John’s words have power. John misreads Sherlock and it shapes the text, it shapes how Sherlock sees himself, it shapes how he behaves.
HOLMES: […] all emotion is abhorrent to me. It is the grit in a sensitive instrument … HOLMES and WATSON (almost simultaneously): … the crack in the lens. WATSON: Yes. HOLMES: Well, there you are, you see? I’ve said it all before. WATSON: No, I wrote all that. You’re quoting yourself from The Strand Magazine.
I love this meta, and I love this show.
John criticizes Sherlock carelessly on the presumption that he’s incapable of being hurt by it. Sherlock takes in all of John’s criticisms, strips them of all their context, and uses them to punish himself.
L e t ’ s p l a y a g a m e . Let’s play Murder. Imagine someone’s going to get murdered at a wedding. Who exactly would you pick? More importantly, who could you only kill at a wedding? Most people you can kill any old place. As a mental exercise, I’ve often planned the murder of friends and colleagues. Now, John I’d poison. Sloppy eater, dead easy. I’ve given him chemicals and compounds – that way, he’s never even noticed. He missed a whole Wednesday once, didn’t have a clue. Lestrade’s so easy to kill, it’s a miracle no one’s succumbed to the temptation. I’ve got a pair of keys to my brother’s house. I could easily break in there and asphyxiate him. If the whim arose.
London. It's like a great cesspool into which all kinds of criminals, agents, and drifters are irresistibly drained. Sometimes it's not a question of who. It's a question of who knows.
deviant-doll said to inevitably-johnlocked: Hi there! I just noticed something while rewatching HLV and I don’t know what to make of it (or if someone already noticed), but when they are in CAM’s office, Janine is lying on a carpet which looks exactly like the one in the therapist/Eurus’ office, the big blood red one… it’s fleeting but it’s definitively there… could this fit in one of the theories going on around here? I’m not used to write meta, but just had to share the thought with someone ☺
Okay, I don’t know if you’re both the same person, but these two asks came in only a couple days apart, and only took so long because I didn’t see the rug in CAM’s office, since there’s no above-shot of it at all. This was the best I could get:
Which actually I think is the EXACT same rug as the one in TLD:
It’s got the same little sploochy ends on it (just go with it okay LOL), so I do think they reused that prop. The questions now are:
Was it deliberately done as a foreshadowing of events (John will be shot, which is what I think the surface symbolism of the rug is in TLD), and is symbolic of blood / injury?
IF TLD is part of John’s TAB, is this something John placed in his story because he has seen it before when he helped Janine?
If TLD is part of Unreliable Narrator, is this something Sherlock added as a detail?
If this is Sherlock’s mind palace, is this a little detail he plopped into his story because he had seen it before when John was helping Janine?
Or is it just a nice prop that was expensive and they wanted to give it more screen time?
All are pretty valid thoughts, I think. Either way, there must be a reason it’s SO prominent in TLD. It shows up very glaringly in many scenes with the therapist, and I think it’s mostly foreshadowing John’s possible gun-shot.
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