The Curious Case of the Twin Wallpapers - Call for Meta!

It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that during the last hiatus, when thinking about series 3 and the things that were to come, I did not only look forward to finally knowing how Sherlock survived the fall, but also to see what wallpaper would make it into the show.

When the big moment finally came the show did not disappoint. All three episodes featured fantastic wallpaper designs but some of the choices confused me. I am familiar with Arwel’s visual style and especially one of the patterns we saw did not match my expectations.  I could clearly say “this paper is the odd one out” but I could not see why it had been chosen despite its oddity. I always say that if something is odd, then it is odd for a reason.  Also, Arwel’s use of wallpaper is semantically rich. He does not only choose patterns that look nice on camera. He has a penchant for bold, striking and impressive patterns. He makes us see the wallpaper when generally wallpaper tends to hide in the background. His wallpaper is not white noise for the eyes, quite the opposite in fact. Of course the wallpaper adds to the visual style of a show and therefore the choices have a clear need to fit within the general visual tone, but that’s not the only thing that happens with wallpaper in the Sherlock universe.  Arwel also uses wallpaper to support the characterisation and create visual links between characters and scenes.  

 So, which pattern was the odd one out you ask?

It’s the Toile de Jouy at the crime scene in The Empty Hearse.

While compiling the wallpaper patterns for the masterpost I had the opportunity to see the wallpaper patterns from all three series within short succession and then I understood. On its own that toile is the odd one out, but it is not alone, no. It has a twin. But more on that later. First we should talk about what is so odd about a Toile de Jouy pattern that it gave me pause when I spotted it on Sherlock?

Toile de Jouy is a very very traditional pattern. As in 18th century French pastoral scenes traditional. That does not match the generally bold choices we see on the show. If you look through the masterpost you will see a lot of colour, contrasts and geometry, neither of which you will find in a Toile de Jouy. What I would have expected to see is a toile with a twist, such as Timorous Beasties’ London Toile:

Seeing Timorous Beasties wouldn’t be too far-fetched given that we’ve seen one of their designs (devil damask) in Irene Adler’s bedroom.  Their London Toile features the modern London skyline instead of a farm house with trees and instead of a frolicking French couple we get scenes of gang violence.

In other words: the wallpaper we see on the show is boring. Yet it is shown quite prominently.  The camera pans over it and we can see that the paper itself is in a rather good condition. Had it been damaged, yellowed, dirtied and partly torn I would not have looked twice because that would have said “this is an abandoned house, an empty, boring old place”. But it is not. It is also not plain, striped wallpaper that would have said “nothing to see here but a wall, move on”. No, the paper features an easily recognisable design but one that is not so out there that anyone who watches the show would question its usage in this scene. It’s a perfectly everyday pattern – that just so happens not to fit into the general visual tone of the show. It was so odd that I immediately thought “what on earth is that doing in the show?” Knowing Arwel’s love for wallpaper I could not understand why he would make this choice.

But this series 3 crime scene was not the only one that broke my brain because I could not understand its wallpaper. In The Sign of Three Sherlock is doing drunk deductions in front of a black and white wallpaper that, thanks to the camera filters, we never get to see clearly.

When I try to identify a pattern and try to find the manufacturer, I write down a couple of associations and pattern descriptions so that I can try and see which company is the most likely manufacturer. For the drunk deduction scene I wrote down “crazy sixties botanical nightmare”.  Based on the retro furniture I fully expected the wallpaper to be some black and white interpretation of a mod/retro pattern and the shape of the white parts suggested that it might be a botanical pattern.  After six months of coming up empty in my searches I had to rethink this approach, at which point my brain helpfully suggested that it might me a negative Toile de Jouy.  And guess what. 2 minutes of googling later I had found it.  Again, a Toile de Jouy is not what I would expect to find in a flat that is so completely mod-ified. It is an odd choice but in this case it matters less because all we see are white blobs on black background. The filters used do not allow us to see the actual pattern on the walls.

But there’s a twist.

The drunk deduction scene wallpaper is the negative version of the Jack the Ripper how I did it crime scene wallpaper in TEH. They are the exact same pattern, the first one being the classical blue on white background while the second one has a white pattern on a black background.  Have a look yourself:

Taken on their own, both of these wallpaper choices are odd and there would have been many other choices that would have fit within the visual style of the show much better. Taken as a pair these choices add a link between two scenes and given how badly they fit into the show as a whole, the need for the link must have overwritten the need for a coherent visual style.

So, what links these two scenes apart from their wallpapers?

We find both these papers in crime scenes that seem to be the polar opposite of each other in many ways:

We have day versus night, sober versus drunk, Sherlock figuring it out versus Sherlock having no clue, without John and with John, the 6 month old skeleton and the 6 month relationship that leads to the engagement and therefore the stag night, both cases including something that is fake, the crime scene in one, the man posing as dead men in the other, the police calling Sherlock in and someone calling the police on Sherlock and in both cases “why would someone go to all that trouble?”

Why indeed? The wallpaper says that they’re mirror images and I can see a lot of elements that support this but I cannot see why they would go to all that trouble.

Tell me, what are we supposed to see when we take these cases and set them next to each other? 

“why would someone go to all that trouble?”

YESSS! This is amazing.

I’ve written metas about how each crime scene is symbolic of Sherlock’s subconscious, i.e. how his sexuality is a crime scene he’s endeavored to keep uncompromised. (The hint is Sherlock saying, “Don’t compromise the crime scene!” in the drunken deductions scene, which I’ll get to.)

In TEH, when we see the wallpaper Lestrade is actually pulling the crime scene tape off the door, haha:

Here’s some quotes and added stuff from my meta about that, so people don’t have to wade through the other stuff I talked about in it. Basically the sex part comes in with all the trains going into tunnels stuff getting mixed in with Sherlock thinking about John:

Sherlock had to walk downstairs to get to the room with the skeleton, and it’s dark and dusty; it’s symbolic of his subconscious. This visual symbolism isn’t unique to Sherlock, it’s an old trope. Then a train comes through and knocks some dust loose, i.e. stuff is being dusted off in Sherlock’s subconscious, so things he hasn’t acknowledged in a long time are being forcibly uncovered. Also it makes Sherlock think about trains.

The skeleton is also a mirror for Sherlock: it’s dressed like he dresses sometimes, we get “spruce” and “pine” as his incorrect guesses for the smell, when they’re both verbs for what he’s done this episode: he spruced himself up for John, now he pines for him. He’s been burned (might also be a Moriarty nod) and feels dead, but the skeleton can’t be more than six months old… which is how long Mary says she’s been with John (or at least how long he’s had the moustache, i.e. when John became someone different than Sherlock remembers). There’s a book called “How I Did It” when Sherlock is always telling how he did it (i.e. solved a crime) and tried to tell John how he faked his death the night before. We get a nod to the ACD Holmes with the skeleton’s “Victorian outfit.” Lestrade says, “So it was a fake,” and Molly asks why anyone would go through all that trouble, and Sherlock responds, “Why indeed, John,” because he’s thinking of how he went through all his trouble faking his death and couldn’t even be with John at the end of it.

John, in Sherlock’s head, asks Sherlock if he’s “jealous” — presumably of Mary. This question really bothers Sherlock. Then John calls Sherlock a “smart arse,” a reminder to Sherlock that John doesn’t or wouldn’t like him, perhaps especially in a romantic way. Finally, John tells Sherlock “you forgot to put your coat collar up” — which Sherlock didn’t forget, as you can see from the scene. We know from THoB that John told Sherlock he looks cool and mysterious with his coat collar up, so it’s not a stretch to interpret this as Sherlock, fraught with all the things he’s done wrong to lose John, thinking he should have looked more physically attractive for John. I actually find it kind of difficult to interpret it any other way, to be honest. We have no other information about how John feels about Sherlock’s coat collar being up than the bit from THoB.

After Sherlock leaves that room they visit the subway guy. We get a quick shot of one of the toy trains going around. We get more shots with the toy trains moving around during the scene.

Afterward, Sherlock has that big mind palace sequence of trains going into tunnels, with the tunnels projected on him. The trains-in-tunnels visual metaphor has been a trope symbolizing sex in films for a long time, especially older films when it was less acceptable to simply show sex. During this sequence, we get a shot of Sherlock’s face doubled as if his attention is split two places, and indeed, the shots of John are interspersed between shots of Moran, insinuating that Sherlock is having trouble focusing on the case because he keeps thinking of John. As a train. Going into a tunnel. Which is projected on Sherlock. 

In other words, Sherlock is being distracted by feelings of attraction toward John. Not to put too fine a point on it, but: Sherlock is literally thinking of trains going into tunnels, but his subconscious is like, speaking of which, I wish John would fuck me in the ass.

Like. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All of this was set off by the train’s movement in the Jack the Ripper crime scene.

But Sherlock won’t acknowledge his feelings yet; it’s all subconscious, and when it starts to creep in with John’s criticisms in his head, he gets anxious and waves it away. I’ve argued Sherlock’s acknowledgment of his feelings happens in the drunken deductions scene, and then his best man speech.

We get the negative of the Jack the Ripper crime scene wallpaper in the drunken deductions scene, which seems to tie the two scenes together as being representations of Sherlock’s subconscious.

I talked about it before here (honestly a ton of other places too; this was THE SCENE to talk about in January, lol), but among a bunch of other stuff, so again: here are some quotes and extra stuff added:

After John touches his knee, and after Sherlock hears Tessa telling the story of his and John’s first evening together and tears up, we get the drunken deductions scene. In that scene, Tessa prompts Sherlock to figure out the crime scene, which is symbolic of his own sexuality. And just like a crime scene, Sherlock has endeavored to keep it uncompromised. But everyone expects him to figure it out, so he starts stumbling around. And this is where Arwel really shines.

Sherlock starts bent over the couch, looking at a plate that looks vaguely anal:

Aside from the wallpaper, we get another hint from Arwel that this scene is metaphorical from the giant bull skull; that is not a typical decoration, but it’s an icon of how Sherlock chose to decorate 221B. This scene is about Sherlock.

