MN

Got the link via @finalducc

The governments agenda is clearly spelled out in this consultation, through the phrasing of the questions.

Excuse me while I link a video. It’s a clip from a comedy so it’s a bit exaggerated but it demonstrates the point very well.

Almost all the questions in that survey were “leading questions”. They had an inherent presumption that the person answering agreed with age restrictions, wanted more severe ones and wanted more websites and services restricted. (Believe me I take no pleasure in being correct that VPN’s are next on their target list).

This is a consultation where they try and make you look a monster for saying no. They push the “but it’s for the children” hard. Like there was one question where in order to say no, you had to not object to children sending/receiving nudes which felt wrong. I mean that’s bad, obviously that’s bad. But the answer isn’t total lockdown of the internet to verified ID.

So yeah if you are from the UK then fill this out, and fill it out carefully. Don’t let them manipulate or trick you into agreeing that mandated age restrictions are necessary, as that is what we have with this “you must prove your identity” and it looks like they want to make it worse, not roll it back.

You must include a third secret Holmes sibling somewhere in it and

You can't adapt any of the original stories.

we all know (I hope) that Holmes is autistic and also variously mentally disabled in other ways.

I’d make it a sibling who is autistic too, but who is intellectually disabled and completely non-speaking, unlike Sherlock (and Mycroft if you like… I don’t have strong opinions on whether he is autistic). in the late nineteenth century, such a person could be in some sort of an institution or in full-time care at the family’s house, paid for privately (and we do think the Holmeses are relatively well off).

I’d open the story with the final Holmes parent dying and entrusting, in their will, the care of this sibling to Sherlock and Mycroft, but sans any sort of useful details about their needs or even their location (maybe the parent meant to have a conversation with Sherlock and Mycroft about them but died suddenly before having the chance). for bonus heart-wrenching emotions, maybe Sherlock and Mycroft didn’t even know about this sibling’s existence (perfectly possible given the way that disabled people were often hidden away in the past, especially if this sibling was born first).

they have to go on a big adventure to get them out of the institution they are in — after finding them in the first place, of course, which won’t be easy when they might not even be using the Holmes name — and on the way get caught up in other crimes being committed at the corrupt institution. there would be scope here for some really interesting discussion of how to communicate with disabled people (for the investigation) when the AAC technology we would tend to use now is not available, or when knowledge of BSL was not wide-spread, or when nobody has even done research into how to communicate with people who have certain conditions, and also some discussion of how people assume disabled people (especially the non-speaking) don’t understand, which could lead to some of the residents at the institution having heard some really relevant things because the care staff just didn’t consider not talking about it in front of them.

naturally, along the way Holmes comes to the conclusion that he is mentally disabled too. maybe they’re poking around the records in the institution’s archive and find out that his parents inquired about having him put there too? maybe he didn’t talk for much of his childhood and they thought he was intellectually disabled too?

institutions were for physically disabled people too, so we could explore Watson’s feelings about his old war wound and his (what I think is) myalgic encephalomyalitis / chronic fatigue syndrome from having enteric fever. going with this, I think it is probably best if we make Mycroft completely abled, to contrast. with Sherlock finding out he is disabled too, we could put in that maybe Mycroft as a young teen heard his parents worrying about how they thought they had just had a blip with their first kid, and Mycroft turned out fairly normal (if a bit clever) which comforted them, but now the third one’s all weird too. and Sherlock angry at Mycroft for never telling him about this (which can be all mixed up with anger at their parents for never telling them about their older sibling). (would need to figure out a way for Mycroft to have heard that conversation and not know about the sibling. maybe the parents were referring to them in past tense as if they had died young, which would be a perfectly reasonable assumption for Mycroft to make given nineteenth-century infant mortality. but actually they were just doing it out of shame.)

it would have to be handled with a lot of care to avoid coming across as using disability for cheap drama, but disabled people do deserve to be included in drama and so it would be worth the effort. I don’t know how it would conclude — I don’t know what the happy ending is here — but I’m sure I could find one.

as a sign language student (granted, ASL) and amateur Deaf history enthusiast, i immediately locked onto the idea of the Holmes sibs needing to learn BSL to communicate, especially considering one of the most momentous (read: disastrous) events in Deaf cultural history occurred in the year 1880, known as "the Milan Conference".

