Amanda Abbington is Martin Freeman’s lovely wife, and has been unofficially dubbed the Queen of he Fandom. She really deserves a post all to herself. I may do that soon.

Anyway, she is very involved with the fans and very personably communicates with them on Twitter and Facebook. She is, in general, just a really sweet person and a really good sport about things.

That is from a BBC Radio 4 comedy called Cabin Pressure, which Benedict Cumberbatch also stars in. The “nice hot cup of coffee” line is from the St. Petersburg episode. There was a time at which they were all available on Youtube, but I believe they’ve been taken down for copyright reasons.

It’s a brilliant radio show, if you should deign to buy it through iTunes or something. You will come for the Benedict, but you will stay for the hilarity.

According to the writers, Sherlock did, in fact, save Irene. It was not a daydream.

If you’ll allow me to insert an opinion here, I don’t think that the narrative choice to have Sherlock save her life was inherently a bad one, I just think it was done in a very strange, contrived, and impractical way. I believe that’s why people are so inclined to assume it was a fantasy. The whole setup seemed very surreal, what with the ninja getup and the empty background and the headlight wash and the unlikelihood that some bloke with a wacky prop sword could fight his way out of a group of militant terrorists with AK-47’s.

So I’m not sure why those choices were made, but I can see why you would be confused.

In the original stories, Watson faints upon seeing Holmes again, then Holmes explains his daring escape, then things more or less go back to normal. There are a few tidbits where Watson mentions how splendid it is that they’re together again, but there isn’t a great deal of angst about the whole thing, Doyle more or less dives right back into the sleuthing stories.

The Mofftiss team have slyly indicated that John will probably have a more pronounced reaction to Sherlock’s grand reappearance in the show, but we will have to wait and see. A punch in the face is a popular fan-theory, though.

As Irene very pointedly indicated, even DNA records can be tampered with, so I’m sure Jim could have figured ou something tricksy to complete his illusion, given that his plan was to appear to have been Richard Brook all along. That said, I’m not sure about the rest of it. I have no aspirations to be a theories blog, I’m just doing a bit of sporting speculation, so I don’t agonize over unknowable things until it takes the fun out of it. I’ve no idea what Sherlock’s plan for his “return” is, so I can’t say if being a suspect in a murder case would put a damper on it, but I can say with every ounce of confidence in my being that I believe firmly that Jim is dead. Again, feel free to disagree with me, but that’s my stance and I’m sticking to it.

redscharlach:

Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch: A Visual Examination.

All otters are from The Daily Otter, for all your ottery Tumblr needs!

The pohotoset “Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch: A Visual Examination” was originally posted by Tumblr user Red Scharlach on March 19 and started its journey by making the rounds on other Tumblr blogs.

The photoset gained such popularity that it started appearing on other humor and meme sites such as 9Gag and The Daily Otter. Yet, as a result of what I can only assume was the slowest news day in recorded history, “Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch” grew into a semi-legitimate media story. An article about it appeared in The Huffington Post, which is forgivable, but quickly thereafter it appeared in in print in Metro.

The remarkable thing about this post - funny though it is in its own right - is the ridiculous speed with which it went viral. The original photoset now has more than 40,000 notes.

Metro article: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/893628-benedict-cumberbatch-takes-on-new-role-as-otter-lookalike

Huffington Post article: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/19/otters-who-look-like-benedict-cumberbatch_n_1362375.html

Original post to follow.

Nope, it’s just me. Speaking of which, I hope you will all forgive me for my absence in the last two weeks or so. I had to deal with finals and then a horrendous move into a new apartment. Accept my apology in the form of two tentatively related new Sherlock memes to be posted tomorrow!

I would consider a timeline problem a minor inconsistency. There are problems with it just like there are problems within the show itself. Like this: http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/post/22051268921/soo-lin-yao-knows-the-black-lotus-is-after-her-yet-she

or this: http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/post/21739377245/ljlindberg-asked-i-was-watching-the-final

(In fact, finalproblem is a good place to talk about this sort of thing in general, as this isn’t exactly a theories blog)

Not to mention all the gun-physics problems (missing shell casings), science equipment problems (no slides in the microscopes), and other minor errors.

