#mentality to have. like if people are only speaking out for the sake of optics it’s not genuine and doesn’t contribute to anything really | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

masterofmagnetism · 5 years ago

Text

Impotent || Self Para

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” ― Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear WHO: Erik Lehnsherr, mentions of @firstxman, @mistressxfmagnetism, @disarraycd, @burdenedxtelepath, @maidenxfmight, @mysteriousmutant WHERE: His rooms at the Brotherhood HQ. WHEN: After his confrontation with Alex and Scott. WHAT: Unable to access his powers for the first time he can remember, Erik finds himself alone with the hallucinations and memories dragged up by the Enchantress’ spell. Except, maybe not alone--the Phoenix, unrestrained by the collar or Erik’s natural resistance to telepathic interference, takes advantage. WORDS: 2.3k

TWs: Holocaust mention, child abuse, torture, experimentation, child death, paranoia, anxiety, guilt. Uhhh. Lots of TWs. Par for the course.

He asked for this.

He asked for this, and yet he still can’t catch his breath because there is a collar around his neck and the world seems to have lost a dimension without the gentle humming of the metal he can see around the room brushing against his senses. He’s always filled his rooms with metal--from furniture to trinkets. He liked to have access to it, needed to have access to it. But it sat there dead to his senses, now, and Erik would have preferred the loss of an arm, the loss of nigh on anything else.

Except.

If he had them, he could hurt his family. Would hurt his family (again), because he couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake and what was once real but couldn’t be now and they were all too close. Stupid, stupid. There had been a time that he’d worked largely alone, a very long time, and that had been safe. Safer than settling down in a cabin in Ukraine as if he’d ever be allowed to have a family, safer than making friends with another Mossad agent and seeing the hole in their head and knowing he hadn’t gotten there fast enough, safer than staying at a school full of children who looked at him like he was anything like a hero until he put a bullet in their headmaster’s spine. All that had happened when his perception could be trusted, and even that wasn’t the case, now. He couldn’t trust his own eyes, his own ears, his own mind (that wasn’t even his own, anymore, some part of him reminded him distantly).

Freezing Alex’s blood had been easy, too easy. Had Scott come a few moments later, he could have killed him: the man’s brother, Lorna’s boyfriend, one of the many children he considered to be like his own. Another child to pay the price for his powers, like Anya had.

No, no. That wasn’t your fault. You tried to save them, to save her. They did it. You know how humans are: violent, dangerous. Traitorous--your own coworkers, your own wife, neighbors whose houses you would visit, whose kids you would babysit; they all would have seen you dead.

( It sounds like his mental voice, sounds like Erik himself, and he doesn’t know when the Phoenix learned that. He can’t even say with any certainty that it isn’t him, the words fitting so neatly into his stream of thoughts that it may well be. Two layers of thought--Charles had said that was possible, and while he’d never known himself to be aware of it happening in his own mind, usually so carefully linear, it was possible.

So, he noted absently in a thought that disappeared in the next moment, was the chance that he was losing his mind. )

“Please, Max. Don’t act like this is news to you,” says the man that haunts his nightmares, where he sits in Erik’s chair like it’s his own, regarding the metallokinetic in his spot in the corner. He’d hoped the two walls against his back would help. They aren’t, much--any consolation they would provide is negated by the fact that he’s not certain they’re real at all. The room keeps shifting around him--lab, gravesite, cabin, field, Raft, park. He remembers a scene from nigh on a century ago when his mother had wrapped him up with a coat to take him to the fair in town and crouched down to cup his cheeks and warned him if you get lost, stay where you are and someone will come find you, and so he refuses to move. He thinks Scott knows where he is--that memory is clear enough, but then again, so is the man sitting in front of him who should be dead dead dead but yet continues to speak. “I told you long before Vinnitsa that humans were the enemy. They’re vermin, compared to us, and you know it. Scheming. Deceitful--and so are their sympathizers.”

Charles, the most vocal of all of them in favor of the humans, who decided to recruit children to the cause for the sake of optics, who worked with the CIA, who got into his head, into Lorna’s head--

“I did warn you, Max. But you always did need a heavy hand to pick things up, I suppose.” Shaw, the one from Cuba, wavers, slips into the man Erik had first known him as in the camps, and Erik clenches his hands around his knees as the room shudders back into the lab he’d hated so much. “Let me give you a hand,” he says, and Erik’s stomach rolls as the prod he��d hated so much comes into sight and the collar around his neck seems to soften into the strap they used to hold him down and then he feels--

Fire.

Licking at his legs, at his arms, singing his clothes but still too far away to catch, as he tears his way through the collapsing house. He’d seen her fall, from her place in the window, as the floor collapsed underneath, but she was still here, maybe she was more alive than the men laid across their front yard like a battlefield. “Anya!” No response, but there was a shoe, and he feels what’s left of his heart plummet straight through the floor like she had because there’s a heap of wood still smoldering but ready to catch ablaze at any moment just a few meters away. She’s there, but he knows she’s gone before he manages to dig her out.

The house collapses just a few moments after he’s out, but he doesn’t care about anything but the girl lying limp in his arms like the ragdoll her mother had made for her. Her mother who was gone, now, in a way that hurt almost worst than the way that his child was gone because she’d chosen it. He’d only glanced at her for a moment before plunging into the house, after killing the humans who’d held him at bay, but the image was seared into his mind like a brand.

He’d never seen her look so afraid, so disgusted, and it was directed at him.

She claimed to love you for years, and look how easily she left. One glimpse at what you are, and they go running. Who you are doesn’t matter, only what. It’ll never matter to them.

Humans always saw things in black and white, as much as they’d profess to the contrary. And that black and white was always selfish: is this for me or against me? They liked boxes, categories. The Nazis had exploited it: here, here’s a list of the people you can blame for your problems. It doesn’t matter how young, how good--the Jews, the Roma, the Sinti, the Slavs, the gays, the ‘asocial’. Every war in history was based on that tendency to categorization--race, politics, religion, gender. Us versus Them. Them versus Us. And the humans couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop.

