alright i had to stop at this point in this genius gifset and just stomp around my room because reading this felt like a vertebra clicking into place in my spine
“romantic entanglements” is such a specific phrase and it appears in these incredibly climactic scenes. both of these emotionally charged conversations are prompted by john’s searching questions.
let’s say i did believe that mark and steven’s “insane wish fulfillment” idea they had since the beginning was to give sherlock holmes’s personality the context of his long lost sister killing his best friend. then these two scenes — specific, repetitive, and obvious dramatic parallels — would make zero sense. the fact that they make zero sense would bother me less if these scenes didn’t matter so goddamn much in their respective episodes. even as a casual viewer, you know there is a breakthrough on the horizon during these moments.
sherlock’s confessions are always are aborted; by the case in TAB and by john’s self-loathing in TLD. the confession is aborted, yes, but THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION is interrupted, unresolved. (and don’t get me started on HLV’s aborted love confession). it cannot be resolved by sherlock having a conversation with someone else, it has to be a scene exactly like this — man-to-man, alone with john.
i have to tell you, some days i waver and think, “maybe they’re just terrible asshole writers. maybe they think people wouldn’t notice. maybe they’re counting on people not thinking this hard about this story.” but then someone like @afishlearningpoetry will lay all the evidence out like this and i’m just like. “of course. of course they’re going to be together.”
there will be a third conversation. and there will be a kiss at the end.
I had the same epiphany.
I am not big on predictive argumentation because people have been hurt and disappointed in this exact context before, but for real, these two scenes represent the first two beats of a three-part structure. In a classic three-beat, the first establishes the pattern (John makes intrusive statements; Sherlock talks about romantic entanglements in a negative way; they are interrupted); the second expands on that pattern (same dynamic, but this time it’s clear it is about them: John makes intrusive statements; Sherlock talks about romantic entanglements in a negative way but tries to make the conversation about his feelings for John; John blurts his confession about himself, interrupting).
The third beat (if there were to be one), repeats the pattern and inverts it. Maybe Sherlock will make the intrusive statements; maybe he will tell John he’s been lying to himself about romantic entanglements; most definitely, there will be no interruption this time.
This is a tried and true structure so ingrained, we can hardly fail to expect it. A writer who withholds the third beat is letting down their audience. I personally can’t imagine mofftiss suddenly being *this* absolutely terrible at their craft. We’ll see? We’ll see.
Lord Moran was arrested at the end of TEH. If he’s walking about London streets getting on buses paying no mind to John Watson at all – who, in ACD canon, was supposedly his arch enemy – then this is another point of evidence to Sherlock imagining ALL OF S4 ever since T6T. We are still stuck in S3.
I swear to fucking God if we spent all that time in Tarmac hell only to find out the tarmac never existed…
We’re still in S3. Definitely.
wanna say it here, too. bc it may be a hint to mind palace/sherlock’s imagination: when john’s at the crib..the plastic flower is first large, then it’s small…and the fish eye is glowing turquoise.
there are other things that glow in this episode too. @whatiwassuggesting has a list of everything that glows, including the skull picture
and I have a list of all the times the skull does its glow-y thing in TLD too (as well as what colours it changes into)
this is so great 🙂 yeah, there’s plenty of stuff glowing and blue/turquoise lighting effects. would love to see a list. i’ll try to find it on your blogs…thanks! 🙂
I can give you the list of TLD skull glowings, I don’t have the list from @whatiwassuggesting
I haven’t posted them onto my blog yet as we were working on a meta but I will throw them down here, one sec
Hopefully it’s eligible whoops
oh, wow..thanks 🙂 yeah, skull hell and the lighting effects kill me since day one. i am so glad for any post. can’t wait to read your meta, then! cute doodle on the left ^^
So. Some of the most dedicated and responsive TJLC blogs are receiving anonymous asks that are enciphered cryptograms. **fondly leans out of window at epic ticker-tape parade, throws armfuls of confetti onto each
puzzle-solver and puzzle-tracker** Some of these cryptograms seem to be coming from a person written in character as moriarty. When solved, these in turn have ties to other aspects of this ARG (alternate reality game) – tweets from the @contact_jm twitter account, for example. Possibly also ties to the thelostspecial.com website, which is somewhat quiet for now but may not remain that way.
