Can we talk about Mycroft Holmes?

 (Sherlock Meta from before S3 by ibelieveinmycroft)

As you may have gathered, I believe in Mycroft Holmes. Many do not. There has been a lot of hate towards the eldest Holmes brother since Reichenbach and I’m not of the opinion that any of it is deserved. While we may have a year to wait to discover the truth, and it is a capital offence for a Sherlockian to theorise without data, it is inconceivable to me that the events surrounding Mycroft during Reichenbach should be taken at face value.

I am slowly becoming aware that what I think occurred during The Fall is something of a marginal theory, (I don’t understand why, it makes perfect sense to me) so please allow me to detail the reasons why I believe Mycroft is in on The Fall.

It is quite long, and contains pictures and quotes, so see under the cut. Some of it is convoluted; some of it is pure speculation….enjoy!

First things first – the canon.

This should be the first clue to everyone. While Sherlock itself is, at times, lovingly irreverent, skewing with names and reversing deductions, Moffat and Gatiss always tell Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales and never stray too far from the canon. We’re all rather expecting an adaptation of The Empty House, the story that followed The Final Problem, when Sherlock returns in 2013. Mycroft is referred to in this tale – the final mention of him in the original canon – just after Holmes reveals himself to Watson:

“I had only one confidant — my brother Mycroft. I owe you many apologies, my dear Watson, but it was all-important that it should be thought I was dead, and it is quite certain that you would not have written so convincing an account of my unhappy end had you not yourself thought that it was true. […] As to Mycroft, I had to confide in him in order to obtain the money which I needed. […] I came over at once to London, called in my own person at Baker Street, threw Mrs. Hudson into violent hysterics, and found that Mycroft had preserved my rooms and my papers exactly as they had always been.”

While it would be quite a simple thing to leave out, should the writers want to go in a different direction and, say, cast Molly in the role of Sherlock’s confidant, in their version of Mycroft they have created a character with the infinite wealth, power and resources to be of assistance in a way that other characters cannot. Even if it transpires that all Sherlock asked of his brother is to maintain the flat and send him enough money, those small acts alone are more than Molly is capable of. Although the likelihood is Sherlock would need far more.

Mycroft vs. Moriarty

The main accusation laid at Mycroft’s door is that he sold out his younger brother to Moriarty. John charges Mycroft with giving Moriarty the “perfect ammunition” to destroy Sherlock.

I may have believed this, had they key code existed. Faced with a mad man with a weapon that could “blow up NATO in alphabetical order”, what is Mycroft prepared to sacrifice for the good of millions? But it didn’t – as many commentators on this episode have pointed out, computers do not work that way. Jim is clever enough to fool every criminal the world over into believing that he has the key to every locked door. And I agree with why Sherlock could fall for it, just wanting everything to be clever, instead of base and criminal and vulgar – it’s straight out of the canon, from Abbey Grange.

“Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.” - all thanks to the amazing I Bovary You for tracking this quote down for me. It was driving me crazy.

(The lovely A-Study-In-Teal tracked down a similar quote from The Woman in Green, the Rathbone film which provided a lot of inspiration to this episode, in which Moriarty remarks “Holmes has one weakness, his insatiable curiosity. If you can rouse that, you can lead him anywhere.”)

But how did it fool Mycroft? Particularly as this took place prior to Jim’s big stunt at the Tower. He had no proof that it worked.

I have little doubt that Jim Moriarty got himself locked up under his own terms – he was only in Mycroft’s prison because he wanted to get to Mycroft, to have a word, (can I just take a moment to say that goes a long way in confirming Mycroft’s standing…that the greatest criminal mind the world has ever seen had to get himself put in an interrogation room just to meet the minor government official…) to con the information he wanted out of him. Even if Mycroft hasn’t realised this, though, he is still too clever to just give information of any kind away. Although we know very little of Mycroft’s background and training, we must assume that he knows how to negotiate. Negotiation does not include telling your prisoner about your brother’s childhood.

And more to the point – why did Mycroft release him? A mad man who had scratched his brother’s name all over the cell.

That narrowing of the eyes – Mycroft’s plainly not happy about it. Although the mention of a cabinet reshuffle earlier in the episode is an almost-convincing explanation for the sudden release, I don’t see why that wouldn’t have been explained in the confrontation scene between Mycroft and John. I am of the opinion the release was at Sherlock’s request (see below…)

The Baskerville Conundrum

I keep coming back to Baskerville. There was an odd discussion about the basement in Baskerville near the beginning of the episode and it was never mentioned again. Sherlock noticed the lift goes all the way down, and then John asks about it, only to be told that’s where the bins are kept and…that’s it. That was weird.

Unless that’s where Mycroft was keeping Moriarty.

Sherlock only has to make a phone call to his brother to get himself let back into a top secret military base that he’d already broken into the previous day. We don’t get to hear the content of this phone call, or what makes Mycroft acquiesce to such a ludicrous demand so quickly, and then Sherlock is off screen for some time. Although Sherlock was conducting experiments on poor John, that doesn’t quite account for all the time he was offstage.

I am of the opinion that Mycroft came up from London at the same time as Lestrade (save your Mystrade giggling for later!) and invited his brother down to Baskerville’s basement, to show him where he was keeping the criminal mastermind. Mycroft may have been making plans to make Moriarty just disappear, but Sherlock is already aware of the criminal network Moriarty has spun around himself; killing him would only be the beginning. And so this is where the brothers cooked up something fiendishly clever to dismantle Moriarty’s web. Sherlock persuades his brother to release Moriarty, and the final game begins.

This is further borne out by Moriarty’s appearance to Sherlock in the woods. Drugged, and provoked by fear and stimulus, Sherlock hallucinates his nemesis’ face. But why? The drug works through suggestion:

Sherlock: I made up the bit about glowing. You saw what you expected to see because I told you.

So why would Sherlock see Moriarty out on the deserted moor, during a case that is entirely unrelated to him? Unless Sherlock had seen him earlier in the day, in that same place.

I think I’m going to die…

We mustn’t forget, in Reichenbach, Sherlock knew he might have to “die” before he went up to the roof, and so went to Molly.

Far earlier in the episode, during the case with the Ambassador’s children, Molly comments that Sherlock looks sad, like her dying father, when John isn’t looking – Sherlock already knows, even before the little girl screams, and Moriarty’s plan really begins to come to life, that he might have to die. His plan, to fake his own suicide, pre-dates Moriarty’s attempts to discredit and destroy him.

In addition, on the roof, Moriarty mentions Mycroft:

“Sherlock, your big brother and all the King’s horses couldn’t make me do a thing I didn’t want to.”

Sherlock isn’t surprised by the mention of his brother, even though we never saw John deliver the information that his brother made a terrible mistake that risked Sherlock’s life. It could feasibly have been done off screen, but I am of the opinion that Sherlock already knew. He had already planned for this.

Whenever the plan for surviving the fall was formulated, it was before this point and, for my money, before the episode itself, in Baskerville.

Faking a death in London in 2012 is much harder that faking a death in Switzerland in 1891.

