I'm a fan of BBC Sherlock & the Holmes canon, that's what I post about here. My main is @sapphiclitstudent if you want to check it out. I'm in uni, studying (mainly) literature, dealing with, among other things, Sherlock Holmes.
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Look, I know that Enola Holmes (movies) is all popcorn feminism, and I was prepared for a fun little marriage thing. Instead, they decided to do colonialism, which... is a challenging topic for a popcorn feminist movie.
But they didn't really do a story about colonialism. They did a revolutionary who wanted a free Malta as comedic relief, wtf. They did Moriarty as an angry black woman who's partly... just trying to get a rise out of Sherlock? Like is this a Batman-Joker thing? They did a few throwaway comments. And they did this bizarre plot where the English colonial forces feel guilty about stealing from Afghanistan. Apparently more guilty than the modern English.
They left Mycroft, the only person who might have been actually happy for Enola choosing to get married, out of the movie without any explanation at all, just a crossed out name. (I mean, they showed how time passed. They could have shown a reconciliation.)
The talks about marriage were off putting, and I'm not even someone who like marriage as an institution. The whole argument Sherlock and Enola have about it felt like it was pulled from bad fanfiction. The argument between Enola and Tewkes (I will admit to liking "Earnest" as a name for him, but the last name is shit) was weird.
So. She's late, gets in a carriage in her wedding dress. Along the way, the coachman thinks they're being chased by a bandit. She gets on top of the carriage, losing bits of her wedding dress along the way, and ends up falling off. I mean, okay, movie magic that she wasn't seriously injured but what exactly is the sequence after that? Because... coachman gets to the wedding, says "she fell off the carriage with a bandit chasing us!" at a noble's wedding where the godfather's a Brigadier or something, and honestly, I think the narrative would be the army being mobilized, not everyone returns to the house and whispers "how dare she miss her wedding." People would be fussing over her whether she liked it or not. They'd take it as an omen that the wedding isn't meant to be if they hated her, not whispering about how scandalous it was that she didn't get to the wedding.
The end the movie with Tewkesbury "giving up his title" to shack up with the Holmes daughter in sin after being "married" by Eudoria. His own mom was there, yeah? Holy shit that's unhinged for the upper class in the Victorian era. And where did his title go? Someone who won't be a reformer but gets his seat in the House? Nice, guess Grandma Tewkesbury won in the end.
If they'd really wanted to talk about colonialism, having Mycroft there as a counterbalance to Enola's outrage about the theft could have made for something interesting, but instead we had the poor godfather who felt guilty about it and wasn't told where the gold was because it was so shameful. To the British army. See? Because he's a good colonizer, he feels guilty that he stole things that they would have justified as spoils of war, and it's the Empire's fault they couldn't give it back!
And then there were the flashbacks. It felt like I was back in the 90s when the flashback filler episode was popular. I mean, I guess it wasn't quite that bad, but still, it was weird.
I can forgive the costuming. It was boring, the makeup was weird, but whatever. But I don't know. This was just so disappointing to me, and I probably haven't even really talked about everything I disliked. It was disjointed and I was very disappointed for something I was really looking forward to.
oh yes! every adapter has their own thing. i know it, you know it, everyone knows this.
here’s the thing. i have no idea what they were trying for in enola holmes.
what are they saying? was this made by 50 people? in an office? planned out the plot over a teams meeting? because it feels like it. Enola being late for the wedding. Tewkesbury giving up his title. the whole colonization spiel.
This scene has always been very important to me, and now that I'm getting more sentimental with age, it constantly brings tears to my eyes. The fact that John couldn't tell the therapist about Mary's hallucination, but started talking to her in front of Sherlock, killed me, tore my heart out, and continues to do so with every rewatch.🙏
is this a record? making them gay even though they probably only held about 3% of the franchise’s overall screentime. i mean establishing john and johnlock in (essentially) one movie with about 5 total minutes of screentime is just insane
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HE MADE TEA. John Watson made tea for Sherlock every day since they started living together and asked him about his cases, and when he stopped, Sherlock came to him with tea. Sherlock Holmes made tea for him and then told him about a case.
