This has to be my favourite S4 fourth wall break… John using the audience’s POV of this scene as his phone wallpaper, rather than the picture Mrs Hudson actually took (which would… you know… show them looking into the camera).

Well spotted @devoursjohnlock! This perspective makes the photo seem very arranged and the ”happy family” (a concept that Sherlock dismisses later in the episode) a bit artificial. It also contrasts with those scenes in S4 where the characters are indeed looking into the camera as if breaking the fourth wall in far more illogical moments.

Ajay’s Google image search

I’ve been spending a bit of time with The Six Thatchers this week, and one thing that caught my eye is these photos that come up when Ajay does his image search for Sherlock:

Some of these could come up as images in a search in the Sherlock universe, but I don’t think they all can. If we number the shots, starting at the top left, we get this pattern:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4

5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9

10 - 11 - 12 - 13

14 - 15 - 16 - 17

Images 3 and 14 are “Hat-man and Robin” press photos. Not sure about 16, but it probably belongs in this category.

Images 5 and 12 are from the Ricoletti press conference. 12 can’t be a screenshot, because we don’t see the ceiling from that angle, so these are presumably photographs taken by the press:

Images 8 and 15 appear to be from John and Mary’s wedding. I’ve added 7 here, although I think that’s a different suit.

Image 9 appears in only one place. You know, in case we needed reminding during The Six Thatchers that this blog post exists. Which, actually, we do. Really nice to get this confirmation, the more that I think about it.

That leaves images 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 11, 13, and 17.

I’ve given up on image 1 (too washed out) and 6, 13, and 17 (too generic).

Image 10 has Sherlock showing rather a lot of neck, and although I first thought it must be from ASIB, it’s not. I can’t find it in Hounds, either:

Likewise, image 4 is a puzzle because of the colour scheme. It looks like either an office scene (Sherlock exiting an office, and a desk with a chair and monitor behind him) or like an outdoor scene (boxy vehicle behind him). I think that’s a sunlit cityscape in the background:

I’m not skilled enough to make a tumblr-sized version of this that represents the colours faithfully, but assuming that the object behind him is a desk, the only one I can find with legs that could match it is in the governor’s office in TFP:

Too much of a longshot, I think. Still, I wish we had a better version of that orangey image.

Images 2 and 11 are from the Bloody Guardsman case in TSOT. The most interesting of this set is 2. In TSOT, the transition from 221B to the barracks has interlaced shots of John and Sherlock walking left to right and the soldiers parading left to right and right to left, never sharing the same shot:

After Sherlock steals the bearskin hat, we get this:

But, Sherlock is being stealthy here. There’s not an opportunity for a laugh with the soldiers (and it would have been in poor taste after finding Bainbridge). So, how can the following photo (image 2) exist in the Sherlock universe?

In fact, this is not from the Sherlock universe at all. It’s one of Arwel’s production shots (see it on his website). This is a picture of Ben, not Sherlock.

Image 11 is similar; here’s the Ajay photo (L) next to Arwel’s shot (R ), which doesn’t exist in TSOT:

I’m guessing these are from the same shoot.

That was time-consuming, but I think worth it for an addition to S4′s Adventures in Breaking the Fourth Wall, and especially for the Six Thatchers case reference.

Keep reading

rb to make this easier to find again

David Welsborough as Arthur Conan Doyle

Remember this guy in s4ep1, ‘The Six Thatchers’ (TST)?

(x)

Did you know the same actor also played Arthur Conan Doyle on the show ‘Murder Rooms’ – quite successfully, I might add?

So, what if there’s a meta level to consider here: What if this actor was chosen for this part on ‘Sherlock’ precisely because we were supposed to read David Welsborough as Doyle?

…Doyle the ‘father’ of the fictional character Sherlock Holmes who never saw his creation ‘come out of the closet’!

This would give us three interpretative levels of the Charlie Welsborough case in TST:

(More under the cut…)

Yes, I know what you’ll probably say: Actors aren’t defined by the parts they played in the past; we shouldn’t confuse actors with the roles they play, etc.

But!

But…Not only is series 4 the series that made fourth-wall-breaking into a sport, no, the casting process is also usually influenced by whatever acting history and experience an actor brings to the job.

Also, let’s not forget that, ahem, meaningful casting decisions aren’t exactly a new phenomenon on ‘Sherlock’: A lot of people have pointed out that Toby Jones as Culverton Smith is a, shall we say, interesting choice, seeing as he played the Dreamlord on ‘Doctor Who’ and a lot of us suspect ‘Sherlock’ series 4 (at the very least) to be a dream.

@mr-brightside24 has pointed out here that the actress who played Nurse Cornish in TLD played the sister of the bisexual character Ianto Jones on ‘Torchwood’, making the casting of this actress a sly little reference to John’s sister on ‘Sherlock’ (and a hint at John’s possible definite bisexuality).

So, I can totally see them picking the actor Charles Edwards for the part of David Welsborough because he evokes feelings of ‘Oh-hang-on-he-played-Doyle-didn’t-he’ in a British audience. It’s Mofftiss’ sly trademark style of playing with meta readings of the show.

‘Cause if we read Mycroft as The Author™, Moriarty as all earlier adaptations of ‘Sherlock Holmes’, and Wilder in TAB as a representation of Billy Wilder ( “Thank you, Wilder,”), why shouldn’t we read David Welsborough as ACD himself? 

(And yes, yes, I know it’s more complicated than that and that Mofftiss are currently playing with the idea that Moriarty represents them, the storytellers. But bear with me for a moment, okay?)

Think about the first name they chose for Mr Welsborough: David.

They had used the name David once already: in TSoT…

Back then, they used this name to (at least) cast suspicion on the paternity of John and Mary’s baby. 

Whether David, indeed, turns out to be the real father, or whether the baby even exists, is neither here nor there, the fact remains that they used the name David to (at least) signal to us that this might be someone’s REAL FATHER.

Think about it: Doyle is the real, actual father of Sherlock Holmes. Not Wilder, not Moffat, not Gatiss, nor any of the countless other script writers of the 20th century. It’s Doyle!

Add to that the fact that Charlie Welsborough is an obvious Sherlock mirror (what with travelling to Tibet, like ACD!Sherlock Holmes after his fake death at the Reichenbach Falls)…So, we’re obviously supposed to read Charlie Welsborough as Sherlock on the show.

Remember how ‘Many Happy Returns’ specifically showed us a mountainous landscape for the Buddhist monastery scene at the beginning?

That’s where Sherlock was hanging out during the hiatus between TRF and TEH. So, it’s not just an ACD!canon thing. Our Sherlock was there, too.

And now look where Charlie Welsborough got off to:

Charlie even tells his father, “Didn’t you see the mountains?” just in case we wouldn’t get the connection.

But if we read the Charlie Welsborough case simply on a literal and subtextual level as BBC!Sherlock being unable to come out and pretty much ‘suffocating’ in the closet, the connection to his father remains unclear.

What’s up with Sherlock’s dad on the show? Nothing much. Is David Welsborough really a good mirror for Sherlock’s father on the show? 

It just doesn’t look like Sherlock has a troubled relationship with his dad. In fact, his choice of love interests seems to be influenced by the role model set by his dad. Granted, I could be wrong about this, and maybe they will, at some point, reveal something deeply troubling in Sherlock’s past that’s connected to his dad, but it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me at the moment.

