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beekeeperspicnic · 9 hours

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Visiting Fulworth

Today @jeremys-come-to-bed-eyes and I went on something that I might have been classified as a "research trip" for The Beekeepers Picnic, if it had happened a few years ago! As it is, there's no hiding that it was just a geeky fan trip.

I didn't invent the idea of Holmes retiring to keep bees in a village called Fulworth - it gets alluded to a few times in the stories, and there is one story set there, 'The Lion's Mane'.

We know Holmes' retirement home is either a 'cottage' or a 'villa', it's a few miles out of Eastbourne, and it's clearly somewhere where it's possible to walk to the sea for a swim. Sherlockian tradition is that the real-life place fitting this description is the village of East Dean.

So, that's where we went - walking from Eastbourne.

This area is famous for it's white chalk cliffs, which are eroding away very quickly. Here is a path to nowhere!

These cliffs are known as the Seven Sisters. They all have names but the only two I remember are Short Bottom and Rough Bottom.

The beach there is all pebbles - I knew that when creating my game, but I felt like a pebble beach just wouldn't look right all in pixels, so I made it sandy instead.

East Dean is absolutely gorgeous, basically everything I could have hoped for.

Here is the village green - flying a Ukrainian flag in solidarity!

And here is Mr Holmes' official cottage. As far as we could tell its now an office of the local estate rather than someone's house, so we didn't feel too weird taking lots of pictures! The Lions Mane implies his cottage is a little way out of the village, but I'll forgive them for putting it in the centre instead.

(I think that the dates are obviously the dates he lived there as recorded by his biographer - our last information on Holmes is from 1917. I think they made the right call not to try to invent a date for his death.)

A lot of the cottages in the area have this really distinctive mixture of pebbles and brick which I think must be a hallmark of the local area, but I was pleased to see a few whitewashed buildings like the ones I put in the game:

Thank you for reading, please enjoy this adorable foal.

#the beekeeper's picnic #sherlock holmes #sussex retirement #sussex cottage

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beekeeperspicnic · 2 days

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When Holmes and Watson go to a concert, this is what's happening in Watson's mind the whole time.

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beekeeperspicnic · 2 days

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I'm part way through designing this menu and I just...

TINY VIOLINS AS SLIDERS!

#gui

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beekeeperspicnic · 3 days

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[Img description - a comic. First panel, A woman sat at a desk with a graphics tablet, thoughts whirling around her head - Is it a mistake for me to spend so much time on this game? It's so niche. It's basically a glorified fan game. It's bound to result in an amateurish product, If I was more savvy I'd be developing a sustainable creative career. My peers are getting book deals and winning awards and becoming established creatives, what am I doing? Is this contributing enough to the world? Panel 2 - She looks down at the graphics tablet. Panel 3 - A view of the tablet, with a drawing of a house on it. Panel 4- The woman puts her hands over her face and says 'Ahhh but it makes me happy!']

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I made this comic a little while ago about a game I'm making called The Beekeeper's Picnic, a cosy point and click adventure featuring a retired Sherlock Holmes.

Now, I do actually want people to play and enjoy this game. I think my creative work is a kind of communication, and it brings me joy to know it's succeeding in communicating with people.

So I'm just going to slip in here that there is a kickstarter for the game running at the moment. And it's going really well!

But actually the main message I want to tell you is this:

I think it's actually ok just to BE and to DO. To dip your hand in ochre and make a handprint in a cave wall because you're a human being, and you want to see how it feels, and you want a way to externalize your complicated inner world.

Our capitalist society will tell you that you must use your resources, you must not squander gifts or opportunities, that you must rise, that you must produce, produce, produce.

But I made a little house in my computer and I found happiness in it.

If I say that's enough, it's enough. ❤️

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beekeeperspicnic · 4 days

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Do the game work on Linus ? Or is it only Mycroft compatible ?

If you're asking if the game works on Linux, or is it only Microsoft compatible, then the good news is it works on both Linux and PC! I'm also hoping to get it working on Mac too, but that's proving to be more difficult.

But if you actually meant Linus... you now have me imagining that Mycroft Holmes has a best buddy called Linus and they lounge around all day in companionable silence.

#asks

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beekeeperspicnic · 4 days

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It's a Mycroft!

