aruan: (Sherlock - 221B)
2014-01-28 10:18 am

going to ride these endorphins for a long minute

'Sherlock' recap: Season 3, Episode 2, 'The Sign of Three' | Metro US

You guys, I was the toast of Tumblr last night after basically every BNF in Sherlock fandom linked to my Metro recap of The Sign of Three. I'm 99% fannish enthusiast, not creator, so the last 12 hours on the other side have been like one long fizzy high. I mean, I had a ton of fun writing these (here's The Empty Hearse, which IMO is funnier and just as ho-YAY!) and could say that's its own reward, but there is nothing more validating than the enthusiasm of hardcore fans.

PS. All fannish emotion aside, I could defend every word of it to my editor as an unbiased assessment of what happened in the episode. This stuff writes itself.

Slight spoiler in the editing question. )

PPPS. This one time, South Korea was not exaggerating.
aruan: (Sherlock - all these things I've done)
2014-01-24 01:04 am
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I got 99 problems with the new season of Sherlock, but His Last Vow ain't one

I'd like to respond to marsdaydream@Tumblr’s list of the bitterest pills we were expected to swallow in season 3, especially His Last Vow which contained, for me, the most consistent characterization of them all. Here's how I see them. )
aruan: (Sherlock - all these things I've done)
2014-01-21 01:51 am

how I learned to stop worrying and love The Empty Hearse

I'm not the comedian in my social circle. As the enthusiastic magpie, my forte is effusive bursts of emotion on the esoteric subjects I know a ton about. To that end, I've spent many happy hours between Tumblr and the AO3 "preparing" for the third season of Sherlock. Meta, fic, art - my fannish life of the last two years consisted of little else.

Which was exactly the problem when it came time for The Empty Hearse. )

Back in September, as my newspaper's resident Sherlock expert, I agreed to write episode recaps, which we try to make amusing (nothing TWoP-caliber, but not everyone wants to read a few thousand words on a single episode of their favorite show, either.) The formula works: While I watch neither Homeland nor Scandal, our synopses are often so amusing that I almost forget people die with some frequency on both shows. So it was with that goal to find humor that I approached my recap of The Empty Hearse - and realized what I've been doing wrong from the first scene.

Summarizing something forces you to focus on what's happening in the story, and only that, while being funny puts the drama in perspective. I learned to love the episode by setting aside two years' worth of emotional investment (which still needs a good catharsis - this is the closest I've come). Take things as they happen. Let the characters react in their own ways. Instead of allowing a scene totally jar me out of the story, take a deep breath to consider that the people who made it probably weren't intentionally setting out to fuck with their audience. Allow things to unravel as the writers intended instead of imposing limitations and requirements. I know you're all rolling your eyes, but as a journalist I'm trained to look ahead and anticipate what's next - but the effect is prejudicial in the real world, and joy-killing in entertainment. With that in mind, the episode actually turned out to be damn good, accomplishing everything it needed to without becoming maudlin. I'd give it a solid B+.

tl;dr Sometimes the characters serve the plot, and sometimes the plot is determined by character development - and both are valid storytelling approaches.
aruan: (Sherlock - all these things I've done)
2014-01-06 03:15 am
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The Sign of Three, totally spoiler-free reaction edition

I can't find the interview just now, but I believe it was Mark Gatiss who once told an interviewer that they put all this time and effort into crafting the cases for Sherlock, but in the end all people want to see is Sherlock... being Sherlock.

And if The Sign of Three, and to an only slightly lesser extent The Empty Hearse, is how they see Sherlock behaving in his own life, then I'm glad we at least got six episodes of coherent and entertainingly told stories before trotting out every fanfic trope in a single season.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish this bottle of wine and hope the last hour and a half were just a bad trip through the AO3.
aruan: (Sherlock - all these things I've done)
2014-01-05 11:37 am
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on the potential of Mary Morstan

More than anything else, The Empty Hearse ended up being about Mary Morstan for me (and Mycroft Holmes, but one appreciation post at a time). And it’s the height of hipster nonsense to say I liked her before she was famous, but it’s true. )
aruan: (Star Trek - we've got a badass over here)
2014-01-04 07:04 pm
Entry tags:

holy crap I finished a thing

Title: I Can't Do It Alone
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Music: I Can't Do It Alone from Chicago
Summary: Then we wow the crowd again.
Notes: After The Empty Hearse, I wanted something happy damn it (no spoilers).

aruan: (Sherlock - all these things I've done)
2014-01-03 10:35 pm
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for the sake of law and order, I suggest you avoid all future attempts at a relationship

I know we all played this game almost two years ago, but from what Moffat and Gatiss have said in interviews (I’m spoiler-free for The Empty Hearse) there won't be much in the way of explanation for the events of The Reichenbach Fall. Which seems a shame, even if from a storytelling perspective John Watson is perfectly right in the Series 3 trailer to say it's not about how Sherlock did it, but why. (Though the audience already knows most of it: kill yourself or your friends die; John had to watch because otherwise he would've ended up ruining his life trying to find out the truth like Anderson(!!!) and coming with Sherlock would've given away everything.)

That doesn't mean I can't spend a few thousand words (>.>) tying up the loose ends. )

As an aside, this post would be more thoroughly sourced if more than half of the links I’ve come across weren’t inactive due to people changing/deleting their Tumblr handles. Such a black hole of fannish history.
aruan: (Sherlock - all these things I've done)
2013-12-08 12:55 am

on and on through the night and the milky way

Aside from a pleasant Thanksgiving spent with friends and their family (though B. gets credit for making a ridiculously fiddly Hungarian dessert, the latest attempt to sublimate the stress of long-term unemployment with baking) there just wasn't anything notable about November. We bought a vacuum during Black Friday, but it was through Amazon so that doesn't quite count. And now, somehow, it is improbably December. I just want some real snow soon, is all I'm saying.

Oh! Actually, there was one thing. Back on Nov. 11, I attended the book release party for Rene Redzepi: A Work in Progress, the new memoir-cookbook by the head chef of Noma in Copenhagen. There was free champagne and lots of people dressed in black who looked like they don't actually eat anything, and I managed to snag a brief chat with him. Amusingly, here is a video of him utterly terrified about just how serious coffee people can be.

In ALL the news of the past week, Sherlooooock. Last year, fandom had [personal profile] greywash's advent calendar with the 26 chapters of as many names as snow, and this year we seem to be getting daily interviews, photos and other chum in the waters ahead of the Jan. 1 premiere of The Empty Hearse. As if we needed any provocation, but I'll take it. For the record, mustache haters to the left, I am ALL IN.

In college football news, I don't have any strong feelings about Michigan State but good job breaking Ohio's 24-game winning streak because, though reveling in Urban Meyer's pain may be shallow I'd drink his tears if I could. Yes, this Gator is still bitter.