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Let me give you a little extra incentive…

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I agree with @lololollywrites and have some stuff I want to add!

@loudest-subtext-in-tv explains the difference between the moral philosophy that Sherlock and John share and Mary's actions very well in her M-Theory meta. Sherlock has a very keen and deeply-held sense of justice, and his commitment to justice is what motivates his work as a detective in the first place. (Think about what Mycroft said to John in ASIB. What does Sherlock's decision to become a detective, rather than study science for the pure pursuit of knowledge, tell us about his heart? @asherlockstudy has a great meta on this here.) Sherlock wants to save innocent people from dying or getting hurt, and he cares deeply about bringing people who have done terrible things to justice. But if Sherlock judges someone to have done something unforgivable, he doesn't particularly care if they suffer for it. That's why Sherlock is willing to hurt Jeff Hope the cabbie to get him to reveal Moriarty's name; Hope killed five innocent people, so Sherlock doesn't care about protecting or respecting him. And as @lololollywrites said, Sherlock hates Magnussen because he manipulates innocent people, "because he attacks people who are different and preys on their secrets." (@nyxviola, now @nyxneon, did an awesome meta on why Sherlock hates Magnussen so much here.)

John was an army doctor, so as @loudest-subtext-in-tv points out in her M-Theory meta, Sherlock is drawn to John in part because he probably joined the army for noble reasons and has saving lives as his highest priority, just like Sherlock does. At the end of ASIP, Sherlock specifically points out to Lestrade that John didn't shoot Hope until he was in immediate danger, so John has "strong moral principles." John shot Hope to save Sherlock's life, and Sherlock perceives early on that John's moral code is probably very similar to his own.

Sherlock and John's moral philosophy doesn't always line up with the law and the actions of the British government, and they don't hesitate to work outside the law when they believe that's where justice leads them. This is in keeping with the original Sherlock Holmes and John Watson characters from ACD canon. In the ACD stories, Holmes sometimes decides to let the criminal go if he believes they won't do any more harm and aren't a danger to anyone else, or if he thinks it would be crueler to hand them over to the police. Watson is on board with this.

Even though Sherlock is willing to work outside the law, though, in HLV he doesn't go to Appledore planning to kill Magnussen. Sherlock thought he could get Magnussen for attempted treason and then hand him over to the authorities and have them bring Magnussen to justice. Sherlock only shot Magnussen as a last resort, in an absolutely desperate measure to save John after he realized that killing Magnussen was the only way to prevent John from getting charged with treason and to protect John's future with Mary. Remember how utterly shocked and devastated Sherlock looked when Magnussen said there were no vaults, and Sherlock realized that his original plan had fallen apart!

Mary's actions are very different. As @lololollywrites explained, Mary's decision to shoot Sherlock was a selfish act. She did it to protect herself, not to protect others like John did when he shot Hope and Sherlock did when he shot Magnussen. And we have to pay attention to what Mary said in that very first gif that the original poster used! @loudest-subtext-in-tv highlights this line in her M-Theory post, too! Mary says that Magnussen has stuff on her that would put her in prison for the rest of her life. This implies that Mary killed innocent people in the past. Maybe we could do some mental gymnastics and suppose that Mary was acting like Sherlock and John and only taking out bad people, but then Magnussen later tells us that she was an assassin for hire. So she killed people for money! (Kind of like Jeff Hope??) Not to protect other people like Sherlock and John did.

I also totally agree with @loudest-subtext-in-tv and @lololollywrites that Mary likely worked for Moriarty. Another one of Mary's lines to John in the 221B scene in HLV is important. Mary asks John not to read the memory stick in front of her, "because you won't love me when you've finished, and I don't want to see that happen." I think this heavily implies that Mary was involved in something directly relevant to John and Sherlock during her assassin career, and personally, I think it means she was one of Moriarty's snipers at the pool. (We know she wasn't John's sniper in TRF because we see that guy on screen.)

