#for real though the insurance ad was like a quarter of the episode

[coricomile]

Dear Deep Night Special Episode,

Wela/Khemtid is still uninteresting on all counts, and I could have done without the clip show for 60% of the ~new episode.

Seji continues to be the only one I care about, and for a hot second I thought he was getting a third boyfriend, but it was just an insurance ad that kept going through to the next scene. I am sure groups of 20somethings often discuss putting their life insurance in their partner's name after a month or two of dating. ;__;

But thanks for all the softcore horny scenes being compiled together, and kudos to whoever on the subtitles team decided to change "host" to "PR manager".

[lifes-a-dick]

High Wycombe is the Sussex Downs

The “triple poisoner” Sherlock mentioned he caught in High Wycombe at the end of TLD is from Doyle’s The Sign of the Four:

I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money - ACD

I once caught a triple poisoner in High Wycombe - Sherlock in TLD

What’s cool is that when Holmes says that line in the canon, he is slyly comparing none other than Mary Morstan to the triple poisoner. It’s kind of an iconic scene, where they have both just met Mary for the first time, as a client.

“What a very attractive woman!” I exclaimed, turning to my companion. He had lit his pipe again and was leaning back with drooping eyelids. 

“Is she?” he said languidly, “I did not observe.” 

“You really are an automaton- a calculating machine,” I cried. “There is something positively inhuman in you at times.” 

He smiled gently. 

“It is of the first importance,” he cried, “not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.” 

“In this case, however-”

“I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.”

An exception disproves the rule. Oh, Sherlock, you salty thing. Holmes is warning Watson about his attraction to Mary, and that you can’t judge a person’s inner quality by how appealing their facade is. In fact he’s saying you never should, because it’s always wrong. He gives an example: the most appealing woman he ever met was a murderer of children. While the most outwardly repellent man he knows is truly a hero. Watson begins to suggest that Miss Morstan is surely an exception, and her inner quality is as lovely as her facade. But Holmes cuts him off before he can make his point, and says that there are no exceptions. The very fact that Watson was drawn to Miss Morstan at their first meeting, by Holmes’s reasoning, means she’s bad news. 

Then there’s also the fact that the example that occurs to Holmes makes the woman “not what she seems”, then an initially “repellent” man his example of someone who is beautiful underneath. Gosh I wonder if he’s talking about himself, and simultaneously suggesting that he is the better of the two romantic options who were together in the room with John just a few moments before. 

More under the cut.

Holmes says facades are false, without exception. The more appealing the facade, the more likely it’s a trick. Mary’s image was improved for S4; her cute soft curls instead of the more harsh slicked back short hair from S3, the tan, her wardrobe had even improved from the bizarre things they dressed her in in S3. I believe Mary’s S4 ‘look’ was to exaggerate, and draw our attention to, the falseness of a facade. Mary’s facade as something empty/false was already pointed out quite dramatically in HLV when her image was projected onto the empty house. I think that was to warn us of what was to come. That like Holmes warned Watson in The Sign of the Four, WE would now need to guard ourselves from being fooled by a facade.

She’s a triple poisoner with a winning facade, and apparently she’s been caught:

I once caught a triple poisoner in High Wycombe - TLD

And here Sherlock was the one to catch the triple poisoner, whereas in the canon nothing like that was mentioned (even though you could argue that it was implied), therefore we can assume that this has significance for our story because that detail was added for TLD. I’ll come back to this at the end.

What’s also interesting is the rich philanthropist who seems repellent. Sounds like Culverton Smith.

Culverton Smith, who is clearly made to be physically ugly and “repellent”; the teeth, the bad suits, the general creepiness. An example of someone (or something) that we find near impossible to see past the repellency to the good underneath. Culverton did say that he was “in credit” for the things he’s done, lives saved, money donated, etc.

Sherlock says of Smith in TLD that he’s “the most dangerous, the most despicable human being I have ever encountered” compared to “the most repellent man of my acquaintance” about the philanthropist in The Sign of the Four. 