Whatever Sherlock’s plan was, in getting from the roof to the pavement while remaining alive, it had to fool three people. Moriarty from the rooftop (Sherlock couldn’t have known he was about to shoot himself), John from the ground and the sniper (Moran? Please be Moran) from his vantage point opposite. So far, so simple (if you’re Sherlock) – an obscured field of vision here, a cyclist giving a blow to the head there and, hey presto. But if he was out to fool his brother too? Mycroft has a legion of CCTV cameras and a deductive ability that surpasses Sherlock’s own. I think it would be a near impossibility to fool Mycroft in this way. And while it’s entirely possible that Sherlock didn’t consult his brother before jumping, knowing Mycroft would work it out later, that seems a bit careless, even for Sherlock. Leaving incriminating CCTV footage outside of Mycroft’s capable hands, where any of Moriarty’s web might get hold of it, would be foolish and likely derail anything he was hoping to achieve
.
Not to mention the family connection. In cases like this, it is normal to get a family member - not a friend or colleague - in to identify the body, and Mycroft is the only blood relative that we know Sherlock to have. He would have to come in to identify his brother, and the ever-observant Mycroft would detect a fake in three seconds flat. He knows what his brother looks like.

As a quick aside, can we just quickly clear something up here – Molly is not a pathologist, she is not a doctor. Twice in the series she is referred to as Miss Hooper – and one of those times is by Mycroft, who is genteel enough to at least ensure he address her correctly. Molly may have been necessary for the initial cover-up, when Sherlock’s body is first pulled into the morgue, and perhaps she even provided a fake corpse, but that is as far as her influence goes. A death certificate would have to come from someone else. The British Government himself could easily pull some strings to obtain this.

He is the British Government

While we’re on the subject, Mycroft is essentially a deus ex machina in a suit. His levels of power, much less his job title, have never quite been clarified on screen, but what we do know is he can walk into a top-secret military base just by flashing his ID card, seems to be on personable terms with the Queen, handles cases involving MI6 and runs aeroplane-themed counter-intelligence operations despite claiming to work for the government (Whitehall and the Secret Service are quite separate operations…for people who aren’t Mycroft, anyway) and, also, is involved with the clandestine interrogations of criminal masterminds.

So, we’ve seen him do all that, and yet he couldn’t neutralise Kitty Riley, the failing tabloid hack? Without this story, Sherlock’s problem, of being accused of being a fake, unravels. Yet, Mycroft doesn’t stop it. Instead, he is seen reading it.

In fact, he is seen reading the tabloids twice in Reichenbach. While I believe that, were nothing more sinister afoot, he would probably read the press coverage on his brother, the focus of this episode on the press is quite telling. Sherlock, despite saying at the beginning of this series, in Scandal, that, being a private detective he “doesn’t need a public image,” is now seen in the opening of Reichenbach posing (grudgingly) for pictures with John. This courting of the press is, for my money, the ‘out of character’ thing Sherlock does. That Mycroft is keeping up with the press reports, and that he doesn’t kill Kitty’s story, for me, points to this forming a part of the brothers’ plan.

John…

Poor John. I feel so bad for John. So does Mycroft. He was collateral damage in the Holmes brothers war against Moriarty.

The scene is gut-wrenching….but if Sherlock can cry on cue, then Mycroft can act too. I am reminded of Mycroft’s brief appearance in The Final Problem:

“Did you recognize your coachman?”
“No.”
“It was my brother Mycroft. It is an advantage to get about in such a case without taking a mercenary into your confidence. But we must plan what we are to do about Moriarty now.”

Mycroft can play a role as well as his brother, and if this scene demands for him to play the villain, then he can. He slips momentarily, though - when Mycroft says “John, I’m sorry…” he’s not apologising to Sherlock. His apology is for John and what the brothers are about to do to him.

Silence is Golden

After two episodes exchanging insults, favours and one tender moment, suddenly the brothers are no longer on speaking terms. John actually draws attention to this repeatedly, questioning both brothers on this on separate occasions:

John: Why don’t you talk to Sherlock if you’re so concerned about him?… Oh God, don’t tell me.
Mycroft: Too much history between us, John. Old scores; resentments.
John: What about Mycroft? He could help us.
Sherlock: A big family reconciliation? Now’s not really the moment.

Mycroft’s presence at the Diogenes Club throughout this episode reinforces the mantra Silence is Golden. Of the three scenes Mycroft appears in, all of them are in his club. For a man facing the loss of his younger brother, for whom he cares deeply – this series went out of its way to confirm that – he seems decidedly static, sat in his silent club, reading the paper and drinking scotch and sharing nothing.

Staying away from each other, pretending to hate each other, reinforcing their perceived estrangement, keeps Mycroft out of Moriarty’s line of fire. I can’t help but think the writers had good reason to keep him off screen during the crucial moment, just as Molly – also unthreatened and indisputably involved somehow – was nowhere to be seen.

And finally…

The final scenes from Reichenbach do not show a Mycroft in anguish. We saw him upset, after Sherlock inadvertently grounded his flight of the dead in the opening episode of this series: in his shirt sleeves, with a glass of brandy and a look of horror in his eyes. But this Mycroft is one who is deep in thought, mirroring Sherlock’s own “thinking gesture”, hands together in silent prayer after he folds the paper away, the plan complete. It’s a lovely touch, and shows Mycroft scheming, strategizing, planning their next move.

…I really need series three to hurry up and put me out of my misery.

They do not make very much room for each other’s uncontrollable emotional outbursts

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

John squeezes Sherlock’s neck

then he squeezes it again, harder

and finally as he moves to sit back down, his hand lingers and drops slowly, still on Sherlock’s shoulder

John is not done hugging Sherlock. He’s supposed to be done, and Sherlock’s trying to move on with his speech, and there’s an audience to all this, but John is not done and can’t quite take his arm away. He doesn’t want to let go.

John tells Mary to stop him; he can feel it coming. He knows his desire to hug Sherlock is latent and might, if Sherlock goes far enough in his speech, spill over and he’ll do it, audience be damned, with the ecstatic delight he genuinely feels, and indeed that’s just what happens.

Neither of them make very much room for each other’s uncontrollable emotional outbursts. They’re like ships in the night that way.

When John tells Sherlock that he loves him, that Sherlock is his best friend, Sherlock practically loses his bloody mind. John reassures him in a heartfelt way, briefly, and then quickly changes the subject, even through Sherlock is completely and obviously too overcome to proceed. I always wondered why he did that.

John doesn’t appear especially uncomfortable at that point, as he does later after the wedding when Sherlock looks so heartbroken that John will dance with Mary from now on. We see John being uncomfortable with Sherlock’s feelings, and that best man request isn’t one of them. It looks instead as though he’s just misunderstood which feelings Sherlock is having. John instead reacts as if he thinks what’s overwhelmed Sherlock is primarily the necessity of the speech, not the reality of his place in John’s life and his heart. It’s not clear that he entirely understood that that was actually news to Sherlock, which might help explain why he didn’t leave any room for Sherlock have those feelings in the first place. He didn’t believe they were mutual at that point, did he!

Likewise, Sherlock seems utterly oblivious to John’s desire to hug him during his speech. John is genuinely overcome, so much so that he is willing to ignore the audience and just react with pure delight and affection. And that’s a big deal for someone as buttoned-down as John is. But Sherlock doesn’t react to John at all.

