A rabbit, John!

The second issue of the Practical Handbook was all about queer readings so I made this non-fiction comic about reading Holmes as trans! It’s actually more of an introduction to the subject, ideally I’d like to turn it into a proper article some day, but it felt good to reflect on it and be able to have this in a publication as a valid reading. Researching critical material was emotionally draining since the very few published essays on the topic are incredibly transphobic and basically worthless, but that made me want to have my say even more. Many thanks to my good friends Mo and Elinor for helping me with the wording so as to make it accessible but to the point, and as always Katie for supporting my little transgender bum.

A Recommendation List of Holmes Stories

This is—for the moment—exclusively Victorian/Edwardian, as in book Holmes and things that read like book Holmes, for the excellent reason that my interests are very limited. A mixed assortment of friendship and romance, because why choose when you can have both; warnings, genres, themes, pairings and other important stuff mentioned between brackets (hopefully).

Keep reading

Pins for various Sherlockian Societies in the collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries

Every Sherlock Holmes story is like

— John Watson (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Problem of Thor Bridge)

The way Holmes textually canonically frequently regularly and often without hesitation commits crimes and/or protects criminals because he likes them, he thinks it's a silly thing to be criminalised for, he's bored, the police annoy him, he's gay, he's been drinking his respect women juice, or it was a really funny crime is just... Perfect of him actually

Literally canonically in his eyes basically the worst thing you can do is be a rich guy using your power to hurt people especially if you're hurting women or warmongering but if women commit treason he thinks it's hilarious and they end up besties who send each other Christmas cards every year its so fucking good

He's 100% right about all of this by the way

As a cop, you've got to be really SURE about the cases you bring to Sherlock Holmes. Because there's every chance he'll just decide to help your suspect flee the country.

To any fic writers who worry they are wasting their time... I read a fic for a relatively small and inactive fandom about three years ago. And there was one specific scene where a character watched another dancing like an idiot to a beyonce song and it was so sweet and loving that even now years later I have that song on one of my spotify playlist so every once in a while it will play and remind me of that fic, and every time it does I smile and feel a little happier.

The stats on a fic will never really tell you if your writing touched someone. There's no numerical way to show you what impact you made. Maybe you are wasting time, or maybe you are writing something that someone will remember for a long time, something that will never fail to make them smile.

In Sherlock Irene Adler is just as obsessed with outwitting Holmes as he is with outwitting her, and I feel like that’s a fundamental misreading of the source material, because in Doyle’s version Holmes happens to get in Irene’s way, so she does the functional equivalent of trapping him under a cup, sliding a newspaper under him and dumping him out in the backyard.

—

Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via rembrandtsw (via finkspiration)

“It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.”

Oh dang that is spot on!

(via rosalarian)

When John was with Mary, a canonically romantic and sexual relationship, he felt unfulfilled enough to stray (even if he didn’t physically cheat). He had love and romance and sex, and it didn’t fulfill him.

When John was with Sherlock before the fall, a close but nonsexual or romantic relationship, John felt fulfilled enough that he did the opposite. He STOPPED dating. He STOPPED having sex with people. He didn’t have sex and romance with Sherlock, but the relationship fulfilled him.

So what do YOU think the future holds for John?

Every minute is time to reblog this

Every so often, I remember that like 80% of Tumblr (myself included) was completely enraptured by a show where the big twist was that the main character forgot his childhood friend was murdered by his sister, and for some reason only remembers his childhood friend ever existing as a dog.

And in that same episode it’s revealed that the same sister…..like…..hypnotized (?) the main character’s arch rival into hating him by, like, staring at him for a few minutes.

In our collective defense, this is when we all decided “hey we should probably stop watching Sherlock”

#Sherlock #I only watched the first two seasons? (via @raptortooth)

god i wish that were me

Wait What?

series 3 of sherlock: john marries mary morstan off-camera, the show mocks all the fans who kept the hype up during a two year hiatus, mary turns out to be an assassin who shoots sherlock, during which time he has a near-death-experience dream about his dog redbeard who was put down. also there’s a weird scene where john is revealed to be attracted to danger and so he dated mary because he was subconsciously picking up the fact that she used to be an assassin. also the series ends with sherlock committing murder in front of witnesses to save john and mary.

christmas special: sherlock goes on a bender where he hallucinates a victorian-era case, the episode ends with moriarty seemingly returning via social media and mycroft making a cryptic reference to “the other one.” oh, also any consequences from sherlock committing murder are immediately negated.

series 4: HOO BOY.

episode 1: mary is killed due to her assassin past, but no one really cares since she’s only been in the show for all of four episodes. she keeps coming back as a recorded voice/hallucination.

episode 2: john goes to a new grief counseler. also he keeps hallucinating mary. sherlock is told to solve a murder by the murderer’s daughter, but it turns out that while the murderer has a daughter, it’s not the woman who gave him the case to solve! eurus, sherlock and mycroft’s sister, has simultaneously masqueraded as john’s grief counseler and the murderer’s daughter and a random woman who keeps following sherlock because she’s a master of disguise! (to be fair, this is a legitimately cool reveal and I genuinely didn’t see it coming)

episode 3: HOO. FUCKING. BOY. eurus is sherlock and mycroft’s sister who’s been in a prison for the criminally insane for decades. mycroft has withheld this knowledge from both sherlock and their parents by claiming she died in a fire she started. turns out she’s able to hypnotize people with ???? her superior intellect ???????? and so even talking to her makes people want to do things for her like commit murder ????????? and so she’s somehow able to do things like escape from her scary island prison and then take herself back, blow up baker street, kidnap multiple people, and then pull Saw-esque morality problems on Mycroft and Sherlock and John where she just murders people for funsies with no apparent motive. IT IS DURING THIS SEQUENCE THAT IT IS REVEALED THAT SHERLOCK HAD A HUMAN BEST FRIEND THAT EURUS MURDERED BUT REWROTE HIS OWN MEMORIES TO IMAGINE IT WAS A PET DOG WHO DIED.

Y’ALL. IT IS SO DUMB. IT IS SO DUMB THAT THE FANDOM GENUINELY HAD A CONSPIRACY THEORY GOING FOR A WHILE THAT THERE HAD TO BE A SECRET FOURTH EPISODE - OF A SHOW THAT ONLY EVER HAD THREE EPISODES PER SERIES - BECAUSE THERE WAS NO WAY THAT SOMETHING THAT BAD COULD BE THE FUCKING FINAL EPISODE.

#every sentence of this was new information that I now wish I didn’t know  - @karatam

So anyway watch Elementary with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu

I’ve literally been sat here for 9 years waiting for two guys to sit down and talk about their feelings. This is the price we all pay for toxic masculinity