#ive definitely blown this out of proportion in my mind and probably nothing is wrong and this dude won’t ACTUALLY try anything with me

[scottspack]

cant tell if a man at work is harassing me bc in my mind he wasn’t and i didn’t feel harassed bc i thought that was just how he was with everyone but then he asked me if he was making me uncomfortable and reflexively i said no bc once again i thought that’s just how he is but now im wondering if that was him asking for permission to like genuinely hit on me and now i don’t know whether to make a big deal out of it or just ignore it and see what happens

[possiblyimbiassed]

John’s wedding is a crime scene - Part IV

In Part III of this meta series I came up with a rather horrible hypothesis: What if Sherlock and John actually did get intimate on the stag night, but none of them wanted to admit this fact - perhaps not even to themselves - for different reasons? Which was what ultimately broke Sherlock’s heart and made him OD after the wedding? This is a rather speculative idea of course; it could definitely be very wrong, and I don’t actually wish it to be true. But this is still what I see, and it would explain certain things in the show, so I might as well try to provide evidence and explain what makes me jump on this train of thoughts.

In Part III I tried to point out the distinct, symbolic resemblance between the Mayfly Man’s ‘crime scene’ and 221B. This, together with John showing up in Mrs Hudson’s kitchen the following morning, makes me think John and Sherlock never actually left Baker Street after the stag night. And their leaving 221B is not confirmed by John’s blog. So if they never left 221B, what did actually happen?

Permit me a bit of more analysis and shameless speculation (if you’re already bored, you can just skip this part, because it’s long and maybe tedious :) ).

So if they never left 221B, what about this nurse who came between them? I think ‘Tessa’ is either incredibly naïve, or lying. As @raggedyblue said in the addition to Part III, ‘Tessa’ only dates a guy one night, and it’s only dinner out and exchange of numbers. If she doesn’t hear anything from him after that (and she didn’t seem to know him before) why would she go to his flat to investigate? In the show ‘Tessa’ says that she thought he’d at least call to say they were finished. But how can you finish something that never actually started?

We could also ask why John followed Sherlock home after the pub round, instead of going home to his soon-to-be wife? Well, alcohol might have had to do with it. But the alibi of a case sounds better, doesn’t it? ;) Actually, during the wedding planning scene in TSoT (and this is part of Sherlock re-telling some cases from John’s blog in his best man speech), Sherlock tells us “I once broke an alibi by demonstrating the exact severity of...” until he’s interrupted by ‘Mary’. And he says this directly after he claims to have solved another case “without leaving the flat”. Hmm... By the way, this is also the scene where Sherlock is showing off his skills with the serviettes:

The swan looks a tiny bit cocky, don’t you think? (Of course it does - swans are some of the cockiest birds I know ;))) ‘Mary’ made him choose the Opera House, though, whatever that might symbolise...

Anyway, What if John is lying in his blog post, and the interruption from this ‘nurse’ (whose name is not revealed in the blog post) was actually a phone call or a text message from ‘Mary’? Which they might have dismissed, John perhaps telling her they were on a case. While the real Tessa actually e-mailed Sherlock late at night, or something like that. Just speculating here... ;)

By the way, these blog descriptions are getting more suspicious the more I think of them. John’s next-to last blog post is called “The Hollow Client”, and it’s dated July 2nd:

This is about a month before the wedding, and John and Sherlock have been to a suit-fitting together. Sounds logical enough; friends could totally do that, even though John is living with Mary since at least a year back. But John describes it as if he were still living in 221B with Sherlock: it’s “when we got back” and “sitting in my chair” and “He’d emailed us”. And now there’s also an empty suit, exactly when John has been to the tailor to have his own suit fitted for the wedding. “Jack Griffin” has the same number of letters as “John Watson”, by the way, and the name starts and ends with the same letters. It’s almost as if John is indeed still living there, but he’s invisible - isn’t he? ;) Why is John gravitating back towards staying with Sherlock at 221B, shortly before his own wedding? Of course, in the show, the wedding planning seems to have mainly taken place at 221B, but wouldn’t ‘Mary’ then be at least mentioned here? But she isn’t visible when Sherlock recounts this case in his best man speech either.

