#the wizards have had an indelible effect on each other

[hello-eeveev]

can we. can we talk about how in the final lucien fight, Essek failed to resist the slow effect from one of the eyes (he rolled two natural 1s in a row). canonically, he was weighed down with with so much shame and guilt that he could barely move—the same guilt that he is seriously considering going back in time to undo—and he didn’t use his fortune’s favor reroll to try to alleviate it.

but he did expend his mote of possibility when he struggled to pull Caleb out from under a building. no hesitation.

so. so. was he saving his fortune’s favor for the mighty nein? had he already decided not to use it for himself?

homeboy really said “I would break the world to undo my sins, but I will bear them if it means you survive.”

[freshcuntgrass]

One of my NPCs, Samuel, is a tiefling necromancer. He did not want to be a necromancer. He did not want to be a tiefling. These things were thrust upon him, along with many others, and this is the story of how he makes his peace.

--

Samuel Stanley is born a human, the only son of the major general of the navy. He is a scrawny, anxious, deeply emotional twink who prefers the library to the dockyard and who dreams of magic in a town that mistrusts it. He and his dad love each other, but they don't always like each other, and they certainly don't get each other.

Samuel jumps ship from the naval academy and takes up with a wizarding university that travels across the world on a fleet of ships. It upsets his dad, but things make sense there. He's good at the classwork. He's not being bullied. He's even started dating this boy Brad, who is goofy and earnest and really seems to like him. (Brad himself is a story for another time.)

As often happens, a PC shows up and everything goes sideways.

It was some solo text-based adventure for a wild magic sorcerer who hasn't even played at my table for years now. He was investigating the shitty necromancy professor, ended up going somewhere with Brad, and then rolling a 1 on the wild magic table. You know, the one where ten effects go off in the next minute? A lot of dice later, we have a 14-year-old sorcerer who is six-foot-three, bright blue, covered in fog, and wondering why ten people are dead. Among them? Samuel Stanley.

The sketchy necromancy professor starts carting people away, ostensibly to preserve their bodies and save them (sure, Jan), and I thought that would be the quest. Instead, the player follows Brad as he carries the body of his boyfriend to the other necromancy professor, and helps him plead with her to save Samuel, at any cost.

She reluctantly agrees to use the druidic reincarnation ritual she knows, if the boys will agree to become her assistants. Necromancy wasn't exactly what any of them had planned, but they agree. They help prepare the ritual beneath the moonlight. The new body created by Reincarnate slowly grows in the center of the ring of runes written in blood.

We roll the dice. It comes up tiefling.

Now, there are two pieces of lore to understand here. First, tieflings are rare in my world. Before that roll, I'd never had one in-game, PC or NPC. They're born to human (elven, halfling, whatever) parents near sources of fiendish power-- to demon-worshippers, near portals to hell, in times when devils rule the land. The parents aren't evil, necessarily-- one tiefling my players met later was the daughter of two veteran fiend-fighters-- but they indicate that energy being somewhere, and so they're feared and mistrusted and often very, very alone.

Second, death always leaves at least one indelible scar. It changes your soul, little by little, and if you die too many times you simply aren't you enough to come back at all. I represent this in gameplay with tarot cards; you draw one card from the major arcana for your first, two for your second, and so on. Running out of cards, or drawing the Tower, keeps you from coming back. Any other card, and it's a little less clear, a little more up to personal interpretation.

Samuel drew the Lovers.

He runs from the afterlife into the portal that calls his soul back to a body. He settles in and knows immediately that it is not his. He's bigger, stronger, taller by over a foot. He feels a tail lying beneath his legs and hard horns behind his skull, digging into the back of his neck. There is a strange warmth flowing through his veins. But he opens his unfamiliar eyes and sees a familiar face above him. The boy who changed the entire course of his life because he refused to trust the establishment's plans, refused to let him out of his sight, refused to wait a single day without knowing if he would be alive again. The love of his life. Brad.

--

Brad and Samuel never planned to be necromancy majors, but with the amount of time they spend prepping components and inscribing copies for their new boss, it's basically impossible to be anything else. But if they're going to hold power over death, they tell each other, what's to say they can't figure out a way to use that power to give others life? So they try, as much as they can, to help each other and find whatever good they can.

I don't remember when or how they migrated to a different table's story, but this is how the party found them: two 21-year-old college bros, fumbling their way through apprenticeships in necromancy, one in a strange body he doesn't understand, both inexplicably soulmates. They're a fun cameo, a good way to let players find wizard information or loop them in-game into the death lore. They make a great comedy duo, or a mini-quest in which Brad follows a flamboyantly terrible idea and Samuel begs the party to help them rescue him before Consequences. I don't remember which of these I was using, but this party took one look at these death himbos and said: "That's our best friends now. They're going on an adventure with us."

So they go along, quietly developing in the background, as all good sidekicks do. Samuel trips over his enormous red body and frets over whether his dad will accept him like this. Brad becomes a surprisingly consistent emotional support for the players, and also teaches a pair of skeletons to play mead pong. There's a whole subplot where they and another party sidekick (Sasha) go off and become a trio of gladiator-show heels called the Reaper's Boize. They live their lives alongside the players, but usually offscreen, unless the players pull them into a scenario or I need to cut to a comic relief shenanigan.

Oh, except Samuel has also personally watched the entire party, half of their (too many) sidekicks, and a lot of other people gruesomely die.

Samuel was there when the bardlock, entrapped and tormented by his archdevil ex-lover, stabbed himself in the heart to escape. He was the one who carried his bleeding body back to the cleric and paladin, begging them to use the life magic he himself couldn't yet grasp.

Samuel had a front row seat as the paladin was beheaded in the gladiator ring, and again when the entire party was slain by devils and cultists at the winner's ball that night. People rushed to save the bodies of the party, but no one else was left to bring back the paladin's wizard girlfriend Zoë. Brad had helped with the Reincarnate ritual-- they had to try, right? They had to try. The tiefling girl came back as a gnome, but she came back, with Brad and Samuel there to help her get used to life after death.

