a custom-made instrument of compressed steam

@euphoricalliope on Twitter (one less "c") / currently focused on a possible alternate reality game (ARG) related to BBC Sherlock

[sherlockshite]

@contact_JM’s lesson

Just to shed some light on the @contact_JM account on twitter:

CONTACT_JM’S TWEETS TOTALLY SPELL N-I-E-T-Z-S-C-H-E 

Nietzsche values suffering over happiness: Read more on his concept of the  Ubermensch, and Human - All too Human (because I can’t really explain everything here, it will be a fantastic ride for your brain and way of thinking, i promise. I don’t have time or complete knowledge to explain everything. I JUST KNOW IT’S EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHY)

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

“The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone that has produced all the elevations of humanity so far?”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

Thanks. It fits. Nietzsche hasn’t ever been my guy, but it totally makes sense that he’d be Jimothy’s. God is dead, Nietzsche is dead, Moriarty is also dead (?). And yet -- it’s not nihilism.

ARG definition in a nutshell: “the emergent consequence of the interaction between something that is painfully limited to something that is astonishingly absolute and without borders”

(one looked-for game with rules, known players and a clear objective in the context of BBC Sherlock) VS. (130 years of Sherlock fandom output, The Great Game, fanfic & transformative works generally). Needle, haystack.

[hellooteapots-deactivated201905]

my mother in law is trying to find out what im doing on my phone …..

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

shepherding the sanity of your cadre

[ivyblossom]

Hi Ivy! Well, here I am, back to the grindstone with the Big Kahuna of Series 4 questions: why do you think Mofftiss chose to have John beat up Sherlock in TLD? They didn't have to go there, right? What was the point of going that far, and then not even showing us the emotional 'pay-off' we assume happened before TFP? Why do this if the point of the show is to portray the devotion between Sherlock and John and their journey to a legendary partnership?

Perhaps we can come at this by considering what narrative function John’s violence serves in the story.

First things first: an important part of John’s characterization is that he cannot express his most intense feelings in words. He doesn’t say the things he needs to say. 

I don’t think you can overestimate just how much John hates himself in The Lying Detective. He has failed in every way that matters to him: he cheated on his wife (as far as he’s concerned), he’s abandoned his daughter. He’s drowning his sorrows in alcohol. He’s hallucinating. John is broken. He says nothing, which means he’s not yet completely broken.

The slow breakdown of John Watson isn’t just about Mary’s death, but that does bring it to a head. It’s also about the still-steaming revelation of Mary’s past and how she lied to him from tip to tail. He placed all of his faith and trust in Sherlock, and he failed to deliver. He feels betrayed, but unable to express that. He must accept things as they are because it’s the right thing to do, but he can’t do it.  He hates himself for failing everyone he knows, and he hates everyone he loves for failing him. He is rudderless. Still: he says nothing. He hasn’t quite hit rock bottom yet.

And then he finally does.

When John breaks completely and hits and kicks Sherlock, he has been dragged into a case after forcefully pushing Sherlock out of his life, repeatedly reminded that he’s a failure even at the one thing he’s valued for (writing about Sherlock), and has to face that fact while waiting outside a loo while Sherlock get high, literally on his way to killing himself again. Then he watches Sherlock apparently falsely accuse a man of being a serial killer and then threaten him with a scalpel. Sherlock is out of control too. It’s John’s job to keep Sherlock in line, isn’t it? But what good is he at that? 

John is angry with Sherlock for letting Mary die, for betraying him, for failing to be the man John believes him to be. John hates himself for failing to live up any even a single one of his own standards. Hurting someone he loves, something he also did to Mary without her knowing it, is, I think, the ultimate expression of how broken he has become. He is there to protect Sherlock, but he does the opposite. It is his final and ultimate low. John is now utterly broken.

He does not apologize for his actions. Or at least, we don’t hear him apologize. He stands at the foot of Sherlock’s hospital bed and bears witness to the evidence of his rage, the damage he caused to someone he loves. How long does he stand there? We don’t know. How does he feel? Does he regret what he’s done? Is he ashamed of himself? He comes to say goodbye, but he can’t face a conscious Sherlock. He still can’t say any of the things that matter. 

He walks out of the room expecting to never see Sherlock again. Mary forces John to admit that he can’t stop thinking about him. And that he hates himself. Is he sorry? I think he’s beyond sorry, but he says nothing.

Until he finally does. 

I think the violence, the balled up emotions that never get expressed, are there to underscore the moment when they finally are. Finally, finally, when Sherlock asks John if he’s okay, he is truthful: no. He is not okay, and he will never be okay.

And then the floodgate is open. John says the things he never said. He asks the questions he always wanted to ask. Having reached the ultimate rock bottom, John is finally cracked entirely open. He is talking, and he is honest. And 221b blows up so that they can rebuild it and start over.

I think John hurts Sherlock in order to explode the part of him that holds him back. It is Sherlock’s guilt made flesh and blood, and it’s the action that pushes John to finally be brave to open his mouth.

[mild-lunacy]

I love this! It definitely works for me (as usual). Thank you. And this also really makes me think of this Barbara Kruger quote from @deducingbbcsherlock’s post on John’s violence in TEH:

Of course, this is about the homoeroticism of male violence, but I also think this points to the homosocial aspect of violence between men.

