For previous adventures in the Cliffebatch universe, see here. For a more complete accounting of The Toast’s Benedict Cumberbatch coverage, go here instead.
Year: 2016
Place: London
Smaller Place: A lonely crofter’s cottage
REPORTER: Well, first of all, congratulations on your universally-applauded performance in Hamlet.
BENEDICT (quietly): Thank you.
REPORTER: Critics and audiences alike commented on the unprecedented melancholy you brought to the role; night after night, you seemed to draw upon stores of human emotion most actors could only dream of. How interesting, too, that your Hamlet really did not gain that kind of traction until the show’s second week. May I ask why?
BENEDICT (inhales): It was then that I found and lost great love, I think, perhaps, for the first time in my life.
REPORTER: You haven’t been linked to anyone seriously since the play wrapped, just, well…
BENEDICT: The bevy of models.
REPORTER: Yes.
BENEDICT: A different one every week.
REPORTER: Right.
BENEDICT: They mean nothing to me.
REPORTER: They’ve all been very beautiful.
BENEDICT: Some men might find them so, I suppose. No, let me be clear, all women are beautiful; beautiful and strong.
REPORTER: I’ve read your misandrist blog, you seem to feel very strongly about women.
BENEDICT: Oh, yes. Women are better than men, that’s obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than a few minutes.
REPORTER: I’m sorry, I interrupted you. The models?
BENEDICT: Again, just to be extremely clear: all women’s bodies are perfect, just look at these Shapely Prose posts I have bookmarked in Chrome. But, to my very individual and personal taste, I simply cannot experience deep passion for a woman who has flat abs.
REPORTER: Really?
BENEDICT: Yes. For a woman to be supremely beautiful, she should have abs that protrude outwards in a more bulgy fashion, like Flo Rida’s. I think that, in purely aesthetic terms, a woman’s abs should say: “Hey, I work out a whole lot. Not just the pretty muscles, all of them. Maybe I’m working through some personal stuff, maybe it’s not for everyone, but I’m cool with it.”
REPORTER: Interesting.
BENEDICT: Yes, the perfect woman should be extremely pale, with bulgy abs, and very, very thin lips. She should have no facial features that would imprint themselves on the memory, and butch arms.
REPORTER: Butch arms?
BENEDICT (firmly): Butch arms.
REPORTER: How butch are we talking?
BENEDICT: I mean, I would NEVER, ever put pressure on my partner to lift, but if at some point it became difficult for her to shave her armpits because of her upper-body definition, that would be ideal. That would be a great goal to shoot for.
REPORTER: Benedict.
BENEDICT: Yes?
REPORTER: You’re clearly describing a specific woman.
BENEDICT (looks thoughtful): I am, aren’t I?
REPORTER: Can you tell us a little more? This must be the great love you referenced earlier.
BENEDICT: During the second week of Hamlet, my publicist asked me if I could meet briefly with a fan. It’s a common enough request, and, of course, I dread it. But he said, “look, she’s written a bunch of odd, intrusive, sexual stories about you, and this brilliant, as-yet-unpublished scholarly monograph on two leading pieces of Mystrade fanfic–”
REPORTER: Mystrade?
BENEDICT (waves dismissively): It’s the imagined pairing of Lestrade and Mycroft, it’s the only slash worth reading, it’s brilliant, it makes so much sense.
REPORTER: Do they share screentime?
BENEDICT: They do not.
REPORTER: …you were saying.
BENEDICT: Yes! I quickly read her work, and the rare purity of her wit and the warmth of her soul leapt off the printouts from Tumblr and into my heart and my mind and made a home there. “Let her in,” I said, hoarsely. “Please, leave us alone.” We only had twenty minutes. I fell deeply and hopelessly in love with her, I begged her to stay longer.
REPORTER: Why didn’t she? Did she not return your affections?
BENEDICT: She’s married. She’s married, and she has a child. I told her I would marry her at once, the instant she obtained a divorce. I told her that if she had objections to divorce, I would simply move in next door to her and respond instantly to her texts about her favourite television shows, her favourite 1970s singer-songwriters, whatever portmanteaus of doughnuts and pies and cakes are being created in the bakeries of Manhattan. That I would wait forever, just to help her trim her vicious cat’s claws, and ask nothing in return, except to sample the delights of her muscular body whenever her husband was briefly away from home.
REPORTER: But she refused to break her vows?
BENEDICT: I almost talked her into it that night. I said, “please, please, siren, lie down on this couch in my dressing room while the heat from our bodies melts the greasepaint on my angular, British form,” and then I kissed her.
REPORTER: That must have filled her with confusion and arousal.
BENEDICT: I believe it did, yes. She leaned into our embrace for but a moment, then fled. I have not seen her since.
REPORTER: Hence the melancholy.
BENEDICT: Yes. I thought of her every night, when I took the stage. I shall never love another woman.
REPORTER: I notice that you said “woman.”
BENEDICT: My encounters with Martin Freeman still have their charmingly shy and tender charms, yes.
