#at least catullus was writing his poems to a real woman even if she was married to someone else

[shivunin]

Ohhhhh oh how about "One talking to the other when they think they're asleep" for Maria and Fenris pretty please?

Thank you for the prompt! <3 I had to ponder this a bit, but I am happy with the results c:

("Sharing a bed" prompts here; I am still open c:)

(Also, please forgive my rusty Latin; it's been eight years since I've had to actually use it for anything more than a party trick. I've also fiddled with the translation below for flow. Apologies to the memory of Catullus)

Tevene/Latin:

Tuus sum: I am yours

Corpus animaque: Body and soul

Placideque quiescas: Rest well and peacefully

Fenris/Maria Hawke | 1,138 Words | No warnings

Corpus Animaque

"Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and the rumors of rather stern old men let us value all at just one penny! Suns may set and rise again; for us, when once the brief light has set, an eternal night must be slept. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred; then, when we have performed many thousands, we shall stir them into confusion, so that we might not know, and in order not to let any wicked person envy us, when he knows that our kisses number so many." ---Catullus 5*

“Say something in Tevene,” Hawke had murmured to him perhaps half an hour ago. 

Fenris, who was now well versed in what Hawke sounded like when she was trying to force herself to stay awake, had obliged. He’d taught her hello and goodbye, then described the room at length in disinterested tones, all the while allowing his voice to grow ever quieter. Maria slept deeply now, her cheek pillowed on her arm atop the pillow, and Fenris let his head rest on its side so he could watch her. 

It had been strange to speak the tongue of his birth with her—odd, like two halves of his life twining when he’d expected them to be forever as water and oil. There was something, though, in speaking to Maria when he knew she could not understand him. Fenris pondered this for a time, listening to the crackle of the fire at her hearth and the soft whistle of her sleeping breath. 

“Cor mea,” Fenris murmured after a moment: my heart, a simple enough endearment.

Hawke did not stir. She’d rested her hand near his shoulder, as she often did, and he’d obligingly twined his fingers with hers. Fenris set his other hand over both now, cradling her hand between his. 

There were things he ought to say to her. He knew that. But even now, when he was certain there would be no leaving her, words of love refused to slip easily from his lips. Not in the common tongue; not even in the one he’d spoken for most of his life. 

Not his own words; perhaps the words of others would come to him more easily. 

“Vivamus, mea Maria, atque amemus,” he murmured, feeling the pulse at her wrist where it pressed against his, “rumoresque senum severiorum onmes unius aestemimemus assis.”

Maria pulled her hair back in a red silk scarf when she slept. It prevented her hair from tangling too badly in the night and kept either of them from rolling onto her bounty of curls while they slept. Now, a small curl had snuck from its confines just below her ear, threatening to tickle the sensitive skin and wake her. Fenris lifted one hand and tucked it back with the rest, moving slowly and carefully. Hawke did not stir, for which he was grateful. There was more yet to say. 

“Soles occidere et redire possunt;” Fenris went on, “nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda.” 

An eternal night indeed; they had, both of them, seen enough of death to last several lifetimes. Her pulse thrummed steadily against his own, as if in sweet answer to the unspoken undertone to the words. They were alive now, the two of them; whatever rest they might share tonight was not that long rest, but the blink of an eye in the span of their days.

There will be other nights, she’d told him once. He dwelled too heavily on dreadful possibilities now. While she still slept…let him finish this, at least. 

Fenris spoke the rest of the words—give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand—meaning each of them as he spoke. They were not his words; they were borrowed from someone he’d never met. Even so, they seemed intended for something like this: a room that held only the two of them, an unusually clear night in Kirkwall which showed the stars clearly through her bedroom window, and the gradually softening light from the fire that kept them warm. Such words should be exchanged in whispers and the touches of hands, intended only for a lover’s ears.

It felt wrong to end with the poem, but Fenris didn’t have to cast about for something to end with. There were other words he’d told her before, words he’d conveyed in a dozen different ways if not a hundred. He’d seen her concern when he’d said them the first time—I am yours—as if she was worried about why he might say that. As if she thought he’d somehow conflated her with those who would have owned him once.

