i ❤️ bbc sherlock series 4

the magazines in 221b that may or may not include photos of men in uniform and shooting guns

when wanda was with us, we started talking about s4 specifically and she asked us if we’d all seen all of it, and we were all like “oh yeah” and then she asked “and did you know what it was about?”

everyone said “yeah!” and THEN she was like “but did you know what it was about?” a little bit more slowly and deliberately and at this point everyone’s a little confused and no one’s really answering and i’m leaning so far forward i’m about to fall onto the floor

a couple of months ago i was reading this book for my lgbt+ american history and literature class called The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White, which is a semi-autobiographical book about a gay man growing up in the 50s and 60s (and it’s also really really good). but as i was trying to read it in peace i stumbled upon this line that just stopped me because i knew it, and i just sat there like ‘what the fuck’ before realizing why i recognized it: 

“But for me, the tuxedos (which depersonalize waiters and lend distinction to friends)…”

here’s the paragraph in full

and i realized that it’s almost identical to one of sherlock’s lines in the empty hearse

and i was like oh my god MARK and it was bothering me for months because i researched it to see if maybe both sources were referencing something else altogether but i couldn’t find anything. and so finally this past sunday at the sherlocked con, i was like ‘shit i never asked mark about that book’ and i looked over and there was no one in line for an autograph from him so i went over and asked the woman next to him if i could take a few minutes to ask him a question

and she said yes and so i started telling him this whole story and it was really sweet because when i asked him if he’d read the book he was like “of course i have :)” like genuinely happy to be talking about this book and possibly to realize what i was bringing up

and i told him about how i’d recognized it and realized what it was and i was about to say ‘because it’s in the empty hearse!’ and he cut me off and said ‘it’s the line about the waiter’ and i was like ‘!!! yeah!’ and he started reciting the line with me like. saying it right behind him and i got so excited to have that finally answered, because i mean he just straight up told me that he referenced THAT quote in THAT SCENE