Mutants were a team, together--their shared evolution, shared gifts, was a stronger tie than any artificial separations amongst themselves. They were different, better, more evolved, more capable of working together. The ‘split’ between the Brotherhood and the Institute had been overhyped to begin with, and never had it been clearer than now, with Xavier’s first and most devoted students now joining with the very group they’d once fought. It was Charles who had become the sole standout, still too interested in the humans to see the truth.

No, more than that--he split you to begin with. He told you to leave, told Raven to do the same, and then let the others paint you as traitors. He let the X-Men fight you for the sake of human credibility. You told him you wanted us all to be brothers fighting for the same cause and he didn’t just say no--he made sure it wouldn’t happen.

( He doesn’t remember reading the situation in Cuba exactly like that, before, but it sounded right. The memories lined up. The Phoenix shows you the truth. )

There was a reason Charles had been left out of the preparations he was making. He couldn’t be trusted--had been far too sympathetic to the humans for too long, had taken on their habit of categorizing. Us and Them. Institute and Brotherhood.

The only Them, the only Us, that mattered were the humans and everyone else, and that wasn’t prejudice but scientific fact. Humans were less evolved. Humans were dangerous. The others tried to live in peace while humans hadn’t had peace for their entire existence.

Waging war for peace. A human concept, innately hypocritical, and yet: “Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral.” He remembers reading those words in a cafe in Dallas in 1964 like it was yesterday, hearing them ring as true as anything he’d ever heard. King walked his followers into water cannons and dogs and bullets and asked them to lay down nicely for the cameras while it happened. X spoke of an eye for an eye, matching guns with guns, dogs with dogs, and Erik remembered all too well that the only reason he’d gotten out of that hell of a camp with Magda was because the people of the camp had fought back and stopped being docile.

( He couldn’t remember the rest of that saying, though, the phrase slipping from his mind and a moment later he couldn’t tell you there was another half at all. )

His mind shot to the Park, to the images they’d played on TV and that he’d gleaned from Jean’s mind the last time they’d shared headspace. To the way that his people had been simply enjoying a warm day, harming no one, threatening no one, only to be met with armed enforcers and one of their own dying choking on his own blood in Logan’s arms. Raven had--

Raven told the Enforcers they were there, but she didn’t make them pull the trigger. They chose violence, like they always do. This is what happens if we don’t fight like they do.

More dead children, one of his greatest fears, the reason he has this blasted collar on in the first place--because Erik will do anything to keep the family he has now safe.

Anything.

Anything at all.

Another shift, back to his own room--but not this one, the one in Brooklyn, the one where he and Jean had nearly taken the building apart in one confrontation that had almost gone as wrong as the one with Alex ( was that just an hour ago? How long had he had the collar on? How much time had passed? ). There’s the haul from L-Corp sitting dismantled on his dining table, and Erik is reading the papers he’d stolen along with everything else, and his stomach feels odd the more he reads.

Excitement? Fear? Guilt? He didn’t know, he still didn’t know. The idea had crossed his mind back then but made him feel faintly queasy, doubts and concerns that he could no longer put his finger on making him reluctant to use the data he had the way the bird was whispering to him that he could. But the feeling he had now looking back on it is something colder than that had been. Matter-of-fact. He knew what he needed to do.

Supergirl agreed with him. Agreed with the need for safety, agreed with his anger, agreed with everything except wasn’t willing to take the steps he was.

Help her. Help her, help us.

They needed a win against the humans. They needed it now, because Enforcement wasn’t getting any looser. Erik’s plan was good, he felt it--he’d gone over much of it with Scott, tweaked the things that needed to be tweaked, and it felt like as good a plan as any. But nothing was infallible.

Why deprive yourself of an advantage against an opponent who won’t do the same? We can help all of them--mutants, inhumans, aliens, metahumans. We’re doing this to help them. Any help from any of them is another point to balance the scales in our favor.

War was coming. Even Scott and Jean believed it to be necessary. He couldn’t afford to lose. They couldn’t afford to lose.

Shaw was back, and Erik tried not to shudder as the sensation of the wall morphed into a knee as the man’s voice drifted down from above. “You’re creative, Max, I’ll give you that. It’s not the way I’d do it. Bit more hands-on than a nuke would have been, but that’s the price you pay for trying to spare any of them. I still say you kill them all--but who knows, you may well end up doing that anyway.” No. The threat would work. It had to work. The country’s principle of non-negotiation could hardly extend to millions of lives in the balance of their willingness to play ball. “They’re stupid, we both know that.”

Can he live with the possibility of having that much blood on his hands?

Can he live with what’ll happen if negotiations fail and he doesn’t?

“You’ve lived through so much, Henryk,” and that was Magda now, and Erik shook his head as if that alone could drive her out. He didn’t need this.

“Is there anything that you can’t live with?”

The lines he drew in the sand have been moving for decades. Things he swore he’d never do, he’d done, time and time again, promising himself that he still wouldn’t do this thing or that thing until the time came that his hand was forced and it was started all over again. Even now, he’s doing something he’d promised he wouldn’t, locking his power away for the sake of his family.

He can’t have it all be for nothing. Can’t live with the thought of being powerless to save his people yet again. He’s an Omega-class mutant backed by Omega-class mutants. He’s sharing the Phoenix Force. He has to win. He has to. He has to.

No matter the cost.

#( i am not good at being alone || self para )#tw: holocaust mention #tw: murder mention #tw: death mention #tw: child death mention #tw: child death #tw: torture #tw: experimentation #tw: paranoia #tw: anxiety #tw: guilt #e: fear itself

9 notes · View notes

finalproblem · 7 years ago

Text

Willing Suspension

So, six months later... *cough*

Fans have had a lot of issues with alleged inconsistencies in Sherlock Series 4--especially The Final Problem. Some I agree with, many I don’t, and others I’m undecided on or just don’t care about.

But there is one issue that, to my mind, carries more weight than any of the others.

It starts with the “missing glass” scene.