And more than that, bulls are symbols of masculinity and virility. And Sherlock looks at this symbol of both himself and sexuality, and wonders if it’s dead. Sherlock is drunk this time, unlike the Jack the Ripper scene, and without his inhibitions, he’s actually confronting this stuff. Remember, the scene before this John touched his leg and said, “I don’t mind,” and he and John were getting pretty touchy-feely on the couch while Tessa reminded Sherlock of how he’d wanted to “take it slow.” Sherlock got upset realizing that John is going to be gone soon. All this stuff is swirling around Sherlock’s head, and because John is about to get married, Sherlock can’t just push it aside and “take it slow” indefinitely anymore. It’s time for him to grow up and figure out what he wants.

Sherlock then wanders toward a pink light (the color for same sex attraction in the bisexual flag) and is confronted with “wood?” or “egg?” deductions: gay or straight? He immediately looks to a woman, Tessa, and gets a few quick deductions; but Tessa is also is a mirror for Sherlock, a man. (Tessa is a nurse, and John calls Sherlock his “nurse” this episode. And Tessa was narrating Sherlock’s recollection of his first night with John.)

Sherlock says, “I’m just gonna whip this out,” ‘this’ being the magnifying glass which is going to symbolize his dick, which is pretty much the only thing you colloquially “whip out” in English. Sherlock notably has to take off his clothes — his coat — in order to do this, and his coat always symbolizes his work and “armor,” so he’s symbolically vulnerable as if he were naked, and it’s a metaphor for getting ready to have sex.

Sherlock whips out his dick — er, magnifying glass — and extends it, i.e. moves it to the “erect” position. First thing he does is get on all fours with his ass in the air toward John, which is obviously symbolic of gay sex. But Sherlock also puts his face in the carpet, which he well might: most people are heterosexual, and “carpet munching” is a euphemism for performing oral sex on a woman. Balance of probability is that Sherlock should begin looking there, right? Sherlock operates on balance of probability. But, oh, he falls asleep! Putting his face in the carpet wasn’t interesting. Tessa says, “Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes!” But a woman’s voice can’t rouse Sherlock, and he merely makes dry heaving noises into the carpet: he really doesn’t like having his face there, does he?

The man with Tessa gets irritated and says he’s calling the police, and grabs Sherlock’s arm from behind him. John looks like he’s going to punch the man. Sherlock immediately wakes up now that he’s had rough contact with a man, and says, “Whoa whoa whoa! What do you think you’re doing? Don’t compromise the integrity of the —”  Then he vomits, which has at least possible three symbolic meanings here: it’s a parallel for ejaculating; it indicates Sherlock’s distaste at being touched by a random guy (i.e. not John); and it’s an unstoppable revelation that he can’t suppress.

John finishes, “Crime scene!” Yup: Sherlock’s “crime scene” — his refusal to engage with his sexuality — is definitely compromised now. Sherlock wipes what looks like semen, not vomit, off his mouth, looking surprised. Arwel chose to have a giant dick-looking thing on the table behind Sherlock, and they framed the shot so it’s just above Sherlock’s face:

You know: like Sherlock just sucked a dick. And it came all over his face.

Sherlock then closes his magnifying lens, i.e. resetting it to the flaccid position. And we get the camera transition of Sherlock on his knees, having just wiped his mouth, to the inside of John’s mouth:

Mutual blowjobs, y’all.

So we get a couple things from this: Sherlock just realized he’s gay, probably, and doesn’t want anyone but John compromising the integrity of his crime scene, i.e. deflowering him. Unsurprisingly, the next morning we see Sherlock empty an entire mind palace full of women down to eventually nothing. (“Not you. Not you. Not you.”) Who is the only person Sherlock doesn’t kick out of his mind palace? John. Which is interesting, because we know in THoB he used to kick John out of the literal room when he went to his mind palace. Then during his best man speech, once he figures out John had been lying about being bisexual, Sherlock empties the whole room of men (after sexually evaluating one, no less) and his mind palace of Irene Adler and “narrows it down” to “It’s always you, John Watson.”

And that’s how I link the wallpapers together. Bless you for finding this stuff, stepfordgeek! <3 <3 <3 I loooove all the shit Arwel puts in the show, he’s amazing.

Edited to add: right, I got so excited I didn’t talk about the pattern choice itself or why it changes color. I think it was chosen for two purposes: 1) it depicts couples and domestic stuff, so it fits the concept of Sherlock wrestling with romance; and 2) it’s very old, which I take to be a meta commentary on Sherlock Holmes as a character, i.e. they bring the wallpaper back the second time and changed it in a significant way while still retaining the gist of the first version of the wallpaper, which is symbolic of remaking Sherlock Holmes as an (eventually) openly gay character in that scene.

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Let me remind you that Sherlock owns 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens. He owns these two big properties, but, when a cute soldier comes in, HE'S TOO POOR TO AFFORD A FREAKING FLAT ALONE

surface nonsense, absolutely.

metaphorically, hmm... a house might represent the self, or one's life situation. an empty facade, a bolthole, a bleak, narrow hallway: seems pretty lonely and dire. on the other hand it's a ventilation shaft for the trains, trains in tunnels. so there's air (thought) and trains (classic filmspeak for libido) so not totally depressed.

@ebaeschnbliah @possiblyimbiassed @raggedyblue @sagestreet

anyone else still into metaphorical readings? apologies to OP if this isn't where you wanted it to go, but nearly every time there's a bit of utter nonsense on the surface, it turns out to have a metaphorical reading that makes a bit more sense.

I don’t think it was ever about money in the show. (Look at how he dresses, the fees he refuse and how mrs Hudson easily would let them stay for free.)

I think Sherlock might have looked for a flat mate because he can’t really live by himself. (Though he does point out in ASIP that “together we might be able to afford it”, so I dunno.)

@sarahthecoat This is exactly where I wanted it to go. Thank you. Thank you to all the people in this fandom reading between the lines. THIS, the metaphorical, symbolic reading, THIS is why I'm here. Thank you.

(Also the trains for libido??? Is that true? There is some deducing to do about S3 because there are trains everywhere)

glad we found each other! the metaphorical reading is the one i keep coming back to also, though i enjoy reading all the theories and interpretations. fandom is broad and we bring so many different views to the story.

trains, especially trains going into tunnels, have been a cinematic metaphor for sex for a long, long time. not the only possible metaphor, but very commonly used. and in a show that seems to be all about sherlock's brain vs his body, it's not a reach. yes, there are trains everywhere in the show. i think it's interesting that trains figure prominently in TGG also, but only above ground. in TEH they go underground, and in HLV at last we have that ventilation shaft, linking the two states.

oh, and @alltingfinns brings up the money aspect. money is also a rich metaphor. it can be a substitute for emotions (even irl!) for example. so in ASIP, "together we can afford it" could mean "we'll both be much happier together" (so true!). mrs hudson's family discount represents her affection and gratitude. sherlock may scoff at money (sentiment) but he does always seem to have plenty!

Let me remind you that Sherlock owns 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens. He owns these two big properties, but, when a cute soldier comes in, HE’S TOO POOR TO AFFORD A FREAKING FLAT ALONE

surface nonsense, absolutely.

metaphorically, hmm… a house might represent the self, or one’s life situation. an empty facade, a bolthole, a bleak, narrow hallway: seems pretty lonely and dire. on the other hand it’s a ventilation shaft for the trains, trains in tunnels. so there’s air (thought) and trains (classic filmspeak for libido) so not totally depressed.

@ebaeschnbliah @possiblyimbiassed @raggedyblue @sagestreet

anyone else still into metaphorical readings? apologies to OP if this isn’t where you wanted it to go, but nearly every time there’s a bit of utter nonsense on the surface, it turns out to have a metaphorical reading that makes a bit more sense.

Yes, @sarahthecoat a metaphorical reading makes the most, if not the only sense to explain this kind of occurrences in Sherlock BBC. As @gosherlocked​ wrote in this old post, it’s impossible (in real life) to use those houses to live in at all and - to quote Sherlock from canon (and Mycroft from PILOT)  - ‘if you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains must be the truth’ (We told you but did you listen?, quote by Mofftiss). On a metaphorical level though, those houses have great significance indeed. As you already mentioned, it isn’t uncommon to use  ‘house’ as a metaphor for the ‘self’ or the ‘body’ (set this house on fire). But there is still more. Those twin ‘Empty Houses’ at Leinster Gardens draw a bridge to AC Doyle’s story TheEmptyHouse and by doing this they create also a connection to the show’s prior episode TGG and the ‘empty house’ opposite 221b (the empty houses). There is another connection to ASIP and the empty school buildings which are deliberately presented as perfect ‘twins’. The motive of twins and pairs is repeatedly picked up in this show and therefore should have some meaning. There is another connection to TheEmptyHearse because the title of this episode is used as a wordplay for the canon story TheEmptyHouse and it features really a lot of trains and tunnels (X). What also comes to mind is the motive of ‘empty houses’ linked to ‘fateful gardens’ that seems to connect Lauriston Gardens (ASIP), Leinster Gardens (HLV) and Miss Orrie’s Garden (TST). And in no case one should forget who has been chosen to be the key-driver in this story … the station master of all the trains, of the entire transport … ‘Choo-choo, come on now! Aaaaaall aboard!’ :)))

thanks so much, i knew there would be so much more once we started pulling this thread!

Let me remind you that Sherlock owns 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens. He owns these two big properties, but, when a cute soldier comes in, HE'S TOO POOR TO AFFORD A FREAKING FLAT ALONE

surface nonsense, absolutely.

metaphorically, hmm... a house might represent the self, or one's life situation. an empty facade, a bolthole, a bleak, narrow hallway: seems pretty lonely and dire. on the other hand it's a ventilation shaft for the trains, trains in tunnels. so there's air (thought) and trains (classic filmspeak for libido) so not totally depressed.

@ebaeschnbliah @possiblyimbiassed @raggedyblue @sagestreet

anyone else still into metaphorical readings? apologies to OP if this isn't where you wanted it to go, but nearly every time there's a bit of utter nonsense on the surface, it turns out to have a metaphorical reading that makes a bit more sense.

