@continentalblue / continentalblue.tumblr.com
fucking sucks ass that detective is a subtype of cop or always some type of law enforcement. a detective should be someone who is a master of disguise, a weirdo, socially maligned, and hated by the police. he should solve the cases using his ultra specific knowledge about geography, linguistics, human biology, and cigar ashes
If Sherlock Holmes was Isekai'd to a fantasy world he would just deduce the rules of this world and get back to solving crimes. He'll find an elf girl sidekick,name her Watson, and pretend like nothing happened.
"If you look closely, you can see traces of chalk dust on the floor. Our murderer must have used a magic circle to kill our victim."
"Actually Holmes, this looks like salt. Quite unusual for a magic circle, since it can be scattered so easily..."
"It tastes like salt too. Good eye Watson. Let us start by visiting the fish mongers."
"Well I would enjoy some fried dragonfish, but how does this help our investigation?"
"A process of elimination, my long-eared friend. There're only two ways for the culprit to get salt in the city. They could have brought it in themselves-"
"But then they'd have to pay the tarrif!"
"Very astute! No, a much likelier option is that they bought it here. Either the docks or the meat market would be the place. And I have a hunch that our culprit is fishy in more ways than one."
"But Holmes, how did you know the merfolk ambassador was the killer?"
"An excellent question, the key was the footprints."
"But he doesn't even have feet!"
"He doesn't as of right now. But you forget, the magic circle."
"I see! The killing spell was a water spear, which normally requires a circle."
"But doesn't if you're already imbued with water magic like our scaly ambassador."
"So the circle..."
"To grant him a pair of feet. For just long enough to leave distinctive footprints in the scattered salt and to make us suspect a two-legged killer."
"By the Goddess, Holmes, you're a genius!"
Makes sense.
Anyway, getting sheer autism vibes from Holmes
Good. That means I wrote him in-character.
i would watch 3 seasons of this show. the animation would be colorful on everything except holmes who remains in his usual British browns.
Everything else would be in a modern anime art style but Holmes would be drawn like the old illustrations.
I agree with most of this however: Holmes would be fighting tooth and claw to get back to His Original Watson (if Holmes had already met him). The narrative arc of this isekai is holmes desperately trying to get back home not because he feels out of place in this world (it's actually a wonderful place to live and has so many different kinds of wildlife and there are bees he's never seen before) but because wherever watson is, is his home. It is both or none.
He's solving crimes as exchange for info on how to get home, the materials he needs, etc, to get back to Watson.
Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
Sherlock Holmes is a polyglot, and therefore we as a fandom should make him fuck up the English language more often I believe
"Watson, I'll buy a letter mark. Don't wait for me."
"You mean a stamp?"
Was thinking with his German synapsis "Oh, yes!"
Everytime he says a french expression, it's not him showing off. He just genuinely forgot English had the expression "kill two birds" so he said "turn one rock into two strokes" or whatever coup means in this example
"Watson, how do you call that... that round fork?"
"You mean spoon?"
"Watson, it's raining basins"
"You mean buckets?
*sherlock still thinking in italian*
"Ah...suppongo di si"
a facet of Holmes’s character that is just the sweetest little thought to me is the fact that he seems to care so much about his information/methods being available, accessible, known.
He never seems to have shirked from explaining his processes, and was perfectly happy to do so for clients - in the ‘red headed league’, if i remember right (at least in the Granada show) he jokes he’ll have to stop talking through his deductions because once people do have it explained to them they consider it ‘absurdly simple’. which, at least to me, implies Holmes must do that often. and it also gives the impression imo that if you would like to know, all you have to do is ask him.
Add to that all of his articles and monographs and books; the fact he’ll openly admit to referring to past cases and cite the ones he did use to help piece this new mystery together. And he actively recommends it as a method! he doesn’t allow people to think that his abilities exist in some kind of vacuum, or that they’re some kind of unobtainable gift he just happens to be born with - I mean he has a talent for it ofc, and it takes a lot of work, time, and patience, but it’s still reasonably attainable for the dedicated.
Like he really said ‘hey! I can do this thing! It’s really cool!! And so can you!’
More selfish people would have hoarded that information like a gold mine, I’m sure, if only for the notoriety (and therefore wealth) it would bring, never explaining anything so they can leave others to attempt desperately to figure it out. They’d try and probably succeed in staying on a pedestal.
But Holmes went, no, this knowledge can help people. It can improve methods, it can save lives. so I’ll share it. Because that matters more to me.
