T.o.b.y

This reminds me that another proof of how bad my Sherlock obsession has become, is that I seriously considered doing just that. But it seemed unfair to my husband, who is definitely not a fan, and besides, I don't quite know if John and Mary are really the perfect couple to evoke if you want a good marriage...

Very good point, Jess, I must say. I guess Sally was just seeing what she wanted to see. I mean, it was obvious that she'd love it if it turned out that Sherlock wasn't so superior to the "professionals", after all. Her judgement was definitely clouded by her feelings... I am quite disappointed with the lookalike explanation. I was hoping to find out that Moriarty used Sherlock's voice, not his looks. After all, he had a recording handy (what Sherlock growled at Kitty's dictaphone), and the girl didn't scream at him until he began to speak to her.

I think that, ironically, Sherlock is a much more romantic type than John, at least if you use "romantic" in a broader sense (I mean it the way John means "drama queen", or, as I think Mr Moffat put it once, Sherlock has "the heart of a poet"). It's a good thing he's not real and therefore cannot come over here and kill me for saying so, but Sherlock seems terribly sentimental to me at heart, too. Just listen to the music he writes.

I think the most blatantly sexual scene in A Scandal in Belgravia was Sherlock's face when he's drugged and she's dragging the whip over his face. That expression, I've seen that, and I certainly do not sleep with Sherlock Holmes, nor do my, ahem, marital activities, include syringes or weapons of any kind.

Yes, that would be an interesting research project: what does your preferred "ship" (or lack thereof) say about your personality? Is it somehow linked to those spooky MB types? Also, what does it say about me, that I just hate these "two names one word" things? I don't know, I don't want them to hook Sherlock up with anybody, but there is a whole range of characters where I say, all right, if they felt they couldn't let him be single, then fine. Just don't blow it up too much and do please spare me the intimate details. A standing flirtation with Irene is perfectly fine by me. She's The Woman, and she's not dead, so that door is still wide open and I don't mind a bit. John is already so much beloved by Sherlock that it doesn't seem to make so much of a difference to add sex to their relationship, especially if it weren't shown, anyway. What do I care what goes on behind closed doors? Molly is a new character who isn't part of the original story anyway, so they can basically do whatever they like with her, and the actress is so amazing, I feel she and Mr C. could pull anything off. Janine I'd have a harder time with, but if Sherlock wanted to change his mind on the "just transport" front, I can easily imagine them as friends with benefits. I'd still hugely prefer if they kept him single and celibate, but, to quote a good book I recently read, the world is not a wish-granting factory.

Yes, that is one of my biggest complaints about series 3, that they didn't bother to make the deductions comprehensible any more. They're much less fun if you don't know why Sherlock knows Mary bakes her own bread or has a secret tatoo (where, by the way? and what?), or is a liar, for that matter. I know that Doyle gave up on them after a while too, but is that really an excuse? "Our writing turned sloppy on purpose because that is canon"? I don't think so.

I don't know enough of the Sherlock fandom at large to recognize fanservice when I see it, I guess (and from what you wrote at the bottom in small print, that's probably a blessing), but this might explain why my first reaction to The Empty Hearse (and series 3 in general) was "did they get a team of fan fic writers to do their scripts?" The creators have denied often enough to interact in any way with their fans or being influenced by fan works, but it does seem to me as if there's been quite a lot of market research on somebody's part between series 2 and 3. Luckily, it hasn't spoiled the story (yet). But I do wish they'd ignore their audience even more than they allegedly do and go back to the style and tone of series 1. I do love Sherlock's character development, though. I'm glad he's not a typical series protagonist. They tend to be pretty static from what I know.

Okay, I need to rant right now, because I am fuming at the nostrils and I think my head will explode if I don't blow off steam right now: I just tore my favorite dress. My favorite dress that I haven't gotten one tenth the mileage out of that I could have, that always fits and always looks good no matter how much weight I've put on, the F***ing dress I wear every F***ing Christmas and that I got for the equivalent of five dollars in a bargain basement while it's probably in the 100 dollar range, actually, and that I've looked up online because I'd like another one and didn't F***ing find because they don't make it any more. F***! Whew. Feels better now. Sorry. Ahem. Very unladylike to swear so much, and also very silly and superficial to get so upset about a piece of clothing. But I have a very awkward body, and a dress that fits me is next to an impossibility, so... Damn, damn, damn. Thank you for having a rant thread. I'll go be a grown up again now and get out my sewing kit and try to save what I can.

