"To suffer together, to live together. I want it."

"Liam, I also want to live together"

"Hey you two! Have you finished your wedding vows?"

- Yuukoku no moriarty chap. 75

Liam and Sherly | Moriarty the Patriot

Manga coloring by me

I'm finally up to date on Yuukoku no Moriarty. I feel empty now.

And how come Billy gets it while the two freaking geniuses DON'T. I'm frustrated.

An incomplete list of bizarre yuumori details I thought were Anime Weirdness License but turned out to be Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes canon (hereafter, “ACD” or just “canon”):

- All Moriartys are named James!! (or at least we have Professor James Moriarty and his brother Colonel James Moriarty; the possible third brother is disappointingly unspecified. It’s also possible that there are only two brothers, the named Colonel and the unnamed “station-master” being the same Very Employed brother mentioned differently in different stories, but it is hard now not to picture Albert in uniform and Louis in a jaunty railway cap)

- Colonel Moran the platonic ideal of a sharpshooter

- …his near-perfectly silent and accurate airgun sniper rifle that fires revolver bullets for some reason (I don’t know anything about the history of weaponry so maybe this only strikes me as implausible because I’m uninformed)…

- …built by an eccentric genius blind German named Von Herder (really really thought he was mostly just M + engineering genius in a spy media so he must be German by definition + anime trope of blindfolded weird smart guy. We don’t meet him in canon so this is still probably the recipe for his character traits/personality but the basic ingredients were suggested right there in ACD!)

- “Good night, Mr Sherlock Holmes” and Adler’s perfect disguise

- Also Sherlock’s house burning plan is bonkers in canon and in every adaptation and I’m delighted every time. (I tricked you dear reader, I already knew these two truths because I love A Scandal in Bohemia in particular. Everyone within the sound of my internet voice should just go read it, it’s so short and so unhinged)

- Sherlock does indeed repeat The Line (“once you’ve eliminated the impossible…”) absolutely as often as he can plausibly fit it into conversation

- Mycroft is The Government. Totally forgot this was not an invention of the BBC show, it’s just late in canon and retconned to have always been true. We meet Mycroft in The Greek Interpreter as a regular boring government employee and he gets the upgrade in The Bruce-Partington Plans; the in-universe explanation is that Sherlock can trust Watson with the truth now, and…

- …Watson being generally trustworthy according to Sherlock’s judgment definitely makes it totally fine for him to have government secrets

- Milverton plot beats are shockingly similar up to the involvement of Moriarty: “oh no milverton has blackmail on a client I better go burgle his house, stay out of it watson” “I’m coming too we’re best friends and roommates even in prison!!” “Ok fine” “awesome. I’m going to go sew burglar masks” (even the fancy-night-out alibi! And in canon, Holmes himself rather than Watson is the hot boy bait / fake plumber who pretends to court the maid so that she will tell them how to get in but it still happens this way!) ((another side note holmes loves 2 burgle. Every opportunity for a break-in he is THERE, and he’s so psyched to tell cops that he would be great at crime. In the Valley of Fear he mentions to a Scotland Yard officer that he’s been to Moriarty’s office three times, the officer says “I thought you hadn’t met him” and he says “I haven’t and you probably shouldn’t ask any more questions about this [smiles innocently].” I love him))

- also the anime version’s “wow milverton is here at the door right exactly when we are just finished talking about him, what a crazy random happenstance” aligns with approximately 100% of character entrances in canon

- “Clearly the only way to solve this Treasure of Agra issue safely is by getting Small to throw it into the river” and thus LESTRADE AND THE BOYZ GO ON A SICK HIGH SPEED BOAT CHASE

Bonus: Not really that weird but a fun oddly-accurate nod that made me smile to discover:

- We meet Fred Porlock in ACD as a character who has betrayed Moriarty by writing Sherlock letters tipping him off about their criminal organization’s plans, then he’s discovered and has to stop sending tips. I think it’s sort of cute, then, that we see him writing to Sherlock when he planned to “betray” William/disrupt the Final Problem to save him, and he’s discovered and interrupted by Louis

Moriarty The Patriot manga chapter 76 English Translations is here and here some of the "interesting" panels that my mind would NEVER recover:

They do be overdramatic when they got drunk I fuckin love it.

DID SHERLY JUST FORGOT BILLY'S EXISTENCE AND ONLY MENTIONED LIAM?????

Billy The "Third-Wheeling" Kid—

Hawt Sebastian Moran🥰

And these are panels that left me speechless:

?????

Hah??????

HAAAH????????

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.....???????

Part one end???

