imagine being some depressed victorian homo avidly reading the strand magazine for the mysteries or whatever and thinking like ok so anyone else get kinda a gay vibe from holmes and watson……… but homosexuality is illegal and the wilde trials are going on and your book club is completely heterosexual so you have nobody to talk about it with and you think you’re going mad and then acd drops the three garridebs on you with watson sayijng "all my years of devotion culminated in the relevelation that holmes loved me" like what would you do. i’d go ballistic