However, if we’re supposed to read this on a meta level (instead of merely on a subtextual one alone), then it makes perfect sense: The ‘Dad’ in question is Doyle. The troubled relationship is the one between the creation and its creator!

A creator who loves his creation and yet doesn’t really, fully understand it.

Remember what the Welsborough parents say about Charlie: “He was our whole world.”

And in a sense, Sherlock Holmes was Doyle’s whole world, however much he might have hated the idea himself: This character is what defines Doyle’s legacy. It’s who he is to us as an author.

Sherlock Holmes is Doyle’s whole world, but at the same time, Doyle could never let him come out of the closet (we can only speculate about what Doyle thought about the issue), he just couldn’t because he was stuck in a conservative time.

In a sense, that’s what we get with David Welsborough too: not an overly malicious evil character, probably a good dad, but one who is stuck with his conservative views on the matter (a Cabinet minister!). 

I mean, the tragedy of the actual Charlie Welsborough case in TST is basically that both of them, the father and the son, are fated to remain children forever! 

Charlie Welsborough can never come out of the closet and thus will remain a child forever, never becoming an adult with an open, fulfilling, happy love life. 

And the dad, in his own way, will remain a child forever too: 

He’ll never get the chance to challenge his own beliefs and maybe (at least) start a discussion with his son on the issue. The dad is stuck and will, in a sense, remain a child, who is utterly childish and besotted with a conservative idol (I mean, a Thatcher shrine, a shrine! Like a teenager with his favourite sports idol! Come on!). 

The tragedy here is that this probably utterly good, but also utterly clueless man will never grow as a father figure, never have an actual conversation with his son, never see his son for what he is and never have that moment later on in his life where he sits down with his child and says, “You know, son, we will have to agree to disagree on what Thatcher did to the unions, but I’m beginning to see your point when it comes to what she did to gay men.” 

(And yes, I’m talking from experience here. I’m pretty sure David Welsborough would be the type of father who, at some point, together with his Conservative Prime Minister would have voted for gay marriage. Because that’s what actually happened. Not because people change completely and entirely – they rarely do – but because they redefine the issue for themselves. Looking at David Welsborough, I’m pretty sure he would have come round and eventually would have been the kind of father to keep nagging, “Son, any chance of you finally finding yourself a steady boyfriend, getting married, buying a house and adopting half a dozen children?” The kind of father who waits for his son to turn into his gay poster child. And Charlie would have just laughed and rolled his eyes at his old-fashioned dad. I think it would have been possible.)

But the point is: None of this happened. They never got the chance.

Because the closet is too suffocating, too restricting for it. Charlie never grew up to be an adult and to be ‘out’. And his father never grew up to (at least) question some of his beliefs. They both remained stuck, the son in the closet, the father in his childish, naive Thatcher-idolizing-phase. Growth was impossible for them because the closet was too overpowering, too horrible, because it defined everything they did. The closet didn’t allow for this growth to happen.

That’s what I’m personally taking away from these scenes. 

And that’s why I think it would fit the Charlie-&-his-father as Sherlock-Holmes-&-Doyle reading so well: 

Doyle was stuck in a conservative time and he was forced to keep Sherlock Holmes in the closet and eventually kill him. Sherlock Holmes was never given the chance to grow as a character. (Not in that way, at least.) And Doyle was never allowed to grow himself as an author. They both remained stuck, stunted in their growth.

And that would make perfect sense as the meta message we’re supposed to take away from this:

Mofftiss showed us Wilder in TAB to tell us where they took their inspiration from, and they’re now telling us what Doyle himself couldn’t do. 

Which, in turn, can mean only one thing: That they WILL do what Doyle couldn’t!

Do we get another hint that we’re supposed to take previous roles the actors have played seriously?

Yes, in fact, we do.

Not only did the actor who plays David Welsborough famously play Doyle himself…

…but the actor who plays the son, Charlie Welsborough, played a famous gay character before!

Rob Callender is still very young, and I’m sure he’s a fine actor, but he hasn’t played that many roles yet. There’s, however, one that I’m absolutely certain at least Mark Gatiss took notice of: he played Guy Bennett (the leading role) in the play ‘Another Country’.

Guy Bennett is not just a gay character, the part is based on the life of Guy Burgess, the infamous gay spy. And the entire play is basically about how difficult it is to come out of the closet. No way this casting decision was a coincidence!

(If you’re unfamiliar with the play, the probably most famous monologue from it is up on youtube. It’s from the film adaptation with Rupert Everett as the gay guy who’s telling his best friend, played by Colin Firth, what’s what.)

So, we have an actor who previously played Doyle play David Welsborough and an actor who previously performed in a leading role on stage, in a play that is all about how oppressive the closet is and how difficult it is to come out, as Charlie Welsborough, aka, the Sherlock mirror.

Come on! What do we say about coincidences…

We’re supposed to read them as Doyle and his creation Sherlock Holmes, I’m certain of this.

By the way, Mofftiss have (low-key) played with this idea before: 

In ‘The Blind Banker’ (yes, the episode that gave us a sculpture of a gay God sitting right between Sherlock and John!), the teensy-tiny part of the dead banker Eddie Van Coon was played by an actor who’s best known for the role of a gay man in another show:

He played a gay character (leading role) on ‘Sinchronicity’ – a gay character struggling to come out.

I would call this a total casting coincidence if it weren’t for the fact that he played opposite Paul Chequer, who played his best (albeit straight) friend on ‘Sinchronicity’. And well, guess what? Paul Chequer turned up on ‘Sherlock’ too…as DI Dimmock:

And he didn’t just turn up as Dimmock at some point on the show, no, he turned up in exactly the same episode (TBB) and in connection to the Van Coon case!

The above screencap shows us Van Coon (the Sherlock mirror) and Dimmock (the John mirror) together with Sherlock and John in one clever shot.

So, again…an actor who played a gay character struggling to come out of the closet playing a Sherlock mirror who died in a locked room…and an actor who played the gay guy’s best friend playing a John mirror…Too many coincidences for me.

This casting decision has to be intentional. 

(As for the mirrors: Van Coon wears similar clothes to Sherlock’s. Dimmock has the same haircut as John. Then, there’s the fact that Dimmock is directly reflected in the mirror opposite John, etc. You see where I’m going with this, right?)

And these two actors played a gay man struggling to come out of the closet and his best friend on another British show. A coincidence this is not!

So, in conclusion, I think it makes perfect sense that Mofftiss would up the ante in s4 and play up their little dig at Doyle by using actors who had previously become associated with the roles of Doyle and a gay man in the closet, respectively.

Addendum:

There’s also a little EMP idea that I would like to add. If you’re not into EMP, you can ignore this and skip right to the end. But I feel drawn more and more to an EMP explanation, so here goes:

An EMP theory which I haven’t read so far and which I’ll totally claim as my own:) is the following crack theory one: (And yes, I know it’s rubbish…)

Sherlock faked his death in TRF and left for Tibet. (We know he was there somewhere from the Buddhist monastery scenes in ‘Many Happy Returns’.)

Sherlock never came back, though. He’s still sitting crossed-legged on the ground in some sunny monastery courtyard, meditating. All of s3, TAB and s4 are his mediation on what might have been.

