OMG. This Would Have Made Those Days SO MUCH BETTER!

Benedict Cumberbatch reading a letter by Alan Turing at the Letters Live event

I'm not sure if he's an actor so much as he's an utter chameleon. 

(x)

Convo between my 7-year-old students today

Josie: I have a new crush

Matt: Me too! On a boy!

Pearl: You're a boy with a crush on a boy?

Matt: Yeah, he's really cute.

Pearl: Oh.

(pause)

Matt: Boys can like boys. I just can't marry him because boys can't marry boys.

Me: Yeah they can. You can marry whoever you want.

Matt: Really?

Josie: Yeah! My tia has a wife so now I have a titi and a auntie.

Matt: Okay. Then maybe I'll marry him.

Dave: (from across the room) No, you can't, you're seven.

(Age was apparently the only foreseeable problem anyone of my elementary schoolers could see with gay marriage.)

I love this a lot. 

But I'm having less of a problem with John's reactions - or lack thereof - then many people seem to be. And I've been wrestling with why.

...after here be spoilers...

John is a bit broken. As we all are. He's always been ashamed of it and of the crazy choices it makes him love: war, Sherlock, and now, Mary. He's an apologetic adrenaline junkie. 

Why wasn't John more upset with Sherlock after he 'died'? Easy one. He understands that Sherlock was trying to protect him: It's what he'd do himself. 

Why wasn't John more upset with Mary for lying to him? Still pretty easy. He is upset with her – he doesn’t seem to talk to her for a good long time. And he’s not more upset, in the end, because it is his fault, a bit. He wouldn't have chosen her if she wasn't a disaster that needed fixing. And everybody in the sitting room - all disasters needing fixing - knew that full well.

Now, the hard one. Why wasn't John more upset with Mary for shooting John? John is, at least on the surface, okay with Mary shooting Sherlock because he feels personally responsible. It is his job to keep Sherlock safe and he brought someone dangerous into Sherlock's safe zone. It isn't Mary's fault that she's dangerous - it's her wiring. It's John's fault for putting the two crazy choices together; one was going to hurt the other eventually. It was his job to keep them both safe and he let them hurt each other.

But with that said, while I do believe that John has forgiven Mary entirely for hurting him, I am not sold on the idea that John has forgiven Mary entirely for hurting Sherlock. And I think we’ll see that eventually.

People have been reblogging my John Watson post recently. And I can see why. I re-read it today and I was most struck by this line:

Sherlock may be an undeniable hurricane-strength force whirling through John’s life but John also chose him.

No, says Sherlock in HLV. John chose Mary. And...

I love sets of photos like this and this one is of course extra fab.

Catherine Slater ‏@damasuerte 33m

@EmrysIsLove and here’s the photo! pic.twitter.com/g3ysdPxLcU

Husbands.

Martin Freeman is my spirit animal. 

Proving that there are at least two perfect men in the world. 

Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen behind the scenes for Two Plays in Rep’s Waiting For Godot & No Man’s Land promotional photos