ivyblossom:

Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have always been very pro-fandom. I sense that many people are not feeling that right now, but I think this episode is more of a love letter to fandom than some may be inclined to think.

One of the most beautiful things about this series, for me as a fan writer, was the number of scenes that don’t exist on the screen but the story builds upon. It’s what I loved so much about series 2 in particular, and dissecting it has taught me so much about story construction. 

There’s all kinds of things going on under the surface that we can pull out and explore, but they aren’t just sideshows or what ifs. The story depends on you pulling them out and exploring them, it counts on it. There are weeks in A Scandal in Belgravia that the story relies upon, and we jumped right into them and give them life. All the dialogue that must have been spoken, or not. All the little intimacies that are clearly there, just below the surface. These things are foundational, and absent. We are expected to fill them in.

This series is perhaps the most blatant on that front because of the way that we went from The Lying Detective to The Final Problem. John had said his final goodbyes to Sherlock. He was angry all over again about Sherlock’s 2 year absence. Even once they’d half-repaired things between them, it was still over. John was about to duck out 20 minutes early. He couldn’t bear to sit there with Sherlock. He was running from Sherlock emotionally, not running towards him. 

Then finally: one honest conversation. All the right questions asked. Both of them open and exposed, staring at each other. John might still have left. He might have still run from it, this terrible, wonderful, dangling possibility, but he doesn’t. John gives in, and cries. It’s a very vulnerable and emotional moment he is willing to share in Sherlock’s presence. Sherlock doesn’t run from it either, though in other times and places he probably would have. Sherlock goes to him. Sherlock takes John in his arms.

Then they have cake.

Fanfiction asks: what happened? What happened before cake? What happened after it? Well, we had another episode, so we held our breaths and wonder if the story will fill it in for you. This one didn’t, it jumped ahead in time. It showed us, not the immediate emotional follow up, but where that follow up landed afterwards. They showed the result of those scenes that aren’t there. Those scenes are important, relied upon, and absent.

You may feel disappointed by that, I can understand that. This show has never been willing to handhold you through very much, it expects you to run alongside this speeding train of an emotional through line. They have every reason to think we can do that: we’ve been doing it since S1.

Where they are in The Final Problem is a far cry from where they were an episode prior. Something fundamental has shifted between them. Something critical has changed. The status of Sherlock and John’s relationship in this episode, how incredibly in sync they are, how in tune they are with each other’s emotions, how they never once doubt one another, how concerned they are for each other, how included they are in each other’s emotional lives, each other’s families, how bare and naked they can be together without hesitating or flinching: that’s a statement, and it’s giving us an answer to the question of what happened between The Lying Detective and The Final Problem. This is how close they have grown.

Fiction is collaborative, always. As the audience we aren’t just watching, we’re imagining, we’re creating this story along with the writers and the actors and the production team. The audience filling in the gaps. A creator who is aware of that allows those gaps to exist so that they can be filled by the audience. They set them up and give it to us, and then depend on what we’ve created, like a rung in a ladder. They give us a start and an end point, and let us have the joy of working out the middle. And then they build on that middle, as if it’s part of the show. Because it is.