A study in dependency
#I have never in my life had so many feelings over the fact that somebody isn’t wearing shoes
I felt my heart crumple when I first saw it.
Someone needs to analyze this. Emma? Somebody? What is it about the bare feet that is KILLING ME every time I see it? Why?? Why are we having such an emotional response to bare feet?
Because this the only time we’ve ever seen John on screen without footwear (he might have been barefoot in the FALL post-shower scene, but it’s hard to tell). He’s always been shod in one way or another: brogues, sandals, always ready to take off after Sherlock at a moment’s notice. Now that Sherlock’s dead, he has no reason to do this anymore. Also, the way they’re pressed together, instead of flat on the floor, is reminiscent of hands in prayer, or two hands clasped with fingers interlocked. Curled in on himself, vulnerable.
I always thought it was because he had Sherlock’s blood on his shoes
Just when I thought the angst couldn’t get any worse… (tw: blood)
Now thinking of those shoes left at the door of 221B, the slight bit of red footprints in the carpet, the red etched into the treads that won’t wash out, the shoes John will never wear again but can’t bring himself to throw away….
It only took me a couple of days after my “Never again! You’re all monsters!” experience in the “Sherlock” tag to venture back there. This makes me glad I did.
Sobbing marathon tho
(more specific) Benedict Cumbargraph
(Source: benbenny)
I think the core problem with the fandom’s imagining of sherlock/moriarty is that they have 0 comprehension of how moriarty’s character canonically works. they’ve grown so fond of their fanon version of him that’s a mindless, blood-bathing sadist that they overlook his character establishment on the series itself. this is a man who, in his ongoing mission to ‘destroy’ sherlock, never once laid so much as a finger on him. (the first time moriarty touches him is during the handshake/hold — and that’s a tender and intimate touch, not a violent one. not even REMOTELY a violent one.) his career as a consulting criminal was defined by absence and lack of direct contact. this is something explicitly stated numerous times throughout TGG. HE. DOES. NOT. GET. HIS. HANDS. DIRTY. i can assure you he’d find absolutely no pleasure in watching someone slaughtered before him. he’d find that as despairingly boring as everything else, and by no means would he ever do anything of the sort himself. what would be the point? there’s nothing clever or distracting about murder or torture. the fun for him comes through the orchestrating of the details, the construction of the puzzle, and, most significantly, through the expectation that sherlock holmes will be there to work his way through moriarty’s artful handiwork.
with a misunderstanding of moriarty’s character comes a misunderstanding of sherlock’s, and a misunderstanding of the complexities of their relationship. when people imagine moriarty as this demonic sadistic psychopath, they’re doing so because it makes sense for them to slot him into the conventional mold of the villain. and in doing so, they reify their imagining of sherlock as the romantic hero. they simply ignore the fact that sherlock has, more than once, stated that he is not a hero. more alarmingly, they ignore the central themes of TRF and all the work it put into deconstructing the hero/villain binary that gives readily comprehensible meanings to fairytale-esque fiction. sherlock’s life is not a fairy tale, and when you imagine him as the vulnerable hero terrified of the big bad evil moriarty, you completely miss this point, and bysodoing miss the point of EVERYTHING ABOUT THE SHOW AND THE CHARACTERS WITHIN IT. why do you think the turning point of the rooftop confrontation is sherlock’s declaration that he is not, and never has been, an ‘angel’? why does said confrontation find resolution in moriarty’s ‘you’re me’? why does all of this happen within the thematic context of a deconstructed fairy tale? BECAUSE THE SIMPLICITY OF THE GOOD/EVIL OPPOSITION IS HERE DESTROYED BY SHERLOCK AND MORIARTY BOTH. no good, no evil, no hero, no villain, just two brilliant, damaged, and isolated human beings who have found comfort in one another since they found each other through carl powers. this is why talk of thanks and blessings and owing passes between them. it’s about sharing and ethics and consent AND EVERYTHING ABOUT THE FANON IMAGINING OF SHERLOCK/MORIARTY AS VIOLENT AND SADISTIC AND NON-CONSENSUAL IGNORES THIS.
the ‘guilt’ of shipping sherlock/moriarty emerges from this series of misconceptions. if the fandom would tear themselves away from their beloved and reductive fairy tale character tropes, they’d see that sherlock and moriarty have far and away the most balanced and mutually respectful power dynamic on the series. no one else receives the unconditional respect from sherlock that moriarty does — no one else, not ever. and moriarty does nothing to sherlock that sherlock does not happily consent to. RESPECT. ETHICS. CONSENT. the great irony is that sherlock/moriarty is probably the least violent of any of the relationship dynamics seen on the show.
a scandal in belgravia
i hate this episode.
i hate the way it’s set up.
it breaks so many basic episodic rules.