We know the wedding was a very difficult day for Sherlock, and during the speech he reverts to the rather shy and introverted person he sometimes is when he is deeply uncertain and out of his depth. It’s the same version of him we see when John tells him off for getting something wrong, when he listens quietly and does what John tells him to do rather than getting into a spectacular fight. Or when he’s drunk off his face and tries to make a joke. It’s his rawest self, the one that has no automatic defences. And that’s who he is when he’s giving his speech (until his speech becomes something else, naturally). That’s who he is when John hugs him, though it looks as if he can’t accept the hug, or even feel it happening, because he’s trying to do this difficult thing instead. He can’t make room for John’s feelings at that moment, because of the wedding, the speech, the loss he’s experiencing. So it happens, and then they move on, and it’s all unexamined. Until later, perhaps.

Desperately unspoken, indeed. There is a missing scene in series 3, and you can feel it. Maybe it was in the drunk tank, lost to the comfortable amnesia of alcohol. Maybe it’s at the hospital after Sherlock’s been shot. Or afterwards, when John knows that Mary isn’t what she seems. Maybe it didn’t happen, which would mean it’s still to come. The moment when they look at each other with the real weight of all those feelings and reactions, all understood and acknowledged, interrogated and confirmed, and actually have the space to hold them all.

Is Sherlock a compulsive liar?

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

tykobrian:

Is Sherlock –for a lack of better term- a compulsive liar? I mean the way Sherlock was focusing on the importance of serviette making in criminal (?) investigation instead of answering Mary’s question rang a few bells. And before Mary pointed out that his fibbing won’t work on her like John (?) it didn’t even occur to me that he would be exaggerating for this simple matter. I mean Mary was already impressed to begin with! And so what if he did learn it from youtube, it’s still cool! Thoughts?

Ivy Blossom:

A Sherlock is not a compulsive liar. What he is, most definitely, is a man with a big ego and low self-esteem. He knows that John thinks he’s dashing and brilliant, as well as charming, dangerous, and sexy with his flipped collars and his cheekbones.

Of course sharp-as-a-tack Mary can see right through Sherlock the way that John can’t; John sees Sherlock through the buttery light of his intense adoration. John expects Sherlock to have an amazing story about how he learned to fold napkins. He can’t conceive of Sherlock as an ordinary man, because to John, Sherlock is always, always extraordinary. Either he’s extraordinarily terrible (”You machine!”) or he’s extraordinarily spectacular (most of the time). An ordinary person learns to fold napkins on youtube. Sherlock Holmes would not be so ordinary!

Sherlock Holmes is indestructible, unflappable, untouchable, and emotionless. He wants to be a high-functioning sociopath, probably never more so then right then. Sherlock has an appearance to keep up, but only for John.

Especially just then.

Sherlock might be married to his work, but he doesn’t care about cases or criminals while he’s folding napkins. At that moment, he’s terrified that he’s only got John back in order to lose him again to his impending marriage. He’s having a serious emotional crisis and is trying to act like he isn’t, wouldn’t, and couldn’t. He’d just learned how to not be alone, and suddenly he’s about to be alone again. He’s in an absolute state, but he’s trying to make sure John doesn’t notice.

Is that a lie? I suppose so. But it’s not compulsive. He’s doing it for a good reason.

Sherlock's and Molly's relationship in The Empty Hearse

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: tarale43 asked: What do u think about Sherlock's and Molly's relationship in The Empty Hearse? That kiss on the cheek? That you be yourself and not the replacement of john? People kept worrying about Irene and sherlock, but molly just breaks some of sherlock's rule? He said that she is the most important or some thing around that line of the friend that morierty doesn't know about.

A: What I think? I’m not sure you’re going to like it.

Their relationship is odd, and it’s interesting. They don’t quite know how to talk to each other. There’s always this undercurrent of discomfort between them. Molly is hopelessly and pointlessly in love with Sherlock, and he doesn’t return the feeling. She is the opposite of him in pretty much every way. He doesn’t know how to relate to any element of her. Until suddenly he does.

Sherlock constantly rejects Molly in series 1, and becomes awkwardly aware that he’s causing her so much pain and how inexcusable that is in series 2. His relationship with her demonstrates how he changes once John enters his life, and the fact that he alters his behaviour towards her is entirely due to John’s influence. He tries to be kinder to her, but he’s not very good at it, and fails.

When John rejects him, Sherlock finally knows what it feels like to be rejected by someone you love completely and hopelessly.

Often Molly is a mirror of John, and putting her in John’s shoes seems to underscore that, but I think Sherlock’s behaviour towards her at that point is more about himself. John has told him to fuck off. Sherlock doesn’t think he’ll speak to John again, and the mean voice berating him in his head is John’s. He’s haunted by that rejection. He’s ravaged by it. His heart is torn out, just like Molly’s always is.

It’s interesting that he chooses to include Molly in his life in a new way just then. He suddenly understands what it would mean to get the attention of someone he loves, and he’s finally behaving with some level of empathy towards Molly. For once, they’re in the same boat.

Sherlock’s assurance to Molly that she shouldn’t be what someone else wants her to be, but should just be herself, is the lesson he’s also trying to learn. He says it to Mycroft, too: maybe he doesn’t mind being different. Why would anyone mind? He’s finally looking at her and seeing himself: rejected, awkward, feeling out of place, and alone without wanting to be. But why shouldn’t he be himself? Why shouldn’t she be herself? Neither of them can mould themselves into being what they think someone else wants. They just have to be themselves, both of them. Rejected or not, it’s the only way. That’s Sherlock’s reality, and Molly’s.

When Molly is a mirror of Sherlock, she’s his quiet, shy, awkward and emotional self, the one who’s too nervous to say how he feels or ask for what he wants. When Molly is Sherlock, she’s the part of him that will accept whatever crumbs he can from someone who’s rejected him. And she’s the part of himself that he wishes were stronger.

That’s what I see in their relationship in The Empty Hearse.

Q: tarale43 asked: Thank you for the meta, it really fits fromt hat perspective. Total respect, but could you explain the kiss on the cheek thing? That's the part I don't understand why A [This is a follow on from tarale43’s previous Q about Molly, which I attempted to answer here.]

A: No? It’s a perfectly fitting action, it seems to me. Sherlock has been terrible to Molly, and he’s only just begun to understand what he’s been putting her through. He’s suddenly very sensitive to it, since, as I said, he’s hurting from being rejected himself.

In spite of being engaged, Molly still wants Sherlock, and he knows it. He tries to fit her into his world, but it doesn’t work out. For once, he’s sorry that he can’t give her what she wants, and he doesn’t want to make her feel the way he feels. So while he does reject her again because he has to, he’s much more kindly about it this time.

He’s grateful for what she’s done for him, and what she’s endured because of him. He kisses her on the cheek because he’s both grateful for her actions and repentant for his own. He knows viscerally how much pain he’s caused her, and in that moment, for this and other reasons, he’s sorry that he’s a terrible human being. Molly never deserved to be treated the way he treated her, and neither did John. Sherlock’s very, very sorry.

What is John thinking here?

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

You’ve been reading John’s blog. The story of how you met. 

I’m a bit irritated that I don’t know what John’s thinking here. I mean, clearly he’s surprised that Sherlock considers his blog useful on a personal level. He didn’t know that. Generally John’s blog seems to be only irritating or amusing to Sherlock, though it’s in the end their main source of advertisement and therefore revenue. John has argued with him to recognize the value of his blog for that reason I don’t think he would have guessed that Sherlock would value it for another.

