Against the rest of the world

Shipping Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson in every adaptation including the ACD canon. BBC Sherlock, Granada Holmes, Billy Wilder's TPLoSH. TJLC and TFBC.

[love-y-o-u-3000]

AU where S4 doesn’t happen at all, Sherlock hallucinates everything after Mary shoots him

[darlingbenny]

[martinsgrrrl-deactivated2015031]

This is what falling head over fucking heels looks like

[love-in-mind-palace]

Good times

[incurablylazydevil]

Four times John took a chance on Sherlock, and that one time he didn’t.

[doctorstrangebatch]

DONT CALL YOURSELF OUT LIKE THAT BABE

[honeybee1895]

U serious.

[isitandwonder]

tfw you’ve forgotten that you’ve already dismissed your most hyped plot twist as boring years ago…

[love-in-mind-palace]

lmao yeah..

[delurkingdetective-deactivated2]

This has to be an intentional callback.  It has to be.  They both invented dogs, you don’t have two fake dogs in your story just by accident.  

So: Sherlock is dismissing this plot as “boring” but the truth turns out to be not far off. It is actually a childhood trauma masked by an invented memory created via a hallucinogenic drug.   A drug like, say, TD-12.  Which is never used or mentioned after being featured prominently in TLD.  Which is not used much in TLD itself, either, beyond adding totally superfluous creepy color (you could have the same plot, structurally, if Faith just overheard her father talking and “anyone” was muffled).  Ah TD-12, Chekhov’s hallucinogen. This undeniable plot parallel is one of the single biggest textual arguments for TFP being in some way fake, and it’s why I favor drugging as the source for unreality over a pure EMP theory.

[phoenix-rises-1623]

Ooh, I like your thoughts @delurkingdetective My brain also added… “at least the tv people took me seriously.” Like many now who accept the story “as is”, when there’s a different truth waiting to be discovered. Curiouser and curiouser… (By the way I don’t know if we are getting anything more officially or not - it’s just clear that there is more anyway.)

[delurkingdetective-deactivated2]

I’ve wrote a bit about the metafictional parallels between Henry Knight’s repressed memory and Sherlock before TFP came out.

From my meta on ‘watching’ imagery, posted back in September:

At the beginning of THOB we see a news segment on Baskerville and in particular, about Henry.  Sherlock stops the tape:

SHERLOCK (to Henry): What did you see? HENRY: Oh. (He points to the television.) I … I was just about to say. SHERLOCK: Yes, in a TV interview. I prefer to do my own editing.

Henry is a Sherlock mirror, and his story is fundamentally one of misinterpretation.  Fearful and confused, he misremembers a traumatic thing that happened to him.  But this is only the beginning of Henry’s distress: the people around him take his misinterpretation and run with it, for their own reasons and their own benefit.  In this image, we see the crucial role that the press plays in this process.  They’re influencing not just how others interpret what happened to Henry, but how Henry himself interprets it, reinforcing and perhaps even extending Henry’s faulty memory.  The result is depicted very negatively: Henry feels dissociated, self-loathing, and attempts violence against himself and others.  It is only once Sherlock helps him ‘stop the tape’ of his false memories and see the real truth that Henry can move on with his life.

If I can get even more metafictional for a moment - and of course I can! - Henry’s story is a metaphor not just for Sherlock but for ‘the collective Sherlock Holmes stories and fandom’ and perhaps even for all stories with significant fan communities.

(Someone, I don’t remember who, pointed out the resonance between Sherlock’s “I prefer to do my own editing” in this scene and his line to Watson in the greenhouse in TAB “I’ve a mind to speak to your editor”.  Plus, of course, there’s the scene from the beginning of The Six Thatchers where we watch Mycroft’s colleagues literally edit footage from BBC Sherlock, something which Sherlock both calls out “That’s not how it happened at all” and is protected by.)

And then there’s this post I wrote about faith and paranoia in TLD, written right before TFP:

Smith then diagnoses Sherlock as a delusional paranoiac.  The word ‘paranoia’ stuck out to me, because we’ve seen it precisely twice before in the show. Here’s the first time, at Baskerville:

image

Relevant side note: the other results of the H.O.U.N.D. drug are  “extreme suggestibility,” “fear and stimulus,” “conditioned terror”.  Not a bad analogue for TD-12.

Irrelevant side note: while googling “paranoia” and “Baskerville” to find this image I came across this German song, Der Hund Von Baskerville, set to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.  Enjoy!