This entire metaphor is cancelled. 🚇❌

Focussing on trains and tunnels …..

Impressions from Sherlock BBC, The Empty Hearse

NOTHING  NEW  UNDER  THE  SUN

_______________________________________________________________

There is this story of ….

… secret tunnels

… carriages full of explosives

… a clock ticking

… a switch activated

… and   b o o o o m …….

Doesn’t this remind you of another case?

Hasn’t this all happened before? There’s nothing new under the sun!

What was it? What was it? What was that case? Huh? D’you remember?

It’s on the tip of my tongue.

Remember ….. remember ….

°

More of V for Vendetta here:   You can’t kill an idea

June, 2016

@possiblyimbiassed   :)))

I suppose you’re referring to this recent post (X) @ebaeschnbliah? And now I’ve watched the film too. Wow - I should have suspected you’d already have written about this topic! :)) Full symbolism and an almost identical plot line with TEH - brilliant! There are sculptures there also (in V’s room) and the fire/water allegory. And the way everything is connected in a chain of events. Also: it makes me think of ’V’ as in Brechtian Verfremdung; the ’V-effect’. The breaking of the fourth wall. And in the end, V becomes all of us, the people. (In BBC Sherlock, however, the audience seems to be depicted as either dead or deeply asleep, considering the plane scenes in ASiB, TST and HLV 😂)

I’m starting to wonder if even a single plot element of BBC Sherlock is actually new or unique. Or if it’s all just a jumble of bits and pieces taken from other stories…

But, come to think of it, at least we do have our very special, unique Jim Moriarty in BBC Sherlock, don’t we? :D As you mention, he resembles V. He likes to play the game and is a lot funnier and more rebellious than his canon original, in my opinion. In TRF Jim actually frees the prisoners from the same institution - Pentonville - where Oscar Wildes’ life was destroyed. And Jim goes directly for the ‘Crown Jewels’ and puts them on with pride (like Freddy Mercury), unlike the rusty, broken ones in MUSG that were buried ‘deep down below’ and then dumped in a pond. In HLV he takes over the media (like V). And while the whole of S4 seems like a dystopic world with Thatcher hiding a memory stick in TST, Culverton Smith applying a drug for people to forget important stuff in TLD and Sherlock suffering imprisonment and emotional torture in TFP (like Evey) based on his childhood memories, Jim also returns in TFP. He takes us on a train journey (like V’s last journey) and makes a hungry donkey eat Jesus (V kills the bishop). And he want’s to ”break free from your lies”…

Remember, remember the 5th of november - V for Vendetta. ;)

@raggedyblue @sagestreet @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked

wow, interesting! i haven't seen v for vendetta, although it has some faves in the cast. i can't help noticing the prominence of Trains in Tunnels, a classic film metaphor for sex. -> Jim is "mr sex" , and i love that point that he reverses the harms done to oscar wilde! hmm, could bbc's moriarty be more of a hero (or antihero?) than true villain? in s1 he talked about "getting sherlock to come out" (pun intended). in s2 he was acquitted after liberating prisoners, crown jewels, and wealth. in s3 taking over screens, sounds a bit like beating magnussen on his own turf. (and even with the icky murder=falling in love metaphor, you have to admire that over how sherlock dealt with CAM in HLV). in TFP he's in concert with "eurus"= sherlock's repressed emotions/anima/shadow self, however you interpret her, again helping liberate her so sherlock can integrate and be "complete as a human being".

gee, this reminds me of my "expect the unexpected" speculation, that sherlock ultimately needs to team up with jim somehow. (i had thought, maybe with "mary" too, but i really would prefer not). maybe together they save john, that would be nice. there is an element of this in my reading of the (beloved) waterfall scene in TAB. john pushes moriarty off the ledge, apparently saving sherlock from him, theres two of us, etc. but instead of going right home with john, sherlock jumps after moriarty. same fall, but different method, different meaning, entirely different emotional context. it doesn't even FEEL like sherlock is leaving john, and of course they end up comfortably at home together.

anyway, bit of a ramble away from original topic!

OMG OMG OMG

Ok so someone has probably already posted about this and I just missed it…so forgive me.

BUT.

I JUST GOT THIS IS THE MAIL.

Which is great right?  Right.  Lovely book, high quality.  10/10 recommend.

BUT.

I flip to the first page and LOOK…HOW FUN!  A GAME!  You have to find the clues hidden in the pics!  

The text says “You see, you just don’t observe…hidden within the illustrations are nine clues, essential to solving the crimes in each episode.”

Oh OK, let’s look at the clues for the fun little game…

Standard stuff…Carl’s trainers, the pills, the hound’s pawprint, the deerstalker, John’s gun, Mary’s wedding ring, the knitted cap…

Wait…

MARY’S WEDDING RING???

IS A CLUE TO THE CRIME COMMITTED IN THE SIGN OF THREE???

HOW DARE???  

BUT GUESS WHERE IT’S HIDDEN???

Here’s a clue…

ANY GUESSES???

THE FUCKING POOL!!!

THE. FUCKING. POOL.

I CAN’T MAKE THIS UP!!!

IF MARY ISN’T MORAN I WILL EAT THIS COLORING BOOK.

OH. MY. GOD.

They also drew John’s gun instead of Mary’s for His Last Vow. Interesting choice, that.

ooh, good point. fun one to re read with so much more meta by now. these are all pointers to some of the important topics that we have explored in meta.

asip, pills: drugs=chemistry of love.

tbb, lotus tattoo: language of flowers.

tgg, carl's trainers: shoes, transport, body, that whole body/heart/mind theme. remember all the shoe photos during s4 setlock? "going back" etc?

asib, the boomerang: things that come back to you, or never really left. memories, themes, recurring dreams, karma, "family", etc.

thob, the footprint of a gigantic hound: follow the dog series by sagestreet!

trf, the stoopid hat: a hat of another's choosing, sherlock's straight facade.

teh, train guy's hat: why would he mind being different? he keeps and mends his favorite things. also trains in tunnels, hurrhurr. ;) attention to detail.

tsot, "mary"s ring, as discussed above.

hlv, john's gun: very interesting, as you point out, that it's not "mary"s gun, so it's not about her shooting sherlock. it's about john's dick gun instead. hmm. also possibly leading into the "doctored footage" at the beginning of s4.

Ships and Cars - The Sign of Code

There have been lots of discussions about code in BBC Sherlock, and the possible metaphorical meaning of different things that appear frequently in the show, such as coffee/tea, water/fire, dogs/cats and many more. This show indeed seems filled with ciphers, code and secret messages. In this meta (X) I tried to decipher the encrypted name of the fishing boat that Sherlock and John hijacked in TFP, when it was called upon from Sherrinford: “Golf-Whisky-X-ray”. 

The Ship coding

At first I thought this was referring to the international spelling alphabet for wireless communication (X, X) where there’s a word for each letter. “GWX” didn’t make much sense to me, though, until I stumbled upon something deeper: ‘Golf’, ‘Whisky’ and ‘X-ray’ are also part of the marine Code of Signals (X) that was established in Britain around 1850. It’s still used by water vessels to communicate important messages regarding safety of navigation and such, and the signals can be sent by, for example, flaghoist, signal lamp or flag semaphore. Conan Doyle worked on a ship at least in 1880 and 1881, so the signals could totally have been known to him already in Victorian times. And since Sherlock and John are on board a boat in TFP, 

I think it’s reasonable to assume that the marine code is the relevant one here. In this signal code, the flags for “Golf”, Whisky” and “Xray” mean the following:

Golf = “I require a pilot.” 

Whiskey = “I require medical assistance.”

”Xray = “Stop carrying out your intentions and watch for my signals.”

Which in other words could be read as:

But is this use of marine signals something that only appears in BBC Sherlock? Is it Mofftiss’ own idea to use them, or could there possibly be any canon references to them? In the discussion that followed my meta (X)  @frailtyofgenius​ pointed out to me that ACD’s canon actually does mention “Naval signals” in His Last Bow (LAST), which I think might be very significant. And the one who uses the naval signals is Holmes himself.

Continued under the cut, because this is reeeally a long ‘transport’… ;)

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oh wow, this is amazing!!!

also - i’m not the first to make this connection but “the giant rat of sumatra” very likely links back to sherlock’s childhood rewrite of the samarra story, “meeting in sumatra”!

the wheel turns, nothing is ever new… can samarra be avoided?

yes, but it’s “a story for which the world is not yet prepared”…

involving a ship :)

Yes @frailtyofgenius I do suspect Sumatra is meant to be significant in BBC Sherlock (and Sumatra is also mentioned in several canon stories). Apart from ’meeting in Sumatra instead of Samarra’ in TST, we also have the secret underground station at Sumatra road in TEH. Come to think of it, in relation to this case with the carriage that derails and disappears (very much as in Conan Doyle’s The Lost Special), the ’train nerd’ Shilcott also calls attention to the fact that the carriages of the subway train are actually called cars. Which means that the carriage that’s about to explode at Sumatra road, blowing up the whole Parliament (if Sherlock hadn’t found the off-switch of the bomb) is actually also a car. Why do Mofftiss put an emphasis on this, one might ask?

@raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @lukessense @sarahthecoat

@possiblyimbiassed yes I see a connection between Sumatra and cars (or choices and cars in general) as well, one of those connections leading back to ASiP (as I’ve mentioned here). Sherlock mapping out an alternative route for him and John to catch the cabbie and in TEH Sherlock needing “all the maps” to find the hidden car in Sumatra with the bomb frozen in time between 1:28 and 1:29. Sherlock needing “all the maps” is immediately followed by the skip code about “James or John” so maybe this alternative route in green in ASiP ends on the 13th floor in Sherrinford, paving the way for an alternative ending just like Sumatra? John in the well in TFP and the reconstruction of the set at the end of TFP seem to suggest something in that direction.