(infodump under the cut)

I did consider making Secret Holmes (as you’ve dubbed them) deaf, but since I’m autistic and hearing I thought I’d be able to do a better job of writing an autism plot. it’s also more likely that a child would be sent away and kept secret for mental disability than for being deaf; deaf people were routinely kept as part of their families (albeit not able to communicate with them as well, which is obviously horrible) as the same level of support needs doesn’t tend to exist as does with, say, intellectual disability. (and the social stigma was of a different sort; not necessarily less, or better, but different.) Alexander Graham Bell’s wife Mabel Hubbard and his mother Eliza Symonds are good examples. (obligatory note about Bell being anti-sign-language. boo.)

but we could very easily have a friend of Secret’s be a deaf person, because there would have been some deaf people at these institutions. (maybe they could even be an older member of staff, who knows a form of signed language from the pre-Milan-conference days and is trying to teach some key vocab to this struggling, non-speaking autistic person? it could be a really beautiful scene where Sherlock has completely given up on being able to get anything like a statement from his sibling as they just seem unable to communicate, and then sees that if you stop trying to force them to communicate the ‘normal’ way then everyone is happier.)

BSL (due to not being taught after the Milan conference) had become very unstandardised by the time this story would be set so I don’t know how likely it would be that even somebody with a book about it could just turn up and start chatting. also, figuring out from diagrams what your hands are meant to do for particular signs is an absolute pain in the arse and it’s so much easier if someone can actually demonstrate the signs to you.

You must include a third secret Holmes sibling somewhere in it and

You can't adapt any of the original stories.

we all know (I hope) that Holmes is autistic and also variously mentally disabled in other ways.

I’d make it a sibling who is autistic too, but who is intellectually disabled and completely non-speaking, unlike Sherlock (and Mycroft if you like… I don’t have strong opinions on whether he is autistic). in the late nineteenth century, such a person could be in some sort of an institution or in full-time care at the family’s house, paid for privately (and we do think the Holmeses are relatively well off).

I’d open the story with the final Holmes parent dying and entrusting, in their will, the care of this sibling to Sherlock and Mycroft, but sans any sort of useful details about their needs or even their location (maybe the parent meant to have a conversation with Sherlock and Mycroft about them but died suddenly before having the chance). for bonus heart-wrenching emotions, maybe Sherlock and Mycroft didn’t even know about this sibling’s existence (perfectly possible given the way that disabled people were often hidden away in the past, especially if this sibling was born first).

they have to go on a big adventure to get them out of the institution they are in — after finding them in the first place, of course, which won’t be easy when they might not even be using the Holmes name — and on the way get caught up in other crimes being committed at the corrupt institution. there would be scope here for some really interesting discussion of how to communicate with disabled people (for the investigation) when the AAC technology we would tend to use now is not available, or when knowledge of BSL was not wide-spread, or when nobody has even done research into how to communicate with people who have certain conditions, and also some discussion of how people assume disabled people (especially the non-speaking) don’t understand, which could lead to some of the residents at the institution having heard some really relevant things because the care staff just didn’t consider not talking about it in front of them.

naturally, along the way Holmes comes to the conclusion that he is mentally disabled too. maybe they’re poking around the records in the institution’s archive and find out that his parents inquired about having him put there too? maybe he didn’t talk for much of his childhood and they thought he was intellectually disabled too?

institutions were for physically disabled people too, so we could explore Watson’s feelings about his old war wound and his (what I think is) myalgic encephalomyalitis / chronic fatigue syndrome from having enteric fever. going with this, I think it is probably best if we make Mycroft completely abled, to contrast. with Sherlock finding out he is disabled too, we could put in that maybe Mycroft as a young teen heard his parents worrying about how they thought they had just had a blip with their first kid, and Mycroft turned out fairly normal (if a bit clever) which comforted them, but now the third one’s all weird too. and Sherlock angry at Mycroft for never telling him about this (which can be all mixed up with anger at their parents for never telling them about their older sibling). (would need to figure out a way for Mycroft to have heard that conversation and not know about the sibling. maybe the parents were referring to them in past tense as if they had died young, which would be a perfectly reasonable assumption for Mycroft to make given nineteenth-century infant mortality. but actually they were just doing it out of shame.)

it would have to be handled with a lot of care to avoid coming across as using disability for cheap drama, but disabled people do deserve to be included in drama and so it would be worth the effort. I don’t know how it would conclude — I don’t know what the happy ending is here — but I’m sure I could find one.

I'm going to make the case for Mycroft definitely being autistic. Known facts about Mycroft include:

He has the same routine every day and very rigidly sticks to it. He goes between his home, his work and his club, which are all in close vicinity to each other. We can infer that he probably finds breaking his routine distressing, or at least not ideal.

He founded a gentleman's club which attracts oddballs like himself, where you can enjoy creature comforts without having to socialise and make small talk.

