#i mean. they could be right. in the way that tjlc could be right in that theoretically it's not impossible

[tiberius-kirks]

I know someone said it already but it's truly insane to me how quickly gomens2 devolved fans into tjlc-levels of unwell

[flickrrposts]

Black Hat is going to be Hypnotized by Heroes - Theory

Why?: It'd be cool.

Okay, seriously, this could be nothing more than fanfic potential, but in case there's some small chance that I'm right about this, here are a few points on where I'm coming from.

#1 - Tension

This show has reaffirmed time and time again, in the show, comics, livestreams, interviews, that Black Hat is:

A, Powerful,

and B, Terrifying.

I don't think I need to go through evidence of that being the case, if you're familiar with the show at all, you know this.

He's been side-lined throughout the entire show, and it would not only be cathartic to finally have him show off his powers, but it would also make him feel like a real threat in the story if he's positioned against Flug, Dem, and 505.

The tension would be raised to infinity. The show would practically feel like a horror movie because of how near-impossible it would be to defeat him.

#2 - Goldheart's Plan

According to Miss Heed at the end of s1e6, Goldheart wants to "end all villainy."

Black Hat controls all villainy.

P.E.A.C.E. has already caught on to how deep Black Hat's rabbit hole goes, via the agents creating the Podemos Bailar website. (omg, with Magician being one of the agents, then Black Hat's hat is the "rabbit hole", it's like a pun, you get it? You get that-)

Before the third Arenque Noticias video, Melissa Lead states, "If you ask my objective opinion, I'd say a controlled villain is better than a villain set loose."

As observed by @paper-gold-theories, characters with gold accessories tend to be associated with Goldheart or the Golden Rule in some way (Miss Heed, Porccini, the reporter in s1e4).

Melissa wears a golden necklace and ring, so it's very likely that her opinions either align with the Golden Rule, or Goldheart himself.

So if Goldheart's objective is to brainwash all villainy, then who better to target than the man at the top? (the man in the top-hat, haha, I'm on a roll)

#3 - Black Hat's Weaknesses

Alan has hinted that Black Hat is not invincible, and has actually described him as "lazy".

So the concept of Black Hat slipping up is not an impossibility for the show to explore.

#4 - Details

This is getting into TJLC levels of analysis, but I've noticed a couple things that could somehow be foreshadowing this:

In this poster:

Villains have a red outline, and heroes have blue:

(The fact that Flug and 505 have blue is an analysis for a whole other day)

But Black Hat has a gold-ish color on both sides:

This could be a stretch, but,,

In 2021, promo art was released for the show:

And Black Hat's monocle looks suspiciously pink.

Sure this could just be red shading that accidentally looks pink, but it isn't that hard to edit if the colors came out wrong, I did it just now:

The difference is night and day:

I don't think Black Hat has ever been associated with pink before outside of Demencia's fantasies. It would have been easy to choose any other colors too, like green, yellow, orange, or even blue.

The Black Hat being lit with pink for the first time is a coincidence in the very same promo that ALSO includes Miss Heed.

And as is obvious, ALL of the people Heed hypnotizes have glowing-pink eyes:

Even if this isn't foreshadowing to my specific fan-theory, I find a Black Hat - Heed connection extremely suspicious.

It's very well that in this scene, Flug DID perfect Heed's formula.

The heroes have the perfect hypnotizing formula. Or at least they still have some version now.

They have the means.

So TL;DR, Flug perfected Heed's hypnotizing formula, and so P.E.A.C.E./The Golden Rule/Goldheart is going to use it to control Black Hat when his guard's down.

(or somethin like that, idk)

[susandsnell]

the armand is alice theory is so infuriating for many reasons, but yeah the misogyny + biphobia at work to erase daniel's past romantic relationships... it never made sense to me especially bc one of the ways through which an older daniel comes to sympathise w/ louis is through his own failed relationships to his wives and daughters

welcome, companion in haterism!!!! I try to make it a point to avoid IWTV discourse for the most part but I cannot and will not countenance this fuckass theory, I do not respect it, and I will not shut up about it until the show proves me right and we see it dead in the ground. It is so stupid. It is so fucking stupid.

I fully agree - whether you read Daniel as bi or gay (and there's sufficient argument for both, though I def have my own theories - and the latter doesn't imo at all lessen the importance of his relationships to his wives), how circa 2008 misogynistic yaoi no-girls-allowed livejournal do you have to be to try to erase women from existence that we haven't even seen yet. This show is already a sausagefest with so few women to spare.

Likewise, as you point out, it would also be godawful writing that completely undercuts what they've done so far with Old Maniel, which imo is one of the highlights of the show. Through his life experiences of two failed marriages + two daughters who are no-contact (parallel to Louis with Lestat, Armand, Claudia and Madeleine), he's much better equipped to empathize with and reach a better conclusion with Louis in 2022 than in 1973, offering insights that help them both grow as people. As well, it would completely cheapen and frankly ruin one of the most important emotional beats of the entire show up until this point -- Louis' rescue of Daniel. This was what allowed him to have One Mortal Life, Fully Lived Out, given shape and meaning by the good and the bad, the triumphs and the failures, the heights of his career success and the nadirs of his personal life. It's incredibly important to both characters - this is literally 70% of Daniel's entire existence we're talking about here, and where Louis is concerned, Louis, the walking moral crisis, in the depths of despair and suicidal depression, was able to see that the vampire could do a good deed and have a positive impact. What he tried and failed to do with Claudia time and again, he succeeded with here, and there was an even broader impact when you consider all the people Daniel was able to live on to help, and all the lives he touched. What would any of that even mean if it's Oops! All Armand?

And finally, it cheapens Devil's Minion itself. It dumbs down the promised future we have of their dynamic to "There's Literally No One Important In Daniel's Life Except Armand And Never Has Been", and Daniel can apparently only ever have one relationship, and no others to have learned from, compared it to, or used as a frame of reference (whereas Armand has had several, too). I hate soul-mate stories as a narrative crutch, and I aggressively do not care to learn that Daniel's demonstrated emotional intelligence, growth, happy memories and deep failings as a husband and father were, to borrow his parlance, "based on a seismic lie". On the other side of things, it would completely wreck the narrative buildup that Armand alone is enough for Daniel after every other relationship for him has been performance and manipulation; Daniel seeing him for who and what he is when nobody else ever has is so crucial to their show dynamic as it exists currently. It would be cheap, soapy, and frankly, reminiscent of TJLC.

Past Devil's Minion could have very well happened and I'm not entirely against the possibility, but for the love of God, can we not do it at the expense of women and oh, I don't know, Daniel's entire character as he exists on the show?

[findafight]

It is tiring to be regarded as a 'homophobe' when you claim to not like a queer ship or say you do not think a queer ship is going to be canon & should not go canon. ST fandom has this type of fans especially Bylers and recently Ronancers. Sorry that I do not think Byler has a chance of being wrapped up in a nice way when the writers actively refused to even breakup Mileven in this season and intentionally added a confession scene on the show from Mike to El. We literally have 1 season left with everything else going on in a limited time frame but I am expected to be okay with the possible resolution of this whole thing, and should expect a nice wrap up where we supposedly will see Mileven break up, Mike and El moving on from each other, there will be a time for them to adjust to that, for Mike to consider dating Will HECK even for Will to consider confessing and dating Mike, for the writers to make that all believable to the audience in a nice way within the narrative.... and I am expected to like Ronance when Stobin is one of the most important platonic relationships on the show and we canonically know Nancy and Steve's break up was bad, and that Steve still has feelings for Nancy. I want to see representation, I really do but it feels like the fandom itself is bending any logic and sensibility to make a ship seem reasonable and make sense within the narrative... when it really does not.

God. Yeah. Like sure queer people can have internalized homophobia or intra community basis (like bi/a/trans phobia) etc but to say someone's a bigot just because they don't like the a fictional ship, or even that they just don't think it will be canon, is just silly and causing problems on purpose.

The intense blr shippers have really turned me off the ship, honestly. I have a few asks from them saved as drafts just to get them out of my inbox, and they're saying the same as others "we're fighting homophobia" "you're just as bad as people saying why don't we shut up about blr and ship mlvn if you don't think this has been part of a grand and epic master plan for the greatest romance ever" as well as just not understanding what the very specific phenomena of queerbaiting is, all telling me I don't belong in the ship because I don't ship it correctly. So. Makes me feel bad and really disappointed. People who ship mlvn (which my original post was also tagged, because it discusses them too) DIDNT come to my inbox and call me names or a fake shipper when I said I thought they should break up. Make of that what you will.

As much as Will and Mike getting together would mean to people, putting that much emotional weight and expectation and emphasis on a single aspect of a show, a single ship, is not healthy. It also, if it does happen, will not be the epic romance planned from the start they think it is. (We remember tjlc, right?? RIGHT??) If it happens it will possibly be slap dash and rushed, because you're right. There's a lot happening, the show struggles with ending/starting romances, and they are NOT the only characters that matter. The breathing room required for both Mike and El AND the audience to make the breakup feel real and that enough time has passed to not make Mike look like an asshole for immediately dating his ex's brother (and for Will not to look like an ass for dating his sister's ex?!?) Is now insufficient given how short the seasons are, and as you said, they should've broken up in S4 to pull that off.

And then the fandom would likely feel a bit cheated after building it up so much in their heads, only for it to be a bit of a flop. But I guess a lot of people don't mind how Nancy and Jonathan got together, so with the way some of the people in my inbox were talking about El then it could be like that too. Just. Not giving a shit if someone, a character I personally love, was really hurt and betrayed by her recently ex boyfriend and her BROTHER.

Pretending it was all fine because romantic love is the most important thing ever to them I guess. When it's not, especially in the show! Non romantic bonds are so important to these characters! It would just ruin it for me, because what I was originally saying was that Will, Mike, and El all mean so much to each other and actively try to not hurt one another (even if the do accidentally or end up hurting themselves) and that, because Will and El are siblings now, Will might think twice about dating Mike so soon after he broke up with El. It would make them look cold hearted and selfish tbh. That's why a good ending would be Will feeling comfortable enough to come out, and being accepted by his friends. (All of them not just Mike) and that final emphasis on the Party as a whole rather than individual Romo relationships.

It's actually very important to consider other people's feelings in everyday life, I think. Sure, ultimately they shouldn't dictate all your actions, but there will be consequences for some of them. They can lose friendships, or other relationships. It can also make a character look REALLY BAD.

For rnce, people go on about how Robin absolutely does not need to consider Steve's feelings in pursuing a girl. (Ignoring other issues people have with the ship that have nothing to do with Steve, lol) And sure. Okay. For every girl but the one that broke his heart, cheated on him, and who he still has feelings for that Robin herself encouraged. People are out here saying they could be endgame without completely ruining stobin's friendship like huh??? Do they understand Robin "what if we just combined" Buckley? Do they not care about the most important relationship in her life? Do they not care about her beyond how she can hype up Nancy instead of one of those icky boys?

