I need headcanons for when and why Sherlock started dressing the way he does. It’s not how his father dresses (casual, homey, playful) and not how his brother dresses (elegant, finicky, proper). At what point did Sherlock settle on an image? Did he have a few false starts – are their old photos circulating of him trying out leather trousers or tweed jackets or cravats? Did an ex-lover make suggestions, or did he model himself after a celebrity or a magazine spread? How did he pick his tailor, and what conversations did they have about line and colors and textures and fit? When did he first find The Coat? Did it come with the red buttonholes, or were they Sherlock’s idea? Or his tailor’s suggestion?
Basically I need more shoppinglock in my life.
I don’t usually reblog/reply to fandom stuff, but… I have headcanons.
See, I really can’t help but think that Sherlock’s image IS just a look for him, just as much as Mycroft’s elegant, finicky, proper suits are a LOOK for him. Remember- the one and ONLY time we’ve seen Mycroft in a private, at-home setting, where he’s alone and not trying to make an impression on anyone, he was dressed in ill-fitting lycra- hardly the pinnacle of finicky and elegant fashion he generally presents. However, he’s learned that clothing makes an impression on the public. People see a man in a perfectly tailored and expensive suit, and they start jumping to conclusions. This man is wealthy. This man is intimidating. This man is in control. The suit is a costume, designed to present a specific image to the world, and Mycroft pulls it off like a pro.
Sherlock’s regular getup is no exception. We’ve SEEN that he has an entire wardrobe full of, for lack of a better word, costumes. Clothing for all occasions. And Sherlock is unquestionably a master when it comes to gauging peoples’ reactions to different kinds of clothing. I doubt it took him any time at all to settle on a LOOK.
… especially since, I suspect, he settled on it right as he was getting off the drugs.
Think about it. Here’s this scrawny, wild-eyed young man with needle tracks up and down his arms, trying to barge his way into police investigations and be taken seriously. He’d have been kicked out on his ass without question at first. But he knows that there are ways to offset that. I see him trying Mycroft’s style at first. Intimidating, perfectly tailored, expensive suits, and yeah, that got him in, but it also closed off everyone around him. People who are too intimidated are closed-mouthed, guarded, and very untrusting. That isn’t what Sherlock needs.
So he tones it down. He loses the suit jacket, but keeps the long sleeves, so no one can see the needle tracks. He tries out a few different colors of dress shirt, and found that people react well to the darker colors. It’s cold, so he grabs a long coat- the sweeping tails and high collar are very dramatic, like a cape, and he does SO love making a dramatic entrance. He stays formal looking, clearly a man of means and control, but with little casual touches (like occasionally wearing jeans and sticking with a plain scarf and avoiding and waistcoats like the plague).
And, as he gets healthier and gets some weight on him, he just doesn’t bother getting a new wardrobe, because that is BORING, leaving him straining the buttons of every shirt in a roommate-distracting way.
OK, I mostly don’t disagree with this analysis of Sherlock, but every time I see this reblogged I twitch a bit at certain Mycroft-related inaccuracies.
We see Mycroft at home, alone, not expecting company, three times. The one already mentioned. Once in SiB, where he is wearing a full country tweed suit. And once in TFP, where he is wearing a suit, just without the jacket.
The “ill-fitting Lycra” was…when he was interrupted literally mid-workout. I don’t really know anyone who works out in a three-piece suit. I am honestly puzzled that anyone could think we could conclude anything much about Mycroft’s style based on what he wears on the treadmill. (Beyond that he wears a long-sleeved shirt and pants when most people would choose something more abbreviated, which could suggest a higher level of formality.)
Speaking of the three-piece suit, it would actually not be a good costume choice for Mycroft to convey generic wealth and power. While not as wildly unusual as it would be in today’s United States, a suit with waistcoat and pocket watch is still quite an affected look for a contemporary Englishman on an ordinary day. You wouldn’t routinely see it on a City man or government official just going about his business. It’s practically an Edwardian look (see recent photos of Ewan McGregor in the A.A. Milne biopic). Not something you’d wear to the big board meeting or to meet people for pitches or negotiations, if your goal is to look like a Master of the Universe. That’s not why Mycroft wears that kind of outfit.
