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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9852953" data-attributes="member: 78087">Yes, Sherlock is terrible for this. Elementary is a lot better in almost every way, not least in the portrayal of Holmes as someone who has actual mental health and substance use problems (his Watson starts out as a sober companion for him) and this makes a lot of his erratic behaviour more understandable, if not pardonable, depending.Holmes in the original short stories and novels, in my opinion, is mainly coded as unconventional. He’s very clever and he knows it, and this makes him impatient with social conventions under many circumstances, sadly especially with his best friend, Some of the latter is narrative convention - the reason Watson doesn’t say, “just tell me the solution and show us how clever you are, you’re clearly gagging to” more often is that he’s not allowed to because the solution has to come at the end, and so we just have the sad spectacle of Holmes berating Watson for not seeing the obvious. This is still awful and shouldn’t be excused.But with most other people, Holmes is perfectly polite and respectful. He knows how to behave and he knows how to elicit information from a client (by listening, House, you should try it some time), and he’s often more kind and respectful to servants, women, children etc. than other men around him who consider such people to be their social lessers. He almost never punches down, in other words. He saves his barbs for people who deserve it who are at least his social or professional equal. Lestrade etc often gets it in the neck because he opens with a clearly incorrect theory or “You’ll never solve this one, Mr Holmes” and even then Holmes usually is mild and restrained, at least initially.I think Holmes’ cultural reputation (often seen in adaptations) is based on his core unconventionality and the fact that Watson is clearly very intimidated by his friend (which is very sad). So Watson goes on a lot about how Holmes is a bloodless icy calculating machine, when actually Holmes clearly has many emotions (not least love for Watson*) and expresses them all the time. These two factors then get translated in adaptations to “@$$hole who is unfortunately always right” which is a convenient power fantasy for many writers.*Whether this is in any way romantic love is unclear, but it’s a valid interpretation, I think. Certainly neither of them ever express it as such, but it’s obvious that if Holmes was attracted to Watson, and knew that it wasn’t returned (Watson is married for most of the time they’re together), he would never say a word.</blockquote>

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