#Watson would just describe him as cold and mysterious

[frostandflamesfanfic]

The Last Three Years (Sherlock x Reader) - Chapter 3

| | Masterlist | |

Chapter 3: How to Save a Life

"Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend somewhere alone in the bitterness. And I would have stayed up with you all night, had I known how to save a life..." -The Fray (How to Save a Life)

Pairing: Sherlock Holmes (BBC) x Watson!Reader

Word Count: 2.9k+

Warnings: brief mentions of su!cidal thoughts/attempt (nothing actually shown or fully described)

Summary: As you stand on Bart's rooftop to make the biggest decision in your life, you receive a mysterious call for help. Also referred to as the one where you find out how your flatmate is handling her grief.

Back on the rooftop of St. Bart’s, everything seemed so small. The phone stuck in your fist once more and you could still see the bustling scene below. All you needed to do was jump. It would be over in a matter of seconds. It was so tempting, the whispers promising death. It would be quick, almost painless. Eternal slumber reunited with those you love, if you had faith in an afterlife. Just one. . . more. . .step. . .  

The phone suddenly buzzed in your hands, indicating a call. Checking the Caller ID, you saw it was from an unknown number. To this day, you still didn’t know what possessed you to pick up the phone. Maybe it was an act of desperation. Perhaps you were simply disillusioned by false hope it might actually be him calling you back. “Hello?” 

“Please stay on the line for an incoming transmission.” a female voice responded. 

There was a period of silence as you shifted uncomfortably in wait. Who could possibly be calling? Your answer arrived not long after, when a throat cleared and a familiar tone greeted you. 

“Ah yes, Watson the younger,” the voice of Mycroft Holmes said in your ear. “I do hope you are not planning to continue walking.” 

“What do you want, Mycroft?” you asked in a peevish tone. “I am not in the mood for games.”

“Oh, yes, I am very aware of that. I can practically feel the wave of...” Mycroft paused for a moment, allowing you to visualise his face as it morphed into a grimace. “Sentiment through the message.”

Part of you didn’t want to believe it, but somehow part of you was expecting this to happen. “Oh bloody hell, Mike. Did you seriously listen to-”

“I would like to inform you that my younger brother’s unfinished business has now unfortunately become my own. His voicemail is currently being monitored for any potential threats or updates on past cases,” he paused. “However, as. . .dramatic. . .as your adventure has been, that is not my reason for calling.”

A grunt of annoyance escaped your lips as you made a face of your own. The Holmes siblings were never ones to mind their own business. You knew that from the start. John had made sure to warn you as you had moved your boxes into the flat downstairs. However, you still wished Mycroft had had the decency to give you the privacy you believed you so righteously deserved. “What do you want?”

“It appears my dear sister is having a difficult time. Her condition is worsening. Surveillance has since reported to me she was caught in her bedroom window creating a loop with her bedsheets. I am quite certain she was not attempting to craft a new fashion piece.”

You could feel your body run cold as the blood drained from your face. No, this can’t happen, you screamed in your mind. Not her, too. You blinked to clear your thoughts before parting your lips to speak. “Is she having conversations with herself?”

“On the contrary,” the eldest Holmes replied. “She refuses to speak to anyone. It has been requested by my sister’s medical council that I make an appearance, but that would require legwork of course, so-“

“So you’re calling me to be your errand runner? Did you not hear my message correctly, as you have been oh-so-keen on keeping tabs on us?”

There was silence from the other end of the line. “She needs you,” Mycroft admitted, using your full name for once. “There’s not much I can do to save her. I provide the funds, but there is no one else she will speak to.”

"I can't- I can't be there for her, I can't fix her. A broken person can't fix another broken person."

“Then you’ll both die.” Still peering down, you witnessed a black car pull up to the front of the building. “The choice is yours, Watson. Choose wisely.”

Like hell it is. You let out a scoff. “There’s never a choice with you, Mycroft.” With that, the line disconnected and your mobile buzzed once more, signalling a text. It was an image. Enlarging the attachment, your eyes closed tightly to console yourself as you took in the horror. 

From just a glimpse, you could already see how broken your friend was. Her dark hair was mangled with knots. It had grown since the last time you had seen her. It was down to her waist at this point. Dark bags sagged underneath her cerulean blue eyes. Black and blue marks were speckled about her face. This wasn’t the woman you knew, the person you looked up to. 

“Oh, Elora,” you whispered as your grip on the mobile device grew tighter. “What have you done?” Once more, you dared to look down at the busy city streets below you and bit back a sob. You had been so close to eternal quiet. You could practically hear his voice calling out to you to join him. Tears filled your eyes and you turned your face toward the sky. “I’m sorry, love. Forever is going to have to spare a minute. There’s something I have to take care of first.”

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Your heart had dropped when you pulled up into the typically quiet street. It felt more like a prison than a place of healing. The amount of security you had needed to go through was excessive, although you wondered how much of it was Mycroft’s doing. It had only taken the press a few days to get wind of your flatmate’s new living arrangements. They flooded the condominium’s lobby ever since, each one hoping to get their hands on an exclusive with the cracked Holmes girl. 

The flat was dimly lit, even though it was early enough in the afternoon. The reinforced glass panels, though they were bolted shut, offered a beautiful view of the city skyline below. A television was rotating between channels, alternating between celebrity gossip and news. Your heart jumped into your throat when you saw a shot of him. It was the day he solved the Reichenbach painting case. You could still see the bright and blinding flashes of the paparazzi cameras as they had made their way through the streets. His hand had gripped your arm tightly as he attempted to shield the two of you with his coat. 

A deerstalker was perched atop his head, which would later become his signature style. He always hated the blasted thing. That year for Christmas, you had given him a new version of the hat, but in his favourite colour. He had harped on about how it wasn’t even a true hat for nearly an hour. The memory brought a bit of momentary happiness to you as you neared the bedroom door. 

The tin of biscuits in your grip was slowly becoming heavier. When your landlady had found out you were going to visit Elora, she had loaded up your car with a variety of sweets. You hadn’t had the heart to tell the old woman about Elora’s condition, but figured it would be a good idea to at least bring in one container. 

When you turned the knob of the bedroom door, you saw your friend curled up on the bed. Elora was so still, you started to fear she was no longer breathing. “Elora?” you called out, hating how broken your own voice sounded. Yet you received no response from the lump on the bed. “I brought some biscuits from Mrs. H. She said they were your favourite.”

A deep voice stopped you from venturing further into the room. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” he said. For the first time, you recognized a figure who had been standing by the door. A man, late thirties. Obviously wasn’t used to detail work, given by his tan. Mainly an outside worker, you mused in your mind. He was a relatively thin individual, but you could tell he was strong. He also had two concealed firearms- one in the holster and another under his pant leg. Make that three, you thought to yourself as you noticed a bulge under his shirt sleeve. God, this is what you got by staying around Holmes for so long. What had they done to you?

“Can I not give my own friend food now?” you spit out sardonically.

“She might try to choke herself with them…” the man said, trailing off. Soft-spoken, then.  

“She’s in her bed! Like hell she’s going to be able to choke herself with food.”

“Please, she just tried to hang herself this morning. I’m afraid I can’t let you give those to her,” the man said stiffly. Oh, so he liked to call the shots. Definitely an outside worker who never had the chance to speak.  

“I’m giving her these biscuits whether you like it or not,” you snapped. “This might be your only opportunity to project authority, but you sure as hell can’t think you can boss me around when it comes to my family.”

“She is my family, as well.” 

“What are you-”

A quiet cough from behind the wall caused your attention to shift away from the idiot in uniform. “Sebastian, don’t bother,” you heard Elora’s voice say. It didn’t sound like her, though. She sounded hollow, shattered to a million pieces. She sounded like how you felt – broken. “It’s too much work.”

“You are worth it!”

You flinched at the sound of a dry laugh as it echoed off of the walls. It too sounded hollow and dull. It was as if there was no more hope of happiness. “I will never be worth it.” Elora didn’t look at you. Instead, she switched her view to that of the ceiling. “Go home. You didn’t need to come.”

I’m not going to lose you, you thought. It’s bad enough you’re going to lose me, but you are not about to lose yourself. “We both know I can’t do that,” the words got caught in your throat.

“And why not?” Elora’s gaze flashed over to where you were standing next to “Sebastian.” You could feel the holes as her eyes burned into your clothes from the glare. 

“Because you’re my friend.” You turned to the man next to you and narrowed your eyes. “Either you let me through, or I’m going to do it myself. The question I have for you is how good are your lawyers?”

Sebastian shifted uncomfortably but ultimately ended up stepping away to allow you entry into the room. 

Slowly, you crept your way into the white room. The tin of biscuits fell from your hands as you neared the bed. “Elora,” the words floated around the room with a whisper. “You know you can always talk to me.”

You watched as your friend hesitated. This wasn’t the Elora you remembered. It was a shell of a person who once was, you could see it. It was going to take a while before she was back completely. However, you could still make out the faintest light of your flatmate desperate to return. 

“I don’t want to,” Elora whispered as she curled up against the wall. “I don’t want to be here.”

“I could take you back to Baker Street, if you want?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” You watched as the tears fell down your flatmate’s face. “I don’t want to be here.”

As you reached over to gently pull Elora into a hug, she closed her eyes and tilted her head toward the ceiling. A sharp intake of air filled her lungs. Hold on, love, you pleaded. Please wait for me. It won’t be much longer.  

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

It had taken weeks for you to regain Elora’s trust. Your friend had grown fearful of anyone after creating a prison for herself within both her mind and new flat. After a few visits, you soon learned the true identity of the mysterious (and irritating) Sebastian. The two of you would meet for tea at a small cafe across the street when Elora was taking a nap after a particularly rough afternoon. It was during these talks, you heard more of their story. Sebastian was a licensed security contractor and had met Elora months earlier, before the true mental break. They had both enrolled at a program for grief counselling and coping. As they both had lost someone close to them, the pair had forged a strong connection, which eventually led to Sebastian’s moving in. Where you had failed, he had worked to provide Elora the support and encouragement she had needed to make progress. 

Sebastian shared how, at one point, Elora had allowed herself to join a program for rehabilitation. Whenever she had experienced a particularly rough day, she was injected with medications. The doctors had mentioned to him that it was merely for her depression. However, the two of you knew it was something stronger- something to contain the psychotic breakdowns. 

One day, Elora had reached out to you, which had caught you by surprise. She had wanted to take a trip to the gravesite. “I need to see him,” your friend whispered into the phone. “I think I’m ready.”

When they selected the day, you took a deep breath before climbing the stairs to his flat. There was something you needed before you could go and his room was the only place you could get it. The flat had become covered with dust, yet it still looked the same. Nothing had changed. Even after the day Elora destroyed the kitchen, you had done your best to restore the organised chaos. Their chairs hadn’t been moved. Vials of chemicals lay just as they were left. As you walked towards his bedroom, your eyes caught a glimpse of a rich mahogany. 

It was his violin. 

Unable to help yourself, you traced a finger along the instrument’s body. Eyes closed, you could still make out the beautiful compositions that once filled the building. He had played for you that day...before everything had happened.

“Play for me?” you had asked in a whisper.  

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t protest as he moved to lift the violin. “What would you like to hear?” 

“Something. Anything?” You closed your eyes as he began to play a hypnotic melody. The few minutes flew by far too quickly and she remembered frowning in disappointment. “Why did you stop?” 

“Still a work in progress,” came the deep muttered response.  

“It sounded beautiful. You’ll need to show me how to play it once it’s done.” 

A piece of paper rubbed against your palm as you moved the violin off of his seat. You frowned and reached over to pick it up. Your eyes took in the various notations speckled about the page. It was a composition of some sort, possibly the work he was composing that night. When you glanced up at the top of the page, a light gasp escaped your lips. It was his handwriting. There was no doubt there. However, the most peculiar thing was how much of the top was scratched out. It was almost illegible to make out what he had originally intended to title the piece. What you could read, though, was unmistakably your name. Was he going to name the piece after you? 

Tears pricked at your eyes as you lifted the instrument to your chin. It didn’t feel right to be using his violin, but you needed to hear it again — feel the rise and fall of the notes in your bones. That magic couldn’t be recreated with your own instrument. You sat there for a while, extending every note with a long tug of the bow. Even when you reached the end of the notation, you couldn’t stop playing. Something had unlocked within you. You needed to do something to let the emotions out. So you did what you thought he would want: compose. 

Using a pencil, you grabbed another stack of blank sheet music and began to fill the staff with your own aches and pains. The violin screamed at times under your touch, but you didn’t care. It was as though you could feel his presence and it angered you. Sadness crashed over you like a wall being smashed to bits. Faster. Harder. Your mind was screaming at you. Now slower, draw out the pain. The bow was in your control and yours alone. It scraped against the strings like a knife slicing through butter, cutting away at your deep-seated sorrow and anger. By the time you had yanked out the final note, your heart already felt lighter. Yet, you still wanted to cry. A mangled sob ripped from your throat and you fell to the floor on your knees as you allowed yourself an opportunity to experience emotions you had long since bottled up. 

You set the violin back on the leather cushion of his chair and made your way into the bedroom a few moments later- his bedroom. There, in the closet, sat his collection of coats. Your fingertips brushed against the navy trench coat and gripped the heavy material. You heaved a deep sigh and slipped it on. It was a bit big, but you didn’t care. It smelled like him and made you feel safe. However, you knew you couldn’t fool yourself for long. This coat was meant for a Holmes’ and you happened to know just the person who was in great need of it. You shrugged off the coat and elected to wrap a simple blue scarf of his around your neck. Your arms secured the coat to your chest as you made your way back to the doorway. 

“I’m not ready to let you go,” you whispered to the empty flat. “But I know I need to. Help me be ready.”

=================================

Author's Note: *emphatic jazz hands* So you decided to venture into the flat for the first time since Sherlock went splat. Brave choice!! It would be an understatement to say I nearly started crying when I was writing this scene. It was loosely inspired by another fic I cannot remember the name/author of for the life of me, but I do remember it had to do with Sherlock teaching the reader how to play the violin. I think the music would have been the best way to connect with our sociopath, but that's just me. I'm a sucker for that trope ;)

As usual, don't forget to drop a like, reblog this work, and leave a comment! This lets me know that you want to see more of this story and gives me the motivation to keep it going. I have a rough idea how I want this story to go, but we've got a long ways to go still. 

I was also curious, when it comes to x reader fics, is it more comfortable to read gender-neutral or do you prefer a certain gendered POV? As I was editing up an upcoming chapter, I realized one topic is going to be a bit of a challenge to approach in a gender-neutral style, so I'm hoping it won't confuse/turn anyone off the fic as it only affects a short arc in the overall plot.

See you next week!

SH Taglist: @ohchoices, @severuined, @southernhippie10198

[ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff]

Mystery Writer (Spencer Reid x Reader)

Summary: Spencer finds books at a second hand bookstore that are annotated and he falls the person writing the notes. 

AN: This was part of a fic swap on @imagining-in-the-margins​ server! This is for the marvellous @definitelynotkatesblog​ <3 I really hope you like it! I had to delete the original post because it didn't show up in the tags. This will be staying up regardless of that now.

Masterlist

Your name: submit What is this?

“If you need anything, just let me know!”

Spencer pressed his lips together at the person behind the till before heading deeper into the rows of second-hand books. Familiar titles, old and new, printed on spines in various states of pristine/decay, they tempted him to select and bring them home with him. The clear sections between biographies and fiction guided him deeper into the forest, deeper into finding his way out. He was hoping to adopt one such book for a day off, when he could revisit it with a fresh eye. It would be like seeing an old friend again, remembering why they were friends in the first place with a hint of that initial read through from years ago, and perhaps he would learn something new in the process.

A dull ache in his chest at the sight of The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle. But he had long since recovered from that heartbreak and he would be able to read this story without feeling that again.

Still. It had been several years since he read this book.

His nervous fingers plucked it off the shelf and the pages fell open for him. A flattened gum wrapper parted the pages like the Red Sea. Spencer lifted it out tentatively. Its creases were ironed in from its role as a temporary bookmark, an impression of scribbled black ink flattened after it was made.

Spencer’s eyes scanned over the page in search of what this gum wrapper might have been guarding.

“Women are never to be entirely trusted – not the best of them.”

In the margins was scribbled:

Product of the time, but still a prick, rude smartarse role a bit dull

Spencer found himself exhaling in light laughter. That a lack of empathy was considered “dull” by this person, when it was something he dealt with in his job almost every day. The confidence in this commentary too, this brazen critique of a much beloved fictional character was left for someone else to find.

His gaze found Watson’s opinion of Holmes’ casual sexism: “atrocious sentiment”. It was circled twice in the same black biro.

Spencer dug his thumb against the text block and flicked through the book. A waft of that book smell lifted from the paper, accompanied by the bold notes of the previous owner dotted across the text until he finally landed on the reverse of the front cover. Two letters – initials - were scratched onto it.

It was with bridled exhilaration that Spencer approached the till and held up the book with a half-smile. His hands were quick to place it down on the counter so that the shop assistant could type the price into the till. His mood was apparently palpable because they seemed just as happy as Spencer to hand him back the novel in a brown paper bag – the receipt tucked inside.

 --->--->--->--->--->

 “Love is an emotional thing, and whatever emotional is opposed to what is true, cold reason, which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgement.”  

What a lonely existence and also a lie. See: entire relationship w/ Dr. Watson!

Spencer smiled at this comment. Now all the other instances of a double underlining made sense. Each one produced itself in his mind as evidence that Mr Sherlock Holmes did in fact love. Maybe not marry, but it would have been terribly unconventional for him to wed Doctor John Watson. The unknown author seemed to understand this. They never emphasised if this love was platonic or romantic. But the way in which they proved love existed within this character oft portrayed as emotionless, Spencer simply adored. They were a romantic reader, who still enjoyed reading about the cynic

He grew quite aware of his posture in that moment and he straightened his back. A few clicks of complaint emitted as he stretched, his head twisting from side to side. Screwing his eyes open and shut behind his glasses, he revisited your deduction.

On the dot of the “i” in “lie”, there was a sprinkle of graphite around the indent from where a pencil’s lead had snapped from the effort put into topping off this point. A sprinkle of graphite smudged where the pages pressed together.

Spencer moved on to where a sentence in black biro tried to blend in with the printed words. A memory appeared at the front of his mind: when Rossi was bewildered to learn Spencer and Dr. Alex Blake wrote the newspaper crossword in pen.

The pencil markings were like mini brainstorms, something to revisit and make a solid theory with the black biro. But the planning was never rubbed out.

Little quotes were circled. This mystery critic spent half the book roasting the characters and the other half leaving little exclamation marks and circles around phrases and words when they couldn’t think of something to say. Spencer found it sweet, picturing the thrilling unfolding of events for the reader to revisit.

His heart ached in bittersweet memory as he recalled the contents of Dr Alex Blake’s book The Route of Linguistics. It was necessary pain to create a profile of who this mystery critic was. Yes, he was profiling out of work hours. His evenings were now spent trying to picture the voice behind the notes. The sarcasm, the witty blows to the character’s and author’s ego. He almost wished that he couldn’t read so fast because he finished the book, even with its additional notations, all too quickly. But there was one bonus.

Spencer traced the pad of his fingertip over the exclamation marks describing Mary Morstan. What else might a detractor of the great Sherlock Holmes read?

--->--->--->--->---> 

He had returned to the bookshop in favour of adopting another. Yet he could not find one that satisfied his unknown criteria. It was not until he found himself checking the front pages of the fifth book he had selected, that he realised he was looking for a pair of initials.

Sighing, he placed My Dear Bessie, with its empty front page, back on the shelf. The chances of finding another book containing this mystery critic were so minute. He could probably calculate them if he wanted to dedicate himself to such a disheartening statistic. He’d rather not spend his lunch break doing that, as much as he loved statistics. This once, they did not assure his safety and he remained unsupported by the fact that he could not find any other Arthur Conan Doyle books.

His desperation became most apparent when he thought that perhaps fate should just decide for him. If anything, he would come away with a random book to read through in about ten minutes on a flight back home.

He peeked around the corner of the shelves. The shop assistant at the till was busy writing something down, not paying any mind to the shop’s only customer.

“A random shot had no better odds than just picking books off one by one” is what he told himself as he closed his eyes and placed his fingers on the end of the shelf, just over the first book’s spine. In an “S” pattern, his arm moved up and down, over the books and shelves and gaps between units. His feet stepped forwards into the space he knew was clear.

Spencer stopped and opened his eyes, his finger shifting just an inch out of the way of his new book’s title.

Circe. Madeline Miller.

He tapped the top and the book fell forwards, where he caught it. Its shining dust jacket was serving its purpose, a few tears along the edges from where it had protected the hardcover. He checked the front page. A map of Aiaia in orange and brown filled it to the corners. On the next page, his heart stuttered at the sight of two initials in the same handwriting and the same biro. There was also a scribble - invisible to start with then a ball of black.

The first page with the story’s text held a scribble just above its opening line:

the power of the name

“When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.”

He could see that the first was in a blunt pencil, but the addition was a sharpened point carving into the paper. A secondary thought that was provided after completing the novel, they had added it. Spencer lifted it to his face, his eyes crossing to keep the stipple in focus. The scent of the paper and the graphite reached him easily; the note must have been made just before Circe was gifted to him. How lucky he was to find such a treasure.

The shop assistant was cutting out a new sign for “BUY ONE GET ONE HALF PRICE!”. By the time Spencer made it to them, the sign was placed upon the pile besides him. The shop assistant smoothed out a crease on the dust jacket, ineffectively but Spencer admitted the gesture. He was glad that someone who loved books as much as him got to work in a place like this.

--->--->--->--->--->

Spencer’s mind, definitely for worse, echoed the words off the tabloids around his head the split second he made eye contact with the headlines. He paced the shelves to somewhere a little quieter. When he found the chocolate aisle, he pretended to peruse. Ever half a minute or so, his gaze drifted up to the till area where the shop owner was on a phone call and clearly not paying attention to him.

