So I read a fic but can't find it on ao3 so I was wondering if any of yous have seen it? BBC sherlock, probably Johnlock knowing me, but not necessarily. Season 1 AU, where john can see ghosts. I distinctly remember that in the pool scene, John starts mimicking Carl Powers to piss off/ distract Moriarty. I also maybe remember a scene where John finds the head in the fridge and it's very annoying? And it has convos with Sherlock's skull. Any help would be darling, tysm!
What I like a lot while plotting potterlock is the concepts that I can develop further than what had happened in the original plots (duh, the beauty of fanfic)
For example, for my johnlock timeline (1980s) I was inspired by the Marauders dynamic, but of course I spiced it up a notch because I can. There were 4 Marauders, but for the johnlock crew in my fic there is going to be 7 people involved. Let’s list them:
John Watson (Gryffindor)
Sherlock Holmes (Ravenclaw)
Greg Lestrade (Hufflepuff)
Jim Moriarty (Gryffindor - there is a reason for this that is yet to be shown)
Carl Powers (Gryffindor)
Molly Hooper (Ravenclaw)
Mary Morstan (Slytherin)
Now while there is an obvious imbalance between the members of the Houses, the crew dynamics will be important. Mary is not very popular because of the bbc Sherlock canon (which I allign with too, and I like evil Mary plots, but I challenged myself to write her differently here, which means that she will not interfere with John and Sherlock as a potential romantic interest just because she is a girl). I made her a Slytherin because, well, she is. And I love her to death in this fic. More on that later.
Next, Carl Powers and Jim Moriarty. Jim’s Gryffindor arc will remain unveiled for now, but I really wanted to include Carl Powers beside being dead. And I like to have them established as close friends before joining J&S&G. They both have things to offer to the Detective Trio, and will contribute to their developments too (especially Sherlock’s, because we know how he is regarding ‘friends’).
Molly Hooper is a sweetheart. She also is not going to pose as this infatuated fragile girl to the boys. While she is lovely and definitely interested in dating, it’s not with the main trio because?? Girl knows her worth. She befriends Sherlock in Year 1, but that is an added detail to that chapter which I will keep secret until it is updated. (which I dunno when it is pls dont kill meh) She a great friend, supportive, and all around smarter than Sherlock in certain situations. These two Ravenclaws will have a great friendship. Once Sherlock stops being so aloof he’ll take her as his little sister most likely.
Greg Lestrade. My man. We could argue he could be a Gryffindor but nah fam. My boy here is a pure Hufflepuff who puts up with the fiery egos of his two best friends with ease. There is a lot of clashing in this group at first. You have three Gryffindors who are not afraid to butt heads (respectfully if needed), a smartass Ravenclaw that has no filter, a second Ravenclaw that likes to watch the chaos as long as nobody gets hurt... Someone needs to keep them in line. And that someone is Greg. Does it tire him? Yes. Does he care? Eh, he got used to it. He and Mary will get along well. The biggest theme in my fic is to destigmatize that awful Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry. Mary is chill. Slytherpuff duo of Common Sense. Are they wary of each other at first? Yeah, but the point is that they ignore the surface-level House bullshit and grow over first impressions.
John and Sherlock, dudes. You know the drill. They’re the core members, but they are in for a whooping. They cannot be in a bubble, even if they’re the other pair of the protagonists. They both have to cooperate with others to grow as people. And what better way to do it than to put them into a crew that fucks shit up? I’d like to develop this thought but that would contain spoilers, and I have to remind myself that I havenpt update in... an abominable amount of time. So I’m making up with this post lol.
Now, the name of the crew.
- I don’t know
The main trio that is John, Sherlock, and Greg I have already titled the Detective Trio. But the whole crew of 7... Lucky Seven? Oh, that actually isn’t bad and will correlate with the later plot development in the 1997 timeline... I’m a genius
I think Lucky Seven can be the shield name for now anyway, hah
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
oh yeah and one the aforementioned peeps will become a werewolf haha
(Part 2 of this post where Bee asked about their Animagi powers)
Why did you want to solve the case of Carl Powers? How did you notice it? And how did you find out about his shoes?
