brainofck

Husband took a peek at The Empty Hearse and was annoyed. He feels like it was all "nudge nudge wink wink" and inside jokes and meta. He said, "There wasn't a single part of it that wasn't fanservice of some kind." Which he found especially irritating because it's only the seventh episode of the show. (I think he only watched the first 20 minutes or so.) "It's 'The French Mistake' except instead of having 10 seasons they have 7 episodes." (That's not a spoiler. It's not The French Mistake. He was just complaining it was too meta.)

Interestingly, Husband has never been a big fan of Sherlock. He thinks the stories are too implausible. (And no, we won't say, "Oh, like ACD's stories weren't.") Basically, his feeling is they do "a few interesting things with the characters" but mostly it's not that great. Also, at least initially, he was very unhappy that Sherlock was being portrayed as a sociopath, since in ACD SH is more of an eccentric gentleman, outside of the drug use and depression.

Anyway, after he said that, my first thought was, duh, that's because the whole SHOW is fanfiction. The ACD stories, to the extent they were about Holmes, were actually ABOUT the cases. The evidence, Holmes' deductions, maybe his disguises. Certainly, it was about how awesome Holmes was for his near magical ability to comprehend tiny clues. But Sherlock might as well be called Sherlock and John are Friends. They do fun stuff together, running around solving crimes, and yes, Sherlock is still a genius. But this is the (modernized) flip of ACD. In ACD they were clearly friends and fond of each other, but that was secondary. In Sherlock, they solve crimes, obviously, but that's background to their relationship.

Regarding slash, I've always said, that's what fanfiction is for. Well. Go Mark Gatiss, you got your pre-slash fanfiction made into an awesome show!

Strontium Chloride Red and Other Colours

I can almost guarantee you this will be my only rec for this pairing (outside a reiteration that the 5 pieces hils rec'd yesterday were all fun!). I prodded bluemeridian's recs, and kept passing on things because they sounded dumb, or tedious, or too much trouble. Since I know she is an excellent and reliable rec'er, I think I my interest in this idea is already fading.

However! The above is actually sort of a Sherlock rec, actually. Q is cast as the youngest of THREE Holmes brothers, and the three of them spend a fair amount of the story texting. Beware major spoilers for BBC Sherlock - I think this story is set between the second and third seasons.

(Please note there is no warning on the story for Q's untreated eating disorder, though you could classify it as similar to Sherlock's cocaine use - Sherlock uses drugs to distract from boredom, and doesn't care about them so much when he's busy. Q uses hunger as a tool to ground himself in the humdrum of real life, from which he finds himself almost completely detached. In the end his relationship with Mr. Bond seems to be curing that detachment, and maybe the eating issues will be set aside. Anyway, just fair warning if that's a problem for you.)