It’s a sad statement on so many levels. John is describing reality, and Sherlock keeps calling him romantic. Sherlock thinks John paints him as “so much cleverer” than he actually is. He wants to live up to John’s image of him, not only morally, but intellectually. John surely thought he had that side covered!

I don’t know what John’s thinking here, but I think he’s…I don’t know, touched? The way he was during Sherlock’s speech, perhaps. Maybe that’s not a strong enough word. He’s having a strong feeling. I’m struggling to find the right word for it. Gratefulness, affection. Touched. Is that the right body language?

A failure with a massive, monstrous consequence 

(because Sherlock is an idiot)

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

I think, in retrospect, one of my favourite things about series 3 is how we learned that Sherlock’s lie to John about his fake suicide is actually fairly pointless and was just a really bad idea from start to finish.

I know lots of fans were distraught that Sherlock’s death was planned in the first place, and many more were horrified that Sherlock didn’t appear to have a clear and meaningful reason to lie to John about it. Sherlock decided that he would fake his death, and only the people who had to know, would. His brother because he was part of the large mechanism that made it possible. Molly for practical reasons. And his parents, because naturally. But not John. He didn’t need to know. Sherlock obviously failed to articulate a reason why he did.

John should have been the other exception, but he wasn’t. It was such a total betrayal of that relationship, and many fans had invested in the idea that Sherlock would only do such a thing under very extreme circumstances. He had to do it for a reason. But that’s not what we got. It was just a terrible, thoughtless oversight. It was tone deaf and cold-hearted. It was a complete misreading of their relationship. It was stupid.

And I love it. It’s just delicious, isn’t it? It’s perfect.

It’s not because their relationship wasn’t as devoted as we wanted it to be. It’s because Sherlock is an idiot.

Is John trustworthy? Of course he is. Sherlock should have known that. Even if John failed to keep a secret, would it have mattered? I can’t see how. You can build a version of the story where John’s belief that Sherlock is dead is significant, where his grief serves an obvious and useful purpose (I gave it a shot myself), but that’s not what we got, in the end. At least, not so far.

It’s possible that we’ll learn more about Sherlock’s hiatus in series 4, and perhaps John’s grief will gain some meaning if we do. That would be terribly interesting.

But as it stands, Sherlock simply failed to understand that lying to John meant losing the thing he valued most in the world. Sherlock only wanted his coat and John after coming home, that’s all he cared about. Being Sherlock Holmes again, hanging out with his mate, solving crimes, getting back to how it used to be. It hadn’t crossed his mind that he had destroyed that with his lie.

He fucked up.

And why? That, it seems to me, is the theme of series 3. Sherlock is pretty useless at processing his own emotions. He’s kept them in check for so long I’m not sure he even able to easily identify them. And he’s certainly crap at coping with them when they become overwhelming.

He doesn’t understand why John cares what people say about him. He can’t imagine what it would be like to hear slander about someone you love; he can’t imagine that he is someone John loves, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. His lies tell us that he doesn’t understand what it’s like to love someone, either, even though he does. He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t understand that he and John are a matched set, that they belong to each other. Even at their very closest, when they are, as Irene correctly points out, a couple, Sherlock fails to see it. The man who can deduce everything fails to deduce the very thing every single other person who comes within ten feet of him and John have already deduced: John loves Sherlock, and Sherlock loves John.

I like that failure. It’s a failure with a massive, monstrous consequence. You think it’s all over and done with in The Empty Hearse, since he was forgiven and all was well, but it’s not. The entirety of series 3 is an exploration of the consequences of Sherlock’s failure to understand his relationship with John. He loses that relationship, then has to process the fact that he had something to lose in the first place. And then he has to cope with the fact that John’s pain and his own loss is entirely his fault.

He can force John to forgive him in a pinch, but the consequences of his terrible actions remain. He has lost John, and even when he gets him back, he doesn’t really. John has moved on. That thing they had, that you and me against the world, that’s over. Not only is John married, he’s about to have a baby. It will never been just Sherlock and John again.

Or so he thinks. We’ll see what comes next.

Sherlock redeems himself the end. His great act of emotional awareness and understanding, the demonstration of his growth, is pretending, not that he’s going to die, but that he’s going to live.

Now, we see, he understands: John’s feelings matter, they’re important, and Sherlock is mindful of them, even in the face of his own tragic end. He wouldn’t have understood it before, but now he does. He understands, and he accepts it.

In what was meant to be his last act as Sherlock Holmes, he opts to avoid hurting John all over again with the truth. He gives John a happy lie instead, because he loves John, and he doesn’t want to cause him any more pain. John being happy is more important that Sherlock’s own needs. It’s more important than the truth.

Awkward Conversations 

(Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

Sherlock was high as a kite while in his fact-based Victorian fantasy, but if you accept that he was at least partially in control of it, if only enough to remain aware that it wasn’t real (at least most of the time), then he knew the conversation he endured with Watson in the greenhouse was his own projection. It was his subconscious getting personal.

Was it something he had been anticipating with some dread? Had he wanted to just get it over with? Or was it a kind of fantasy, something he wanted to happen? John has hinted at this sort of conversation before, though much more gently. Sherlock knows it might come up again, if the right circumstances occur. Does he prepare himself so that he has a witty retort on hand? Or is he longing for John to understand him, to know the degree to which he’s been lying about who and what he is, and guess the real dimensions of his very human heart?

Sherlock himself knows that the emotionless persona he adopts is a sham. He knows he has impulses, feelings, a desire for companionship and love. His subconscious is fighting him on his decision to remain alone and pretend it comes naturally to him. He projects John as the one to make these obvious deductions about him and confronting him about them. Does he want to be revealed? Or does he fear the revelation? Or both?

The significance of the heartbeat sound 

(mostly in A Scandal in Belgravia)

 (Sherlock Meta by Loudest Subtext In Television)

lindefishway asked:

hello!i love yor metas. can i ask you? during the series we can often hear some heartbeat. so...if s2 is from John's pov, does this mean that we hear his heart? a lot of it during sh+irene scenes. (I'm only on 56min, but I have already counted 46!+ don't forget music=heartbeat). Or are they belong to sh? it also a lot of it in s3 >.< what do you think? sorry for my english^^

Loudest Subtext In Television:

Thank you!

We get the heartbeat sound in the soundtrack a LOT starting from A Scandal in Belgravia forward. It might be in the soundtrack even before that, but I would need to rewatch.

The heartbeat sound is used for whatever character is on the screen. In ASiB we hear it for Sherlock, Irene, and John just off the top off my head, and possibly other people. It’s not exactly accurate to say that any episode is from any single character’s perspective, as they always jump around a bit. We get a lot of Sherlock’s perspective in all the episodes, for example, so we need to note the context and camera perspective every time.

 The heartbeat sound is used broadly to signify anything of significance, i.e. anything that would strike someone strongly. That makes it difficult to attribute special meaning to it in most circumstances. For example, Sherlock gets a heartbeat sometimes when he has an epiphany, Irene gets a heartbeat when Sherlock discovers her safe and her heart keeps pounding while he works out her code, there were heartbeats all over the place when the CIA had guns on people, the CIA guy’s heart beats a few times when Sherlock is telling Lestrade his (future) injuries over the phone, and so on.

