Why aren’t they denying “Sherlolly” from the start? 

 (Sherlock meta by eugeniebatch)

“And he adores Molly, of course he does. He loves her. I don’t think she has the same sort of crush on him anymore.” (x) 

“While Sherlock was faking emotion when he was talking to John from the rooftop, […] when he goes to Molly, he’s being genuinely emotional.” (x) 

“In the end of that scene, she’s a bit wounded by it all, but he’s absolutely devastated. He smashes up the coffin, he’s in pieces, he’s more upset than she is, and that’s a huge step in Sherlock’s development. The question is: Did Sherlock survive that scene? She probably had a drink and went and shagged someone, I dunno. Molly was fine.” (x) 

I have noticed that most of the time, when Moffat talks about Molly/Sherlock and their feelings for each other, he specifically talks about Sherlock’s feelings, like trying to imply that his feelings are more important (or equally important?) than Molly’s, or that the viewers should focus more on his feelings than on hers (maybe because Molly’s are obvious).

I know some of you will say “oh, please, that’s because he’s a misogynist and we already know he always diminishes Molly’s character, etc, etc, etc.” But I’m not trying to discuss that. Not now.

What I’m trying to point out is that, to Moffat, Molly is always fine (in the end). She helps him but tells him off when she needs to, she always wins their discussions and she seems to be the strongest one when they’re together.

On the contrary, Sherlock seems to be the one with “all the feels”. He’s the only one who gets hurt the most, feels more emotional and is the most affected one (by Molly and the circumstances around/between them).

Some weeks ago, I asked for someone to find me any links or quotes where Moffat or Gatiss have mentioned Molly's unrequited love for Sherlock, in an explicit way. I needed to find something like that to be sure of what I was going to write here, but unfortunately nobody could help me…

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that neither Moffat nor Gatiss have ever declared that Molly’s feelings were unrequited. I have never watched/read an interview in which they have made clear that Sherlock doesn’t love her (romantically), as they did when talking about John (here).

On the contrary, they have specified he ACTUALLY does and the only sources we have to believe he doesn’t have feelings for her are Louise Brealey talking about ‘unrequited love’ in some of her interviews, several articles written by journalists or bloggers claiming it to be that way and, of course, our own eyes as viewers of the series. There is no evidence that the creators of the series have made explicitly clear that he has no feelings for Molly Hooper. Not before this season and not after it (yet), although we had Gatiss saying: “We have to be left uncertain as to, when he says ‘I love you’, does he actually mean it or is he just saying the right thing to save her life. You’ll never quite know.” (x)

Well, then… my question is: Why aren’t they denying “Sherlolly” from the start? Why not saying it’s something that didn’t happen and won’t happen at all because Sherlock “is clearly capable of feeling emotion and of falling for someone, but that someone is not Molly Hooper”, for example????

Is this something we are completely missing?

“Moriarty slipped up, he made a mistake…”

 (Sherlock meta by eugeniebatch and anarfea)

eugeniebatch:

Oh, no. He didn’t.
He told Eurus about Molly.

In those 5 minutes, he told her about the things that would drive Sherlock out of his mind. And of course, he also told her about the person who mattered the most, giving her the opportunity to play with Sherlock’s emotions.

Thus, even after death, Moriarty managed to “burn the heart out of him”.

anarfea:

I thought that Eurus deduced this herself. Sherlock made the mistake of having Molly show up at John’s therapy session to diagnose him. And John refers to her as “the one person who can see through your bullshit.” Eurus watches the whole exchange after she examines him where Molly says “I’m stressed; you’re dying.” She sees what they mean to each other, when they exchange those dark, meaningful looks at the ambulance.

Jim thought that John was Sherlock’s heart, IMO. He connected John to Victor via Redbeard (hence the referring to John as a ‘pet.’ as does Eurus). He thought John is the person who matters the most to Sherlock, and he thought that Sherlock would kill Mycroft to save John, and that he would suffer terribly.

Eurus says that “Moriarty thought you would make this choice.” I think she was hoping that Sherlock would kill John to save Mycroft, because she wanted him to chose his family over his friend. The way she wanted him to chose her over Victor when they were children.

I think that Jim and Eurus had a post-mortem bet going on, about who Sherlock would kill. And I think they both lost, because in the end Sherlock chose to kill himself before he’d kill either Mycroft or Sherlock.

And as for Molly. I like to think that Jim didn’t realize that Molly mattered, and that Eurus did. But the real catch of course, is that neither of them succeeded in burning Sherlock’s heart out in the end. He came to the realization that he loves her. And you can see at the end of The Final Problem that she knows it. If anything, they help Sherlock find his heart again, after it was broken in The Lying Detective by his grief over Mary’s death and John’s cruelty towards him.

The definition of "begging for mercy"

 (Sherlock meta by eugeniebatch)

["Am I the only person in this fandom who knows what it means to beg for mercy? I don't want to crap on anyone's pretty gifset, but merely saying 'please' is not begging for mercy. A person who begs for mercy is admitting that he is utterly powerless, usually in the face of authority threatening torture or death. You beg for mercy when you have no other option but to accept your fate. A dominatrix could be such an authority in a playful sense. If you want an example of begging for mercy, Irene does it after Sherlock guesses her password, when she says 'are you expecting me to beg?' He has the power then, she has none. She is begging for mercy, which he refuses."]