If all your tantrums are this mild, they hardly deserve the term... It's perfectly fine, you don't have to like her. I don't like Mycroft, and neither do I share the common sympathy for Moriarty. Oh, and don't even get me started on Magnussen! I wasn't too fond of Janine, at first, either, but she kind of won me over. Anderson I think is a spineless, pathetic idiot and Bill Wiggins is just plain annoying and superfluous. We all have our aversions, and thank god with fictional people, we don't even have to justify them. I don't want to see Sherlock and Molly together together, but just plain together? Yeah, any time. For me, a scene that has these two interact would have to be a lot more badly written than any member of the Sherlock team is capable of, to put me off.

Well....? Huh! Tough question. Who would I cast to play me? I can't even get that far in my brain, because I get hung up on why in hell anybody should play me. Not exactly a dream role... Whom would you cast to play you? Trying to ease the conversation back to favorite scenes: If you all had to choose just one scene (just one!) to be your favorite, which would you pick? Mine is still the pool. It still makes me catch my breath and my heart rate go up.

Have you never had an unfortunate crush? Maybe this should go in the subtext thread, but with Molly, I see two layers of affection for Sherlock, so to speak. There is the crush / infatuation thing, where one thinks, um, dear, you don't really think this man is boyfriend material, do you? And then there's something else, something deeper and more true, and very touching. I think she does love him as well. Not necessarily romantically, deep down inside, just loves. It's like she really sees him, sees beyond the armor of coat and collar and snark and genius, at the person behind it all. Of course this is me interpreting wildly, but that is what I in turn see when I look at the two of them. My favorite Molly scene is still in The Reichenbach Fall where Sherlock asks her if she would still want to help him if he was not "who you think I am, who I think I am", and she doesn't even have to think about it. What's fascinating about Molly's affection is that she doesn't seem to care so much for Sherlock the genius as Sherlock the man, and who else does that? Who even sees that far into him? This in turn makes us laugh sometimes, because she maybe approaches him too much like a "normal" human being, but on the other hand, we're getting more and more evidence to the fact that he is a normal human being.

You're making my mouth water... Here in Germany, our ice cream parlors mostly serve Italian ice cream, which is a bit different from the stuff I've usually had in the US. An American friend of mine referred to the kind of ice cream we get here as "Gelato". It's a bit thinner, less heavy. I don't know if it actually has less fat, but it gives that impression. While in the US, I'm used to ordering a serving size (like small, medium, large - whoever manages to eat large, I have trouble enough with small), here in Germany, we order a number of scoops. One scoop usually costs about 80 cents, and it's really just that, one scoop. A standard helping is two or three scoops, which is less than an American small (it's like half a small). And you choose a different flavor for every scoop. Standard flavors are for example vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, chocolate chip ("Stracciatella"), tiramisu, lemon (which is more like sherbert), hazelnut, amarena cherry. Lots of places offer yogurt ice cream, too, now (not the same as frozen yogurt). My favorite flavor is mint chocolate chip. I used to eat nothing but that in the US, because I couldn't get it in Germany, but of late, lots of ice cream parlors here offer it too. They call it "After Eight", because that's the name of a mint chocolate brand. Then there's one place near where I live now that has something they call "cherry kiss". Basically, it's chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and cherries in it, mixed with cherry sauce. Mmmm...

Oh, no, no, I didn't mean you! I meant Mycroft and the other government officials standing around cooly debating whether to send Sherlock to prison or exile and kill him after he's basically done their job for them. The remark about patriotism is from The Great Game, where Sherlock calls John "quaint" for being motivated by "queen and country". The original Mr Holmes was quite patriotic, by the way. I never liked that aspect, and I didn't think it fit the character, either. But a tiny bit of it seems to have rubbed off on Sherlock. Besides, I don't think England was such a big motivator in shooting Magnussen as the people who live there - and elsewhere. Um... I'm sorry to tell you this, but I find the "Merry Christmas" bit funny, yes. Very much so.

