Explaining Molly as a “Mirror”

 (Sherlock meta by o0katiekins0o)

Since I’ve been asked about this specifically a number of times I thought it would be helpful to just make a post.

So “Molly is John’s mirror” is not some clever subtext that someone in the tinfoil hat brigade discovered. It is, in fact, a very old trope of the “Ms. Male” or “Distaff counterpart” that certain fans are applying here.

Basically it means taking a male character, slapping a female signifier on him, and voila! Same shit, new character.

One of the most recognizable examples is Ms. Pac Man. In order to appeal to the female market. Media Execs simply slap a lipstick and bow on whatever they happen to be making at that moment and hey! look! inclusivity! Buy our stuff, dumb ladies!

Here are some reasons why this is problematic:

1. It diminishes the female character’s role to her relationship with a male.

2. It does not leave room for dimension as this character is not her own person. She is merely a “girl version” of someone else.

3. It reduces female identity to shitty gendered signifiers (pink, frills, sparkles etc…)

Usually this goes hand in hand with the “Smurfette principle”. Where women are tokenized as the “girl” in an all-male cast. She may be a character that has other qualities but the one given highest import is that she is female in a way that remains very rigidly within the scope of the social gender binary.

This is not how Molly Hooper was written. She’s being read that way by fans who have a lot of internalized misogyny that they are projecting onto her character.

So far the only overlap I have seen is that Molly likes ugly jumpers and she’s nice.

But Molly wears ugly jumpers far more often than John, yet it’s a characteristic that belongs to him by default?

And let’s be honest, John is really not that nice. I mean sometimes kinda, but only if there’s something in it for him. (eg: getting to be the “hero”, flirting with women, looking superior to Sherlock) but apart from that, he’s just kind of a jerk who treats his non-neurotypical friend like some lovable “idiot savant”. Any one of us who met him in person would probably instantly label him as a “fuckboy” because well… the shoe fits.

Molly has a level of kindness that is completely unprecedented. Her kindness and loyalty are her trademark characteristics and I, personally think, that it’s very not good to hand that off to John just to make him seem better or to apply more validation to a fan-made narrative that actively works to erase female characters.

It’s definitely something to unpack and examine.

Explaining Molly as a “Mirror”

 (Sherlock meta by o0katiekins0o, mae-jones and mychakk)

o0katiekins0o:

Since I’ve been asked about this specifically a number of times I thought it would be helpful to just make a post.

So “Molly is John’s mirror” not some clever subtext that someone in the tinfoil hat brigade discovered. It is, in fact, a very old trope of the “Ms. Male” or “Distaff counterpart” that certain fans are applying here.

Basically it means taking a male character, slapping a female signifier on him, and voila! Same shit, new character.

One of the most recognizable examples is Ms. Pac Man. In order to appeal to the female market. Media Execs simply slap a lipstick and bow on whatever they happen to be making at that moment and hey! look! inclusivity! Buy our stuff, dumb ladies!

Here are some reasons why this is problematic:

1. It diminishes the female character’s role to her relationship with a male. 
2. It does not leave room for dimension as this character is not her own person. She is merely a “girl version” of someone else. 
3. It reduces female identity to shitty gendered signifiers (pink, frills, sparkles etc…) 

Usually this goes hand in hand with the “Smurfette principle”. Where women are tokenized as the “girl” in an all-male cast. She may be a character that has other qualities but the one given highest import is that she is female in a way that remains very rigidly within the scope of the social gender binary.

This is not how Molly Hooper was written. She’s being read that way by fans who have a lot of internalized misogyny that they are projecting onto her character.

So far the only overlap I have seen is that Molly likes ugly jumpers and she’s nice.

But Molly wears ugly jumpers far more often than John, yet it’s a characteristic that belongs to him by default?

