Winning!

Maybe I'm just too competitive. Growing up with multiple siblings can do that to you. The latest flare-up of that trait came this evening, thanks to my finally getting around to checking out the "Which Sherlock Holmes are you?" quiz at SherlockHolmesFan.com.

Those silly "Which [Insert favorite thing here] character are you?" have been one of the more fun things to pop up on Facebook since it's start. A bit like a backwards horoscope, a weird little dice roll for an ego stroke, and a celebration of fan fun, all rolled into one, there's nothing vital, serious, or important about them, and for better or worse, they're just fun.

I've seen which politico on House of Cards I am, which Marvel's Avenger, which convict on Orange is the New Black, whatever looks like it might be intriguingly non-obvious at the time. (I mean, I have always known which Star Trek character I am. Some things just are.)

But which Sherlock Holmes?

Out of Cumberbatch, Downey, Miller, Rathbone, and Brett?

(Nice of them to give a "You're not Sherlock!" option in there, wasn't it, Howard?)

I had no idea. And the questions didn't seem as obvious as some similar quizzes, where one could pretty much skew the results.

But when I got done and the following showed up . . . .

A part of me jumped up and went, "I won!"

Like I said, I'm competitive, even in non-competitive endeavors. But it also seemed to reveal that good ol' Benedict is apparently now my favorite Sherlock Holmes. The Rathbone/Cumberbatch tie seems to have tilted toward the modern contender, with his unforeseeable future output. (Could coming seasons contain something so off-putting that his Sherlock falls from grace? We shall see.)

All that said, I may have a new favorite Sherlock Holmes come September. My television has started to give me promos from an AU network for a Sherlock show that may be coming in via some Twilight-Zone-ish source. And if that sentence makes no sense to you and doesn't sound like anything you've heard of, don't worry. It probably shouldn't and neither should you have.

I'm just another blogging looney of the interweb after all, and this fall, you might just get to see something old and something new, something borrowed and some part of it BLUE. Or maybe not actually see it.

For now, however, WOO-HOO, CUMBERBATCH!

Winning!

Waiting for Mr. Holmes.

Well, the Peoria movie listings for this weekend aren't quite out yet, so I don't know if Ian McKellen in Mr. Holmes will be making it to our local theaters this week. Oh, Ant-Man will certainly be here, as well as the comedy Trainwreck, but Mr. Holmes is at that level of movie release that one never quite knows about, Peoria-wise. It could be this weekend. It could be a couple of weeks from now.

Which seems kind of fitting.

When the novel that Mr. Holmes is based on, A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullen, first came out, I read it and didn't particularly care for it. An aged Sherlock Holmes with his powers failing wasn't exactly something I was excited to read. I read it, but can't say I enjoyed it. Characters that one is drawn to for their exciting powers inevitably have a story where those powers are taken away, and while that might seem like a great dramatic thought to the writer, it kind of sucks for the reader.

I mean, if I wanted to read a tale of a detective who wasn't all that bright, I have plenty of others to choose from. (Even among detectives named "Sherlock Holmes" these days, sad to say.) But when I look to a story about Sherlock Holmes, I'm looking for that dazzling brilliance that goes with that name.

To me, Cullen's book seemed more of an excuse not to have to write dazzling brilliance than an exploration of growing old. At the time I read it, growing old was not a concern of mine, so that may have colored my view of it. During those pre-Downey, pre-Cumberbatch times, I was also desperate for an energetic Holmes at the height of his powers, which we just weren't getting, so the book was even more of a let-down.

But now, as the onset of all that comes with passing one's prime starts to weigh upon my mind, I'm wondering if Mr. Holmes might not get a different reaction from me. We've had our young, energetic Holmes quota filled of late. At this point, Sherlock Holmes in old age will be more of an interesting change. And, to put it bluntly, the quality of a movie never corresponds entirely to the book upon which it was based.

So I wait for Mr. Holmes, kind of like I wait for the coming of growing old: Knowing it will get here at some point, pretty sure it's not going to be completely delightful, but hoping it won't be too painful, and possibly have some great moments in it.

We shall see.

A second dispatch from the Omegaverse.

"Why isn't he . . . ?"

"Where is his . . . ?"

"How is that . . . ?"

Nine chapters in to the epic Omegaverse tale I'm reading, and I finally ran into my first detailed sex scene, a wet dream that Omega Sherlock is having.

And suddenly, I'm twelve again.

Not only do I not understand the basic impulses for what is going on "on screen," but I'm not even sure how the mechanics of it are working.

