Why Sherlolly shippers enjoyed the ILY scene in TFP 

(explained in words JohnLock shippers can understand)

(Sherlock meta by paintedwithwords)

I’m seeing JL shippers so offended on behalf of poor Molly and surprised we would ejoy the I love you scene, so I want to explain it in words you can comprehend.

Euros said Sherlock was unaffected by all that was happening, he was lucid and concentrated on the puzzle she presented. Mycroft threw up when confronted with death and John felt guilty and upset but Sherlock kept his focus and Eurus did not want that. She knew that Sherlock would not let her shake him so she decided to strip him of his defenses, caring is not an advantage so she decided to make him admit that he cares, more deeply that he lets on about Molly Hooper. She could pick John or Mycroft, she actually gave Sherlock that choice but Sherlock had recovered by then, and he was smart about it, yes he protected them both because he loves them mboth but he could keep his cool and not falter.

What did she use instead to make Sherlock lose it? Molly Hooper. She used his own feelings for her to rip him apart. He lost, not because she died since she didn’t but because he could not turn back from the truth, once you said it you can’t take it back, you can’t un-say it. Once you’ve opened your heart you can’t close it again. Not only she stripped him of the obliviousness he had chosen for his own feelings, but she made him trample on Molly’s heart, she made him force Molly to admit that it was true that she loved him though he does not know what to do about it, because loving someone and being able to act on that love is not the same things and Sherlock has spent most of his life trying to deny that he needed that love. She was the wallpaper, the background of everything he did. She was the voice that guided his mind palace. She was the one that counted the most. He’s a graduate chemist but he needed the “practical experience” (seriously?), and It took him 4 years to remember Greg’s name, but no problem with Tom’s. All of that meant something.

Sherlock had to see a man kill himself, his wife die without a reason, and had to contemplate killing a little girl to save a city but he went mad when Eurus told him to look at what he did to Molly, that he had destroyed her, and in a way destroyed their relationship because he had treated her feelings like a joke, at least from Molly’s perspective in that moment.

For how painful it was that conversation was the most honest thing they ever shared and not a single word of it was a lie. His first I love you was supposed to feel fake to him but it didn’t, that’s why he said it again, because the words hadn’t felt unsincere, that made him connect the dots, because, guess what, it was true. Which doesn’t mean they’ll drive off in the sunset or get married and live happily ever after. But he truly does love her and at the end of the day love is always the only thing that matters.