Mrs Hudson's husband was abusive

 (A Sherlock meta conversation reblogged by thelonelybrilliance)

itsgotflaps: I’m sure that Mrs. Hudson’s husband committed a great number of crimes in order to get sentenced to death. From the way she flinches when Sherlock slams his hands on the table, I’d say it’s safe to bet that one of his many crimes was spousal abuse.

cumbermums: That would certainly account for why Sherlock ensured his execution.

ibelieveinsammy: And why Sherlock got so enraged when he saw that she had been hurt

xrdj: And why she acted as if she were perfectly fine when she was hurt.

lotrlockedwhovian: And why she was able to remain calm and still sneak the phone out and why Sherlock knew she would be okay despite John’s worrying - because she’s been through worse and persevered.

castielcampbell: And why he didn’t want her to leave England. He wouldn’t be able to keep an eye out on her.

sherlock-is-the-fire-of-my-loins: And why he got so mad at Mycroft for telling her to shut up because her husband also abused her verbally.

i-say-no-to-status-quo: And it overall explains why as a general rule, YOU DO NOT TREAT MRS. HUDSON POORLY or you will FACE THE WRATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.

tripmalcolmlove: This makes perfect sense.

The super intriguing Holmes family

 (Sherlock meta by strawberrypatty)

I’m really just super intrigued by the Holmes family in general now. During series one and two they were portrayed as super cold minor nobles. But after series three it was like “Okay, cute little elderly couple who are utterly and completely normal”.

But now we’ve been introduced to Musgrave. Also the fact that cross-dressing Uncle Rudy held a position similar to Mycroft in the past. So like… I think the answer is somewhere in the middle of the two portrayals? Like, Mr and Mrs Holmes are incredibly chill and normal folks, but they actually do have some social status they just kind of ignore it?

I’m wondering how the loss of Eurus changed Mr. and Mrs. Holmes too. Like they totally left the grandeur of their old life behind after their daughter died and their youngest son was so traumatized he basically forgot his sister existed.

Mary & John 

 (Sherlock meta by thelonelybrilliance)

There was something quite tragic and yet beautiful that Mary died without knowing that John slipped.

This isn’t to say that I’m happy John slipped, or that I think it was a small deal. I do think he was remorseful. I do think he is human.

John has more trust issues with his spouse than most people, and he’s done a really remarkable job of swallowing it down. He loves (loved! GAH MY HEART) Mary VERY MUCH. But new fatherhood is tough, and feeling on the outs from two of the most important people in his life from an intellectual/plotting standpoint–that can be difficult. All of this made it not OOC for me that John would get a little close to a dangerous line.

But. He pulled back. He pulled back and he was sorry and remembered that he loved his crazy little family and his adorable, dangerous, inscrutable wife with her little lace-up sneakers and her assassin’s past. And he wanted to tell her–he wanted to apologize. He wasn’t going to sweep it under the rug.

And then she died. I can only imagine that on top of everything else–all of John’s other insurmountable grief, he feels guilt. But Mary was a very different person than John was. In a way, I think (with the exception that surely she was sad to leave behind John and Rosie) Mary was content when she was dying. She had her shot, her crystalline perfect moment with a man she loved more than anything, even if she couldn’t stay because her past would always catch up with her.

So Mary knew she was always going to die. And Mary got to die looking at her perfect husband–a good man, a faithful man, who, yes, isn’t perfect, and yes, toyed with a possibility of indiscretion, but that doesn’t change who John Watson is and it didn’t distract her in that last moment from seeing who he was.

In defence of the Holmes parents

 (Sherlock meta by thelonelybrilliance)

I keep seeing people complaining about the Holmes parents being too normal.

But are they really normal? Did it ever occur to anyone that they were so freaking traumatized by the tragedies that came with having three brilliant children, one so intelligent and emotionally unbalanced that she murdered someone as a small child? That their middle son, the emotional, imaginative one–then repressed his memories and emotions for the next few decades?

That their family home was burnt down and then their daughter was committed and then they thought she died?