To me, the function of Mycroft’s outfits for others is two-fold. For those who don’t know who he really is, they serve to obscure him as some kind of fussy eccentric with a “minor role.” For those who do, they emphasize his idiosyncrasy, his flair for the dramatic, and the power he has to indulge both. Because…while Mycroft’s costume is costume, like all disguises in Sherlock, it’s also a self-portrait. He wears a suit drinking at home alone in front of the fire on Christmas Eve because that’s how he conceives of himself.
Agree with everything @harriet-spy said and adding that Mycroft and Sherlock’s clothes are their armor. They share this with Irene, whose nudity is her battle dress. It’s a way the three of them hold themselves at arms length from the rest of the world. It says “look, but don’t touch.”
Sherlock talking about Howard Garrideb in The Final Problem:
SHERLOCK (quick fire): Howard’s a lifelong drunk. Pallor of his skin, terminal gin blossoms on his red nose … (he zooms in on the man’s face and then lowers his gaze to his hands) … and – terror notwithstanding – a bad case of the DTs. [Delirium tremens.] (x)
The picture of Mary holding a pink elephant mixes two idioms: “the elephant in the room” and “seeing pink elephants.”
The elephant in the room= the obvious problem no-one wants to talk about. We’ve seen this referenced already- the literal “elephant in the room” Sherlock brings up at John’s wedding. We already know the metaphorical meaning is: John and Sherlock are in love with each other.
But, what happens when we combine “the elephant in the room” with the saying “to see pink elephants”, a drunken hallucination?
The elephant in the room now is the fact that the ‘elephant’… is a hallucination.
In Sherlock Series 4, the ‘pink’ elephant in the room is… that the events portrayed are not real.
This is not to say that everything is literally a hallucination, just that the events presented are unreliable. And the fact that John is strongly linked with alcohol, once again strengthens the concept of John as an unreliable narrator. He is the one creating these “pink elephants.”
When the Series 4 episode titles were first released, I was unsure what to think. Why would the creators of Sherlock name an episode after something previously mentioned in the series if not a direct callback to it. Hadn’t the final problem already been addressed on the rooftop of Barts Hospital? Was this somehow a clue into some sort of deeper meaning to that conversation before Sherlock fell? To be honest, it hadn’t hit me until this very moment what this episode title could actually be referring to.
I am a strong believer that TFP is occuring in John’s mind, there’s no way they would end on a cliffhanger with John being shot and then have him be totally fine, just having experienced a low level dart gun. The red rug that surrounded his feet in Eurus’ therapy office symbolized blood, and I don’t think that we should disregard that quite yet.
In The Reichenbach Fall, Moriarty says
Sherlock solves this predicament with the fall, but what if, at the end of TLD, John has the same problem.
The Final Problem is stayin’ alive and that is exactly what TFP is. John trying desperately to find a way to stay alive in his little old mind bungalow.
In His Last Vow, the thought of John pulls Sherlock up and back to life, in The Final Problem, Sherlock pulls up John.
It’s just Sherlock and John with a problem, the final problem, stayin’ alive.
I was reading Sherlock’s post on John’s blog – which also is the very last post on that blog – when I realized something in the comments section that I probably should have noticed ages ago:
Does this ring any bell? ANYONE!?
Talking about elephants in the room, but this has been there since Series 3, hiding in plain sight. Three things stand out to me:
1. Sherlock is hinting heavily about John’s wedding as a crime scene and what happened there. He seems very lonely and desperate for some attention; he has been leaving comments for two days, but no-one cares. John and ‘Mary’ have apparently read his post, but they both merely tell him to shut up.
2. Finally, when John no longer responds at all, Sherlock allows himself to be distracted by Mrs Hudson, and they’re about to play CLUEDO. As in “clue”.
This is very sad and very good, @possiblyimbiassed. I never really got it how ANYONE that is stressed so much in TLD and TST was just meant to point to Culverton Smith’s choice of victims. Because we get the ANYONE at a very crucial point in Sherlock’s life, one of the most crucial of all. He realises he has lost John for good. So he gets obsessed with the word but it is about him and John, not about some cereal killer.