I don’t want to excuse it, so it’s difficult to talk about this. It’s not okay, however… it’s also not the same as violence to people who cannot fight back, or people who have not entered into the dangerous situation with the expectation of violence, as men do. I don’t think that barroom fights are exactly equivalent to this situation, or that Sherlock’s expectation of John’s violence (as @plaidadder has described) was somehow enough. However, it seems like a lot of people (or rather, primarily female fans) process the violence as if it’s fully equivalent to a domestic abuse situation, where John is simply inflicting his rage out of the blue on a defenseless, vulnerable and weak Sherlock. My feeling is that Mofftiss almost certainly didn’t intend to ‘go there’ if that’s the frame we’re talking about, but of course you can’t choose the frame the audience chooses. And of course, there’s also the discourse about ‘would canon Watson do this to canon Holmes’, which I’m pretty sure Mofftiss weren’t concerned with at this point either.

So yes, this is ‘just John’, John and the issues he was repressing and accumulating since TRF and into TEH, HLV and then TST.

Of course, the idea that (some) men need violence as some sort of outlet before they can communicate is the very foundation of what you’d call ‘toxic masculinity’. From what Moffat has said about Sherlock’s inner ‘volcano’ and the way it could– and should!– inevitably explode, I feel like he’s interested in the issue of male repression in general. Sherlock has his own ‘moment’ in TFP when he destroys the coffin as a way of letting off steam after a painful emotional moment, so I suppose it’s a sort of narrative shorthand, though particularly for John. The issue with having the audience go through all that angst without relief or soothing is probably where the lack of pay-off comes in, though. I noticed you didn’t really go into that, haha.

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

Staying on the train of Watsonian emotional analysis tonight.

[consultingeastwind-blog]

On who the Real Showrunner is

We’ve always known that the psychopath monster Mary Morstan makes us vomit with disgust over her pure unadulterated evil, but the level of her supposed cleverness in being the actual title holder of Moriarty the criminal organization (or as Sherlock called it in the released S1 scripts, “Crime Ltd.”) really does make her a virus. The virus.

Mary Morstan Infected the Real Story Tellers

She has utterly corrupted the Story Tellers - Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss - that they are no longer recognizable as the writers who gave us S1 to TAB.

Did she reprogram Mofftiss? Drugged them with a powder from a folded paper? Tampered with their IV and threatened them while drugged and injured to “Never tell John” aka never tell us the true story that’s 130 years overdue?

Shot them for making a funny face?

She announced her fake birth in a far-right UK broadsheet as if she were either British or Queen-and-Country-ish. Of which she is neither.

She tried - and is successful so far - in usurping the title Story Teller from Steven and Mark that she tried to tell the story of her fake baby herself, making sure to throw shade at Sherlock in those very few words, and pass it off as a joke. Just to drive home the false point that Sherlock cares not about the “baby” nor John.

Mary Morstan Infected the Characters

She hired a cartoonish has-been (or never-was) actor who gave the most offensive portrayal of gayness and mental illness (the existence of which is offensive itself when perpetually paired with gayness), turning him into the stereotype of the creepy stalking sexual predator with the irritating antics of an attention-seeking 8-year old boy.

Mary hired an annoying caricature to make nauseating gifs and nightmarish soundbites that she could upload to every screen in England and Azkaban.

Then Mary killed him shortly after he says, “Nah, you talk big.” Thus rendering him forever a failure in “burning the heart out” of Sherlock. Was the irony lost on her or is she really that homophobic such that it was deliberate?

One could say Jiminy Creeper gave his life for his art. Or did he? If Mary can access MI-5 from a phone in seconds, then she could make up an entire public backstory about “Richard Brook” the allegedly multi-awarded actor. But is actually an over-the-top nobody.

Mary Morstan Infected the True Story

Mary Morstan’s presence all throughout S4 was intrusive (or as better writers have put it “it felt chaperoned”) because Mary was telling us S4 with the arrogance of a self-inserting malevolent author. Mary gets the last word in S4 (and far too many words besides) because she is its Story Teller.

Mary Morstan is also S4’s alt-right propagandist, conjuring a dystopian tale where Greg, John, Sherlock, and Mycroft are redundant, abusive, gullible, and spineless - respectively. Where POCs are rare, and stupid when they show up. Where little old ladies are road hazards. Where teams of government officials dedicate an entire room and resources for surveillance and nepotism. Where cross-dressing uncles lock up their 6-year old gifted nieces in prison.

An alt-right world Mary force feeds us through John’s and Sherlock’s drugged state where she recycles her homophobic script for the long-dead Jiminy Creeper and speaks them in a woman’s voice, another caricature of gayness and mental illness.

A bizarre world in which Molly is a sickeningly pathetic 40-year old woman with the emotional maturity of a 16-year old while her self-important nagging is ignored, her medical degree ultimately useless, and her public humiliation and torture makes her come back for more.

An un-buy-able world in which Mary Morstan is a self-effacing, saccharine letter writing, saintly mommy with a cheating husband, but is “cute” and “better” than her army doctor husband as a crime-solving match for Sherlock.

A surreal world in which a smart, educated, insightful, articulate fan base of Sherlock is systematically engineered to paint them as sex-crazed gay fetishizers who, in their genius, could be nothing else than unnatural.

Mary Morstan’s wresting the story away from Moffat’s and Gatiss’ hands - and rewriting Mycroft as someone who would date a colleague old enough to be his mother (possibly because his own mother thinks him “very limited”) - is a heist that the literary, cinematic, artistic, and philosophical world has to either solve or else live with.

