Make Perfect the Present

Out of your whole life give but one moment! All of your life that has gone before, All to come after it, – so you ignore, So you make perfect the present, – condense, In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment, Thought and feeling and soul and sense -

“Now”- Robert Browning

In celebration of January 29 and the beginning of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Also on AO3.

- - -

John Watson stands at parade rest on the other side of the crime scene tape. He’s just a nosy bystander intrigued by the lights and the hustle. That faint smell of gunpowder? The slight sheen of a recent adrenaline rush? There’s nothing to see here, move along.

John stands, not at ease but with a calmness and certainty he hasn’t felt in too long. He watches Sherlock, sat in the back of an ambulance and clearly baffled by the orange blanket around his shoulders.

John stands there and he waits, patiently. He can be patient now, in this new world that has suddenly opened up to him.

It doesn’t take long.

Sherlock, in the middle of no doubt an impressive deduction, glances over at him and lights up as he makes the unlikeliest of connections. John smiles. Finally. He is seen.

Sherlock comes over and lays John bare once again. John welcomes it, even as he (briefly) wonders at himself.

When they finally break free from older brothers and uninterested assistants, they steal glances at each other. John sees his own happy disbelief mirrored on Sherlock’s face.

John doesn’t know what happens next, but he knows he can’t wait to find out. He thinks, he hopes, that Sherlock feels the same.

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. This is how they begin.

WIP Wednesday and Happy Johnlock Day:

Best Man Bender (a FTH fic for Anyawen)

How late is too late to finish a FTH 2023 fic? (Asking for a friend.)

Where did Sherlock go when he left the Watson wedding early? He went out and scored, says fanon. Hold my beer, says Silver.

@anyawen (whose prompts and genius betaing birthed Casualty and Ride On) gave me a brilliant prompt, which I have tangled and mangled to rewrite the events of HLV.

What if Sally Donovan happened on Sherlock on a bender after the Watson wedding? And made common cause over "wanting the married man"?

I've had so much fun with this, revising / repairing most of the plot points I winced at in His Last Vow.

Beta'ed by @thegildedbee, golden queen bee among betas, Best Man Bender will begin posting on 14 February and update twice a week.

Ch. 1, "Oh What a Night": Sally got a wasted Holmes back to 221B after the Watson wedding. POV Sally Donovan

When I woke up around dawn, it was to the sight of him standing over me and peering down, looking more clear-eyed than he had any right to and probably deducing the everliving fuck out of me.

My startled squeak made him jump back a foot, and that made him wince, and we both said, on cue, “are you all right?” and that almost (only almost) made us laugh.

I could see him trying to work out how to play this. Candid? Fake-composed? Jokey?

I spoke first. “I’m all right, thanks. Could use some tea, if you have any.”

He nodded, almost solemn, as if having tea to offer me meant he passed some test of being a responsible adult despite having been caught out on a monumental bender.

Very carefully he made his way to the kitchen, then said, “Perhaps more hygienic if you make it yourself, Sergeant. I’ll show you where everything is. Then, I think, a shower.”

Oh. So ‘cat, mortified’ was the order of the day: when embarrassed, bathe.

I had to approve; the smell hadn’t improved overnight. Holmes pointed me to tea and kettle, mugs and milk, then dragged a bin bag out of a drawer and made his way unsteadily down the hall.

Tagging past readers here and in the comments:

Thanks for reblogging!

check out this periodic table

I have made a lot of bad jokes but this is still probably my greatest hit

Forever a favorite

World Heritage Post

Honestly the first episode of Season 2 is the one where I’m really going 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨. Wdym John counted Irene’s texts. Wdym John’s girlfriend broke up with him because of his devotion to Sherlock. Wdym John is going through girlfriends so fast he’s mixing them up. What do you MEAN “I’m not gay” “Well I am, look at us both”.

i know most people following me dont care about the weather, but i really need to share this because im genuinely gonna throw the fuck up dying of laughter over whoever runs this national weather service account on twitter fighting for their lives

In case anyone is having a bad night

(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)

Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean 

Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe

Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay

Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden

Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)

Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)

Here and here are websites where you can play with sand

Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods

Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails

Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis

Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)

Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites

Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)

Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3

Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm

Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests

Here is a website of calm rain noise

Take a breath. It’s going to be okay, I promise.

