I have lost my mind.

[impulsereader]

Both alternates were very good suggestions. After I stared at them for a little while I went with lemonsareinplay and then realized that hunt_the_lemon was brilliant and set that up as well.  I went with a journal rather than a community so that each lemon can have its own tracking post.

Now I need to decide if I want to do a test run with some real lemons before setting loose some of the more sturdy, wooden variety.  Perhaps I'll devote one journal to live specimens and the other to wooden.

This is all litlover12's fault, by the way, because when she said - Oh my gosh, you played Hunt the Lemon in real life! (Sort of.) YOU ARE AWESOME!! - My brain apparently decided that I must go to the next level, and I am now planning on scattering Cabin Pressure-advertising lemons all over and hoping a few people will obligingly reposition or hand off said lemon and report back.

Anywho...

Gran smiled happily as she surveyed her enthralled audience.  She cleared her throat again, and everything else stilled in response.  “Now, since he has confirmed his interest in our endeavour, and being a soldier himself, I wondered if our own Doctor Watson might condescend to accept the role of Benedick.  I believe this would emphasize the warm welcome we wish to extend to him in joining the family and taking such good care of our Sherlock.”

The room buzzed with whispers and gasps and bursts of scattered applause, and all eyes turned once again to him.  Mycroft, who he hadn’t noticed before, cleared his throat and began, “Gran -,” but John’s mind was already racing and it very definitely didn’t seem like something he ought to refuse, so he broke in and assured everyone, “I’d be happy to.  Love to, in fact.  Much Ado, great show.  That’s a really warm gesture, thanks!”

Gran beamed at him again.  “Wonderful.  Now then - ,”

Mycroft’s tone was gentle when he cut her off, “Sherlock, do come in.  John has just kindly agreed to play Benedick in next year’s Production.”

Sherlock, who had apparently either been passing the door or intending to join this mass gathering, was framed in the doorway and went completely still for a split second; his eyes grew wide.  “Oh, John, no; you don’t have to do that.”

“No, no.  I want to,” he assured his friend.

In response, Sherlock began picking his way across the room, looking like a giant water bug as miniscule patches of floor were uncovered by shifted hands and knees to allow his progress on tiptoe.  “No, really, John.  It would be better if you ceded the honour to someone else.”

He reached John’s side and dropped awkwardly into a crouch next to his chair.  John leaned over slightly and hissed in his ear, “It’s a warm gesture in order to welcome me to the family, you git.  I can’t just say no.”

Just as intensely, Sherlock insisted, “You really don’t want to do this, John, trust me.  It’s quite elaborate; everyone takes it extremely seriously.”

John rolled his eyes.  “I will read the play a couple of times beforehand, you know.  I’m not an idiot; I know the story, this isn’t a big deal.  I don’t get stage fright; we put on a panto in uni once.”  When Sherlock didn’t look convinced, he continued reassuringly, “Honestly, it’s fine if they want to put a sword belt round my waist for a couple of hours and product into my hair.  I can’t respond to ‘welcome to the family’ with ‘bugger off, thanks but no thanks’; it’s your Great Gran for heaven’s sake, Sherlock!”

Sherlock regarded him intently for a moment and then his eyes lit with humour.  For a second, John thought he might giggle.  He certainly spoke through a bit of one when he asked, “You’re determined, then?  Nothing I say will convince you otherwise?”

“Yes, I am determined; and no, you cannot talk me out of it,” he responded with finality.

Sherlock nodded.  “Very well.”  John noticed that his mouth twitched into an amused grin.  He rose to his feet.  "I humbly request the role of Beatrice."

Comments

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

I'm so proud to have had some small part in inspiring the lemon lunacy. :-D

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

Oh, just wait - I'll make you set some lemons loose as well!

[northernwalker]

*sporfles*

Hey, that's period appropriate!

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

I know! This is totally Sherlock's argument whenever John grumbles about it over the next year.

[221b-hound.livejournal.com]

Real life Hunt the Lemon *and* John & Sherlock being cast as Benedick & Beatrice. This post is composed of win and ponies!!!

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

I do wonder if anyone else will come out to play...

[221b-hound.livejournal.com]

Have you joined the Cabin Pressure community? There around bound to be a few Chicagan (Chicagan?? Is that the adjective??) folks who'll be keen to get the ball rolling. :)

[djarum99.livejournal.com]

B & B, and lemon hunts. I love you ♥

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

Well, my new icon helped inspire me to the effort...