Anyway, back to ‘Tessa’. 

For some reason, a visit to this flat made her believe she had dated a ghost (or an ‘empty suit’, perhaps? ;) ), rather than someone who just didn’t want to give her his correct address. And for this she hires a detective? Visits him late at night? In the other cases described, the Mayfly Man seems to have actually taken the women ‘home’ with him for one-night stands (well, ‘Gail’ in Sherlock’s MP court room at least says that “nothing happened”). But this wasn’t the case with ‘Tessa’. Up to this point the ‘Mayfly Man’ blogpost coincides with what we see in the show; Sherlock’s MP conversations with the ‘victims’ are actually taking place online. But it’s only in the show that the famous detective finds this ‘ghost’ case so important that he goes out late at night - in a heavily inebriated state - to check out this (supposed) address, which could just as well be fake. Why not do this in daylight? But no, he goes there at night, immediately as if it were an urgent murder case, ‘clueing for looks’. But the only clues he does find are reminiscent of 221B. To me, there’s something very fishy going on here.

John’s little white lies on the blog may be understandable, if he simply doesn’t want to reveal that they were both so drunk they got picked up by the police. But aren’t the gaps a bit too obvious? Why does he have to describe his stag night as a “a quiet, civilised evening in the pub”? John isn’t exactly someone who says no to a drink, so at least he could have revealed the less compromising parts of it. It was supposed to be a stag party after all. And why - after having been arrested, and with Mary probably waiting at home for him - does John return to 221B in the morning? Living with ‘Mary’ since last year, it’s not as if he’s leaving 221B now, is it?

Apart from this, there are two main things that bother me, I think, and perhaps most of all the combination of them: John’s silence on the blog after this event, and the sheer amount of sexual innuendos concentrating around John’s wedding.

As for the blog, John seems to be hanging over the comment section instead of focusing on his newly wed wife on their honeymoon, as Sherlock points out. John keeps commenting on it, apparently until Mary makes him stay away from it (“John. You are reading your blog again” appears on August 12, the day after Sherlock posted the wedding photos and talked about John’s “sex holiday”). And yet none of them even comments the 'attempted murder’ that Sherlock solved on their wedding, thereby saving the whole event from disaster - why? (And why is this the last time John ever posts anything on his blog?)

There are lots of erotic hints sprinkled all over the show (pointed out years ago, for example by brilliant Rebekkah in TJLC explained), but in TSoT the sexual innuendos get very blatant, and they’re raining down like a shower. I mean, apart from the ones I’ve mentioned in Part III, there are much more, for example these lines, that on a textual level all seem (more or less) farfetched: The Waters gang gets caught “in the act” by the police. Donovan: “We’ve got the tunnel entrance covered”. Janine: “I’m very pleased to meet you. But no sex, OK?” Sherlock: “...with a history of erectile disfunction”. Molly: “And we’re having quite a lot of sex”. Sherlock to Mycroft: “Why are you out of your breath? Either I’ve caught you in a compromising position or...” 

And then there’s the most blatant innuendo of them all: this absurd theory of what happened to Bainbridge, suggested by a Sherlock mirror (and look how the John mirror beside him is smirking :) ): 

Why would this idea occur to a random boyfriend of Molly’s? Unless it’s a metaphor - and a painfully obvious one. And to whom was this supposed to have happened? To Bainbridge - another Sherlock mirror.

Lestrade’s theory about the killer is that he’s a ‘dwarf’. 

(I mean, come on Sherlock Greg, give poor John a break!) In a recent post, @ebaeschnbliah discovered other suspicious innuendos about an ‘organ’ in TSoT (X), which only increases the impression that TSoT is this show’s El Dorado of innuendos.