@frailtyofgenius

Speaking of ‘mapping out an alternative route’ for John and Sherlock @lukessense​ - that’s exactly what Sherlock does in TEH as well. But not just to find the hidden car in Sumatra road; instead of using Marys’s car (Mary’s transport?) to come to John’s rescue on Guy Fawkes day, he uses a motorcycle. An he traces shortcuts in his Mind Palace to get to St James church asap:

But this time the red line is the short cut. To use this shortcut Sherlock takes the motorcycle through tunnels underground and whatnot, which seems particulary significant.  

ooohhhh, yes, the motorcycle chase is a kind of mirror to the cab chase in ASIP, both have an element of Save John Watson, and an element of sherlock putting on a facade. (“mary” as a facade of sorts to make sherlock more acceptable? just as in ASIP, he flashes lestrade’s pilfered warrant card to make his stopping the cab more acceptable) in ASIP, the fantastical element is rooftops, in TEH it’s tunnels and down stairs. #stairs code. the “alternate route” has always suggested to me, the writers’ plan to not simply rehash the same adaptations, but to take an alternate route through the canon.

I think you might be on to something there, @sarahthecoat! Yes, I definitely agree the writers seem to have an alternate route in mind for BBC Sherlock. And the shift from rooftops to tunnels is interesting, not least because apart from using tunnels as shortcuts for the motorcycle, the rest of TEH is also filled with tunnels:

And great points with the mirroring and the idea that Sherlock is carrying Mary as a facade! I didn’t think of the fact that Sherlock fakes (and takes) his authority to stop the cabbie’s car in ASiP, but that’s interesting as well. Especially as this whole series of events with the taxi chase is not present in the Pilot.

@raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @lukessense @frailtyofgenius

mmhm, and we all remember what Trains In Tunnels are about, yes?

To add to the Mary/Moriarty twin debate…

In response to John’s suggestion that the bride may have a twin, Greg makes a point of saying “She had one older brother who died four years ago.” 

My question…why would they make a point of saying that the bride (the symbol for Moriarty) had a brother who died. Maybe it’s a random detail not meant to be looked into… perhaps it is mentioned to suggest that Moriarty does in fact have a sibling–

Then, of course there is the matter of John’s next suggestion…

Although Sherlock shot this down… later in the episode (as I’m sure you remember) Sherlock (in the present) says “John is always right, it’s boring!” 

If we take Sherlock’s words “as gospel” then that may mean that John is correct… “This whole thing (the bride having a secret twin) could have been planned.”

Wrapping that all together, we have:

Moriarty has a sibling of some sort (which may or may not be a twin) AND he most likely planned for that sibling to carry out his master plan after his death.

After all, Sherlock did say that Moriarty is dead BUT he will strike again.

hmm. from a metaphorical standpoint, it does make sense that homophobia (moriarty) and heteronormativity (mary) could be “twins” or at least working together.

so the original post is from 2016 and therefore of course lacks essential information from S4:

1) We know now that Moriarty indeed has a sibling, a brother who was a station master. I‘ll leave you to your own deductions who this ‚brother‘ in charge of a ‚railway station‘, that Moriarty had some kind of „sibling rivalry“ with, might be.

2) It‘s never twins. This show is about double-meanings, two sides of a coin, two bottles (good one, bad one), inside and outside persona, a person and its mirrored reflection etc. It‘s not about actual siblings or twins but about different versions.

3) Of course Mary and Moriarty are connected. Moriarty is the spider at the center of a web, he is connected to everything. As you said @sarahthecoat it does make a lot of sense that homophobia (or fear of one’s own sexuality) and heteronormativity are connected and made into two big villains on the show. The reason Sherlock has to hide his true identity is because of homophobic prejudices and the necessity for heteronormative readings. Sherlock hides behind the facade of a woman, but she is nothing more than a projection or a ghost. The same goes for Moriarty, he is a part of Sherlock that he (or his mind) separated from himself to protect. But Moriarty is not the only part that’s been separated from Sherlock. Sherlock’s identity is spread out via a whole web, so to me it‘s not sufficient to say Moriarty and Mary are ‚twins‘. They are both part of the problem, big parts indeed. But what about other facades and fears of Sherlock? Even on TAB there were more brides than just Moriarty and Mary. And on the plot level of the show there are more connections than just the one between Mary and Moriarty. And neither Moriarty nor Mary are actually dead (as in gone), because (almost) nobody dies inside of this narrative. The ‚villains‘ reappear over and over again, more and more distant, until the final problem is actually solved.

@therealsaintscully

mmhmm. as for the "station master", we haven't forgotten the time honored metaphor using trains, right? once again it is about controlling sherlock's sexuality.

Chapter 12 – Three Men in a Boat – TFP 2/3

This section of the meta is going to deal with the events at Sherrinford – I’ve broken TFP up into three sections to try and get the most out of it. This isn’t just a read through like the first part of the meta, it has a specific structure, much like Eurus’s trials for the boys, so it’s really important to take this bit in one chapter. My hypothesis is thus – that each episode of s4 has been a different obstacle to be broken through in Sherlock’s mind, and that each of them is represented by one of the different Sherrinford tasks. It’s essentially an illumination of Sherlock’s progress through his mind – but it’s set up by Eurus, who is Sherlock’s mental barrier, so these are going to represent Sherlock’s darkest fears about each of the obstacles. Ready? Let’s go.

We take up the episode at the pirate hijacking, which is quite BAMF, but also illuminates a couple of things that we should bear in mind going into this episode. The first is that the transition from a blown up Baker Street to Sherlock and John hijacking a boat without a scratch on them is absolutely bizarre and leaves SO many questions – it’s dream-jumping of the most obvious kind. The second is that water has played a long role as a metaphor through the show, particularly in the EMP sequence, and it’s climaxing now – we are in the deepest waters of Sherlock’s mind.

Mycroft and John working together in the disguise sequence is metaphorically lovely – in the Oscar Wilde scene of the last part we saw Sherlock’s brain and heart finally coming together, and here for the first time they’re working together to give Sherlock the ability to go and confront Eurus. This is what makes Mycroft’s line so powerful. He says:

Say thank you to Doctor Watson. […] He talked me out of Lady Bracknell – this could have been very different.

Comic throwaway? Maybe. But given what we know about Lady Bracknell from the first part, this also has a more powerful meaning – heart!John finally stopped brain!Mycroft from being an obstructive force in Sherlock’s psyche, and they started working together instead to save him. This could have been very different is far more loaded than it sounds. All this whilst creating an image of Mark Gatiss as a Victorian aunt – wonderful.

When we first meet Eurus proper, her similarity to Sherlock is striking. She plays the violin – this isn’t a Holmes thing, because Mycroft doesn’t – it’s Sherlock’s motif throughout. Her hair is like a feminine Sherlock, her pallor and cheekbones match Cumberbatch. For reference, this is a picture of Sian Brooke and Benedict Cumberbatch together in real life.

I’ve done a section on why I think Eurus is the most repressed part of Sherlock’s psyche, and his traumatic barrier to love and life – I sometimes glibly refer to this as gay trauma, but that’s its essence. The similarity between Brooke and Cumberbatch in this scene is really compelling, looking the same but lit and dressed in opposite colours. Similarity and difference both highlighted. Even nicer, the white of Sherlock’s shirt is the same notable brightness as Eurus’s uniform, but it’s hidden under his jacket – a visual metaphor for her being hidden inside him.

Eurus gives Sherlock a Stradivarius as a gift. This should set alarm bells ringing for anybody who has seen TPLoSH. If you haven’t seen The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, please do so immediately because my God you are missing out, but TLDR – a Russian ballerina offers Holmes a Stradivarius to have sex with her so she can have a brainy child, and he declines because he’s gay. (This is not just my interpretation, this is genuinely what happens, just to be clear.) Eurus giving Sherlock a Stradivarius is a deliberate callback to the film which Mofftiss cite as their biggest inspiration; just like the ballerina tempted Holmes to feign heterosexuality, so does Eurus – and both make clear that it’s not without its rewards, which is unfortunately true for real life as well. This moment in Sherlock’s psyche also recalls the desperate unrequitedness of Holmes’s love for Watson in TPLoSH, a reference to our Sherlock’s deepest fear at the moment – he has realised his importance but not John’s romantic/sexual love for him, as we’ll see. So here, trauma!Eurus isn’t just referencing closetedness, but is actively drawing on a history of character repression with which to torment Sherlock – metafictionality at its finest.

The Stradivarius is specifically associated with closetedness, but violins more generally in the show are used to show expressions of love that can’t be voiced out loud – think of John and Mary’s wedding, or the desperate bowing of ASiB. So Eurus, gay trauma that she is, telling Sherlock that she taught him to play is a moment of distinct pain – she is the reason he can’t speak his love aloud, but instead has to speak in signs.

When Sherlock plays ‘him’, rather than Bach, to Eurus (he has a big Bach thing with Moriarty in s2, take from that what you will because I don’t know!), he’s playing Irene Adler’s theme. As a fandom, we’ve generally agreed on associating Irene’s theme with sexual love, which ties in nicely with Eurus’s question – has Sherlock had sex? It’s unanswered. At the end of ASiB, Irene calls Sherlock the virgin, suggesting that he hasn’t.

My favourite moment in s4 without a doubt is Jim dancing to I Want To Break Free. I know it’s the most boring thing to say, but my two greatest loves are Andrew Scott and Freddie Mercury, so it was like Christmas. Here it is also Christmas, but there are two possible timelines. I hypothesise that this refers to Christmas 2010, but it’s absolutely conceivable that it could be Christmas 2009. If we acknowledge that Sherlock is in a coma in 2014, then five years ago is Christmas 2009; however, given that we’ve jumped to 2015 in dream time, I’m going to make the guess that Jim’s visit to Sherrinford is supposed to take place in 2010. This ties up with the idea that this is when Moriarty first started taking an interest in Sherlock, who had never heard of him before ASiP, particularly as this is all in the EMP.

