Two Sherlocks in a single TV show.

Fan fiction too often gets dismissed as ephemeral fluff, but one writer's attempt to start a new fic this week brought out what a great analytical tool it can be.

Caroline's poll on Twitter, as she started to plot a new story, aimed to put Sherlock and John into a scenario based on cult favorite TV show Firefly. And finding a Firefly character who lined up with Sherlock Holmes quickly brought out two very different dramatically different ways we view Sherlock.

For those unfamiliar with Firefly, let me run down the two characters involved for you.

Inara is a worldly professional who sets herself apart from the rest of the cast in her separate vessel attached to the main spaceship from the start. She has insights into her fellow humans far beyond those of other characters, goes off to handle her own cases, and deals with folks from the highest ranks of society on occasion. Inara could be argued to be the best and wisest of the Firefly's passengers and crew.

River, on the other hand, is the ultimate outsider. No one ever knows what she's up to or why she's doing the weird things she does, though there usually winds up being a valid reason for it. She definitely has her own Dr. Watson in her brother Simon, also a doctor, who struggles to take care of this dangerously random individual, much like our John Watson did. River has mental abilities so far above her fellow humans that she seems like an alien being, and, like our Sherlock, will just suddenly go from aloof artist-type to kicking major ass.

As the check mark in the above screen shot shows, my natural reaction is to go for the latter view of Sherlock Holmes, but both are wonderfully valid takes on the man. And this is one of the things that those who dismiss fan fiction outright fail to understand: Writing fan fiction is the perfect tool for exploring aspects of personality in ways simple articles can't do. Putting characters in scenarios to play out what aspects of their personality will lead to are thought-experiments that can lead to better understanding of not just the character you're writing about, but yourself and others. And also passing that understanding on to others who are curious to read your experiments.

Which is kind of what fiction has always been about. Helping us understand differing points of view than our own and gaining empathy for people who aren't us.

Caroline's question revealing two great Sherlock Holmes characters in a single TV show really brought that out for me this morning, which, considering I'm a big fan of both Sherlock Holmes and Firefly, surprised me that I'd never considered before. I hope we never lose the spark to run such experiments, because they're another part of what makes Sherlockiana such a great place to be.

Another great night of Sherlock Holmes, unexpected.

Here's one of those things I love about Sherlock Holmes that you forget after a while, and then get to be happily reminded of . . . .

There is great joy to be had in little things.  Details in the Canon. Simple Holmes-related artifacts. A digital clock hitting 2:21. And even, as happened tonight, an almost non-attended Sherlockian discussion group meeting.

I've mentioned our local library group, the Sherlock Holmes Story Society, here before, which meets at the North Branch of Peoria Public Library on the fourth Thursday of the month at 6:30. We've been going since January of this year, and attendance is still pretty irregular, ranging from eight to tonight's gathering of two and a half.

Going into this evening's discussion of "The Engineer's Thumb," I was not expecting much. I'd forgotten the meeting myself until the day before, the good Carter was buried in deadlines and unable to attend, and the reminder e-mails we had decided to start sending out had failed to come together. And when 6:30 approached and I was sitting in the meeting room alone, things were looking pretty bleak.

And then one person showed up.

And one of the best meetings ever began. Because what makes a great Sherlockian meeting? Getting surprised by another person who you quickly see is into Sherlock Holmes as much as you are. Someone who got the stories read to them as a child as bedtime stories. Someone under thirty who appreciates the Granada series. And someone who not only cites Lyndsay Faye's work as their favorite pastiche, but attended the legendary doom that was DashCon. The kind of person you hope will walk into any Sherlockian meeting.

Not that we don't have a few such folk in the Sherlock Holmes Story Society already (Where were ya, guys?), but a brand new one?!?  Treasure.

We had a good back-and-forth on "Engineer's Thumb" until about the halfway mark of the meeting, when a second attendee showed up (the "half" I mentioned earlier), an older gentleman in mirror shades and black cloth gloves. And then the meeting took a turn . . .