The whole of it was too much to explain, too strange to say aloud: if I may at last choose what to do with my life, I choose to give it to you. I would give all of myself to you if I could, because you would never ask me to, because you have insisted on seeing me as a person from the first moment we met. 

Too formal. 

Too many possible hidden meanings, when he’d first said the words to her in those bruised days after that disastrous night together. Fenris had chosen the easiest ones instead of the explanation, willing to risk her concern in exchange for some level of understanding. 

It was easier now; he could say them with more affection, and she’d returned the words more than once. They meant something different when Hawke said them, but that had never bothered him. 

“Tuus sum,” Fenris told her now, the words feeling firmer in this language, more binding—though the weight of them was a comfortable one, words and bonds he’d chosen rather than ones that had been chosen for him. 

“Corpus animaque,” Fenris finished, his voice hardly more than a whisper, “placideque quiescas, cor mea.”

It seemed fitting, somehow, to dip his head and kiss her hand then. If he were less tired, he may have considered why such an implicit vow had felt necessary. Matters had passed tense in Kirkwall weeks ago and slid unstoppably toward some imminent danger. Fenris could not smooth her way; he could not fight her battles for her. 

But he could hold her hand in the night, and whisper to her of kisses and days to come. He could stay by her side as long as she would allow him. 

As long as there was strength in his arms, as long as he could stand with her, he believed he would see her safe. He had never been an optimist; if pressed, he would not wager on their odds. 

But Hawke—he believed in her. If anyone could navigate them out of this disaster, it was her.

“Mea cor,” he said one more time, setting her hand back over his chest with exquisite care. 

The time for words had passed. It was past time for rest. Fenris looked at Hawke once more before he closed his eyes, tracing the shadows of her face, the softness of her eyelids, the unfading smile lines on either side of her mouth. When he’d looked his fill for now (only for now; it could never be enough for forever, as he knew well), Fenris closed his eyes at last. 

It was much longer before his focus slipped from the steady pulse in her wrist and Fenris fell asleep at last.

*Base source for translation: Wikipedia

(I know, there are prettier versions elsewhere, but it's nearly one am and i don't want to look)

[lurking-latinist]

re: these tags

THAT'S SO COOL AHHHH!! good for you aubreyad community stays winning

[introducing this with a disclaimer in case i'm wrong about everything: i am only halfway through the series rn (just about to finish 10) and also am but a mere undergrad classics major who has yet to even declare said major and I probably don't have the right to be yapping about propertius. nevertheless i shall.]

anyway i have been growing persistently more insane about diana's proximity to a Lot of classical imagery, like how her first appearance in post captain is literally during a fox hunt + all the gender stuff she has going, obviously linking her to mythological diana (and artemis if we're going to conflate the two) but your take has sent me in a whole new direction with that-- because she doesn't actually really embody the artemis archetype all too much overall (an emphasized character trait being that she's notably Not Chaste) EXCEPT in relation to stephen, w/ whom her relationship is much more brotherly than it is sensual i guess?

which would align very well with your idea of diana as elegiac puella-- sort of in a way being mythologized by stephen-- resulting in the reader actually being able to see two different manifestations of her character (one through the eyes of an omniscient prosaic narrator and one through the perspective of stephen as a "poet" figure). and i just think that's neat.

my latin class has also been looking at a few of propertius' love elegies and, at least to me, they read a lot like if stephen 1.) hated himself significantly less and 2.) were less indecisive in writing about his Feelings?? 1.8 (and all of the poems concerning cynthia moving/traveling away and propertius being all moody about it) is very reminiscent of the arc from post captain to the surgeon's mate imo. 1.12 is also Literally Him-- "cynthia prima fuit cynthia finis erit" can be compared to stephen's poetic catastrophizing about how his life is Literally Over and Love Is Dead when he believes to have fallen out of love with diana!?!? i'm going to lose my mind.