In connection with the blog, however, it gets even more heartbreaking. Imagine Sherlock leaving the wedding with no one noticing or caring – we get the look from Molly but she goes on dancing – and then sitting at home and not even getting answers to his blog comments.
For me more or less the whole of S3/TAB/S4 is about Sherlock trying to live without John, coming to terms with having lost the persons that matters most to him. Sure, there is his past as well – do not get me started on this – but the one constant thing that is repeated again and again is Sherlock losing Johnin every conceivable way. @ebaeschnbliah
We begin with one bust missing. It was a bust once proudly at the front. It was on a
shrine, never meant to be touched or handled, only there to collect dust and perhaps get cleaned once in a while but otherwise? Nothing was ever going to happen to it, it’s static.
And yet, someone decided it was their duty to smash it, to discover the secret hidden and reveal it to the world. The statut quo couldn’t stay.
After that beginning that chocked Sherlock because it’s him who noticed the change by the absence of Thatcher, two busts fall
to their death. Different owners, same modus operandi. Bust Two and Bust Three fell, Bust two’s braking was linked with Mycroft after he mentionned a fic where Sherlock avoided death. So, bust 2, avoiding an appointment with death, a fall… hmmm…
As Lestrade
shows Sherlock Bust Three, Sherlock’s face and Thatcher’s are mixed, showing their fate
are one and the same. Both fell and got broken because of it.
Because of
the third statue, we finally have enough evidence the culprits left behind to track the one responsible.
We are like hounds after the one responsible for that mess. Unfortunately, the
one responsible for this hid his traces too well. He’s decided to hide his tree
in a forest. No choice but to wait.
Fourth try,
we think we’ve got it. Except it’s murder this time, something horrible
happened, something wrong happened and we know there is something wrong with the modus operandi. Plus, there was not one but to
busts and both met a hammer.
So far, each owner had one bust, but ower four? He had two.
The process
of elimination is finally at work. We know
we’ll get the answer with the fifth burglary. It’s just time to wait now and
catch themIN THE ACT. Like Lestrade, we’ll have to catch them IN. THE. ACT. and like him, the fifth time will be the charm.
This isn’t silly at all, @fellshish , this is fucking me up.
Miss Orrie Harker? I what sort of name is that. Has a ring of Ormand Sacker about it.
Wait, you’re right! That awfully looks a lot like the name Doyle first gave to John Watson.
But that means, if the murderer, who I strongly suspected based on evidence within TST to be Mary, killed the victim whose name was a reference to John Wtason… then that means…
Oh boy.
John Watson is definitely in danger.
The doubling up of the busts in owner #4 / Act 4 / s4 is messing me up! Two busts = two busted stories? The real plot and the one that we saw onscreen? Idk idk??
The number 57 notoriously recurs in Moffat’s work and this timeline aims to report its mentions.
To note:
The time indicates the airdate.
This timeline is limited to explicit mentions in the dialogue, as this are the only ones that are almost certain to have been intentionally placed by Moffat, and other explicit mentions by Moffat himself.
This timelines excludes mentions of 57 in episodes showrunned by Moffat when they have not also been written by him.
This timeline excludes mentions of numbers similar to 57 (like for example 507), even if they might have been intentionally chosen due to their similarity to it.
2007:
21 july Jekyll: Episode Five
MR. HYDE: 57 years old, ex-smoker, gave up two years ago?
2010:
3 april Doctor Who:
The Eleventh Hour
DOCTOR: Article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation.
2012:
1 january Sherlock: A Scandal In Belgravia
JOHN: 57? SHERLOCK: Sorry, what? JOHN: 57 of those texts, the ones I’ve heard.
Uknown date before 15 january 2012 (since he deleted his Twitter account) Twitter
millieisshort: @Markgatiss @steven_moffat on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you to see the fandom suffering already? Steven Moffat: @millieisshort @Markgatiss 57
2013:
23 november Doctor Who:
The Day Of The Doctor: Cinema Intro
THE DOCTOR (11): I just watched the 100th anniversary special, all 57 doctors.