Even in what is thought of as a tale with much explicit world-building, nobody wants to stop to give a "kid" a sex education class. I mean, we all understand how sex works, right?

Well, I thought I did. But somehow I think even Dan Savage would have a heck of a time puzzling Omegaverse sex out, t'were he suddenly dropped into Sherlock's wet dream.

Leading up to the first full-out chunk of Omegaverse porn in this novel, I wasn't really having too much trouble being a male reading a work plainly intended for a female readership. Yes, occasionally there might be a scene where John Watson seemed to forget he had a penis (Somehow "penis awareness" was not something I thought this blog would ever touch on . . .), but overall, it read pretty good. And since this is a fantastic universe with a wholly different biology, who's to say that those bits weren't out of place.

The problem is that I'm still not sure of how this biology works. The Gilded Cage did an excellent job of exploring the social ramifications of Alpha-Beta-Omega life, but I'll be damned if I have any clue what a "knot" is at this point, only that Alphas have one and Omegas want it inside them.

Like I said, twelve all over again.

In the novel, Sherlock Holmes wants a new mystery to distract him from being in heat, and I'm starting to sympathize with him, as a new mystery would be something I understand . . . and The Gilded Cage has done its casefic bits pretty nicely so far.

I just think I needed an "Omegaverse Sex Ed for Dudes" course before I started this little adventure.

Impossible not to comment, but so not wanting to.

Remember the day when the biggest comic book convention in the world could happen and most people didn't even know there were such things as comic book conventions?

And a psychic, like the notorious Amazing Criswell could go, "And there will come a time in the 2000s when a comic book convention shall be the source of all prophecy, and all the faithful shall look up and wait for visions of what is yet to be . . . ."

With its teasers, spoilers, quips exploding info-shrapnel across social media this week, San Diego Comicon brought a few minutes of entertainment and a few days of boredom to Sherlockians as everyone's Twitter-feed, Facebook, etc. filled up with links and comments to and on those same few minutes.

All about an hour or so of television that will be coming out late this year. (Well, with the addition of movie theaters worldwide showing that single episode,  BBC Sherlock may be making its first transtional step to just being a movie series, which it kinda-sorta has been all along, rivalling the Basil Rathbone films.) In one short clip, we saw echoes of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and Granada television's Sherlock series, heard some truly meta comments about Watson's published works, and saw that fan-tweaking moustache appear. What all this means for the whole of the thing will give grist to the fan-mill for easily six months.

I mean, what the f'hell? Literally, what the f'hell is this?

"A dream, a hoax, an imaginary story?" as the Silver Age comics used to tout when their covers showed Superman or Batman in some off-norm character-altering situation. And these days, with creator awareness of fan fiction and all its varied splendor, just telling an alternate universe Sherlock tale would not be out of place.

From all indications, it's a light-and-happy one-shot before we get into the dark and tear-filled drama of the next season, where three killers try to deal with the birth of a baby.

Hmmm, "Three Killers and a Baby" . . . there's a dark upgrade to that old Tom Selleck, Ted Danson, and Steve Guttenberg comedy of its time. That, however, was a comedy. (Of its time.) The season of Sherlock that follows this Victorian oddness? Betting it's not so funny.

But on we go, having gotten our summer cookie and waiting for a real meal.

Into the Omegaverse . . . .

Being a Sherlockian these days is a real opportunity.

For those who love things past, we have things like that re-discovered William Gillette film to delight, as well as lesser bits of history being discovered and shared by the network of Holmes fans connected more than ever before.

And for those who love the future, the new, the uncharted territory?

Oh, this is a brave new Sherlockian world indeed.

I've been tentatively dipping a toe into the pool of fan fiction for a few months now, trying this and that, seeing the various levels of skill and interests of the writers, but for the most part observing it as an outsider on an alien world. Sherlock fan fiction, for the most part, was not written for my sort of brain . . . there are  triggers meant to be tripped by a lot of it that don't seem to be as developed in my too-male mind. Yet hope springs eternal, as writing, at its core, is always an attempt at one mind to convey its truest thoughts and feelings to another mind, to make that other mind understand.

It's a connection every writer hopes to make, and one every reader delights in.

And after months of looking for that connection -- though I will admit they have not been months fully dedicated to the task -- I hit it. I found a book I couldn't put down. And I found it in the oddest of places . . . the Omegaverse.