Then there’s a neat little thing in TAB that completes the story; a near identical comment made by Holmes to one in The Sign of Four:

My dear Watson, you are allowing emotion to cloud your judgement - TAB

The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. - The Sign of the Four

If you recall the context of that comment in TAB, it was John berating Sherlock about his cocaine use, calling him a “drug addict”. So when Sherlock tells John that his emotions are clouding his judgement, it’s clearly because here is Sherlock behaving “repellently”, but wishing that John could see past that to who he is underneath. To reinforce that this is indeed a reference to that theme from the canon, little Billy then rushes in with the telegram that alerts them that Mary has gone off on some assassiny mission. John is then unwilling to admit that Mary is anything other than his ordinary wife. He still can’t see past a facade, a winning one, or a repellent one. 

WATSON: What is it? What’s wrong? HOLMES: It’s Mary. WATSON: Mary? What about her? HOLMES: It’s entirely possible she’s in danger. WATSON: Danger? HOLMES: There’s not a moment to lose. WATSON: Is this the cocaine talking? What danger could Mary be in? I’m sure she’s just visiting with friends. (x)

If facades are always wrong, then Mary is the murderer, and Culverton Smith isn’t. Because well, he wasn’t, and didn’t kill Sherlock in the end. One layer of the many different ideas that Culverton Smith seems to represent, could be the idea of someone or something physically unappealing that puts us off, but which is “in credit” in terms of goodness once you look further. 

My thoughts always go back to homophobia and what the commentary there could be; like something that initially repulses or repels people (queerness), but which is beautiful once people break down and dispel their own ugly ideas. Think of Madame Vastra in Doctor Who, Moffat’s custom made Sherlock mirror. Her lizardiness represents that perceived ugliness, yet she’s somehow extraordinarily beautiful too - her appearance represents both how queerness is perceived by homophobes, and also the beauty that it truly holds. Holmes clearly sees himself as having a repellent facade to John, but I’m not sure how much this reflects John’s actual thoughts, since that was Sherlock’s dream. And the subtext here is not referring to attraction so much as how facades are a bi-product of repression, and that they’re broken down the more knowledge we gain, aka information is power.

I think John is also that “repellent” alternative for Sherlock, just as Sherlock represents John’s initially repellent alternative to Mary. Sherlock and John both battle the internalised enemy that is repression. Our repression is why we find something repellent that isn’t repellent, because repression is brainwashing.

Repression stops us from seeing past a facade. So this theme could also be behind the Culverton-John mirroring that many have pointed out. Sherlock lying there in that hospital, dying, letting his “repellent” male-attraction in the shape of Culverton, be the death of him. Or, letting it (the John who bursts through the door) save him instead. 

What is High Wycombe?

It’s a real place. A fairly normal/ordinary large town in England, and could be supposed to be a juxtaposition of ordinariness to make a joke about the idea of Sherlock taking Irene Adler there for dinner; an unlikely scenario. (High Wycombe does, however, boast a well-known BDSM sex dungeon/B&B. Very funny, Steven.)

Amy’s Choice is a Doctor Who episode in one of Moffat’s seasons that you’re possibly sick of hearing about. Anyway, it’s significant here again for different, non-EMP reasons. In that plot, of Amy’s two choices that the episode was named for (it was sort of subtext, but she needed to choose between two cute boys, Rory or the Doctor), Rory represented an “ordinary” existence as an alternative to the excitement and danger of life with the Doctor. There were two parallel realities (both later revealed to be hallucinations, but anyway). One of them was Amy and Rory’s ordinary but blissful domestic dream life in a quaint country home, in a town called Upper Leadworth. Upper Leadworth is an entirely fictional location invented for that Doctor Who episode. Here is what I’m proposing, then I’ll tell you why. I think this all does link back to the EMP-parallel in that episode, but for now this little connection stands on it’s own:

Upper Leadworth = High Wycombe

Upper = High. Yes?? Yes. 

But also...

The village of Upper Leadworth and the charming country home represented a sort of promised land, a utopia for Rory and Amy (even though Rory wanted it more than Amy did). Remember that over and over and over, in both Doctor Who and Sherlock, Moffat uses a marketable het-romance as a mirror for Sherlock and John’s story, or certain aspects of it anyway. Including often Amy and Rory.