He took the gloves off, but not the shades, and soon we got peppered with random questions about Sherlock Holmes ranging from "Was he real?" to "Does this need a book?" to "Did you ever see The Prisoner?" And he was taking notes on our answers. He had seen a lot of Sherlock Holmes movies, primarily the Rathbones, I think, but kept giving us springboards to talk about some aspect of Sherlock Holmes that might have had something to do with his legion of questions.

William Gillette. Conan Doyle's non-writing career. Heroes who die. Adolph Hitler's Hound. The number of pages in the Complete (and how it wasn't the same in both copies present). Robert Downey Jr. Suddenly we were on a wild random treadmill of subjects and never made it back to "Engineer's Thumb" before the overhead speakers said it was time to close the library.

It would have driven a more goal-oriented Sherlockian mad, but that last half of the meeting still just makes me laugh. As so often happens, when you least expect it, you sometimes get great surprises.

And tonight was one of those nights. Next month, I'm determined to get those reminders out, because our Sherlock Holmes Story Society alumni are going to want to meet our newest member when she returns. Our late arrival said many times that this was probably going to be his only time in the group, which is why he had so many questions, so I don't expect we'll be seeing him then.

But you just never know about Sherlockian gatherings, and that's the best part.

When you follow Sherlock Holmes around, you always get marvelous surprises, and most often, when you least expect them.

221B CON PANEL SEASON!!!

The word went out on 221B Con's Twitter feed today -- the con is accepting suggestions for 2018 panels from now until late November. Which means its time for those lovely ideas that will bond a table full of speakers and an audience come next April.

2017 saw some real dark horse panels, where some very strong panelists turned signed up for panel ideas that I initially didn't have very high expectations for. 221B Con is like that -- if you can make it through the whole con without a few real surprises, I would suspect you of being heavily tranquilized on some narcotic. And a lot of the seeds the those amazing twists are planted now.

So let's prime the pump, shall we? Panel idea brainstorming session begins . . . now!

What if "The Adventure of Thor Bridge" had that one thing from its title that it's missing . . . the god of thunder, Thor himself? What if Basil Rathbone had met the real Marvel Spider-woman, instead that non-super one with the pygmy sidekick? Are there superheroes in the Canon besides Sherlock Holmes?

The pastiche life cycle of Sherlock Holmes. Tell us your favorite stories of Holmes as a young boy, a teen, a young man, a middle-aged man, and an elderly fellow. Can you fit a chain of them into one life of Sherlock Holmes?

The end of CBS's Elementary . . . if 2018 is the final season, how would you want the show to go out? Series finale hopes, dreams, and shockers.

Conan Doyle's haunting of Sherlockian fandom: What's he inspiring? Who's he cursing? Is he making clay pots with anyone while Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers plays?

The future of Sherlockian podcasting. What's the future of a medium based around hundred year old stories and an unreliable flow of new material to comment on?

Cats and Sherlock Holmes. Why do dogs hog the limelight when it comes to Sherlock? Let's talk about cats!!!

The Canon is a lie! What's the real secret behind the Sherlock Holmes stories that only conspiracy theorists and the clinically insane dare speak of? Multiple disposable Watsons? Sherlock really an actor paid by Dr. Watson ala Michael Caine? Mrs. Hudson was a medium and both Holmes and Watson were the spirits of fourteenth century monks?

Victorian celebrities that appear in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Who were they and why were they cool enough to get mentioned by the cool boys of Baker Street?

Show me how to draw a cartoon of Sherlock Holmes! Seriously, somebody show me!

Guided tours of the dealers room. Sure, you've wandered shyly through the dealers' room, but what if you got to trail along with somebody extroverted enough to talk to all those cool creators and vendors about their wares?

The Tubies. A made up award based on the test tubes of Bart's lab for outstanding production of Sherlock Holmes YouTube videos from 2017. And Sherlock's Test Tube goes to . . . .

Sherlock spin-offs without Cumberbatch or Freeman. Possible? Any that could be distracting enough to keep you from wondering where Sherlock and John were the whole time?

The Son of Buckaroo Banzai. Sure, it seems to have nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, but those Blue Blaze Irregulars didn't just come out of nowhere.

Okay, the brain storm seems to be blowing through . . . get your own creative lightning going and start rolling those mental thunderclouds around to see what happens. The end of November is not that far away!