The reality of where he is and what he is actually doing is bleeding through in this dream scene in TAB here:

His actually being in a Buddhist monastery is also the reason why Sherlock dreams of Charlie Welsborough’s journey to Tibet:

He’s including all of these details in his dream as clues, to remind himself that this is just him meditating and not real.

And since Buddhism originated in India, that is also the reason for Sherlock’s sudden obsession with Agra. (Maybe Sherlock has a few Indian monks sitting and meditating right next to him.)

The monks in Sherlock’s vicinity would also explain his sudden obsession with headless nuns (in TSoT), his dream about the league of furies (in TAB) and his odd porn ideas about nuns who have holes in their habit (in TEH). Thank you @ebaeschnbliah for reminding me of that last scene again.:)

Well, and the fact that Sherlock lives in this Buddhist environment with monks from India would also explain why he started to include elephants in nearly every scene of his dream-meditation. Aaand not just in this one…

Want more crack evidence that Sherlock is sitting cross-legged in a courtyard, meditating, surrounded by monks, wearing pointy capes? 

Well…

So, there’s my crack EMP theory.:)

And since the ACD-canon!Victor Trevor left for Nepal, I’m just going to assume that he is somewhere right beside our BBC!Sherlock, making him tea encouraging him to, “Go and tell John!” ‘Cause my headcanon!Victor is the perfect wingman, you see.

And all the while, Irene’s ringtone keeps startling all the other monks out of their meditation, and Sherlock keeps screaming at his phone, “Jesus, you’d think I could have some peace and quiet in this monastery! I swear, this woman!”

More of my meta (especially the stuff about the sculptures used on ‘Sherlock’): HERE.

Transcripts from Ariane deVere.

(x) All the screencaps in this post were taken from here.

@sagestreet , I don’t know how I could have managed to miss this entire meta, but I do agree with the applauses; it’s simply brilliant!! Charlie and his dad, one actor playing ACD and one doing a gay character - I just can’t… And nurse Cornish’s actress playing Ianto Jones’ sister in Torchwood - wow! (I loved that show until Russel T Davis killed off Ianto, then I didn’t any more. Now I might reconsider the possible reasons why he actually did that). Dimmock and Van Coon, their actors even showing up in the same scene - amazing! And as for Charlie’s and Sherlock Holmes’ experience in Tibet, let me just remind you that Benedict Cumberbatch spent five months of his youth in a Tibetan monastery. ;).

For some odd reason, I now envision Yoda, with his slightly nasal vocie, calmly nodding and repeating your wise statement: ”A coincidence, this is not.” :))) These are not random choices by Mofftiss; they simply can’t be.

good one to re read!

Drippy yellow paint; a meta.

(Sherlock series 4 is the paint that hides something from view)

Yikes, this just inspired some thoughts.

In The Blind Banker Sherlock seeks out the GRAFFITI ARTIST, Raz, to learn about painting. Much later we get this S4 promo pic smiley above that’s very obviously meant to be graffiti style, the lines clearly made by a can of spray paint, in the same yellow paint of the original smiley. The original smiley itself was painted between TBB and TGG in series one.

That yellow drippy paint parallel above tells us that something has been sprayed over and vandalized in S4, hiding something from view.

Even the promo pic of John and Sherlock in their chairs in a flooded 221b is very painting-like, as others have pointed out, making the graffiti over it very much like the “blinded” banker portrait in TBB. So who actually is responsible for vandalizing series 4? Who painted over the painting? Graffitied the portrait? Destroyed a priceless work of art?

We see John as the one doing the vandalizing in TFP.

And we get this wall-view shot below, where as if to hide something from our view John even sprays two dots to cover our (the audience’s) eyes, just as the paint covers (blinds) the eyes of the man in the portrait in TBB.

Now BEFORE you get too excited about interpreting John’s little artwork there as telling us that S4 is John’s “cover story”….

Back in TBB we see that John was framed as the graffiti artist and got the blame for it. But he didn’t do it. 

He was caught holding the can, with no way to prove it wasn’t him. And an ASBO.

A painting is a story - I mean, that’s a fairly straightforward metaphor that doesn’t need much explanation. To hammer this home, Sherlock even says “author” in the Raz graffiti scene when we’d expect him to say “artist”, implying that on the meta level both of these ideas are being compared:

And then….

John is our storyteller and the narrator of most of Doyle’s stories. So of course when S4 went wrong, John gets the blame for it. And we even saw graffiti artist John in action painting away on the wall in TFP.

But TBB tells us that John didn’t do it. He was framed. 

Without proof though, or witnesses, he gets slapped with an ASBO. So as far as the official record goes, now he really DID do it. But that’s not what happened at all.

The mess that was S4 wasn’t his fault, but he was caught with the pen (=spray can) still in his hand. John was always our storyteller, but someone else took over in S4.  “John Watson is no longer updating this blog”

So TBB tells us that John never graffitied the wall, yet… here in S4 we see it happen with our own eyes. 

Which tells us that S4 is one giant LIE. We can no longer trust what we’ve been shown.

And the reason we see it this way in TFP, is because in TBB, John couldn’t prove that he didn’t do it. 

John looked guilty with the spray can (read: pen) in his hand, and as we were shown neither Sherlock nor Raz had any intention of helping him get out of the situation. Sherlock ignores John when he arrives back at 221b fuming about his court date, and next time he sees Raz he once again is ignored and shut down by both of them.

Poor John.  He had no witnesses come forward to back him up, so even though we never hear about his court date again we can pretty much bet that he got that ASBO.

John, our usual storyteller, is of course getting the blame for the heteronormative ending, even though the clues tell us that he had put down the pen before S4 began. So who is the real culprit? Well Raz is given a look that suggests he’s a Sherlock mirror - black coat, collar up:

If Sherlock is the painter, then perhaps he’s also the author. TBB also just happens to feature the infamous “pen toss”, but have another look at it and consider what’s really going on here:

A pen. John is passing Sherlock the pen. The tool of a narrator. Perhaps a hint that in this adaptation we’ll gradually see Sherlock take over as storyteller, gradually….or suddenly. 

[If this isn’t a bit too deep then maybe you’ll like this. If you remember my discussion of “Look to your left; it’s a political statement” in this meta, you might remember the significance of the way Left (wing) versus Right (wing) are used in the dialogue and cinematography and direction to tell us that this adaptation is going in a brand new direction (ie. to the “Left”). Now have a look at the pen toss again. This might be too subtle for some because obviously left versus right is subjective depending on perspective and angle and…. Yet. It’s fairly clear in this particular example. The pen is thrown from the right side of the screen, to the left as we symbolically change storytellers.]

Sherlock taking over the storyteller/narrator role from John explains EMP, the idea that what we’ve been watching since HLV (or since elsewhere depending on who you ask or how dark of a mood they’re in) is inside Sherlock’s mind and therefore not quite real, but it doesn’t explain why Sherlock would sabotage his own love story. That’s a whole other thing, and I’m sleepy now. Thoughts and comments are welcome! @monikakrasnorada @sagestreet @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @shylockgnomes @raggedyblue @tendergingergirl @possiblyimbiassed @the-7-percent-solution @holmesianscholar @sarahthecoat @darlingtonsubstitution @devoursjohnlock @loveismyrevolution

For some reason, I seem to have missed this truly brilliant, two-years-old meta, in spite of being tagged. I noticed it first now, thanks to a link from @ebaeschnbliah​ (X).

