I've been reading Animorphs, so here's some fanart from this funny scene in volume 24 (The Suspicion)! I'm adding the cropped text because it's just so great! 🤣

Warm up sketch... This is Ana Dolabra, the fem Sherlock the world has been waiting on (at least tumblr). If I can make even just ONE moot read The Tainted Cup, then I'll be happy!!

Fun fact, Robert Jackson Bennett is the person responsible for my overwhelming preference for 1st person writing. It's not otherwise very popular in SFF, but he CRUSHES it in City of Stairs, which was an influencial series to me when I was starting out as a writer. I decided 'why not, let's try some present tense', and the rest is history.

Anyway his books are always mental. I love his worldbuilding. I wish I could rent a condo in his brains for a while, study him like a bug in my petri dish.

IDK how to dress Ana, but I might make a full length of her in am ao dai...

CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON part 4 - death of a blackmailer

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3)

content warnings for: guns, blood, death. which you are *probably* expecting if you know how this story goes in canon, although this version is...not exactly how Watson told it to the Strand.

(This is part of the Watsons sketchbook series)

okay here are some thoughts I had while making this:

MILVERTON IS SUCH A WEIRD STORY. I believe it's the only case in canon where we don't meet the supposed client, Lady Eva, or even read a letter from them. That was what originally made me think there was more going on - that, and Holmes's "intensity of feeling" when he speaks about Milverton.

The 1885 Labouchere amendment, which made it much easier to prosecute men for having queer sex, was called "the Blackmailer's Law". Although queer sex was illegal before the passage of the law, two people needed to actually be caught in the act. After 1885, the standard for evidence got much looser - including suggestive letters.

Learning about that in conjunction with reading Milverton put this idea in my head - that Holmes is Milverton's target. I've been avoiding reading fic or watching any other adaptations of this story because I knew I had a specific way I wanted to do it, but I know I'm far from the first one to draw this connection!

The second WEIRD part of this story is the remarkable coincidence that, on the same night Watson and Holmes burgle Milverton's house and hide behind the curtains, a mysterious woman appears and shoots him. "No interference upon our part could have saved the man from his fate". With uncharacteristic passivity, they watch a man die and a murderer escape. Holmes has certainly let criminals go before, but usually he talks to them first!

As I was digging into the story, certain descriptors for this mysterious avenger stood out to me. She is described as tall, dark, and lithe. She has "a face with a curved nose, strong, dark eyebrows shading hard, glittering eyes, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth set in a dangerous smile". Does that sound like anyone else we know?

I truly believe that the enduring power of the Sherlock Holmes canon lies in the fact that Doyle did not write these stories with particular care. There are holes, inconsistencies, contradictions, and gaps. At the same time, the charismatic center of the story is (while chastising Watson for not recording his adventures accurately) telling the reader to pay attention to trifles. To look closer, to ask questions, to consider every angle, no matter how outlandish. The combination of these two factors results in: a series of facts that do not *quite* hang together, and authorial permission to attempt to deduce the true story.

Finally, something that fascinates me about the Victorian era is that it marked the birth of many ideologies and power systems that, in the 2020s, we are now living through the consequences of. Notably, capitalism. Milverton, who insists he is only doing business, and therefore is innocent, while ruining lives, struck me as a very modern villain. "How could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?"

If only we could hit more men like that with chairs.

THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON part 3 (part 1) (part 2) as promised here they are enjoying committing a crime (to quote Watson: "I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the defenders of the law instead of its defiers").

Nearly made myself ill drawing them holding hands WHAT IS IT WITH GAY PEOPLE (me) AND HANDS

(This is part of the Watsons sketchbook series!)

Part two of CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON (part 1 here) - this story really truly has everything and I haven’t even gotten to the crime yet. In the last entry I went off canon, but this update is almost all line for line in the book…why are they like this

(This is part of the Watsons sketchbook series!)

THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON - part one of several, because this is one of my favorite Holmes stories! Ever since I read it I had a feeling there was something more...personal...going on with Holmes's hatred for Milverton than simply a principled stand against blackmail. A lot of this is directly pulled from the books but of course I took it in my own direction!

This is in the Watson's sketchbook series, and specifically references the Hound of the Baskervilles entry in that series :)

also thank you to my friend Phoenix for reading this when it was in sketch phase and reassuring me that it made sense!