sorry for dumping all of this on you unprompted and also sorry for the fact that it probably does not make sense. peace and love

if undergrad classicists don't talk about propertius literally WHO WILL. (genuinely my currently-being-written phd dissertation chapter is based on an idea I had in the class I read propertius in freshman year. never feel like you're not a 'real scholar' or something yet, because you honestly never do become something different, you just keep reading and talking and this is what we do! there's nothing realer than this!)

oh wow that's really well put--we kind of get to see her from an omniscient-narrator perspective and through the eyes of her lover who is Not Being Normal About Her. very nice!

yeah I keep reading bits of propertius and being like "hmm is po'b going to quote this one I wonder." (he doesn't mostly but I keep thinking he should. because I want the aubreyad to be denser and less accessible I guess? :P) there's a lot of catullus woven in too of course - I associate Catullus 72 with the 'falling out of love' arc (my dude that is not what falling out of love looks like).

oh gosh yes 1.8 -- that was one of the things I was trying to describe to Distinguished Classicist, the way she's so -- what's the word I want? not volatile... she disappears. she's constantly Gone. you turn around and oops, she's eloped to Sweden. (honestly though if Cynthia and Propertius could manage to have *fake* revenge affairs that would actually be *great*, for them that would be an improvement.) Gareth Williams (in a chapter called, amazingly, "From Grave to Rave") describes Cynthia as "ever only elusively visible in the narratological mist" and I feel like that's a bit what's going on with Diana. For her there's a genre element as well--she's a woman in the Men Going to Sea books, and even though the Aubreyad gives way more time to women than the average Men Going to Sea book, the fact is the camera frequently simply isn't on her. We see far more of Stephen thinking about her, hearing rumors, etc. than we do of her actually being on the page. Now in elegy nobody seems to be quite fully on the page, we only get "fragments of story" as Genevieve Liveley and Patricia Salzmann-Mitchell say (excellent collection by that name btw, I recommend checking it out if you're at all interested in narrative and lyric/elegy). But Diana manages this while being in a novel, which is impressive to me.

yeah stephen as a character is a lot more... self-reflective? than propertius' speaker. for one thing he's in a novel, I think, so he can actually... have a series of contiguous experiences. he's also a compulsive diarist which is helpful for self-reflection I guess. and more mature, like, as a human being, than propertius' speaker, who apparently does nothing with his life except be in love and write poetry, he doesn't exist outside of as a poetic voice whereas, again, stephen benefits from a third-person narrator and has medicine and spying to do and so on. also he's Catholic.

I love the "Catullus-and-water" line, it's like O'Brian just put in a little wink to those of us who would notice this, like, "yes I am doing this on purpose." All in all I've pretty much defaulted to assuming that O'Brian is doing things on purpose. although he did forget Babbington's first name that one time and retconned it very awkwardly

[fragiledewdrop]

High school Newspaper Shenanigans

I don't have a lot of good memories about high school, but today I found a dusty copy of what passed for a "newspaper" in my school and it brought me back to when I was 16.

The girl who had been running the school newspaper for as long as I could remember was graduating that year, so she had to prepare for the final exam and university and she did not have time to edit anymore. My friends B., C., and I, in what was probably a fit of madness, decided to try our hand at it. And so I found myself co-editor of a newspaper. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it would be one hell of an adventure.

The paper was called "Up!", after the Disney movie, for...some very creative reason I cannot remember. The first thing we did was change the title to "Up patriots to arms!"

One of the first things we had to cover was a very important, popular, yearly student strike,which would have been fairly easy, if not for the freaking tension between the two student organizations in our city. The biggest one, the "Rete" , was basically left wing - although many people didn't know or care about their affiliations- and they constantly butted heads with the student block, a group of self proclaimed neofascists who dressed in all black, used smoke bombs during protests and were always surrounded by the police.

We decided it would be a grand idea to interview the respective leaders to get both opinions on the matter.

The president of the "Rete" came to meet us after school. The highlight of the interview was when he said that his was a "non political organization", at which point we looked at each other in disbelief and asked him:"Really?"

