#jamielock.

[jamiemoriartes]

13

SEND ME A QUESTION REGARDING MY MUSE.

13. What about your muse makes you sad?

I’ve already sort of covered what makes me emotional about Jamie here, so, for the sake of not repeating myself, I’m going to talk about Jamielock (A.K.A. Sheriarty). This is stepping into canon territory, with spoilers, so mind how you go! So, Elementary’s take on the over 100 year old ship of Moriarty and Holmes is fascinating. Disregarding spoilers for a second, and just talking about how Jamie and Sherlock relate to each other, it really is tragic. They are each other’s only intellectual equals, the only people, as Jamie says, that they can really talk to. But they are separated by a wide gulf of empathy. Jamie has spent her entire life thinking she’s alone, intellectually, only to find that there is someone else out there who sees everything she does, who might just be an intellectual sparring partner. Her loneliness never bothered her (the way it seems to have bothered Sherlock), but now she has the potential of someone who is her equal? She’s fascinated. And so, imagine her disappointment when she finds what a disappointment he is. Not only is he shackled by empathy to the point of it being a burden to him, but he is so deeply emotive that he turns to drug use to escape from those feelings. Jamie is disappointed in Sherlock, but she can’t quite bring herself to withdraw completely from him, and that’s her ultimate downfall. She’s not sure if what she feels is love, or some stunted version of it, because she’s had no experience with the emotion, but she’s afraid that it is, because that’s something she’s supposed to have cast aside as a useless emotion, which serves no grand purpose at all. She’s determined to make him see the world the way she does, because she believes her viewpoint is superior, but he ultimately ends up getting inside her head instead, affecting her decisions, she says, “in the strangest of ways”. And that is so sad, because she rails against his influence on principle. She’s incapable of the kind of transformation he wants her to undergo. It’s beyond her. And that is so darn tragic.

[jamiemoriartes]

meta + romance

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Romance

First of all, I love that you sent this to me? You know I’ll never miss an opportunity to talk about Jamielock, so here goes! I think, until Sherlock, Jamie had only had flings. Having a long-term romantic partner never appealed to her, and she didn’t see anyone worth the time and effort that would take to maintain. She has needs, so sure, she’s had meaningless one night stands, but until him, I can’t imagine that she had a romantic partner, or any desire for one. And even then, her time as Irene was a quick way to get close to him to assess if he was a potential threat. It’s hard to judge Sherlock and Irene’s relationship honestly, given that Irene wasn’t real, but I think we do see glimmers of Jamie in Irene. She loves painting, and art, which Jamie does, she is very clever, which Jamie obviously is, and  quick-witted. I think Tarin put it best when she said that Irene was the best parts of Jamie, without the sociopathy, lack of empathy, and callousness. So, though Irene Adler wasn’t real, she was still Jamie, in a way. Also this moment:

This moment preys on me, you guys. She’s watching him. She has no need to watch him -- he’s not looking at her. This isn’t for his benefit. And yet, she’s looking at him with that little smile, for nobody’s benefit but her own. Why? I think it’s because he’s kept his promise, and given her another “entirely unique experience” in showing her this place. I really think she didn’t know these tunnels and prayer tablets were here, and she’s genuinely impressed with Sherlock here. Again: this is the only time we see her, as Irene, doing something positive when he’s not watching. Because there is also this moment, when she looks at him when he’s not looking at her:

But this strikes me as more of a look like “I’m gonna figure you out, you potential threat to my criminal empire”. Anyway, I refuse to believe that Jamie was capable of maintaining an almost year-long relationship with Sherlock -- going on dates, sleeping together, visiting places -- without feeling some flicker of fondness for him. She claims she simply ended her “project” when she realised that he wasn’t a threat to her criminal activities, but I doubt that very much, judging by the pained way in which she admits she “failed to predict his descent into addiction.” I think his fall from grace troubled her more acutely than anything had in a long while, because here was her equal, her opposite, giving in to such a debasing addiction. I got off topic there, so, to drag it back to romance, I’ll say this: Jamie is interested in long-term romantic entanglements, though she doesn’t know it yet. She’s had one before. Her feelings for Sherlock aren’t orthodox, by any stretch of the imagination -- she’s able and willing to sit calmly and chat with him while he’s got a bullet wound in his shoulder, she openly threatens to “hurt him” if he gets in her way, and she’s the reason he became a drug addict to begin with -- but they’re still there. For all her emptiness, she is capable of romance, just not a romance ordinary people would recognise as one. Now, more gifs, for my own sake:

[jamiemoriartes]

⚔️

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⚔️ - Consider her worst enemy?

I’m going to cheat a little here and talk about Sherlock Holmes. Jamie has yet to make an enemy in Echo Springs that she considers a worthy mental opponent (she dislikes Kaz and Jessica, and is on her way to also adding Inej to that list) so, in order to really answer this, I’m going to have to delve into her canon, forgotten, past. Her relationship with Sherlock is too tangled to properly unpack here, but he is, without a doubt, her worst enemy. He’s the reason she was imprisoned, and he is the only person she considers on her intellectual level. As she says to him, “I know what that’s like. Only me”, in reference to how he sees the world. Without a doubt, he’s the person she considers to be her equal, with his empathy and morality acting as an impassable chasm between them. Despite not having full access to her memories, flashes of Sherlock still come to her, in the form of dreams, and she finds herself sketching him sometimes, wishing she knew who he was. As much as other inhabitants of Echo Springs could be, and are, thorns in Jamie’s side, and potential threats, there will never be another like Sherlock to Moriarty.