there used to be a time where if you asked an american for “a blowie” they wouldn’t give a fuck because they found your australian accent so irresistable. but now they have to question fucking everything. “why is a blowjob called a blowie”. “why is a picture of yourself called a selfie”. “why is a barbecue called a barbie” like these arent the most dumb fucking questions imaginable. VAMOOSE
“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
— Vincent Van Gogh
“If I am worth anything later, I am worth
something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in
the beginning.”
Have been doing this for years without realizing it was an actual technique and it freaking works:
Do NOT say: “I think I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.”
Instead, say: “My best friend wanted me to ask you about something. I don’t even think it’s a thing, but she thinks I might have something called EDS. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, I think? I don’t know. It’s probably rare. But have you heard of it? Do you think I might have it?”
Here’s another example:
Do NOT say: “I think I have ADHD.”
Instead, say: “So my wife said I had to ask you about something. I don’t know if she’s right, but if I don’t bring it up with you, she’ll be really mad at me. She thinks I might have something called attention deficit disorder. And she said you might be able to help.”
Yes, it is wrong that patients have to use passive aggressive techniques just to get an MRI. But, as my mom always says, it’s better to be wrong than to be dead right. Sure you could insist on being more direct with your doctor, but if that doesn’t work — and the doctor dismisses your symptoms when they should be treating them — the choice could literally leave you dead. You’d be right, but you’d be dead right.
This is not part of the article but it also works:
It works especially well for psychiatrists instead of saying “I think I have this” or “I’ve been looking at x and I have x, y and z symptoms”. Instead just say your symptoms and let them come to the conclusion on their own.
if you’re gonna have a big celebrity voice a character in your animated movie you should show it to a test audience and if they can correctly guess who the celebrity is you need to fire the celebrity and hire a real va
honestly it was a red flag when bbc sherlock went “well obviously the word written in blood isn’t the german word for revenge, it’s clearly the beginning of the name ‘rachel’, what absolute idiot would fail to see that” when in the original novel it is, in fact, the german word for revenge, which sherlock points out gleefully to a roomful of policemen who all figure it’s the beginning of the name ‘rachel.’
and by red flag I mean it was a clear sign that the adaptation was trying to one-up the source material, instead of engaging with it with love.
You’re so right. I remember watching 1x01 and thinking “wow! they got the texts to pop up on the screen, that’s super cool!” and thinking it was just like. A super well done show and so amazing. But looking back, what I actually liked about it was the snappy editing and the little bit of development that Martin Freeman was allowed to give to his character.
Apart from that, the show is so full of… contempt? Like even from the beginning, there’s this sense that the show thinks you’re probably too stupid to be watching it, but sure, I guess we’ll let you tag along and see what a clever, amazing person Sherlock is. He’s definitely smarter than you though so don’t even try to engage with the source material, a dummy like you could never get anything right.
And then that just stayed the tone of the show until I got fed up and stopped watching.
That’s just it, that thing with the texts on screen was the first time I’d ever seen phones so smoothly and cleverly integrated into the visuals, it was genuinely brilliant, and the Watson we’re introduced to in ep1 is a compelling character. And frankly even the condescension doesn’t jar yet in ep1, because part of the joy of mystery stories (and especially of sherlock holmes adaptations) is watching the detective be so incredibly clever, so it wasn’t immediately apparent that the writers didn’t want us to be able to follow along. They’re just showing off their mystery-writing skills!
And – I think this part was really important actually – because in ep1, Sherlock responds to John actually being impressed by his deductions with the startled vulnerability of someone who’s never before met someone who doesn’t immediately want to either defeat him in battle or never speak to him again. John is truly impressed with Sherlock, but unthreatened by him, and Sherlock doesn’t really know what to do with that but he really doesn’t want to lose it. So he invites John along on his case, and then shows off for him like a peacock flashing his tail in the nervous hope that John might say more nice things, and he’s clearly floored when John does.
And that’s a really good dynamic on which to build a friendship! Closet thrill-seeker who’s extremely secure in his own abilities befriends arrogant mean girl genius who’s spent so long being envied and disliked by everyone he meets that he imprints like a duckling on the first person who doesn’t do that, but he has no clue how friendships work so he just drags this person to crime scenes and worse in the hopes that somehow this’ll do the trick.
But although John is confident in his own abilities, the writers don’t actually want him to have any. My beef with this show actually started in the very next episode, where John and his date get kidnapped by bad guys. They’re tied up and being interrogated, and John is unable to do literally anything but sit there and yell about it, even when they nearly murder his date. Sherlock has to swoop in and save the day.
In ep1 when John meets Mycroft, Mycroft’s parting shot is “fire your therapist,” because she says John’s psychosomatic tremble is a response to danger but Mycroft has been unsubtly threatening him and his tremble has firmed up and gone. John responds to danger with level-headed courage, we are told this explicitly in the text. And then when his date is about to be murdered by bad guys who believe he knows the location of the hidden whatever, he can’t find the presence of mind to fucking lie about it? String them along a little? Come up with SOME way to buy time, convince the bad guys he’s cooperating so they’ll stop paying so much attention and he can figure out a way to send a message, something. Anything.
That’s when I realized the writers didn’t actually want John to be able to do anything, they didn’t want this to be the partnership they set up in the end of ep1, they wanted Sherlock to be the competent one and John to be his fangirl. And the thing is, John is the viewer insert character. He’s the one we’re supposed to be able to identify with so he can hook us into the story. And it turns out the writers just want John – and us – to do exactly what you said: tag along and see what a clever, amazing person Sherlock is.
@cafffine I hope it’s cool that I’m copying your tags onto this longer version of the post, bc on the surface that’s just the rache/rachel thing writ large – what if we took the thing that it wasn’t in the book and did that instead! – but it’s also part of this deep contempt the writers have for just…people. I was going to say ‘regular people’ but actually there are no people as clever as their version of sherlock, he’s the specialest guy in the whole wide world and he can never be wrong.
And first of all, that’s just so much more boring than a full on genre twist. The brilliance of making the shift into horror “our infallible detective was wrong,” thus signifying that the rules of the detective story no longer apply, and that same realization is also “the rules of reason and civilization we were operating by are useless, the superstitious locals are right, there be monsters here.” That’s the opening to Dracula! That’s classic horror! What a seamless genre transition, what a great way to shock your readers, what excellent suspense and what a cool mystery.
But it requires Sherlock to be wrong. It requires him to be completely wrong, and specifically it requires him to be wrong to have dismissed the locals as superstitious peasants whose fears were silly. It requires him to admit that just because he’s smarter than someone doesn’t mean his worldview is more correct.
Which, I suspect, is something the the writers of bbc sherlock don’t really know how to wrap their heads around.
They’re just showing off their mystery-writing skills!
I agree with everything in this post except this one specific sentence, with which I disagree vehemently. They are showing off their contempt for mystery writing as a concept. Mysteries are a dialogue between author and audience, in which the audience is an active participant and collaborator. Crafting an engaging mystery that is difficult but possible for the audience to solve is an artistic feat of incredible skill.
Meanwhile, anyone can hide so much information from the audience that it’s impossible to anticipate what the main character’s solution will be. To the author looking to write a masturbatory Smartest Man power fantasy, the audience is not a collaborator, but a threat.