And let’s be honest, John is really not that nice. I mean sometimes kinda, but only if there’s something in it for him. (eg: getting to be the “hero”, flirting with women, looking superior to Sherlock) but apart from that, he’s just kind of a jerk who treats his non-neurotypical friend like some lovable “idiot savant”. Any one of us who met him in person would probably instantly label him as a “fuckboy” because well… the shoe fits.

Molly has a level of kindness that is completely unprecedented. Her kindness and loyalty are her trademark characteristics and I, personally think, that it’s very not good to hand that off to John just to make him seem better or to apply more validation to a fan-made narrative that actively works to erase female characters.

It’s definitely something to unpack and examine.

mae-jones:

@o0katiekins0o this!

I would like to add, if the conspiracy folk looked at actual mirror characters that have been studied, they would see that they usually have a very specific dynamic and are absolutely central to the story. Ie/ Frodo vs Gollum or Harry vs Voldemort and in Sherlock’s case, him vs Moriarty. All of these characters are typically evenly matched in terms of gravitas and share characteristics while being painted as diametrically opposed in motivations.

Molly and John do not fit this idea in any way shape or form. While they share some characteristics, they are not involved in a storyline together independent of the central character. They cannot be mirrors if their actions within the story do not necessitate the other’s presence. Ie/ if you take Molly out of the story, what effect does that have on John’s narrative? The answer is ZILCH because Molly’s presence has nothing to do with John and everything to do with Sherlock. The only mirror in any of this is Molly as a mild antagonist to Sherlock.

Yes, you read correctly! Molly is more of a mirror to Sherlock if you want to go down this road. How is she an antagonist? Well, she prevents Sherlock from being Sherlock at times. A character doesn’t have to be evil to be an antagonist, just someone who opposes the lead. Doesn’t it make more sense to view her this way? She dresses hopelessly while he is flawless, she is kind beyond belief while he is a dick, she cares while he is apathetic, and so on. Molly’s very presence changes his arc in the end. Even Moffat and Gatiss said it, “Sherlock wouldn’t be Sherlock without Molly.” If Molly is a mirror to anyone, it’s Sherlock.

And … thank GAWD he’s in love with his own reflection, amirite?

mychakk:

I love both of your points here. Excellent metas. I’ll also add my two cents here. I think Molly does fill in the role of a mirror in s2. But it’s in the sense you write @mae-jones she’s kind of an antagonist to Irene in A Scandal in Belgravia in her affections toward Sherlock and to John in The Reichenbach Fall in her trust in Sherlock and ability to see the true Sherlock. In both cases, Molly and the other characters do the same thing, are placed in the same position, yet the motivation and ultimately the outcome is different. She and Irene pursue Sherlock, yet it’s Molly’s true feelings that humble him. She and John are there for Sherlock during The Reichenbach Fall, but it’s her support that allows him to win over the Consulting Criminal. Two sides of the mirror. And wouldn’t it make sense to turn to Irene to help him fake his death when she had already done it so well to fool Sherlock? Or wouldn’t it make sense to turn to John his bestie, ‘confidant’ etc? No, Sherlock chooses Molly, the one who counts and whom he always trusted. The one true in her deep affections and in her ability to see him. The one who never intentionally hurt him. Irene and John are those two neon signs in their interactions with Sherlock while Molly is this unassuming little one candle, but it’s her warmth and comforting light that makes him turn to her and make her ‘the one who made it all possible, the one who matters most’.

"Don’t be alarmed, it’s to do with sex"

 (Sherlock meta by mae-jones and o0katiekins0o)

[Mycroft: Don't be alarmed, it's to do with sex.
Sherlock: Sex doesn't alarm me.
Mycroft: How would you know?]

mae-jones:

Some took this to mean Sherlock was a virgin, especially with Sherlock being referred to as “the virgin” later. However, one could extrapolate many things from these exchanges.