Like Watson, I love to think of Jack Munro.

Somewhere in the middle of the 1880s, a man named Grant "Jack" Munro found himself suddenly a father, in the most abrupt of fashions.

In his thirties, doing well as a hop merchant, married for a few years, Jack Munro was the sort of fellow who has a favorite pipe that he loves so much he has it mended with silver bands. Even though the pipe came to him in less prosperous times, he shows a loyalty to it that tells us something about him. He thinks with his heart as much as his head . . . else why attach such value to a mere pipe?

When such a man marries, he marries with all of his being. And Jack Munro did, meeting a young widow named Effie, committing himself to that relationship whole-heartedly. He cares enough to be concerned that his wife's finances might be sorely hurt by his own business dealings, even as she shows such faith in him to merge her capital with his. He's a commitment guy.

And when circumstances seem to indicate that something horrendous is going to tear his marriage apart, Jack Munro goes to the best man in England to seek advice on just what that thing might be . . . and what he should do about it. The results were recorded by John Watson under the title "The Yellow Face," which also gives us a "Norbury" that has nothing to do with Mary Watson taking a bullet. This "Norbury," the original warning word to be whispered in Sherlock's ear, was not the most horrific moment of Watson's life, but "one of which I love to think."

Watson's own words. A moment that is "one of which I love to think."

And of late, it becomes increasingly attractive to retreat into one of those moments John Watson put on paper for us. A different time, a different place, a world where Sherlock Holmes brings truth and sets things aright for his fellow Victorians . . . most of the time, anyway. He tries.

If, as I found myself at the end of this particularly disputatious weekend, wanting to retreat into one of Watson's moments, I can think of none better than one of Sherlock Holmes's failures. The moment he did tell Watson to whisper "Norbury" in his ear whenever he was getting over-confident. And a moment Watson loved to think of that was, most definitely, not a failure.

That moment: Jack Munro, discovering he was a step-father of the sort of happy little girl who can make John Watson burst out laughing during the climax of a case with her smile. And it's not his laughter that makes the moment Watson loves . . . it's Jack Munro's reaction to fully understanding that he is now father to a child he has never seen before.

Jack picks up the little girl, gives her a kiss, and says they should all go home. Jack Munro, a man who shows he loves and commits to even the simplest of things in his life, goes all in on fatherhood in an instant. Race is no barrier. All the preconceptions and mistaken ideas he had going into that moment are no barriers. Jack Munro recognizes that it's a moment for love and nothing else, and he goes for it.

And it was a moment that John Watson loved to think of, and one he shared with us to love as well.

I'm grateful to him, and his literary agent, Conan Doyle, for that moment. For after some of what's been going around lately, it's a moment that we can remember has been on paper for well over a hundred years . . . and inspiring us all to be a little more like Jack Munro.

The Adventure of the Not Guilty Bachelorette

Well, you can just call me "Batman," because I'll always be here to fight the Mad Hatty-er.

My peer in the blogosphere, Rob Nunn, has backed up his case against the honourable Hatty Doran Moulton as some sort of villain. Thus, I find myself answering the call amid the darkness of this September night to once again defend one of the true innocents of the Sherlockian Canon.

Again, I will start with the unimpeachable testimony of Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself, who counseled, "You must make allowance for this poor girl, placed in so unprecedented a position."

T'were Hatty Doran Moulton of "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" anything close to the villain Rob casts her as, she could have simply denied her previous marriage to Frank Moulton, which no one else knew of, gained her noble title by marrying Sir Robert, and kept all the family money coming her way no matter who she married. She had nothing to gain from going back to Frank. No motive for the act whatsoever, except for true love, and without motive, as we all know, a criminal case easily falls apart.

And take Hatty's own testimony about the St. Simon engagement: "Then Lord St. Simon came to 'Frisco, and we came to London, and a marriage was arranged, and pa was very pleased, but I felt all the time that no man on this earth would ever take the place in my heart that had been given to my poor Frank."