Samuel stood by the party's side in the devastating final battle between them and their archdevil enemy. He watched a theater full of people rot away to nothing in the blink of an eye. And he can't do anything about their lives, not all of them, but he'll be damned if he doesn't make sure this archdevil tastes death. When the party's bardlock dies, when he gives up the freedom of his soul forever to ensure that the archdevil can be destroyed, his lifeless body falls once again at Samuel's helpless feet.

--

Our last quest brought us through the port city where Samuel grew up. He returned apprehensive, mistrusted, a fiend and a stranger to everyone in the place he so recently called home. The gang has barely stepped foot off the docks when a tsunami crashes onto shore right behind them. (Look, the PCs are level 17. At some point, the only way to get any real danger is directly from God.) This time, it's Samuel's worst nightmare: it's Brad who goes down. In the background of this epic struggle, with the roguelock rappelling from rooftops and the cleric parting the sea like Moses and the paladin smiting entire falling trees out of the way, we cycle back turn after turn to two dumbass necromancers Life Transference-ing themselves and each other in and out of consciousness, because neither one can think of anything worse than letting the other one go.

When the waves subside, they are all surrounded by death. It could have been much, much worse, but as the town priests cart the bodies away to the temple, it's clear there are more than the cleric, the paladin, and all the town clergy can raise in any reasonable time, and more still lost and swept out to sea. But Brad and Samuel know Reincarnate now. Maybe, with them, that's enough.

It's hard to get the clergy to trust a pair of necromancers, one a tiefling, rolling up to their temple and asking to make some new bodies. It definitely wouldn't have worked without the high-CHA party leading the charge. They allow, riding on the heroes' reputation and good word, ONE reincarnation.

We roll the dice. It comes up aasimar.

(The table loses their shit.)

Aasimar, of course, are the opposite of tieflings. They're born to mortal parents who find themselves touched by the gods. The party cleric is an aasimar, the son of high priests born on the holiest day of their gods' year. Their sidekick Sasha is an aasimar, born in secret to a monk who took the blame for a fellow monk's sins. If these necromancers can create an aasimar, the temple reasons, they must not be so evil after all.

Brad and Samuel spend the better part of their next week Reincarnating every victim of the tsunami they have the spell slots to handle, putting the others into Gentle Repose until they can get to them. They run out of bodies and start working from hairbrushes, baby teeth, lockets of hair. Samuel tells them it's okay to come back different, it's okay to take some time getting used to who you are now. Death always leaves at least one indelible scar. This is a difficult one to bear, we know, but we did our best for you. Your life isn't over, it's just different. That's enough to build on.

--

The party needs to move on. The cleric and paladin have vengeance quests waiting and supernatural forces yelling at them about it in various prophetic visions, etc. There's a lot more quest happening in the spotlight; this is just one tale of many woven in at the edges. Today, the party is racing on a scroll of Wind Walk towards a dark ritual and stumbles upon the paladin's former nunnery, taken over by the enemy cult and guarded by corrupted angels in molten chains. A battle ensues. No problem for the 17th-level magic users; more of a problem for their somewhat lower-level companions. And Sasha-- Samuel's gladiator buddy, the aasimar warrior-- takes so much damage from an unlucky crit that they fall dead in a single blow. The cleric and paladin are across the battlefield, surrounded. The next closest ally? Samuel.

Sometimes it takes me a minute to figure out what an NPC is doing on their turn. I don't want dead air, if I can help it, so if it's not too much of a spoiler I'll often end up giving a little insight into the thought process the NPC takes. The monster seems the most enraged by X, ignoring the blows from Y. The wizard's focus wavers from their pursuit of Z. One thing is optimal, another is equitable, a third is dramatic, and along the way I'll find which one is true. I do this as the initiative rolls around to Samuel.

"Samuel Stanley has seen a lot of death, hasn't he?" I muse. "He never asked to be a necromancer, to get so close to it and know it so well. Death made him a tiefling, and death's followed him ever since. I Remember him finding the bardlock bleeding out in the park, and carrying him across town to you? Remember him seeing everyone die at the ball, and bringing back Zoë even though he knew she'd be different? Remember the fight with the archdevil? Remember him standing next to you at the bardlock's funeral?"

I look up at the webcam and all my players are crying. I'm crying. Jesus Christ, I was just trying to buy myself a second to check the spell sheet. Damn the optimizer in me; it's been obvious from the start what this character would do.

"Samuel knows his job, now. He knows what death asks of him, and he accepts it. He walks calmly over to Sasha's nearly headless corpse and kneels down beside him, wraps one massive red hand around the limp hand of his friend, and with the other he slides their eyes closed and casts Gentle Repose."

Lots more crying over this. Lots more crying over completely unrelated things that are much more relevant to the overall plot. I don't know how this story ends; we've only just left initiative. The cleric and paladin have plenty of slots for Revivify and Raise Dead, so Reincarnate probably won't come into play. Then again, maybe it will. Samuel is there, either way, with the promise that has become his life's work to make and to keep: Your life isn't over, just different. That's enough to build on.

[bassfanimation]

The Secret Girlfriend Theory

Before anyone chortles at the title of this, please bear with me.  It’s something that, I think in the ending of the Sherlock series, actually makes sense if I had to dissect his relationships with women (romantically speaking).

Since so many people have enjoyed the “I Love You: A Man’s Perspective” post,  I also had a great talk with my hub about this new theory of mine, and again, his interpretation from a man’s perspective is really interesting.  We also had a very personal talk, which opened my eyes to something I didn’t know about him before.  I’ve asked if I can include it here and he’s totally cool with. He’s also completely amazed that people like our banter, but mostly he likes that it’s opened up new avenues of discussion in the fanbase.  I’ll denote in the post between our views for clarity.

A small disclaimer: this is merely my (and some of my dude’s) own personal view, coming from our own worldviews and experiences. In no way am I writing any meta, thoughts, or opinions that are meant to invalidate anyone else’s reading of the show or characters.  Everyone can have their view and their story, and it’s ok.  These are just ours.  Art and media is open to everyone’s interpretations.

This is another long one folks, so take a potty break now!