The answer was "Yeas, although of course many of us are registered in different parties along the whole spectrum, such as..." and he started listing all left wing parties in the country, from communists to centrists, because apparently that's what he meant by "variety". Anyway.

It was time to interview the leader of the Block. He told us to wait in a square until someone would come get us.

B. and I were getting very nervous.

A guy with a shaved head and a black leather jacket came towards us. "You the journalists? Follow me"

We followed him to the lair. I mean headquarters.

(By the way, we realized we knew this guy. He was a lamb. I had no clue what he was doing there.)

The headquarters' walls were legit covered in swastikas and pictures of Mussolini. Yikes.

The leader was also very nice. Didn't stop me wanting to throttle him when he said that poor Mussolini was just misunderstood.

I had to ACTUALLY stop B. from doing something rash. No picking fights with the fascist dudes in he fascists's lair, please.

They straight up told us, I shit you not, that they were a brotherhood and, as a very effective bonding experience, they put on music and danced in a circle while whipping each other with leather belts. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Maybe they were, but it didn't seem so. That didn't make it into the article, but it's forever etched into my brain.

I was shaken, but the double interview turned out great. #journalism

A while later we were sitting at a school assembly in the local movie theater. Everybody was complaining about the fact that our gym's roof had collapsed the year before and nobody was doing anything about it. We were taking the bus every week to a public gym, but we had to pay for it and were Officially Not Happy About It.

It was then that B. went : "You know what would be great? If we could interview the mayor about this"

I lit up. "Oh my god! We could ask him so many things! And not just about our school, but about the Linguistic High school that had to be evacuated and about [all the other schools that were literally falling to pieces. You know, Italian things]"

But the consensus was that, while we could try, it would be almost impossible for us to get an interview. So we sighed and sat back.

C.cleared her throat. "Guys." "Yes?" "You know how the mayor is a lawyer?" ".... Yes?" "Well, my dad is a lawyer. He knows him."

We dragged her to the bathroom

"We are not leaving here until your dad gets us an appointment" (poor guy)

He did

For that same night. At the town hall. At 8 pm.

We cleared our afternoon to come up with pertinent questions and practice and freak out.

At 8 we were at the town hall.

There was a red banner on the balcony with a slogan on it, that would be there for months afterwards, because...

... that same night a group of workers had occupied the town hall to demand better pay and better working conditions

Good for them

Bad for us

We were about to leave, but they assured us the mayor would be with us shortly

We waited three whole hours

During which, obviously, an old council member came to talk to us about how, if we wanted to do some real journalism, we should investigate the presence of the Illuminati in our town

Not gonna lie, we were kinda interested at that point

Around 11, the mayor called us in

I am going to concede that he must have been tired

But he was still a slimy son of a bitch

Extremely condescending

When we brought up our problems, he told us our schools were the Province's responsibility

(the Province would of course later tell us we were the Mayor's responsibility)

It was a train wreck

But eye opening

The article we wrote was extremely passive aggressive

He told C.'s father that he really liked it

I don't know if he was impermeable to sarcasm or just a politician.

Fast forward a few months. While our math teacher was talking, a giant piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, missed her by millimeters and crashed on the floor. We went on, business as usual, but that was kinda scary. And it was not the first incident of that kind to happen in our school.

We decided to do a reportage

Armed with notebooks and a camera, we went from classroom to classroom, asking students and teachers about problems with the building.

It was like opening a can of worms.

We got everything from "Oh yes, don't you see those huge holes in the ceiling and in the floor?" to "Yes, every time it rains the classroom gets flooded" to "See this giant wooden piece of tent rod? It fell on my shoulder last week. We don’t even have tents!"

Everyone had something to complain about. The teachers. The janitors. It was scary, to be honest. Especially considering we were repeatedly told ours was the safest school structure in town (what with having been standing since the end of WWI and all)

One day, while we were trying to get on the roof to evaluate its conditions, the headmistress called us in her office.

She said that she had gotten wind of what we were doing (duh)

And she hoped that we wouldn't give a bad impression of her "to parents and important people"

Because after all her hands were tied

It was the responsibility of the Mayor and the Province

(Just who the fuck was responsible for us?)

