furriesandus:

cumbler-tumbler:

violethuntress:

constancecream:

sussexbound:

yorkiepug:

I’m trying to wrap my head around what Mofftiss though everyone was doing wrong in their Sherlock Holmes adaptations and they got right……

In other stories

-Was there not enough queerbaiting?

-Were other stories just not quite misogynistic for them?

-Not enough babies?

-Not enough Mary…I mean Rosemund Mary?

-Was John just not good enough to narrate his own stories anymore?

-Not enough crazy murder/rapist secret sisters?

-Lack of mind control powers?

-Lack of Mycroft/Gatiss face all over the finale?

-John Watson needed a little character assassination?

-Lack of no right choice murder room mysteries?

-Not enough violin duets with crazy murderer sisters?

-Too much Holmes/Watson interaction in other stories?

-Too much John Watson in general in other stories?

-Too much time spent in 221B in other stories?

Someone help me, I’m at a loss here.

You and me both.

Yeah, no, but honestly, did Mofftiss really read the books, both back in their youth, and simultaneously think, wait, how can you explain a character like Sherlock Holmes?
He’s so extraordinary, …you could almost say there’s something wrong with him, surely there must be some dark secret buried in his past?
What about his childhood?
Wait, would it not make so much more sense had there been a genius psychopath sister?
This! This must be the answer to the question why Sherlock Holmes has fascinated readers for over a hundred years!

… and someday I will get myself a TV show and reveal all of it in a giant, groundbreaking rug pull that no one except for me and my pal could have predicted!

I know most of this is meant as snark but honestly? I think they thought that they would be the first to explain why Sherlock Holmes is the way he is; to excavate his past; to answer the “What’s your childhood trauma?” (thank you, Cordelia from BTVS) question. I don’t think they knew they would go with “psychopath / just needs a big hug” sister, but the very decision to Go There and Explain Everything.

(I don’t like that they even felt the need to do that, as I’ve written before.)

The thing is, I know a lot of you are also original ACD fans, and I was just rereading some last night (A Study in Scarlet). And whatever problems Sherlock Holmes has that Moftiss thought needed to be explained are problems they made up themselves.

The Sherlock Holmes of the ACD stories isn’t emotionally dysfunctional. He’s a highly intelligent young man (probably early 30s at most—Watson takes him for possibly a medical student when they first meet) who knows everything about chemistry and soils and nothing about the solar system. He’s dedicated to his studies, conceited, at times tart, and sometimes unaware of the niceties of social discourse because of his obsession with his studies and analysis. But he is a man who can have an extended conversation with Watson about his work without insulting him, can furnish and decorate their flat over a number of days as a team with his new roommate (NOT moving in before Watson and messing the place up with his stuff), etc., etc. He’s strange on the surface, but it’s because he’s always deep in his thought processes (when he’s not deep in a period of torpor and sawing away distractedly and tunelessly on his violin). He doesn’t push Watson around or take advantage of him. He treats Watson respectfully, as he does all people, though he doesn’t suffer trivialities and artifice.

If Moffat and Gatiss wanted to explain how “Sherlock Holmes” got to be the way he was, their task would have been to explain how the man became so interested in becoming a consulting detective. And that isn’t really that fantastic. You don’t have to be “emo” to be an unusual and interesting person. Perhaps it’s a failure of their narrow acquaintance and experience that they don’t know that it’s pretty normal for a highly intelligent person to make up his or her own puzzles and seek out intellectual challenges, and even to be socially a bit out of it.

Don’t get me wrong; I loved Moftiss’s take on Sherlock and John in series 1 and 2. But although they may think otherwise, they haven’t done Sherlockians any favors or advanced inquiry by misreading the character of Sherlock Holmes as a traumatized self-diagnosed sociopath and giving him a lurid, melodramatic back story. The story didn’t need a “reset.” That’s all on them.

Agree with @cumbler-tumbler here. Their Sherlock simply became more and more unlike the Sherlock of the stories which is why we stopped watching. Obviously loads of people loved it but I lost interest because they changed everything too much for my liking.