In The Final Problem, Sherlock had to say the most painful words he’s had to say throughout this entire series: “I love you.”  What’s worse, he had to say these words in front of the two people he has most wanted to impress in his life: John and Mycroft.  I think them being in the room with Sherlock for this test was highly, highly significant. 

Sherlock has always been like the Wizard of Oz, which I wrote something back a while ago. I’m not sure if I can find it though as I think it was on the end of someone else’s post, but I might be wrong. Anyways, Sherlock make believes he is a larger than life figure in front of literally everyone, but none moreso than John Watson, and his brother Mycroft.  

With John...John is Sherlock’s #1 fan. Sherlock wants John to believe he is the ubermensch.  He’s Superman, literally.  Even Moffat and Gatiss have stated things that lead you to believe they too thought of Sherlock Holmes as a comic book hero. To young boys, he is just that. Sherlock, in turn, thrives off of John’s adoration for him and his skills, he clearly eats it up.  Most immature, childish people crave attention, and Sherlock is the picture of immaturity at the start of this series.  Because of Sherlock’s need for John to see him as this super-intelligent, amazing man, he has to hide a lot of the more ‘human’ aspects that he has deep inside himself.  It’s why John thinks he’s a “machine”, early on.  Sherlock, in effect, cannot let John Watson see how the sausage is made. (no dick jokes now, this is a clean post, you can send me dick jokes later tho)

Next, with Mycroft, it’s very obvious as to why Sherlock hides all his feelings even more around his big brother.  With John, Sherlock is Superman.  With Mycroft, Sherlock is only a child, and he makes this very well known in how he talks to and treats him.  He taunts Sherlock constantly about sentimentality.  He mocks love, he cares nothing for feelings, and he uses the mere notion of Sherlock “feeling” against him.  Any sort of emotion Sherlock has he absolutely cannot let Mycroft become wise to them.  I like to believe that Sherlock actually idolizes his big brother, and loves him deeply (we see in the family videos).  He’d never show it of course, because to show it would mean Mycroft would probably roll his eyes at him and Sherlock, until this point, couldn’t handle that.

Now, let’s take a good look at the women in Sherlock’s life (that we know of) who’ve had even any inkling of romantic or sexual attraction with Sherlock.

Irene Adler.  Even as a Sherlolly shipper to the grave, I will never deny Irene and Sherlock’s very real attraction.  Gatiss has stated Irene and Sherlock were “made for each other”, and he’s right, in a specific way.  BC has stated that he truly believes Sherlock and Irene had a night together (that means sex, to be indelicate about it, heheh) after he saved her. Now, technically that’s not canon, as canon only pertains to what happens on screen.  But, if the actor that’s playing the character has imagined that in the character’s backstory, and is playing that character with that in mind, then I feel it’s so close to canon it might as well be. *shrug*  Anyways...there was an intimate, sexual love affair between Sherlock and Irene...with one very interesting aspect that spans across to other women, later: it was a secret, until now.  More on that later.

Sherlock never allowed John to know that he knew Irene was alive.  Sherlock purposely kept Irene’s existence as a connection to himself as secret from everyone.  From John, to Mycroft, to literally anyone, even Molly Hooper, of course (though I like that Molly never considered it a secret, she deduced it pretty clearly when Sherlock ID’d Irene’s body despite her face being unrecognizable).  We see in TSoT that Irene appears inside Sherlock’s mind, naked, and seductively touching his face.  Irene Adler is a secret, but she is firmly, undeniably still part of Sherlock’s life, his dreams, his lust, his admiration...all of that.  But she is his secret romance. Again, I’ll revisit this in a bit.

Janine Hopkins is up next.  We don’t meet Janine until TSoT, which is also where Irene Adler pops into Sherlock’s mind, AND Molly Hooper is present and shown in contrasting ways to Sherlock more than a handful of times. All three of these women are making a very bold impact in TSoT, which is the episode featuring John and Mary’s wedding.  For me, that is no coincidence.  Mary also is playing a hugely impactful role, but not a romantic one.  Many JLers interpret TSoT and the women in it as Sherlock struggling with his losing John because he’s in love with John. It’s totally fine if you want to see that. For me though, I think it’s the opposite.  We have Irene inside Sherlock’s head, nude.  We have Molly Hooper, who is now engaged but keeping her eyes firmly fixed on Sherlock (not to mention him peeping into the frame from behind as Molly’s kissing on Tom).  And we have Janine who is actively looking to hook up with a man at the wedding. She’s a sexually mature, sexually available woman who has a pretty clear agenda. I rather loved that about J, she’s awesome.  I’ll come back to that with a thought from my hub, later.

Now, Janine and Sherlock actually get on really well. They laugh together, Sherlock tries to impress her a bit, he goofs off with her. They have a really nice rapport, yet still she ends up dancing with someone else at the end of the wedding. We see her with another guy, we see Molly unfortunately chained to ol’ Meat Dagger McGee, Mary dancing romantically with John...and Sherlock goes off, alone...as Molly watches, helplessly. (damn that made me cry) 

In the very next episode, His Last Vow, we see that Sherlock is actually dating Janine.  Most of us knew that it was under false pretenses just because of the canon ACD story where Holmes fakes an engagement.  The important part to notice is that In the first part of the episode, Sherlock has a near meltdown when Mycroft approaches his room, where Janine is sleeping.  He physically threatens Mycroft to get him out of 221B and away from nosing about. He’s hiding a secret.

After Mycroft leaves, Sherlock goes to take a bath, and Janine then comes out of his bedroom, wearing one of his shirts as her pj’s.  John is utterly gobsmacked, reflecting us, the audience, as we’re feeling the same.  Janine then proceeds to act like a typical ‘girlfriend’.  Sherlock eventually comes out of his room fully dressed, and the two put on a show in front of John that looks very normal, despite the audience knowing it’s bull.  I think all of us remember the very awkward kiss Sherlock and Janine share that made all of us sort of recoil, because it felt unnatural.  I know there’s about 10,000 meta pointing out that this means Sherlock is not into women, but I think there may be another reason that kiss was so weird. My hub has a good take on it.  I’ll also bring this back up later.