A problem I have with rnce is that a lot of the writing saying it could be canon (which, lbr, it won't be. While I think blr may be canon just in a kind of disappointing way, I don't think there's any chance of rnce happening, especially with Vickie right there blushing and flirting with Robin) only focuses on how it would be good for Nancy, or if it's trying to make it seem good for Robin ignores their personalities and other relationships. Like Nancy isn't annoyed by Robin until Robin's speech gets them into Penherst, or that Nancy wasn't dismissive of Robin's ideas, and Robin wasn't clearly nervous and apologizing for being annoying in order to get Nancy to like her (tbh I think Nancy should have been the one pursuing a friendship with Robin instead of the other way around but alas). Tbh I could go on about how Nancy and her relationships and her needs/wants inside those are often misdirected? Misidentified? By fandom, and how that feeds into Robin being reduced to someone who supports Nancy (which, if people complain about Robin considering her bffs feelings about her dating someone, shouldn't they complain about her becoming a glorified cheerleader for Nancy...oh. it's because it's romantic. And some parts of this fandom value that most.) In rnce, which strips Robin of her personality and makes it boring. But this is already long haha (Not to mention it'd be super weird for Nancy to be dating her ex she cheated on and never actually told she cheated on him's best friend. Awkward!!)

I used to not mind rnce that much, tbh. I didn't get it and did think it was weird but the art was cute! And now it's sort of an alarm bells for people being weird about stobin.

Steve and Robin's relationship, like so many platonic relationships but more glaring with just how obsessed with each other they are, is often devalued by the fandom by virtue of the idea that a romantic partner needs/should be someone's number 1. Even though those two want to combine, and are seen taking active roles in trying to get them a romantic relationship, and are really the first person the other felt they could be completely themself around. They're the most important person to the other, regardless of their romantic relationship status.

[priestfrommidnightmass]

(gayroman, sorry lol using my main) this is important to Me. what do you think peter maldonado and sam ecklund's letterboxd top fours are

oh my fucking GOD. i have been waiting for this moment my whole life. EVERYONE BE QUIET. apologies in advance if i get a little lost along the way i have a lot of thoughts on the way they’d consume movies and the movies they’d love individually and together so…

i don’t think peter is a Total “film bro” but i do certainly think he enjoys the pretentious more than sam does. my list of movies that i deeply believe changed the trajectory of peter’s life includes: spotlight, american beauty, phantom thread, se7en, the social network, ex machina, nightcrawler, and gone girl. spotlight came out just before av happened and i think 15 year old peter was Never the same after that. he was like oh my god i Need to do this. personally i didn’t like american beauty but i think he’s the type that would be changed by it at least when he was very young. i think he went into phantom thread expecting to not care abt it much but left thinking abt it for days and days on end and probably saw himself in it a little. se7en because. come on tell me he Wasn’t speechless after seeing that shit. same with the social network. like what do you want me to say. i think ex machina because i just do i just think he’d like it. nightcrawler because. (gestures) come on. and gone girl because i have this funny idea that sam and peter watched that together and both left changed for veryyyy different reasons. i think he’d also enjoy argo i forgot to mention that. but to answer the question of what would be in his top four… i’m gonna go with spotlight se7en nightcrawler and the social network… that feels right to me…

as for sam… i think sam has No tolerance for any of the shit peter enjoys. he’s not stupid by any means but he watches movies to have FUN ONLY!!! NONE OF THE BORING SHIT PETER LOVES!!! once on a whim i actually Did make sam’s letterboxd (ecklundmovies00 if anyone’s interested. i tell a story through that account it’s canon to me) and his actual letterboxd top four on there consists of: hot rod, the greatest showman, the lego batman movie, and spiderman 3. it just feels So right to me. it’s just true. honorable mentions to pitch perfect i think he’d love it very much and i believe he left 2018 forever changed after seeing love simon and call me by your name i think he certainly had a lot to unpack that year.

bonus thoughts i think they both force each other to watch movies the other Hates (peter often telling sam he doesn’t take things seriously and can’t recognize good cinema and sam complaining that peter hates fun and only loves boring shit.) however they do find some things they agree upon. one movie they can agree upon is clerks. peter likes it from a filmmaking standpoint and sees it as admirable since it was made on such a low budget and sam likes it because he thinks it’s funny and kind of wishes he could be randal. one of the Greatest truths i’ve decided on is that their one joint cinematic voice is the movie hot rod. it’s so shitty and yet anytime they need to distract themselves from the world they turn it on they’ve seen it together easily 15+ times. because of this they were also some of the only supporters of popstar: never stop never stopping when it came out. documentarians have to support documentarians! i also think they watched all of sherlock together and had a massive obsession with it they were using that av room to pick apart tjlc I KNOW IT! i also think they enjoyed seeing the most recent star wars trilogy and recent james bond movies together in theatres. i don’t know how much they enjoyed the movies themselves but they loved the ritual. but other than that there’s very little middle ground. can you tell i’ve been dying to talk abt this lmfao sorry. did that answer your question

[queen-anne-music]

ok no. i'm not done.

firstly, from a meta standpoint of izzy's death representing the dying age of piracy, I can kinda get it.

BUT, hear me out

we didn't need that parallel, we got slapped in the face with it in episode 7 when ALMOST ALL OF THE SHIPS BLEW UP, that was representative of the "death of piracy"

additionally, the same meta-commentary could be made by saying that ed's retirement means blackbeard's death and again we get the death of piracy thing from a narrative standpoint

now by this point it is probably VERY obvious that izzy became one of my favorite characters this season, and I have to acknowledge that some of that is definitely clouding my view of this finale

but

i really, really think that this could have been handled better, don't get me wrong Con O'Neill's acting in his final scene was amazing, and I am so, so happy that izzy and ed finally talked about their relationship with each other, but this show has had crazier things happen then a character surviving things that should have killed them, off the top of my head: ed surviving this season, stede surviving being hanged, auntie surviving a whole explosion, buttons TURNING INTO A BIRD, and of course I think there is something to be said for izzy having a leg amputated!! and somehow not getting any kind of infection from that despite the less-than-ideal circumstances

while i don't think that David Jenkins intentions were to say a big fuck you to older disabled members of the lgbtqia community, this still hurts

also seeing time and time again a character go through a redemption arc only to be killed off at the end of it just gets old

but i have to wonder

maybe this isn't meant to be the end of izzy

here's what I think, recall the ending of season 1 where ed throws lucius off the boat and we were all like HE BETTER NOT BE DEAD, I have to wonder if this is meant to parallel that

i'm not trying to pull a tjlc here, but here's a few other things that don't quite add up that support this theory

firstly, the title of the episode. perhaps I'm looking in all the wrong places but I haven't really seen anyone discuss this? the title of each episode usually plays into the events of the episode in some way (sometimes in obvious ways like calypso's birthday and sometimes in less obvious ways like impossible birds) but I can't really see the connection here? its an obvious callback to stede's mermaid scene but it never really came up in the episode which seems a bit odd

next, izzy was buried on land, this feels wrong for so many reasons (yes I know half the time pirates were buried on land shush), there feels like no good reason to bury him on land, something could be said for the fact that he's watching over ed and stede's inn but for someone who represented the pirate ideal I would have thought they would bury him at sea, which leads me to my next point

buttons landed on izzy's grave again i repeat BUTTONS LANDED ON IZZY'S GRAVE the same buttons who turned himself into a BIRD, magic is canonical to the OFMD universe, and it has been established that buttons is an actual sea witch, they didn't do much to establish the limitations of these powers so it would not be out of the question for buttons to potentially bring izzy back, which maybe he can only do if he has access to izzy's body?

i feel the need to also mention that from a narrative standpoint ed and stede's ending feels a little bit rushed (this could be for a lot of other reasons that have nothing to do with this theory I'm not in denial nooooooooo) but it did feel a little bit interesting that we got the whole scene with ed trying (and failing) to be a fisherman contrasted with the ending of him as an innkeeper to say nothing of stede's love of being a pirate captain (and subsequently leaving all of his crew behind) also there was one other scene that make me think that this doesn't feel quite right, the anne and mary dialogue. while I do understand that it was an interesting look into how their relationship turned sour because they both sucked at communication I have to wonder if it is foreshadowing the downfall of ed and stede's relationship now that they've left piracy? again I'm very happy that they seem to be able to communicate a bit better this season, and that they are happy living what ed would call the simple life, but I'm not confident that this ending means smooth sailing for them

(it also seems a bit odd that ed isn't on the ship to take revenge on ricky? but maybe he needed some time to process?)

i think a solid case could be made to bring izzy back in season 3 if we get one (but they also say denial isn't just a river in egypt and I don't wanna give anyone any false hope)

at any rate they certainly have given the fandom quite a bit of stuff to play with for fix-it fics

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

Seeing everyone hate Aziraphale actually bothers me quite a bit lol. Like im definitely more than a little upset but neither of them are totally in the right. I never experienced extreme religious trauma or anything like catholic guilt, but I do understand toxic relationships and how hard it is to leave them. This is totally in character for Aziraphale and people clinging to the coffee theory don't seem to understand that. Do I think the metatron could have threatened him? Yeah totally, but I also think that Aziraphale wants so badly to be good, and he wants heaven to be good for Crowley.

As for Crowley, he wants to protect Aziraphale more than anything but unfortunately kept things from him in the process.

I could go into further detail but everyone has already said what I'd say anyhow.

TLDR: Niel knows these characters and understands their motivations more than anyone, and people saying that Aziraphale is a horrible person or the ending was awful (upsetting yes, but awful?) is insane to me.

It’s really insane to me that people are going into full-blown denial and theory mode when we got textual confirmation of romance and a kiss! (These people would have NOT survived tjlc l o l)

More to the point, I think people are being quite dense, honestly, because it all seems clear to me that Aziraphale a) genuinely albeit mistakenly thinks he’d be helping Crowley by wanting him in Heaven with him and b) is terrified of the depth of love between them and what it would mean to actually pursue all of that and go off together. His hand literally shakes as he touches his lips after their kiss—you don’t need to study film to see how scared he is. So much of the show revolves around Aziraphale being terrified of going against Heaven—we have a scene of him on the verge of tears and convinced he’s going to Hell the first time he lied to the archangels!—why would all of that suddenly not apply now? It’s like people don’t get the character.

It’s one thing to say Aziraphale is making well-intentioned but wrong decisions, and another to flip out and say he’s awful for it. I really think some people can’t cope with this series having actual conflict driven by the main pairing. I’m not kidding. They’re mad s2 didn’t have a happily-ever-after ending the way s1 did and that (shocker!) conflict is being used to generate a larger plot lmao. The weird theories are so needless. None of this is hard to figure out.

I’m not a fan of Gaiman, but he’s not wrong for having the characters fuck up and make mistakes in order to tell a story; that’s a staple of storytelling lol. He intended for another season to follow this, so he obviously doesn’t mean to leave Aziraphale and Crowley permanently like this.

[lemontartyellow]

BBC Sherlock watch through: A Study in Pink

You read that right. BBC Sherlock in the year of lord and savior 2024. To be fair to me, I was 8 when the show ended, and therefore could not watch it in its heyday.