I firmly believe that Jim represents the fear that John is in danger – I highlight this in the chapter on HLV, where you’ll recall we first encounter Jim in the EMP and he sends Sherlock on his journey through the EMP with the words John Watson is definitely in danger – a pretty big sign. Even without this, though, his biggest threat to Sherlock has always been hurting John, whether in TRF or with the idea of burning the heart out of him with Semtex. It’s not unreasonable then to assume that MP!Jim first getting inside Sherlock’s subconscious to represent this fear happens in 2010, when he first meets John. He slips in and stays there, and he melds with Eurus. We see this in the powerful visual of the two of them dancing in front of the glass as Jim’s image slowly becomes Eurus’s reflection – the fear of John dying embeds itself into the gay trauma that Sherlock has stored up, even without him realising it. This ties in nicely with the choice of I Want to Break Free, which is famous for its use of drag in the music video – Jim melding into Eurus is the dark side of queer genderbending that we hate to see. It’s also a pretty fitting song name for an intensifying of repressed gay trauma, even without the association with queer king Mercury.

[A side note to all of this – there were wonderful TEH metas about trains in tunnels being sexual, which isn’t just a tjlc thing but is a well-established idea in cinema – Moriarty’s consistent train noises here seem like a horrifyingly inverted version of that sexual longing.]

Task 1 – The Six Thatchers

The governor is set up as a mirror for John in this task, which provides some helpful context for the episode as a whole. Heart!John makes this comparison himself, by drawing out the similarity between the situation with the governor’s wife and his with Mary, though in this case the governor does kill himself because of his wife – or so it seems. The suicidal instinct matches with everything we’ve learned about John in s4, but I want to hypothesise, perhaps tenuously, that he’s more connected with Eurus than we might think. We know that Eurus has had control of the governor for quite some time, and one of the things we hear her saying to the governor in the background of the interrogations is that he shouldn’t trust his wife. This is an odd thing to pepper into the background when he’s about to commit suicide for her, and perhaps suggests that he’s more of Eurus’s pawn than he lets on, though I grant this may be spurious.

The idea that he distrusts his wife because of Eurus is important, however, because we’ve already seen John engage with Eurus in various forms, but this seems like an extension of E; Eurus, aka Sherlock’s hidden self, has been making John doubt Mary, even before she shoots Sherlock. John cannot know she’s a spy at this point, so it’s unlikely he’s doubting her goodwill; he’s simply doubting her.

Before we look at how the actual task impacts the governor and how that illustrates what’s really going on in TST, it’s worth pointing out that it is the governor’s engagement with Eurus which prompts the entire shutdown of Sherrinford and forces Sherlock (with brain!Mycroft and heart!John ever at his side, of course) to engage once and for all with Eurus. This points to everything that s4 has been telling us – that Sherlock’s understanding of the relationship between him and John, including his power to save him (we’re going to see the governor play the foil here) is what sends his brain into stay-alive-overdrive. Sherrinford is the peak of this.

Summary of the task, for those who hate TFP: Sherlock is given a gun and told he can pick either John or Mycroft to kill the governor, otherwise the governor’s wife will be killed by Eurus. As I’ve written about in its chapters, TST is about Sherlock trying to get to the bottom of Mary and why she tried to kill him – and, of course, the impact this will have on John. In brief, by displacing the shot onto Mary in his mind, he’s discounting his own importance and instead thinking about what it will mean for John to lose Mary. His greatest fear is that losing Mary will break John, and it isn’t until the end of TLD that he recognises that the return of John’s suicidal ideation isn’t over Mary, but over him. TFP presents the horror version, the version of TST that Sherlock’s trauma wants him to believe but which he has to overcome. In this case, Mycroft and John resolve to keep the governor alive in their passivity, but that passivity – Sherlock’s coma – is not enough to keep the governor from killing himself over Mary. This is the most feared outcome from Mary’s death that Sherlock can think of – his fear of losing John combined with John’s love of Mary, which in TST Sherlock is still taking as read.

Double naming in this show should never be neglected, and in this case we learn shortly before the governor dies that his name is David. Again, the dramatic manner in which we learn this (on the moment of execution) draws our attention to it – we know another David in this show.

Yup – Mary’s ex who’s still in love with her from TSoT. So even though Sherlock is experiencing the panic of John killing himself for loss of Mary, his subconscious is still pointing out to him that that’s not what’s happening here. This mirror version of John that he has set up, who is broken by the loss of Mary as Sherlock fears in TST, is actually the other man in Mary’s life – even with Eurus forcing the worst possible scenario onto him, this still can’t quite fit John’s character. And so we move onto the second task.

Task 2 – The Lying Detective

This section of the Sherrinford saga is the three Garridebs, the closest thing that the fandom has ever got to a collective trauma. I do think, however, that it’s fully reclaimable for tjlc and means the same as we always wanted it to; I also think that it’s possibly the most gutting part of Eurus’s metatfictional power play.

If you haven’t read The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, it’s quite short and the most johnlocky of the Holmes canon, so I’d thoroughly recommend. For the purposes of mapping bbc!verse onto acd!verse, however, here’s the incredibly short version. A man called Evans wants to burgle Nathan Garrideb, so he calls himself John Garrideb and writes an advertisement from a man called Alexander Hamilton Garrideb (make of that what you will, hamilstans) declaring that he wants to bequeath his fortune to three Garridebs. “John” gets someone to pretend to be a Howard Garrideb to get Nathan out of the house to meet him – he comes to burgle the house but Holmes and Watson are lying in wait. He shoots Watson, and Holmes thinks Watson is seriously injured and so we have this wonderful section:

“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say you are not hurt!”

It was worth a wound–it was worth many wounds–to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

“It’s nothing, Holmes. It’s a mere scratch.”

He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife.

“You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?”

Mofftiss have referenced this moment as being the greatest in the Holmes canon for them, the moment when we see the depth of Holmes’s affection for Watson, and so it seems odd to waste it on such a tiny moment in TFP. Many fans, myself included, were really upset to see Eurus drop all three Garridebs into the sea, the implication being that tjlc would never be real, and it was that moment that caused many (including me) to walk away. I came back, obviously, but I completely understand why you wouldn’t. However, I want to map one Garridebs story onto the other to show how they might match up.

The Garridebs that Eurus presents us with are not the three Garridebs from the story. In the story, there are three physically present Garridebs – Nathan, John and Howard – although admittedly only Nathan is an actual Garrideb. Alexander was completely invented by John and existed only in a newspaper advertisement. Evans, alias John Garrideb, is the criminal in the Garridebs story; Alexander is an invention.

So – what happens if we substitute John for Alex in bbc!verse, as in canon they are the same person? This is interesting, because double-naming means that John becomes the killer. Whilst it’s true that John Garrideb is known as Killer Evans for his murder of a counterfeiter back in America, in canon he is done for attempted murder – of John Watson, of course. Here we have a situation where a John is set up killing John. This is exacerbated by the victim in bbc!verse being called Evans; Roger Prescott, the counterfeiter, would have been a much more canonical nod to the books, so we can assume that the choice of Evans is therefore significant. It should be noted that Evans and John/Alex Garrideb are the same person in acd!canon - so killing Evans is a representation of suicide. But, in case we weren’t there yet, the reason that Evans took the name ‘John’ is acd!canon is very likely to be because Evan is Welsh for John – so whatever way you look at this situation, you have Sherlock deducing John killing John.

This is, of course, exactly what Sherlock deduces at the end of TLD, far too slow, when we see Eurus shoot John in an exact mirror of the shot from TST – I explained in a previous chapter why this means that John is suicidal without Sherlock. However, much like the passivity of Sherlock, John and Mycroft in the first task, here we see that Sherlock’s act of deduction is good, but can’t actually save anyone; Eurus kills off our Garridebs moment as Sherlock is left to watch, and it’s notable that heart!John is the most distressed about this. Remember, in the first task Eurus left Sherlock with an image of a John who was suicidally devoted to Mary, and although the Garridebs moment is one which metafictionally highlights the relationship between Sherlock and John, she’s still presenting him with a Garridebs moment in which he is fundamentally unable to save John. This is a direct result of the Redbeard trauma that Sherlock has experienced – helplessness is key to that, and this is what Eurus has come to represent in his psyche. But – Eurus isn’t real, Eurus is testing Sherlock, trauma trying to bring him down, and Sherlock’s job in TFP is to break through the walls that his consciousness has set up for him.

The power in Sherlock saying I condemn Alex Garrideb is heartbreaking, then, because it is Sherlock recognising that he is the reason that John is going to die. Eurus is there to make him confront that reality, which she explicitly makes him do. We get the split-second moment where he thinks he’s saved Alex, and then he’s plunged into the sea – but remember, this is Eurus taunting Sherlock, presenting him with worst-possible-scenarios. TFP is set up as a game for a reason – it is a series of hypotheses cast in Sherlock’s mind by his trauma that he has to break through one by one. Remember, although she’s ostensibly trying to hurt Sherlock, Eurus’s ‘extra’ murders in the first two tasks are aimed at hurting John, which wouldn’t make sense if he weren’t the mp version of Sherlock’s heart.

Task 3 – The Final Problem

Pretty much straight after this episode aired, people were pointing out that Molly is a clear John mirror and that pretty much all of the deductions Sherlock makes here could be about John. Again, we’re seeing Sherlock’s emotions being resolved in a heterosexual context – the presence of Eurus means that he’s unable to process them in their real, queer form. However, if we take Molly to be a stand-in for John in this scene, it may tell us what TFP is about – and the scenario that Eurus presents will be the worst one, the thing that is causing Sherlock the most pain.

TLD/the previous task have shown us that John is in imminent danger, so the transition to Molly Hooper’s flat being rigged with bombs is not a difficult one; we must assume this to be the suicidal ideation that we’ve just deduced. The time limit suggests that Sherlock is running out of time to save him (fucking right he fell into a coma SIX YEARS AGO). Putting Molly in a bad mood isn’t really necessary for this scene – they make her seem a lot more depressed than she would necessarily need to be, and they emphasise her aloneness and her ability to push people away, which isn’t something we know Molly to do. These traits are all much more important in the context of a suicidal John – they paint a much clearer picture of someone who is depressed and alone than we really need for this scene, where it’s not relevant to the surface plot.

