of stories, not of atoms" ~
Hi! I found your link through the FandomTrumpsHate auction, I am too late for the auction itself but I am looking for a beta, and I would be willing to donate to any charity of your choosing just as in the auction. It's a Cabin Pressure story (if you don't know the fandom, you would probably need to listen to at least one episode to understand the basics of the characters). I am looking for someone to do a general read-through, check on spelling and grammar, and a 'do these jokes make sense' sort of things, some Britpicking perhaps. It will be around 50k, explicit Martin/Douglas, no specific warnings. Would you be interested? Thank you!
These last weeks of the semester have been especially exhausting, so I'm just getting back to communicating with the rest of the world (turned in all my grades yesterday! huzzah!)
I've not actually listened to CP but I know the general outlines from enthusiasts :-) I've always meant to give it a listen so maybe this is my signal to move that up the list :-)
If you still need someone, I'd be happy to help out, although I have a couple of beta jobs on tap so it would probably be around the beginning of June, if that's okay?
After immersing myself in GO fanfics, I’ve noticed several themes.
1. Everyone loves Muriel.
2. Everyone hates the Metatron.
3. Crowley looks fabulous in high-end (or, really, any) dresses. And is an expert with hair and makeup.
4. Aziraphale has hidden talents, usually including a kink of some sort. Good for him.
5. Anathema can work in almost any occupation imaginable and kick ass at it.
6. The Them are still quirky and awesome, even when they’re off to uni.
7. Mr Brown… oh my… why is he such an ass?
8. Newt is awkwardly sweet. (seriously, I like him more now than I ever did in the book/show)
9. Never trust an angel (aside from Aziraphale and Muriel, obviously).
10. Crowley + Aziraphale are either ace (5%), have a “normal” sex life (5%) or fuck constantly, with toys and other additions, have weird safewords that they really should use more often, the angel is mostly dom, and Crowley learns how little he actually knows about sex the third time they get naked together.
One thing that makes Galaxy Quest such a good film is how kind it is about the diehard fans, from the nerds who have an encyclopedic knowledge of every inch of the ship to the fangirls who squeal over their favourite ship, it'd have been so easy to make fun of them and portray them as pathetic losers and asocial freaks, but instead they're portrayed as sweet and earnest and having firm and valued and real friendships with each other as a result of their fandom, and being right to care about the show as much as they do. The movie isn't a love letter to Star Trek, it's a love letter to Star Trek fans.
:: March 20 :: Selection for Week 12 of 2025 :: 🐝"a scandal in bohemia" (1891) from sherlock holmes: a year of quotes* 🖊️
One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of The Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem.
Standing alone in the dark of night, it so happens that John Watson finds himself at 221B Baker Street, perhaps in the shadow of a lamppost, gazing up from the pavement below toward an upper floor window which frames a partially visible, partially obscured figure in motion. The sitting room across which Sherlock Holmes is pacing had previously belonged to Watson as well, before he had exited the premises, perhaps six months to a year before; as he observes, "my marriage had drifted us away from each other." In his wording he's not yet ceded the space that served as his former home as belonging solely to its current occupant, stating that Holmes "had remained in our lodgings in Baker Street." Watson has brought himself to the physical border at which he is placed either outside or inside the brilliantly lit space.
The quotation above also sets up another inside/outside dichotomy, a sharply psychological one, between ignorance and knowledge. In the previous paragraph, Watson reveals that, during the time that has passed, he knows nothing more of Holmes than does any other reader of the metropolitan dailies; but here and now, at this precise place, in this precise moment, he confidently claims that he can perfectly understand the figure at which he gazes: "To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem."
Perhaps Watson's presence at Baker Street occurred as he states: that he has happened upon his old neighborhood while returning to his marital residence after the conclusion of a doctorly house call. In my reading between the lines, I suspect the opposite to be true: that this claim is a pretense (perhaps an explanation given to his wife as to why he is out roaming the streets late at night). Nor may this be the first instance of such an event, and instead is only the most recent, the one in which he moves from passivity to action.
What Watson does say directly is: "I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again."
How did we arrive at this moment, in this, the third Sherlock Holmes story?
By the end of the second story, The Sign of the Four, the partnership of five years or so that had begun with Holmes and Watson meeting and moving in together in the first story, A Study in Scarlet, has been dissolved by their separation, as a consequence of Watson's marriage.
The obstacle that transpires at the conclusion of TSotF is presaged by the existence of a different obstacle in the tale's beginning passages, which portray a Watson who is highly agitated about and dissatisfied with his flatmate. Watson feels only partially in control of a force that is bringing matters to a head; he assigns agency for his contemplated actions to the wine he has imbibed, and nonetheless feels inadequate at winning the battle ahead: to convince his friend to abandon his use of cocaine. He is up against the "pathological morbidity" that lures Holme to indulge in the habit, as well as Holmes's seeming indifference to giving due weight to Watson's anguish.
As the encounter builds, it becomes clear that although Holmes's seven-percent solution is a cause for Watson's vexation, it is also symbolic of other, seemingly long-standing frustrations that have accumulated into a barrier that, if surmounted, would allow for the emergence of a deeper partnership and intimacy. This outcome, however, continues being thwarted due to Holmes's purportedly ascetic nature.
Holmes is casually dismissive of Watson's concerns, and chooses to redirect their conversation by turning to comments about his recent intellectual activities. He reveals that some of his "practice has extended recently to the Continent," after being sought out for consultation by one Francois Le Villard, an individual who, he says disingenuously, "as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service." When Watson glances at the "crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper" tossed his way by Holmes, what he spies is "a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray 'magnifiques,' 'coup-de-maitres,' and 'tours-de-force,' all testifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman." Holmes informs Watson that he rates the capacities of his new partner-in-crime quite highly, such that he is, in fact, allowing him to translate "small works" of Holmes's into French. These "small works" are research monographs of which Watson has been unaware, unlike Holmes's foreign contact.