The time we need to pay attention to the heartbeat is when there isn’t an obvious reason for it:

- In ASiB, Sherlock gets a few stray heartbeats over time when he’s deducing naked Irene and doesn’t know what she’s trying to pull… but also when he’s deducing familiar, comforting John – and then he gets three very close together. Why does Sherlock’s heart pound when he gives John a full body once-over?

- After John hauls Sherlock back to bed, John says he’ll be in the next room if Sherlock needs him. Sherlock says, “Why would I need you?” and John says, “No reason at all,” and shuts the door – and we get a huge heartbeat with the sound of the door closing. Both of them are on screen and it could apply to either or both of them: it’s either a blow to John that Sherlock doesn’t need him, or a blow to Sherlock that he needs John and John is leaving, or both.

- We get the heartbeat for John in moments that shouldn’t be anxious for him at all. Right after John figures out the text alert sound is Irene, Mycroft tells Sherlock he’s to stay away from Irene Adler. Sherlock says, “Will I?” and we get a big reaction shot of John with a heartbeat; he’s sitting, and behind Sherlock and Mycroft, so it’s not natural to cut to John and do this, but they did it.

- We get another heartbeat when Sherlock shuts his bedroom door in John’s face at Christmas, after John lets us know he’s been counting Irene’s texts and says, “Do you have a reply?” and tries to overhear Sherlock’s phone conversation.

- We get another out of place heartbeat from John after Sherlock says to Irene, “You’re rather good.” Why does that make John’s heart beat? A second later John gives them his hated middle name as a potential baby name. Hm.

- There is a HUGE heartbeat for John when Sherlock rattles off the first part of the Bond Air code and Sherlock looks at him. Oh, John. Those deductions really get your blood pumping, eh?

- We get a heartbeat for Mycroft after hanging up with Sherlock: Irene doesn’t matter to Mycroft, Mycroft is bothered that Sherlock is concerned about Irene Adler. We get another one at the morgue from Mycroft’s camera perspective when Mycroft is looking at Sherlock’s back before opening the door to go talk to him. We get another heartbeat for both of the Holmes brothers when Mycroft says, “Well. You barely knew her.”

- We also get a big heartbeat when Sherlock is casually talking about the hiker deduction and we see the hiker representing John’s heart. The hiker isn’t dead yet, so it seems to be a nod to the symbolism.

Worth noting: we don’t get a heartbeat when Irene kisses Sherlock on the cheek, and we don’t get a heartbeat when she tells Sherlock she’ll make him beg for mercy twice, even though we get other heartbeats in the same scene. (Some scenes are devoid of music and heartbeats both.) He stares her down so she doesn’t stab him with a syringe, but he’s apparently exactly as calm as he looks.

“Mary Watson” isn’t good enough 

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

The only thing I wanted out of Mary Morstan in Sherlock is that, if John is going to betray her or abandon her, which I think he arguably does in the original stories, (though it’s never framed that way, of course) that Mary return the favour with at least equal force.

What is clear already in His Last Vow is that John is not happy in his very new marriage. He’s having nightmares. His tremour has returned (but not yet the limp). He on the verge of bolting, keeping his things as close to packed as he can. He hasn’t seen Sherlock for a month, and a month is far too long, as far as John’s concerned.

In The Empty Hearse, Mary is delighted by John’s fixation on Sherlock. She teases him about it, encourages their relationship. She appeared to be completely unthreatened by it. By His Last Vow, John has worn through her last nerve. When we see Mary comforting her neighbour in her sitting room early in the morning, she is pretty much fed up with John’s whining, and I don’t blame her. They are both chafing inside that relationship. It’s a holding pattern for both of them.

Both of them find a release valve, and it’s the same one. Mary asks Sherlock to take John out and run him, which should appease John for a while and will give her the freedom to stop playing happy housewife. She needs to go take care of the business that has been plaguing her. As Sherlock notes, there must have been a part of her that had been missing that.

Mary and John both have the same problem at the opening of His Last Vow. They’re bored. And they’re bored for the same reason: they’re both trying to be ordinary.

When John asks Mary if “Mary Watson” is good enough for her, she says yes, but I think she’s wrong. It’s not good enough. It names and shapes one part of her persona, one that is arguably completely false. It shuts out the rest of her quite deliberately. John doesn’t even want to know about it. He doesn’t want to hear about it, and he doesn’t even want it named.

I think that’s a tragedy. I’ll be honest with you, I love the little peek into the rest of Mary’s character. She’s tremendous.

She’s cold-blooded, cruel, impatient, rude, conniving, ruthless, and manipulative. She’s at least as observant as the Holmeses. She’s smarter than John, and quite possibly smarter than Sherlock. When Wiggins poses as a beggar she dismisses him loudly and impatiently, but gives him money anyway, in spite of being in the middle of something quite important. She believes in social justice. She’s psychopath who voted lib dem. She’ll probably vote labour next time around. She bakes her own bread, can tell when Sherlock is fibbing, and can shoot a hole in a spinning coin. And killing (presumably) bad guys on a freelance basis is what she does for a living. She’s not ashamed of it. She’s proud of it. It’s not a stretch to say she probably enjoys it.

While her “Mary Watson” persona is demonstrably a lie, there is likely some truth to it (as there inevitably would be). I’m not sure what to think about her feelings about John (too complicated to judge at the moment, I’m afraid), but it’s clear that she likes Sherlock. While it wasn’t even close to enough to stop her from putting a bullet in his chest, I think they were genuinely friends. Unlike Sherlock, feelings don’t get in Mary’s way.

Is “Mary Watson” good enough? No. It can’t be. Neither she nor John can go back to their ordinary life as if none of this happened and be happy, which appears to be the plan. It didn’t work the first time, even before Mary shot Sherlock and her secrets spilled out. I can’t imagine a baby will make it any better.

When “Mary Watson” breaks apart and the real AGRA steps out, it will be spectacular.

Does Mary Know? 

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

I wrote a story post series 2 that proposed that John came to realize how he felt about Sherlock after Sherlock was apparently dead. While fanfiction can definitely be a meta argument of a kind, that one in particular isn’t one I would ever make.

I’m pretty convinced that John is already clear about his feelings for Sherlock through most of series 2. If Sherlock hadn’t taken a flying leap at the end, I would have written a story about John’s emotional journey towards accepting his feelings for Sherlock and set it entirely inside the earliest parts of A Scandal in Belgravia, which is where I think most of that internal action probably happened.

I think John is well aware of how he feels about Sherlock. But he won’t admit to it out loud. That’s what he won’t say to his therapist, isn’t it? And it’s what he doesn’t say at Sherlock’s grave. It doesn’t say it to Sherlock’s face in the train in The Empty Hearse either, which was another logical place to say it. It seems as if it’s something John physically can’t say.

So does he ever tell Mary?

My first instinct is to say no. If he couldn’t say it to his therapist, or alone at Sherlock’s grave, or to Sherlock in the moments before he believes they’re both going to die, how could he possibly say it to Mary? Mary represents moving forward, getting away from the dark hell of his long period of grief. Mary is moving on, so why would John even try to tell her this terrible, painful thing, finally putting into words something that never existed in words before? Could he do it, even if he wanted to?