(Which as an aside the fact he will so willingly do things for free, reduce his fee, or allow clients plenty of time and leeway to pay him ties into this quite nicely, because it’s the same kind of idea. He wants to help people - from all backgrounds - and again rather than put barriers around himself to become hideously rich, he’s kind, considerate, and patient. he would rather do good, his morality and compassion far, far outshining any sense of greed. the only time (to my memory) we see him prioritise money, rather than stepping back to consider who the real victim might be, is in ‘A scandal in Bohemia’, which interestingly seems to be the first time Holmes had come into contact with such a ridiculous amount of money. And, well, it cost him. Maybe he learnt more than one lesson from Irene Adler).
i still cant believe bbc sherlock turned sherlock holmes, who is canonically an empathetic person who respects others and often fights for the under represented when no one else will and loves and supports his friends and helps a sexual assault victim hunt down her attacker and helps another victim of misogyny get free of her ex even though he was the one to hire sherlock in the first place, into a misogynistic douchebag lmao i hate
BBC Sherlock is bad for a whole lot of reasons but we could stand to talk more about how much whimsy and delight the show decided to throw away.
Sherlock Holmes in the books is a weird little nerd who knows he's hot shit and whose body is at least 50% cocaine at this point. He's what happens when a chemistry major listens to too many true crime podcasts. He plays the violin and likes to be on the floor.
How to write a good detective story:
1. Make up a silly man
Balthazar Cummerbund could never capture Sherlock "I will do all the drugs at once to see what happens" Holmes getting crossfaded in the living room while his buddy who is a whole ass doctor looks on in fascinated horror
Sherlock Holmes is a man who talks about experimenting with animal tranquilizers but never swears because his mom might hear
Why make Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler lovers when you can make them frienemy penpals?
My dear Mr. Holmes,
Word has reached me across the Ocean that reports of your tragic demise have been greatly exaggerated. My deepest sympathies.
Yours quite sincerely,
Mrs. Irene Norton
The Women of Baker Street - by Michelle Birkby
[image description: an excerpt from a book in all italics. it reads:
“There, does that help your mystery? I wish I could come to help, but i am taking lessons with a great maestro. I think I shall sing again—through choice, not necessity. My husband is kind, and understands how great the lure is. Then I shall come to London, and send you tickets—but I won’t send one to Mr. Holmes. If he wants to hear me sing, he can pay for it.
Love to Mary, and of course to you.
Yours, Irene”.
end description.]
In the red headed league, Holmes says, “I have made a small study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject.” First of all, he definitely has a tattoo (which he probably got down at the docks by some random sailor and it was really unhygienic (which makes Watson almost faint when he finds out about it years later))
However, I bet that in order to get fuller knowledge on tattoos which would enable him to write a monograph about them, he gave himself a really bad stick n poke tattoo of a bee <3
This tag👍
I have to do a fan art with this, holmes with a tattoo
kinda simple and rushed but i needed to do it
Omg I love it!!! The bee is so cute!! <3 <3 <3
I’m re-reading canon. Haven’t read it consecutively since the first time I read any of it, I think I was 12 at the time? Anyway last night I read STUD. I had some thoughts -
No one speaks in the flowery “Victorian” language so many adaptors for various media seem to strive for. Especially not Holmes. Holmes’ dialogue is fairly slang-y and informal. He is not the one who uses big words. All big words appear in Watson’s prose.
Watson really has all the hallmarks of being an intelligent person. It’s actually easy to imagine what Holmes likes about him. He’s very quick on the draw and adaptable, novelty doesn’t throw him off, he’s a skeptic but has no problem taking in new information and adjusting his worldview, and he seeks to build that worldview empirically. I wonder if Holmes didn’t take him along on this case partly because he empathized with Watson’s boredom at the time and general desire to find things out. It’s not at all the case that they did not have things in common, besides their circumstances. They’re starting on the same page in some ways.
It’s also fairly obvious that Holmes is making an effort to get along with Watson. Contrary to Stamford’s concerns Watson initially finds him very easy to live with, and describes that he’s tidy, quiet, and retires punctually at 10 pm. Not the Holmes we become familiar with through subsequent stories...Holmes is arguably being purposefully considerate. There is some foreshadowing, such as Watson’s suspicions of Holmes’ drug use, elsewhere in the story, that suggests ACD had a fully fleshed out idea of his character at the time, so it seems likely this was written with intent.
I still couldn’t make it through the Utah part.
Further bulletins as events warrant.
Sherlock Holmes Edition Numbers 11 and 12
“Holmes and Watson” “Watson and Holmes”
It’s all right.
Age has not mellowed you, has it.
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.
There’s a whole subset of Sherlock Holmes stories that could be labeled Asshole Guys Try to Control Women’s Money.
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.