It was not long before Spencer grew bored of looking at KitKats, and he pulled out One Thousand And One Nights. The book’s pages fell again to page 57. This shop’s receipt stood above them, still holding its place from the previous owner. It felt wrong to part the two.

No new people had entered this corner shop for 8 minutes. He’d even given the time at the receipt’s end a fifteen-minute margin either side. Given that this mystery critic took a break from work at the same time on the same day of the week – and that they worked during the day – he should have seen them. Maybe he had, and they were that man in the baggy hoodie who stunk of weed. Probably not. Hopefully not. Not that Spencer was judging him for his… recreational activities. He just wanted the mystery critic to be someone he could realistically spend time with.

Just then, Spencer’s phone trilled annoyingly loud. He received a glare from the shop manager and Spencer sent an awkward apologetic expression his way before answering JJ quickly.

“Spencer, we’ve got a case. We need you here ASAP.”

His response was immediate. “Ok, be there in ten.” Hanging up, Spencer dithered on the spot then grabbed a packet of Cheetos. He’d been there for nearly twenty minutes; he had to get something.

“Three dollars,” the manager said before returning to his call. But not before he rolled his eyes at Spencer. Spencer dropped the bills onto the counter and dashed out before he could be offered a receipt.

--->--->--->--->---> 

  An outlier in the usual length of case work had passed by in five long days. Spencer hardly ever regretted the time he put into this job. Every unsub caught was lives saved. But the absence of his mystery commentator had been niggling at the back of his busy mind and he was glad to finally reunite with them on this long flight back.

From his satchel, he recovered the copy of One Thousand And One Nights and began rereading the notes to ground himself in the story. His focus lingered on the page as if he were reading it at the average 250 words per minute. It allowed him to block out the humming of the engine.

Spencer did not take his eyes off the page as he pulled open his desk drawer and popped a piece of overpriced gum into his mouth. Half-hearted reminders bounced in his head, from when he tried smoking and chewing gum to ease his cravings. The fruit flavour was very clearly artificial and it faded within six minutes. Why his mystery critic would pick such a pathetic packet of gum to chew, he didn’t know. But hopefully the fact of its flavour disappearing fast would mean they get through the packet quicker and buy another soon. Even if today, and the days before, spent in that shop did not lean in favour of that hypothesis.

--->--->--->--->--->

The Five People You Meet In Heaven was in the Recently Donated pile. It was near the top, slid towards the edge of the container after being placed wonkily on a copy of some sports autobiography.

Within the pages was more than Spencer could have ever hoped for. Entire paragraphs were circled, quotes underlined. A squashed mini post-it note tabbed the page and a whole paragraph was scrawled on it, about Tala. An arrow pointing to the underside, Spencer lifted the flap and saw more to read, like an interactive pop-up book that he’d gotten Henry for his second birthday. Spencer closed his eyes quick and snapped the book shut. He wanted to save it for when he was sitting comfortably, not while he was rushing back to work in time for JJ to get to her lunch break on time.

The shop assistant had just clipped the lid back onto a green highlighter when Spencer drew up to their counter. With careful fingers, he placed the book upon it. There was a twitch of the assistant’s mouth; their eyes brightened. They looked like they wanted to say something, but something else held them back from making the first move. Spencer recognised it from his school days.

“It’s a good read.” He spoke after they had typed the price into the till.

“I know,” The assistant replied instantly, a relieved smile on their lips, “What part are you on?”

“I’ve already read it, but I wanted to revisit the passage at the diner.”

“Ahh, that’s a good bit. One of my favourites.”

Spencer’s eyebrows furrowed a fraction of an inch. His gaze dropped to the nametag on the left side of their chest. Y/N, their name’s first initial. It couldn’t be.

“What did you think about the final person, Tala?”

“Oh,” The shop assistant clutched at their heart, “I was an emotional wreck before and it hit me hard just as the rest did. So bittersweet to hear her forgiveness. It took me a few times to finish reading the end, but it was all worth it.”

He couldn’t be this lucky, to get this many books from the same person and to have them standing in front of him. Spencer didn’t believe in luck.

As he reached across for his new book, he turned over the cover, “Was this yours?”

Twisting their head around to read the publication details, the assistant – Y/N - smiled sheepishly at the initials. “Yes, and I’m glad to see it go to a new home.”

Apparently luck believed in him.

“But,” Spencer felt his brows knit automatically as he looked between the book and their previous owner, “You love it. I-I’ve seen your notes.”

A hand clapped over Y/N’s mouth, “Oh God, you must have. I mean, it wasn’t the intention initially, but I thought they might be a little entertaining for anyone who picks it up to leave them in there.”

“Oh, they were! I’d love to read more of your thoughts. Hear, hear them, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Y/N checked the door to the shop, still shut, and back to Spencer. They dropped their elbows onto the countertop with their chin in their palms. “What did you wanna know?”

From his bag, Spencer procured his – their – copy of The Sign of Four and flicked through the pages. So many places to choose, but he wanted to open with what had introduced him to Y/N’s analysis.

The pair put their heads together, leaning on the counter. Spencer could smell the chewing gum on their breath. Y/N never cut him off, and he never wanted to cut them off. There were little pauses at the end of each of their turns to speak before the other picked up where they had left off. Their voices leapt from secretive whispers to passionate orations of their favourite passages, rebounding evidence and analysis off each other like a bouncy ball. Spencer finally had a voice to put to the sarcasm, the one his mind had conjured long forgotten in the wake of Y/N’s enthusiasm.

The shop’s door swung open. Spencer leapt to attention as an older woman swept in, past the two of them towards the non-fiction section. Y/N adjusted their name tag, their back straight too. The clock behind the till announced that it was now twenty minutes after the end of Spencer’s lunch break.

Running on the rush of his hobby meeting a potential friend, Spencer asked, “Can I get your number? So we can talk more, maybe swap some more books, when you’re not working?”

His luck was still by his side as Y/N wrote out their number on his receipt, written in their infamous black biro.

--->--->--->--->---> 

  Spencer leapt over to the door of his apartment, took a deep breath, and unlocked it. Stood behind where it had been was Y/N and they too were still wearing the uniform from work. Their nametag was still on their polo shirt, the same spot that Spencer wore his FBI tag.

“Can I get you a drink?” He asked the second they made a step inside his abode.

“Tea would be great. Milk and one sugar please.”

And while he was in the kitchen, Y/N rushed over to the bookshelves, their eyes wide to take in Spencer’s collection. “Oh wow! You weren’t joking!” Their finger indicated to a hard cover copy of Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy, “That’s one of mine. Well, yours now.”

Plucking it from the shelf, they opened it up. Spencer had written his initials beside theirs.

Spencer stuck his head out in the partition, “Ours. If we’re going to be sharing.” Y/N stood on tiptoes, teeming with delight, their hands cradling the book with all the care Spencer could hope for in a fellow reader. Joint custody of their books and their passion? What a dream.

“I just have to write a little more about the epilogue, and I’ll be with you,” Y/N took their place on his couch. A pencil began scribbling away their thoughts onto the last few pages. Their knees were their desk.

Spencer finished brewing and placed the mug in front of Y/N, who mumbled a quick thank you to him. He joined them in writing his final notes. It slowed him down a considerable amount, but he was glad to take things at a casual pace, especially considering the way that Y/N almost broke their pencil as they scrawled out their thoughts for Spencer to hear later.

“Have you thought about the next one you’d like to try?” Spencer asked tentatively. He wasn’t so sure if Y/N would want to be interrupted.

Luckily for him, Y/N paused their stream of consciousness to look back at his books, “Hmm. So much to choose from.”

Stood up, their book left in Spencer’s care. They took a deep breath, closed their eyes and used their forefinger to draw a zigzag over the spines. Spencer felt that he was almost sick with joy.

Y/N stilled their wandering hand and opened their eyes, already drawing out the selected novel, “This one.”

“And what have you chosen for me next time?”

Y/N handed over The Butterfly Lion from their bag, “Ok, I can’t wait any longer, what do you think?”

They sat back on the couch. Their legs now hung over the arm of the couch, elbows either side and face cupped in their palms. The book rested in their lap. Shifting so that he faced them completely, Spencer returned to the first page and his analysis began.

[swiftl0ck]

taylor swift x characters

john and sherlock x peace

bbc sherlock

folklore - taylor swift

i think this song works so perfectly for john and sherlock, the beautiful relationship they have and how they fit together like puzzle pieces, they are truly the best team and totally lost without each other.

Our coming-of-age has come and gone Suddenly the summer, it's clear

sherlock and john meet at a time in their lives where they have grown up. they have lived separate lives and have both assumed that they are fine on their own. then 'summer comes', they meet and it becomes clear that they have more growing up to do, they push each other to change and be better.

I never had the courage of my convictions As long as danger is near

this line is john speaking, sherlock has never had a lack of courage in his convictions, he speaks his mind and john respects him for it. john has been away from civilian life for some time, he has less experience in standing up for his values when it really counts, but sherlock pushes him to.

And it's just around the corner, darling 'Cause it lives in me

sherlock thinks he is dangerous, he believes he is unfeeling and logical and he hurts people when he is trying to help. he has been told this so much he accepts it as truth. sherlock thinks he is inherently dangerous to know, because, despite his deep understanding of how humans work, he doesn't know where he fits into that. he keeps causing people pain when he doesn't mean to, so he warns them against him.

no, I could never give you peace

this is the truly beautiful message of the song. sherlock needs danger, he thrives off cases and mystery, without it he loses the will to live and spirals. John loves to investigate with him, this has been made clear as he comes back to work alongside sherlock time and time again, however, he does not NEED it as sherlock does. in the chorus, it truly shows how sherlock is telling john that a life with him, can never be peaceful.

but I'm a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm

what better metaphor to describe sherlock holmes than a fire. he blazes around london, bright and powerful, once set off there is little point controlling him but he channels his energy towards burning out all evil he can find. john is struggling until he meets sherlock holmes, the fire to make him feel alive again and warm his brittle heart, toughened by years in a war.

if your cascade ocean wave blues come

all these people think love's for show but I would die for you in secret

sherlock ruined his whole reputation, died a fraud and a traitor, to save john, lestrade and mrs hudson. the man who once scoffed at the weaknesses of human emotion finally understands how powerful it is and truly dies for them in secret.

the devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me would it be enough if I could never give you peace?

the devil really is in the details for sherlock holmes. his head runs round with theories and deductions and observations. "it's always you john watson, you keep me right". with the swirling mess inside his head, it's watson's constant presence that keeps him from losing his sanity to the devil of unending thought.

your integrity makes me seem small

despite his intelligence and incredible abilities, sherlock often loses sight of what matters to normal people. i believe there is no time that sherlock feels smaller than when john is yelling at him for being unfeeling. especially as sherlock often does not know what he has done wrong, he feels superior to john in every way apart from emotions. in that he feels inferior.

you paint dreamscapes on the wall

a dreamscape is "a landscape or scene with the characteristic of dreams". both sherlock and john have dreams of what life could be like, but, as the show goes on, they each become happier with their reality, raising rosie in 221b, even if it isn't perfect.

however, the dreamscapes could also be about sherlock's mind palace, because what better way to describe a mind palace than a dreamscape of information.

I talk shit with my friends it's like I'm wasting your honour

john perpetuates his friends' general opinion that sherlock is cold and has no feelings when he knows that isn't true. he makes jokes at sherlock's expense when it is clear that sherlock is not emotionless, he just doesn't show emotions in the same way.

and you know that I'd swing with you for the fences sit with you in the trenches.

sherlock and john are with each other in the highs and lows in life, when they solve cases and save lives or when they lose the ones they love most. they may drift apart but they will always come back to each other. the wartime imagery of trenches could also reference john's army history.

give you my wild, give you a child

this line is so perfect, in the last scenes of the final problem, john and sherlock are seen raising rosie together. she may not be sherlock's child but john is entrusting him with her care as they raise her together. i think this is a really beautiful conclusion to their story, especially because of how much john struggles to trust sherlock after the six thatchers. it clearly depicts that the trust there is stronger than ever as john allows sherlock to be such a big part of rosie's life.

give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other

the understanding between john and sherlock is unmatched. the amount of communication that goes unsaid throughout the whole show is so intricate and detailed and yet they both understand the other one very clearly. a level of connection that allows them to be so incredible at what they do.

family that I chose now that I see your brother as my brother

Is it enough? But there's robbers to the east, clowns to the west

sherlock and john can never relax, they have made too many enemies over the years, there are people everywhere who are angry at them and nothing can change that. but they don't let that come between them, they fight their robbers and clowns together.

I'd give you my sunshine, give you my best

sherlock wants to be his best self for john, so many times we see him trying to change something in his life when john asks him to. sherlock truly values his opinions. however, sherlock also always attempts to only show john and those around him his 'sunshine', he struggles to be vulnerable and open with others.

but the rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me

john and sherlock both know that life would be easier for john if he didn't stand with sherlock, but he does anyway, and I think that is such a powerful thing.

Thank you so much for reading!

written by iona

listen to peace here:

[maxwell-grant]

Downfall of a Dark Avenger Part 2: Shadows of Manhattan

Having finished reading Al Ewing’s El Sombra trilogy and having had enough time to digest it, I’d like to talk about the trajectory of it’s titular protagonist, the character and series’s relationship with it’s influences. Relating to The Shadow and Zorro and general pulp archetypes, and also the way it incorporates Astro Boy’s Pluto into the mix.

This part is focused on Gods of Manhattan and El Sombra’s first appearences in Pax Omega and the ways in which the urban vigilante manifests itself in the books. 

In Gods of Manhattan, El Sombra takes a backseat to it’s central players, Doc Thunder and The Blood-Spider. I’ve mentioned how Thunder, while ostensibly a Doc Savage/Superman amalgam, also combines aspects that allow the character to condense the entire history of the superman into a single being, but to a character very much centered on the future and in progressive ideals, described in the book as someone considered both the city’s ultimate savior as well as viewed as "a faggot, a liberal and a miscegenationist”. In that regard, the Blood-Spider becomes his opposite. Perhaps the most comprehensive savaging of the dark detective/The Shadow ever put on paper, that has a larger point behind the questions and criticisms it brings up to what this kind of figure can be. 

"You can hardly have a war on crime unless you are the one defining what a crime is. First rule of the war on crime: everyone is guilty or something"

Us am vigilantes! Am us not men? Us use violence to effect social change! Am us not men? Us bring terror to underclass, make streets safer for overclass! Am us not men? Am us not men?

Making them loved rather than feared. Having them fight crime, or the right kind of crime, at least. Created a persona designed to appeal to the worst in people, to bring the citizens of New York around to his cause, his war on crime, which would, of course, then become a war against ‘urban crime’. Or some other little euphemism. ‘Inhuman’, for example. Sounds a lot more relatable than subhuman, doesn’t it? Comes to the same thing, though.

Although The Blood-Spider is an evil take on The Shadow, most of his character traits are taken from characters that followed him. He’s got the moniker, savagery, fright tactics and branded murders of The Spider, he climbs buildings and has a civilian identity akin to Spider-Man’s, with constant name references to characters like Stacey, Jonah and a redhead named Mary Watson, with him sharing a name with Peter Parker as well as Batman villain Jonathan Crane, he’s got Rorschach monologues that are echoed by his associates past his demise in white supremacist organizations dedicated to carrying off Spider’s legacy, predating HBO Watchmen’s take on Rorschach legacy. If Doc Thunder is all about taking the superhero’s past to create a better future with it, Blood-Spider takes the future of the urban vigilante and uses it as a conduit to enact a barbaric and reactionary agenda in service of undoing everything Thunder stands for, even before he’s revealed to be a Nazi agent. 

Blood-Spider is what happens when the absolute worst aspects of said characters are brought to the forefront and twisted by a dose of reality. He’s to The Shadow what Plutonian is to Superman, the most sour way said character and legend can be twisted into something horrendous. He’s the Doutrinador in a fedora, everything I vehemently argue that The Shadow wasn’t, and yet seems sadly ever closer to as more and more comics dehumanize the character. He’s Howard Chaykin’s Shadow, naked and raw and exposed for what it ultimately is. An insult and a wake-up call, if a necessary one.

In fact, said poisoning of a legend is explicitly a plot point in the book, because the book establishes that, before The Blood-Spider, the city’s main vigilante used to be a man by the name of Blue Ghost, friend of Doc Thunder and, although a mysterious public figure, still firmly on the side of good. Unfortunately, moral victories aside, “good” alone doesn’t cut it in the world of El Sombra. 

You took a look at the Blue Ghost - mysterious masked avenger, operatives all over the place, big fan-following with the working classes, and you figured...we need one of those. Just take away the Japanese orphan kid and replace him with a foxy Aryan chick.

Blue Ghost is almost a textbook Spirit analogue, even defined as being beat up a lot as his main asset, except here, he’s placed as Doc’s counterpart that died before the story began and is now replaced by a darker and more horrendous counterpart, and because The Spirit was influenced by The Shadow, it opens a roundabout connection. You can read this as a comparison between the shift from Adam West’s Batman to Frank Miller’s Batman, or a comparison between The Shadow and earlier more straightforward pulp vigilantes like Jimmie Dale, or a comparison between the pulp/radio Shadow and later iterations of him or analogues to his archetype that upped the nastier aspects. Again, nothing in El Sombra is ever quite just one thing. 

And at last we come to El Sombra, who spends much of the book caught in between the duels of Doc, Untergang and players in between. And it’s interesting that here, while El Sombra’s final victories over the story’s major conflict lie in his willingness to team up with Doc, despite knowing of his origins as a Nazi weapon, his victories over Blood-Spider instead come from turning tricks of The Shadow against him. First, when he discovers Spider’s true nature, spying on him by pulling a Fritz the Janitor. And then in the finale, when he schools Spider on what a real shadowy avenger looks like. 

"Amigo...that's my sword"

The voice came from the darkness above them, where the gaslight did not reach. The Spider's blood ran cold for a long moment, and then he grabbed hold of his other gun, tearing it from its holster and raising it to fire a volley of bullets into the darkness. "Where are you? Show yourself!" he hissed, turning in place, the gun raised to fire at the slightest sound or movement.

"You're not the only one who can hide in the shadows, my friend. I've got very good at it, over the years."

"Show yourself!" Another volley of shots, with no result. Was he throwing his voice? Was he everywhere at once? Was he a shadow himself? A ghost?

The voice echoed from another place now, continuing his speech exactly where he had left off. And still that mocking voice echoed from the shadows above.

"See, I didn't know if you were a good guy or a bad guy. I mean, sure, you killed people, and you were kind of a dick about it, you know? But I didn't know if you were one of the bastards. I didn't know if you needed to die or not, amigo."

The gun clicked empty. He was out of bullets. He turned again, and there was the man in the red mask. Just standing there, in the middle of the concourse. His smile didn't look human. And his eyes. Oh, his terrible eyes...

"Stay back." The Spider whispered, and his voice sounded in his ears like a frightened, animal thing, waiting to curl up and die in its hole.

The man in the red mask only laughed. A rich, deep, joyous laugh, a laugh that echoed and filled the whole station, bouncing from pillar to pillar, careening through the great vaulted arches. Such a laugh!

Then the laughter stopped, and he fixed the Blood-Spider with a look that would freeze the fires of Hell.

And suddenly - quite suddenly - there was no Blood-Spider. There was only Parker Crane, the Nazi. Parker Crane, the traitor. Who thought he could destroy America, and only managed to destroy himself. Parker Crane. Just a man wearing a mask. He ran, and left the sword behind him.

"Nice trick," Doc murmured, turning to the masked man. "Throwing your sword from up on the balcony - good aim, by the way - then throwing your voice and a little mental suggestion to make him think you were up in the arches where he'd been. Where did you learn that?"

The masked man shrugged, lifting up his weapon. "In the desert. You can learn a lot in the desert, if you put your mind to it."

By the story’s end, once Lars Lomax, Thunder’s arch-enemy and Lex Luthor, takes center stage as it’s ultimate threat, Parker Crane is left a traumatized, broken shell unable to even move, utterly stripped of any mystique or power that his mask and guns may have brought him. And in the end, El Sombra finds him, neutralized and no longer a threat to anyone. And he makes his choice.

El Sombra knew what it was to hate, to hate so hard and so long that you knew nothing else, to hate so strongly that it crossed that line into something beyond reason.

He lifted his sword, resting the blade in his palm for a moment, considering. Crane only stared, weeping and making his soft, mad noises. El Sombra sighed, shaking his head. "You know, I don't know if I can kill a guy who's already dead. Even if he is one of the bastards."

"Don't let him in here." Murmured Crane, his eyes wide.

"Shhh, I won't let him in," smiled El Sombra in response, trying to be reassuring. "You'll never have to face him again. I promise. It's okay, amigo. It's okay."

It was strange. He knew he should feel hate for Parker Crane. It was Djego's job to bear things like pity and doubt, to feel sorrow and shame. That was Djego's role in their team of one. El Sombra was there to take never-ending revenge and to laugh and to never look back. But to know that his murder of Heinrich Donner - his righteous kill - had resulted in so much harm coming to so many... and now to see the leader of Undergang, the man he'd come to New York to kill, just an empty, broken madman, a shell of a person... El Sombra wondered if he was changing.

"Don't," whispered Crane, a tear rolling down his cheek. "Don't let him back in."

El Sombra smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, amigo. I'm going to go and make sure nobody ever needs to see him again. And I couldn't have done it without you." He squeezed lightly. "You didn't mean to, but you did some good. Remember that."

Then, gently, he pushed the tip of the sword through the front of Crane's skull and into his brain.

He was not incapable of pity. But he was who he was, and he did what he did.

And broken or not, the bastards had to die.

We’ve seen El Sombra struggle and be faced with choices, choices between Djego and El Sombra, choices between kindness and violence, between peace and conflict. We’ve seen the conflict in his soul between things that he knows are right, because Djego is a good man with a good soul who wants good things for himself and others, and things he knows he must do, because he is El Sombra and El Sombra was created to kill the bastards that brought his world to ruin and therefore it’s what he must always do. And in the end, El Sombra is simply stronger. He has to be. But strength and violence and hatred can only get one so far. 