But then, John told Mary about Sholto. And the way Mary comforts Sherlock at the wedding suggests that she knows about Sherlock, too. She could have just figured it out. She’s smart enough. But maybe he told her. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

I kind of love the idea that John told her. Maybe she’s the only person he’s been able to tell, about all of it.

Which makes sense. He decided to marry her. He feels close to her even though they haven’t known each other long. She probably knows a lot more about his emotional life than anyone else does. Sherlock is affronted about not knowing about Sholto. John didn’t tell Sherlock about him, according to Sherlock. But to Mary, John talks about him all the time.

So there are things John thinks about, and talks about, and longs for, that he doesn’t tell Sherlock about. And never did.

I kind of love that.

Because it’s like John and his relationship to physical affection. You might have thought that he isn’t a very demonstrative person until the wedding. When Sherlock tells the audience that he loves John, John cannot stop himself, he gives Sherlock a great big, delighted hug made of pure happiness, he hangs on to him and only relunctantly lets him go. It was an impulse he couldn’t restrain, even in front of an audience. Which suggests that he’s a much more affectionate person than we generally see, and that being affectionate is something he carefully modulates. He asks Mary not to let him hug Sherlock, which seals it even more. John wants to be demonstrably affectionate, but holds himself back for a variety of reasons. Who gets to know about John’s feelings might be similar.

If he’s told Mary about his intense relationship with Sholto, and about his feelings for Sherlock, it suggests that when John feels safe in a relationship, he talks. He may still find it difficult, but he overcomes it.

So if Sherlock ever gets his act together, he could have a cuddly John who uses his words to let Sherlock know how he feels. Which is a nice thought, no?

Irene Adler is Sherlock

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

This Irene Adler is a female version of Sherlock, so it’s no wonder they’re fascinated with each other. She literally is, I’m not being metaphorical: look at her. She’s rail thin with high cheekbones. They’ve even styled her hair as an echo of Sherlock’s. She puts on his coat and deduces alongside him. Irene is Sherlock.

She’s got a live-in friend who loves her and does her errands for her and takes care of her, but isn’t, it seems, her girlfriend. Though you certainly get the impression that she’d like to be. They are both dangerously clever. They both take care with their appearance and their costumes in order to elicit the reaction they want in the people they meet. Their realms are different, but process and the goals are pretty much the same.

I grant you, dominatrix and consulting detective are a bit far off as professions, but they have some similar elements. Sherlock and Irene are both self-employed, for one. They peer into people’s souls and determine their motives for a living. They walk into a room and take control of it, and the people around them find that irresistibly attractive. People seek them out for their expertise. They are both expert manipulators with big egos and secret emotional lives. They both want you to think they are cold, calculating, brilliant and invulnerable, and they both want to be that, but they’re both lying.

They are both fascinated by Moriarty. And they’re both gay.

Initially I thought Irene was a version of Sherlock before he met John; she’s Sherlock in the past tense, colder, valuing only the game, willing to do more than just flirt with evil. But after series three, it’s clearer that Irene was a premonition of what was to come for Sherlock. She was a bright, blinking light that said: Sherlock will fall in love, and it will very nearly kill him, except that someone will intervene at the last possible moment.

I never thought Sherlock was romantically or sexually interested in Irene, but he is clearly fascinated and disturbed by her. But can you blame him? She’s him. He’s looking in a mirror, and not really sure what to make of what he sees. He loves his reflection and he loathes it at the same time. He rejects himself and all his worst fears about himself, condemns himself to death, but then gives himself another chance in the end. Live to love another day, Sherlock.

Why they didn’t tell Amanda Abbington Mary’s whole story when they filmed His Last Vow

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

I was really surprised to hear that they didn’t tell Amanda Abbington Mary’s whole story when they filmed this episode [His Last Vow]. Really, really surprised. For a few reasons: I didn’t realize they didn’t read all three scripts before they started shooting (hahahahahaha I should have known they’d still be working on the finer details up until the last second, no one’s ever as organized as they should be, are they), and also because the decision smacks of a lack of trust. If you wanted Mary as her disguise instead of Mary with her very dark side visible, couldn’t you just tell the actor that that’s what you want? Amanda Abbington knows what she’s doing. She’s smart, she’s competent. She’s an excellent actor. Why not trust her?

Just now [...], I think I get it. Keeping something like that from an actor, potentially alienating a cast member and presumably a friend in this way, they must have wanted something very particular from her. What did they want?

They wanted no suggestion whatsoever of what Mary would do, surely. Not even the slightest hint of a whisper of what she really is. They wanted the truth of her so buried that it doesn’t even exist here at all. They didn’t want to show Mary pretending to be what John thinks she is; they wanted her to be that Mary. They wanted her eyes clear and unconcerned. No doubts, no concerns, no faltering, no mistakes. Not a hair out of place, not a questionable stray glance.

That’s not something normal people can do, entirely subsume themselves, hide their goals and motivations out of every flicker and every movement. No one’s that perfect. It would have been a weird thing to ask for, if she’d known the truth. It would have seemed terribly fake. She would have wanted to play a woman hiding a terrible secret, naturally. Even just a little bit, when no one was watching. Because that’s what she is. But they didn’t want that, obviously.

Why not? Why would they want absolutely nothing of what Mary really is to be visible to the viewer, even in retrospect? There’s something intensely satisfying in seeing hints of the future in the past, once you know what happens. Why did they disallow us that pleasure?

What we got must be exactly what they wanted. This must be Mary in perfect, perfect control. Her eyes, her face, her emotions: she is perfectly in check. Every move she makes is a decision, and it’s always the right one. There is no darkness in her here, though she has plenty of that, as we later learn. She is not haunted, or conflicted, or distressed by her lies and manipulation. She is so perfectly not who she actually is that we have to question everything we see here. This is not Mary (or whatever her real name is). This is what she wants everyone to see and to believe.

She is the consummate actor, the perfect sleeper agent. Sherlock can’t see any of her secrets, except a hint that she might lie about a few little things (but who doesn’t?). She sets off no red flags. She is lovely and funny and adorable, she is forgiving and understanding, she is unthreatening and unthreatened. She is kind and gentle and intelligent. She befriends everyone, including the viewer, and including Sherlock, as impossible as that has always been for John’s girlfriends. But she manages it. She is the perfect manipulator, and no one can see it. She’s so good, it’s inconceivable. She can become whatever she wants completely and perfectly, and make everyone believe it.

Sherlock must wish he could be this good at pretending to be something he’s not. He’s pretty good at it, because most people genuinely believe he’s a sociopath. But he isn’t. Mary is.

re: Mary 

(Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

I find it’s getting easier and easier to forget that I have no idea who Mary is, and I have no idea why she’s doing what she’s doing. I’m not inclined to take much about Mary at face value, because everything she does has a question mark on the end of it. She has made a lot of choices, and at this point, we don’t know why she’s done any of it.

All we know for sure is that Mary popped into John’s life fairly recently, and they had a whirlwind romance that resulted in John attempting to propose to her.

We know that Mary likes Sherlock. She says so, and they do seem to get on quite well. At points they get on better than Sherlock and John do.

We know that Mary knows exactly how to manipulate John into doing what she wants him to, because she told Sherlock she’s capable of that, and she proves it. She’s also pretty adept at getting Sherlock to do what she wants him to, as it happens.