A short while later, Watson enunciates a curious expression, one that appears to arise from his Sherlockian impasse: "If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man." Taking this sentiment at face value, Watson apparently sees no light forthcoming to greet him as he makes his way through a tunnel that reverberates with regret. To say the least, there is a lot going on here, in regard to emotions roiling under the surface for the two men.
Into this unsatisfactory and unsettled domestic scene arrives a disruptive force, a woman who crosses the threshold, seeking to become a client: Miss Mary Morstan, a single woman who possesses a pleasing, undemanding presence, whom Watson immediately describes as "sweet," "amiable," "spiritual," and "sympathetic." These characteristics mark her as the inverse of Holmes, while simultaneously being the inverse of an invert: Mary is a marriageable prospect. She is a damsel in distress who demurely agrees to Watson's protection, who soothes his bruised ego with "ardent admiration" directed at himself, and who unreservedly throws open the door to intimacy and welcomes him in. In short order, Watson sets out to romance her, leading to a proposal for them to wed that occurs with impressive, if not to say questionable, speed.
Watson's marital attainment wraps him in a cloak constructed out of the warp and weft of heterosexual normativity and of upstanding conventionality. I think that Watson does truly care for Mary Morstan, and does truly favor aspects of what he calls the "home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment." But the dramatic and solitary nature of his reappearance at Baker Street also suggests that his hasty departure from his menage with Holmes has resulted in a significant amount of repenting at leisure. After all, he will ring the bell and be shown "up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own," and within a day he will be once again detecting at Holmes's side, and staying the night.
My interpretation of the timing for this turn of fictional events is that the design of TSotF has been influenced by the ramifications of the real-world Cleveland Street Scandal, which occurred in 1889, two years before ASiB. In 1885, the government had passed the Labouchere Amendment, which designated "gross indecency" (in essence, same-sex acts between men) as a crime. While this event is indicative of an increasingly intolerant environment for homosexuality, it was the police raid of a male brothel supplying under-age boys, many of whom worked in telegraph offices, for sex with wealthy men -- including aristocrats -- that helped construct a foundation for moral panic. It was this media-saturated scandal that had far-reaching effects, both in terms of personal danger in regard to risky behavior, and in terms of public attention. These events were not only the result of legal decisions, but also of new initiatives in policing practices and surveillance:
Cleveland Street is an acknowledged milestone of London’s sexual past, but it has broader significance to historical developments of the late nineteenth century: what has thus far been missing from discussions about the scandal’s notoriety is that it is as much a revelation about new clandestine information monitoring practices as it is of London’s subcultures.
[Katie Hindmarch-Watson, "Uncovering Cleveland Street: Sexuality, Surveillance and late-Victorian Scandal," posted at the Notches blog (2014).]
When Doyle brought Holmes and Watson to life in ASiS as characters who would save each other, I think that he did intend for the two of them to have an especially deep, even exclusive bond, while also being disinclined to imply anything further about the precise nature of their intimacy, leaving this for individuals to assess according to their own insights. But by 1889, the socio-cultural realities of societal sexual regulation made the option of providing Watson with marital propriety especially prudent. This sensibility, admittedly speculative, might also be supported by two other authorial choices.
The first instance is how the third story begins, in a way that provides Holmes himself with a vague heterosexually-tinged coloration in ASiB (and it is purposefully devised to be singular): "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex."
The second item is that, although the young street boys who make up the Baker Street Irregulars appear in the first two stories (and have one, much later, appearance), they are never seen again. The subsequent omission of their narrative presence as traders of informational goods with a mature male who supplies them with rewards, is perhaps due to caution on Doyle's part to avoid any inadvertent connection being made to the Cleveland Street scandal's telegraph boys. (It is interesting to note how familiar the idea is of the Baker Street Irregulars in Holmesian lore, despite the brevity of their appearance.)
And yet: despite the care with which Watson and Holmes as an exceptional pair of men are given plotlines that innoculate them from moral suspicion, the third story nevertheless brings us the image of Watson's night time vacillation on the pavement, gazing up in longing at the absent figure he once knew so well; it is a centuries-old theatrical scenario drenched in the aura of romance, with whispered echoes of erotic desire. Doyle could have re-united the two in any one of a thousand other mundane ways . . . and yet he did not.
Imagining Watson hitting his mark on the Baker Street stage puts me in mind of much that is contained in the lyrics and music of the 1980 song, "Romeo and Juliet," written by Mark Knopfler, and performed by Dire Straits . .
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*Levi Stahl and Stacey Shintani, eds., U of Chicago Pr, 2019
& bespoke notifications as requested :-) [thanks for reading!]: @totallysilvergirl and @winterdaphne2 and @keirgreeneyes and @calaisreno and @lisbeth-kk
I've just noticed how Mycroft's use of his umbrella is a rather aggressive provocation when compared to John's cane -- since Mycroft famously carries his umbrella everywhere it tends to fade in the background, but here, while his stance is somewhat dandyish with the umbrella propping him up, it is also broadcasting that it's pretend support. He lifts it up with ease and remains perfectly still and upright with one leg even angled across the other and swings it all the way up to chest level to point it at John -- he's steady on his feet, unlike John. Just one of the many factors that went into his intimidation theatrics, perhaps.
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