Upper Leadworth:

I think High Wycombe is the equivalent for Sherlock and John, to Rory and Amy’s Upper Leadworth.

.... AND I think High Wycombe is a temporary place-holder for Sussex and bee hives. 

I think High Wycombe is a little code, and an assurance that this future for Sherlock and John exists (as does the night of passion). Even the idea of it being High or Upper suggests the idea of rising upwards, rising above limitations, coming up from “the underground”. Also, the “down” in Sussex Downs is the opposite of Up or High. 

Rewriting Down as Up, and replacing Sussex Downs with High Wycombe (if only temporarily), is sort of like rewriting history - taking Sherlock’s lonely retirement in the Victorian era where he couldn’t openly be a couple with John, and replacing it with one where they will live together. 

Also, there’s the fact that High Wycombe exists, whereas Upper Leadworth, for no clear reason, was chosen to be a fictional location. I would suggest that this is because Amy and Rory never really did exist there together in Upper Leadworth. They ended up being (sort of) defeated by the Weeping Angels who I argued briefly over here, mirror Mary as a villain. That’s why Upper Leadworth is a fictional village - it wasn’t Amy and Rory’s future. 

High Wycombe is a real place however, because so is Sussex Downs, and Sherlock and John are going to actually go there.

I don’t think I need to convince y’all that the “romantic entanglement” in TLD conversation was not about Irene at all, but about Sherlock and John’s relationship with each other. Just as ASiB was exactly that; not about Irene, but about Sherlock and John. Irene represented that wedge of heteronormativity that came between them; she causes as much confusion between Sherlock and John as she does for the audience. And still, the writers use her as a coded way for Sherlock and John to talk about their feelings for each other, like they’ve done before:

So she’s alive then. And how are we feeling about that? - ASiB.

WATSON: Irene Adler. HOLMES: A formidable opponent; a remarkable adventure. WATSON: A very nice photograph. HOLMES: Why are you talking like this? WATSON: Why are you so determined to be alone? -TAB x

So let’s look at the High Wycombe mentions at the end of TLD and try to decode the scary mess that it is, because we’re pretty sure they’re not really talking about Irene.

D’you go to a discreet Harvester sometimes? Is there a ... night of passion in High Wycombe?

Night of passion. Hmmm. Then a minute later...

...High Wycombe is better than you are currently equipped to understand.

So now John is using High Wycombe as code for sex + a relationship. We’ve stopped talking about Irene. Sherlock the machine is not yet relationship material, not until his head and his heart can hug and make up then start working together.

...currently equipped to understand...

Remember when TLD aired and all our hopes and dreams were still alive we were in fairly good spirits because this WHOLE DAMN scene clearly seemed like a set-up for romance in episode 3?? I think it is, and was, still exactly that - a set-up for romance. 

The dialogue actually does foreshadow that Sherlock was about to go off and seek that which would “equip” him to “understand” how good “High Wycombe” could really be. 

Romantic entanglement...would complete you as a human being.

Sherlock points out the obvious here when he says

That doesn’t even mean anything.

Because it really doesn’t. Unless you reverse the sentence, when it then becomes the plot of TFP...

Completing you as a human being, will make you ready for romantic entanglement.

Delving deep into metaphor-land, which is the only possible way to analyze The Final Problem in any way which yields answers instead of questions and frustration, we can now see exactly which of the many bizarre scenes in TFP was foreshadowed by this dialogue from the end of TLD.

As befits something as climactic as Sherlock becoming ready for love, and that love then saving John’s life, the “completed as a human being” bit was the climax of The Final Problem itself, and indeed the climax of the entire series, and I would go so far as to say, yes, probably also the climax of the entire show so far. You just have to squint your eyes and see past the weirdness of Eurus and her weird game, the girl in the plane, the clown, and definitely squint your eyes and ignore the plot holes, because as I’ve argued a lot, plot holes have always been, and are now more than ever, an invitation to dig deeper and look further. 