Mycroft’s “how would you know?” could be a dig at how Sherlock has utilized sex to get what he wants. Sherlock is the ultimate control freak at this point in time. He has never been in love with a potential partner. He very well could have had sex a million times but I imagine he would have done so for perfunctory reasons. So, of course sex wouldn’t alarm Sherlock if it was always on his terms and he was in complete control of his emotions.

Mycroft’s ‘how would you know?” could very well be, “how would you know what it’s like to be so desperate for someone that you lose your mind with them and get turned inside out by your physical desires?”

As per “the virgin” comment, it could be the same vein of thought. Without being into someone, with having the emotional connection to them, sex would be functional for someone like Sherlock. Sherlock, for all intents and purposes, is a virgin when it comes to romantic love and I think that is the ultimate message they were trying to instill in us as viewers.

In series 3, this comes full circle when Mycroft says, “I’m not lonely!” Sherlock uses his brother’s words against him. Again, it’s a parallel in emotions, not physicality. Sherlock is stepping out of the “virgin” emotional role. It shows how his feelings are developing, how he’s come to recognize the absence of romantic love in other people’s lives.

Sherlock’s physical virginity is ultimately irrelevant (as it really is irl). The sex part of the equation is unimportant, it always has been. ie/ Emotional context.

PS - From a Sherlolly standpoint, it’s kinda cool to think that the creators may have ALWAYS intended for Sherlock to fall in love romantically. These little hints are insights into where they were going with the show, not just opening Sherlock up, but a complete transformation. That’s what the virginity trope has always been about, not the fetishism of the physical, but how love can change us.

o0katiekins0o:

And it was brought up again in The Final Problem when Mycroft said he’d asked Eurus if she felt pain and she said “Which one’s [pain]?”

How would you know if sex alarms you if you have never been able to make the connection between sexual expression and romantic love?

How would you know that you’re lonely if you fail to connect your isolation with your unhappiness?

How do you know what pain is when you feel so intensely that you can’t suss out one emotional state from another?

I have said for a long time that the Holmes weren’t born with the empathic connection of emotional state and cognition.

Sherlock actually tries to make the connection on a very basic level aided by John: X means happy, Y means sad, Z means angry. We watch him learn to form these connections through the progression of the series.

The only emotional-physical state Sherlock seems to inherently understand and respect is fear. In The Hounds of Baskerville he gives his “body betrays me” speech and in The Abominable Bride when he told Lestrade “Fear is Wisdom in the face of danger”.

If you subscribe to the notion that all emotions exist on a spectrum between fear and love, then it starts to look as though the entire show is Sherlock starting at fear and working his way through the entire spectrum leaving “The Final Problem” aka Love.

Euros and Sherlock and the violin conversation

 (Sherlock meta by winterdahlias)

[...] At the end [of TFP] when they’re doing the montage and Sherlock and Eurus are playing their violins it seems to me that it’s sort of an echo of when Sherlock first walked into Eurus’ cell and she asked him to “play you.” As in “tell me about yourself.”

So in the end he is telling her what is going on in his life through their duet, keeping her updated on his life like if she was “home.”

He tells her about he and John solving cases again, how he’s helping him with Rosie. Tells him about Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. [And] about Molly. I was watching the tiny bit where Molly comes in through the door and walks in smiling brightly. The scene transitions to Sherlock playing and smiling at the same time. It is my personal belief that at that moment he is telling his sister that he is [...] happy because he finally has Molly by his side. And by continuing the duet with him, Eurus is telling him that she is happy for him, too.

People in Sherlock's life and what they taught him

 (Sherlock meta by o0katiekins0o)

I think about his draw to Irene and later Mary, how they are both people like him. They show him that people like them can make their way in the world. That there are places in life for them and, by extension, him.

Irene taught him romantic love was possible for him. Mary taught him family was possible for him. And Euros taught him that, not only were those things POSSIBLE, but they were things he actually had and was at risk of losing completely.

It almost felt like envy “Like always, you have everything and I have nothing.” She taught him what it truly meant to be alone. And no, it did not protect her.