I do love this so much @tjlcisthenewsexy, because it’s ‘meta-on-meta’, and I think it gets right to the core of the issue! And great catch that Raz is yet another Sherlock mirror! :) In fact, I think there are more hints in TBB that Sherlock is the ‘painter’:

1. Sherlock finds a spray can and actually holds it, sniffs it etc, when he and John are investigating the graffiti close to the railway:

2. When Sherlock, John and Sarah visit the Chinese circus, Sherlock finds another spray can when he sneaks into their dressing room. It’s the same kind of paint (Michigan) that Raz was talking about:

After this, he even spray-paints a mirror, showing himself behind the graffiti:

So, Poetry or Truth? It seems to me that the ‘truth’ of an artwork - art being a creative and therefor constantly changing process - must lie somewhere between the artist’s subconscious and the eye of the beholder. But the baseline in this case is, as you explain above, a clear message from the authors: John Watson didn’t do it. 

I think it’s significant that John tosses the pen to Sherlock already in S1, in the episode that has code as a major theme. And this isn’t’ just the audience ‘reading too much into it’; there’s simply too much code. It just can’t be a coincidence that in the show we have a) a painting with someone who resembles Arthur Conan Doyle blinded by graffiti and b) John calling a graffiti painter an ‘author’, while in his actual blog post about the Blind Banker, this is how John describes Raz:

“Sherlock worked out that the graffiti was like an ancient secret code. So we went to meet a ‘friend’ of his. I think the correct term is 'delinquent’. I called him much worse.”

From the very beginning we, the audience, have access to this online blog; John Watson’s version of the story. Even if John is an unreliable narrator, who seems to twist the events to his own advantage and leave out many details from his stories (for example, if he did get an ASBO, he doesn’t mention it on his blog), I still think the blog descriptions are brief and straight-forward enough to represent the ‘truth’ in this Holmes adaptation, rather than ‘poetry’. Or, as Sherlock says in MHR: “Only lies have detail”. While John’s blog posts might be the equivalent of Watson’s (ACD’s alter ego) published stories in The Strand, the blog language is far less poetic and far more summarized. But if the blog is John’s version, what is the show? Does John really need two different media to express his author work to an audience? Why would he need two? Or - as I believe the pen tossing actually means - are we perhaps looking right into the artist’s subconscious? In this case Sherlock?

In S1 the pen(manship) is tossed over to Sherlock. In S2 Sherlock stops updating his own website The Science of Deduction (John: ”Nobody’s reading your website”). And, to be honest, by HLV I don’t think there’s much ‘science’ done any more for the rest of the show, neither is there much deductive reasoning - at least not good enough for crime solving. Sherlock’s S4 deductions are lacking, at best: The seat in Charlie’s car was made of vinyl, thus he died from a fit? Nathan Garrideb was short-sighted and Howard was an alcoholic, thus Alex committed the murder? Guilty by process of elimination? That would not hold in court, where the burden of proof lies with the accuser. Sherlock’s deductions in HLV are idiotic, though: “Mary phoned the ambulance”. “It was surgery”. I mean, really?? 

So, it seems we’re now into ‘poetry’ and Sentiment rather than science. In S2 Sherlock also suspects that John’s blog has “been hacked and it’s a message”. Later in S2 Moriarty hacks the blog (and 221B), and after TSoT (that would be in the context of S3) Sherlock himself hacks the blog and starts posting on it. After this we never see any more posts from John on it. In S4 we have John typing on a jpg file that never appears on the ‘real’ blog. And after S4, as @tjlcisthenewsexy mentions above, there’s a message on the blog, referring any reader over to Sherlock: “John Watson is no longer updating this blog. For the latest Sherlock content on the BBC go to the Sherlock programme website.”

So I totally agree with @tjlcisthenewsexy that in BBC Sherlock, the detective himself has taken over the role as narrator. And not only from HLV, but from Day 1 in ASiP, I believe (I’ve tried to provide evidence for this in my meta series ‘What Happened to Sherlock’, X). It’s just that I think from the beginning the narrative was based on John’s blog combined with Sherlock’s own memories, while after TSoT Sherlock lost contact with reality (originally @raggedyblue‘s idea). And when he loses reality contact, I think his ‘graffiti’ over ACD’s artwork is getting more and more absurd and surreal. While still providing a lot of code, obviously. And the code still points to the original work. ;) 

@gosherlocked @sarahthecoat

this is great to see again, and with additions. What leapt to my mind was also, in TST, when Sherlock is in Mycroft’s bunker-office, MYCROFT is holding a pen! So not only did John “pass the pen” to Sherlock, now Mycroft, a stand-in for the writers of the show, is holding it. 

Laboratory Conditions: Molly’s polaroids in The Game is Now

A new escape room pic went up on the 221B twitter account today (x).

This bulletin board is in a room built to resemble Molly’s lab. Other views of the lab room are visible in a trailer released a few months ago (x), but this is the first public view of the bulletin board. Among the mementos shown are a dozen or so photographs; the tone of the captions is similar to that of Molly’s blog. The comments are overtly consistent with all of the major straight ships (ironic in this room, for spoilery reasons).

Of the polaroids that I recognize, all are promotional stills or posed photographs of the Sherlock cast. This caught my eye immediately, because it reminded me of a meta I wrote after S4 aired, about the photographs Ajay pulls up in a Google image search in TST (x). In fact, one of Molly’s escape room polaroids is from a series of photographs that I talked about in the Ajay meta (outlined in yellow below), which appear to have been taken by Arwel. These two slightly different photos were taken during the same shoot.

MH + SH

Below are the other polaroids shown in the escape room pic, with their original promo versions. I tried to track down as many as I could after playing the game; thanks to everyone who helped with this process, especially @nixxie-pic​. There are a few that I’ve identified that don’t appear in the posted photo, so I haven’t included these. Molly’s captions are below the pics.

I don’t see what all the fuss is about, why doesn’t she just put some clothes on?

Celebrating John’s birthday / What a lovely day

Mrs Hudson with her best friend

A cheery smile from Sherlock? (different pic, same shoot)

Like Ajay’s photographs, Molly’s polaroids all exist in our universe, not in the Sherlock universe. The writers seem to have gone out of their way to ensure that we know that we’re outside of the narrative. Even if these pics could have been taken by someone within the Sherlock universe, Molly’s captions drag us out of it again. How could she know about Irene Adler’s best disguise? Why reference John’s birthday for a picture taken in TSOT costumes when it was never mentioned in that episode? How could anyone in-universe even have taken a picture of John in that outfit?

I haven’t been able to identify the other full pic shown above, either in the show or among the promo pics that I have copies of. If anyone recognizes it, please let me know.

John catching flies

Wherever it turns out to have come from, I rather wish escape room!Molly hadn’t given it such a spidery caption.

Other posts about The Game is Now: The Queen’s Portraits | Selections from the Mind Palace Bar | Victoria Regina

This last picture of John… I just spent an hour trawling through my picture folders & cannot find an exact likeness… but it screams out ‘pilot John’ to me!

Good catch, @nixxie-pic , fandom goddess!

oh my god the sounds John makes after Mary dies.

I can’t. I can’t. 

