Where The Lightning Strikes -- rated G, ~1250 words

Read On AO3

Tagging in the replies as per usual -- let me know if you want to be added to (or taken off) the tag list!

just remembered a fic on AO3 (or more likely LJ because it had that distinct late 00's experimental vibe) that appeared double-spaced oddly, in that some paragraphs would be spaced normally and others would have double or even triple spaces in between. it was about one half of the otp getting over the other's death (or coma, can't remember which), so all the comments were about how poignant the use of visual spacing was as a means to convey all the emotional holes in the character's life.

and then the author replied like... *giggle* guys it's NOT double spaced. try selecting the whole text

and we were all like "no WAY"

but we selected the text, and yes!!!

the "holes" in the story? they were actually lines and actions from the dead/coma character's ghost, rendered invisible to the eye by the simple trick of coloring the text the exact same as the background, revealed by nothing more than a click and a drag of the mouse

a story about the profound loneliness of losing your the partner of your life and having to make do without them, without anything to fill the holes they'd left behind, suddenly became a story about the profound helplessness of seeing someone you love suffer from your absence while you are right there, unable to do anything about it, unable to communicate that you love them enough to suffer unseen and unheard with them, just to keep them company they'll never know about

it was then that I truly realized how *superior* the digital medium is to plain printed paper, how the medium and the format can add to a story.

I think about that fic about once a year. I wish I could find it again

ok but imagine being one of the people who found that out on ACCIDENT

I often miss the early days of the web, when we experimented with HTML just to tell a good story in a new and interesting way. I'll never forget making my first digital illustrations to set up my Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fic to look like a Guide entry. Those were the days.

still thinking about crowley's fall.

That one quote, more specifically. "How much trouble can I get into just for asking a few questions?"

It's very possible I'm overthinking it. But it still reminds me so much of art and censorship, I wrote a poem on it just now, and I just wanted to elaborate on that, on why I said that an answer is judgement but a question is justice.

Back in Ancient Greece, Plato tried to outlaw writers, the storytellers. For millennia, those in power have feared people in arts, because we're not just dealers in aesthetics, we're dealers in ideas. Even in times of war, poverty, censorship, songs were sung, paperbacks exchanged in dark alleyways, stories whispered and walls covered with graffiti.

When stories are created, the writers have to balance both opposing ideas in their head, no matter how vile or repugnant. To prove that the protagonist is strong, you can't have a weak antagonist. The opposing idea has to be as strong as the one that will win for the victory to be meaningful.

Art, and stories, aren't about being right. People say we find answers in art, and maybe for some that's true, but I think what is infinitely more important are the questions it raises.

Because what is braver, what is more shattering to the status quo, than to question it? To dare to ask what if, to present an alternative, to pull an idea up to the witness stand and cross-examine it?

That's why when we see censorship, we need to look deeper. Because if an idea is truly that 'right', it will survive even the most intense of questioning, and even sceptics will have to accept its veracity. Why, then, are people so afraid of stories that question? Maybe it is because deep down, they aren't convinced themselves. They don't believe that their idea will survive the cross-examination. They are trying to keep a lie in power over the truth.

And art isn't about finding that elusive truth, it's about daring to look the lies in their face and say, maybe, maybe you're wrong. I don't know, you don't know, nobody may ever know, but maybe.

Like the Serpent of Eden, whispering, presenting that alternative of dissent to Eve. Not coercing. Not forcing her hand. But telling her that there is an alternative, whether good or bad.

That's why the writers, the artists, the musicians, those from every walk of the arts, are journalists interviewing society. We cannot allow ourselves to be silenced.

It's not about the answers offered, and whether someone agrees with them or not. It's about the questions, and if people fear the questions, maybe think about why that is.

a comic about different types of storytellers

Yet again apropos of nothing, but one of the most interesting things hanging out in both fandom and around various forms of internet self-publishing - as well as haunting various conversations about video-game plots, TTRPG plots, and now pondering the world of actual play podcasts and fiction podcasts and drama podcasts and so on - has let me to contemplate is the wide range of shit that people actually do want to consume* in terms of story, and how it does not, necessarily, map to any formal tradition's decisions about What A Good Story Contains.

