Take time to read LSiT tweets. Good points on so many fronts, not just the ARG idea. With a few people still struggling with the treatment of johnlockers by Mofftiss, Nat’s words may help.
Over a year out from s4-everyone needs to read these
This is how I feel about fandom. A year out from the last new episodes. Less voices. More echoes.
Well, every fandom sort of gets quiet when there’s no more new content. But I think this show ended in a way that makes it really hard to continue creating it, which is basically what fandom eventually does in this situation.
So, first of all, I’m sure there are Sherlock fans out there who loved “The Final Problem.” There are X-Files fans out there, I have discovered, who will defend anything Chris Carter writes, no matter how bad it is. For those fans who love the show unconditionally, I’m sure the conversation continues without a hitch. I just don’t interact a lot with that segment of the fandom.
There’s probably also a section of the Sherlock fandom which was never invested in Johnlock, liked Mary Morstan fine, accepted the craziness of “His Last Vow,” “The Six Thatchers,” and “The Lying Detective”….and then got to “The Final Problem” and just went, NO. Because really…the whole Eurus thing was a truly terrible decision, just from a series arc standpoint. It really drives home how little Moffat knows or cares about plotting and narrative. At the end of the show you should be resolving things that were introduced earlier, not introducing brand new characters and plot lines. Who in their right mind builds the last episode of their show around a character the viewers have never heard of? Instead of using “The Final Problem” to resolve things between John and Sherlock, they spent 90 minutes answering a question that the viewers had never asked themselves and didn’t care about. If they’d introduced Eurus at the beginning of S2 or something, they’d have had a chance to develop her and then maybe by S4 the viewers would have something invested in her. Instead, the viewers don’t even know she exists until the last 5 minutes of the second-to-last episode. I don’t know how that made sense to anyone.
But on the segment of the fandom that was invested in Johnlock, the impact of TFP was devastating, both to individuals and to the community. Because it really is in S4 that it becomes clear that Moffat and Gatiss have become fed up with the whole canon Johnlock thing and are actively trying to destroy that reading of the show. As exhibit A I offer the sudden reintroduction of Irene Adler as a potential romantic partner for Sherlock. She doesn’t appear; but John spends part of that climactic conversation in “The Lying Detective” trying to convince Sherlock to re-connect with her, and it’s revealed that she’s still occasionally texting him. I had to rewatch “The Final Problem” to write “Christmas Time After Time,” and one thing I noticed this time around is that in the final montage of the two of them in 221b, there’s a shot of Sherlock texting someone, “You know where to find me.” He can’t be texting Moriarty or Eurus; John’s in the room with him; I figure he’s supposed to be sending that to Irene Adler.
So after TFP, that segment of the fandom split in all kinds of directions. There’s the split between people who now accept that Moffat and Gatiss either are no longer or were never planning for a canon Johnlock ending, and the people who are keeping TJLC alive by inventing ever more elaborate explanations for why Johnlock really IS canon. This split has, I think, been very destructive. It used to be easy enough for people who were pro-Johnlock but not TJLC to interact with TJLC true believers without anyone getting their feelings hurt. But now, the TJLC reading of the show is so divergent from the non-TJLC reading of it–the two groups cannot agree even on things like the number of episodes of S4 that were actually shot, or whether/how much of any given S3 or S4 episode is set in someone’s mind palace or part of someone’s dying hallucination–that these two segments of the fandom don’t share enough common assumptions to have a real conversation about the show. Then, amongst the non- or ex-TJLCers, there was the split about how to respond to Moffat and Gatiss’s refusal to make Johnlock canon after having hinted at it fairly persistently in the first two seasons. And so on.
But for the Johnlock-positive but also non- or ex-TJLC segment of the fandom, which is the part of the fandom that I have the most contact with, I think the show just hurt a lot of people’s feelings so much that they don’t want to maintain a relationship with it. Moffat and Gatiss, as showrunners, never cared about the viewer’s emotions; it was all about what they wanted and how clever and badass they could be. They lost their grip on the fact that fans engage with television, primarily, emotionally. The small screen pulls people in emotionally in ways that the big screen doesn’t, and their emotional investment in characters and relationships makes them vulnerable. So it is possible to give your fans an emotional shock so painful that it functions as aversion therapy. That’s what happened with the “Children of Earth” series of Torchwood, which not only killed off half of the canon m/m couple but forced the surviving partner to commit an act so morally heinous and emotionally painful that I, at least, had no desire to watch that character do anything else, ever again.
I don’t think Moffat and Gatiss ever understood that. For instance, the biggest obstacle to me in trying to write fic about this show after S4, apart from the absolutely bonkers plotting, was John beating Sherlock up at the end of “The Lying Detective.” How do they get past that? How do *I*, as a viewer, get past that? I don’t. And that’s a loss.
Anyway. Yeah, echoes, I guess. Echoes and elegies for a show I used to love.
