Tanok Smerti

the ol’ jitterbug!!!

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Re reading A Study in Scarlet and thinking about thin haggard nosy John Watson and young manic showoff Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote this and now 140 years later I have to go insane. Btw did you know that “earnest” was code for gay at the time in London specifically did you did you know that

I need every single person to understand how horrible tumblr’s tagging system is

I go into the tag for epilepsy and its all flashing lights. We can’t use our own tag because people without epilepsy fill it up with improper warnings.

Use ‘flashing’ in place of ‘epilepsy’ in your tags. You aren’t warning people of epileptics, you’re warning us of flashing lights. Please please tag properly. Epileptics say this endlessly and constantly and it’s ignored. You are risking lives by doing this.

Here’s proof of what I mean:

notes or tags telling us to

“just get a new tag”

Cleveland St. scandal -> July 1889

The Sign of the Four -> February 1890

Taking into account that A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887, it’s very possible that ACD was writing TSo4 WHILE this was happening.

The scandal was a VERY BIG DEAL at the time, considering there were notable people found to be connected (included men of royalty). If ACD was at all nervous about there being ANY homoerotic connotations towards his work, he would’ve added in Mary to protect himself as soon as he could. Which, coincidentally, he did.

Just some food for thought :^)

It was in the year ’95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great University towns…

This is from The Adventure of the Three Students.

So what is this “combination of events” in 1895, into which Watson need not enter, that caused Watson and Holmes to leave town? Most chronologies place 3STU as occurring sometime in spring, and well, what else occurred in spring of ‘95?

The trials of Oscar Wilde. We can imagine that Holmes and Watson are leaving London due to the controversy, persecution and panic for queer people caused by the trials.

Now, 3STU was written in 1904, years after the trials occurred, and four years after Wilde had passed away. But the points I am making in bringing it up is that, as the above posts are saying…These sorts of real-life events certainly could have had an influence on Doyle’s writing. 

Being careful about making sure his work couldn’t be used against him in court would definitely be something on Doyle’s mind, because not only is that exactly what happened to his friend Oscar Wilde, but also to another man that Doyle knew and attempted to defend but who ultimately ended up being hanged to death, partly because of his diaries being discovered in which his homosexuality was detailed (he was hanged for treason but the content of the diaries worsened his case). So Doyle personally knew at least two people, two people who he liked and respected, two people who died because of things they had written being used against them–one sentenced to hanging and the other whose sentence worsened his health until it may as well have been a death sentence. So it wouldn’t be a stretch at all to assume that Doyle was trying to avoid writing anything that could possibly get him in trouble as had happened to his friends.

First of all, as is well established in this fandom, Watson is an unreliable narrator. Not only is that known through shaky details in the stories which can’t be explained- for example, his wound which magically changes places- but Watson explicitly states on multiple occasions that he has changed aspects of the cases (names, dates, etc).

Then there’s the wife, which I’m purposely addressing as ‘the wife’ because Mary Morstan was introduced as an orphan (an integral detail to TSoF), so how can she visit her family in later stories? Watson doesn’t go out of his way to explain his marriage -or divorce, if that’s applicable (it’s not)- and seems to forget the wife entirely. Ultimately, the wife becomes a phenomenon… a plot device. (She’s not real, basically)

So, ACD is aware that he couldn’t write a homosexual relationship into his stories due to the potential consequences of that (as evidenced above) but he’s not denying it. Well, if he is, he’s not doing a very good job. Watson is known and caught red-handed of hiding or changing details- his true relationship with Holmes is one of them. And ACD wants the correct people to know this- homophobic readers can think of multiple explanations for the bachelors on Baker Street and their true nature (cough cough Rex Stout), but queer readers will recognise the implicit suggestiveness of, for example, The Three Garridebs.

ACD said, “I think I may claim that his famous character Raffles was a kind of inversion of Sherlock Holmes, Bunny playing Watson. He admits as much in his kindly dedication. I think there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal a hero.”

THE FINAL PROBLEM - part 8 of many - - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7.

"It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me cold and sick."

Forgive me for ending this update in the middle of a conversation, but the next one will be LONG long. (I won't ask you to forgive me for anything else)

Little 221B Baker Street character line-up but it's slightly different every time I cross-post.