#sherlocktember24

[andy-the-irregular]

"This is unworthy of you, Holmes!" He was so mad lol

Anyway, I haven't drawn in a long time but Sherls here has actually helped me out of the art slumb, so thank you Mr. Theorist.

[sherlocktember2024]

Prompt List!

Here is the prompt list! Good luck, Irregulars!

[ficwriting-account]

3. Poison

Holmes reminisced about old cases the way people reminisce about the past when looking at family photos. In front of the fireplace one evening, a years-old poisoning case led to a conversation with Watson.

"Actually, batrachotoxin is only the secondmost fascinating poison I know of! I only find arsenic more dramatic due to its history, and of course maitotoxin is an order of magnitude more deadly and has a quite exceptional chemical structure..."

"Holmes, you have a mental list of your favorite poisons?"

"Why? You've never thought of this?"

"From a medical standpoint I do find toxicology interesting, but..."

Holmes took the cigarette from her mouth and pointed it accusatorily at Watson.

"Really, now? Because to me, you seem rather like a cardiotoxin kind of girl."

The latter rolled her eyes.

"For your information, I'm more of a neurotoxin 'kind of girl'. In fact, if you love dramatics, you should be one as well — arsenic pales in comparison to the role of neurotoxins in evolutionary arms races."

Back to the mouth the cigrette went.

"People in ancient Rome would have been rather unhappy to hear that, my friend."

"Don't you have so much Celtic DNA that you shouldn't care?"

"Well, I've studied the properties of arsenic in case I'll ever need to defend Gallia's honor."

"Why did you guess cardiotoxins?"

"I never guess. But maybe that came to my mind because, um, you're in my heart?"

"Comparing me to poison? I must say you're terrible at niceties."

"Perhaps someone ought to give me examples of niceties every once in a while, then."

"Good lord. Read my writing. There's plenty there."

"Capitalist scum, paywalling your compliments..."

"I'll go pour you some rum now, if you'd like. My rum — proving I'm not a heartless profit-seeker."

"That's called welfare capitalism, товарищ."

Holmes looked at the back disappearing to the kitchen and thought, who else could I have these kinds of conversations with? Not that I'd go through with the humiliation of saying this to her, but I really appreciate having Watson as a friend!

The moral of the story: it's, like, epic to have someone to talk bullshit with.

[sherlocktember2024]

Good day, Irregulars

Mod speaking here, run by @sadieb798. I started this blog because of recent events in the last month everything feels Awful, and I just wanted a little bit of fun and sparkle to do during the month of December.

Every day of December there will be a fun prompt, and all Holmes and Watsons are welcome! Whether you're a fan of Sherlock, House MD, Bruce and Rathbone, or even just your own interpretations -- they can all be featured! Each prompt will have something to do with the Canon as well as something that is winter-related.

All forms of art are accepted: fic, fanart, embroidery, whatever your hearts desire! If you want to participate, be sure to use the tag sherlocktember24 or send in your art to us for them to be displayed here!

Have a great day, and keep an eye out for those prompts! They'll be up soon!

[sherlocktember2024]

Hello Irregulars!

I'm overwhelmed by the amount of people now following this blog and are as eager to participate in this as I am! It's so exciting!!!

Next post will be the ✨PROMPT LIST✨!! But I just wanted to take a mo and say how happy I am and glad to be among such passionate people!

[sherlocktember2024]

@goodassmotherliker yes absolutely you can! All the prompts are good for all year round!

[ficwriting-account]

2. Dogs

One reason everyone found Dr. Watson charismatic was her sophisticated way of loving life. Certainly her long hair and perfectly curved nose rarely went unnoticed, but the reason so many men fell in love with her — instead of the next pretty thing with a medical degree — was her intellectual openness.

For example, life often doesn't warn you before giving you a pomeranian in each arm and a reason to run for your life, but Watson could be trusted to endure — nay, thrive — in the situation.