[*I know there are people who really object to the use of 'consume' and 'produce' in terms of talking about storytelling and being an audience for storytelling in terms of art, and while I get where those arguments arise from, I don't actually agree with them necessarily, and also it's really hard to find another word that briefly and concisely covers all the various forms of story and audience therefor so we're just going with this one.]

It's actually something I first noticed when discussing re-reads of favourite books with friends, as it happens - it is common wisdom that you need to have A Plot beyond, say, "people in a secondary constructed world go to school and explore the world they're in". Except it turned out that an awful lot of us would go back to reread the bits of the story that were literally just . . . the bits where someone was exploring the new world they were in, and then peace out when the Plot happens.

One then contemplates the Little House books and their enduring popularity† and how for the most part they are literally just . . . a whole series of books about people Doing Normal Things in a landscape that's different enough from the readers' to be fascinating and exciting because it's different, with small domestic excitements and so on.

[†there are other factors here including their active propagandizing in the settlement/colonial narrative of the Americas and how that works, but there are many other books that did the same thing and also disappeared off the face of the planet and did not, in fact, result in endless generations going back to read carefully emotive descriptions of How You Do Sunday Dinner In This Kind of Setting.]

And then of course one discovers the literal entire genre of the "some kind of mundane AU", or the same sort of thing where literally several hundred thousand worlds are just The Characters Deal With What's Going On For Them even with all the magic or weird heritage still in place.

Now are there also people who nope out of them and go "oh god this is boring they do nothing but eat sandwiches and have feelings"? Sure. My point is emphatically not "so this is what people ACTUALLY want, and everyone else has been lying forever". That would be Very Stupid, as an argument, so I'm not making it. Hell there are times when I don't want a "character explores universe" type story because I'm just not there. I'm not making a blanket statement about what single type of story is A Good Story/A Well Done Story/etc at all.

Rather, I've observed with fascination the way in which the comparative ease of distribution** that comes with the internet and its aspects has uncovered the vast, vast range of kind of story that people actually do enjoy, at one time or another, and the way in which the previously hyper-limited formats tended to require a story to partially please a large number of people all of the time in order to get out there.

[**comparative is an important word here. The digital divide is real, the Bad River's monopoly and bullshit is real, etc etc etc - but it is impossible to argue that it is not easier, with the internet context, to distribute one's work, than it was when doing so would emphatically require the physical production of a paper version of said work and its physical geographical shipment from place to place, or the ability to put that work onto incredibly limited and controlled mass broadcasts or even the incredible barrier of equipment entry required to independently broadcast. "Comparatively massively easier" doesn't mean "totally easy".]

For instance: I know a couple of people who at one point or another have made significant money on really "niche" porn; and anyone hooked into fic and art circles in fandom knows there's definitely a market for very specific very "niche" (scarequotes on purpose) porn and smut and other stuff, but the ability to even be able to charge a couple dollars a pop for an e-copy of the same and make enough for a house downpayment, or to pay for a degree, or whatever, speaks to a significant audience. And that kind of thing really is niche.

I know others who make a very reasonable living off a very specific form of romance-novel, a form even more specific than the paperback market was ever going to allow for - it turns out that on a very regular basis people do actually want this specific kind of story. I know a few others who do the same in niche fantasy or niche sci fi and so on.

And of course as a fic writer there are thousands of consumers who want all kinds of things (and in fact repeats of that kind of thing) for the cost of logging into AO3 and maybe leaving a comment.

A lot of this has to do with ease of and low cost of distribution: fanfic, obviously, is free; and a lot of these niche markets have prospered off the back of very low cost e-book platforms and so on. And there's definitely a discussion about whether or not that is a fair recompense for the artistic labour involved for the creator - essentially it seems that enough people are willing (nay, eager!) to access this kind of thing for free but balk once there's some fee attached to it, and balk even more once that fee hits paperback levels. That's a separate set of conversations, though.

The thing that fascinates me is more that actually it turns out that people want all kinds of stories. Lots of people, and lots of kinds of stories, and what will become the endless repeat favourite darling of the heart is not necessarily what conventional wisdom argues is The Best Craft - even "the best craft" for a story that isn't trying to be high art, but just a fun thing.