Sherlock and the audience believe he has won this task, but of course he hasn’t - there were never any explosives rigged up in Molly’s flat, and it was a ruse to destroy his relationship with Molly. This is what he fears then – what if he’s wrong? What if coming back to life because he loves John won’t save him – it will destroy him and their relationship? The problem to be wrestled with is how to save John – according to the symmetry of these tasks, that is the final problem. We know that the scenario Eurus has presented isn’t real, but Sherlock doesn’t; he is being held up by his inability to cope with interpersonal relationships, and to get to the bottom of that we’re going to need to understand what he’s been repressing – part 3 of this meta.

There’s a wonderful shot just as Sherlock is destroying Molly’s coffin which zooms up and out through a ceiling window, all the way above Sherrinford, as though to emphasise not how remote Sherrinford is but just how deep inside it Sherlock is. Given what we know about the height metaphor as well as the water metaphor, this shot is a pretty clear way of telling us – this is as deep inside Sherlock’s mind as we go, this is the nub. But Sherlock smashing up the coffin has another powerful connotation – he’s refusing death. In terms of metaphor, he’s refusing John’s death – there will be no small coffin, because he will not let it happen – but the visual of him smashing the coffin also suggests that he is rejecting his own death. The two are, of course, inextricably linked. Our boys’ lives are tied together.

Epilogue: The Hunger Games

I can’t watch this without thinking of The Hunger Games, I just can’t! But regardless of how much Sherlock seems like Katniss in this section, let’s press on. I don’t count this as one of the typical tasks, because this isn’t Eurus presenting a ‘haha I tricked you scenario’ - far from it. This is Sherlock’s way into unlocking his repression. The key takeaway from this scene, as we’ll see is that trauma has hurt Sherlock, and it’s going to try pretty hard here to mutilate him – but it can’t kill him.

We get a great line from Sherlock at the beginning of this, where he tells John that the way Eurus is treating him isn’t torture, it’s vivisection. Because it’s an experiment? Perhaps. But the more logical way to phrase this would be that it isn’t vivisection, it’s torture. Torture is much more emotionally charged than vivisection as a phrase – from a writer’s perspective, this phrasing is strange because it seems to negate rather than intensify the pain our characters are undergoing. Why, then, would vivisection be more important than torture? Well, put simply, vivisection is the act of cutting someone open and seeing what’s inside – and that’s what we’re doing. This isn’t just an analogy for experimenting on people, it’s an analogy for going literally inside somebody. In EMP world, then, these words are well chosen.

Sherlock is offered the choice – John or Mycroft? Heart or brain? We might initially think that this is Eurus pressuring Sherlock into death, but that’s not the case at all – we know from the early series that Sherlock has survived before (although very unhappily) with just one of these two dominating the other. It has taken his EMP journey to unite them into a functioning entity, and Eurus is bent on destroying that, mutilating either his emotional capacity or his reasoning, the two parts that make him human. This is a good sign, as well, that trauma has been acting on Sherlock through the first three series, when his psyche was dominated by brain!Mycroft - Eurus is keen to revert to that state, when trauma had control. It is touching, then, that brain!Mycroft is willing to relinquish that control and leave Sherlock with his heart, perhaps because this new unity allows him to recognise how damaged the Sherlock he created was. We should also note that this diminishing of Sherlock’s heart is compared to his Lady Bracknell, which we know to be his repression of all Sherlock’s romantic/sexual impulses – except this time it’s less convincing, because his brain doesn’t believe it anymore. What is also devastating is heart!John’s lack of self-esteem or knowledge, the sense that he isn’t useful to Sherlock, which of course will be proven wrong.

[if anyone has thoughts on the white rectangle on the floor, do let me know. It’s bugging me!]

Mycroft says that he acknowledges there is a heart somewhere inside of him – again, this is emotionally powerful in the context of the brain/heart wrangling that we’ve seen inside the EMP. Just as Sherlock’s psyche has tried to compartmentalise them all this time and they’re finally working together, now there’s an acknowledgement that the compartmentalisation into personae is maybe inaccurate as well – brain!Mycroft’s pretence to be emotionally detached is not in fact correct, as we’ve been suspecting for a long time.

Brain!Mycroft also states that it’s his fault that this has all happened because he let Eurus converse with Jim. If you spend any time thinking about the Eurus + Jim meeting, like many elements of this show it doesn’t make sense. There isn’t a feasible way this could have been planned, recorded etc in five minutes, and although it’s true that Jim could have come back to shoot the videos under the governor’s supervision, it’s not clear why he’s so important. Unless he takes on the metaphorical significance that we’ve assigned him, letting Jim see Eurus seems pretty unimportant – he is only the garnishing on Eurus’s plan. Instead, Mycroft is at fault for letting John be in danger – not only did Sherlock misdeduce Mary (although we can lay the blame for that at the feet of heart!John - see meta on TST), his reasoning was blinded and so he missed John’s suicidal urges and the danger to his life. Brain!Mycroft holds himself responsible – all of these EMP deductions are way late, comprised of things Sherlock should have noticed when his brain wasn’t letting his heart in.

Five minutes. It took her five minutes to do this to all of us.

The lighting is dramatic, so I can’t properly gauge Ben’s expression at this moment, but his eyes look crinkled in confusion, just like they are at the moments when a sense of unreality starts to set in in TAB. Indeed, these aren’t very appropriate words for when you’re about to kill your brother; it’s like he’s being distracted, like there’s something important that he’s missing. Mofftiss are drawing attention to the sheer impossibility of the situation – and Sherlock’s nearly there. His Katniss Everdeen move, threatening to kill himself, is the recognition that his trauma doesn’t have that power – it can hurt him and deform him by twisting his psyche into unbalance, like it has before and like Eurus is trying to here, but it cannot kill him. We can see that Sherlock has risen above the one-sided dominance that he began the entire show with when Eurus shouts at him that he doesn’t know about Redbeard yet – that’s not going to change his mind today, but it’s a direct throwback to the days when it would have, in ASiP with the cabbie. Character development, folks.

The shot of Sherlock falling backwards into the dark water links to two aspects of the EMP. One is the continued metaphor of water to represent sinking into the depths of his mind. The water is so dark it looks oily – it could be argued that this is the oil that is corrupting the waters of his mind as we finally cut to the repressed memories. I quite like this reading, though I have little other oil imagery to link it to in the show. The other notable point is the slow-motion fall backwards – instead of showing Sherlock, John and Mycroft all falling, we cut to Sherlock falling backwards exactly like he did in HLV when he was shot by Mary. This is a really clear visual callback. Even though we’re going deeper, we’re linking back to the original shooting, back in reality, suggesting that this depth is paradoxically going to lead us back to the start. To go back to the oil imagery, don’t forget that oil floats on water – although it looks like we’re sinking, there’s a real sense that these repressed memories are actually pulling us to the surface of Sherlock’s subconscious, quite unlike the deep zoom out we saw when Sherlock was destroying the coffin.

And that’s it for part 2 of the TFP meta! Part 3/3 will deal with such highlights as John not being able to recognise bones and presumably getting his feet pulled off by chains. Good thing this is just a dream. See you then!

FINALLY reading this! wow! I so appreciate this dissection! I still remember struggling to watch TFP, not enjoying it, but it was screamingly obvious that it was bursting with subtext... I just couldn’t quite make it out on my own. 

just a couple little things twigged, aside from all the YES WOW YES THAT moments! “vivisection” as an investigation of a living subject, contrasts with a post mortem, an investigation of a dead subject. We’ve had plenty of scenes in morgues with corpses and mentions of post mortems, but all three boys come out of this alive.

Mycroft admitting he has a heart, could be a callback to “pretty damn smart” watson in TAB? 

[M-Theory] Skeletons, fires and the question of John and Mary’s relationship in The Empty Hearse (“why would anyone bother?”)

tl:dr what if the ‘Jack the Ripper’ case in The Empty Hearse was a hint about Mary’s past that Sherlock, distracted and upset from his homecoming, simply missed?

A FEW DISCLAIMERS: I’m not a native English speaker and this wasn’t betad, so excuse the less-than-perfect English. Additionally, this is my first ever piece of meta so excuse the amateurism. Lastly, this may have been picked up before by other meta writers and if so - I’m not aware of it, as I’m quite new to this fandom.

As I was rewatching The Empty Hearse last night, researching for my newest fic, the Jack the Ripper scene/case stood out to me yet again. This is the first time I’ve watched the episode with such attention since reading @loudest-subtext-in-tv​ M-Theory in full, and since then I’ve been watching the episodes far more critically.

This case/scene always stood out as very strange to me. It’s the first official case Sherlock accepts with NSY immediately after his return, while he’s supposed to beworking to stop a devastating terrorist plot.

My funny little theory is that this case is actually subtext/hint/metaphor for fans who are questioning Mary’s background and the motivation behind her attachment to John. More importantly, to those who wonder how Sherlock could have possibly missed out on the hints that Mary was not who she said was.

The case, such as it is, would not even be a ‘1’ in Sherlock’s eyes, but as others have said before, the cases featured in episodes are supposed to say something about the show - subtext, essentially. And one of the biggest suggestions in M-Theory is that Mary was planted as John’s partner by Moriarty for a number of reasons: in the short run, to be able to get a sense about Sherlock and his status (is he actually dead? is he communicating with John?) and in the long run, to ‘burn Sherlock’s heart’ by having him find out hat John had moved on.

My rewatch last night suddenly made the scene seem a bit different than before. Let me guide you through it (transcription with credits to Ariane DeVere): 

Sherlock and Molly (a John mirror and a de-facto replacement of John in this episode) are shown into a crypt that houses a skeleton. This is a NSY case, since Lestarde is the one bringing them into the crypt. LESTRADE: This one’s got us all baffled.

SHERLOCK: Mmm. I don’t doubt it.

This skeleton is the same ‘skeleton mystery’ that Sherlock was reading about earlier in the episode. The skeleton is surrounded by an empty carafe and wine glass on one side and a syringe on another. I read that some fans seem to think the skeleton is wearing Sherlock’s clothes (which made me laugh as I remembered this scene from The X-Files).