Anyway. The climax of TFP was the sort of “on paper” completion of Sherlock’s character arc, hence why he was then immediately declared by Lestrade, in very cheesy fashion, to be “a good man”. Great to good. Done, complete. This is the scene I’m talking about -

Sherlock’s last and biggest challenge, finding Eurus, and thereby saving John from dying in the well.

If you view Sherlock’s “sister” as a long-lost part of him, then once he learned of her existence, found her, and “reconciled” with her, he was making himself whole. Complete as a human being. Two halves of one whole, back together again.

The whole “save John Watson” narrative is still going here. Whereas in TLD Sherlock needed on his death-bed to realise the value of his own life to John, (which is definitely not made clear in the slightest), here in TFP Sherlock is doing the same thing over again - saving John by saving himself.

Eurus symbolises the part of himself that was stolen from him as a child, when he began to figure out what he was, and then ‘what he was’ was immediately taken away from him. She represents the repression of his sexuality, which is why she was taken away and hidden and forgotten and locked in a cell (kept behind glass). Eurus is Sherlock’s fear of what he truly is and what he wants, she’s the “dangerous” in “love is a dangerous disadvantage”. 

So he finds and saves Eurus, the two of them almost becoming the silhouette of one person as they hug in the dimly-lit attic room. Then up shoots John, de-chained and lifted from the well. Because Sherlock became ready for love when he “completed himself” by merging with his lost half, and then John was subsequently saved by that love. 

Completing Sherlock as a human being has made him ready for romantic entanglement. He is now equipped to understand how good High Wycombe can be. So.....I guess that comes next? Steven? Mark?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mary is Caught

Mary is the triple poisoner Sherlock caught in High Wycombe. He ‘caught’ her there, because the very act of Sherlock replacing Mary as John’s love interest, exposes her as the fake that she is. Making johnlock canon exposes heteronormativity as the villain in Doyle’s canon - the murderer who forced Doyle to decide to kill his creation.

 @monikakrasnorada @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @devoursjohnlock @the-7-percent-solution @possiblyimbiassed @sagestreet @shylockgnomes @sarahthecoat 

[dailykhaleej]

Analysts predict up to 8% full-year drop in private home costs, Real Estate

Singapore

THE Covid-19 outbreak and financial slowdown have began to chunk; the City Redevelopment Authority’s flash estimates for the primary quarter exhibits its benchmark total private home worth index shrank 1.2 per cent over the earlier quarter.

The drop adopted three consecutive quarter-on-quarter good points. Yr on 12 months, the index is up 2.2 per cent.

Analysts count on private home costs to proceed heading south, to the tune of up to Eight per cent for the entire 12 months. Nonetheless, they don’t seem to be predicting a steep fall just like the 24.9 per cent slide over 4 quarters through the World Monetary Disaster.

Keep up to date with BT newsletters

Successive rounds of property cooling measures over the previous decade have constructed up systemic prudence and prevented an asset bubble from forming.

“The URA private home worth index has risen solely 9.1 per cent from end-2010 to Q1 2020; so costs haven’t run forward of fundamentals, thus decreasing the dangers for householders,” stated JLL’s senior director of analysis and consultancy Ong Teck Hui.

Analysts count on builders to promote about 20 to 30 per cent fewer private properties this 12 months than the 9,912 items they moved final 12 months – amid weaker sentiment and restrictions on showflats given tighter social-distancing measures geared toward slowing the additional unfold of the coronavirus outbreak.

PropNex Realty chief government Ismail Gafoor stated: “Builders are nonetheless going forward with launching new tasks however they’re adjusting their worth expectations. In right this moment’s regular, if a developer can promote 10 per cent of a venture with greater than 300 items through the first weekend of its gross sales launch, he ought to be very joyful and work on the momentum.” Pre-Covid, the norm was to transfer 30 per cent or extra of the venture in the primary weekend.

DBS Group Analysis analyst Derek Tan too expects builders to attempt to proceed launching their tasks due to the five-year deadline to end promoting all items, from the location buy. “On the identical time, they may proceed to foyer the federal government to chill out the cooling measures.”

Savills Singapore government director Alan Cheong means that “if market sentiments are stretched, some builders might both defer their launch for 1 / 4 or two or they may launch in accordance to plan however achieve this in small batches to check the waters”.