Mary Morstan Infected the Strong Woman Narrative

March is Women’s Month, today March 8 is Women’s Day. Mary Morstan’s idea of an empowered woman is one who murders her friends, betrays her colleagues to their deaths, abandons her infant daughter (fake as it is) to escape the consequences of her crimes, uses her husband as a human shield from the murderous colleague she betrayed, and runs away while his best friend lifts a table to shield her husband instead.

Mary Morstan has overtaken both the fictional and real universe even before S4 aired in her quest to quell the truth of the 130-year old tale. She infects every hopeful heart, hacks every clue to the truth, reformats perceptions, and distorts memories of all that is good and right and noble and beautiful and true.

And she laughs with glee in every available platform online and off each time a troll destroys hope for resolution.

Mary Morstan is a rogue character escaped from a fictional universe wreaking havoc in her wake. It’s about time we went after the actual villain and not the discredited heroes. Waiting 2 years for an acquittal with only the Andersons among us speculating and repenting is such a grave miscarriage of justice.

It’s time to take down Mary Morstan the Moriarty figurehead. Kill that virus.

Unleash the secret.

[mara-the-cactupus]

Whoa, I love this interpretation! Now that I think about it, she does sort of sneak in and take over the show:

TEH: Mary is introduced pretty quietly, but she steers John around a bit (she sides with Sherlock, teases him about shaving, makes sure the engagement goes through).

TSOT: between wedding planning and, like, marrying John, she gets in a bit more manipulation of John and Sherlock.

HLV: this one is actually really interesting because the episode starts out focused on CAM, and Lady Smallwood, and Sherlock’s drug habits, and Janine, but then Mary comes out of nowhere and suddenly the rest of the episode is centered around her.

TAB: Mary is pretty determined to be involved, first showing up at 221b, then working with Mycroft (there wasn’t really a reason for that subplot other than to give her more screentime/mystery), then being the one to lead them to the heart of the conspiracy. We also have the hacking, as you mentioned, and her leading away John in the graveyard. And of course, “the bride” is in the title.

TST: this episode feels kind of off because it’s more focused on her spy backstory than on an actual case; she interrupts Sherlock’s work (in a sense) by going into labor, makes sure she has control over choosing the baby’s name, and tries to replace John as Sherlock’s crime-solving partner. Then there’s her first voiceover: the letter that she writes to John as she’s running away. (And there was pretty much no point to the travel, other than more screentime, since everyone ended up all together anyway.) She shows up at the aquarium before John does so that she can have a dramatic moment, then of course has a very drawn-out death scene. The DVD at the end makes sure that even though she isn’t physically there anymore, she is still very present in the narrative.

TLD: …even though she should be dead, Mary still manages to show up onscreen (and her first scene is so ambiguous that we’re unsure of whether she’s alive or dead), and her DVD drives the plot of this episode because she tells Sherlock exactly what to do, and he does it. She also is there to tell John what to do, and since she’s a ghost, she doesn’t even bother to be subtle.

TFP: Even if she has zero reason to be involved in this episode at all, Mary still manages to dominate the ending by doing a voiceover where the other characters are all muted. She is in complete control.

So yes, I love the idea that she’s the “virus” and The Storyteller. She attached herself to John (the real storyteller), and has been infecting him since day one. And the connection to Moriarty… wow. Well done.

[wssh-watson-deactivated20191117]

THANK YOU SO MUCH

I LOVE THIS AND I LOVE YOU TWO

[devoursjohnlock]

But it extends far beyond what we’re shown on the screen. The promotion for S4 was dominated by Amanda Abbington touring with Mark (who claims he wrote her flight to Morocco so that he could watch her play different characters – as if?), and she narrated a Mary-centric short documentary that aired in theatres before The Final Problem. It’s yet another example of fourth-wall breaking in this series. I think we should be talking about this more.

[tjlcisthenewsexy]

@consultingeastwind I’m SO happy you’re all on this train as well and talking about this - Mary is “Moriarty” and the breaking of the fourth wall references are about Mary corrupting and claiming the story as her own, and burning the hearts out of it’s audience in the process. 

Mary picked right up where Jim left off at the end of TRF, as if Jim represented one villain of the love story (Sherlock’s fear and sublimation of desire) and Mary represents an equally deadly one (heteronormativity). I think we might even move on to yet another “Moriarty” before the show is over, once heteronormativity has been defeated. Perhaps it’s “the British Government”, the “highest authority”, who is ultimately responsible for oppression, the institution responsible for making the laws that persecuted gay people. 

[thepurplewombat-deactivated2019]

Season 4, the case of the missing Watson, and why BBC John doesn’t love Sherlock

So yesterday I was reading @silentauroriamthereal‘s Best of Three, again (it’s a really good story!). And I realised that the John in that story is pretty much a total dick. He’s incredibly patronising and self-congratulatory about being such a wonderful friend to Sherlock etc etc etc, all the while being actually unimaginably cruel to Sherlock.

And I left a comment to the effect that I loved the story but hated John, and she very kindly replied that she thought it was pretty in character and I had this absolute oh my god moment because she’s bloody right, isn’t she?

And somewhere between Season 4 and Best of Three and SilentAuror’s comment, I think the scales sort of fell from my eyes with regards to John and the show. It’s not that Season 4 ruined John. Season 4 was the logical continuation of where they had taken the character, arguably from the second episode. Go back and look at the way John talks about and treats Sherlock, all the way back to TBB. Try to reconcile the way John talks to and about Sherlock with the way Watson talks to and about Holmes.

