I enjoy reading your responses. Since language is a  problem, most of the time I am unable to give any real contribution.

nicbooful wrote:

I think it's wonderful thinking you know a book very well then someone else comes along and adds to it by making you think more about it. It's just a whole new level of appreciation for the author. (This is also what makes this updated show so brilliant because there are so many different ways it can be interpreted. It's not black and white.)

This is kinda what happened in my case. It was through the first Guy Richie film, I was introduced to the Johnlock idea. Before then, it was the stories and the unique character of the hero which made me a fan of the canon., and JW, to me, was just a good friend of Holmes, the poor chap who always bore the brunt of SH's sarcasm 

(“I AM inclined to think– –” said I.
“I should do so,” Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently -VALLEY .).

Since I was oblivious of the beauty of their relationship, The Three Garridebs was among my least favourite stories, but now I realise if ACD hadn't written that piece, how incomplete the canon would have been (I wonder if there are such passages as threr in 3GAR in victorian literature which portrays a deeper friendship between people of the same gender) .

 

nicbooful wrote:

Can you imagine if Holmes and Watson were gay (or bi)? If they truly did love each other in that way then how beautiful, but tragic,that would be? They do spend their lives together and know they need each other but because of the restraints of society, at that time, never crossed into sexual relations.

 
Yes, it would be tragic but at the sametime beautiful. I don't know really, but I always imagine SH as a tragic hero.

If we could read in between lines, we would realise canon is not just about crimes and detection but about exploring the nuances of the relationships between the main characters.

For example, what do you all think of this paasage from The Norwood Builder?

At the time of which I speak, Holmes had been back for some months, and I at his request had sold my practice and returned to share the old quarters in Baker Street. A young doctor, named Verner, had purchased my small Kensington practice, and given with astonishingly little demur the highest price that I ventured to ask–an incident which only explained itself some years later, when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes, and that it was my friend who had really found the money.

Last edited by holmes23 (July 12, 2013 4:46 pm)

From The Devil's Foot

At the same moment, in some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes’s face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror–the very look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine..,

holmes23 wrote:

SusiGo wrote:

On the other hand we have those hints or clues or whatever you may call them that have been quoted here or somewhere else like this one:

"One day in early spring he (Holmes) had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms, and the sticky spearheads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their fivefold leaves. For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately." 

 
If someone who doesn't know anything about canon read that passage he/she may think it's an excerpt from a romantic novel

It is friendship, not romance. I can do that with close friends, that doesn't mean that I am sexually atracted to them. Of course friendship is a kind of love, the problem is that people here read the canon from a 21st century point of view. At that time, friendship between two men was still possible without being gay.

kittykat wrote:

holmes23 wrote:

SusiGo wrote:

On the other hand we have those hints or clues or whatever you may call them that have been quoted here or somewhere else like this one:

"One day in early spring he (Holmes) had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms, and the sticky spearheads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their fivefold leaves. For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately." 

 
If someone who doesn't know anything about canon read that passage he/she may think it's an excerpt from a romantic novel

I know, right?

Mmm....so obvious. By the way,  what a lovely picture it is..

From The Priory School

“I must have a peep through that, Watson. If you bend your back and support yourself upon the wall, I think that I can manage.”
An instant later, his feet were on my shoulders, but he was hardly up before he was down again. 

Ahem, nice scene. Really. 

Oh, they could do very nice things with that. Let's hope they have the same idea. 

From the Priory School :

As we approached the forbidding and squalid inn, with the sign of a game-cock above the door, Holmes gave a sudden groan, and clutched me by the shoulder to save himself from falling. He had had one of those violent strains of the ankle which leave a man helpless. With difficulty he limped up to the door, where a squat, dark, elderly man was smoking a black clay pipe.

       

I haven't got that far yet, I'm reading in order.

From The Illustrious Client:

I think I could show you the very paving-stone upon which I stood when my eyes fell upon the placard, and a pang of horror passed through my very soul. It was between the Grand Hotel and Charing Cross Station, where a one-legged news-vender displayed his evening papers. The date was just two days after the last conversation. There, black upon yellow, was the terrible news-sheet:
MURDEROUS ATTACK UPON
SHERLOCK HOLMES
I think I stood stunned for some moments. Then I have a confused recollection of snatching at a paper, of the remonstrance of the man, whom I had not paid, and, finally, of standing in the doorway of a chemist’s shop while I turned up the fateful paragraph.
........
I need not say that my eyes had hardly glanced over the paragraph before I had sprung into a hansom and was on my way to Baker Street
.............
The sufferer was wide awake, and I heard my name in a hoarse whisper.............
I sat beside him and bent my head.
“All right, Watson. Don’t look so scared,” he muttered in a very weak voice. “It’s not as bad as it seems.”
“Thank God for that!”
..........
“What can I do, Holmes? Of course, it was that damned fellow who set them on. I’ll go and thrash the hide off him if you give the word.”