And - continuing the pile of subtle pieces of evidence - then there’s S4, marked by John’s terrible sense of guilt over cheating on ‘Mary’:

But isn’t it a bit exaggerated to be this guilt-ridden over some basically innocent text messages to a totally random woman from the bus? While 'Mary’ is (supposedly) forgiven for having nearly killed John’s best friend? The same friend that John himself had recently nearly killed too? If this isn’t blown out of proportions, I really don’t know what is. But later in TLD we learn that this bus woman is actually Eurus in disguise - who I believe represents a side of Sherlock - ‘Sister Sentiment’. Wouldn’t this outburst of guilt be more logical if it had some real background?

Johns policy on the blog seems to be to pretend the stag do never happened. And if this was John’s reaction, Sherlock’s behaviour is probably an auto-defense mechanism aimed to repress and compartmentalise this emotionally devastating memory. Not because he didn’t like what happened, but because of the heartbreak of how everything turned out after that - because of John’s denial and decision to mary ‘Mary’ anyway. As I’ve tried to show in my meta series “What happened to Sherlock” (X) I believe that we’re in Sherlock’s mind from Day 1, that what we see in the show up until HLV is Sherlock living through his memories while reading up on John’s blog. And the rest of the show Sherlock is in coma after an OD, but still running hypothetical scenarios inside his Mind Theatre. If my idea about the stag night would turn out to be true, I actually think this would fit both with John killing Hope in ASiP, with Sherlock losing Faith in TLD and with Love being a constant suspect of Sherlock’s after TSoT. And it would definitely fit with the fact that Sherlock never gets a ‘confession’ out of Culverton Smith (= John mirror) in TLD.

But then in TFP Sherlock has this mental “purgatory” through which he drags himself; this experimental lab that is Sherrinford, ruled by Sister Sentiment, where he’s going through hell and facing his demons. And in TFP we have this conversation between Sherlock and Eurus (Thanks for the transcript, Ariane deVere. My bolding):

EURUS: Oh! Have you had sex? SHERLOCK (continuing to play the tune): Why do you ask? EURUS: The music. I’ve had sex. SHERLOCK: How? EURUS: One of the nurses got careless. I liked it. Messy, though. People are so breakable. SHERLOCK (still playing): I take it he didn’t consent. EURUS: He? SHERLOCK: She? EURUS: Afraid I didn’t notice in the heat of the moment and afterwards... well, you couldn’t really tell. Is that vibrato or is your hand shaking?

I never thought that this conversation made sense; why is Eurus’ sex life interesting at all? Why is she presented as some kind of sex predator, while being painted as gay at the same time? Is this meant to be some sort of horrible homophobic joke from the show makers?  

However, after realising that Sherlock and John might have never left the flat after the stag night in TSoT, this conversation with Eurus kind of offers a new reading that I honestly hadn’t thought about before. (And I think the trap that shouls be avoided here is reading it without emotional context; this context might actually have been provided long before this in the show). You don’t follow me? OK, let’s play Sherlock here. Let’s put up a Mind Theatre scenario and pick this conversation apart, line by line, reconstructing what possibly might have happened during the stag night. I’ll substitute Eurus’ name with MP!Sherlock to facilitate the understanding. Remember that in our little scenario, this is Sherlock talking to himself:

MP!Sherlock: Oh! Have you had sex? This could of course be about Victor Trevor or someone like him in Sherlock’s earlier past. Or it could be a taunt if Sherlock is still a virgin. But if Sherlock did at some point have sex with someone, he apparently has repressed this memory, so the question might be valid for the stag night scenario. And on a meta level, it’s also hard to see why Eurus’ words would allude to something that the audience is not familiar with, since it hasn’t been shown. So balance of probability makes me think stag night, because we might actually have seen it happen, albeit covered up with metaphors.

