If not later, when?

Timothée greeting fans at the VFF (9/3) 💋

Seriously??? I mean... SERIOUSLY??? I mean... WTF???

So, since I’m currently in the process of uploading all my EMP metas to AO3 (here), it just occurred to me that we might need a summary post of all the different proposed EMP starting points. So here goes:

If I remember correctly, the three founders of EMP theory, @monikakrasnorada, @the-7-percent-solution and @gosherlocked originally proposed (in 2016) that Sherlock’s EMP (extended mind palace) starts at the moment Mary shot Sherlock in HLV.

Then there were a lot of people in the fandom who had all sorts of earlier or later EMP starting point ideas (e.g., Sherlock actually jumped off the roof in TRF, Sherlock OD’d on the plane at the end of HLV, Sherlock only slips into his EMP sometime during s4, etc.)

@ebaeschnbliah and a couple of others were proposing very, very early EMP scenarios (i.e. everything we see right from the start of ASiP is already happening in Sherlock’s mind). And @ebaeschnbliah and a few other fans are also playing around with PILOT!verse (i.e. the unaired Pilot is real; the show is not. Or: Sherlock actually slips into his EMP at some point during the Pilot).

In 2017 @possiblyimbiassed had a completely different idea: EMP starts in the gap between TSoT and HLV as Sherlock OD’s off-screen after the wedding at home in his 221b flat. Everything we see at the start of HLV is already EMP.

Shortly after that @possiblyimbiassed re-worked that theory under the influence of an idea that @raggedyblue had come up with. @raggedyblue had proposed that, while Sherlock indeed OD’s (probably in the gap between TSoT and HLV), what we’re seeing on the entire show right from the start (!) is actually not what really happened, what we are seeing is instead Sherlock re-imagining his entire friendship with John right from the start in his mind due to the fact that he read John’s (not entirely factual) blog right before putting that needle in his arm. (This theory that @raggedyblue originally put forward and @possiblyimbiassed has worked out in intricate detail is something I refer to as the raggedypossibly-theory.;))

As for myself: I am not that creative, so I haven’t really come up with EMP starting points of my own. :D While I like all EMP starting points and think they’re all fun to play with, I mostly go back and forth between two ideas:

1. TRF: I.e. Sherlock actually jumped off that hospital roof at the end of TRF. 

2. @possiblyimbiassed’s original theory from 2017 was right, and Sherlock OD’d after the wedding. Everything we see at the beginning of HLV is already EMP.

Both theories aren’t originally mine (obviously), but this argument in favour of them is something that just occurred to me:

Both scenarios have one big advantage over all other EMP starting points, the advantage of being closely tied to ACD’s canon!Holmes stories!

1) There was actually a Reichenbach moment in ACD!canon, after which Holmes’ disappeared for years hiding from both the public eye and Watson. 2) And the fact that Holmes’ gay heartbreak and sorrow find their expression in his drug use is canonical in SIGN and also massively hinted at in the film TPLoSH (Mofftiss’s favourite film).

So, that’s what those two theories have got going for them: Their deep foundation in ACD!canon.

Mostly, I believe in theory 1, though. (I mean, theory 2 has its merits, what with Holmes’s canonical drug use, but it has the drawback of putting the starting point into an off-screen gap between TSoT and HLV.)

Theory 1 is the simplest, really: Sherlock jumped. 

There’s a reason why we never got an actual explanation of how Sherlock supposedly ‘tricked’ everyone at the end of TRF and how the jump worked out well for him. (Hint: It didn’t.) 

There’s a reason why the last episode of s4, which, on a meta level, pushed us into the same void as the original readers of the ACD!stories after the Reichenbach Fall, is called ‘The Final Problem’ linking it back to TRF (which in canon was actually called ‘The Final Problem’). 

There’s a reason why Mycroft’s weird bunker office starts to appear in TEH, etc., etc., etc. …

Sherlock actually jumping and everything being in his head starting with TEH would explain all of that. 

