but apparently now they’re just something Arwel likes. as if the use of a long standing metaphor didn’t mean anything. as if Sherlock and John staring at it in a room and unable to talk about it because of official state secrets (via John’s blog) doesn’t mean anything. as if they commissioned a designer to use it in s4 and it didn’t mean anything. as if they had an elephant breaking when the plane landed in TAB and sherlock’s mind palace was shattering into reality didn’t mean anything. apparently elephants in rooms are just that. sure jan.
the thing is, a lot of the plot holes don’t matter. it doesn’t actually matter about how they survived the explosion or got on the boat or got john out of the well. the problem is that the overall conclusion of the episode’s plot, no matter how you look at it, is unnecessary. we didn’t need this episode for Sherlock to realize that he’s better with his emotional connections in juxtaposition to Eurus’s lack of them, because Sherlock realized that exact thing in TAB and acted in accordance with that realization in TST and TLD. we didn’t need Sherlock’s family to be remade in a better image because the underlying love between Sherlock and Mycroft has always been clear, even if it hasn’t been perfect. we didn’t need Sherlock to understand the importance of having or saving a best friend because he realized it in TRF. we understood from the end of TLD that John and Sherlock have reconciled and are now ready to trust each other and work in partnership again (which TFP actually undermined by Sherlock ignoring John’s Vatican Cameos warning, incidentally). we knew Sherlock was willing to die to protect his loved ones two seasons ago. there was no emotional fall-out or gain for the characters on the basis of going through Eurus’s games.
we just…didn’t need a single thing this episode gave us. that’s the plot hole I can’t let go of. that’s what makes this so unsatisfying. it wasn’t just sloppy, it was a waste.
The sheer force of two opposing emotions; one seeing how wrong all of this was and knowing none of it makes any sense and feeling like there has to be an answer, there’s no way we are wrong, there’s no way it was a series of major coincidences, there has to be an answer; the other a crushing, burning heartbreak and feeling the loss of something I loved so deeply for so many years
the things we thought we learned from the show. you can recover. you can find love. you are not defined by your trauma. you deserve to be surrounded by people who care about you. they didn’t teach us that. we taught ourselves, and we taught each other. there is less goodness in the world than we thought. but we have each other’s goodness. we have our own goodness. we thought we were looking at the light. WE ARE THE LIGHT.
Kid!Sherlock: Daddy, can I please have a dog? Pretty please!
Daddy Holmes: I’m sorry, son, but you know I’m allergic to dog fur. Here, why not take this random orphan kid that your mum and I found wandering on the fields? It’s basically the same thing.
sherlock: why are u so obsessed with me and why are u trying to kill me and kill my friends and kill our brother and kill these randos
churros: i wanted to play pirates with yall that 1 time in 1982 and we didnt
sherlock: oh dang my bad
churros: yup. but if u give me a hug and schedule Violin Battle Game Night every friday, we’re cool and i’ll stop alla this killin
sherlock: hahaaaaa u got it, but you’re goin DOWN sis [immediately pulls out violin rips into a playful rendition of “We Are Family” by the pointer sisters]
This is not about the resolution of a TV show which is currently an open text and may as well continue to be so for the next 20 years.
This is not about predictions or decoding.
This is about intelligent readings and queer subtext and the labor that goes into fans making sense of convoluted narratives in the search for satisfying media and queer representation.
This is about giftedness and queerness and the wages of being different.
(This also got long).
Because if there’s one thing I learned from being part of the BBC Sherlock fandom is that a large number of you, us, fans, are unusually gifted. Whether that giftedness manifests as mental prowess, scholarly achievements, high empathetic IQ, artistic talent or writing virtuosity, we got invested in this show because we all wanted more: more compelling plots, more complex characters, more nuanced queer representation. We wanted more. We wanted something different, different from heteronormative romcoms and linear crime stories. We wanted messy and clever and queer and human. Why wouldn’t we want that? That sounds groundbreaking.
I think it’s no coincidence that we got hooked in a show centered on a protagonist that is coded as gifted, neuro-divergent, and queer. We—so many of us female-identified people—are tired of having the world explained to us by men. And Sherlock, that most human human calculator, seemed miraculously positioned beyond the world of rigid binaries. He appears brilliant but insecure, suicidal and arrogant, interested in humanity but disinterested in heteronormativity. He can be read as trans, a gay man, an asexual, a demiromantic, autistic, bipolar. Different always. Gifted always. Conventional never.
We have been writing this amazing character, you and you and you and you. For years. Your labor gave it life. Your intelligence gave him depth. (The same can be said about John Watson). When canon gave you scraps, you made tapestries. When it gave you gaps, you filled them with intricate designs. You made this show rich and warm and human. You did. You did. With your creative and interpretative labor. By following the clues embedded in a carefully crafted queer subtext. You. Your labor did it. Your giftedness did it. Your desire for different representation, for deeper meaning did it.