Finally someone's asking the right questions! Even the police did not ask that.
Carl was a swimming champion, having won multiple competitions. For someone with his abilities, the chances of death by drowning are low. Really low. Also, he was on a school trip to London. There was no way his shoes would be missing from the crime scene. It sounded like an absurd detail to everyone else, but really, when you think of it, where on Earth could they possibly go?
As for how I noticed it, the news made front page headlines. Postmortem said it was an accident and the case was closed rather quickly, but I tried to get the police interested. They wouldn't listen to what they called a "delusional kid".
...I hope I hadn't piqued anyone's interest with my attempts, though. Wouldn't want the actual murdered having a grudge on me.
I was looking at this image from this meta x. I don't know if it has already been analyzed, I'm actually getting lost ...
But "if dog can't swim, neighbor is the killer"? With all the absurdity of "Redbeard who is a dog but not a dog who is a child who dies in a well but who cares, where is the dog bowl?", With all the work we did to read all this metaphorically, the fact remains that Canonically Victor Trevor was also something for Holmes, even if he was just a friend (if ...). And in Sherlock, narratively he seems to be a neighbor. Is there anything true in Victor Trevor's story? If the dog can't swim, if homosexual love is drowned by emotions, will it be the neighbor whit Sherlock will fall in love with?
No longer being able to swim is what happened to Carl Powers too, Sherlock's first "case". And we know that Watson is a (pink) case for him. Victor and Powers, evoke the same idea, victory and power, who thah wins is powerful, power leads to victory. Between Carl and Trevor I have not found any obvious relationship, but Trevor is a name with which the Moffits have had to work because it already exists in Canon and Carl actually means ... Freeman.
Jim keeps his voice, and his expression, unreadable as he answers. His tone was deceivingly casual.
“A necessary evil.”
As it was for everyone else, it was a learning period in his life. Although his childhood contained the stepping stones to become what would eventually be who he is today, the actual conditions of his childhood were… something to be decided. No kid in a ‘healthy environment’ would kill his classmate over being laughed at (as well as keeping the kids shoes for several years following as a ‘souvenir’), after all.
Not that he would say as much out loud, of course.
The not so hidden meaning of Sherlock series 4 Spoiler Alert!
I think that it was all supposed to take place inside of Sherlock’s head, just like everything that we have seen him go through, from The Abominable Bride, to the Hounds Of Baskerville. He has always shown that he is very in control of his mind right? well that is until he is too injured to think right. Then it is all out of his hands. And what else does this to him? Drugs. I think that it is all taking place just after he was shot by Mary, he then enters Coma, (Because let’s be honest, who is going to come out of being shot in the heart and dying briefly that quickly and well?) He is stuck in his own mind where he is trying to build walls around himself so that he stays sane in there, and in doing so he creates this whole life and world of lies for himself. First of all he needs to tell John what happened because that is what he would do if he was awake. He would go to John. then he needs to kill Magnussen, because hey, why wouldn’t he do that in real life? But this is where we get our first hint that it is not real. He kills him. Sherlock does not kill people, but we tend to do what we want to do more freely when we are dreaming, and Sherlock has proven that he has feelings and urges and he, of course in real life would have had the urge to kill him but ultimately wouldn’t because he doesn't kill people he just locks them away or they die because of freak accidents.
