Sherlock/real life divide: not quite as broad as it should be

[marysutherland]

Most of the time it's clear to me that BBC Sherlock and its fanfic exist in a stylised fantasy world that has absolutely nothing to do with mundane reality. There are times, however, when I feel that although the plots may be unreal, some of the characters are a little too close for comfort, and I'm not so much inventing dialogue as overhearing it. Consider the following things I've heard/read in the last couple of weeks:

1) Colleague to visitor: "Would you like a Lithuanian chocolate?"

2) Another colleague discussing with me the arrangements for a book launch party for someone who is terminally ill with cancer: "Of course, it's going to be the elephant in the room, but at least not a suffocatingly large elephant."

3) Comments on one colleague's blog about X having also started a blog [anonymised]:

[Visitor] AB: Not mentioned on Facebook that I can recall. X needs to be pushier. Believe it or not!

Blog owner: I’ll be sure to tell him, from a safe distance :-)

X: It’s in the ‘about me’ box, A. Doh!

Blog owner: Ah, in that case I’ll be sure not to tell you!

X: There’s a difference between pushy and bolshy. I *do* need to be pushier. More than one person has told me that, believe it or not!

Comments

[ginbitch.livejournal.com]

You get the best eavesdropping! I love the Lithuanian chocolate comment - and the elephant _needs_ to be a fic post...

[marysutherland.livejournal.com]

The Lithuanian chocolates were actually quite nice. The Lithuanian mead, in contrast, was more than a bit not good. At least, one of the people trying to get me to drink some reckoned it was mead. Someone else who was reading the contents off the back said it contained juniper and various other botanical ingredients, which seems odd for mead. (I'm not sure whether he could actually read Lithuanian, but he may well have been able to read a language from the same language group).