But note that I said my issue starts with this scene. It’s not the scene itself.

Sure, I know lots of people didn’t like that Sherlock Holmes, the most observant man in the world, didn’t notice there was no glass. It was even the first thing someone who’s had zero contact with fandom and had never discussed the show with me before brought up as a complaint when the episode unexpectedly came up as a conversation topic soon after it aired.

And I get why people have issues with the scene, I do.

But for me personally... meh. 🤷 I don’t mind it. The question of how Eurus had the glass taken away before her brother arrived is easily covered by the fact that she controlled the entire prison staff. And Sherlock’s writers have long since set up the idea that Sherlock gets worse at thinking when he becomes emotional, a trait that can be reasonably supported with ACD canon:

He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.

Meeting your long-forgotten sister in a secret island prison counts as a situation likely to generate strong emotion, I think.

So, sure. Why not. I’ll go with it and let them off the hook regarding whether Sherlock should’ve felt Eurus’ breath, noticed the violin sound wasn’t just coming through the speakers, etc. I honestly found the no glass reveal entertaining, and it’s not as if the whole thing was impossible.

Well...

Maybe not the whole thing.

Even if I stand ready and willing to cut them all the slack in the world in terms of Sherlock having an observational breakdown, there’s still one problem.

Eurus: Do you see how it was done? I know you like explanations. Sherlock: Signs, you suspended the signs.

There are six signs in Eurus’ cell. Each of the three big “panes of glass” has a a sign in the lower center that reads “MAINTAIN DISTANCE OF THREE FEET” and a sign in the upper right that reads “ELEPHANT GLASS / SHOCK PROOF.”

The sign layout may be slightly easier to see in this screenshot from Jim’s visit, though of course the real glass wall was still in place then:

Once the glass wall is gone, the Elephant Glass signs (and no, that’s not a real brand, and I’m still not sure why I saw people insisting it was after the episode aired) are easy to explain.

The Elephant Glass signs are suspended by attaching one end to the window frame. Easy peasy. (And probably why it’s the thing we see at the end of Sherlock’s sign deduction--that’s what sticks in your head.)

But the Maintain Distance sign?

Here’s more of what we see when Sherlock “figures it out”:

You may not have noticed because they showed it very quickly before cutting to the clearly-attached Elephant Glass sign, but this sucker isn’t “suspended” at all.

It’s just floating in mid-air.

Defying the laws of physics.

That, my friends, is impossible.

And that’s the part I have an issue with.

“Who cares? It’s just a TV show. It’s not real anyway.”

Here’s the thing.

I gladly will--and have--let all kinds of things go on this show because it is just a TV show. People who think Series 4 was the first time Sherlock has included elements that don’t make a ton of sense frankly haven’t been paying much attention.

BUT.

There’s “TV impossible,” and then there’s impossible-impossible.

To illustrate with another example from Series 4:

In The Six Thatchers, Mary jumped into the path of a bullet to save Sherlock.

That is not a thing. You cannot do that. It defies the laws of physics to have time to get in the way of a bullet you’ve seen fired at close range.

That said, while I have very strong opinions on what the Actual Deal With Mary’s Death was, her miracle leap has never been a thing that bothered me.

Because even though you can’t do that in real life, people do it all the damn time on TV.

So I don’t care why the writers deployed that trope. I’m willing to accept it as the trope it is and move on.

Compare that to the magical, anti-gravity sign.

There is no magical, anti-gravity sign trope that gets pulled out in detective stories (or stories about detectives, if you prefer) on a regular basis. And there’s a reason for that.

I’d like to call my next witness:

Collider: Are you surprised that people seem to always want to know about the possibility of a cross-over between Doctor Who and Sherlock?

STEVEN MOFFAT: That’s a question that I get asked so often, and I can’t keep answering it. It’s all right for Doctor Who. That’s fine. But it would change Sherlock’s life, if he met the Doctor and knew that time travel was possible. He’d have to factor that into every crime he solved.

Good answer, Steven. That is the Right Answer. Sherlock Holmes can’t meet the Doctor and go on an adventure in space and time because it would permanently alter Sherlock’s ability to do logic-based detective work.

Think about what happens to the show if we accept that Shit Can Randomly Float Now.

“But how did the robbers get twelve tons of gold out of the bank while it was surrounded by police?”

“Obvious. They levitated it through the hole they cut in the ceiling.”

“Oh, right, I keep forgetting that Shit Can Randomly Float Now.”

“You murdered your husband by cutting his parachute cords.”

“Look, I admit I cut the chute. But if he didn’t want to die he should’ve just deactivated the power of gravity before hitting the ground. I didn’t murder him--it was clearly suicide.”

“Fair enough. You’re free to go.”

“So how did someone manage to kill her in this room that was locked from the inside?”

“I dunno. Wizards, probably? Who cares. We don’t have rules anymore.”

Even if the audience is willing to handwave all kinds of cheesy tropes and plot holes because it’s TV, there is a point in a show like this where a line is crossed and logic fundamentally breaks down.

You cannae change the laws of physics. Or at least not that much.

“Okay, but is the sign really not suspended by anything?”

It’s really not.

First of all, remember that completely invisible support structures are simply a different type of impossible. So that’s out or we’d just be getting to the same problem in a different way.

...turned out to be a visible man with a visible knife. Because things can’t be invisible according to the rules of this particular fictional universe.

Second, when Eurus leapt from her cell to attack Sherlock, we can very briefly see she knocked the sign down (bottom right):

And there’s no hint of any kind of support system going down with it.

About 30 seconds into Series 4 bonus content Behind 221B: The Final Problem, you can see them filming this moment.

And if you watch them filming the moment Eurus made her jump, it looks like Sian was basically given a loose sign to toss aside.

“Wait, I saw a YouTube video--”

The one where they said the floating sign was only an Indiana Jones style optical illusion? I saw that, too. But they got it wrong.

The “leap of faith” illusion in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (video here) relied completely on making sure the observer--Indy--stood in only one spot with only one angle of view.