So yeah, no, Sherlock and John live by a very different moral code from Mary. They care about justice and believe there can be a higher justice than the law, but they generally try to work within the law and have only resorted to killing in desperate situations. They haven't killed for money or personal gain.

Maybe Mary really did want to leave her past as an assassin behind and be Mary Watson. But then she shot Sherlock after he offered to help her. Moreover, @loudest-subtext-in-tv makes some great points in the M-Theory meta about how Mary really doesn't treat John well in HLV after all of this goes down. She never shows remorse for her past or even apologizes to John for lying to him, even though it's clear that she's caused him great pain. I actually really, really liked Mary when TEH and TSOT first aired, and I wanted her to be the strong charismatic female character that the show lacked. But now that I've thought about her character a lot more, I just can't like her. :(

Finally, I have to point out that Sherlock is ultimately the most selfless and caring person on the entire show, and this contrasts him sharply with Mary. Sherlock jumped from the rooftop of Bart's in TRF to protect the three people closest to him in the world, and he did so knowing he was leaving the love of his life behind and without knowing when or if he would see him again. When Sherlock returned to London, he was desperately in love with John, but after John revealed in the train car scene that he wasn't going to leave Mary for Sherlock, Sherlock respected that choice and spent the entirety of S3 doing everything he possibly could to give John the future with Mary that he thought John wanted. Even though it clearly broke his heart to do so. Finally, in HLV, we saw that Sherlock was willing to throw away his whole life and accept a suicide mission to eastern Europe in order to prevent John from going to prison and to give John a safe future with Mary. Sherlock is such a forgiving and selfless person that he was even willing to help Irene Adler after she broke into 221B in ASIB, even after she treated him like shit, and he even forgave her again and saved her from the terrorists in Karachi after she betrayed him and treated him like even worse shit, because Sherlock didn't think she deserved to die for what she'd done.

Mary tells Sherlock at Leinster Gardens that there is nothing in the world that she would not do to keep John. In contrast, Sherlock proves by the end of HLV that he is willing to sacrifice absolutely everything, and to let Mary have John if that's what he believes will keep John safe and give John the future he wants. Ultimately, Sherlock's love for John is a far more selfless kind of love than what Mary demonstrates.

So in the end, Sherlock was a very selfless person, and Mary was not. She killed people for money and shot Sherlock to protect herself and to hide her past from John. There are major differences here, and we shouldn't just wave our hands and say that if we forgive Sherlock and John for killing people, then we should forgive Mary, too. These differences are very important to our understanding of the characters and to our understanding of the narrative of the story more broadly.

Listen carefully to what Mary says: “people like Magnussen should be killed, that’s why there are people like me”.  She’s the type of person who kills people like Magnussen.  And what type of person is Magnussen?  According to Sherlock he is ‘the Napoleon of blackmail’ who runs the Western world from Appledore, using the “greatest respository of sensitive and dangerous information anywhere in the world”.  And as long as Magnussen has that information “the personal freedom of anyone you have ever met is a fantasy”.  He’s not a very nice person, in fact, he’s a pretty nasty guy who turns Sherlock’s stomach.  When Magnussen flicks John’s face at Appledore he tells him “I know who Mary hurt and killed.  I know where to find people who hate her.  I know where they live.  I know their phone numbers.  I could phone them right now and tear your whole life down.”  He could set these people on Mary, and they obviously wouldn’t call the authorities to have her arrested and properly tried in a court of law.  They would hunt her down and kill her.  Probably not very nicely, because they are not-very-nice people.  So Mary may be right, people like Magnussen should be killed; that’s why there are people like her.

Who else has killed someone?

and then justified it as the killing of a not-very-nice person who deserved to die?

