SIGH.

Love and Eurus’s Three Forms

Having read @toxicsemicolon‘s brilliant meta on S4 as absurdist theater/the-blog-is-the-show, I was struck by one section:

One thing that puzzled me about an allegorical reading of Eurus is why she had three forms: Exx from the bus; Faith, the John mirror; and Eurus, the horror-movie sister.

But in Greek, romantic love also had three forms: Eros, Philos, and Agape. In Series 4, we see how lack of each form, personified through versions of Eurus, hurts John.

Agape: The Lady from the Bus

Agape represented unconditional love and was often used to denote affection between spouses. In TST, we see the opposite: John isn’t being faithful to his wife because he doesn’t love her–doesn’t feel the agape he’s supposed to–, causing guilt and self-loathing. John Watson, tortured by agape.

Philia: Faith Smith

Philia was brotherly love, translated variously as friendship (particularly loyalty to friends) or affection. In TLD, we get Faith Smith, the least subtle John mirror in the entire show. She represents John as he was before moving in with Sherlock:

John’s suicidal thoughts and lack of purpose went away, if temporarily, because of Sherlock’s friendship and understanding. In TLD, Sherlock’s attempts to stop Faith from committing suicide reflect the same feelings. His later comments also suggest new awareness of the importance of considering the effects of actions on friends’ emotions. He’s grown since TRF, when he believed John would be unaffected by his death (i.e., felt no philia).

But even as Faith reminds us of the role of Philia in Sherlock and John’s relationship, the actual episode is telling us that that rapport simply isn’t there at the moment. Sherlock and John are completely estranged. John even beats Sherlock up, demonstrating a complete lack of philia, and regrets it afterwards. John Watson, tortured by philia.

Eros: Eurus Holmes

Eros represented intimate love and desire. The weird-snake-mating-dance-thingy with Moriarty, the comment about the nurse of indeterminate gender definitely not john repressing his bisexuality, and similar scenes point this way.

Again, lack of eros causes problems. Sherlock’s issue in the “I love you” scene is that he can’t get Molly, a John mirror, to say those words to him. Similarly, John and Sherlock aren’t in a relationship because neither of them will actually say those words to the other. John Watson, tortured by eros.

Conclusions

Eurus doesn’t represent love so much as she represents the problems caused by unfulfilled or missing love. Lack of agape makes John feel guilty about “cheating”, lack of philia makes John hurt his best friend and hate himself, lack of eros nearly gets a John mirror killed.

But Eurus’s forms also suggest that by embracing love in all three ways, John can end his pain. Let’s hope he learns from his mistakes.

NOTE: Depending on where you look, you’ll find up to seven forms of love used by the Greeks. Eros, philia, and agape are by far the most common. However, a solid fourth place goes to storge, the love between parents and children. By definition, it doesn’t apply to the relationship between John and Sherlock. However, if we look at Eurus as simply an allegorical representation of love and not at her role in the narrative, her storge form is arguably represented by her little-girl versions on the plane and in the scenes of Sherlock’s childhood.

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This is very interesting. They inverted everything about Romantic Love. They have done that before. I did a meta, behind-the-painted-smile interpreting Smiley, and what they did with V for Vendetta was to invert a lot of the storyline. There was also the use of mirrors, throughout. The mirrors increased a lot in S4. They were everywhere, and when Sherlock said the words, “By the pricking of my thumbs…” it triggered this by-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs The message I also got was Love. So, as you show, everything was reversed, as it pertains to John. Through a looking glass, darkly.   S4 has been painful, but metas like this that give a glimmer of hope that there was a worthwhile message to it.

@sherlock-overflow-error this is excellent! @tendergingergirl yet more inversions... that is the overriding motif of s4.

