logging into tumblr for the first time in like 6 years because martin freeman and benedict cumberbatch were seen together. I'm donning the tinfoil hat again
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I think I'm going to bring this old johnlock print of mine to Dashcon 2 when I table there this year !!! Seems fitting since it was popular back in the day
Since I'm taking my time with my second Fandom Trumps Hate story, I've decided to give you all a small teaser. I won't give the title away yet, but the prompt from the brilliant @totallysilvergirl was that John can sing. Really sing. And he's managed to keep it a secret. Even from Sherlock! Yes, that's right.
As is my wont, I always rec fics (influenced long ago by my lovely recipient) and to my astonishment, I found that there are very few fics with this topic. Another reason to write one.
Excerpt:
John’s blog.
Anniversary Post
Congratulations to me on my tenth blog post! I know for a fact that the main character I’m writing about won’t even notice, but to me it is kind of a milestone. If you think that this is the tenth case I’ve been privy to, you’re wrong. Not every case is worth writing about. Some of them are actually classified if you can believe it. Shh…
If you are a regular reader, you know how this normally goes – clients and/or the police want Sherlock to help with their predicament. This time, though, things were slightly different.
I got an email from an acquaintance I hadn’t spoken to – nor thought of – in years. Claire Burnell nee Turnbull who I went to school with back in the day, has moved up in the world apparently. She is now the lady of Matfen Hall: Northumberland’s only five-star hotel. In fact, it is also a spa and a golf resort. Very posh going by the website, which is extensive. Or excessive, as Sherlock described it.
Anyway.
A little digression – you all know how heedful Sherlock is of his brain capacity, which is why I was utterly befuddled when he seemed to know Claire’s sister, Chloe. I only remember her as a clingy eight-year-old, but of course, she’s a grown woman now. And an acclaimed classical pianist. Hence Sherlock’s knowledge, I suppose.
Having read the email, I was quite certain I would have to disappoint Mrs Burnell – the case was a five at best – and Sherlock refuses to even leave the flat for less than a seven. If we were to help with this one, though, we’d have to leave London for the rural parts of Northumberland. My hopes weren’t high, but for the sake of my previous relations to Mrs Burnell, I decided to at least ask Sherlock when he got home from wherever he was at that particular moment. He sure wasn’t at Tesco to get milk, I can tell you that much!
I won’t bore you all with Sherlock’s deductions about my previous relationship with Claire Turnbull (now Burnell) – let’s just say they were just as substantial as Matfen Hall’s website.
To my utter befuddlement, Sherlock readily agreed to take the case.
“You do realise we need to travel to Northumberland, yes?” I asked, just to be sure he’d understood what it would entail to solve Mrs Burnell’s plight.
“Don’t be obtuse, John!”
And that was apparently that, because the next day we were on the 8.30 train from King’s Cross, which would reach Newcastle a little after 11 a.m.
Nobody cares, but I am on a Sherlock rewatch bender. Those 2 years between season 2 and 3 went on forever (and was damn good fun!!).
I am just in awe of Martin Freeman's acting in this scene. He never says a word while his expression goes from shock to confusion to anger to murderous rage in each different shot.
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Sherlock fandom. TW: canonical suicide, blood, depression.
It Was My Fault
Somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that I was to blame for Sherlock’s suicide. I should have observed more carefully. When I think about our last encounter – before the roof incident – God, I was so angry with him! But now, I’m able to peel away his obnoxious behaviour and to see how anxious he was. He already knew what he was about to do next - once he got me to leave - and it must have terrified him. Even the great Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have been indifferent to jumping from a building to his inevitable death.
“You have blood on your hands, Watson. His blood.”
This is a mantra I tend to torment myself with when I wake from a nightmare; a horrible dream where I see him fall in slow motion to prolong my agony. When I finally reach him - no one stops me this time - I place my palms on his beautiful face, wipes away the blood, closes his eyes, and pecks his lips.
“Sleep tight, Sherlock. I love you. I’m sorry.” I whisper in his ear.
The dream always ends with people appearing to take him away. I fight them like a tiger, but to no avail.
I wake with his name on my lips, tears streaming down my cheeks, and my heart shatters once more.
***
He looked like twelve that day – his last day on Earth. Just like he did the first time I met him. Seen in hindsight, something was different, though.
There was a bone deep sadness in his features when he played with the stress ball as if he’d realised how I and his other friends would react once they realised that he was dead. And yes, he did have more than one friend; I was just one of many.
Mrs Hudson, for starters. In fact, she was more like a mother to him. She grieves as if she were, for sure.
Then there’s Greg, Molly, Angelo, Wiggins, Mike; his entire homeless network, for goodness’ sake! Not to mention everyone who owed him a favour; there must be dozens, if not hundreds.
And still, he was dead (pardon the pun) serious when he declared that I was his only friend after we’d solved the Baskerville case. I could tell that he wasn’t shamming; trying to get into my good grazes again. It was pure honesty. By then, I had learned to discern the difference.