Remember that when John shot the cabbie Sherlock was voluntarily taking the pill - he wasn’t being coerced.  This means that John cannot avail himself of the “defense of other” defense to murder (akin to self-defense except that the homicide is committed to defend the life of another person, not yourself).  Sherlock confirms this when he tells John that he wasn’t really going to take the pill (true, John doesn’t believe this, but he does acknowledge that Sherlock was voluntarily risking his life to prove he was clever, because that’s how he gets his ‘kicks’).  John actually committed murder that night and then threw the murder weapon in the Thames.  Nevertheless, we love it when they giggle at the crime scene and then go off to dinner together. 

Also remember that after John shoots the cabbie Sherlock tortures him to force him to reveal Moriarty’s name telling him “you’re dying, but there’s still time to hurt you”.

Finally, remember who actually does kill Magnussen:

So don’t be too judgmental of Mary.  Both John and Sherlock have committed murder to save each other.  I don’t hear anybody criticizing them for doing this - in fact they are praised for doing so.  So why the double-standard when it comes to Mary?  Is it because we don’t know her back-story?  Sherlock has deduced that Mary was an intelligence agent, but he does not know what country she was serving. By her blonde hair I suppose we are to assume she is Russian, but that could be a red herring.  Sherlock trusts her, maybe, because, like him, she is on the ‘side of the angels’, even if she isn’t one herself. 

The fandom shouldn’t complain when John Watson’s wife turns out to be an assassin, because if the fandom likes Sherlock Holmes, and the fandom likes John Watson, then it is, indeed, what the fandom likes.

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I just went to this and it was so wonderful and fascinating! Congratulations and thank you @victorianpining! Everyone else, go check out the second session today if you can :)

Free Talk on Saturday, September 14th: "Let the High God Judge Between Us": The Inversion of Hope and Sin in A Study in Scarlet

I am very excited to announce that I have been invited by Romancing the Gothic to give a class on A Study in Scarlet this September. I'll be analyzing Jefferson Hope as a narrative mirror to John H. Watson, the queer subtext of his thwarted love story and subsequent quest for justice, and the ways in which Watson uses his role as the narrator to manipulate the reader's sympathies in favor Hope (and himself).

The session will last approximately 1 hour and runs twice on Saturday, September 14th, once at 11am Eastern and again at 4pm Eastern.

Sign up for the 11am Eastern session

Sign up for the 4pm Eastern session

The event is free to attend, though you can pay money towards your ticket if you wish to. In full disclosure, I do get a cut of any additional proceeds, and I'm in a good enough spot financially that if you're feeling generous, I encourage you to explore the rest of Romancing the Gothic's upcoming offerings and put that money towards a ticket for another event! Romancing the Gothic also records their talks, so if you aren't able to make it, it will eventually be available on their YouTube channel.

This is obviously a huge step for me professionally. I am extremely thankful to Sam Hirst at Romancing the Gothic for this opportunity, as well as the consistent and generous support of this community. You all already know that I had basically given up on having any literary or academic ambitions for a while there, and I genuinely don't think I would have been able to get here if you all had not been so kind and encouraging when I tentatively began revisiting those aspects of myself a few years ago and in the years since. Thank you, I love you, and I *Hope* (hah) you enjoy the talk if you attend!

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You may need to re-start my heart on the way.

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Eeerr…

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I thought about this more and wanted to clarify something!

Of course, it's in the original canon that Holmes faked his own death at the Reichenbach Falls and left Watson to believe him dead for several years. What I'm trying to say is that Moftiss made a deliberate choice about when and how to introduce their version of Mary Morstan. In the original canon, Mary enters the picture as one of Holmes's clients and she and Watson are married for a few years before Holmes's confrontation with Moriarty and presumed death. And by the time Holmes returns to London, Mary has died, and Watson immediately sells his medical practice and moves back in with Holmes at 221B so they can solve crimes together again.