He loves silence. Does he have a lot of sensory sensitivities?

Although he's good at deducing facts about people, he seems to be very bad at inferring how they are going to feel and act, which leads to a lot of problems in The Greek Interpreter.

He has a job where he deals with facts and figures, because he's very good at memorising them and storing them in his mind. He's kind of the government's IT guy.

You must include a third secret Holmes sibling somewhere in it and

You can't adapt any of the original stories.

we all know (I hope) that Holmes is autistic and also variously mentally disabled in other ways.

I’d make it a sibling who is autistic too, but who is intellectually disabled and completely non-speaking, unlike Sherlock (and Mycroft if you like… I don’t have strong opinions on whether he is autistic). in the late nineteenth century, such a person could be in some sort of an institution or in full-time care at the family’s house, paid for privately (and we do think the Holmeses are relatively well off).

I’d open the story with the final Holmes parent dying and entrusting, in their will, the care of this sibling to Sherlock and Mycroft, but sans any sort of useful details about their needs or even their location (maybe the parent meant to have a conversation with Sherlock and Mycroft about them but died suddenly before having the chance). for bonus heart-wrenching emotions, maybe Sherlock and Mycroft didn’t even know about this sibling’s existence (perfectly possible given the way that disabled people were often hidden away in the past, especially if this sibling was born first).

they have to go on a big adventure to get them out of the institution they are in — after finding them in the first place, of course, which won’t be easy when they might not even be using the Holmes name — and on the way get caught up in other crimes being committed at the corrupt institution. there would be scope here for some really interesting discussion of how to communicate with disabled people (for the investigation) when the AAC technology we would tend to use now is not available, or when knowledge of BSL was not wide-spread, or when nobody has even done research into how to communicate with people who have certain conditions, and also some discussion of how people assume disabled people (especially the non-speaking) don’t understand, which could lead to some of the residents at the institution having heard some really relevant things because the care staff just didn’t consider not talking about it in front of them.

naturally, along the way Holmes comes to the conclusion that he is mentally disabled too. maybe they’re poking around the records in the institution’s archive and find out that his parents inquired about having him put there too? maybe he didn’t talk for much of his childhood and they thought he was intellectually disabled too?

institutions were for physically disabled people too, so we could explore Watson’s feelings about his old war wound and his (what I think is) myalgic encephalomyalitis / chronic fatigue syndrome from having enteric fever. going with this, I think it is probably best if we make Mycroft completely abled, to contrast. with Sherlock finding out he is disabled too, we could put in that maybe Mycroft as a young teen heard his parents worrying about how they thought they had just had a blip with their first kid, and Mycroft turned out fairly normal (if a bit clever) which comforted them, but now the third one’s all weird too. and Sherlock angry at Mycroft for never telling him about this (which can be all mixed up with anger at their parents for never telling them about their older sibling). (would need to figure out a way for Mycroft to have heard that conversation and not know about the sibling. maybe the parents were referring to them in past tense as if they had died young, which would be a perfectly reasonable assumption for Mycroft to make given nineteenth-century infant mortality. but actually they were just doing it out of shame.)

it would have to be handled with a lot of care to avoid coming across as using disability for cheap drama, but disabled people do deserve to be included in drama and so it would be worth the effort. I don’t know how it would conclude — I don’t know what the happy ending is here — but I’m sure I could find one.

Actual medieval Christian priest, trying not to cry: Look. I know you're going to fuck. But just. Just don't fuck in the Church. Fuck in the Fucking Woods, fuck in the fields. Fuck in the regular woods even. Just. Don't fuck in the fucking Church, it's not a Fucking Church. Please. This guy I know fucked his girl in the Church and they got stuck together by God and everyone laughed at them

"actually they were really witches with magic powers! (Bad)"

"actually they were really witches with magic powers! (Good)"

"they weren't witches at all they were smart women of science more sophisticated and advanced than those STUPID inbred people could comprehend so they killed them because they thought that medicine was evil"

If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outrè results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

So it's like as a young man he goes "Boy I wish there was a tiny society made of individuals with a shorter lifespan than my own which I could life the roof off of and observe." And then he just sits on that for a few decades before going "WAIT! BEES!!!!"

(Gosh sorry this doodle is so cursed haha)

Sure, the connotations of two men holding hands has definitely shifted over the past century and is now more likely to be seen as having romantic implications (sadly, I think) than when this was written. What is a normal thing to do in a homosocial friendship has shifted.

...But I think that it does suggest that if Holmes is fantasising about whizzing around omnipotently and making brilliant deductions on a social scale, he wants Watson specifically there with him to be impressed?