The Great Heart is finally here!  As I say in the author’s note, this meta was just a bit of fun for me than anything else. I had such a great time noticing all the scenes I could use to build to the ending of From a Drop of Water that I wanted to write a meta actually analyzing them as well.

While this meta ended up being quite long because I really enjoy poring over details and exploring an idea from every angle, it was definitely made in a lighthearted spirit and I hope that comes across. More than anything in this meta, my hope for you is that if you’re still engaging with BBC Sherlock in the year of our Lord 2022, you’re doing it in a way that makes you happy and doesn’t risk your well-being on the outcome of a TV show. Your real world heart is worth more than even the most compelling symbolism.

With that framework in mind, I hope you enjoy the meta!

this is so good!! read it yesterday evening. i had one of those "i can't believe we are still identifying new patterns in the show after all these years" moments, but rebs did it. KNIVES, people, we have discussed this knife or that knife, but not KNIVES as a PATTERN till now, to my knowledge. we have discusse phone=heart, john as the heart to mycroft the brain, etc but not HEARTS as a PATTERN. and i know there has been discussion about fairy tales, but i don't think i have see sherlock specifically identified with the huntsman, will have to review bugcatcherinviridianforest's fairy tale metas.

twigged on: sherlock stabs "the unsolved ones" to the mantle with arwel's leatherman, and john is the three patch problem, still unsolved. 0.0

twigged on: so there's a lucy westenra in dracula, you say? wasn't andrew west's fiancee in TGG named lucy? why yes, she was. coincidence? not anymore. 0.0

not to discuss bbc sherlock as a real entity but opening the show with John crying and distressed at a martin freeman quality level was such a move… that immediate vulnerability sets the viewer up so well to love and understand him through the following standoffishness and the damn my leg shouting…  you know when you can feel yourself actively unzipping as you type…

yes! i was just thinking about this recently. in a conventional detective or procedural show, at least the few i used to watch, the opening scene sets up the case the team is going to solve in that episode. S1 sorta fools you into thinking that Sherlock is going to be a Detective Show. in which case, john is the case to be solved.

Inspired by this great post.

I realise why it’s much more meaningful that Sherlock sees The Woman naked in his Mind Palace in Series 3. This is Irene the moment she sees through his straight façade, this is Irene who sees all. She sees what he likes (dudes)…

I confess that I didn’t have much interest in The Woman before I realized what she was doing meeting with Sherlock naked.  Before I started thinking this was all about her figuring out if he was gay, etc, I really didn’t get her character, at all.

I definitely don’t see her as a villain & I don’t think that Sherlock beat her.  I think he may have cracked the code to her phone but, in the end, he saves her because her stytsem of, ‘protection’, works.  She knows your secrets and you protect her.  It’s like blackmail gone friendly, or something.  Once she knows what you’re about, she becomes your ally in a way that is unlike anything else.

I actually don’t see her character as being about sex, at all, but about knowledge, information.  Her job is, always, to know, 'what you like’.  That’s why people protect her, because she keeps your secrets.

If the Mayfly man deductions are about Shelock and John’s sexualities then thinking of them woman would only be useful in relation to what she may have taught him on the subject.  Seeing The Woman dressed like when he cracked the phone code wouldn’t relate to his deduction.  I also don’t think his ego would be compromised considering how things ended between them: he saved her and then humorously reminisced about it.  I think he didn’t have any hard feelings toward her, in the end: he admired her power play with him above everything.

I mean, if she didn’t get naked to figure out, 'his deal’, (Is he gay?  Is he in love with John?) then why?  What was the point of that, otherwise?

I don’t see her as being on Moriarty’s, 'side’, per se.  I think she was affiliated with him and she may not have even had a choice in the matter. There’s lots of reason to speculate that Jim controls Mycroft and we know that Mycroft’s not a villain.  At least, he doesn’t want to be, if he is, you know?

i really love the idea of irene switching from team jim (under duress and threat of harm) to team sherlock (free to be an ally). it works both as a better surface level story, and on a metaphorical level. whether irene represents sherlock's libido, or the naked truth (or both) it makes sense to separate her from jim (homophobia) and help sherlock. sherlock is learning to accept all of himself, as he accepts all of john (both the soldier and the doctor).

The Sherrinford “Not”

The Final Problem Explainer, Part I

[Read the rest on Medium.com/TJLC]

I read it today, in bits and pieces, and took loads of notes. I LOVE THIS!! It’s Why S4 Is Like That, it’s On Beyond Johnlock. I knew there had to be SOMETHING but I knew I wasn’t the one who was going to figure that out.

It makes sense of what Rachel Talalay was saying about how they filmed TST with all these transitions that made it clear they were moving between built sets, but also why that was not working for TST. YES they write the subtext first and then loosely paper it over with just enough of a surface story. I think we pick up on that subtext so much more than we think, and it’s why sometimes you go back over the actual dialog in a scene and it makes no sense, but the delivery and the subtext are what’s really being conveyed.

Love the discussion relating the “shoot the governor” scene back to ASIP, and contrasting the different choices. John’s line in TFP about how he “got a woman killed” twigged on TBB when John chose to leave Soo Lin “in hiding” and go after Sherlock, which you can tell by his face when they find her body, he felt her death was his fault for not staying with her. Then he has another similar kind of choice in HLV when Sherlock gets shot. He really does keep getting this quandary. (and then he wonders, who would Sherlock bother protecting? You, John. He’s protecting you.)

I also love the point that so many of Sherlock’s deductions, especially in TFP, but also throughout the show, are actually wrong! I am dimly remembering some of the initial anger at S4 and TFP in particular, was outrage that Sherlock apparently “solved” the puzzles, but “lost” anyway. In the context of the overall arc, he’s wrong because he’s shutting off half of himself, and you can’t live like that, it doesn’t work. 

(also, thank you for validating my dislike of John’s s4 hair. While loads of other people were squeeing over it, I was like eeeehhhh ew. Glad to know I was subconsciously rejecting something fake) (oh, and also thank you for validating my nausea over the TEH train car scene, cos it always really bothered me that Sherlock was that dishonest with John. Everyone talks about how nasty John was to Sherlock in S4, but not about how nasty Sherlock could be too.)

Come to think of it, that “manufactured crisis” pattern was right there in ASIP too, with the “come at once, could be dangerous” texts, and then Sherlock was just lying on the couch. Ok it got dangerous later, but still, he was kinda jerking John around just as in the pattern you describe. 

I also LOVE that these “puzzles” are opposite-day-in-bizarro-mirror-world versions of the situations in ASIP (and subsequent episodes). again, I don’t know that I would have ever made the specific connections myself, I am just not that good at identifying those match points. Especially when it comes to shootings, which make me really uncomfortable! Thank you so much, what a brilliant meta, monumental series. whew!

bits of this also twigged ideas about TAB but nothing I can put in a complete sentence at the moment.

Re-watching ASIB

So the scene where Sherlock goes to identify Irene's body at the morgue. Please bear with me since I am not sure if this has been already talked about and probably ages ago.

Sherlock had assumed that they are going to find Irene dead because she sent him her most prized possession - the camera phone.

He takes a look at her face - we are told it is bashed beyond recognition. He asks for a look at her naked body, all of it.

Now, we know Sherlock was a bit perplexed at Irene's (a woman's) naked body being shoved in his face.

But he is still Sherlock and he did have the time to deduce her appearance up until the time John walked back in the room and then he decided to offer his coat to her.

Back to the morgue - Sherlock sees the dead woman's naked body for a few seconds, rolls his eyes around, and says "That's her" with confidence.

Why would he lie? Because The Game is On. He understood that for some reason Irene wanted them all to believe she was dead. So he let them. Also because she needed protection. Sherlock, without all his walls and masks, is an extremely caring person. Irene hadn't committed a viable crime up until then technically. She just had information. He wanted to see what happens next.

Then Battersea happens.

Now, everyone - including John, Mycroft, and the audience assumes Sherlock is heartbroken and sad up until then because of Irene's "death".

But we know he knew she was alive. Why was he sad then? John says

So, it is not specific to Irene's incident then.