2014:
25 december Doctor Who: Last Christmas
THE DOCTOR: Clara. Give me any two digit CLARA : 57. THE DOCTOR: All right, all of you, turn to page 57and look at the very first word.
2015:
28 november Doctor Who: Heaven Sent
THE DOCTOR: 57 minutes.
2017:
27 may Doctor Who:
The Pyramid at the End of the World
BRABBIT: 11:57 PM. BILL: Yeah, mine too. SECRETARY-GENERAL: It’s everyone’s. 11.57 PM. NARDOLE: Did you get that, sir? Everyone’s phone’s gone to 11:57. DOCTOR: Yep, same here. BILL: What’s, what does that mean, 11:57?
This list may not be complete because I haven’t watched everything Moffat, but just to show you that the number 57 predates BBC Sherlock, so if anything it is probably tied to Moffat as a person.
The DW shakespeare reference is not one of this examples, not even considering Moffat’s showrunned episodes not written by him.
There is no consensus in the DW fandom on 57 being about bisexuality and some believe it is about the mention of ‘time’ in the sonnet. The belief that it was tied to bisexuality was held only by johnlockers and without a certain reason, as the first 126 sonnets are all addressed to a man and to this day, even if I asked more than once, nobody came to me with a source about 57 being more relevant than all the other 126 sonnets to bisexuality.
The Lying Detective – MAGNUSSEN IS DEAD, BUT MARY KILLED HIM, NOT SHERLOCK.
So one thing that’s definitely going on here is that with only one tiny exception in TST, the audience is being gently coerced into forgetting that Mary shot Sherlock in HLV, ready for that giant ass rug pull where we go back to that moment that marked the beginning of Sherlock’s coma-induced morphine dream or whatever the hell it is we’re witnessing. But I don’t think the rug pull will JUST be that Sherlock has been dreaming. I think there will be another surprise.
Right, so onto the second part of my idea. Talk about leaving things to the last minute. As I type this, it’s 8.5 hours until TLD airs.
So if you’ve read the above meta, you’ll know that I think Mary shot Sherlock AND Magnussen in CAM tower that night, then Mary left, leaving John to become a suspect in CAM’s murder, while Sherlock remained in a coma in hospital. Without Sherlock as a witness, John Watson is definitely in danger.
There’s one more thing that could happen to tie this fanciful theory together. It takes us back to the details of Sherlock’s last three seconds of consciousness and the deduction that Molly and Anderson helped talk him through.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t really write meta and I haven’t read all meta and this may all be hogwash/old news, plus I tend to confuse things and misremember.
BUT.
Ever since I sort-of watched TFP,
I’ve been bothered by what I see as the similarity between Musgrave Hall and Skyfall
in the Bond movie of the same name: the ancestral home, out in the middle of
nowhere, the destruction, the fire…
(That’s the villain watching it burn, btw)
But even though this has been at the back of my mind since then, I haven’t bothered to look into it. Maybe
someone else has. That’s not what this post is about, even though I’m
sure it would be an interesting thread to pull (and someone probably
already did). But it does encourage associating Sherlock with Bond, which is the point of this post. And which, as we all know, Mark Gatiss went out of his way to drive home in that poetic response to a review that complained about Sherlock being too Bond-y.
So anyway, with all these Bond associations floating around in my brain pretty much CONSTANTLY, today as I was out
walking, something struck me. “What other final instalment in a rebooted movie series that I
loved made me grievously disappointed, had glaring plot holes, and introduced a
random super-duper villain from the hero’s childhood who no one had ever heard
of before?” And the answer (for me, personally) is Spectre.
There should always be a spectre at the feast, right?
Well, I know Spectre came out just a half year before Sherlock s4 started
filming, but they could have been “inspired” to cobble together the mess that
is TFP in that time. So what are the plot holes in Spectre? Many people loved the movie, but others saw it as a regression to earlier Bond incarnations with ridiculous gadgets being prioritised above plot. One relevant question comes from http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/43844/why-didnt-the-machine-affect-bond-in-spectre:
“There is a scene where Bond is hooked up to a torture machine. He is told
that the first action will damage his eyesight and the the second action will
cause him to forget all the faces he knew. Both these actions occurred, but he
still remembers everyone’s face, and 5 minutes later he is making precision
shots from a large distance. So it seems like the torture device had literally
no effect on him. Is there a reason for this, or is it just poor movie making?”
