All Hail to the Queen

You’re so right. I remember watching 1x01 and thinking “wow! they got the texts to pop up on the screen, that’s super cool!” and thinking it was just like. A super well done show and so amazing. But looking back, what I actually liked about it was the snappy editing and the little bit of development that Martin Freeman was allowed to give to his character.

Apart from that, the show is so full of… contempt? Like even from the beginning, there’s this sense that the show thinks you’re probably too stupid to be watching it, but sure, I guess we’ll let you tag along and see what a clever, amazing person Sherlock is. He’s definitely smarter than you though so don’t even try to engage with the source material, a dummy like you could never get anything right.

And – I think this part was really important actually – because in ep1, Sherlock responds to John actually being impressed by his deductions with the startled vulnerability of someone who’s never before met someone who doesn’t immediately want to either defeat him in battle or never speak to him again. John is truly impressed with Sherlock, but unthreatened by him, and Sherlock doesn’t really know what to do with that but he really doesn’t want to lose it. So he invites John along on his case, and then shows off for him like a peacock flashing his tail in the nervous hope that John might say more nice things, and he’s clearly floored when John does.

And that’s a really good dynamic on which to build a friendship! Closet thrill-seeker who’s extremely secure in his own abilities befriends arrogant mean girl genius who’s spent so long being envied and disliked by everyone he meets that he imprints like a duckling on the first person who doesn’t do that, but he has no clue how friendships work so he just drags this person to crime scenes and worse in the hopes that somehow this’ll do the trick.

But although John is confident in his own abilities, the writers don’t actually want him to have any. My beef with this show actually started in the very next episode, where John and his date get kidnapped by bad guys. They’re tied up and being interrogated, and John is unable to do literally anything but sit there and yell about it, even when they nearly murder his date. Sherlock has to swoop in and save the day.

In ep1 when John meets Mycroft, Mycroft’s parting shot is “fire your therapist,” because she says John’s psychosomatic tremble is a response to danger but Mycroft has been unsubtly threatening him and his tremble has firmed up and gone. John responds to danger with level-headed courage, we are told this explicitly in the text. And then when his date is about to be murdered by bad guys who believe he knows the location of the hidden whatever, he can’t find the presence of mind to fucking lie about it? String them along a little? Come up with SOME way to buy time, convince the bad guys he’s cooperating so they’ll stop paying so much attention and he can figure out a way to send a message, something. Anything.

@cafffine​ I hope it’s cool that I’m copying your tags onto this longer version of the post, bc on the surface that’s just the rache/rachel thing writ large – what if we took the thing that it wasn’t in the book and did that instead! – but it’s also part of this deep contempt the writers have for just…people. I was going to say ‘regular people’ but actually there are no people as clever as their version of sherlock, he’s the specialest guy in the whole wide world and he can never be wrong.

And first of all, that’s just so much more boring than a full on genre twist. The brilliance of making the shift into horror “our infallible detective was wrong,” thus signifying that the rules of the detective story no longer apply, and that same realization is also “the rules of reason and civilization we were operating by are useless, the superstitious locals are right, there be monsters here.” That’s the opening to Dracula! That’s classic horror! What a seamless genre transition, what a great way to shock your readers, what excellent suspense and what a cool mystery.

But it requires Sherlock to be wrong. It requires him to be completely wrong, and specifically it requires him to be wrong to have dismissed the locals as superstitious peasants whose fears were silly. It requires him to admit that just because he’s smarter than someone doesn’t mean his worldview is more correct.

I agree with everything in this post except this one specific sentence, with which I disagree vehemently. They are showing off their contempt for mystery writing as a concept. Mysteries are a dialogue between author and audience, in which the audience is an active participant and collaborator. Crafting an engaging mystery that is difficult but possible for the audience to solve is an artistic feat of incredible skill.

Vax telling Gilmore he didn't want to string him along made it clear out of game that his feelings towards Keyleth were his priority, even though it happened where the other characters were not able to hear.

Similarly, Vex giving her blessing eventually after her initial resistance signaled to Liam that this would not be a major break between the twins.

Vax asking Vex what she intended to do about her feelings for Percy served not only as an opportunity for her to voice them to someone; it also serves as a big green light for Taliesin as Percy to kiss Vex later that episode (which he had already from Vex's resurrection ritual, but it underscores it).

Pike talking about Scanlan with Keyleth and Vex allows her to make it clear that she does ultimately like a lot of things about him despite sometimes being annoyed, and her talking to him through her earring while Scanlan is very much not there but Sam is at the table also serves as this kind of green light.

Jester asking Veth about kissing in relationship to Fjord lets Travis know where Jester is at and invests Veth in-game in the relationship.

Caleb asking Jester if she's "sweet on [Fjord]" lets her openly reassess her feelings after an intense arc and also indicates in-game that Caleb has noticed.

Beau waiting to hear the sound of thunder signals to Ashley (who was not at the table but who was presumably staying updated on events) that Beau has feelings for Yasha; it also allows those playing Yasha (often Matt for pure RP and Travis in combat) to return that flirting, since the baseline was already established.

Possibly the most obvious example, but Beau and Fjord's conversation on Rumblecusp not only clarifies to the whole table where everyone is (opening the door, for example, for the scenes in the beer garden a few episodes later of Caleb having Fjord and Jester dance together and Caduceus encouraging Yasha to pursue Beau) but very much serves as a green light to Ashley and Laura respectively. This is then mirrored by them talking after Beau has asked Yasha on a date and Fjord and Jester have kissed, and everyone involved can "debrief" with their partners not present in-game.

As mentioned, this is mostly about PC/PC relationships because PC/NPC is an inherently different dynamic mechanically though still should be a conversation, but Veth describing Yeza and Jester asking Caleb about his feelings about Essek both give Matt clues for playing these NPCs and how things might be received.

FRIDA mentioning their crush on FCG to Deanna means it's not a complete surprise to Sam, since it is a very sudden relationship, and lets him prepare and decide how FCG would feel in the moment, and also establishes how Deanna will feel about it.

However, those places of Texas that are close to Arkansas, do not include “close to Fort Smith, Arkansas.”

The closest Texas gets to Fort Smith is about 185 miles (about 300km), at “a little closer than Texarkana.” (Dallas, fwiw, is about 275 miles/450km from Fort Smith.)

It’s bigger than this.

According to Wikipedia, the poet Mary Karr was born in 1955 and grew up in Groves, Texas and “lived there until she moved to Los Angeles in 1972.” So she would have been there when she was 13 and attempted suicide.

According to Google Maps, the shortest driving distance between Groves, TX and Fort Smith, AR is 439 miles (or 706 km for metric using folks).

That’s almost 8 hours of driving.

Almost 16 hours roundtrip.

(I assume he broke every speed limit he could.)

That’s how much this man loved his daughter.

May we all be worthy of such love.

May we all be capable of giving such love.

The effects of the writer's strike are months down the road which made it a whole lot easier to support because as third parties we weren't really being affected (yet), the effect of the actor's strike is going to be immediate and we're going to get a lot more propaganda of "these people are overpaid to begin with."

Remember our desire for content does not supersede these people's rights to live.

No individual actor or writer is at fault if a project gets delayed or cancelled.