Near the end of HLV, when Sherlock’s lying in the hospital with his gunshot wound from Mary, Janine visits him there.  Her revenge and her words here now have a new meaning to me than they used to.  She says, “I know what kind of man you are, Sherlock Holmes.”  Then we see the tabloid news paper where Janine has blabbed to the press about her and Sherlock’s highly voracious sexual relationship. “He made me wear the hat!”, one of the headlines says. Sherlock looks really defeated by it all, and Janine says he didn’t have to lie to her, that they could have been friends.

Putting the rest of the series together, Janine’s words, and her “revenge” have a new meaning for me. It lines up with Irene, AND with Molly.  Sherlock Holmes’s private life has never been examined much. If anything, it’s remained very “off screen”. Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat drew a lot of inspiration for Irene Adler from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.  I think that right there is what makes me think Sherlock’s love life was, in the BBC version, “private”.  It’s something he wanted kept out of the public view, his friends’ view, everyone.  It was not for them to know about it, especially considering how closed off Sherlock’s own true heart really was.  It was basically DEAD, as the coffin in TFP represented. 

Now, for Molly Hooper.  Loo Brealey stated in a PBS podcast interview that she got this feeling that there was a lot going on behind the scenes with Molly and Sherlock.  It’s never out in the open, but the way they interact leads you to think there is something there.  We’re not sure what, but it’s deliberately set up to be an ‘are they or aren’t they’ question.  Personally, I found Eurus’s test to give us the definitive answer: they ARE.  The reason I think this is true, is how it was all laid out.  It was made to be A) in front of John and Mycroft, B) the words I Love You had to be said, and they had to be REAL, Molly made sure of that or she wouldn’t have said it back to him (also genius on Eurus’ part), and C) how she told him to say it.  She said, “You say it.  Say it like you mean it.”  This just absolutely smacks of two people who have a “something” together, but neither has actually made it REAL, until now.  Not only were they BOTH forced to make it REAL, but it wasn’t a SECRET anymore. Mycroft knows it, John knows it (fkin finally), Eurus already knew it because she’s a badass queen.  Sherlock is now terrified, the most private part of his life is now out in the open.  The coffin was smashed.  Skadoosh, you have a heart and everyone knows it now, no going back.

I think Molly Hooper has always been Sherlock’s ‘secret girlfriend’ (I know how dumb that sounds but I don’t have a better term) because that’s the way it was supposed to be: out of our view.  Sherlock Holmes doesn’t flagrantly date women like Bruce Wayne, he doesn’t go on publicly identified dates at all (can you imagine the paparazzi).  His heart IS his most guarded secret, and I don’t mean the friendly love he shared with John. That was well out in the open from the first series. It was even featured in the newspaper, which neither was happy about.  No one likes their life blared about and dissected by the public.  Also they’re Holmes and Watson, it’s the most iconic love between two men ever.  No, in this series...Sherlock’s heart was the thing he struggled most to keep under wraps. It’s the thing that he was most afraid of, it’s the thing that made him most vulnerable, it’s the thing he could not risk, not even for us, the viewers! 

Back to some ideas between me and my hub.  

My view of Janine’s revenge was meant to be a huge slap to Sherlock by saying, “Look what I did, I let the public think they’re in on your sex life. I told lies about the most private thing you can do with another person. I made it into a joke.”  Janine made Sherlock’s heart into a JOKE, let that sink in.  

Now, Janine also said she “knew what kind of man Sherlock is”.  This line is hotly debated by fandom as to what that means. I thought that that meant she knew he was a lying shit, and also he didn’t want people to know him, or his private affairs, especially regarding his most guarded emotions. That’s why Janine stuck it to him good.  He made her heart a joke, so she made his a joke right back.  Also, the awkward kiss?  To me, that was so awkward, because Sherlock didn’t love Janine...he loved someone else, he just didn’t know it yet.  I think he was so stiff and weird with Janine because it really wasn’t genuine at all, and it made him feel terrible on some level that he was there, hurting someone else (Molly) by being with Janine. He was betraying the good man Molly thinks he is...big time.  I think that’s also why he didn’t have sex with her.  A lot of people use that as evidence that Sherlock isn’t into women, but in the context of the series as I personally see it, I think he was close enough to Molly at that point that he felt like he’d be betraying her horribly to sleep with another woman.

My husband, who I just talked to this morning about this, has a wildly interesting view of Janine and Sherlock, and why that felt so odd. My hub thinks that Janine scared the pants off of Sherlock.  He has always viewed Sherlock as a normal guy, but also, he’s a nerd.  He is an immature, extremely childish, inexperienced NERD.  He said that a sexually experienced woman who is very comfortable with her appetites for sex probably scared Sherlock shitless.  He said Sherlock is essentially a virgin, despite having most likely had sex with Irene Adler.  He noted that Sherlock and Adler probably only were together after it was on his terms, not hers.  He went to Adler to save her, he was in that control over her at the time, meaning the intimacy they shared was on his terms.  With Janine, however, she held the advantage over him, big time.  My hub also thinks Sherlock was still highly inexperienced with sex, so, that aspect alone would mean he may very possibly avoid being in a situation with Janine where he could come off as a horrible sex partner...much like young guys fear when they have no effing clue how to please an experienced lady. 

My hub also said he feels Janine was Sherlock’s “tantrum”.  He came back from his faked death and everyone had moved on.  He expected John to just whip back into things.  He expected Molly to still be there at his beck and call.  We saw the heartbreaking stairwell scene.  She had moved on from him.  At the wedding, we see Molly looking at Sherlock almost the entire time, and she is staring daggers at Janine as well.  My dude says he feels Sherlock probably saw all this happening and said, “Well fuck it, if they’ve all moved on, heh I can do that, watch me I’m going to make them all so jealous, because I’m a great big fucking child and I can show them *sticks tongue out*”.  So, he tries, but it’s a woeful wreck.  I find this reading insanely cute, and heartbreaking, considering Sherlock even says to Mycroft on the phone, “I’m not a child!”  Yes, you still are, Sherlock. :(