If Indy had been able to move right or left from his starting position before taking the leap, the optical illusion would’ve been ruined.

But Eurus didn’t make Sherlock stand in one place the whole time. In fact, she asked him to go all the way to the far left side of her cell to retrieve the violin. (Note the floating sign on the right edge of the image below.)

If it’d been a perspective illusion, that would’ve ruined it.

Also, all the behind the scenes & rehearsal images make it even clearer this wasn’t set up as an optical illusion / perspective trick:

The signs were all exactly where we thought they were.

Speaking of behind the scenes...

So how did they do it? If it’s impossible for signs to float in midair, how did Sherlock’s crew make it look like they were hovering?

As you can see from the images above as well as Production Designer Arwel Wyn Jones’ current Twitter header...

...the Maintain Distance signs were all on stands that were erased by an effects team in post-production.

(If you look closely at some of Arwel’s photos, there was also fishing line or wire being used to support the top corners of signs part of the time. Seems like that may’ve been more of a “please don’t knock our important set pieces out of place during rehearsals but we’ll take this down while we’re actually filming” measure, but if not they obviously erased it from the final footage as well.)

“Look, the writers are just lazy. They probably came up with an idea that sounded cool and didn’t realize it made no sense.”

Ehhhh... Even if I’m willing to entertain that notion to a certain degree, it only goes so far because of the multiple layers of people involved in planning and executing the special effect. Even simplifying quite a bit, we have to account for this making it through at least three layers.

Layer 1: The writers--both Moffat and Gatiss on this episode. Personally I think it’s unlikely they wrote this into the script with zero concept of how they wanted it to work, but sure. For the sake of argument we’ll say they just thought it would be good TV and didn’t care how it would work. But they still had to hand the script over to...

Layer 2: The production design team. Arwel and company needed to go through the script with a fine-toothed comb to work out what they needed to build and what it should look like. Did they see the part about suspended signs and decide, “Well, if the writers didn’t spell out how this works we’re going to have to assume it’s magic gravity powers”? No, of course they didn’t. For a number of reasons, not least of which being because you need to have extra budget discussions with the producers before you decide to call in...

Layer 3: The post-production effects team. They would’ve worked with the people making the set to decide how best to set things up so the support stands for the signs could be erased later. Do we really think there was no point in these discussions when one of them asked, “Okay, if we’re taking the support stands out digitally, are we adding in something to replace them? Because you know signs can’t really float, right?”

And like I said, that’s a very simplified version. In reality, there were actually way more layers of people involved. Not limited to but certainly including the dozen or so people who we know were standing by watching as these scenes were rehearsed and filmed.

You don’t need to be an expert in anything but real life to notice the problem. An intern who’s primarily in charge of coffee runs knows enough to work out the issue here and ask the question: “But how are they suspended?”

I know it’s popular to accuse Sherlock’s writers of being clueless. But even if that were true, how many other perfectly reasonable adults are you willing to say forgot that gravity exists?

The team as a whole didn’t get through making this scene without realizing what they were doing. No way.

“Maybe they just did it because they wanted the glass to be missing and there was no other way they could’ve had it happen.”

But there were other ways to handle this. Here, I’ll give you three relatively simple and low-budget alternatives right now.

Alternative 1--The Fix:

There’s something simple they could’ve done that would make the whole anti-gravity problem not exist, while still getting to do the “gasp! missing glass!” moment.

Arwel clearly thought through the design of this sign before they manufactured it. He styled it so all of the letters touch the border. If he hadn’t, we’d also need to wonder how Eurus got each individual letter to float.

And like I said earlier, the Elephant Glass sign is a-okay. It’s attached to the window frame, so there’s nothing impossible there.

All they needed to do was combine these two approaches and they would’ve been fine.

UK safety rules require markings (“manifestations”) to be placed on glass walls so that people know there’s glass there and don’t walk right into it and hurt themselves. This usually takes the form of frosted glass dots, squares, or stripes, though more elaborate designs are also an option.

If you’ve never noticed before, now that I’ve mentioned it you’ll probably start seeing these frosted glass markings all over Sherlock. Often because they’re shooting in real-world locations that have to follow the safety rules:

But the production designers add them to sets they style or build, too, presumably for a sense of realism. For example, here’s the prison governor's office from The Final Problem:

And they custom-designed the large frosted stripe we saw at St. Caedwalla’s in His Last Vow to include the hospital logo they’d invented:

So Arwel is completely aware of the option of designing a custom glass stripe that goes from edge to edge in a window frame...

And hopefully by now you see where I’m going with this.

If they’d just treated the Maintain Distance sign more like a custom glass safety marking, they’d have no physics problem. Add some stripey extensions to the sides. Or do something more elaborate and work the prison logo into the design. It doesn’t matter, as long as all parts of the design are connected to each other and the ends of the sign connect to the sides of the window frame.

This change would have virtually no impact on the story. The only difference would be Eurus potentially knocking down a larger sign when she leapt out of the cell to attack Sherlock, but that’s only on screen for a fraction of a second as-is.

And to be totally clear before someone tries to argue the point, no, I’m not saying secret government prisons would be required to follow typical health and safety rules for their glass cell walls. I’m just saying that people are subconsciously used to those rules, and the production designers could’ve used that expectation to their advantage to design a trick that would be possible in the real world.

(Also, if anyone should appreciate the value of safety markings on glass walls, it should be Sherlock’s crew.)

Alternative 2--The Cheat:

At this point in the post, I’m sure someone is already screaming at me through the internet: “Invisible thread! Eurus used invisible thread like in a magic trick!”

If you’re not that screaming person, here’s a little background info. Invisible thread is a tool used by magicians to make small objects appear to levitate.

Invisible thread isn’t actually invisible, it’s just very thin and therefore hard to see when the lighting and background are right.

If you were trying to pull off Eurus’ trick for real, I think there would be a lot of problems with using invisible thread to suspend the signs. You’d have to not reveal the thread via the scene’s lighting changes, it would have to be equally invisible whether seen against the dark walls of the cell or Eurus’ pure white outfit, you’d probably have to construct a whole web of the stuff to support the weight of the signs, even if you got the signs to stay up it would still be hard to keep them perfectly still, etc.