Oh god that noise. In the commentary or an interview Martin confesses. The little shit was trying to make Ben laugh, break character, in the middle of a scene!

HMMM another break in the fourth wall?

DEVELOPEMENT  OF  THE  FALL

________________________________________________________________

The Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland play a prominent role in the original Sherlock Holmes stories. It’s the place where it comes to the final confrontation with his archenemy James Moriarty. ‘The greatest crisis of my career’ Holmes writes in his farewell letter to Dr. Watson in the story titled ‘The Final Problem’. One of the most interesting deviations from ACD canon in the modern Sherlock BBC adaptation lies in the considerable time difference between the first meeting of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson and the introduction of James Moriarty, which ultimately leads to the dramatic events at the Reichenbach Falls and Holmes’ hiatus after his faked death.

While in canon Holmes and Watson know each other for 10 years before Moriarty enters the story (X), Sherlock BBC introduces that famous antagonist of the great detective already in the first episode and sets the Reichenbach Fall only eighteen months later, thereby replacing the Swiss waterfall with Bart’s roof. Jim Moriarty compares falling to flying … ‘falling’s just like flying except there’s a more permanent destination’ … and indeed, both topics play a major role throughout the story told so far and are constantly repeated in the series and episodes. Appart from S1, each series ends or starts with a ‘fall’ or ‘flight’.

However, whereas strangeness, improbability, drama and violence increase in a lot of other repeated scenes, the outcome of the ‘fall’ seems to decrease.

TBC below the cut …

Keep reading

Some thoughts:

I like these observations, and aren't we all eager to see sherlock wake up! I love the idea of it at the beginning of s5, but i wouldn't put it past these "cheeky" so and sos to put it at the END instead!

Problematic Promos

Now that some time has passed, I was taking a look back through the promotional materials for Season 4, and I noticed something. I apologize if someone has already mentioned this stuff! I looked around for a meta with this topic, but I didn’t find one, so here we go!

I recall that when the promotional materials for Season 4 were released we all sort of commented on how dark everything in the photos appears, what the hair looked like, how the burned out flat photo with just Sherlock and John in it looks like a heart, and how the smiley doesn’t show up in the reflection in the flooded photo. I also recall intense discussion about the three photos in the chess themed set, and how the leak of the final photo drew so much attention from The Powers That Be. All of these are valid catches, but I noticed a few other things relating to the promos.

I’m not sure what they all mean, to be honest, but I do know that everything on this show is deliberate, so…

1.       There are still no photos of Eurus/Sian Brooke in the official photos on the BBC One Sherlock site. Surely by now it would be ok to release some. I mean, Sian Brooke is attractive and well known enough to warrant some photos! They have certainly included her in some of the post season videos. But if you’re looking for a lovely, composed, high resolution shot of Eurus or any of her personalities, you’re going to be disappointed. I think this is weird, especially given that we see both Culverton Smith and Jim Moriarty (and he was a big secret) in the photos.

2.       This photo is NOT of 221B. Look closely.

The smiley is different than the original! It’s tilted wrong and aligns with the wallpaper differently.It’s just not the same. I know I have seen a meta on the Miss Me Smiley from this image: 

The burned out smiley almost looks like a mirrored version of this one, doesn’t it?

So what about this bumped out area in the wall in our 221b? Not there in the burned out flat.

Where are the windows on either side of the room? Again, not there. 

And what about that trim high up on the burned out left wall? Not there in 221b.

The people in this show KNOW their set. This can’t be a mistake or something where they thought, hey…that’s close enough.

So what does it mean?

3.       Now on to the seven images that they released the week before the season started. One a day, a right? Burned out flat in the background. I noticed a few things about these images. 

But first, this image for reference: 

Every one of these characters is wearing the same clothing as the group shot, but with a coat/jacket added in the individual photos, with one exception. 

Take a look:

(Greg’s photo is missing from the BBC One Sherlock site. A little odd, given the wind-up they gave these each day…but anyway.)

Molly. 

Molly is the exception. Her clothing is completely different under her lab coat.

To me, it seems like this singles her out in some way. Just like they single Mycroft out in another way. 

Can you see it?

It’s the smiley again. In each of the other six photos, the smiley moves around, but it is the original smiley from 221b. The size, shape, and orientation are correct.

But Mycroft’s smiley is different. 

It’s the strange, new smiley from the burned out flat photo, and unlike the other character shots, this smiley isn’t on the 221b wallpaper. 

I think it may have been @the-7-percent-solution who commented to the effect that if you want to mess with people’s heads, just mess with their surroundings. Make things a little bit off, and that will make the audience uncomfortable, and they probably won’t even recognize why. Maybe that’s what’s going on here. Or maybe there is some deeper meaning. 

I don’t know for sure, but I do still believe that these weird details are part of a larger plan. The cast and crew are too attuned to the details of the show to overlook errors or do things half-assed. 

Thoughts?

As always, apologies for tagging the unwilling or missing a tag! Please share with whoever may be interested. Thank you!!

@escaroles @sherlockedmeta @gingerhermit @mycroftseyebrow @marathecactupus @averybritishbumblebee @k-s-morgan @the-7-percent-solution  @fkngerlocked @inevitably-johnlocked  @hnm22705 @goodmythicalmail @hubblegleeflower @disregardedletters @sherlock-overflow-error @a-consulting-criminal @hollyberrypie @morgendaemmerung89 @shamelessmash

Another thing about Mycroft in these single shots; he’s the only one looking directly at the viewer - breaking the 4th wall deliberately… 🤔

HMM, good catch.

BBC Sherlock - a wakeup call?

There’s quite a lot of scenes in this show where our dear John Watson is seen to be waking up from some kind of ‘sleep’ or another. In other scenes we also see Sherlock Holmes waking up, but in Sherlock’s case it’s always a matter of waking up from a drug-induced state. In fact, there are so many waking-up scenes that I’ve been starting to wonder if this in some way is meant to be significant? Let’s take a look at the evidence: 

1. John waking up

The very first scene in ASiP, John is waking up in his bedsit after a nightmare about the war in Afghanistan (please note the breaking of the ‘fourth wall’ in this scene, with John staring out at us from the screen):

In TBB John wakes up from a nap on his new job, after having exhausted his brain with Sherlock’s great search for codes in the dead journalist’s books:

Later in the same episode John wakes up from being knocked out and kidnapped by Shan and her gang:

More under the cut: 

Keep reading

wow, that really is a lot! (oh, and one more,they both wake up on the stairs during the stag night). I don't watch a lot of tv but this seems like more than i am used to seeing? (on elementary, it is a bit of a running joke that holmes wakes watson up in various ways, but i think they are just riffing on the ACD canon instances.)

THE MODERN HOLMES FAMILY PICTURES IN THE GREY CHAMBER

________________________________________________________________

When Sherlock wakes up in the grey chamber in The Final Problem - after he got hit by the dart - he notices that a row of family pictures have been plastered onto the walls around him. 

Below the cut are images of all the fotos from the walls - cut out and enlarged for better viewing. They are sorted the way they appear on the walls. I put them in three blocks - left, right and middle wall. The middle wall is the one Sherlock pushes open and leaves the grey chamber. Here I added some pics from the episode itself for completition.

There is a fourth block at the end for a single picture with a foto collage which doesn’t appear on the walls. At least not in one of the pictures Arwel posted on his blog (here). I tried to find it in the episode but unfortunately that scene is very dark and the fotos most of the time too blury to spot a certain Image.