Turns out there were a lot of people like me who would in fact probably have been delighted with a story that's mostly about rebuilding after an apocalypse and the long list of Skills and Building Things and so on, sans any complex plot at all. And reread it a lot. (And every other kind of story.)

yes, this, so much!

and i would love to have the opportunity to examine the data, if i could tonight make minimum wage, oh , let's say, $30/hour, how would that impact the balking at paying a fee for reading niche stories. just out of curiosity. wouldn't that be interesting. how many more home down payments would that boost. etc. just as a for instance. not to derail this excellent discussion. <3<3<3

Stede’s Trauma, and Why Being Sorry isn’t enough

Fandoms are often in these situations where their show has given them a terrible cliffhanger, where beloved characters have been rent asunder by the choices they made, and we are left for years to ponder the horror of it all. And we dig into who needs to do the apologizing, who made the mistake that caused this, etc. etc. It’s fun because it’s so painful! We love fictional pain, it’s just so delicious. Yum yum! Please sir, may I have some more?

And here we are with Stede and Ed: they made an agreement to run away together, and Stede chose to go home instead and leave Ed waiting with no goodbye and no explanation. Pretty clear cut, really. Stede made a bad choice and should apologize, so the story should now be about Stede apologizing.

I mean, yes, Stede should apologize for ghosting Ed in the worst way, sure, but an apology from Stede just isn’t the question or the answer, I don’t think. It’s not enough, for a start, it doesn’t address why any of this happened, and it’s obscuring all the misunderstanding going on just under the surface. 

What we have here, my fannish friend, is a fundamental miscommunication between two complicated people who have big feelings they can’t recognize or cope with, both of whom believe they have done the absolute right thing for the right reasons, and that is literally my favourite situation in the world, so I am in a delirious haze of delight right now, and will probably stay in this fog of fannish delight until s2 airs.

But I wanted to write about Stede, and why I believe he’s also in a tremendous amount of pain, and why his choices make sense. And why apologizing for it isn’t enough.

Continua a leggere

Very good 👏👏 Everybody go read this!

Also:

I really REALLY hope we also get clarification from Ed’s side of things - how is he really feeling about all of this. Not the abandonment, that’s clear, but what he was “giving up” - to him, was he really giving up anything at all? Who does he really WANT to be? As much as he obviously also wants Stede and to be with Stede, he’s gonna need to trust - capital T Trust - that Stede loves him as he is.

The Strength of a Symmetrical Plot

One of my favorite studies of Harry Potter is that of the ring composition found both in the individual novels and overall composition. That very composition is what makes Harry Potter such a satisfying story. It’s a large part of the reason Harry Potter is destined to become a classic. 

And it’s an integral part of the series many people are completely unaware of. 

So what is ring composition? 

It’s a well-worn, beautiful, and (frankly) very satisfying way of structuring a story. John Granger, known online as The Hogwarts Professor, has written extensively on it.

Ring Composition is also known as “chiastic structure.” Basically, it’s when writing is structured symmetrically, mirroring itself: ABBA or ABCBA. 

Poems can be structured this way. Sentences can be structured this way. (Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.) Stories of any length and of any form can be structured this way.

In a novel, the basic structure depends on three key scenes: the catalyst, the crux, and the closing. 

In Harry Potter, you might recognise this structure: 

But all stories should have this structure. A book’s ending should always reference its beginning. It should always be the result of some major turning point along the way. Otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be a very good story.

What’s most satisfying about chiastic structure is not the basic ABA structure, but the mirroring that happens in between these three major story points. 

To illustrate what a more complicated ABCDEFGFEDCBA structure looks like, (but not as complicated as Harry Potter’s, which you can see here and here) Susan Raab has put together a fantastic visual of ring composition in Beauty and the Beast (1991), a movie which most agree is almost perfectly structured. 

source: x

What’s so wonderful about ring composition in this story is that it so clearly illustrates how that one crucial decision of Beast changes everything in the world of the story. Everything from the first half of the story comes back in the second half, effected by Beast’s decision. This gives every plot point more weight because it ties them all to the larger story arc. What’s more, because it’s so self-referential, everything feels tidy and complete. Because everything has some level of importance, the world feels more fully realized and fleshed out. No small detail is left unexplored.    