Now, let’s start with the obvious. We have a skeleton in a discussion about Mary’s secret past life. Mary literally has skeletons in her closet, skeletons that Sherlock has to pick up on in order to question who and what she is. In a way, if this is supposed to be subtext, it’s fairly on the nose.

Sherlock begins deducing immediately using his sense of smell, represented by writing on the screen:

PINE?

SPRUCE?

CEDAR

NEW MOTHBALLS

…

Fire Damage

So in my reading of this, Sherlock sniffs for and maybe expects ‘old-timey’ smells - pine, spruce, cedar. @loudest-subtext-in-tv​, in a post that no longer exists, pointed out that this is a hint to Sherlock’s state of mind - he spruced up for meeting John, and was instead met violence and rejection, leaving him pining. Hmmm. Instead what he actually smells are new mothballs and fire damage. 

The new mothballs smell seems to be his first hint that something is off - a skeleton in this stage of decay should indicate a long period of time in this condition, but instead that new mothballs suggest that the timing is off.

Let’s not ignore the ‘fire damage’ smell as well. Something was burning. Is it Sherlock’s heart?

MOLLY: What is it?

(Sherlock gets out his phone and holds it up high to try and get a signal.)

MOLLY: You’re on to something, aren’t you?

SHERLOCK: Mm, maybe.

(John’s voice sounds in his head and the words he speaks appear in Sherlock’s mind.

SHOW OFF

Sherlock senses that something is off, that it doesn’t add up, but something stops him.

It’s John berating voice, telling him off in a way that’s very similar to the night of their reunion.

MOLLY: Trains?

SHERLOCK: Trains.

What a weird exchange for two Londoners in a crypt, wouldn’t you say? We’re being called out about the trains. Here’s what LSiT writes about trains in this episode: We then get a lot of trains and tunnels imagery, which carries both sexual connotations, and the idea of twists and turns and paths intersecting at various places. If this is meant to be a visual metaphor for Moriarty’s plot and the involvement of Mary, Mycroft, and Magnussen, it certainly works. We got train track imagery two episodes in a row during John and Sherlock’s investigations in the The Blind Banker and The Great Game, after all, both of which revolved around Mycroft’s involvement with Moriarty. It visually suggests the idea of connections.

John’s breathing of Sherlock in his mind continues throughout the scene. 

MOLLY: Male, forty to fifty.

(She looks round at Sherlock.)

MOLLY: Ooh, sorry, did you want to be …?

SHERLOCK: Er, no, please. Be my guest.

(John’s voice sounds in his mind again.)

JOHN (voiceover): You jealous?

(His second word appears simultaneously in front of Sherlock’s mind’s eye.)

JEALOUS?

SHERLOCK (angrily, through gritted teeth): Shut up!

Sherlock is distracted by none other than John accusing him of being jealous when Molly (John?) approaches the skeleton and asks if he wants to inspect it - to look into it, to see what mysteries it’s hiding.

MOLLY: Doesn’t make sense.

LESTRADE: What doesn’t?

(Sherlock gently blows away the dust around the hand and continues blowing towards the edge of the table.)

MOLLY: This skeleton – it’s … it can’t be any more than …

SHERLOCK and MOLLY (simultaneously): … six months old.

This six months hint, I think, was the thing that made me think of this scene in the context of John and Mary’s relationship. I think by this point it’s agreed upon in fanlore that John and Mary have known each other and/or dated for six months when Sherlock returns. John is probably already living in Mary’s flat in October, about a month before Sherlock comes back - so much so that Lestrade comes over there to give him the DVD containing Sherlock’s video message. This, despite the fact Mary’s first comment on John’s blog is left on April (prompting Harry to ask ‘Who’s Mary?’), so that could roughly suggest the ~six months timeline is correct.

So we have Sherlock confused - we have a case of a skeleton (some secret) that’s not as old as it’s supposed to be (Mary’s identity as Mary Morstan) and something significant happened to it around six months ago.

Sherlock pulls out a book from the drawer in the table -

How I Did It

By

Jack the Ripper

And, after being berated by John inside his head yet again, Sherlock explains:

The-the-the corpse is-is six months old; it’s dressed in a shoddy Victorian outfit from a museum. It’s been displayed on a dummy for many years in a case facing south-east judging from the fading of the fabric. It was sold off in a fire-damage sale … (he gets out his phone and shows the screen to Greg) … a week ago.

LESTRADE: So the whole thing was a fake.

SHERLOCK: Yes.

(He turns and heads out of the room.)

LESTRADE: Looked so promising.

SHERLOCK (already out of sight): Facile.

So here we have a few more things that points in the direction of hints we’ll hear and see again S3 and M-Theory: a shoddy victorian outfit, like Mary in TAB, a dummy, like in His Last Vow, and of course the fire, burning and even ripping Sherlock’s heart out (Mary shooting Sherlock in the heart).

Would this be Moriarty, playing a game of clue with Sherlock, telling him ‘this is how I’m going to burn your heart’? By planting a dummy, displayed for many years, on a corpse that’s six months old?

Lestrade, who - let’s remember - opened this scene by telling Sherlock ‘this one’s got us all baffled’, announces it was all a fake, having looked so promising. Is Lestrade mirroring Mrs. Hudson’s words earlier in the episode? Surprised that John had moved on and was somewhat baffled by John and Mary’s relationship?

Also, a note about Jack the Ripper and Moriarty from Baker Street wikia: “Due to the very nature of [the Jack the Ripper] case, it has proven to be very popular to pit [Sherlock] against one of history’s most infamous killers. The sheer amount of times these two have clashed through various media rivals that of Sherlock and Moriarty.”

And then Molly, John’s mirror, wonders out loud:

MOLLY: Why would someone go to all that trouble?

SHERLOCK (offscreen): Why indeed, John?

Dear Molly here is actually asking the right question - why would anyone go through all that trouble?

Sherlock, distracted and confused and even somewhat disappointed seems to be missing out on the clue entirely, even when Molly raises this very obvious question herself. Is it Sherlock’s fear of upsetting John further that prevents him from looking more deeply into this?

Is this Moftiss’ explanation for how Sherlock missed out on such a huge clue, as it was standing right in front of his eyes?

Of course, later in the episode we discover that sometime during this scene Sherlock figured out who actually placed that skeleton there - it was Anderson, in what others note as an attempt to convince Sherlock to come out of his hiding after his return.

Anderson represents the show’s fans in this episode, and when Sherlock berates Anderson for wasting NSY’s time by staging a fake crime scene it almost seems as if Moftiss are berating the fans for asking stupid questions about Mary and her relationship with John.

In a way, they sort of rule out this entire post - it was Anderson, not Moriarty. But let’s not forget that according to M-Theory (and in general) Moriarty works via proxy. It was Anderson and Donovan who fell for Moriarty’s trap of suspicion in TRF. How difficult would it be for Moriarty to push Anderson to do something like setting up a fake crime scene?

Also let’s not forget that while Anderson is ridiculed in TEH, he’s the one who knows where to find Sherlock in HLV (either because Sherlock wants him to find him in his bolthole, or because Moftiss are saying the fans are right and are on track).

Tagging other meta readers/writers who I think might enjoy this (apologies if you don’t - I won’t tag you again): @sarahthecoat​, @devoursjohnlock​ @inevitably-johnlocked​ @possiblyimbiassed​ @waitedforgarridebs​ @tjlcisthenewsexy​

love it! i also love how m theory, mirroring, and metaphorical reading are all in complete harmony here. Moriarty(=internalized homophobia) put "mary"(=heteronormativity) with john(=heart/love interest). the skeleton has an empty wine glass (wine=romance, so no wine=no romance) and empty syringe (drugs=chemistry of love, so none of that either) and sherlock's phone (=heart) is getting no signal (SADFACE).

Anderson is a fan mirror and also a john mirror, so looking back at TRF, moriarty (internalised homophobia) made both anderson (john, fans) and donovan (sherlock mirror) doubt sherlock's ability to solve cases (do the work/personal integration, solve the three patch problem/his feelings for john).

i also just twigged on, there are "crypt" settings in several other episodes as well... probably all having to do with the "basement" level of stairs code.

[M-Theory] Skeletons, fires and the question of John and Mary’s relationship in The Empty Hearse (“why would anyone bother?”)

tl:dr what if the ‘Jack the Ripper’ case in The Empty Hearse was a hint about Mary’s past that Sherlock, distracted and upset from his homecoming, simply missed?

A FEW DISCLAIMERS: I’m not a native English speaker and this wasn’t betad, so excuse the less-than-perfect English. Additionally, this is my first ever piece of meta so excuse the amateurism. Lastly, this may have been picked up before by other meta writers and if so - I’m not aware of it, as I’m quite new to this fandom.

As I was rewatching The Empty Hearse last night, researching for my newest fic, the Jack the Ripper scene/case stood out to me yet again. This is the first time I’ve watched the episode with such attention since reading @loudest-subtext-in-tv​ M-Theory in full, and since then I’ve been watching the episodes far more critically.

This case/scene always stood out as very strange to me. It’s the first official case Sherlock accepts with NSY immediately after his return, while he’s supposed to beworking to stop a devastating terrorist plot.

My funny little theory is that this case is actually subtext/hint/metaphor for fans who are questioning Mary’s background and the motivation behind her attachment to John. More importantly, to those who wonder how Sherlock could have possibly missed out on the hints that Mary was not who she said was.

The case, such as it is, would not even be a ‘1’ in Sherlock’s eyes, but as others have said before, the cases featured in episodes are supposed to say something about the show - subtext, essentially. And one of the biggest suggestions in M-Theory is that Mary was planted as John’s partner by Moriarty for a number of reasons: in the short run, to be able to get a sense about Sherlock and his status (is he actually dead? is he communicating with John?) and in the long run, to ‘burn Sherlock’s heart’ by having him find out hat John had moved on.

