It’s not suicide, it’s murder: WHY SHERLOCK IS DYING

**suicide tw

There’s a montage of deaths in ASiP…

We can’t see the cabbie, all we see is a person appearing to take their own life.

Sherlock knows that somehow these are murders not suicides, even if he doesn’t yet know how it was done.

What could be the subtext of a death that looks like suicide but is actually murder?

What about the reality that suicides in the LGBT population are 40% higher than in the non-LGBT population?  

“I do not think it far from wrong when I mention that at least half of the suicides of young men are due to this one circumstance” - John Addington Symonds (1840-1893)

If a person takes their own life due to depression directly caused by a heterocentric culture and institutionalized homophobia, then is it really suicide? Or is it murder?

The victims in ASiP were persuaded to take the pill. The cabbie never touched them. 

I don’t want to kill you Mr ‘olmes. I’m gonna to talk to yer, and you’re gonna kill yourself.

The idea of suicide is put in front of us by the implication that comes with prejudice; that we’re freaks, that we don’t belong, we’re faulty, or ill.

So the murderer (homophobic society) need only push the pill towards us. There were two bottles though, a good one and a bad one. So apparently there’s a way to stay alive. But there wasn’t for the cabbie’s victims. All of his targets, including Sherlock, somehow chose the poison pill. 

The choice was an illusion. Because while suicide is ultimately the decision of it’s victim, it’s a choice that was made for them by a society that forced their hand. It’s not suicide, it’s murder.

We see this over and over…

Looks like suicide but is actually murder: 

Regardless of what really happened, how Sherlock really survived the fall, the fact remains that he killed himself because he was persuaded to do it.

I don’t want to kill you Mr ‘olmes. I’m gonna to talk to yer, and you’re gonna kill yourself.

And again in HLV when Sherlock goes on a “suicide mission” that he was sent on as punishment, forced into a position where he had no choice but to accept “suicide”.

The death by suicide of millions of gay men and women throughout history is the real life tragedy that this subtext is referencing. It’s one of the reasons why Sherlock is dying, and why the show is a fairytale where true love will defeat the enemy that wants him dead.

Yes Anna! Yes this! Wonderful work. :)

This brought me to tears  @tjlcisthenewsexy! 

Think about 1895, the year Oscar Wilde, as a prominent victim, was murdered by society; he died a social death in that year, only to be followed by his physical extinction a few years later.

Think about people like Clive Durham in Maurice, who kind of committed suicide by repressing his true feelings only to end up in a dead, unhappy, loveless - but socially accepted - heterosexual marriage.

Or Alan Turing - only a few days back the British Government prevented the pardon of thousands of gay and bisexual men by outtalking the so-called Turing Law. The Government’s plan will only pardon dead gay men convicted for same sex offences - as if only death would make them worthy to be redeemed. In 2016!

But these are only some prominent cases - there are too many forgotten lifes ruined by bias, prejudice, harrassment and hate.

Because of this, Sherlock as a gay show matters!

This is so painful, @tjlcisthenewsexy but so true. This is exactly the point of this show. Thank you for painting the truth so poignantly.

YES @tjlcisthenewsexy - to all of it! I hadn’t seen this meta before, but this is exactly how I’ve been thinking about BBC Sherlock for a long time now. And even if this was written before S4, to me it fits perfectly with S4 as well. It’s the message that keeps popping up again and again in this show: suicide is referred to more often than murder in this supposed detective story, but it’s provoked by the villains, who represent society’s homophobia and heteronormativity. And this also emphasizes the need of a S5 where these things are finally dealt with.

Mirrored in TFP when the governor shoots himself…

Oh god you’re right 😭

i've been referring to this recently, folks may not have read the original.

Code, obviously

I’m aware that LSiT, Rebeckah and others of those brilliant people who figured lots and lots of things out in BBC Sherlock when I was still a lurker at tumblr, have addressed the many codes hidden in ASiB long ago. But time passes and I don’t have all those links for references, so why not try to refresh this issue a bit again? It can’t hurt, I think, because some people might still be unfamiliar with it. And not least because I actually do believe that ‘the Game is still on’. Anyone who has more links on the subject is of course welcome to add them.

In ASiB, at the Christmas party in 221B, Sherlock notices that John’s blog counter has stopped on 1895.