How great would Beauty and the Beast be if Gaston hadn’t proposed to Belle in the opening, but was introduced later on as a hunter who simply wanted to kill a big monster? Or if, after the magnificent opening song, the townspeople had nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Or if Maurice’s invention had never been mentioned again after he left the castle? 

Humans are nostalgic beings. We love returning to old things. We don’t want the things we love to be forgotten. 

This is true of readers, too. 

We love seeing story elements return to us. We love to know that no matter how the story is progressing, those events that occurred as we were falling in love with it are still as important to the story itself as they are to us. There is something inside us all that delights in seeing Harry leave Privet Dr. the same way he got there–in the sidecar of Hagrid’s motorbike. There’s a power to it that would make any other exit from Privet Dr. lesser. 

On a less poetic note, readers don’t like to feel as though they’ve wasted their time reading about something, investing in something, that doesn’t feel very important to the story. If Gaston proposed to Belle in Act 1 and did nothing in Act 3, readers might ask “Why was he even in the movie then? Why couldn’t we have spent more time talking about x instead?” Many people do ask similar questions of plot points and characters that are important in one half of a movie or book, but don’t feature in the rest of it. 

Now, ring composition is odiously difficult to write, but even if you can’t make your story a perfect mirror of itself, don’t let story elements leave quietly. Let things echo where you can–small moments, big moments, decisions, characters, places, jokes. 

It’s the simplest way of building a story structure that will satisfy its readers.

If there’s no place for something to echo, if an element drops out of the story half-way through, or appears in the last act, and you simply can’t see any other way around it, you may want to ask yourself if it’s truly important enough to earn its place in your story. 

Further reading:

A concept I find quite funny:

So, we all remember the part in A Study In Pink, where Sherlock and John are in the restaurant; cue the “I’m not gay” shenanigans, right?

BUT, what if, after Angelo put the candle down and John said “I’m not his date!” He turns to Sherlock and does the whole “God, I cannot believe that guy? You get this often?”

And Sherlock’s just looking at him awkwardly, debating on whether or not to tell him that this is where he’s brought any previous dates to as well. 😂😂

Fanfiction, specifically AU fanfiction which focuses on retelling the same story in a different setting, under different constraints, or with a twist, is actually a cultural successor to the ancient bardic tradition of taking long-loved and long-told stories and retelling them with a personal flourish. Through the practice of adding details to unexplored scenes, bringing a specific character to the forefront and constructing sequels, the content-creating fandom that is keeping the ‘epics’ alive through transformative works is reflective and hereditary to the human need to preserve the stories which are dear to us and connect with them on a personal level. In this essay I will

The Strength of a Symmetrical Plot

One of my favorite studies of Harry Potter is that of the ring composition found both in the individual novels and overall composition. That very composition is what makes Harry Potter such a satisfying story. It’s a large part of the reason Harry Potter is destined to become a classic. 

And it’s an integral part of the series many people are completely unaware of. 

So what is ring composition? 

It’s a well-worn, beautiful, and (frankly) very satisfying way of structuring a story. John Granger, known online as The Hogwarts Professor, has written extensively on it.

Ring Composition is also known as “chiastic structure.” Basically, it’s when writing is structured symmetrically, mirroring itself: ABBA or ABCBA. 

Poems can be structured this way. Sentences can be structured this way. (Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.) Stories of any length and of any form can be structured this way.

In a novel, the basic structure depends on three key scenes: the catalyst, the crux, and the closing. 

In Harry Potter, you might recognise this structure: 

But all stories should have this structure. A book’s ending should always reference its beginning. It should always be the result of some major turning point along the way. Otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be a very good story.

What’s most satisfying about chiastic structure is not the basic ABA structure, but the mirroring that happens in between these three major story points. 

