SarahTheCoat

what did sherlock need the pen for

oh, that's a good question.

there's that scene in TST? i think, when mycroft is holding a pen and it is maybe signalling him as representing the writers (it's been a while since i saw that meta, so im paraphrasing very loosely)

this early in the series though, it could be something about whether john or sherlock is, or represents, the writer. we do see john take notes, in TGG at least, maybe in TBB? but does sherlock? does typing or texting mean something different?

apologies if this sends someone down a rabbit hole, as i blithely toddle off to bed!

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

This is a very interesting meta @tjlcisthenewsexy​  And TBB really seems to be the key-code to unravel the whole story. So much is hinted at in this episode that reappears later in fullblown scenes and stories. The mask (facade), spray paint (tan), the stage, the fall, the mirroring, the stolen items, the locked room murders/mysteries, the underground networks, the dragon, past history, changing codes, the yellow face ….

As for ‘Sherlock sabotaging his own love story’ … Sherlock is described to be 'his own worst enemy’. This sounds a lot like the perfect basis for a massive inner conflict. At times anyone does irrational or foolish things … because we are unsure, afraid or we are going by false assumtions. Why not Sherlock Holmes too? After all, he isn’t very skilled when it comes to matters of the heart, nor very apt in handling his own emotions. Under these circumstances it seems very likely that mistakes may occur.

YES, @tjlcisthenewsexy this is brilliant! I wondered about that pen toss in TBB, especially since the discussions about who holds a pen in s4. And the spray-paint as a pen is made clear by the wall of code john finds... which was written by... someone else... and concealed from sherlock. Not sure what that means... maybe just that over the years, different people have been writing versions of the story, with different intentions.

The painting of the "blind" banker also reminds me a little of the photo of ACD that we are familiar with, the one that's on martin's fridge, in that pic of him in an apron that's been going around recently. Not sure whether we are supposed to make that connection, it's a fairly conventional kind of portrait. (IE, "people sit in chairs" doesn't count as a tv trope)