welovethebeekeeper:

marcespot:

consultingeastwind:

marcespot:

**IMPORTANT** More on John’s hallucination theory.

Which you can see in this video, this post, and this one. In the latter I tackled the subject of John’s repression in TFP, but I just have the need to expand on this and continue to draw your attention to it because, the way I see it, it was the central theme of John’s dream. Seriously, it gets much better.

So, John sees himself imprisioned in a hellish institution that serves to “trap demons”, according to Mycroft –who John imagines as no other than Lady Bracknell. That character of Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is first and foremost a symbol of bigoted Victorian upper-class negativity, and its conservative and powerful repressive values. They invented the ‘demon of homosexuality’, but of course “there never was any monster” –as John heard Sherlock say (keep that detail in mind). Could go on but I think you get the idea (I recommend Ghost Stories Are Gay Stories by @heimishtheidealhusband.)

Now the coffin John pictures in the center of one of the gray rooms of his mind has “I Love You” carved on the lid. It’s his love for Sherlock that he puts into a coffin. Remember when TAB gave us the decoder of coffins = cupboards?

JOHN IS CLOSETED AND WISHES SHERLOCK WOULD ‘BREAK HIM FREE’

Only Sherlock’s love would save him. He thinks “I am lost without your love, save my soul”. He listens to “I Want to Break Free”, and envisions Sherlock bringing down his walls just like in Queen’s music video.

Remember John projects his feelings onto other people, like Sherlock did in TAB. Shaky Molly telling Sherlock “I love you, you know it’s always been true, you say it first” is the personification of John’s tiny feels. He wants Sherlock to love him back so bad. And he comes to that conclusion, that Sherlock does love him and will not let their love die, that losing him would make Sherlock suicidal. That exchange they had at the end of TDL when Sherlock told him “We might all just be human… even YOU.”, resonates in John’s mind, so he knows Sherlock understands him, and is willing to help him break free from his island of hell, to come down from his plane of isolation and land safely on his loving arms.

Remember Eurus is John, he even pictured her wearing his favourite jumper. Like I wrote on that link above, Sherlock stepped closer to him, and even entwined fingers with him because HE DIDN’T SEE A BARRIER. This is the representation of overcoming queerphobia, because remember, John heard Sherlock say “there never was any monster”. Sherlock not noticing the glass is the same Moffat did with Vastra’s “when you stopped seeing it”, and I can’t stress enough the importance of that.

JOHN KNOWS EMBRACING HIS LOVE FOR SHERLOCK AND THEREFORE COMING OUT IS WHAT WILL SAVE HIS SOUL. Embracing his identity is the solution to the final problem. That’s why the episode ended with that ridiculous line in Mary’s mouth. Mary saying “who you really are doen’t matter” IS THE FINAL PROBLEM. Remember in T6T when Vivian was retelling the Samarra story and Mary showed up just to say the word “death”? Because Mary is

the representation of death, she is the tragic ending in Samarra, the embodiement of heteronormativity, the ultimate villain who must be defeated.

There’s no possible way TPTB had put themselves in that position and not deliver resolution, not answering the question “can Samarra be avoided?”, and not give us John and Sherlock going to Sumatra’s fix-it story that Sherlock dreamed of since he was a child. The fourth episode is a must. It’s the only way Ben’s words make sense:

“There are a huge number of pay-offs in this series,” he says. “I think, in the past, you could get away with watching a few episodes in isolation, but this… they’re vine branches in the jungle of Sherlock, you have to keep swinging from one to the next to really understand. And really… the pay-offs are massive if you do.” (x)

If you don’t read TFP as John’s Garridebs hallucination, that statement would be ridiculous because plot-wise nothing would make sense. But knowing this was John’s horror nightmare and that there will be another episode literally bringing the solution to TFP in which ‘love conquers all’… the pay-offs will be massive indeed. Pulling this off will be television history.

Keep reading

I really love this theory, or any theory that would make S4, especially TFP, not real. The only downside to this is that with TFP (and possibly TLD) being John’s nightmare / hallucination, we would have to assume T6T events were real as well.