To illustrate what a more complicated ABCDEFGFEDCBA structure looks like, (but not as complicated as Harry Potter’s, which you can see here and here) Susan Raab has put together a fantastic visual of ring composition in Beauty and the Beast (1991), a movie which most agree is almost perfectly structured. 

source: x

What’s so wonderful about ring composition in this story is that it so clearly illustrates how that one crucial decision of Beast changes everything in the world of the story. Everything from the first half of the story comes back in the second half, effected by Beast’s decision. This gives every plot point more weight because it ties them all to the larger story arc. What’s more, because it’s so self-referential, everything feels tidy and complete. Because everything has some level of importance, the world feels more fully realized and fleshed out. No small detail is left unexplored.    

How great would Beauty and the Beast be if Gaston hadn’t proposed to Belle in the opening, but was introduced later on as a hunter who simply wanted to kill a big monster? Or if, after the magnificent opening song, the townspeople had nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Or if Maurice’s invention had never been mentioned again after he left the castle? 

Humans are nostalgic beings. We love returning to old things. We don’t want the things we love to be forgotten. 

This is true of readers, too. 

We love seeing story elements return to us. We love to know that no matter how the story is progressing, those events that occurred as we were falling in love with it are still as important to the story itself as they are to us. There is something inside us all that delights in seeing Harry leave Privet Dr. the same way he got there–in the sidecar of Hagrid’s motorbike. There’s a power to it that would make any other exit from Privet Dr. lesser. 

On a less poetic note, readers don’t like to feel as though they’ve wasted their time reading about something, investing in something, that doesn’t feel very important to the story. If Gaston proposed to Belle in Act 1 and did nothing in Act 3, readers might ask “Why was he even in the movie then? Why couldn’t we have spent more time talking about x instead?” Many people do ask similar questions of plot points and characters that are important in one half of a movie or book, but don’t feature in the rest of it. 

Now, ring composition is odiously difficult to write, but even if you can’t make your story a perfect mirror of itself, don’t let story elements leave quietly. Let things echo where you can–small moments, big moments, decisions, characters, places, jokes. 

It’s the simplest way of building a story structure that will satisfy its readers.

If there’s no place for something to echo, if an element drops out of the story half-way through, or appears in the last act, and you simply can’t see any other way around it, you may want to ask yourself if it’s truly important enough to earn its place in your story. 

Further reading:

like i quite literally have never been more passionate about anything than i am about the human race’s invariable desire to tell stories and the fact that we always find a way to do it, through spoken language and written language and body language and visual art and theater and poetry and oral tradition and a million other things. there are so many things we take for granted about the human experience that we never stop to think about but i really want you to take a step back and consider how fucking amazing it is that our need to tell stories transcends all boundaries of time and geography and borders and language. it is one of very few things that is legitimately intrinsic to human nature and i will never stop being completely in awe of humanity for that.

YES.

This is the most beautiful way to describe fic, transformative storytelling and collective mythmaking. He gets it.

Interview/Behind the scene video with the female director (Elizabeth Margolius) and the two lead actors, Maggie Kettering as Dorothy Watson, and Cassandra Bissell as Sherlock Holmes about their upcoming play, Miss Holmes, written by Christopher M. Walsh (running time, ca. 2:44 min).

ok, looks very interesting, but why is holmes’ shirt not tucked into her trousers? That just throws me right out of the scene. I love the two actresses already!

No, that’s not the play :D They’re all in Victorian attire/costume there :D It’s set in Victorian era. That’s just the actresses and the female director fangirling about Sherlock Holmes and the play.

It’s a great play, @sarahthecoat​. It has one of my absolute favourite twists on the very first meeting of them. “She’s a romantic, this one.”

Also, to dragg her on into following her to cases, the line/question/flirting ahoi, “ Doctor Watson, tell me truly, when was the last time you felt safe?”

Well, most of it is interview, but there is a little clip on stage, and it just… the costumer in me just, NO. That shirt untucked thing, not in victorian times, not in renaissance, not in medieval, doesn’t even look good today. Why do people do it?