SHERLOCK (continuing to play the tune): Why do you ask? But now he gets suspicious - always the curious detective. :)

MP!Sherlock: The music. I’ve had sex. In TSoT we have these scenes out at the pubs, with sexual innuendo in the shape of chemistry measuring cylinders, and some rather suggestive pieces of music. 

So this talk of music might just trigger Sherlock’s memory that he did indeed have sex with John, albeit in such an inebriated state that he doesn’t even remember the details, just the fact and the emotional imprint it left on him. 

SHERLOCK: How? Please note that he doesn’t ask “when”, which would sound more logical, wouldn’t it? But at least Sherlock’s subconscious might be perfectly aware that something ‘forbidden’ did happen during the stag night. So the next immediate question would be: how did this event at the stag night actually come to happen? How was it even possible?

MP!Sherlock: One of the nurses got careless. I liked it. Messy, though. People are so breakable. You could say that the nurse ’Mary’ got careless, in the sense that she didn’t seem to keep track on her fiancee’s doings shortly before their wedding. And yes - Sherlock obviously liked ’it’. But since they were both drunk, it was quite messy, both in a physical and an emotional sense. And of course people are emotionally breakable, even if Sherlock tends to despise this fact. But all three of them are human beings who can break down. Which I believe is exactly what Sherlock did, only some time later, when the wedding was a fact (’delayed action stabbing’). And consequently he took a lot of drugs and OD:ed (as I have tried to suggest before X, X).

SHERLOCK (still playing): I take it he didn’t consent. MP!Sherlock: He? Who - John? Well he actually did, didn’t he?

SHERLOCK: She? But where was ’Mary’ in all this? Did she consent to John and Sherlock spending the night together?

MP!Sherlock: Afraid I didn’t notice in the heat of the moment and afterwards... well, you couldn’t really tell. Neither of them probably noticed the ’consent’ issue in the heat of the moment, since they were drunk. And when looking at how ’Mary’ acts about John and Sherlock, indeed it’s difficult to understand what she thinks. ‘Mary’ knows from start how much John has been grieving Sherlock; she must have noticed that there was probably something deeper than friendship going on between them. And she definitely noticed what Sherlock did to John at the Landmark restaurant. And still...

Isn’t ‘Mary’ just a little too tolerant to be a truly authentic fiancee/wife? During the wedding reception she told Sherlock that “neither of us was the first, you know”. And then in HLV we have her threatening to kill Sherlock if he “takes one more step”. Contradictory indeed; I think it’s no wonder Sherlock finds it hard to tell whether she ‘consents’ or not. 

MP!Sherlock: Is that vibrato or is your hand shaking? Vibrato?! No further comments… ;)

So if my horrible hypothesis happens to be true, this conversation with Eurus actually does seem to make some sort of sense. 

I do know this hypothesis is wild, but reconstructing important events backwards from observations of tiny details is actually the Sherlock Holmes character’s MO, so why shouldn’t we, the audience, have a try at it as well? We have Holmes and Watson themselves pointing it out for us in TAB: 

HOLMES: From a drop of water, a logician should be able to infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara. WATSON: Or a Reichenbach.

And, by the way, this show is not unique in using subtle double entendre that might mean something sexual has happened between these two guys. ACD canon is full of innuendos too, what with Holmes and Watson using the Turkish bath together (ILLU), sharing double-bedded hotel rooms (TWIS), etc, etc. And Watson has not been married a month before he abandons his job and wife for some new adventure together with Holmes (who is suddenly waxing lyric over a rose), which ends up with him sleeping in 221B (NAVA).

Tagging some people who might be interested:@sarahthecoat @tjlcisthenewsexy @ebaeschnbliah @fellshish @gosherlocked @loveismyrevolution @sagestreet @raggedyblue @sherlockshadow @darlingtonsubstitution @devoursjohnlock @tendergingergirl @kateis-cakeis @csi-baker-street-babes @88thparallel @timilina @dieseldrakilis @sherlock-overflow-error @elldotsee