An error doesn’t invalidate the material in the blog posts any more than an error in an episode invalidates the entire episode. The material is indeed overseen by the writers, not put together by a fanboy somewhere or something, and while - as I said - the physical creation of the website isn’t handled by the writers, the writers also don’t personally handle things like costumes or props. They have teams for that. That doesn’t make them any less official.

What I’m trying to say is that I don’t agree with the Anon who claimed that John’s blog posts offer absolutely no additional information. I’ not saying that there are necessarily clues in the blog, but there’s no reason at all to write it off.

You could take it that way, I would say that’s most likely what they were getting at, but it’s hard to know whether that was just a sly canon reference for its own sake or an actual reference to Sherlock’s in-universe drug preferences. Besides that, there area lot of drugs that can be taken in a seven percent solution.

I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate here, I definitely agree that the odds are very good that Sherlock’s drug of preference is cocaine, I’ve just learned through experience not to outright trust anything that Moffat and Gatiss throw out. Especially considering the legitimately mind-blowing array of drugs readily available in the brave new world we live in.

Molly? John! Detective Inspector!? John!

Mycroft!

(Was this a question? I certainly hope not, because I accidentally Rocky Horror’d and now I can’t stop.)

I have no idea what you’re responding to, but it sounds like you’re trying to get at the fact that Jim’s death was never mentioned in the news after the rooftop scene.

First of all, the news clip on John’s blog definitely was made under the supervision of the writers, as was the “hacking” video from Moriarty. The entirety of John’s blog (and Molly’s blog, and Sherlock’s website, and all other Sherlock-related web media) is dictated by the writers, otherwise there would be glaring inconsistencies. They don’t do the actual typing themselves, they have better things to do, but they determine the content and they obviously had to script and film all the extra “blog videos,” as well. They didn’t just magically appear from somewhere. The blog videos are absolutely fair game for clues.

Secondly, in the Doyle canon, Mycroft was not exactly involved in the “coverup of the fall.” In canon, Mycroft was not even aware that Sherlock had faked his death until well after the showdown with Moriarty. Sherlock did go to Mycroft for money and to take care of some personal matters, but Mycroft was only involved later and in a minor capacity. At any rate, in BBC Sherlock, I doubt Mycroft would have had Moriarty’s body removed, and I doubt Sherlock would have wanted him to.

Why?

Because Sherlock made a huge deal of allowing everyone to think that he was a fraud, and that Richard Brook was real. Remember this?: “The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs Hudson, and Molly … in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.”

That conviction would have been reinforced by finding “Richard Brook” dead on the roof. It would have appeared as though Sherlock had either shot him or threatened him until he shot himself, making the “manipulative fraud” story all the more convincing. In short, given his intent to make himself the public bad guy, Sherlock would have been better served by leaving Moriarty’s body on the roof for the police to find.

Yet it wasn’t in the news, and therein lies the mystery.

Also (and this is a personal theory) I feel that Mycroft’s role in the fall was more ad hoc, and more of an afterthought. He probably helped Sherlock to falsify an identity and perhaps to flee the country, but given that, as you said, the whole situation was partially due to Mycroft’s carelessness, I doubt Sherlock would have been on speaking terms with him when he was making plans to fake his death. He had Molly, who was more than capable of providing a false Death Certificate and other elements critical to the coverup (a body, perhaps?) so I doubt he needed or wanted Mycroft’s help, at that stage in the game, at least.

Now look closely here, because you might miss it:

There! See it? Okay, wait, one more:

Ladies and gentlemen, The Case of the Secret Sexy Nipple Conspiracy

“I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.”

Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles

That is all we ever hear of the Vatican cameos in canon, more about it here: http://thesherlockfandom.tumblr.com/post/19695549724/whats-the-story-behind-vatican-cameos

I’m glad you enjoy my blog, and by the way, I’ve changed my mind. There almost certainly is a Secret Sexy Nipple Conspiracy. Clearly. I mean, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. The left one is obviously evil.

I’m quite sure that was a troll, as Mofftiss are wont to do. It’s funny, but going by the credits, it’s still just “Anderson.”