Like introducing, say, a memory-altering drug for no reason at all
and not following up on it.
“Bond accidentally shoots a
suitcase filled with explosives, which blows
up half a building. Aaaaand nobody notices….
Seriously: an explosion goes off in a packed city during the busiest day of the
year, and there’s not a single acknowledgement from anybody anywhere. Bond
returns to the street to pursue his target and the festivities are still going
on as normal. Surely somebody would have seen a building collapsing right in
the middle of everything? Nope. It’s just ignored, which makes no sense given
that the explosion happened in plain sight. What gives?“
Yeah, what gives?
Continuing:
“As Bond enters MI6 in an attempt
to track down whatever waits for him inside (it’s Blofeld, by the way), he
realises that the building has been set
up as a kind of “James Bond Funhouse.” Firstly, he sees his name
sprayed onto a wall of deceased secret agents, and arrows have been placed
around the building to guide him towards his goal. Pictures of former Bond villains – Silva, LeChiffre – and former
love Vesper have been pinned to the
walls. And then Bond reaches Blofeld, who is (somehow) concealed behind a wall of bulletproof glass. The
question is, though: how did Blofeld know that Bond would kill those agents and
thus enter the building to see his name, the arrows and the photos of the
deceased? He had no reason to suspect that Bond would be able to free himself
and kill two agents whilst handcuffed, and yet he went to the trouble of drawing arrows and putting up pictures!”
A grey bunker filled with clues and rooms with pictures of the hero’s past – remind you of anything?
And finally:
“Okay, then: the worst contender.
Actually think about this for a second, because it’s quite insane when you try
to piece it together: a plot hole to end
all plot holes, if you will – and one that only succeeds in spoiling the Bond continuity for absolutely no reason at
all. In the film’s big and
unexpected “twist”, Bond discovers that Blofeld is his half-brother
and that the villain has set out to make his life hell due to some very
undeveloped and frankly ridiculous “daddy [friend] issues.” As a
result, audiences are told that all of
the villains in all of the Daniel Craig Bond movies were working for Spectre
the whole time, which – in itself – makes no sense. Blofeld has been in the shadows the whole time, apparently, watching.
How the hell could Blofeld have masterminded all of Bond’s pain when Bond was
randomly assigned to most of his cases, or stumbled upon them by accident?
Bond got involved with most of the villains as a result of other peoples’
actions. Le Chiffre didn’t plan to meet with Bond; Bond was sent after him.
Dominic Green had other things on his plate long before Bond got involved.
Silva was going after M and wanted revenge on her, Bond aside. Trying to shoehorn all four Bond movies
into one continuity was a huge mistake on the writers’ part because it suggests
that Blofeld somehow manipulated all the events that led Bond to each villain,
which clearly wasn’t the case. But how could he have known that Bond would
be assigned to each and every villain? How could he have even predicted that
Bond would become a secret agent, thus drawing the pair into the scenario that
Blofeld wanted? It’s all very, very tenuous and you could probably spend days
and days combing through the movies, spotting all the moments at which “I
am the author of all your pain” induces another plot hole. It’s retconning
of the worst kind, and it’s crazy that the writers decided to go down a route
that opened them up to relentless plot-based scrutinies.”
There’s nothing to add at this point, because we can all see the parallels with Eurus.
________________________________________________
Alright, just a few bonus details that aren’t plot holes, just… you know, too much:
–
Receiving a posthumous message from the previous M, Bond carries out an unauthorised
mission in Mexico City.
–
Bond asks Moneypenny to
investigate Oberhauser, who was presumed
dead years earlier.
–
At the end, Bond throws his gun into the Thames
and leaves the bridge with Swann.
Ho hum.
_______________________________________________
Oh, bonus fun fact: look, it’s Andrew Scott! Playing E… I mean C! Being all up in arms about surveillance technology, incidentally.