My rewatch last night suddenly made the scene seem a bit different than before. Let me guide you through it (transcription with credits to Ariane DeVere): 

Sherlock and Molly (a John mirror and a de-facto replacement of John in this episode) are shown into a crypt that houses a skeleton. This is a NSY case, since Lestarde is the one bringing them into the crypt. LESTRADE: This one’s got us all baffled.

SHERLOCK: Mmm. I don’t doubt it.

This skeleton is the same ‘skeleton mystery’ that Sherlock was reading about earlier in the episode. The skeleton is surrounded by an empty carafe and wine glass on one side and a syringe on another. I read that some fans seem to think the skeleton is wearing Sherlock’s clothes (which made me laugh as I remembered this scene from The X-Files).

Now, let’s start with the obvious. We have a skeleton in a discussion about Mary’s secret past life. Mary literally has skeletons in her closet, skeletons that Sherlock has to pick up on in order to question who and what she is. In a way, if this is supposed to be subtext, it’s fairly on the nose.

Sherlock begins deducing immediately using his sense of smell, represented by writing on the screen:

PINE?

SPRUCE?

CEDAR

NEW MOTHBALLS

…

Fire Damage

So in my reading of this, Sherlock sniffs for and maybe expects ‘old-timey’ smells - pine, spruce, cedar. @loudest-subtext-in-tv​, in a post that no longer exists, pointed out that this is a hint to Sherlock’s state of mind - he spruced up for meeting John, and was instead met violence and rejection, leaving him pining. Hmmm. Instead what he actually smells are new mothballs and fire damage. 

The new mothballs smell seems to be his first hint that something is off - a skeleton in this stage of decay should indicate a long period of time in this condition, but instead that new mothballs suggest that the timing is off.

Let’s not ignore the ‘fire damage’ smell as well. Something was burning. Is it Sherlock’s heart?

MOLLY: What is it?

(Sherlock gets out his phone and holds it up high to try and get a signal.)

MOLLY: You’re on to something, aren’t you?

SHERLOCK: Mm, maybe.

(John’s voice sounds in his head and the words he speaks appear in Sherlock’s mind.

SHOW OFF

Sherlock senses that something is off, that it doesn’t add up, but something stops him.

It’s John berating voice, telling him off in a way that’s very similar to the night of their reunion.

MOLLY: Trains?

SHERLOCK: Trains.

What a weird exchange for two Londoners in a crypt, wouldn’t you say? We’re being called out about the trains. Here’s what LSiT writes about trains in this episode: We then get a lot of trains and tunnels imagery, which carries both sexual connotations, and the idea of twists and turns and paths intersecting at various places. If this is meant to be a visual metaphor for Moriarty’s plot and the involvement of Mary, Mycroft, and Magnussen, it certainly works. We got train track imagery two episodes in a row during John and Sherlock’s investigations in the The Blind Banker and The Great Game, after all, both of which revolved around Mycroft’s involvement with Moriarty. It visually suggests the idea of connections.

John’s breathing of Sherlock in his mind continues throughout the scene. 

MOLLY: Male, forty to fifty.

(She looks round at Sherlock.)

MOLLY: Ooh, sorry, did you want to be …?

SHERLOCK: Er, no, please. Be my guest.

(John’s voice sounds in his mind again.)

JOHN (voiceover): You jealous?

(His second word appears simultaneously in front of Sherlock’s mind’s eye.)

JEALOUS?

SHERLOCK (angrily, through gritted teeth): Shut up!

Sherlock is distracted by none other than John accusing him of being jealous when Molly (John?) approaches the skeleton and asks if he wants to inspect it - to look into it, to see what mysteries it’s hiding.

MOLLY: Doesn’t make sense.

LESTRADE: What doesn’t?

(Sherlock gently blows away the dust around the hand and continues blowing towards the edge of the table.)

MOLLY: This skeleton – it’s … it can’t be any more than …

SHERLOCK and MOLLY (simultaneously): … six months old.

This six months hint, I think, was the thing that made me think of this scene in the context of John and Mary’s relationship. I think by this point it’s agreed upon in fanlore that John and Mary have known each other and/or dated for six months when Sherlock returns. John is probably already living in Mary’s flat in October, about a month before Sherlock comes back - so much so that Lestrade comes over there to give him the DVD containing Sherlock’s video message. This, despite the fact Mary’s first comment on John’s blog is left on April (prompting Harry to ask ‘Who’s Mary?’), so that could roughly suggest the ~six months timeline is correct.

So we have Sherlock confused - we have a case of a skeleton (some secret) that’s not as old as it’s supposed to be (Mary’s identity as Mary Morstan) and something significant happened to it around six months ago.

Sherlock pulls out a book from the drawer in the table -

How I Did It

By

Jack the Ripper

And, after being berated by John inside his head yet again, Sherlock explains:

The-the-the corpse is-is six months old; it’s dressed in a shoddy Victorian outfit from a museum. It’s been displayed on a dummy for many years in a case facing south-east judging from the fading of the fabric. It was sold off in a fire-damage sale … (he gets out his phone and shows the screen to Greg) … a week ago.

LESTRADE: So the whole thing was a fake.

SHERLOCK: Yes.

(He turns and heads out of the room.)

LESTRADE: Looked so promising.

SHERLOCK (already out of sight): Facile.

So here we have a few more things that points in the direction of hints we’ll hear and see again S3 and M-Theory: a shoddy victorian outfit, like Mary in TAB, a dummy, like in His Last Vow, and of course the fire, burning and even ripping Sherlock’s heart out (Mary shooting Sherlock in the heart).

Would this be Moriarty, playing a game of clue with Sherlock, telling him ‘this is how I’m going to burn your heart’? By planting a dummy, displayed for many years, on a corpse that’s six months old?

Lestrade, who - let’s remember - opened this scene by telling Sherlock ‘this one’s got us all baffled’, announces it was all a fake, having looked so promising. Is Lestrade mirroring Mrs. Hudson’s words earlier in the episode? Surprised that John had moved on and was somewhat baffled by John and Mary’s relationship?

Also, a note about Jack the Ripper and Moriarty from Baker Street wikia: “Due to the very nature of [the Jack the Ripper] case, it has proven to be very popular to pit [Sherlock] against one of history’s most infamous killers. The sheer amount of times these two have clashed through various media rivals that of Sherlock and Moriarty.”

And then Molly, John’s mirror, wonders out loud:

MOLLY: Why would someone go to all that trouble?

SHERLOCK (offscreen): Why indeed, John?

Dear Molly here is actually asking the right question - why would anyone go through all that trouble?

Sherlock, distracted and confused and even somewhat disappointed seems to be missing out on the clue entirely, even when Molly raises this very obvious question herself. Is it Sherlock’s fear of upsetting John further that prevents him from looking more deeply into this?

Is this Moftiss’ explanation for how Sherlock missed out on such a huge clue, as it was standing right in front of his eyes?

Of course, later in the episode we discover that sometime during this scene Sherlock figured out who actually placed that skeleton there - it was Anderson, in what others note as an attempt to convince Sherlock to come out of his hiding after his return.

Anderson represents the show’s fans in this episode, and when Sherlock berates Anderson for wasting NSY’s time by staging a fake crime scene it almost seems as if Moftiss are berating the fans for asking stupid questions about Mary and her relationship with John.

In a way, they sort of rule out this entire post - it was Anderson, not Moriarty. But let’s not forget that according to M-Theory (and in general) Moriarty works via proxy. It was Anderson and Donovan who fell for Moriarty’s trap of suspicion in TRF. How difficult would it be for Moriarty to push Anderson to do something like setting up a fake crime scene?

Also let’s not forget that while Anderson is ridiculed in TEH, he’s the one who knows where to find Sherlock in HLV (either because Sherlock wants him to find him in his bolthole, or because Moftiss are saying the fans are right and are on track).

Tagging other meta readers/writers who I think might enjoy this (apologies if you don’t - I won’t tag you again): @sarahthecoat​, @devoursjohnlock​ @inevitably-johnlocked​ @possiblyimbiassed​ @waitedforgarridebs​ @tjlcisthenewsexy​

love it! i also love how m theory, mirroring, and metaphorical reading are all in complete harmony here. Moriarty(=internalized homophobia) put "mary"(=heteronormativity) with john(=heart/love interest). the skeleton has an empty wine glass (wine=romance, so no wine=no romance) and empty syringe (drugs=chemistry of love, so none of that either) and sherlock's phone (=heart) is getting no signal (SADFACE).

Anderson is a fan mirror and also a john mirror, so looking back at TRF, moriarty (internalised homophobia) made both anderson (john, fans) and donovan (sherlock mirror) doubt sherlock's ability to solve cases (do the work/personal integration, solve the three patch problem/his feelings for john).

i also just twigged on, there are "crypt" settings in several other episodes as well... probably all having to do with the "basement" level of stairs code.

perfectly safe if you avoid what must bring the carriage (transport / body) to join the heart (bomb). Perfectly safe,  if you avoid/ignore Sherlock Holmes is live, made of flesh and blood, subject to impulses … human.

mmhmm!

oh yeah well what if trains entering tunnels didn’t symbolise sex, in fact what if sex symbolised railway engineering, how about that huh

everything is about sex, except sex, which is about trains

OH suddenly a lot of Sherlock makes a lot mhore sense

MMHMM. I always thought it was interesting that in s1, the trains in TGG are strictly above ground, but then in s3, in TEH, they are all in tunnels.

It’s the same with putting Mycroft’s office in a bunker. Above ground there’s more light.

aha, yes! Love your tags too.

oh yeah well what if trains entering tunnels didn’t symbolise sex, in fact what if sex symbolised railway engineering, how about that huh

everything is about sex, except sex, which is about trains

OH suddenly a lot of Sherlock makes a lot mhore sense

MMHMM. I always thought it was interesting that in s1, the trains in TGG are strictly above ground, but then in s3, in TEH, they are all in tunnels.

Gold Is Heavy

[Mostly a smooshed-down version of some key points from this older post.]

So remember that bank heist at the start of The Sign of Three?

Keep reading

*shakes head in wonder at all the connections*