Then this happens.

Sherlock witnesses that John doesn't deny.

Then the text alert goes off and Sherlock hurries off from there.

Going (walking all the way?) home like this

He is clearly shaken, in deep thoughts, a bit confused, and is trying to gather himself.

Why? Because, hey look! Irene is alive? Obviously not.

For a man of Sherlock's calibre, intelligence and standards do you really think he would get all emotional and shaken up or even fall for someone some woman who literally beat him up for her camera phone? Who used him. Who drugged him. Who said he'd make an "unattractive corpse". Who asked John to back-stab him. With who he had no emotional connection whatsoever? Please.

I mean I don't have to go on about it since it has been established that Irene is a Sherlock mirror. So many metas on this.

He was like that because John didn't deny Irene's "Look at us both", John was so jealous - angry jealous (his reaction to "Are you jealous?" was a deflecting "We are not a couple"), him accusing Irene of flirting with Sherlock - questioning her like a possessive partner, John denying he's gay again (nothing new there) but actively doing everything that proves his attraction and love towards Sherlock.

It made Sherlock panic even more knowing that what he had been feeling, rather - what he had been trying not to feel is also, maybe, felt by John too! For a man who keeps a tight lid on his oh-so-strong emotions, it must've been a really intense experience.

It's all there for us to see, we only need to observe.

YES, YES AND A MILLION TIMES MORE YES! @dinner--starving you are spoy on in your deductions here. I don't know why this isn't talked about more often. And I am still looking for a fanfic with this flummoxed Sherlock after-Battersea scene!!! They need to talk about this.

omg, yes! i don't think i have ever seen the idea that sherlock LIED in the morgue! but that's brilliant! and it does change how we read the scenes that come after! it also reinforces why he would go rescue her at the end, i think, aside from the metaphorical reading which of course he does, and also aside from that being mofftiss' little fix it fic for the ending of TPLOSH.

The real impression here to me is that ASiB is a rehearsal for TRF of course... I mean, besides the TPLoSH revival...

Yeah Sherlock is lying. Irene is lying. Mycroft is lying. And John is lying. And is all about sentiment for some reason.

Sherlock has a damsel in distress. Mycroft is not the Iceman. John dont think Sherlock *is like that*. Jim wants attention (!) and Irene doesn't win....I guess?

They all care so much. Or smt.

So this is AFTER Sherlock's meltdown and John being his ONLY FRIEND right? You know, the episode with the fake trauma hound, that is a dead society (gotta love acronyms!) with one rogue player? And the other very real hound that assumes crazy big proportions bc of reasons (of sentiment), but has to be put down?

Cool.

Crazy how even tho John was Sherlock's ONLY FRIEND in like the next episode Molly ended up being *the one that mattered the most*. Bc Mycroft couldn't arrange a fake corpse for him. He needed a confidant?

HELLU MARY! How IS the family?

Hey remember T6T original case is right about this time? And then they fake killed Mary in the one in s4? And then Irene text Sherlock and John with the impact of WOW IRENE FAKE DIED. AGAIN confessed to Mary's ghost that he wanted to cheat on her? Good times.

Why would someone go to all that trouble?

Why indeed John.

Lets eat some cake!!!

yeah, definitely a recurring theme! it SO WORKS on the metaphorical reading too! john is uncomfortable around sherlock's Naked Desire, so he tries to hide it with his Armor(coat) and the Work (lol, using a "gun" to "call the police", like back at the beginning of TGG, using it to get john's attention. Sherlock must be a big screamer, nevermind snorer!)

the phone=heart is tied up with memories/photos somehow. sherlock trying to remember something but without letting on to mycroft/brain. that's not how it works, dear, you have to integrate the aspects. they all care because SHERLOCK cares.

THOB takes place somewhere in the ASIB timeline. Jeanette and Dr Mortimer are reiterations of John not getting anywhere. and yes, just what @netbathetic said about the hound!

sherlock confides in molly because he wants to confide in john, but can't yet? and excellent, pointing out that the original six thatchers case, on the blog, happens around now too. so really all of s4 is sherlock still chewing over these early events and feelings. every "love triangle" is just sherlock, john, and their mutual pining.

The Two Versions

Let’s go back to The Empty Hearse, to the scene where Mary is reading John’s blog out loud. This is the morning after the whole “Not Dead” fiasco and John is busy not shaving for Sherlock Holmes. Much has been written about this scene, but I found something that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t been discussed yet.

Let’s look at the screen that Mary is reading from:

If you’re familiar with the blog (and if you’re not, go study it right now!)  you’ll notice it’s a little bit different from the layout we see on the actual blog. You can see that Mary is logged on as Watson. The buttons next to it say “Log Out”, “Your Dashboard” and “Create a new Post”. The text below has a scroll bar which you don’t have on the real site. 

My point - This is the blog editor and Mary is reading from an unpublished entry. And what’s so interesting about this entry?

Keep reading

I know I made a post about this before, but I can’t seem to find it… I agree with you that Mary “discovering” entry to the blog means that John must have been looking at it and left it unprotected. I think they make that fairly overt, although we don’t really talk about it. Mary is reading what John was reading when he put it down; even casual viewers can see his embarrassment at being caught reading about Sherlock. This scene is mirrored in The Abominable Bride when Mary catches Sherlock reading “John’s blog” on the plane. BUT, the narration that kicks off TAB makes it appear that Sherlock was reading A Study in Scarlet, not the blog. Exactly the same sort of thing happens in this scene in The Empty Hearse.

Looking at the differences between the blog draft Mary is reading and the Speckled Blonde post, the last paragraph of the draft is text from the first paragraph of the published post, and the middle one is the same in both entries, but the first paragraph of the draft is paraphrased from The Sign of Four, the Doyle story in which we meet Mary Morstan:

This scene occurs while Holmes and Watson are working on the case that Mary brings them. It’s such an interesting choice – like the post that we see John pretend-typing into an image viewer in TST, we’re seeing a post published before it can possibly have happened. To highlight this, Mofftiss incorporate other elements from this paragraph into The Sign of Three.

“I’m just going to whip this out.”

So, this unpublished draft begins with a description of things that happen during the Mayfly Man case, which appears in the following episode. And it conflates John’s blog with Doyle’s stories.

rb for discussion

There seem to be several versions of the blog (layout-wise) featured on the show:

In ASiB John seems to be logged in as Watson. The editor features the buttons “Log Out”, “Your dashboard” and “Discard new post”, an area for the title of the post and a toolbar:

This is what a published blogpost looks like on ASiB as there are no editor-tools visible (although it does look like somebody is still logged in, because we see three buttons again): 

The blog on TEH looks a bit different. A certain Watson is logged in again, but there’s no toolbar anymore and it’s only possible to create a new post. Maybe this is not the editor-mode, but the scroll bar would be a weird feature for a finished (even though unpublished) post. Moreover there is no counter stuck at 1895:

The infamous blogpost that John seems to write up on a jpg-file on TST is different again. Whoever took the screenshot of John’s blog was not logged in as Watson (or anybody else), even though we have the three buttons again. What’s also weird here is the URL of the blog. Whereas the blogpost on TEH seems to show the same URL John’s blog has in our “reality”, the blogpost here is placed somewhere at Dr.JohnH.Watson/personalblog/home. Doesn’t read like an actual URL to me. But a counter seems to be in place again, this time a 4 is stuck inside of 1893. Or maybe it’s just 18493.

Interestingly enough non of the blogposts look like the posts in our “reality” as they only show the day of the week, not an actual date. The Six Thatchers-case was published on the 19th December in our “reality” (see below), whereas the post from ASiB only says “Wednesday” (as far as I can decipher it). It seems like there used to be a counter on the blog in our “reality” (x) and the layout was blue at the beginning (x), but they obviously changed that.

On top of that it’s not possible to see who the actual author of the blogposts is. On the show in S1-S3 it seems to be a certain Watson. The blog in our “reality” only shows a user with the name “John Watson”, even though his username seems to be the only one that has been deactivated. The last blogpost “The Sign of Three” was signed by Sherlock Holmes himself.

