royalmailtrackngkr63

[tisorridalamor]

We have to save Hatoful Boyfriend from being the punching bag everyone points to for why English speaking audiences don't take dating sims / romance focused vns seriously it's driving me up a wall it contains so much love and sincerity. Sorry it's an otome and you couldn't get over the birds but that's YOUR problem!!!

[beautifulpersonpeach]

What do you think about Namjoon saying 'I wanna touch you I wanna feel you'? Isn't that a bit creepy?

Ask 2:

BPP😭

It was so heartbreaking to watch NJ be emotional while telling us that they can’t be their usual straightforward selves at the moment, but they will soon be able to tell us a lot more after everything has been decided.

I can’t imagine how much pressure and stress they’re under right now… 

I hope everything will work out in their favor in the long run.

**

Hi Anon(s),

I found it funny how I got these asks around the same time, about the same subject, and yet the perceptions by both anons seem worlds apart lmao.

Anon 1, I can totally understand why you might feel uncomfortable hearing Namjoon's speech, but I'm going to spend some time here talking about why exactly your question pisses me off, though you likely meant nothing bad from asking it, and at the end I'll explain why I'm thankful you asked it.

Generally speaking here, one pet peeve I have with native English speakers and/or white people who take an interest in k-pop or in another culture, is how casually ignorant they can sometimes be and when corrected, I've observed many just dismiss it as not a big deal or 'identity politics'.

Lol.

It's not racist that a native English speaker who is non-POC has no idea what code-switching is and what it can look like, but if you've taken an interest in an industry where majority of the people speak English as a second language, which then impacts how they apply certain words (think of how Jungkook titled My You, even after he acknowledged it's not grammatically correct), then some kind of self-awareness is sorely needed.

Code-switching is not just a function of language but of culture. Think of any Black person you know, find them and ask them if they have a 'white' or 'office' speaking voice and if they're careful of what words to use to a white audience. Everything from the type of words used, to the tone or accent, to even posture, changes sometimes when non-white/native speakers switch into that language. And this is just for Black people in America who have spoken English all their lives. Imagine for a moment what it is like for a Korean. Imagine what it's like for a Korean who is mostly self-taught in another language.

I was drafting this response when a moot also talked about this on Twitter, so rather than continue responding to Anon 1 (this subject is very personal for me and the more I talk about it, the more direct I'll be, though Anon 1 was likely just asking out of curiosity), I'll just link to a fuller explanation of what happened with Namjoon's speech here, (end of thread to read upwards linked here too). If any of those explanations seem like too much of a stretch, feel free to come back here with more questions if you have them. :)

*

The curious thing is, BTS have made these sort of cringe missteps when speaking in Japanese, but Japanese speakers don't immediately jump to assuming the worst (like assuming Joon means to sexually assault children), nor do Japanese speakers mock them for using words in an odd way. No, that's a reaction I've only observed in English speakers who are almost always white. And in a sense I don't blame them. After all, it's 2022 - anybody with an international presence should speak and use English the way native speakers do. Apparently. Whatever your feelings about the British monarchy, the fact remains that we live in a world shaped by their centuries of imperialism and colonialism. It bleeds into most things, including subtle expectations like this that most of the time is invisible to English speakers/Western people.

Oh, and then there's the typical hate for Namjoon k-pop stans are notorious for lmao. He's an easy target, and k-pop stans operate on that kind of frequency.

Anon 1, thank you for asking your question. Because honestly, your question/reaction is completely understandable and I thoroughly sympathize, but I can recognize that it can be also borne of ignorance. The great thing about ignorance is that it can be quickly tossed. All one has to do is ask a question, and they'll be informed of other perspectives which hopefully expand the views of all involved. I'm also thankful you asked your question because as I said above, this is something personal to me given my background and where I've lived most of my life. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say my mind on this, because this is something that will keep coming up the more k-pop (and BTS) move into the international spotlight.

**

To Anon in Ask 2, I caught that too and honestly my heart feels a bit heavy for them. I have some theories on what his words could mean, but October 13th to 15th is only a few days away. The best thing at this point is to live in the moment, live with them in the moment, have a good time during Jimin's birthday and the concert, and trust that these adult men who have navigated waters not known to anyone like them before, will continue to do what is right for them.

[casijaz]

Well turns out the other post won’t be the last one.

Decided not to put anything under a cut but this post is tagged ‘long post’ so you can click on it at will. I’ve added shorter sections in (brackets) to put together the point.

It’s always been like this. In fact a couple of months ago I made a silly post about it. Please stop giving each other ass-pats about how not-racist you might be. Or how your one non-white friend says whatever you posted is not racist.

White people: Stop being performative allies.

My fellow peas of the seas, or individuals who aren’t white who interact on this western website: Being a poc is not a trump card to claim we can’t contribute to specific forms of racism.

---

I remember back when I was 17 I defended some (then not obvious to me) clearly racist art a white friend of mine made. I spoke to the people who came onto her art and told them they were trolling, they had to be. Spoke in all caps sometimes, had bolded stuff, all weird ways of talking with this demeaning or passive aggressive tone. I remember thinking ‘hey, do they know I’m a person of colour? They must feel silly! Here I am, a poc, who clearly says this is ok!’ But it wasn’t. In this instance the racist art depicted an indigenous person, and this was an instance of racism against indigenous people, and I am not indigenous. (Translation: Defending racism is bad, even if the people who say racism is bad might be mean to you.)