Two disclaimers before we begin with its first episode.

1. Despite me not watching a single episode up until this point, I do know a decent amount about it from watching videos about it (Hbomberguy’s video, Sarah Z’s video about the Johnlock conspiracy, and as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, a decent chunk of the TJLC explained videos). That being said, I will attempt to go in to it with an open mind in all regards.

2. Much like what people do to his actor, I will intentionally be getting Sherlock’s name wrong. Why? Because I think it’s funny. It’s probably not gonna be funny to a lot of people but I’m gonna do it anyhow. Mmkay?

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

-What kind of bed is that lmao. You roll over a little bit and you fall off

-That transition from John saying that nothing happens to him to the intro was definitely a bit awkward

-These transitions are getting on my nerves. Can we find a smoother way to get from one thing to the next please?

-They’ve all got a point. Why would they be linked just because they took the same poison? Investigate the poison, not the suicides.

-If you’re so sure that they’re suicides why are you investigating them????????

-Why is Shamrock an asshole.

-Here comes the 10 billion gay jokes.

-Yeah, Shamrock definitely seems…eager for John to like him.

-Ok, now he’s bossing Mrs. Hudson around for no reason. There’s a difference between “unsociable” and “asshole” guys cmon now.

-I just want to say that despite my whining, I think it’s been…fine so far. I just haven’t found anything nice to say about it yet. It’s not boring me to death, that’s something I guess.

-Four suicides?? In a big city?? Crazy. Must be something wrong there.

-BBC Sherlock says All Cops Are Incompetent! That’s something going for it.

-Ah yes, the struggling to plug in his phone line. One that haunts many I hear,

-Completely neutral on Johnlock right now if anyone was curious. I don’t really think they have any of that kind of chemistry really and that’s most of it I’m pretty sure. If they had some more chemistry I’d probably jump on it.

-I like Sally. Everyone else is fine (although Shamrock is on thin ice), but I like that she’s mean to Shamrock. And she’s funny about it.

-Ok. I don’t like Shackrock. Get his ass out of here

-He is such an asshole?????

-I know from the Hbomberguy video that the victim was attempting to spell Rache as in the German word in the original story and…..wow. They really are just dismissing it as stupid aren’t they? For what, so Shackrock can have more opportunities to be an asshole?

-Mycroft’s stance???

-Mycroft is alright I think. Him and Sally, that’s two characters I like

-I’m gonna count how many references to Shackrock and John being gay/gay jokes in general there are. That’s 2

-Weird brothers. Kind of funny. I like them

-3 gay references. We’re doing great for not even being through the first episode.

-Genuinely though, why does nobody believe John when he says that him and Shackrock aren’t a thing. It’s only happened once so far but I know it happens in the future a few more times. Theres no apologies or even any “mhmmm sure ;)”, they just straight up ignore him.

-I think Shellrock likes men at the very least. Between everyone around him thinking that him and John are a thing, and him being based on the the adaptation that wanted to make him gay, he’s probably at least a little bit of a manliker at the very least. Not sure if it’s intentional though.

-4 gay references. You think we’ll be able to squeeze one more in before the episode ends?

-How do I still have 30 minutes left. Ugh.

-I think….I don’t like this show. I will continue on. But I don’t think I like it.

-I am growing a fondness for John and Shellrock’s relationship though. They’re a little cute.

-Why is he so insistent on Shellrock not being the type to take drugs. He literally found him slapping on nicotine patches like it was nothing.

-Am I supposed to like Shellrock. Am I really supposed to.

-Can Shopshock shut the fuck up.

-This cabbie thing was actually kind of good.

-Yeah, Shopshock and John are pretty cute. And a little gay but I don’t know if that was intentional on the writers part.

-Shopshock is a little funny. Not enough to counterbalance the assholeness but a little funny.

-Did she ask who just so they could end the episode with Mycroft saying Sherlock and Dr. Watson. Really.

Finally, the episode has ended. It’s been 4 million years. It got a little bad in the middle but it managed to pick itself back up by the end. Because of this I have no idea how I feel about the episode over all. Anyway, join me next time for The Blind Banker.

[rey-jake-therapist]

i have nothing much to add to this thread, but there are some things you said I'd like to reply to.

But TJLC got a lot of hate, too. Just for being a queer reading of the show. I am not talking about criticism, but straight up harrasment and hate. One of the TJLC OGs faced harrasment so bad that she went offline for years.

I wasn't there when Sherlock was big and the ship war blew up but from my experience as a Star Wars fan, there's never a group that's entirely innocent and the other is all bad. I know you are/were a Reylo so I'll try to be very careful with my words here; I saw 'antis' being awful to shippers, accuse them of being abuse apologists and/or compare them to real life criminals' fans, but I also saw shippers being horrible to non shippers, accuse people of being misogynist because they didn't ship Reylo, and attack anyone who dared to say they didn't like TLJ. I saw aggressiveness from both sides, and all the parties involved said the others were the villains.

For a while I thought I shipped Reylo but I also always knew Kylo would die and that this romance was doomed, so I observed all this from an external point of view most of the time, though not being ok with the extreme woobification of Kylo and expressing an opinion of him that largely differed from the pink glassed vision of him that most shippers had, I ended up having more issues with shippers than with antis :( I had the same opinion about most Reylo meta I read as I have about most TJLC's meta: I thought they were often reaching and giving way too much credits to the writers and directors, Rian Johnson in particular. I think it's easy to forget that people like JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Gatiss and Moffat, all those guys who write for mainstream media ... They don't think of the fans first, let alone shippers, they write and direct thinking of the general audience first.

This isn't an invitation to discuss Reylo btw, it's old history for me and I'm not interested in discussing it anymore: I bring it up only because when I discovered the mess that the Sherlock fandom used to be, I found a striking resemblance with what I had witnessed when I was involved with the SW fandom. As I told a friend earlier, I'm convinced that if someone really believes in a theory, they'll find 'evidence' everywhere in the story that they are right. And if 'someone' is a group, it will quickly become an echo chamber. Shippers, antis, het ship, queer ship... The way social media are conceived will always favor that. It can actually be hard to navigate in those spaces without having a strong opinion on subjects such as shippings, I for example never could feel I belonged anywhere in terms of fandoms. But I like to think it allowed me to stay objective most of the time about this stuff, so well.

Adlock is not a big ship. Not even in the top 7, I think? TJLCrs believe since Irene is a lesbian and Sherlock is gay, shipping them is homophobic and deserving of mockery.

Duh accusing accusing people of anything because they ship two fictional characters is really a no-go for me, especially when the people who do that base their hate on their personal headcanon.

Sherlock was nowhere being close to be confirmed as homosexual in the BBC or the ACD canon; just because a man isn't interested in dating women, does it mean that he's more interested in dating men, just like a woman who's not interested in dating men isn't necessarily a lesbian. A media that shows a man not interested in dating women isn't necessarily meant to be interpreted as saying "this man's gay".

As for Irene, she fell in love with a man and married him in the ACD canon, and she had a canon crush on Sherlock in the BBC canon; IdK why they had her saying she was gay while a few minutes later she was making rather explicit sexual proposition to Sherlock -I think we, including Sherlock, all know that when she offered him to have dinner with her, it was a metaphor for sex....-, and I don't like it at all, but it's the way it is. Now, people can headcanon whatever they want, but calling others homophobic because they want a fictional man to kiss a fictional woman who's canonically attracted to him and proposed him to have sex is IMHO in no way justifiable. I know you didn't try to justify it btw, and you're right to point out that many Adlock shippers are queer themselves....

The way some fandoms clearly hate women is really appealing. It shows in the way they either villainize female characters or significantly reduce their importance in the male characters's life. Some go even as far as claiming they're not real characters but only living metaphors of said male characters's sexuality. In certain m/f ships, female characters are reduced to walking uterus and aren't allowed to have any other desire than becoming wives and mothers; damn them if they want friends and have other plans for their future, cause only the male character's happiness counts.

I'm all for tolerance towards headcanon's but the stuff I've read lately.... Big yikes.

[antlerx-art]

So let’s talk (more) about venom 2 because my tjlc mind can’t stop analyzing movies :)

A lot of people are disappointed in Eddie not properly apologizing to Venom, and I agree. That totally wasn’t how I expected or wished their reunion to be, because it was rushed and they didn’t really clarify things, it seemed like Eddie just wanted to get back to Venom to fight Carnage. However I also think that that scene was totally in character for him: like one of my friends pointed out, it took 6 months, s i x m o n t h s, before Eddie even apologized to Anne after their break up, and it was Venom who told him to do it because they could have died, so apologizing isn’t really something Eddie is good at and also it takes him a long time. Knowing this, it’s comprehensible that his apologies to Venom were so bad and maybe not sincere. It wasn’t the right moment, the right way and the right place, but I see Eddie as somebody who says things with actions and not with words, and this is proved during the beach scene. At the beginning of the movie, Venom mentions wanting to be free, “feeling the wind in their hair and sand between their toes” and the fact that they repeat this line at the end of the movie means that this is Eddie’s way to apologize, to tell Venom that he cares about what they feel. So Venom tells Eddie that they love him with all of his defects. His defect is not being good at apologizing, Venom knows it and lets him know that bringing them on a honeymoon to fulfill their wish is already enough <3

[helplessly-johnlocked]

T6T is a message for TJLCers

I was rewatching The Six Tatchers and noticed that, from the very beginning, there were subtle messages directed to us via Sherlock.

In this meta I’ll try to show you the most noticeable examples of that, so welcome to my first analysis of Sherlock. 

1.  One of the first lines we have in the episode, “that’s not what happened at all’’.

We are Sherlock and Mycroft and his super secret gang are Mofftiss.

This may be one of the most blatant evidence, as a lot of us have already pointed out in emp theory or john’s tab theory.

Here, Mofftiss the “British Government” is showing us Sherlock fake footage. Sherlock, or rather us, immediately knows that all of that isn’t real, it’s made up. It’s a distorted version of reality.

Despite us Sherlock knowing and saying it’s fake, Mofftiss Mycroft carries on with the lie, telling us that now, it is the only truth.

2.  Mofftiss’ plans

We are Sherlock and Moriarty is Mofftiss (how ironic, huh)

Moriarty Mofftiss filmed the message the series/lost especial before (t)he(y) “died”, dying as of disappearing. Now they are ghosts, lurking in the dark and making our pain prologue more and more, waiting for the perfect moment to announce the fifth season.

Lady Smallwood: You also say you know what he’s going to do next. What does that mean?

We know what Mofftiss are going to do, we know tjlc is the endgame of the series, even though Moffat and Gatiss themselves refuse to explicitly tell us.

Sr. Edwin: Perhaps that’s all there is to it. Perhaps he was just trying to frighten you.

Sherlock: No, no, he would never be that disappointing. He’s planned something, something long term.

They are trying to convince us that that’s all there is to it, that s4 is all we have, and we’ll just have to take it on the chin. But we know that they would never do that, they aren’t that disappointing, they are Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for God’s sakes! They’d never do that to us, they’d never queerbait. 