Bonus:

On the unaired Pilot John doesn’t keep an actual blog at all. All he does is try to come up with something to write about in a text document:

@raggedyblue​ @possiblyimbiassed​

Interesting thoughts, @thepersianslipper, @devoursjohnlock and @lukessense! John’s blog is one of my favourite topics of discussion, because I think it’s so revealing. I’ve written these metas about the blog (X; X; X) (and this about Sherlock’s website (X)). And I’m certainly not the first; there’s been a lot of other discussions about the content of the blog; some examples: X (John’s writing style);  X (the lack of updating after TSoT); X, X (Sherlock taking over).

I very much agree that there’s something weird going on in this scene and that there are two versions of John’s blog; the one we see in the show and the one we can all read online. On the latter, we can actually verify for ourselves what is written, while the former seems to convey content that doesn’t always add up logically. 

But my problem is not just that one is showing the still unpublished editor material, and the other the published version. The difference is also shown, as @devoursjohnlock points out, for example by the ’jpg editor’ in TST or by John’s very different language at the beginning of this post read by Mary, which is an almost verbatim quote from ACD canon’s SIGN. But, as @thepersianslipper says, the rest of the post is verifiably John’s, since it stems directly from the published post “The Speckled Blonde”, which he had written years before this moment. 

But why would John store an unpublished version of this old post, embellishing it with something that was totally irrelevant to the story of the Speckled Blonde? This canon quote about Sherlock’s blood hound behaviour doesn’t fit in logically with the story in the Speckled Blonde post; it even obfuscates the whole beginning of that story, making it almost impossible to make sense of the case. This line just doesn’t fit in, embellished or not.

I might be wrong about this of course, but one thing that makes me think that Mary is indeed supposed to have hacked John’s blog by herself in TEH is that she’s reading it from an iPad. We never see John write on an iPad, do we? Only laptops. So my guess is that this iPad is supposed to be Mary’s own, and she has hacked John’s blog from it. Which would be consistent with her later (in TAB) showing able to hack even the government’s secret information. But then again, I don’t actually believe that we’re seeing John’s and Mary’s domestic scenes in TEH ‘for real’, since I suspect that the whole show is seen from Sherlock’s perspective, and this scene is a conjecture, one of his ‘scenarios’.

If I were Sherlock, I would study John’s blog very carefully to try to analyse John. Which he proves to have done in TSoT, when he even uses it as source for his Best man speech. He might even remember parts of the text verbatim. But I also think Sherlock, by reading the blog, still might have come to some wrong conclusions about John’s motives to hang out with him, as I suggested here (X). 

At any rate, I think that whenever we see John without Sherlock in the show, this is Sherlock attempting to imagine the world through John’s eyes, in order to understand him better. For example, when Sherlock showed up in TEH after two years of pretending to be dead, interrupting John’s proposal, Mary didn’t react with jealousy or resentment, as one could expect from someone in her situation. Instead she sided with Sherlock against John. And in this scene she is teasing John for being drawn towards Sherlock. Isn’t that focus on Sherlock a bit contrary to her interests? I think Sherlock could very well have driven this odd reaction at the restaurant(s) further in his scenario, imagining Mary reading John’s description of him in a way where John comes across as obsessed (not necessarily based on love, though). 

I also find it very strange that John would be capable of using a far more lyric language on his editor than in the text he actually has published. When do we ever see John being poetic in the show? Or on the published blog? If I’m not mistaken, this only happens in the Victorian part of TAB, which is explicitly said to be happening inside Sherlock’s Mind palace. There’s a great difference in style between Watson’s stories in canon and ‘our’ John’s way of expressing himself in the show. And I strongly suspect that in the show, this ‘poetry’ version belongs to Sherlock, while John’s published blog is at least a little closer to the ‘truth’.

@raggedyblue @thejohnlockoutlet @sherlockedcarmilla @todaywearesoldiers @sarahthecoat @tjlcisthenewsexy @elldotsee @88thparallel @fellshish @spenglernot 

@possiblyimbiassed many interesting additions! First of all about the iPad: It’s again an Apple product, gadgets Sherlock usually uses because of all the apples and the i (as in me, myself and I). Furthermore I’m gonna summarize some points that have been made, that I find especially striking:

1) John is writing up the blogposts presented on the show as Watson. It’s not John Watson (the username that we see on “our” blog), but Watson, a direct reference to ACD canon. 

2) The blogpost Mary is reading was written up on Tuesday. What Tuesday? The Tuesday before the missing Wednesday? Or Tuesday over two years ago when John was writing up the other version of the case of the speckled blonde? Because we do see John writing it in ASiB, the first paragraph of the post is even shown on screen and it’s the same paragraph we see on “our” blog (x) (so no verbatim version of SIGN). Why on earth would John suddenly write up a different version of the case that is referencing a scene from ACD canon that is also featured on the show both on the stag night in TSoT (as @devoursjohnlock pointed out) and in TST (the dog Toby is following a trail of blood)? Why a second version of the post that is also directly linked to ACD canon?

3) Where did the counter stuck at 1895 go? The blog Mary reads shows no counter anymore, the blog John is “writing” on his jpg-file in TST features a counter again, this time it’s stuck at 18(4)93 (the year FINA was published, but I bet you all know that), but Watson is not logged in anymore. 

I think what’s important here is not so much that there is a more “clinical” writing-style on the published blogpost, and a more poetic one on the unpublished blogpost, but that the blog on the show is directly linked to ACD canon. First the counter gets stuck at 1895 in ASiB: Sherlock and John gain popularity, Sherlock meets Moriarty, his heart is about to burn (out) -> Sherlock “falls from grace” in TRF and dies, but no, it was just a “magic trick” and Sherlock comes back. TEH: back to the speckled blonde, the case John wrote about just before the “Sherlock Holmes baffled”-one where the counter got stuck in ASiB. This time the counter is gone but instead there is a passage almost quoting SIGN which directly links back to ACD canon. Mary is introduced to the narrative of the show and suddenly she is reading an allusion to the original ACD canon. TAB: Sherlock is reading John’s blog, but the voice-over of Watson is narrating a story very similar to STUD. The story definitely takes place inside of Sherlock’s head here and we’re in 1895. TST: Watson is not logged in anymore, the counter is stuck at 18(4)93. 

What’s going on here? I can only guess of course and this is just a very vague idea but the blog pictured on the show is directly linked to ACD canon whereas the blog in “our” reality is not. @possiblyimbiassed we both agree that the blog shown on the show is not the same one that we can read in our “reality” but on top of that it’s important to note that the blog on the show is more thoroughly interwoven with ACD canon and so is the blogger (John Watson writing under the name Watson). This gets even more obvious in TAB when John really is the original storyteller Watson and when suddenly in S4 the skull painting changes into an mixture of the skull, STUD and ACD. Interpretations of this may vary a lot, but to me we are not only inside of Sherlock’s Mind Theatre but the role of John Watson on the show is a very special one: he is the problem and the solution. Who are the skull ACD and STUD merging with? Billy? Victor? John? How about all of them? I think what we see on BBC Sherlock is a confrontation of Sherlock with the idea that was shaped of him via ACD canon. A way this confrontation is handled is via John and his blog. The John Watson on the show is not the John Watson, he says so himself right from the beginning, to Mike Stamford in ASiP. John Watson and his blog are an echo from the past in a way, a reminder of ACD who (most of the time) told the story of Sherlock Holmes through the eyes of Dr. Watson who had to hide Sherlock’s real identity behind villains and masks and facades. Sherlock’s love for John Watson was the reason he had to hide behind those facades (I know the real reason is not John but society, but without Sherlock’s love for John there wouldn’t have been a reason to hide in the first place), but Sherlock’s love for John Watson is also the solution. It’s the final problem after all. Sherlock gets confronted with ACD canon and the facades and expectations it has created, in TAB he even dives into 1895, but realizes, that he is a man out of his time (whereas Watson isn’t). So Watson logs off in TST (Sherlock takes control of the blog and shuts it down), because this was just an image/facade anyway. Mary dies at the end of the episode (another facade gone) and John Watson breaks down in TLD. Both Sherlock and John are only human after all (but they are the same person anyway, because everybody on the show is a mirror for Sherlock inside of his Mind Theatre). 