But…but… @sarahthecoat that’s why it’s so great (IMO). That they don’t want to fit into… that’s what Miss Holmes tells, among other things. And, for me, it’s a great detail. That even the costume reflects the characters. Sherlock Holmes and Dorothy Watson don’t want to be proper, because f*ck proper, also the drama doesn’t shy away that society doesn’t treat women all that well/fair/proper.

I understand where you coming from, but yeah, agree on disagree?

yeah, ok, just... to me it's like going around with your underwear showing. And was a big peeve when i was doing renaissance-ish costumes for summer shakespeare, and had to constantly insist that actors tuck in their shirts. If i was dressing a show like this, i would find a different way to express not-proper. *shrug*

Next question: is the theatre play, Holmes and Watson by Jeffrey Hatcher (the man who wrote Mr Holmes) a massive fix-it as well as f*ck you to SHERLOCK’s The Final Problem?

Like, I only read the first ten pages or so of it… and it’s so much smarter than Moftiss “idea” of a game. The writing is not so great (when one has just reread Pinter’s Betrayal) but the concept?

Has someone watched it live? The play, not the episode, obviously.

@sanguinarysanguinity @sanspatronymic @a-candle-for-sherlock @brilliantorinsane @scfrankles @sarahthecoat

Oh, and tagging @fellshish because we had a short mention of Dürrenmatt yesterday, and this play has some serious vibes of the great Swiss playwriter as well.

The story is basically that Sherlock Holmes died 3 years ago at the Reichenbach, however, as no body was found, countless frauds have claimed to be ‘the real Sherlock Holmes’ ever since. Always, the ever-loyal John Watson was consulted to solve the case. All were fake; he’s at a bad place etc.

Until he recieves a mysterious telegramme urging him to an island. On that island an asylum is located. And in that asylum three men are prisoned — all three claim to be… Sherlock Holmes.

The Game is on.

(Apparently, it ends in a true Dürrenmatt style: John Watson cannot decide who the real detective is. It’s been to long. It will be forever a paradoxon. The man who never lived, and therefore will never die.)

(As I say, the premise is really something else. Even, of course, the question of identity as well as what’s he been up to during the hiatus is not knew. The writing however, so far as I have read it, nah. Don’t expect Ken Ludwig or Cunny/Nicholson. Maybe Hatcher is simply better at writing screenplays?!)

hmm, i have never heard of this before. Sounds kinda creepy.

@sarahthecoat: nah, not really. It’s just… dunno. The premise is solid, the end result not so much IMO.

Compared to theatre plays like Miss Holmes or Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, or The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, or or or… it’s just not that well written? Which is kinda odd because he is the screenwriter of Mr Holmes (the one with Ian McKellen)? But I wasn’t a fan of that particular adaptation either, so… Also, IMO, the original set design is not really a homage to HAMMER and more the BBC SHERLOCK, but that’s my two cent. 

For me, you have to *hear* the voices in a play, even when you’re only reading the script. I never saw it live, so all I have is the script. And IMO, you cannot hear John Watson. He’s just… neither a Victorian/ACD-ish character nor a modern take. Further, I agree with a review that stated that the major issue with the play is that it lacks the depth of character exploration.

The thing is that what people keeps interesting for more than 100 years is not the cases, or, you know, being clever/er than Sherlock Holmes. It’s the characters. And if Sherlock Holmes is engima - and it’s the question who he really is… than at least the rest of the characters IMO should be spot-on. Because in this case of identity, you IMO need a character you can identify (and yourself with). John Watson was/is since the beginning the stand-in for the audience - and this John Watson?

Maybe there should be a twist. But yeah… meh (IMO IMO IMO).

HMM, i wonder if, on stage and with the right actors and director bringing it to life, whether it would work better. I know i have a very hard time reading a script and getting any real “life” out of it on my own.

I actually LOVED the “mr holmes” film with Ian McKellen. I had got the book out of the library months ahead of time, and liked the movie better than the book for once. What is the date of this play, is it from way before that screenplay? Maybe the writer is better now than he used to be? Just speculating.

No, @sarahthecoat​, the play is fairly recent (2017). That’s why - when I read the premise, and prior reading it - thought that I was inspired by The Final Problem, aka Moftiss “writing”. The author has written another play too, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, 2011.

