moriartys-magpies

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characters who view themselves as tools/weapons first and people second... characters who martyr themselves for a cause because they think that's the only way they can be worth something... characters who push themselves past their breaking point again and again and again... characters for whom devotion and masochism are inseparable... characters whose self-sacrifice becomes self-annihilation...... what was my point again? i had a point. anyway.

#Sebastian Moran #Mormor

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Peers into the void.

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A weapon. That’s all you are.

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I Promise I’m Not a Murderer: The Story of a Researching Writer

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how am i not tired of reading about the same two people falling in love in 5000 different ways yet

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so I’m rewatching TGG right now and I’m at the pool scene where Moriarty says “I gave you my number… i thought you might call” and I’m just imagining how funny it would have been if Sherlock had actually called him and said something along the lines of “hey jim just checking in if u still fake-dating Molly? cause i’d love to hit that. and by that i mean you. you free tonight?” i mean just imagine Jim’s reaction i’m sobbing

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Happy birthday, Jim.

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I don’t like Mary.

Mary Ruined BBC Sherlock For Me

The seeming desperation to sanctify Mary as the patroness of BBC Sherlock was monstrously unfair to Sherlock and John, the actual heart of the show.

Sherlock’s flaws are treated like flaws, and largely dealt with over the course of his arc. Mary’s flaws are treated like cute little quirks. Such a spunky woman! Sherlock writes a long, sweet love letter to John that was explicitly tailored to his genuine strengths and weaknesses as a human being. John finds this uninspiring and promptly forgets about it despite crying over it. Mary spits out a bunch of emotionally manipulative tripe under duress, and this apparently makes John want to be “what she saw in him.” Sherlock makes blatant, loving sacrifices for John, and these are brushed under the rug like plot devices while Mary is lionized for her textbook abusive possessiveness. Sherlock goes through a long, intense, and sometimes cruel redemption arc for a horrific mistake he made with good intentions, while Mary is redeemed for literal attempted murder and never-ending lies through crying, and whines about minor consequences. Her out-of-character sacrificial death isn’t treated as the redemption (which would have a neutral result and would have come before John taking her back), but as currency to buy John and Sherlock’s unending worship. John’s devotion and need and love are swept to the side as reasons for Sherlock to live, never explicitly addressed, but Mary’s sacrifice is placed on a pedestal. There’s an entire episode (two, really) about Sherlock’s world and heart revolving around John, and his willingness to go to hell for him, but we’re still told Mary’s the hero of it.

If Mary were so important, so great at showing John and Sherlock how to understand each other, their relationship would have been better after she was introduced, not worse. That’s basic logic. There wouldn’t have been a month of separation in which she complained about how much John missed Sherlock. There wouldn’t have been Sherlock’s uncertainty about his place in their lives. John would have recognized that Sherlock was being stupid and self-sacrificing, and that he didn’t have to settle for a lying assassin and Sherlock would have seen that John wasn’t happy with a lying assassin (or even a passive-aggressive nurse) and offered him an open home. In fact, post-Mary they seem to know less about each other, at least until John and Sherlock finally hit rock bottom in The Lying Detective and have to remake each other.

A truly caring, insightful Mary should have told John that she was responsible for her own actions, that Sherlock had done far too much for her already. Instead she left a note telling Sherlock to emotionally regress and go torture himself so John could play hero—and it didn’t even work. Her “love letter” canonically contributes to John’s breakdown by connecting his self-worth to an unrealistic standard of behavior (that is, unconditional loyalty and forgiveness—exactly what Mary acted bitterly entitled to). You could even read John’s horrific treatment of Sherlock as projection: he punishes Sherlock for not living up to an impossible standard of perfection because he thinks he needs to be punished for the same thing. It’s Sherlock who has the insight to heal John by telling him he’s allowed to be human, and that he wasn’t a bad person for wanting to cheat (though they gloss over why his need to cheat was sympathetic, i.e. the fact that Mary was a terrible and abusive wife). Yet instead of following this theme to it’s natural conclusion and rejecting Mary as an influence over their emotional lives, she’s treated as the hero of the storyline and elevated to narrator and posthumous counselor.

In the principle of “show, don’t tell,” Mary’s supposed goodness for our protagonists utterly, utterly fails to deliver.

