u/TheBurningEmu

From Sherlock Holmes, in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one

of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I

must look at everything with reference to my own

special subject. You look at these scattered houses,

and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at

them, and the only thought which comes to me is a

feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with

which crime may be committed there.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate

crime with these dear old homesteads?”

“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is

my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience,

that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not

present a more dreadful record of sin than does the

smiling and beautiful countryside.”

“You horrify me!”

“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure

of public opinion can do in the town what the law

cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that

the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a

drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and

indignation among the neighbours, and then the

whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a

word of complaint can set it going, and there is

but a step between the crime and the dock. But

look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields,

filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who

know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish

cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on,

year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser."

Having seen and heard of the many evils that take place against gay and trans people in rural communities, I feel like this was a particular piece of wisdom that ACD got very right, even way back in the 1800's.

The boys seemed to think this somehow was problematic. It's actually very realistic. Farmer ants IRL use aphids as a sort of livestock to process plant material into honeydew to eat. Thank you.

I've been on a big Christie kick recently, and was wondering which books you all were able to guess or figure out the solution very quickly?

For me it was:

The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side:

>!Pretty much the instant Mrs. Badcock mentions that she snuck out while sick to see Marina Greg, I realized that she must have gotten Marina sick, which when not much later they talk about how much Marina wanted kids, the conclusion that getting Marina sick affected her kid/kids at the time was a near instant realization for the motive for the murder.!<

The Sittaford Mystery:

>!From the initial setup, it seemed very clear to me that Burnaby, being the only one who was able to relay the message, and the only one who left, must have done it, but I'll admit I thought he probably used a car somehow, not skiis.!<

There have been a few others where I've been close or figured it out about halfway through, but those are the two where I was able to really nail it quickly.

I don't remember this ever happening before, but the sheer stupidness of it had me raging.

I'm at war with the Dwarves as the VCoast, defensive allies with Manfred. He is also at war with the Dwarves. We both hate them, he loves me. Suddenly, he manages to vassalize these Dwarves because we have cooperatively beaten the hell out of them.

Now, Manfred in his grand and unstoppable wisdom, decides he hates me because I was at war with his now vassal (I had the option to either declare war on him or make peace with the vassal when this happened, and I chose peace), whom we both were grinding into paste 1 turn ago. He breaks our alliance. Declares war not much later.

I have somehow found a brand new way to be annoyed with the diplomacy system after all this time.

I'm not going to pretend I've ever liked or supported our Republican Montana candidates, and political ads are always obnoxious, but this year just seems to be on a whole different level of basically cultish devotion to Trump.

There's barely even a mention of policy or ideas, it's just "I'm endorsed by President Trump", "I support President Trump", "President Trump is the best thing to ever happen and we need more".

It honestly just feels pathetic that this is the level any of our potential state representatives are campaigning on just another person's name and nothing else. Montana has always seemed to value independence from our politicians until now.

I've read quite a few of the many story collections available now as my go-to guilty pleasures, and was wondering all of your top and bottoms of the authors out there right now

For me:

Top has to go to Lyndsay Faye, followed by Tracy Revels. Both of them do an incredible job at staying true to the original characters while building on them in real human and emotional ways, elevating Holmes, Watson and all the characters to great new levels. "The Whole Art of Detection" and the "Tales of Light/Shadow/Darkness" books respectively remain my favorite pastiches so far.

Bottom has to go to Robert V Stapleton, followed by Luke Benjamen Kuhns.

Stapleton (I assume this is a pseudonym, ironic) just cannot write either dialogue or mystery. The outcome of the stories seems obvious from the start, which isn't always a bad thing, but the dialogue is jarring and rough, and Watson is overly doltish, which is always a poor writing choice to me.

Kuhns' stories are fine, and he does add some interesting character elements to the classics, but he writes Holmes and Watson as far too violent in my mind. Often the first choice of both Holmes and Watson in his stories is to pull guns and "start blasting", which just feels wrong and jarring. The mystery element is also often a bit lacking.

Lastly, a shout-out to James Lovegrove and Lois H. Gresh, for some Holmes X Cthulhu weirdness. While often these don't quite hold up in terms of deduction and character, when you've already broken the barrier into unreality, the changes are less jarring and make for fairly fun horror romps.

What are y'all's top and bottom picks?