That Mary died a fake Hollywood death while Dr. John Watson sat there and moo-ed, blaming Sherlock, and that it somehow started / continued her redemption arc.

That the baby is real in the first place and that it really is Mary and John’s child when it has been coded since S3 to be neither real nor related to John and Mary.

All those consistently inconsistent elements in T6T – including cameramen in the frame. I would love a TFP (and TLD) is John’s nightmare / hallucination even more if it were taking place in the story’s timeline prior to T6T.

In the meantime, I’ll hang on to my “A Villain (Mary and/or Jim) is the Story Teller of S4” theory. I’m alone in it and no one’s even considering it, but that’s the only comfort I have for everyone being far too wildly OOC ever since T6T.

@consultingeastwind​ Thank you for this, my friend! How come I haven’t seen your “A Villain (Mary and/or Jim) is the Story Teller of S4” theory D: sounds brilliant, pls link me to it, I wanna read it! 

I mean, yes, I did make the connection of Moriarty’s “I’m the storyteller, it’s on DVD” with Mary’s Miss Me DVD like I posted here, but only in the sense of her recorded message being an act. As in, she wanted for Sherlock to trust her while actually sending him to his death and telling him not to tell John, like, there’s absolutely no way John could’ve known he had to save Sherlock. If it wasn’t for badass hero Mrs. Hudson telling John about the existence of that DVD, Sherlock would’ve died. I expanded on all that here. But the thing is, Mary planned it so well, it LOOKS as if she made John save Sherlock. They make it look as if she’s been redeemed, but she has not. She’s acting as pure while being evil. She managed to keep manipulating both Sherlock and John even through a posthumus message, and remain as a Saint in their eyes, while she’s actually the villain.

So, no, I don’t see her ever having a redeption arc. Because like I said before, all the time we see her in TLD that’s NOT HERSELF,

it’s a ghost. It’s the image a deceived John has of her. His concept of Mary is “corrupted”, like Culverton would say. The ONLY time when she appears as herself being ‘nice’ is in TFP, in an alternate Miss You DVD –please note these are opposite titles Me vs You. This series gave us two DVDs showing two completely different versions of Mary: she’s (covertly) evil in one (in which she can’t even resist the little “go to hell” joke, like David Collar in that Twitter case, you can see the parallel here), and openly good in the other. So what’s the truth? “Me or You?”, said the bride in TAB. We’re told to choose, the two cannot coexist. It’s either one or the other. Which leads me back to the hallucination theory. Since this is all in John’s head, he imagines Mary The Saint left this lovely message for them, but THAT DVD DOES NOT EXIST. The only real DVD is the Miss Me one, which equates evil Mary with evil Moriarty. Btw, I just think all of this is a perfect metaphor for an heteronormative reading of what’s really happening in the story; people being presented with the choice to be blind to Mary’s evilness and taking it. Embracing that apparent redemption arc without looking closer or question anything, ‘choosing to ignore everything they see that doesn’t comply with it’, like Sherlock would say. It’s just like the story of 130+ years of people getting the canon wrong. They started proving it wrong with TFP. They showed us what happens if you choose the wrong DVD, just so they can fix it. I’m in love with this great complex metaphor.

Now, regarding Mary’s hollywoodesque death, I initially thought she might have faked it –becasue of the striking resemblance that shot of her coffin has to Diamonds Are Forever which I talked about here. And although I see some perks to have her coming back for revenge, I’m frankly irked by her and I don’t want to see her anymore. Her mere presence is annoying to a lot of us, and you know what, I think that’s the point and it makes sense. Because, you see, I think they deliberately wanted to showed us how she ruins the Sherlock and John show. They’re not her Baker Street Boys. Like I said above, they coded her as evil, they want us to hate her. 