They have planned something (johnlock) from the beginning of the series, since the gay pilot. And those plans are still on. 

3.  Our plans

“What are we going to do in this long, exhausting hiatus?”

Well, what we’ve always done. We are the targets, targets wait, right? Mofftiss are the owners of Sherlock and we have to wait until they decide to start again.

But in the (painful) meanwhile, we’ll do what we are excellent at: we’ll rewatch the series again and again and go deep into the incredible layers of subtext.

4.  Trick? Obviously

The trick is the released season four and the surprise is our predicted season four.

Sherlock: The trick was meant to be a surprise.

Mr. and Mrs. Welsborough: Trick?

Sherlock: Obviously.

The trick aired S4 was meant to be the foretold s4 a surprise (not to us, obviously, we knew what was going to happen, but rather to casuals and antis); but in the end, it didn’t take place. 

The surprise expected season didn’t get executed, we didn’t have the explicit Johnlock we were hoping for. But we know that, unlike Charlie’s surprise, which didn’t happen; we will get our so deserved happy ending, with TJLC finally confirmed and Sherlock and John parenting Rosie as a happy couple.

5.  Acronyms

Sherlock: AGRA’s an acronym.

Mycroft: Oh, good. I love an acronym. All the best secret societies have them.

Well well, how do I start with this? It is clearly and blatantly about TJLC.

This scene works similar to the group of women in TAB and Chris Melas, Mofftiss are telling us they know about us, they know who we are, and they like us.

Mycroft (Mark) is not only saying he loves acronyms, but he also thinks that all the best societies have one! And even better, he is holding a pen!!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is evidently Mark Gatiss himself  telling us he knows and appreciates TJLCers, this is him saying all of that directly to us, this time not even through Sherlock.

6.  The butcher’s

Sherlock is we are more than certain that it has to be a ploy made to confuse and mislead us.

Season four is too bizarre, too baroque, even Bond-esque and with countless plotholes. It has to be fake, IT IS FAKE. There is no other explanation to its fuckiness and nonsense.

It is also a rope to put our neck into, it’s a test we have to pass. And in a way, we like it, we have fun making theories and writing amazing metas; we enjoy it, that’s how we are. Just like Sherlock.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, here finishes my first meta (omg I thought I’d never be writintig that). This was all I could extract from the episode, I hope you’ve liked it!! If there is anything more you’ve noticed about T6T, please let me know. I’ll be more than glad to hear it.

I’ll leave some ‘must read’ links to emp and john’s tab theories:

John’s alibi masterposts by @/inevitably-johnlocked: link one / link two / link three

EMP huge masterpost by @/monikakrasnorada: here

EMP Tumblr blog @/emplock: here

[loudest-subtext-in-tv]

Something I know no one will ever contend with when they just want to write a hit piece about us, but...

When Moffat said on the A Scandal in Belgravia commentary, “If you watch the show carefully, there’s subtext about John’s drinking,” what did he mean? He wasn’t being flippant, he’s said one of his favorite writers is William Goldman and writers should study him because he “knows everything.” Goldman’s Ten Commandments on Writing say to “put a subtext under every text” and not to be too on the nose. 

So what is the “real” subtext to why John drinks, and why does John drink when he’s alone with Sherlock and trying to get him to open up, or otherwise thinking about Sherlock? If the subtext is not about John’s relationship with Sherlock, then like... who else is in the room in those scenes, what’s going on, who is John actually thinking about, and why is it so important to the story that Moffat would include it? What storyline does the subtext of John’s drinking pertain to? It must be pretty big to not have been revealed yet, so it shouldn’t be hard to make a case for.

Similarly: When Moffat and Gatiss say that The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, a movie noteworthy for depicting Holmes as a homosexual in love with Watson, is the inspiration for their adaptation, what do people imagine they adapted from it? Because it wasn’t the characterization, they don’t much resemble the BBC Sherlock characterizations. Barely any plot points were borrowed, and minor ones at that. Why did they pick the big overtly gay adaptation for the basis of their show from a hundred straight alternatives? Why did Gatiss say the thing he liked about it was that Holmes was in love with Watson?

I mean, I know people who hate us will never actually watch it, but the movie is not subtle. The movie isn’t a bunch of gay gags, the movie makes very clear that Holmes is genuinely homosexual and in love with Watson in a deeply painful way that queer people can recognize and relate to, and the same vibe is heavy in series 3 especially. For example, the endings of TSoT and HLV are not gay gags, they are things that happened in the plot and were not presented as remotely funny.

There are two reasonable perspectives on this:

1) It is not especially weird for people who pay attention to what the writers have said about their stories to think all the gay stuff is intentional, and its not weird to have fun chasing down things the writers have taken care to talk about. That’s what fans do, they try to predict where stories are going. No one made hit pieces ridiculing Jon and Daeneyrs shippers because they recognized what the foreshadowing in Game of Thrones was saying, and they were basing it off almost nothing compared to what the showrunners of Sherlock have said and taken care to include in the plot and subtext. People write hit pieces about us because they deeply believe it’s stupid for queer people to think a gay romance could be depicted, we had the misfortune of having a sense of humor about ourselves (calling it a “conspiracy” and ourselves a “cult”), and were enthusiastic about the show and writers whose fandom we’re a part of.

2) The gay stuff is intentional, but all a big joke despite appearances to the contrary. Most of the antis even argued that the gay stuff was intentional, they just thought it was to fuck with people or be provocative. Some of them were even dreading S4, including while it was airing, because they thought we were going to be proven right and we’d be insufferable. If people who hated us worried we could be right, then how delusional could we be?

I can understand someone thinking it all being a big joke is more likely than a TV show depicting a gay romance, but it does not follow that people deserve to be an object of public ridicule because they recognized a bunch of queer allusions and painful queer life experiences that resonated with them and considered that the writers, one of whom is queer and unabashedly obsessed with the works in question, may have positive motives for including those things. It feels like punishing people for doing their due diligence of actually researching the writers’ feelings about things and their influences, rather than just piling on and calling them homophobes. I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s opinions if that’s how they feel about Moffat and Gatiss nowadays, I’m just saying it’s not some shameful thing for people to actually investigate these things and conclude differently. It’s okay to think writers are talented and clever, and their fandom should be a place where it’s okay to explore that.

What makes me most sad about this is that there is genuinely no area of life where people can just play around anymore without being hunted down. Like, politics is fucking miserable, the pandemic is miserable, I just had a friend kill himself a few months ago because of how bad life is lately, a close relative who I never thought would have suicidal ideation has it now, I have been fighting wanting to die for years, in the U.S. none of us have any idea if we’re ever getting any sort of pandemic stimulus again -- so many of us are suffering immensely right now, it should be okay to be goofy and creative in a fandom without someone deciding its their prerogative to profit off us because they think we’re weird, or whatever. 

The reason there’s a lot of crazy meta analysis is because this was supposed to be a relatively safe, creative place where people can try their hand at analyzing stories without being graded or made to feel inadequate, so we treat metas a lot like fanfics where it’s not really appropriate to just rip people’s shit apart no matter how illogical it is, and we find things we like about analysis we don’t agree with in that same spirit: it’s a cool idea anyway, it’s artistically inspiring, it got close to a more compelling idea, etc. I have a big packet of fan mails where several people told me they had been scared and self-conscious to share their thoughts on things, and TJLC helped them open up and inspired them to major in literary or film-related majors. People start somewhere and it’s cruel to make fun of them because they weren’t great at something that doesn’t fucking matter. 

FANDOM IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A SUPER SERIOUS SPACE. NO ONE PUTS ON A TUXEDO BEFORE THEY LOG IN TO TUMBLR. NO ONE NEEDS SOME OUTSIDER TAKING THE THINGS THEY OFFERED IN THE SPIRIT OF FUN OUT OF CONTEXT TO PRESENT TO A WIDER AUDIENCE THEY DELIBERATELY AVOID BECAUSE THAT AUDIENCE IS MEAN AND SENDS THEM DEATH THREATS AND HOMOPHOBIC AND MISOGYNISTIC SLURS AND SUICIDE ADVICE. IT IS ACTUALLY NOT AN ENORMOUS CHARACTER FAILING TO SHARE BAD ANALYSES OF A TV SHOW, AND SHOULD NOT BE A MATTER OF NATIONAL INTEREST. 

But places where people can open up and try things out increasingly can’t exist anymore, because even in a low stakes environment like a fandom there are busybody ghouls who want to profit off being condescending about how people spend their leisure time. It doesn’t add anything to the world except their bank accounts.

[eisforeidolon]

'stiel shippers are already making up conspiracy theories about how 15x19 ending is actually a fake, homophobic ending meant to fool people and 15x20 will have the true ending where Cass comes back and their ship becomes unequivocally, mutually canon and it's endgame. They've gone full TJLC with the fix-it episode theory and I can't say that I'm surprised at all.

Yeah, negative levels of surprise there. 

When Misha was posting all those travel pictures from around the US while J2 were quarantining, it was all a ruse!  TPTB made him post old pictures to hide where he was and his generic motel rooms could be in Vancouver!  He lives in Washington, so that’s probably close enough he doesn’t have to quarantine anyway!  They can’t leave the guy who saVeD tEH ShOw out of the last two episodes!!  Doesn’t matter that they let the actors spoil Mark P. and Jake A. and Jim B.’s returns, nah, they had to try and keep whether Misha was there or not a surprise!

Now this.  They managed to recognize when an episode was pandering to bibros with 15x19.  Which honestly was a bit of an accomplishment for them, given the hilarious exercise in palpable denial their “meta” about Red Meat is.  It certainly isn’t even all of them that managed it, given the usual blinkered nonsense floating around declaring Dean being drunk is desolation about Castiel (not, you know, hopelessness their whole world is still gonna end and everybody is gone but him, Sam, and Jack - just like their Mary who? nonsense in season 13).  Not to mention the insisting to each other Dean was totally willing to kill Sam to get Cas back, lalalalaing right through how the brothers were offering to kill each other and both be gone for the revival of, again, everybody else.  I digress ... and go on for a bit after this, so have a cut:

The point is, they recognize that having the Winchesters drive off into the sunset together is pandering to bibros, but they refuse to accept that whole scene destroying Castiel’s character was just pandering to them.  Despite how out of nowhere with zero previous buildup to support it being twue lurve it was.  Despite how this was supposedly planned for a year, yet the characters have been more at odds than ever.  Despite how one-sided it was.  Despite how, no matter how much they keep insisting to people in the comments under official CW posts that there is NO WAY to see it as anything but romantic, non-shippers and more casual fans keep daring to say they see it as familial (the NERVE!).  Despite how, while you could fairly say it’s become The Jack Show in recent years, it has never been the Dean & Cas show outside of shippers’ fevered imaginations.  So while pandering to them any harder than was already done is gonna get some WTF from the general audience?  Pandering to bibros just means making Sam & Dean’s show about ... Sam & Dean.  Which nobody in the general audience is gonna bat an eye at.