So, paranoia is a side effect of a memory-altering drug introduced in a metafictionally rich episode where a Sherlock mirror realizes he’s misremembering his past and Sherlock himself questions his own reality (”I’ve always been able to trust my senses, the evidence of my own eyes, until last night.”)  Definitely not a coincidence that it comes up here.

Perhaps I should do a new post about Sherlock-Henry metafictional parallels which actually incorporates TFP.  

[artsiali]

open your fucking eyes, john

[the-7-percent-solution]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmiOaFDN0GE)

The only video you ever need if someone says to you, “Sherlock and John are just friends, there is no reason to believe otherwise”. These are just clips of the show. I honestly don’t blame people who haven’t noticed these things – I didn’t notice them the first time I watched the series and I am gay. It’s because I didn’t expect to see it, so I unknowingly put my blinders up and consumed the media without a second thought. I saw but I did not observe. However, the moment I realized it on my own, I felt the metaphorical glass shatter and I was overcome with shock. How did I, a gay person, miss this? How?? But now that I’ve seen it, feel it with every fiber of my being, I cannot “un-see” it. It’s like looking at the moon every night and then one day noticing it looks like there’s a face in it. You will see the man in the moon every time you look because you can never go back to that moment when you didn’t know it was there. That’s what BBC Sherlock is to a lot of people when it comes to queer readings. You either see it or you don’t. You’re either open to the idea or you’re not. But once you see it, you will never go back. So regardless of what the BBC, the writers, or strangers online say, this queer reading of Sherlock is felt by viewers around the world and that experience will never be taken from them.

[gaykerstreet]

OH MY GOD THIS IS MY VIDEO.

[sannapersikka]

[roadswewalk]

(;¬､¬)      (⇀_↼‶)

[ ಡ ､ಡ ]    [ ≧_≦ ]

(ಥ - ಥ)     (눈_눈)

[[ his frown so qt orz ]]

[gaykerstreet]

sherlock: mike can i borrow your phone

john: here use mine

sherlock: thanks

john: what are we

[the-7-percent-solution]

I can’t believe people picked up on the “YOU or ME” choice in The Abominable Bride, especially considering the Bride was eMElia and the man she hunted was eUstace BUT WHEN THE FINAL PROBLEM came out, everyone who believed in those patterns saw eurUS, a clever woman who excels on social media, isolated by Gatiss because of the risk associated with her knowledge, taking part in human experimentation in an EPISODE NAMED AFTER THE STORY THAT CAUSED A HUGE SOCIAL COMMOTION in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY IT IS NOW and they just don’t see the connections anymore.

The SAME logic used to decode The Abominable Bride works RIGHT NOW but for SOME REASON everyone threw a fit because they didn’t get what they wanted, when they wanted it.

And to think I didn’t believe Gatiss when he claimed “fan entitlement” to be a raving problem in the Sherlock fandom.

[redpeacoat3-deactivated20171018]

Hold on a sec, we are not entitled when we desire respect and representation. Just because we are getting it later (and I want to believe we will) doesn’t mean we don’t have every right to be angry about the way we’re being treated now.

[welovethebeekeeper-deactivated2]

May I point out that the fact johnlock wasn’t confirmed in TFP was not the main reason many of us were pissed at the writers. In fact it wasn’t even the quality of the script. It was the callous disregard over many LGBTQ fans reaction. I was there at the BFI, it was bullying by Steven Moffat. I was on twitter 3 nights in a row talking to people who were devastated and either engaging in or thinking about self harm. So don’t reduce the fan reaction to your narrow interpretation. Many non tumblr fans were effected. They weren’t ‘ throwing a fit’ as you so eloquently put it and fan entitlement is a smokescreen for setting up your audience and manipulating them on a grand scale, then being pissed off at the result you created. 

[msclaritea]

Seriously @the-7-percent-solution constantly hammering at people to ‘believe’ is a huge turn-off. You choose to keep playing, then kudos. Go for it. If you turn out to be right, you can have ALL the bragging rights, but please stop beating up on others who choose not to, right now. The creators used magicians and mentalists to mess with people’s minds, now we keep getting trolls in here to make things worse. Please just stop. We all have to come at this in our own way.

