#reichencrack

Here’s the thing:

For 8+ years, Sherlock fandom shared intentionally bad theories on April 1st using the #reichencrack tag.

The year between the 9th and 10th installments has been... a strange one.

So if you wanna share a Reichencrack Day theory or meta, go for it.

If you wanna just reblog some silly, funny, or weird Sherlock posts from whenever, go for it. (That’s what I’ll be doing.)

If you’re not in the mood at all and wanna carry on like nothing’s happening, that’s also totally fine. (Feel free to filter any of my tags out of your life.)

You do you. Protect that brain.

Imagine Sherlock trying to see signs that John liked him. They touch so little in the series and almost every time there’s another reason why Johns heartbeat might have gone quicker. ‘Did his pupils just dilate? Must have been my imagination’

Jim was perfect as the “face” of Moriarty because he played the part so well.  He was just deranged enough to convince Sherlock, because Sherlock expected Moriarty to be deranged.  The real Moriarty was quite amused by the part of her plan that involved pretending to the press that Jim was Richard Brook, an actor.  It was her favorite bit of meta.  She was practically waving it in Sherlock’s face that Jim wasn’t really Moriarty, knowing he would double down on his certainty that he was.  If Sherlock had been at all suspicious, he wasn’t now.

It was also fun to gaslight Sherlock with hints that Moriarty was alive again. Since in his mind he didn’t doubt that Jim was Moriarty, that meant he had to doubt the evidence of his own eyes when Jim blew his brains out. It was hilarious.

Even more hilarious was the fact that even Eurus was fooled.  She was so obsessed with Sherlock, that if her baby brother believed Jim was Moriarty, then he must be Moriarty.  She was the most intelligent of all the Holmes children, had some sort of disconnect with empathy, and yet she too was fooled by sentiment.  Plus, it was obvious she rather liked Jim.  They were two peas in a pod and Moriarty didn’t regret letting them play together.

But Eurus and Sherlock didn’t matter.  Only Mycroft did.  It was essential to keep him distracted, because he was the only one who had the ability to thwart Moriarty’s activities.  Jim led them all on a merry chase for a good while, but then he had to ruin it by killing himself. For the drama of it all, no doubt.

Moriarty put Mary in place, hoping that Mycroft would figure out she was an assassin and have to deal with that, but for some reason he focused on Sherlock and his pining for Watson. Moriarty was beginning to despair, until Magnussen came along.  He had the utter audacity to try and blackmail her. Not that she cared a whit for her husband, but it was the principle of the thing. But she couldn’t be too upset, because it led to her brilliant plan to sic Sherlock on him, and to also tip off Magnussen to Mary’s real identity. Events dovetailed nicely and Mycroft was preoccupied for weeks, especially after Moriarty pulled her stunt with the videos of Jim everywhere.

Mycroft had only ever come close to finding out the truth once. When her code name came up. Amo.  Luckily, she’d been manipulating the secretary for years into thinking she was pulling one over on her superiors, so Vivian proved to be the perfect scapegoat to keep Mycroft from realizing the truth.

But there were only so many red herrings and scapegoats and sleights of hand that Moriarty could pull before Mycroft started to see the truth.  He needed to be brought down in the same way that Sherlock and Eurus had - sentiment.  Melt the Ice Man. And now that her pesky husband was out of the way (everyone bought that it was suicide), she was free to hit Mycroft where he was most vulnerable. He’d been focusing so much on his brain that he left his heart exposed, thinking he had none, and now she would take ownership of it so that he would never dare to suspect her again.

Sherlock only got interested in science because he heard he'd get to examine lots of specimen.