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beekeeperspicnic · 4 days

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Furiously telling myself this with my probably 2.5 years to develop 3-4 hours of gameplay.

(Webcomics were "worse", to be fair, I think I used to produce about 20-30 minutes of reading time per year with comics.)

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

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beekeeperspicnic · 5 days

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He's so jaunty...

From my game The Beekeeper's Picnic. 🐝 Explore a seaside town in the 1920s and solve mysteries as the (retired) Great Detective in this point and click adventure! 🐝

Follow the Beekeeper's Picnic Kickstarter! Wishlist on Steam!

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beekeeperspicnic · 6 days

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This in the tags made me giggle:

And since there are a fair number of new people in these parts it's probably worth saying, yes, you can!

Over time I've come to realize I'm making a thematically queer game here. At first I was really hesitant to call it that - it's not a romance game, after all. It doesn't have much visibly, overtly queer content. I was scared about misleading people. But it's inherently about two people whose relationship doesn't fit inside a conventional box, who don't have an easy existing societal framework to apply to themselves, trying to navigate that situation. I think that's a universal constant of the Holmes&Watson relationship which is baked into the canon. What could be more queer than that?

The writing is deeply informed by my experience as an aromantic asexual and a platonic or queerplatonic interpretation was always my baseline (you write what you know, y'know?) , but over time I realized the joyful thing about games is that players can choose?

So yeah, ultimately you can decide that Holmes romantically loves Watson, or that he has a deep platonic love for him, or that he sees him as a brother, or that he doesn't really know how he sees him beyond knowing he wants to be with him always.

The game is mostly zany point and click antics, but that aspect is there, and I feel it's important.

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beekeeperspicnic · 7 days

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I based Holmes' kitchen on the kitchen at Winterbourne House and Garden so closely that now whenever I go there, it feels weird.

#game design

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beekeeperspicnic · 7 days

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AUTHORS DOING OTHER STUFF

Like putting together a bee hive. Badly. With the aid of Cheezits.

I’m not the only author who keeps bees by the way. I know @neil-gaiman used to keep them in Wisconsin. And Sherlock Holmes have it a go, too, so it’s not a bad gig for a historian turfed mystery writer, either.

Yes. I might be procrastinating.

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beekeeperspicnic · 7 days

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youtube

The Beekeeper's Picnic Q&A Video!!! In which I speak while having a paper moustache literally glued to my face, and my cat makes a cameo.

Find out more about the game here!

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beekeeperspicnic · 7 days

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I'm already planning where to put these stickers and getting that kind of sticker-anxiety of needing a really cool place to put a really cool sticker.

Thank you so much to everyone who spread the word and donated to our season 2 crowdfund campaign during our match event—we hit our goal before the weekend even hit! As such, everyone who donated (and everyone who will donate—there’s still time!) at the $30 tier or above will get FIVE STICKERS now! Introducing our fifth sticker design:

We thought you deserved a nicer-themed Sherlock Holmes sticker inspired by that one time we accidentally made Sherlock Holmes trend in December 2022 (ah yes, our most lasting legacy, the congrats in advance to the happy couple public domain post)! Enjoy!

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beekeeperspicnic · 8 days

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The Beekeeper's Picnic Papercrafts are here! Including...

Paper Dolls - Make paper standees of Holmes, Watson, Mycroft and their little neighbour Tilda in a variety of outfits! There are over 20 separate items of clothing. Here's a little tutorial I made...

youtube

Colouring Sheets - Colour Holmes and Watson out for a stroll, or famous scenes from the stories The Gloria Scott and The Devil's Foot.Print them onto paper or card to colour with pencil crayons, or print on watercolour paper and have a go at painting them! You could also open the PDF in your paint package of choice and try some digital colouring! (Just credit me for the lineart, please!)

Postcards/Prints - Print out a map of the village of Fulworth and postcards from the Diogenes Club, 221b Baker Street, and the famous cliffs over Fulworth Bay (famous for making an excellent picnic spot! Also that whole jellyfish thing.)

If you are a kickstarter backer who pledged at Creative Crafter or above, you can claim your rewards here.

If you'd like to buy the Creative Crafter package now, then this is the place to go!