It would tie the whole EMP idea to the ACD!stories, and it might even have the advantage of making Mary a figment of Sherlock’s imagination, some nurse he hears (in his coma), a nurse coming into Sherlock’s hospital room and flirting with John. Obviously comatose, jealous Sherlock has to turn her into a great villain after that.:D

So, yeah, theory 1 has a lot of things going for it.

But, as I said, theory 2 (OD in the gap between TSoT and HLV) is also very close to my heart, for various reasons (Holmes’ drug use in SIGN, his symptoms fitting a cocaine overdose, as I pointed out at the end of this thread here: x).

In short, I keep bouncing back and forth between these two theories, basically.

So, this is it. My EMP summary post. Feel free to add more EMP starting points of your own in the comments, if you like.:)

P.S. And then there are obviously those of us who believe that all EMP starting points are true because it’s an ‘Inception’ style dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream scenario, which Mofftiss have, after all, hinted at in both the Sherlocky ‘Doctor Who’ episode ‘Last Christmas’ and the massively Sherlocky show ‘Dracula’…This has been proposed by many different people over time, I believe.

i remember when EMP theory first emerged, back when i was a lurker, and it helped make sense of some of the most nonsensical parts of s3, especially HLV. but then reflecting on how much of HLV didn’t make sense, and how much of TSOT was also mind palace (sadly, deducingbbcsherlock, who sorted out a great deal of that, has deleted, but some of @heimishtheidealhusband ’s meta also covers it), and how much fake bs was in TEH, made me start to question the earlier series. other fans began to compare the blog entries with the show, too. did john not mention running across rooftops because it didn’t happen like that? how much is just tv story telling, suspension of disbelief, and how much is just pure fantasy?

(More extensive rambling under the cut)

The hospital scene in HLV with the backwards running heart monitor has been suspected a long time ago as possible starting point for an EMP scenario that  continues in TAB (and beyond) because Sherlock still hasn’t come back from coma. The also very interesting ‘raggedypossibly-theory’ on the other hand (thoroughly explained in @possiblyimbiassed ‘s meta series What happened to Sherlock?) persues the idea of a much deeper EMP scenario. It sets the time of John’s and Mary’s honeymoon as the centre point, when Sherlock overdoses on drugs. It runs backwards as well as forwards and covers the whole show. Identical to both theories are drugs which severely affect Sherlock’s consciousness. 

In my old post The stage is set I wrote about Reichenbach, the Pool and the Pilot as possible starting points for a mind palace scenario. 

TBC below the cut ….

When we originally coined the idea of EMP theory, my idea was that the one crucial point of no return where Mofftiss veer from Canon is the moment Mary Watson shoots Sherlock and John decides to stay with her, changing the character of John Watson to a point where I cannot follow.

But all your theories have lots of merits and by now I think that virtually all of them might be true in some way.

The idea of ​​having a theory named after me fills me with ridiculous pride every time.

There are so many EMP starting points and they have the unpleasant characteristic of being all plausible, I say unpleasant because part of me hates not having confirmation. But precisely this being multiple and above all credible, is one of the reasons why I think there is this strange circularity in history, that what we see as the beginning, ASIP, is not the beginning but the beginning is probably a scene in which , locked up in his house after the wedding (confirmed in in TLD) as @possiblyimbiassed puts it, Sherlock falls into his “dream” and relives the story from the beginning. There was one thing that went around during the filming of S4, which was that the actors were told to read the script backwards and then everyone was moved because they had finally understood (it seems strange to me this thing of revealing something like this to the actors late, but I really don’t know anything about how these things go). My theory does not literally provide a reverse reading, but conceptually it comes close.

The different points of entry of EMP, and I agree that TRF is the most canonical, could signal deeper and deeper states of consciousness that Sherlock reaches. So here I also embrace the “inception” theory. Not for anything else, the superficial and coherent narrative unravels more and more, and even if there are really implausible things from the beginning, they become gradually more evident as the episodes and Sherlock’s journey proceed. A journey that I read as interior and that increasingly assumes the characteristics of the dream. S4 is definitely dreamlike. I probably seem a little crazy because I put all the theories together, but isn’t it likely that everyone is partly right, that everyone has seen a part of the puzzle and that the solution is not to deny a part, but to try to put them all together?