I also have defended white people who lived in a bubble of whiteness. I figured, well, they live in the bubble, or they’re young, and their actions weren’t coming from a place of malice because they didn’t know any better.  (Translation: Even if you’re a nice person, your actions can still be bad, and you should acknowledge this.)

When someone points out to you that something is racist, you shouldn’t jump to a knee-jerk defence or being passive aggressive in acceptance of this fact. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but you’ll have to go through it. Remember this is not about coddling white feelings, it’s about the reproduction of white supremacy and racist ideologies in a multitude of settings. (Translation: Even if you don’t know anything about racism, or don’t think you’re racist, you could still be. Racism is not as simple as one action. It is a global structure that influences the world.)

Reproducing racist ideologies is something that people of colour can also be guilty of. This means that they don’t have the power to be racist (as racism is about a hierarchical power structure where whiteness is as the top, aka white supremacy) BUT they have the ability to reproduce (or repeat, mimic, etc) the racist ideologies that are prevalent all over the world. (Translation: Because racism is everywhere, everyone can do it, even if they don’t wish to.)

Yes, not everyone has the luxury of being able to understand English to a level that certain concepts come across. Which is why I’ve taken the liberty of adding tl;dr to the end of each paragraph to get that point across for my fellow ESL speakers. However not speaking English well enough can be used as another excuse for condoning racist actions by others. (Translation: Saying I don’t know better is not the solution to stop being racist. Trying to understand the other person is.) 

The point is to stop making excuses. Stop defending the racist. Stop defending racist actions, no matter how small or big they are. 

It is also not up to the people who are actually hurt by this to coddle you and teach you. If you wish to learn more please follow blogs that are specifically talking about these issues. Here’s one. Here’s another. Here’s a fandom specific one. Here are also my own posts about xenophobia and more xenophobia. Unfortunately they are heavy with academic writing but I’ll hope to make a simple English version of it one day. (Translation: Here’s helpful blogs for you to learn more from!)

---

As for the people of colour who talk about adding nuance, different perspectives, and how racism is complicated. Yeah. It really is. But whichever argument I see brought up about ethnic issues are still ethnic issues. That’s about xenophobia. I often talk about xenophobia and racism not being the same thing for a white audience, but I feel like maybe I’ve left fellow people of colour out of the conversation.

I’ll speak from my own experiences regarding this, because I could pull situations from all over the world but it wouldn’t be genuine nor would I be the expert. So. In my mother’s country we have many different ethnic groups who most of are not white (I’m pretty sure they make up less than 1% of the population), who sometimes get into conflict with one another. When they discriminate against one another, that’s definitely a bad thing. However when these groups fight both discrimination against ethnic groups and racial categories come to light, as the two are almost always heavily interlinked for people of colour.  (Translation: Racism and xenophobia overlap and connect when it comes to people of colour.)

This country (Suriname) was colonised by western forces so it brought along a lot of strife. While no Surinamese person would probably refer to themselves in Suriname as a person of colour, when they are put in a Western context they definitely always do. When groups fight against each other they use both rhetoric imposed on them by western colonial forces (racism) and hatred for other ethnic groups (xenophobia). Because both groups are still groups of colour, they are only capable of reproducing racism, not producing it, as they have no power to in the structure of racism. (Translation: People of colour can discriminate one another with something they have power over, and reproducing racism.)

---

This entire conversation has also highlighted something that I’ve deliberately avoided in my previous posts, but my fellow black Tumblr friends haven’t, and that is the issue of anti-blackness.

Throughout all of this it seems like many different ethnicities have obviously come together and argue on different sides, but one side seems to be devoid of a certain race that has spoken up against these issues over and over. 

When black people tell you that something is racist, your knee-jerk reaction shouldn’t be ‘but it isn’t, because I’m not white, and I approve of this.’ Going back to that story of 17-year-old me, I was not the racial group affected by the drawing. I was not offended, because it wasn’t my racial identity that was being mocked. When black people tell you that something is racist, you can assume that they’re telling you something is anti-black.

Don’t turn this a conversation only about the voices of people of colour when at the heart of the topic it’s been about anti-blackness shown by a multitude of people from different ethnic groups, white or not.

I’ve seen people act like they’re on the good side because surely they’re supporting people of colour who’ve told them that the side I’m arguing on seems to be ridiculous. I’m calling people names! Making assumptions! I’m stuck in a western perspective talking over non-western people.

Then turn around and they’re not boosting black voices. They’re not mentioning anti-blackness anywhere. I see MLK quotes taken out of context. They’re clamouring to reblog or create art depicting black characters or meta about them, while that art is either fetishistic or was proven to be made by a racist (who was proven to be so like 2 whole minutes ago).

(Translation: Don’t throw black people under the bus. Listen to us when we’re talking about anti-blackness. All poc are indeed not the same, so don’t treat it like it is.)