Doesn’t matter that the network president still talks about doing a revival with, specifically, J2.  Doesn’t matter most of the legitimate press over the series ending focuses particularly on J2 and Sam & Dean’s ending.  Doesn’t matter that the ones the actual co-showrunners consulted about tweaking the finale scripts post-COVID are, repeat it with me, J2.  Jared is totally a cheerleader for their ship, we know this because reasons!  Jensen must have changed his mind since last time he said his character was straight, because nobody’s asked him in the last five minutes and that’s the “right” answer they want him to say!  Misha said Jensen was totally into it and Misha *cough* never lies!

As I’ve said before, I put nothing 100% past Dabb.  I would not be even a little surprised if we get at least somebody mentioning somewhere next episode that Castiel got resurrected off-screen again.  Or if there’s some implication the brothers see him again in a way shippers could pretend totally had to involve hooking up with Dean. However, while we know Misha will bend whichever way the minion $$$ wind blows, and Dabb comes off as desperate for ass-pats on twitter from the hellers & minions blowing smoke up his ass?  He has played both sides for years in ways the general audience can dismiss (again, hard to do that and make reciprocated twue lurve “cannon”).  Dabb is also a co-showrunner with Singer who isn’t all over fandom and seemed kind bemused by it and previously said the ship was never discussed as a thing in the writer’s room while the ‘hellers were insisting their secret storyline was totes in there, guise. 

Likewise, I would be very surprised if after years of being harassed by a handful of disrespectful asshole “fans” to do so, Jensen agreed to just give in and change the character he’s been very invested in playing for fifteen years to please those jerks.  For something that suddenly and arbitrarily changes the character’s sexuality away from how he has explicitly said he has been playing it for fifteen years for a 40+ year old character in the very last episode.  For something Misha has implied he and Berens went behind his back to do in terms of Castiel’s end - that any idiot with two brain cells to rub together could figure out would lead to more harassment directed his way especially if he dared object (and would be objecting to another actor’s choices for their own character). For something that undermines what he has said repeatedly that he sees as the fundamental basis of the show.

None of that matters, though!  They’ve convinced themselves that they’re the only real audience and only they know the true story - the rest of us are just some sad definitely tiny group of pathetic hangers on that don’t understand the show has Changed Now and is really about the grEatEST LurVe stORy nEVeR tolD!  It’s what their whole echo chamber the whole audience wants ... because they say so!  

[cheuwing]

First of all: Thank you very much for your metas! I have a question about the role of Greg in tjlc. What exactly is he doing? Is he a good one or a baddy? Any space for Mystrade in tjlc?

Hello dear,

Thank you so much for your message! I was surprised to receive a question after such a long absence (a very nice surprise!). I don’t know if you’ll read my answer; hopefully it will find you well. :)

It is a very interesting question... I haven’t rewatched every single episode with a focus on Greg (I might do it later!), so feel free to take my view with a pinch of salt.

First of all: I adore Gavin Greg Lestrade! He is such an amazing, complex character in the series. I believe it is clear that Greg is on the good side. Actually, I think each character mentioned on the rooftop scene as targeted by Moriarty is explicitly good: John Watson, Mrs Hudson, Greg Lestrade. (Every other speculation is fair game, but these three are unquestionably good) The show never questions their loyalty either. Greg might be disgrunted sometimes, but he’s always there to help and support Sherlock (the “maximum back up” scene at the beginning of TSOT comes to mind). Furthermore, he is the very first one who talks about Sherlock’s side: “Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and I think one day, if we're very, very lucky, he might even be a good one.” To me, these elements prove without the shadow of a doubt that Greg is, in fact, good.

Also, according to Sherlock:

That’s all the proof I need! x)

Now, regarding Greg’s role in TJLC... My personal opinion is that he serves as a mirror. Typically, a mirror for Sherlock:

detective, keen on solving cases,

clever,

good coat, and similar clothes in general,

quits cigarettes at the same time as Sherlock (showing their matching patches in ASIP), both are seen with - unlit - cigarettes in their mouth in s3,

willing to bend the rules a little bit to solve his cases - namely by calling a “consulting detective”,

blunt and a bit ruthless (his introduction scene in which he is uncomfortable, possibly annoyed, in front of the media and deadpans “Don’t commit suicide” while Sally plays Watson’s role as social facilitator)

solving a case or saving a friend is more important than taking credit,

a bit of a drama queen (... that “maximum back up” scene comes to mind again xD),

lovely interactions with John in which they tend to be very honest and a bit arseholy (”NOT REALLY”)... (also: taking care of him and bringing Sherlock memorabilia in Many Happy Returns), a few moments of them working perfectly in sync (that action walk shot in HLV)

... among other things!

Interestingly, I think it’s fair to say that Greg is associated to John in some aspects (public servants, caring arseholes, both of them striving to guide Sherlock on the side of the angels, mindful of Sherlock’s emotions & thoughts process... Betrayed by their wives. Even on a visual level: action walk in HLV, shooting scene in THOB, in which, hilariously, even though John shoots second, he manages to catch his target => metaphors!!!)

I personally believe that Greg serves to show how a real, uncomplicated friendship with Sherlock (or John, for that matter) would work. He has no problem hugging him when he comes back (something John is unable to do, because he is overwhelmed with too many conflicting emotions... also, they’re not alone). Talking about emotions and such is easier between them too (Greg doesn’t hesitate to ask about John when Sherlock brings Molly for the case). They still bicker, argue and even play jokes on one another like John & Sherlock do (Lestrade never hesitates to film Sherlock on his phone, or to force him to wear a security blanket). Same goes between John & Lestrade: the friendship is much smoother/more wholesome than with Sherlock, because no one has to rein desire/unspoken emotions in. I mean, as @just-sort-of-happened highlighted it in this post: Greg provides a contrast to John's attraction to Sherlock.

So there you go: to me, Greg is a mirror for Sherlock and his interactions with both John & Sherlock serve as a contrast between the wholesome friendship that could be and the complicated relationship with lots of hidden desires, unspoken things and general sense of constrinct that these two have.

I also believe that Greg is a sort of mentor to them? He is the one who guides onto the right path, the one who is concerned, who is proud (his proud daddy expressions give me life), and I guess, who experiences things first (he has already worked on the cases before he presents them to Sherlock - and usually has failed -, he shoots the hound first - and fails -, he was married before John - and... you get the jist). I feel like Greg will start his grand relationship before Johnlock and in a sense, will show them the way.

As for the grand relationship in question... I love Mystrade. I really do. If it becomes canon, I’d be very happy. (Also, I could totally see Mark Gatiss thrilled to pose with Rupert Graves, his crush from Maurice, as his fictional lover ^^). Greg has been associated with John enough that I could see their relationship as a mirror for Johnlock. (and I certainly love this trope in fanfics!) I would be more than satisfied with Mystrade (also... if it happened after years of queerbaiting issues? two gay couples? with Gatiss, creator of the show, playing a character in a homosexual relationship? That could be pretty cool).

However, I have to say that I’m not really convinced it will happen in the show? It seems to me Mycroft is very much presented as an asexual character, or, at the very least, someone who doesn’t understand sex at all (the allusions with Lady Smallwood show how uncomprehending he is on the subject, and not just in a ‘gay man approached by a woman’ kind of way. Contrast with Sherlock in ASIP, being able to say ‘women are not my area’, ‘I know it’s fine’ and ‘while I’m flattered by your interest....’). In Sherlock’s mind palace, Mycroft serves as “the mind”, cold, logical, rational, in contrast to John “the heart”, emotion-focused, soft. In the Mayfly Man deduction, Mycroft insists on intricate planning, intent... whereas John focuses on sex right away. Thus, I personally see Mycroft as very remote from the concept of sexuality.

I personally see another likelier (in the context of the show) love interest for Greg: Molly Hooper. If Greg is an obvious mirror for Sherlock, Molly is an obvious mirror for John (I mean, very explicitly... And also at the wedding). There is already a history of interest between the two, at least from Greg’s part. Remember the gaping mouth at Molly’s dress at Christmas? How the camera framed them as a couple at the wedding, while Tom was obviously discarded as a serious lasting boyfriend for her? To be fully honest, I would probably be slightly annoyed at Molly’s character development if she goes out with another Sherlock mirror, but... It would make sense. She said it herself: she has a type. And I’d argue that Greg is a much more wholesome mirror for Sherlock, and he’s obviously interested in her. I think the writers already paved the road for this romance, so it seems likelier to me. I guess we will wait and see :)

To sum up => I ADORE Greg Lestrade. I hadn’t explored my thoughts on him for a long time before I received your message and had the perfect opportunity to do so. It is a joy to study his character and role in the story. To me, he is unquestionably good (like Mrs H & John). He is a fascinating mirror for Sherlock, and a great friend who shows what an uncomplicated friendship with John & Sherlock would look like. I’d definitely be happy to see Mystrade on screen (and these versions of Mycroft and Greg would certainly work well together! I think Greg would love to tease Mycroft like John does sometimes -> cue to hilarious expressions). I personally don’t think the writers would go there, but who knows? That could be very satisfying. I think a likelier mirror for Johnlock will be provided with Molly/Lestrade. Either way, Lestrade might very well be the one to show John & Sherlock the way to love. I’m curious to see how they will show it :)

Hopefully this will be a satisfying answer. Take care, dear! (And feel free to share your thoughts with me on the matter :) )

[theories-just-for-funzies]

“What’s the very worst thing you can do to your very best friends? Tell them your darkest secret, because if you tell them, and they decide they’d rather not know... You can’t take it back. You can’t unsay it. Once you’ve opened your heart, you can’t close it again.”

This is the second post I’m making about BBC Sherlock S4 (or anything about any fandom, really). You can find the first one here, the topic is almost the same. I’m really slow in writing down my theories in a way that is comprehensible by others, so I’m sorry if i don’t have a lot for the moment. Read this with the knowledge that I firmly believe in TJLC as explained by Rebekah on YouTube, and that S4 is not real as we see it, but is telling us what we need to know before they release S5 (or the special if that’ll come first) through unusual ways, TJLC style.

I think here Culverton smith is mirroring the writers, and his friends are the viewers. During the whole scene we have TONS of mirrored shots in the windows, most of it infact. In all of the previous seasons mirrors and character shots in mirrors were there to signal “hey this character is currently mirroring this other thing”, so idk it might be even this time??

Faith when she’s still drugged and tries to remember something about the conference, the first shot of her that we see, she’s in a mirror, even the desk reflect her image. Wander which part of the audience Faith is mirroring? Yeah, you guessed it. The tjlc fandom. The ones that analyze things. The ones that are questioning.

And the nurses? Idk, I’ve never seen a nurse that’s just putting an IV wearing a mask (unless under special circumstances of course), it never happens even when you’re taking blood samples, it just doesn’t ring right to me. So, who are the nurses? They’re people working for Culverton, they know what’s happening, they know what the solution is and what it does, they know how to administrate it, but they leave the room in the moment of confession. The nurses are mirroring BBC Sherlock’s crew.