And for the show to privilege Mary so blatantly when, objectively speaking, John and Sherlock’s relationship was so much more loving and more transformative, is heteronormative. For them to give Mary explicit, textual ownership over John and Sherlock’s relationship—a relationship that predates her introduction by years—is grossly heteronormative and arguably sexist. To need her approval for their implicit romance… I’m not sure I can begin to describe how much that disgusts me. Making John and Sherlock’s romantic feelings explicit would deal with the queer-baiting issue, but not with this.

The only way I can take any pleasure in this treatment of Mary, at all, is to treat it as a metaphor. With Mary as the avatar of heteronormativity and heterosexual privilege, the show’s worship of any sign of basic decency and sanctification of Mary for a non-existent redemption arc after nothing but “mental cruelty” become an apt metaphor for the way queer people are expected to behave when thrown crumbs of human rights. It’s only as caricature that her arc has any value. But I’m no longer sure that’s intentional.

If they’d written this series under duress with explicit orders to make Mary/John more important than Sherlock/John, to put Mary on a pedestal, and to avoid explicit Johnlock, then this result is exactly what I’d expect. Subtextually, Mary is still a villain with all the villainous parallels (e.g. Lady Carmichael and her abusive husband). Subtextually, John and Sherlock are still in love. Narratively, John and Sherlock are given all the real effort and development even while Mary hovers over their shoulders and intrudes on their love like a voyeur. Yet somehow, the explicit textual story is completely contrary to the subtext.

This was the moment they should have turned subtext into text, the moment the proverbial iron was hot, yet they failed to follow through. They teed up canon Johnlock and delivered Saint Mary the Undeveloped instead. Why? It baffles me. I can’t imagine they were censored, for surely they’d be loudly complaining about that. Did Moffat and Gatiss really grow up daydreaming about Mary the martyred matchmaker and Eurus the grand… whatever? Are they really so blind they can’t see the striking resemblance between their Mary and half their villains? Are women so unreal to them, they don’t require actual consequences or meaningful motivations? Are they so deluded, they can’t see the vast superiority of John and Sherlock’s romance to any other in the show? It’s the strangest thing, and the series suffered badly for it.

They could have made something great, something memorable, something historic, something that would be talked about in a truly positive way. Even if they hadn’t originally planned it, the opportunity was golden. And instead they did… this. It’s so utterly foolish. I am honestly baffled. It’s still possible they’ll do something explicit with John and Sherlock in S5, but their failure to capitalize on the perfect setup in S4 makes that look far more doubtful than before.

And what gets me is that there was so much good about this season. I actually enjoy a lot of the camp and ridiculousness many people dislike. I enjoy convoluted plot lines and don’t mind the occasional plot hole, easily plugged with a head canon. I enjoy high romance and heightened emotions. Set aside the appalling relationship dynamics and The Lying Detective is a very clever, fun episode with a beautiful ending. But I can’t watch S4, and possibly S3, because Mary is so very very horrible, and I’m still told I’m supposed to love her.

It’s like someone made your very favorite dessert, but you’re not allowed to taste it unless you sit next to your abusive ex and listen to them talk about how much you owe them. Sure, it might be the best dessert in the world, carefully and lovingly crafted by a master chef, but it’s still not worth it.

I don’t think anyone is crazy for holding out hope that there’s something more clever going on here. If they do make more Sherlock, and they actually fix this and the queer-baiting issue, then I’ll watch it. Maybe even love it. But I’m not holding my breath, anymore.

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make me choose → @ladyahsoka asked Mormor or Sheriarty

↳“My destiny and his wound together.” → insp

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He runs the biggest, most dangerous underground criminal empire in the world, with thousands of people tied into it that he has to keep track of so no secrets get out without him wanting them to. He has also seen and caused a lot of deaths & tortures first-hand. Not to mention he was tortured himself. That alone is enough to make you look 10 years older than you are.

But aside from that, there was a point in the game where he realised he was going to die. Knowing that fact, and knowing that he would have to leave behind his huge criminal web and the reputation that he had built over his life, and knowing he would have to leave behind Sebastian -whether he told the sniper his plans of dying on that roof beforehand or not- and knowing exactly what effect his death would have on Moran... That would definitely drain the spark of hope from your eyes.

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Punk!mormor punk!mormor punk!morm-

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because I’m bored

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Love is a chemical defect found in the losing side.

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