Then we have our next thing come into play. (And bare with me, things are about to get a bit like Inception here) The Abominable Bride, and Jim Moriarty’s return. So Sherlock clearly misses Jim, he admits it to himself and to us when he brings him back in his mind with the bill boards displaying his message, he is asking himself all throughout the Film, with the boards, with Mycroft, with every turn he asks himself that question. He misses Jim, so he brings him back, he needs him back to stabilize himself but he knows that he cannot bring him back because he has no idea how he could survive a bullet through the brain. And honestly he believes him to be dead in real life. So he, while in his mind in Coma, enters his mind palace and debunks Jim being alive. However, he gives us our next clues. #1 He loses control of things when he is on drugs, they inhibit his ability to tell himself to stop. They make telling to difference between reality, and fantasy near impossible. (And what do they have him on so that he is stabilized so that he does not die? That’s right.) #2 Jim tells him (And us) flat out that it is all a dream. He is warning him, begging him to wake up. “It doesn't make sense Sherlock, It doesn't make sense because it is not real.” And it doesn’t, non of series four made any sense! it was like it was all bad fan-fiction, not the elaborate stories that we are used to seeing.
So then we have it all handed to us, we know for a fact that Carl powers is dead, we know what killed him and how it killed him. But Victor Trevor, we don’t really know that for sure, do we? It was never even hinted at before. And it is all to perfectly identical to reality, to the first Series's. Victor Trevor drown because of a child that Sherlock knew, that Sherlock was close with. Carl Powers drown because of a child, (But what if this is all to tell us that Sherlock really knew Moriarty, that perhaps they were so close that Sherlock had forgotten him after he found out the awful thing that jim had done.) a child that Sherlock knew. Victor Trevor was the first case that Sherlock ever had, he was the first trauma that he ever experienced. Carl Powers was the first case, the first trauma that he ever experienced. Sherlock could not save or avenge Carl, so he felt guilty enough from it that he made the exact same thing happen with Trevor. Sherlock feels guilt for not saving Carl, so he torments himself over it (Along with other things too, like what he has done to Molly, what he has put Mycroft through, everything) because it scares him, and right now he is terrified because he cannot wake up.
Then there is the fact that Euros is like Moriarty in so many ways. The earliest description of Euros and her problems was from Mycroft. He told Sherlock and us that when she was little she cut open her arm and did not seem to feel the pain, “Which one is pain?” She does not react to pain, not even when it is severe. Then we remember that we heard Mycroft describe Moriarty in real life. They interrogated (Tortured) him for weeks. Nothing. He just looked into the darkness the entire time. He did not cry out, he did not fight it, he just let it happen as though he did not feel a thing. Then When Sherlock goes into the room with Jim in his mind palace, (After he was shot and fighting) We see Moriarty in a padded cell, he is stuck there and he is supposed to be contained, but he is not fully. He manages to lunge at Sherlock, causing him enough pain that it knocks him to the floor. Then we see Euros. She is in a cell, alone and all in white (Like Jim) and she is contained, until she lunges at Sherlock and causes him pain, knocking him to the floor. Now we need to go back reality, back to the roof top where we saw Moriarty for the last time. Sherlock sees Moriarty kill himself, and when he does he looks like he is about to cry, he looks sad and like he is so alone up there in the clouds, on the roof top nearest to them. He reaches out to Sherlock for comfort as he shoots himself. Sherlock is distraught. We can actually hear him say “No” when the trigger is pulled. He could not save Jim Moriarty. He regrets this, he regrets that he did not reach out to him and pull him closer, that he did not make him feel less alone by just holding him and telling him that he was not alone, that he was there. Because he knows now that Jim had mental problems, that he was on the edge and that he did nothing to stop him from jumping himself. Then with the last time that we see Euros she is sad, she is crying like how Sherlock imagines that Jim wanted to, She says that she is alone and in the clouds (On a roof top nearest to the clouds) and she can’t come down (He never came down). Now this time Sherlock grabs her, he holds her close to him like he wishes that he had with Jim (Because he doesn’t kill. He saves), He tells her that he is there, that she is not alone and he helps her, he walked her down from her own roof top and into safety like he wished he had done for Moriarty. We then see her loaded into a car by police, just like Jim was, but instead she is not in a body bag, she is alive, like how he wishes Jim was.
The whole thing did not make sense, and what did Moriarty tell us? “It doesn't make sense, because it is not real.” It was never real, Sherlock is in coma and using this fake reality to cope. He is creating another part and stage to his life because he is not awake to live it, So he makes up this whole origin story for himself, but not so creativity. Instead he takes parts from his real life, because that is all that he can do, the whole thing about Mind Palaces is that you cannot think of a place that you have never been, so Sherlock just copied his life and twisted it until it seemed real.