REPORTER: What’s left for you, now? Where will you go from here?
BENEDICT: I send her emails every day. Long, thoughtful emails, discussing her work and its merits. Since I cannot openly retweet or favorite her Tweets, I write fervent missives about each one individually.
REPORTER: Does she write back?
BENEDICT: I know she cannot. Each day that she does not write back only fills me with greater ardency, for her loyalty and strong moral code is even sexier than the body I fantasize about while grimly making love to Miranda Kerr or Brooklyn Decker. I will wait for her until I die.
Benedict stares off into space, and ceases responding to the reporter’s questions. Graciously and kindly, she leaves him alone with his thoughts.
Tags: beauty, benedict cumberbatch, greasepaint, sacrifice, sherlock, true love
How could he read this and fail to appreciate your splendour? Prepare for emails.
Do you think you could convince him that “sampling the delights of her muscular body” included giving you at-home pedicures while the two of you discuss the aforementioned TV shows and singer-songwriters? I mean, if your husband doesn’t want to massage the hard-working arch of his child’s mother, I’m sure Benedict would love to.
The idea of “grimly making love” is really nesting in my brain right now. Would that be making love while scowling, or like, everyone few minutes going “uhhh, oh geez” and then doing that sharp intake of breath noise?
The actual insane delight I feel on reading every line of this makes me concerned for my broader emotional well-being, but this is incredible. I’m also going to steal this rhetorical technique:
BENEDICT (waves dismissively): It’s the imagined pairing of Lestrade and Mycroft, it’s the only slash worth reading, it’s brilliant, it makes so much sense.
e.g. The Toast is the only website worth reading, it’s brilliant, it makes so much sense.
Misandry is the only ethos worth espousing, it’s brilliant, it makes so much sense.
I could go on, but I’m going to re-read this instead.
THAT WAS MY FAVORITE PART TOO
It’s a little bit frightening how badly I want him to read these and respond to you in some fashion.
LOL NICOLE I AM LITERALLY DYING I DO NOT UNDERSTAND BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH AT ALL BUT I WANT YOU TO WRITE ABOUT THIS EVERY DAYYYYYY
This website is so much ‘two friends screwing around’ I can’t even
but i LOVE IT
Benedict would like to remind you that this is indeed an accurate use of the word “literally,” as we are all of us dying every moment.
My encounters with Martin Freeman still have their charmingly shy and tender charms, yes.
MY LIFE IS JUSTIFIED AT LAST.
“I’ve read your misandrist blog”
Thought exercise: What are the posts on Benedict Cumberbatch’s Misandrist Blog like? Does he just post links to Toast articles and say “THIS!!!1!”
Yeah, but he does it in RP.
I can’t stop re-reading this and laughing.
This is so sublimely perfect.
Again, just to be extremely clear: all women’s bodies are perfect, just look at these Shapely Prose posts I have bookmarked in Chrome.
I choked on a pretzel at this.
Just perfect.
I DIED. My alter ego lives on in the Cliffebatch universe!
Shapely Prose will live in all of us always.
This warms my cold dark heart.
This is so achingly perfect.
You know, a few years ago I was mired in an extremely intense and extremely embarrassing Robert Pattinson thing and developed scenarios all the goddamned time. And, based on my perusing fansite comment sections, I was clearly not alone. Oh and a fellow fan went to NYC, waited outside the Jimmy Kimmel show or something, got him to sign some magazines and was seriously depressed afterwards that he didn’t stop every single thing and fall in love with her there on the spot. Seriously depressed.
So anyway, this reminded me of that time. I’m a huge fan of Sherlock, btw and have to consciously stop myself from obsessing over Bendysnap. I went through that once and can’t do it again.
Anyway, beautiful scenario. Thanks.
Never be embarrassed of this.
BRB sending this to all my Cumberbitches.
Nicole, I had to take multiple breaks while reading this post to look away from my computer because I was blushing/giggling too much to go on. Please write more!
Yes! More, please!
For a woman to be supremely beautiful, she should have abs that protrude outwards in a more bulgy fashion, like Flo Rida’s.
I just lost it. That’s amazing.
except to sample the delights of her muscular body
I. I’m at a loss.
“That must have filled her with confusion and arousal.”
NICOLE
This line filled ME with a similar mix of emotions.
This was beautiful perfection in every sense.
Is this where I complain about the time I wrote a cool story about a gang of sexy female thieves and the main one was obviously an avatar for me looks-wise and i made the love interest a black guy so my husband decided that the whole point of writing the story and the only thing he would say about it was that I had a sexual fantasy about banging a black guy and got really mad at me?
No? Ok, cool.
That is upsetting on so many levels. Including: 1. a love interest being a POC does not make it some weird fetish thing 2. married people are allowed to have sexual fantasies, I’m sure Nicole’s husband will recover from this post, there is no reason for anger there 3. what about the rest of your awesome story!