Lots of pics and very little text under the cut ….  Enjoy :)

Continua a leggere

@ebaeschnbliah wow what a job! Every time I see these pictures, I feel uncomfortable with the fact that they have shamelessly mixed images of the young actors with the images of the actual actors who played the littles Holmes. Difference evident above all taking into account Mycroft who would have to gain weight and lose weight as a squeezebox if the photos had a real sense. Then the young Moffat is missing. They could have also used his photos at this point. Looking at them then closely it hit the collages, between different siblings, but above all between actors young and young actors. Also between Ben’s young parents and new TFP interpreters. As if there was a double reality for each and the two were roughly merged. A reborn Frankestein.

@possiblyimbiassed @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @loveismyrevolution @sarahthecoat

@raggedyblue, @ebaeschnbliah: This is very interesting, thanks for taking so much trouble, and I agree, this collection has a slightly disturbing quality. They are breaking the fourth wall in an extreme way by mixing these pictures. You truly get the impression that there are two sets of families, the “real” Holmeses and the actors. And the fact that they did this proves that they expected us to take a very close look at these photos. 

And I find it also very peculiar that young Eurus is nowhere to be seen. Because many of these photos were taken at a time when the family was still intact and there is no reason why should not appear in any photo. Except, of course, she does not exist at all. Occam’s razor, anyone?

Also the focus on Sherlocks blue eyes and the dark eyed little Sherlock. Eye colors don’t change. But little Sherlock and Eurus having dark eyes while the adults have light eyes 😐😐😐

wow, so much detail! and almost none of it really visible in the episode to the ordinary viewer. Thanks, @ebaeschnbliah , for giving us such a close look. @raggedyblue & @gosherlocked i agree, the deliberate mixing of the young actors and the actors young (!!) even to the point of blending their faces, especially blending sherlock’s and mycroft’s faces with each other, wow. What is that about, are they the same person too? @belladonnaxy , I have to wonder at the casting process for the two young actors, how many did they see, how much priority did they place on actual likeness? I know sometimes a show either works hard or gets lucky that way, and sometimes they just put a higher value on getting “the right person”. But the choice to do this photo collage that rubs your nose in the differences, hmm!

The complete absence of “euros” clinches it for me that she’s definitely not real.

Impressive piece of work @ebaeschnbliah! It’s fascinating to have a closer look at these photos, and I agree the mix of actors/characters does indeed seem to break the fourth wall. And Eurus’ absence is glaringly obvious. Which could also be said about the family film Mycroft is shown at the beginning of TFP. And Eurus is supposed to be the youngest of the kids, so she could hardly be the one who was doing the filming. My guess would be that Sherlock ‘borrowed’ characters from horror movies like Orphan…

…and The Ring…

…and composed ‘Euros’ in his mind theatre with these characters as template.

@gosherlocked @sarahthecoat @raggedyblue @sherlockshadow @loveismyrevolution @fellshish @mathilderunout @devoursjohnlock @sagestreet @beingallmysterious @tjlcisthenewsexy

yep.

@sarahthecoat @raggedyblue @gosherlocked I remember the Doctor Who episode with Clara trapped in a dream ( the first one with the Zygons). In dreams, things are changing. You can’t read stuff in magazines because it’s mixed up letters. You look different in a mirror too. What if the mixed up photos from both the child actors and the actual actors as children is a part of it?

Does my thought process make any sense???

yes!!! That makes a lot of sense! And it reminds me of the book "mary" is looking at in the holmes' sitting room, supposed to be about "the dynamics of combustion" but with a chapter about the thyroid.

THE MODERN HOLMES FAMILY PICTURES IN THE GREY CHAMBER

________________________________________________________________

When Sherlock wakes up in the grey chamber in The Final Problem - after he got hit by the dart - he notices that a row of family pictures have been plastered onto the walls around him. 

Below the cut are images of all the fotos from the walls - cut out and enlarged for better viewing. They are sorted the way they appear on the walls. I put them in three blocks - left, right and middle wall. The middle wall is the one Sherlock pushes open and leaves the grey chamber. Here I added some pics from the episode itself for completition.

There is a fourth block at the end for a single picture with a foto collage which doesn’t appear on the walls. At least not in one of the pictures Arwel posted on his blog (here). I tried to find it in the episode but unfortunately that scene is very dark and the fotos most of the time too blury to spot a certain Image.

Lots of pics and very little text under the cut ….  Enjoy :)

Continua a leggere

@ebaeschnbliah wow what a job! Every time I see these pictures, I feel uncomfortable with the fact that they have shamelessly mixed images of the young actors with the images of the actual actors who played the littles Holmes. Difference evident above all taking into account Mycroft who would have to gain weight and lose weight as a squeezebox if the photos had a real sense. Then the young Moffat is missing. They could have also used his photos at this point. Looking at them then closely it hit the collages, between different siblings, but above all between actors young and young actors. Also between Ben’s young parents and new TFP interpreters. As if there was a double reality for each and the two were roughly merged. A reborn Frankestein.

@possiblyimbiassed @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @loveismyrevolution @sarahthecoat

@raggedyblue, @ebaeschnbliah: This is very interesting, thanks for taking so much trouble, and I agree, this collection has a slightly disturbing quality. They are breaking the fourth wall in an extreme way by mixing these pictures. You truly get the impression that there are two sets of families, the “real” Holmeses and the actors. And the fact that they did this proves that they expected us to take a very close look at these photos. 

And I find it also very peculiar that young Eurus is nowhere to be seen. Because many of these photos were taken at a time when the family was still intact and there is no reason why should not appear in any photo. Except, of course, she does not exist at all. Occam’s razor, anyone?

Also the focus on Sherlocks blue eyes and the dark eyed little Sherlock. Eye colors don’t change. But little Sherlock and Eurus having dark eyes while the adults have light eyes 😐😐😐

wow, so much detail! and almost none of it really visible in the episode to the ordinary viewer. Thanks, @ebaeschnbliah , for giving us such a close look. @raggedyblue & @gosherlocked i agree, the deliberate mixing of the young actors and the actors young (!!) even to the point of blending their faces, especially blending sherlock's and mycroft's faces with each other, wow. What is that about, are they the same person too? @belladonnaxy , I have to wonder at the casting process for the two young actors, how many did they see, how much priority did they place on actual likeness? I know sometimes a show either works hard or gets lucky that way, and sometimes they just put a higher value on getting "the right person". But the choice to do this photo collage that rubs your nose in the differences, hmm!

The complete absence of "euros" clinches it for me that she's definitely not real.

‘Real’ people?

Isn’t this choice of words from TEH a tiny bit strange?

I mean, Mycroft and Sherlock have extraordinary brains; he could have compared them to ‘ordinary people’, that would have been more logical, right? With ‘superior’ minds, it might be hard for them both to endure the little stupidities of common people in their everyday lives, especially if they lived isolated as kids. But why on earth would Mycroft not regard himself and his little brother as real people? 

