Hey Nonny!

Here's a few I got:

Why Does Molly Look Into the Camera (HLV)

All The Instances of Fourth Wall Breaks in S4

Blog Tag: Something's Fucky

Blog Tag: Breaking the Fourth Wall

Is Sherlock S4 a Stage Play?

Mise En Abime

Sherlock’s Love is Eros

And Others' posts:

All Seasons: Physically Impossible Scenes in S4

Fucky S4 Things (Community Post, check all the threads)

Through A Glass, Darkly

tl;dr: Why are John and Sherlock seemingly ignoring Mary in the first minutes of T6T? 

PS - I decided to have a copy of this post on Google Docs, which will be updated as I go along. I’ve given everyone permissions to add comments on my doc, to encourage further discussion.

One of the things that caught my attention in S4, while still a casual watcher and long before I began to read Sherlock meta, was the whole issue of Mary coming back to John and Sherlock’s life after shooting Sherlock.

I remember being outraged about it, especially regarding Mary’s prominence and strange redemption in T6T (and of course, the closing montage in TFP).

As with my earlier posts, I’ve been rewatching HLV/T6T over and over again as research for my WIP Turned, and new things have been standing out, now that I read meta. Recently, for example, I noticed Sherlock’s response to ‘John’s’ ghost!Mary in TLD. Sherlock responding to a ghost who insists throughout an entire episode she’s a figment of John’s imagination is strange, I’d say. I’ve since learned I wasn’t the only one who noticed this - I remember coming across a mention of this in meta by @loudest-subtext-in-tv​​ as well @discordantwords​​, who mentioned this in response to a fic prompt I sent her (you’ll find some interesting clothes meta in there too, by @bakerbee​​).

And then I watched TST again and noticed something weird. Sherlock’s interactions with Mary between the tarmac suddenly seem, to me, as if they go back and forth between completely ignoring her to only barely acknowledging her presence. This could be NOTHING, or a part of the general fuckery of S4, or could fit well in with a larger theory I haven’t read up on yet. It could also be Sherlock not liking the person who shot him, and ignoring her, but my feeling is that this is something else. The question is, whether this is ghost!Mary in Sherlock’s mind, John’s mind, or something else?

Just to spice things up, I’d like to first direct your attention to something fucky that @tjlcisthenewsexy​​ had pointed out about the penultimate scene in HLV. That part is supposed to be happening after Sherlock’s Victorian dream and his return to reality (SUPPOSEDLY). In this post, tjlcisthenewsexy claims and adds screenshots that show that after Sherlock ‘lands’ back in reality, every shot of Mary, unlike before, conceals her pregnant belly. It’s kinda creepy - go have a look. In fact, go on and read the entire post and ask yourself why is Mary pregnant on the tarmac but not in Victorian days, and where Mary is during the final scene of TAB.

The photo below was taken from @tjlcisthenewsexy​‘s blog.

Another ‘feature of interest’ regarding Mary in the tarmac is her scarf - it has colourful butterflies on it, and remember that because I’ll get back to it soon.

Sidenote to my ‘water is dream’ homies: Sherlock’s pardon scene seems to attempt to reinforce we’re back in reality when Sherlock tweets ‘Back on terra firma’  (meaning dry land :ahem:, solid ground) and Lady Smallwood insists that Sherlock is now ‘home and dry’.

So, in the first ignoring-Mary scenario, Mary wears the same ‘frock’/kimono (I’m not sure what to call it) we saw her wearing at Sherlock’s parents’ house. This is the famous ‘fake blog post’ scene, or the jpg blog, where John is writing a post about his new fatherhood even though Mary is still incredibly pregnant. Sherlock mentions that if things continue the way they’re going, he’ll be needing two knives. Here’s the dialogue:

JOHN: It pays to advertise.

(Sherlock sits down in his chair, looking at his phone. Mary, standing near the window and rubbing her very pregnant tummy with one hand while pressing her lower back with the other, looks at him.)

MARY: So, what about Moriarty, then?

SHERLOCK: Ooh, I have a plan.

(Grimacing, Mary rubs her bump again.)

