Sherlock’s subconscious sexual attraction toward John

 (Sherlock Meta by Loudest Subtext in Television)

-ziska said: You brought up in your "Subversion and Sherlock" Series (which is incredible and mindblowing) that eating equals sex or is meant as a metaphor. This got me wondering about a scene in The Empty Hearse. Mary is coming to Sherlock and is telling him that she thinks that John has been abducted. Sherlock is seen dropping his chips. They could have easily given him something else to drop like a glass of water for example. What is that supposed to mean in this context? I counldn't make sense of it.

Loudest Subtext in Television:

To answer that, we need to go over the crime scene that comes before it.

During the “Jack the Ripper” skeleton scene, Sherlock has John’s voice in his head criticizing him and asking him if he’s jealous. Note that Sherlock had to walk downstairs to get to the room with the skeleton, and it’s dark and dusty; it’s symbolic of his subconscious. This visual symbolism isn’t unique to Sherlock, it’s an old trope. Then a train comes through and knocks some dust loose, i.e. stuff is being dusted off in Sherlock’s subconscious, so things he hasn’t acknowledged in a long time are being forcibly uncovered.

After Sherlock leaves that room they visit the subway guy. We get a quick shot of one of the toy trains going around. The guy has been established as a mirror for Sherlock by being a weird guy who’s not afraid to be different, a guy who has specialized knowledge other people don’t, and a guy who notices things other people would miss, plus Sherlock wore his hat. When the guy says he has a girlfriend, Sherlock says, “Girlfriend?” and laughs, the subtext being that the idea of Sherlock having a girlfriend is laughable. And we get more shots with the toy trains moving around.

Afterward, Sherlock has that big mind palace sequence of trains going into tunnels, with the tunnels projected on him. The trains-in-tunnels visual metaphor has been a trope symbolizing sex in films for a long time, especially older films when it was less acceptable to simply show sex. During this sequence, we get a shot of Sherlock’s face doubled as if his attention is split two places, and indeed, the shots of John are interspersed between shots of Moran, insinuating that Sherlock is having trouble focusing on the case because he keeps thinking of John. As a train. Going into a tunnel. Which is projected on Sherlock.

In other words, Sherlock is being distracted by feelings of attraction toward John. Not to put too fine a point on it, but: Sherlock is literally thinking of trains going into tunnels, but his subconscious is like, speaking of which, I wish John would fuck me in the ass.

Note also that before Sherlock went down in the Jack the Ripper room, Lestrade had to tear the crime scene tape off the door. Then in The Sign of Three, we get another reference to Sherlock’s sexuality being a crime scene he’s endeavored to keep uncompromised during the drunken deduction scene.

So that’s why he’s suddenly like, damn, I not only want food, I want really heavy food. And he goes and eats it alone because he’s gay and sad.

If anyone cares for additional info on this set of scenes:

The skeleton is also a foil for Sherlock: it’s dressed like he dresses sometimes, we get “spruce” and “pine” as his incorrect guesses for the smell, when they’re both verbs for what he’s done this episode: he spruced himself up for John, now he pines for him. He’s been burned (might also be a Moriarty nod) and feels dead, but the skeleton can’t be more than six months old… which is how long Mary says she’s been with John (or at least how long he’s had the moustache). There’s a book called “How I Did It” when Sherlock is always telling how he did it (i.e. solved a crime). We get a nod to the ACD Holmes with the skeleton’s “Victorian outfit.” Lestrade says, “So it was a fake,” and Molly asks why anyone would go through all that trouble, and Sherlock responds, “Why indeed, John,” because he’s thinking of how he went through all his trouble faking his death and couldn’t even be with John at the end of it.

Speaking of eating being sex, no one’s ever asked me about John the morning after the stag night, and that’s my favorite example. John’s all ready to eat his favorite breakfast when the topic is Sherlock, but then Mrs Hudson brings up Mary and John suddenly looks nauseated at the thought of eating and doesn’t take a bite.