Love is not a game

 (Sherlock meta by heart-knows-no-shame, cumbercougars and bassfanimation)

heart-knows-no-shame:

It’s been weeks and I’m just so struck by the fact that the whole theme of Sherlock throughout the years was…“The game is on!”. Sherlock using the distraction of his detective work as a substitute high, and honestly a way to keep himself at arms length from ‘humans’ and any emotional and/or romantic relationships of course.

And then there’s The Final Problem and in comes Eurus Holmes, setting up this game for Sherlock, and putting Molly Hooper’s life in danger, and during that call we get all this…

• Is this one of your stupid games? No, it’s not a game. 
• I’m not an experiment, Sherlock. No, I know you’re not an experiment, you’re my friend, we’re friends. 
• You know why. No, I don’t know why. 
• Because it’s true, Sherlock. It’s always been true. Well if it’s true then just say it anyway. 
• Say it like you mean it. I love you. I love you. 

He spends the whole phone call worried and pleading and as soon as it’s done he tries to shut all that off and get back to the game so he says…”Eurus, I won, I won…I won, I saved Molly Hooper.” 

But then you have Eurus coming back with that emotional context speech and being like, Haha nope, silly boy, you just lost, you proved yourself wrong, you have emotions, you do care. 

And the writers had Eurus use Molly Hooper against Sherlock, like this, to facilitate this exact epiphany, (disapproving everything he’s said over the years, that he’s not a hero, that he doesn’t have a heart) because Molly Hooper does count, she matters the most, he loves her, and love is not a game.

And  I just can’t get over how important that scene was [...] for Sherlock’s  entire arc of character development !

cumbercougars:

The “…if it’s true, say it anyway…” is even more poignant in repeated watchings because that’s when the penny drops with him. It makes my heart ache for both of them.

bassfanimation:

I still cant get over the fact that this scene essentially broke down Sherlock’s character into it’s purest, rawest form. A man finally letting himself love. For real. The game is over, his game with himself is over. This finally frees him from his own cold chains and he sees that the game never was fun, it was never who he was supposed to be. Molly saw that from the beginning…saw through his “bullshit”, his "game". Now everyone else knows Sherlock does have a heart…all thanks to Eurus Holmes and Molly Hooper, and of course everyone who loves Sherlock. But Molly was the key…the last door that unlocked that made it all possible. “You made it all possible.” “What do you need?” “You.”

On the confession scene

 (Sherlock meta by berlynn-wohl, cumbercougars, marykk1990 and isabeau221b)

berlynn-wohl:

JOHN: Every time Mary left the room to take care of our baby, I was texting with another woman. SHERLOCK: Don’t sweat it, bro, that’s not really cheating...

cumbercougars:

Oh you who live such pure lives…

Both men know it is cheating. John is being consumed alive by the guilt of it, we just watched him beat Sherlock to a pulp because of it, while Sherlock was consumed by the guilt of Mary’s death. Sherlock is attempting to comfort John, to assuage his guilt a little as a good friend would. What would be the point of grinding him down even more at that point. John needs to move beyond his guilt into healthy grief so that he can then get better and be the father Rosie needs and deserves. A man eaten up by guilt who sees his dead wife’s phantom dissaprovibg everywhere he goes does not make a good dad.

marykk1990:

Thank you @cumbercougars, I’m sick of people raking John over the coals. He’s obviously devastated by what he did and he knows it was wrong. He’s sobbing in pure grief over cheating on Mary and over losing Mary. And what else is Sherlock supposed to do? He’s going to comfort and support his friend. (And no, that is not a Johnlock hug to all the Pushy Jlockers out there.) They both loved Mary. This is a scene where John admits his guilt and begins to redeem himself.

isabeau221b:

Oh, thank God, some sanity at last! Sorry, it’s just that I started to get offended that so many people could not even fathom a man comforting another man without throwing them in bed. This was such an important scene for the character development of both Sherlock and John, that has multiple valid interpretations. The problem isn’t those who ship them, but those who insisted there was only one meaning behind the hug.