SHERLOCK: I’m going to monitor the underworld – every quiver of the web will tell me when the spider makes his move.

(As he was speaking, he has also tweeted “#221Bringit!”)

JOHN: Basically your ‘plan’ is just to sit there solving crimes like you always do.

SHERLOCK (smiling across to him): Awesome, isn’t it?!

(He jumps up, steps across to the mantelpiece and rips the top letter off the pile.)

Credits to Ariane DeVere for the transcription.

Watch this conversation and you’ll notice that neither of them acknowledges Mary, despite her physical presence there. There are two ways to read this conversation: in one Sherlock responds to Mary, in the other Sherlock is somewhat vaguely pointing out that he has a plan to deal with the issue of needing to with wait for Moriarty despite the deluge of cases he’s been getting.

Next up, the Dusty Death case:

A few things I noticed here: John never acknowledges Mary’s presence here (and neither does Sherlock) and Mary’s STRANGE APPEARANCE HERE: Where’s the belly? Where is the red lipstick, colourful clothes? The fact is that everyone’s appearance changed between the tarmac and now - whenever this now is; John’s hair and clothes are dramatically, Sherlock suddenly has a trump-tan and Mary’s hair is longer and more curly. But look at Mary in this photo - she’s all washed up!

The belly is back, but even though Mary calls Sherlock’s name a number of times he doesn’t acknowledge her at all. Look at John, too, who throws a glance at Mary’s general direction for a split second, but we don’t see an actual exchange of words between John and Mary. There’s something strangely reminiscent of TLD in this photo that I can’t put my finger on, maybe the lighting?

Things seem slightly different once Mary is in labour - although let’s not forget that Mary is ignored by Sherlock and John for long enough to the point they’re missing out on 59 calls. Interestingly Mary, who feels comfortable enough to (later, when John is on the bus) tell Sherlock that John is available at 5PM one day for a case (‘Mary says it’s fine’) never calls Sherlock when she’s in labour and can’t get a hold of John.

Sherlock is again immersed in his phone in the car on the way to the hospital, and only acknowledges Mary when John tells him to. The interesting thing in this scene (besides the fact that there are setlock photos of a version of this scene shot where Sherlock was the one doing the driving) is Mary’s dress. It’s a black dress with butterflies, a callback to her tarmac scarf. The Google search for butterflies and symbolism of death(?) are easy enough.

Sherlock is again immersed in his phone at Mary’s flat when John and Mary asks Molly and Mrs. Hudson to be the godmothers (you know, when the photos ‘don’t come out right’). He never fully acknowledges ONLY MARY and her words or even looks at her, and he’s surprised by the choice of name for Rosie later in church. To me, here at church as well as in the car on the way to the hospital, Sherlock looks surprised to find himself wherever he is.

And then comes the Welsborough case, during which we see for the first time in this episode, an actual conversation between Sherlock and Mary - I’m sure there’s a lot to be said about this case etc, but the one thing that stood out to me was Sherlock, in a split second of premonition, standing completely alone in the room staring at the Thatcher busts - in a way that ties in my mind to another idea I’ve been having, about Thatcher representing Mary in one way or another (but let’s save that for another time).

Now think again about ghost!Mary, John and Sherlock in the hug scene in TLD.

Whatever’s going on here, it’s strange. I wonder if what we’re seeing here are different versions of the same ‘unreliable narrator’ reality/narrative, jumping back and forth between ‘John’s alibi/blog’ and Sherlock who’s still locked in his Mind Palace (in the same fashion of TAB, where we switch between the various layers of supposed reality and Sherlock’s various layers of his mind).

Thoughts?

And while I have your attention, I’m researching another idea. If you know of any significance of the hazelnut/hazel tree/the word hazel or Luz in the BBCSH universe please let me know. Could be a photo, a wallpaper, the name of a place etc.

PS- I doubt any/many of my point here are completely new and were never pointed out before by others - if they were I apologize for not giving credits, at this point it’s very hard to know every single origin of meta ideas going around. Let me know if you deserve the credit for something.

Tags after the cut.

"Deep waters Sherlock, all your life... deep waters"