Season 4 John is not out of character. Not for BBC John. It’s extreme, but it’s not actually out of character. We think it is, but I think that we have good reason for that. In my specific case, I knew and loved the canon long before BBC Sherlock came on the scene. I know Watson, and I know how he feels about Holmes. So when John acted the way he did in Season 4, I thought it was awful, and terrible, and it came as a shock to me. Before Season 4, when John acted in ways that Watson would not have, I was like “well, maybe he’s just having a bad day’, but Season 4 made me realise that Watson hasn’t been having bad days, Watson has never been here at all.

We think that John is better and wiser and kinder than he is because we spend more time with the wiser, kinder versions of John Watson that we see in the canon and in fanfiction. We’ve been blinded by those Watsons to the truth of John’s character in the show.

And that leads me to another conclusion. BBC’s John doesn’t love Sherlock. We think he does, because Watson loves Holmes, and whether you think that it’s platonic or romantic or sexual or whatever, you can’t deny that there is love there, but John? He doesn’t love Sherlock.

I think he wants Sherlock. I think he’s addicted to Sherlock. To the cases and the life they lead and the danger and all of it. And I think that, like any addict, he hates Sherlock and everything that comes with him, and hates that he needs him. And that’s why the morgue scene happens. Because John, unlike practically every other Watson in history, does not love Sherlock Holmes. Because John wishes that he had never met him and wishes that he could live without him, and knows that as long as Sherlock is alive, he will never, ever be able to leave him for good.

Which means that yes, they really did do TPLoSH all over again, with a gay Holmes desperately in love with Watson, who doesn’t love him back. Except they dialled it up to 11, because everything has to be bigger and louder and hurt more, and instead of a straight Watson who still loves his Holmes, they have given us a John Watson of ambiguous sexuality who not only does not love Sherlock, but actively despises him.

(I also have some thoughts about how Sherlock has been moving toward becoming Holmes over the course of the series, while John moves further and further away from being Watson, but I’ll save that for another time.)

[addigni]

why do you hurt me???

i mean, especially after s4, i felt more or less convinced that John doesn’t love Sherlock back, certainly not in the way Sherlock loves John so selflessly and unconditionally

but to see you spell it out so well and dial it up some more….. oh my heart….. oh my poor sherlock…. it makes this scene THAT much more painful to watch

[lawyermargo-deactivated20180329]

I believe you are absolutely right and I think that’s why S4 has been so difficult for me. I had clearly conflated BBC John with all the permutations of John that are fan created. The fan fic and fan art Johns that love Sherlock; that nurture and protect Sherlock from that place of genuine love for Sherlock. S4 John’s character arc is divergent from those fic Johns I have read and I’m starting to see that is on me, not the BBC writers. I now have to figure out if I can go back to the fan created Johns and enjoy them for what they are, and leave BBC John behind. I’m still trying to decide.

[thepurplewombat-deactivated2019]

@lawyermargo we all did, I think. But the good thing is that fanon John is much closer to canon Watson than John is! I’m not sure if that’s a comfort to you or not, but we are not, and we were not, wrong. The John Watson we see is the real John Watson. It’s the BBC version that’s out of character.

Also, there are other Johns. Try Granada! Granada John is beautiful.

Or read canon and just imagine Martin’s face on it.

[lawyermargo-deactivated20180329]

@high5sandchocolate, I think this is good analysis of why we’ve been struggling with S4.

[conversationswithjohnlock]

I’m so glad someone is saying this and not getting bashed for it. Before S4 I rewatched all of S1, S2, and S3 with my kids. And to be honest, I hadn’t rewatched it all for at least a year, and had been thoroughly and happily buried in fic adaptations of Sherlock and John.

I remember saying to my best fandom friend (not tagging in case this post makes her sad) at the time that seeing it all again after some time and distance made me realize that John wasn’t actually very nice to Sherlock. He was a bit of a dick.

I do believe he cares about Sherlock, and comes to see him as a friend, and I do believe John knows that he owes Sherlock his very life, and he’s absolutely addicted to him as a surrogate for the adventure. But he also blames Sherlock for getting in the way of the happy normal life he thinks he wants. He goes back to Mary because he wants to, because he’s pissed off at both of them, but he wants Mary, and he doesn’t want Sherlock. At least, he doesn’t want to want Sherlock, and he never gets past that. And he hates Sherlock when Mary dies because if there hadn’t been Sherlock, there’d be a Mary. Sherlock is John’s fly in the ointment, his virus in the system.

And I think I went as far as to say that I didn’t think johnlock was endgame, that I would love to see it, because they’re my OTP, but I didn’t think the show had given us a foundation for it. We’d spent so much time in hiatus, consuming fic and seeing subtext in three-second long clips taken out of context, and just simply dreaming and wanting, but I didn’t think it would happen.

I don’t like it. I don’t like having my johnlock-colored glasses ripped off, but John didn’t turn into a dick. He kind of always was one.

And maybe that explains why I’ve found myself drawn more and more to Victorian johnlock lately, and why I don’t really write fixits, preferring AU.

At the end of it all I still find myself shaking my head and asking, “This? This is the story they wanted to tell?”

[silentauroriamthereal]

Okay. So I just became aware of this post earlier because I’ve been at work all day, and since it’s my fic that sparked it, I feel I should weigh in. 

Here’s the thing – okay, there’s more than one thing here, but here’s one of the things: fanon always goes too far. I love being part of a fandom. It’s wonderful to have a huge number of people to share your interests and passions with! But one thing that inevitably happens is that the fanon view of the characterisations turn into two-dimensional stereotypes really quickly. I loathe the terminology that calls Sherlock a “gay baby penguin” and John a “human trash can”, etc. It happens in every fandom, not just ours! What this practise does is reduce these complex and multi-layered characters into so much less than what they are.