After hearing her true love was in a massacre and hearing no more news for over a year . . . a period in which she was actually ill from grief . . . Hatty, sure that her one chance at love was over, let a marriage be "arranged" to please her father. A dutiful daughter . . . and a faithful wife, when she finds her husband still lives . . . how could anyone cast this lady as a villain?

I will admit, some might have a certain political bias against her. In his original post, Rob said this about Hatty believing the story of her husband's death: "Has this woman never heard of fake news?" And there evidence of Rob's bias may be coming out in that -- the papers did refer to Hatty as "a Republican lady," someone he would expect to be familiar with "fake news" even though she died long before a Republican politician made those words famous. But we must not let such modern political issues throw false light on the clear cut case for Hatty Doran Moulton's innocence.

When you truly look at Hatty Doran Moulton's situation, her closest Canonical counterpart can be found in Irene Adler Norton, perhaps the most impressive woman Sherlock Holmes ever knew. Both women had two of the ultimate cases of white male privilege, a king and a lord, with designs upon them, and both tried to slip away with the commoner they truly loved, only to have Sherlock Holmes take their side at the end, even though he had been hired by their noble ex.

Would we call Irene a "villain" for outsmarting Holmes? Would we call Hatty a "villain" for outsmarting Lestrade? (Who knows, Hatty might have even been Lestrade's the woman!) Nawww.

Smart women had enough obstacles to deal with in Victorian England. Let's not add any more burdens to their memory with such accusations.

But, hey, if you want to call Sherlock Holmes "The Criminal Mastermind of Baker Street," well there's a book for that now, thanks to Rob Nunn. I just hope he doesn't decide to do a similar book about Hatty Doran, as I don't want to take the time to write a book-length rebuttal. But I will!

The money thing.

None of us likes to talk about money. It's long been one of the great trouble spots of marriage, of friendships, even of a hobby like Sherlockiana.

And these days we're seeing it more prevalent in this hobby than ever before, thanks to two big generational waves and the gap between them. A lot of the baby boomers who rolled into this hobby in the sixties and seventies are doing quite all right for themselves in their retirement, and take for granted that their lives have been just the way life works. On the other hand, we have that great influx of Sherlockians that came to us thanks to the Downey/Cumberbatch wave, a great many of whom are still paying student loans the size of home loans their predecessors were taking out at their age.

And it's not just the generational differences. When I was in college, I could buy every new Sherlock Holmes book that came on the market without putting too big a dent in my budget, which was entirely based on part-time jobs. And there weren't nearly so many Sherlockian events that one needed to buy an airline ticket to fly to. And none of them had paid celebrity autographs. Commercial interests have entered all fandom experiences in ways they never have in the past.

There were differences in our incomes in the 1980s, but at a Sherlockian weekend, you never really seemed to notice them too much. The base price level of Sherlockiana seemed be set up for bookworms, because nobody wanted to waste too much money on other things when we could be spending it at the city's bookstores. And those things that did cost a little more? The Strand magazines and rare old books? Finding them was the trickiest thing, and sometimes you could still luck into a real deal. So when somebody did get something good, you were just happy for the fact that they found it, not going "Oh, well, guess they just had more money than anyone else watching eBay that day."

Ah, eBay. The first harbinger of wealth awareness. Early on, I remember a Sherlockian friend talking about certain old volumes always being bought up by the same familiar buyer whenever they came on the site. My friend knew exactly who was grabbing up the items he saw in their common shop and knew exactly why he wasn't getting them: the number of bucks in his bank account. But it hasn't just been eBay that gave us a newfound wealth awareness. The whole internet seemed to want to chime in, even in the most innocent of social media comments.

A simple humble brag can now be posted to numbers of people once only attained with the full circulation of The Baker Street Journal, the top Sherlockian communication method of its day. Shelf porn doesn't require being friendly enough with a person to go visit their house, at which point you liked them well enough to be delighted at their good fortune, rather than envious. And when a big event happens, you can now start ticking off hundreds of people who are attending when you aren't, just by glancing through social media.

It's easy to feel less than able in the current climate of Sherlockiana, because there is alway something you won't be able to do, or buy, or even just get to. And it doesn't help that a few of the people who do get to do all of the things kind of suck. Tradition overrides empathy a lot of times in a fandom as old as Sherlockiana. Some corners of the fandom can seem to claim ownership of the true Sherlockian world a little more than happens in younger fan cultures. We have our narcissists, just like many other parts of life, who will always need someone to claim to be better than.