That's obviously way different from what happens in BBC Sherlock. So it really seems to me like Moftiss may have looked to "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" for some inspiration when they sketched out Sherlock and John's love story and decided how to use Mary Morstan's character. (Also, the detail of Sherlock getting captured and escaping...ugh.)

okay so I'm re-reading the original ACD Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time in years, and I have to talk about "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor." Holmes takes a case that centers around a couple who live a rough, dangerous life together and fall in love, but then have to part because of reasons beyond their control. The husband goes off on his own to complete a task that will allow him to return to his beloved, but then gets captured. He escapes and tries to return to his wife, but by that point she's believed him dead for more than a year. He follows her to London, only to find out that she's about to marry someone else. But now here's the real kicker: when he approaches her and she catches sight of him and realizes that he's still alive, she immediately decides to leave her new fiancé for her first, true love.

Also, Holmes doesn't think the wife did anything wrong by leaving her new lover for her first husband.

Ugh. It's like Moftiss truly just lifted this plotline and embedded it into TRF and TEH, but obviously with John making the opposite decision from the wife in the ACD story.

The story literally ends with Holmes saying to Watson that they should "thank our stars that we are never likely to find ourselves in the same position." (Holmes is talking about the position of the second man whom the wife left, but still.) That hurt.

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This was a fascinating read. It made some stuff about TJLC analysis really click for me!

This meta also explains that works in the mystery genre intentionally avoid ambiguities—there's one solution that the reader is supposed to find. I'm totally sold on TJLC and the argument that Sherlock is a romance/mystery hybrid that uses the conventions of the mystery genre to tell a love story, but this meta left me feeling sad that with the way the show ended, the writers didn't give us the closure that mysteries generally promise their audiences. I mean, of course I was already upset about the ending of the show and the lack of closure. I'm just trying to say that the fact that the show conforms to mystery genre conventions otherwise makes that lack of closure upsetting in yet another way.

anyone have a link to @loudest-subtext-in-tv ’s meta on how the show is a mystery, a detective story, and as viewers we’re supposed to try and solve the mystery? the full text would obviously be ideal but a link with a readmore would suffice

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Musings on Johnlock and Moftisson's Use of Dialogue from ACD Canon

I recently finished rereading the original ACD Sherlock Holmes stories, and I had a lot of fun spotting places where the BBC Sherlock writers lifted dialogue directly from the original canon and incorporated it into the show. For example, this exchange between Sherlock and Moriarty during the pool scene in TGG…

Moriarty: I would try to convince you, but everything I have to say has already crossed your mind. Sherlock: Probably my answer has crossed yours.

…comes from Holmes and Moriarty’s first meeting in “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” with only very slight modifications.

Moriarty: All that I have to say has already crossed your mind. Holmes: Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.

Another one of my favorites might be when Sherlock says “Sorry, I never could resist a touch of drama” to Mary in the Leinster Gardens scene in HLV. This line comes from “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” where Holmes shocks his client by revealing the missing treaty from under a serving dish and then says “…Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.” (The Sherlock writers liked this one so much that they gave it a callback in TAB. In the church scene, Sherlock strikes a gong to catch the women’s attention and then says “Sorry, I could never resist a gong, or a touch of the dramatic.”)

There are lots of other examples!

What really caught my eye during my reread, though, were places where it seemed like the show writers lifted lines from the ACD stories, but then changed them in some way or incorporated them into the show in ways that changed their meanings or significance. I think there are a few places where they did this and perhaps made the dialogue more…Johnlocky.

There are four passages in particular that I’m thinking about. I would love to hear your thoughts on these!

 “Oscillation on the pavement always means there’s a love affair.” In TSOT, Sherlock says this to John as John looks out the window of the 221B sitting room and watches a potential client trying to make up her mind about whether to come in.

Sherlock: She’s a client. She’s boring. I’ve seen those symptoms before. Oscillation on the pavement always means there’s a love affair.

This comes from the ACD story “A Case of Identity”:

Holmes: “I have seen those symptoms before. Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de cœur.”