So I started thinking, what if her fake act of selflessness taking the bullet for Sherlock was real? And it blew my mind how likely that could be! Listen, we know she’s a psycho villain, she would go to any lenghts to get what she wants. We herd it from her own mouth, she told Sherlock:

“John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It’d break him and I will lose him forever, and Sherlock, I would never let that happen. Please, understand. There is nothing in this World I would not do to stop that happening.”

At last I get the full meaning of that ominus statement! The point is

–just as it happened with Moriarty (see parallel here)– neither Sherlock or John have any idea how far she was willing to go for her selfish reasons. She’d do anything it takes –anything– to make sure John loves her forever. Even if that means ending her own life to burn a corrupted image of her into John’s memory forever.  She traumatized John by taking the bullet for Sherlock and killing two birds with the same stone; making John hate Sherlock thus causing thier estrangement, and earning John’s eternal devotion thinking she was Angel Mary. Plus the added bonus of chopping off Sherlock’s self worth too (remember Sherlock thinking Mary gave her life for him and he doesn’t know how to ‘spend that currency’, ugh!) And this remains to be fixed. Woah, man, she’s disgusting!

So I think the hollywoodesque death is their way to point out that wasn’t an act of self sacrifice at all. It looks fake because it was; it didn’t come from a pure motive, it actually was a selfish, evil act. Again, just like David Collar did, (see here) Psycho bitch gladly took a bullet like a kamikaze to traumatize our boys forever. Yes she felt pain, but she was struggling to put up the act until her very last seconds. Wow, amazing.

Now onto John’s reaction. Given that he’s been thoroughly brain-washed, I can understand why he would feel confused and express his emotions through anger, specially towards Sherlock. That’s what you do when you’re being pushed to the edge, you take it out on the person you love the most. But it’s worse in his case, this is a soldier who fought in War. He was projecting af, he was actually blaming himself,

blinded by anger, and epically Fucked Up, unable to measure the impact his words would have on poor Sherlock. Same reason why he beat him; he was actually beating himself –but I don’t wanna get into that because it’s too painful, you get the idea.

Plus, John was right there, not only able to take her pulse like he did in TRF, but to actually check the bullet-wound with his doctor fingers. Watch it and you’ll see how his professional fingers really get in there. I just think if it was fake, he must’ve noticed the absence of a hole in her flesh. He didn’t, instantly assessing it as fatal. Otherwise he would’ve been able to save her.

But I just can’t wrap my head around those little fucky details, like John’s blog, or the cameraman (tho I did propose an explanation for the skull painting changing colours as the only element of Magical Realism of the show and why that could be important in the link I added here). And as for the baby, no idea. I don’t know why those “baby’s day out” scenes seem so OOC. Maybe just to make us cringe? If that’s the case, it works. 

But the baby seems very much important to John, since the possibility of him and Sherlock raising Rosie together as a family flashed before his eyes! But maybe that’s not Rosie.

That may be the toddler he imagines he could adopt because the prospect of becoming a father some day has already made a home in his heart and he wants Sherlock to be the father of his child? ❤ After all, Steven did say “Sherlock doesn’t rule out the idea of one day being married and one day being a parent.” (x) Imagine a series 5 starting with a teenage lady in trouble who you think is the client, like in every cold opening, and she comes home calling for her father and turns out you see a slightly gray-haired Sherlock welcoming her home?? *rip me* Many adaptations did this. So many possibilities! Like Martin said, “a daughter makes stakes get higher” indeed, and we haven’t really seen that yet. But if they already pitched that idea to Ben and Martin, no wonder they said we’ll problably have to wait a bit more for next series!

Woah, this got longer than anticipated, but I love this exchange. Thank you for making me rethink these things, CEW! Anyone else wats to join in please do.

Just on the Rosie as their daughter issue. The writers want to take and fix all adaptations and that includes the Mary Russell books. I have said for a long time that John’s daughter could be The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Not Sherlock’s wife, but his daughter. It’s why I think Rosie is in the plot. She is a pay off for a special 12-15 years from now. It also solves the ‘heirs’ issue at the beginning of TPLoSH. Rosie is a fix it in the making.