I've been staring at the Naval Treaty email schedule going "are we there yet?" since Wednesday, and we're HERE!

I know the standard argument is that he was looking for A Clue over near the vase of flowers - do you believe it for a second? I don't. That might have required walking over to the vase. It did not require a short monologue on the goodness of God followed by completely losing touch with the fact there were other people in the room.

From a 'Holmes as queer' perspective, independently from the Holmes/Watson perspective, it's probably my favourite paragraph in the book. I'm not gonna pretend to be very educated about queer thought in the 1890s, I'm just extremely gay and think that 'Isn't it nice that my heart can find this beautiful, even though that feeling serves no purpose for the continuation of the human species?' might mean something. And that he believes it's a gift from God. Given the place and time he's living in, I think that's incredibly powerful.

Oh yeah and I found a floriography dictionary.

Three Blind Bankers

I started to write a response to this thread, and it became too long, so here it is on its own.

The bank in The Blind Banker is indeed metafictionally important—as @thewatsonbeekeepers​ says, John acts as Sherlock’s “agent” in this episode, collecting money for Sherlock’s services. It’s an old custom of the Sherlockian societies to refer to Arthur Conan Doyle as Sherlock Holmes’s “literary agent”, rather than the writer of the stories (because, as we all know, John Watson actually wrote them).

Having John Watson feeling cash-poor and turning to Sherlock Holmes for help, then insisting he be paid, his physical expression of relief when he takes the cheque… all of this is very reminiscent of Arthur Conan Doyle, who was desperate for cash in his early years. The shadow of that desperation never left him, even after he started making big money from Sherlock Holmes. And the common perception is that Doyle would also turn to Sherlock Holmes only when he needed money.

Regarding the idea that the bank represents “the estate”, it’s important to remember that there is not a single Doyle estate, but two: the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate and the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. (which is the one linked in the previous discussion). Both have (or have had) family ties to Arthur Conan Doyle, both have separate legitimate claims to specific parts of Doyle’s legacy, and both have brought copyright lawsuits under different circumstances.

The posts that used to circulate on tumblr about Andrea Plunkett and her nuisance lawsuits against various film adapters were about the Literary Estate. The nuisance lawsuit against the Enola Holmes adaptation was brought by the Conan Doyle Estate Lid. The Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. is also the group that is closely affiliated with a number of highly esteemed Sherlockians, including those who are slowly releasing previously unpublished works by Doyle, like the whaling diary Dangerous Work and A Life in Letters. This group is trying to shut down Enola Holmes. They also have a stake in presenting Doyle and Sherlock Holmes in a specific light, and they control a lot of information about both. So, paraphrasing from the previous discussion, “Have they ever read the Canon?” Oh yeah. They’ve read it, published it, interpreted it, made careers and reputations on it. But they don’t see it the way we do.

To return to Sebastian Wilkes, I’m not convinced that he represents either or both of the estates, although perhaps I am wrong. The thing is, Sebastian’s relationship to Sherlock in TBB echoes John’s: this case is costing him, in terms of money and potential embarrassment. His response is to turn to Sherlock Holmes… “How’re things, buddy?” he says. His tone is ingratiating… Can you help me out here? Could you see your way? Would you sort this for me? Could you be discreet? These are the same sentiments, from both John and Sebastian, in the same episode.

The difference is all in the attitude. Hard to imagine John saying here, “We all hated him” even if he does laugh at Sebastian’s joke. Sebastian looks down his nose at Sherlock, even as he save’s Sebastian’s livelihood… which is exactly how Doyle acted toward Sherlock Holmes within his lifetime. Doyle insisted repeatedly that Sherlock Holmes kept him from writing better things, that he only came back to the Holmes stories for money. So, there’s a lot of conflation here, I think, between Doyle, Sebastian Wilkes, and John Watson. It gives us a little glimpse at John’s imperfection and at his subterfuge. For a number of reasons, I think it is unlikely that Doyle really hated Sherlock Holmes, but publicly, he insisted that he did.

So, I think Sebastian Wilkes is specifically a mirror for both Doyle and John (or simply for John via Doyle) in this episode. The bank itself mirrors Doyle’s legacy, as @raggedyblue​ suggested. And perhaps the fact that it is a bank means that it represents what people stand to gain from it. That is the business of the estates, and also of everyone who produces content related to Sherlock Holmes, including filmmakers, publishers, pastiche writers, old-school Sherlockians… and even us.

However, the name of the bank, Shad Sanderson, suggests to me that Mofftiss aren’t aiming at so broad an interpretation. Etymologically, Sanderson is the same name as Anderson, who we recognize as an obvious John mirror. And I strongly suspect that Shad is taken from Shad Thames, an old London street near Tower Bridge; the name of this street is a corruption of “St John’s”.

So, this is John’s bank—of stories, really—presided over by a portrait of Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes enters at the invitation of a sneering John mirror to solve a case there. There is much in this episode that we couldn’t have recognized when we first saw it in S1, but that becomes clearer in hindsight.