The appearance of Victor Trevor in TFP as a little pirate friend from Sherlock’s childhood, who got trapped in a well where he drowned, is intriguing to say the least; it doesn’t seem to connect with anything else we had seen in the show, except for the dog Redbeard. But Victor is not a new element for Sherlockians over the world, and I think this meta by @sagestreet gives an excellent explanation of how Victor fits into the show on a meta level. But what about the textual and subtextual levels? I imagine this has been brought up before, but something just seemed to click into place, so I’ll just throw my thoughts on it out here anyway. There are some pieces of the puzzle that stands out to me, so let’s try to put them together into something - more or less - coherent.
So, for a start: what exactly do we know about Victor Trevor from ACD canon (The Gloria Scott, GLOR)? I’ve highlighted certain facts that caught my attention in this recollection (Sidney Paget’s illustrations are all found here):
Well, basically this:
The story about Victor Trevor was Sherlock Holmes’ first case ever.
Sherlock got to know Victor when they were both at college.
They became friends (Sherlock’s only friend) because Victor’s dog bit Sherlock so he ended up in a sick bed where Victor spent a lot of time with him.
Victor came from a rich family, and Sherlock spent a summer with Victor and his father (Trevor senior; a “squire”) at their large, old-fashioned house with high chimneys.
In what is described as his ‘first case’, Sherlock deduced (parts of) and eventually learned what had happened to Victor’s father, involving a ship with convicts (Trevor senior among them), a mutiny, explosions, killings, shipwreck and Trevor senior ending up hiding under false name for the rest of his life.
Hudson, a surviving criminal from the event, showed up at the mansion, getting drunk and blackmailing Victor’s father with the threat of exposure, which would forever sully his and his family’s name.
Victor’s father's real name was James Armitage, the initials of which Sherlock discovered from his secret tattoo. He got suspicious of Sherlock, who could deduce his criminal past, which led to Sherlock leaving the place.
Victor showed Sherlock a message with a skip code that had meant imminent danger to Trevor senior. It’s a threat of exposure, the fear from which he never recovered; it gave him a stroke that lead to his death.
The skip code read, after deciphering: “The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life.”
After his father’s death, Victor ended up “heart-broken” in a tea plantation in India. Sherlock and Victor never seemed to have met again after that.
This is Sherlock, many years later, telling John about the message Victor had him decipher:
“Yet the fact remains that the reader, who was a fine, robust old man, was knocked clean down by it as if it had been the butt end of a pistol.”
“You arouse my curiosity,” said I.
Now, this does not bear the slightest similarity to what we learn about Victor in TFP, does it? But what if his story is indeed included in BBC Sherlock, but not (just) in TFP; what if the story about Victor is scattered all over the episodes in the show? And what if this scattered story about Victor is meant to give us clues about the emotional trauma in Sherlock’s past that made him shut down his feelings? Under the cut, let’s take a closer look at some elements of the episodes from this perspective, to see if this idea would make any sense:
ASiP
This is only the first episode of the show, but I think some traces of Victor might be found already here. James Phillimore, 18, who seemed to have some problems with internalised homophobia (judging by how he refused to share an umbrella with his friend in the heavy rain), was found dead near a sports centre, seemingly having committed suicide with a poison. But Sherlock’s investigation makes it clear that Phillimore is one of the victims of serial-killer cabbie Jeff Hope. Phillimore was a student at Roland Kerr’s College for Further Education, an old building with Victorian design (see my recent meta + additions for a more in-depth analysis of the significance of this college).
In canon James Phillimore figures as an unsolved problem in The Problem of Thor Bridge (THOR):
“A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader. Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.”