Let’s circle back around to Irene Adler for a moment where I’ll talk about my views first.  I see Irene as Sherlock’s secret romance.  I do believe they had a something shortly after Belgravia, but I don’t think it lasted.  I think it was a short-lived, hot, firey affair in which two people who suddenly came together, and fit sexually and intellectually, clicked like hell.  Irene Adler was Sherlock’s absolute fantasy come to life.  We have all had those people we’ve looked at and just oozed lust for. Celebrities, singers, you name it. We all have our own personal fold-outs. Hell I have a Sherlock standy in my office that my own husband gave to me, LOL!  I’m a lustful cow and Sherlock is hugely sexy to me...but he is also a fantasy.  An image.  Sherlock is not who I’d spend my life with.  Sherlock isn’t going to come home, cook me spaghetti, rub my back, listen to me cry, etc. That man is my husband, who I truly love and loves me back for exactly who I am.  I think, from my personal interpretation, Irene Adler is Sherlock’s ‘standy’.  He does have strong feelings for her, and he always will because he obviously was intimate with her, and I think she was his first “love”.  She’s gorgeous, dangerous, mysterious, smart as hell, and even sexier than she is smart.  She is the ultimate fantasy.  His secret fantasy, which we ALL have.

My hub’s view of Irene Adler is slightly more simple in that to him, she represents Sherlock’s desire, his sexuality.  She is the flesh’s fantasy, in the flesh!  What’s neat though is that she was also highly, highly intelligent, which was also a turn on for Sherlock.  In the end though, Sherlock is already a genius.  Irene was much more about the flesh than the mind, in this particular adaptation.  In the books, Irene Adler was much more of an intellectual foil, so this read on the BBC Adler is very much aimed at sex, specifically Sherlock, and his very obvious interest in sex (and not with men).  My hub and I agree though, that we both think that Irene is who Sherlock thought of for sex...not what he actually wanted in love.  The fantasies we all have, the porn we watch, the fanfic I read, hell...that’s all great fun, but it’s not who we really are inside.  We don’t want our fantasies at the end of the day.  We want love.  We want honesty, softness, common interests, trust, reliability.  Sex is the sprinkles on the cake.  When we’re old and in Depends we want someone who smiles at us like we’re the most beautiful person on Earth.

On to Molly Hooper, and why I believe she was truly Sherlock’s ‘secret love’, his real love.  Molly was there with Sherlock from the very start, and always, always, always shown in a romantic (and even sexual) context.  Even when the writers used her as the butt of jokes, it was still in relation to her love for Sherlock (stuff it with your fake feminism, there’s a point to it).  Her love was ever present.  

Now, Molly was also there when Sherlock behaved at his worst.  She was aware of his moods, his volatility, his childishness, and still she remained strong in the face of that.  She saw his emotions even when he was sure he’d locked them away.  John and Mycroft sure didn’t see them.  Molly really knew what kind of man Sherlock was, only unlike Janine...she was okay with that.  She didn’t like when he was mean, but she corrected him.  She tried her best to help him be better, and he let her do it.  What did John say about Mary?  John said he wanted to be the man Mary thought he was.  Sherlock asked Molly in TRF, “If I wasn’t the kind of man I think I am, would you still want to help me?”  The answer was an unbending yes.  Sherlock allowed himself to be made a better man in large part thanks to Molly Hooper, not Irene, not Janine.  Mary was the love of John’s life.  What would that make Molly to Sherlock?  To me it’s very clear, maybe it’s my shipper goggles, I won’t deny I love them, but to me the parallels speak for themselves.

Talking to my husband, he said he’s always related heavily to Sherlock, and I had never known why until this morning.  He recalled when we first met, how closed off he was.  He often spouted out random facts and knowledge, so much that my grandma used to call him a “Know It All”. We had a hard time connecting as anything other than friends, because quite frankly, I thought he was cold.  We had a big fight once, and I cried and I said that he never showed emotion.  When I was happy, I wanted him to be happy with me.  When I was sad, I wanted him to understand that I was sad, and to be sad with me.  He was raised in a family where the men were kind of closed off.  Oddly enough he also had wanted to be a forensic pathologist, LOL.  But it took YEARS for him to open up to me, and me to him, cause I’ve had my own horrible childhood woes that have led me to be very scared of intimacy.  YEARS.  People kept asking us if were were a “thing” and we never knew how to address it, until one day he just asked what we were.  It was at that point that we gave it a go, we became a “thing”.  We still had a long, long way to go though. Long story short, we’ve been with each other in some fashion for 17 years.  We’re still learning how to love and to be open.  For men, it’s twice as hard to learn. It takes a long time for them to understand their own feelings, and even then they’ll find new ways to be confused, LOL.  It is human.

I’ve always thought of myself as Molly Hooper; lonely, a little weird, strange interests, plain, and probably no one’s lifetime love.  And now I know my husband has always thought of himself a lot like Sherlock Holmes; lonely, emotionally sensitive but closed off out of fear, often insecure, intelligent with facts but afraid of emotion, having to unlearn aloofness and to be ok with trust.  Forever we were together, but not together.  Everyone sort of saw us and thought maybe we were a thing, maybe we weren’t.  Were we secret lovers and didn’t realize it?  We didn’t even know for ages, until one day, you just open your heart.  After that, you see what happens.  For us, our love for each other doesn’t fit the typical mold.  We’re not everyone else, but we fit perfectly with each other.  Perfectly.

Molly and Sherlock also fit perfectly, especially if you view them as who they really are, as the kind of people they actually are.  He was closed off, a nerd to the 9th degree, not very “normal”, messy, childish, moody, stupid a LOT of the time, and not very popular with anyone.  She was lonely but open, also a nerd to the 9th degree, not very “normal” herself but she didn’t care and didn’t pretend to be, had a sadness in her that she tried to turn into a smile for others, ignored but accepting of it, overlooked by everyone (except by one person), not very popular with anyone yet one person still came back to her time and time again. I find the stairway scene extra telling now, considering it was Molly trying to be “normal”, stating her and Tom have a dog and they go to pubs with friends...then as Sherlock insinuates that not every man she loves can be a sociopath, she whispers to herself, “Maybe it’s just my type”. Girl does not fit into any “normal” mold whatsoever, just like Sherlock doesn’t fit into a mold of any sort.  I love that so much about them, it kills me, because I relate so much.