Gods of Manhattan is the trilogy’s moral compass, the book that most clearly defines the morality the series operates on. And in between the spectrums of justice embodied by Doc and Crane’s approach, between the two urban avengers in The Blue Ghost and Blood-Spider, El Sombra made his choice. And it’s the first choice that dooms him.

Enter Pax Omega, and we learn that, 4 years since the previous book's events, El Sombra joined a squad of agents called Yankee Bravo Seven, who work for an organization named STEAM, who enact missions against Nazis to turn the tides of war. He is joined by several other types of characters, including The Blood Widow, Crane’s former assistant Marlene Lang now having taken up the moniker (just as Nita van Sloan did for The Spider, even with the “Widow” prefix). We see that El Sombra has joined a team of bantering heroes and even formed a friendly rivalry with a man named Savate, modeled after Batroc the Leaper. 

But we see that the hunger for vengeance still burns, still burns beyond reason, restless because it’s been 4 years and the war still isn’t over and Hitler still isn’t dead by his sword. And it’s that restlessness that again dooms him, when he once again makes the wrong choice and betrays leader Jack Scorpio, Scorpio who had personally brought him on board and gave him the best shot he ever had at getting to Hitler. 

El Sombra frowned. "We need to make our move now."

Scorpio shook his head. "Not yet."

"What?" El Sombra looked incredulous.

"Wait for my signal, I said! Damn it, I need you to trust me!" Jack Scorpio reached up to brush the back of his finger across his forehead, and realised he was sweating. 

Through his special glasses, El Sombra's aura was glowing an angry, pulsing red, like a throbbing vein. "Just...trust me. I'm asking you to hold back for just five minutes. There's more going on here than you know."

El Sombra just stared at him, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a cold snarl.

"Trust me. That's all I ask." Jack Scorpio looked into the blazing eyes behind the bloodstained mask, and spoke softly, soothingly, almost desperately. "Can you just hold back for one minute?"

The eyes behind the mask narrowed.

"Can you?"

PERSONNEL FILE: DJEGO "EL SOMBRA". TO EYES ONLY: THIS INDIVIDUAL IS HIGHLY DANGEROUS. IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED HE NOT BE INCLUDED IN ANY OPERATIONS CLASSIFIED ABOVE TOP SECRET OR HIGHER. (I'll take the risk - J.S)

El Sombra spat in Scorpio's face.

"Chinga tu madre."

Then he drew his sword and leaped down into the fray.

After the mission is over, with the base destroyed and a major victory secured, although with Jack Scorpio having been killed, the team disbands. El Sombra continues to wander the forests near the Luftwaffe base for about two weeks, killing as many Nazis as he can, until an explosion blast hits near him, knocking away his mask and portions of his leg and arm, and rendering him unconscious for 8 months. By the time he wakes up, the war has ended, and so has El Sombra for the past 7 years.

Djego was afforded the best of medical care at the hospital in Venice. El Sombra was nowhere to be found.

His mask had been torn off in the explosion, along with some of the meat of his leg and arm. He walked stiffly, now, with a pronounced limp, and his left arm was all but useless, hanging limply at his side. The Wildcat crew had salvaged his sword, but Djego had little interest in using it.

Gradually, he regained his mobility. The back of his head itched constantly, and he suffered from horrendous mood swings, when he would rage against the Fuhrer and the bastards, or weep helplessly, like a child. But gradually, he found his personality stabilising in the gentle, antiseptic atmosphere of the hospital. He found that Djego - so long despised as a weakling, a coward and a fool - was capable of a kind of gentle, melancholic wit that made him popular.

Djego healed and grew, and the itch in the back of his skull began to subside, as El Sombra relinquished his grip.

Djego felt his heart seize in his chest. The cloth was missing a scrap at the end, and there was mud ground into the fabric along with the old bloodstains; but it had two evenly-spaced holes in it, and was unmistakably a mask. It seemed to be looking at him.

He takes up gardening and establishes himself in the city of Brandenberg, he becomes a fixture of the city and a friend of it, he enters a relationship, and El Sombra never appears again.

Until a mysterious stranger named Leonard Lorraine, walks through his door one day, saying he’s got a mission to fulfill, and hands him his mask. And, once again, El Sombra is simply stronger, and he makes the wrong choice again. 

Djego shook his head and tried to step back from it, but his legs wouldn't move.

"No," he whispered. "No. Please"

"I was happy," pleaded Djego. "Doesn't that matter to you?" He picked up the cloth in trembling fingers, looking into the empty eyeholds. "Doesn't that mean anything?"

There was no answer. The patrons of the bierkeller did not even notice anything was happening.

"I was happy," Djego choked, and then, in one spasmodic motion, he pulled the mask onto his face, and secured it tightly, so that the knot once again rested in the back of his head, where it belonged: so tightly that it might never come off again.

El Sombra looked at his hands.

He prodded his belly, amused at the rounded shape of it, and took a couple of steps back from the bar. The limp was gone.

He laughed, very softly, so as not to disturb the patrons.

Djego and Lorraine walk through the desolate streets of Berlin, which in the years since has completely sealed itself from the outside world through an impossibly thick dome, and Djego discovers the city completely bereft of life, with only a few lobotomized robotic citizens aimlessly wandering and chewing on the mountains of corpses in the city, as their Nazi ideology reached it’s inevitable outcome of total annihilation of any and all that the party could find an excuse to slaughter in the name of purity, which eventually included it’s few remaining members. In this world, Hitler has been a brain inside a robotic contraption ever since 1945, and it’s amidst this scenario that El Sombra, while thinking about how his final confrontation with Hitler would play out, eventually finds what’s left of Hitler. 

All around them, there were the sounds of machinery, but the Mecha-Fuhrer was completely silent, utterly motionless. In the centre of its chest rested a tank of toxic green fluid, and on the surface of the fluid, a human brain floated, like the corpse of a goldfish.

It was quite dead.

El Sombra stared at the Fuhrer for a long moment. Eventually, he spoke, and his voice was cracked and raw, and choked with rage. "Is...is this a joke?"

De Lareine smiled his terrible smile. "The Fuhrer's body needed a great deal of maintenance and repair, you know. After two years, one of the processes delivering oxygen to his brain failed...and there was nobody left to repair it. He died, slowly." There would have been some pain, at the end".

El Sombra slammed his fist into the great iron throne on which the massive body sat, shattering his knuckles and tearing the skin from them. He didn't seem to notice. "Some pain," he choked, through gritted teeth."

El Sombra was still staring into the empty, dead eyes of the Fuhrer.

El Sombra again chooses poorly. It’s this moment, above all else, that truly damns him to his fate, as we come to see what is it exactly that a persona created for the purpose of vengeance has, when said vengeance is robbed from it. Like Parker Crane, his persona crumbles completely to expose the petty, ugly little feelings that drove it to such grandstanding antics in the first place, and the allmighty El Sombra is exposed for the all-too human failings that damned him once and for all.

"This isn't right," he said, eventually, in a strangled voice. "How...how can it end like this?"

"Why shouldn't it?" De Lareine shrugged. "Here's a thought. Maybe, despite his twenty-year tantrum and all his dressing up, spoilt little Djego is not the centre of the universe -"

El Sombra turned, face red, tears streaming from his eyes, and charged at De Lareine, slashing his sword. El Sombra crashed down onto the floor, into the soot scattered about, as De Lareine walked around him.

"Did you really believe Adolf Hitler would wait around for your sword? Did you not imagine that it might be better for him to seal himself off in a hole to die, instead of murdering and enslaving continents until you finally got around to him? Did you think you were the hero of your own little story, El Sombra, with your mask and your laugh and your-"

"Shut up!" El Sombra cried out, scrambling to his feet, the sword shaking in his hand, tears and snot running down his face. "He was mine! He was mine to kill!" He lifted the sword, the tip trembling. "Bring him back," he screamed, "do you hear me? Bring him back to life!"

De Lareine had to laugh at that.

And in the end, El Sombra is crushed, spiritually and physically as his spine is shattered by Lareine, who begins to experiment on him as he lays dying, ready to fulfill fate’s greater purpose for El Sombra. Ready to become not just the perfect machine Pasito’s conquerors intended, but a superior design. Ready to abandon his former life, ready to abandon everything that defined him, ready to shed any and all traces of Zorro and Shadow and pulp hero in his system, because the age of pulp heroes and superheroes has passed. 

The metal man emerged from his hole, dragging the corpse of the Fuhrer behind him.

The brain in the metal man's chest would, perhaps, live for thousands of years. He wondered how he would spend the time.

He remembered little of his former life; he had been a man named El Sombra, or perhaps Djego. He had been stupid - he realised that now - but that was something he would never be again.

Apart from that, there was only a succession of faces, the memory of laughter and of a final, awful betrayal that had destroyed him. But there was also the sense that a great and terrible mission had ended at last, and it was time for a new life to begin.

The metal man took a last look back at the great dome of Fortress Berlin. Somewhere in there, the Leopard Man was hunting, freed from his own mission. And in the Fuhrer's old office, the empty, lifeless clay of El Sombra - or was it Djego? - lay, discarded, like a butterfly's cocoon.

The metal man thought on this, as the Fuhrer rusted at his feet and the tanks began to approach from over the hills ahead.

He would need a new name.

It’s now the age of Pluto.

[possiblyimbiassed]

“E” as in Eurus, Enola and Estate

In June this year the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd filed a lawsuit against an impending Holmes adaptation movie on Netflix (article from RadioTimes here: X). 

Sherlock, Mycroft and Enola, starring Henry Cavill, Sam Claflin and Millie Bobby Brown.

This post about it by @tendergingergirl (X) seems to have gone largely unnoticed, but I think it deserves far more attention. In fact, it got me thinking “What’s all this actually about?” and looking a few things up.

My curiosity about the doings of this Estate began in December last year, before the release of BBC Dracula in January, when an interesting discussion initiated after an excellent meta by @yeah-oh-shit (X), who had made some investigations into previous copyright and public domain issues and lawsuits, which I had never known about before. 

And now it turns out that the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd (from here on I’ll call them ‘ACD Estate’) is suing the film makers, along with Nancy Springer, author of a book series based on characters from the Holmes universe called The Enola Holmes Mysteries (2006-2010), for copyright infringement. 

But I thought most of ACD’s Sherlock Holmes stories are now in public domain, including the Illustrious Client, the Sussex Vampire and the Three Garridebs, whose copyright under US law expired last year (2019)? Well, yes, but that’s still not all of them, and according to ACD Estate “for those of the stories whose copyright terms have ended, this action is brought within the three-year limitations period for infringement.”

More under the cut.

So, the ACD Estate’s copyright, they claim, still includes the following ten stories collected in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes:

The Creeping Man (1923)

The Illustrious Client (1924) 

The Three Garridebs (1924) 

The Sussex Vampire (1924) 

The Retired Colourman (1926) 

The Lion’s Mane (1926)

The Three Gables (1926) 

The Blanched Soldier (1926) 

Shoscombe Old Place (1927) 

The Veiled Lodger (1927)

The whole lawsuit can be downloaded as a PDF file from this news article (X), and it’s quite an interesting read.

Claims about Sherlock Holmes’ emotions

So, since this is not the first lawsuit from the ACD Estate about adaptations, what’s their beef with the film makers this time? As far as I can see from their claims, this is about Sherlock Holmes’ emotions. 

This is how the ACD Estate reads Holmes’ character development in the lawsuit: “Conan Doyle made the surprising artistic decision to have his most famous character—known around the world as a brain without a heart—develop into a character with a heart. Holmes became warmer. He became capable of friendship. He could express emotion. He began to respect women. His relationship to Watson changed from that of a master and assistant to one of genuine friendship. Watson became more than just a tool for Holmes to use. He became a partner.” 

They even quote the famous passage in The Three Garridebs (3GAR, 1924) where Watson says: “It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask.”

But all this progress, they claim, specifically happened within these ten still (allegedly) copyrighted stories, which Conan Doyle wrote after World War One, where he had the traumatic experience of losing both his son and his brother.

They claim that Holmes’ emotional development is still under their copyright (which I believe in practise means their power to decide whether to allow a film adaptation or not) and apart from the emotions issue, they also provide the following other examples of developments that are (supposedly) unique to these ten still copyrighted stories:

Holmes employs a knowledge of medicine in Watson’s absence

Holmes and Watson use modern technologies in detective work for the first time 

Watson marries a second time during his association with Holmes (BLAN)

Holmes changes into someone who has great interest in dogs

Sherlock’s “secret sister”

The Enola Holmes Mysteries got me interested, and now I’ve read the two first of six instalments in total. The series is about Sherlock’s and Mycroft’s younger sister Enola, a clever teenager whom the brothers – in particular Mycroft - want to send away to a boarding school after their mother has disappeared and abandoned her. But Enola hates the idea of being confined to a place where she will be forced to wear a corset and restricted to a certain (‘female’) behaviour at all times. She escapes to London, where she starts a secret private detective career specialising in investigations of missing persons. Enola must keep ahead of her brothers who are determined to capture and force her to conform to Victorian society’s expectations for young women. She skilfully uses different disguises, just like Sherlock, and she meets John Watson pretending to be someone else. With her cleverness she manages to outwit even Sherlock. She is good at drawing and uses her sketches in her work. She manages to communicate with her mother (and eventually also with Sherlock) by using ciphers.

All of this does seem to have certain similarities with how Eurus Holmes is described in S4, doesn’t it?

Eurus is, like Enola, the secret Holmes sister whom we never have heard of before.

In TFP Mycroft claims Eurus’ intellect was superior to both Sherlock’s and his own; she was “incandescent”.

We see little Eurus draw sketches of her family members (not very pleasant sketches when it comes to Sherlock, though).

Mycroft made sure Eurus was sent away to an isolated prison/institution (Sherrinford) at an early age.

Their parents seemed absent and not particularly interested in the whereabouts of their own daughter (they didn’t even know she was alive); they let Mycroft and ‘Uncle Rudy’ take care of things, so one could easily suspect she was abandoned.

Eurus seems to have escaped to London at her own leisure, while Mycroft thought she was incarcerated.

Eurus appears in London under three different disguises: “E” (flirting and texting with John), 

“Faith” (walking the streets of London with Sherlock) 

and John’s new therapist. 

Eurus makes riddles with codes for Sherlock to decipher (“The cipher was the song”).

So, one might wonder if the Eurus plot is – at least to some degree – inspired by Enola Holmes? On the other hand, while Eurus appears cold and calculating, Enola is compassionate and sensitive and makes mistakes because of emotional bias. Enola seems more similar to Eurus’ disguised personas than to the supposedly ‘real’ Eurus - the one who burned the family estate down and killed Victor Trevor. 

I still believe that Eurus only exists inside Sherlock’s head in BBC Sherlock, being a part of himself, but that’s for another discussion.

As for the Holmes siblings, it’s also interesting that on the ACD Estate’s website, where they have a collection of ’facts’ about ACD’s characters, they seem to have included BBC Sherlock’s Eurus as a valid sibling of Sherlock and Mycroft (scroll down to “Holmes facts” on this page: X), even though this character is nowhere to be found in canon. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this, but the only reference I can find to ”the East Wind” in ACD’s stories is in His Last Bow (LAST, 1917), where Holmes says that ”There’s an east wind coming, Watson”, and goes on to talk about a cold, bitter wind that is threatening England; most probably a reference to WWI, which was raging at the time of publication. No one with the name Eurus is ever mentioned, though. If Eurus had already been part of canon, why would Mofftiss have claimed her to be the big ”rug-pull” in TFP?

I haven’t read the final part in the Enola Holmes series (X) yet, where allegedly Enola reconciles with her brothers (Sherlock in particular) and they end up respecting her independence and skills. But according to several reviews Sherlock softens up a bit in the end. In the parts I have read, the two adult brothers appear rather conservative, patronising and sexist towards their younger sister – indeed more condescending than I think Holmes view of women actually is described in ACD’s original stories (allegedly – we never see him treat women badly in practice, do we?). At any rate, I haven’t this far been able to find a single specific plot element from the ten (supposedly) still copyrighted stories in Springer’s work.

In their lawsuit, the ACD Estate claims that “The Springer novels make extensive infringing use of Conan Doyle’s transformation of Holmes from cold and critical to warm, respectful, and kind in his relationships. Springer places Enola Holmes at the center of the novels and has Holmes initially treat her coolly, then change to respond to her with warmth and kindness.”

So what they’re doing here is the same thing they’ve done before (and lost): they’re claiming they still own some intrinsic characteristics of Sherlock Holmes, even though most of the stories are already in public domain. 

Other lawsuits

A similar lawsuit towards Miramax (X) was made in 2015 for the film Mr Holmes, which had Ian McKellen as protagonist. But it ended in settlement before the defendants had responded to the accusations, which were similar to those regarding Enola Holmes about Holmes’ emotional life, but also had to do with the details of Holmes’ life as a retired man.

So, this is not the first time the copyright owners are interfering with content in Holmes adaptations. To complicate things further there seems to be two different estates claiming copyright for Doyle’s work. In 2010 there was some reporting that another estate had threatened Guy Richie’s Sherlock Holmes movies with disapproval after Robert Downey Junior had discussed Holmes possibly being gay on a TV show (X). According to Digital Spy, Andrea Plunket, who then represented the ‘Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate’, said: "I hope this is just an example of Mr Downey's black sense of humour. It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books."

It’s very unclear which legal rights Andrea Plunket’s family (Andrea apparently died in 2016) actually has to represent ACD’s work, though. Andrea had been married to one of the copyright owners, and her family’s money had paid for the purchase of those rights, but after her divorce Andrea seems to have lost her part in the copyright, according to @mallamun on tumblr: (X). There’s also a lot of interesting things to read about these copyright issues in an article by Mattias Bodström from 2015: (X). However, there’s still a website from ‘Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate’ claiming ownership of the stories: X, and they have published a detailed account of their version of the matter (X).

The current case

I have no idea what the court will think about these new accusations against Netflix et al, but to me, if this isn’t farfetched, I don’t know what is. I think a good case could be made for most of these ‘unique’ elements listed above being expressed already before the Case Book. For example, in His Last Bow (LAST, 1917) they use a car, in The Dying Detective (DYIN, 1913) Holmes manages to fool Dr Watson that he’s very sick. When Watson declares his intent to marry for the first time already in The Sign of Four (SIGN, 1890), Holmes resorts to drugs. The dogs are all over the place since day one, and Holmes seems to appreciate them very much, not least Toby in SIGN.

And don’t get me started on the contradictions in Watson’s various discussions of whether Holmes has a heart. Holmes’ actions of helping people often contradicts the image of a cold, emotionless person. The Yellow Face (YELL, 1893) ends with Holmes being deeply repentant for being over-confident in his suspicion of a woman for adultery or maybe worse offences, when she was actually only trying to protect her little daughter from society’s racism.

In the Devil’s Foot (DEVI, 1910) there’s the following conversation (my bolding): “Upon my word, Watson!” said Holmes at last with an unsteady voice, “I owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an unjustifiable experiment even for one’s self, and doubly so for a friend. I am really very sorry.” “You know,” I answered with some emotion, for I had never seen so much of Holmes’s heart before, “that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.”

Why on earth would it be a “surprising artistic decision” from ACD to develop Holmes into a little more caring and openly compassionate person as he grew older? Isn’t that the very classical character development of any literary hero’s journey and also a logical personal development for many people in the real world? It’s called ‘learning’ and ‘maturing’, as far as I know. To claim this is infringement of some unique idea is frankly ridiculous.

In short: They make a very literal, textual interpretation of the Holmes character, cherry-picking the parts that suit their interests, they claim there’s a clear story arc with very separate characteristics before and after WWI, and that they own the end of it. Thus, no adaptation with a progressive story arc regarding Holmes’ character would be permitted without their consent. Since apparently BBC Sherlock have ACD’s Estate’s license for their own franchise, this just makes me wonder how much trouble Mofftiss et al had with including things like Sherlock’s and John’s hug in TLD, or his emotional breakdown with the coffin after Eurus’ experiments on him in TFP.

Possible satirical meaning and small hints

Allow me to speculate a bit about the possible implications of BBC Sherlock in relation to the Estate. In a recent excellent meta by @raggedyblue, the ACD Estate as ‘Doyle’s bank’ is discussed, regarding the significance of the banker Sebastian Wilkes in The Blind Banker (X). Many interesting ideas are presented in this meta, I really recommend a read. This topic also initiated an interesting discussion about Doyle himself mirroring John in this post by @devoursjohnlock​ (X).

In an addition to that meta @shylockgnomes brings up John’s blog post about Tilly Briggs as another possible reference to the Estate (X). I totally agree with this; some time around the release of BBC Dracula this year, and our discussions about legal issues connected to both shows, I stumbled upon this particular ‘aborted’ blog post and came to realise its possible significance. It gave me the idea to change the title of my own blog to “Tilly Briggs Ship with Johnlock on it”, since I suspect that the blog post might be a clue about legal obstacles to a certain relationship. And that title is staying, at least until we know the true story (if ever). 

Canon contains some info about Matilda Briggs is in The Sussex Vampire, one of the late ACD stories that should be in public domain by now, since the copyright supposedly expired in December 2019. But, as shown above, the Estate now claims there’s a three-year lapse when they can still sue for infringement. Here’s the quote from SUSS (my bolding): “Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,” said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. “It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.” Sumatra, by the way, was Sherlock’s preferred destination in the TST tale of the merchant who met Death in Samarra. In Sherlock’s version, according to Mycroft, the merchant survived and became a pirate... ;-) 

John’s aborted blog post (X) is titled “Tilly Briggs Cruise of Terror”, which just might be yet another little jibe at the Estate. John says that “I had to take this post down for a while as the ship's owners are launching an appeal”. According to Jacob Sowersby (a Sherlock fan on the blog) and Mike Stamford, this was “mind-blowing stuff”:

So I can’t help thinking this sounds like a hint to us about the Estate and a certain ‘ship’ which is still partly in their (legal) power and control. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the whole show - on the meta level - is partly meant as a satirical commentary on how Holmes’ and Watson’s characters, and therefore also their relationship, have been treated the last 100+ years by their ‘owners’. A treatment where I believe the hetero norm has always ruled, and where Andrea Plunket’s quote above indicates that homophobia regarding Holmes and Watson is still tied to legal obstacles.