But money? Pay close attention to the big money folks in the hobby, and to those with less. And see where the most creativity is coming from.

Sherlockiana itself was born during the latter years of the Great Depression, when poverty was the name of the game. Nobody was living as comfortably as they liked. But with some paper, a pen, and a copy of a completed Sherlock Holmes canon, good things could still be had. And we have so much more than paper and pens these days. Even if we aren't living large in an urban Sherlockian center with a goodly disposable income.

Whether it's in the Great Depression of the last century, the one that might lay ahead, or just dealing with your own bank account on a Friday night, the money thing is always going to suck. But you aren't alone in that, because that's kind of the point of a community like Sherlockiana. There are things here that can't be bought, and will never be, things of yours that you don't even realize will make even the wealthiest Sherlockian a bit envious at some point.  (Trust me on this -- I'm a very jealous person, and some of you out there? Wow.)

It's good to consider and be considerate of income disparity in our world, inside and outside Sherlockiana, every now and again. And perhaps help fight the rising tide of inflation if you find yourself in a position to do so. Because we are, and have long been, a community. And a pretty good one at that.

Holmes folded up his cheque and placed if carefully in his note-book. "I am a poor man," said he, as he patted it affectionately and thrust it into the depths of his inner pocket.

In defense of Hatty Doran Moulton.

Sometimes, Sherlockians like to just make trouble.

Having lived next door to a man whose greatest joy was seemingly getting himself repeatedly kicked off the Hounds of the Internet, I know this well. So I tend to forgive little outrages like the one my friend Rob Nunn committed over at his blog, Interesting Though Elementary, earlier this week. Forgive, yes. But let stand unopposed? As the mighty Thor would often shout under Stan Lee's scribelage, I say thee nay!

For Rob has a real bone to pick with Ms. Hatty Doran Moulton of "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor." After saying he might have come to a contest for "Worst Villain of the Canon" to argue her candidacy for said position, Rob refers to the poor girl as "vile," states that she sucks, and cites her absence from a Baker Street Babes list of female characters as more evidence of her awfulness.

Now, I don't know if Rob was stood up at a wedding by a California girl himself once upon a time, or harbors some other grudge, but personally, I am rather proud of Hatty, a fellow American who stayed loyal to her man under the tremendous pressures of British society. Allow me to call my first witness to Hatty's quality of character: Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

"I trust that you at least will honour me with your company," Sherlock said to Hatty and her husband, once the unforgiving Lord St. Simon had coolly stalked out of 221B.

"Honour me with your company," one of the greatest minds in Victorian England says there. Can you imagine the sheer joy of hearing those words directed at you from Sherlock Holmes? Sherlock Holmes, a man with such a keen eye and such a perceptive brain that he knows more about you than anyone else at first meeting. Sherlock Holmes, whose skill at judging character and looking for deceit, weakness, or villainy was at the highest level. And also, Sherlock Holmes who viewed the average social summons as calling upon one "to be bored or lie."

Sherlock Holmes did not invite just anyone to dinner at 221B Baker Street.

And yet he invited Hatty Doran Moulton and her husband. Did he invite Flora Millar? No. Did he invite Inspector Lestrade? No. Did he invite his own brother, Mycroft? No, no, no.

He invited Hatty.

Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, I could go on all evening about the fine qualities of this upstanding daughter of the American West. I could draw in Lord St. Simon's testimony of her strength, courage, and nobility. I could read newspaper reports of her fascinating persona. And of course I could call up what her maid Alice's loyalty reveals about the sort of person who inspires such a bond. But do I need to say anything more once you have seen how Sherlock Holmes himself judged this woman?

Again, I say thee nay!

We have many a villain to turn our glares upon in the Canon of Sherlock Holmes, and that we shall all do, as we enjoy his battles against them. But Ms. Hatty Doran Moulton shall never be among them . . . unless you are the sort who would also write a book proclaiming Sherlock Holmes a villain!