The thing is that asylum, shatter island, case of identity, Reichenbach + Hiatus, etc etc etc are all great ingredients. There’s a reason why it has a long tradition in theatre.

However, as I say, potentially personal taste. I couldn’t stand “his” Sherlock Holmes in Mr Holmes either. The idea was fascinating, but the characterization, yikes. Which is saying a lot as Ian McKellen is a terrific actor. I could and cannot hear “his” John Watson; and that’s kind of my “thing”. Yet, if you like it, all the better! Maybe you’ll enjoy this.

HMM, well, perhaps i will check it out at some point.

It’s Just a Movie. It’s Just a Show.

Back to the Future helped me get through the hardest month of my life ten years ago.

Love, Simon made me feel more comfortable with aspects of my identity…

Which I now embrace through a love for chick flicks.

“Veronica Mars” helped me get through high school…

And “Doctor Who” helped get me through my first year of college.

I was able to bond with my dad over our mutual appreciation of Coen Brothers movies…

Deadpool gave us a way to properly express how much we hated his cancer…

And “Brooklyn Nine Nine” is helping me deal with his passing.

Zombieland taught me how to laugh again…

And The Imitation Game taught me how to cry.

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” provided storytelling which challenged me as a child…

While shows like “Static Shock” opened my eyes to cultures & experiences other than my own.

Bandslam was a movie so close to my life as a 13 year old it felt like I’d written it…

While How to Train Your Dragon showed me that just because I was a weirdo didn’t mean I was alone.

The Book of Life helps me feel more comfortable about death…

And “The Good Place” encourages me to life a full life.

“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” makes me feel more comfortable about talking about my mental health issues.

Chicago got me through pneumonia.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles is a Thanksgiving tradition in our home.

I feel closer to my mom because of Harry Potter…

To my brother because of Lord of the Rings…

And to the rest of my family because of Disney films.

People say, “It’s just a movie,” or, “It’s just a show,” like that’s minimizes it, but it doesn’t.

“Just a movie,” means it is a storytelling device that resonates with people.

“Just a show,” means it is something people can come back to when they need it.

Entertainment, storytelling, and art have the power to inspire people…

To change them, to help them deal with their life…

To connect with others…

And to see themselves represented in ways they never thought they would.

So if something is just that, then I think that’s pretty great.

YES!

Silly Enough? - Reverse Motion in BBC Sherlock

From S1 onwards Sherlock goes on an inner journey, from great man to good man, from self-declared sociopath to compassionate, mature man who cares for his family and friends, who is capable of love. This inner journey is believable and stringent and continuous. 

The outside world, however, becomes more and more dark, bizarre, and hurtful. While S1 and S2 are situated in a recognisable world close to our perceived reality, S3 and especially S4 are becoming more and more bizarre and out of this world, culminating in places like Sherrinford and Musgrave Hall. 

The same goes for the characters. From S3 onwards almost everyone starts behaving in erratic, unexpected ways: Sherlock murdering an unarmed man, Molly slapping Sherlock, John remaining with Mary, Sherlock staying friends with an assassin who wanted to kill him and saving her life, John turning against Sherlock and getting violent, a nurse endorsing drug consumption in a hospital toilet … and do not get me started on TFP.

There is an excellent example for the progression from realistic to bizarre: explosions.

The question is why? They could have chosen to show us Sherlock’s inner journey while letting the more or less realistic world intact. The disintegration is not imperative but a deliberate choice on the side of the creators. So, why?

It has not been done before. No SH adaptation has ever attempted to give us such a big character arc, such an inner journey, allowing us so many insights into the mind of the man himself. At least one whole episode (and more if you are an EMP theorist) take place in Sherlock’s head. This is indeed a story about a detective, not a detective story, and the very contrast between the believable inner journey and the increasingly bizarre world of the show is meant to emphasise this principle. 

It is a daring concept and many of the post-S4 reviews and reactions confirm that this is a dangerous path indeed. But it can also be a rewarding one if one day both worlds are merged, uniting the concepts of Sherlock as an emotional, compassionate human being and as a brilliant detective.  

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