The literal situation in the original story is very similar; Holmes is looking out the window of the sitting room and watching a potential client try to make up her mind about whether to come in. In the show, however, this line is much more significant than just an observation about a client. As many of us have recognized, in the show there’s some very important subtext going on because this is a reference to John’s oscillation on the pavement in TEH, when John came to visit Sherlock after their disastrous reunion but hesitated outside the door.

(gifs from @afishlearningpoetry, here)

So in the show, because the writers also included John’s oscillation on the pavement in the previous episode, this line becomes much more important. The text of the line itself is pretty much the same as in the original story and appears in a very similar immediate context, but the show writers changed the broader context to modify its meaning and significance. Now it’s about Sherlock and John and full of Johnlock subtext.

I also think the fact that we’re talking about a love affair is significant. This tells us that John feels torn between Mary and Sherlock after Sherlock’s return in TEH and he’s not really sure what to do about it. I wonder if this might be a clue that John was already thinking about cheating on Mary with Sherlock in TEH—we saw that he was prepared to do this a few months later during the stag night in TSOT. Read another way, perhaps the reference to an “affair” here indicates that John is already cheating on Sherlock by being with Mary, because the real love story in this show is always the one between Sherlock and John. Just a thought.

When they lifted this line from “A Case of Identity,” the show writers also changed the French phrase “affaire de cœur” to the English phrase “love affair.” I’m not a French speaker, but I think “affaire de cœur” might have the same meaning in French that “love affair” has in English—it’s not just referring to an “affair of the heart,” as in something to do with love, but to an actual affair. But please, if there are any French speakers reading this, I would love to hear what you think! If this phrase does have a different connotation in French, that could be really interesting.

“…he has many fine qualities of his own that he has overlooked in his obsession with me.” There are at least two lines from Sherlock’s best man speech that seem to have been inspired by the original stories, but changed slightly. Here’s the first one.

Sherlock: If I burden myself with a little help-mate during my adventures, it is not out of sentiment or caprice—it is that he has many fine qualities of his own that he has overlooked in his obsession with me.

This comes from “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier,” one of only two stories in the original canon narrated by Holmes instead of Watson. In the original story, Holmes writes this:

Holmes: Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this opportunity to remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my various little inquiries it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own, to which in his modesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances.

Sherlock’s line in TSOT is a bit harsher towards John than what Holmes writes in the original story, but it comes in the section of the speech where Sherlock is purposely trying to make himself look like a jerk. Sherlock is deliberately self-deprecating right after this, explaining that “…if I didn’t understand I was being asked to be best man, it is because I never expected to be anybody’s best friend. Certainly not the best friend of the bravest and kindest and wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune of knowing.” So perhaps we shouldn’t take Sherlock too seriously when reading this line in particular.

Even so, it seems notable to me that the show writers changed the end of the quote and specifically chose to have Sherlock use the word “obsession” to describe John’s attitude towards him. That word isn’t in the passage from the ACD story, so I feel like the writers must have put it there for a reason. To me, “obsession” feels like much stronger language that what Holmes wrote and is more suggestive of love or infatuation than of a platonic relationship.

Moreover, I wonder if Sherlock’s use of the word “obsession” here is also meant to give us a clue as to how Sherlock sees John’s feelings towards him at this point in the narrative. Personally, I think Sherlock has known or suspected that John is in love with him ever since he overheard John and Irene’s conversation at Battersea in ASIB. But I also think that by the time we get to S3 (and especially to HLV) Sherlock and John have both come to believe that their love for each other is destructive and dangerous. (I could write a much longer meta about this, and might do so at some point.) So to me, perhaps Moftisson using the word “obsession” here is meant to indicate that Sherlock believes John’s love for him is unhealthy, or that John doesn’t see him clearly. It’s a very sad thought. But then again, I might be reading too much into this, because after all, this is the part of the speech that Sherlock later tells us to dismiss by revealing that he purposely meant to make himself look bad here.