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.
sometimes I remember just how cinematographically gorgeous the six thatchers and the lying detective were then I remember how the final problem was filmed in a spray painted cardboard box held together with duct tape with a spare camcorder found in someone’s basement then stored on a usb taped to a few dollar bills and left out on a table with a sign in neon lights blinking out the words “Russia whatever you do don’t take and leak this cinematic masterpiece moff thinks is better than asib owo” and I laugh hysterically and then I black out
so the detail of the gold tooth comes from the stock-broker’s clerk, wherein the villain is pretending to be his own brother, but is identified (by the client, no less, and before he comes to holmes! not by holmes) as himself by virtue of having this tooth. that’s a story where the villain makes up this huge intricate convoluted plot to get a bystander (the clerk) out of the way so that he can finish his nefarious plot.
a) “it’s never twins” strikes again
b) this is the same plot, basically, as the red-headed league and as the three garridebs.
where else do we see this plot being significant? trf. a huge intricate convoluted plot (sherlock’s death) to get a bystander (john) out of (harm’s) way.
now 3G’s significance is obvious. REDH is a bit less obvious but it is still important in terms of the mirroring between all the characters, and it was also acd’s second favorite of his own stories.
the POINT though is that s4 put this “convoluted plot to get a bystander out of the way” idea right into the mouth of acd’s study in scarlet. it plays right into the exact same thing as the FINA bit where moffat points out that “watson starts by telling you he’s telling you a porker, and then he tells you a porker,” that is to say, that watson lies about the facts of that case (that being that Milverton’s mysterious death was brought about either holmes or watson themselves). a few weeks ago i saw this exact same situation in the greek interpreter, and its parallel to the end of asib (that it ends by implying that sophy kratides murdered her captors and escaped, but it’s written such that you have to ask whether that really did happen or if holmes or watson themselves were rewriting her a happier ending than the one she got, v. the lie john tells sherlock abt irene being alive/sherlock knowing the truth).
this is significant because bbc sherlock repeatedly highlights the idea of john watson’s canon stories having been the product and result of an unreliable narrator. because we hear the stories about holmes in canon through watson’s lens, we don’t actually know the truth of the canon. we can only know the truth as watson gives it to us. although his stories are written so as to downplay his own role, he is, in fact, the main character.
the point of this WHOLE THING is that s4 is an intricate, convoluted plot intended to get a bystander out of the way, and you have to ask yourself, who is the bystander, who is the plotter, and what is meant by getting out of the way? as in the canon stories, the plotter is watson: watson has always been the source of the unreliable narration, has always been the one providing a different story, a half-truth or even an untruth, in terms of the holmes and watson stories. the bystander is imo sherlock himself – that he is the one watson is protecting (a la trf) or alternatively, that he is the one who knows something that would stand in the way of watson’s story (the truth, a la the stock-broker’s clerk – the clerk knows the “two brothers” are the same one man).
in s4, imo, we’re in sherlock’s shoes insofar as sherlock is the bystander looking at a plot he can’t understand the point or purpose of, because the plot is john’s, not his. i think this is where the confusion comes in about from who’s perspective you’re viewing s4 from – because in either perspective, you aren’t looking at the whole truth. you either have the truth as john gives it to you, or the truth as sherlock knows, and both of those things are not the whole truth as it really is. imo, it doesn’t really matter who’s pov it is, bc either way, it’s john’s story, john’s plot, and so both pov’s are inherently flawed and unreliable at best. that makes us the bystander, upon whom the plot is being played. all we see in s4 is the plot – there is no denouement. that’s part of what makes s4 so unsatisfying. right after s4, one of my biggest criticisms of it was that it resolved nothing for either of the characters, that they were effectively situated exactly where they were in relation to one another as they were post-hlv. and now i see that was the point, because we’re only halfway through. we still need to wait for the denouement, and only after the denouement can we see what the point of the story truly is (which imo is going to be that they’re in LOVE)
oh i should add that traditionally, bbc sherlock places the series’ “denouement” (which is a term i’m using very loosely here to mean explanation of how they get out of whatever mess) in the first episode of the next series. the explanation of s1, of how john and sherlock live to fight moriarty, is in asib. the explanation of s2, of how sherlock survives to come back, is in teh. but the mess of s3, that being, sherlock’ self-sacrifice for john and mary’s benefit, fails to address mary’s recently role as would-be murderer and gets explained in a scene where mark as creator says “this is a lie. doctored footage.”
which means we’re still waiting for the truth, which will probably be in the first episode of the next series.
Who remembers the series 1 fandom theory that it’s not Sherlock who has sociopathic tendencies but John?
Misses the war, hates being alone when he’s alone but thinks most people are arseholes, hugely impulsive, charming yet grumpy, puts on an act of being civilised and socially acceptable but calls his new friend all sorts of terrible things, coolly murderous at a moment’s notice…
Then there’s the mini episode, in which Sherlock made it clear that John’s friends don’t really like him.
The BBC version of John Watson cannot get unrehearsed words of sincere affection out, is drawn to an assassin, text cheats with another woman after becoming a father, rages against Sherlock to the point of beating him up, abandons his baby while grieving and giggles at crime scenes when nobody “ordinary” is looking.
It’s absolutely nothing like ACD Watson, and it’s an unpopular view, but there is a consistent line for BBC John’s character if you squint in that direction.
Yuuup, I’m in the very small camp that John beating Sherlock up isn’t /that/ out of character. (With what we’ve seen on BBC Sherlock). An over exaggeration maybe of what John should have done in that situation, if I was writing directing I would have toned it down a bit. Anyways, at the time of the episode airing I didn’t think it was off until I saw everyone on tumblr talking about it.
That is to say what John did was a load of hot garbage. All the pressure and other shit that was going on doesn’t excuse it. But yeah, it’s not completely unbelievable.
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