The concept of a dream ties in well with your coma theory @sagestreet, for which you have found numerous signs that would otherwise be inexplicable.

Theory 1, albeit canonical, contains all those non-answers that @possiblyimbiassed as usual, has identified and highlighted so well, once again I can only find myself in agreement with her.

And although I agree with the impossibility that we have to know the deeper authorial intent, I cannot help but think that this “dreamlike” choice was a good basis for using the mirror technique that was already present in the Canon, I think it made it easier to use the huge number of metaphors and allegories, I think it made it possible to highlight Sherlock Holmes’ modus pensandi and his Mind Theater, I think it opened up the possibility of inserting a large number of metatextual references that in a more realistic narrative would have struggled to blend.

No less than four episodes - ASiP, HLV TAB and TLD - have John waking up from a dream in the beginning (well, in TLD he didn’t even wake up - he stopped lying down!). Each of them seems to mark the beginning of a new story. While this seems to show us the story from John’s perspective, I think it would also be consistent with Sherlock - being obsessed with John - repeatedly trying to imagine things from John’s perspective. Which is exactly what he says he’s been doing in one of the (supposedly) ’real’ scenes in TAB:

MARY: You’ve been reading John’s blog – the story of how you met.

SHERLOCK: Helps me if I see myself through his eyes sometimes. I’m so much cleverer.

(Again - rambling continues under the cut)

“I think our theory might be tied to canon in more ways than just the fact that Holmes sometimes used drugs”

I absolutely agree, @possiblyimbiassed. In fact, I might have worded that badly in my OP. ACD!Holmes didn’t just take drugs sometimes, after all. No! SIGN makes it pretty obvious how important that whole drug-taking thing is metaphorically: Drugs are metaphorically presented in that story as Holmes’ wife. (After all, it’s said that Watson gets a wife out of this whole business, and Holmes gets…well, you know, his drugs.) So, drugs are an ‘ersatz’ spouse for Holmes. Drugs are his ‘wife’. And isn’t that just the most heartbreaking thing you’ve ever heard?!

In other words, the canon ACD!story SIGN directly ties the drugs to Watson’s impending wedding, which, on the show ‘Sherlock’, lends further credence to an EMP starting point somewhere around the time of the wedding and links it all to Sherlock’s drug problem.

Hurray, the day has finally come! :D I’ve started to upload ALL my EMP metas to AO3, to make sure they can all be found in one place.

Summary: You are unconvinced that s4 is all fake? You don’t believe Sherlock is in a coma? Here I’ve collected all my EMP metas in one place. In them I’ve gathered a lot of evidence (textual, subtextual and on a meta level) for the coma theory.

I will probably be uploading about one chapter a day…until it’s done. But there are A LOT of them…so…

whatever you can think about the Season 4 of Sherlock, I guess we’re unanimous to admit that Badass-Mrs Hudson was an amazing treat 

I wanted a tribute to Una, for all that she brought to Sherlock, and because she’s my fave Mrs Hudson EVER!

So, I’ve been lurking on Tumblr for almost a decade. I was living on the tjlc and johnlock tags for years, but somehow I never quite dared to come into the fray and join the discussion myself. So many amazing people were already covering pretty much everything anyway. Recently though, I came across this post on a FB group and, I kid you not, I immediately had horrible flashbacks to the mess that was S4 of BBC Sherlock.

Now, I had left all that hot mess behind me, or so I thought. In the past four years, I moved to a different country, went through a slow and painful break-up, completed a Bachelor’s degree, and drifted away from tumblr. But this godforsaken post, brought it all back with the force a thousand punches, because the past year hasn’t been traumatic enough apparently, so why the hell not.

At this point, I should say that since S4 aired back in 2017 (when we thought we had problems), I hadn’t sat down to watch it again. I refused. But dammit, it’s on Netflix now, and I’ve had it on the brain since that damned post, so I figured why not. LET’S WATCH THE WHOLE THING FROM THE BEGINNING, SHALL WE.