(The main plot of THOR, however, is a triangle drama where one of the involved parts commits suicide but tries to arrange it so their rival is accused of murder.) Roland Kerr’s college is also where Jeff Hope takes Sherlock to talk to him and make him kill himself at the end of ASiP, and where (supposedly) John shoots Hope. The college is also represented as Sherlock’s Mind Palace in HLV, where he finds comfort and strength to survive a gunshot by mentally summoning his childhood’s dog Redbeard.
TGG
Several people have pointed out, about this last episode of S1, that Moriarty’s five “Greenwich pips” transmitted by a pink telephone (=heart metaphor) in TGG represent the five series in BBC Sherlock. Moriarty’s ‘great game’ with pips in it begins with an explosion close to 221B.
The case of Carl Powers is what comes from the first pip, but it also ties into the fifth and final pip. In the first pip we learn that the death of Carl Powers was Sherlock’s first case, an he has saved a press clip of the boy from this case:
In TFP, however, we’re told that The Musgrave Ritual was his first case. None of them is canon consistent, however, since ACD told us that Holmes first case was The Gloria Scott. According to Sherlock’s discoveries in TGG, Carl was a young swimming athlete who was poisoned by Jim Moriarty, which lead to him drowning in the pool. The official version from the police, however, was that Carl died in the water due to some sort of ‘fit’. The case of the fifth pip takes place at the swimming pool where Carl died.
Strangely enough, Sherlock makes an appointment with Jim exactly there, and this pool is also where Jim tosses the valuable memory stick that Sherlock has recovered. The Carl Powers case was never solved, though, and the Bruce Partington memory stick was never recovered. Which means, that if the fifth pip is foreshadowing S5, the Carl Powers case might come up again in S5.
THoB
This whole episode of S2 is about a guy, Henry Knight, who is haunted by a childhood trauma in which he lost his father. Sherlock seems particularly engaged in this ‘cold case’ with modern times consequences. For the first time we see him shaking with fear after having (supposedly) sighted the same monstrous ‘hound’ that has affected Henry since he was a boy.
But it turns out that “there never was any monster”; Henry’s father was killed by his own friend. (Please read @sagestreet‘s brilliant ‘Follow the dogs’ meta series for subtextual explanations of how the ‘hound’ mythology represents homophobia, and many other very interesting ideas). Another important fact that we learn in this episode, is that Sherlock considers John his only friend.
TRF
In one of Sherlock’s cases in the last episode of S2, he and John visit a boarding school, from which two children have been kidnapped. Sherlock’s sudden rant against Miss MacKenzie is a little bit weird, though, isn’t it?
Moriarty has poisoned the children by luring them to eat toxic chocolate. In this episode Sherlock and John are very much exposed and speculated about in the media. Suddenly Sherlock is accused of the kidnapping and Moriarty blackmails Sherlock by threatening John, which (supposedly) leads to Sherlock killing himself (but he actually disappears by faking his suicide).
TEH
in the first episode of S3, when Sherlock comes back from the dead, he immediately deduces that John’s fiancee ‘Mary’ has a secret tattoo and is a liar:
Later, in HLV, it turns out she has been hiding under a false name and lied about her criminal past and has many deaths on her conscience as an assassin. Sherlock also observes that ‘Mary’ can recognise a skip code; in fact there’s a skip code sent as a warning about an imminent danger to John.
Sherlock deciphers it, and the resulting message is “Save John Watson”, which leads him to where John is trapped in a bonfire.
HLV
At the end of the last episode of S3, John is threatened by the ruthless blackmailer and media magnate CAM, who flicks John’s face in front of Sherlock and threatens them both with exposure in his news paper.
I’ve written about this in The Threat of Exposure and other metas about media’s role in BBC Sherlock (X, X).
TST
In the first episode of S4, young Charlie Welsborough is found dead in his own car outside his rich (and Thatcher-loving) parents’ mansion, when his car is hit by another car and explodes.
Rather than (as is his MO in S1 and S2) investigating the crime scene to find out what really happened, Sherlock quickly concludes merely from police data that Charlie had made himself invisible by disguising as a car seat.
