In BB, we see that Sherlock is not blind to his attractions, like Sebastian, but he is mute. Like Ariel from little Mermaid he has given up his voice in order to be close to the guy he likes.
He sends what he thinks are obvious hints to John and John does not understand them.
*
Lends him his bank card.
“Take my card”.
* Introduces him as, ‘friend’, after only one case together. This is the same guy that will say he has no friends in HoB.
“This is my friend, John Watson”.
*
Revisits an earlier conversation where John was worried. Since John doesn’t understand that he interrupted him asking for money to take a job for him to make him money, he brings up the conversation that was cut short. Though he must know what, ‘those letters’, were as they looked like this: "Overdue" in big red letters.
“What about this morning?”
“Those letters you were looking at”. ‘Bills’.
“He was being threatened”. ’…and not by the gas company’.
So, John is stressed about the bills. Sherlock has brought this up. Now, the, ‘what were those letters’, bit is an excuse to ask John about his problems. He obviously knows what the problem is but he’s giving John a chance to talk about what’s on his mind.
Also at Van Coon’s Sherlock feels out John’s ability to read between the lines:
“Those symbols at the bank, the graffiti”
“Why were they put there?”
‘Some sort of code?’
“Obviously”.
“Why were they painted?”
“If you wanted to communicate, why not use email?”
‘Maybe he wasn’t answering’.
“Oh, good, you follow”.
‘mmm, no’.
(The theme here is when there’s no way to communicate, you use code. This refers to Sherlock the man and the show, as well).
“what kind of message would everyone try to avoid?” (in the text, a death threat, in the subtext, a message that someone is interested in you. Fear of falling in love. Because death = falling in love, on this show).
*undertands neither text nor subtext, here*
Sherlock switches to conversation about the bills.
*
Sherlock trusts him to do his own leg of the investigation:
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Tells him to go on a date with him instead of Sarah:
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Saves him from Shan. Comforts Sarah:
*
We see that he has no voice throughout the show but it’s made into a neat visual, here. This is a line he paints there: his silence is self-imposed.This clue is for us from the showrunners:
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Finally, he uses the cypher paint used to express how he feels now that John is around:
*
By the beginning of GG, he’s had enough of throwing out clues and feeling like his feelings aren’t reciprocated: hence, the shooting.
*
*
*
P.S. Sherlock is especially silent with Sebastian in this bathroom scene. He lets John do most of the talking and when he tells him off, Sherlock lets him have the last word. Very telling: a man who doesn’t know Lestrade’s first name after untold years of friendship, calls this man, ‘Seb’, here. And one who, according to John, always has the last word, lets this man have it. Sherlock is only unable to speak when it comes to telling someone that he has romantic feelings for them.
what a treat to revisit your back catalog and find this gem!
I was going through my Torchwood tag because I thought it might be salutary to remind those coping with the disappointment of “The Final Problem” that the BBC has in fact already Gone There. Torchwood was basically Russell T. Davies’s Doctor Who fanfic and there were queer sexual encounters galore on it, including a canon m/m relationship between the protagonist and his second in command. It struggled from the get-go; there were only two ‘regular’ seasons, followed by a miniseries (”Children of Earth”) and a fourth season produced for Starz with a completely different setting and almost completely different cast. Now, there are a lot of reasons why Torchwood might have struggled that have nothing at all to do with the sex, the main one being that the first season was very uneven and included several episodes which were really, REALLY bad. But I digress.
My point was, I found this: “Me and my male showrunners.” It is an in-depth consideration of the question: why, at my advanced age and with my many adult responsibilities, am I still getting so pissed off, all the time, at the men who run my shows?
The bottom line is: it comes down to self-indulgence. What really makes me angry is when the showrunners start treating the show as purely a vehicle for their own fantasies, without taking into consideration not only standards and taste, but the labor of everyone who puts the show together. Sherlock is what it is in large part because of the extraordinary cast and the equally extraordinary production team. When you are surrounded by this much talent, you ought to feel yourself duty bound to give them material that is worthy of it. And I submit that in “The Final Problem” that is definitely not what happened.