That said, I’ve always been a fan who identified more with Sherlock than with John, and maybe because of that, I’ve always seen and disliked John’s cruelty. I just started watching the Big Bang Theory and I feel the same way about Sheldon, whom I identify with less, but I’m still completely appalled by how his friends treat him sometimes. He’s infuriating, as Sherlock can be, but Sheldon is clearly autistic or somewhere on that spectrum. He’s not insane, yet his friends constantly refer to him as being crazy. He’s eccentric and neurotic and completely frustrating sometimes, but that’s no reason to treat him that way. I feel like this is the popular view, though, to have the show’s “regular person” there as a foil to show how smart/odd/different the special character is, which isn’t at all to say that John and Leonard aren’t special in their own right. We’re meant, I think, to accept John’s regular treatment of Sherlock as normal, and that’s a larger problem than in this show alone.

And THAT said, I still have further issues with how John treats Sherlock, and more than just in series 3 and 4. I’ve found that John regularly assumes the worst of Sherlock intentions without confirming them, and Sherlock is frequently too focused on the larger problem to care to correct John. Far from being the machine John thinks he is, Sherlock is extraordinarily compassionate. If he chooses not to show it, or focuses his response into finding practical solutions, that doesn’t take away from this. Consider their exchange in The Great Game:

John: Try and remember there’s a woman here who might die.

Sherlock: What for? There are hospitals full of people dying, Doctor. Why don’t you go and cry by their bedside and see what good it does them?

 John took that to mean that Sherlock didn’t care about anyone’s death, whereas Sherlock rather failed to explain that what he was doing was solving the case and thereby far more useful than sitting around expressing sadness. It happens again and again. Later in the same episode, John gets all snarly and furious when Sherlock expresses admiration for the intellectual intricacy of Moriarty’s planning. He doesn’t condone it. It’s just a passing remark, yet John immediately jumps to the conclusion that Sherlock doesn’t care about any of the people involved as potential victims. And yet it’s always been clear that Sherlock cares. His face, upon hearing that the old woman’s building was blown up, is such that even John, despite his views, reaches instinctively out to console him, gripping the back of his chair rather than Sherlock’s actual shoulder. But it still happens over and over again. John clings to this narrative that Sherlock doesn’t care about people. It’s this unfounded bias that makes him only see certain aspects of Sherlock. I mean, to an extent we all do that, but John takes it to special new levels.

 Which brings me to my next point: John Watson is incredibly, ridiculously, obnoxiously emotionally repressed.

Keep reading

[holmesianscholar]

Wow, reblogging for @silentauroriamthereal’s analysis. That in itself was just as beautiful as your fics, thank you so much for your brilliance.

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

Echoing that statement. Keep reading under the cut on @silentauroriamthereal‘s addition; I found it most helpful. Especially the sense that John needs to get his priorities, um, bent.

[alexxphoenix42]

The Pain of S4

I think one of the insidious side effects of series 4, beyond existing as a crazy, out-of-character, bond-esque romp through the Twilight Zone is how it makes us question everything that came before. Did John really care about Sherlock at all? Was there a love affair brewing between the two men or did we just image it? Was Sherlock an unprincipled junkie all along? Was John an abusive arsehole just waiting to smack Sherlock around from day one?

There are so many lovely instances of John and Sherlock melting over each other, enjoying each other’s company and making cow’s eyes at each other that it’s ridiculous to say the feeling wasn’t there.

Sure John might be an angry, shouty little man with issues, but he believed in Sherlock even while others faltered. He fed Sherlock the thing with peas, and put him to bed when he was incapacitated, watching over him if he needed anything. He followed him, and killed for him, and looked out for him. It was real.

After a couple of series of being the thinking machine fond of telling everyone what a sociopath he was, we could see how much Sherlock cared in S3. He all but chucked his work out the window to plan John’s wedding, making John’s well-being his top priority. He followed John, and killed for John, and looked out for him. It was achingly real.

Then series 4 rolled in, and that all went out the window. Sherlock gets brought low, encouraged from some voice from beyond the grave from Mary to destroy himself, while John steps in to drive a few more nails into the coffin beating Sherlock into the floor in a viscous rage. Why? Why did we need to see such horrible violence perpetrated against Sherlock from John, his supposed best friend?

You know why. No homo. It’s long been a custom in movies and tv to have side gay characters as a laugh, and main gay characters who need to be punished for their transgressions. Even a show that came out just a few years ago “London Spy” with a number of gay characters followed this rule – painstakingly slaughtering it’s gay characters because gay is bad and needs to be cut down in a morality play of pain and suffering.

So Sherlock was too gay. He plans weddings, and folds napkins into swans and wears tight shirts and loves his John so he needs to be punished for it in the eyes of popular media. Really? In 2017 this is the only narrative, the only path we can see to represent a gay man and his life and loves?  

I don’t think so. I don’t think gay characters need to be mowed down, and I don’t think John and Sherlock deserved to be shafted liked that. As far as I’m concerned, S4 was a fever dream of someone’s. Perhaps Sherlock was still getting the drugs out of his system from the end of TAB, and then he woke up and married John. S4 isn’t canon for me, it’s a weird AU at best, and John and Sherlock have always loved each other and always will. It’s my head canon, and I’m sticking with it.