And he also refers to other people as ‘goldfish’ - as if he were looking at them through a glass tank… 

Makes me think about this conversation from ASiP:

I’ll leave you to your own deductions ;)

@gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @raggedyblue @tjlcisthenewsexy

@possiblyimbiassed I love this point of view. What we are seeing happening may not be to see what the real Sherlock Holmes is, but to see Sherlock Holmes become real? An extreme attempt to humanize him, to bring him from a mythic to a human level, so that he can be accepted even in his most suft facets. And maybe this is the reason why they played continuously with the fourth wall, which appears and disappears, fragile from the beginning, separated from the wall of tissue paper that was from the very beginning was the blog of John Watson up to what they are doing now.

@ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @sarahthecoat

These are wonderful thoughts, @possiblyimbiassed and @raggedyblue. I love the idea of Sherlock slowly becoming human = real.

Thanks for the interesting additions! What I particularly like with these dialogues is that they can be read on various levels. On the textual level, all I see is Mycroft and Sherlock being sarcastic about them having to endure the dull intellects of ‘ordinary people’ in the ‘real world’ they are forced to live in. On a subtext level, however, I think this can mean that at least some scenes with Mycroft in them aren’t actually happening in ‘real life’. For example, I find it hard to believe that Mycroft really has the extreme level of surveillance over his little brother that is depicted in the show; did he actually kidnap John in ASiP? Seems a bit too sick to be true, in my opinion. Was this rather Sherlock’s brain scrutinizing John’s characteristics and making more deductions? Or maybe the events did happen in some form, but Sherlock is adding a ‘splash of colour’ to them while remembering them in his mind palace. 

But the interpretation I like the most is the one @raggedyblue explains above; that on a meta level, the show makers are trying to make Sherlock Holmes come alive as a character, to appear as a real person! In other words, he’ll leave the 120+ years of stereotyping in an infinity of adaptations behind, and become human. And yes; that might be the idea with all this breaking of the fourth wall.

John’s answer to Sherlock’s last question in the pics from ASiP above is that ‘real’ people don’t have arch enemies, but boyfriends, people they like, etc. Which makes me even more convinced that this is what is going to happen to Sherlock in the end; Moriarty will turn out to be either as human as anyone else, or to simply not exist. While Sherlock+John becomes a real item. ;)

I agree, this ties in with the themes played upon throughout the series of ’the person’ vs ’the persona’ or the ‘public identity’ vs. the truth of who we are or myth/legend/superhero/angel vs. man. It shows up in several ways including:

- The symbolic use of the hat to indicate a public identity,

- Playing with real vs. fake and the fourth wall

- Focus on the media. How the media ‘turns on’ Sherlock. How Moriarty manipulates the media and his own identity. How he uses the media to destroy Sherlock.

- Sherlock as a Superhero; (gay pilot rooftop scene anyone?). 'Real people don’t have arch nemesis’ Sherlock bluntly telling John that he is not a superhero.

- What John writes describes Sherlock to be (the cold, logical, unfeeling machine) vs. who he really is (the drug addict with questionable morals who solves crime as an alternative to getting high)

I think this scene with Mycroft is very much about person vs. persona. Mycroft is one who would like to pretend that there is no 'person’ to him. He is completely the persona he has assumed of the cold, logical, in control government official. Nothing about him is that messy, vulnerable 'real human’ stuff. He would like Sherlock to be similarly armoured. However, Sherlock keeps reminding him of his personhood. He keeps reminding him that he is human, that he struggles with his impulses (to eat), and that he is lonely and craves a connection. Mycroft hates this. He very much doesn’t want to be a real, human, breakable person.

The problem of Sherlock is that he can’t be the persona/myth/superhero and be human/touchable/loved.

And I would posit that one reason the conclusion of S4 is so deeply unsatisfying is because Mary’s voice over says quite literally “who you really are doesn’t matter - what matters is the myth and legend of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes” thereby negating the entire struggle of the series by putting them back where they began.

In that story arc, this is the darkest moment - the moment when all is lost. He’s put on the hat, decided to be the machine rather than the man and assume the persona of the untouchable legend/myth/superhero Sherlock Holmes.

This is a very nice checklist, @i-believe-n-sherlock-holmes - so true! And I truly love this discussion. I so agree that S4 is the darkest moment, where Sherlock has put on the hat and lets ‘Mary’ take over with her damning little ‘message’. Any development seems to be lost, and Sherlock and John appear frozen in time in the final picture. But that’s still on the surface; at the same time there’s also some deeper development going on behind the facade, where Sherlock is being humanized. His drug abuse is no longer 'for a case’; it’s glaringly obvious that it’s killing him. He recognizes that he ‘can’t do it alone’. He has ceased being a self-declared ‘sociopath’ and is letting Sentiment into his life. He starts hugging people (John and also Euros=himself). He practices to say “I love you” (to Molly = a John mirror). He smashes the coffin (=Death) in rage and frustration. He definitely seems to intend to leave the Rathbone building in the final, frozen photo. But there’s still a war to be waged in S5, isn’t there? The war against homophobia.

rb for discussion, wow, yes!

________________________________________________________________

Investigations …..

Sherlock BBC,  The Hounds of Baskerville

________________________________________________________________

His eyes!

now I can’t link photos, but I looked a bit around and in all the photos of people using similar microscopes, no one had eyes lit (in fact probably one would be blinded more than having increased visibility). Apart from making us enjoy Ben’s eyes, don’t they also look like small projectors? @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @possiblyimbiassed

@sherlockshadow

Wow! @raggedyblue  I took a lot of screenshots from that scene, a lot more than those in this post, I had a hard time to select the most beautiful ones (as always :) …. and it never struck me that floodlighting Sherlock’s eyes in that way could be a strange or maybe even a bit unrealistic occurence. But you are right, it seems indeed odd to have the own eys lit while looking into a microscope. And it’s even more conspicuous in a story where eyes generally play such a big role as in Sherlock BBC. 

‘Small projectors’ …. is someone/something looking back at Sherlock? This is an interesting thought. In this episode Sherlock is investigating the ‘Hound’ and the scene above is the moment when he discovers the hidden truth about the synthesized drug, created to produce fear. In Henry’s case this fear is used to prevent him from remembering that, what he once witnessed.

On a metaphorical level, where Henry Knight is Sherlock’s mirror and represents that what happened in Sherlock’s past, Sherlock takes - in this scene - his first glimpse at his own trauma. 

Or the other way round ….. the past/the trauma is staring back at him …. the hound, the monster, the ghost, the demon, the devil …. that, what will turn later in the story into the ghostly bride, the buried skeleton, the insane ‘other one’ . 

Memory starts stiring and Sherlock is, for the first time, aware of it …. and panicks? …..

Or Sherlock just realized that he is actually staring at the chemistry of …. love? ….

Just some thoughts that came to mind immediately. :)

@gosherlocked @sherlockshadow @possiblyimbiassed @sarahthecoat

The chemistry of love - beautiful reading! And kudos to @raggedyblue for pointing out the odd lighting of the eyes.

@ebaeschnbliah

Ok … I just realized that this is not the scene where Sherlock finds the coded informations about the HOUND drug. Seems I was a bit hasty, sorry. The discovery of the fear-drug happens a little bit later when Sherlock is able to break into the secured documents. In the scene above Sherlock stares at the sugar from Henry’s kitchen. He is so sure to discover some chemical residues of a drug here but finds …. nothing. 

Sherlock actually stares at ‘nothing’ related to a dangerous drug …. or at ‘no-one’ or ‘nobody’ …. one might say. Well, no-one or nobody …. is NEMO …. isn’t it? 