Although actually that’s still pretty sad, because Sherlock is basically saying that he doesn’t deserve John. So I guess either way, Moftisson took what was actually a pretty sweet and complementary thing that Holmes said about Watson in the original canon and made it part of the evidence that Sherlock is feeling quite down on himself by this point in the narrative of the show.

“…but then, you know, he’s a romantic.” In the best man speech, we also get this line from Sherlock when he’s talking about John’s blog and how John writes up their cases.

Sherlock: Of course, he does tend to romanticize things a bit, but then, you know, he’s a romantic.

In the original ACD stories, Holmes often critiques Watson’s writing style and how he presents their cases in his stories for the Strand and other magazines. One of the first instances of this takes place in The Sign of Four, where Holmes critiques Watson’s write-up of A Study in Scarlet.

Holmes: I glanced over it. Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid. Watson: But the romance was there. I could not tamper with the facts. Holmes: Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it. Watson [narrating to the reader]: I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings.

We could probably have a whole separate conversation about the queer subtext in this passage, but I’ll try to stick to the aspects of this that I think are particularly relevant here. First, Holmes specifically uses the word “romanticism,” basically saying what Sherlock said in the show when he said that John tends to “romanticize” their cases. So this is pretty similar! But what I think is different is that in the passage from The Sign of Four, Holmes is criticizing Watson’s writing in a negative fashion, is actively pointing out areas for improvement, and seems a bit peeved, or at least not wholly impressed. Watson certainly takes it that way, since he writes that he was “annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him.”

In contrast, Moftisson softened Sherlock’s comments significantly for the best man speech. He’s not actually picking a bone with John like Holmes is in the original canon. Sherlock is still saying that John is “a romantic” who “romanticizes” their cases together, but he doesn’t mean it in a bad way!

(gif from thejohnlocked, here)

And now here’s the sad part, because this is BBC Sherlock, after all. When Sherlock says this, his voice drops in pitch a bit and sounds sadder, more subdued. He also looks down, avoiding eye contact with John. So the way this line appears in the show, it’s about Sherlock acknowledging that John is a romantic in the context of John marrying someone else. Sherlock knows that side of John isn’t directed solely or mostly at him anymore.

“Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.” In TLD, Sherlock says this to Faith after he realizes that she’s seriously thinking about committing suicide.

Sherlock: “Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.

This comes from “The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger,” where Holmes also encounters a woman who has a plan to commit suicide and talks her out of it. Moffat wrote TLD, and he took these two sentences in particular straight from the original story with no wording changes:

Holmes: Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.

There’s not much that I like about S4, but I do think this is one place where the writers actually improved on a line from the original canon and used it very effectively in the show. In this scene from TLD, it’s so clear that Sherlock is talking about his own fake suicide. His small speech to Faith demonstrates that he feels deep, genuine regret over his actions on the rooftop that day because of what his fake death did to John.

In the original canon, “The Veiled Lodger” is set in 1896 (see here), so it takes place after Holmes’s fake death at the Reichenbach Falls in 1891 and his return to London in 1894. The dialogue that surrounds the two sentences that Moffat pulled is more about the minor character than about Holmes, though, so although it’s possible that Holmes was thinking of his own fake death when he said them, it’s not as obvious as it is in the show.

In TLD, Sherlock first says “Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it,” to Faith as she’s leaving 221B, similarly to how Holmes says this to the minor character at the end of their interview in “The Veiled Lodger.” But Moffat decided to have Sherlock say these lines again later on when they’re by the water, and in that scene he added this part to Sherlock’s dialogue, which isn’t in the original story and makes it clear what Sherlock is really talking about:

Sherlock: “Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else.