I hope this will be the last time I’ll talk about this. But I have a bad feeling it won’t be.

[altimade]

To everyone who says ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ movie is not Singaporean enough.

DISCLAIMER: Purely my personal opinion. Go ahead to agree/disagree, because we all have our own say on things and that’s fine.

First off, I would like to point out that this is a major Hollywood project. Entertainment business is still a business. Why do people make movies? To create something great and make money out of it. And to make one costs a lot of money. The people who backed the project all want their rewards. No one wants to lose their invested time and money. 

Let’s get to the reasons. 

The movie is made by an American movie studio, so it would naturally be mainly marketed towards the American movie audience. 

They put a recognised Asian-American actress as the leading lady not just because she fits the role, but also because the public is already familiar with her. Casting doesn’t only mean ‘Finding the perfect Rachel Chu’, but also ‘Finding the perfect Rachel Chu that can also attract audience’.

And for the rest of the cast, they also went for Asian-American actors/actresses. There are various reasons that I can make out. The Asian-American actors/actresses in the US need wider opportunities, and they want to provide that. There are difficulties with working with someone based in Singapore for a movie made in the US. It’s less risky. Et cetera.

It may not (fully) feed your idealism, but that’s business.  

Maybe, just maybe since I’m assuming, something was discussed behind the scenes and they decided to use more recognised Asian-American names than the ones on the global casting. Maybe it had something to do with the direction they decided to take (also considering at the signing of famous Asian-American comedians). 

And no hate to Singlish, but to people who complain about the lack of Singlish in the movie, there are more things to consider if you were to make a movie.

Do you even see how some Native English speakers treat people with a little grammar mistake, especially if they’re Asian? They would mock them like crazy. Second of all, Singlish would make it hard to understand to people unfamiliar with the dialect. I know there is that magical device called ‘subtitles’ but they don’t usually use it in English-speaking movies screened in English-speaking countries. Once again, it’s for the audience. 

Also, most of the main characters (the ones with the most dialogue) in the first book speak in American/British English rather than Singlish. I never expected it to be a fully-Singlish movie, even though I do hope that they include a little Singlish here and there to make it really feel like being in Singapore. 

Conclusion? I think the producers already tried to create something faithful to the book (and its fans) and go on with their own creative direction, while also considering various business/marketing circumstances.

For the result, we would have to wait until the movie comes out. 

After the recent whitewashing ordeal it is already a heck of a blessing to have the all-Asian cast we have now. Once again, the last all-Asian cast movie was The Joy Luck Club on 1993. 

Is it the Asian Black Panther? No. (Tyersall Park also doesn’t have vibranium)

But is it a progress? Yes. 

Albeit a small one.

The industry has a lot to catch up on, and personally I’m open to even the slightest move ahead. 

[wri0thesley]

#200 au where jotaro and dio are "regular" people in college fighting over the same girl

Your advisor had told you that it would be good for you to be more social, make more friends, actually bother interacting with people and maybe you’d be a bit happier. You’d grumbled about it and asked one of your friends what you could do that would make you seem social but wouldn’t involve necessarily actually speaking to anybody, and she’d suggested that you join the debating society. Come along, she’d said, you can just watch the debates. She’d narrowed her eyes at you and then cooed, ‘there’s something in it for you’.

You had no idea what that was until you came to your first meeting and realized that the ‘something’ she was referring to was eye candy.

There are two gorgeous boys in the debating society and honestly, you’re not entirely sure how anybody can concentrate on anything with them both sitting there, watching.

The blonde one - Dio Brando, your best friend had whispered over to you when she’d seen you staring at him - was apparently a law student, and when he came up to the lectern and lounged comfortably over it, speaking in a voice that was half-velvet and half-steel, you imagined that one day he would be an incredible lawyer. You’ve seen him with various beautiful girls, but never more than once. He has never lost a debate–

Well, except one time.

The other boy, Jotaro Kujo, is a marine biology student and is over six foot of solid muscle mass and a gruff voice that only makes itself known once in a blue moon. Usually he sits near the back and says nothing, but you have occasionally seen him lift a thick eyebrow as if mocking whatever the speaker was saying. The one time you’d seen him actually take to the raised dais; he’d fucking obliterated Dio Brando’s opinion on oil pollution.

He’d seen you grinning like an idiot in the audience and you’d been rewarded with a curl of his lip that was almost definitely a smirk.

“I saw you smiling,” you hear, later that evening when you’re grabbing your bag and intending to go and sleep and blow off the essay you’re supposed to be doing. “Everyone else looked like I’d decapitated Brando in front of them.”

You turn around and are surprised to see Jotaro Kujo in all his hulking mass; hat drawn down over his face and a brusque voice that you’re surprised to find sounds a lot more … nervous when you’re close to him.

You don’t think you’ve ever actually seen him interact with anyone before; he seems to come in, and leave. You’ve seen him in passing when you’re getting lunch and stuff, usually with a shorter red-haired guy, but he’s never seemed overly friendly and he’s certainly never made any overtures that suggest he might recognize you.