She smiled sweetly, leaned in towards us and whispered "You'll be careful now, won't you?"

She looked at me and said my name

Hoping I'd be the responsible/most easily intimidated one

(I had beef with that woman, mmmkay? But that's a story for another day)

I smiled and I told her: "Of course. We are just taking pictures of what we see. We'll let the truth speak for itself"

We did

No commentary

Just very objective descriptions and pictures

We really felt like heroes of the free press and free speech, at the service of the people despite the threat of power. (Yes, it sounds dramatic. It's because we were teenagers)

And then there were the other, less momentous adventures:

That one time when, after days of editing, we had to fill a little blank space at the bottom of the last page and nothing fit. We were frantically searching through our notes, the articles other students had sent us, drawings, everything, and we were slowly losing hope, until B. unearthed one of my notebooks and said : "What is this? 'Requiem. In memoriam termosifoni malati, ego ista verba pronuntio..." I was horrified. "NO" I yelled. "That's just a joke. We are NOT publishing that. NO WAY!" It was really a silly thing, you see. There was a radiator in our classroom that didn't work very well. Sometimes it was scorching hot, sometimes (on the coldest days, obviously) it was icy. So my friend E. and I had decided that the radiator was "sick", and we wrote its last will, its epitaph, parodies of famous poems like "La fontana malata" (The sick fountain) by Palazzeschi or "All'amica risanata" (To the healed friend) by Foscolo (can't find translations, sorry). It was fun. B.had found my silly attempt to write a "Requiem" in...kinda dog Latin I guess? But the grammar was correct. In any case, IT WAS NOT MEANT TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. But we were desperate, so I relented. On one condition: it had to be ANONYMOUS. And that was the best decision I ever made in my entire life, because when we distributed the newspaper I saw a bunch of Latin teachers analising the fucking thing in front of their classes. "Mmmmhhh I am not sure an accusative was the best choice here. I would have gone with a dative." Then write your own pastiche poem, Marta! One of them had even copied it on the blackboard and was trying to figure out the metric! That was the equivalent of a 3am shitpost, not fucking Catullus, people! I have never been so embarrassed in my life! At least my friends were having a field day with it. Oh, and my Latin and Greek teacher figured it out. She read it and told me : "This was you, wasn't it?" I wanted to disappear. But she said it was funny, and that was the end of it.

All the times we had to edit what other students gave us and it was WILD, you guys. The grammar alone...The choice of topics....We got quite a few articles about UFO sightings over our town, so that was a thing. (We got to see a lot of really interesting and creative stuff, though)

The times we absolutely lost our cool, because it was hard work, okay? "Federica, your Isabel Allende analysis is a bit too long. Maybe if we cut the Scheherazade comparison..." "YOU ARE NOT CUTTING THE SCHEHERAZADE COMPARISON, B." "But.." "That is the backbone of the whole thing. The structure would collapse without it." "It's only a metaphor!" "No! I won't sell myself and my principles for a chance to be published" "Guys! CALM DOWN! It's just...essentially a book report." "SHUT UP C."[........] "I think we need to eat something" "Yeah. Should I make pancakes? With chocolate chips or without, B.? "

The time we got stuck at school because it was snowing, and C. wrote a beautiful piece called "The agonizing mesmerism of snow", and our friend P.,who was a wizard with a pencil, made an earie and amazing drawing for it that almost made me cry. Coincidentally, it was the day pope Ratzinger resigned. We thought it was a joke while still at school, then later on agreed that it was the reason it had been snowing in the first place. None of us wanted to write about the pope, so we asked the guy who was always sending us articles about the occult and arcane symbols hidden in churches. It turned out great.

The time a bunch of our more "troublesome" classmates started making hilarious dirty jokes based on Catullus' double entendres and B. promised them we would publish them (anonymously) if they wrote them down. They did, and the result was a page titled "Surrealism" full of the dirtiest "poetic" stuff in existence that made everybody laugh themselves unconscious, with the exception of some teachers who somehow didn't get the jokes.

