[ SECRET POST #2583 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2583 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 043 secrets from Secret Submission Post #369.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. http://i.imgur.com/UgzDn9K.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

This ISN'T what everyone automatically assumes? Come on, you're seriously trying to tell me people seriously can't consider that he just learned it later?

Sherlockians must be even more irrational than I thought...or you must be going off of a super small reference pool of opinions.

[skippydelicious]

That is fandom for you. There are still, 60 years or more on, Batman fans that declare Batman can't have a code against killing and guns because his very first characterisation before they nailed down the general character traits used a gun a handful of times. Fandom insists that the very first character info remains true always and forever. Sherlock-fandom is no different. Fans are crazy.

[truxillogical]

If I remember right, isn't it not just that he didn't know this stuff at first, and more that when John found out how much he didn't know, Sherlock explained that he deliberately forgets all of those things that he doesn't consider useful?

Why would he "learn it later" then? I mean, maybe eventually he decided some of it was useful, but he was pretty adamant about not wanting to know that the Earth revolves around the sun or whatever astronomy tidbit it was.

[(Anonymous)]

Because people, especially 27 year old guys who are poor and trying to work out the kinks in their very unique and experimental profession, can change their minds?

Also, don't call them Sherlock and John. Please. They are Holmes and Watson. Sherlock and John are for the BBC version only.

[truxillogical]

Um...ooookay? Didn't realize there was some kind of policed nomenclature for how to "properly" refer to them. Terribly terribly sorry.

Not saying that Sherlock can't change his mind, but there's no need to get super snotty about it. He seemed pretty confident that he'd found a way to organize his mind that worked for him. That's one way to handwave it, sure. But it's not like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never made some continuity errors. So it's fine for that to be one and it's okay to mention it as such, instead of trying to handwave it way. I mean, I "know" that you can make the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs because the run goes close enough to the pull of a black hole that a skilled pilot can use the gravitational force to cheat at space travel, but it doesn't mean that when George Lucas had Han Solo bragging about it, Lucas didn't think that a "parsec" was a unit of time.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh no, I'm not assuming Doyle intended it, but then again no one gives a shit what Doyle intended. :P Doyle is, as far as Holmes fans are concerned while they're doing the whole "Holmes was a real person!" shtick, Watson's super-lazy editor. :D

What I meant was that Holmes directly contradicts his rubbish brain attic remark later on when he frequently demonstrates that random knowledge IS helpful -- for example, his unfamiliarity with theology flummoxed him on Mrs. Barclay's "David!" comments, which he explicitly admits was the cause of his inability to figure out the solution at the end of The Crooked Man. Meanwhile, knowing an American slang phrase like "jumping a claim" clued him into the situation of Hatty Doran in The Noble Bachelor. All evidence that shows that the brain attic thing does not at all come in handy in detective work, no matter how "confident" he was about this idea when he was just starting out. And then there's this passage from The Valley Of Fear:

"I don’t doubt it, Mr. Holmes; but that is no business of ours."

"Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest."

Which is quite a change from "what does it matter to me and my work?" So I say that, from the evidence, he must have changed his mind.

I...didn't mean to sound snotty? There's a thing in SH fandom called "the Great Game", where we argue about "what really happened" in a faux-super-serious way, which is just an act, but it's one that we keep up as doggedly as Stephen Colbert keeps up his nutty conservative persona. I sometimes forget that not everyone plays it. Apologies.

But regardless: these days, Sherlock and John are generally considered to be the BBC characters specifically, who have nothing factually to with the canon characters because they are from a modern AU.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, don't be so fucking touchy. BBC fans don't own the franchise you know. They were only ever Holmes and Watson for a hell of a long time, and remain so in the books.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't call two characters whose names are Sherlock and John by their name? Why, exactly? Please explain why these two characters are the only two versions in a hundred other versions of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson whose first names are reserved solely for their use? I seriously would like to know your reason for this.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Nowadays, Sherlock and John are used to refer specifically to the BBC characters. Before the BBC series came out, there would be no problem with doing it, but nowadays it has different connotations.

Also, given that they are always referred to by last name, it's a bit like referring to Harry, Ron, and Hermione as Potter, Weasley, and Granger. But that's a rather irrelevant quibble.

[(Anonymous)]

Because he did learn it later. He knew stuff like that later, so he must have learned it later. Therefore he must have either changed his mind, or he lost the ability to forget. I would put my money on him changing his mind, as in later stories (particularly in The Valley of Fear), he points out the usefulness of acquiring a wide breadth of knowledge.

And ditto on the anon above me on "Sherlock" and "John." Just....no.

[truxillogical]

Sherlock John Sherlock John Sherlock John Sherlock John...

Geeze, it's their names. It's just a discussion on a fandom forum. Get the hell over yourselves, what are y'all, Baker Street Irregulars or something?

[(Anonymous)]

And are you twelve? Not giving a very good picture of BBC fans there. Why don't YOU get over yourself?