To me John Watson is the reason a part of Sherlock came alive (desire, love etc.), but he is also the reason this part was made into a villain (Moriarty hiding inside of John Hamish Watson). This idea might be a bit complicated and I’m by no means claiming that it’s in any way right, but it would fit with this direct confrontation with ACD canon via John Watson and his blog. The John Watson presented on the show is stuck in canon, he is an echo of the past, like a recurring dream or trauma. But the solution to the final problem literally lies within John Hamish Watson. The John Watson presented on the show is not the Watson from canon, but a reminder of the facade of the canon. In S3 canon seems to creep up into the narrative via the blogpost (and Mary arriving), but Sherlock is onto something, like a bloodhound, realizing that Hamish is the solution. Sherlock gets directly confronted with canon/1895 in TAB, realizes he is a man out of his time and start getting rid of several facades in S4. He’s trying to solve the final problem by spiraling down a repeating narrative (Reichenbach repeats itself). That’s why the timeline of the blog on the show makes no sense. 

I don’t know where exactly the “real” John Watson is, but I don’t think it’s the guy who neither knows what a patience grenade nor a human skull is in TFP. I think when Sherlock is saving John from the well of emotions in TFP, he is actually saving himself. John Watson is not a real person, he is a mirror for Sherlock, changing with Sherlock as he becomes more human and less machine. Maybe the “real” John is still sitting at Angelo’s while Sherlock is watching the cabbie through a mirror in the unaired pilot? He did tell John that he “might as well eat”, because they “might be waiting a long time”. Of course I’m kidding here (am I?).

@sarahthecoat @raggedyblue

*flails*omg i love this! this metatextuality, the deep dive into the canon, if they "aren't doing johnlock" as endgame, then what are they doing? something that assumes johnlock (cos it's shown and coded into every scene in the show, plain as the noses on our faces), and goes beyond it.

also i love the idea that "remember where we left them" could refer back to the date at angelo's!

Who cares about decent?

Crime, Police Report, Alibi 

“The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 however, went a step further once again, making any male homosexual act illegal – whether or not a witness was present – meaning that even acts committed in private could be prosecuted. Often a letter expressing terms of affection between two men was all that was required to bring a prosecution. The legislation was so ambiguously worded that it became known as the ‘Blackmailer’s Charter’, and in 1895, Oscar Wilde fell victim.” (x)

@possiblyimbiassed​ John’s alibi - poetry or truth? (x)

Still 1895 (x)

“John is a made up person” (x)

@sarahthecoat​ @raggedyblue​ @therealsaintscully​ @disfictional​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @helplessly-johnlocked​ @thewatsonbeekeepers

Well spotted, @lukessense; gives food for thought! Suddenly Sherlock’s comment (”Who cares about decent?”) to Mrs Hudson in ASiP, when she claims that ”it’s not decent”, makes perfect sense subtextually. ”Gross indecency” was the offense (as of the 1885 Criminal Act in your link) that Oscar Wilde was convicted for. So yes; John and Sherlock ending up in police custody after the stag night (which I try to explore in this meta series about John’s wedding being a crime scene X, X, X) might also be seen as a response to Sherlock’s initial comment, yes? On a meta level, the characters are being punished for their same-sex relationship. And the fact that Mycroft (= British government) has a file on John also speaks of some kind of ’fellony’. But Mary is his alibi, his ’beard’ (= facial hair). Interesting is then also Sherlock’s comment on John’s moustache in TEH: ”Well, we have to get rid of that”. And that in TLD Sherlock consequently blames himself for Mary’s ’death’.

@possiblyimbiassed yes and additionally something I wanted to post earlier but you were faster now ;) (because I think it’s not just about the wedding/stag-night):

Self-reblog for discussing the police report under the picture of John with his beard (TEH):

It‘s not the same police report as the one on set in 2016 (x) but there were additional ‚crimes‘ committed until S4 right? What I‘m getting at: I think this connection of John‘s beard (=his alibi, his heterosexual facade) and the police report make it rather obvious what the crime of S4 is about, doesn’t it? Mofftiss decided to put exactly this picture of John on top of a police report so that the subtextual crime and alibi-connection can be made. And we know that John needed an ‚alibi‘ after TRF where the media turned (confirmed bachelor John Watson), Mr. Sex Jim Moriarty broke into ‚London‘ etc. and as the quote above shows us is that even just the suggestion of a ‚crime‘ was enough to get people persecuted (x). And we know that at least John is still stuck in ‚1895‘ at the very end of TFP (he remains Dr. Watson).

So to me this is yet another subtextual proof that the crimes committed here are the crimes @possiblyimbiassed suggested (x). The problem is that while Sherlock embraced his human/emotional side throughout S4 John still ends with his doctoral degree (Dr. Watson). TLD and TFP specifically focus on John being first a bad doctor (Culverton‘s claims) and then describing John as a soldier in TFP who is „unmarried, practical about death, alone“ (via mirror Molly) because that‘s what soldier-John is. He‘s still stuck in ASiP, only his „who you are […] doesn‘t matter“/Dr. Watson-side made it to TFP, but it‘s not the real John. It‘s Dr. Watson from 1895 („Since when do you call me John?“). If you‘re thinking about the last scene of TAB they specifically pan from 1895 into the modern world to show us how Sherlock and John move into S4. As a Sherlock who realizes he is „a man out of […] [his] time“ and a John who is still hiding behind his moustache. I think S5 really needs to be about John now. Saving him from the ‚well of emotions‘, saving his true identity. He is the original storyteller, so he is the one we should ‚end‘ with to finally tell the true story :).

(quotes are from memory here, I hope they are right)

What do you think @sarahthecoat @raggedyblue @possiblyimbiassed @disfictional @i-believe-n-sherlock-holmes @megara-holmes @not-a-bit-good?( @therealsaintscully just subtext here but maybe the police report in TEH could be helpful for your theory?)

Yes @lukessense, I agree: the police report is making this emphasis and S5 needs to be a great deal about John. I think he needs to fully embrace (and be recognised for) his both ‘sides’; soldier and doctor. As for John’s doctoral degree, I realized something interesting in this very short story by ACD (X): When Watson receives a letter from Edinburgh’s University, Holmes deduces what it is about, and makes this comment regarding Watson’s title:

So apparently, at this point in the stories, Watson had not yet received his MD title. According to ACD, he was not an official ‘doctor’. ;) And looking at ACD’s own medical career (X), he was first a Bachelor of medicine (while working as a ship surgeon and also trying to run a medical practice) for four years before he received his doctor’s grade.

@possiblyimbiassed​ I keep coming back to the question of how much of John Watson on the show is real. If we’re inside of Sherlock’s Mind Theatre it would make sense that each “actor” is also a projection of himself, which does seem to apply most of the time (or always?). So what about John Watson? The reason I’m asking this is because it feels like we have two John Watsons right? Dr. Watson and John Watson. John Watson is a made up person (x). Made up by whom? Dr. Watson or Sherlock? Because we do have this:

So if John is a mixture of love interest and Sherlock’s projection it’s interesting to follow John’s sad musical theme throughout the show. It keeps reappearing in moments where trauma is an important subject: the experiment inside of Baskerville in THoB, the Hänsel and Gretel-case in TRF etc. And we have the talk about Molly’s father in TRF who is directly connected to Sherlock’s emotions. But Molly is supposed to be John’s mirror. Furthermore we have Billy the skull John is filling in for, but Billy is a part of Sherlock’s. What I’m getting at is that the question is wether the trauma, the loneliness that the character John Watson is presented with are a part of John’s or Sherlock’s. Because after Mary’s death in TST the question about John’s abilities as a doctor are questioned more and more. This could either be because John’s facade as Dr. Watson crumbles without Mary (the facade of 1895) or because Sherlock’s facade crumbles because John Watson was never the real John Watson. The real John Watson is still Dr. Watson who is somewhat present in the story, but only as a fragment. There are times he is addressed, e.g. in TAB or by Eurus in TFP which is interesting because he claims to be a soldier here all the time. This feels like TFP is about Sherlock confronting both identities of John Watson that need to be saved. The question is wether this is about Sherlock’s projection of John that is actually a traumatized part of himself that needs to be saved and/or (because we have two John’s) the real John Watson that is still Dr. Watson. This is kind of hard to grasp I guess. The reason I keep asking myself this question is because I want to know what trauma that’s being presented on the show is about which character. Are they all about Sherlock? Because then the John Watson on the show is definitely a part of Sherlock. Or is the show also about a traumatized John Watson Sherlock knows about and tries to figure out until he realizes that he needs to save this traumatized John Watson by giving him emotional context? John Watson was always our original storyteller, so where is he hiding?