Charles Augustus Magnussen also talks about ownership at the beginning of HLV (thanks for the quotes, Ariane DeVere): “Of course it isn’t blackmail. This is... ownership”. And later in the episode: “It’s all about knowledge. Everything is. Knowing is owning”. In fact, quite a bit of emphasis in HLV is put on Magnussen’s ‘ownership’ of characters people: “I’m a businessman, acquiring assets. You happen to be one of them!” Apparently - as this new lawsuit shows - it’s even possible to make money out of Holmes’ emotions.

@catwillowtree also pointed out, in another additional thread to @raggedyblue​’s meta, that Eurus’ burning down Musgrave Hall – the family estate - in TFP also seems like a reference to the ACD Estate. I would add to this, saying that the bomb that didn’t go off in TEH and the “patience grenade” that did go off in TFP might have to do with the same issue. What would happen if the ‘bomb’ of Johnlock would go off before the relevant stories are legally in public domain? Most probably another lawsuit from the Estate, which might become very expensive. 

Come to think of it, in TGG Greg Lestrade mentions an estate agent, when Sherlock receives a text message and a phone call on the pink phone from Moriarty: “What the hell are we supposed to make of that? An estate agent’s photo and the bloody Greenwich pips!” Well, if the Estate agent is somehow connected to the five pips, that fandom theory of the pips representing five series in the show comes to mind... For every pip in TGG there’s a victim covered in explosives; a huge bomb threatening to go off. (The third bomb did go off in TGG, but in S3 Sherlock found the ‘off-switch’ in time). If the fifth bomb is to explode in S5, I bet it won’t be until the relevant stories are safely in public domain. 2023?

More wild speculation while I’m at it: Maybe Sherlock and Ajay’s smashing of Thatcher busts in TST also ties in metaphorically to the same topic? The Thatcher era was not easy for LGBTQ people. There are several owners in TST whose Thatcher busts need to be smashed in order for Ajay’s lost memory stick to be recovered. AGRA is referred to as Ajay’s and Mary’s “family”. The memory stick contains personal information, ‘who you really are’. Could be read as if the info of who Sherlock Holmes really is can only be released once certain obstacles are overcome...

In another interesting meta from last year by @yeah-oh-shit​ (X), they mention the secret underground station at Sumatra road in TEH, where Howard Shilcott tells Sherlock and John that “They built the platforms, even the staircases, but it all got tied up in legal disputes, so they never built the station on the surface.” So maybe S5 is basically already written? It would make sense to me if the long hiatus we’re facing right now has a far more logical reason than the excuses Mofftiss have presented in interviews - the risk of legal disputes with the copyright owners.  

Tagging some more people who might be interested: @gosherlocked​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @sarahthecoat​ @sagestreet​ @thepersianslipper​

ETA: I have corrected some details about the copyright owners in this post; thanks @devoursjohnlock​ for pointing them out!

[hnybnny]

properly introducing my main fanservants!!!

LOTS OF PHOTOS/ART AND SUCH UNDER THE CUT BUT LIKE,,,, THIS IS JUST. A QUICK INTRODUCTION. TO MY PRIMARY SERVANT BASTARD CHILDREN- (in order of appearance; Sebastian Moran, John Watson, Enola Holmes, Columbia, Thomas Edison (True), Nicolas Flamel, Captain Stormalong, Edgar Allan Poe)

Feel free to hop in my ask box if you wanna talk about them or have any questions!!! Thank you for reading ily- 

Colonel Sebastian Moran (Assassin)

My primary servant OC by far! Professor James Moriarty’s chief-of-staff and right hand man- the second most dangerous man in London, after the Napoleon of Crime himself. Nicknamed ‘Basher’ or ‘Tiger Jack’, among others..

Moran is- or was- the most skilled marksman in the British Army, before he was dishonorably discharged. There are only a handful of men on the face of the continent able to shoot as well as he. As well as being an unnaturally skilled shot, he is a devoted sportsman and big-game hunter, and has notoriously tangled with tigers by himself in India- a predator that rather aptly describes the man himself. He authored two books, and his feats are still legendary in India, where his record 'bag of tigers' still goes unmatched. Although his outwards appearance was that of a respectable London gentleman and honorable military veteran, he gained a reputation in the evil underworld and was recruited by James Moriarty, serving as his 'chief of staff' of his criminal empire as well as his personal assassin for jobs that required his peculiar skill with a rifle.

The man is, as one Chaldean staff member puts it, a 'stone-cold badass'. He has a nerve of iron, and is vehemently loyal to both Professor Moriarty and his Master. He lives for danger, and the thrill that comes with 'kill or be killed' situations. Moran is also extremely easy and obvious to read- smiling 'like an idiot' when happy, and 'frowning like thunder' when angry. He does rather enjoy killing people, and is overall a man of few morals (although still having more than the Professor)- which, paired together, is what led to his leave from the military as he's practically a walking example of the 'Colonel Kilgore' trope. The more challenging the kill, the more enjoyment he gets out of it. As a strange upside, Moran has no illusions of how he's a right bastard.

"Ask anyone who knew me in the army, and you'll hear the same things about Basher: tiger in the field, bounder in the mess; a good man to have your back, but a bad man to show your back to; trust him with a fight, but not your sister, your wallet, or a deck of cards."

His Noble Phantasm, which represents his unmatched skill with a rifle, is called  BEBR DER KHANH KHALI - Persian for ‘the tiger in the empty house’. 

The bullet shot is, unlike others, a specially-made expanding revolver bullet which makes Moran unable to be likely linked to the kill. Much like a ghost or a tiger stalking its prey, he is completely silent in his attack, and the target can never see him coming before they're already dead- and just as quickly he is gone, seemingly disappearing into thin air without a trace.

No matter the conditions or distance, as long as Moran can see his target in some way- whether by the naked eye or through his scope, or perhaps in some other manner- his shot is guaranteed to hit its mark with deadly accuracy.

Also, if you find him not wearing his coat, it’s probably because he gave it to Jack. He loves knife child. They deserve proper clothes.

(source: amon-sheep on twitter)

(source: manalmmune on twitter)

[[LINK TO HIS CHAPTER IN MY FANSERVANT FIC]]

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Doctor John Watson (Caster)

The famed Boswell and best friend of the great detective himself. Aman who is most like his traditional origin, as opposed to the heavyset comedic figure modern media tends to make him out to be- aka the Watson that is described by Doyle as a former rugby player, an army man, and popular among the fairer sex due to his handsomeness, intelligence, and charm. 

He quickly becomes a proper ‘fatherly’ figure in Chaldea and especially to Master, due to his big dad energies, despite never having the chance to be a father in his life. Chaldea also appreciates finally having a proper doctor that isn’t a Berserker or... whatever’s going on with Ascelpius. Watson is Holmes’s life compass, the loyal companion always by his side who balances the detective out. 

Although he’s a caster, he also wields his trusty wartime revolver, and is curious in that, unlike most casters, he has one offensive Noble Phantasm- it’s his secondary, and his primary ‘Conductor of Light’ crystallizes Watson's role as a 'whetstone' for Sherlock Holmes's mind and unmatched stimulator of his famous flatmate's genius. As Holmes himself summarizes, “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.” This Noble Phantasm is purely supportive, serving to bring out the absolute best in an ally- whether it be manifested in power, magic, or inspiration- and temporarily unlocking a vast wealth of potential that they might not have even known they had. The exact limitations or bounds of it is not known, as it can seemingly extend in purpose as far as Watson or his Master might need it to in a given situation- able to provide buffs, grant moments of unmatched mental clarity or courage, and even unlock hidden abilities and Noble Phantasms if the moment is dire enough. His secondary NP is one he rarely uses, and hates to do so, because of the bad memories it dredges up- called ‘The Reichenbach Solution’, it creates a reality marble recreation of Reichenbach, with the roaring waters and a single shot from Watson himself sending the enemy tumbling off the falls to their demise. 

Watson was old friends with Moran in the army, and reconnect during their time in Chaldea (despite Holmes and Moriarty’s protests), and he also joins the ‘author squad’ and spends much time with them. He is a rational man and sturdy as they come, always there when needed; whether it be to patch up wounds, help solve mysteries, or to help Master deal with all the mental trauma from their adventures (because holy shit they need HELP-). Also Also he probably just straight up adopts Mash, he and Holmes are her new gay dads.

(source: gomooink on twitter)

--

Enola Holmes (Ruler)

If Sherlock is the representation of all great detectives, then the teenage Enola Holmes is the representation of all female sleuths. Originally far too weak to be a servant- her source material being extremely modern (Enola Holmes series by Nancy Springer), she contains the essence of the great detectives of the fairer sex, but most importantly of two Divine spirits- Athena and Persephone (not Ma’at, despite what the image says-), both Greek goddesses. Athena is the dominant of the two, and a maternal figure to Enola, while Persephone is content just to sit back and enjoy the ride.

The younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes (and sometimes, the mysterious elder sibling Sherrinford), Enola is much like her more famous brother- similar in lanky stature and physical features, including the prominent hawk-like nose. She is plain in appearance but behind bright eyes hides an intelligent, clever mind, albeit a stubborn and hard-headed one. She is a rebel at heart, resisting the efforts of society to shove her into the mold of a perfect subservient Victorian woman. Enola often uses being underestimated due to her sex and age to her advantage, and, like Sherlock, is quite adept at the art of disguise. With her Spirit Origin also containing figures like Nancy Drew and Miss Marple, Enola is a talented private investigator with a knack for seeing things from angles that other’s can’t- like that of a woman.

Also yeah, she gay. Keep scrolling. She would like to hold hands with Mash very much. 

(enola w/ her brother mycroft; source, dewa-chan)

(concepts for her ascensions, mostly cemented, again courtesy of dewa-chan who i owe my life to always and forever-)

--

Columbia (Ruler)

The Divine Servant calling herself Columbia is a complex individual. At face value, she is the personification of the United States of America, often visualized as a goddess; a quasi-mythical figure first written about by the enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley during the Revolutionary War in her work To His Excellency, George Washington. Columbia is, in fact, an amalgamation of two lesser Divine Spirits. One of them is the Roman goddess of liberty, Libertas. The majority of personifications of liberty are merely aspects and appearances of her, including the Statue of Liberty and the unidentified woman in the painting Liberty Leading the People, leading to Libertas having a more powerful- if rather confusing- Spirit Origin compared to most other minor Roman deities. The other is Columbia herself; a goddess first encountered by Chaldea during the odd adventures with Paul Bunyan. She is the symbol of America, and although she is technically a goddess, she is not worshiped- instead existing as an anthropomorphic personification akin to Uncle Sam. She is a goddess crafted by humankind, a manifestation of the thirst for freedom and equality that resides in the heart of man.

However, her existence is still closely intertwined with Libertas, having come from her 'lineage'; Columbia explains that if other personifications of liberty were to manifest, such as Marianne- the French icon of liberty, they would have to have Libertas accompanying their own Spirit Origin to be anything more than a Phantom. Columbia is not only linked to the nation carrying the name America, but to the land itself- in her earliest incarnations she served as a representation of the Americas- both South and North- to those across the Atlantic. She protects all who walk across the great frontier, and all those who have walked it before. Geronimo often voices his hopes that she is the same goddess that brought the first peoples of the yet-unnamed land delicious maize in abundance; Columbia only ever gives a knowing wink, always keeping the answer to herself.

Columbia tries to speak like a newscaster- that is, without an accent- to hide that fact that her true accent as a Servant is the thickest fucking New York brogue you can imagine. AYYYY, SHE’S WALKIN’ ‘EEEEERE!!!!

She has two Noble Phantasms- a support one, her main, called ‘ TORCH OF THE NEW COLOSSUS: THE DREAM OF A NATION ‘, and an offensive albeit rarely used NP called ‘ STRIKE FOR FREEDOM: DO NOT WEEP, FOR WAR IS KIND ‘ that has anti-Country parameters /because it straight up fuckin’ manifests the american military from all across its history-/

Columbia is just... a big country mom. who can grow to the size of the statue of liberty. whoops. 

[[LINK TO HER INTRO CHAPTER IN MY FANSERVANT FIC]]

--

Thomas Edison (True) (Caster(?))

BASTARD MAN. BASTARD. This Thomas Edison, though being initially called an Alter, is actually the True manifestation of the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’ without the influence of so many presidential heroic spirits. To match Tesla, he’s a 5*. I have him as Caster but... that’s still up in the air, tbh. 

He will steal your Noble Phantasm and claim it as his own. It’s actually one of his Skills- ‘Intellectual Copyright’. It blocks an enemy's ability to use their Noble Phantasm, sealing it for a length of time, while also buffing Edison in return- the strength of the buff received is proportionate to the strength of the sealed Noble Phantasm. This embodies Edison's habit of taking other people's ideas for his own, and while he often improved upon them, he still claimed them as solely his creations. He can copy the abilities of others and shape them to his own needs, always at the ready with a lawsuit in hand if anyone dare complain!

He is not allowed around Ivan or Ganesha due to his history with elephants and electrocution.

His Noble Phantasm (he may have more than one, he gets VERY shifty when asked) is a manifestation of his most terrible and deadly creation- the electric chair. He can also create a reality marble of a fantastical Menlo Park, a thriving center of innovation and invention, using his Territory Creation. 

Did I mention he’s a bastard? God, he’s a bastard. He’s incredibly intelligent BUT HE IS A BASTARD. He’s Evil alignment (arguably, may be Chaotic Netural-). It pains Tesla to admit that he actually likes normal Edison (furry man) much more. 

Ask him what he did to Louie Le Prince and he’ll sock you in the jaw and take off running (and also not answer). 

--

Nicolas Flamel (Caster)

The Alchemist, the great and immortal Nicolas Flamel himself. He’s a sad old lanky Frenchman DILF dad who misses his wife a lot, and is always ready to throw hands with Merlin and/or Paracelsus. He’s a potential candidate for the Grand Caster class, but is behind Solomon and Merlin in ‘line’.  Flamel was a successful French scribe who would gain a reputation as an alchemist after his death in 1418- or at least, his presumed death. He was rumored to have been successful in his creation of the Philosopher's Stone, an artifact with the ability to transmute base metals, and with it was able to create a way to achieve immortality. This Stone was his magnum opus, and he was the first to successfully create it- a fact he makes sure that Paracelsus is aware of at all times.

Also, much like Merlin, he’s not a true Servant. This is THE Nicolas Flamel. But... what happened to Perenelle, his wife? He does not like to talk about it.

He enjoys peace and quiet, educated debate, and reading. Flamel gets on quite well with his fellow Frenchman Dantes, as well as with Waver/El Meloi. 

THE DRAGONS OF FLAMEL (Skill): Flamel summons a staff of Cadeceus. Carried by the Greek god Hermes in mythology, it is said "...wake the sleeping and send the awake to sleep. If applied to the dying, their death was gentle; if applied to the dead, they returned to life". In the hands of Flamel, it can stun an enemy or counteract the effects of a stun-inducing skill upon an ally. As well as that, it can channel the effects of its corresponding god-named element mercury, able to dissolve many metals like silver and gold at will. However, like mercury, this skill is extremely volatile and prone to backfiring violently on Flamel if overused.

ELIXER OF LIFE (Skill): The ultimate alchemical creation- the solution, part of Flamel's legend, that granted he and his wife immortality. He keeps a small flask of the elixer on him at all times, and can be used in a pinch to heal all of Flamel's physical wounds, or that of a singular ally. However, it is not enough to grant an ally immortality, nor is it enough to heal multiple mortal wounds. The substance takes exactly one week, given the right materials, for Flamel to remake and refill his flask with some of the elixer.

He has two Noble Phantasms, one being ‘The Stone of the Philosphers’, and the other being ‘The Book of Abra-Melin the Mage’.

[[LINK TO HIS INTRO CHAPTER IN MY FANSERVANT FIC ALSO THERES A LATER CHAPTER WHERE HE ATTEMPTS TO THROW HANDS W/ PARACELSUS]]

--

Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong (Rider)

Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong is, plainly put, pretty much a nautical version of Paul Bunyan. Like Bunyan, he can change his size at will, growing to huge proportions. His giant ship was said to have hinged masts so as not to catch them on the moon, and had a stable of Arabian horses on board for his crew to get from one end of the ship to the other! Stormalong is said to have had a lifelong rivalry with the fabled Kraken- but unfortunately for the legendary sea beast, it got summoned alongside Stormalong and has begrudgingly taken up residence in his hat in a somewhat smaller form.

His main weapon (not drawn) is a ship's anchor he wields like a flail. His pipe is really just for the aesthetic as he can't use it to smoke, but it does blow bubbles! His Noble Phantasm is The Courser and the Kraken (Massive all-enemy damage + stun).

He’s a good boy who loves boats, the water, and clam chowder. 

--

Edgar Allan Poe (Foreigner)

The alcoholic author himself, Edgar Allan Poe is a Foreigner-class servant, being linked with the King in Yellow- Hastur the Unspeakable.

Sometimes you can find him locked in a tiny pitch-black closet with Dantes and Sherlock, all three of them puffing away in utter silence on their tobacco. Hastur most often takes the form of a multi-eyed raven chillin’ on his shoulder, and is capable of speech- if prodded, he will shit-talk the patrons of Poe’s fellow foreigners. He really doesn’t like Cthulhu and Yog, even if Poe has psuedo-adopted Abby, WHOOPS. Hastur, to his credit, is the least malevolent Elder God/patron in Chaldea- though if he is seen chatting with Moriarty by any servants or staff, Master must be alerted immediately.

True to form, he’s very macabre, with a unique dramatic way of speaking much like his writings. He’s unsettling and creepy, but has impeccable manners and likes to chat (he’s very lonely-). He enjoys a good mystery, and is prepared to find Arthur Conan Doyle if he be a heroic spirit and beating the snot out of him for treating Holmes so poorly- Poe was the inventor of the detective fiction genre, after all. Most of skills manifest visually as references to his most famous works. His NP is ‘ A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM : THE CRY OF THE YELLOW RAVEN, NEVERMORE ‘ 

He doesn’t know what a ‘Hot Topic’ is, but it sounds intriguing!

And no, he doesn’t know what the hell was up with his death either. Weird shit happens in Boston.

[15560931-moved]

how about Lupin? for the characte thing

Send me a character and I’ll list...

Favourite thing about them:

The way he talks. It might just be because of the words and writing style that were used back then. Every story he will go on some grandiose speech about something that will span paragraphs and pages. But if you condense it down, it’s usually just about how much of a galaxy-brain, alpha chad he is. Sometimes there’s a disconnect in the way he thinks of himself and reality, and that’s part of what makes it so funny as well. 

Least favourite thing about them:

See above. 

Favourite line: 

Oh there are so many lines, I have a dedicated folder of stupid shit that Lupin says. Every single time he looks in the mirror and describes about how handsome he is, his inner monologue about how he’s horrified by people who commit tax fraud in full seriousness, his broad shoulders, how car accidents are only for stupid people with his car crashing in the next three sentences, and most importantly, as he would like everyone to know, his very fine figure. 

However, none of those can beat this one.This mysterious “if inspector Béchoux doesn’t love me, then only death remains!” line that was missing in the original French, but was somehow added in this one (1) English version. 

It rattles around in my skull like a coin in an empty jar. I wake up in a cold sweat at night thinking about it. Where did it come from? Why was it added? Why this translation in particular? WHO added it???? The world may never know. 

brOTP: 

Gilbert/Lupin and Beautrelet & Lupin 

OTP: 

Béchoux/Lupin and Narrator/Lupin. 

nOTP: 

(S)holmes/Lupin- I just don't think their personalities are compatible with each other at all in a romantic sense and I can't see them together under any circumstances- Besides, (S)holmes already has his Watson :^) 

Random headcanon:

The books say he’s of “average height.” I like to think that he’s around 176 cm and is really by no means short. But he has the unfortunate luck of always surrounded by people taller than him. Even highschool detective Beautrelet is described as “very tall” in the books. 

Although it is not uncommon for men to wear fancy dress shoes with heels back then, so he probably makes up for it that way lol. 

Unpopular opinion: 

There’s like 10 people here so I don’t know what would be considered as an unpopular opinion-

Song I associate with them

Josephine - Parov Stelar 

Favourite picture of them

Every single drawing of him by Chiho Saito from her “VS Lupin” manga series is very tasty.

I also owe her my life for this dyed blonde-highlights Lupin.

[recentanimenews]

Random Reads 2/18/21

Are You in the House Alone? by Richard Peck Are You in the House Alone? came out in 1976 and though I totally could’ve read it when I was a teen—and thus still a member of its target audience—I never did.

Gail Osburne is a sixteen-year-old high school junior and native New Yorker who’s not at home in the quaint Connecticut village her family relocated to several years back. I knew that the plot involved Gail receiving menacing anonymous notes and phone calls, and I was expecting these events to get started quickly and the suspense to remain high throughout. But that doesn’t happen.

Instead, the story is told retroactively, so we know Gail survives. Also, obvious culprit is obvious. (I hope the reveal wasn’t intended to be a surprise, but perhaps readers were less savvy about such things in 1976.) Initially, much more of the focus is on Gail’s relationships with her parents, boyfriend, and best friend, and in particular how the latter two are in the slow process of dissolution. Eventually she receives some threatening notes and creepy phone calls, gets scared, is let down by people in positions of authority, and comes face-to-face with said obvious culprit. That happens halfway through this slim novel. The rest of the book is about Gail’s recovery from her ordeal.

I thought Are You in the House Alone? was going to be fun, suspenseful fluff, but it turned out to be fairly serious and occasionally (intentionally) infuriating. I really appreciated how Peck was able to weave in a couple of threads that seemed very random at first and make them integral to the denouement, too. Ultimately, I didn’t love the book, but I kind of… respect it, if that makes sense. It didn’t go the cheap route.

