Practice BBC Sherlock

“I stretch out my hands towards you. Oh ! may I live to touch your hair and your hands. I think that your love will watch over my life. If I should die, I want you to live a gentle peaceful existence somewhere, with flowers, pictures, books, and lots of work.”

— Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), in a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945), dated Monday Evening [29 April 1895], HM Prison, Hollowa, in “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” (via finita–la–commedia)

When writing a character struggling with shame

Shame isn’t guilt. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am something bad. It’s corrosive. It rewrites self-worth. And most of the time, it whispers, not screams.

✧ Start with silence. Characters carrying shame don’t confess it on page one. They avoid. They deflect. They joke. They become perfect. Shame thrives in secrets. Let it fester before it speaks.

✧ Show the disconnect. They don’t feel lovable, even when they are. Compliments bounce off them. Praise feels like a setup. They think kindness is a trick. Show them flinching at affection.

✧ Give it a backstory. Shame doesn’t appear from nowhere. Maybe they were told they were too much. Not enough. A mistake. Shame is always planted by someone else, then internalized. Find that origin moment and make it hurt.

✧ Let them sabotage good things. They get a healthy relationship? They run. They succeed? They downplay it. They get seen? They shut down. Shame convinces people they don’t deserve good things and they’ll act accordingly.

✧ Body language matters. Hunched shoulders. Arms crossed. Averted eyes. Shrinking into themselves. Shame has a physical posture. Write it.

✧ Watch their inner voice. Shame doesn’t sound like “I’m the worst.” It sounds like “Why would they care about me?”or “Of course I messed it up.” It’s casual. Constant. Cruel.

✧ Make healing slow and clumsy. Shame doesn’t vanish after one pep talk. It takes safe spaces. Relearning. A lot of awkward baby steps. Let your character accept one small good thing and then panic about it later.

✧ Let them rewrite their own story. Eventually, they’ll have to look at who they were and say, “Even then, I was trying. Even then, I deserved love.” Let them get there. Let it be earned. Let it feel impossible and then let it happen anyway.

Season 4 timeline

In TLD it looks like late summer/early autumn but then it's suddenly Sherlock's birthday (which supposedly is january 6th) but virtually no time passed between TLD and TFP if you look at the plot.

I've postponed trying to solve this for my fic but now that I need to write scenes in a house with a garden I must deal with this somehow.

UPDATE:

I decided to go back and look at the script for this whole birthday business (I don't currently have access to the show itself) and I feel it's obvious now that John just failed at deduction (like he often does) and Sherlock just goes along with it because he doesn't want to reveal anything about what is really going on. I mean the episode is called The Lying Detective after all.

JOHN … I’m going to make a deduction. SHERLOCK Okay. That’s good. JOHN And if my deduction is right, you’re going to be honest, and tell me, okay? SHERLOCK Okay. Though I should mention it is possible for any given text alert to become randomly attached to an entirely different - JOHN Happy Birthday. SHERLOCK … Thank you, John, that’s very kind. Sherlock now avoiding John’s gaze - like a teenager quizzed by his parents about his girlfriend. JOHN Never knew when your birthday was. SHERLOCK Well now you do.

the temptation to rush fanfic endings is so incredibly strong for me that i'm in physical pain thinking about stretching this next chapter out into two more.

“Maybe I love too much and maybe I show too little.”

—  r.m drake (via difficult)

That sweet modest face as a reaction to "this is my brother Mycroft" 😍

Home library of the late Richard Macksey, legendary Hopkins prof.

you really think so? well, it's good to know. i've always wondered.