Additional thought: it is interesting that the story mentioned above, where John doesn’t have his doctoral degree yet, is the story where they took the quote for the best man‘s-speech from you:

Just makes me think about doctors, marriage…

@therealsaintscully​ @raggedyblue​  @sarahthecoat​

Thanks @lukessense; you reminded me of something I think is important when trying to analyse BBC Sherlock: If we choose to see characters in the show as mirrors of certain other characters, or as metaphors for certain concepts (especially if we also see them as ‘avatars’ in Sherlock’s inner musings), it might be a good idea to look with the same glasses at the things these characters do or experience in the show. 

For example: When Molly in TGG, instead of having any success with Sherlock, whom she’s actually in love with, gets together with ‘Jim from IT’, she believes she’s in a relationship with someone from work (”office romance”). As it turns out, she’s actually in a relationship with Jim Moriarty, “Mr Homophobia”, and the relationship is fake. In TRF Molly claims that this was never a true relationship: “Jim actually wasn’t even my boyfriend. We went out three times. I ended it.” 

But if Molly is a mirror for John, what does this tell us about John? At least twice he gets together with ‘someone from work’: Sarah and Mary. Are John’s relationships ‘true’ or is he just attached to his own internalised homophobia? I think the latter. But since Molly also says “I ended it”, might we expect John’s ‘real’ character to develop in S5 so he ultimately ends his fake relationship? Because in S4 he sure as h*ll doesn’t end anything; he just proceeds with his relationship with Mary-the-assassin even after she’s supposed to be dead. And she gets to have the last word about his character: “the doctor who never came home from the war”. 

Another example: We have some interesting conversations between Molly and Sherlock in TEH and TSoT (quotes originally from Ariane DeVere’s transcripts). In the client’s house in TEH:

And at Barts in TSoT :

We do know that Molly in TEH is dating someone who looks very much like Sherlock, right? Some rather interesting points about ‘Molly’ and ‘Tom’ here: 

So this seems more like John’s Molly’s real love interest. Except that she does seem to break up with him after TSoT (Sherlock at least makes this assumption because she’s not wearing her engagement ring at Barts in HLV. But has it ever occurred to Sherlock that wearing a ring might not be practical while working in a lab that’s supposed to be sterile?). I’d rather say: Foreshadowing, anyone? ;)

Regarding your question, which I believe is very relevant. I think it makes most sense to see ‘MindPalace!John’ as either a metaphor for Sherlock’s heart or as the man existant in the show’s ‘reality’ that Sherlock is trying to analyse. And I don’t mean that these two are mutually exclusive; ‘MindPalace!John’ could sometimes represent the heart, and in other scenes the real man. Or in some scenes even both at the same time. 

But since Sherlock ends up analysing himself and his own traumas in TFP, these things tend to mix up a bit, right? Sometimes, when Sherlock thinks he’s pondering John’s problems, he might as well be looking into himself. And ‘poetry’ is not the same thing as ‘truth’. So yes; this isn’t easy to sort out.

And that’s why we need the blog as an anchor to ‘reality’, in my opinion. The blog tells us there is a man named John Watson, according to himself “Dr. John H. Watson”, who was - at least when the blog started - “an experienced medical doctor recently returned from Afghanistan”. Which means he at least was both a medical doctor and a soldier. And no-one can take that away from him; I do hope that John will remain being both, even if one side of him will turn out to be more important. But if the blog is not intended to be updated any more, we need to see John’s character development in S5. We need to see him end his fake relationships.

As for your observation about by ACD’s story The Field Bazaar (X): I think it’s interesting that Holmes is downplaying Watson’s doctor title here, at the same time as he’s accentuating the intellectual contrast between the two of them. Is it this that Mofftiss have chosen to pay attention to in TSoT? Because John as a doctor is also questioned by the commander of the ‘bloody guardsman’ in this episode, but then restored by Sherlock, when he takes this case as an example of John’s actual competence. And the officer also question’s John’s competence as a soldier, but John’s resolute behaviour when he saves the guardsman’s life is proof of his competence in both aspects.

@therealsaintscully​ @raggedyblue​  @sarahthecoat​

wow, yes, this makes a lot of sense! (also i just had my morning tea, which might be helping me!) i especially like the metaphorical translations of the molly scenes. i think that is exactly what we are supposed to get from the character mirroring.

and i agree that we need to see john reject fake relationships and choose sherlock, not as "what's left after my wife died" but as his first choice all along.

John’s wedding is a crime scene - Part V

I’ve already talked a lot about what ‘crimes’ might have been committed in Sherlock’s ‘reality’ around John’s wedding in TSoT, so now I think it would be interesting to analyse some events that might have lead up to these ‘crimes’, and also how Sherlock might interpret them in his Mind Palace. 

This idea occurred to me after a new discussion surged regarding Part IV of this meta series - a discussion which you can find here (X). (To anyone who prefers to start from the beginning of the series, here are the previous parts: Part I, Part II, Part III). In one of the additions, @lukessense was talking about TLD and asked the following questions:

These things have been puzzling me too, and I’m not sure about the answers in any sense. The following is just my very subjective opinion, and there could certainly exist a lot of alternate explanations. But I’ll try to lay out my view of it all here - in an emotional context - and see how S4, in particular TLD, can relate to John’s wedding and to other events before it.

The Macho Game

Continued under the cut

Keep reading

I like the idea of ​​the Game as the ballet that the two idiots play with each other, a sort of arm wrestling, which is also a game @possiblyimbiassed. I am always a bit skeptical about a past trauma (although I love @sagestreet father theory, it becomes more and more compelling) because I am convinced that despite the enormous misleading appearances (see Eurus) I find it difficult to think that has been introduced  a background  that does not exist in Canon. Although the abandonment of Victor Trevor following the death of his father could be seen as trauma, and the story itself (so sweet, and intimate….how one can read this story and still thinking that Holmes is a cold man for me it is a mistery) tells of a secret (and shamefull) life of Victor’s own father, which is why it is possible that everything makes sense. The theory still holds its water if we move to meta level because there we can glimpse a trauma in the impossibility of being together openly, when things could not be said because love could not be called by its name. Fathers as original characters (John / dad Holmes-Mary / mom Holmes-Sherlock / Uncle Rudy who we know was a master of disguise). A Victorian level that is reflected in Sherlock and his strong positivism, while John seems to adapt more to a more recent scenario like that of Thatcherism, with the possibility of coming out but with the fear (and certainty) that society is not yet ready. . I really enjoy your reading of the hug scene and I think Sherlock’s claim that we’re all human in the end, John included, is the perfect conclusion. Not ideal characters stuck in a specific historical / cultural context, but human beings, with their facets, their weaknesses, their feelings. Pawns that escape the game because humans are not pawns, they are more complex than that. I always thought that Sherlock accused himself of killing Mary because he had destroyed John’s heteronormative facade simply by making him fall in love, but to think that there has been a failure (perhaps more than one) on the physical level (we want to see! ;-P) it still has more sense. Continuing on this train of thought I now also doubt the beating told in the blog. It has already been highlighted how often the desire to touch between men is sublimated in combat. As in the scene you visually illustrated John states that he always sees the subtext of the beating when he hears Sherlock speak, but we know he sees something else. So beating as sexual intercourse (I know it’s not nice, but death as falling in love isn’t very nice either). In the  Canon Watson is far from beating Holmes on his return, he faints and in the next scene Holmes is undoing his shirt …. is it possible that there has been a more welcoming return (as you point out 3 times!)? But by now John was engaged with Mary and we know well that besides being scared of what people might think John is a man of honor. And in TLD we see involved John’s deformed mirror as a latin lover and the false Faith that accompanies it. A full misunderstanding of intentions. John thinks Sherlock is high, Sherlock thinks John just wants to fuck (which also brings us back to the ASIB scenario).