I can’t spend too much time thinking about that, or I’ll break down.
Why did he feel the need to take his own life when…
***
I’ve stopped bringing Mrs Hudson when I visit his grave. She’s so fragile. It’s as if her sassy personality died that day too.
In the beginning, I always stood in front of his elegant gravestone like a soldier keeping watch, but now – if the weather allows it – I sit cross-legged on the grass instead. It’s oddly comforting to talk to the black stone as if it is actually him.
“Hi, Sherlock. I miss you. The flat is so quiet. Even when you were lying supine on the sofa, lost in your head, you filled the room with life. You were the most animated person I’ve ever known, even when you barely moved a muscle. I’m considering moving out, finding my own place. Too many memories and ghosts in 221B nowadays.
“There’s a new nurse at work. Mary. She tries to flirt with me. It doesn’t work, but she’s quite persistent, I’ll give her that. Soon enough, she’ll realise that it’s a futile endeavour. I’ve even said so, but she just shrugged and winked at me. It was unsettling. Nobody has winked at me since you did it before you walked out of the lab that January day in 2010. I guess I should be flattered. Once, I would have been. Not after meeting you, though.”
***
My nightmares are always worse after I’ve visited his grave. In this particular dream, I have blood smeared on my palms. I realise this too late.
Like I usually do, I place my hands on his cheeks, but instead of wiping bloody off his face, I add more. In desperation, I try do clean my hands by rubbing them on my jeans, but it keeps pouring out of my palms like small fountains. We both drown in it.
When I finally wake, the bed is damp. My t-shirt and pants are soaked. For one horrible moment, I thought I’d peed myself, but it is only malodorous sweat.
***
“It was my fault,” I tell Mrs Hudson when we have tea together the day after I thought I’d drowned in my own and Sherlock’s blood.
“Nonsense, dear. You know there was no stopping him when he had made up his mind. Silly boy.”
She cries a little and I hold her gently until she manages to gather herself.
We watch the last Bond film, which she takes great delight in. Strangely enough, this makes me miss Sherlock even more.
Despite that I chided him for ridiculing the plot and the insane stunts, I secretly loved it. I guess he knew that, because he never stopped commenting, and he had this smug expression on his face while doing it.
If I concentrate, I can hear his voiceover.
“That stunt is impossible to survive, John. He doesn’t even have a scratch, for God’s sake! This inanity kills your brain cells, you know.”
I smile when Daniel Craig – against all odds - survives yet again, regardless of Sherlock predictions.
***
To my surprise, I sleep well that night, and I wake more rested than I have in a long time. Perhaps this is a sign that things are about to change for the better.
Inspired by the fabulous @dragonnan's Blood and Romance (included by permission)
*
Too old for this: my first half-thought as I flail and thrash my way back to consciousness. I’m underwater, aching to breathe, but I’ll die if I do; but it isn’t cold enough, I’m not wet, where the hell I hurt all over and something’s wrong, it’s dark where is Sherlock
If I’m not under water, I can breathe; I open my lips a hair and no water floods in, so I take a careful breath and it’s air. Not sweet, God no, tastes like mould and sewage, but definitely air, and shakily I suck it in.
I blink and try to focus but can’t see anything. Where the hell am I, and where is Sherlock? There—a second complete thought, even if it’s just the ragged scraps from before stringing together into sense, that’s got to be a good sign.
Okay. Okay. Stop, where am I. Listen.
In a silence so loud, a darkness so complete, I can hear my racing heartbeat even over my ragged panting—but nothing else, not close by. I can’t breathe through my nose at all. I try to shift to generate some sound, get some idea at least of what kind of surface I’m near or on. Take stock: everything hurts but I can’t tell from what, I can’t gather any sensory data to extrapolate anything from. (Sherlock would say, deduce. I’m not Sherlock. He’d know what to do to get some clarity here; I’m just starting to panic.)
finish reading on AO3
*
A Thousand Words: A picture's proverbially worth a thousand words and often inspires them, though the words may be many more or many fewer, as the Muse decides. Each chapter is a one-shot, inspired (so far) by @kettykika78, @justanobsessedpan, @stephdrawsjohnlock, @bluebellofbakerstreet, @petite-madame, and now dragonnan: more to come.
Thank you to all the artists who do fanworks: you are a constant inspiration. And to the betas (@copperplatebeech for this ficlet) you are a godsend. And to the readers: we wouldn't be posting our stories without you.
Thanks for reblogging! Let me know whether to tag or untag you.
HEY. OKAY. SO. I went off in the groupchat this morning a little and I think I want to say this in public to ALL of my fellow Fandom Elders.
I have been a fangirl online for thirty years now, and YOU KNOW WHAT? I'm tired of my peers apologetically calling themselves ancient grandma fandom mummy hags!