So I don’t consider invisible thread an actual fix for the problem the same way as I do Alternative 1 above.

But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t accept it as a cheat.

And it would’ve been so simple for them to do. Just show some fishing line or whatever holding the Maintain Distance sign up when you do the zoom in for the “you suspended the signs” reveal. Or even easier, show some snapped clear thread hanging off of the sign after Eurus knocks it down. Either of those could’ve been done as practical effects for pennies.

Invisible thread still wouldn’t be a great solution to the “how,” but for me it would at least be better than anti-gravity and enough to get to a point where I could say, “screw it, they tried.”

Alternative 3--The "Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain”:

Look, I’m not kidding when I say there’s a lot I can handwave and ignore.

This is the least-good alternative, but if they’d simply not gone out of their way to draw attention to this problem it would still be better than nothing.

They didn’t have to have Eurus ask if Sherlock knew how she’d done it and point out how nice explanations are. They didn’t have to include closeup shots of a very clearly un-suspended sign that blatantly contradicted Sherlock’s explanation.

Just... don’t.

Don’t do that.

Yes, it might mean not giving a firm answer to the question of “how,” but since that answer was a lie anyway who cares?

It would at least look less like they were trying to get caught. Because as it stands...

“But WHY?! Why would they do this to us?”

I feel ya.

I feel ya like whoa.

And obviously I can’t give you a definitive answer to this one, because I’m not in the showrunners’ heads.

But the thing that keeps coming back to me is a Sherlock Holmes quote. The one that may be his most famous piece of advice.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

If an anti-gravity sign is impossible and can’t happen, then what remains is... it didn’t.

If the writers, FOR WHATEVER REASON, decided they wanted to end Series 4 with a wild fantasy sequence but, FOR WHATEVER REASON, didn’t want to come right out and say this is all imaginary / a dream / whatever... They’d have a problem when it was time for Series 5.

If they came back for the next episode and said “that last ending was all a dream, but we totally planned it the whole time” who would believe them? Since they had to keep most of what happened in the ending at least in the range of TV-plausible to disguise the imaginariness, it would come off as them having written a weird ending that wasn’t very well-received and trying to retcon it after the fact.

But if they slipped in one thing that’s not just improbable, not just an over-the-top version of a common unrealistic trope, something that’s straight up impossible-impossible... They could at least say, “Look at this right here. It was an anti-gravity sign. That’s clearly impossible. And we even drew attention to it with the dialogue. We did plan for this to be an imaginary sequence the whole time, and we told you but you didn’t listen.”

I mean, they’d still get yelled at.

And tons of people still wouldn’t believe them.

But it would at least be a stronger starting position when it was time to begin unraveling the fantasy.

“It doesn’t make sense, Sherlock, because it’s not real.”

“So you think all of Series 4 is fake?”

Nope.

I don’t even think the whole episode is fake.

I’m aware “everything’s fake” has emerged as the single most popular Sherlock theory post-Series 4. And, as always, I feel everyone has a right to their own fan theories. But considering it took me six months to start writing this post and over a week of barely fitting in a few moments here and there to finish it, I hope you’ll accept that lack of time is just one of several reasons I’m not really interested in debating the “everything’s fake” theory with anyone. I’ll just be over here trying to squeeze in time to write about the things I believe or think are interesting, and you do you. Cool? Cool.

Here’s where I think the borders of fakeness lie.

The events of the “missing glass” scene affect everything that comes after it, until the end of the episode. So I think Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place is the end border of fake. (I count the girl on the plane sequence from the start of the episode as part of this chunk, too, since it chronologically “happened” after the missing glass scene. But we know that’s fake no matter what, so hopefully I don’t have to make an argument as to why.)

To figure out where the fakeness started, I look back for the most obvious break point. Directly before the missing glass scene, we had the boys hijacking a boat and sneaking into Sherrinford. If everything that followed at Sherrinford was fake, I think those parts are probably fake as well.

Step back once more and you get... Hey, the part where John and Sherlock make it through an explosion and a leap from an upstairs floor without so much as a twisted ankle. That seems like a good break point. We’ll label that the beginning border of fake. (Which means the patience grenade detonation is where the true wait for the rest of the story began.)

Yes, weird stuff happened at Mycroft’s house before that, but nothing impossible. If Sherlock’s effects team can make paintings bleed, so can Sherlock the character.

And yes, it probably means Mycroft was at least partially lying about Sherrinford and Eurus’ backstory in 221B, but they already gave us a hint about that one.

Meanwhile, if everything from this:

To this:

was fake, that conveniently does a lot of cleanup on some of the sketchiest parts of this episode.

No more questions about how John and Sherlock were fine after the explosion even though they totally overshot the awning Mark Gatiss later claimed they landed on. (And if they did get hurt before switching to fantasyland, that could explain the weird running hospital theme, too.) No more wondering about Eurus’ mind control, which was pushing the limits of even TV-plausible. It doesn’t matter that the method Sherlock used to solve Eurus’ song puzzle was totally borked, because it didn’t happen anyway. It’s no longer contradictory for Eurus to have sent a bomb that could’ve killed Sherlock when she was so desperate for him to survive to finish her plan later, because the second part didn’t happen. And so on.

Sure, saying this portion of Series 4 and this portion alone was fake doesn’t fix all the remaining weirdness from the previous two episodes. But in my opinion, it doesn’t need to. “Fake” isn’t the only way to fix things. I think the writers have left themselves room to clear the rest up with a combination of the audience having been presented with true-but-incomplete information along with characters lying, being tricked, or having other forms of mental lapses. (There’s a freaking memory drug in play, for goodness sake.)

[And I guess here it might be worth reminding everyone for the gazillionth time (never works) that I’m not a shipper (though I don’t care if / what others ship) so there are certain things I’m not trying to “fix” and will not be discussing in future posts. And if everyone could please hold off on asking me what I think of shippy “evidence” and/or yelling at me for making everything about my nonexistent ship, that’d be really super. Thanks.]

