Hi everyone!
I’d just like to throw out a little challenge to all the other writers out there. It’s probably because I read waaaay too much johnlock porn, but the number of times I read “deduce” in Sherlock fic is well, a lot, to put it mildly. Yes, I know it’s all Sherlocky and part and parcel…
This challenge looks interesting.
‘Deduce’ is canon, but it does tend to get used a lot.
I’m not doing any writing myself right now, but I’d like to see what is
deducedproduced.I just checked, and I managed nearly 70K without it. It’s an AU, but still…;)
In non-AU territory, I used the word ‘deductions’ once in all of Defence Mechanisms, in story 2.
You wanna know the hell of it? Strictly speaking, what Sherlock does is not deduction, it’s induction. Deductive reasoning infers a particular instance from a general law; induction moves from particular observations to the general hypothesis. “If you can strengthen your argument or hypothesis by adding another piece of information, you are using inductive reasoning. If you cannot improve your argument by adding more evidence, you are employing deductive reasoning.” (Here’s a good overview of the difference.) So every time I hear “deduction” in reference to Sherlock, I have the tiniest little urge to shake ACD by the shoulders and say, “What the hell were you thinking?”
Sometimes Sherlock deduces! He uses both, really. But yeah: thanks, ACD, for causing generations of people to misunderstand the nature of deduction. XD
Also, I was interested, so I just went through and checked. Of the 37 Sherlock fics I’ve written, six of them use any form of ‘deduction.’ One of them—Anywhere You Go—uses it as a section title, so I’m not sure whether that counts. In Internet Downtime, it refers to Sherlock’s website. In two, John’s being snarky. It’s only used unironically in Ten Minutes and The Man Who Sold the World, both of which are Sherlock POV (or Sherlock POV chapters, in the case of MSW ^_^).
I’m not sure you actually can entirely avoid using it when Sherlock starts talking about casework. He really does like that word, whether he’s right or not. ^_^
(I bet John is saving that one up for some time when he just can’t take Sherlock being all smarter-than-thou anymoer. ^_^)
Perversion is Fun!: Fanfic Challenge