Always 1895

Sherlock Holmes is so huge and at the same time so much a part of my life, of my very identity (my email address of about twelve years is based on the number of steps to the door of 221B Baker Street, his legendary home. Beat that), that I find it hard to write about him. There is too much of myself that I've invested.

I've been pretty much an "alone" fan since I was little. I had friends online who liked Sherlock Holmes--I joined the very first Discussion Group on the Yahoo! Groups website (HOUNDS-L, in case you're wondering. It's still alive, and our old discussions are still there!), and wrote and discussed and dreamed and analyzed and memorized like everyone else. I played THE GAME like everyone else, and if you don't know what the Game is, it would be wonderful for you to find out. ...But while the fandom is dynamic, the canon itself, in the nature of canon, has always been static. It's always the same stories, the same gas lights, the same speculations.

So even though I didn't expect or want it, this sudden surge of Sherlock Holmes-related things in the media--the film starring Robert Downey Jr, the other slightly-silly British film of the same year that piggy-backed on the Hollywood film's fame, and this new, incredible, breathtaking series SHERLOCK--has made things... different. More alive. Has given us more fanon to talk about, circling around the canon, being irreverent to it, being faithful to it in all of ways that actually matter. More and more people are being drawn into reading the original stories. And purists, as purists often are, are wary of these new shows, but are secretly happy to know more than everyone else about Sherlock Holmes, and to get the jokes--the five orange pips, RACHE(L), the Bruce Partington Plans and Cadogan West, Mycroft Holmes gaining "a little weight"... And the fact that Sherlock is called "Sherlock", rather than Holmes, because there was only one real, definitive Holmes on screen, and he died in 1995. And he was as faithful to the canon as anybody could have been, and this new, beautiful series respects that.

I should know. I'm a purist, and I always have been (my forays into Mary Russell fanfiction notwithstanding).

But even I can see this: SHERLOCK has done what nothing else has been able to do since Jeremy Brett: to bring him to life.

And to bring us hounds, all over the world, closer together.

The Game is on, and we will be waiting.