TJLC Languishes in Prison; TPTB Baking Files in Cakes
I dunno whether this is relevant or might become so, but in case it is – I was just digging around learning about Victorian-era cryptography, and stumbled across this account of how ACD used the text of his own Sherlock Holmes stories as a means of communicating news from England to British POWs held in Germany during WWI. ACD was speaking at a convention dinner in 1921. A pamphlet describing the convention dinner speeches and events ended up in the British Library, and the keeper of the website at this link transcribed the relevant ACD info for the benefit of online Sherlockians in 2014. (X)
Bold emphasis mine, natch:
That Conan Doyle was familiar with this type of secret message transferal is evident when during the Stoll Convention Dinner he reveals how he used this cipher to communicate with a friend by employing pinpricks underneath letters of his stories:
“My creation of Holmes did, after all, a small bit of war work. It is hardly worth mentioning, but I had a friend who was shut up in the Magdeburg Military Prison in Germany. As he and his brother officers were getting no news from England, I took a volume of Sherlock Holmes and in it I pricked out all the news letter by letter, beginning with the third chapter — pricking under each letter of the message with a needle I sent the book to him with a note saying: “This may relieve your prison captivity and afterwards be placed in the prison library. It is slow but perhaps you might find the third chapter to be a little more interesting.” I thought that would be good enough for him, but as a matter of fact he missed it. There was however, another officer, Capt. The Hon. Keppel, of the Guards who with extraordinary sagacity, “got on” to it. The result was that the British officers in captivity got the whole of the news of England at that time. I then got another letter saying “Please send us another Sherlock Holmes story.” I continued to send them with all the news pricked out in them to those officers until I learned that they were actually being allowed to have English newspapers, and then I desisted.”
What if We Get an Ur-Cipher?
We’ve all been on Prison Shutter Island since TFP, and hints within hints can get a gal down after three straight weeks of emotionally invested theorizing. The attention has become a shade annoying.The verifiably “real” cryptograms that are part of the ARG are possibly parts of a puzzle, but what is the end goal of the puzzle?
What if the end result of all of this cipher fuckery teamwork is a pattern we can then apply to the existing BBC show footage or shooting scripts to read/generate a completely different set of information than the one TPTB originally told? This would not be as nice as having more video footage as a new episode, but given what I just read it in Doyle’s own words, I feel like this may come up at some point. Just theorizing here, but I had to mention it, because I like the elegance of Moftiss doing it flat-out. I mean, c’mon. How could they resist following in ACD’s footsteps, pinpricking their own canonical text to bring relief to beleaguered imprisoned friends longing for news?
Since their medium is audiovisual, though, and not text, it doesn’t entirely make sense that they would limit themselves to the shooting scripts. Maybe the end result will be a series of time stamps that the fandom can then edit into an alternate canon, perhaps using some additionally provided footage found along the way?
What Do You Think — Do We Make the Lost Special?
The fandom is already thinking of doing this anyway, or already doing it fast, through fix-it fic… not a huge leap. I’m still holding out for an actual release, but maybe this is part of the “patience bomb” going off before that happens. They know we can. Would it still be a worthwhile endeavor even if we know on some level it’s all marketing for the real fourth/next episode? Hell, yeah. They said it would be annoying and yet, here I am. I don’t care at this point. I’m serious about them owing us birthday cards though, and public acknowledgment-slash-apology if this goes big à la Kemp/KRATIDES/Geek Interpreter. There is hope here: after all, we only need to do it “… until I learned we learn that they werewe areactually being allowed to have EnglishTJLC confirmationnewspapers.”
Or maybe the whole shebang has jumped mediums, and is now a Tumblr meta-project, so all of this is a moot point, and we are making the effort as we speak, and canon is now a swarm of TJLC Tumblr blog posts. Still interesting, if only because it’s all of you who are making it so.
Caveat: I use “we” on eggshells, as someone who joined Tumblr like 3 weeks ago out of sheer frustration with S4 and a keen need to de/reconstruct it. Total n00b here, offering sincere apologies if I am stepping on anyone’s sense of belongingness. Willing to earn my own. Y’all are rock stars. I’ll be over here just yelling ARG a lot and feeling every cryptopuzzle keenly as a pinprick.
