How The Times Choose To Cast Us

The internet has taught people to archive your opinions and weaponize your growth. If you evolve, you're a flip-flopper. If you admit uncertainty, you're weak. If you take time to rethink, you're stalling.

So people fake certainty to avoid punishment.

BISEXUALS GROW FROM THE GROUND

A common story is that several people started throwing insults and/or rocks at the carriage they thought contained his French-born mistress Louise de Kérouaille, calling her the "Catholic whore" until Nell Gwyn leaned out the window and noted with a smile:"Good people, you are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore."

Hear me out: the man laughs at the idea of having Christian scriptures in his house, plays the violin, claims to be from a line of "country squires" but never says where they're from, is described physically in ways that were common descriptions of Jews when the stories first came out (a "thin, hawk-like nose," gray eyes, black hair and tufted brows), is heavily driven by education and justice, one of the first clients Watson ever mentions (although we don't hear the man's story) is "a Jew pedlar" which implies he's known in the Jewish community, and, frankly, this, from The Adventure of the Naval Treaty:

"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner."

Holmes is Jewish and that's that.

his nose is repeatedly described as aquiline. like honestly given doyle's famous consistency that's probably one of his more consistent character traits.

sherlock was. like. not a name anyone gave their kid before. seriously in like twenty years around when he was born there were like under 20 kids named sherlock. you know what it's really close to? like, suspiciously close to? shylock, one of the most famous anglo-jewish literary characters. it could easily have been a name to 'pass' because his real name was, like, shlomo.

also the whole thing where mycroft just. like. appears out of nowhere? yeah, that's mighty suspicious. UNLESS of course mycroft started hiding his jewish identity recently

seriously as noted his family background is. like. suspiciously vague. notably, he says his grandmother was the sister of 'the french artist vernet'. there was more than one french artist named vernet, which makes it kinda weird he didn't clarify. of course, if he was making it up that vagueness would work in his favor.

when we do see the last name of a canonical relative, it's verner. which just doesn't sound very french.

from the opening of the greek interpreter: "During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life...His aversion to women and his disinclination to form new friendships were both typical of his unemotional character, but not more so than his complete suppression of every reference to his own people." now, his own people fairly clearly means "his family". but that's a very awkward phrasing and definitely brings to mind 'jews' more than 'oh yeah his brother'

there's almost no theological references. when watson makes a list of holmes' abilities and his knowledge, theology just doesn't appear. this suggests three possibilities: a) it naturally didn't come up enough for watson to have data on it, which seems unlikely (I doubt swordsmanship came up often, but there's a note on his abilities), b) holmes deliberately avoided the subject, or c) to write it down would involve revealing holmes' faith, which watson knew of when publishing, and so watson did not mention it.

there's a conspicuous lack of references to churches and stuff. I can think of two: victor trevor's dog biting him as he was going to the chapel (probably required at the time in university) and when we see him in a church in a scandal in bohemia, witnessing the marriage of irene adler to godfrey norton, he explicitly describes that as "the most preposterous position in which I ever found myself in my life". which is a little odd, because IMO holding the ancient English crown after you found it buried in an acquaintance's yard while trying to track down the vanished butler who tried to find it via clues in a family coming-of-age ritual handed down over the centuries, is somewhat more preposterous (that's in the musgrave ritual, which takes place before holmes and watson meet). unless there's some other factor. if he's jewish that goes a long way towards explaining that.

the stradivarius he got from "a Jew broker's in Tottenham Court Road for fifty-five shillings", another sign of contact with the Jewish community (we only know that the man looked, to Watson's eyes, like a 'Jew pedlar')

All joking aside, you and I both missed something that was recently brought back to my attention by Granada: The Crooked Man. In many respects it's a nearly-verbatim page-to-screen translation, and it opens with Colonel John Barclay's wife calling him "David."

In both the show and the original short story, when Watson asks Holmes basically "so what was that all about, anyway," Holmes berates himself and says that word alone should have told him exactly what was going on.

Now I ask you: why would an irreligious man raised in an irreligious or Christian household, with "no knowledge" of religion, say his first instinct should have been "oh, that's totally a David and Bathsheba reference," and then be able to identify its location not only as "the Bible" but "first or second Kings"?

Meanwhile, remind me which king and his son are central to the story of the Tanakh, again?

(Also in my head he will forever be Schlomo Holmes now thank you for that)

Happy Black Fae Day!

I did this as part of a collaboration post with many other wonderful black creatives over on IG. My theme was Warrior Fairy.

Creative Direction and editing by me