Bonus fun fact 2: main characters apparently not wanting to film anymore
Bonus fun fact 3: “If I risk it all, could you break my fall?” (Spectre song)
Omg did mofftiss and the people of James Bond made a deal or what ?? This is extremely suspicious !
Well…that rung a bell with me so I just looked back and found this– a theory that the writer John Logan and Mark have talked about Bond before…telling timing re: where Bond and Sherlock’s at! @pawsoffmykitty
what the fuck
Holy shit, that last photo explains why mofftiss had such a cow over the alleged early release of their own chess photos! Brilliant theory! After all this I still ask myself: “What did any of this have to do with Sherlock Holmes?” What a Charlie Foxtrot S4 turned out to be.
One of the first lessons any of my employees gets is
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern”.
This rule of thumb holds true in many situations and it helps to spot oddities and find things that do not fit among big bundles of data. It is a rule I have internalised a long time ago and that runs in the back of my mind at all times, so it is not surprising that my “Three times is a pattern” alarm suddenly went off during TEH.
It is the third time we see the flat of a woman that is somewhat close to Sherlock (I do not count Kitty Riley in this) and the third time this woman has a wallpaper with birds on it. Coincidence? The universe – or in our case Arwel Wyn Jones – is rarely that lazy. We are talking about a man who puts glass skulls in the background of a scene and pins phoenixes on walls that remain invisible. Just because he can.
So where do we see birds on wallpaper? I do not count the walls at the wedding since they are technically a mural and not wallpaper.
The first person we see near bird wallpaper is Mrs Hudson. On the walls outside 221A we see finches.
This fits with her image. She’s a little old lady. Harmless. Like a finch. Just your garden variety landlady-not-housekeeper. That’s what she broadcasts to the outside world (hence the finches are outside her flat). We learn that this is not quite true when we see her through Magnussen’s eyes.
The second bird wallpaper we see is in Irene Adler’s bathroom. Mind you, it is not her private bedroom. This bedroom is her workplace. This bathroom is directly attached to her workplace but it is slightly hidden away.
I do not know enough about birds to be sure what kind of bird it is but If I had to guess I’d say it is a Chinese bird of paradise. Which is a good fit for Irene. Her sitting room is very respectable, like Irene in public in her impeccable outfits. The bedroom gets the Devil Damask treatment which is again a good fit for a dominatrix. Yet when all layers are away she is still an exotic bird. The naked woman Sherlock Holmes could not figure out. A very exotic specimen indeed.
We had coincidence, we had happenstance but for a pattern we need three instances, so what is number three?
It’s the wallpaper in Mary and John’s bedroom.
So what about that wallpaper? Especially in the colourway that Arwel has chosen for his set, the birds evoke parrots. A wall full of colourful parrots. What do parrots do? They repeat words and phrases.
What does Mary do when we first see her in front of this wallpaper? (gif borrowed from amygloriousponds)
She repeats a sentence she must have heard someone else say. Other people have pointed out the striking similarities between Mary’s and Magnussen’s phrases.
Mary parrots a phrase she clearly must have heard someone else say, while sitting in front of a wall of parrots – a wallpaper pattern that is not that good a choice for a bedroom. It is entirely too busy, people usually want a calm and relaxing room, not such a busy wall full of birds. This is a very interesting turnout indeed.
Arwel Wyn Jones knows his wallpaper.
Arwel choosing the parrot wallpaper for this room is – on the surface – very odd. This is not a pattern that is appropriate for a bedroom. If the pattern had only been chosen with its effect on camera in mind, there would have been countless other choices that would have worked better in the context of a bedroom.
(Trust me on that. In the last 16 months I have read more than two dozen monographies on the history of wallpaper design and usage. On top of that I have looked at roughly a million wallpaper pattern swatches. Yes you have read correctly. One million swatches. No, I am not kidding. It was all for science. And the masterpost)
So when I say that he could have chosen dozens of other spectacular patterns that are currently on the market, but went for one that is not only slightly off within the context it is being presented in, but that simultaneously fits into a meta-narrative pattern.
“The flat of any woman that is of importance to Sherlock has wallpaper with birds on it and those birds make a statement about her personality”.
Going with that pattern I would not be surprised to find something like this somewhere near Mummy Holmes next time:
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