Unfortunately the crime of stealing breed show dogs is inherently funny, and so the word "dog thief" cannot accurately describe how scary the man chasing her was. Let's try something else: the circles around his eyes were so dark that his otherwise strong face looked like a skull, and his teeth glinted from inside his black, bushy beard. Most importantly, he had a knife. He was a fast runner — much faster than Watson at least, with her short legs and the dogs and their useless leashes flapping in the wind. Turns between buildings never arrived fast enough for her, and the blind facades gave him no reason to leave the weapon unused.

Ahead, between buildings on the side of the passageway, Holmes waited for the two like a snake in its nest. The gap was just a little more than an arm's length, and her instincts had begged her for minutes to peek outside. Willpower prepared her to strike.

As footsteps neared the gap and a familiar shape with white fluff in the middle had passed, a cacophony of clangs, shouts, and barks followed. The thief tripped on an empty trash can, made a face print on the mud, and found himself pinned down by long limbs. The weight on him must have been barely half of his own, and so he had to struggle only a little before... A click of a gun made him still.

The little, agitated pooches kept barking throughout the whole ordeal.

[sherlocktember2024]

Day 2, Irregulars!

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Prev | Next

[ficwriting-account]

4. Snow

In the dimly lit front of a bus, Holmes and Watson were talking quietly to avoid alerting the suspicion of others. The world outside seemed black save for the snow and street lights, and the bus was crowded with commuters.

"By looking at the snow on their shoes," Holmes said, "you can approximately tell which stops they've come from. Let's use that sitting old man as an example: his shoes are only surrounded by a puddle of water, so he must have been here for a longer while than the snow-laden people on his right. And the woman sitting on his left has been here for such a long time that the water around her shoes has started to evaporate. But don't concern yourself with that group standing in front of them — the floor there is just a mess, you can't make anything out of it.

"Since the first stop after the terminus was only twenty minutes ago — that you can see on the route map there — the woman must have entered on one of the first stops.

"What was she doing in that area, near Heathrow? What do you think, Watson?"

"She has a large backpack. Kind of heavy. It could carry a laptop, for example. She's middle-aged. So... she's probably going home from work?"

"Good! The time being five p.m. doesn't automatically mean that, of course, but most people work regular hours, so ceteris paribus it's the most probable option."

"And she looks tired, like after a long day's work."

"People also look tired before work. Get more specific!"

"What I'm saying is, look at her makeup, for example. It looks like it's lived a little during the day."

"Excellent. Pinpoint specifics instead of sticking with generalizations — just remember both."

"So... she probably has a job near Heathrow on regular hours that requires that she keep a backpack with her."

"Hm! I'd say she's an office worker."

"Because of the way she dresses, and... it's a very common type of occupation. That is something you'd say."

"Indeed! If you chose people at random, even then more than every tenth one would be an office worker."

The person they were talking about had noticed their interet and looked concerned, so they turned their attention to the walls or ceiling to act casual.

Holmes said, "Coming up with a similar idea may only take a second or two for an untrained layman. One glance at her, and he thinks she's an office worker going home. But because he doesn't have a clear, systematic approach, his thought process might sacrifice accuracy for the sake of speed — relying on his brain's much faster and cheaper snap judgements. In more difficult tasks, those really must be avoided. We need to avoid them even now so we won't resort to them when it will matter."

"I don't believe many laymen think of the thing with the snow and the bus route. That's not how my brain works automatically, at least."

"That is possible."

"Holmes, may I ask you something? When there's no snow, how on earth do you know where each passenger has come from?"

"Rain."

"And when there is no rain?"

"Then I don't, necessarily. This answer surprises you — why? The information that you or I decide to seek either is there or isn't. There is no mechanism serving it to us on a silver platter. If there is nothing, you should also know nothing — otherwise you're lying to yourself to sate your hunger for knowledge. And what is the hunger good for if anything can sate it?"

Watson looked as if she wanted to say something, but just then the bus had stopped and a loud group of youth crammed in. Then the trip went on with a silence between the two friends. The same didn't hold true for the new passengers, unfortunately, so Holmes put on her headphones and disappeared into her own worlds.

Watson thought of her capability to shake a person's beliefs seemingly effortlessly — had she been like that as a child? If she really tried to, could she tear apart some poor bastard's core beliefs (and sanity) just by exposing their faulty logic? Maybe it was fortunate that she was a kind person at heart — certainly not someone any grandma would call a sweetheart, but still.

