Boton

I'd just like to comment that hearing puppy snores from the corner of your office is one of the nicest things ever.

And it doesn't have to be black and white. It doesn't have to be either moonlight and roses or Wartenberg wheels and floggers. A little bit of game play could be a natural extension of what many people are saying is Irene's primary appeal: that she presents a challenge for Sherlock who can give as good as she gets. It doesn't seem that far of a leap to me that if he likes the head games of trying to outsmart her, he might like physical interactions that involve some head games too.

I agree with this. This is a great analysis of what I think is going on in John's head. And I think John is right in this instance. He watched Sherlock mooning around for 6 months or however long after he thought Irene was dead. John saw Mycroft confirm this theory twice: once when he declared the night of Irene's "death" a danger night, and once when he proposed that John could lie to Sherlock about whether or not Irene was in witness protection in America, which is a point that John visibly debated before he told the lie in the kitchen. I do think, and have from the beginning, that Sherlock wants Irene on more than an intellectual level. Sure, maybe he loves the challenge, but I think he also loves remembering her in battle dress and is intrigued by the idea of some recreational scolding. I understand why some people see this differently. However, one of the impressions I have had that was strengthened by the Eurus story in S4 is that Sherlock is only pushing people away on Mycroft's advice and as a way of avoiding getting hurt, not because he is disinterested in human connection or that he can't relate on any level but the intellectual.

That's a great question. Personally, I might be conflating "shy" with "empathetic," and those don't always go together.

It has to sting, though, that Sherlock took Molly into his confidence. Either that or he realizes what the silence probably cost her in watching all her friends suffer.

CAM wasn't a murder to me; he was an extermination. An erasing of the hard drive. I'm not the slightest bit bothered (in fiction) by someone with a strong moral code coming in to remove someone who is technically inside the law but who is destroying the lives of innocent people. And, in my opinion, CAM was absolutely armed: he knew all about Mary, and he was holding a gun to John and Mary's heads just as sure as if he had the physical object. The reason I would object to this in real life is that you never can be sure you have all the information while you are living it. Vigilante justice in the real world creates more problems than it solves. But in fiction? Heck, I cheered when Sherlock shot CAM. I might have rewound it a couple of times, too. Yes, back to Molly. I find this really pretty amazing too. I find it strange that no one seemed to talk to anyone else. Molly helped Sherlock, so she had the most information but potentially the most reason to keep mum. Lestrade saw the crime scene and, at least possibly, the phone that Sherlock threw down that had the "Lazarus" code message on it. And Mrs. Hudson had to know something was up because, at least if we assume that ACD canon is backstory, Mycroft would have come to her to make sure 221B stayed the way Sherlock left it. Maybe Moftiss just realized that it would look bad if they filmed a scene where John chased Molly through a series of restaurants, yelling at her all the way about keeping secrets. (Although wouldn't that have been fun? John spends the whole night berating people in restaurants!)

And I always thought that CAM hired Janine because he knew of the Mary connection, and he correctly predicted that he would be able to use this little access point in some way. I've always thought Janine was being used by both CAM and Sherlock, although Sherlock's proposal had the potential to hurt worse. In the original ACD story, at least Holmes knew that there was a suitor standing in the wings who was interested in the housemaid (or whoever it was), so she wouldn't be left embarrassed or without a potential husband. Janine had no comparable modern safety net, so I guess selling Sherlock's story had the parallel purpose of making her set for life and somehow mitigating the damage. But I still think it's probably the worst thing I saw him do in all the episodes, and yes, I'm counting CAM's "murder."

Now I keep picturing Mycroft in that old superglue commercial where the guy superglues his hard hat to an I-beam....

And then you hear his voice, and you say, "I want to watch and listen to him read the phone book out loud. For as many hours as it takes."