As per usual in BBC Sherlock, it’s mentioned and pointed out, but we’re also being distracted by other things happening at the same time (in this case Molly’s conversation with Lestrade).

(I’m putting the rest of this meta under the cut, since it’s lengthy)

Keep reading

I like this! When the blog counter got stuck on 1895 I think it was our signal that Johnlock isn’t going to be canon yet. We had no resolution on that code at all, until, TAB was announced and moftiss made a big fuss that it was set in 1895. I think a journalist misquoted and said 1885 and Mark picked at it, and made it clear it was 1895.

This led people to believe, along with the content of TAB that we were set up for johnlock canon is s4. At the end of TAB sherlock is saved by Victorian John who tells him to wake up in his own time. Now sherlock has had the realisations about John it’s time to go back to the present day, and fix it.

Without a doubt the blog getting stuck on 1895 is code, I think Mark specifying TAB is set in 1895 not 1885 when it made very little difference is important. Many took the purple hooded women to be tjlc- “they must win, they are right and we are wrong” and to be fair that’s a very reasonable assumption… but alas s4 did not produce the goods. Hence the likes of Rebekah and LSiT and to some extent skully have left the fandom. S4 was their limit.

The only way I can make sense of this is: following the trial, Wilde was actually sent to prison (as you mentioned), things got worse before they got better. In terms of John’s blog, we’ve gone from the counter is frozen to the blog is actually a jpg file and it’s not being updated now. Perhaps the explicit reference to Wilde in the final problem during the patience grenade was to let us know that we are still going to have to wait. The truth is never pure and rarely simple. Wilde was on trial and now he’s in prison. In fact that’s where we are going now. To see a fake sister on murder island prison. Lunacy awaits.

We have to serve our sentence. And that was s4 plus this hiatus.

It’s very interesting that in TAB a group of women who feel wronged and invalidated are the secret powers that we must lose to because they are right. It was another 23 years until any women got the vote and even longer for true equality and the vote for all women to be extended. So whilst Mycroft/Moftiss acknowledge our bravery and courage and support our cause, we are doomed to fight on for much much longer. I hope we don’t have to wait 23 years… but ya know. It’s a fight. S4 was a fight. This hiatus is. Some of us have faith retribution is coming and some of us don’t anymore. As I’m sure was the case for the oldest and most battle scarred suffragettes.

As for the cryptographer, this is a good shout. Presumably the best cryptographer in the country in 21st century is a computer? In real life I mean. The claim he was upside down means Irene is talking about a man. And yes you are right, it makes me think of Turing as well. Simply because I can’t name any others. Not to mention Turing did save the world when he broke the enigma code, or at least he saved some lives and shortened the war. Coventry represented allowing civilians to be killed and some factories destroyed because if we hadn’t the Germans would have concluded we must have had inside info, they were apparently already suspicious, they would have potentially changed something fundamental about enigma code. Mycrofts flight of the dead is trying to avoid a Coventry situation. Rather than allow a flight of living people to be blown out of the sky, he’s going to replace them with dead people. No one gets hurt. But as British intelligence services were faced with the inability to do this. The people must die or we show our hand and risk losing the war altogether.

Maybe this means moftiss wanted to make it canon explicitly but this was dangerous for them, so they had to make some het shit and go the route they have done, they had to sacrifice real lives. The flight in tfp, the people are sleeping not dead, and we are the little girl all alone who wants to land this flight.

I dunno I’m rambling now…

Nice meta!! Thanks 😊

Thanks for your interesting addition @justanotherone16 ! I agree that ‘1895′ in ASiB was probably a sign to the audience, on a meta level, that we would still have to wait quite a bit for Johnlock to happen. Because I think the two examples in this meta point to some backward ideas of our society that should definitely belong to the past by now, but that sadly are still far too engraved in many people’s minds. 

I forgot to mention (which some people have also pointed out long ago) that the codeword ‘1895′ also appears in HLV, in a subtle form:

The billboard over John’s head can be read as “Information is the power to change 1895″. I’m still in good hope that BBC Sherlock will eventually come up with this transforming information in a more obvious way ;).