I’m happy at the place I’ve landed…. everything in amy’s meta of course as a foundation… but then, the blog=show thus I don’t have to pin any proof down using details. details on both are fuzzy; it’s not about matching precise dates because the blog (and john’s account, just like acd’s account) are sloppy with details. if they match great, of they don’t, who cares, just like details like sherlock’s birthyear and everything else are fuzzy; mofftiss is doing this in the style of acd and always sort of have been but the difference is that we’re now through the looking glass. we no longer have these fictionalized accounts but all we have is the blog. the cover story. the account. we have no first-hand information. bits of “truth” peek through, sometimes indirectly. to understand this we can’t go collecting breadcrumbs anymore, we have to step outside the whole frame.

“to understand this we can’t go collecting breadcrumbs anymore, we have to step outside the whole frame”

this is the most important thing, i’m sure. i’ve been trying to formulate the exact same thought today, but failed 😅

i decided only yesterday to stop clinging to details, especially details of “whose point of view is that”, because it really..doesn’t matter now? i’m totally aware of the fact that “sherlock” isn’t sci-fi, but, at the same time, show’s reality isn’t tied up to our own reality too much (as Mark said, the show’s reality is a “slightly exaggerated version of our own universe” (thanks to Amy for this reminder), so. especially when lots and lots of facts point out on the idea that S4 is a combination of theatrical mechanics, i’m totally fine with almost all possible “inconsistencies” (it demand further deep analysis, of course)

yes, the exaggerated reality! I feel like I’m settling into an understanding of the show that is in-depth yet doesn’t rest upon continuity details, which feels right. 

also, the idea that I keep coming to with a lot of other/earlier theories that got a lot of traction (…john’s mind palace, it’s all an extended dream, etc etc) is that it’s like the philosophy 101 example of the elephant… (oh no is this OUR elephant in the room??? no pun was even intended) where blind men who have never heard of an elephant all try to describe it: it’s long like a snake! it’s wide like a tree trunk! it’s thin like a whip! it’s ..something to describe the big ears! and they’re all right. 

so while we’re all sort of right, we have to look at the bigger picture and not get too lost in details. we have to scale out and see the elephant.

Yes, I like this approach.

YES, I've been thinking of the blind men and the elephant too, and how we may not even have the whole elephant, or we may have more than one critter, or a whole ecosystem. I'm not sure how this qualifies as "fixing" something "everyone else has been getting wrong", but who knows what goes on in their funny little minds. I wonder if this is what arwel was trying to get at with all the elephant tweets, during s4 filming. Either instead of, or in addition to, the "elephant in the room" connotation (which still hasn't been addressed except subtextually)

Once you’ve eliminated the impossible

John Watson is no longer updating his blog

WHO IS????

NURSE CORNISH: It’s gone downhill a bit, hasn’t it?

If Sherlock was the last person updating John’s blog, then who should we believe came up with all those unpublished blog posts?

Looks like Sherlock’s the storyteller to me now.

This is important and I really don’t want us to forget about that in our further analysis.

I was just re-watching that scene in TDL, trying to make sense of why does Nurse Cornish and apparently everyone else FIRMLY BELIEVES that John’s blog is actually Sherlock’s, like ???

Right, @marcespot?? Why else would they question whose blog it is?  

That’s very interesting @marcespot @mrskolesouniverse @monikakrasnorada   The thing is though … if TLD happens inside Sherlock’s head, then all the people there are imaginations of Sherlock’s mind and can’t think for themselves. Sherlock is the one who is thinking. I see only two possibilities for a scenario like this:

The same goes for everything that happens inside Sherlock’s mind. And for every character who exists inside Sherlock’s mind. Sherlock is the author and director on his Mind-Stage.

That’s what I was saying (poorly) with the original post, @ebaeschnbliah. As you know, I firmly believe all of S4 to be in Sherlock’s mind. And the reason the blog hasn’t updated in real time is because we are frozen at the time of the shooting. So, since Sherlock was the last to update, he has now ‘taken over the blog’ in his mind. Hence, no one knowing it’s John’s blog, because he’s the narrator now.