The time we interviewed our student representative (a classmate of ours), whom B. had always thought was too full of himself and needed to be brought down a notch. So we "accidentally" misspelled his name in the article. Nobody noticed except him. He was fuming and it was glorious (not my proudest moment, but what can you do)

The time another brilliant classmate wrote a piece called "The pathologic mysoginist" that absolutely enraged some of the guys in our school. I stan her to this day.

That time I wrote a long article for Woman's day about the abuse and mistreatment of women in our country and across the world. I thought it was nothing special, really, but then Maria the janitor (the sweetest lady in existence) stopped me in the corridor and teared up a bit and said that she hadn't known about a lot of the things I had discussed, but she thought it was important to talk about them and that she felt represented as a woman and that she wanted to bring the paper home to read it to her husband. It touched me so deeply I still get emotional when I think about it.

Anyway, all of this and more happened in one year. Then we, too, had to worry about university admissions and exams and we passed the burden on to "aliens and occult" guy (who was amazing too)

But I remember the passion we poured into it, the willingness to take risks, the feeling of defying authority for the "greater good". We were idealists, all of us, and so full of hope and a will to change things in every way we could. Maybe a high school newspaper means nothing in the great scheme of things, but it meant something to us. It made us brave when we didn't think we were. It made us defiant. I wonder if that part of me is still sleeping, somewhere deep inside.

[ebaeschnbliah]

THE  ROADS  WE  WALK  HAVE  DEMONS  BENEATH ...

________________________________________________________________

GOING ROUND IN CIRCLES ON THE QUEST FOR THE TRUTH

THE HEADLESS NUN

This term is used for the very first time in the PILOT. Sherlock refers to a previous case in which Angelo obviously was involved as well.

SHERLOCK: Angelo, headless nun. ANGELO: Ah, now that was a case! Same again? SHERLOCK: If you wouldn’t mind.

At least between Sherlock and Angelo the term 'headless nun' seems to be a secret code for a certain kind of action. 

Going into action - going into acting

On this special occasion: acting like a drunk who is thrown out of a restaurant ... with the addition of a splash of white wine.

________________________________________________________________

VATICAN CAMEOS

Another term that is used as a secret code for a certain kind of action. This time between Sherlock and John in ASIB before Sherock opens the safe where Irene's camera phone is kept ... guarded by a spring-gun.

SHERLOCK (urgently): Vatican cameos.

But this time the meaning is different. The term is meant to be a warning that some kind of deadly danger is about to occur.

Going into action -  going into defense/rescue mode

On this special occasion: Sherlock and John are immediately crouching down for cover. Only a short time before this happens, both Sherlock and Irene are adding a 'splash of color' to prepare themselves for the meeting. Real blood for Sherlock. Lipstick in the shade of blood for Irene.

The definition of CAMEO/S:

a gem, small medallion, statue with a profiled head carved in relief

a small literary or filmic piece

a small theatrical role

The VATICAN:

A small state in the middle of Rome, seat of the Roman Catholic Church, ruled by the Bishop of Rome ... the Pope. The Pope is also the supreme authority of all catholic monasteries and therefore ... of the nuns.

Originally 'Vatican Cameos' is an untold story mentioned in 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'

“I must thank you,' said Sherlock Holmes, 'for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.”

VATICAN CAMEOS = A WARNING AGAINST VATICAN PERFORMANCES ?  AGAINST SOMETHING THE 'HEAD OF THE NUNS' ORDERED TO DO ? BUT 'THE HEAD' IS MISSING AND THEREFORE STILL UNKNOWN ?  A GHOST .... AN ANONYMOUS PLAYER ?

________________________________________________________________

HEADLESS NUN & VATICAN CAMEOS ... UNITED

Both terms reappear in the episode 'The sign of three' at John's wedding. Sherlock promises little Archie the picture of a 'headless nun' if he is able to answer the question: how to kill someone in public.

SHERLOCK: Oh, hello again, Archie.  What’s your theory? Get this right and there’s a headless nun in it for you.

Sherlock uses 'vatican cameos' to inform John - without alarming the other wedding guests - that Major Sholto is in mortal danger and about to be murdered.