We know she doesn’t have a lot of friends.

We know that her Mary Morstan persona hasn’t been around for long, but it’s been around longer than her relationship with John has.

We know that she is, or at least has been, an assassin. She has killed a lot of people, on government payroll and “freelance.” She has done such terrible things that one of the big bads of the show considers her “wicked.” She tells us herself that her history would turn John against her. That it would keep her in jail for the rest of her life. That goes beyond “I was just doing my job,” obviously.

We know that Mary is an excellent shot. Better, perhaps, than John is.

We know she’s an amazing liar.

We know that she can tell when Sherlock is lying.

We know that Mary shot Sherlock. We know she shot him because she told him to stay put and he didn’t, not because killing him was part of some grand plan. Sherlock wildly underestimated her, and that was really dumb on his part. He wasn’t doing what he was told, so she shot him.

We know that if Mary threatens to kill you, she won’t be bluffing.

We know that Mary still has an arsenal of guns, bullets, and various other spy/assassin gear at the ready, and that she is still engaged in some below-the-radar activity (monitoring and threatening Magnussen).

We know she develops friendships with people who have the connections she needs, and is willing to hurt them (Janine) or sacrifice them (Sherlock) as the need arrises.

We know she is prepared to play a very long game.

We know that her affection for a person won’t get in the way of her trying to kill them.

We know that, like John, Mary can stay exceptionally calm under intense pressure.

We know that Mary is committed enough to her relationship with John that months of silence between them didn’t make her give up on him. She waited it out.

We know that Mary is pregnant. I realize some disagree that that’s a fact, but I figure the mention of a scan suggests that there is an actual verifiable baby.

Is Mary in love with John? Maybe. Is John Mary’s way out of a life she no longer wants? Could be. Is she still someone’s hired gun? Is her relationship with John some kind of job? Is she using John the way she used Janine, as a means to an end? Is John cover for something? Has she been directed to get close to him, to marry him, for some reason? Is her relationship with John her own idea, something that runs counter to her current job, if she has one? Maybe so, maybe not.

There’s certainly a story there. Mary’s doing things for a reason, and it’s interesting that the writers have worked so hard to ensure that we don’t know what that reason is, one way or another. She’a an intelligent, ruthless woman with a lot of history and skills. She certainly has a story. I bet it’s a great one. We just don’t know what it is yet.

Does John love Sherlock more than Mary?

 (A Sherlock meta discussion between painlock and ivyblossom and becumsh)

Anonymous asked:

I want to believe that John loves Sherlock more than Mary, I really do. But what's up with this line on his blog - "She's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Sorry Sherlock. ;)."? Like...ouch. :(

painlock:

But look at the context. This is an extremely long post about Sherlock coming back in which John writes how alive he feels again, how amazing it is, how happy Sherlock makes him, that he’s not felt like that for a long long time, that “Sherlock’s oh so brilliant and amazing and I love it when I’m with him and there’s nothing quite like the feeling when we’re together” and then he’s like “oh and btw I got engaged”

sooooo

ivyblossom:

Additionally…

The context of that exact wording is really fraught. John has been in the depths of despair for quite a while over Sherlock’s death when he meets Mary. They have a whirlwind romance, and for reasons we don’t see on screen, John decides to propose. There’s a story in that, I’m sure.

And he says to her: “Meeting you was the best thing that could have happened.” She picked him back up again, so that certainly seems to be true. But Mary takes that and turns it into “I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.” Which startles John, because that isn’t quite what he was saying, but it’s out there now, and he’s about to marry her, so…sure, I guess so. That should be true. I feel like the blog is repeating that consensus, but John clearly isn’t 100% on board. Which is why there’s an apology to Sherlock appended. Because John knows it feels wrong, but makes a joke out of it.

The truth is that it isn’t entirely true, and John tells us that repeatedly. When John asks Sherlock to be his best man, he says he wants to be “up there with the two people I love and care about most in this world,” and when he’s trying to reassure Sherlock that everything will be okay after he gets married, he talks about how Mary turned his life around, and is about to explain that Sherlock did that too, but Sherlock runs off instead of hearing it. It would be interesting to see where that conversation would have gone.

I have no doubt that John loves Mary, at least until he discovers that she isn’t the person she claimed to be, and probably even after that. But Sherlock is special to John in a way that no one else really can be. John and Sherlock are each other’s souls, they are part of a whole. Apart they are broken; together, they can do anything. No matter what else happens, that’s always true.

With the caveat that TAB is all in Sherlock’s head, I think it’s an interesting depiction of John’s very conflicted loyalties.

It starts with Watson having abandoned Mary to the point that she plays a client just to see him. She doesn’t object to her husband spending time with Holmes, as modern day Mary doesn’t mind John spending time with Sherlock. She likes Sherlock, she just doesn’t want to be completely abandoned by her husband, which seems fair. Both Victorian and modern day Mary don’t mind John having the friendship, but they mind when the friendship is all he talks about, or all he commits to.

Victorian!Watson, confronted with his failures as a husband, tries to repair the damage he’s caused, which we can see from the empty chair in 221b that Holmes keeps on talking to, but he fails. He falls right back in with Holmes and vanishes. Victorian!Mary finds her own excitement to replace her marriage. She has goals of her own that Watson knows nothing about. Their maid points out that they’re basically ships passing in the night, and they have effectively abandoned each other. John can’t seem to keep his attention where it ostensibly belongs, and once again, in the desanctified church, he has to admit to Mary that they’d neglected each other (again). Little wonder. He keeps leaving her. She finds other ways to pass her time.

I don’t think it means he doesn’t love Mary, or even that he loves her any less than he loves Sherlock, but Sherlock is his soulmate and his companion and his world, and everything else, including Mary, will always be left behind if Sherlock wants him or needs him, or even finds something intriguing to explore. This is really damaging for John’s love life, but it seems like he can’t fight it. This is how he’s built.

It will be interesting to see if this theme continues to hold into series 4.

becumsh:

[...] John and Mary are a very happy couple. Fandom tries to find the ways and means in which John hasn’t forgiven Mary or she’s a villain or whatever. But John loves Mary and he puts an effort to forgive her and make their marriage work. Sherlock likes Mary and he understands why she’s made all of her bad decisions. It’s the point that Sherlock is still John’s center of the universe that pulls him and Sherlock’s life basically turned into “how to make John happy” ever since s3. John doesn’t necessarily wants to be so dependant on Sherlock but it already happened and here you are.

The s2 finale was a mess and even though no one has died (or faked one’s death, y’know) s3 is even more of a mess. I don’t quite comprehend how moftiss are going to fix it.

ivyblossom: 

I’m not really sure how you get “very happy couple” out of what I wrote above.

Mary and John are in what appears to be an impossible situation. Even if Mary were the sweetest, most innocent, most adored, and most forgiven woman in the world, it wouldn’t change the fact that her husband, who loves her, seems destined to always run away from her and towards someone else.
Even before Mary shoots Sherlock, it’s clear that John and Mary are not especially happy. John’s bifurcated loyalties have made themselves plain; he misses Sherlock. He won’t shut up about Sherlock, he dreams about Sherlock, and tries his hand at being Sherlock. He’s a junkie; he’s addicted, and it’s already starting to impact his marriage.