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez Mack Megaton is a hulking robot who was created to destroy. He developed self-determination, however, and went against his programming. Now, he’s a probationary citizen of Empire City, where mutagens and pollution have created a very diverse population. While some “biologicals” are still “norms,” others have been physically transformed (like rat-like Detective Alfredo Sanchez) and others have been changed in not-so-visible ways (like Mack’s friend, Jung, a talking gorilla with refined literary taste). Mack works as a cab driver and is trying to keep a low profile, but when his neighbors are abducted, he can’t help but try to rescue them. This gets him into all sorts of trouble, of course.

Despite its name, The Automatic Detective isn’t really much of a mystery. I suppose it’s more… sci-fi noir. Mack meets various thugs, beats some of them up, gets beat up himself, etc. Slowly, he makes progress on uncovering a huge conspiracy. At times, I felt like Martinez was a little too enamored of the gimmick he created, and places in the middle dragged a bit as a result, but the ending is pretty satisfying and overall the book was enjoyable enough, even though it’s quite far from the sort of thing I usually read.

As a final note: I really liked that Martinez limited himself when it came time to invent universe-specific profanity. Instead of the text being liberally sprinkled with words like “frell” or “frak,” the phrase “Oh, flurb” appears but once (during a moment where the meaning is 100% apparent) and made me laugh out loud.

I don’t know if I’m necessarily eager to read more by Martinez, but I’m glad I read this one.

The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse When I read My Man Jeeves back in 2010, I was somewhat disappointed because so much of it was repetitive. While there are some common elements that recur within the eleven stories that comprise The Inimitable Jeeves, it is still so very much superior that I’d now say… forget about that first book. Start here. Go back and read My Man Jeeves for completist purposes, if that’s your inclination, but start here for the best introduction to these characters and Wodehouse’s uniquely charming and amusing writing.

First published in 1923, The Inimitable Jeeves contains a linked set of stories that typically involve affable Bertie Wooster being imposed upon by either his eternally lovesick friend Bingo Little (who is “always waylaying one and decanting his anguished soul”) or his mischief-making younger cousins, Claude and Eustace. One plot thread involves convincing Bingo’s uncle (who provides him with an allowance) to agree to Bingo marrying a waitress. Jeeves comes up with the idea to ply the uncle with romance novels featuring class differences to soften his heart, and it ends up that Bertie is compelled to go visit the old fellow and claim to be the author. In addition to containing the most elegant description of sweat I’ve ever seen—“The good old persp was bedewing my forehead by this time in a pretty lavish manner.”—this situation is referenced a few times in subsequent stories until Bingo succeeds in getting married to a different waitress who really is the author of those romance novels.

So, even though you’ve got episodic happenings, it’s rather a satisfactory conclusion. Bertie is endearing, Jeeves is competent, the writing is excellent, and it made me laugh. (I especially liked when a character was described as resembling “a sheep with a secret sorrow.”) I’m so glad that I didn’t give up on the series after the first book; now I feel as though I finally see what the fuss is all about. I’d also like to give credit to the fabulous narration by Jonathan Cecil. I’m not sure if it’s deliberate, but I hear echoes of Fry and Laurie in his performance, and I heartily approve. I will certainly seek out more unabridged versions read by him.

The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters This is the second in the Jacqueline Kirby series of mysteries. I haven’t read the first, and wouldn’t normally begin with the second, but the book promised an English country mansion plus “fanatic devotees of King Richard III” so my usual routine flew right out the window.

Even before university lecturer Thomas Carter likened himself unto Watson, I’d noticed the similarities between how this tale is told and the Sherlock Holmes stories. We are never permitted inside Jacqueline’s head. Instead, we see her how Thomas, hopeful of one day securing her romantic affections, views her. It’s fairly interesting, actually, because Thomas’ opinion of her fluctuates, sometimes peevishly. “You drive me crazy with your arrogance and your sarcasm and your know-it-all airs,” he says at one point. And though he soon after claims “I’m no male chauvinist; I don’t mind you showing off,” the fact is that earlier he was grumbling inwardly about her feigning “girlish ignorance” to reel in mansplainers and then walloping the “unwitting victim” with a cartload of knowledge. It’s true that Jacqueline isn’t especially likeable sometimes, but for remorselessly trouncing the sexist louts she encounters throughout the book, I must commend her!

The mystery itself is somewhat bland, unfortunately. The leader of a Ricardian society has received a letter purportedly written by Elizabeth of York, which would exonerate Richard of the deaths of her brothers, the “princes in the tower.” He calls a meeting of the society, with each attendee costumed as one of the historical personages involved, and summons the press, planning to unveil his find with much fanfare. But someone begins playing practical jokes on the Ricardians reminiscent of the fates of the people they are pretending to be. The book isn’t a long one, and soon the pranks start coming right on the heels of one another. Because of the swift pace—and some shallow characterization—the solution is rather anti-climactic.

Still, while I’m not sure I’ll seek out any more Jacqueline Kirby mysteries, this was overall a decent read.

A Perfect Match by Jill McGown The series of books featuring Detective Inspector Lloyd (whose first name is a secret for now) and Detective Sergeant Judy Hill begins with a short yet enjoyable mystery in which a wealthy young widow is found dead in a small English town on property she’d just inherited from her recently deceased husband. Unlike some mysteries of which I am fond, there’s no preamble where readers get to know the victim or the circumstances of their life. Instead, immediately there’s a policeman discovering the body and then Lloyd turns up to question the victim’s next of kin. This same lack of character development hampers the romantic tension between Lloyd and Hill, leaving me with no idea what motivated Hill to finally decide to act on her feelings for him, betraying her marriage vows in the process.

The mystery itself is interesting enough, however, involving long-married Helen and Donald Mitchell who have ties to both the victim, Julia—her late husband was Donald’s older brother and Helen thinks they were having an affair—and chief suspect, Chris, originally a friend of Donald’s who has fallen in love with Helen. I can’t claim to have mustered anything more than a mild curiosity as to what the outcome would be, but neither did I guess the specifics, so that was good. I liked the interrogation scenes, too.

McGown’s writing had some fun moments. I loved the super-evocative imagery of Lloyd telling Hill that her new perm makes her look like Kevin Keegan. I also really appreciated a recurring bit where each chapter ends with the point of view of wildlife. When Chris is eventually brought in by the police, his arrest is depicted from a bird’s perspective, for example. There are also ducks, a moth, a fly, a cat… I don’t know if this device recurs in later books in the series, but I look forward to finding out.

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight This is the second mystery/thriller I’ve read in which a single mom who is a lawyer with a cold and unfeeling mother of her own attempts to work out the mystery of what happened to a family member (the other being Girl in the Dark by Marion Pauw). Is that some kind of trend these days?

Kate Baron has a demanding job at a swanky firm, but she’s trying her best to be a good mom to her fifteen-year-old bookworm daughter, Amelia. She’s shocked to get a call from Grace Hall, the prestigious private school Amelia attends, saying that her daughter has been accused of cheating, and by the time she makes her way to the school, Amelia has evidently jumped to her death from the school roof. The police are only too happy to classify her death as a suicide, but when Kate gets a text that says “Amelia didn’t jump,” she starts trying to put together the pieces of what happened.

Reconstructing Amelia has quite a few problems. Despite her better judgment (and a promise to her best friend), Amelia joins a clique of bitchy girls at school who end up publicly humiliating her and trying to get her expelled when she falls in love with someone deemed off-limits. It’s hard to muster sympathy for what she ends up going through when one remembers the cruel prank she was willing to pull on someone else as part of the initiation process (largely kept off-camera to keep us from disliking her too much, I guess). We’re repeatedly told about the great relationship Amelia and her mom share, but never shown it. The subplot about Amelia’s dad is the literary equivalent of wilted lettuce. And the fact that the new detective who gets assigned to the case allows Kate to question suspects is absolutely ludicrous.

And yet, I couldn’t hate the book, largely because of Amelia’s friend, Sylvia. For much of the book she comes across as shallow and self-absorbed, but when Amelia really needs her, she’s there. She gives Amelia this tour of “great moments at Grace Hall” to cheer up her impressive pal, right before breaking down about her own legitimate pain. I never would’ve thought at the outset that I would have such immense sympathy for Sylvia, but I do. I find myself hoping that she’ll be okay.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane It sure is nice going into a book unspoiled, particularly one as twisty as Shutter Island. I was quite happy with the book as it began, with U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule taking the ferry to Shutter Island to track down a patient missing from Ashcliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It’s late summer 1954, and these guys are manly but accessible, and surprisingly funny. Consider this relatiely early exchange that cracked me up:

Pretentious Doctor: *makes remarks on the lives of violence the marshals must lead* Chuck: Wasn’t raised to run, Doc. Pretentious Doctor: Ah, yes. Raised. And who did raise you? Teddy: Bears.

For a while, all seems straightforward. Then Teddy confides to Chuck that he’s actually come there looking for a patient named Andrew Laediss, who was responsible for setting the fire that killed Teddy’s wife two years before. Gradually, one starts to doubt everything (and there was a point where all of the uncertainty got to be a little much for me) but the ultimate conclusion is a very satisfactory one.

Why Did You Lie? by Yrsa Sigurdardottir Set in Iceland, Why Did You Lie? starts out with three different storylines taking place a few days apart. The first involves a photographer on a helicopter journey to take pictures of a lighthouse on a rock in the middle of the ocean, the second is about a policewoman whose journalist husband has recently attempted suicide, and the third is about a family who returns from a house swap with an American couple to find some of their stuff missing and weird footage on the security camera. Of course, as the book progresses, these storylines converge, and it’s pretty neat when the police activity the helicopter flew over in chapter one turns out to be almost the culmination of the policewoman’s plot thread.

For some reason, I can’t help wondering how Ruth Rendell might’ve written this book. I think Rendell would’ve done a lot more with characterization, for one thing. There’s certainly some here, especially for the anxious husband who struggles to make his wife admit something really has gone wrong with their houseguests, but the primary concern seems to be getting on with the suspenseful action. Quickly, each plot features some kind of creepy lurker and then ominous notes (variations on the “why did you lie?” theme) figure in to all three, as well. Nina, the policewoman, digs around and talks to people and works out that everything connects to a supposed suicide from thirty years ago.

The result is certainly an entertaining book, but not one I could really love. One major issue I had is being able to predict something very significant. The number of characters who could’ve been angry enough about the 30-year-old lies in question to terrorize people in the present is very small. And once the existence of a certain person is oh-so-casually mentioned two-thirds through the book, I thought, “Oh, well, it’s them, then.” And then a little later, I figured out which of the characters it must be and I was right. This made for an anticlimactic ending that was clearly meant to be a shocking one. Also, I would’ve liked to have cared more that one character ends the novel poised to move on with life but, in reality, still in jeopardy.

I still would read more by this author, though.

By: Michelle Smith

[silenthillmutual]

Death Note (completed list)

all L/Light, unless specified otherwise.

Top 5:

Best Wishes From a Goddess of Death by The_Maiden_of_Autumn; M (fluff, AU, angst)  Misa Amane is not stupid- oblivious and airheaded sometimes, but definitely not lacking in intelligence. She can see the way Light and L are together, the regretful, sorrowful looks L gives her whenever she speaks to Light. She knows where this is heading; she just doesn't want it to be this way. But she's made her bed, and wishes them happiness, she truly does. Slight LightxL

Cake Crumbs And Bed Sheets by Jenwryn; M (AU, fluff, romance)  An inexplicable and very fluffy AU, written for Australia Day. In which L eats lamingtons and vanilla slice - and has help to fall asleep.

Kanji by sashocirrione; T (fluff, AU, hurt/comfort)  Light is bringing L home to meet his sister and mother, as L is now his boyfriend. But Light can't shake off the feeling that he was somehow tricked into the situation. Fluffy and probably somewhat OOC, not my usual style. Written for Persefone88, one of the winners of my 100th review contest, (started back when I was still running that contest).

(Now And Then There’s) A Fool Such As I by Light It Up; T (AU, fluff)  Knowing he couldn’t miss his first class, L took a deep breath and strode into the hallways, ignoring anyone who tried talking to him. By the time he was sitting at Biology and had his pencil twirling between his fingers, hearing the teacher explaining things he already knew and the girls to his right talking about stupidities he didn’t want to know, L just wanted to vent about how he was feeling. However, he would never do that with someone he actually knew.

you’re a wasp nest by raisuki; M (fluff, AU) But Light was already wandering off, his cane clicking rhythmically as he navigated the halls. He gave L a half-hearted wave before merging back into the flow of people. L was fairly sure he has just been tricked into buying Light Yagami dinner, and he was also pretty sure Light Yagami is the most audacious person he had ever met.

and now, for all the rest!

K/K+

Ambiguity Among Two by Fledgling  [L x Light. Hugging. Handcuffed. Ficlet.] L shuddered at the memory, and briefly, he dug his fingertips into Light's back, willing bruises inside that whispered of sleepless, difficult nights.

Bedtime by Servant Gabrielle (humor, romance) Drabble. LightxL. Sometimes, being handcuffed together caused a few problems.

Candy by Eriko Myoujin (romance) L wants to know if Raito enjoys candy. Supposed to take place during the time Raito has forfeited his memories of the Death Note. A silly little thing written for an LJ community. [LxRaito]

Candy is Dandy by firedraygon (humor) During a latenight investigation, L is craving some chocolate. LxRaito

Duplicity’s a Matter of Fact by lefcadio Light x L. A thunderstorm, an unexpected conversation, and cake.

I’m Glad I Found You by bri-notthecheese (+Misa/Matsuda; romance, friendship) No one would have expected a relationship to blossom between Investigator Touta Matsuda and Model Misa Amane. However, if a friendship developed between them while she was under suspicion and then she eventually decided to let Light go, Matsuda would be the perfect prince waiting for her when she decided that he was who she truly wanted and needed. Matsuisa ftw.

Observations by Asidian L does some unconventional observations. Too bad he can't convince himself it's for the good of the investigation. Light x L.

Out of Focus by Chiba.Kun (romance) [LightxL] Written from Light's POV. Oneshot. Not much to it. When the two are handcuffed together, innocent desires surface. I apologize for the crappy summary.

Sleepy Chains by WellspringIsSuperLame (romance) In which a tired Raito becomes rather suspicious of Ryuuzaki. Random little one-shot, LxRaito fun.

Starlight by subdivided (drama, romance) AU manga ending, LLight, one shot. The Kira case is declared solved before Light can regain his memory. He and L leave the party early, for a garden under the stars.

Sweeter Than Sugar by Manwyn (romance) LxRaito. L offer Raito one of his treats... AN: Sorry i'm not very good with summarys.

What I Lay Down by mleeph (romance, drama) Love comes in percentages, but sacrifice is a matter of absolutes. Thus, L comes to a realization at 1:19 in the morning. [Raito x L ]

G

3:19 Am by Tierfal (romance, drama) This is really not the time of day at which Light prefers to discuss their respective revelations. 

Bad Habits by domo (humor) Light hates it when Ryuuzaki bites his nails, Ryuu just wants to know if Light is gay or not.

Bananas by Tierfal (humor, romance) Best. Idea. EVER.

Cake by Desmenn

Confused "No thanks. I'm fine like this- confused."

Counting the Coffee Drip by NOT_TOWA_WAKASA (fluff) Light is a blind man who loves to count. L finds him curious, and wades through the holiday season to visit him wherever he may appear.

Dance With Me by dotti55 Light wants talks L into trying a new experience.

Easily Entertained by Tierfal (humor, romance) It's an important distinction.

First & Final by overdose I watched the most emotional Death Note scene in Death Note history. (I've only made it to L's death) So, I decided to do something with it. Kinds sucky and rushed.

The First Noel by OctaviaPeverell (romance) Because L loves Christmas desserts and Light can't get enough of handcuffs!

Four Minutes of Solitude by Tierfal (humor, romance) L tries to take a break, the operative word being "tries."

Heaven-Sent Hypocrisy by Tierfal (romance, fluff) Somebody up there was looking out for him.

mellifera by alharper He sleeps beside you, spare hand curled around the chain, six feet of arrogant beauty and ruthless intelligence softened and hidden.

Oh So Smart by Zanganito (+Misa/Light; fluff, angst, humor, hurt/comfort) Misa decides to have movie night! During the film, Light makes a few unwelcome realizations and is moved to tears. L takes advantage of the opportunity to mock him relentlessly. Set just after the conclusion of the Yotsuba arc.

On A Boat by Tierfal (humor, angst, romance, hurt/comfort, AU) Light is considering throwing himself over the side and trying to drown.

Perilous by Tierfal (humor, romance) It's just another evening… until it's not.

Perverted by Tierfal (humor, romance) It's all about the contingency plans.

Provocation by Jenwryn (humor) "I would not provoke Watari-san if I were you, Light-kun."

Resolved Tension by norestforthewckd (fluff) Light Yagami does not like Ryuzaki. Light Yagami is a very big liar with a bit of a soft spot for a certain man.

Sub Finem by RatatoskMode "...I still can’t believe that this is the end. No, it’s more like I don’t want to believe it. The only person I deemed worthy of taking my life was L himself, but to go this way is pathetic." Light Yagami is dying, and he's visited by a familiar ghost of his past.

The Taste by Tierfal (romance, AU) It makes perfect sense.

Will You Be My Valentine? by TabbyCat33098 (AU, fluff) L has been getting mysterious presents all day long, presents of a...how do you say? Romantic persuasion. What is going on? Who's sending these?

Word Play by CuteCat213 (AU, fluff) Remarkable: worthy of attention; striking. L bit his thumb and watched Light. His boyfriend certainly was striking. And he was sure Light wouldn't mind; there had to be at least six other things more creepy than watching his boyfriend sleep and tying to think of words to describe it.

T

Antioxidant Properties by remarks Rivals getting hot and bothered (mismatched socks and a kiwifruit).

Are you Lonesome Tonight? by Light It Up Their time apart had scarred the both of them. There were days someone would mention that High School relationships didn’t last long, or that when two people started dating at a too young age, they always ended up drifting apart. Those days were when L was the most vulnerable, and Light made sure to spend the night with him, whether at the Yagami house or at L and Watari’s.

The Boy’s Too Refined by sabriel75 (AU) The notorious detective, Sherlock Holmes, takes too keen of interest in Light and L's affairs. He suffers a concussed head for it. Light loses his innocence. Both were bound to happen sometime though as far as John Watson and L were concerned.

Caveat Emptor by Tierfal (humor, drama) In which there are shopping trips, sarcasm, backhanded compliments, dark rooms, big guns, bubble baths, trauma of every sort, and detailed fantasies involving cake - lots of those. Let the buyer beware indeed. L/Light.

Cherade by lefcadio Light x L. When you're handcuffed to someone, insomnia takes its toll in one way or another.

A Different Decision by phoenixjustice Maybe a world free of criminals and ran by Kira would truly be a better place.

Fevered by Ivydoll (Mello/Near; romance, drama) MelloNear. When Near's illness jars the boys' comfort zones, they lose some of their control and experience a slight tilt towards one another.

Fidgeting by Tierfal (romance, fluff, AU) "Don't squirm."

From the (Very Private) Notebook Of... by Shayheyred (humor, crack) Probability that L is a dork: 100%

The Ghost Inside You by slightowl In which Light must learn to cope with an undead roommate. (An LxLight ghost story.)

Giving And Taking by Jenwryn (AU, romance) AU. The Kira case is closed, and L had promised himself he'd make a move on his partner-in-crime-solving but... there's too much to risk losing.

grow old or something by youremyqueen The afterlife is a bit like normal life, in that it's completely dull.

Lay Your Hands On Me by Light It Up (AU, fluff) Of course, though, it was only seldom that Light remembered that. He couldn’t care less about when he’d leave this small, crappy apartment, not when every now and then he could catch scenes and sounds so enticing from the man he’d been in love with for about a year and a half.

Love Tonight by Light It Up (AU, fluff) Light looks at him with tears in his eyes, blinking a few times to force them back. Almost shyly, he nods, so L reaches up to brush away a stray tear from his cheek. “It’s your birthday, you idiot,” Light explains then, hugging his knees as close to him as he can.

Never Forgotten by metal goat (angst) Raito can never seem to forget L, no matter how hard he tries... LRaito, some RaitoMisa. Spoilers for Ch.58. Shounenai. Oneshot

The Plan by strange_isle (drama, AU) Light's scheme was both devious and elegant. Too bad it's gone awry. Now in the aftermath, L demands answers, but Light's not exactly in the most amenable of moods.

A Pocketful of Posey by Edmondia Dantes Redux (drama) Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Light/L.

Sour Candy by Edmondia_Dantes On the taste of apples and sugar.

Special Quality by Tasogare Nagisa (crack) We are all defined by that one special quality; if only we knew what that quality was...

Sweet Things by Light it Up (AU, fluff) Their relationship had started just before the Kira case was closed. Light confessed to the detective that he was the assassin, and when he thought L was going to handcuff him and send him to prison, where he would wait for the jury to decide when his death sentence would take place, L had instead kissed him. Although he could never be completely sure of it, Light guessed that the fact that he was crying when he confessed was the factor that made L’s mind up.

Sweetest Decay by Fantastical Queen Ebony Black (Mello/Near; angst) Letting you get the better of me. MelloNear [Spoilers for chapters in the 90's]

Taste by Hikaru R Kudou (humor) Shounen ai, Raito and L. A conversation between the two over breakfast. Raito: "I happen to like them that way. Is my taste bothering you?"

Unreliable as the Mind by Ramasi Losing and regaining his memories doesn't make Light's already complicated feelings for his opponent any simpler; and L might have even less scruples about killing someone he loves.

What you’ve always known by Devilinthebox (hurt/comfort, angst) Light comforts L about his body image. L tries to put distance but needs the comfort. He lets some defenses down (Request)

White Sepulcher by World’sOnlyConsultingTimeLady (angst, romance) L's rationality falls on an ordinary, dull night. L/Light one shot

Winter Wonderland by Light it Up (fluff, AU) What Light didn’t mention, was that he was extremely sensitive to the cold. He had never gone out during the Christmas holidays because when he was very little, he had come down with pneumonia after staying out on a windy day, so his parents never allowed him out again.

