every martyr in this jungle

The New Year | greywash (Sherlock/Lestrade)

Also known as fizzygins on Tumblr, where she is often hilarious and sometimes gives teasing glimpses of more Good Morrow to come, she's probably my favorite author in Sherlock fandom. Her stories leave me breathless (and not just because her sentences tend to go until she runs out of breath writing them, I suspect.) The writing style isn't for everyone. Take the warnings seriously. But it's genuinely the best story in this pairing.

I don't remember what got me into Sherlock/Lestrade a couple months ago - it probably has to do with Sherlock's time as an addict, before he formalized his detective work. And he is all of those messy things in this story, sneaking into labs to do his work, pushing everyone to the edge because he's unable to channel his arrogance. But this is Lestrade's story, and instead of the usual guilt trips about Sherlock's age or trying to clean him up, it's selfish, agonizingly emotional and so, so plausible.

And now it's back to Game 4 of Rays vs. Red Sox. Keep yesterday's momentum going and make this a real series, boys.

Today, my editor asked if I'd be interested in writing episode recaps of the upcoming season of Sherlock because "you know more about it than most." Stand down everyone, the award for Understatement of the Year has been claimed. I enthusiastically accepted, but then had to explain that the last two series had months-long delays between the British and American airdates, and we debated whether people in the States would wait or try to get their hands on it illegally (really though, we were debating whether publishing it right away or waiting would get more pageviews).

I'm tempted to say that fans of the show, and therefore the people likely to read episode analyses, would watch it as soon as possible (god knows I'll spend that night obsessively hitting the refresh button on Pirate Bay) if for no other reason than it would be next to impossible to remain unspoiled about how Sherlock faked his death if you're on any kind of social media website or read any pop culture blogs. Of course, the wider Internet isn't your commuter paper, where you wouldn't be on your guard for spoilers if you didn't known the episode had aired. Ugh. I don't know what the right call is here.

In other TV news, Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show from Jordan a bit culture shocked and high strung, and man do I have buckets of sympathy. Every year we came back home for a two-week break from the Middle East we felt the same way: really grateful for Target and Mexican food; a bit disconcerted by how little clothing people wear in public after wall-to-wall dishdashas and abayas; and wanting to bathe in Americana (which in Florida meant a trip to the theme parks and World of Beer).

These feels don't happen on arrival - they take a few months of frustration at not being able to buy what you want at grocery stores, trying to deal with labyrinthine bureaucracy designed to waste your money and time, and adjusting to an entirely different pace of life and social discourse. We were chatting in Ikea maybe a couple months after arriving in 2008 when a man walked up to us. "Are you guys Americans?" he asked in a slightly desperate tone. We nodded, a little freaked out, and he burst into a huge smile and shook all our hands in both of his, saying that it's so rare to hear American accents and how happy he was to meet all of us. It struck us as strange at the time, but yeah, we got there eventually too.

Finally, fannish marketers are so much more savvy than the people actually paid to promote a show: cesperanza may well have talked me into Luther with the line, "It's as if Batman fell in love with the Joker." Um, YES PLEASE.

There are nice bits: discovering things you don't remember owning, the satisfaction of filling garbage bags with stuff to donate, the even deeper satisfaction of shredding papers. But there are things I don't quite know what to do with, like our kitchen utensils, and getting boxes won't be as simple as going down to our local liquor store (pro tip: liquor bottle boxes are small and study, making them excellent for hauling books.)

It's also more than a little bit tedious, and we may have come here with four suitcases and two carry-ons but that's certainly not how we're leaving. So, it's been half and half between doing legit moving preparation and laying on the sofa with a cat sleeping on me, rereading the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep, the post-Reichenbach story of my HEART.

And now, your daily dose of the 'Dhab.

( Day 2: Our office for the first month (January 2008). )

me: Tumblr is debating what Hogwarts house Sherlock and Mycroft would be sorted into
Ravenclaw and Slytherin, respectively?
B: Mycroft is total Hufflepuff. sorry
"You might belong in Hufflepuff,
Where they are just and loyal,
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true,
And unafraid of toil"
he is loyal to Sherlock above all costs and is loyal to running the country and works endlessly at both tasks. he's a Hufflepuff
Mycroft doesn't want power for power's sake
it's the only way he can watch his brother
me: damn my knee-jerk dismissal of Hufflepuff
B: Hufflepuff is the Spanish Inquisition of Hogwarts
Hufflepuff is also always in the background, unseen
you know who ELSE is always in the background, unseen? hmmmmmmmmmmm?
me: oh man, Mycroft is the FLUFFIEST HUFFLEPUFF

With "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure" and a riddle as the password, Ravenclaw was a gimme. But, once B said it, Hufflepuff made all the sense in the world. And not just because of the uncanny resemblance between Mycroft and badgers. Oh, and Hufflepuff supported Ravenclaw's Cedric Diggory in the Triwizard Tournament.