elaby | Holmes is more interesting than applying for jobs.

Okay, so, you know how I am with canon. It's important to me that I keep my interpretations and writings very much in line with it. This is more often relevant with books, because with movies and TV shows (aside from things I've studied minutely, like Utena) I have less access to the material. Stuff in books is easy to look up, whereas I probably wouldn't go through a movie or episodes of a show unless I was really dedicated. But with books, I really try to interpret the source material and stay true to it.

The exception to this is when I think the author is off their rocker (*coughAnneRicecough*) or when the general fan-feeling about the canon is pretty relaxed, like in Gundam Wing (of COURSE Treize and Wufei had the hots for each other!)

So I've been kind of going :{ about various things that displease me in the Holmes canon, because I can't reconcile them with what I want to think about the characters. I guess this is a kind of continuation of that post about The Game I had a little while ago.

But I came across something today that made me decide to relax my approach.

One of the reasons I have a hard time playing The Game is because, as I see it, Conan Doyle was really not that interested in continuity. I LOVE continuity. Stargate SG-1 made me a happy little fangirl. The fact that Watson mentions having a wife in a story that he says happened in 1887, when he says he got married in 1888, makes me twitch. Of course, people have taken this to mean he was married before he met Mary Morstan. I can't really believe that, since he never mentioned her and was obviously a bachelor when he moved in with Holmes. I think I sometimes consider authors to be more... on top of things than they necessarily are. I'm used to JKR, for whom it seems every tiny detail was exquisitely planned out, and Jim Butcher, who never puts anything anywhere in his stories that isn't going to be significant later. I'm sure I could come up with a lot more authors who do that, too.

But I don't think Conan Doyle is one of them XD

Today I was skipping through my second volume of Holmes stories, and I came upon The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge. It took place, Watson says, in 1892.

Dude, Holmes went off Reichenbach Falls in 1891, and didn't come back until 1894.

And the thing that frustrates me is that some of those who interpret this as "real" blame all of this on Watson. He's not that stupid, guys T_T I can see him messing up dates, sure. He had a pretty relaxed marriage, so he could have even conceivably forgotten what year he got married (though I don't think it's very plausible). But he wouldn't forget what years he thought Holmes was dead, for god's sake.

I guess my problem is that I interpret the characters as if they were real people (i.e. trying to defend Watson), but I don't interpret the other details as if they have to be true and I need to find some way to explain them.

Anyway, that was a very long round-about way of saying that I'm no longer going to worry too terribly much about things that I perceive as out of place when I'm reading these stories. This is a breakthrough for me, I assure you!