#sentimentality

This is by far the largest and most long running project I've ever undertaken. I still feel like a child in the woods about it in a lot of ways, despite learning a lot in the past year. I'm incredibly proud of it. It feels amazing every month when we get to the finish line and I go look at all of the games submitted.

The sense of community on the discord has been a huge help and honestly the only reason I managed to keep it going through the last year. At the risk of being overly sentimental, being able to share this thing with other people that really care about it has been the best experience of my life. It's taken what was my unfocused obsession and turned it into something that is actually meaningful.

There's also been blessedly little drama, despite the art community vibe of the whole project.

My goals for the Jam going forward are threefold:

Find a more functional system for encouraging critique between designers. We used to do Review Weekend, but that always put too much pressure to try to get through every submitted game. I'm think maybe we do a game exchange between people on the discord?

I'd like to carve out a little bit of time to run a game here and there on the server. @norbezjones has been the backbone of the play sessions over there, and I'm so grateful to em for all the work e've done. I really would love to encourage more people to jump in and run more games!

Demasiadamente 𝑹omântica e 𝑺entimental.

"Este livro é para todos os jovens — de corpo ou de espírito — que ainda acreditam que o 𝑹omantismo é a maior riqueza da alma".

— 𝑳𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗂𝗋𝖺 𝖽𝖺 𝗌𝖺𝗎𝖽𝖺𝖽𝖾.

For #mayprompts2024. Prompt: box

Sherlock unpacks one of John's secrets.

------------------------------------

“This is everything?”

“It’s mostly Rosie’s stuff. Travel light, myself – oops, sorry, Mrs. Hudson.”

“I’ve just been up there airing the room – when’s the little one coming, then?”

“I pick her up from day care at five. I’m afraid she’s going to be a handful.”

“I can look after her for a bit, if you boys need some peace to unpack all this. Just the once, mind. I’m not your babysitter.”

“She’ll be making the offer twice a week,” said Sherlock quietly as Mrs. Hudson closed the door of the flat behind her. “She’s brought the conversation round to the matter an inordinate number of times. Having a young person about the place.”

“Are you sure you’re all right with that? It’s going to be a lot.”

“John, had I had any misgivings I should have expressed them before now. She will wake us early in the morning, make messes, tantrum, play with her food, and insist on wearing the same jumper five days in a row. I have read three manuals of child-rearing, and watched a stupefying number of videos on the parenting of toddlers.” Sherlock applied himself to cutting the tape on a packing-box, extracting John’s laptop, three shoeboxes, and a purple plush teddy half again as large as Rosie herself.

“Right, just so you know, most of what you learn from those books goes out the window when you actually have to do it.”

“And I understand there will be times when she wants – or needs – you to sleep in her room, and times when she will come into mi – ours.”

“Ours. And you’re all right with that too? Having me in your space?”

“John, need I repeat myself – what’s this?”

“What’s what?” said John from the door of the bedroom, a garment bag over one arm.

“What,” said Sherlock, “are you doing with a Ministerial dispatch-box?”

“Er. Nothing. It’s –”

“This is the sort of box used by the government for transportation of papers at the grade of Secret and above. Only two firms manufacture them – Barrow and Gale, or Wickwar and Company. Customarily they are stamped with gilt lettering, or sometimes a medallion engraved with the name of a specific Ministry, and retiring Ministers have been known to retain the one assigned to them, as a token of their years of service. This one has had the medallion removed.” 

“It. Er. Was a –”

“It appears significantly battered, as if it had seen long use. The modern digital security features are absent, leaving only a common lock –”

“Don’t –”

Sherlock had already picked the lock. A small sheaf of yellowing pages from the Sun and the Express; a familiar, tarnished key that had once opened the original lock of 221B, refitted since his return. A deformed bullet that might just have been dug out of the plaster over the couch; a dusty but otherwise clean Petri dish, identical to the ones currently clustered at one corner of the kitchen table; other unidentified objects that rolled and rattled beneath the folded clippings.

Near the bottom was a cheap, tatty fore-and-aft cap, fraying grosgrain ties sewn into the earflaps – the kind that had seen a flurry of sales by street vendors and souvenir shops after Sherlock snatched one up to hide his face from paparazzi and ended up splashed across the covers of the tabloids. Three flash drives fell out of the crown as he picked it up.

“John. I should never have expected you to purchase your very own Sherlock Holmes hat. Or to store it in a dispatch box of unknown provenance.”

“Erm. After you were – gone.”

Sherlock waited.  

“Mycroft came round. Offered to pay the rent until I – could make plans to move out. Or, well, even if I didn’t. I – told him I just couldn’t stay here, and he said he understood, and he’d take charge of the clearing-out. But the next day he sent Anthea round with that and – a note. In case there were – mementoes I might want to carry away.”

“Sentimentality. How uncharacteristic of my brother.”

“For a while I kept the Webley in there too. Just that little bit of trouble it takes to find the key, you know… And then, when I met Mary, I just. Loaded my blog onto some old thumb drives and chucked them into it, and shut the lid.”

“I would have expected you to… discard all this. When we weren’t – when you said you never cared to speak to me again.”

“I guess there are some things that are so – well – so secret you have to hide them even from yourself.”

Sherlock stood, holding the box at present arms as if carrying it into Parliament.

“John, do you think you could do without this box for just a bit?”

“I don’t suppose I need it any more. Back here now – bugger, that’s my reminder alarm. Need to go get the little terror from Mrs. Patel’s.”

“It is. Ah. Possible that I am sentimental too. And I believe I would like the personalisation replaced. John H. Watson, M. D. Or ought it to say John Hamish?”

“Not if you want me to sleep in your bed.”

“There’s room for… many more thumb drives in it. All the tales to come, backed up in a place of honour. Perhaps the mantel, if you wouldn’t object.”

“Definitely not Hamish then.”

The phone in John’s breast pocket burred again. “Better go.”

“Hurry back,” said Sherlock, tucking the box under one arm and extending his other hand

“Welcome home, John.”

“Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, MD, Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid… It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine...”

--The Problem Of Thor Bridge