@devoursjohnlock I think this is a fantastic interpretation, and a really good nuance in splitting the banker and the bank into Doyle and estate. One thing that I want to throw out there - a little random - is that Sebastian is the patron saint of homosexuality. The name showing up with Moran is one thing - Mofftiss can’t control that, although Doyle being an educated man and of the Wilde set would definitely have known about the connotations of the name, given how frequently it appears in Shakespeare etc. in a queer context, which was well known at the time. Using it again makes me wonder whether it’s important when Sebastian is asks John to be discreet - in case we weren’t aware what Doyle might have needed to tone down for his publishers? Possibly I’m clutching at straws here, but I study a lot of queer theory and the name Sebastian does have tremendous significance in art and literature. 

[leading me to the very cracky here, but what about the line in TRF - Johann Sebastian would be appalled? John-story-seller and Sebastian would be appalled with the queering of the canon that we see in the Sherlock/Jim dynamic?]

rb for discussion. i did not know that about the name sebastian.

@sarahthecoat it’s actually really cool - pretty much every queer pair in Shakespeare’s work are called Antonio and Sebastian! So this really would have been a studied thing in Doyle’s time (Wilde and co were mad on Shakespeare’s queerness)

wow, ok. i had noticed how often those names both crop up in the plays, and thanks in part to being in sherlock fandom i notice more queer subtext in everything. now i want to crack open my shakespeare again!

I have just realized something that I am sure the Holmesians have already analyzed in a minimal part and that even here it has already been taken into consideration, but often I belive that I need to figure stuffs out on my own…so…ever in the Canon no one really sees Moriarty apart from Holmes. That not only sees him, but from which it is evidently obsessed. The idea that even Doyle himself had intended to write Moriarty as nothing other than Holmes’s homosexuality, at the time even more tinted than homophobia than it is even now, is incredibly tempting. The monster that accompanies the hero. The real cause of his fall. The same thing that his friend Stoker will write a few years later, writing about Dracula. The two also share the same prominent and bulbous forehead. And I’m still wondering what the hell ever will going to add the Moffits in Dracula … I look forward curiously

 @possiblyimbiassed @sarahthecoat @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @tendergingergirl

hmm, interesting thought! If ACD used "moriarty" as a metaphor for, or avatar of, holmes' homosexuality, then that suggests that BBCSH, using not only moriarty, but many other characters as well, as metaphors, or avatars, or mirrors/foils, is well founded.

meta: the blind banker

The mirrors;

Heartrooms: Van Coon, Lukis’ & Soo Lin’s flats.

For your consideration before reading; it is long holy fuck [LIKE 20K WORDS LONG], it is not formally written and I’m frequently trash. Carry on.

Much courtesy to Ariane DeVere for her wonderful transcripts that make everything very easy, and to skulls-and-tea, 221behavior & LSiT for resources, epiphanies and general awesomeness.

Keep reading

Still reblogging TBB meta. This one is enormous, but chock-full of insights, and I am so glad I saved a bookmark! I think this friend’s metas is where I started learning about the idea of character mirroring, I may have to go on a meta spree... :)  Also, that screen cap of Soo Lin’s stuffed toys, omg melt me! what does she have, a white bunny (see also ASIP and THOB), and a peanut? or a potato? and what else, not one I recognize.

The Dog Philosphy: Diogenes, Redbeard, and John Watson

This is the fourth in a series of posts relating to Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. This post does not deal with the novel directly, but I think it belongs in this series because it is about the role of dogs in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and how this role is adapted in Sherlock. Inevitably, it has an impact on the interpretation of the novel and the episode The Hounds of Baskerville.

Perhaps surprisingly, I’m going to start at the Diogenes Club. We are first told about the club in The Greek Interpreter.

Because it is mentioned only in stories which feature Mycroft Holmes, and because he was a founder, we tend to associate the Diogenes Club only with Mycroft, but Sherlock Holmes tells us that he also frequented the club:

Assuming that Doyle wrote much of the subtext of the Sherlock Holmes stories through allegory (see… everything else I’ve written), this seems like a good place for readers to look for clues: why Diogenes? Why choose this name for “the queerest club in London”? And what can the answer tell us about Doyle’s stories?

Diogenes of Sinope (c. 404/412–323 B.C.) was also known as the Dog Philosopher, in part because he embraced being called a dog for his way of life and because alluded to dogs often in his teachings. He and his colleagues were therefore called Cynics: “cynic” literally means “dog” or “dog-like” in Greek. In art, Diogenes is often pictured sitting in or near a large, round tub (which he made his home), accompanied by dogs, letters, and/or his famous lantern.

Diogenes (Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1860)

Much of what we “know” about Diogenes is myth or legend, so should not be taken too literally. Diogenes is often quoted as saying, “I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy, and bite scoundrels.” It appears that Doyle and Diogenes have a few things in common here.

Three men and a tub (to say nothing of the dog), under the cut.