[f-m-r-l.livejournal.com]

If you'll explain the lemon hunt, I'll see if I can pose and shoot some lemons. Heck, even if you won't or can't explain, I'm willing.

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Best to listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV-iInTUOYc&feature=relmfu which equals Cabin Pressure (BBC radio program) series 3 episode 1 - but in short Hunt the Lemon is a game wherein you hide a lemon in plain sight for your partner to find - but everyone else around you is in ignorance of the game.

I am obviously adapting slightly by eschewing a known partner and planning to randomly place actual lemons for either those 'in the know' who have listened to the show, or who are curious enough to pick up the lemon and check out the web address written on it. I am playing a virtual version of the game within the real world - instead of bringing the lemon to your partner in person and handing it off to be 'hidden' again, the lemon finders report their find and the relocation on the journal.

I expect this will have an extremely short shelf life as I will receive very few if any responses - still - I will have tried and had enormous fun doing so!

[f-m-r-l.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I wonder if it's possible to cleanly brand a QR code into a lemon, what it would take for me to make a branding 'iron', and whether that would provoke a stronger response around here.

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

*gapes* I was thinking Sharpie and a coating of something...I am now picturing protective equipment on the level of welding stuff. I'm so completely happy that your mind even went here I can't express it properly. As long as I'm not a lonely lunatic I think I can be perfectly content.

[f-m-r-l.livejournal.com]

How do you want to work this? I think you'll want a bit explaining to visitors why they're at the site and asking them to leave a comment, and that's the page I'd like the URL for.

Would you like to number the lemons (matched to entries with lemon pictures) so people can easily find/leave a picture of their lemon? Or would you just like people to comment on a main post to have all the lemon comments together?

And would you like other people involved, or just the people you already communicate with online?

Drat. If I keep asking questions, I could end up distracting you from writing, and that would be bad. A URL for that first part would be good from my tinkering standpoint—it doesn't even need an entry yet. You can modify the entry later. I just want to experiment with the branding.

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

The writing is going fairly well at the moment so a bit of a citrus distraction shouldn't hurt.

I have no objection to opening this up to others, but I've made a tactical error if we're going to do that. By setting up a journal instead of a community I'm limiting people to just replying to posts - I was imagining a post for each numbered lemon with people commenting when they've found that one.

If we're opening it up for others to release lemons a community would be better as people could post their releases with pictures and then we could tag appropriately to keep things tidy.

I don't believe I can convert from a journal to a community so I either need to delete the journal - which means I need to wait 30 days to create the community of the same name. This is annoying. Or I need to think up yet another name for the thing. hunt_the_lemon is pretty darn good and I think I'd like to stick with it.

Assuming we stick with that name, the url for the journal is http://hunt-the-lemon.livejournal.com/ - we could have a sticky post explaining the concept.

I've just put up a test post for which the url is http://hunt-the-lemon.livejournal.com/555.html - but if I end up deleting the journal to convert to a community this may change.

Thoughts?

[f-m-r-l.livejournal.com]

If you think that you wouldn't be deluged with pictures, and you wanted to keep it as a journal, you could set up an email address for the project and have people send pictures to you to post. That would also allow you to open it up to friends, etc., who weren't LJ users. But it could get hairy if things unexpectedly took off.

Having a community, on the other hand, would restrict it to LiveJournal users. You would probably want one where people needed mod approval to join, and if you wished you could assign them a block of numbers at that time. It would be a lot less work, as long as the members only needed a little moderation. ("No, hon, I gave you numbers 51-100. What is this lemon '666'?")

I'm... not the world's most patient person. I want to start fussing with things. So I may not be the one to ask.

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

All right - I think I've sorted this out. I created the community traveling_lemon using the journal hunt_the_lemon and the email account hunt.the.lemon@gmail.com. Now we can proceed on all levels.

so the url for the journal, for non LJ users who want to play will be http://hunt-the-lemon.livejournal.com/

I'm thinking I want players to initially go the journal and I'll use that to assign #s, then they can either email me pics or post to the comm.

Does all that sound reasonable?

[f-m-r-l.livejournal.com]

Sounds great to me!

[impulsereader.livejournal.com]

Oh - I'm also interested in anything interesting you can do with a lemon - I was actually a bit disappointed in my own originality during my day going around the loop. I sort of resorted to holding the thing up and having the lemon out of focus with the target seemed rather - not the point.