@gosherlocked @lukessense @ebaeschnbliah @loveismyrevolution @tjlcisthenewsexy @sarahthecoat

@raggedyblue atm I‘m also very unsure about the past trauma. The story about the child that needs to be saved just reminds me too much of TGG where Sherlock saves the child in the context of dismantling a fake painting (=fake season 4 and fake childhood trauma story?). And the five pips of TGG are repeated over and over again throughout the show. But Sherlock does recognize the name Victor Trevor so there has to be someone with that name (not just on metatext I guess because that would be confusing). And there has to be a reason Thatcher is so deeply intertwined with the show, not just because of the TST story on the blog (x). The story on the blog seems to be the metaphor for the love triangle on the show and internalized and constitutional homophobia could be a part of the reasons for the love triangle in the first place.

„A full misunderstanding of intentions. John thinks Sherlock is high, Sherlock thinks John just wants to fuck“ Sounds like our voice-over at the end of TFP right? The junkie who solves crimes to get high and the doctor that never came home from the war (three continents Watson). But we know that both the drugs and the war are actually about love and not just sex.

@sarahthecoat @possiblyimbiassed

hmm, i’m inclined to think there was a real childhood trauma, just because of what a deep effect it seems to have had. i think the writers are using our sherlock’s childhood as a metaphor for the character’s origin (the ACD canon as it emerged in its time), all of that has been written about by people smarter than me. my take on it is that no small boys were deceased, though, drowned or otherwise. i think there was either something going on between the adults which caused a rift/estrangement (ie as @sagestreet writes about re mummy, daddy, and uncle rudy, for example), and which little sherlock would not have understood. OR that little sherlock had a best friend, little victor, with whom he had an innocent childhood relationship, but which got misconstrued by the adults, causing victor to be taken away from sherlock. i think the boys playing with their toy wooden swords suggests this, on a metaphorical level. maybe they got caught “playing doctor” or something, perfectly normal for kids, but homophobic parents got freaked out. it happens. and again, sherlock would not have understood, only associating a wrenching loss with having been best friends. That both victor and little eurus in TFP mirror john watson, suggests to me that sherlock is associating that loss with this relationship too. re creating a familiar pattern, or afraid that he will, and trying to work out how not to. can he be best friends, or even lovers, with john, and not have the loss and hurt?

Many interesting thoughts here, @raggedyblue, @lukessense and @sarahthecoat! 

About a possible backstory trauma for Sherlock: The problem is we have nothing much to go on, since John’s blog hasn’t updated since TSoT and S4 is so weird that things don’t fit together in a believable way. Metaphors are always harder because their interpretation will necessarily be subjective, so my suggested conclusions above are of course speculative. It’s always wise to be skeptic about what we see in this show, I think, because much of it is based on deception, and a great deal of plot has never been introduced in ACD canon. Same thing with some characters, and the role of others. But even if the backstory we see in TFP is made up by Sherlock, at least metaphorically the events described by Mycroft and seen in Sherrinford and Musgrave would still mean something, don’t you think? Victor Trevor does figure in canon after all, as well as (Reginald) Musgrave. My guess would be that Victor as Sherlock’s friend did exist - either as a kid or a teenager or both - but that something happened to him that also affected Sherlock. 

More under the cut

Keep reading

yes, and your guess at a back story is as good as mine. i keep twigging on the swords, because they are similarly curved to the one sherlock hides in the TBB opening (which fight strikes me as VERY metaphorical, btw) and in rescuing irene (also VERY VERY metaphorical, plus it's Irene=libido) That victor's ends up floating in the water strongly suggests the overwhelming emotions that are the crux of it, as you say.

i will like very much if the writers tell us "the rest of the story" as they did at the end of THOB. not holding my breath, but it would be nice.

Can I borrow your phone …. I want you to send a text

A study in Sherlock   (A study in John)

Impressions from Sherlock BBC, A study in pink

“unsolved case, shoot the wall” doesn’t sherlock shoot the wall at the end of tfp

uhhh but more than that, the FIRST time Sherlock shot the wall it WASN’T over an unsolved case, it was over NOT HAVING a case, he was bored

so… if this show means anything, “unsolved case, shoot the wall” would be a clue for TFP being fake

In tgg he shot the wall because he was feeling crushed after reading John’s writeup of their first case.

i would posit that the unsolved case in TGG was John, and Sherlock’s Feelings about him. the show isn’t really about the surface reading, it’s about Sherlock. John was the “three patch problem” in ASIP. TBB didn’t quite break that particular “code”, and then the blog post came out.

@sarahthecoat I agree that the ’unsolved case’ was John in TGG, and I believe it still is in TFP. Yes; TFP may certainly be fake (as in happening only inside Sherlock’s head), and the case is still unsolved. It is John who paints the smiley face in TFP, and John even puts his head close to it when Sherlock is aiming, as to demonstrate that it’s about him. In TGG I thought Sherlock shot the smiley face he had spray-painted on the wall out of frustration, because John was still going out with Sarah, even after their fiasco date on the Chinese circus in TBB which almost got her killed. And Sherlock couldn’t handle - or recognise - his own feelings about that. I also think John writes all those horrible things about Sherlock on his blog out of frustration because he can’t handle his own feelings for Sherlock. John is indeed a mystery, an un-solved case to Sherlock. :) In TFP there’s a mix up between a scene where Sherlock visits Eurus and communicates with her through the violin (= gets in contact with his own feelings) and the scene with Sherlock shooting the wall that John has painted on. So apparently the (John) case is still unsolved, even if Sherlock has come a long way on his inner journey.

In TFP Eurus talks about the Musgrave ritual which Sherlock needs to solve to save John, and that’s also the ACD canon story - MUSG - where Holmes shoots the wall of 221B, while in one of his ”queer humours”:

”I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.”

@gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @raggedyblue @sagestreet

yes, exactly!

“unsolved case, shoot the wall” doesn’t sherlock shoot the wall at the end of tfp

uhhh but more than that, the FIRST time Sherlock shot the wall it WASN’T over an unsolved case, it was over NOT HAVING a case, he was bored

so… if this show means anything, “unsolved case, shoot the wall” would be a clue for TFP being fake

In tgg he shot the wall because he was feeling crushed after reading John’s writeup of their first case.

i would posit that the unsolved case in TGG was John, and Sherlock's Feelings about him. the show isn't really about the surface reading, it's about Sherlock. John was the "three patch problem" in ASIP. TBB didn't quite break that particular "code", and then the blog post came out.

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride opening credits overlays (previous | next)

I looooove the overlay with Watson and the stabbed mail on the mantle!!! First one: John alone and second one: them together!!

IN HIS MIND PALACE!!! I never realised this before!

TLD:

Mrs Hudson: He’s more emotional, isn’t he? Unsolved case, shoot the wall! Boom, boom! Unmade breakfast, karate the fridge. Unanswered question… Well, what does he do with anything he can’t answer, John? Every time?

John: He stabs it.

Mrs Hudson: Anything he can’t find the answer for, bang! It’s up there. I keep telling him, if he was any good as a detective, I wouldn’t need a new mantel!

John Watson the unanswered question he can’t find an answer for… well well

MMHMM

BBC Sherlock - a matter of logics

OK, good question. I’ll ask the same about TAB: how does this work, exactly? 

According to the very obvious and established plot line of TAB, all this happens in Sherlock’s fantasy. We’re explicitly told that Sherlock is imagining this whole Victorian setting, with John in it, and later himself, as a result from overdosing on drugs, on a plane heading for Eastern Eurus Europe (sorry; misspelling there :) ), while reading John’s blog. 