The problem is, I believe, that heteronormativity still rules in many senses. Otherwise we would probably have seen far more heated reactions from media, and the audience at large, over the lack of any logical sense to what happened with the characters in S4. In fact, I think there should have been a huge reaction already after HLV, when the show’s classic protagonists - well-known for their fight against crime - were apparently preferring to find excuses for a ruthless assassin with no signs of regret, rather than admitting to any kind of intimate feelings between the two of them. Sherlock becoming a murderer also helped to cover up and distract the audience from this fact.

I believe an episode with Johnlock in it would first have to solve the problem of heteronormativity repressing the protagonists’ minds before they can be together. In S4 Sherlock is probably approaching this problem by first approaching Sentiment in general, facing his own traumatic past. Which is a huge step forwards. But the Patience Grenade, and the voice-over by ‘Mary’ in the end, seems to indicate that he’s not quite there just yet.  

As for Mycroft’s ‘Flight-of-the-Dead’ plan, it might have worked perhaps, and it would have been for a great cause: to save human lives. And I like your idea of this maybe being Mofftiss’ way of telling us that there were sacrifices to be made. But I also think - in an in-universe reading - that it’s an example of what you might get if decision-makers try to detach all kinds of emotional values from their decisions. I mean, stealing the bodies of people’s loved ones as tools to prevent terrorism? Leaving their families to be looked upon as crazy when they become suspicious? I doubt Mycroft would have taken the public blame if it all leaked to the press… 

About the purple-hooded women ‘at the heart of the conspiracy’ as TJLC, I think it was a brilliant idea, and I’m still not totally convinced that wasn’t the actual intention. :)  But in that case I also find it a bit shitty of the show-makers to have them wear hoods like KKK and use murder as their method - nothing to do even with the actual suffragettes of that time. And yes, some people might have been too invested in the predictions of Johnlock in S4, making the disappointment of it passing their limits. Understandable, considering how the show-makers went on about it before the series aired. And yes - it’s a fight, still going on.

@sarahthecoat wrote: “I would call Turing’s death a “murder disguised as suicide” like the ones in ASIP. Hmm, i wonder what sort of poison the cabbie was handing out… we’re not told, i don’t think”.

‘Murder disguised as suicide’; that’s brilliant - why didn’t I think of it? :) No, we were never told what kind of poison the cabbie used on his victims in ASiP. I think the only poisons we actually get identified is the botulinum toxin in TGG and Mercury in TRF - and none of those cases were referred to as suicide. 

@tjlcisthenewsexy wrote the meta about murder disguised as suicide, it's brilliant.

That billboard gives me hope, because it was created by the art dept for the episode, and i don't think you put something like that in, if there isn't going to be a payoff eventually. They could have made anything they wanted, or nothing, but they made that, simultaneously a callback to the 1895 references in ASIB, and "the power to change".

And yeah, homophobia and heteronormativity are not so easily vanquished as a villain in a tv show, so given that i still believe in the 5 act structure, we have a way to go yet.

Code, obviously

I’m aware that LSiT, Rebeckah and others of those brilliant people who figured lots and lots of things out in BBC Sherlock when I was still a lurker at tumblr, have addressed the many codes hidden in ASiB long ago. But time passes and I don’t have all those links for references, so why not try to refresh this issue a bit again? It can’t hurt, I think, because some people might still be unfamiliar with it. And not least because I actually do believe that ‘the Game is still on’. Anyone who has more links on the subject is of course welcome to add them.

In ASiB, at the Christmas party in 221B, Sherlock notices that John’s blog counter has stopped on 1895.

As per usual in BBC Sherlock, it’s mentioned and pointed out, but we’re also being distracted by other things happening at the same time (in this case Molly’s conversation with Lestrade).

(I’m putting the rest of this meta under the cut, since it’s lengthy)

Keep reading

it's good to bring this back up! I think ASIB was also where the phone=heart metaphor was confirmed, although it was during s3 hiatus, i think, that it got laid out in a sort of group meta. When sherlock says, "this is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head", as he's finally unlocking irene's camera phone. (After just talking about love and john watson, apropos of nothing anyone else said.)

I would call Turing's death a "murder disguised as suicide" like the ones in ASIP. Hmm, i wonder what sort of poison the cabbie was handing out... we're not told, i don't think.