SHERLOCK: Oh! Ladies and gentlemen, can’t stand it when I finally get the chance to speak for once, Vatican Cameos.  MARY: What did he say? What’s that mean? JOHN: Battle stations. Someone’s gonna die.

The most interesting aspect here is that the main action happens entirely between three Sherlock mirrors:  

'Director of the Mind-Stage' Sherlock tells 'Little Sherlock Mirror' Archie, he will get a 'headless nun' if he is able to deduce how 'Sherlock Ex-Comander of John Mirror' Sholto could be killed in public without anyone noticing it.

________________________________________________________________

'Headless Nuns' in ghost stories:

This kind of character can be found in legends and ghost stories. They are sometimes hauting places, seeking revenge, guarding treasures, bloodthirsty and murderous ... in short - they are the perfect tools for creating fear and terror in ghost stories.

The real roman catholic nuns (x x):

A nun is a woman who lives in a religious community.

She swears an oath to live in chastity and obedience.

She dedicates her life to the greater good she believes in.

She is considered to be a 'Bride of Christ'.

There is a wedding ceremony where she wears bridal white with wreath and veil.

She wears a wedding ring which will be buried with her after death.

After the ceremony she exchanges the bridal robes for a sombre religious habit.

A nun is also called 'sister'

Turning a nun into a ghost story is basically the same thing as turning a sister into a ghost story.

________________________________________________________________

A LITTLE DETOUR - THE DOUBLE MEANING OF WORDS

The creators of Sherlock BBC are known for using word-games with great fondness. Just a few examples (I'm sure there are more):

beech & beach - the Holmes children play on a beach, pebbles on a beach ... or ... looking for somthing buried under a beech tree.  

Welsborough & wells burrow - used as family name ... or ... for creating a well one has to burrow a hole in the ground first.

pals & palls - Mycroft uses the term to describe Sherlock's and John's relationship in TGG  ('since you and he became ... pals')  meaning 'mates/close friends' ... or ...  the dialoge between the ambassador and her husband in TST  ('chess palls after three months/everything palls')  mening 'losing interest/becoming bored'

birds & birds - flying animals (most of them) with feathers ... or ... young women,

Harry & Harriet - brother or sister? sister or brother? Right from the beginning ....

________________________________________________________________

MR.SZIKORA FROM THE EMPY HEARSE

After Sherlock returns from his hiatus John has a visiter at the surgery. An old man with white hair and beard who presents John with three small gifts.

MR. SZIKORA: I run a little shop, just on the corner of Church Street (?). Er, magazines, DVDs. Brought along a few little beauties that might interest you. “Tree Worshippers.” Oh, that’s a corker. It’s very saucy. “British Birds.” Same sort of thing. “The Holy War.” Sounds a bit dry, I know, but there’s a nun with all these holes in her Habit.   

This scene is a canon reference to ACDs 'The Empty House'.  Sherlock Holmes visits Dr.Watson in the disguise of an old man and tries to sell him three books .... 'British birds' (the real feathery ones), 'Catullus' (the roman poet who did actually write a lot of 'saucy' stuff and also poems about  'how to comfort a friend in the death of a loved one') and 'The Holy War' (most likely without the nuns).

In the original story Dr.Watson is fooled by this disguise and doesn't recognise Holmes whereas in Sherlock BBC John tries to pull of the assumed fake wig of his patient because he suspects Sherlock to play a prank on him.   

A second canon reference can be found in Mr.Szikora's statement that his usual PG is Dr. Verner. As told in ACDs story 'The Norwood Builder' ... Dr. Verner is a distant relative of Sherlock Holmes.

A young doctor, named Verner, had purchased my small Kensington practice, and given with astonishingly little demur the highest price that I ventured to ask -- an incident which only explained itself some years later when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes's, and that it was my friend who had really found the money.

A man comes to John's surgery who actually IS Sherlock Holmes in canon but in this adaption Mr.Szikora comes from a person who IS a close relative of Holmes in canon.