I’ve never heard about those pin pricks! That is FASCINATING.
Something I’ve never mentioned or seen mentioned, but now might be a good time to do so – words have been misspelled frequently in this show, missing a letter each time. And sometimes letters get randomly thrown at us.
For example, “Piccadilly” was missing a “c” in TBB, Bond Air pointed out the missing “I”, “Mocha” was missing its “H” in TEH, “Captain” was missing the “A” in TAB, Moriarty had a “Y” drawn in blood on his lips in TAB, “IOU” was hammered home multiple times in TRF. Eurus went by “E”, Mycroft goes by “M”.
Could they have been leaving a message this whole time – pin pricks of their own – that if we deciphered early could break their code before they did it themselves?
77/11/26 or 26th November 1977. I googled it and the very first hit was something called the Southern Television Broadcast Interruption that happened on that date. This is it:
This video is titled “alien broadcast” or something, but it’s actually real footage of a real thing that happened on 26th November 1977 (a real hoax, done by people, not aliens). It was a broadcast interruption through the Hannington transmitter of the Independent Broadcasting Authority in the UK on 26th Nov, 1977. The interruption is generally considered to be a hoax, and the hijaker remains unknown. The interruption lasted 6 minutes, and took over the sound, leaving the video signal unaltered aside from some picture distortion. The speaker claimed to be a representative of the “Intergalactic Association”. It interrupted the news, then transmission returned to normal shortly after. Southern Television later apologised for a “breakthrough in sound”.
An explanation is given for how this security breach could have happened: “At that time, the Hannington UHF television transmitter was unusual in being one of the few transmitters which rebroadcast an off-air signal received from another transmitter (Southern Television’s Rowridge transmitter on the Isle of Wight), rather than being fed directly by a landline. As a consequence it was open to this kind of signal intrusion, as even a relatively low-powered transmission very close to the receiver could overwhelm its reception of the intended signal, resulting in the unauthorised transmission being amplified and rebroadcast across a far wider area. The IBA stated that to carry out a hoax would take “a considerable amount of technical know-how" and a spokesman for Southern Television confirmed that “A hoaxer jammed our transmitter in the wilds of North Hampshire by taking another transmitter very close to it.” However, like the Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion a decade later, the identity of the intruder was never confirmed.
** Which means they had planned the HLV broadcast signal interruption story line before they even made the props for ASiP **
After all that I went on to casually start reading about Max Headroom (a weird thing I actually watched on TV in the 80s when I was little and the satire and subtext of it were beyond me) and found the British made pilot, titled “20 minutes into the future”. Weirdly, it’s very very relevant, and I don’t know if this cabbie number clue was meant to point me towards this, but it did anyway. I pointed out shortly after TLD aired that “20 minutes” had been said quite a few times in TLD, and that it was probably important (also see this and this). Also, mentions of 20 minutes in TLD and elsewhere are almost without fail a reference to something that’s going to happen in 20 minutes time, that is, 20 minutes in the future, as if it’s a countdown to something. Culverton’s life will change in exactly 20 minutes. John asks Sherlock if he will be okay by himself for 20 minutes.
To tell you the short version for now… the movie “Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future” is about an evil television network hiding a dangerous truth from it’s viewers. People are dying because of this secret, in a most violent and terrifying way. A journalist is working to uncover the truth, and while doing so has an accident and is “brain dead” at one point before resurrecting himself from a morgue and coming back to complete his mission – *spoiler* the hero (the journalist) finally uncovers the truth! And reveals it to all via a live television transmission.
I also like this parallel …The evil television network had taken the face of a dead man (the journalist) and used circa 1985 computer technology to animate his face so that he could continue to appear on camera in order to convince the public that he was still alive. Essentially, they turned him into a puppet.
The fact that we only see Moriarty’s head, and the unusual choice of backdrop for this shot of dummy!Jim which looks like it might possibly have been inspired by the amazing Max Headroom animation grid background..