You look around to make sure he’s got the right person - the only other people in the room are Dio Brando, who’s surrounded by a legion of adoring fans and looks intensely grumpy, and a group of three girls who are looking at you like you’ve just spat in their coffee. One of them looks vaguely familiar, and you remember that you’ve seen her a lot when Jotaro is around. Eh - you guess a guy that handsome attracts a lot of admirers.

“You were right,” you say, shrugging. “The guy’s opinions were bullshit.”

A smile breaks across his face, and your heart skips a beat - Jotaro isn’t just chiseled and muscled, he’s really fucking handsome.

“The guy’s bullshit,” he says. “Do you want to get a coffee or something?”

There’s a touch of hesitation in his voice, and you wonder if this is the first time he’s ever asked someone on something that might almost be a date. Nah, there’s no way that could be the case - look at him. Still, you smile - because you’re supposed to at least be trying to be social - and nod encouragingly, and that’s how you really meet Jotaro Kujo.

* * *

You’re basically thrown together with Dio Brando, on the other hand - a partner for a presentation he’s supposed to be doing in one of the literature classes he’s taking is taken ill with something or other and yours helpfully decides to drop out of the whole school the week before the presentation date, so your lecturer just throws both of you together so he doesn’t have to actually think.

By now, you’re used to the angry looks you get from Jotaro’s admirers when you’re walking with him - both of you are aware that you’re teetering on the edge of something that might be romantic, but he’s a lot shyer than you’d expected - but it’s nothing compared to the looks of disdain you get thrown from Dio’s friends and followers. Something about the charismatic blond seems to inspire a fervor in other people that’s nigh on religious.

He looks more than pissed at the lecturer throwing you two together - you know that he and Jotaro have had something of a rivalry since he basically obliterated Dio in the marine oil spill debate, and Jotaro’s an imposing enough figure that people know that you may or may not be his girlfriend.

“I don’t want to do this with you,” he’d said, immediately, when you’d sat down beside you, his accent like cut glass.

“The feeling’s entirely mutual,” you assure him, slightly rankled.

He raises an eyebrow at you, and then scoffs as if the very idea that somebody might not want to be with him is laughable.

“We can just get this done, then,” he says. “And hopefully we’ll never have to see each other again.”

* * *

It turns out that, beneath the veneer of arrogance and sneering disdain for others, Dio Brando is surprisingly clever and insightful. What you assume is going to be over when you’re done with the assignment actually becomes a partnership that is immediately reformed whenever a task calls for two people, and sometimes just when Dio wants company whilst he’s studying.

Jotaro’s timetabled classes clash horribly with yours; you’re an English student and he’s a marine biologist - but Dio’s match up incredibly well.

Somehow, you’ve befriended two of the most handsome guys on campus, and you’ve basically had to do nothing.

You don’t have any ties to any particular side in their rivalry - apparently, it had begun far earlier than the debate, and was something to do with family pride - but that doesn’t mean you enjoy listening to either of them rant about one another. And Dio could rant for hours when it came to Jotaro Kujo.

“I wish you wouldn’t hang out so much with him,” the blond grumbles one day, when you’re bent over an assigned text together. You’ve been noticing, recently, that his hair falls over his eyes in a way that’s verging on adorable and that he always smells like burning sandalwood. “You know what people think about you–”

“What’s that?” You ask him, calmly. Jotaro has a habit of pulling his hat further down when he’s embarrassed and he always smells faintly like the salt of the ocean.

“You know,” he shrugs. “That you’re his girlfriend.”

Maybe you are Jotaro’s girlfriend, maybe you’re not - it’s a sentence that you’ve heard the exact opposite of from Jotaro, lamenting that everybody thinks you’re Dio’s girlfriend.

“If it bothers you that much, ask me out yourself,” you say mildly, flipping to the next page in the book. When you look up, his lips are pressed tight together.

“Maybe I will,” he says, after a moment, and then throws himself back into the reading.

* * *

“If it bothers you that much, ask me out yourself,” you tell Jotaro, after watching him methodically sharpen a pencil until it’s nothing but a stub in his fist. His sapphire eyes glance down to the pencil, and then up at you.

“Okay.”

* * *

Jotaro punches Dio so hard he has a black eye for two weeks, and Dio knocks out one of Jotaro’s teeth. 

[le-koko-butter-blog]

John's Erotic Self. TFP meta reading.

Introduction

I recently re-watched The Final Problem and jotted down some notes regarding things I have yet to read in other meta here on tumblr. Perhaps, they are addressed on someone's blog but I have yet to come across it. Now, I can be completely and utterly wrong. As I was writing it, it felt super duper meta but it made a lot of sense to me. Feel free to add or correct what I have written. I'm putting this out here for a discussion about the text.

In order to even read this, you have to subscribe to or entertain the idea that TFP is from John's mind bungalow perspective. If you aren't of this opinion, you'll likely think everything I am saying is nothing but embellished bullshit. I assure you, I'm being entirely sincere.

The notes follow the events as they are laid out in the episode since I wrote down bullet points as I was watching. I was going to include pictures but alas, I am lazy.