You sure? You think Mycroft understands Sherlock's affection for his friends, his "heart of a poet", his decision to be a detective and live in a chaotic little flat instead of using his talents to become a "philosopher or politician", his attraction to Irene Adler? I don't think Mycroft understands his brother at all. He keeps underestimating how human he is, and that causes trouble time and again, from the shooting of Magnussen to Irene getting him to crack the plane code. Mycroft truly is a cold fish, if you ask me, while Sherlock only tries to be one. He tries to live up to his brother's ideals, but he's never going to be as good at it as Mycroft. And I was thrilled when, in series 3, it seemed that Sherlock was finally realizing that maybe his brother's way of doing things is neither the best nor his only option. "Not you". Exactly, Sherlock! Grow up and step out of your brother's goddam shadow! I'm not denying they have a brotherly bond. They come from "the same planet", clearly, and of course there are things only they can understand and only they can talk about. And they do love each other, in a very weird, warped, dysfunctional, possibly unhealthy Holmesian way. I just want Sherlock to outgrow him. Mycroft pushes all my wrong buttons. And the torture scene was final for me. Line crossed. I can't forgive that. I can totally forgive Mary for the shooting, but not Mycroft for sitting with his feet on the table and enjoying the sight of his brother being brutally beaten to a pulp.

But does Molly know about the Janine thing? (I'm too sleepy to remember.) I doubt she knows Sherlock and Janine went out at the time, but she did notice them flirting at the wedding, and once Janine went to the newspapers, well, I suppose most of England knows now, don't you think?

I can make her shadow go counter-clockwise, if I only look at that. But not the dancer herself. Strange!

In real life, you mean? You take away his leverage. If someone's threatening to reveal your secret or else, you reveal the secret first; then he has no more leverage. Of course, you still have to suffer the consequences of revealing your secret. It depends on what's more important to you; keeping the secret, or stopping the blackmail. That might stop him from being a threat to you. But I think the big question is, how do you stop him from doing similar things to lots of other people? Or, as he says, to entire countries? Yes, Carol, exactly. I think it's doing Sherlock an injustice to assume he shot Magnussen only to protect Mary. I think he did it to protect everybody, to prevent future harm to the population of England and international affairs from a bloody creep who thought himself entitled to bully anybody he fancied on any scale he thought fun. I think it would probably have been quite hard, next to impossible maybe, to get anywhere with Magnussen in a legal setting. He probably knows every trick in the book, could pay for the best team of lawyers available, and blackmail his way through judge and jury until they let him go. He expressed complete and utter contempt for the "civilized" way of doing things when he visited Baker St, and mocked the English as "a nation of herbivores", who were all so "domesticated" and did nothing but stand around apologizing. In a way, Sherlock shooting him is like going, okay, you want uncivilized? Fine, here you go! And I'm going to say this again, at no point does the show claim that shooting people is perfectly okay. They make a huge point about Sherlock doing it in front of witnesses, assuming full responsibility, and being essentially sentenced to die himself by his own brother. He knows it was wrong. But the problem was, at the time he did it, there was no right left. That is what the villains do, in Sherlock and in real life (as far as there are villains in real life, which I doubt): They bring out the worst in others and force them to use it. I've always admired the kind of hero who is willing to sacrifice his own virtue so the other people can continue to stand around with a clean vest looking smug and judgemental and go on with their good little lives. By the way, I loathe Mycroft even more since His Last Vow. The most powerful man in England, and he, apparently, did nothing to stop Magnussen for years. And why? "Because he never threatens anyone of importance". Well, thank you very, very much, Mycroft! Good to know that it's perfectly fine with you if us ordinary goldfish get tyrannized over by a megalomaniac media mogul as long as he doesn't mess with your club of stuffy old rich people (which he did, by the way, but never mind). And then Sherlock finally actually does something, and Mycroft has him sent on a death mission, just so he won't be accused of "brotherly compassion" (Mycroft, if you're worried about that, why not show them a video of what happened in Serbia. I bet you had that filmed, you know, for your evening entertainment on a rainy day). I think Lady Smallwood's comment "hardly merciful, Mr Holmes" is a hint that if he had wanted to, he could very well have gotten Sherlock off much more lightly. But he didn't. Of course I can't really believe Mycroft didn't have a secret backup plan to save his brother at the last minute. He doesn't want his sad little excuse for a heart broken, after all. Perhaps we'll find out next season that the Moriarty footage was his idea. But still. I hate how he continues to act so F***ing superior while making Sherlock do the dirty work he should have taken care of himself in the first place.