Analysts’ projections of the full-year 2020 drop in URA’s total private home worth index differ broadly.

On the low finish, Colliers Worldwide’s Singapore analysis head Tricia Music predicts a lower of 1 to Three per cent. On the different finish of the vary, CBRE’s Southeast Asia analysis head Desmond Sim and Savills’ Mr Cheong say the index might shed 5 to Eight per cent.

The Singapore authorities has projected GDP to decline by one to four per cent this 12 months. “Transferring ahead, we count on builders to be extra versatile in their pricing expectations in response to the Covid-19 outbreak, particularly after they have to issue in the constraints at showflats due to enhanced social-distancing measures,” stated Mr Sim.

The outlook for the Singapore property market has modified drastically in the previous few months. Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, DBS’ Mr Tan was a rise of up to 2 per cent in URA’s private home worth index this 12 months; he has since reversed his forecast to a drop of up to Three per cent as a substitute.

Mr Cheong of Savills paints two situations forward for the private housing market. Within the first situation, the place shopping for sentiment is simply reasonably stretched with worry over Covid-19 managed nicely right here, “if visibility of the pandemic clearing up seems in direction of end-2020 or early subsequent 12 months, the property market rebound can be fast and can cowl the misplaced floor”.

“Within the second situation, the place there’s a complete breakdown of financial and social behaviour arising from the twists and turns of the Covid episode, the material of market sentiments might tear. Then regardless of how a lot builders slash costs, demand can be anaemic or negligible. In that case, I’m positive there can be intervention by the authorities and banks to alleviate the state of affairs. Builders will then defer until the suitable time to launch.”

For now, most market watchers assume it might be untimely for the authorities to grant builders their long-standing want of rolling again cooling measures.

Giving a constructive tackle the state of affairs, Nicholas Mak, head of analysis and consultancy at ERA Realty, stated: “As soon as the pandemic has been contained, there’ll doubtless be sturdy restoration in demand and costs due to the pent-up demand and fuelled by unfastened financial insurance policies. Housing demand is likely to be postponed – however not destroyed – by Covid-19.”

Property companies are exploring methods to use know-how to market actual property to allow overseas patrons to view and purchase regardless of the journey restrictions, he added.

The 1.2 per cent q-o-q decline in URA’s benchmark private home worth index adopted good points of 0.5 per cent in This fall 2019, 1.Three per cent in Q3 2019 and 1.5 per cent in Q2 2019.

For the primary quarter of this 12 months, throughout the non-landed private housing phase, the prime areas or core central area (CCR) posted the largest q-o-q decline of 1.5 per cent, though this was a smaller drop than the two.Eight per cent slide in This fall 2019.

Property consultants usually attribute this to the pricing for The M alongside Center Street, with 389 items offered at a median worth of S$2,439 psf in the primary quarter. JLL’s Mr Ong stated this was “much less aggressive pricing” in contrast with new sale transactions in the CCR in This fall 2019.

Within the city-fringe or remainder of central area (RCR), non-landed private home costs shed 0.5 per cent after dropping 1.Three per cent in the earlier quarter. “With out main new launches main costs in RCR, the index continued to soften in Q1,” stated Mr Ong.

Within the suburbs or exterior central area (OCR), costs fell one per cent, contrasting with the rise of two.Eight per cent in the earlier quarter. “Within the fourth quarter of final 12 months, Sengkang Grand Residences was launched, promoting 226 items at a strong median worth of S$1,742 psf whereas top-selling tasks in Q1 2020 resembling Treasure at Tampines, Parc Clematis and Parc Botannia had median costs under S$1,600 psf,” stated Mr Ong.

URA’s flash estimate information additionally confirmed that costs of landed properties fell 1.7 per cent in Q1 this 12 months, after rising 3.6 per cent in the earlier quarter.

<!--//--><![CDATA[//><!-- <!-- Facebook Pixel Code --> !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1714621078759983'); fbq('track', "PageView"); <!-- End Facebook Pixel Code --> //--><!]]>

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2RjpMRx via IFTTT