#until the loot falls out like sonic the hedgehog's coins

[quill-of-thoth]

Letters From Watson, Catching Up

The Musgrave Ritual part 3: fun bits! - I didn’t point it out in the last part, but I love how Musgrave immediately catches on to the scavenger hunt and starts helping. Especially because he knows the ins and outs of the house.

- Obviously there is immediately a corpse. And a crime scene reconstruction. I do like that Holmes admits that he has no idea whether it was an accident or on purpose that Brunton was trapped in the treasure chamber: contrary to many pastiches and modern adaptations he does not always have, or need, every single fact of the case.  - Also, the treasure. The absolute lack of fabulousness of the treasure! I admit that the first time I read this story with not a lot of historical knowledge (my known English monarchs skipped from allegedly King Arthur to Queen Elizabeth to Queen Victoria) the shabby condition of the artifacts made me think they were much more than two hundred odd years old. As an adult who has been to two archaeology digs I appreciate the realism: important things are seldom shiny! Granted, my best two finds were a left-handed pot sherd and a shred of china.  - On the subject of archaeology: every aspect of this discovery is a disaster and it makes me itch. First you remove the artifacts from their context with zero documentation, then you chuck them into a lake. Zero of ten stars all around. 

- Honestly, thousands of stolen artifacts filling the British museum and things that actually belong there thrown away in a pond. I have a grudge against Victorian era archaeologists that only starts with Heinrich Schliemann. - It’s currently VERY hard to quickly google information about Queen Elizabeth 1 or King Charles 1 and get answers, so I’m not going to do a deep dive (tonight) on whether this “ancient crown of the kings of England” (which didn’t exactly make me think that Charles 1 wasn’t some time in the 10th century) directly contradicts any knowledge of actual Elizabethan and immediately post-Elizabethan crowns. Hey British royal family, could you make it easier on historians and pick a new name, ever?

#Letters from Watson #The Musgrave Ritual #look if you DON'T have a grudge against 1800's archaeologists you haven't studied enough archaeology #I have methodology questions for Indiana Jones but I will happily help him shake anybody who preceeded him #until the loot falls out like sonic the hedgehog's coins #and it can be put in a museum #in it's country of origin #where appropriate #because sometimes it belongs in its original community actually #especially if it's somebody's body #also of note google's top result for what happened to the crown of queen liz 1 #is some #absolute bullshit #in the bit where you click on the question #not like the search results #in case you didn't already know that those weird pop up things are kind of broken