Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Glappy Sherlock.

I encountered the word "glappy" for the first time this week, as well as a prime example of the Sherlockian use of it.

"Glappy," as it is defined by the Urban Dictionary and it's coiners, the sprightly lads at the Ugly Couch show podcast, is "The mixed feelings you get when you see a movie/tv show/book/game that you didn't really care for, but you are glad they made it anyway."

The first thing I thought of when I heard the term, was the recent movie Mr. Holmes.  Glappy is a feeling that is probably felt more keenly by fans of a given thing than folk in everyday life, and it was my fan love of Sherlock Holmes that made me glad to see an Ian McKellen movie about Sherlock Holmes, created with all due respect and seriousness that the Master of Detectives deserves. But I really didn't care for the film.

And then Chris Redmond and Rob Nunn got into a small discussion of "The Mazarin Stone" on Twitter, and how it might just be the worst Sherlock Holmes story that Conan Doyle got published. (I say "got published," as I never truly give up the thought of Watsonian authorship, even in the face of ol' walrus-moustache.)  To me, "Mazarin Stone" isn't even a bad Sherlock Holmes story . . . in my mind it's always the fake Sherlock Holmes story. Like it's a bunch a bad actors walking through a stage play of something Holmes once sort-of did.

Of course, those thoughts might just be due to its origins and my awareness thereof, but still . . . .

I don't think highly of "Mazarin Stone," but I don't hate it. I might wish it into the Apocrypha, but I'd never wish it out of existence. (Like another thing with the name "Sherlock Holmes" used a bit too freely to describe its main character.) I'm pretty much glappy that "Mazarin Stone" was written.

And, you know, that's really not a bad thing. If, at the end of my run as a blogger about things Sherlock, I think I'd settle for a "glappy" from those that bothered to read the thing now and then. It's a word that definitely shows a consideration was made.

And that, in the end, is all we can ask of people. Or hope for.

1 comment:

  1. I stand by my original statement: The Veiled Lodger is worse than Mazarin Stone.

    ReplyDelete