Fuck Sherly and Liam's fall, just think of how Louis's reaction could have been while watching his brother dying. I imagine it like that:

The blond man was looking at his brother who was ready to fall, thankfully Sherlock was holding him but his arm. He still had hope that he could hug and talk to his brother again but all these thoughts disappeared when suddenly his brother hurt Sherlock with his sword and started falling. Sherlock fall with him. The blond was looking at his brother slowly coming closer and closer to his death unable to do anything. He just stood there watching. A tear fall from bis eye and then another and another. He then just fall to the ground and cried for the brother he just lost. Sebastian was holding him in his arms trying to make his stop crying even though he was crying too. The young male couldn't stop neither crying nor screaming at Sherlock even though Sherlock was too long gone to hear him. "YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED YOU'D SAVE HIM! YOU BASTARD, YOU SAID YOU WOULDN'T LET HIM DIE BUT YOU LIED!" While Sebastian was trying to calm both him and himself. "Shh... Everything is going to be fine... We'll get over it..."

WHAT IF LIAM SAID “catch me if you can” NOT BC HE WANTED SHERLOCK TO CATCH HIM AS A CRIMINAL BUT BC HE ALREADY KNEW HOW HE WAS GONNA END THINGS AND HE WAS DESPERATELY HOPING SOMEONE (sherly) WOULD SAVE HIM

After all, are there people who still believe Sherliam are just true friends?!

They started flirting from the first moment they met, in Noahtic, in the two detectives, Sherlock was literally on the worst mood and when he saw William everything changed, he smiled like crazy and ran to him, he totally entered into horny mode when Will said "Catch me if you can Mr. Holmes", William could have killed him and done with him long time before but he didn't, Will also left him a love letter (and don't trynna tell me it wasn't a love letter, it was):

"... One more thing, when I came to call on you, you likely left me with a question, something along lines of: why you? Giving a simple reason would be prove rather difficult. But let it suffice to say our first meeting was enjoyable enough for me to forget my plan, for a moment at least... It felt as though I had found the one person who understood me! Had our circumstances been different, I would have like to converse with you a great length. For reasons I can't quite explain, it feels as though you're a long standing friend. That is why for me it must be you, I want you by my side, the moment I meet my end, no one else will do! If only... we could be reborn... in another world! Perhaps in the next life, things will be different!"

"If only Liam... Genius couldn't tell I felt the same this whole time!"

Sherlock's reaction to that was literally his 'I love you too' moment, Sherlock didn't fight back Will in the bridge, he really tried to save him and when he fall, he fell with him "I can't let you be the only one who dies" (couldn't live without him), and even though he knew he could die after a fall like that he did fall with him. He hugged him and touched the back of Will's head. "I've caught you... finally!" From the moment Sherlock hugged him, William's 'hell' disappeared. Plus their life after the final problem.

If any of you needs more proves get the fuck out of here, I'm giving up!!

y’all I just need to get this out MORIARTY THE PATRIOT ANIME HATES MISS MONEYPENNY! They must do! Because why have they ignored her presence like she never even existed?? It’s one thing to cut out scenes for the manga from the anime—but it’s a whole other thing when you cut out a VITAL character from the manga on the anime.

Literally helped Moran and his character development, Part of M16, Was doing so much more AND helping William!!

The anime makers must HATE strong independent boss ass women because there should be NO REASON.

When I saw she wasn’t in season one or two I was thinking they would add her in the OVA. Because she actually WAS at the moriarty tea party as a stand in maid.

BUT NOOOOO SHE WASNT EVEN IN THE OVA!! the writers were probably like “we shouldn’t add a new character this late on!” So WHEN WILL U if MTP does have a season 3 I KNOW she’s gonna be there because her role is so vital. And SPOILER ALERT!!!

the ova instead of adding her do you know what they did??? Added this scene of Louis making tea and all the hired maids fall in love with him.

Bro— they must think we hate Louis or something. WE BEEN LOVED LOUIS SINCE THE FIRST EPISODESSS!! There was absolutely no need to make extra Louis content for us to somehow like him more??? We already love him!! The reason this makes me so mad is because they chose this weird scene to add in instead of at least a cameo of miss moneypenny. :(

John and Sherlock’s friendship in moriarty the patriot makes me either so happy or sad

John manga panel redraw sketch,, probably won’t finish this artwork

Chapter 75 ily

Liam & Helena💞

Manga coloring by me

Just a thought. Now that Albert got longer hair. He could wear a high ponytail.

Moriarty the Patriot meta:

The Man: James Bonde, Agency and Gender Euphoria

[yuukoku no moriarty spoilers for anime/manga scandal in Bohemia arc] [also this got so long wow who would have thought i had so many thoughts about my best boy]

[he/him pronouns for yuumori Bonde/Adler, she/her pronouns for Holmes-canon Adler]

Everything about the James Bonde reveal is so perfect to me. It’s Holmes-canon that Irene feels comfortable cross-dressing so that would be a fun slightly unhinged direction to take even though it could go so wrong and I was so braced for it to be a Bad Take.

I was so ready to have my heart broken but you beat the odds you stunning son of a gun

But then. Irene/Bonde becomes a perfect transmasculine fantasy, Irene is The Woman and Bond(e), who he becomes instantly and nearly seamlessly, is most definitely The Man, always the embodiment of super cis hetero masculinity, reincarnated forever to fit whatever that means for the times. (We like hairy womanizers because it’s the 70s so that’s who Bond is. We like Conflicted Dark Thoughtful Protagonists because it’s the 00s so that’s who Bond is. Etc.) And now. And NOW. Bond is again THE MAN, perfect masculine sex symbol, evolved from The Woman, a character who was actually a gender symbol to Holmes, and then became a more conventionally-understood sex(ualized) symbol only by repeated reinterpretation, meaning, yknow, lazily written misogynistic takes on Adler.