So, I found myself reading [this] from a blogger I used to follow and [...] this really annoyed me because I don’t think this person is right, so I need to express what I think.

First of all, does this person really think Sherlock is “merely” saying please? I mean, I’m quite sure he’s not saying it insignificantly, having into account the situation in which Molly is in.

Secondly, doesn’t this person think Sherlock is, in fact:

• “utterly powerless” (he has no decision power here!) ?? 
• “in the face of an authority” (does Eurus mean something to you?) ??? 
• “threatening torture or death” (“her flat is rigged to explode”) ???? 

Lastly, doesn’t this person also think that, besides Eurus, Molly also has “all the power”? (although she didn’t even know it!). Sherlock is begging for mercy because she refuses to say “I love you”, and as this person wrote in the tags, “you beg for mercy when you have no other option but to accept your fate” (and in this case, he has no other option than accepting Molly’s fate because, by not saying those words, she’s certainly going to die!)

I believe this scene demonstrated us that a person doesn’t only “beg for mercy” when he/she is (actually) in front of an enemy or authority, but also when another person (who he/she cares about) is in grave danger.

Don’t you think so?

Pessimistic and realistic Sherlolly readings on the ILY scene

 (Sherlock meta by diane-w, eugeniebatch, bassfanimation and justaminion)

diane-w:

Molly didn’t ask him if he loved her. She already knew he did. She just wanted him to say it first.

eugeniebatch:

(I’m writing this as the pessimistic and realistic Sherlolly shipper I try to be) Indeed. She didn’t ask him: “Do you love me? Because if you do, I’ll say those words to you”. No. She knows he doesn’t love her. She always knew (or at least, she thought it). That’s why she asks him: “Say it like you mean it [because I know you don’t, but if you want to play with me, then I’ll play with you]”. HOWEVER, he didn’t need to say it TWICE! He said it twice just because he wanted to. And that’s a fact.

bassfanimation:

I can see this logic being absolutely real, but I still slightly disagree. I’m not entirely pessimistic, though I am still somewhat rooted in reality. I think my view is my brain trying desperately to see at least some sunshine in this world.

I think Molly said “Say it like you mean it”, because she knew he would just try and play it off like he didn’t mean it. That’s how closed off he is to the mere idea of love. He even stated it in The Lying Detective, right at the end, that whole “While romantic entanglements might be fulfilling for other people” bit. I still feel that was his whole rehearsed “bullshit” he’s fed himself, and everyone else, for years. That’s what Molly was prepared for…his act, his game. 

If Molly Hooper is the one who ‘sees through his bullshit’, then she probably has (and has had for a while, remembering The Empty Hearse) a sense that Sherlock does feel for her, but that he’d never, ever say it. It would always be something he wasn’t comfortable actually admitting or getting ‘entangled’ in. Her saying, “Say it like you mean it”, to me, was her saying to him, “We have had this thing together for so long, but you refuse to make it real, so I’m not playing with you anymore…you have this chance to make it real. Will you, or won’t you?”

I do think maybe Molly thought he might not say it and mean it. I think this was a gamble she took. He could have simply repeated it that one time and that would have been it, she’d have hung up, and they’d be damaged beyond repair. But…I do agree with your last line there, he not only said it once, but TWICE, when he didn’t really need to? Not unless he needed to say it again for himself. That last ILY was, as most people have noted, almost like a realization to himself rather than to Molly. Molly, I still think, already may have known Sherlock loved her. Her frustration with him though, of him never acting on it, that was really tearing them apart. To me, that was the actual ticking bomb…the one between Molly and Sherlock.

Truth is, we’ll never know. Both of these could be true, or hell, he may not have meant it at all. Unless Moffat gives us a real, concrete answer, we’ll always be left wondering, and Moffat never gives real, concrete answers to anything.

diane-w:

Since she sees through his BS, I do think she suspects he loves her, too, but he won’t admit it or accept it. I also get the impression (I know she was having a bad day but still) from her demeanor that even though he’ll always have her heart she is just about done with him. She was glaring at the phone before picking up. I think Eurus unintentionally did them both a favor.

justaminion:

It’s really fascinating because she does see through his BS but the exception is when it involves Molly herself (e.g I don’t count). I think she asked him to say it as a practical demonstration, because he didn’t understand why she couldn’t ‘just say it anyway.’ Which means she also must believe that he cares for her enough to feel uncomfortable saying it. But I don’t think she believes he loves her romantically, or even understands romantic love in the slightest.

bassfanimation:

Oh that’s a wonderful observation and it perfectly explains the whole back and forth with Sherlock asking why she can’t say it, and how he doesn’t even understand why she can’t. Also, just telling her to “say it anyway, if it’s true”…is the most Sherlocky thing in the world… He’s still thinking with logic to a degree, as if Molly saying that to him is just her stating a fact…but it isn’t. It’s so much more powerful than that. That is why the second time he says it, he seems to be surprised by his feelings, and why Eurus lost count of all of his ‘complicated’ emotions. That is why he freaked out and obliterated the coffin. That is why he slide down the wall, sitting looking as if he was just emotionally exhausted. He now suddenly understands the feeling Molly Hooper has had for 7 years because he is now feeling it himself. The pure, raw, complicated chemistry of love.