If we accept S4 as the official ending of the show, then Sherlock’s fake suicide in TRF is the crucial turning point in Sherlock and John’s love story. It is the terrible event that they are never able to recover from, and it sets in motion all of the pain that follows after. (This is also something I could write a much longer meta about.) So having Sherlock express such deep regret over it in TLD was actually a very powerful move on Moffat’s part. So yeah, that’s at least one good writing choice in S4. (*Screams*)

Anyway, this is what’s been on my mind recently, and I would love to hear what you think in the reblogs and replies! Thank you for reading 😊

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Never, not ever.

∞ Scenes of Sherlock

Come on. You’ll have to go down.

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I have a few more for you!

Monographs:

The Polyphonic Motets of Lassus - "As to Holmes, he returned refreshed to his monograph upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus, which has since been printed for private circulation, and is said by experts to be the last word upon the subject." ("The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans")

Articles:

Ears - "Each ear is as a rule quite distinctive, and differs from all other ones. In last year's Anthropological Journal you will find two short monographs from my pen upon the subject." ("The Adventure of the Cardboard Box") (@amypihcs pointed this one out in the reblogs!)

In Progress / To Be Written:

Cornish and Chaldean Languages - "The ancient Cornish language had also arrested his attention, and he had, I remember, conceived the idea that it was akin to the Chaldean, and had been largely derived from the Phoenician traders in tin. He had received a consignment of books upon philology and was settling down to develop this thesis, when suddenly...." ("The Adventure of the Devil's Foot")

A list of Sherlock Holmes's Hyperfixations Monographs

"Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects." (The Sign of Four)

Tobacco ash: Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes - "I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco." (The Boscombe Valley Mystery) / "I have made a special study of cigar ashes—in fact, I have written a monograph upon the subject. I flatter myself that I can distinguish at a glance the ash of any known brand, either of cigar or of tobacco." (A Study in Scarlet) / "Here, for example, is one ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.’ In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with colored plates illustrating the difference in the ash." (The Sign of the Four)

Trailing/Tracking - "Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses." (The Sign of the Four)

Hands and occupations- "Here, too, is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers." (The Sign of the Four)

Ciphers - "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writings, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyze one hundred and sixty separate ciphers [...]." (The Adventure of the Dancing Men)

18th century?/historical manuscipts - "It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject." (The Hound of the Baskervilles)

Bees/beekeeping: Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen - "Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.”

Articles:

Theory of criminology: The Book of Life - "Its somewhat ambitious title was “The Book of Life,” and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examiniation of all that came his way."

To be written:

Malingering - "Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph. A little occasional talk about half-crowns, oysters, or any other extraneous subject produces a pleasing effect of delirium.” (The Adventure of the Dying Detective)

Dogs - "I have serious thoughts of writing a small monograph upon the uses of dogs in the work of the detective.” (The Adventure of the Creeping Man)

Typewriters/Typewriting- "I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime." (A Case of Identity)

Please feel free to add what I missed!

[winterdaphne2]

Fun fact: In "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual," Watson refers to himself as having "a natural Bohemianism of disposition." What's more, he does this while likening himself to Holmes, explaining that they were both rather messy flatmates in 221B.

Watson certainly describes Holmes as "Bohemian" more frequently (he does this over and over again in ACD canon, not just in "A Scandal in Bohemia"), but he described himself that way at least once! I've seen it said that Watson is an unreliable narrator, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's not self-aware. ;)

“That’s not a sentence you hear every day.”

You’re right, John, it isn’t.

We’re all very familiar with the sort of cringe-worthy yet sweetly honest scene in TEH where Sherlock and John have this little exchange (and thanks again to Ariane DeVere’s transcripts):

SHERLOCK: See you’ve shaved it off, then. JOHN: Yeah.  Wasn’t working for me. SHERLOCK: Mm, I’m glad. JOHN: What, you didn’t like it? SHERLOCK (smiling): No.  I prefer my doctors clean-shaven. JOHN: That’s not a sentence you hear every day!

Sherlock outs himself as a gay man to John.

John is surprised and focuses on the sentence rather than the meaning, the format instead of the content, as the viewer is supposed to do too.

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