Analysis

The Final Problem displays every genre but romance and yet, in its entirety it is a romance. There was a post going around that compared the cinematic shots to other films. The dialogue and the music are also genre-specific. I was tipped off initially because of the outrageous clown sequence at the beginning. I thought that they would go through all the movie genres and end up in romance but they did the opposite. This baffled me and made me lose confidence that I knew what the hell was going on (that was just the tip of the iceberg). There was no romance, partly because all the genre switches serve a function to highlight the fact that indeed BBC Sherlock is a romance as we have always known ever since S1E1. Of course, there is a lot of meta out there already talking about how the show is perceived versus how it really is. (I suspect that that Bond article Gattiss replied to was planted just to put the idea of Bond and shitty movies into our head).

If we also extend this to John's mind, the fact that he deliberately avoids romance is pretty telling. He's afraid to even consider it in fear of its implication. I think this is the theme to the whole episode. Romance is just another word for erotic love. We tend to think of it as something naughty or bad and certainly John has this assumption but Eros as a type of love is named explicitly to separate it from the other types. We are tipped off that Eurus is a Greek name. Well so is Eros. Eros is the erotic love (hence the root word), philia is friendship, agape is like a broader kind of love, a love for humanity, that Jesus kind of love. You can easily google this if you're interested.

Eurus=John erotic self. This is not a stretch. In T6T they made the phonetic leap from ammo to amo. This seems a bit of a reach honestly since these are two common words. To me it's like bowl and bowel. Perhaps I have this impression since I live in a city that has a high population of Spanish speakers. I would also think it is somewhat common knowledge for English speakers. This is just an assumption of course. The phonetic link between Eurus and Eros is less of a stretch since the pronunciation of Eurus sounds almost the same as Eros to many of us. The actors routinely pronounced it differently since that round gutteral Euuurr sound is a bit difficult. I can't say it without mimicking her voice. 

Going forward with the idea that Eurus is John's erotic self, it's interesting to note that Eurus looks a lot like Sherlock compared to her other disguises. She has a wonderful mass of black curly hair that starkly contrasts her vibrant blue eyes. This is interesting since John has only seen her with reddish hair as the girl on the bus, light brown hair as the therapist, and coming from Sherlock's report, blonde hair when she was pretending to be Faith. 

In the initial scene at 221B, I noticed the painting of a man that is directly behind John in the living room is dark. Now, I'm sorta new to tjlc so I'm not sure if you guys decoded this already. I always thought it looked like John or a young William Shatner (The Kirk/Spock thing again?). We don't get a good look at it but it's a white man with blondish short hair. From my recollection, it's always lit. Curiously, it's dark in TFP. Perhaps, this represents John in some way. It's dark suggesting that's he's unconscious. I could be reading into it though. You all tend to be better with the sets. 

Under the assumption that Sherrinford=sherlock, one may assume that Sherrinford is a code word for Sherlock that Mycroft uses and not an actual place. And is it just me or the goddamn place looks like a penis? Anyhow, Eurus is kept secure deep in Sherrinford. Deep, deep down there is that erotic love (Eurus) at the center of John's image of Sherlock. At least, that's how I read it. Perhaps I am off.

 The next scene is in the plane. There is an empty baby seat in the aisle. The little girl looks at it briefly. I of course, think this is baby Rosie in some way. It's interesting that it's empty. I'm not sure what this symbolizes yet. Perhaps it's saying the babe ain't real or perhaps it represents the betrayal of Mary or the emptiness of John's life as a father married to Mary.

 Another interesting thing that I noticed is that throughout the episode all the deductions are freaking absurd. They sound more like the jokes that people throw at Sherlock, like did you know what college I went to by the coffee stain on my shirt? That kind of stupidity. I think that's another clue that we are in John's mind because John's isn't really able to follow Sherlock's deductions. They seem to make sense but not really. They are terribly far fetched.

 Now, you can totally disagree with me on this next point. But I believe the violin playing=sex. As soon as Sherlock plays his own song, Eurus interprets it instantly as sex even though the song sounds absolutely nothing like sex. It's rather somber. But we should recognize it as Irene's theme. John in TLD mocked Sherlock asking him if they had random sexual rendezvous. He's suspicious and massively jealous that Sherlock has had sex with Irene.

Eurus says something so interesting in this scene. She says something along the line that "The man who sees through everything, doesn't see it." In the dream world it's the glass. This of course, is laughable to us as the audience but just for second, think what it means symbolically. She keeps directing him to it, but he can't see it. Sherlock's super observant but for some reason he can't tell that John wants him, can't tell that the glass isn't really there. Oddly enough, the company is elephant glass. John is aware that he desires Sherlock and can't believe that Sherlock who can read other people so easily can't see this.

This little exchange between them is fascinating to me because there is an element of philosophy here that isn't totally ridiculous like the stuff we've heard from her before. My personal favorite is the whole shitey lot is "happiness is a pop song, sadness is poem." Like ok, what next level emo shit is that? The dialogue that I find interesting is when Sherlock mentions that her playing is beautiful. She says she doesn't know if it's beautiful, only that it's right. Sherlock then replies that they are often the same thing. Eurus immediately answers then what's the point of beauty? So to Sherlock, all things beautiful are right. However, Eurus doesn't believe that they are the same thing. Some things are beautiful and wrong. Now, John recognizes the beauty in Sherlock (this sounds corny but it is after all, a necessity to romance) but at this point John thinks his desire for Sherlock is wrong. It isn't right. He's beautiful but it isn't morally right.

