The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-Ed

So, I was recently on vacation for a week at the beach (granted, the very cold beach, since it was in New Jersey and it's heading into autumn, but still the beach) without internet. I managed to do very well and only twitched a little bit, which was very good, considering I'm usually on my laptop several hours a day. However, I think the internet missed me, because it followed me into real life.

Not. Kidding.

My godson kept running over while I was reading to show the weird things his hermit crab was doing. The boardwalk vendors were selling Troll Face and Cool Story Bro t-shirts. The front-page photo on Sept. 19 was a man in a tricorner hat firing a se'en-pounder from a flagship on the Delaware River.

Honestly, it was like I'd never left. But return I have, to the news that apparently we only have three Yuletide nominations this year?

( This is hard, y'all. This is really hard. )

Long story short, if you're thinking about nominating any of these:

Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus
Stand By Me (1986)
Clueless (1995)
Top Gear UK RPF
Raging Phoenix (2009)
Lost Girl
Haven
Diane Duane - The Young Wizards Series

Please drop me a line so we can avoid redundancies, and also squeal about how awesome our tiniest fandoms are.

Since it turns out that a watched torrent doesn't download, I decided to join the rest of fandom and post about my love for Sherlock.

I love it.  An awful lot.  And it's not because it's clever or Moffat-y or because Benedict Cumberbatch has a voice like a leopard impregnated a double bass and then the offspring rolled around in honey (though all of those things are true).  It's because they get Watson right, and my opinion of Sherlock Holmes mythos works lives and dies on their Watsons. 

In inferior spin-offs, Watson is just there to get Holmes to talk out loud, much like the skull on the mantelpiece.  He's dumb, easily awed, and likes his comforts.  Often, this Watson is fat and old, and is easily irritated by Holmes's physical activity because he can't keep up.

In the Granada Holmes (which at least Cumberbatch watched, because there were many, many moments when I flashed back to Jeremy Brett), they had two Watsons.  One was an inferior Watson.  One was a proper Watson.

To me, a proper Watson is the one we meet in Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" - an injured war veteran who's bright enough to recognize that Holmes has him and everyone else on the planet beat in that department and smart enough to want to hang on for the ride.  He has his own skill set, distinct from Holmes'. He's definitely awed by Holmes, but not really by much else, and Holmes, in turn, seems more awesome to us.  His irritation at Holmes's bizarre energy comes not from an inability to keep up but from that military mindset where you don't hate doing active things, but you do hate doing them unnecessarily, because you might need that energy later.

In short, he's Martin Freeman's John, and I ADORE him.  Fic is happening, people. 

ETA: torrent loaded.  Will be back later.


( LATER. THERE ARE SPOILERS. OBVS. )