I don't remember, honestly. (And haven't sorted through back posts to find out.) I will say that, over the course of the seasons as I got to know the characters, my impressions changed a bit. I was always physically attracted to Sherlock, but I think seeing him over time emphasized how much he does that sort of intellectual game play that I like, so my attraction added the layer of liking his personality. Mycroft definitely benefited from prolonged exposure, so to speak. I think, in person, he would be difficult to get to know, but making that effort would be worth it. Lestrade and John both have always been overshadowed by my opinion of them physically, although I think S3 and S4 John also took a hit on the personality front. I know that is at variance with what I've said other places, because I really love John as a character and as someone to think about. However, when it comes to him being a "turn on," his increasing surliness sort of consumed what I thought of John the character. (I will say, however, that I have seen some very physically appealing photos of MF, so this is another case where my attraction to the character differs some from my attraction to the actor.)

I'll bet Mycroft has taken a chance or two. Somehow, while I tend to believe that he satisfies carnal urges through a nice, discrete service provided by the Diogenes, I've always thought that he had a relationship or two when he was a field agent and doing more of the legwork.

I may have answered this question a while back, but I'm going to go through it again because it is more fun than working. :) Who turns me on? Sherlock: Sherlock had me at the dark curls. I'm not so much attracted to BC in normal life, but Sherlock, with those luscious dark curls..... Anyway. He's a bit thin to be my "type," but personality wise, he does it for me too. He reminds me of a friend I used to have. This friend was rude, arrogant, and often made people cry with his comments, but he and I flirted like our lives depended on it. Something about engaging in that kind of banter and giving as good as I got is a real turn-on for me. Ahem. Mycroft: Now Mycroft is likely to be my best match. He and I are similar personality-wise, but he wouldn't suffer fools, so he'd also spar with me. Plus, I find refinement and love of detail and order to be very attractive, and physically, there's also something about Mycroft that turns my crank. Lestrade: Personality? Who cares. I just want to take the silver fox into the Met interview room and interrogate the man for a long, long time.... John: I would have trouble with being taller than John, to be totally shallow. But I'm taller than him in bare feet, so it would bother me to be that much taller in 3 inch heels. Personality wise, however, S1 and S2 John particularly would be very appealing to me, so I like to think he would be a good friend that I have a low level attraction to, which is true of all my male friends.

The proposal, for me, is probably the worst thing I've seen Sherlock do, and I think that had the potential to cut the deepest. There is just a little hint ("That was never gonna happen!") that maybe Janine didn't think they'd ever marry, which sort of mitigates it a bit, but it is still an awful thing to do. Nonetheless, it was cruel. In contrast, I think what Sherlock did to Molly at the Christmas party probably still hurt, but it was awkward and careless, not cruel. So it doesn't resonate with me as much. (And we're back to the "how you see Sherlock's sexuality" conversation we were having elsewhere, but I've always believed that both people in that bathtub were having quite a good time. Sherlock always uses cases as an excuse to do what he really wants anyway.)

I agree with that, CAMPer. There are lots of paths to being a "complete" person, but having a spouse changes you in a unique way. Having a child changes you (I am told). Having friends, or siblings, or parents in your life can change you. I think John sees that, and he's viewing everything through that lens, particularly because the scene is largely him talking to Mary with occasional asides to Sherlock.

Beautifully put, Arcadia. And I find Sherlock, at the end, to be a good man. He cares for his friends. He would kill and die for them. He's started to explore different types of relationships, including those with his brothers, with Molly (a platonic female friend in my view), and even with Irene (a flirtation with sexuality, regardless how far he takes it). He's gone further toward embracing the range of human experience. He's a good man, not just someone who does great deeds.

I can definitely see this. When I watched it again, though, I thought that John wasn't in any kind of position to actually be thinking about Sherlock's life. John, to me, is thinking about John there - how much he'd like to be back at the "possibilities" stage of a relationship and how he thought his marriage, for all its flaws, made him a complete person. I guess I give John a lot of slack for doing his own processing during that scene more than focusing on what he was really conveying to Sherlock. Nonetheless, I'm sorry to hear that people have made you feel that way IRL. That's not cool. You're absolutely fine just as you are. :)

Yeah, definitely depends on your Sherlock lens. I see the TSoT scene with naked Irene as an indication that lately, every time he goes into his mind palace, Naked Irene is there, distracting him from his work and causing him to take some "private time." ;) The scene Artemis quotes above, I definitely think is utter BS on the part of Sherlock. That's his stock answer, and John finally called him on it. (I do see where everyone else is coming from - I enjoy a good ace Sherlock interpretation every once in a while. It's just that that is not "my" Sherlock.)