Fics to reread for inspiration: 7PercentSolution's Just Dance (2020)

“What do you reread?” asked @notjustamumj recently, here on tumblr. What do you reread?

When I thought “reread for comfort,” one list formed itself instantly in my head.

But when I thought “reread for inspiration,” a completely different list formed. At the top was 7PercentSolution’s Just Dance (6/6, 22,783 words), set between the Watson wedding and the minute Sherlock accosts John in a drug den.

So many plotholes in that month. Ever wonder

• how CAM’s PA came to be Mary’s maid of honor?

• how Sherlock ended up in a doss house frequented by John and Mary’s neighbor’s kid?

• why Mycroft would forbid Sherlock to go after CAM?

@7-percent makes sense of all of it.

At times I just stop reading and say: “Of course. Of course that’s what must have happened.”

7Percent has so much going on between and behind the scenes we saw. She shows us the interior landscape of Sherlock’s external behaviors, shows us how his great mind (with occasional miscalculations) meshes with his great heart, how each can sabotage the other.

The intricate steps of ballroom dance, which Sherlock uses to woo Janine, mirror the intricacies of the plot. But it’s not just a clever metaphor; we get to see behind the scenes of the dance steps, through how it’s taught: something drawn from her own long experience.

7Percent shows us how it’s done: how to write a story that works within a set of incoherent Moftiss constraints, and one that—for character development and plot elaboration—leaves them in the dust.

Tagging a few Sherlockians here and in the tags:

PLEASE REBLOG!

This is cinema actually

The Turkey Story

So it’s 2001, and my family drives from fucking California and like three blizzards to get to Ohio for thanksgiving, becuase my grandparents are moving into a nursing home and it’s their last holiday in that house.  So its a bit bittersweet but ultimately a good thing.

Since it’s their last holiday there, the family pulls out all the stops when it comes to dinner, all the Russian desserts come out, as does the Lethal Bacon Mashed Potatoes and the horrible candied yams with the mini marshmallows dish because not all expressions of love are good, even if they are sincere.  In the spirit of going all-out, Uncle Bobby smokes a Turkey.  

Uncle Bobby started cooking as a boy scout by tossing foil-wrapped potatoes into a campfire and has been addicted since, and now has a hand-made smokehouse in the backyard where he makes various cured meats and other delights.  He seasons the turkey in the traditional manner, but he and grandpa have a shared passion for a spicier mesquite-style bird, so Bobby makes a Cornish Game Hen seasoned that way, for them.

Then Bobby has a Brilliant Idea.  He realizes that he can stuff the turkey (once it has been smoked) with regular stuffing, and there is still plenty of room for him to put the game hen inside THAT, and stuff the game hen becuase why not?  He confers with Mom, and she explains how to cut open the turkey so there’s  dramatic reveal as the stuffing and game hen come out.  It’s Genius.

Except, of course, that my Aunt Sue is attending, Uncle Cliff slouching after her.

So the day of the dinner, tensions are running a bit high, between the marathon cooking, the kids all being trapped indoors due to aforementioned blizzards, and Uncle Cliff deciding that the best way to amuse himself is by hiding from the adults in the basement, getting drunk and rambling about how various ethic groups were destroying America.  Being that I had close Muslim friends that were leaving the country becuase of 9/11, I was near tears from this nonsense and ready to fight a man roughly five times my size.  

Sue, for some reason, keeps coming down and defending him, or telling us we’re rotten children for ‘attacking’ him, becuase she Must Stand By Her Man, even if her man is a hefty bag of dog feces with an ugly mustache.

My sister eventually bolts upstairs to tattle and my grandfather limps down to the basement and brandishes his Hip-Bone Cane, hands rock-steady in spite of the Parkinson’s slowly taking over him.

“Firstly Cliff, It may not be my roof much longer but while you are under it you will be civil, or I’ll beat your skull in.  Also, dinner’s ready, everyone go wash up.”