Milverton design under the cut:

The "Whoops, didn't see THAT coming!" Sale

This afternoon's email has brought us unexpected news of a sudden expense that we, well, weren't expecting. :/

As a result, we're doing the only thing we can do on short notice: throwing a sale!

All our ebook bundles at the Ebooks Direct store are now 50% off until the end of the local Spring Bank Holiday Weekend (at 23:59 Irish time on Monday, May 7th).

This includes the Whole Store Package—the entire DRM-free contents of our store—which with the 50% discount is reduced to $35.00 (for 36 ebooks. Plainly we need our heads felt... but needs must, etc.). The discount also includes the All The Wizardry bundle (all our Young Wizards ebooks), the Feline Wizardry bundle, and the 2023 Pride Month Bundle.* And naturally when you buy from us, you're also buying our guarantee of free replacement of your ebooks should you lose them or change platforms.

Interested?

Please use this link (which has the discount baked in) to go to the store, choose a bundle, and put it in your shopping basket. The discount will apply itself once it's in the basket. All you need to do then is check out using your preferred method of payment.

For those who take advantage of this brief sale: thanks so much! You're lifesavers. :)

And if you've already got all our stuff, or aren't interested, would you consider reblogging this for the possible attention of those who might like to grab a bargain?

Please & thank you! :)

*Also: I was looking at this page and thinking "That's weird... why don't we have an 'All The Middle Kingdoms Stuff' bundle? Must do something about that." It'll be added over the course of the weekend, and the same discount will apply.

rewatching elementary now with the knowledge Jonny Lee Miller had started with his own sobriety and recovery whilst filming is honestly transcendent. He is so GOOD. he is gut-wrenching. The scene where Sherlock explains his sobriety feels like a leaking faucet that requires constant maintenance and offers only not to drip in return - jlm does this thing with his voice where he's on the verge of tears but bored all at once. He's wrecked by a feeling he's utterly sick to death of having. It's such a compassionate performance. On another level it is truly crazy to me that we have so many Sherlock Holmes adaptations so eager to make Sherlock an addict, but Elementary is far and away the only adaptation that does that and takes the addiction seriously. Perhaps in part because of JLM's real life recovery, but we'll never know. On a rewatch, it's a lot :')

Interview where Jonny discussed it (toward the end.)

Tbh? I don't like Paul. I don't want Paul. I understand that Paul serves an important narrative function and that Paul is the best possible ending for Camilla and Palamedes given their situation, personalities, and relationship. However what I really want is for Camilla and Palamedes to attend the ATN wedding as two individual humans and for Pal to be a lightweight who loses his tie in the garden fountain after three drinks and for Camilla to do exactly one shot with the group, keep Gideon from ripping the sleeves off her dress shirt, and absolutely kill it at lawn games during cocktail hour. Since this scenario is a wild tonal mismatch for the series and also Palamedes was already dead, this was unlikely to ever happen. However Paul is the final nail in the coffin for the theoretical existence of this scene and I can't help but resent them for that

ok actually i'm putting this back in my queue with my original tags:

It has long been a dream of mine to make a compilation of the hysterical stylings of Clive Merrison as Sherlock Holmes. History relates that the BBC actually received letters of complaint regarding this Laugh-with-a-capital-L, and such outbursts of amusement were tragically kept to a minimum after the first series.

The first short interview clip is from ep. 202 of the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere podcast. The following, in airdate order, are from BBC Radio 4's Sherlock Holmes (1989-98) dramatised mainly by Bert Coules, with the exception of the final clip from the last episode of the extracanonical Further Adventures, which aired in 2010.

@sanguinarysanguinity

Happy Tu Bishvat - The New Year of the Trees

ט"ו בשבט שמח, ראש השנה לאילנות

…oh my GOD

It was about a decade long taste for my dad actually

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR THE WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE SHERLOCK HOLMES 170 YEARS 🥳

video on youtube twitter tiktok #norepost

2 hour limit

@thejakeformerlyknownasprince

I hit a pothole (a Michigan pothole so basically a sinkhole) today and my check engine light came on. I don’t have one of those computer plugins to reset the light and I knew it was just a sensor that got knocked so I was just like “well let’s see if this works” and on the way home I swerved and hit the pothole again and the check engine light turned off

I just googled “Michigan Pothole”

IS THIS STATE OKAY??????