Oops - a gun! What about all these firing guns in your dreams, Sherlock? ;))

Anyway, we’re very definitely inside Sherlock’s head here in TAB, we know that for a fact. 

But what about this scene in ASiP? Sherlock wasn’t present, was he?

Yep; these were rhetorical questions, obviously. My actual point is this: If Sherlock can imagine these things about John dreaming of being wounded in a 19:th century war, then from that follows, logically, that Sherlock can just as well imagine John dreaming of being wounded in a 21:st century war - his own time frame. In both cases Sherlock can base his imagination on known facts published on John’s blog: 

A) John was an army doctor in Afghanistan: 

B) John got shot:

and C) John has a therapist (which probably means he’s haunted by the war - or missing it): 

But we also know that Sherlock deduced all this - most probably before even knowing about John’s blog - just by observing John when they first met: 

So Sherlock’s own deductions, verified by John’s blog, actually gives him plenty of material to dream up scenarios about how these things happened with John; how John was in the war, how John got shot and how he ended up with nightmares caused by PTSD or similar problems, which would make him need a therapist.

Conclusion: Since these two war-dreams-and-wake-up scenes are basically describing the same events in very similar ways, there’s a pretty good chance that they are imagined by the same person - why wouldn’t they be? Which means we’re inside Sherlock’s head already from Day 1 in ASiP. So this logical operation tells us that we’re watching a story about a detective, not a detective story, and that it’s seen from his own point of view. 

So, even if the audience doesn’t like it, or doesn’t believe it, or just assumes otherwise since ACD is telling the story from John’s perspective, I think the evidence is right there, staring us in the face. We’re being told, and we can definitely choose to listen.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

@raggedyblue @sarahthecoat @ebaeschnbliah @sagestreet @loveismyrevolution @tjlcisthenewsexy @gosherlocked

Yes. I remember this idea coming up before, i forget if it was before or after s4 (before, i think), as to whose POV we are seeing. The assumption had been it was john’s pov in s1-2, and part of why s3 felt so jarringly different was a change to sherlock’s pov. Then someone pointed out that everything in ASIP about john, is stuff he either reported to sherlock, blogged about, or sherlock deduced. And telling the story entirely from sherlock’s pov fits both the title “sherlock” and the idea that this iteration is different, doing something that hasn’t been done before.

Yes @sarahthecoat , I do agree on both points, and I’m sure I’m not the first one to bring up this idea. But my memory is sometimes short, so I’m sorry if I’m unknowingly copying someone else’s meta here. :) At this stage I must have re-watched each episode dozens of times, but I haven’t been able to find a single scene with John that couldn’t be explained by facts that Sherlock has collected about John, be it through John’s blog or by talking to or observing John (the parts we all see of him), and making deductions. And that goes for the whole of S1-S3 as well. 

For example, we see John quarrel with the chip-and-pin machine in TBB, but then he tells Sherlock about it, which clearly gives Sherlock stuff for imagination. We see John investigate the hobby astronomer’s flat in TGG, but then he tells Sherlock about it. We see John talking to the police about the boomerang case in ASiB, but he has contact with Sherlock via Skype. Greg visiting John in MHR is described on John’s blog. The scene where Mary is teasing John about shaving for Sherlock in TEH is preceded by a scene where Sherlock deduces that Mary doesn’t like the mustache, and followed by a scene where John appears clean shaven at 221B. Etc., etc.

On the other hand, if we assume it’s all told from John’s perspective, we must also make a lot of other assumptions about John that complicate things, and that we aren’t actually privy to, and never shown. 

We must assume, for example, that it’s John who has a mind palace (or ’mind bungalow’ or whatever), when we’re explicitly told and demonstrated that it’s Sherlock. Or that John is just as capable as Sherlock of doing deductions, which we’re generally shown that he’s not. Or that John is imagining glimpses of Sherlock’s childhood, which he could know nothing about until Mycroft tells him in TFP, but in John’s imagination little Sherlock is clearly wearing the same clothes as in TFP, and the surroundings are the same. Or that John, by sheer coincidence, happens to flirt with a random woman at the bus, and later choose a new therapist, both of which turn out to be Sherlock’s secret sister. (If this is not random, by the way, what would it tell us abut John? That since he’s attracted to Sherlock, he subconsciously seeks out his sister, no matter what disguise she appears in? If this is true, I feel very sorry for John, because then he’s in deep sh*t.) Or that John’s ’ghost!Mary’ is persuading Sherlock to wear the hat, which he then does - a causality that is obviously impossible unless you believe in the supernatural. 

I could go on and on, but I think it’s all a matter of applying logics, which is supposed to be the very point of Sherlock Holmes. Occam’s razor is sharp. ;) And, as you point out @sarahthecoat, maybe we should also ask: if this show is about John’s inner life, why is it called “Sherlock?”

@raggedyblue @sarahthecoat @ebaeschnbliah @loveismyrevolution  @sagestreet​ @tjlcisthenewsexy @gosherlocked

Brilliant, @possiblyimbiassed, @sarahthecoat: I honestly have never understood how anyone can think that S4 or even bigger parts of the show after TRF are from John’s POV. Sure, we are made to believe that S1/2 are from his POV because of the blog but as you pointed out, John tells or writes about his experiences. And if not, Sherlock is able to deduce or imagine them because he knows John so well. So, in choosing to name their show “Sherlock”, Mofftiss quite probably decided to show us the inner world of Sherlock Holmes, something had not been done before and especially not to this extent. In secretly and skillfully exchanging the trusty blogger’s POV for that of the Sherlock himself, they did something that had not been done before. But of course this raises another crucial question (which I think @ebaeschnbliah will like very much): If the whole show is told from Sherlock’s POV, what is real and what is not?

You know indeed very well the thoughts I like most, @gosherlocked  :))))  And yes, @possiblyimbiassed I find your reasoning absolutely logical. As Sherlock advices his brother at the beginning of PILOT (using the famous quote from canon):

So, what is possible and what is impossible? Person ‘A’ being hauted by traumatic memories of the war and person ‘B’, who is intersted in person ‘A’, envisioning or fantasizing about those potential memories, is absolutely possible. But person ‘B’ envisioning those memories in exactly the same pictures as person ‘A’ experienced them …. that’s (in my opinion) definitely impossible. Sherlock in TAB can’t have John’s exact memories from Afghanistan inside his own head. The only possible solution for completely identical pictures in different characters heads is …. it’s not about different characters but about one and the same character where those pictures, those fantasies, appear. 

This leaves a wide field of options for the question ‘what’s real and what’s not real’. If  the story is told from the inside of Sherlock’s head right from the beginning …. do we even know the ‘real’ John Watson?`Or is the character we know as John Watson already a product of Sherlock’s fantasy … ‘a construct based entirely on childhood impressions, influences and role models’? What’s more, do we even know the ‘real’ Sherlock? Or is that man, the famous detective, maybe a consturct as well? The vision of a teenage Sherlock he has of himself as a grown up person?

I remember the creators saying that with TAB they opened the possibility to take their story in every direction they like. This statement could be very true. Sherlock BBC could be about a victorian Sherlock imagening modern times or vis versa. It could also be about a young Sherlock imagening himself as a grown up man and famous detective. This story could be indeed a lot of things …..

@sarahthecoat @raggedyblue 

Yes!

Sherlock point blank saying “None of my cases are as interesting or remarkable as John Watson” in his speech, he is point blanking saying “The thing I said I was married to in episode one is bullshit compared to John Watson” he is literally ACTUALLy saying that JOhn ismore important to him than his life’s work PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS SHOW IS NOT ABOUT CASES

MMHMM!

Sherlock: Five minutes till the plane lands. Should be enough time to figure out how Jim survived.

Sherlock: *fantasizes about John as a soldier*

Sherlock: *fantasizes about meeting John all over again*

Sherlock: *disguises woman he knows has a thing for him as a man and pretends not to see through it but imagines John does*

Sherlock: *disguises self as snarky maid who deduces the sad state of the Watson marriage to John’s face*

Sherlock: *fantasizes about John prodding him about his sex life*

Sherlock: *imagines Jim fellating a gun on his knees*

John: Sherlock?