Molly and Sherlock are like me and my hub.  The secrets that you don’t realize are there, right in front of you.  Sometimes, people don’t even know what they feel.  Sometimes it takes years, a crushing event, hell even a drunk night of Mario Kart and tamales.  You just know when you know that you love someone. It’ll hit you like thunder and it’ll scare the shit out of you.  That’s why I, and my hub, think Sherlock really did mean what he said to Molly, and that he’s known on some level for a very long time that she was the real deal.  She’s not his standy.  Not his foldout.  Not an experiment.

Molly as Sherlock’s real love might have been a secret before, but now she’s real, and his love is real for her too now.  It became real in front of John Watson and Mycroft Holmes, the other two most important people in their circle.  The coffin that Sherlock obliterated in front of them?  That’s the secret being destroyed.  The love is revealed.  Their love may not fit a mold, it may not be the kind of relationship you think of when you think of ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’, but it doesn’t have to be like everyone else’s relationships.  These two people fit in their own way, and I think Molly has always, always been okay with that.  Similarly, Sherlock knows she’s okay with that.  Their realness is theirs to make it their own.  You can’t go back to be a secret once you say “I Love You.”  That is as real as it gets.

[mastcomm]

Love Saves the Day Turns 50: Hear 12 of the Loft’s Essential Songs

On Valentine’s Day in 1970, David Mancuso hosted a private party called Love Saves the Day in his loft at 647 Broadway in New York, a few blocks north of Houston Street. He was an audio obsessive with a voracious appetite for spiritual sounds and a profound sense of community, and the event was an opportunity to bring together friends in a setting unfettered by commercial demands, or the restrictions of their outside lives.

Mancuso, who died in November 2016 at 72, didn’t produce music on his own and didn’t think of himself as a D.J., preferring the term “musical host.” Yet the mix of unorthodox records played at what became known as the Loft, and the inclusive ethos that he and his devotees espoused, became cornerstones for dance music. And as one of the founders of the New York Record Pool — an organization that helped distribute promotional vinyl to D.J.s — in 1975, Mancuso was at the forefront of asserting the D.J.’s role as commercial and critical clairvoyant. The responses of the dancers at the Loft could reverberate throughout the city and beyond, reshaping the American pop charts.

Parties at the Loft were structured according to three “bardos,” a reference to the phases of an LSD trip — note the first party’s initials — which Timothy Leary took from “The Tibetan Book of the Dead.” First came “the calm,” giving way to “the circus” and finally “the re-entry.” Mancuso didn’t blend or beat match songs together, instead presenting them in their unadulterated form. But the Loft was still experienced as a succession of intertwined stories, each chapter crackling with an improvisatory energy and emotional heft. A single night might include jazz fusion, Broadway musicals, searing Latin funk, sumptuous disco, eerie psychedelia, exploratory African rhythms, shrieking post-punk and much more.

The eclectic selection of music wasn’t the only diversity embraced at the Loft. Riding the momentum of the 1960s’ progressive politics — and with the Stonewall uprising fresh in the minds of many attendees — the parties were far more mixed than most New York night life, and Mancuso’s dance floor became a comforting, transformative space that aspired to erase the racial or sexual oppression experienced elsewhere. Free to dance however and with whomever they wanted, the Loft was where many people found their chosen families.

The Loft has moved locations several times, but is still going strong with three parties a year in New York. To mark the 50th anniversary of that first Love Saves the Day event, here are 12 classics and comparatively unheralded gems that were heard at different periods on the Loft dance floor over the party’s lifetime.

Chuck Mangione featuring Esther Satterfield, ‘Land of Make Believe’ (A&M, 1973)

Many songs have lyrical messages that can be taken as mission statements for the Loft, but few match the impact of this live recording. Accompanied by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Chuck Mangione’s luscious arrangement surges beneath Esther Satterfield’s soaring vocals, as she references “The Wizard of Oz” and Martin Luther King Jr. The lyric “Where everything is fun, forever” reflected “the spirit everyone wanted to tap into” when entering the Loft, said Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy in an interview. (Murphy, one of the party’s current musical hosts and a longtime collaborator with Mancuso, helped release two compilations of music from the Loft via the London label Nuphonic in 1999 and 2000.) “You were entering the safe land of make believe — you could be a child, be free.”

Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, ‘Missa Luba’ (Philips, 1958)

This recording — of a Latin Mass in Congolese musical styles featuring a children’s choir under the helm of a Franciscan friar named Guido Haazen — wasn’t released in the United States until 1963. Mancuso had been hosting unofficial parties as early as 1966, and this album appealed to his affection both for music with an explicit spiritual message and for African percussion.

Andwella, ‘Hold On to Your Mind’ (Reflection, 1970)

Although the Loft is typically associated with disco, its audiences’ tastes were omnivorous, extending to throbbing, piano-inflected jams such as this one by the Northern Irish trio Andwella. With a sinuous guitar and a ringing, short-lived break, it’s one of several harder-edge slices of psych-rock that Mancuso played in the party’s early days, alongside less sinister outings like Brian Auger and the Trinity’s “Listen Here.”

Nina Simone, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ (RCA/Victor, 1971)

A stark, sibilant cover with abundant harp and tape hiss, Nina Simone’s take on the Beatles was a mainstay of early mornings (and afternoons) at Loft parties. Some attendees remember it always being the last song of the night during the years at 647 Broadway, the Loft’s first location, and it’s easy to imagine the regulars floating comfortably back to their lives on the strength of the hopeful outro.

War, ‘City, Country, City’ (United Artists, 1972)

The twangy harmonica on “City, Country, City,” the track that closes out the first side of War’s 1972 album “The World Is a Ghetto,” might seem an unlikely candidate for dance floor impact. But the spiraling intensity of the saxophone, percussion and organ build toward a powerful climax. “Everybody downstairs knew it from the first chord and was running upstairs to it,” the New York D.J. and Body & Soul co-founder Danny Krivit said in a 2018 oral history of the Loft on Red Bull Music Academy Daily. “When I went upstairs and I saw this explosion as it got to this busy part of the song, it was something I had never experienced in a club before that.”