This definitely sounds like sherlock writing john's lines, though. like the blog post about the wedding. @devoursjohnlock , @toxicsemicolon, @monikakrasnorada, @mrskolesouniverse, @sherlockshadow, who else was in that discussion about s4 is the blog, and sherlock took over the blog...

SHERLOCK LITERALLY TOOK OVER JOHN’S BLOG.

HIS IS THE LAST POST MADE TO JOHN’S BLOG, FOLLOWING THE WEDDING.

This was exactly my thought, so glad to find this!

In January I wrote a post saying “I don’t think TFP is in Johns mind. I think it’s still Sherlock (EMP) imagining what it’s like in Johns mind. He’s imagining what John would hallucinate about. If it’s not alibi theory and they’re telling/making up different parts for different audiences.”

Bc the whole of s4 is like something John would write but super duper over the top - only with a hotter but colder John (who chases after women and genuinely loves Mary in a way) and who’s extremely mad at Sherlock and blames him for almost everything. And a frankly not very likeable Sherlock.

Yessss, @ifiweremykid. It’s sad, but it makes so much sense to see this as Sherlock’s vision of how John would imagine things. How’s that for some Inception level shit? Because Sherlock IS a drama queen and of course, it would be so outrageous.

yeah, this makes sense, in an angst drenched kind of a way...

I haven’t have time to read the thing yet, but I’m seeing a lot of people talking about the relationship between the blog and the show in S4, and I thought it might be a good time to mention that Culverton Smith’s hospital wing probably opened for business the day of or the day after John’s stag night.

I think there was a lot of discussion early on about this date being 20 July, 2044, but it’s really 20 July, 2014 (not enough room for two 4s there).

The following day, John wrote up the Mayfly Man case, describing his “quiet, civilised evening” with Sherlock.

So civilised that it led him to create a persona based his darkest vision of himself, I guess.

Theoretically, there may have been a lag between the courtroom deduction scene in TSOT and John writing this post, but he needed no additional information after that scene to do it, so I’m betting that stag night occurred 19 or 20 July, 2014. Whether or not “the show is the blog”, this is support for Culverton Smith being a creation of John’s mind.

i’m sorry, but…. WAIT A MINUTE. JOHN’S DARK MIRROR, WHOSE ACTIONS TOWARDS SHERLOCK (the scene in his hospital bed) ARE FULL OF SEX/VIOLENCE PARALLELS, POSSIBLY WAS “CREATED” (his hospital is his castle indeed) AFTER JOHN’S STAG NIGHT?

i love everything here

I may not agree with the idea that Smith is John’s ‘creation’, but I do love this. I mean, this is amazing! THE DAY AFTER STAG NIGHT???? 

Yes, @mrskolesouniverse, ‘full of sex / violence parallels’ is what is hitting me so hard. Especially, since I see S4 as from Sherlock’s mind palace. Sherlock has a bit of a reason to sexualise Dark!John in that way, doesn’t he??? 

AND, @sherlockshadow, SHERLOCK TOOK OVER JOHN’S BLOG WITH THE VERY NEXT POST.

holy cow, yeah… and i remember after s3, there was the whole discussion about, 1 john wanted to get more drunk than sherlock planned, in order to lower his inhibitions, in the hope of helping to “make something happen” 2 too bad they got interrupted, because something was about to happen that might have saved john from the wedding 3 good thing nothing happened after all, because john & sherlock aren’t a one night stand, or a drunk fumble, or a cheat. when it does happen it needs to be a free and clear thing, no substance abuse factor, etc. still, the combination of part 1, and john talking about cheating and suffocating in marriage even before the wedding, does suggest a monster like smith. ew.

@sarahthecoat I am just gonna riff off what you said here because I am excited…..

John wanted to get himself/Sherlock more drunk because he wanted something to happen with them

because he loves Sherlock not Mary and wanted out of the wedding.

But nothing happened so he tells Sherlock, the blog, everyone this story of the Mayfly man, who just wanted out of his marriage. He had a series of one-night stands because it didn’t matter to him who the girl was (could be anyone), he was just bored by married life.