It's not weird that we are here! There are SO MANY OF US! We're not outliers, we're not oddballs. We are occupying a space we CREATED and we are still fucking here, having fun with all our younger online friends, which is COOL AND GOOD and NOT EMBARRASSING ACTUALLY. It's fucking rad.
Look. We *built* online fandom, comrades! We built it with Angelfire and Geocities and the fucking telephone cables we unhooked from our phones to plug into our enormous, boxy desktop computers to suffer through glacial download speeds that today's children can't even fathom. I think we should all agree to stop apologizing for being here when this is our fucking house.
An excellent sentiment (not mine):
To all of my beloved young friends - remember this when you get older. You don't need to grow out of fandom. Who the fuck cares if it's cringe? Childlike joy is something to CELEBRATE, NOT SOMETHING TO BURY AND HIDE!
Fandom costs no money! Fandom doesn't require gas mileage or plane tickets! Fandom promotes human connections! The world is cold and miserable and full of pain. Don't fucking give up simple things that fill your heart with joy just because you feel like you should now that you have arbitrarily grown 'too old' to enjoy them.
you know what, as someone who wrote kirk/spock with ballpoint pen in her spiral notebook and later was a MSR on listserv, i will ABSOLUTELY accept "fandom upperclassmen" over fandom grandma, since i'm not even anyone's MOM except the cat. (also it makes me think of x-men first class and i like the idea of being sir patrick or sir ian)
You know what, I'm okay with "fandom elder." I am an elder. I found fandom in the mid-/late 90s -- MSR on alt.tv.x-files.creative, Ephemeral, and Gossamer. My first website was on Angelfire, next was on Geocities, Tripod after that I think. I was around for the Shipping Wars (Shippers vs. Noromos) and the No Mulder No Watch folks after season 7.
I'm Generation Jones, a term I found on Reddit. Late Boomer/early GenX. I'm 3 years older than David Duchovny, 4 years younger than Anthony Stewart Head. I was an active fic writer 1999-2005, then Life Happened.
In 2024 I was back home, stagnating creatively. My elderly dad was living with me, diagnosed with dementia and declining. I was balancing a full-time job, taking care of Dad (with some help from my self-employed sisters), sinking deeper into a decade-long chronic depression. I started watching The X-Files again in the evenings when Dad would start to sundown, and good lord, did that show still ROCK. I started watching more, found the X-Files and X-Files Fanfic subreddits, found out about Tumblr, and most importantly started feeling like I wanted to write again.
Dad died in April 2025. I posted my first new story in 20 years three months later. I posted all my old fics to AO3 and I'm still writing new stuff -- will be posting a new fic hopefully next week.
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that fandom -- specifically THIS fandom, The X-Files fandom -- saved my life.
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
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Jerry Springer: Welcome to the show! Today we have a consulting detective, his best friend, and the wife who’s been keeping more secrets than either of them. Please welcome Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, and Mary Watson!
[Audience applauds. Sherlock looks annoyed. John looks uncomfortable. Mary smiles politely.]
Jerry: Sherlock, why are you here?
Sherlock: Because my brother made me choose between this and therapy. I weighed my odds and thought this was the lesser of two evils.
Jerry: And has it been?
Sherlock: No.
[Audience laughs.]
Jerry: John, what’s the biggest problem in your friendship with Sherlock?
John: Well he did pretend to be dead for two years, that will put a damper on any kind of relationship.
Sherlock: You are still holding on to that? I came back months ago.
[Audience chatter.]
Jerry: Mary, you’ve had some secrets too.
Mary: Fair enough.
Jerry: Former assassin. Fake identities. International operations.
Mary: When you say it like that, I sound kind of cool.
John: YOU SHOT SHERLOCK!
Mary: In my defense, I aimed carefully.
Sherlock: She did. It was very well done. Quite professional.
Jerry: Hold on. You got shot by your best friend’s wife and you’re complimenting her?
Sherlock: Competence should be acknowledged in all its forms.
[Audience laughs.]
Jerry: John, who causes you more stress?
John: Honestly?
Sherlock and Mary: Me.
John: Exactly!
[Audience applause.]
Jerry: Final question for John, who do you love more … Sherlock or Mary?
John: I… I…
Mary: John?
John: Um… Err…..
Sherlock: well , John?
[John throws a chair and runs off stage. Audience starts chanting “Jerry! Jerry!]
Jerry: Well, we’ve learned that friendship, marriage, and detective work are all complicated. And between that complication we might solve something bigger than crimes… our love for one another. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.
Sherlock: You only say that since the television network wants you to sound compassionate while they actively encourage scandal and shock value, potentially ruining people’s lies and familial relationships.
[Jerry mimes to the camera to cut the feed and muffled sounds of a detective being strangled while the credits roll and the audience applauds.]
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“The entire Sherlock fandom is sustained on the ridiculous belief that it’s perfectly normal to edit and reblog the same exact screencaps in hundreds of different ways”
origamiaround
prguitarman
2087
gummygunk