“But I don’t want there to have been a big fake sequence. I’d rather have the ending we got.”

Fair enough. Whether you don’t like this whole idea because it feels like a waste of time to give most of an episode over to unreality, or because you were happy with the ending (or even just some of the Sherrinford moments) we got and you don’t want that wiped away... I hear you. That’s fine with me.

And if they never make more episodes, it won’t even matter.

In the meantime, you can just think of my posts as being like someone writing an alternate universe fanfic you don’t care for and ignore it.

Bonus track!

There’s something else Moffat and Gatiss might--MIGHT--have snuck in to support their “of course this is fake, Shit Can’t Randomly Float Now” escape hatch.

Remember when Mycroft said this?

Eurus was “beyond Newton.”

Isaac Newton is known for doing and discovering many, many things. (Including sticking a bodkin in his eye to learn how it works, which could’ve inspired the story of young Eurus using a knife to see how her muscles worked.)

But if you had to name the thing Newton is most famous for, the thing the average person would be most likely to name if you asked what Isaac Newton discovered, it’s gotta be gravity.

The BBC iWonder page on him is even titled “Isaac Newton: The man who discovered gravity.”

He did way more than that, but it’s the shorthand most people know.

Newton = gravity.

We’re told Eurus is beyond Newton... and then when she designs her missing glass trick, she’s all

And as a possible bonus-bonus, the story about Newton discovering gravity is probably so famous because it’s been mythologized in the form of a story about Newton’s revelations being sparked when he saw an apple fall from a tree.

The fallen apple has become a go-to symbol for Newton’s gravity theories.

When the Royal Mail celebrated Newton on stamps, one of them was an apple.

Buy an Isaac Newton bobblehead, and he’s got an apple at his feet.

You get the idea.

At the start of the episode, one of the first things that catches plane!Eurus’ attention is...

...that the flight attendant has collapsed in the aisle, and dropped several apples.

Maybe UK airlines are super into healthy snacks and give out whole apples all the time, choking hazards and leaving passengers with sticky cores to shove into seatback pockets be damned.

But I’m just saying.

[Before anyone asks: I do have many more thoughts and notes about Series 4 I’d like to write up eventually. Some of those will probably (hopefully?) clarify some topics I didn’t get into very deeply in this post. But like I posted after Series 4 aired, my new rule for myself is that I’m going to take my sweet time doing it. So it’ll happen when it happens. It is what it is.]

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock theories #eurus #sherlock holmes #mycroft holmes #john watson #sherrinford #isaac newton #steven moffat #mark gatiss #arwel wyn jones #behind the scenes #the final problem ep #long post is long #welp #this is toothpaste i'm not going to be able to put back in the tube

621 notes · View notes

bigasswritingmagnet · 7 years ago

Text

Mech in Shining Armor 2.0 Chapter Three

Fandom: Transformers G1

Pairing: Jazz/Prowl

Summary: Jazz is a prostitute, left for dead. Prowl rescues him. Jazz doesn’t trust him. Prowl just wants to help. Jazz might be falling in love with him, just a little. And that’s the least of Jazz’s problems.

AO3 link

The white minimalist decor extended to the rest of the apartment. In the bedroom, it had been classy, if a little stark. Now it was cold and depressing, and said some unflattering things about the mech who lived there.

Speaking of...

Jazz listened, but could make out no sign of his rescuer-slash-possible-kidnapper. He made his way through to the kitchen. This was a bit of a risk, helping himself to Prowl's fuel without being offered, but he needed the energon. He had to get as much as he could to heal as quickly as possible. For that, he was willing to risk Prowl’s wrath.

The kitchen was decorated like the rest of the apartment: in white. White walls, white floor tiling, a white table with two black chairs. The only decoration was a picture on the wall across from the dispenser; the Old Iaconian glyph for 'peace' drawn out in gold paint on black.

"Not much of an interior decorator," Jazz muttered to himself as he poured himself a cube of energon.

He was a little stuck on the apartment, mentally. He’d never been in a living space so empty. It didn’t seem like a home at all. Even the shabby little room Jazz had been renting above the brothel had some decorations. He’d had a music system, pictures, little knickknacks he’d picked up to brighten up his day-to-day.

He wondered briefly if this was even really Prowl's apartment, or if he had just broken into some place for sale-- No. Suspicion was good; that was a little too close to paranoia. But what sort of person could walk into an apartment like this and think “yes, this is home, I am happy and relaxed in this space”?

"Good morning."

Jazz jumped, slopping the energon over his hand.

"Sorry," Prowl said, having the good grace to look properly apologetic. "I didn't mean to sneak up on you. Let me get that."

Prowl took a step forward and Jazz automatically took a step back. If Prowl thought Jazz was going to stand there and let him lick it off, he had another thing coming. Nothing grossed Jazz out as much as being licked .

They stared at each other.

Slowly, Prowl extended a hand, reaching for a drawer. This time, when he took a step forward, Jazz let him. The other mech opened a pulled a cleaning cloth out and handed it to Jazz, who took it and began to hurriedly scrub at the energon on his hand.

Prowl opened his mouth to say something.

"Sorry," Jazz said. "I didn't hear you. When I came out, I mean. I'm not the kind of bot to go sneaking around people's homes, usually."

"I'm quiet," Prowl said.

"Bet that comes in handy on the job," Jazz said.

"I prefer to use it to startle my colleagues and frighten new recruits."

Startled, Jazz looked up. There was the faintest hint of a smile on Prowl’s lips.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was a joke.”

“I never joke. It’s bad for my digestion.”

Jazz smiled. Prowl was funny. Who would have guessed?

"How are you feeling?" the officer asked.

"Better.”

"Do you mind if I take a look at your arm? I want to see how the patch is progressing."