Keep reading

ok, i got in too late last night to start reading this, but i have it in a browser tab now so i can't lose it, gonna zoom thru tumblr notes while it's cooperating this morning. Already though, the image of diogenes in his tub-kennel reminds me of "the man in the moon" in the mechanicals' "pryamus and thisbe" in midsummer night's dream; the round tub/moon, the dog, the lantern, only missing the bush.

I'm part of the @astudyincanon book club, and that's exactly what we are doing, reading ACD canon with an eye to the gay subtext. Come Join us!

Arthur Conan Doyle and Subtext

Because it is apparently my calling in life to obsessively research 19th century homosexuality and then yell about it on this dumb website, I’m going to keep doing it.

I’ve started to work on two books:

Here’s some stuff I’ve screamed about so far:

1) Early on in his book Kestner makes the argument that ACD – deliberately and with premeditation – used specific forms of subtext and coding in his writing. He discusses some big issues from the late 19th century (anxiety about the rapidly changing social structure, worries about a German invasion, the complicated perceptions of America, etc) and then shows specific examples of how ACD tapped into these issues by using subtext in the stories. This is important because it supports the idea that ACD could also have constructed a subtext around some other popular topics as well (homosexuality). Additionally, Kestner believes that ACD “queried and interrogated” 19th century ideas of masculinity and manliness in the Sherlock Holmes stories and found them to be problematic. He notes that ACD creates a distinction between manliness and heterosexuality in his writing: you don’t have to be blatantly heterosexual to be a 19th century “man”, as we see in the character of Sherlock Holmes.

2) The readers of the Strand magazine which published ACD’s stories were predominantly male. ACD reportedly said his ideal audience was British men and boys. To me, this implies he could write about male culture perhaps in a way that men of that era could uniquely understand, including subtle nuances of male behaviour and relationships in both public and private spheres. (Those supposedly innocent Turkish bathhouse scenes fooled no one, ACD.)

3) Kestner notes that once Watson joins Holmes in living at 221B, they immediately “behave as if they had always lived together.” Aw. My heart. Also, he gives a list like “they read together and eat together and smoke together and walk together” and then my eyes just glazed over.

4) Then Barsham gives us these gems:

“As in all the Holmes stories, a hidden level of sexual reference anarchically parodies the formal orderings of masculine discourse, playfully concealed in the crime or mystery it investigates.”

and

“No amount of engagement with the massive archives of Sherlock Holmes’ scholarship can silence their celebration of the ingeniously superficial. Their depth lies only in the autobiographical impulses re-symbolised within them and the sexuality which they conceal.”

and

“The problem of marriage rather than the solution of crime is the main issue of the early Holmes stories. […]…the status of Watson’s marriage to Mary Morstan, which concludes the second novella, The Sign of Four, [provides] “the series’ one irreversible event.” Sexuality in the private sphere is the territory of silence in which Sherlock Holmes is initially configured.”

and

“…Doyle created a homoerotic religion of Western masculinity, located in a space safe from sexuality but charged with its symbols and their control.”

In my view, Barsham is saying that yes, there is sexual subtext in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and yes, these sexual references are carefully hidden within the mysteries.

More to come.

RB direct from the op for better tagging.

god i am so SLOW. irene said she dressed like a boy because of the freedom it afforded her. then she used that costume to go out alone, at night, into the city to see her brand new husband. and we never ‘see’ the photograph the king is so frantic about. SO SLOW.

Hah, yes. I drew a variation on this theme myself a while back (reblogged here.)  The story simply says that Adler was in “evening dress” without specifying the variety.  People have often re-phrased this as an evening dress, assuming feminine attire, but the original text wasn’t specific.

I find the dual stories of Adler and Holmes in SCAN very interesting. From Holmes’s perspective, the case is initially a convenient catalyst for the revival of his connection with Watson, but Adler takes on a deeper importance in his mind. She is an unconventional as Holmes himself, and perhaps braver. I feel that Adler was a lesson to him far beyond his underestimation of women. 

SCAN is a story with much potential for discussing queerness and the risks and rewards of being different. It’s disappointing that in nearly all adaptions* it’s displaced by or simplified into a romantic attraction between Holmes and Adler. Of course that can be done – it can even be done with a queer sensibility – but there are so many other rewarding ways of exploring that connection. I stick hard to the point that Sherlock Holmes was an insignificant player in Irene Adler’s life, but she struck him deeply in a way that had little to do with romantic attraction.

* I haven’t drawn up a list, but with the exception of Granada, nearly all of the film, television, and comic depictions of Adler I’ve seen have involved attraction to or an affair with Sherlock Holmes. Many also turn Adler into a professional criminal for some reason, perhaps again to re-associate her life with Holmes.

The only reason people insist on putting Adler with Holmes is because she’s the only woman he ever mentions favourably - and it’s for her intellect, not her sexuality - and they’re so homophobic they can’t bear to ship him with the only other blindingly obvious candidate for his affections - Watson.

I am coming to understand how homophobia plays into all of this…late in life but it’s hard to see it when you’re in it.

I miss abundantlyqueer, i wish i had made a tumblr years ago and reblogged a bunch of stuff. Such a smart cookie!