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beekeeperspicnic · 8 days

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Important game development update from Miss Malkin

jhkkkkkkkkkkkkkkjk ;l;ll;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;l;;l ;lllllllllllllllllllllllllll qwse3fgvyvygf g vvvvvvvvvvfvvvvv4vvvvvvvvygvgvgyvgyvgyvyyyyyyyykkkkkkkkswswswsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssssxssssssssssss

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

#cat #miss malkin

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beekeeperspicnic · 8 days

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@eardefendersI get where you're coming from but the Brain Attic thing is a real method of memory/memory retrieval called the Method of Loci. Humans have been using this method since ancient times. It comes up in Greek myths & all sorts of treatise & whatnot over the centuries. Since they started the Memory Championships in the 90s, consistently the winners have all had mind palaces to help them win. I think that's why he always has the brain attic in every adaption, cause it's real.

Sorry for answering this as a reblog, I just know I'm going to end up needing more space than you get in comments!

The brain attic as described in A Study in Scarlet isn't the Method of Loci, and it's not a 'memory palace'.

Holmes is talking about how he doesn't pay attention to anything which doesn't have immediate application in his work (like the fact that the Earth orbits the sun) and to demonstrate his point he uses the metaphor of his mind being like an attic to try to explain his philosophy to Watson:

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. (...) It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. ”

Now, I think if you were to ask a neuroscientist their opinion on this, they'd say it is (unsurprisingly) an old-fashioned way of thinking about memory. Our brains are actually very elastic. If you refuse to learn basic science, that doesn't give you more space in your brain to memorise lots of different types of tobacco ash, or whatever.

Perhaps Arthur Conan Doyle realised this, or perhaps he figured that it didn't make for an interesting character, because this element of of Holmes' personality dropped fairly quickly - in later stories he has weird little hobbies/special interests that aren't connected to his detective work. He uses the metaphor one more time in the Five Orange Pips, but in a toned down "I try to full my mind with useful things!" way.

And it's definitely not something in 'every' adaptation. None of the big 20th century Holmes adaptations ever mention the 'brain attic'. Basil Rathbone doesn't, Jeremy Brett doesn't.

So, where does this idea that one of the defining characteristics of Sherlock Holmes is his 'memory palace' come from?

Yup, it was BBC Sherlock.

And I think that's a really clever bit of writing! Managing to revive and update this really odd moment in Study in Scarlet with a more legitimate strategy for memorising facts, which works really well visually on screen.

You can tell they were onto a winner with it, because it managed to add to the mythos of a character that had already been around 120 years. And it totally stuck. Like the Meerschaum pipe and the deerstalker and saying "Elementary, my dear Watson!" it's something not in the source material which I think your average person now just accepts 'memory palace' is a core Sherlock Holmes Thing.

But anyway, long story short and to go back to the original post, I like the re contextualisation of the brain attic idea in BBC Sherlock, I think it can get a little silly when later adaptations now go out of their way to try to include it because they feel like they *need* to, but making my game showed me that depicting a character's mind visually is really fun, and now I understand why lots of people do it.

One thing that keeps striking me while making this game is how often I have to go back on personal quibbles about Sherlock Holmes adaptations - I keep having moments of "...ok I can see why people do that so much."

I have always found the whole "brain attic" thing a little silly, and I find the fact that it's become an intrinsic element of the character a bit strange considering it's mostly just a bit of early-installment weirdness in Study in Scarlet.

But then as part of a game I wanted a screen where the player sorts information, and the idea of visualising the inside of Holmes' mind, and showing how it changes over time, was just far too good to pass up. So, brain attic.

Doyle implies that Watson joins up with his old regiment during WW1, but the idea of this beloved author going off to the front in his 60s never makes much sense to me and I know it is basically propaganda. My headcanon tends to be that Watson's war service would be in an unofficial capacity in England.

But I needed an instant way to signify to the player that Watson had been away, and he's had a tough time, and he needs rest and healing.

So, he shows up in an army uniform, and he has at least been to France (I imagined him in a hospital away from the Front).

Silly little thing that came up today reading His Last Bow is that Holmes in it has white hair. I love the idea of him with white hair in old age. It just didn't look good in the pixel art. So he has grey hair.

I think in adaptation you need to consider the strengths of the medium you're working with and the story you're telling rather than headcanons, but it still feels strange and frustrating sometimes.

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beekeeperspicnic · 9 days