If you’ve never worked on a set let me tell you: nobody, apart from the smallest possible amount of selected people, knows the whole picture, they can’t risk it, usually it’s just the writers, the producers, and most f the times the main actor; everyone else just knows the smallest informations to do their single job of adjusting the lights or hair for that single scene just like it’s written in their schedule.

So the crew knows partially what they’re doing, but they can’t speak, because their mouth is covered.

I’m thinking this is exactly the reason of S4. S4 is the memory drug. Everything made sense till now, tjlc was more and more evident, it was extremely obvious to everyone that johnlock was an actual thing, i mean just look at the sign of three, MY MOM THOUGHT THEY WERE CANONICALLY IN LOVE BEFORE I EVEN DID (at the time the fandom wasn’t the greatest so I avoided pretty much anything that wasn’t fan fictions or fan art, and just thought it was queer bait). Everything was super clever and well made. And then S4 came. A cheap Hollywood movie where nothing made sense and with john and sherlock great platonic friendship. And it was the last season so how could you not except what they already gave you and still want more, right?

Wrong. S4 is either complete bullshit or a distortion of what actually happens.

Culverton say that he can’t say his darkest secret because he can’t take it back, yet he does tell, and he does take it back.

The show does say that sherlock and john love each other (and are still pining) but S4 takes that back. You want the distorted version? Ok. Sherlock does explicitly says the words “i love you” in S4 to Molly in a physical mirror, a character’s mirror for John, whose description of the coffin perfectly fits John. The show does say that the writers aren’t stupid and aren’t making a tv show that’s just a blockbuster action movie, with cheap Hollywood effects and made up physic laws. Yet S4 takes that back.

The whole thing they kept saying in earlier seasons about “making history of television” and “making unprecedented things”? What unprecedented things? That was extreamely cheap cinematic, with really poor writings and a rip off of James Bond and classic horror movies. Nothing about S4 was memorable or relevant.

They already said everything they had to say (for the moment) but then they couldn’t leave the public waiting for another 6 years before S5 with all that hope and knowledge. Especially considering the fandom suspected even the phone\heart metaphor before ASiB even aired. Leave those people with the tiniest hope and you’d find your plans stripped naked for everyone to see in less than half of that hiatus. That’s really not Moffat style, he needs to give you hope, rip your heart open, surprise you leaving you gasping, only then he can make another plot twist and make everything super beautiful again and making you crying because it’s too many emotions.

So they said their things before S4, the fans that were still not sold on johnlock or didn’t want it canon were the friends who would rather not know, they went on with the brain washing of S4, and said “ok, we’re done here, nothing else to see, the show is finished, good night”. But just as with Faith’s story you can reconstruct if not all, part of what happened; because i don’t know if you noticed, but S4 doesn’t have a lot of plot holes, it is one single gigantic plot hole.

But what happens if they kill everyone just like Culverton Smith said? What happens if they make S4 so bad and destroy everything they said up until now with the show itself? What happens if the same people that were able to decode everything suddenly lost any faith because they were let down so much they just let the fandom die, and there was no one left to analyze what they were actually saying?

Everyone would forget all about TJLC and about how clever of a show it was. They would erase the whole show from people’s memories, letting it pass by like any other show that’s there to fill your Sunday evening.

Also there’s another thing that doesn’t sit right with me, although i don’t have any proof backing this up and am not sure of what I’m saying, it’s basically just speculation, but still. TD12 package:

obviously this drug doesn’t exist, the only thing i came across with that name is a percussion sound module, you’re welcome to make your own theories with this informations since i know absolutely nothing about music technology and am not the smartest tool in the shed when it comes to music theories or clues.

I presume TD12 it’s something along the line of saline solution, since Sherlock made that replacement himself later in the episde, my research (because i also have no knowledge about medical stuff) told me that saline solution has en expiration time of roughly 2 years. On the package we see that the expiration’s date is October 2018, so counting back, assuming Culverton got the drug shortly before doing his speach, the scene takes place somewhere around October 2016. Wander what happened in October 2016?

On BBC Sherlock official YouTube channel they release just one video: Sherlock Series 4 release date. Now. You might say I’m looking a little to much into it, but if you go check the release dates of the other YouTube videos you would see that they usually don’t post just one video per month, that’s the only one around that time period. Idk if you ask me it’s a lot of strange coincidences.

Anyway, in the scene he then says “these drip feeds will keep the drug in your blood streams at exactly the right levels. Nothing that is happening to you now will stay with you for more than a few minutes. I’m afraid that some of the memories you’ve had up to this point might also be... corrupted.”.

So the victims starting now, will continue to take the drug for the next idk 30 minutes???? But apparently some of the events preceding that moment can be “corrupted”. Translated: everything starting from October 2016 is fucked up because of the drug, not only that, but also some things from before that. I’m guessing the “drips” would be the little occasional posts or news??

Might I add the information that in December 2018 the escape room Sherlock the game is now opened? Like, i know it’s not October, maybe I’m just looking where i want to look, but... I genuinely don’t know, that’s why I’m sharing things, so that people with a more objective point of view can come and say to me “hey you’re not making any sense, what the fuck are you talking about”.

And overall, I’m not native English speaker, but I don’t think you say “corrupted” when talking about human memories. It sounds more something used in the context of digital memories, usually it’s files that gets corrupted, not human brain memories.

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 7: There’s Something About Mary (TST 2/2)

A very funny film – with a very apt title for this chapter!! If you haven’t read the first half of the TST meta, check the previous chapter – we’re jumping straight back in.

Jack Sandiford’s home in Reading could not be talking more about water – Arwel has really excelled himself here. Not only do we have a swimming pool and a Hokusai, but look at the ceiling – I have never seen a ceiling reflect water quite like that. I don’t know if it’s a mirror (!) or another visual effect, but it serves to remind us of where we are – the water is not just below us, but all around. It’s not a case of taking the plunge – we are still drowning.

A moment of appreciation for Sacha Dhawan, whose time on Sherlock was far too short – at least he got Doctor Who. Regardless, his first scene is back to parody here. Sherlock’s quip about the polling station is the sort of quip you only see on television, and the fighting that follows is clearly stage fighting. We get Bond-esque drama as they jump into the pool and smash the glass (note the same motif from the Thatcher smashing earlier), but even before that, banging each others’ heads off the surfaces without a scratch is obvious stage fighting and a well known move. It feels more like theatre than TV, and for me it doesn’t work on film. Perhaps I’m being harsh here, but I feel again that we’re moving into a parody of Sherlock Holmes the superhero. We also get several shots during the fight scene where water seems to obscure the lens with its weird refraction of light; I love this, because it’s a jarring reminder that the camera exists, and with that a reminder that this is artificial. It jolts us out of the scene and speaks to its unreality.

Sherlock announces that he has found the black pearl of the Borgias, but of course he hasn’t – it’s the AGRA memory stick. Importantly, the original story ends with the black pearl, so we’re tying back in to the expectation that has been latently set by Craig; here, the show is diverging from canon, and Sherlock doesn’t know what to do about it – his declaration that it’s not possible is literal. This scene gives a perfect parallel to the one in TAB where he attempts to unmask Lady Carmichael only to find Moriarty – he was missing the obvious. Here, we’ve seen already in this episode the serious miscalculation he has made about Moriarty in his brain; he is still treating the Moriarty threat as one of a supervillain. Stealing jewels is something we associate with Moriarty from TRF, but that moment is high camp – it’s the end of the episode between John and Sherlock which is the emotional crux. If we’re focusing on what Jim means in himself, we’re missing the point – and it’s exactly the same here. Sherlock needs to reconceptualise Jim as his fear of losing John, and this is the moment when his brain connects this properly to Mary. Bear in mind that everything that happens after Sherlock is shot in HLV takes place within the EMP, so we know nothing about Mary in reality. The AGRA memory stick doesn’t represent who Mary genuinely is – it represents the great unknown of Mary, the question mark over her head. Never forget, after all, that the original AGRA box from the stories was empty. It’s the same here – our divergence into Mary’s past is untrue. When Sherlock realises that Moriarty is somehow to do with the memory stick, he is realising that his fear of John dying is tied into his confrontation with Mary back in 2014 (!). This moment of realisation drives the rest of the episode to Mary’s death scene, where Sherlock relives his own attempted assassination by Mary (as we’ll see) – this is what he has to figure out. If we need more impetus to realise that what happens in HLV post shooting is wrong, look at Sherlock’s flashback to John and Mary’s reunion in HLV – if we take this show at face value, that simply can’t be right, because Sherlock wasn’t there. The only way to read this is if such a scene took place in Sherlock’s own brain – a kind of fill in the blanks as he tried to excuse Mary, only now realising that she is, in fact, the most serious threat of all.

A dreamscape coincidence takes place behind Ajay in this scene – before we know that he is Ajay, and the A in AGRA, we see the A behind him on the shelf, as though calling it out to us. This world is too interconnected to be real; its whole fabric seems to self-reference.

In case we wanted any more flashing blue light, we see the police sirens flashing in – now as far as I know, police sirens are normally blue and red, but not here. I wonder why. They will be the same, somewhat worryingly, at the end of TFP. Look at how it lights up one half of Sherlock’s face, just like the water did before. Rachel Talalay is really fantastic.

The next thing we get is a flashback to Tbilisi, and the ambassador asking ‘who’s they? Seems we put an awful lot of faith in they’. It’s difficult not to read this as a reflection on tjlc and how most of us have been feeling for years now, whether or not this is intentional! She also says that she’s got something ‘they’ would love, if we ever get out of here: ammo. For ammo, we should pretty much always read ‘amo’, the Latin for I love – this will be very important later, but for now there’s a nice little metaphorical resonance here – if we ever get out of where we’re trapped (Tbilisi, or the dreamscape), the great ‘they’ want amo. Maybe.

We cut out of this flashback into Sherlock standing and thinking to himself. Normally, in the show, that means that what we’ve been seeing is a mind palace construction or a flashback. When the AGRA scene showed, I expected us to cut to Mary explaining it to Sherlock and/or John, because that would explain its flashback nature. But again, it’s Sherlock thinking, which like our previous memories of Mary suggest that none of it is real – it’s a stop gap as he tries to work her out. It could be argued that Sherlock got this info from his glance at the memory stick, but I don’t buy that – the memory stick contains material from before their betrayal, not after.

Ajay’s torture is another way of teasing Amo and the English woman, which will come to fruition later in the episode, so we’ll move through to Sherlock’s meeting with Mary. Mary, at this point, is still just Mary, no mirrors, no nothing, as Sherlock tries to work her out. Notice how he acknowledges that he had been too caught up in Moriarty and the pearl. I also think it’s relevant that the building in which Mary chloroforms (camphors?) Sherlock is a church – this is a subconscious reference to the Sherlock-is-murdered metaphor in TSoT (X). As we’ll later discover in a big way, the one thing that is stopping Sherlock from getting a handle on Mary and the threat she represents is that he can’t acknowledge his love for John as playing a part in this – he can’t understand why love is such an enormous threat. He will get there (at least partially) at the end of TST, but not until then. Just like the Sherlock-is-murdered metaphor in TSoT represents his realisation that he is in love with John, Mary’s attack on him here in a church stops him from getting to the bottom of what is going on with Mary.

