“The one who falls and gets up is stronger than the one who never tried. Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
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these are the characters i’m currently accepting requests for! if there’s a character not listed here, send an ask, and i’ll let you know if i can write for them. if there’s a character listed on my masterlist that’s not listed below, i can probably write for them again too, just send me an ask about it.
It's been a real long year, but getting to the stories from right before Holmes' retirement (then in and after retirement) is one of those things that makes reading them chronologically (or rather chronoillogically at times) create greater feelings of investment and substantiality than say, reading in publication order.
I can't tell if Watson describing himself merely as a habit comparable to tobacco and smoking is really a healthy way to frame their relationship. It's certainly poetic and gets the point across of how much Holmes relies on him, but it also suggests a level of detachment, as if Holmes sees Watson more as an object than an equal. And it's also a question of this being how Watson views himself versus the reality of the situation, cause we know Holmes cares for him a great deal. But also it seems they don't live together in this story if Holmes has to message for him to come to Baker Street, so perhaps their relationship has deteriorated a bit from what it was before, meaning the way Watson describes their relationship here is appropriate.
Miss Alice Morphy's age isn't stated here, but it's young enough that in the story people thought it was a bit much for the much older Professor Presbury to marry her. Which is to say, in a real life comparison I'd doubt whether she would like him.
Roy the wolfhound seems to attack the professor every nine days, which suggests a consistent occurrence that causes good boy Roy to freak out.
Alright, I went and checked and if you continue to count every nine days, the closest date consistent with the Roy attacks would be September 3, which I guess is close enough.
Like a few other stories, a supernatural twist here would be an interesting alternative version. The Professor goes off to mysteriously explore Europe, comes back and is acting very much not like himself, and now he's crawling on all fours for some reason. It seems like it could easily be written to be that he's possessed or something.
A very cryptic ending, especially with the line being from the Professor's own daughter.