This is what John tells Sherlock the next morning and prints on his blog, but it turns out that’s not the true story - the Mayfly man wasn’t interested in those women, he was in fact after one specific person, a man, James Sholto, a Sherlock mirror …… but John stops updating his blog and never tells the world the true story. (!!!)

THEN, maybe, he convinces himself that it WAS the true story - that he doesn’t love Sherlock the way he deserves and didn’t want to be with him for his own sake - that his primary motivation is just escape from Mary. It doesn’t have to be Sherlock, he’s just a bad person and it could be anyone. A random lady on the bus…. John will hook up with anyone at all to escape Mary, his marriage, just as Culverton will kill anyone he has access to… we know that’s not true but does John believe it himself?

And he views his trying to hook up with Sherlock on stag night as caused by a baser desire, and he thinks he would have hurt Sherlock, and YES there are parallels here with the Culverton strangulation scene….

Culverton is the monster John thinks he is.

Oh and uh - Culverton says he needs to kill ANYONE John says he wants help from ANYONE (but Sherlock) Does John think he’s going to destroy anyone who gets close to him and he’s warning Sherlock away?

yeah, pretty much. The "mayfly man" writeup is pretty much john projecting, knowing how unhappy he is going to be in the marriage even before the wedding. :( and that all gets confirmed.

season 1:

john has a blog, doesnt know what to write in it, finds his life boring until he meets sherlock. starts writing blog posts about his life with sherlock and the first case they have, a study in pink, john already redacts names from people working on the case, showing us already the difference between what we see in the show and what is presented as an official version of the case

moriarty who already knew about sherlock thanks to his website, gets more infos on sherlock thanks to john’s blog: sherlock already criticizes john’s blog for the way he writes about him (the great game), moriarty uses clues from john’s blog to get sherlock in the game

season 2:

sherlock gets more and more famous thanks to john’s blog: john’s blog become a real part of their jobs and twice in this season someone compliments john on his writing of a particular case: the aluminum crutch, a case about a man killing himself by accident while acting on stage, we also can see already how john distorts reality just by writing about The Woman. we also see more cases that aren’t truly talked about on the show or just referenced, full of subtext and codes. we also get multiple references to what is the truth, who is sherlock who is moriarty, the lie behind reichenbach fall and the destruction of sherlock’s reputation: a big lie wrapped up in truth

season 3:

season 3 starts with the presentation of multiple versions of the same story: the empty hearse gives us three theories about how sherlock survived, what sherlock accepts to tell us about it, we also have mary reading an excerpt of john’s blog that we never have heard before. john’s blog becomes active again, full of longing and again distortions of truth (the stag night???), tsot is about john’s blog and the story of sherlock and john seen through john’s blog and sherlock’s own memories: again we can see the difference between what is written from john’s pov and what sherlock tells us.

the main villain of this season is magnussen, controlling the media, publishing whatever he wants to pursue his own goals. we see how it doesnt matter to him if what he’s published is untrue, just the action of publishing it makes it true for the public.

tab:

john’s blog or should we say watson’s stories are part of the official narrative: sherlock in his drug mind palace is aware that what john’s writing is just an official version of the story, a public persona for sherlock that is not the truth, this episode finally makes a point of telling everyone that john’s blog is not telling the truth: it’s just something sold to the readers/audience

season 4:

finally john’s blog is the show. when before we had the line between reality and fiction, when before we could as the audience tell exactly where was the lie between what john wanted to present as the truth and what he experienced, now we have no idea: the blog has officially announced it wouldn’t be updated anymore (by the BBC) and gave a link to the actual show: the blog tells us that for more content of its nature, we had to watch the show. the promotion for season 4 was all about lie and distortion of the truth, from glitches during the relentless promo videos (an entire month before it premiered): all the videos we got from all the main characters were, in my opinion, a presentation of john’s version of these characters, hence the video glitches for each of them.

HMMMM.