World is Mine by Light it Up (fluff, AU) Given that information, it’s quite obvious that Light lost, and the idea L had was certainly the most embarrassing thing Light has ever heard in his life. His cheeks are read in the mirror, and he turns a few times to look at himself from every angle, his heart pounding against his chest. This is so not a good idea, and he’s sure L just wants to see him like that to laugh at him, but God, Light has to admit that he likes what he’s seeing.

M

Almost Oblivion by Serria L knows that Light doesn't close his eyes at night for fear of waking up as Kira. L, on the contrary, won't rest until that transition is complete.

An Apple a Day by hyperRme (romance, crime) ...but if the doctor is cute forget the fruit. L turns this into his motto when he is forced to see doctor Raito because of his sugar only diet. As he pursues the doctor, L learns that the murderer he is trying to catch is pursuing Raito’s life.

At Night by Vehuel (PWP) Things that happen at night should stay between the two of them. Secret, and covered in darkness.

Chance of Circumstances by wordbombs (romance, humor) Sometimes all happiness takes is a change of circumstances. L/Light, fluffly lemon meringue AU one-shot. Answers- What if Light was a Wammy?

Choose by reaperlight (AU, fluff, angst, humor) Light isn't too fond of Valentine's Day. As it turns out neither is L...

Control by mmmdraco From the 3 Sentence Ficathon: Death Note, L/Light, control

Daylight The Light Does Bring by Jenwryn (romance, fluff, AU) The detective rolls onto his side, displacing Light's trailing thumb, and stares up at the younger man.

Guilty until proven Innocent by Callicanios (mystery, romance) Kira has emerged, the great detective L sets out to stop him. Only thing, Light is not Kira. Due to the explicitly of the chapters beyond chapter 14 the rating will be changed to M. LxLight

Softly Now by Jenwryn (romance, AU) The apartment is laced with the smell of fresh paint, and L has flecks of blue upon his cheeks.

Somnambulism by reaperlight (crack, humor) Light does not appreciate L’s sense of humor.

Submission by lichenglie “I think you forget, Light Yagami, that I am just as childish as Kira is,” he says, “and I hate to lose.”

Water, water, water by Devilinthebox In the bath, they forget they’re a detective and a suspect; they remove these identities along with their clothes, layer by layer until there are only the handcuffs left. And them; facing the other in the eerie calmness of their bathroom. At least, it’s how Light sees it.

E

Anger Before Bliss by mannysue (angst) L was depressed. Depressed that his deduction was wrong. Light is very much not pleased by this change in L's demeanor. He decides to take action.

Bang! by youremyqueen Written for the second death note kink meme, prompt was: in bed with a fully loaded gun.

by night we go naked, by day we go blind by youremyqueen Written for the second death note kink meme, prompt was: sensory deprivation.

Can’t I Even Dream? by Light It Up (fluff, smut) They didn’t kiss; it was more like breathing each other’s air, being as close as physics allowed them to. Sometimes Light wished they could just freeze the world and stay in a moment forever, just enjoying their own company and that instant when their bodies were in perfect synchrony, hips meeting at every precise thrust.

Clean by FayJay Set during the period when Light had given up the Death Note, and didn't know he was Kira.

Dirty by FayJay Set during the period when Light had given up the Death Note, and did not know he was Kira. (Sequel to 'Clean', but can be read as a standalone.)

Interested in Learning More by Shadow_Of_Quill Light isn't asexual. He just has... unusual interests. And Ryuuzaki is very observant.

Intermission by Shiraume What happened right after the infamous fight in Vol 5.

Just Before Sunset by Evilchuckles (romance) Perhaps they don't want to remember. Perhaps it's enough to be happy.

Linked by Shayheyred The chain is not what connects them

Low of Solipsism by Light It Up (AU, fluff) Even after six months of them dating, Light still wondered what it was about L that drove him so wild. Before him he used to be a quiet lover, rarely making any sounds more than a moan here and there. That being said, it’s easy to understand that Light was surprised when they first started touching each other and he instantly became vocal.

Playing the Part by Vector L was alone in his intent stare at the monitors.

Roundabout Truth by Ramasi Light is furious when he's kept in chains after he regains his memories; he has no choice but to try and figure out L further.

See Me by Shadow_of_Quill (AU) Light sometimes thinks he'd give anything to have someone see him for who he really is.

Something to Think About by dotti55 Having moved to The Wammy's House together, L and Light share their first Valentine's Day together, and make some discoveries about their relationship and their future together.

That Night by sashocirrione L and Light have a hotel-room encounter that is not at all accidental. Complete but open-ended.

Time Out by epkitty (fluff) They were handcuffed together for how long???

[unsccnangcl]

TASK 001 : THE INTERROGATION

location: hemlock police station 

time: ten oh-four am, december sixteenth twenty-nineteen 

mentioned: @ofaurclia, @edcns, @heartofgolds, @ofreligion, @covingtonhqs

sometimes it annoyed ella, how obviously threadbare she looked. she knew she was a mess, willowy and pale, like a strong breeze could blow her over. when she was a little girl, all silent and trembling and wide grey eyes, people treated her like she might be sickly, asked her if she was cold or hungry or needed anything. she looked like someone you should take care of, even now. and it annoyed her, especially because she knew it wasn’t out of genuine care for her, but out of pity. 

somehow, though, she didn’t think detective watson pitied her, and when he offered her a blanket, ella took it without question, wrapping it around her shoulders, clutching her old, plastic crows water bottle she got during frosh week in her skeletal hands. besides, she kind of needed the comfort right now; ever since melanie- well, a pit had opened in her stomach that was impossible to fill. she’d thought being turned down made her feel e m p t y, but now… on the best of days, ella always felt in the back of her head, but now it was like she’d fully pulled away. she could barely feel the cold of her water bottle against the tips of her fingers. and when she returned into her body even slightly, everything hurt so thoroughly, in a way she couldn’t describe. 

she managed to shoot the nice old man a smile as he settled himself down, getting himself ready to ask her a few questions. the hemlock police chief stood stoically behind him, and ella tried to forget he was there. the detective twirled the pen in his fingers, and shot her a smile in turn. “let’s begin.” 

“ can you tell me, to the best of your memory, what happened on the night of december 13, 2019? ” 

ella swallowed, blinking down to her feet, before looking back up at the detective. “well, um… my, my roommate, rosemary. rosemary keegan, i mean. she, uh, she told me that the debate team was having a party that night and… and i don’t usually go to parties so i didn’t think anything of it. she was going, so i decided i was gonna read wuthering heights that night- i read it every christmas, it helps me get into the holiday spirit.” 

“but,” ella said with a sigh, “i’d barely gotten started before my friend eden, um, lennox-montgomery, texted me at about…” she bit her lip, “hold on, could i please check the timestamp on my phone?” she didn’t know why she felt the need to ask, but she did. this was a detective, after all. when detective watson gave her the go-ahead, ella said, “thank you,” and pulled her phone out of the purse at her feet, scrolling through the texts. “um, at six-seventeen pm. she texted me asking if i was going to the debate team party at the estate, and she…” ella trailed off, sliding her phone under her thigh, and one hand with it. “eden is my friend, and she wants me to, like… get out more.” she manages a weak smile. “she’s way cooler than me. anyways, she… she offered to do my makeup and stuff so i went to her place. we had dinner and… and went to the party together.” 

“i spent most of my time ghosting eden, and sat on the couch when she danced. i mean, she made me dance a couple times, but…” she trailed off, biting her lip. she could feel the hurt stabbing at her stomach, and it was stupid that this still hurt, even with melanie… being gone. “something, uh, something upset her after a little while, and we left the main area at like… ten thirty-ish? but, um…” she swallowed, looking away, remembering how eden had asked her to leave, the way her gut twisted, the hurt plain on her face, “she asked me to go, and i,” she laughed, “i went back to the party, trying not to cry, though i… i did, eventually. i cried in the bathroom for, like, forty-five minutes, and, um, one of melanie’s roommates gave me a handkerchief, it was really nice of her. uh, michal… something. her name’s michal.” 

she shrugged, “and by the time i left the bathroom… or, like, a few minutes later, apparently something was on fire, and everyone was leaving. i was back home by twelve-thirty.” in finishing, she nodded, watching detective watson make his notes with some nerves, sucking at her teeth. she’d sucked her thumb until she was four years old. 

“ did you see anything unusual that night? was anyone acting out of the ordinary? ”

“um.” it niggled at the back of her brain, what she’d left out, but she… she still didn’t have a good feeling about it. still… melanie was- gone. no, dead. melanie was dead, she might have been murdered, and… tears pooled in ella’s eyes, and she brought the heel of her hand up to wipe at them. “sorry, i… i did see something. when, when eden…” she took a deep breath, “when i followed eden out the house, um,” when her friend was ranting about melanie, melanie, melanie, “aurelia choi came out after her and… and eden asked me to leave, so i left.” ella shrugged, wiping at her eyes again, the color rising in her cheeks. “i didn’t know… why. i still don’t, but… yeah.” 

she looked down at her lap, and realized she’d been opening and closing the water bottle spout the entire time she’s been speaking. she shut it one final time, before sliding her other hand under her thigh, both of them pinned under her legs, ella curled in over herself. “i didn’t… i didn’t see eden for the rest of the night, but i saw aurelia again at… i don’t know, i went to the bathroom to cry right after i talked to her. it was less than an hour later, probably half an hour after i left eden. anyways, i- when i saw her, i had to ask where eden was, if she’d gone home or something but aurelia didn’t… didn’t answer me.” aurelia was an expert at brushing ella off. she paused for a moment, adding, “and then, of course, the fire happened, but. i didn’t really see it. everyone just ran out of the estate and i was trying not to get trampled, y’know?” 

ella reached for the tissues, patting under her eyes and wiping at her nose. melanie was dead, and she was too scared to ask eden about that night, and… and ella just felt useless, useless. what more could she do with for the detective? 

“ can you tell me more about your relationship with melanie? ”

she laughed wetly, “i… i think you know too much about my relationship with melanie, detective watson.” she blew her nose into the tissue, before primly folding it up, looking around the room for a moment before she stood up a little bit, just to reach the waste paper basket. 

“well, um… we took, uh, phil 101 together. and she sat next to me and… and asked me for notes and stuff.” looking back on it, it seemed silly, that ella would ever think that was flirting. but nobody talked to ella, especially not in first year. especially not bright, beautiful girls like melanie. 

“and i… i saw her more and more and i… i had, or, um,” she cleared her throat, face bright red at the confession but… well, the detective already knew, didn’t he? “still have a massive crush on her. i… i’m-,” obsessed with her, “i guess infatuated with her, is the best term.” ella didn’t even dare say l o v e, because then that… felt too much. she couldn’t call something so silly, so pointless, so greedy love. “even today, i...” her voice shook, her throat tightening, “i still have those feelings for her.” 

she grabbed at her water bottle, snapping it open and taking a few long sips, just to calm herself. just to have a point of focus so she didn’t feel like she was spiraling out of control like an unspooling sweater. “i’m sorry, i’m fine, i just…” the look in detectie watson’s eyes killed her, and finally, a sob burst out. “it’s just… she’s gone, and she…” she shook her head, burying her face in her hands. her water bottle fell to the floor, and she scrambled for it with trembling hands as it spilled upon the ground. “i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m-.” she snapped it shut, putting it back on the table between them. “i’m just… i don’t know what to do. i feel so empty and like…” 

ella took a gasping breath. “she had… she had so much- she was gonna do so much.” melanie was going to save the world, ella had been sure of it. “she was so much, everyone- everyone loved her and i…” she gasped and whimpered, and she realized how close she was to hyperventilating. what use could she possibly be? “i just want to help, but i don’t know how, but i… whoever did this, if someone did this,” because it didn’t make sense to her, melanie being murdered. “i just… i want to know why. if there is a why.” 

for a long while, the room was just filled with the sound of ella’s sobs. 

“ do you have any reason to believe that someone would want to hurt melanie? ”

ella shook her head, feeling worn out, rung out, an old dish towel where her brain should be. “i… i don’t think so.” even eden wouldn’t have it in her, ella thought. she didn’t think she knew anyone capable of murder. “everyone loves her, she’s…” the sun of the solar system, the light at the end of the tunnel, brilliant and beautiful and unreachable and life-giving and every pretty metaphor you could ever imagine. almost calmly, so quiet, ella admitted with eyes faraway, “she’s everything.” 

“ do you have any questions about how the case will proceed? ”

ella’s gaze flickered back to the detective. she had questions, so many questions, but… but they crumbled like ashes in her mouth, like they always did. useless, she was u s e l e s s. “my… my mom wants to know why we have to stay, but…” ella shrugs, going shy. “i don’t know, could you please call her or something? because she doesn’t believe me.” she’d texted her mom she wouldn’t be coming home for christmas the night before, and her mother called, chewing her out for nearly two hours. she had thought to beg the detective if she could leave, but… she had a duty here. as a citizen, as someone who loved melanie. she had to do all she could to solve this mystery. 

[powerbottomblake]

RWBY:Ragnarok or predictions on the Atlas arc

Building on my previous post about how the RWBY arcs parallel seasons and the archetypal narrative structure linked to each season, I’ve established that Atlas corresponds to winter, aka themes of darkness, dissolution, the return of chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure, but what I’m going to be developing here is how winter is linked to Götterdämmerung myths, a.k.a Ragnarok, otherwise known as the death of the gods in Norse mythology. So yes, Atlas is definitely a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Time for our heroes.

The thing is, that isn’t the only Norse mythology allusion tied to Atlas, be it the cast, the location or the events of Ragnarok itself. This post will be about delving into all of these allusions and find how Ragnarok’s narrative beats find equivalents in RWBY and how it might help predict the Atlas endgame (or at least part of it) as well as figure out some general plot points.

But before that, I feel like you need to familiarize yourself with the G.U.N theory (though I don’t know if I’m 100% in the scope of it with this post). I think the person that best explained it in a concise way would be @alexkablob in this post but basically the nitty gritty of it is that all RWBY characters aren’t allusions to a single myth but have layers of different allusions to several myths, and decoding them makes it possible to predict the beats of their narrative. Think v6 made it all too obvious with how Adam was Prince Adam (a.k.a the Beast before any character development or growth), the Rose curse and Gaston all wrapped in one (plus some references to Anakin Skywalker too apparently!); or how Yang is Goldilocks, Beauty and the Beast simultaneously (amongst others).

So characters that you know are allusions to a certain myth/fairytale, might have allusions to other ones, less obvious but still just as significant in determining that character’s fate and their overarching character arc, and the Atlas arc of the story is just full of these other allusions, all Norse mythology themed.

I’ll start with the allusions tied to the central figure of Atlas�� plot, aka the man himself, James Ironwood, then branch out on the connected cast’s allusions and how they’d fill their respective roles in Atlas’ version of Ragnarok.

So, as we all know James Ironwood is supposed to be our Tinman from the wizard of Oz. Thing is Ironwood also refers to a location in Norse mythology, Járnviðr (literally old Norse for Iron-wood), where a witch gives birth to giant wolves that are alluded to as Fenrir’s kin, one of them in particular being dubbed snatcher of the moon, who will swallow the moon come Ragnarok.

Before delving deeper into this, who is Fenrir?

Fenrir is a monstrous wolf who’s bound until comes Ragnarok, where he breaks free, wreaks havoc on the realm of the gods, and kills Odin, the patriarch of the Norse mythology pantheon and one of its most powerful figures.

I’m gonna go ahead and assume that CRWBY will merge all the monstrous apocalyptic wolf figures into one because that’s the decision that makes the most sense, and I’m gonna refer to it as Fenrwby to differentiate it from the original Fenrir (listen I couldn’t come up with anything else).

So now we’ve established that Atlas harbors or will get invaded by this giant wolf, Fenrir, who announces the apocalypse and swallows the moon.

Damn, I wonder which character is always closely associated to moon symbolism, incidentally also alluding to a tale called Dead Moon (again @alexkablob got you covered) and whose death circumstances are still a mystery till now?

That’s right I think Fenrwby will be confirmed to be the reason Summer died. Another point that absolutely convinces me of it is that he(it?) refers to. A gigantic evil wolf. Or you could say. A Big Bad Wolf. And guess where Little Red Riding Hood is headed right now?

But before eating Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf eats the grandmother first.

Yeah, this might very well be the last time Maria’s making the trip to Atlas.

But let’s go back to Ironwood. There’s yet another allusion to him and that’s the Norse god Tyr. Tyr was a war god, but also presided over law and justice, which aligns with Ironwood being leader of the military, headmaster and even has the Council (which I assume is executive and judicial power) bow to him.

Tyr’s most striking act and for which he’s most known though is that he’s sacrificed his arm when the gods first bound Fenrir, the arm the wolf bit off being the right one, and lo and behold:

James Ironwood is indeed missing a right arm (well a whole right side because he’s also Tinman, but you get me). From this we can already surmise that the mission Summer was sent over to was probably the containment of Fenrwby, and it cost Summer her life and Ironwood his right side.

That leaves us with one question: who/what is Fenrwby and where did he come from?

We’ll have to go back to the original myth for a bit here. In Norse Mythology, the trickster god Loki fathers three children with a giantess:  Hel, a woman that becomes a sort of queen of the Underworld, the world serpent Jörmungandr and the world wolf Fenrir. All three siblings are prophesied to be big trouble to the gods but what sets Fenrir apart is that:

He’s the one foretold to announce Ragnarok; his unbidding decides it

He’s the one destined to swallow Odin himself whole

He’s the only “hellish” sibling who’s raised right where the gods live, in Asgard

Beyond the similarity in how the names sound, I do believe Atlas’ design takes after Asgard and is meant to symbolize it.

For further reference here’s Marvel’s take on Asgard:

And here’s our first look at Atlas:

Atlas even has those threads attached to Mantle below which I suspect act as anchors + elevators/transportation conducts (most of it probably dedicated to Dust transport) between Mantle and Atlas, but also are a visual reference to Yggdrasil's roots, the Norse world tree, extending from Asgard to the other realms below.

So Fenrir is raised right in Asgard, but the wee pup is growing at an alarming rate (plus is prophesied to destroy all of it) so none of the gods is keen on approaching him. None except one brave god that is the only one to get close and feed him. And who would that be? That’s right, Tyr a.k.a our basis for Ironwood.

Ironwood hosting and hand-rearing a monster that will ultimately cause Summer’s death and the Atlaspocalypse sounds extremely unlikely, but there’s one scenario where this makes sense.

Atlas is known for its technological advancement and its constant development of new weaponry. I believe Fenrwby was born out of such a project, under the general leadership of Ironwood, but someone must have taken the experiments too far and ended up creating something so terrible Summer Rose herself (and maybe all or a combination of the remaining STRQ team), a silver-eyed warrior, had to be dispatched to neutralize, dying in the process.

Now is the time to remember that Fenrir is Loki’s son. In the original myth, Loki, an Asgardian god, gets eventually banished and during Ragnarok sides with the enemies.

So we’re basically looking for a disgraced Atlesian, who was possibly a scientist and is now currently working with the enemy.

And here is our Loki, none other than Arthur Watts himself, whose fallout with Atlas is yet to be explained.

I believe the reason he left Atlas was because he’s the one responsible for Fenrwby’s creation and in its immediate fallout, evaded arrest.

Another reason that leads me to believe Watts is our Loki is that Loki’s ties to Hel, Norse queen of the underworld, who was described to be “half-black and half flesh-colored”, which is a dead ringer for Salem.

Arthur Watts’ name also seems to refer to Arthur Conan Doyle and John Watson, the first one being the creator of Sherlock Holmes and the latter his dutiful companion and side-kick, so I believe Watts might be a combination of (evil) Sherlock and Watson. This is further supported with how Watts’ appearance seems to be a blend of both (Watson is described as tan, with a strong build and a moustache and Sherlock as tall and lean) and his outfit being Victorian-era inspired. He is referred to as Doctor by Salem, first to affirm his status as fallen scientist from Atlas but also most likely as a nod to Watson who was a skilled doctor and often would be referred to as Doctor as well. Sherlock Holmes is known to be an emotionally detached analytical machine with a caustic (and at times callous) kind of humor, having a usually dispassionate and cold demeanor, all of which match what we see of Watts. How is this linked to our Ragnarok? Well one of Sherlock Holmes’ most well-known stories, one where incidentally Watson has a very proactive and prominent role, is the Hound of the Baskervilles. The story is itself based on the legend of a “monstrously evil man” who sold his soul to the Devil (Salem) and after his death led a pack of phantom, evil hounds.

Evil hounds, monstrous wolves...Watts always gets linked to big bad canidae one way or the other.

Which brings us to our next question: now that we know who made Fenrwby, what exactly is Fenrwby?

Ok so this is the part where the theory gets tentative because there isn't much to go off of, so bear with me.

Watts is partly based on Sherlock Holmes, who is indifferent and detached usually, unless he's in the midst of an investigation. He then turns driven, getting tunnel-visioned and borderline obsessed (he can even go without food for so long he faints) until he solves the mystery. I think Watts is much the same. He carries himself with cool composure mostly but there was one instance where he showed a sort of zealous fascination: when he saw the seer Grimm.

Ok so I have an inkling that Watts is fascinated by the Grimm, and his forbidden experiments involved Grimm creatures. This is further supported by the Baskerville allusion to a pack of phantom hounds, which could very well reference the Grimm.

So going off this, Watts experimented on Grimm - since Atlas is very much wolf-themed, maybe Beowolfs? - and out of them he made Fenrwby.

But what could possibly be combined to Grimm in a way that’d defeat the combined forces of Ironwood (whose entire right side got severed) and an experienced silver eyed warrior like Summer?

I think we can make an educated guess based off the two major technological breakthroughs we got to witness during V1-3, namely Penny, the first synthetic being able to generate aura and the aura transfer machine. You’ll have guessed it, I think Atlas was dabbling into aura experimentation and Watts rerouted it to his own Grimm endeavors. What if he succeeded in equipping Grimm with something similar to Aura? Something that would hijack the Silver Eyes. I’m just bouncing ideas here but I’m pretty sure Fenrwby is the result of Watts tinkering with Aura and Grimm, and I think Watts staying with Salem is in large part because she’s the crystallization of the divide that fascinates him, being both human (having a soul, so in theory having aura) and grimm. Salem is the long running case study Watts is pursuing in a way.

