One of the more deliberate moments where the watcher witnesses the depth of Sherlock’s pining. Sherlock is referring to John’d romanticism in relation to his blog.. which, let’s be clear, is a blog revolving around Sherlock. John isn’t romanticizing crime, or murder, or the generality of cases… he’s romanticizing Sherlock, his mind, his acuity, their time together, who Sherlock is specifically as a man and John responds to Sherlock’s identity by writing about it with great depth and affection.
Up until now Sherlock has been the primary recipient of John’s romantic attentions. Not outright physical romance, but something with perhaps even far greater intimacy. John accounting Sherlock with beautiful sincerity, and genuine respect, his words making Sherlock into something desirable. (Which in turn, Sherlock returns that same level of romanticism in his best man’s speech.)
Sherlock was probably content just having that from John. Having love expressed through the safe medium of John’s blog. Sherlock’s small hesitation and and averting his eyes so he’s not looking right at John, pursing his lips. His tone and expression is a cocktail mix of regret, guilt over having these feelings in the middle of this event, and internalized longing.
am I misremembering this or is the arthur conan doyle estate absolutely off the hinges over what little control they have over sherlock holmes and ready to pull the trigger on anyone who writes the character as gay or as a nice person
ok so this is weirder than I thought
sherlock holmes apparently has kind of a complicated copyright situation; it’s in the public domain most places but because of the US’s very long copyright (thanks disney) some of the stories from the tail end of the canon are not in the public domain, at least in the US.
and the ACD estate goes HARD on this. guns blazing on everything from star trek parodies to this year’s netflix movie Enola Holmes, alleging that the character traits they give sherlock holmes are only present in the copyrighted material ( the last 10 stories out of about 60)
Delightfully, like most claims, it’s available online so we can see exactly what traits sherlock holmes is banned from having:
having medical knowledge
using new technology
liking dogs
respecting women (”In the Copyrighted Story “The Lion’s Mane,” Conan Doyle creates new character attributes for Holmes, placing a woman at the center of the story and having Holmes react with warmth and emotion to her—quite unlike Holmes’s (…) aversion to women in public domain stories.”)
caring about watson (”Springer also copies Sherlock Holmes’s warm friendship with Watson from the Copyrighted Stories (…) Nowhere in the public domain stories does Holmes express such emotion about the well-being of his companion John Watson. This friendship was not created by Springer in the Enola Holmes Mysteries. It was created in the Copyrighted Stories and copied by Springer.”)
being… nice… in general (”The Springer novels make extensive infringing use of Conan Doyle’s transformation of Holmes from cold and critical to warm, respectful, and kind in his relationships”)
HAVING FEELINGS??? (”Holmes’s new ability to express feeling results in a complex series of original creative elements Conan Doyle expressed in the Copyrighted Stories.”)
through a quick google search it would appear this also extends to sherlock holmes being written as gay, because it ”isn’t true to the spirit of the books” but mostly because andrea plunket is kind of grossed out by gay people
EXCEPT apparently andrea plunket isn’t actually a member of the estate and is only pretending to be after she sued for the rights in a divorce years ago and failed to get them; now she goes around falsely representation them and keeping the gays out of sherlock holmes. She’s even threatened to sue the BBC to keep them from “making any more sherlocks” (a plural i will absolutely be using in my daily life from now on)