Much has been said about the awful rape lines and I agree with what has been posited by other bloggers that John is further demonizing his sexuality since John is likely bisexual. 

Simultaneously, John, Mycroft, and the governor are sitting in the dude's office talking about Eurus' mind control. I think besides the obvious genre level stupidity that we see in many Hollywood films, I think for the meta, it is saying that giving Eurus your attention will compromise you, meaning giving attention to your dark sexual thoughts compromises oneself, and subsequently makes one dangerous and out of control. It's not uncommon for people to link sexual desire with the inability to control oneself. I think this further demonizes John's desire. The only practical solution is to ignore it altogether. They really don't have the option though since Eurus won't be ignored any longer.

Going back to the convo between Sherlock and his sister, John further demonizes his sexuality, turning something beautiful into something horrible. Eurus mentions Sherlock's laugh. She says it's her favorite thing. John must love the sound of Sherlock's laughter. She talks about making him laugh all night and it makes you wonder if Sherlock and John stayed up all night laughing and John all the while was extremely sexually aroused by him. This seems almost like it would be a tender moment between Eurus and Sherlock but Eurus (/John) immediately switches this to screaming. John thinks his desire would harm Sherlock in some way.

But it doesn't really matter because again, Eurus is taking over the prison and John is losing his ability to control his desire although he fights it. When Eurus finally attacks Sherlock she screams for everyone to come in and stop her from killing Sherlock. John is evidently fighting with himself.

Finally Moriarty (the manifestation of all evil gayness) shows up. What's interesting is the Queen song. People have already talked about the song's themes and what it says about coming out and embracing your sexuality. But Moriarty, the evil gay takes out the earbuds right before the word 'love.' John is still unable to see that these desires can be connected to love. His homosexual desire can in no way be connected to love. This is why all the villains in the episode are queer coded because John villain codes all queerness. One thing that strikes me is how Sherlock is interestingly less flamboyant in this episode. Like this is the same guy who used the phase "alarming shade of pink" and z-snapped as he screamed to some rando at the bar that he knew ash.  

But anyway! Back to TFP. In the flashback, the glass is clearly there when Moriarty meets Eurus. Her reflection can easily be seen. I wonder what the glass is supposed to symbolize. I wonder if it's some form of truth. The glass is not there when Eurus, John's erotic self is visited by Sherlock because there really is nothing separating them but it's present when Moriarty shows up. Moriarty and Eurus although supposedly want each other, they actually, in truth don't touch. This is perhaps a stretch. I'm just theorizing here. This just may have to do with the fact that Eurus doesn't think to take over the prison until Moriarty shows up. Not that that makes sense or anything. The surface plot of TFP makes little sense.

A random aside: Eurus mentions a so called brother of Moriarty and says he's as stationmaster. I wonder if in John's mind he is thinking of Culverton Smith.

The killing of the Governor's wife instance is really interesting because I honestly believe that it's about Mary. She is the wife after all. John curiously, is unable to kill the guy. I thought he would be able to honestly, since he is soldier and has killed people and really only a fool would think not executing the guy would not end up in the wife's death as well. But what's significant for John is he can't go against his moral code (this is brought up a couple times in the ep). He can't go against it even if it results in causalities such as the wife's death. You can certainly guess what option he'd make in those stupid hypothetical train games. 

Mary is brought up and the Gov asks what he would do to bring her back. John doesn't answer. What are we supposed to deduce about what really happened to Mary? I don't know if I'm looking at this too deeply but Mary's death and John's involvement is freaking fishy (that wasn't an aquarium pun btw). Also later on the 3 Garidebbs room, John shouts that his "priorities got a woman killed." Hmmm....

 Now to the Garrideb scene: There is red paint on the walls. I hope its paint and not blood. Mycroft mentions that it is still fresh. This reminds me of the text in T6T, "fresh paint to hide a smell."  There's a huge window with an ocean in the background. I think it's already been established that water is feeling. This isn't unique to the show. That's actually a rather old belief. That's why the water zodiac signs, Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio are thought to be ruled by their emotions. The deductions Sherlock and Mycroft here again make no sense. At least to me they don't. They deduce that the guy had laser eye surgery because of his nice clothing. This is absurd. Again, John doesn't quite understand the route of Sherlock's thinking.  

 The Garrideb story is literally and figuratively dangling in front of the viewer under the clear assumption they would know the significance of this story to Doyle's canon and yet, they gloss over it. I think they were trying to rip the heart out of everything and make it just a cold, boring case with forced stakes.

Afterwards, John is furious and Sherlock turns to him and says "Don't let Eurus distract you. Soldiers today." The soldiers thing comes off super bro, no homo and I think in a way it's meant to. John was an actual soldier. Largely being a soldier is about "duty," selflessness, and suppression for the greater good-well, supposedly. If John thinks of his desire for Sherlock as selfish and bad, he would naturally repress it under the guise of being a soldier. If you remember at Sherlock's grave in TRF, one of the most heartbreaking and powerful things John does is straighten up and stand like a soldier. You could see him crumbling underneath this futile attempt at control.