One thing I love about the Three Patch Podcast has been its interviews with fanfic writers. Even if I'm not interested in what a particular writer is writing about, hearing them talk about the process can be rewarding in and of itself. This month, however, I found a writer who goes by "BeautifulFiction" striking a particular chord, so I went and checked out her massive, nearly 327,000 word work -- bigger than the largest Harry Potter volume, bigger than any two of the three Lord of the Rings books combined -- on a whim.

I started reading that book, The Gilded Cage by BeautifulFiction,  on my computer, but quickly moved to reading it on my phone for portability. And I've been reading it while I do things like brush my teeth, which is one of my tests of any novel for that much desired "can't put it down" quality. I am, I will admit, only three chapters in, but they are very long chapters, the first being a case unto itself, and enough that I have a feel for the thing, and that I'm actually getting what the author is writing.

So lets talk Omegaverse. The Gilded Cage is good science fiction, the sort that doesn't feel the need to dump every detail of the new universe you find yourself in up front, but lets you explore it through the characters and what's going on in their lives. What is going on in their lives? Well, typical John and Sherlock and Inspector Lestrade stuff, just like you're watching BBC Sherlock. But underneath that, hidden like a secret held by one of those three main characters, is an overlay of a reality that makes this a science fiction tale and not a flat-out Sherlock mystery.

I don't want to spoil much, just in case you're as much a newbie as me and wanting to explore this tale on your own, but here's where BeautifulFiction is getting it right: Part of the fantasy of Omegaverse rules is rebuilding human sexuality to create new ways for two men to have crazy sex with each other and actually get pregnant, and it gets used a lot for porn, as I understand it. (Total newb taling here, forgive me if I over-generalize or mis-state.) But The Gilded Cage is written so well that it uses that mechanic to explore the relationship between Sherlock and John without diving into sex right away. Like any good book, it holds back on the big impacts, letting tension build. BeautifulFiction takes even that a step further . . . she uses Alphas and Omegas in a way that can communicate to even a male like myself aspects of what it is to be female.

Sure, it's a science fiction world and the role of the Omega is an extreme caricature (well, I hope) of female cultural roles, but it's there's more than just a gay male love story going on here. It's the sort of work that makes you think about your own life and world while walking your mind through a fantastic fictional one.

From everything I'd heard about Omegaverse, from podcasts, at cons, I had pretty much assumed it was a girls-only club. Something I'd never really get simply because I'm not really into guy-on-guy romantic entanglements. But a good writer . . . and BeautifulFiction started well and seems to be growing even as the chapters move along . . . can take you out of your personal headspace and move you closer to theirs. And that is what I'm getting out of The Guilded Cage: Something new.

Like I said, being a Sherlockian these days is a real opportunity. Everything in it might not appeal to you, but it's big enough, diverse enough, and so full of fascinating stuff that something out there is apt to capture your interest.

And you just never know when that might come along. Even in the Omegaverse.

Believing in Sherlock Holmes . . . still.

Remember that great Sherlock meme from a couple of years ago?

"I believe in Sherlock Holmes."

It was a very cool thing that sprang out of the finale to season two of BBC's Sherlock, in which Moriarty had completely discredited Sherlock Holmes as a fraud and the detective had, to the world's eyes, committed suicide at being ruined so. But the idea that someone out there still knew the truth, even when superficial evidence pointed otherwise, resonated with fans of the show, who did know the truth. And the best way to express that?

"I believe in Sherlock Holmes."

I was watching a documentary called "An Honest Liar," about a well known skeptic named James Randi last night, and it made me think of that meme again. At the point in the film when it got to his debunking of a prominent faith healer of the day, I was at first reminded of Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle . . . Randi is a big Houdini fan . . . and how no matter how much Houdini tried to debunk fraudulent spiritualists, Conan Doyle wanted to believe that such a thing existed.

That's the problem with debunking frauds, myths, and mass delusions. Usually those things exist because they fill a need in those people that hold tight to them. Belief is a very irrational thing, a tool the human mind uses when it doesn't have all the facts, when choices must be made without the proper tools to make them. And if we use belief too much to make our choices, eventually we start making that single aid our go-to shortcut instead of using rational analysis.

So what do we believe when we believe in Sherlock Holmes?

At the time that meme was going around, it was a bit of a cult of personality. A love of the character Benedict Cumberbatch played for two seasons, a way to hold tight to the anticipation that the character would be back for a season three and restore his good name. But Sherlockians have believed in Sherlock Holmes for a lot longer than just the between-seasons time of a single TV show.