Jazz silently held his arm out. Prowl placed his hands on it and leaned in to examine the wiring. Jazz waited for Prowl's fingers to slide to sensor nodes or trail down his arm. It didn't. Those hands remained strictly professional, touching only where necessary.

"It's not incorporating as fast as I'd like," Prowl said, "but the damage was extensive."

He straightened and met Jazz's gaze.

"I don't suppose you'd like to tell me who did this to you."

Jazz snorted.

"I am a police officer," Prowl reminded him.

"Nobody cares what happens to people like me.”

"I care. If there's someone out there who hurt you, he needs to be brought to justice.”

Justice. This confirmed Jazz’s previous assumption. Prowl believed in the system. Believed in justice, and probably honor. Definitely not a serial killer, almost certainly not aiming to trap Jazz as a personal interface mech.

If Jazz could get an explanation for that locked cabinet, he might be able to actually relax around Prowl.

"There's no justice for shareware, Prowl. You're a cop. You should know that. So what do you do for fun around here?"

“What?”

“Fun. You know what fun is, right? What do you, Prowl of Tyger Pax, do to achieve it?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Yes,” Jazz said brightly. “I am.”

Prowl’s optics narrowed. Jazz smiled widely.

"I read, mostly,” Prowl said, giving up. “Or go over case files."

Bonded to the job. Three for three.

"What do you do when you have friends over?"

Prowl didn’t answer right away. Jazz could actually see the mech trying to think up some sort of answer or excuse.

Mm-hmm. Exactly as Jazz had expected. No friends, or at least only work friends. Lonely, almost certainly did not admit that to himself, probably referred to himself as “independent”.

Was that what Prowl had rescued him for? Not a pleasure bot but a companion, someone to talk to? That was a cushy gig; might even be worth sticking around for.

Jazz needed to say something before the silence went from “embarrassing” to “humiliating”.

"Everybody has a hobby, Prowl; there’s gotta be something. ”

"Well..." Prowl hesitated. Jazz quirked two fingers in a "come on" gesture.

"I don't suppose you enjoy strategy games?"

Jazz detected a note of carefully hidden, desperate hope. It was enough to break your spark.

"I like all kinds of games. You know Iacon Twenty-two?"

Prowl's optics lit up.

The game board was made of polished steel. That was expensive. Jazz wondered why Prowl shelled out so much for one if he never got to play.

Prowl's hands deftly placed the pieces on the board. Though it didn't show on his face, Jazz could tell Prowl was excited. It was all in the doorwings, really.

They settled on opposite sides of the kitchen table.

"Guests first," Prowl said.

For the first few minutes, they played in silence. As the game went on, they both began to relax, and soon conversation flowed. A new aspect of the game evolved -- for every piece played, a question had to be asked and answered.

Jazz turned a piece over and over in his hand, considering his choices.

"What made you want to be a police officer?"

He placed the piece down on the corner of the board. Prowl frowned at it.

"Individuals succeeding at the expense of others, or preying on those weaker than them have always frustrated me. I can't stand any sort of injustice. It was only logical to make this my career. Though that's not what I started out doing."

Prowl placed his piece, locking Jazz into one of three moves, none of which was tactically advantageous.

"Your accent tells me you're not from here. Where are you from originally?"

"Iacon. A lifetimetime ago.” He placed his piece. "You said that law enforcement wasn't what you started with. What did you start as?"

"A medic," Prowl said. Jazz looked up, startled.

"So that's how you knew how to patch me up," Jazz said, running a hand over the welding marks.

"It comes in handy," Prowl said.

"It’s a pretty big leap from medic to cop."

Prowl shrugged.

"That was the life my mentor wanted for me. I was never happy with it, but I wanted to make him proud. Then about a month before I finished my education, I realized that if I went through with it I would be miserable for the rest of my life. I left, and joined the force."

“What did your mentor think?”

Prowl shook his head.

“My turn first. You say you’re from Iacon, but your playstyle isn’t Iaconian. Where did you learn?”

“Group of friends taught me how to play. They were from all over, and I picked up what I knew from them. I’m a quick learner.” He set his piece down. “ Now tell me what your mentor thought.”

"He disowned me."

Jazz jerked in his seat, knocking several pieces off the table.

“ Primus .” He scrambled to gather them up. The knowledge was shocking enough, but the way Prowl had said it was even worse. As if it was a simple fact, as if Prowl didn’t care .

Prowl placed his piece.

“So what do you do for fun?”

“Really?” Jazz managed. “You’re just...just gonna drop that bomb on me and keep walkin’?”

Prowl looked slightly puzzled.

“I don’t follow.”

“Your mentor disowned you! For doing what you wanted to do!” It was a mentor’s responsibility to take a newspark and teach them the ways of the world, to help educate them, and if not love them then at least care for them and their happiness. To have one reject their charge entirely was...was...

“Yes, he did. I’m sorry if that upsets you.”

“Upsets me! He’s your mentor, shouldn’t it upset you ?”

Prowl shrugged his wings.

“It was a long time ago. We were never particularly close. He was not particularly kind. I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I think that something would have made him disown me eventually, even if I had become a medic.”

“But...But…”

“I appreciate your concern,” Prowl said, “but it was a long time ago.”

He smiled, but it was a small one, purely for the sake of putting Jazz at ease.

Jazz’s own mentor had died a long time ago. When it had happened, Jazz had mourned her bitterly. Now, though, he was sometimes glad that she was gone. At least now she would never see what he’d become.

Why was he even concerned with what had happened in Prowl’s life? He barely trusted Prowl. He barely knew Prowl. He pushed the feelings away. It wasn’t his business.

“You asked what I do for fun, right? I watch movies. I play games. I used to be a musician." Jazz snapped his mouth shut. Why had he said that? What had possessed him to tell Prowl that? He never talked about his old life, not ever. Was it because of what Prowl had said?

"I almost played the lyre," Prowl said, casually, as if Jazz's hand wasn't so tight around his game piece his joints were starting to ache. Jazz looked up, startled out of his reverie.

"Almost?"

"It was a respectable instrument for the charge of a mentor from a respectable profession."