[sggk]

this haunts me

[worriesconstantly]

honestly, one of these days an alien will say that johnlock is real and suddenly this member of area 51 will come forward saying: "actually i am anti, i have been doing this experiment,,,,,," seriously,, all still in my list, lostspecial site, vivala me, dale pike, etc, etc

omfg their next top move will be a ghost appearing on twitter yelling about how johnlock is pure and once we all start believing in his insightful ways he will turn around and be like  ‘actually i am arthur conan doyle and i hate every one of you fucks goodbye’ and that’ll be the end of the arg as we will have all learned a valuable lesson about how much arthur conan doyle truly hated sherlock holmes and the nerds like us that obsess over it (and i include mofftiss in this bracket)

the special will then leak because they will realise he did not approve of bbc sherlock after all

i’ve cracked it lads

i’ve solved the arg

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

I love you all

[conversationswithjohnlock]

Martin Freeman: But look, we’ve had this planned for years. YEARS.

BBC Bigwigs: Sorry guys, but things have changed. We’re just not ready for detecting dick sucking yet.

MF: You can’t fucking do this to us. What about the fucking fans? They’re expecting this! We’ve been building to this for years!

BBCB: We feel you. We do. But no. Season four must not give viewers any idea whatsoever that this was a love story between two damaged men who heal each other and make each other whole and then only need one bedroom. How do you feel about Bond?

Benedict Cumberbatch: But it’s a love story. You said we could. You said. Martin and I have practiced!

BBCB: So we’ve come up with a way out for you. Eurus.

MF: What the everloving FUCK is a Eurus?

BBCB: She kills an innocent child and burns down the house and sexts with John and pretends to be Culverton’s daughter, and then Uncle Rudy – remember him? – locks her up in Alcatraz, and wait, don’t go, just listen, then she brainwashes EVERYONE! and Sherlock fixes her with a hug!

MF: The everloving FUCK? 

BBCB: People are gonna love it.

BC: But what about the eyesex and the stag night knee-touch thing and Sherlock coming back to life for John and how he never corrects anyone who assumes they’re a couple and the wedding speech and just how gay everything is?

BBCB: And did we mention Mary’s DVDs?

[sundayduck]

New head canon accepted.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Rouge - A Rowbank Original Series

Hi there! I’m taking a break from tumblr but I had another thought about that infamous poster last night and I just had to share it with someone… hope you don’t mind :)

So… while I couldn’t sleep last night my mind turned again to that awful date “March 8th” and how we had been mislead by that poster. I know people pointed out that the title “Rouge” clearly must mean that it was just a red herring but I felt like the word Rouge alone isn’t enough to be certain about that. Of course there’s also the fact that (as far as I know) it’s still unclear what “Rowbank” refers to.

Then it hit me: If it’s a red herring and we’ve got the “red” part then Rowbank must be something fish/herring related?! So I did a quick google search at 2am and of course: Rowbank Reservoir is a “well-established recreational fishery, with brown, rainbow and blue trout, together with perch and pike, which is managed by the Rowbank Angling Club.” (x)

Now, this Reservoir lies in Scotland, more precisely only 6 miles (10km) away from Paisley where a certain Steven Moffat grew up. Apart from that reservoir there are literally almost no results on google for the word “Rowbank” (someone else already looked at the few possibilities here: (x))

In conclusion: the poster was most definitely a red herring.

Serving us a date like this on a poster plate would’ve been very un-like Moffitss anyway… maybe that date was supposed to be our 3rd big disappointment (after ATY and 29.1)? People always stop looking after 3? Who knows… I’m still convinced there is a plan.

(submitted by shouldjuststopbeinghurtingnow)

Hey Lovely!

Thank you for this interesting thought! I personally still believe that there is *SOMETHING* that’s going to happen as well. I just hope it’s going to be soon. 

But yes, I’ve also read theories that it’s also in relation to the publication date of the original ASIS, so it still works, and “Rowbank” being another Easter egg because it relates to Moffat. So Easter eggs on a billboard that was a red herring… REALLY GRASPING FOR STRAWS *REACHES FAR*, but “Easter” egg on a billboard we thought was the airdate and in some weird inception shit Easter IS the airdate? The Easter egg red herring is the clue??? *big shrug* Hmm.

Personally, I think that is WAYYYYYY too clever for them. WAAAY too clever. But we can dream.

[worriesconstantly]

the story of the hedgeon is featured in a old tv/muppet show with John Hurt called "The storyteller" *eyes emoji intensifies* and the story is about loyalty and broken vows, and of course true love

the rabbithole never ends. it just keeps going and i keep tumbling

yes that was a pun

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

YouTube link to the Henson version here (X). Points worthy of note if the Hedgehog is a John mirror:

Hedgehog son is rejected most painfully by his father (though loved by his mother). Determines to go out into the world and make something of himself.

A Beauty-and-the-Beast story, with Hedgehog as the beast.

The Princess (”princess of sweetness and cherry pie” HA) says of her Hedgehog husband (as well as to him), when asked which would you have for a husband, man or creature, “I have a husband, sir. He is what he is, no more and no less.” It is what it is. He reveals he must return to his hedgehog skin, as he is enchanted and cannot leave it. Promises are made that she will not meddle for a third night. A test of loyal love.

Enchantments are confusing. Remedies are mixed up. Seeds of doubt are planted. The princess burns the hedgehog skin, on her mother’s advice. Tragedy ensues.