We go upstairs and sit down, and do the traditional “Name one thing you’re thankful for” as the bread gets passed around the table, and things calm down a bit.  Bobby brings out the Turkey and everyone goes OOH becuase it’s really pretty, them Mom carves it open so that the stuffing spills out dramatically along with the game hen and there’s an appreciative gasp all around becuase it looks cool.

Only Sue KEEPS gasping, in utter horror, before getting up and clasping her hands to her face ala Edvard Munch and shrieks-

“OH MY GOD IT WAS PREGNANT!”

We all stare at Sue.  We all look back at the fully-dressed-cooked-and-stuffed birds that in no way had any internal organs in them or ever gave live birth. Then we all looked back at Sue, trying to figure out where to begin but since she’d been trying to justify Cliff’s behavior she was pretty much free-associating conspiracies and scandals now, and just kept going.

“IT WAS PREGNANT MY GOD WE’VE COMMITTED AN ABORTION WE’RE ALL GOING TO HELL FOR THIS, I’M SO SORRY JESUS-” She goes into full pearl-clutching gibbering horror at this point and falls back into her chair like it’s a Victorian fainting couch only it’s a shitty chair from the Eisenhower administration so it collapses and she slams into the floor, sobbing and kicking her feet like a toddler.

Everyone watched for a moment before my Mom sighs heavily and starts carving and serving the turkey while my grandmother mouths “she’s not coming back”.   

Cliff, reactions delayed by about six beers, finally notices his wife is on the floor and tries to pick her up, falls on his ass himself.  They are assisted by Dad, who is saintly patient man and less immune to this jacknapery at that point. I am stuffing dinner rolls into my face to keep from laughing at this grand spectacle and it’s not working.

“I CAN’T EAT IT, I REFUSE TO PARTAKE IN THIS BARBARISM-”  Sue begins but Dad puts on his best Kindly Father voice (he was heavily involved with the catholic church and even considered becoming a priest before getting drafted but that’s another story) and assures Sue that she need not eat, or even be in the room if she wants.  She nods, placated by being the center of attention again, and Dad goes in for the kill.

“I wouldn’t want you to go hungry.  Can I make you some Eggs?”

“That would be lovely.” Said Sue, joke flying over her head like a boeing 747.  I recall watching my grandmother nearly choke to death on the green beans over that, and everyone pointedly trying to avoid talking about anything poultry-related while Sue sat there and ate the most ironic scrambled eggs in the history of mankind.

Shortly thereafter, Cliff threw up in the sink and they went home, and the party got underway properly, with Grandpa raising a toast to Mom and Uncle Bobby “For marrying well, for a change” “Pregnant Turkey” has been an Ohioan thanksgiving staple since then.  I’ll see if I can hit Uncle Bobby up for instructions but if you decide to make it 1. you HAVE to shriek “OH MY GOD IT WAS PREGNANT” when you carve it open, or it’s not authentic and won’t taste as good 2. Share the pictures with me.

If you enjoyed this story, help support your local disabled  storyteller by donating to my Tip Jar

i was in a thrift shop the other day and they were playing the most unsettling variations of normal christmas music, culminating in this rendition of the 12 days of christmas except it was like 12 guys all singing over each other and going “no!” and interrupting the lyrics with random other phrases until they deadass just started singing 5 golden rings to toto’s africa. can anyone confirm that this is a real song and not that i stroked so hard i astral projected into a universe where everything is somehow worse than it is here

https://youtu.be/2Fe11OlMiz8

I remember listening to this in grade school. I am going to go get some Chinese food.

this is what my anxiety attacks sound like

Oh I needed this laugh this evening. Thank you so much.