[(Anonymous)]

Re: the "Astronomy: Nil" bit, most classic Sherlockians agree that Holmes was having Watson on when he said he was unaware the earth orbits the sun...

I'm pretty sure that a lot of Holmes's "ignorance" was tongue-in-cheek twitting of early Watsonian gullibility.

[(Anonymous)]

Uh, no? I could believe that if Watson wrote A Study In Scarlet very early on, but Watson wouldn't have written that in his book six whole years later in 1887, and Holmes wouldn't have affirmed it around the same time in The Five Orange Pips. There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Holmes was twitting Watson. Whereas there is plenty of evidence that he genuinely didn't know then, but learned it later, either willingly or by accident.

I mean, it's a cool (and sort of hilarious) theory for a fanfic or something (like, maybe Watson intentionally put his totally mistaken list, which he knew was mistaken, in his book and implied that his list was true and that Holmes seriously didn't know what the solar system was for shits and giggles), but it sure as hell ain't a remotely logical evidence-based interpretation of canon.

I've never seen any classic Sherlockians claim unilaterally that Holmes was having Watson on with the sun remark. I've heard a couple people speculate that he could have been having Watson on, but no "yeah, that's wrong." Although classic Sherlockians are utterly ridiculous people who think it's logical to assume that Watson was a coward who self-inflicted his wound to get out of the army, and that it's more logical that he was concealing the fact that he was married to Lucy Ferrier than that he mixed up a date or two or lied about it to protect a client's privacy. So I don't really care what they say.

On the other hand, people can't just "forget" things at will, no matter what Holmes claims, so I always did side-eye his solar system remark, though more for what the fuck his family life and education was like, rather than assuming he was lying.

[(Anonymous)]

This was what I thought too. Holmes was trolling Watson. )

[escriboconundedo]

the other day, i came across someone who declared that the only people who could talk about history are people who hold degrees in history. everyone else can't possibly actially know anything about it.

so, yes. there are apparently folks out there who think a person can't learn anything new or anything that's outside of zer field -- and that extends to real people as well as fictional.

it's pretty weird.

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect the people complaining about inconsistency have read a little more closely than you did. It wasn't just that Sherlock started out ignorant and had time to learn stuff, it was that he deliberately chooses not to retain knowledge that's isn't directly relevant to crime. Holmes believes that one's brain only has a finite amount of storage space (which is lulzy in itself, but I digress) and that he needs all of it for the detective work so he doesn't want to clutter it with information that he considers useless.

It's ACD writing himself into a corner, because obviously Holmes knows a wide range of things that may or may not be relevant to crime (and who's to know what will be relevant and irrelevant until the time comes?) and THAT'S why it looks consistent to readers. At least, to readers who read the text carefully.

[(Anonymous)]

Why is it 'lulzy' to assume that a brain can't store an infinite amount of data?

[(Anonymous)]

Because the way Holmes approached simply isn't how the brain works. You don't go well, my brain's full so I'm not going to retain this knowledge you've just told me or I won't have room for the next fact I need. Your brain and memory function isn't that mechanic, so terms like "finite" and "infinite" are just... not applicable except in the broadest of ways.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Oh don't get me wrong. I know it's definitely not authorial intent on ACD's at all. Not from the guy who can't remember if Watson was hit in the leg or shoulder, and who dated a case to 1892, when Holmes was pretending to be dead. O.<

I just mean that from a text-only perspective, it's consistent. It makes perfect sense for Holmes to decide "well, okay, maybe I should expand my brain attic to include a ton more trivial information, and maybe some Goethe quotes too" since trivial, seemingly irrelevant information has actually helped him in cases on more than one occasion.

Or maybe Watson's knowledge just rubbed off on him over the years. Holmes may "endeavor to forget" irrelevant information all he wants, but that's psychologically impossible to do consciously.

Re: OP

[intrigueing]

Late to the party, but I always pictured Holmes spectacularly bungling a really obvious case because he couldn't accurately parse, say, a really obvious Dickens or Shakespeare reference that a witness overheard someone else using. And then maybe Holmes would say to himself "okay, maybe the brain attic idea is actually kind of stupid. I will go devour all Watson's books to acquire the same frames of reference as a normal educated man would have."

After all, Holmes isn't one to dogmatically stick to his ideas when they fall apart. For example, he talks up how unreliable and irrational women are when he's being theoretical, but when he actually deals with women, his prejudices never lead him to illogically treat them like hysterical morons, because he prizes doing what actually makes sense far above any of his theories and inclination (some of which are really, really weird anyway, let's be real. Moran's character development mimicking his ancestry, what?)

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

That would make sense, except that we're never shown that Holmes has changed his mind. We're only ever given one explanation that's confirmed later on canon. Holmes says one thing, but demonstrates another via his actions.

That's textual inconsistency.

Re: OP

[tweedisgood]

That's ACD :-) We love him.

[skippydelicious]

Fans deducing something from non-explicit information and discounting anything that is only implicit in the tales (such as Watson being the kick up the arrogant ass that Holmes in all incarnations needs to move out of his comfort zone)? That's unpossible!