They then enter the next room and discuss the little girl on the plane. They agree that they have to get the girl to crash or land in the sea. Again, the sea and water are symbols for emotion. Later we find out that the little girl is Eurus. Eurus is John. So, it is really John that has to land in the water. He has no other choice. The only thing is whether or not Sherlock will save him or doom him.  

Next to the infamous "I love you" scene. I sincerely believe the coffin is clearly John's. The headroom shouldn't be unnecessary so why does Sherlock cut off a couple of inches? Maybe I don't understand coffins. He deduces that it's Molly because she's unmarried, practical about death, and alone...Why can't this be Irene Adler? There is no real logic in the deduction to be Molly. Most of what he says from the coffin before Mycroft looks at the lid is downright dumb speculation honestly. He assumes that it's cheap and therefore the person is unloved. One can easily say their family was poor. But anyways, it's a dream and John believes that Sherlock pulls shit out of thin air. All that really matters is that Molly is a mirror for John. She's loved Sherlock forever or at least John thinks so. The first time he meets Sherlock, Molly comes in with coffee and Sherlock remarks cruelly that her lips are too small. John could tell that Molly liked Sherlock. Molly to me comes off super ooc. She's usually rather mousey but she's somewhat forward and aggressive in TFP. She has more traits of John than she normally has. I think what's important is that she's always loved him and John has always loved Sherlock. All the ASIP reminders as well as Sherlock running up the stairs at Lauristan Gardens in HLV's mind palace to get back to John the first time he left him suggests that the two were in love at first sight. (I would love to discuss this further but I feel that someone already wrote meta on this).

 However, like John, Molly needs Sherlock to say it first. People have already discussed this, John in addition, is super emotional in this scene. Of course, he cares for Molly but he just looks downright dejected especially after the confession.

 "Saved Molly Hooper?" This line rings awful and trite. But they are utilizing the themes of genre and all it's cliches. I think what this line is actually saying about John is that he is afraid of love, he thinks it will destroy him no matter how it happens, through his own death or through the heartbreak that Sherlock doesn't really love him, that even if Sherlock says it to him, it'd be forced and empty. He thinks he's meaningless to Sherlock the way Molly thought she was meaningless to Sherlock in TRF. Again, the discussion of John's lack of self-worth has been largely discussed.

 A random aside. Molly's message machine: Dead Center of Town? Is that a morgue joke? The timer is also really incorrect and suggestive of a dream. I may be wrong about this but that last 30 seconds felt super long.

 The next scene is where Sherlock has to shoot one of them. Mycroft's words are of course how John sees himself especially in relation to Sherlock who he practically worships. He thinks he's a "stupid little man, little scrap of ordinariness," and that Sherlock can easily "find another". Again people talked about this before in other posts.

 What's interesting and also infuriating about this scene is that John doesn't actually do anything. Throughout the episode he merely gets dragged along.  His inaction is glaring when Sherlock puts a gun to himself and John doesn't intervene. This is his dream and he can't control his subconscious. Again, he thinks Eurus (his desire) is an unstoppable threat to Sherlock.

 Also, I kinda like this scene despite John's silence because it shows how underneath all his annoyance with Mycroft, John thinks he is a good guy.

The music as well, sounds straight up like a Bond movie during this scene. I'm not familiar with Bond but it sounds like the stuff they have playing during the trailers.

After they all hilariously get darted, Sherlock wakes up in that room with the cut up pictures on the wall of Sherlock and Mycroft's child selves. Escaping from his confines, Sherlock literally breaks down the four walls. Others have stated that not only is this a call back to the queen music video but this is metaphorical to what the episode and the creators are doing, breaking  down the so called 4th wall and interacting with the audience.

Meanwhile, John is in a deep well, chained to the bottom submerged in water. Again water is feeling, water is love. John is chained to the bottom drowning in his love but Sherlock can't reach him. It's hidden in some place no one knows where, no one but Eurus. So the key to saving John from the well is Eurus, the key to saving John from drowning in his love for Sherlock is reconciling with John's erotic self. In less fancy terms, if John doesn't have sex with Sherlock he will figuratively drown in his overwhelming love for him. This show is so over the top dramatic in its romance that I am inclined to believe it is actually a 15 year old gay boy's modern angst filled Sherlock AU. But I'm all for it, it's so damned romantic I can hardly think about it before my mind explodes. This is also why the rope which is actually a chain btw saves him even though he was chained to the bottom of the well. Because the thing that John thought was oppressing him, the thing he thought was evil, his erotic desire is actually the thing that saves him. How fucking sexy is that?

Meanwhile, Sherlock confronts his crazy Charlie Manson sister. She threatens him to solve the final problem (Find redbeard through the song). Meanwhile the plane is shaking around the same time that the well is filing in with water. The scenes are shot back to back, connecting them, solidifying that the little girl is John. They are both crying for help.