Princess embarks on an long journey of repentance, eventually discovers hedge-husband in a shack in the woods

She expresses unconditional love, and a desire to canoodle him. Proceeds to hold onto him through many protean changes (hedgehog, something with wings, etc.) until he finally takes his true form.

She has won back her true love by looking without hope of finding and holding on for dear life.

On second thought, maybe this is a meta-story about the ARG. Good heavens. Looking without hope of finding and holding on for dear life = sums up many areas of my existence at the moment.

Btw, kudos to the codebreakers on this one…

[wormwatson]

keep in mind, however, that it isn’t the only version of the story. I definitely like the Henson one a lot more than the one I read.

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

@cactusbloom -- Point taken, but I have a feeling there is an awareness of which easily accessible online video version our fandom is likely to immediately find and absorb, and my later post about the Storyteller being in the story (and pilloried by his audience within it) has a certain . . . something.

I’d say another good bet for a go-to source would be the version of the story as published in the edition used in the BBC show -- 1948 printing, illustrated by Josef Scharl (X). I can’t find a table of contents online but I know it was described as a complete edition (per cover photos here X), which means it contained all the known Grimm stories, including this one. Translation info here, pulled from that same set of eBay photos:

[worriesconstantly]

the story of the hedgeon is featured in a old tv/muppet show with John Hurt called "The storyteller" *eyes emoji intensifies* and the story is about loyalty and broken vows, and of course true love

the rabbithole never ends. it just keeps going and i keep tumbling

yes that was a pun

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

YouTube link to the Henson version here (X). Points worthy of note if the Hedgehog is a John mirror:

Hedgehog son is rejected most painfully by his father (though loved by his mother). Determines to go out into the world and make something of himself.

A Beauty-and-the-Beast story, with Hedgehog as the beast.

The Princess (”princess of sweetness and cherry pie” HA) says of her Hedgehog husband (as well as to him), when asked which would you have for a husband, man or creature, “I have a husband, sir. He is what he is, no more and no less.” It is what it is. He reveals he must return to his hedgehog skin, as he is enchanted and cannot leave it. Promises are made that she will not meddle for a third night. A test of loyal love.

Enchantments are confusing. Remedies are mixed up. Seeds of doubt are planted. The princess burns the hedgehog skin, on her mother’s advice. Tragedy ensues.

Princess embarks on an long journey of repentance, eventually discovers hedge-husband in a shack in the woods

She expresses unconditional love, and a desire to canoodle him. Proceeds to hold onto him through many protean changes (hedgehog, something with wings, etc.) until he finally takes his true form.

She has won back her true love by looking without hope of finding and holding on for dear life.

On second thought, maybe this is a meta-story about the ARG. Good heavens. Looking without hope of finding and holding on for dear life = sums up many areas of my existence at the moment.

Btw, kudos to the codebreakers on this one…

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

Forgot to mention the interesting bit:  The storyteller is pulled into the story itself mid-telling, and in the process (shortly after saying to the camera “I’m very good at this”), is THROWN iN JAIL by an audience who doesn’t like what he has to say. But is released eventually, and at the happy ending is invited (again) to the happiest of weddings, where “I told the best story there is to tell: A story which begins in hello and ends in goodbye.”

Not sure how often this sort of thing happens within the Henson series, but here (X) is the Wikipedia entry on The Storyteller (1988) with background and a full plot synopsis of each episode, including this one (”Hans My Hegehog”).

@worriesconstantly @swishyspock @kingdomforapony

[gaylittlezuko]

IF any of you still pay attention to the moriarty rp twitter (@contact_jm), i think i FINALLY figured out his latest code: Hans the Hedgehog! A story by the Grimm brothers about a giant half human/half hedgehog…..maybe some of you literary folks can read more about it, there was a lot of info and analysis that I found but I can’t quite compile it into something that makes sense.

Weiterlesen

[kingdomforapony]

You mean this one “3 - syxgcnabzichjlgaoxxabchwjpubzqjksbztfjubcexyd - [John] + [Birthday]” ? How did u get from that to Hans the Hedgehog? I gave up on that one cause I couldn’t find any meaning…

(Today he posted another thing 1. 3, 2. 9, 3. 🌳🐷 and we know the last one is hedgehog…is that a clue.to your solution ?)

[gaylittlezuko]

yes! first i did a skip code with every 3rd letter (starting from the 3rd letter of the code), then i put that solution into a vigenere with the key “hedgehog”, and then i put THAT solution into a caesar cipher with the key = 9

[worriesconstantly]

the story of the hedgeon is featured in a old tv/muppet show with John Hurt called "The storyteller" *eyes emoji intensifies* and the story is about loyalty and broken vows, and of course true love

the rabbithole never ends. it just keeps going and i keep tumbling

yes that was a pun

[euphoriccalliope-blog]

YouTube link to the Henson version here (X). Points worthy of note if the Hedgehog is a John mirror:

Hedgehog son is rejected most painfully by his father (though loved by his mother). Determines to go out into the world and make something of himself.

A Beauty-and-the-Beast story, with Hedgehog as the beast.

The Princess (”princess of sweetness and cherry pie” HA) says of her Hedgehog husband (as well as to him), when asked which would you have for a husband, man or creature, “I have a husband, sir. He is what he is, no more and no less.” It is what it is. He reveals he must return to his hedgehog skin, as he is enchanted and cannot leave it. Promises are made that she will not meddle for a third night. A test of loyal love.

Enchantments are confusing. Remedies are mixed up. Seeds of doubt are planted. The princess burns the hedgehog skin, on her mother’s advice. Tragedy ensues.