[ficwriting-account]

1. Watches

The constant torrent of rain outside must have been barely liquid. If that weren't enough to keep living things indoors, the wind would have swept them to the Thames. Probably it was doubly so for any possible clients of Sherlock Holmes, which, to be fair, were few at this time of year in any case. Not even tax fraud was popular during the long winter months, and most street criminals had retreated to whatever holes they had crawled out of by November.

Fortunately Dr. Watson was in Baker Street to comfort the not-so-consulting detective, along with a bottle of scotch whiskey. She was reading a book which Holmes could tell was mediocre at best, and so she decided it would only be courteous to distract her companion.

“When you see a Rolex on a man’s wrist and infer that he’s wealthy, should that be called a deduction at all?” she asked.

“Huh?” Watson said. Holmes repeated the question.

“Why, is there a reason it shouldn’t be called a deduction?” (She was wise enough to not add: “Other than it actually being abductive reasoning.”)

Holmes sat in her chair like a gargoyle and drank from her glass like a shipman. Her eyebrows settled into a position on her forehead that alerted Watson to an incoming rant.

“People are generally aware of how wealth is signalled. In fact, it’s so ingrained in the public consciousness that people even emulate those signals. Things that look expensive are good enough for gaining social status points, or for bolstering one’s ego, or whatever. Another, more conniving group of people is aware of this, and so they capitalize on selling, like, Chanel knockoffs on Aliexpress. But many consumers know this, and so they try to be wary of these sellers — maybe for moral reasons, or because it feels disingenuous, or because wearing an obvious fake sometimes gives you negative social status points. Because any idiot can tell that this whole pattern exists, it’s kind of a lackluster to deduce that a man wearing a Rolex is wealthy. It’s what everyone thinks, what everyone knows that everyone thinks, and everyone also knows that everyone knows that!”

“I don’t see your point, and I’ve studied your methods for quite some time. Is this a concern at all if the part about the man being wealthy is correct?”

“People judge deductions' worth based on their impressiveness,” Holmes stated, as if the word "people” tasted sour in her mouth, “and impressiveness hinges on how many others could make that same deduction — or more precisely, how many others people think could make that deduction. I think there are far better metrics for judging any thought’s worth than the probability of it emerging from any random person's mind, but this kind of thing keeps people entertained. However, if you looked at two different deductions under a microscope, one being this impressive type and the other one not so, would you be able to tell them apart? What do you think, my dear fellow?”

“I suppose that a more impressive deduction takes more work. Maybe a different kind of work, even.”

“But let’s say that no psychological processes can be seen through the microscope. We're not looking at the brain just now. What about the deduction itself, its structure and properties?”

Watson shrugged, attempting to conceal her increasing boredom with the topic.

“I have noticed that structurally simple deductions can be impressive if they just seem unexpected somehow. And expectations are contained outside deductions. If you were to compare a thousand deductions that some normie finds impressive to another thousand unimpressive ones, I think you would find that often there is nothing in the deductions' guts or gears or p's and q's to meaningfully set them apart! That is, nothing in their workings, in their logical structure. Instead, perceived impressiveness may be due to more annoying factors such as a lack of practical knowledge or experience on the observer’s part — for example, maybe she doesn't know enough about different types of dance shoes, so she cannot tell that someone's a ballroom dancer. Reasoning isn't the problem in scenarios like that, it's knowledge. Really, it’s a shame that reasoning just so happens to be the part that you can exert the most control over.

“This sounds discouraging, since reasoning is also the hard part… What I mean is, if you had all the necessary knowledge, you could just sit down and ponder. Then eventually you might be able to solve the puzzle just by connecting some X's to some Y's, checking plausibility and alternative explanations after every step. But you can never be entirely certain that you have all the necessary knowledge.

“But I digress. The point is: impressiveness is a function of an observer's ignorance. It's vapid compared to the otherworldly grace of a satisfying logical structure.

“Watson, are you snoring? It’s not even eight o’clock yet!”