Professor of Sherlockology and Advanced Snape Studies

A sneak peek into the closet of 221b, the Sherlock Suite at Ascendio.


Sometimes cosplaying can get a little too exciting...

On Friday afternoon, chaeche and I were able to recruit foxestacado to take photos of us doing some gender swap Sherlock and John cosplay, for which I had printed out a bunch of shots and stills from the BBC series as references. One of these included the iconic shot of John and Sherlock standing in front of the door of 221b. While chaeche took care of some work business, foxestacado helped me decorate the door to the suite using the black paper and the image of the numbers and doorknockers provided by dixiebell12. (This is where I would normally insert a photo of the door so you could see how awesome it was, but my camera died just as I took the picture. If anyone has a picture of the door to the Sherlock Suite that I can post, please send it to me!)

At this point, I was in my fem!John attire but without my jacket so I could clamber up on a chair and fold and tape the paper to the outside of the hotel room door. As I was crouching on the chair in the hallway a hotel employee approached me. I assumed he was about to inform us that we needed to take the paper off the door because it was a fire hazard. However, he simply walked up to me carefully and asked how I was doing and if everything was okay.

I thought this was a really weird opener if he was about to tell us to stop messing with the door, but I responded jovially that I was fine and that things were good. At that point, I noticed he had one of those plastic curly ear-pieces dangling from behind his ear and that there were a bunch of other men a bit further down the hall that he was signaling to.

It was then that I realized that this interaction was not about the door but rather about my costume, specifically the toy gun poking out of the back of my jeans and which was clearly visible to everyone walking down the hall since I had taken off my jacket. Someone had probably reported a suspicious person with a gun in the hotel and the hotel security staff had been sent to handle the situation.

After making my deduction, I turned to the man and explained that it was a toy gun and took it out to show him. He then laughed a bit, gave the all clear to the other men in the hall and wished me a nice day before heading off to take care of more serious business.

Before finishing with the door, I put the toy gun away, and although the John Watson I was channeling was secretly thrilled by the whole adventure, I made a mental note to be very careful when cosplaying with toy weapons in future.