(I am forever yelling about how No One Understands A Scandal in Bohemia so, quick explanation of what I mean by that:) Adler’s whole (Holmes-canon) deal was taking back agency over her love life and sexual decisions from men who by default didn’t believe she deserved that autonomy. And then basically every adaptation of A Scandal in Bohemia has gone and done that to her metatextually by making her a manipulative criminal mastermind and/or some kind of super famous courtesan and/or serial blackmailer, explaining her behavior the maximally sexy way rather than honoring the (imho) more interesting original motivation to just move on from an old relationship but not believing she’d be allowed to do so without drastic measures. And also her non-criminal background is so much more interesting as a foil for Sherlock Holmes in that she’s not trained over a lifetime to be that foil, she is a regular fairly clever person who just happens to be overlooked by his prejudice, a lesson he explicitly tries to take to heart, making her “The Woman,” his personal model of all womanhood, remembering her as a worthy adversary.

And this version gets the same sexist setup, except that Adler made it up. Sherlock gets to learn the same lesson but Adler is involved in something totally different, and the whole Scandal in Bohemia story was a fabrication — Adler doesn’t just finally get agency back, Adler basically gets authorship of the canon story. (The government secrets situation, the actual tension in this version, is obviously out of Adler’s control but also kind of out of everyone’s hands.) And I think it’s important that Adler plays this role of a woman, The Woman, perfectly, to set up what comes later. I am reminded of a Daniel Lavery essay about the transmasculine impulse to defend one’s prior femininity — “a desire to maintain that one didn’t transition out of necessity but desire: being a woman is hard but I was good at it, I think is the underlying anxiety, nobody fired me, I quit.” The perfection of Irene Adler’s presentation as a woman neatly prevents the idea that transition might be an action taken with a kind of resignation (“I failed to be a woman”) rather than agency and positive desire (“I am and wanted to be a man”), relating nicely to agency and personal choice as a major theme from Holmes-canon Adler.

So then Moriarty the Patriot takes James Bond, The Man, a sex symbol but always in control of his sexuality because his masculinity grants him that privilege, and bestows that identity on a character whose sexuality has always been textually and metatextually out of that character’s hands. And he’s perfect at it, immediately, his transition is instantaneous (and with later argument only from Moran the stock Straight Guy Who Doesn’t Quite Get It, and his status as a man is not even defended so much as stated: it’s a basic, obvious fact confirmed by William as the voice of leadership and Louis as the voice of pragmatism). The transition scene obviously brought to mind another moment that looms large in my personal transmasc mythos, the Disney Mulan fantasy of cutting off your hair and that magically Makes a Man Out of You, except Mulan spends the movie kind of being visibly bad at Man Things and earns her power when she returns to her gender like masculinity was the unknown land on the hero’s journey, and Bonde’s hair cut scene equally set my brain on fire but with the payoff of actually being instant magical transition.

Look at him!!!!! That’s the man!!!!!!!!

I don’t know how other people feel about the name situation (certainly at least a little unusual to not choose one’s own) but I personally love the idea that Bonde is granted a shared first name, a brotherhood, and gets to choose his last name and discard the patronymic, breaking with patriarchal tradition but fitting into a new kind of family that has some of its own customs which he gets to be a part of. (This also fits the queer life pattern of learning about queer identity and culture by horizontal/peer association (brotherhood) rather than vertical/family association (fatherhood). Or more simply, hey look Found Family Trope.)

And this interpretation feels so joyous to me. Amidst all the crime drama we get a relatively positive and bright and uncomplicated character who is taking visible joy in his new identity, strutting around town being The Man, late to important mission meetings because he wants to try out a new car, flirting and winking all the time because now he gets to be in charge of that kind of interaction, inventing new drinks that sound pretty terrible, being playfully over-familiar with everyone he meets. I love that some of this borrows from who he was as Adler, and some of it manages to re-cast the sort of icky James Bond tradition of reveling in masculine power into simple fresh gender euphoria — arguably the performance of Bond’s hypermasculine persona was always a certain kind of gender euphoria, but too often at women’s expense, and now it’s not, because this Bonde is explicitly a little protective of women’s boundaries, taking the bar fight opportunity to get someone out of an uncomfortable situation, and being only reservedly flirtatious with Moneypenny (again we use Moran for Slightly Confused Straight Guy contrast here).

And this choice of Bonde’s origin also feels so generous to me, a gift for my little gay heart. “James Bond is yours now, transmascs,” says Moriarty the Patriot, “it’s your time to be The Man.” I just. Love this series so much. It’s always the opposite of queer baiting. It’s a subtle invitation to a queer feast, with a family who would happily and immediately call you brother if that’s what you ask.

Moriarty the Patriot Vol. 18 Cover