…is all hopefully just a reference to the fact that someone was using Jim’s image to trick the public into thinking he was still alive when he wasn’t (even though in the movie he was actually still alive). Basically, the movie is about the media as a villain, hiding truths from viewers and brainwashing them, and a small band of rebel journalists (from within the evil media) who go on a mission to reveal this truth to the public. And they do reveal it, and the rebels win 🙂 You can watch the movie here.
In TSoT:
“I’ve got a pair of keys to my brother’s house – I could easily break in there …”
Maybe Sherlock means keys to Mycroft’s house. But if some variation of the MP Appledore database idea is right, Sherlock might *also* have the secure access password keys to Mycroft’s… Mind Fortress, or whatever he calls it.
———-
Continuing in TSoT. Sherlock is talking about the Mayfly Man’s target (Major Sholto. Sherlock gives him a note: “It’s You”.) But the person he describes sounds a lot like Mycroft.
“Someone who lives in an inaccessible or unknown location, then. Someone private, perhaps, obsessed with personal security. Possibly someone under threat.”
———-
Then the question is: how will it be planned, how will it be done? Archie knows.
ARCHIE: The invisible man could do it.
SHERLOCK: The who, the what, the why, the when, the where?
ARCHIE: The invisible man with the invisible knife. The one who tried to kill the Guardsman.
(Little light bulb appears over Sherlock’s head). 💡
SHERLOCK: Oh, not just planned. Planned and rehearsed.
———-
In HLV, CAM scoffs at England. “You can do what you like here. No-one’s ever going to stop you… everything starts in England. If it works here … I’ll try it in a real country.”
The International Organization for Standardization doesn’t recognize England as a country. It *does* include the United Kingdom on its list. The U.K. is a “real country”.
I think Sherlock is England, link below. And we all know Mycroft *is* the British government.
**********
In HLV, Sherlock was nearly killed. He’s the Bloody Guardsman. He was a rehearsal.
Next target will be the main event: Mycroft. Is Sherlock going to be the dagger? 😨. Oh my heart.
**********
Thanks to Ariane DeVere for the transcripts!
Thanks to @ebaeschnbliah for this Major Sholto post, it helped me make the connection.
(Not sure about Empty Gun now… Is CAM dead or alive? Well- he may have created the plan, but Janine might have the savvy and her own reasons to see it through. The Holmes boys do have enemies everywhere).
I just made a connection. I think this is why “tie hell”.
In ASiP: SHERLOCK: Serial killers – always hard. Have to wait for them to make a mistake. LESTRADE: Well, we can’t just wait! SHERLOCK: Oh, we’re done waiting! SHERLOCK: Look at her, really look! Houston, we have a mistake. Back in a moment! LESTRADE: But what mistake?! SHERLOCK: PINK! ———-
In TSoT: SHERLOCK: It’s always you. John Watson, you keep me right. JOHN: What do I do? SHERLOCK: Well, you’ve already done it. Don’t solve the murder. Save the life. SHERLOCK: Imagine someone’s going to get murdered at a wedding. Who exactly would you pick? ———-
And in the modern scenes of TAB, what do we have? Mycroft’s wearing a pink tie. Sherlock is sending himself a message, even though he isn’t “awake” yet.
By the end of episode, he knows it for certain: Mycroft Holmes is Moriarty’s next target.
Don’t solve the murder, save the life. PINK. ———-
Thanks to Ariane DeVere for the transcripts!
Because Mark Gatiss, in recent interview, denied going “off piste” in S4.
The only other time I’ve ever heard that phrase was in Sherlock’s Best Man speech. “Sorry, off piste for a bit. BACK now.” Remember- Mark’s BACK 4 tweet.
Then Sherlock says John keeps him right. (In other words, back “on piste”). “Let’s play MURDER”. I’m worrying that Mycroft will be the target.
(Still daring to hope for E4!)
!!!
AHHHHHH I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START AHHHHH GENIUSES YOU ARE
She’s the same actress from ASiB in TFP opening scene. Here she is.
Here we are in ASiB inside the flight of the dead.
Episode 13.
Remember the note on Mycroft’s refrigerator in T6T?
Bro wtf does this mean
row 13 doesn’t exist.
episode 13 doesn’t exist.
They gave it to us but it’s not real!
i haven’t seen the fake episode yet, but could it be that they filmed this plane scene and the one from ASiB at the same time (with the same plane and the same actors)? this would have allowed them to “recycle” some scenes and make a fake episode that doesn’t cost too much..