Also - Mr.Szikora speaks in a heavy Eastern European accent. I don't know when or where John heard Sherllock speak French to make any comparison. Either way, because of his strange habit and his stiking accent John comes to the conclusion that Mr. Szikora must be fake. John believes that this man is Sherlock in disguise.

JOHN: It’s not as good as your French. Not as good as your French. It’s not even a good disguise, Sherlock!

Sherlock speaking French - or more precisely: John obviously knowing that Sherlock speaks French -  is a third canon referce. Original Sherlock Holmes doesn't only speak French, part of his family comes from France. In ACDs 'The Greek Interpreter' Holmes tells Dr. Watson: '.... my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French Artist' 

Does this mean that Mr. Szikora is triple-coded as a Holmes?

As mentioned above Mr. Szikora has the appearance of an old man with a beard. This reminds me of another person with a beard. A Person who is also mistaken for Sherlock Holmes. The beard is fake but the person is indeed a Holmes.

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THE NUN WITH THE HOLES IN HER HABIT

Nuns wear a special habit.  'HABIT' though is another word with more than just one meaning. It can be: 

a garment

a usual way of behaving

the bodily appearance of someone

a mental attitude of someone

a strong need to use a drug 

This leads of course straight away to HLV where this special word is heavily used - but not for nuns.      

SHERLOCK: There’s every chance that my drug habit might hit the newspapers. The game is on.

MYCROFT: The siren call of old habits.

MYCROFT: You’re a celebrity these days, Sherlock. You can’t afford a drug habit. SHERLOCK : I do not have a drug habit.

What do have 'headless nuns' and 'habits with holes in it' in common?

A person is very hard - if at all - to recognize when the head/the face can't be seen/is hidden. A very important information is missing.

It's the same with 'holes in the habit'. Something is missing. A hidden behaviour. A hidden attitude. Someone is hiding something. Any information not seen is like a black hole for the knowledge. Missing puzzle pieces leave holes in the picture. Under certain circumstances 'not knowing' something - 'having black holes about something' - can be very dangerous. But of course, attempting to fill such 'dark holes of knowledge' can be equally dangerous. And there is someone who never liked not knowing:

SHERLOCK: I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing. Unlike the nicely embellished fictions on your blog, John, real life is rarely so neat. I don’t know who was behind all this, but I will find out, I promise you.

And when Sherlock sets out on his journey to explore his past - his family history - his subconscious mind is looking for a sister .... a faithful one ...

But someone turned the 'sister' into a 'ghost story' ...  a rotten skeleton still with maggots in the eye holes even after more than 100 years ... the cold and terrifying force of the East Wind who plucks the unworthy from the Earth  ... to scare Sherlock off.

A nun is a bride. She wears the white robe of a bride with a veil ere she changes it to black or grey - mostly with a splash of white. A nun is called 'sister'. She has no wordly husband but wears a wedding ring, she believes in a higher purpose and lives in her/for her conviction.

Conviction is a dangerous thing. If it gets to strong - to extreme - it can lead to 'holy wars' ... to  'crusades'. But that must not always involve whole nations or confessions or even a lot of people. It is quite possible that a single person can be on a 'crusade' on its own - for their own private reasons. Misplaced love ... the greater good .... murderous jealousy .....

And the male equivalent of a nun  ... is a Monk.

A nun is called sister.  A monk is called brother.

In MHR a blond woman hides among monks ... but ...

LESTRADE: A blonde woman hiding amongst bald monks? That wouldn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes!

JIM: No, no, no, no, no, this is too easy. (He buries his head in his hands.) This is too easy.

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Sherlock BBC is full  of words and scenes with double meaning (or more), of things that start out in one way and then turn into the opposite. Harry or Harriet - brother or sister - it was this question right from the start. Sherlock got it wrong the first time ...  in the PILOT/ASIP. He assumed Harry to be a brother when she actually is John's sister. In his own family Sherlock is looking for a sister. But it turns out that the sister he finds is actually a part of himself. Which way will the wheel turn next?

I leave you to your own deductions.   Thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.

February, 2017

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