Not to be argumentative, but I'm genuinely curious what makes you think he sometimes likes to imagine her naked? He doesn't seem particularly interested when she's straddling his thigh. He looks bemused more than anything. I've always thought of Sherlock's fascination with Irene as being with her mind rather than her body. He finds the way she thinks fascinating, plus the fact she almost beat him. In the scenes where we see them together and she flirts with him he either looks uncomfortable or ignores it completely. Maybe it's another one of those things where it depends what we believe about Sherlock's sexuality as to how we read into his relationship with Irene. Your last part is definitely true, because I always see Sherlock as hetero but intentionally celibate. And all the instances you mention above I read as interest hiding behind feigned indifference.

Oops, yes. Correcting that now.

To be clear, I also thought it made sense. I just didn’t think it was satisfying. Bringing this over from the Molly Hooper thread, because poor Molly plays second fiddle to John enough. ;) I actually found the ending conversation in TLD between Sherlock and John to be pretty satisfying. One of the things I liked was the symmetry of it. John is mourning the end of a relationship that he screwed up several times. He's looking back and thinking how good the little things could have been if he'd really let them be. And here Sherlock is, taking these tentative steps into flirting with Irene, and John is standing there probably wishing he could go back to flirting with Mary by text and having all that wonderful new relationship stuff to look forward to. I liked the conversation. That is all. Edited: TFP and TLD are not the same episode.

You know who needed a satisfying conversation? Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock has put that woman through more than everyone else combined.

Wow, I'm out of this thread for a few days and it explodes! Regarding gerry's commend about needing to infer things and whether or not that takes away enjoyment, to me it depends. I think it is fine to leave places for the viewers to connect the dots, and it is fun to leave places that can be filled in by fan fiction, but I shouldn't have to feel like I need to write fan fiction to get the plot to make sense. With the ILY scene, I personally felt like I had to figure out what happened in order to get from that to the montage. I didn't necessarily need to think that Sherlock apologized, but I had to try to get into Molly's head about why being pulled, even marginally, into yet another of Sherlock's stupid stunts was OK with her. I admit, I have trouble getting into Molly's head in the best of times, so this one was a speed bump for me. The Sherlock-John conversation made sense to me. Most of their communication is some kind of subtext. Realistically, these two don't know a whole lot about one another, even though they are best friends. Someone had a whole list once, but Sherlock has to go to court records to get John's middle name; John doesn't even know if Sherlock has had a relationship before the initial Irene encounter. It makes sense to me that their first forays into really sharing something deep - John, his infidelity, and Sherlock, his attraction to Irene - would be tentative and would stand in for a whole other conversation about forgiveness and being human that they were having in subtext.

I agree with this. Especially (bringing us a bit back to the thread topic) how they handled Molly. I've said I don't much like or feel affected by the ILY scene, but I also don't know how in the world they expect us to make a logical leap between Molly crying brokenheartedly on the phone and her bouncing into 221B like everything is fine. What were we supposed to assume happened? Scene: Interior, Molly's flat MOLLY: You complete arse. How dare you toy with my feelings like this. SHERLOCK: Well, what I couldn't tell you at the time is that I just found out I have a psychopathic sister whose memory I repressed after she killed my childhood best friend, and we were all trapped on an island with her being put through a number of her sick psychological experiments, one of which involved an empty coffin and trying to get me to contemplate your death and make you say "I love you." MOLLY: Oh, well that makes total sense then. I shouldn't have doubted you. So, wanna hang out with the gang at yours later? SHERLOCK: Sure, why don't you pop over Thursday after work? John will be there to pick up Rosie, and I've been dying for a chance to catch up on all the chit-chat.

Regarding the last point (as an Indiana girl myself), I always assume that the memory of "Liberty In (or IN)" was a memory of seeing a postal address. IN is the official postal abbreviation for Indiana; many years ago, it used to be Ind., which made more sense, but they standardized to two-letter abbreviations in caps, no periods. I think it was an early attempt to allow for machine sorting of the mail, but I might be wrong.

Hopefully not, or at least it would hopefully be creatively done. Maybe we can just pick things up in a few years when she's away at boarding school and call it good.