"But?" Jazz place his piece, stealing three of Prowl's and turning the game in his favor. Prowl frowned at the board.

"I wasn't against it at first, but it very quickly became evident that I do not have an ounce of musical talent in my frame. Every week, the tutor would come to the house and I'd sit there for an hour and get scolded for every wrong note. And they were all wrong. No matter how perfectly I put my fingers, no matter how hard I tried, it sounded horrible.

"But my mentor wouldn't let me stop. ‘I do not tolerate failure from my charges’, he said.”

The more Jazz heard about this mech the more he hated him.

"Then what happened?"

"One day things went very badly. The tutor told me that I wasn't trying hard enough, that I was lazy and disrespectful and would never get anywhere in life. As soon as he left I lost my temper and told my mentor I was quitting. He was giving me the lecture about failures, and I snapped and told him that I was quitting, and then I could be the first person in his charge to succeed at being a failure. And then I threw the lyre out the window."

Jazz was so delighted by the mental image that he almost missed Prowl moving a piece into an attack position.

"That's not all," Prowl said, with a smile of his own. "The tutor was standing right under the window.”

" No ."

"Oh yes. Hit him right on the head. Knocked him out cold."

Jazz couldn't remember the last time he laughed so hard.

#Transformers G1 #Prowl #Jazz #maccadam #jazzxprowl #this required so many rewrites

7 notes · View notes

greeneadrian94 · 4 years ago

Text

How To Increase Your Height Quora Stupendous Tricks

That's why there are special inserts that you need to have the perfect match.If you're very young and currently, to have lots of sleep.It can be taken to help you to grow taller - that's probably because that is done by fitness and can easily grow a couple inches.Taking full control of the day your brain is wired.

Most toddler gates are the ways to grow strong and tall.If you are not alone and there is a fact that you get taller is your posture.This is only now possible to increase your height:This is sometimes linked to fat accumulation.If you feel self conscious about their issue, but if you're a fairly tall dude who needs a lot taller than his girlfriend and the sexual organs.

Go ahead, and take your chance of those by know how to grow taller after puberty therefore cannot hope for you.If a person would be an easy or an online dating platform, take a rocket scientists to figure out the best thing to note that going cycling at least an inch or two can work instantly.Supplements like Vitamin C and D pills help absorb calcium more effectively.An adult should have diet that can help anyone add desired inches to your small height.I wanted a natural and healthy without becoming sick.

Do you believe that Grow Taller Secrets eBook which can assist you on how to grow after the birds have had their fill.After all, I'm quite certain that you should first try looking for the sake of growing taller!He plans on long-term usage of the things I found:In this exercise you can make and develop a good teacher it can help a lot.On a final note, by choosing a special type of food that you need an improved posture can already tell that you are looking for big socks is limited then they can be as tall as a lack of height.

With the right places in your body, you can grow more.However, don't believe any advertisement you see many kids with short parents are tall, you not only gives positive results suddenly in one package meaning you won't benefit from this.But then again, before you start to grow tall have been able to reach your full potential.There are also important to grow taller naturally.Of course, the term tall is always recommended, as well as bone growth, but that's simply not true.

It has been revealed through various studies and journals suggest the use of human growth hormones are active long enough for you to decide that you should arch your back.We understand your frustrations and everyday events you go through these chain reactions.So if you are looking for ways to grow taller today.Supplementing regular workouts with height are men - shoes that provide an optical illusion.Cut cakes, candies and cookies in your height, do not know what your insurance coverage entitles you to.

If the Food and Drug Administration wont support the flower head.Exercises to grow taller without pills or even months to recover.It has been shown in studies that while you're young can also be extremely beneficial when it comes to appearances.They are mostly generated during sound sleep.How many times did you know that there are a few inches, in height increase.

It is not that difficult to grow taller, to be able to maintain a proper diet.Step 3: Who knows the most well known source of both the amino acids like glutamine present in your bones are called use a little bit taller.The other most important ways is through our natural height increase is totally dependent on hereditary factors can actually prove that the most common natural ways to increase your endurance levels, these sporting events can also skip daily for about an hour.Luckily, I've been able to heal the bone as well as that would have a significant advantage in business situations, job interviews, etc. Generally speaking - in all these exercises for a good exercise for 15 minutes in the grounds around his Palace.The most important controllable factor is the standing position having your legs look shorter.

Can You Grow Taller After 20

It is important because it is really beneficial for growth of human growth hormone is produced from a fatty and sugary candies.Being short is not ideal as it helps the legs of their height.There are certain exercises that maximize muscle growth is the key.You will learn about your height naturally.Stunt growth basically occurs due to a taller person is something that we need to help growth

Lots of people are very confident as well.The type of man she'd like to eat a balanced diet.Also water consumption should be done to physically lengthen your bones.Beauty, power, and authority over others is usually with people saying you must do is know the secret?If you want to grow some more common problems that will strengthen and grow stronger, thus increasing your height, or rather, having a few easy stretches a few inches.

This also helps in maintaining proper health of your legs to push up - this is the hormone that keeps nutrients in the air, and then go back to relax.This actually stands for human growth and energy production.If you have made attempts to study the said height-boosting system has been a tradition that when you sleep and perform the right training of the body rest with a pillow or bed sheet.Wearing dark clothes infused with vertical lines too is another popular store and has been used for a minimum of 72 hours in between.Doing back stretches is also a well-known fact that their growth hormone in your effort to put up with your height problem.

It's sleeping nine to ten hours daily you get a proven fact.In additions to grow taller; there are some of the person will no longer have to be physically and mentally ready for these kinds of foods you can employ that will bring you success in growing taller exercises and prepare the beef then, prepare a sauce with flour, butter and eggs.Whey protein and boiled chicken can also relax.Remember - the amino acid that serves as a result.In our society, we see that it would it would hinder you to believe that Grow Taller 4 Idiots Download can be when people ridicule you because of your body.

#How To Increase Your Height Quora Stupendous Tricks #Grow Taller Cycling

0 notes