In case anyone didn’t want to leave Tumblr and just hit “play”

Tumblr are you OK? It’s december and you’ve hardly even touched your “twelve days of Christmas by straight no chaser”

my honest to god reaction to hearing about the UnitedHealthcare CEO being murdered was to bust out laughing so hard I almost puked

this company has personally assured and stamped off on the annihilation of countless innocent disabled Americans to save a few bucks for their investors

there are literally hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been personally ruined and destroyed by UnitedHealthcare

actually shooting this man in the chest was pretty merciful compared to what he & his investor buddies regularly and routinely put disabled Americans through

at least he didn’t slowly die of bedsores and not being able to afford chemo while his family was robbed of every single penny they ever had 🤷🏼‍♂️ it’s hard to feel bad for him

The "controversies" section on united healthcare wikipedia page is so long that company did SO much fraud and basically straight up bribery of politicians...

Apparently this guy, in spite of a lifetime spent grinding the life out of millions of people for money, was only worth 43 million dollars. He killed all those people and he never even came close to being a billionaire. Kind of pathetic.

Had to add this screenshot someone else shared on IG.

The shooter had Deny, Delay, and probably Defend written on the shells.

I hope they never find him.

I recently read "virus" by Robin Cook. No spoilers, but it immediately came to mind when I heard of this.

ty for stealing this one much appreciated

people in the notes suggesting it was "improper" for the juror to do this or that it "introduced bias" to the court proceeding 🙄 the ice agent in question accused a moc of assaulting him / resisting arrest. how is the agent being a white supremacist not relevant. what universe are you living in

As a member of the world’s SECOND oldest profession, I assure you this is just one of many ways the justice system is systematically fucked up.

For anyone who wants to know how to fact check something you are told while on jury duty without getting fined:

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” --- like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

There are a lot of problems with our legal system, and I think one of the biggest is that jurors aren’t educated about what they can and can’t do. Juries have a lot of power, if (and only if) they know how to use it.

Reblogging for that last post, because frankly, “what to do as a juror” is one of those things the schools should really be teaching us. Serving on a jury is one of the most powerful rights of citizenship and everyone should be educated in how to exercise it correctly.

Saturday Sherlock Fic Recs

Gathered from my bookmarks :)

It's Not The Violin by copperbadge - M Somewhere between Alejandro and the fistfight, John Watson became someone Sherlock Holmes would kill for.

Sound of Silence by SailorChibi - G Sherlock returns from the dead but nothing is like it was. He doesn't speak and John doesn't understand, not until an encounter with the Yard explains the depths of Sherlock's trauma.

Lost for Words by awanderingbard - M Sherlock is assaulted by an unknown assailant while John is away at a medical conference, leaving him with a severe brain injury. While his intellect and personality are intact, he's lost the use of his right-side limbs and his ability to speak freely. John suddenly finds himself as the main source of support, and possibly a caregiver, to a flatmate who is struggling to do the things he loves most. And Sherlock Holmes has never been the best of patients.

Following On by in_in_in_in_in_in - G ‘Well,’ says Sherlock, throwing the empty bottle down into the foot well. ‘I did think I was going to die.’

‘You thought you were going to die?’ Donovan chokes out. ‘I knew you were a freak, but are you really so self-centred? I thought he was supposed to be your friend, and instead of worrying about him you’re worrying about yourself? Did you push him in front of you or something?’

When something happens to John, Sherlock doesn't understand why everyone's so surprised that he was worried for his own life.

Flinch by Salr323 - G "We hated him."

Oubliette by CherryBlossomTide - T After a traumatic incident, Sherlock becomes trapped in the darkest part of his Mind Palace. The only thing that can still reach him is the sound of John's voice.

A Cure for the Final Problem by Saasan - T (Warning for Character Death) As far as Sherlock knows, he's back in rehab, but something is amiss. Why won't John come visit him?

The Holiday by Scriblit - M (Warning for offscreen noncon) A month following an horrific, sadistic attack during a case, Sherlock is still physically incapacitated and emotionally damaged. A holiday is suggested, but even stuck out in the middle of nowhere, he and John happen upon a case that could make Sherlock begin to feel like his old self again - or could kill him.

Paying Back by Dayja - M Some men do not appreciate Sherlock's handling of their cases. They decide to pay him back.

Harmless Things by J_Baillier - M This is definitely not how John had imagined their Saturday night.