According to Sherlock, instead of surprising his father by coming out of the car, as he (supposedly) had planned, Charlie died instantly from some sort of ‘seizure’, and sat there dead until the car exploded a week later. (Added to this case is also the smashing of a Thatcher bust, which later in TST leads to Sherlock discovering a valuable memory stick).
What bothers me however, apart from the fact that Sherlock’s explanation is quite illogical, is the subtextual implications: a) Charlie is queer-coded,
(the rainbow is just one of the clues) and b) dying inside one’s own car like that is suspiciously similar to a common suicide method. The idea that Charlie (supposedly) died from a “seizure” ties him closely to Carl Powers - his namesake in Sherlock’s first case, who according to the police died from a “fit” in the water. And Sherlock was reminded of Carl’s case directly after an explosion in TGG. Only this time it’s Sherlock who jumps to conclusions about a ‘seizure’, rather than the police. Which makes me believe that this event represents something entirely different inside Sherlock’s Memory Palace/Mind Theatre. Something dwelling in Sherlock’s subconscious, possibly involving a young (boy)friend ‘coming out’ to a conservative, homophobic father in the Thatcher era. And a possible suicide (or at least disappearance?) by said (boy)friend. Victor Trevor travelled to India in canon, while Charlie Welsborough was traveling in Tibet before he died. (Sounds a bit similar to Sherlock traveling in Tibet/Himalaya during the canon hiatus/MHR doesn’t it?).
TFP
In this last episode of S4, theres an explosion at 221B Baker Street, caused by a ‘patience grenade’:
Sherlock and John suddenly appear on a ship as pirates:
They take over the boat and force their way onto Sherrinford Island where Eurus is imprisoned. This is also the only episode where Victor Trevor is mentioned, but he’s not a young man; he’s supposed to be a kid from Sherlock’s childhood - his best (and only) friend. Victor is very much presented as a John mirror; short blond hair, checked shirt and trapped in a well.
Sherlock and Victor were playing pirates outside Sherlock’s childhood home, the mansion Musgrave Hall, which apparently had high chimneys.
Sherlock was called ‘Yellowbeard’ and Victor ‘Redbeard’. In TFP we also see John and Sherlock hijacking a fishing boat and telling the captain that they’re pirates. In spite of both Sherlock’s dog Redbeard and Victor figuring in early snippets of Sherlock’s dreams in S4, Sister Sentiment Eurus later tells him that they never had a dog;
Sherlock was not allowed to have one, since their father was ‘allergic’. We also learn that Eurus (Sherlock’s supposedly forgotten sister) killed Victor by trapping him in a well, because she was jealous that her brother Sherlock had a friend and she was not included in their games. Nothing more is explained about Victor, however (and I feel sure this storyline isn’t over yet).
Victor never came out of the well; he drowned there, but at the end of TFP John seems to be trapped in the same well as Victor, and discovers his bones in it. In the last minute, with a raising water level, Sherlock saves John from the well by solving a puzzle and thereby finding and embracing Eurus.
Conclusion
So, I do believe that we have most of the ingredients of canon’s story about Victor Trevor and the ship The Gloria Scott scattered over the whole show: colleges and boarding schools; a dog; two best friends who were separated; a young man who might have committed suicide, a homophobic father; a mansion; a secret tattoo; a skip code with an important message; someone seemingly innocent with a criminal past; a ship with pirates (= mutinous criminals); dangerous explosions; blackmail and threats of exposure; a trip to Asia. And the back story is merged with the show’s present. What all this might mean for the next series, we can only speculate, but I do think that we have a pattern here.
Thanks to everyone who has had the patience to read all this. :) Tagging some people who might be interested: @sarahthecoat @tjlcisthenewsexy @ebaeschnbliah @fellshish @gosherlocked @loveismyrevolution @sagestreet @sherlockshadow @darlingtonsubstitution @devoursjohnlock @tendergingergirl @kateis-cakeis @csi-baker-street-babes @88thparallel @timilina @dieseldrakilis @sherlock-overflow-error @elldotsee