Watching "An Honest Liar" and seeing James Randi's battles with Uri Geller, the spoon-bending trickster who claimed he could bend metal with his mind, I couldn't help but thinking of what was always at the core of our friend Sherlock Holmes . . . the triumph of truth over falsehood. But even as Randi demonstrated how Geller performed his frauds, there were still people who wanted to believe a man could bend spoons with his mind. Even "scientists" in the field of parapsychology, who thought Randi's exposing flaws in their methodology set back the study of psychic powers they steadfastly believed to exist.

If you think about it, the same thing probably occurred when Sherlock Holmes solved The Hound of the Baskervilles. You can bet there remained Dartmoor locals who still held that the demon hound from Hell was still real, even after Stapleton was exposed and his dog shot. "The Hound is still out there!' they might claim, keeping their lives a little more exciting, reinforcing their religious beliefs in a waiting Hell, or just because their father always told them the story when they were young. And, of course, there would still be those who said, "I believe in Sherlock Holmes's explanation."

These days we see a lot of those kinds of disagreements. And because the word "believe" can be used in describing both notions, some would even say they are equal. But all beliefs aren't equal.

Saying "I believe in Sherlock Holmes" is a funny thing. It sounds a lot like you're saying "I believe in Santa Claus," and that you're a child who naively thinks a story they heard when they were too young to know better was true. It's not something any politician would say on record, not something anyone who was jittery about what people think would state publicly. It worked as a fandom meme, but beyond our happy Sherlock-o-sphere?

What does it mean to believe in Sherlock Holmes?

He started out as a fictional character. He grew to a fictional character with a resonating reality that touched a great many people. He came a legend, and beyond that . . . a symbol.

Sherlock Holmes is a symbol for our hope that a person can find out the truth in a given situation. A symbol for our confidence that our studies, our sciences, and our simply paying close attention can show us the hidden truths of so many mysteries. Sherlock Holmes isn't just a symbol for drug addiction or Asperger's awareness or magically smart geeks who do things we can't. He's the symbol for the best of what we can be when faced with seemingly unsolvable problems. A symbol that reason can win our over superstition. There are no vampires or ghosts in the world of Sherlock Holmes, no matter how many pastiches try to shove them in there as a creative crutch. Because Sherlock Holmes solves ghosts and vampires.

He has the explanation.

Believing in Sherlock Holmes is believing that there is an explanation.

Which has always made him the coolest guy ever, wrapped in a Cumberbatch package or otherwise.

I believe in Sherlock Holmes. You probably do, too, or else you wouldn't have finished reading this little discourse. Every now and then, it's good to think about just what that phrase means to you.

The changing images of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Summer doldrums can mean a lot of sorting, cleaning, and generally looking at new projects. And as I was playing with Photoshop anyway this week, it seemed time to look in on Action Sherlock and Whatever-I-Called-That-Watson again, to see if they had any new material. The answer, unfortunately, was a steady "no."

Watson, it seems, is having body image issues. Martin Freeman has pretty much messed with his head and his once-workable "I'm like Nigel Bruce, but fatter!" line just doesn't cut it now. Even Mycroft Holmes has weight challenges these days, not being allowed by TV networks to be his old insanely-obese self. ("'I am glad to meet you, sir,' said he, putting out his broad, fat hand, like the flipper of a seal." How Watson got away with writing that about the most powerful man in Britain once upon a time is far beyond our modern sensibilities.)

And Action Sherlock? Well, his height was never as great as he thought it should be, and the deerstalker and invernesse just have fallen out of fashion. Even when Benedict Cumberbatch time travels back to whatever happens in the upcoming BBC Christmas episode of Sherlock, he's wearing a top hat.

In short, what seemed like two actors who could play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson only a decade ago (Hey, don't say "They're not actors, they're action figures!" That kind of prejudice against plastic Americans does not help matters whatsoever.) are now hopelessly out of fashion. Holmes and Watson have to be all sex-ay now, and Channing Tatum has a better chance at taking a Watson role than an out-of-work Kingpin action figure. (Even Kingpin isn't as fat as he used to be. But that's another issue for a non-Sherlock blog.)

As Elementary winds down it's non-Sherlock-Holmes take on someone who uses the name "Sherlock Holmes" and Sherlock produces new episodes at a pace that makes glaciers look like cars on the interstate speeding by, one has to wonder where the next fun to be had with Sherlock Holmes is going to come from. But wherever it is, you just can't predict what the detective and the doctor are going to come out as in another decade or two.

Or can you? The Cumberbatch-Freeman era is far from over, and I wouldn't be surprised if they bring Holmes and Watson to the big screen eventually. The effects of the Moffat-Gatiss vision of the two are liable to be with us a while.

But you just never know.