You should write fanfiction where you show your husband your awesome story and he appreciates it and says supportive things, and then leave that story out somewhere he will read it. This is absolutely the best, healthiest way to deal with interpersonal conflict.
yes exactly. actually the guy was blond at first but then I figured diversity was more interesting so I changed him.
Haha I like your response!
Re #2: I’m not convinced that Nicole’s husband is not the true author of these posts.
Yeah if fiction were a 1:1 representation of sexual fantasies that one wishes for one’s own person than approximately 99 percent of fiction goes unexplained (and probably like … 60 percent of fanfiction. How much fanfiction is slash written by straight women?). Not that having a sexual fantasy about banging another guy, black or no, would have justified the response.
Ugh that is so not okay. What an immature way to react. But your story sounds fantastic and exactly like the kind of thing I’d like to read 🙂
*******douchechills*******
ETA I mean I’m sure he’s great
::bows down:: I feel like, if I ever got a chance to meet him AND he fell in love with me, I’d have to shake my head sadly (after one perfect soul-searing kiss) and say, “Go to Nicole. She deserves you more. Be with her. Love her muscular body ardently.” And he would nod and flee.
You’re more selfless than me, I’d take one filthy weekend in a high-end hotel with him before giving him a false phone number and Nicole’s Twitter handle.
OMG, is “let’s keep in touch on Twitter” the new “I’ll email you sometime” in terms of obviously-false promises to one-night stands?!?
Oh God, Nicole, I love this so much and I hope you keep writing these all the time. I am almost crying, from holding in my laughter at the back of this business meeting.
NICOLE
N I C O L E
NICOLE!!!!!!!!!!
this beautifully combines the voice of benedict cumberbatch with none of his dickishness. i pray the day you meet and it’s just like rachel mcadams and ryan gosling making out at the mtv movie awards that one time. naturally, you will scoop him up in your amazingly strong arms and cart him the hell out of there.
I WILL WAIT FOR HER UNTIL I DIE
Is he a dick IRL? He always seems so lovely in interviews, etc.
No, never mind, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Let him remain the lovely friend that I hang out with when I’m in the midst of my fantasy trysts with Martin Freeman, Jonny Lee Miller and/or Toby Stephens.
oh my god. he’s wearing a Darfur t-shirt!!
And chewing gum!
(waves dismissively): Cliffebatch, it’s the only slash worth reading, it’s brilliant, it makes so much sense.
I am done with reading.
Nothing will be better than this so why should I even try?
::props chin in hands, sighs gustily::
Oh, is this where he went after we ran in to one another in the Rothko room at the Tate Modern? He was stunned by my myriad, bookish charms, but I suppose I cannot hope to compete with Nicole.
Oh my god, I just had such a vivid flashback of being a weird pre-teen who was wayyy too into BBC dramas and a recurring middle school fantasy I had about running into I Claudius era Derek Jacobi in the Greek/Roman art wing of the Princeton Art Museum where he would become, as you put it, “stunned by my myraid, bookish charms” and subsequently we would travel the world together. To my 13 year old brain it seemed perfectly logical that Famous Actor Derek Jacobi would want to take on a young ward and that Famous Actor Derek Jacobi obviously would be able to tell that I was the best brainy-yet-plucky girl for the job.
19-year-old me once saw a picture of F. Scott Fitzgerald in drag and spent *months* ruminating on it (partially because I taped it on the wall next to my bed in my dorm – hahaha sorry not sorry roommate). All the love for weird, dorky teenage girls.
I just looked that picture up- 19 year old you had excellent taste in pictures to extensively contemplate.
It taught me a lot about myself. A lot.
INARTICULATE GASPING AND FLAILING
hashtag greasepaint
Nicole. This was perfect in every conceivable way and has inspired me to go back and reread the perfect fic and try to make paella and replace all the vignettes of sherlock and john coming through and being in love with sherlock and you.
tl;dr: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1kga1z3fc1qlwg66….
I should know better than to read your Benedict Cumberbatch fanfic at work! It always sends me into a swoon.
I would be interested in reading Ben C’s misandrist blog.
I love this site so so so so so goddamned much.
I am neither for nor against Benedict Cumberbatch, but that kissing gif at the end is melting my brain.
That’s how it starts. Run while you still can.
where is the kissing gif from?
Just in case nobody’s responded yet, it’s from the first episode of season three of Sherlock, called The Empty Hearse. He’s playing Sherlock and the lucky lass is Molly, his colleague of sorts at the St. Bart’s morgue.
I think we all feel that way over butch arms.
Cumberbatch in Finland with huskies, anyone?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kimberleydadds/benedict-c…
*vigorously fans self*
My husband read the whole thing in complete silence, furrowed his brow, and said “are there crofter’s cottages in London?”
Good. Good. He should be focusing on that part.
You have a perfect consort
I don't know how to react to this, is it meant to be funny?
It’s meant to be very serious and deeply sad.
“abs that protrude outwards in a more bulgy fashion”
new fitness goal.
Nicole can your tumblr be for sharing? Or is it too scandalous?