John MF Watson

I discovered this hilarious parody of A Study in Scarlet, starring a foul-mouthed, badass Watson. Behold:

A Study in Motherfucking Scarlet

The writer hasn't finished the whole novel yet, but what's there already had me giggling maniacally at everything Watson had to say. Best of all are the illustrations altered and included in the chapters.

Brett's Holmes

Tonight I happened to catch an airing of "The Master Blackmailer" episode starring Jeremy Brett. I haven't seen it in ages and it was somewhat better than I remembered. Robert Hardy indeed makes a perfect Charles Augustus Milverton. I wasn't as annoyed by Aggie's romance with "Ralph Escott" this time, but I was still upset that there was no followup after she recognized him as Sherlock Holmes. Sure we saw Holmes apparently close to tears about it at the end, but we didn't see her viewpoint afterward. I found all the extra characters in the episode pointless, especially that Bertrand guy who wanted to buy a statue of Athena but we never found out why.

It really bothered me how much the writers changed the CHAS story. This and subsequent shows like "The Last Vampyre" and "The Eligible Bachelor" were the beginning of my disappointment with the Granada TV version of Holmes. As much as I was a fan in the beginning, I began to feel that maybe they should just stop trying to film more series, since Brett's health was so bad. Leave the other stories alone instead of mangling them beyond recognition.

Canon Chronology

We've had a bunch of snow in our area today, so I spent some time taking pictures of my efforts at chronology. I've only gone through a few of the stories so far, but I hope to find time to continue through all sixty Holmes stories.

I mentioned before that I needed to do a chronology of the canon, because I can't find a chronologist that I agree with. Even though I do have perpetual calendars to look up days of the week, I find that I need to visually see the months and years in question, so I have begun charting them out using a Post-It Note calendar. Basically I choose a month and year that seems suggested by the story, then I find the starting day on my perpetual calendar, and fill in the month on the Post-It Note calendar. After that, I reread the story and take notes, placing them in appropriate places on the page. Some stories require more than one page to work out all the possibilities.

I started with SPEC first, since it's the story I know the best, and it has so much information that I needed to organize. There's not only what happens in April 1883 to keep track of, but also Julia's death two years ago, their mother's death eight years ago, and the family history in India. We can only guess at how long Roylott was in prison for killing his butler, but Helen Stoner makes it sound like it must have been several years.

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes

Yay! I have a guest post on Veinglory's Gay Sherlock Holmes blog. It's a longer movie review than I posted in December.

Private Life, part 3

And now part 3, and what happens on the morning after. This is the final part. Update: actually, here's Part 4.

Private Life, part 2

And now part 2, where Watson comes home, and I begin to depart from what happened in the 1970 movie.

Private Life, part 1

Since I recently rewatched Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes I've wondered what would have happened if the Russian Ballerina scenes had ended differently. You see, to get out of sex with the Russian ballerina Madame Petrova, Holmes lies and claims that he and Watson are lovers. Later Watson hears this story from the director of the ballet, and he confronts Holmes angrily. This plot happens within the first 35 minutes of the film, and is the basis for Watson wondering if Holmes has ever had any female lovers or not. The rest of the movie is hetero.

Well, this story is based on that movie, but with an alternate outcome, where the movie actually is "a love story between two men" as it was promoted. The scene of Holmes bathing while Watson breakfasts is in the movie, and also, Mycroft and Sherlock do not have a friendly relationship.