Now. We were always in for this ride of humanizing the gifted detective, soften the edges of the broken doctor. With love. (fan love, textual love, queer love, creators’ love) Love, not abuse masquerading as pedagogy.Humanization, not humiliation—fans, girls, people, there’s an abyss of difference between these words.
And that’s it. This is where I draw a harsh line: if you are a gifted/ neuro-divergent/ queer person you probably have been told at some point in life that you need to apologize for your difference, that you need to learn to take what love you can get because you aren’t worth much. That you must labor twice as much to get little back. If on top of that you perceived as a “fangirl” then your labor loses even more value—you only care about sex and schmaltz and “gay men doing it.” Your work of reading texts, of LOVING TEXTS, gets undermined by male creators devaluing your intelligence, your interpretation, your emotional investment.
Well. Fuck that. Please say this with me. Fuck that toxic excuse boys will be boys so violence between them is condoned. Fuck the idea female characters must invariably conform into Victorian models of wifely care-taking and self-sacrifice, EVEN if they are presented as assassins. Fuck the destructive narrative gifted people must be beaten down until they apologize for their capacities, as if betrayal and physical abuse ever made anyone a better human being.
Fuck the notion queer audiences must scrounge for every ounce of subtext and then origami inconsistent narratives into tiny slivers of positive representation because we are SO starved for queer happy endings.
Fuck “fangirls” having to make excuses for male creators’ mistakes, inconsistencies, failures and shortcomings.
And above all, fuck the idea that mass produced and distributed fiction/media should *not* be held to a higher standard than “harmless entertainment”.
Damn it, let’s be real here: we all most likely were saved by fiction at some point in our lives. Books, movies, video games, songs—stories save lives, they make sense of lives. Hell, history has we know it is mostly stories told by victors or people in positions of privileged (beginning with alphabetization).
So damn it, stop letting media (male!) creators off the hook that easily. You stuff your show with queer subtext, you are RESPONSIBLE for it and you are liable to your audiences to address it. You don’t get to keep gaslighting and whiplashing your fans—all your freaking fans at this point— with plot inconsistencies, unaddressed callbacks, and veiled queer references, only to deride them if they refuse to keep laboring for YOU by attempting to make sense of the mess you made of your own show. (You don’t get to call bright fans stupid if they call you out on your muddled writing).
Guess what: Johnlock fans asking for canon queer representation are only following the clues you seeded in your own show. And they deserve better than a contrived plot where gifted queer people only earn love after a beating, or only find their humanity after losing their pride and sense of security.
Or that they can only experience a moment of same-sex intimacy (that long-awaited hug) after said physical contact is followed by discussions on heterosexual courtship behavior (having John’s texts to E being equated with Sherlock’s texts to Irene and both linked with sexual interest). Damn it if that’s not too close to no-homo for my comfort. I don’t want have to write/read 20 posts on subtext to be able to validate a reading of queer romance. I want it to be in PLAIN VIEW, to be TEXT, literal, formalized, spoken, made clear as day, for everybody to see, the same way hetero romance is, every day, all the time!!
Damn it. You know you deserve better when the only way to salvage positive queer representation is to erase the whole narrative in a “it was all a dream” deus-ex-machina scenario (and I love you EMP people, but to me your brilliant and well-researched theory signifies more keenly how intrinsically discontent fans have been with the inconsistencies of canonical narrative since HLV, so much so that some fans had to outsmart the creators and come up with a theory that would actually be clever, if albeit unlikely).
Yes, it’s an open text. You can stick with it or you can walk away. You are not smarter for staying, nor dumb for leaving. You are not an “anti”, nor a fair-weather fan (that’s not a thing, by the way).
Whatever you do remember this (particularly if you are young/alienated/oppressed): your labor is valid. Your emotional investment is valid. Your non-normative readings are valid. You are a fan and you are queer and you are different and you are neuro-atypical and you are pretty damn smart. And for that alone, you always deserve more, better than a queer world designed according to some men’s tipsy-turvy views on what giftedness and same-sex love looks like.
Elephants stampeding from our screens, An iconic gay fairytale come true. TJLC walls gleam with scarlet hue, Mark and Moffat’s shatt’ring climax dreams.
Yeet! The stale dark fuck prince grave is dug, Emptier than Vertue’s basement vault. No stomach for unprecedented salt? Take, please, a sip from Sherlock’s ”fireworks” 😉 “””mug””” ;);););););)
Impossible finale gone to waste, ‘R greatest love story never been told? Etched to mem’ry till we’re grey and old, A resounding condemnation of warm paste.
Suck a dick’ll help you come to grips, So take five hundred motherfucking sips.
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i hope the BBC complaints department likes my potato
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