The laundry list of problems with Sherlock’s last two seasons is long and convoluted, but one person seems to crop up on it frequently: Mary.
Unfortunately, Mary’s character seems to be the wrench that first threw the show out of alignment in S3. It’s not that Mary Morstan shouldn’t have been introduced, or that Amanda’s performance wasn’t well done. It’s that Mary was inserted into the show and then manipulated in a way that broke the logic of the plot, not to mention the dynamic of the two leads. More than that, the writers used her repeatedly to bait-and-switch the audience, without ever following up on the ideas they planted.
For some reason this meta I wrote after S4 is going around again, and when I re-read it, I was reminded of a recent conversation that gave me some perspective on the Sherlock fandom experience. (@bendingsignpost, I hope you don’t mind if I paraphrase you here.)
When I was in full Sherlock-obsessed mode, I took Sherlock very seriously, because the show seemed to be a serious show. It sent out all the signals of a real-deal drama. The problem was, it turned out to be a farce – ultimately, it made no sense, especially from a character development perspective. I wrote dozens of metas like the one above, trying to work out how this could have happened.
When you are deeply invested in something, as I was, and then realize it wasn’t what you thought it was, you feel betrayed. Angry. Taken advantage of. And you feel like maybe you shouldn’t get so invested in something again.
But Ben and I were chatting recently, and he pointed out the value of finding a fandom that isn’t so serious. A fandom that recognizes that its canon is flawed from the outset. And you know, that sounds pretty damn fun.
Sherlock fandom has taught me this: question the source material.
As lovely as you made my “wisdom” sound, I think I should state for the record that I said something like “a fandom that recognizes the canon is a dumpster fire, and is rescuing the bits we liked from the flames.”
Yes. This. ^^^^^
The precise quote is even better. ❤
@marsdaydream, I can’t thank you with for all the meta and fic you have written… And the venting, which was therapeutic to me and for the writing of my meta article (which I link here in case it helps others like it did me–also I’m a writer who craves feedback): https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/1465 😀
The Unfinished Act of Sherlock Series 4, The History of Adaptations It’s Working to Fix, the Larger Narrative of What’s Been Driving the Show, and the Real Final Problem.
i’m not sure if anyone has talked about this before but i just watched The Hug scene in tld and suddenly had a revelation about the placement of john and sherlock’s chairs in 221b
it occurred to me that we can maybe think about the kitchen as a symbol for sexual desires/emotions, and the window as a symbol for society/the outside world?
sherlock’s chair sits near the window, but it’s facing away from the window and toward the kitchen. sherlock is socially isolated, he’s an outcast, and he keeps distance from his emotions to the point where he describes himself as a sociopath. john’s chair stands between sherlock’s chair and the kitchen because it’s ultimately sherlock’s feelings for john that he’s keeping himself distant from.
john’s chair sits near the kitchen, but it’s facing away from the kitchen and toward the window. john has feelings for sherlock that he doesn’t want to acknowledge, and he keeps himself distant from the world in the sense that he doesn’t allow it to see who he really is. sherlock’s chair stands between john’s chair and the window because it’s through acknowledging his feelings for sherlock that the world will be able to see the real john watson.
At this stage, I think no-one would deny that drugs is a recurring theme in BBC Sherlock. And it seems to me that the more the show progresses in time, the more focus we get on this drug theme. The last time I heard of it from fandom was right before Christmas, when @someovermind posted this videomade by nerdwriter1 about the very creative filming in TLD, where we’re seeing things from Sherlock’s perspective when he is high on drugs, and also displaying some symptoms of abstinence. It’s a great video, I can really recommend it.
@someovermind ended their comment of the video with these words: “So maybe we should be on the lookout for camera angles that are impossible because they obviously point to Sherlock’s drug induced state ??**;¿¿ And if they are anywhere else it obviously directs us to EMP??¿¿”
I think that’s a very good idea, and it fits nicely with the kind of exercise I’ve been planning to do in this meta.