Well, this is another lovely metaphor, I think. :)

@gosherlocked @raggedyblue @sarahthecoat @sherlockshadow @possiblyimbiassed

oh, what an interesting discussion! It’s been a long time since i looked through my dad’s microscopes, and this one is a lot more recent but it does seem odd to have that much light coming up out of the eyepiece. Do we have anyone in fandom with lab experience? It does suggest the projector lights aimed at the viewer that become such a hallmark of s4.

@not-a-bit-good  maybe? 

Honestly, nothing jumped to my mind when I saw these pictures, but since we’re talking about it…

1) Yeah, the amount of light projected by the microscope seems legit (there’s usally a way to adjust it on microscopes, btw) but the fact that the whole scene was shot in a dark room was very clearly intentional (you’re supposed to be able to look into a microscope in a well-lit lab, afterall). TPTB wanted these twin lights to be visible, I think.

2) They remind me of 2 other scenes in the same episode :

2a. the scene where Henry freaks out because something on his yard accidentally triggers the two blinding garden lights

Which would reinforce the idea of Sherlock and Henry being mirrors,

(as if this^^^^ shot wasn’t enough lol)

which in turns has very interesting implications concerning Sherlock’s past - I agree with @ebaeschnbliah​ that there’s something in Sherlock’s past that traumatised him and gave him is very peculiar views on love and relationships (that it’s destructive and hurts people, which is why Sherlock is terrified of them). 

I mean, since drugs = emotions and sugar = food = sex/intimacy, how typical that Sherlock would first think to look for a hallucinogenic substance in food, instead of a airborne chemical designed to hurt people and manufactured during pseudo scientific experiments by a lunatic…

So something happened to Sherlock when he was young, that his traumatised mind twisted it into something else, like Henry with H.O.U.N.D. 

Incidentally, the fact that there are clear parallels between H.O.U.N.D. and conversion therapy (they’re linked to margaret thatcher, they had detrimental effects on the mental health of those who were exposed to it, 1986 was not a good year for those who wanted them)  makes me believe that Sherlock’s parents are monsters that sent their child to CT (probably in the US, since UK’s laws regarding homosexuality seem practically idyllic - I mean, the gay inkeepers are married in an episode that aired before gay marriage was legal in the UK, iirc).

2b. the scene where Sherlock finds out about Project H.O.U.N.D. in Major Barrymore’s office.

Notice the small rings of light in Sherlock’s pupils? They’re not from the computer he’s supposed to be using. Actually, these rings are a well-known effect produced by special lighting equipment used in film making, called ring lights. The light rings in Sherlock’s eyes indicate that he was acting this scene while facing something like this (camera included in the middle of the ring) :

So yeah. That was very intentional, because these rings of light in Sherlock’s people break the fourth wall by revealing that this was all filmed, not real. 

As to what that means… maybe the light in Sherlock’s eyes indicates whether or not he’s following the right lead? I mean, the light is kind of unfocused when he’s looking for a drug in the sugar, but really precisely inside Sherlock’s pupils when he’s on to the truth with H.O.U.N.D.

@ebaeschnbliah​ @sarahthecoat​ @raggedyblue​ @gosherlocked

Spy!John speculations below :

Weiterlesen

Thanks for your detailed answer @a-bit-not-goodd   That’s a lot of intersting stuff to think about and the movie you mentiond - Splendor - sounds really great. :)

wow, very interesting!

The Secrets of Russell Square Park

In the unaired pilot John and Mike Stamford meet at the Criterion Restaurant which is a nod to ACD canon. For ASiP the creators reduced this reference to the name on the coffee cup and relocated the meeting to Russel Square Park. The Park isn’t near to the Criterion at all. So I’m really wondering why they chose this location.

And I think they wanted the viewer to identify the park because the camera turns around John and shows us the whole sight of the park.

Google told me that Russell Square was mentioned in The Dancing Man. A man meets a woman in a pension at Russell Square and falls in love with her. She is willing to marry him but only if he accepts not to ask questions about her path. (This reference is often discussed regarding Mary). They both end up dead… Uhm, no! I just don’t want to accept this as a reference for John and Sherlock’s story arc.

So, what are the Secrets of Russell Square Park?

I also came across the information of Russell Park being a place for Queer meet ups, but more than that, Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife Louise lived early on at 23 Montague Place, Russell Park, and something else. It has to do with the author William Makepeace Thackeray. He not only worked at Punch (this link explains the significance) but his most well-known piece of literature was Vanity Fair, which “…follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars…It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray’s interest in deconstructing his era’s conventions regarding literary heroism. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder” of the Victorian domestic novel…The story is framed by its preface and coda as a .puppet show Wikipedia

I’ll just let this link speak for me, but it feels like similar to themes in Sherlock. Heroism, Time, Death, Truth vs Ideal.

Under Wiki’s definition of Unreliable Narrator: “The same technique was employed (baldly) in William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1847–8 serial and novel Vanity Fair—one of the few examples of an unreliable authorial narrator in the English novel” The reason I bring up Vanity Fair is that half of it takes place in and around Russell Square park. I can’t find the link but apparently, there is also a bit of breaking the 4th wall, where the Narrator speaks directly of the audience. So many other little things like this, such as the placement of works of art throughout the story.

@shylockgnomes @sarahthecoat @ebaeschnbliah @brilliantorinsane

how interesting that doyle should lend his own address to holmes! I'm also struck by the SPINNING in the gif in the op. We've discussed spinning as a possible emp tell. @kateis-cakeis , i forget if you cited this in your metas about ASIP and the pilot.

My Favourite Piece of Postmodernist Flare

I love this detail, here.  It breaks the fourth wall by referencing another version of this scene: the one in the original pilot.

It speaks to an audience with previous knowledge of a separate, parallel work by this same team.  It speaks directly to you, the informed viewer, while also making direct reference to the creators.  Their hand is here and we see it and they know we see it.

This says, ‘remember when there was a shot of Sherlock, here, on the roof, looking like Lord Byron, bathed in moonlight?  Yeah, we took it out.  But, you know that’s what John is looking at, don’t you?  Well, we know you saw that interview where we discussed that only Moffat liked it so we got rid of it.  Here, is one of the creators, Mark Gatiss, literally keeping us from seeing this scene by calling John as Mycroft.  See what we did there?  Of course you do’.

A postmodern masterpiece like Sherlock doesn’t just acknowledge us explicitly in episodes like TEH, with its nod to fans and shipping.  It knows we are there, the informed audience, from the moment it begins to the moment it ends.  

This level of interaction, whether we are conscious of it or not, is one of the x factors that makes this show have such an enthusiastic following.  We are inside this show, in every nuance and in every way.

This is a little piece of subversion: we get to have John’s reaction still strike us meaningfully while not showing what he’s reacting to.  This way, the creators show us their process, as well.  Here they compromised: they took out Sherlock but kept John.  And those with the right eyes will still see what we’re meant to.  And that’s how we know that they’re always speaking to us, whispering.  (Sometimes screaming, actually).  And that the things we think we see, we are always meant to see.

Reblogging ASIP meta during january. I love this, in a way it's like a message to us, that the unaired pilot is still a legit part of the overall story.

Thanks for collecting these links in one place!