Princess embarks on an long journey of repentance, eventually discovers hedge-husband in a shack in the woods

She expresses unconditional love, and a desire to canoodle him. Proceeds to hold onto him through many protean changes (hedgehog, something with wings, etc.) until he finally takes his true form.

She has won back her true love by looking without hope of finding and holding on for dear life.

On second thought, maybe this is a meta-story about the ARG. Good heavens. Looking without hope of finding and holding on for dear life = sums up many areas of my existence at the moment.

Btw, kudos to the codebreakers on this one. . .

[unprincipledaddict]

From “Sherlock Uncovered: The Return” (2016)

It wouldn’t be an ARG if we didn’t read way too much into every little thing…right? Apologies for tags, just wanted to share. ;) @diemeliyay​ @arglocked @inevitably-johnlocked @jenna221b @waitedforgarridebs

[inevitably-johnlocked]

UHM. WHAT ARE THEY DOING THERE. THAT’S A REALLY SPECIFIC NUMBER OF DICE WITH A VERY SPECIFIC NUMBER DISPLAYED ON THEM. 

AND WHY DICE. THERE’S NO LOGICAL REASON FOR THAT TO BE A SET PIECE… unless it’s hinting at a game.

[castiel-is-swell]

*looks wearily at Sunday April 16th*

[inevitably-johnlocked]

UHM OKAY. I JUST HAD A FUCKING EPIPHANY WITH THIS.

What does one normally do with dice when PLAYING A GAME? 

You add up the sides.

FOUR DICE. SHOWING THE NUMBER 4.

4. TIMES FUCKING 4. 

IS FUCKING SIX FUCKING TEEN.

APRIL 16…. *heavy sigh* IS FUCKING EASTER SUNDAY.

GODDAMNIT.

NOW I AM WILLING TO ADMIT THAT THIS IS JUST A NOD TO SEASON 4.

But an EASTER EGG. IS STILL A FUCKING EASTER EGG.

[loveinthemindpalace]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

god damn it!!!

[holmesianscholar]

MUST REBLOG AGAIN OMGOMGOMGOGJOGMFUDK

[batwoods]

@antisocial-otaku mira, me muero

[antisocial-otaku]

MIRA LOS VOY A MATAR EN SERIO!! la madre que los parió D: @jawnlock-is-real

[kunstninja-deactivated20250306]

It fits with the easter themes and bible analogy in the show. Resurrecting Sherlock…

Btw, can someone give me a link to that, please? I am looking but not finding it

[whimsicalethnographies]

I’m out of date prediction but

[hellooteapots-deactivated201905]

don't you feel disappointed that none of our predictions about the lost special were right

don’t make predictions, explore possibilities

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Rouge and Red Herrings

Hi there! I’ve been thinking something over, and I feel the need to share it with someone who might also enjoy thinking about it. (I’ve read some of your meta and submissions, and have written a few small ones of my own during the time s4 was being aired, but I haven’t shared any of it widely so please pardon me if this has been said before.)

This thought was sparked by one of your asks that you shared earlier, and I haven’t seen it analyzed on my feed yet. (Not that someone hasn’t said it before, I just haven’t seen it.) Season 4 was largely blue/grey in color (the water overlays, the pool, the aquarium, the morgue, [most] scenes with Culverton, and the greyness of Sherrinford are some examples). We get some significant pops of red, though, and they’re largely connected to Eurus. John meets her in T6T on a red bus, and she wears red lipstick. Eurus-Faith wears a conspicuously red dress, and Eurus-therapist has the blood-red rug. Finally, in Sherrinford, we see the red room and the red light that bathes some of the Moriarty train clips. (I dearly need a rewatch to search for other occurrences.)

The Rouge poster, much on our minds yesterday, was one of the only other occurrences that really stuck out to me. Your anon earlier called it a “red herring,” and I noticed that the phrase applies literally as well as figuratively. What if all of the red we see in S4 can be interpreted as red herrings? Does that mean that Eurus herself is a red herring? To me, this could point to either Eurus being fake (a product of altered memories or altered footage, like our rogue gunman who is being blamed for Magnussen’s shooting) or being a pawn of a larger force (headed by Moriarty or Mary, most likely, perhaps with Mycroft- our usual M-suspects). Those are ideas I have heard tossed around before, for sure, but hadn’t heard the color red factored in yet.

Anyway, I’m not really sure what to make of it, but even in my broken-hearted state I enjoy reading your meta and your followers’ asks and submissions! (Thanks for the fic recs too- they’ve been great.)

(submitted by @blinkasaurus​)

Hey Lovely!

Wow, thank you so much for this mini meta of S4 / TFP! I can’t seem to find the post that you’re referencing because I’m a tool and tagged it improperly probably, but yes, I think red in this series literally means “red herring”… like Mary wears red coat in S3 = she’s not really Mary / wears a façade… “redbeard” not really a dog (though that one I don’t believe for a second… the red herring WITHIN the red herring of Sherlock’s past… Red-Herring-ception, LOL). The spots of red in S4 are so GLARING when they happen BECAUSE of how desaturated / dark the series is. And given that I myself believe all of S4 is a false narrative and that “Eurus” is really just a stolen face that John is using in his hallucinations, I think the red spots are symbolic of blood and John bleeding out from a gunshot in this season.

Anyway, I think you’re probably right on this point, my friend, because very little makes sense from a narrative standpoint.

(and you’re very welcome! I take far too long to get my lists out, but I enjoy sharing them when I do!)