No one will ever know how much I freaked out, I really did, hearing that. Sherlock Holmes doing something for another person to connect socially with them without receiving anything in return and without, apparently, any ulterior motives.
Also: John's Diaries!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then Enola brought Tewkesbury a cup of something ( I don't care if it's tea or sewage water ) she, Enola Holmes, brought a cup of a drink to her love pair.
Fuck I love parallels. Holmes and their love language. The best? John was ready to give up on his tentative friendship and then Sherlock came with a cup of tea. Tewkesbury and Enola have a fight and he was, probably, ready to be abandoned and then she came with a cup of something.
[about the nature of adaptations and neo-victorian narratives]
Screaming this into the void because I need to talk about why people actually get frustrated with BBC Sherlock:
A huge reason so many casual viewers ended up deeply disappointed by BBC Sherlock is that we have been conditioned to equate "book accuracy" with "being a good adaptation."
People assume that if a new piece of media is inspired by an older text, its only job is to be a faithful translator. If it changes things, it "failed."
But BBC Sherlock isn’t just a standard adaptation. I need everyone to understand the concept of neo-victorian narratives.
A Neo-Victorian narrative doesn't just copy a victorian story; it uses the Victorian era to do something entirely new. It acts as a meta-commentary. Its job is to reveal something hidden about the primary source, look at it through a modern lens, and ask uncomfortable questions about both the 19th century and our own time. BBC Sherlock takes the original stories and tries to say something specific about modern technology, isolation, masculinity, and media obsession.
(And to be clear: these aren't rigid, separate categories—it’s a continuum.BBC Sherlock sits at a really chaotic crossroads where pastiche (imitating a style), fanfiction (transformative work born of obsession), and neo-victorian narratives all bleed into each other. It actively functions as what scholars call critical fiction or implicative criticism. This is when a new story acts as a literal essay or critique of the original text. The writers aren't just copying Conan Doyle; they are using their own characters to argue with him, dissecting how Victorian tropes function when you drag them into the 21st century. It's a text about a text.)
But here is the real kicker—and why I think people struggle with it so much:
Neo-Victorian narratives generally work best in prose(books). Think: Sarah Waters' novels.
Why? Because the more modes of communication you add to a piece of media—visuals, editing tricks, soundscapes, lighting—the harder it is for the average audience to read the subtext.
When you read a book, words are all you have. Your brain is forced to look between the lines and decode the author's hidden commentary. But on a TV screen, your senses are completely overloaded.
All of those sensory channels end up blinding the audience. People get so distracted by the aesthetic and the plot that they stop looking for the subtext entirely. They treat it like a literal, straightforward translation of Conan Doyle, and when the text doesn't match up 1:1, they feel cheated.
We are judging a complex, multi-layered neo-victorian commentary by the flat, boring rules of "book accuracy"—and it's why the discourse around the show has been stuck in a loop for a decade.
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The Holmes depicted in his stories: Gets very angry when he feels people are being taken advantage of. Gets upset with himself when a client is hurt/killed when he makes a mistake/didn't act soon enough. Will make social blunders considered rude, but apologizes when he realizes he offended them. Clearly pays attention to the little details about Watson, despite claiming to only keep relevant information in his brain. Clearly enjoys just spending time with Watson outside of cases (going to an orchestra, walking around the neighborhood with him, just hanging out at Baker Street)
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God forbid a man wants to draw Sherlock Holmes in a diva pose (rambling about my inspo under cut + close ups)
this drawing probably has a deep meaning I'm not aware of but I genuinely thought of it while listening to Queen of the Night by The Vanished People (give it a listen!) and so I thought of the flower and then I'm johnlock pilled and what flower does fit the sun/moon and night/day theme better than the sunflower...
+ johnlock close ups!
I absolutely apologise for not posting in an eternity but burnout and artblock hit me like a train...trying to survive
