Private Life, part 8

Here's a new chapter of my Private Life fic, where Holmes and Watson officially begin their honeymoon trip. On the train they also discuss some of Holmes's history with women. In the movie, Holmes tells the story about his fiancée, the daughter of his violin teacher, and about "the most affectionate woman I ever knew," but on the DVD, the deleted scenes have a contradictory backstory. In the "Dumbfounded Detective" flashback, Holmes speaks of the daughter of his tobacconist instead, and confesses that he fell in love with a girl while at Oxford, only to discover that she was a prostitute. I've chosen to go with the first backstory, and I have named the women Violet and Ada. (In the movie, Holmes also lists several more affairs with kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, etc. but I'm choosing to think he was being sarcastic with Gabrielle at that point.)

Plus I made a map of the approximate route of Holmes and Watson's honeymoon. (It's from a modern map, so the political boundaries may not be historically accurate for 1887, not that the movie itself is historically accurate.) More on the map below.

Bulldog blues

This week on PBS I saw a UK documentary called Pedigree Dogs Exposed. It was all about how dog breeding, most specifically in the UK since Victorian times, has created dogs that are incredibly inbred and unhealthy. I've heard of this issue before and felt guilty for liking the cute bulldogs in the 2009 movie (and in the Russian Holmes series), because I know that bulldogs have been bred to have such large heads that the females can't give birth naturally, and routinely have Caesarian sections. They and other flat-faced breeds have trouble breathing as well. In this show, it was rather chilling to see animations of how different dogs skulls have been altered by breeding.

Without a Clue fic

I'm really getting excited about the new BBC Sherlock, though PBS is still giving no information about when it will air here, and the BBC website is region-restricting their videos. They must be getting revenge for all the Hulu videos that they can't see over there. ;)

Anyway, I've written a fic inspired by the recent drabble called "I Am an Actor After All." Without a Clue is one of my favorite movies, but I have previously not seen slashiness coming off Reginald Kincaid or his awesome John Watson. But I found the inspiration and decided to do it, but it's going to be a one-off only. I probably won't continue it like my Private Life fic. I'm not sure I really captured Kincaid's voice here, but I thought I'd try it.

SPOILERS for the movie below:

New Nook

I did return the Astak Mentor for a refund, and got a Nook WiFi instead. I don't like the case as much, and there are no folders for me to organize my books, so I'll have to be careful how much I load on here. But for the most part I am satisfied. While I was writing more of my Madness story, it was very handy for me to be able to look up canon quotations on my Nook instead of having to drag out my Annotated volumes. I'd still use the Annotated if I needed to look up some notes about a story, instead of the story text itself.

If I can find time, I may try to make a bunch of screensavers or wallpapers for the Nook out of the Sidney Paget illustrations. I tried scanning them in from my Annotated, but they came out wrong because most of the pictures were too close to the spine of the book, making it hard to get them flat against the scanner. I had to use the pics at Camden House instead because they were both darker and clearer.

In other news, Prelude is now being translated into Chinese. I can't read it (other than the English names in the text) but based on the footnotes, it appears that Amy has finished Chapter 4 so far.

Thunderheart

Today I saw the acclaimed 1992 movie Thunderheart. I already liked Val Kilmer from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and wanted to see his earlier work. The subject matter also attracted me, after seeing We Shall Remain and other films about Native Americans last year. Though fictional, the film is inspired by real events in South Dakota in the 1970s, and Wikipedia points to the story of Leonard Peltier in particular. I think one of the FBI agents even obliquely refers to it when mentioning two other agents who had been killed.