To be clear: that is not why Mary shoots Sherlock. Mary is not the stereotypical wife of literature whose first priority is the state of her marriage. John’s obsession with him is John’s issue, not Sherlock’s. Sherlock does Mary the courtesy of dropping off the radar after the wedding. John can’t bear it, but Mary doesn’t blame Sherlock for that. She blames John, as she should. At the start of HLV, John and Mary are okay, but there are cracks in the surface of that relationship. I certainly wouldn’t say they’re very happy.

Loving someone, and being loved, is not the same thing as being happy. Love is not just a “vicious motivator”; it also hurts, and it can make you sadder than you’ve ever been.

Mary and the Abominable Bride  

(Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)  

I’m still working through some thoughts about this. I understand why Moriarty was the main problem for Sherlock to solve in The Abominable Bride. But it’s Mary I’m still thinking about. She’s the bigger mystery, to my mind. So what does TAB say about Mary?

At first I thought that there’s less suggested about Mary than there is about the Watson marriage. There’s a lot suggested about that, but of course it’s the foreground version of the backdrop, which is poor relations between the sexes in general. The macro version being the vigilante women, and the micro version being ignored wives, like Mary. They’re marriage is not working in TAB.

In any universe, Watson can’t help but run after Holmes. We started TAB with exactly what we all asked for: John and Sherlock together again, hanging out in 221b. In a way the story starts without Mary, as if she’s not there, as if Sherlock’s forgotten about her. John is with him, they’ve been in the countryside for a while, no one knew when they would be back. They are free to do as they will, like before, the good old days. John has abandoned Mary, just like he does in the original stories, without comment or concern.

On some level, I wondered if the whole plot of TAB wasn’t built as a statement to Arthur Conan Doyle’s treatment of Mary. They do enjoy poking fun at his continuity failings, like Watson’s wandering war wound and the two James Moriartys. (”It’s never twins!”) Mary gets ignored in the original stories and unproblematically abandoned by Watson as he wanders off on his Holmesian adventures. She’s lost her function in the narrative, so to speak. So I appreciated that the first appearance of Mary in TAB is as a client, because it’s the only way for her, as a woman, as Watson’s wife, to get any agency in a Sherlock Holmes story. (It’s criticism with love, of course.)

So aside from that, what’s the story got to say about Mary? She remains competent, full of hidden skills, with a double life she keeps from her husband. The relationship is strained, because they don’t spend any time together. Not only because Watson abandons her, but because she likewise abandons him.

I’m pleased to be able to say that, because I think it’s the one thing Mary needs to do in a modern Holmes story. If Watson is going to abandon her, she needs to abandon him right back. She needs to have her own adventures to leave him out of. And so she does.

Are Mary and John actually compatible? Can that relationship work? If this is Sherlock’s subconscious, I’d have to say he doesn’t think so. Twice in the story Watson has to confront his abandonment of her. “We’ve been neglecting each other,” he says to her in the church. He can’t seem to help it. He tries to stop, but gets dragged back into Holmes’ world. As always, Holmes is Watson’s top priority.

And there’s no baby. That was strange: no baby. Sherlock has absolutely no thoughts about a Watson baby. I don’t know what to make of that.

One thing is very clear to me: Mary is not the abominable bride. Moriarty is, not Mary. Her story, I presume, is more complicated.

I can’t wait for series 4.

Does Sherlock know he’s in his Mind Palace in TAB? 

  (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

He certainly does. Not the whole time; but most of the time. When Sherlock says he’s a user, not an addict, he’s certainly lying to himself, but he has some basis for saying so. His use of drugs is controlled. Dangerous, stupid, and emotionally motivated, but still (mostly) controlled. Just not entirely.

How do we know that Sherlock is aware that he’s inside a Victorian fantasy?

When he’s in the morgue examining the body of Emelia Riccoletti, he’s meant to be trying to solve her deception. But in line with his stated purpose inside his Mind Palace, Sherlock says: “Gun in the mouth; a bullet through the brain; back of the head blown clean off. How could he survive?” Why does he say that? Because he knows he’s not actually trying to solve the Riccoletti case. He’s trying to determine whether or not Moriarty could have fooled him. If he had forgotten that he was in his Mind Palace, he wouldn’t have made that mistake.

Later, in the greenhouse, after telling John that “I made me,” that he is alone because he chooses to be, he hears a dog crying and scrabbling against a door or the floor. A dog? Is that the Carmichael’s dog? Sherlock doesn’t consider that. Aware that he is in his Mind Palace, he thinks this difficult and personal conversation is bringing his other heartbreaks into the room with him and John: he says, “Redbeard?” If he were not aware that he’s inside his Mind Palace attempting to solve a crime, he would not imagine that his modern-day childhood dog was suddenly inside the Carmichael’s greenhouse.

The point where Sherlock begins to lose control of his Mind Palace is when Moriarty officially enters the 19th century, sends a “MISS ME?” message, and becomes a topic of conversation between Sherlock and Mycroft. He is suddenly a 19th century maths professor that Sherlock threw off a waterfall, not the criminal mastermind of Sherlock’s real, 21st century life.

And his mind catches the slip, warns him that he’s collapsing into his fantasy.

Mycroft tells him: “You’re in deep, Sherlock, deeper than you ever intended to be. Have you made a list?” We know what that means: Sherlock is reminding himself about the drugs he’s taken, and about his promise to his brother to keep a list. That’s real world stuff. Sherlock does not give Mycroft the list in the fantasy. He’s not ready to give up no it, not yet. He’s not done, even though it has become dangerous. He is about to lose control over it.

Sherlock is in too deep, but he opts to fall deeper into the fantasy and forget that that’s what it is in order to get his answers. He returns to speaking to Mycroft about Moriarty as if he is a 19th century man, and rather than argue or return to the topic of Sherlock’s modern day drug overdose, Mycroft snaps back into place as a 19th century version of himself: “If Moriarty has risen from the Reichenbach cauldron, he will seek you out.” At this point, Sherlock has slipped fully into the dream. He is out of control. And this is where things get weird.

The two universes blend together. He can’t tell the difference between them. There are echoes of reality in his fantasy, and echoes of fantasy in his reality. Watson is disappointed and angry about his drug use; modern-day John appears in the train carriage; the costumes and gongs appear; the women in the church (Molly, Janine) appear in the modern day incarnations as well as their 19th century ones; Moriarty appears, inexplicably, as a bride. This narrative is completely off the rails, so much so that Sherlock is becoming aware of it again.

But not for long. He dreams he’s waking up on the plane, and goes off to dig up Emelia Riccoletti’s body. He thinks he’s conscious, but he isn’t. He’s abandoned by John and digs up an entire grave before realizing that he’s still in his head. Only a supernatural element (the skeleton starting to speak and move) jolts him back.

Finally, he returns to Reichenbach Falls, the setting for the death of the 19th century Moriarty. He says: “Congratulations. You’ll be the first man in history to be buried in his own Mind Palace.” Moriarty is Sherlock’s weakness, he’s his overdosed brain, he’s the tail end of Sherlock’s inability to remain conscious and keep a grip on what’s real and what isn’t. But he’s in control again, aware that he is battling his inner demons rather than external ones, protected by Mind Palace!John. He can jump off a cliff to wake himself because he knows the cliff is a fantasy.