It takes John Watson to save your life. by Sparkypip - T A series of One shots where John saves Sherlock's life in so many ways. Will be updated sporadically as and when I get any time to write. As always I like my characters hurt, so plenty of angst, H/C, whump and bromance.

Seek Out The Unworthy by squire - T Set after the events of His Last Vow - but this time, the plane carrying Sherlock off to Eastern Europe never turned around, and John's life is very different as a result.

Hopeless Wanderer by Cyane (orphan_account) - Not Rated Mycroft wakes up in a cold, dark, cliche. Normally this would be fine, except this time, his captors were smart/stupid enough to drag Sherlock into this.

And they're going to be there for a while, until his agents and Scotland Yard figures out where they are.

This would be a hell of a lot easier if Mycroft wasn't blindfolded, tied up, and forced to listen to Sherlock's screams.

Redemption by sgam76 - G The reappearance of James Moriarty means an initial reprieve for Sherlock Holmes. But the consequences of that reappearance put not just the Holmes boys, but most of the world, at risk. An emerging threat in Eastern Europe brings visions of the plagues of the Middle Ages--but that's the least dangerous part.

English as a Foreign Language by standbygo - G Sherlock is not quite right after Mycroft pulls him out of Serbia.

When Your Belly's in the Trench by Morgan_Stuart - T The next time that door opens, John Watson will kill the person on the other side.

The Least of All Possible Mistakes by rageprufrock - M If ever a people deserved tasering, it’s Holmeses.

Define Vulnerability by TheGracefulBlueCat - T Shortly after Sherlock's return John realises something is very wrong with his friend. He, Greg and Mycroft try to help Sherlock as he falls deeper and deeper into the abyss called PTSD. But Sherlock is not ready to allow anyone in, but then the events of the current case cause him to hit bottom hard.

Into the Gloaming by Vulpesmellifera - M She lays the sage bundle down in one of his seashells, avoiding the label. How he loved cataloging natural items. That sharp mind of his so naturally tended to the sciences, and she’d taken great joy in encouraging him all his life. All the first thirteen years of it. The last year has been entirely different.

His hand lies just outside the white comforter. When she touches it, the chill of his skin sends a shiver down her spine. His lips move, his voice as soft as dead, dry leaves.

“What’s that, love?” she says.

“In the trees,” he says, his eyes still closed. “Is it John there in the trees? I think he’s waiting for me.”

Viola turns her gaze out the window and to the closest tree, a resplendent cherry in the throes of autumn. In the branches there, for just a second, she thinks she sees it: a black bird, feathers gleaming in the sun.

Learning the Heart by Calais_Reno - T An android tries to understand love and grief.

The Ancillus's Tale by Chryse - E (Warnings for noncon and MPREG) Once Sherlock’s body had been his alone. He was free to treat it with great care or none at all; to live on cigarettes and coffee and cocaine and then sleep it all off for days on end. He was free to stay in and sleep alone or to go to clubs and choose someone to touch him, mark him with nails and teeth or to kiss him with sweetness and care, according to his whim. Every part of it had been his decision. No more. Now he was property of the Crown, tagged and marked like one of the King’s deer, to be bred like one of his horses.

I just started grad school this fall after a few years away from school and man I did not realize how dire the AI/LLM situation is in universities now. In the past few weeks:

There's a lot more, but it's really making me feel crazy. Even if it was right 100% of the time, why are you paying thousands of dollars to go to school and learn if you're just going to plug everything into a computer whenever you're asked to think??

That last question is what drives me insane. You are paying that money to learn. Using ChatGPT prevents you from learning. By using it you are essentially setting your tuition money on fire.

You might not grasp that because you think that the important thing about going to college is to get the credential so you can get hired and make more money. OK. You have a credential but you don't have the skills it's supposed to stand for. At some point, you will need the actual skills; and you will not have them. Then what?

Also: the tech industry is not benevolent. If you become dependent on AI to do your thinking for you then whoever designs the AI gets to determine what you can and can't think. You really trust big tech to do that? You want to be in a position where you can only write what AI will enable you to write, and only think what AI will enable you to think? You think that's going to be good for your career or your life or your fucking...soul?