Do tell. Please rant at me. That was not sarcasm.
like i watched the full episode once and was bored to sleep.
it jumps here and there and DOES NOT FOLLOW THE PROPER SEQUENCE OF TIME FOR AN EPISODE.
what the fuck were they doing.
the first part of it was cute with the sheet and the ‘are you wearing any pants’ and all but then we get into this messy goop of working on the case and what? all the sudden we’re focusing on john’s blog now?
lol okay.
and then we’re crossing genres from mystery into fantasy? ….
i did like the molly hooper finally calling sherlock out scene, though.
but then you’ve lost me.
and what…what’s going on now.
i just had to pause it when john is all upset because he doesn’t know the intricate details of his friends sex life (even though they talked about this in the first episode)and i’m trying to figure out how this is relevant to the plot
and..what? character dev. with mrs. hudson all the suddem?
i …do not know.
YES. I agree with this. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I really, really do. NONE OF IT MADE ANY SENSE. If you focus so much on a character like they wanted to do with Adler, you damn well better make sure to write her properly, to have her actions and motivations make sense. Because if they don’t, the plot falls apart. Everything falls apart. Loads of people in that episode had to act in incomprehensible and non-sensical ways to keep it going.
Why doesn’t Mycroft tell Sherlock about the counterterrorism plot once he notices it might be relevant? Isn’t it totally counter-productive to let him walk into that ignorant of the wider repercussions? As far as I’m concerned, Mycroft is responsible for the screw up as well because HE DIDN’T TELL SHERLOCK EVERYTHING HE NEEDED TO KNOW.
John is concerned for Sherlock throughout that episode. Why does he leave Sherlock alone after he’s been drugged then? Obviously Adler somehow gained access to his room? How did John miss that? Why does he leave her alone with Sherlock later on when he knows that she attacked and drugged him the last time that happened? They just needed Adler to accomplish these things, get Sherlock alone etc. so somehow needed to make John incompetent and indifferent to Sherlock’s safety, when he was obsessing about that for the rest of the episode. Really bad, lazy writing that affected John’s characterization negatively.
Why does Sherlock “identify” Irene’s body? You mean to tell me that body was exactly the same as Adler’s? Was it a clone? And Sherlock somehow fell for the “smashed in face” ruse? Again with the making characters more clueless than they usually are to keep the (absurd) plot going.
Who is Irene Adler? I don’t know because the script didn’t bother to tell me. What does she want exactly? She was powerful and living a very comfortable life already, why risk that all on a scheme that she must know had a very probable risk of getting her killed? Why did she suddenly switch from dominatrix, blackmailer and con-woman to murderer and terrorist? That’s a big step to take. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying I would have liked some sort of motivation for it. Why make herself dependent on Moriarty, she must know he’s an unhinged mass murderer and her plan had many tricky parts with the potential to blow up in her face, as they eventually did? Also “Sherlocked”. Really? She was just there to be “snappy” in scenes and get reactions out of Sherlock, there was no coherent narrative for the character on her own. Pitiful, sexist writing.
I keep harping on that episode and how messed up I found it and I’m sorry for endlessly repeating myself, but…The insidious thing about Moffat’s special brand of sexism is that he made Adler into this “badass naughty woman” without taking her seriously. She’s in league with Moriarty, yet he gets depicted as charismatic but deathly while her actions get minimized as “naughty”. The way she strokes Sherlock’s face with her whip after she drugged and whipped him against his will is depicted as “sexy”. How she got all that blackmail information (by drugging her clients or betraying them in other ways while they were vulnerable and trusting her) is swept under the rug. Sherlock keeps saying “no”, but no one listens to him. His (presumed) lack of sexual experience is played for laughs.
Adler in league with terrorists and Moriarty is a big deal in the episode. But all she does to Sherlock? That’s fun and clever. Yet Sherlock is clearly upset throughout. But the other characters seem to see it as some mutual thing, to the point where John leaves Sherlock alone with her (totally OOC moment IMO). So what she does not only to Sherlock, but to her other “friends” is normalized by the reactions of everyone in the episode. The power imbalance and, yeah, sexual assault is portrayed as “cute” and Sherlock’s reeling as pathetic. IMO there’s some gross gender stereotypes about “men always wanting to have sex and therefore cannot be raped” and “women are never a serious threat and if you can’t fight them off that just means you’re a wimp and had it coming”. Gah, the more I talk about that episode, the angrier I get…
And it just ruins so much for me, what they did here. Because there are all these memes going around, that gif with the whip stroking Sherlock’s face is insanely popular, “the woman who beat you” etc., it comes up in fic and so on. And it all looks great, and Pulver was great, but it just makes me so uncomfortable because in the context of the episode it was so messed up. And I do think it further muddies the waters when it comes to fandom’s perceptions of consent. Because Adler’s myriad of violations in that regard are treated like they’re no big deal.
We sit here stranded: We sit here stranded: tw rape
this is so fucking on point I. Can’t. Even.
and it makes me feel like a shitty person so I know I learned something.
Watson and Holmes, Page 11. Art by Rick Leonardi. Words by Karl Bollers.
Sneak peek of the first 11 pages at their Facebook page and at Bleeding Cool.
Full release coming at the end of the month at iVerse.
YOU GUYS.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!