The obsession with the memory stick here is important because the memory stick represents the unknown about Mary that Sherlock is trying – and failing – to get to grips with. However, he’s still going about it the wrong way, and we know that from one line of Mary’s: ‘Sherlock the dragon slayer’. We’ve had these references to Sherlock’s ridiculous hero complex before, but this one stands out, because it feels like a throwback – and it is! But, it’s a throwback to:

Mycroft. If we wanted to, we could jump back to Sir Boastalot as well, but the original ‘dragon slayer’ quote happens when Mary is nowhere around. There isn’t a way to make this callback work without either saying it’s a ‘coincidence’ (really?) or postulating some sort of dreamscape. Here, the dreamscape works perfectly, because it’s the hero image that Sherlock is working to break in this episode, and these iterations come first from his brain (Mycroft) and secondly from hypothesis Mary – even as he’s trying to crack her in various versions in his mind, his subconscious is warning him that he’s wrong. We moved from supervillain Mary to Mary-who-needs-protecting; neither of these are particularly relevant.

Sherlock’s subconscious even trying to break through Mary is important as she refers to the ghosts of her past – this is a phrase which keeps cropping up from TAB all the way through series 4, but it’s normally used in reference to Sherlock himself. She’s again voicing a motif from the programme that as Mary she can’t possibly know about, but as Sherlock’s subconscious is trying to push Sherlock back on the right track.

Mary drugs Sherlock, and in case we needed another reminder of what that represents and what is stopping Sherlock from progressing, we get a shot of Redbeard and we hear Eurus singing the riddle. See chapter 13 (X) which explains why this is symbolic of gay trauma and needing to fully come to terms with your queerness. When Sherlock wakes up, the transition sound from Redbeard back into grown up Sherlock is a gigantic wave followed by rain. Although Sherlock and Victor have been playing by the water, that wave is far too big to come from that image. When we move outside, there is a dripping sound, and our entire visual is coloured in the dark blue of the promo pictures and that really characterises the underwater aesthetic of s4. This scene has shown us a series of blockages to Sherlock solving his current conundrum, and the wave washing over him is the sound of him being pushed deeper into his mind, not climbing out. We’re a long way from a pirate sailing the seven seas here.

The next transition is fantastic. We see two reflections of Mycroft listing off another meaning of Agra (an Indian city) whilst seemingly looking at each other. The reflections are distorted to be thinner than normal, again pointing to the dreamscape we’re used to by now, but also telling us that Mycroft’s voice is Sherlock’s brain here, reflecting – this is the equivalent of going into his mind palace to work something out, drawing on memories and existing knowledge. However, remember that in real life the memory stick does not exist. So why is Sherlock so keen on deciphering AGRA? Well, the treasure of Agra features in The Sign of the Four, in which Holmes is trying to regain the treasures for Mary but does not (as mentioned before, the Agra box is empty) – but the actual important development is that Watson and Mary become engaged. Agra here is not about the memory stick, much like ammo isn’t about ammunition; it’s a tool for Sherlock to engage with Mary’s past. However, Mycroft referencing the original Agra here suggests that Sherlock is trying to grapple with Mary’s potentially criminal past, and also that he can’t get past who she was supposed to be, as we’ve already seen from HLV (she wasn’t supposed to be like that!). However, it’s also a sign that he’s missing the most important part of The Sign of the Four, which is all the more notable for its importance because the wedding episode is named for it; John’s relationship with Mary is the real occurrence in that story.

Others have pointed out that Gatiss wielding a pen in this scene means that he is speaking at least partially as Mofftiss, not just as brain!Mycroft – hence we have wonderful lines such as mentioning that all the best secret societies have acronyms (cough tjlc cough) and that he hates loose ends. A little reassurance there.

Other moments in this scene are lovely – Sherlock is continually distorted by a mirror on the wall, reminding us that this is him trying to process the hypotheses he is running about Mary in his brain. This brain, as previously mentioned, is under siege, and it’s important then that Mycroft and Sherlock both acknowledge that Sherlock and sentiment are becoming one and the same; TFP is going to be about the brain and the heart learning to work together, rather than against one another, but Mycroft’s disparagement and the underground dungeon he’s living in show that we’re not there just yet.

I confess that Mary’s travel montage bores me somewhat, although I’m tempted someday to go through all the graffiti and montages with a fine tooth comb to see if anything can be come up with. I am, however, running out of time to write this before term starts for me! Let’s jump onto the idea that not even Sherlock Holmes can anticipate the roll of the dice. The theme of Sherlock being able to predict the future comes up a few times in this episode, and I’ve mentioned before how this is a set up for us to doubt the premise of TLD, that he suddenly has quasi-magic predictive powers. Here, he seems to, and then it is immediately undercut, because he says that he placed a tracker inside the memory stick. All very funny – except it doesn’t make sense. I confess I didn’t notice this, but my mum did straight away – if you have a tracker, you can follow someone, but you can’t arrive somewhere before them. It’s not possible. This is an aspect of Sherlock’s predictive power that doesn’t make sense – and we might be able to just about buy it on his ‘mathematical probability’ shtick, except he’s just told us that that’s a load of rubbish. This leaves us in a situation that is impossible – and isn’t too much of a problem, because it’s just a device, but is a huge setup for the impossibility of the next episode. It also speaks to a dreamscape again, because where else are you exactly where you need to be when you need to be there, with no explanation?

The jibe about happy families is a little laboured, but it sets up the idea that Sherlock is starting to work in terms of relationships now rather than seeing things in terms of chess. Think of the chessboard squares in Mycroft’s office – but his deduction partner has now switched to John, who represents his heart, and so he’s starting to get on the right track. Note as well how we’re meant to assume they are playing chess or some equivalently cerebral game before we discover that they’re playing Happy Families; this is the same as the chess/Operation scene in TEH, in which we see the difficulty that the Holmes boys have in accessing their hearts. Now that Sherlock is using heart!John instead of brain!Mycroft, he’s almost there, but still not quite winning due to his unfamiliarity with the situation. Note also yet another distorting mirror in the background of this scene.

The fact that Mary’s real name is not Mary is used to great effect here – it could have just been throwaway, but instead in this scene they actually conceptualise Mary and Rosamund as different people. I read this scene as ‘Mary’ being the name for Watson’s canon wife, and Rosamund being our current Mary – so heart!John saying that he liked Mary is his inability to break with established canon. Simultaneously, however, he says “I used to” – he’s caught in a bind, because that canon breakage is already happening.

This room is lit warmly, quite the opposite to the dark watery colours that we see inside most of this episode – most of the waters take place in Sherlock’s brain, and are epitomised by Mycroft’s office, whereas this scene is warm, the colours one might expect of hearth and home, as heart!John takes precedence for the first time. However, notice the grating and the pattern of light that spreads itself softly over the characters’ clothing – it’s much less obvious than in Mycroft’s office, but it’s still the same chequered pattern. As we move in to TFP and John and Mycroft are tied together, rather than moving apart, we’re going to see that increasingly they are two sides of the same coin, heart and brain. You’ll notice, though, that Mycroft’s grating pattern is more like a chessboard – it’s binary and simplistic, black squares and empty space for white light. The patterns of light in this scene, particularly as we move into the Ajay confrontation, become more complicated – the light is let through in swirls as well as grates, as though heart!John is allowing for much more complexity than brain!Mycroft – which seems to be right, given how much more difficult Sherlock finds Happy Families than chess.

[more tenuous crack: Ajay’s torture has always reminded him of Sherlock’s torture, but he’s sustained every day by this bit of information. Ammo, ammo. Amo, amo. Love? I can dream.]

The following scene is an intercut phone conversation between Sherlock, still in Marrakech, and Mycroft in his office – moving back and forth between the two highlights the difference in colour scheme as well as in the angle of grating, which is similar but almost inverted. However, it’s Sherlock talking to brain!Mycroft rather than heart!John – it’s not a row between the two parts of the psyche, but showing that Sherlock has firmly moved over to the other. That won’t be the answer – they will need to integrate for the end of s4– but this is the way towards working out Mary. The split screen effect is helpful here for us to understand both sides not as different, but taking up the same space. This is heightened when Sherlock and Mycroft both walk off, their silhouettes merging into one – they are one and the same. It’s also important that it is from this space that Sherlock makes the ‘amo’ deduction – he could have done so from anywhere in London, but he doesn’t – he needs to be in a heart space.

We now discover what heart!John meant by “so many lies […] I don’t just mean you” earlier – his not-tryst with Eurus. Again, this is discussed in greater detail in an earlier chapter (X), but let’s remember the initial mention of it. It was heart!John who spoke those words, not real!John – because we never get real!John in this series, except through Sherlock’s memory – and so his interrogation of Sherlock’s hypothesis of Mary is where he starts to realise that the problem is one of happy families rather than chess, and that it’s a lot more emotionally complicated than the supervillain arc gives credit for. It’s important that we’re told this story in reverse, because Sherlock is slowly picking up the clues for it but only putting it together late. We’ve seen all the signs that John might be unhappy but haven’t elaborated on them – now Sherlock’s mind is noticing that the Mary problem is something to do with John’s emotions. He can’t work out what, so he hypothesises – this meta chapter (X) goes into much greater detail about how his queer trauma (Eurus) is prodding at his hypothesis of John here, forcing Sherlock to masquerade as a woman in the form of trauma!Eurus because trauma!Eurus will not let him truly accept queer desire and the possibility of reciprocity. It is why we get a story which rings so false about John here. However, I’m running the risk of repeating said chapter, so we’ll move ahead.

We move into brain!Mycroft’s interrogation of Lady Smallwood. The setting is once again focusing on reflection – the mirror behind Lady Smallwood reflects Mycroft, and of course there is the larger mirror structure of an interrogation room, where a mirror from the inside allows Sherlock to watch what’s going on – an obvious metaphor. Lady Smallwood’s opening lines, that Mycroft can’t accuse her again, are really important – in HLV, right before he went down, Sherlock thought that Mary was Lady Smallwood. He’s playing through this mistake – why did he make it? What stopped him from seeing the obvious about Mary, just as he is missing the obvious about Norbury? Both, after all, have been ‘hiding in plain sight’.

Amo. Love, Smallwood’s code name, stopped him from realising it was Norbury, and by extension it’s what stopped him from realising Mary’s true self earlier – love was clouding his judgement. There is more, however. The fact that ‘ammo’ and ‘amo’ are so similar is brilliant, because they mean total opposites – ammo is to do with war, and amo is love. When it comes to the problem of being shot, of knowing that John is in danger but not quite understanding how, Sherlock has been focusing on the threat from ‘ammo’ for too long, hypothesising Mary as some kind of super dangerous villain. This isn’t what’s endangering John. What’s endangering John is ‘amo’ – without Sherlock, John is suicidal, and so it is love that is the ultimate danger. The mistake that Ajay made (ammo) is the same mistake that Sherlock has been making in hypothesising about Mary throughout the episode. Another point worth noting is that gay slang – the early 20th century equivalent for ‘is he a friend of Dorothy?’ is ‘does he know his Latin?’* That’s definitely the sort of thing Mark Gatiss would know and throw in.