So. Now that we’ve established what Fenrwby might be and who is behind it, we can delve into the narrative beats of Ragnarok. I made a synthetic list of Ragnarok events that seem relevant and connect to RWBY as a narrative:

Fenrir swallows Odin

I think Ozpin having Odin references in his character is common knowledge enough in the fandom. Odin is the king of Asgard, is associated with wisdom, knowledge and sorcery amongst other things, and is known for having two raven familiars (Raven and Qrow), all of which fit Ozpin.

What could Odin being swallowed mean for Oz and Oscar?

Of course, this could simply be an indication of Oz/Oscar fighting Fenrwby with Ruby, and losing.

But we can take it further. Oz lives inside Oscar through the merge between their souls, their auras connecting. We’ve established Atlas has been studying and experimenting on aura; Watts has most probably even toed the line of what is morally acceptable in terms of experiments. What if Fenrwby, or one of the machines Watts has been “tinkering with”, is able to sever the connection, effectively trapping Ozpin’s soul or at least sending it in another reincarnation cycle? This is a reach, I’ll admit, but something about Odin being swallowed somehow does not bode well for Ozpin.

Thor fights Jörmungandr

Can’t talk about Norse mythology without talking about Thor! And incidentally we have someone in the main cast based off him. I’ve always found it weird how V4 gives Ren a comprehensive backstory but never an explanation for how Nora is just there, beyond “random Kuroyuri orphan”  (How did she get orphaned? Why was she in Kuroyuri? Who were her parents?). I think Nora’s backstory will be fully explained in Atlas as I have a feeling Weiss isn’t the only one coming home. Thor’s home is Asgard after all.

So Thor fights the giant serpent that is Loki’s other son and Fenrir’s brother. One of Jörmungandr’s most striking features is his venom, as he’s described spraying it through air and sea, and it’s how he kills Thor even as he’s slayed by him, poisoning the god to his death.

Our Jörmungadr equivalent thus needs to wield poison, and be sired (or fixed) by Loki aka Watts. That would be Tyrian.

I believe we’ll have the second round of Team JNR vs Tyrian - as foreshadowed by Tyrian’s interest in Jaune - and it’ll end with Tyrian dying and Nora being gravely wounded.

The frost giants join the fray against the gods

I’ve already expanded on this in my previous post, but Jack Frost, Jacques’ fairy tale basis, is said to be based on the norse frost giants. This, coupled with the “Jack and the beanstalk” references, pushes me to think Jacques is going to betray and cause the death of Ironwood and help team W.T.C.H steal the relic.

Gamr, another big hellish hound, kills Tyr

Gamr is another monstrous hound who breaks free of his bindings in Ragnarok. As I said before, I believe all hounds/wolf imagery is going to be compounded in a single entity in RWBY (especially when they sometimes share identical characteristics), so this is Fenrwby getting free of whatever binding Summer put him under (maybe the Silver Eye power petrified him the way Ruby did the giant Nevermore?) and killing Ironwood.

Surtr, a fire giant from Muspelheim, the realm of fire, covers the entire world with fire with his flaming sword

Surtr is a fire giant that guards Muspelheim, a hot and glowing land of fire, and who sets the world on fire with his flaming sword at the end of Ragnarok. This signals the destruction of the world, but also announces its rebirth with the surviving gods and humans meeting afterwards and leading into a new era.

So the guardian of a sword of destruction (Vacuo’s relic), coming from a hot unforgiving land (Vacuo), crashes the fight. I believe this is when the Summer maiden gets introduced, and she uses the relic to end the fight and save the thoroughly defeated team RWBY so that everyone may escape to Vacuo as Atlas’ destruction is complete.

So, to TL;DR this extremely long post:

There is a Big Bad Wolf kind of monster/entity in Atlas I’m tentatively calling Fenrwby

Watts created this monster by dabbling into forbidden experimentation, probably on aura and grimm

Summer Rose sealed said monster but at the cost of her life and the fight cost Ironwood his right side

Fenrwby is unleashed on Atlas, either by Team W.T.C.H, accidentally by Ironwood, or a combination of both

Jacques sides with W.T.C.H and helps them steal the relic

Fenrwby kills Ironwood and Maria

Oz is either defeated, sealed away from Oscar or sent in another reincarnation loop

Nora is from Atlas and we get her extended backstory

Team JNR fight Tyrian and are able to defeat him but Nora is gravely wounded

the Summer maiden arrives in a bind and with the relic of destruction ends the fight and takes team RWBY to safety

[getsherlock221b]

„What changed your perspective on this so much?", at the same time the bow also began to stroke the strings of the violin with a feather-light gesture, as if the few sounds were signing an undertone of a question. A question of faith, as far as he was aware, was difficult to change or shape. There were always formative and influential situations that made reference to it and often closed in fanatical directions. Even if a minimal expression in the direction of his host was sufficient to exclude the latter. „How do I do it? Quite simply, I use the purest form of deduction and induction. If you have excluded the impossible, then what remains is the truth - however highly unlikely it may be. Life is a large, articulated chain of causes and effects. The essence of the whole can be seen in a single element", again the bow stroked across the strings, pretending a cold and analytical sound, underpinned by the wave of mystery that mostly surrounded his thinking for outsiders. Immediately the mysticism changed rapidly and returned to the cooler and matter-of-fact tone. „A sequence of patterns and general knowledge, the search for details and all sorts of different perspectives. The more knowledge and information you have, the easier it is to put facts together. Similar to what I made clear about you before. The accumulated instruments reflect a passion that takes up enough time, if you take a serious look at it. Your pure interest in it is sufficient to conclude that as well. Why should you devote yourself to a passion that is obviously more frequent in your own four walls? If we add your irrational fears, which are open and can only be overlooked with great effort, one connects with the other. Your quick and thoughtless invitation to a tea, even to my will inside of your apartment, adds a touch of conviviality and basic trust. If you add both aspects together, the result is a chain of effects, only the cause is missing. Why should a socially minded person, just as you are, easily look for a passion that often snatches one away from contacts? Your roommate will certainly hear you from time to time, or, to be more precise, your immediate surroundings, but the anxiety of criticism creeps in underneath. Every artist and musician needs criticism in order to grow. No. You elude examination, even though I am an exception out of obsession with interest. Why else would you explain to me first of all a possible chaotic interior design, although I have to admit it appeals more to me than the interior of a luxury suite? Someone in your life must have contributed, through manic forms of rejection and devaluation, to overshadow your self-perception. Also, are you more of an emotional than rational type, which is why you even take it to heart where it is not even necessary. If you step out of your comfort zone, a whole new world will reveal itself to you with absolute guarantee, a world that hardly knows how to limit itself with all its possibilities", the sounds of the violin, which had begun to form a very special symphony, hectically and rapidly, as it resembled its rapid succession of syllables, were perfect. He could not stop himself, could not pronounce his words more slowly and could not narrow them down. It was only for this reason that his head cleared its throat, weighed down by a smug smile, which was so rare to catch and was due to the host. He listened attentively to the words of the detective, accompanied by the skilfully executed movements on the violin, which ensured that he was not distracted by them, yet they underlined his words. How he did this was a mystery to him, but he couldn't digress to such trivialities either, as he was too tied to what the detective was saying. The more he said, the faster he played, it was almost as if they both fell into a frenzy, in which he was much more sucked in. At some point, without realizing it, he got up and finally came a little closer, still listening to the words as if hypnotized, nodding now and then to confirm that Mr. Holmes was absolutely right. It was only now that he realized, no matter how much Dr. Watson praised his friend to heaven on the blog or tried to describe his indescribable abilities... It was nothing compared to what he could experience here. When both the violin and his guest fell abruptly silent, he only noticed that his jaw had fallen down, so he immediately closed his mouth and swallowed briefly. Totally speechless, he first looked at his counterpart before he cleared his throat briefly and drove his way through his hair, nervously playing with a strand of hair. „Alright, I ... I hope you are truly the only one capable of this. Otherwise I would actually be completely at the mercy before I even step into the room."

[dresupi]

Don’t Have Your Biscuits - Darcy/John Watson

Ship: Darcy Lewis/John Watson For: @thestanceyg Tags:  Wrong Number, Texting, Meet-Cute, Flirting, Pre-Relationship Rating: T Word Count: 1446

Summary:

Darcy's bored, or she probably wouldn't have even responded to the Cute Rando who wrong-number texted her.

But as luck would have it, she's not just bored, she's super bored.

Darcy's phone dinged in her pocket, a single sound to break up the monotony of Jane's slipshod typing skills. Well… that was actually not true. Jane had glorious typing skills, but she would lapse into hunting and pecking the more exhausted she became. Darcy was probably going to have to start herding her towards the door soon.

But that wouldn't be for at least an hour yet, and in the meantime, Darcy had this out-of-the-blue text to deal with. She was fairly certain it was a wrong number, given that the small number of people who actually texted her were in the same room with her.

All except for Clint, that is.

So it maybe was Clint, asking her what kind of coffee she wanted.

She was surprised when the screen lit up with a number she didn't recognize. Of course, she didn't recognize many numbers over here across the pond. They were formatted differently and since she mostly communicated via email, she didn't encounter many actual phone numbers.

Her own phone, which was SHIELD issue, had one of those numbers. Long, strange to her, and necessary to copy/paste when she had to give it to people. She hated phone calls anyway. She was really more of a social media person.

Darcy wasn't even sure why she had the phone other than for Agent Coulson to keep tabs on her, and he could technically do that via Twitter if he really wanted to.

So when she saw the unknown number on the screen, her mind started racing.  Who was it? Another agent? Coulson using a burner cell?

It was only after about fifty or so of these useless thoughts that it dawned on her to read the actual message. Doi. It might have a clue.

Geez, she wished it was Clint. She really needed that coffee.

"Don't have your biscuits."

Frowning, she reread the message again, trying to figure out if it was some kind of code that she would recognize if she was any more caffeinated.

Even if she had a double espresso iced mocha frap in her hand, she still didn't think she'd know what the hell this text meant.  Which of course, pointed to about a ninety percent chance of it being a wrong number.

"I'm sorry?" She typed back, waiting for an answer that would either clarify the text or confirm her suspicion.

The next four messages came in rapid succession.

"They're out of them."

"At the store."

"They're ordering more, but they're out now."

"Oh Jesus, this isn't Sherlock, is it?"

The sudden realization that played out in her text inbox was nothing short of funny, and she snickered as she swiped a quick response. "ROFL nope. Not Jesus either, but no need to worry. I don't think the biscuit thing was your fault."

She waited for the unknown sender to reply, but they never did. Must have been too embarrassed or something.

It was a pity. She was bored, and the mysterious sender seemed interesting.

She saved the number in her contacts. The fifth in a very short list on her new-to-her phone. "Cute Rando."

She wasn't sure what Cute Rando's real name was, but this seemed gender nonspecific and adorable enough that no one should care.

Her phone didn't chime again until she was safely in her flat, watching Netflix in bed. Her takeout containers were stacked on the bedside table for safe disposal whenever she decided to get up.

The sound surprised her, but not as much as the name on the screen did. Cute Rando had texted her back.

"I wanted to apologise and explain about my former message… your number is four digits away from my roommate's, and I was trying to recall it from memory instead of using my contacts."

The sincerity made her smile as she tapped out a quick response.

"It's all good. Don't worry about it. I was really invested in the whole 'biscuits' dilemma. Did you ever find them?"

But no sooner had she pressed send than did another message come through from Cute Rando.

"I'm John, by the way."

He must have sent it before she'd finished typing her response because another came through seconds later.

"No. Never did."

Cute Rando's name was John. Interesting.

"That's cool."

Oh shit, she'd done it too. Double texted before getting a reply to the first message.

"Your name, not the not-finding-biscuits thing."

"I'm Darcy."

She didn't get a response after she told him her name. Which was enough to worry anyone whose entire relationship with another individual stemmed from a wrong number text.

He heard her name and what? Noped out?

She could text him again. A double text after a long time. But how lame was that? It was bad enough that she'd done it while he was responding. But now? After this long?  And technically, she'd sent the last three messages. So this would end up being a quadruple text.

Besides, she knew practically nothing about him. And there was a very real chance that it was just something to screw around between shifts at work or something.

And like hell Darcy Lewis would ever quadruple text someone who ghosted her.

When her phone buzzed two days later, she nearly threw it across the lab and upset one of Erik's machines.

"Darcy's pretty, is that a family name?"

Her jaw dropped down nearly to her chest. It had been two days. Forty-eight hours. She'd all but written off John the Cute Rando.

"Wow, you wait two days to text me back and that's what you start with?" She swiped the words quickly, anxious to hear his bullshit excuse for not replying before now.

"My apologies. Work things."

Darcy started to scoff, but then she stopped and took one look around the lab. Jane was snoring into a cup of cold coffee and Erik was muttering to himself over a monitor. She had no idea what the weather was like outside, and she'd slept on that lumpy sofa in the break room more times than she could count.

"I know all about work things, believe me.  And no, it's not a family name. My mother was just an Austen scholar."

His response was fairly quick.

"That sounds fascinating. I'm entirely out of work things at the moment, perhaps you'd fancy a longer conversation? Perhaps one on purpose? Definitely in public."

Her eyebrows raised significantly. Was John the Cute Rando asking her out? Or was she reading too much into it?

"Wow, kind of forward, aren't you?"  Darcy added an emoji at the end to play up the whimsy and sarcasm, hoping this guy read sarcasm correctly.

It took him a few minutes to respond, but when he did, it was predictable.

"No, actually… I'm never like this."

Haha! Yeah, right, Slick.

It was so predictable that the only thing Darcy didn't expect was her desire to still go meet this guy.

"Yeah right. Pull the other one, John."

His next few responses came through in rapid succession and had Darcy second-guessing her primary judgment.

"Coffee? Lunch? Name the place and I'll be there to pull it."

"That came out terribly wrong…"

"Never mind, I'll see myself out."

She had to laugh.  What an awkward little bunny. Never mind that he'd triple-texted. Again.

Darcy sent one of her favorite emojis to keep him from worrying too much. The crying-laughing face described her feelings exactly, and it would buy her a little time to figure out what she wanted to say.

A nicer person would assure him that it was fine, that she hadn't taken it that way.

Except Darcy wasn't really a nicer person and she'd totally taken it that way.

"Smooth, dude. Mega smooth."

Ribbing him a little more couldn't hurt. And anyway, if he took it badly, she'd know what kind of a person he was, anyway.

"Yeah right. I feel like I owe you an apology for that…"

"Oh, good response, John the Cute Rando…" She chuckled under her breath.

Jane's head popped up to try and focus on her. "What?" she croaked.

"Jane. Go home and get some sleep," Darcy commanded. "I have a coffee date."

She heard Jane's head plop down on the countertop, which meant Darcy would have to pour her into a cab before she left. But that was fine. She needed a little time to freshen up anyway.

"And you'd be right. How about over coffee?"

It took him longer than before to respond, so long that Darcy was almost worried she'd lost him to 'work things' again.

"What, really?"

She was really going to like this goober, she could tell.

[afishlearningpoetry]

Looking Closer at How The Abominable Bride Foreshadowed and Can Be Used to Chronologically Decode Series 4:

In the opening of TAB, Sherlock imagines John narrating how as Sherlock’s biographer he picks and chooses which of his cases to present to the public, alluding to the nature of John as an unreliable narrator in the canon.

In the opening of TST, John writes Lady Smallwood and co. talking about modifying the footage of Sherlock shooting Magnussen and that their story will become the official one, setting up the nature of John as an unreliable narrator in series 4.

[Continue below the cut for more ➤]

See also: 10 Revealing Things From The Six Thatchers That Haunt You Late At Night, 10 Revealing Things From The Lying Detective That Haunt You Late At Night, and 10 Revealing Things From The Final Problem That Haunt You Late At Night. (#tw suicide)

Bonus: They’re not there:

On John’s blog, he wears his heart on his sleeve. He adores Sherlock and clearly loves him even when he tries to downplay their relationship or play up his relationship with Mary. In his post about meeting Sherlock, he calls him “strangely likeable”, and talks like there’s life in for the first time in ages after multiple blog posts about how nothing happens to him.

This includes how John thinks that Sherlock not only doesn’t love him back, but that he’s “spectacularly ignorant” about some things, including the way that he feels about Sherlock. How does the world’s only genius consulting detective not notice that? John is pretty forward about this is in one of his early blogs and first one about Sherlock’s cases.

He also says for the first time that he has to omit certain things in order to publish the story at all, echoing the nature of the original stories.

But Watson doesn’t say this in the opening of A Study In Scarlet; he straight-forwardly talks about his return from overseas and his meeting Sherlock Holmes, followed by the case that changes his life. It’s really in the other stories that Watson talks more about altering details, which is what the debate around his authorship revolves around.

It does provide an interesting comparison, though, the way that Sherlock hasn’t yet become the emotionless machine that the myth surrounding Sherlock Holmes is so obsessed with. He laughs, he dances, he expresses emotion alongside his deductions. The last line about Sherlock actually says, “Didn’t I tell you so when we started?” cried Sherlock Holmes with a laugh. “That’s the result of all our Study in Scarlet: to get them a testimonial!”

That changes with The Sign of Four. The opening of the second novel, following the success of the first, is about Holmes and Watson talking about the publication of their first case together.

Holmes: “Yes, indeed,” said I, cordially. “I was never so struck by anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure with the somewhat fantastic title of ‘A Study in Scarlet.’ ”He shook his head sadly. “I glanced over it,” said he.

Holmes: “Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemo- tional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”

Watson: “But the romance was there,” I remonstrated. “I could not tamper with the facts.”

Holmes: “Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes by which I succeeded in unraveling it.”

Watson: I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings. More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion’s quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.

As Sherlock Holmes becomes more of a text, the more Watson mentions about how he to change names, dates, details, or wait until certain people are dead until his stories are published, to protect international secrets and the lives of its characters. But it all started with Holmes and Watson in a flat, talking about how the romance should be suppressed.

In one of John’s early blogs he mentions a fortune cookie at the end, pulling a quote from The Valley of Fear:

“Everything comes in circles—even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per cent. commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again. I'll tell you one or two things about Moriarty which may interest you.”

Except John says he think it’s going to be different this time. This version is going to do something different before. It’s going to admit that the romance was there. It’s not going to suppress it anymore by the end. But before it gets there, the story is also about how much, and what therein, the story is being altered in the first place. Enter series 4.

An important blog entry to understanding the mindset of Sherlock and John after series 3 is the last blog entry. To date, the blog is still suspended because if it continued the true nature and mystery of series 4, the answer would be spoiled.

It reads as follows:

Sherlock is openly disinterested and angry at the wedding to anyone who’s paying attention. And not without reason.

The ending of TSOT is one of the most devastating moments in the show. John and Sherlock both realize that neither of them wanted this marriage to happen, that they could have been together and in this passing look they know it’s moments too late after Sherlock realizes Mary is pregnant.

It happens and disappears in a moment.

Sherlock leaves the wedding early. A month and one honeymoon later, John will be bursting to get out of his trainwreck of a marriage at every waking moment. He’ll bike to work. He’ll keep his bags packed. When he rejoins Sherlock in the flat he’s practically giddy, and then when he meets Janine and Sherlock explains that he used her later, he’s right back at wondering if Sherlock is capable of loving anyone or not.

And none of this is remotely mentioned in the blog entry. Sherlock takes over for John, foreshadowing that the next act of the show is about to retell The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, which includes two stories entirely narrated by Holmes. HLV is one of the most devastating episodes of the show and it’s not on the blog at all. The public doesn’t know anything about what happened to them.

The next time we see John’s blog it’s going to say this. Absolutely nothing about their time gone, what Sherlock did or what John is going through. Of course, nothing about Mary either. He isn’t even typing anything like normal; he just fidgets his two fingers on the same two keys, and his blog isn’t on the screen. It’s a screenshot. Because what we’re watching is the blog itself.

So the parallel starts thus:

After setting up his dream world and arriving at 221B Baker St., and a conversation with Mrs. Hudson about the way that John modifies people to be characters in his story, Sherlock imagines John giving the following narration

Watson: Over the many years it has been my privilege to record the exploits of my remarkable friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes

The beginning is about putting up the front of John’s purpose and their relationship, calling Holmes his remarkable friend. In the next episode, John as the author takes liberties of his own in order to protect the people in it. He protects himself and Sherlock by covering up the true events of Mary’s death.

In TST, the opening scene is about doctoring the footage of Sherlock shooting Magnussen. With a bright projector light behind Sherlock’s head, the footage cuts out Sherlock putting the trigger as someone walks past the camera. This is being displayed as top-secret information as all of them sit inside a glass window room anyone could sit through.

Sherlock and Mycroft describe how it’s different:

I see. Who is supposed to have shot him, then?

Some over-eager squaddie with an itchy trigger finger - that's who.

The over-eager shooter in this story has already conveniently been placed in the room. She has her own pen and paper, but isn’t writing anything down, which is her job as a secretary. It’s because a copy of that text, this conversation should exist, but it doesn’t, because Norbury doesn’t exist. Mycroft tells her not to write it down and put down it down, because once they’re beyond these walls, they must “never speak of it.” There’s also the meaning of Mark Gatiss being a stand in for the show’s writers, similar to the meaning of when John finds the dog’s bones, a correlation to Emelia Ricoletti’s grave being a switch.

It also creates a connection between John the author and Norbury. She’s the one with the pen and she’s going to take the fall, but John is the one who really shot Mary.

Back in TAB, John continues about how he picks and chooses cases to tell:

Watson: it has sometimes been difficult to choose which of his many cases to set before my readers.

That includes, as far as we know right now, the entirety of HLV. He leaves out Magnussen, Mary shooting Sherlock, Mary’s past, and Sherlock shooting Magnussen at once. It’s not just about the cases though, it’s about other things that John leaves out of his story.