[love-y-o-u-3000]

I don’t understand what is the point of this and hell, this is hardly the first time I am seeing such a post. And it is infuriating, to put it mildly. Defending Gatiss and deliberately making the fans feel guilty for choosing to heal and try to move on instead of suppressing their feelings and believing in something that might not even exist, that’s just wrong. It’s extremely insulting to say people “threw a fit“ when in reality many of us were terribly hurt and disappointed and damaged beyond repair. What you’re doing here is that you’re manipulating people, and what for? What does anyone gain from this? Seriously, what? There are people who read this and, whether you care or not, they might actually feel stupid and weak and pathetic and not good enough to continue playing “the game“, posts like this one make many people feel even worse and much more miserable. Because the message you’re sending to the world is that our pain and anger is not justified and we should act like emotionless computers and think exactly the way you do. Except we aren’t fucking computers. We are people, we aren’t just fans of a damn show who think of ciphers and subtext all the time. Analysing the show, looking for hidden clues and deciphering messages and speculating, that’s all great and good fun, but there are lines that should not be crossed. People have been treated like garbage. We’ve been told that who we are doesn’t matter. Many of us, queer. I can’t imagine an insult more damaging than that. Fine, it’s amazing if it had no effect on you. You certainly act like it didn’t, I am not judging, nor making definitive assumptions but, the point is that, not everybody is that lucky to posses so much strength and optimism. So please, stop trying to make people feel guilty and bad, everybody is different and we all have every single damn right to treat this situation the way we want to.

[msclaritea]

Yale's most daring publication since 1986

BY LULU KLEBANOFF / FEBRUARY 10, 2017 

…“In the early 2000s, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss decided to adapt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books into a television series. Immediately they were faced with a creative choice. How should they deal with the prevalent queer interpretation of their source material? Should they make Holmes and Watson romantically entangled? Should they ignore the queer reading of the story entirely? Should they leave it up to the viewer?”

YALE? WE MADE YALE?! This sooo sounds like a Johnlocker, but whatever. It’s a great article, with Queer Lit suggestions.

@may-shepard @isitandwonder @tjlcisthenewsexy @shag-me-senseless-watson @gosherlocked @the-7-percent-solution @madzither @cosmicgoat @silentauroriamthereal 

[shjwmoming]

[bidoctor]

[gayeddies]

ok assistant location manager on sherlock, i did not even talk about sherlock

[culverton]

what does this mean

[consultingwives]

you Know what it means

[futchcassidy]

[gaybaerey]

[livingthegifs]

"Can i do that?”

By: thejennire

✦Send your request [x]✦

[shag-me-senseless-watson]

Can /I/ do that?

[pastelcolorsandrain]

Ugh, how dare you put this on my dash again. *Stares, useless for hours*

[formerprincewille]

Fuck it’s back FUCK

[yilinglaozuhot]

I love how Martin follows the script.

[skulls-and-tea]

Queen of Understatement Part II

MARTIN!!!!!

[witch-lock]

WELL THAT’S NOT WHAT WE BLOODY GOT THO ISN’T IT

WHAT WE GOT WAS SHERLOCK ASKING MYCROFT FOR A MOMENT 

AND MYCROFT GIVING HIM THIS FACE LIKE “OH SHIT LITTLE BROTHER YOU’RE DOING THIS NOW???”

NOT TO MENTION THE SCRIPT DOESN’T MENTION THE ABSOLUTE AGONY AND TENSION OF THE ABORTED LOVE CONFESSION 

NO MENTIONS OF LONGING GAZES AND BITTERSWEET SMILES IN THE TEXT BUT HELL IF THAT AINT WHAT WE SAW

AND THEN INSTEAD OF A “PROPER MANLY EMBRACE” AS:DKFLKF:SDKF WHAT THE FUCK WE GET THEM SHAKING EACH OTHER’S HANDS ONLY IT’S NOT REALLY A HAND SHAKE THEY’RE JUST STANDING THERE HOLDING HANDS FOR A GOOD FIVE SECONDS

AND SHERLOCK CERTAINLY DOESN’T GO FOR THE OL NO HOMO “OH IF WE MUST” HE INITIATES IT AND LOOKS LIKE HE DESPERATELY WANTS MORE BUT DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO SEEK IT

THEY CUT AN EMBRACE AND STILL WHAT MARTIN AND BEN GAVE US WAS MORE FRAUGHT WITH EMOTIONAL TENSION AND MELANCHOLY ROMANCE THAN THE SCRIPT