Manu Dibango, ‘Soul Makossa’ (Fiesta/Atlantic, 1972)

The inescapable refrain “mamako-mamasa-mako makossa” may never have infiltrated American popular music without the Loft. Mancuso originally uncovered this track in the racks of a record store in Brooklyn, and its addictive, memorable chorus and bleating saxophone earned a passionate response at Loft parties. In 1972, Atlantic licensed and rereleased the original version in America, where it reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and gave the Cameroonian Dibango one of the first mainstream disco hits. A number of citations and interpolations, legal and covert, have kept it in the bloodstream of American music ever since.

MFSB, ‘Love Is the Message’ (Philadelphia International, 1973)

This passionate fanfare and call to action has likely been heard at every Loft party since its initial release. It’s arguably Gamble & Huff’s most direct songwriting statement, and undoubtedly what many Loft devotees would play strangers to try to communicate the party’s philosophies, musical or otherwise.

Blackbyrds, ‘Walking in Rhythm’ (Fantasy, 1975)

The Blackbyrds’ plaintive, twinkling lament for a distant lover, with its repetitions of “walking in rhythm/moving in sound,” captured the essence of the freedom found at the Loft. “The music would not stay at one level all evening long,” Ernesto Green, who has attended the Loft since 1975 and now helps organize the parties, said in an interview. “This was one of the ones played as the music started getting more intense, to start you up on the climb.”

Ashford & Simpson, ‘Stay Free’ (Warner Bros., 1979)

The ecstatic interplay of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson was a regular presence on the New York club circuit from the time they first made their name as songwriters, and their own recorded music had a seismic impact, too. “Stay Free” is a slinky tour de force, with orchestral accents bouncing toward an instrumental peak. There are few sneakier and sadder kiss-offs than the duo’s melisma on the word “lonely,” which threatens to spin the song out of control before the rubber-band bass snaps back.

Steve Miller Band, ‘Macho City (Long Version)’ (Capitol, 1981)

“David never cut records or stopped them in the middle,” Green said. “He always felt the musician took their time to create this music, and they should be credited by hearing the entire recording played.” This was the case even with the 16-plus-minute version of “Macho City,” a slow-burning parody of American military intervention set in a psychedelic key. A riot of alien effects, dub affectations, skronking synths and an irresistibly funky bass line, it’s a laugh-out-loud indictment of a political establishment whose work could feel anathema to the Loft’s message of love and unity.

Code 718, ‘Equinox (Heavenly Club Mix)’ (Strictly Rhythm, 1992)

Released on an iconic house label, executive produced by the undersung Gladys Pizarro, written by the New York club mainstay Danny Tenaglia, and featuring piano by the future Hillary Clinton political adviser Peter Daou, “Equinox” samples the circular burble of Manuel Göttsching’s prog-ambient classic “E2-E4” and a terse Grace Jones vocal. It was a hit at the time when the Loft was operating in the East Village, on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C, and is one of the many songs that reflects the party’s engagement with contemporary sounds.

Karma, ‘High Priestess’ (Groove Attack Productions, 1995)

“High Priestess,” a bit of Latin-inflected soulful house with ballooning bass, was the first-ever attempt by Lars Dorsch, the store manager of Groove Attack record shop in Cologne, Germany, to make music. But he wasn’t aware that the song had been getting play at the Loft — as well as other New York parties like Body & Soul — until 1998, when the licensing request came in for the song to be included on Nuphonic’s indelible compilation of Loft classics. “I was quite familiar with David’s legacy at that point already, and was totally blown away by the fact that he played it,” Dorsch said in an interview. “I’m still floored thinking that we shared a track list with music of that caliber.”

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[mastcomm]

Love Saves the Day Turns 50: Hear 12 of the Loft’s Essential Songs

On Valentine’s Day in 1970, David Mancuso hosted a private party called Love Saves the Day in his loft at 647 Broadway in New York, a few blocks north of Houston Street. He was an audio obsessive with a voracious appetite for spiritual sounds and a profound sense of community, and the event was an opportunity to bring together friends in a setting unfettered by commercial demands, or the restrictions of their outside lives.

Mancuso, who died in November 2016 at 72, didn’t produce music on his own and didn’t think of himself as a D.J., preferring the term “musical host.” Yet the mix of unorthodox records played at what became known as the Loft, and the inclusive ethos that he and his devotees espoused, became cornerstones for dance music. And as one of the founders of the New York Record Pool — an organization that helped distribute promotional vinyl to D.J.s — in 1975, Mancuso was at the forefront of asserting the D.J.’s role as commercial and critical clairvoyant. The responses of the dancers at the Loft could reverberate throughout the city and beyond, reshaping the American pop charts.

Parties at the Loft were structured according to three “bardos,” a reference to the phases of an LSD trip — note the first party’s initials — which Timothy Leary took from “The Tibetan Book of the Dead.” First came “the calm,” giving way to “the circus” and finally “the re-entry.” Mancuso didn’t blend or beat match songs together, instead presenting them in their unadulterated form. But the Loft was still experienced as a succession of intertwined stories, each chapter crackling with an improvisatory energy and emotional heft. A single night might include jazz fusion, Broadway musicals, searing Latin funk, sumptuous disco, eerie psychedelia, exploratory African rhythms, shrieking post-punk and much more.

The eclectic selection of music wasn’t the only diversity embraced at the Loft. Riding the momentum of the 1960s’ progressive politics — and with the Stonewall uprising fresh in the minds of many attendees — the parties were far more mixed than most New York night life, and Mancuso’s dance floor became a comforting, transformative space that aspired to erase the racial or sexual oppression experienced elsewhere. Free to dance however and with whomever they wanted, the Loft was where many people found their chosen families.

The Loft has moved locations several times, but is still going strong with three parties a year in New York. To mark the 50th anniversary of that first Love Saves the Day event, here are 12 classics and comparatively unheralded gems that were heard at different periods on the Loft dance floor over the party’s lifetime.