In Sherlock’s mind: it’s not just smaller things that John says, like Sherlock being “spectacularly ignorant” about certain things and wounding his ego or embarrassing him, it’s that John never picks up on how much Sherlock loves him. John is hiding the true nature of their relationship from the world because he doesn’t see all the deductions of how much Sherlock loves him back.

Immediately after the credits in TAB John is praised by for the success of the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by a man selling Sherlock Holmes branded content in The Strand Magazine, asking if “there’s going to be a proper murder next time.” He inquires if Sherlock is in the carriage at sight of his profile, the same one printed on the paper he’s carrying, and John dismisses him at Sherlock’s behest. That particular story is from the first short story collection, after A Study In Scarlet and The Sign of Four, and before Sherlock’s presumed death in The Final Problem.

“Remarkable. How did you do it?”

“We have some very talented people working here. If James Moriarty can hack every TV screen in the land, rest assured we have the tech to doctor a bit of security footage.”

John isn’t just talking about how easy it is to doctor footage, but that it’s even easier for him to do as a writer with words. He doesn’t need any government technology to alter the story. All he needs to do is the essence of this scene – lie and invent. Like when John invents the story about Eurus in order to lie about what happened to him where he has a pen and paper.

Watson admits the reason he has to do this back in TAB:

“Some are still too sensitive to recount, whilst others are too recent in the minds of the public.”

At the end of the story, Sherlock will ask to make sure that Watson modified the story, to “put it down as one of my rare failures, of course?” The story was progressing like a normal adventure until Sir Eustace’s murder, and then the entire second half of the story was omitted. Sherlock helped Lady Carmichael get away with murdering her husband. He broke his vow, it’s one of his “rare failures”. Sherlock is imagining their marriage in order to try to predict what would happen in the near future and what danger John would be in.

Mary is the case and she becomes the case the next episode. It’s at this point in TAB that we see a shot of the knife in the mantle – connecting to TLD when Mary’s case, the message tied to the dagger, or the case on how to save John, is the one Sherlock still hasn’t solved. The knife is still there in the fake ending of TFP. John thinks he still hasn’t solved it and that’s why he was shot at the end of TLD.

Mary is Sir Eustace with the dark past coming back to haunt her. Mary is the post-humous revenge Sherlock alluded to, the vengeful bride who faked her death to kill her husband, the figure of Death in the Samarra story, and half the ultimate villain – but some cases are still too sensitive to properly recount. Moriarty isn’t back. No, no, no. He’s definitely dead. He planned his revenge on Sherlock five years ago by filming a bunch of reaction gifs and jiving against the glass with Eurus like a snake.

The next episode, Mary’s past comes back to haunt her, and Sherlock breaks his vow. One of his “rare failures”. The over-eager shooter is hauled away as the projector lights the back of her head.

Mary’s death isn’t the only case that John covers up, however. He manages to do that relatively consistently. Even with how on the nose it is, the audience was convinced. The most convincing case is the one that John doesn’t show at all; the cover-up of his own death.

In TST, it’s clear this is about getting away with murder:

That is now the official version, the version anyone we want to will see.

No need to go to the trouble of getting some sort of official pardon.

Lady Carmichael doesn’t have to bother with a pardon and neither does John. His cover-up story, The Final Problem, is an entirely invented entry in the great Sherlock saga, using the name of a real one as a red herring, ending their story and establishing normalcy so no one will know what happened to him next. Series 4 is what happened, officially. But it’s not the truth. John has modified the truth. The romance has been suppressed.

John can’t tell that story because he has to make it convincing enough to draw Mary into the open; he doesn’t want to go to the trouble of getting a pardon when he has to face her again. This has to be the version everyone believes so that when it’s revealed that John committed suicide, everyone believes that too.

John has let his insecurities, self-hatred, and suicidal ideation leak into the subtext of series 4, so that when the news gets out about what really happened, and that the last story in particular was a total fabrication, people believe the secret story hidden beneath the true one. Suddenly the decline of hi stories becomes the tragic tale of a man losing his way and taking his lie. The story ends on a low note. “It’s gone a bit downhill, hasn’t it?” And it is emotionally true, but it’s all part of John’s bigger plan to fake his death.

When Eurus as Faith gives Sherlock the note about Culverton Smith she writes one story on the surface, the one that Sherlock deduces, but hides another message underneath that he doesn’t see until it’s too late. This is the case he didn’t solve.

This is what John’s story is: one text subsumed by another bubbling just beneath its surface. When John’s original story falls through because of what happened at the end of TLD, darkness completely overwhelms his story in TFP. Sherlock is drowning in it until he ties a nice bow on the ending. One coverup hiding another coverup. That’s how you sell a big lie; you wrap it in the truth to make it more palatable.

One of John’s blog entries has a picture of the knife stabbed into a clue board. Sherlock figured out that the victim faked his own death.

TAB foreshadows the lengths John goes to:

But in all our many adventures together, no case pushed my friend to such mental and physical extremes as that of The Abominable Bride!"

Sherlock is pushed all the way to the predestined end of the story, clinging to life at the Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty punching him down. It’s only when he decides to let John in emotionally that he appears, foiling him easily, kicking over the falls like he isn’t a threat at all. Because he isn’t when they’re together and they openly love each other.

John doesn’t have the same confidence. John thinks that he can’t avoid Samarra – that even if he fakes his death, that happy ending he invents at the ending of TFP is the closest to happiness that he’s ever going to get. Sherlock has more confidence in John and what they can accomplish together. “I’m a storyteller. I know when I’m in one.” The real John knows it too, but he can’t see the same ending Sherlock does if he still doesn’t know Sherlock loves him back. John’s ending is a dark mirror and denial of Sherlock’s hopeful vision.

Nothing has pushed John to such mental and physical extremes as that of the abominable bride. Mary faking her death, returning to manipulate and gaslight him, and trying to get him to commit suicide to burn Sherlock’s heart out of him forever is the worst thing that John’s ever been through. The most trying case in his career working with Sherlock. Faking his death, however, isn’t the end. Because the whole point in all of this is to outsmart Mary and Moriarty, drawing them into the open so John can make his move.

Smallwood: “You're off the hook, Mr Holmes. You're home and dry.”

Sherlock: “OK, cheers.”

Smallwood: “Obviously, there's unfinished business. Moriarty?”

For Sherlock, his unfinished business is Moriarty. For John, it’s Mary. They’re going to have to work together to finally defeat them once and for all – and they can only do that once they both know the truth. Nothing can stop them. Then the spoke will turn, and the world will have something new.

But for now, the truth has to be modified. The romance has to be suppressed. Until the world is convinced John is dead and he’s in the clear.

“That’s not what happened at all.”

“It is now.”

[anneangel]

An addendum, in defense of Sherlock Holmes (character of the book).

Keep in mind that this Post of mine is an "Incorrect Quote". So there is an attempt at joke and exaggeration on my part.

In this case, Holmes was so committed to helping his client (a woman who was being Blackmailed) that he wasted no time in taking the plunge for breaking into the house and stealing the letters that would jeopardize the girl's marriage. As for the maid that Holmes deceived, she had another suitor in addition to Holmes, basically the girl was "choosing the best match" and the so-called "engagement" is nothing more than "a kind of courtship" that can be broken at any time by both the parts.

Given that, engagement is not the same thing it means to us today (just as an example, Watson gets engaged to Mary in a VERY SHORT period of time). Engagement was what the couple called the period when they wanted to "get to know each other better", an Crush, an affair, without being disgraced in the neighborhood.

The collection of books, as a whole, only proves that Sherlock Holmes is much more polite and courteous, with a desire to help his clients (and not just solve the mystery), not just a very intelligent man. Yes, he is sometimes described as "cold, analytical and a thinking machine" (but who lists this is Watson, who sees but does not observe).

People like to remember that Watson calls Holmes a "thinking machine", but they forget that Watson also said flattering things about Holmes liking to help everyone who asked of him, that "the greater the consideration of the request, the greater the desire to helped by Holmes. Whether the request was desperate, or polite, or kind, or dangerous, or give flattery to the detective, Holmes accepted regardless of whether it wasn't a "giant mystery". Holmes liked complicated mysteries, but he also liked people. Many times he sneered at snooty rich clients and took money from them for their service, in order to help poor clients free of charge. Holmes was a genius who loved mysteries, but he cared about people.

In addition, to that Sherlock Holmes is a rational person, which does not nullify his emotions (As seems to happen with Sherlock BBC).

Honestly, the most horrible thing Holmes ever did, in books, in my opinion, was trick Watson by pretending to die (twice, once in "The Final Problem" and once in "The Dying Detective").

Holmes is nowhere near as rude and arrogant as Sherlock BBC, Holmes never addresses anyone in such a brusque and rude way, and in general, he takes no pleasure in offending people and exposing them with his "deductive gifts".

It is correct that Sherlock sometimes mocks or is ironic with people, in Books. But Sherlock Holmes only does so when they try to belittle him or make fun of his work first. Holmes is not a rude person by nature, he only becomes ironic and mocking when the police, clients or "villains" try to scorn him and his methods. And even so, Holmes' irony doesn't even compare with Sherlock BBC's rudeness (Holmes, in the books, is almost a gentleman, as he fits social norms perfectly).

Holmes, in the books, is introspective and chooses not to engage in social activities, in fact, but he fully understands how to read and show emotions correctly. BBC's Sherlock is a traumatized boy who doesn't know how to adapt to social contexts. And that's already a big difference.

Holmes, in the books, actually understands himself as someone wiser than most, but he doesn't show himself even 1/3 of what happens in Sherlock BBC.

In the books Watson really turns Holmes into the hero (this is how he is exposed to the reader through Watson's writing). Already in the Show, Sherlock warns Watson that "There are no heroes", that's the BBC satirizing the books.

By comparison, Sherlock BBC is almost a satire of Holmes. Sherlock BBC is very exaggerated, it takes all of Sherlock's behaviors in the books and, when not exaggerating them to the extreme, uses his most "bizarre" behaviors as a rule of thumb for everything (when in the books Holmes only demonstrates them in specific situations, not the ALL the time, as BBC Sherlock makes it seem). This Show corrupts today's view of who is "Sherlock Holmes", who indeed was a misunderstood genius, but was nowhere near as insufferable as BBC Sherlock.

And I say this as someone who saw the Show and loved it, and I love Benedict Cumberbatch too (the acting was impeccable). However, the script is very discrepant, compared to the books (which is reasonable, since it is an adaptation for the current century).

Watson is much more silly and cuter in the books too, compared to John, John is more brash and violent (but I already made this comparison on my blog).

Let's face it, we really liked the Show and the script, but that the personalities of Sherlock and John were more interesting to me in the Pilot Episode (which was not aired). But honestly? People wouldn't love the Show if Sherlock were any different than the one presented by the script and played by Benedict Cumberbatch (part of the appeal of this Show is that Sherlock is BIZARRE and inhumanly intelligent, with no correct emotions).

Another big notable difference is that Holmes does not have any romantic, sexual or love interest with Irene in the books (or with any other woman), even Watson expects Holmes to find someone, which never happens. Holmes demonstrates more than once that he has NO interest in women's bodies or intellects (Irene was the intellectual exception). Is Holmes sexist? I disagree (SOCIETY at that time was sexist, making Holmes not interested in the things that necessity expected of Women, which were useless to him and his work). Book Holmes is more asexual than BBC Sherlock dreams of being.

Were it not for the fact that Sherlock Holmes, in the books, was uncomfortable with Watson getting married close to old age (marrying for the third time, at least taking into account the data from DATES, which show us that Watson was married at least 3 times, once before Mary, then with Mary, and this in old age). Sherlock says that "it was the most selfish thing Watson had done in all our years together", and that line alone made me consider that his affection for Watson was more than friendship, and though unrequited, Holmes was happy to have Watson by him side (that is, until Watson "selfishly" married with a new Woman). Lmao.

This explains why Holmes went to live ALONE with bees, rarely seeing Watson (considering Sherlock was upset). Yet Watson runs to Holmes when called upon! (In "His Last Bow").

As we can see, Watson adores Holmes, makes the detective the hero of his stories, and loves to be his faithful friend and helper. Watson leaves even his wives to be with Holmes (in "His Last Bow").

Obviously, Watson sees but does not observe (not even the behavior itself).

I think this is the only line that supports the fact that Holmes is not Asexual in the ENTIRE Book.

In this case, in short: Sherlock Holmes is Watson's ALL whole world, and John Watson is the only person who Holmes has expended continuous affection on over the years. Obviously it's a love affair (even if platonic).

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

Sherlock: Let's break into the house!

Watson: It's criminal, but I will in, no way let you go without me, for our honor and for the good of society we must do this.

Sherlock: We already share Baker Street, it'll be fun if we end up sharing a prison cell.

Watson: ok

also Watson -

Sherlock: I'll marry!

Watson: who's the lucky one?

Sherlock: Nobody, I'm just with her to get more privileged information about the house.

Watson: but what nonsense Holmes, what a horrible thing, what an immoral thing, this is not done, the worst thing you could do, it will break the girl's heart, and what will become of her afterwards?

it's clear that even though they're going to break into a house, Watson is more concerned about a girl's feelings.

He needs to sort out his priorities

[randomnessunicorn-imagine]

How would UT, UF bros react to an S/o who had a brother but he went missing and then later on they find out that the bros killed the brother back in the Underground

{ Oh, ouch-! Then, it’s impossible Pappy has killed someone because he is an angel, he would never do something like it, so in his scenarios I put Sans like the author of the crime, it’s more logical. It’s so angst just how I like it-! }

✞ Sansy ;

So many persons have crossed his judgment room.He could not imagine that particular person was your brother, this information left Sans so mortified and shocked. He did not know what to say.Actually, he found it out by mistake, you and him were at the Mettaton Resort talking about normal stuff when you decided to open up to Sans. You seemed so vulnerable and melancholic in that moment and he was unsure because he was not a therapist, he could not even help himself. He listened to you anyway because maybe it could have helped you and it was better to take the negative thoughts out instead of keeping them inside themselves. It was not so healthy so he nodded while your voice became darker and softer like you were going to cry.You confessed to Sans you had a brother that you loved so much but he passed away some years ago in mysterious circumstances. The cops have never found his body, he was disappeared so everyone thought he was dead. Seeing Sans and Papyrus, the way they were bound, made you think about it. The sentiments of desperation and mourning were killing you inside. It was inevitable you started to cry, your last words were still so confused because of the sighs. He could see how your soul was trembling and suffering like it was going to break soon. The description you gave about your brother made Sans thought about someone but he could not recall who that person was. At the end, he remembered and his eyes became as black as a black hole. That person was your brother and Sans already met him. He was the responsible of his death.Actually, that evil child took possession of your brother’s mind and he became a weapon of destruction. Luckily, your brother did not possess the reset power so Sans had killed him just one time. Sans was not the kind of person who revealed his secrets to people so you remained in the dark of everything, he would never confess his sins to you but he was ready to accept the hate you would have felt for him if you ever found it out by yourself.You kept telling him your story and you explained that the last time your brother was seen was nearby the Underground and it was the reason that guided you here. You were searching for your missed brother because not even the police wanted to continue his research. They archived the case, definitely. This was the most unfair thing and Sans felt guiltier. He remembered your brother was a good person but that child had to be stopped.When you reached Asgore’s Castle, you recognized your brother’s soul and you were shocked. When you asked for some explications to Sans he said, with his calm but insensitive voice, that your brother was not him anymore and he became a cold-blooded killer, Sans had justified himself saying he was protecting the Underground and you should have known how humans were seen here.Your brother had only paid for his sins, he was so sorry. It was the truth that he did not want to tell you. The decision of forgiving him or not was only yours.

✞ Pappy ;

He was such an innocent soul and his heart got broken when he listened to your story. Pappy was so touched and sorry for the awful experience you lived. He would have never imagined his life without Sans and the only thought of it made the poor skeleton so scared and sad. Obvious, he could not understand entirely the pain you have lived and you were still feeling so he did not know how to help you. He remained in silence, respecting your sorrow. Then, he got closer to you, embracing you while tears were crossing his bone cheeks because he could perceived the agony in your heart. He was so empathic and sweet and the two of you were crying like two little babies so inert and innocent. Anytime you felt blue, Papyrus was by your side listening to your darkness since he was a true friend and you did not deserve to suffer, but nobody deserved these kind of pains. He was the one who wanted to know everything about your brother like he was still alive. You were so delicious and sweet when you talked about him and all the good memories you shared with him, so Papyrus was so content to see your eyes lighted up while you were telling stories about your past and the adventures you lived with your brother. It was good to remember him as if it was a sort of therapy. You described to Papyrus the way your brother smiled or what made him laugh or cry, when you and him had a fight for the last piece of cake or when you fell off your bike and he was there to help you, rising you and then you came back home with your skinned knee. Or when you were so sad for that bad vote at math but your brother was still there to comfort and help you for the next exam. He was really a good person, he did not deserve to die, and you did not know the cause of his death as if it was a sort of mystery. At the end, Papyrus was attached to your brother as well after he heard all those stories and he felt like he was his little brother too. Pappy said to you that he would have been honoured to be his friend and maybe it was a little late but he wanted to build a headstone in Waterfall for your sibling doing a funeral parlour in his honour. You were so glad and reassured that Papyrus proposed it to you, and that he cared so much about your situation and your brother even if he did not know him so it was not his duty but Papyrus was so gentle to stay by your side anyway. That was the moment when you feel truly in love with him.Actually, you have never found out the truth because Papyrus was not so informed about Sans’ second job and Papyrus was not a malicious person so nobody did not suspect anything and Sans was not the kind of guy who talked about his own stuff.Maybe it was better to live in ignorance and nobody was going to suffer even more. Until Pappy was with you, you were real happy.

✞ Reddy ;

The first time you crossed the Underground’s lines you should have known the main rule of this place: “kill or to be killed”. You could answer alone to your enigma and you were smart enough to understand what happened to your poor brother. It did not take a genius to figure it out!Sans’ purpose was not being your friend or anything else, he just did his job trying to put less effort possible so your complains were total useless and he was not going to pity you for your loss. Yes, he would have been desperate and confused if he was in your situation even if he has already lived something like this during all those genocidal runs so he could understand perfectly your feelings but he did not want to be attached to you because it was unfair and dangerous. In this place, you had to follow your mind and not your heart, it was one of the wisest advises he gave you.The skeleton was unsure if he should have said to you about your brother and the fact that he was the one who killed him because the evil child took possession of his soul and there were no hopes for him to survive.Since you would have discovered it anyway the moment you would have fought Asgore, Sans decided to have a casual conversation with you in the Mettaton’s Resort and he confessed to you that he knew your brother and he came here some years ago. This was the location where he died so you were in the right place. Then his eyes became total black and cold, it was the moment when he told you the cruellest truth of your existence that he killed your brother, because it was unavoidable. It was his awful fate!He did not tell you about the evil child and these complicated things because maybe you did not care and your state of mind was too devastated. Sans could understand that you detested him now and it was legit since your brother was still your flesh and blood. Then, with a weird calm in your voice, you said to him that you already knew it and you suspected something like this could happen. You elaborated your theories and they were right and painful at the same time. You were aware about the Underground and monsters but you have never told it to anybody. You were doing your own investigation to understand the truth behind your brother’s death. Actually, your brother confessed to you, before he left the house, that he wanted to reach the Underground to resolve the mystery behind it. He was a very curious and smart person, you always called him Sherlock Holmes and he called you Dr. Watson and when the two of you where children, you always pretended to be detectives and your brother desired to become an investigator so he could not resist and he took the worst decision ever since he lost his life. Then, you could have imagined since this place was so dangerous and strange and it was hard to survive. You knew everything about the history of the Underground because you read so many books and your brother has influenced you. You explained it to Sans and he remained a little shocked and concerned about this story. You still knew everything but he murdered your brother so you should have killed him as well! Revenge was not your aim and you were not a criminal so you spared Sans’ life saying you missed your brother so much but nobody would have never given him back to you. Killing Sans was not a solution, it would have never brought your brother back to life so you did not want to be mad or rancorous for it. Sans thought you were weird and crazy but he respected your decision and he felt a strange feeling inside him since you spared him and you were not angry at him and he suggested you not to fight with Asgore that it was so dangerous and unfair. You did not know what to do because your mission was accomplished and you found out the truth about your dead brother. 

✞ The Edge of Lord ;

It was a shame you put yourself in this situation because you have already lost your brother and now you had to fight a crazy skeleton monster and Papyrus was not so merciful to leave you alone or in peace because your soul was so injured for your loss and he acted so harsh to you. He has never thought how his life could have changed without Sans and he was the one who always complained about him. Papyrus was too insensitive and egoist to understand your point of view so you decided not to talk about it to him because you recognized the kind of person he was. Papyrus was still your enemy, enemies could not be used as confidents, and you had not to tell about your weakness to anybody so you always acted cold and distant towards people. It was a good strategy and your pains were still too much to handle, you did not need any other problem.

You tried to fight against him the best you could even if you did not like fighting, you were so sad to attack somebody, and violence disgusted you so much.Actually, Papyrus knew your brother because he saw him several years ago since he came in the Underground for unknown reasons and he found himself to fight monsters with no choice. He had not killed your brother but he injured him so much during their battle, Papyrus brought your brother to Asgore and then the king killed him.During your match, Papyrus felt a weird feeling, it was like he already knew you but he was sure it was the first time he saw you. Then, he pondered about it and he decided to give his own thoughts voice so he spoke that you made him thinking about a person that he met so many years ago. It was a guy who came here in the Underground without a reason and Papyrus fought against him because it was his job. That boy was not so skilled and it was easy to defeat him, so Papyrus confessed the King put an end to his miserable life. Then, he told you that you looked like that person. In that instant, you realized the skeleton was talking about your brother and you became crazy starting to attack him blindly and you did not know what you were doing because your mind blacked out and you were very shocked. Since the situation got worst and you were so tired and destroyed you ran away hiding in the woods where you started crying full of desperation and sorrow and you did not care if somebody could have heard or attacked you, you were too sad and hopeless. This was the truth and it was terrible.