#also rewatching s4 even for me who still hashtag believes will be an emotioanlly taxing experience /:

[marcelock]

im gonna preface this by saying that anything im about to say in the following post as evidence for Sherlock’s birthday is immediately overruled by the fact that this is still a tv show and is inhibited by filming schedules. ergo, i dont take anything about the weather as a cue for what date it should or shouldn’t be, especially when i know from keeping up with setlock that it was filmed in the late spring-summer with many scenes being in outdoor spaces much larger than just baker street ergo harder to...idk? pump fake snow into? additionally i’d like to point out all the characters wear basically the same wardrobes throughout the show no matter what time of the year it is, and there aren’t a whole lot of other potential indicators of the weather really so it feels like a moot point

now anyway, putting aside whatever theories any of us have about s4 and treating the timeline as normal, i know for a fact that (present day) TAB takes place in january of 2015, a fact i knew before s4 came out, but which was backed up by Mary’s story in TST citing 2009 as “6 years ago” in flashbacks. in TST many, many things happen, which seem to take place over the course of months. in TLD’s opening, Sherlock and John haven’t seen each other in some time. it’s not unbelievable to me that, in a show which usually advances about a year in it’s timeline each season, that TLD takes place in january 2016, to start off with.

now, on the subject of birthdays, most of the Holmesian...well, lets call it widely accepted fanon, (like sherlock’s first name being William, for example, something mofftiss have already adopted into the show) is based in conjecture made over the last century, not unlike us making headcanons online. much like hcs on here that get shared so much others adopt them, so too is holmesian scholarship in many ways, but with the added boost of these being in published books that get treated like textbooks in a way. most of the dates projected for Holmes and Watson’s birthdays are based on any tangible date in the canon they appear to be hungover, the theories tend to go, the night before they were celebrating a birthday. for Watson, this is complicated and there are a few different dates floating around that on which a general consensus has not been reached. (and there’s the matter for bbc of the..weird watson display at a sherlocked event that gave a date but i wont get into that now, all i can say for our john’s birthday is it has to be some time before june)- as for Holmes, however, the date of January 6th has been used so much over the last century, it’s the date everyone has generally agreed upon.

you may say, well, many scholars also agree he’s not gay so who gives a shit and who says mofftiss do about this specifically? well, his tombstone from TRF says “January 6th”

please excuse 1. the shitty phone pic, i havent properly scanned my copy of the casebook yet and 2. the fact that the flowers obscure it. there is a better photo with the full date showing but i cannot remember where to find it.

now, however, i don’t take the dates used on the tombstone to mean anything MUCH because the death date is incorrect. it lists 2012, when it happened in 2011, by all accounts on the actual show (following the timeline of the blog, more dates in the casebook, and magnussen’s on screen files)- which is why i believe the full shot of the headstone wasn’t used, imo it was likely created before they really finalized the timeline going into s2, which is understandable. (additionally, again, putting s4 theories aside, john states in TLD he never knew sherlock’s birthday so the dates on the headstone effectively don’t exist in canon) so why include it? it may not be strictly canon, but it does show that at least at one point, in mofftiss’s mind, sherlock’s birthday is january 6th, and that they are aware of and don’t seem to Not agree with that date.

all this being said, the show tries not to deal in exact dates too too much, leaving many things such as sherlock and john’s birthdays and birth years up for interpretation, but for sherlock, january 6th seems to have very minimal competition. so like, sure, go ahead and pick a different date but yknow, if you’re looking for something with some kind of backing up, january 6th is your best bet.

bonus thought, speaking of TLD and sherlock’s birthday, the beheading scene when sherlock rescues irene in asib takes place in very early january 2011, which is why i believe she knows when his birthday is (if this was 100 years ago id publish that in my text as a holmesian scholar and maybe someone on the internet would be using it as a cited source, isnt that neat?)

PS i know the timeline of this show like the back of my hand and can rattle off all the key points about it any time, i was taking the time to gather photographic and textual evidence to back everything up so i could make a more Official and well typed post so everyone could use it as reference, and i still am going to, but unfortunately mental illness especially has not been kind to me in the last year and it’s all been very delayed, sorry.