jenna221b:

the-blue-carbuncle:

jenna221b:

strange-rock-n-roller:

jenna221b:

1. Thank you so much for your incredible meta! I love this fandom like crazy. 2. According to the theory that TFP is John’s near-the-death dream… How can we explain this – when Sherlock found out that “Eurus killed Viktor” we hear her words about deep water and see the shots of TGG pool and (!) Reichenbach fall from TAB? Why this piece of Sherlock’s MP in John’s dream? I stuck on this…

LOVE theory of TFP being in John’s mind after he is shot! So is it Eurus that still kills him? I’ve read metas where it explains Eurus and Sherlock are the same person, so then Eurus doesn’t really exist..? But she still shoots John? Or is this in John’s min while we are still in Sherlocks MP on the HLV plane? Kind of MP inception or something? 🙂

so I thought I would compile these 3 asks here cause they’re all basically asking the same thing. ❤

So, here’s where I’m at right now: to me a ‘Garridebs’ minisode would be the most likely way of hiding a secret ‘4th episode.’

1) It doesn’t have to be long, it could take place during the suspicious “missing 10 minutes” from John’s therapy appointment as I say here, like a Series 4 version of Many Happy Returns. 

2) The fact that I think the ending of The Lying Detective is an allusion to the James Bond ‘red’ title screen (see here) gives us a clue that this is going into John’s point of view, because of his watching Bond films. To me this also explains Moriarty’s weird “red alert/klingons/cowboys/Darth Vader” line (see here)- they’re all allusions to things John would have watched on T.V.

3) The way Mycroft is acting apparently out of character to me is explained away by this being from John’s PoV- John doesn’t think Mycroft is impressive at all, see here. 

 I still do like/ have written this being a dream from Sherlock’s PoV, but I’m warming to John’s version of TAB much more now because it parallels how Sherlock ended up creating TAB:

• Sherlock is faced with a mystery: Moriarty’s ‘miss me’ message. Overwhelmed by the drugs he is taking, he loses consciousness and retreats into his mind, and invents TAB– his mind seemingly focused on solving that mystery. Except, rather than this really solving the Moriarty thing, the whole thing is dependent on him and John being together: “There’s always two of us.”
• John is faced with a mystery: Sherlock has a secret sister. He gets shot, loses consciousness from the pain and retreats into his mind, and invents TFP– his mind seemingly focused on solving that mystery. Except, rather than solving the Eurus thing (too many loose ends), the whole thing ends with John and Sherlock back in 221B.

In my opinion, this is why we are faced with a literal ‘dangling Garridebs’ scene in TFP (I can’t believe I actually typed that haha @waitedforgarridebs): it’s a clue that the real Garridebs moment going on behind the scenes is left ‘dangling’, unresolved. John is stuck in limbo, waiting for Sherlock to save him.

And his mind fixes on the last thing he was told: that Sherlock has a secret sister. He is left reeling, trying to come up with explanations. This explains the major loose thread at the beginning of TFP: we gloss past and ignore the “mutual friend” who gave Eurus Faith’s note because John still doesn’t know this. 

So, what about Redbeard? I still think John doesn’t know who/what Redbeard exactly is. All he has to go on is Sherlock’s reaction to Magnussen saying “Redbeard” in HLV. So, what does he do? I’m going to quote @marcespot here:

I think because clever–oh so clever– John, figures out what many of us have been speculating. That Sherlock just cannot be this traumatized over a dog, it is painful, yes, but a grown man still not over the loss of a dog? He saw the look on Sherlock’s face when Magnussen brought it up. It can’t be a dog. It just can’t, and John is always right. Remember John was very invested in Henry’s trauma in THoB, tellling Dr. Mortimer: “because I have another friend who might be having the same problem.” Henry had replaced the memory of a murderous man for that of a dog because he couldn’t cope. John made his deductions. Remember John announcing in TLD “I’m gonna make a deduction”. He deduced Mycroft must’ve had made up a lie to protect Sherlock from some horrible truth… why not the death of Sherlock’s only special childhood friend. Note how John equates himself with Victor because the whole point is that he thinks that’s the reason why Sherlock grew up under that imposed ‘conceal don’t feel’ lifestyle, which had to be born out of a trauma because John knows Sherlock, and how emotional, friendly and in need for a companion he is. He literally told Sherlock he needs to get himself a romantic partner! Some great loss must’ve happened for Sherlock to develop any kind of issue with interpersonal relationships, and ever choosing to put on the sociopath façade. (x)

And here’s the thing: this could both mean that John has got very close to the truth (that Redbeard is Sherlock’s past “great loss” or even love)… but to me it also explains why the Holmes family background seemed so weird and contradictory in TFP. We know that behind their facades, Mycroft and Sherlock are “ordinary”, we even have TEH show us how very ordinary Sherlock’s “lovely Mum and Dad” are.

So, why the change to this odd big Holmes mansion cliché? (x) Because John the writer, with his imagination and his adoration for Sherlock, is left reeling from the Eurus reveal. He’s trying to explain it, and to do so he simply has to go back to Sherlock’s childhood. And John is a Romantic so of course Sherlock would have this epic childhood backstory, of course John would imagine him as little Sherlock the Pirate off on adventures, after hearing Mycroft’s “Initially he wanted to be a pirate” quip. And the fact that Mycroft’s description of “the ancestral home” (there was always honey for tea) is an ALLUSION TO A POEM BY RUPERT BROOKE… just makes me think of the poet John, writing unspoken things on his laptop. Poetry or truth, John? He makes Sherlock into a Gothic Hero, and gives him a grand ancestral home, because to John Sherlock is so extraordinary, so everything around him would be, too.

Yes yes yes omg All of that!
PLUS

I watched TFP three times and every time one thing struck me as odd:
Why is it cross-dressing uncle Rudy who takes care of Euros, after she leaves the family?
In combination with THIS theory, it’s obvious:

Rudy is the only other relative John knows about.

oh my god TRUE, that’s the only other Holmes he’s heard of! And we never actually see him in TFP because John’s never seen him! I love how John makes Rudy into this Mycroft figure except bigger than Mycroft, it’s like his own mind can sense the plot holes and is like ‘listen, just say Rudy Managed Everything problem solved.’

oh my god this was such an eye-opener, I am certain this theory is true. Also John in the end imagines he doesn’t live with Sherlock because he probably doesn’t think there’s a chance of having a romantic relationship with him, so instead he imagines that they keep on being friends and solving cases like they did in s1. In retrospect this episode seems goddamn painful

omg yes, he writes the happy ending he thinks Sherlock wants. (x)