ˈbōltˌhōl/

noun

plural noun:

boltholes

a place where a person can escape and hide.“he thought of Antwerp as a possible bolthole” BRITISHa hole or burrow by which a rabbit or other wild animal can escape.

In HLV, we learn of Sherlock’s boltholes for the first time. I don’t think any of us were surprised to learn that Sherlock had places no one knew about, where he could hide, lay low, whatever. But, that’s the interesting bit right there: apparently everyone knew about them?

What’s the point of having a hiding place that’s not secret?

The thing is, I think they are secret. Even still. How?

Because they are all in his mind palace. Because I believe they are all part of his mind palace.

Where has Sherlock been in his mind palace? 

The Underground (TEH)

The Courtroom (TSoT)

Baker Street (TSoT)

A Morgue (TSoT)

Mycroft’s Office (HLV)

Roland-Kerr Further Education College (HLV)

A Padded Cell (HLV)

*I’m sure I’m missing some there, and if I am, please, let me know. :)

Then we get the mention of all of Sherlock’s boltholes after he’s escaped hospital (improbable). That everyone, right down to Mrs Hudson, knows about these places where Sherlock can hide, just seems to defeat the purpose for me. Unless…these are all mentioned after Sherlock has been shot and in a time where I believe that Sherlock is indeed unconscious and this is all taking place in his mind palace anyway.

Is it possible- or even plausible- that these ‘boltholes’ are still more areas of Sherlock’s mind palace?

Parliament Hill-  an area of open parkland in the south-east corner of Hampstead Heath in north-west London. The hill, which is 98 metres (322 ft) high, is notable for its views of the capital’s skyline. Many landmarks can be seen from its summit such as Canary Wharf, the Gherkin, the Shard and St Paul’s Cathedral. This hardly seems appropriate for a ‘bolthole’ or place to hide, quite the contrary. It’s a place that would allow Sherlock ‘to see’, London: to observe. You know, like maybe, try to get the ‘big picture’ in his mind?

Camden Lock- or Hampstead Road Locks is a twin manually operated lock on the Regent’s Canal in Camden Town, London Borough of Camden. The twin locks together are “Hampstead Road Lock 1”; each bears a sign so marked. Hawley Lock andKentish Town Lock are a short distance away to the east; there are no nearby locks to the west. Again, not much of a place ‘to hide’. But, the added water metaphor here is interesting.

*ETA: this post by @longsnowsmoon5 and further amazing input by @tjlcisthenewsexy regarding water and ‘two’ rivers and the Camden Lock.

Dagmar Court  -Housing association block built on the site of the Dagmar Arms (Public House) I suppose it’s possible that he owns one of the flats here? A simple flat seems to be so mundane in this list, though.

The Blind Greenhouse in Kew Gardens  -a glass building in which plants are grown that need protection from cold weather. I searched the Kew Gardens website and found nothing about ‘the blind greenhouse (if anyone has this info, please tag me or send me a link?) but there are loads of greenhouses on the property. Again, a greenshouse seems a terrible place to hide out???

The Leaning Tomb in Hampstead Cemetery -the place for eternal rest, usually gated off because the ground has been consecrated. Again, I searched the Hampstead Cemetery site for any mention of a ‘leaning tomb’ and came up with nothing. Would Sherlock literally desecrate someone’s resting place, to hide from anything? Perhaps this is Sherlock’s ‘burial ground’ for those things he deletes. 

Molly’s bedroom- again, what kind of sense does this make as a bolthole? It’s possible he stayed with her directly after the fall, but when would he need to go there again? 

Behind the Clock Face of Big Ben- “I think he was probably joking.” I think so, too, because JOHN IS PRETTY DAMN SMART.

