Saturday 6 February 2016


The Progress of Sherlock Holmes*
 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

I was thinking about The Abominable Bride, and all the ideas swirling around about what statement its making about the relationship between Sherlock and John. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think it says a whole lot about it. The story is mainly (thought not only) about Sherlock trying to work out how someone who shot themselves in the head with an audience might still be alive. So much so that I found it slightly odd that there isn’t even room for Sherlock to feel any relief about being released from his death sentence. Where’s his joy and being able to go home and take his life back, even if it’s just for a short while? He’s all work all the time, that guy.

But then I started thinking sideways about what kind of statement The Abominable Bride makes about Sherlock’s relationship with John. Look how far he’s come since series one, where he abandons John all over the place, and how he waited until John left the flat to sneak off and meet Moriarty that time. He is a solitary figure in the early days, even as his partnership is getting started. He ditches John most terribly at the end of series two, as if he’s still a completely independent actor without any ties to bind him. And in series three Sherlock is gobsmacked when he discovers that John considers him his best friend. As he’s dying and seeking comfort and control, Sherlock has his demons for company, but John is completely absent. He’s very much outside of Sherlock’s reach, and Sherlock is very much alone in his head. As essential as they are to each other, there is still a distance and disjointedness between them.

At the end of The Abominable Bride, while Sherlock’s wrestling with his demons as they threaten to consume him, for the first time John steps in and saves him from himself. Sherlock is no longer alone in his battles. From here on in, there’s always two of them; two of them on a case, two of them against the rest of the world, two of them saving Sherlock from the things that haunt him. He started out stubbornly independent, all doors shut to vulnerability and personal connections. But now, it seems he’s left one of those doors ajar, and John has slipped in.

So that’s something.

* Self-plagiarism is a thing.

Monday 1 February 2016


A conversation about Lestrade and Tom at the wedding
(Sherlock Meta by urbanhymnal, provocatrixxx and anneincolor)

urbanhymnal:

I need people to talk about how sad Lestrade looked at the wedding. We have a picture of him sitting off at his table, drinking by himself while everyone else is mingling and chatting. Then he had to sit next to beautiful, literally looking-like-a-ball-of sunshine Molly and her fiance, Tom. Everyone around him is so happy and there is Lestrade and his troubled marriage, all alone. No plus one with him.

He gives up on a huge arrest to check on Sherlock (making a bit of a fool of himself by scrambling over there with back up), gets left out of the stag night, and doesn’t get to party after the wedding because he has to clean up the mess again. He didn’t get to dance, either.

Papa Greg deserves better, damn it.

provocatrixxx:

Do you think maybe he’s feeling.. not ‘old’ old, but just… very aware of the passage of time?

I mean, he’s watching John marry Mary, and Mary is perfect for John. If we assume that John is one of his closest male friends, which seems reasonable, the happiness that he feels for John is going to be shadowed by his own insecurities. John chose the perfect woman and is marrying her and is glowing with it. Greg’s own marriage was completely wrong for him. For someone in Greg’s position, that’s going to hurt, there’s going to be something in the back of his mind that says he will never find his own perfect partner.

Molly, I think, is an extension of that. She was pining for Sherlock, but she decided to move on and she’s sticking with it. See how confident she is when Sherlock visits her in the lab? She makes him apologise to her. How very different from the first time we meet her and her faffing with the lipstick.

And Sherlock too. He’s difficult, he delivers an absolute mess of a speech, but he’s trying. And he gets there. He gives John a fantastic wedding. He’s slowly becoming ‘good’ as well as great.

So where does that leave poor Greg? He’s still in his job, he’s either still with his wife and unhappy about it, or he’s in a cramped little flat somewhere that’s dark and distressing which is why he lives in his office.

Everyone around him is going through massive changes and coming out the other side of them as better people. Greg is solid and dependable and that’s why we love him, but he’s too old and too tired to change any more.

For me, I think John’s wedding is that realisation in technicolour. Greg’s job is to be solid, and for the most part, I think he’s happy with that. But sitting at a beautiful wedding beside the woman who took her life back and became fierce with it has got to hit him somewhere in the gut.

Poor Greg. What are your feelings about Omniscient Older Brothers who spend too much time on treadmills?

anneincolor:

I think we all know that Tom is a sort of placeholder, at this point. Molly was positively horrified by his contributions to the wedding. He only speaks to make her upset and embarrassed, which does not bode well for his future as a character. I mean… Meat dagger? If you notice, when Greg does his thing about the dwarf, Molly isn’t upset; she’s got second hand embarrassment, sure, but her face looks a bit… endeared. She likes Greg, she knows Sherlock likes Greg, she’s not concerned that he didn’t get the correct answer. When Tom stands, though, and then speaks, she looks like she wants to fall through the floor. No matter who Molly was at the beginning, she’s now a part of Team Deduction, and Team Deduction has pretty simple rules: Greg can be kind of an idiot, John can be overly sentimental and “miss everything of importance,” but no one else gets a lot of leeway to be wrong in Sherlock’s presence. Tom can’t be a Team Deduction member, and thus, he’s always going to be outside.

The framing of this episode captured Greg and Molly together over and over again. I’ve been shipping this couple since ASiB, because of his reaction to her when she took off the coat, but I do think that we’re being set up to think about Greg pining a bit after Molly. We can assume he didn’t cross her path much since Sherlock was gone, but now that Sherlock’s back, there’s a chance again - only, she’s engaged to this complete idiot. There are several emotional moments in TSoT where Greg and Molly share a look, most intimately when Sherlock says he never expected to be anyone’s best friend. These are people who understand Sherlock, who love him, who’ve known him much longer than John, who at points define themselves by their association with him. Both of them.

My hope for Molly is that she recognizes Tom for what he is: an attempt to not-really-move-on from her hopes about Sherlock. And then, maybe once she ends that and has a few girl’s nights, she could look across the table at Greg, because (in my humble opinion) they would make a fantastic couple.

While I’m pretty much neutral about Molly/Greg I do have to say that I think that the storytelling was incredibly clear about Molly not in fact having moved on. At this point, I would rather see her happy with pretty much anyone (or happily single, that’s a thing that does actually happen) than to settle with someone she’s not happy with. I have to admit to being pretty torn about some of her behavior in this episode.  Tom may not be brilliant but he probably loves her and thinks she loves him, and she treated him pretty harshly.  I would love it if she did the mature thing and broke it off.

I also really hope that they aren’t just keeping her on the hook for Sherlock because 1. boring 2. boring 3. that’d be a dick move to pull on a character they claim to love and leaves her stagnant, growth wise.