As I’ve said before, I believe there is a ‘game’ proposed in BBC Sherlock which we, as an audience, are challenged to play, by trying to solve the enigma of what has actually happened to Sherlock and why has the show become weirder and weirder over time.
This is the third part of a meta series where I try to look at BBC Sherlock with a ‘scientific’ approach. I’m trying to use Sherlock Holmes’ methods of data collection, deductions, hypotheses and predictions, test them and thereby try to solve the puzzles presented to us, as explained in my introduction. As you can see in the introduction, Sherlock’s methods are very similar to the scientific method, which is used by researchers in general and scientists in particular. Which means that we’ll ask some questions that enable us to put up hypotheses. Based on the hypotheses we’ll make some predictions that can be tested with observations from the show. (If you want to read my first two metas of the series, just follow the links of the hypotheses #1 and #2).
These two hypotheses can definitely be wrong, no doubt about that. But at least I’ve tried to test them, finding out a certain amount of evidence that I think speaks for them being at least plausible.
In this meta, though, I’m going to assume that both these hypotheses are indeed true. In other words: In the show ‘Sherlock’ (as the name actually suggests) we’re inside Sherlock’s head all along. And based on this assumption, I’ll try to explore which role Sherlock’s drug use may havein the story we’ve been shown from ASiP to TSoT. As usual, the meta is lengthy (this time even longer than usual), so you’ll find most of it under the cut.
Oh, I can’t believe it! This is amazing, @ebaeschnbliah. You surely remember how I kept going on about the changed layout of the Watson flat which drove me crazy. And now this!
And then of course the box falling open – this is a wonderful discovery.
Therapist: What about his brother? John: Mycroft? He’s fine. I mean, obviously normal and fine are both relative terms when it comes to Sherlock and Mycroft. Therapist: [Chuckles.] Obviously. But, I didn’t mean Mycroft. I meant the other one. John: Which other one? Therapist: You know, the secret one. John: Oh, that was just something… I said. I’m sure there’s… [He pauses.] How did you know about that? I didn’t tell you that. Therapist: You must have done. John: I really didn’t.
Images 1–5 above: From The Lying Detective, starting at approximately 1:02:58 Image 6: Zoom in on reaction of female agent in background when John first says the word “brother”
First of all, I need to make it clear that this catch—and it’s a great one—1000% belongs to @discordantwords. Not me. The only reason I’m building out a new post instead of reblogging the original is because when I saw the stills I went “Eh, maybe?” but when I saw the video I went “Woah, YES.” So this felt like something that needed a gifset.
The wheel turns and there’s really nothing new under the sun… It struck me that just about everything we see in Series 4 of BBC Sherlock, seems to have happened before, in one form or another. Which I believe is strong evidence for EMP theory (or at least something similar). I’m sure several people have already commented on this, but I’ll try to write down a whole list of what I’ve found this far – feel free to add to it!
Events in The Six Thatchers
1. Sherlock (in a Secret Service meeting about how to cover up him shooting Magnussen): “I am taking it seriously; what makes you think I’m not taking it seriously?”
Earlier event: In TEH, the Gothic fan in Anderson’s Holmes fan club, theorizing that Sherlock and Moriarty are attracted to each other: “I do take it seriously. I don’t think we should wear hats.”
2. Sherlock is brought back to London to figure out how Moriarty can be transmitting his “Miss me?” message on every screen in the country. Sherlock’s plan is to sit and wait for Jim’s “spider web” to quiver, rather than trying to find Moriarty himself.
Earlier event: In TEH Sherlock was brought back to London to foil a terrorist attack on the city. At first, he was just waiting for one of his markers (“rats”) to make a move.
3. In one case, Sherlock is in 221B, holding a plastic bag with ice and a human thumb in it.
Earlier event: In ASiB Mrs Hudson discovers a plastic bag in the fridge of 221B, containing human thumbs.
Sherlock Fandom Archive 