Leinster Gardens-  The empty houses that were demolished years ago to make way for the London Underground, a vent for the old steam trains. “That’s his number one bolt hole. It’s top-top secret.” And, we’re to believe ANDERSON, of all people, knows about this?? That Sherlock Holmes, as clever as they come, allowed Anderson to follow him and find out about this bolthole? Of all the boltholes mentioned in this episode, this is the only one that comes close to actually being what it says it is, imo. I can imagine Sherlock hiding out here, no one knowing about it. Hell, there’s even a lab set up you can see in the background. The thing is, there was no reason to have this confrontation. Sherlock could have just as easily (and more comfortably) had Mary come to Baker Street. Sherlock took all that time to set up the Leinster Gardens face-off, when he could just as easily have set something similarly up in Baker Street. John could have listened in over the phone from 221C. I’m sure they could have used the same sort of camera the assassins used in TRF. There was no need for it to have happened like that in Leinster Gardens (yes, I know, it goes with how the Moran deal went down) but still. Could Leinster Gardens be Sherlock’s mind palace where he goes to face the hard truths?

I understand the thought that this is ‘too much’, but it is Sherlock, and he is a drama queen.

’‘Blind’ has several meanings including “having or causing a lack of discernment or awareness.”

Looking over the buildings I came across the Orangery. Built in 1761, it was originally meant to house Oranges and other Citrus trees…but they made it too dark, so the trees were taken out.

and as always any mention of glass says glass closet to me, and the orangery is such a perfect example. was there a single person present for that best man speech who didn’t pick up on sherlock’s Big Secret?

reviewing the lists of locations in the op, they are each a range of sites, from underground to way up high (stairs code by @just-sort-of-happened ) private to public, if that matters. interesting that only some of them seem to exist in our world, i wonder if any of the ones that don’t are references to other adaptations in the Giant Lego Set Of Canon ™. i love that camden lock is all about controlling the flow of water=emotions! and the giant clock face, after TAB, we associate the pocket watch with the modern phone=heart.

testing whether there is a matching between the two lists, just in case that twigs anything.

the underground, and leinster gardens

the courtroom, and dagmar court?

baker st, and molly’s bedroom (since molly is a john mirror, and there’s that indication in ASIB that both boys were up in john’s room)

the morgue, and the tomb

mycroft’s bunker, and parliament hill?

First of all it’s interesting to note how the boltholes are presented and by whom:

Lestrade knows about Parliament Hill, Camden Lock and Dagmar Court and he seems to be talking over his phone to Mycroft (?) as Mycroft is picking up the conversation in the next scene.

Mycroft names the Blind Greenhouse and the leaning tomb in Hampstead Cemetery while observing over his laptop and talking to Lestrade in person.

Molly is speaking directly into the camera as if she was interviewed and she is talking about a “spare bedroom” which turns out to be her bedroom.

Mrs. Hudson is talking to John and knows about the bolthole behind the clock face of Big Ben.

Lestrade’s sniffer-dog Anderson knows about the number one bolthole Leinster Gardens and is talking to Mary.

Some extra notes that could be of relevance: 

Dagmar Court is located on the Isle of Dogs in London. The Blind Greenhouse seems like a foreshadowing for TAB. Hampstead Cemetery seems to be the location that inspired scenes on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (x). Cemeteries and tombstones were also featured on BBC Sherlock a couple of times (THoB, TRF, TEH, TAB, TST and TFP of course). But the way I understand it a tomb is not exactly a tombstone but a crypt? There don’t seem to be any crypts of relevance on Hampstead Cemetery, especially no leaning ones. Maybe this is to be understood metaphorically as well, as a grave that is ”wrong” somehow. And Hampstead Cemetery seems to be a victorian cemetery (x). Molly’s bedroom is also very interesting with Molly being a mirror for John and a “heterosexual cover” of sorts. And she seems to be talking to the audience here which is…funny considering S4 and TFP especially. Big Ben was featured both on ASiB (Moriarty standing in front of the clocktower while receiving the flight details from Irene and informing Mycroft) and TEH (exploding Palace of Westminster). Clocks are also very interesting as time seems to be ticking throughout BBC Sherlock as if something was coming. But we’re also frozen in time a couple of times, for example at the end of TFP. Then on Leinster Gardens are the empty houses Mary’s face is projected on, the facade for the London Underground.