At the very least, the Holmes parents must have serious, serious guilt and PTSD. SO maybe the way they coped was by moving to a small, comfortable home, and just finding what little bits of normalcy they could, while they continued to cope with their two remaining very complicated children, one of whom ran the government and the other who struggled with a recurring drug problem and later faked his own death.

And the fact that they were willing to get in touch with Eurus later, and were angry at Mycroft for not telling them, says that they weren’t at all normal. They wanted to love their psycho daughter. Even after all the pain and fear and guilt they’d likely suffered.

Why Sherlock is the most brilliant show ever

 (by thelonelybrilliance)

I’ve never known a show that developed like this over four seasons and far more years than that. It leaves me awed. It leaves me in love.

Sherlock Season 1 was fresh. It was new. It was everything we loved about Baker Street but with a myriad twists. Who was Sherlock? He was idiosyncratic, brilliant, cold. Fascinated with puzzles, puzzles none of us could solve. The episodes were complex but close to home. Everything revolved around Baker Street, this unlikely friendship.

But there was a whisper. The classic arch villian. These are simple, but age-old, dramatic stakes. Not so much man vs. man but mind vs. mind.

This is Sherlock Holmes come of age, with mystery behind and before him.

It ends with the grand entrance of his twisted mirror, mind vs. mind.

Season 2 raises the stakes. It look into Sherlock’s heart, his loyalties, his fears. It delves into the deepest and richest of Holmes canon–the Woman, the Hound, the Fall. Season 2 leaves us gasping for air. This is Sherlock in the Golden Age, this is Sherlock that has us whirling, trying to keep up with twists and turns, with how much we now care about Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Molly, Mycroft–the side characters who now are part of a universe.

A threatened universe. This is Sherlock and John’s friendship at its tested peak, this is a Sherlock who might just be more than cold exterior, this is Sherlock with problems and people he might not be able to solve. This is the greatest face-off between protagonist and antagonist we’ve ever known, perhaps because they’re so like and yet unlike.

This is the end of an era, and a fall we still don’t quite understand.

Season 3 changes the game. It reels us back from grief. It has its lighthearted moments, even while John struggles to believe in a world again he’d thought lost. Season 3 gives us Mary, a story in herself. Season 3 takes John away from Baker Street, Molly away from Sherlock, everything we’ve known away from itself. How can such grand and beautiful caricatures feel so close to our own life? The alienation and the joy combined that we’ve always felt at a friend’s wedding.

Threats we expect coming from people we never dreamed would be the ones pulling the trigger.

This is Sherlock the savior. This is Sherlock the sacrifice.

This is death cheated in different ways.

Season 4. What is Season 4? Season 4 is everything times ten. The drama, the complexity, amped to 100mph. Why are there complaints it’s too clever? Or that it’s somehow buckling under its own weight, when this Sherlock come full circle. This isn’t close to home, complexities around a simple nucleus–this is close to heart, all the truths we’ve always known, Mary dies in canon, Molly loves Sherlock, There’s another Holmes–and yet it is ALL turned on its head.

This was a brilliant masterstroke. I pray it’s not the last. My soul begs for Season 5. But this was a beautiful finale, if so it must be. This was John destroyed and a friendship forged all the stronger in the end. This is where we realize that Sherlock really is Sherlock Holmes, the legend we’ve all known. A man, as Moftiss said, with a heart you never doubt. This is Sherlock the human.

And suddenly we understand all the questions we didn’t know we had. A high-functioning sociopath isn’t that way because of some paltry quirk. He’s shut down. He’s closed off. This is Sherlock Holmes finally opening the lockbox of himself, stepping outside the mind palace into something far, far greater.

And this is when we learn that the “freak” has “always been the grownup”. He’s the one who forgives. The one who saves them all. The one who cannot kill the brother he loves, does not leave the sister only he does not fear, the one who opens his heart up to the possibility of breaking because he has only three minutes to save Molly Hooper.

This is an East Wind. Mary, gone. Rosamund, still beloved by many. Eurus Holmes, remembered.

And 221B Baker Street changed, yet also just as we’ve always known.

Raise a glass.