It’s a new theory floating around but it makes so much sense!!
It’s BRILLIANT.
GROUNDBREAKING.
TELEVISION HISTORY.
WHY DO THIS?!?
WHY DRAW THESE IMPORTANT PARALLELS?!?
“hundreds of casualties but nobody dies” dats us
I mean they killed all of us…but still. Is there more?
Yes, this post is about Sherlock. Specifically, about the reason for all of those pesky set design flaws that grew larger and larger as series 4 progressed.
For example, the skull picture we normally see…
…turns into this.
Or when Ella’s office looked like this…
…but turned into this.
There are hundreds of examples but how about simply one more.
John’s flat looked like this…
…but turned into this.
If you watch Many Happy Returns, which takes place before Series 3, you’ll see John’s front door doesn’t actually exist under the staircase – that was an unnecessary change in Series 4.
So what do all of these changes have to do with making an impression on the audience? Well. Everything.
When you want to get a group of people to doubt their own memory – or to plant new ones – you have to change things about what they already know, but don’t let on that you’ve changed anything.
And who does this for a living?
Derren Brown, the illusionist who had a cameo in The Empty Hearse. He’s also a very good friend of Mark Gatiss’. He has a fascinating video you can watch about this exact techniqueI’m explaining. By changing details visually, one can change how people doubt their own abilities to perceive reality, and also question their own memories.
Do you know all the outrageous things series 4 fed us?
– Mary is just an ordinary housewife with a good heart – John would never save Sherlock from a serial killer – John would beat Sherlock senseless – Sherlock simply needs love from family to complete him – John has a bunch of friends that love to look after his baby – John would blame Sherlock for any harm befalling Mary – John would easily forgive Mary for shooting his best friend in cold blood – Mary knows Sherlock and John better than anyone ever could
These things blatantly contradict everything we’ve ever known about these characters. Still don’t believe Mary is a manipulative psychopath? Go read the HLV script; it just made its rounds on the internet today.
You’ve been wondering why series 4 is so screwed up, narratively and visually? It has a purpose. It is to make the audience doubt – to make the audience doubt their own ability to comprehend reality.
***Because it’s a nod to the audience to start playing.***
Do you see it yet? BBC Sherlock is absolutely meant to be analyzed, dissected, and argued. We’re playing The Great Game right now. It’s been around for decades, and Moffat and Gatiss threw their hats into the ring upon getting their chance to make the Sherlock Holmes adaptation they’ve always wanted. They purposefully lie, mislead, code, and hint because this is a game that’s meant to be played. This is a game.
“…to resolve anomalies and clarify implied details….”
This is exactly what we’re doing right now. And we’re supposed to be doing it.
I’m not going to lie…. playing BBC Sherlock’s game is very, very hard. I researched Doyle, read the canon, watched interviews, documentaries, and behind the scenes footage for six months before attempting to jump into The Great Game with all the lovely folks already on this site, who had years of experience on me. It was daunting. Being the new person is always hard. But to all of you wondering if you should play now, my opinion is a resounding yes.
We’re in the middle of something groundbreaking. The people who say, “No, we’re not, you’re delusional” have no understanding of the history of Sherlock Holmes.
Look at it this way –
If there isn’t a game, then a few months of our time is enjoyably wasted by incorrectly decoding a television show through literary analysis and historical comparison
OR
If there is a game, then we are the group of individuals clever enough to keep up with it, becoming a part of history alongside this monumental piece of media.
To me the choice is clear – I welcome anyone to join us in playing The Great Game. Hope to see you around.
Oh noOoOoOoOo it’s EMP going back as far as The Empty Hearse… going back to the literal “Lost Special” under Sumatra Road
OK but. Do you notice how many women are wearing pearls in S4??? Mary. Vivian. Lady Smallwood. I noticed but didn’t understand WHY I noticed…until now? Subliminal Derrening indeed.
And Mary’s wearing pearl earrings in the DVD.
Mycroft is wearing what appears to be the Black Pearl in TFP.
Vivian is wearing pearls and a brooch of the Queen’s head. Deduction time…
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