[*I found this on tumblr! And can’t refind it! Which makes me question its veracity – although it seems a really odd thing to make up. If anyone can source this for me, would love them forever – I have trawled my files and I foolishly didn’t save it!]

We should also note that amo is a verb – amor is the Latin word for love. ‘Amo’ actually means ‘I love’ – we know that Sherlock knows this, because he conjugates the verb earlier in the episode: amo, amas, amat. My understanding is that it is the first verb anyone learns to conjugate in Latin classes, and that therefore Mofftiss hoped their audience might have some familiarity (rather than picking a much less taught language). ‘I love’ is not the same as ‘love’ – it is an action, and that’s something that Sherlock hasn’t quite cottoned on to. He keeps saying ‘love’ but refuses to grasp that he has to be involved in this verb – as we’ll see.

Mary’s death scene is where all of this – finally! – comes to fruition. Note the blue lighting over the London Aquarium, even the London Eye, to match the underwater aesthetic, before we move into the aquarium. Admittedly, both do that anyway, but it’s a nice look – they didn’t just pick the middle of the day for it.

The message that Sherlock texts Mary, “The stage is set. The curtain rises.” has been seen before – it’s what he says in TAB before running an entire Victorian fever dream of a simulation (X). It’s one of the many repeats of lines from earlier in the Mind Palace, but it suggests that after his almost complete revelation about love, the final simulation is at last ready to run. The comparison to TAB is important, because TAB is a rerunning of Moriarty’s death with different players so that he can understand it. We’ve got the same thing happening here – he’s rereunning his own assassination attempt so that he can finally understand what is going on. This is why TAB is so important – we thought it stood by itself, but it’s actually the key to unlock most of s4! More repeats happen as Sherlock meets Norbury – ‘the final act’ is a repeat, as is ‘I never could resist a touch of the dramatic’, which is mentioned in TAB as well as in ACD canon. Sherlock thinks he’s cracked it, but he’s still quoting previous iterations of himself, which is a sure sign that he’s not being true to Sherlock, only to Holmes, and that something is going to go wrong.

[A side note: can anybody identify/has anybody identified Norbury’s brooch? It looks incredibly significant, a face on it, but I have no idea who – the only person who pops into my head is the queen, and that throws up a lot of ramifications!]

Others have explained why Norbury is a mirror for Mary – if we hadn’t already spotted the Lady Smallwood connection, there’s the fact that they are both receptionists, that they use the exact same gun and of course that they both attempt to kill Sherlock to protect themselves. When we read this scene, we should be reading it in the same way it has become completely mainstream to read Ricoletti as Moriarty; Norbury is Mary. She thought she could outrun the inevitable, but somebody has information on her. What happened with AGRA isn’t actually relevant here, because that was all hypothesis – Magnussen has something, and that’s all that matters. Norbury’s wish to get out of criminal mess in favour of domesticity matches Mary’s, seemingly – and in case we didn’t get this parallel, Norbury draws it herself, asking Mary if they don’t just want the same thing.

Sherlock’s deduction about Norbury here, however, can’t straightforwardly apply to Mary – remember, he knows nothing about Mary’s prior life. This, again, is where TAB comes in – this moment is beautifully metatextual. TAB has set up the train of thought about people who were forgotten by history, and put in women as a mirror for queer people – but in this sense, Mary’s canon divergence is important, because the Mary of the original stories was never allowed to be interesting. Sherlock’s biting comments about Norbury’s ‘little life’ are vicious and completely out of character – think of the interest with which he treats Jeff Hope in ASiP, even a slight sympathy, for another ‘proper genius’ who’s been ignored. Sherlock’s bitterness here is personal. He’s talking about the exclusion of the real Mary from the stories that we saw partially rectified in TAB, whereas in the stories she had a ‘little life’ – but also, using Mary is allowing his subconscious to work away at the fact that the same thing happened to him. His queerness forced him to live a similarly ‘little life’, pining for a lost love much like Norbury, and also buying a cottage down south in the stories (although in Sussex). Canon divergence is working for both Mary and Sherlock here, and he’s trying to understand it through Norbury – the one giveaway is the pain brilliantly infecting Cumberbatch’s voice here. Even if we can’t superficially understand why, we know that this is personal.

Everyone has dug into Mary’s death non stop for the last few years, and I’m not sure I can add too much that is new, but my 2c on how Mary’s death happens is thus. Sherlock has finally come to the point where he can play out Mary shooting him and the impact this has on John, and so Norbury takes the place of Mary in this rerun. Sherlock is, ostensibly, playing himself, but at the very last second he substitutes Mary. Many tjlcers have pointed out that Mary’s leap in front of the bullet contravenes everything Molly Hooper says about gunshots and plays into a movie hero stereotype rather than anything realistic, and I think we’re definitely being pulled into something artificial here. Why does Mary jump in front of Sherlock? Well, let’s think about how trauma!Eurus allows Sherlock to interrogate his feelings for John (and vice versa), both as E and Faith, through a heterosexual lens by being gender swapped. This is a key sign that Sherlock isn’t able to process a queer vision of himself yet. If Norbury had shot Sherlock, which by rights she should have done in this scene, we would have seen John having to come to terms with Sherlock’s death and dealing with it suicidally – which is exactly the threat that the shooting in HLV poses. Sherlock can’t emotionally process this yet, so at the very last moment he throws Mary in front of the bullet – because technically, in this shooting, John loses Mary as well. He at least loses the Mary he thought he knew. And so, at the last minute, Sherlock reverts to the superhero Sherlock Holmes story mindset which is devoutly heterosexual and devoutly heroic, and pulls his punch. He refuses to acknowledge the I love part of ‘amo’, only the love. And whilst imagining that John is suicidal, he hypothesises that it is from losing Mary. By the end of TLD, Sherlock’s going to figure out that he was very wrong. But this is why Norbury doesn’t just shoot Mary – that in itself would be enough drama, and it could have created a conflict scene which was really worthy of Amanda Abbington’s dramatic capabilities – the bullet needs to almost hit Sherlock before his mind diverts it back into this incredibly flawed vision of what a Sherlock Holmes story should look like.

An important note, therefore, is that John in this moment is one of the only times we see hypothesis!John rather than heart!John – because Sherlock is trying to understand the danger John is in. It is truly heartbreaking to hear Martin Freeman’s cries here, and the more so to imagine that this is Sherlock’s dying understanding of what John is going through.

Others have pointed out the fantastic projector visual that we get next, as though implying that the whole Aquarium scene is a projection from Sherlock’s mind – it’s important to hint here to the audience that Mary is of course not dead, although because of the reception of series 4 I’m not sure that was entirely grasped! Mary’s coffin is then engulfed in blue flames, in case we weren’t encumbered enough in blue, but there’s also a sense of failure in this. Every time we get that level of blue, waves or fire, engulfing like it so often does in this episode, we’re sinking deeper into the subconscious rather than rising out of it. It’s a hint that something has gone terribly wrong, which is only increased at the end of the episode with the notorious final image of Sherlock drowning. We’re not on our way up here, and we aren’t going to be until the final third of TFP – until then, we have a constant aesthetic of descent into the mind.

The exception, of course, is Ella’s office, which ties into the heaven/ascent theme – it seems as though descent is descent into drowning in thought, but it’s not actually death, whereas death is the abandonment of the EMP project all together, letting it all go to rise up to the sky. I’ve discussed the ascent metaphor in a previous chapter (X) so there’s not a great need to go into Sherlock’s therapy session here. Instead, let’s note a final few things – although Sherlock is tempted to let it all go, thinking there’s nothing he can do to save John from his loss of Mary (Ella therapy scene) he can’t stop his heart from reflecting – John walking around a room with a reflection of dark blue curtains on an immensely reflective table.

A table that also seems to have a cup of tea on it, which represents queer desire. This is the reason he can’t let it go, although his subconscious is still talking to him in symbols. Another important aesthetic is Mycroft looking at the 13th post-it note and then glancing at a time piece – discussed here (X), this is really significant and so obvious as a code that my casual family spotted it (although knowing how to crack the code was beyond most of us, an excellent piece of work by @jenna221b). Mycroft’s fridge is also unnecessarily shiny and reflective, so now we’ve seen that neither the brain or the heart is giving up just yet, and as to be discussed in a later chapter, brain!Mycroft’s final recourse to Sherrinford symbolises moving into the deepest part of Sherlock’s psyche to solve this problem – and the most guarded.

We move back to Baker Street, where we’ve lost heart!John, because Sherlock has denied him. Substitute John is still there, though – the red balloon exists, deflated, weighed down by some books. Books normally represent ACD canon in this show, so it’s not difficult to see the balloon – John in Sherlock’s mind – weighed down by canon expectation of him.

The ‘say the words Norbury to me’ line is taken almost directly from The Adventure of the Yellow Face (not as bad as it sounds!). This story is actually anti-racism, though you’d never tell from the title – it’s about a woman who isn’t allowed to see her mixed race child, and it concludes by reuniting them. The Norbury line comes at the end – Sherlock has seen the mysterious yellow face and overdeduced by a million to think that he’s solving a murder case, when all the disguise is is a woman trying to see her child. This is the same mistake Sherlock has made in his characterisation of his assassination attempt in the Norbury scene – he hasn’t been able to see past his role as consulting detective into the more important world of human relationships, which would have saved us an entire series of dreams for starters. It’s a really important moment in the Holmes canon, as it’s one of the only moments where we see behind the mask – much like The Three Garridebs – and it’s vital here in linking our real Sherlock back to the stories, as though to say that he is hidden in there somewhere.

Mary showing up on a Miss Me? DVD raises the question of how the hell it got there – dream logic, fine. All a bit Forest of the Dead, but it is Steven Moffat. This ties together really nicely at the end and gives us hope that Sherlock isn’t at a complete dead end – Jim Moriarty, who was always back, representing the threat to John Watson, has now taken a much more concrete form in the form of Mary. Mary is the reason John is in danger. Sherlock knew this already, but going up nearly to heaven in the form of Ella, he thought there was nothing he could do – here Sherlock’s subconscious is once again in this episode prodding him through Mary as it will through Eurus, pointing out that he can change things. Mary’s DVD is intercut with Sherlock’s visit to John’s house – is it a coincidence that there are inverted hearts on the railings? (Invert being a euphemism for queer that this fandom is long used to.) Sherlock’s subconscious is crying out to him!! The anyone but you stuff is much more relevant to TLD, so we’ll leave it for then. Mary’s video continues in audio overlaid over Sherlock – others have pointed out that she repeats lines, but the inflection is different – it’s like a dream memory, not a recording, where using just one recording would really have been a lot easier for the editing team. Again, the show is playing with inconsistency, unsettling us.

And finally, the much discussed ending to this show – death waits for all of us, but can it be avoided – as London turns into the water which drowns out Benedict Cumberbatch’s face. We’re only going deeper.

That’s it this time! I’ll see you for our next chapter.