Sherlock: DON’T WAKE ME UP I HAVE TO GO BACK FOR SCIENCE

That’s exactly what happened. He even called moriarty “a distraction”. Not “the case”, a distraction FROM what he would rather pay attention to.

that’s his one and only unsolved case…. John Watson

“It’s always you! You keep me right!”

Yes! JOHN is the "three patch problem"!

What happened to Sherlock? Part VI - Live and let die (2)

This post is a direct continuation of the last installment in my meta series; the first post is HERE. I’ll continue what I started in my earlier meta: trying to reconstruct the scenarios I believe Sherlock is running inside his EMP, with evidence and a bit of guesswork as well. I’ve already done it with HLV, so here follows TAB, and then TST. 

Before we start, I think there are some important facts to establish about TAB and TST, which support the idea that these are hypothetical scenarios and that we are indeed inside Sherlock’s head all the time throughout these episodes:

1. We actually know for sure this time, that most of the scenes in TAB are (drug-induced) fabrications of Sherlock’s brain – namely those that occur in a Victorian setting. Even Sherlock himself knows it, at some level:

2. We are explicitly shown, in these scenes, how Sherlock – inside his own brain – talks about how “the stage is set and the curtain rises” and how he later carefully sets up a stage in the street while analysing a crime case involving a suicide and ghosts. Like a theatrical experiment.

3. As observed by those who originally proposed the EMP theory, we never see Sherlock finally get out of his MP in the Victorian setting. At the end of the episode, after the supposedly final tarmac scene, Holmes and Watson are still sitting in 19th century 221B, discussing the case of the Abominable Bride as one of Holmes’ ‘rare failures’. They’re even discussing the ‘modern scenes’ as if they were not ‘real’:

Keep reading

Wow, this is really coming together! (not sure if this is brand new or if i missed it earlier somehow) I also like what @meta-lock wrote in their reply, about all the “memory sticks” representing sherlock’s childhood, his memories or secrets that he fears being revealed. I also think that the whole show being in sherlock’s mind/pov, while he tries to work out the real three patch problem, which is john watson and how he feels about him, is working better and better as the surface reading gets more and more surreal.

Thanks for the comment @sarahthecoat This made me reread and have some additional thoughts. I love how @possiblyimbiassed ‘s meta keeps taking you down another level. It’s the embodiment of “to solve this crime I must first solve and older one” - Sherlock keeps rewinding the tape, so to speak, and ultimately has to delve into his own childhood repressed memories to achieve resolution. (More to come there)

I think the break from show reality to mind- palacing is the wedding. That’s where Amanda Abington said - after that Episode, TPTB told her Mary’s backstory of superspy stuff. So - Sherlock leaves the wedding, “-all that is left for me is the cocaine bottle” or heroin or whatever. He does drugs - perhaps multiple times.

At first - his fantasy is that John would come in, metaphorical guns blazing and rescue him. Yank him out of the trap house, make him pee in a cup…let Sherlock even mentally comment on John’s tire-iron sized junk. But then - he’s have to get rid of Mary.

Around this time - Sherlock probably takes the fatal dose - and it’s the ‘heartbreak’ caused by Mary. But that isn’t right either. Mary might be evil - but freeing John of Mary doesn’t mean John will be Sherlock’s.

The next problem to solve: does Sherlock hate women? Does John dislike women? Look down on them, etc - Sherlock’s double death and Emilia’s - How did Sherlock’s ‘suicide’ impact John? All of the scenarios mentioned above. The scenario Sherlock ends on is he and John together, Sherlock ‘falling’ (in love, defeating Moriarty-Homophobia) but the problem is how to land - how to be in a relationship, assuming John were willing. So Sherlock must dig deeper into his past

TST: In the next season - Sherlock runs scenarios of John’s possible reactions. He also delves into “when did I lock away my emotions?” Hiding in conservative Thatcher era, what would have happened had he come out like Charlie, etc.

TLD: Then - fear of abandonment - if you tell someone something, you can’t unsay it. If he tells John that he loves him, will John reject him? And fear of consequences - if John had a child, if John blames Sherlock for destroying “Mary’ - who at this point has become Sherlock, the detective - so destroying what initially brought them together - the cases and Sherlock being brilliant.

TFP: what made me like this? He splits himself into East and West Winds. He looks at the boys of himself that are more than a bit not good. The part of him that loves Master Criminal Moriarty, the part of him that seems dissociated in his childhood, the part of him that lost his best friend (Victor - who is likely Sherlock Holmes’ college sweetheart in the original Holmes) and ‘burned the house down’ - I’m I imagining he was caught kissing a boy and Victor got in horrible trouble, they were separated and Sherlock was sent to boarding school. He’s also sussing out what John’s history may have been. (Essentially - what’s John’s baggage?)

RB for discussion, yes!

This is a really interesting discussion @sarahthecoat and @meta-lock! And sorry @meta-lock for not having noticed your first comment on this post, which was also very thought provoking. Because what I find interesting to try to figure out is very much what specific questions does Sherlock ask himself in his Mind Palace from HLV and onwards; what are his mind experiments about? And does he reach any helpful conclusions after running each scenario? And your answers to this, as the S4 scenarios described above, make a lot of sense to me. 

You’ve already pointed out that Sherlock may have some irrational fear connected to his childhood trauma (as represented by the memory stick), that he believes John mustn’t know about because then he’ll reject Sherlock. And since this info - wrapped up in homophobia - is apparently not useful to anyone else’s understanding either, Sherlock keeps ignoring the contents of the memory (stick), just like Moriarty and John toss it away, while ‘Mary’ distracts him from reading it. But it also keeps popping up again and again, until Sherlock finally has to deal with his childhood memories in the TFP scenarios, albeit in a metaphorical way (please correct me @meta-lock if I’m interpreting you wrongly here).

I think Sherlock’s main problem is that he believes he’s not ‘good enough’ for John - or worse; that he’s even ‘bad for John’, that being associated with Sherlock in the ‘wrong’ way will drag John into trouble and destroy him. But in reality, I think John is far more aware of the issue of internalized homophobia than Sherlock. John’s main fear is to be exposed in media, to ‘come out’. Which is understandable if John has had some bad experiences, perhaps both in the army and at home, with what happens to people who are exposed this way. 

Which means John will never be the first one to ‘confess’; he won’t spell out his romantic interest in Sherlock, unless Sherlock demonstrates clearly that these feelings are reciprocated. Which brings us back to the problem of Sherlock’s traumatized concealing and repressing of his own emotions. In order to be able to be ‘the one’ for John, Sherlock must first confront and embrace his own feelings, then actually tell John about it. 

As for the break from the show’s reality, I definitely agree that Sherlock probably does drugs repeatedly after John’s wedding, but HLV reflects when he takes the fatal dose, sending him into coma. But at this point I’m not even sure that we have seen the ‘real’ reality just yet; if you’ve read the earlier installments of my meta series, you’ll know that I believe we’re inside Sherlock’s head from Day 1, It’s just that in ASiP - TSoT Sherlock is still awake (but high), reminiscing things of which many have actually happened, based on John’s blog (initially @raggedyblue‘s idea). Be that as it may, your descriptions of Sherlock’s problem solving in TAB and S4 seem accurate to me, @meta-lock. And your boarding school idea in TFP also might be referenced already in TRF with the kidnapped children.

I’ll tag the same people as before, in case they’re interested in these additions:

@ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @fellshish @sagestreet @tendergingergirl @loveismyrevolution @sherlockshadow @darlingtonsubstitution @tjlcisthenewsexy @devoursjohnlock  @kateis-cakeis @csi-baker-street-babes @sectoralheterochromiairidum @mrskolesouniverse @murphysmom67 @elldotsee

The idea of the memory stick that keeps cropping up and being thrown away, such a great metaphor for being afraid to look at something in oneself!

I also am intrigued by, what specific questions is sherlock posing to himself in these scenarios. In a general sense, in order to solve the "three patch problem" of john, he has to first solve himself. But what that means in more specific terms is emerging more gradually.