Chuck Mangione featuring Esther Satterfield, ‘Land of Make Believe’ (A&M, 1973)

Many songs have lyrical messages that can be taken as mission statements for the Loft, but few match the impact of this live recording. Accompanied by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Chuck Mangione’s luscious arrangement surges beneath Esther Satterfield’s soaring vocals, as she references “The Wizard of Oz” and Martin Luther King Jr. The lyric “Where everything is fun, forever” reflected “the spirit everyone wanted to tap into” when entering the Loft, said Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy in an interview. (Murphy, one of the party’s current musical hosts and a longtime collaborator with Mancuso, helped release two compilations of music from the Loft via the London label Nuphonic in 1999 and 2000.) “You were entering the safe land of make believe — you could be a child, be free.”

Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, ‘Missa Luba’ (Philips, 1958)

This recording — of a Latin Mass in Congolese musical styles featuring a children’s choir under the helm of a Franciscan friar named Guido Haazen — wasn’t released in the United States until 1963. Mancuso had been hosting unofficial parties as early as 1966, and this album appealed to his affection both for music with an explicit spiritual message and for African percussion.

Andwella, ‘Hold On to Your Mind’ (Reflection, 1970)

Although the Loft is typically associated with disco, its audiences’ tastes were omnivorous, extending to throbbing, piano-inflected jams such as this one by the Northern Irish trio Andwella. With a sinuous guitar and a ringing, short-lived break, it’s one of several harder-edge slices of psych-rock that Mancuso played in the party’s early days, alongside less sinister outings like Brian Auger and the Trinity’s “Listen Here.”

Nina Simone, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ (RCA/Victor, 1971)

A stark, sibilant cover with abundant harp and tape hiss, Nina Simone’s take on the Beatles was a mainstay of early mornings (and afternoons) at Loft parties. Some attendees remember it always being the last song of the night during the years at 647 Broadway, the Loft’s first location, and it’s easy to imagine the regulars floating comfortably back to their lives on the strength of the hopeful outro.

War, ‘City, Country, City’ (United Artists, 1972)

The twangy harmonica on “City, Country, City,” the track that closes out the first side of War’s 1972 album “The World Is a Ghetto,” might seem an unlikely candidate for dance floor impact. But the spiraling intensity of the saxophone, percussion and organ build toward a powerful climax. “Everybody downstairs knew it from the first chord and was running upstairs to it,” the New York D.J. and Body & Soul co-founder Danny Krivit said in a 2018 oral history of the Loft on Red Bull Music Academy Daily. “When I went upstairs and I saw this explosion as it got to this busy part of the song, it was something I had never experienced in a club before that.”

Manu Dibango, ‘Soul Makossa’ (Fiesta/Atlantic, 1972)

The inescapable refrain “mamako-mamasa-mako makossa” may never have infiltrated American popular music without the Loft. Mancuso originally uncovered this track in the racks of a record store in Brooklyn, and its addictive, memorable chorus and bleating saxophone earned a passionate response at Loft parties. In 1972, Atlantic licensed and rereleased the original version in America, where it reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and gave the Cameroonian Dibango one of the first mainstream disco hits. A number of citations and interpolations, legal and covert, have kept it in the bloodstream of American music ever since.

MFSB, ‘Love Is the Message’ (Philadelphia International, 1973)

This passionate fanfare and call to action has likely been heard at every Loft party since its initial release. It’s arguably Gamble & Huff’s most direct songwriting statement, and undoubtedly what many Loft devotees would play strangers to try to communicate the party’s philosophies, musical or otherwise.

Blackbyrds, ‘Walking in Rhythm’ (Fantasy, 1975)

The Blackbyrds’ plaintive, twinkling lament for a distant lover, with its repetitions of “walking in rhythm/moving in sound,” captured the essence of the freedom found at the Loft. “The music would not stay at one level all evening long,” Ernesto Green, who has attended the Loft since 1975 and now helps organize the parties, said in an interview. “This was one of the ones played as the music started getting more intense, to start you up on the climb.”

Ashford & Simpson, ‘Stay Free’ (Warner Bros., 1979)

The ecstatic interplay of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson was a regular presence on the New York club circuit from the time they first made their name as songwriters, and their own recorded music had a seismic impact, too. “Stay Free” is a slinky tour de force, with orchestral accents bouncing toward an instrumental peak. There are few sneakier and sadder kiss-offs than the duo’s melisma on the word “lonely,” which threatens to spin the song out of control before the rubber-band bass snaps back.

Steve Miller Band, ‘Macho City (Long Version)’ (Capitol, 1981)

“David never cut records or stopped them in the middle,” Green said. “He always felt the musician took their time to create this music, and they should be credited by hearing the entire recording played.” This was the case even with the 16-plus-minute version of “Macho City,” a slow-burning parody of American military intervention set in a psychedelic key. A riot of alien effects, dub affectations, skronking synths and an irresistibly funky bass line, it’s a laugh-out-loud indictment of a political establishment whose work could feel anathema to the Loft’s message of love and unity.

Code 718, ‘Equinox (Heavenly Club Mix)’ (Strictly Rhythm, 1992)

Released on an iconic house label, executive produced by the undersung Gladys Pizarro, written by the New York club mainstay Danny Tenaglia, and featuring piano by the future Hillary Clinton political adviser Peter Daou, “Equinox” samples the circular burble of Manuel Göttsching’s prog-ambient classic “E2-E4” and a terse Grace Jones vocal. It was a hit at the time when the Loft was operating in the East Village, on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C, and is one of the many songs that reflects the party’s engagement with contemporary sounds.

Karma, ‘High Priestess’ (Groove Attack Productions, 1995)

“High Priestess,” a bit of Latin-inflected soulful house with ballooning bass, was the first-ever attempt by Lars Dorsch, the store manager of Groove Attack record shop in Cologne, Germany, to make music. But he wasn’t aware that the song had been getting play at the Loft — as well as other New York parties like Body & Soul — until 1998, when the licensing request came in for the song to be included on Nuphonic’s indelible compilation of Loft classics. “I was quite familiar with David’s legacy at that point already, and was totally blown away by the fact that he played it,” Dorsch said in an interview. “I’m still floored thinking that we shared a track list with music of that caliber.”

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