Sherlock then realizes that Redbeard is actually Victor. We can tell by looking at the little kid that that kid is John. So, Redbeard=Victor=John. But Sherlock can't get to him until he reconciles with Eurus. Interestingly, Eurus compares herself to no one. She felt like she was no one. She was neglected, ignored. But in order to save John, Sherlock needs to connect to Eurus. It's the like most anti-no homo thing ever. There's no platonic blah blah. Connecting John's desire and John's love are essential for his survival. In fact, all of them are the same thing. They are all John. It is worth noting that everything is John but everything is about Sherlock.

Again, when we have the flashbacks of Victor, Eurus is talking about the deep water, how Sherlock always finds himself here. The deep water though, in my opinion is almost always John expressing his love for Sherlock.  We get a flashback of the pool and the Reichenbach falls. At the pool in the Great Game, John with a chest full of explosives attempts to sacrifice himself for Sherlock. Sherlock is startled by this and it's probably the first time that Sherlock knew that John cared for him. During The Abominable Bride, John shows up at the Reichenbach falls and saves Sherlock. Interestingly, the dark blue water from the aquarium bounces off Sherlock's face in the close up with the black back drop sequence suggesting perhaps that John protected Sherlock again at the aquarium. Maybe this has something to do with Mary again?

The song was addressed in an earlier post where someone impressively decoded it, realizing that the "I'm lost without your love" was added by Sherlock because just before you thought it couldn't get insanely more romantic, it had to go another mile. I still don't understand what the "seek my room." part is supposed to mean. Maybe it refers to something literal in the real world or perhaps it's sexually suggestive.  What's super important though is that Sherlock knows at this moment that the little girl in the plane is Eurus. This is essential to solving the final problem and saving John Watson. The little girl is the link between the different sides of John, the "friend" part of him, the Redbeard/Victor John and the "erotic" Eurus John. The girl is the both of them. The plane metaphor is where the literal falling in love thing comes in to play. John is falling in love and has been but he's so afraid of landing. He's so afraid of what it would do to him. He thinks it ends in death. He needs Sherlock to coax him through the landing. Cause yes, again it just gets even more fucking romantic.

 When Sherlock delivers the line "Open your eyes," it brought shivers down my spine. I bet money that is super prominent in the 4th episode.

He keeps saying, "this time get it right." It's referring to her killing Victor but it harkens again back to what is probably a bitch load of regrets John has, especially in marrying Mary and never acting on his feelings for Sherlock.

Then there is the Greg scene and the corny great guy, good guy thing that references ASIP. It just shows again what John thinks of Sherlock. This echoes again the "who you think I am is who I want to be" speech in TLD. Sherlock had always wanted to be the hero John thinks he is. In this scene, we see that John sincerely thinks that he already is this guy.

The whole "Emotional Context" thing is also important. Eurus kept bringing this up throughout the episode. John says to Sherlock in this scene that Sherlock gave her what she needed, emotional context and then says, "It is what it is." (The fkn johnlock line).  What John needed to realize what that the emotional context is central in accepting his erotic self. He needed to realize that his love for Sherlock is not impure just because he desires him. That in fact, a central part of that love is the desire. Consider as well that Sherrinford is surrounded by a huge ocean, a symbol of John's deep love for Sherlock.

The ending is weird as hell. There's a long violin duet between Sherlock and Eurus. I wonder what song they are playing. It sounds gothic as all hell. He plays a part, she repeats it, and then they play in concert together. Often people link love making to music. It sounds weird and gross since it's his sister but it's not really his sister.

Then there is the dreaded Mary speech. She is completely wrong about Sherlock and John. Someone said that Mary is heteronormativity and I agree. John thinks that he should be this straight guy who gets married and has babies, who occasionally gets to go on adventures with his bro. I'm not sure why they decided to end it this way. Maybe it's because the show is showing everything that it isn't, starting with the obvious genre switch, the ooc-ness, and the massive amount of plotholes. It appears like a shitty horror/action flick when in fact, it's actually a romance. All the characters are ooc but they really are presenting certain aspects of the characters (mostly different elements of john), and the plotholes are actually carefully laid out either to aid the genre switch or to add a physical image in the episode of feelings and thoughts (the chain for example).  Once you think it's symbolic and from John's Mind Bungalow, everything actually has it's place.

 Oh and the fucking dummy...what the hell, I feel like that's a symbol for me. After watching the episode over I can't believe I took it's seriously. It's actually so ridiculous that I'm shocked I took it at face value. I actually laughed a lot the second time around. That whole "Which one is pain" statement was so downright dumb and reminiscent of shitty teen horror flicks that I feel I should immediately have been alerted. But I was too invested in Johnlock that I just wanted them to kiss. I didn't want to think. I didn't care about the plot honestly.

On a final note, the Mary monologue also represents what history has done to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, kept them imprisoned in this little box, forcing them from realizing who they ACTUALLY are which of course, is gay lovers. ^_-

 If you come across this, please share with other interested meta writers who might have something to add or correct me on. Most of what I've written are musings. I still think I need to watch all 3 episodes in order again to flesh out my ideas but I thought some of y'all might be interested.