I want an actor to play me, then. No way in hell would I get in front of a camera and talk while there were "actual people actually listening". Hmmmm... now, who would I cast.... It feels pretty silly to take a TV show that seriously and wonder and analyze about the characters as if they were real, but what the heck, it's also a lot of fun, and there are certainly worse ways to make a fool of one's self, so - I don't see myself denying my brain that simple method of stress relief any time soon.

I'll say! An older man following a teenage girl around? Ugh! Well, I'm glad you got rid of him, Jess...

Oooh, I love pictures like that. Okay, I see the faces first, then the vase, and then I go back and forth pretty quickly. I see the cat facing me, but I find it quite easy to make it turn around. The only thing my brain can't do, it seems, is make the dancer go counter-clockwise. I only see clockwise. Now, I wonder why that is and what all this says about my silly old grey matter...

Well, by that rule, so am I. I suspect that Sherlock leaving the wedding is a scene nearly all introverts can relate to. It's certainly a beautiful moment, and I, too, when seeing him there, go "oh, have I ever been there". Yes, he's probably relieved, in a way. But I do think he's also sad. It's not like when he shuts the door on Janine, and his face changes completely, because he's just been playing a part around her, he's perfectly happy to drop that role and get back to business. Sherlock does not leave the wedding with a face that says "thank god this is over and I can now get back to doing what I love." I don't think he enjoyed himself particularly, except maybe while he was on the Sholto case. But he seemed genuinely happy in that short scene where he and John and Mary stand together talking about her pregnancy. It's like he finally has his own little family. And then the realization sinks in, no, they have their own little family. "We can't all dance". Sherlock knows that. He thinks he'll be in the way in the future: "You won't need me around". Until this moment, Sherlock has managed to make the day as much his own wedding to John and Mary both as he can, but when they go off to dance, it's truly "just the bride and groom", and that illusion falls for good. So all he can do is go back to being himself, the idea of himself as the sociopathic loner that he had carefully constructed over years. I don't think he'd seriously choose anything different, but the thing is, at that point, he doesn't have a choice. So yeah, I love that scene, I think it's beautiful, there is a sense of relief, yes, but it's also sad. Beautifully sad.

I still chuckle about Molly and Sherlock's day of solving crimes together. "You're not being John" - yeah, right, Sherlock. Molly saw straight through him, as always. Even to the point where she asks "did you get him off a murder charge?", when Sherlock talks about the owner of the fish place he wants to go to for dinner. Of course Molly can't know how much that is an echo of A Study in Pink, but it's like she intuitively gets it right, anyway. And Sherlock petulantly goes "no, I helped him put up some shelves." I bet that's a lie, just like he lied to Sebastian in The Blind Banker about having asked his secretary. It's just another Sherlock way of saying "no, you're not being John, this is entirely different, I'm trying to make a clean start on this job with somebody else." And Molly doesn't buy it. She lets him down very gently, but she does. Molly has come a long way, too. Series 1 Molly might just have pulled off her engagement ring and gone along with Sherlock on any terms he might have to offer. Series 3 Molly won't settle for being anybody's substitute. That's a lot more than a lot of women manage, especially women in love. And she does still have a crush of Sherlock. I think she always will. I love how she looks after him, how she mutters "Maybe it's my type". I love Molly.

Isn't it fascinating how Sherlock's personality, or what we see as his personality, seems to be almost entirely self-made? The cute curly-haired chubby-cheeked boy we see in flasbacks must at some point have decided "I want to be a sociopath genius logic machine, independent of other people. I don't want to need friends or sex or anything except excitement for my brain. I don't want to deal with my emotions. And I'm not getting a regular job, either, I'll just invent one that suits me." And bam - he just goes and becomes that person. Wow. Must have been some puberty. I don't envy Mummy and Daddy... I do wonder who Sherlock really is. Or was, or could have been, whichever way you want to put it. He is similar to Mary, in a way. He might have kept his name, but he's very deliberately created a persona for himself, and until series 3, he kept his background and family history and so on under wraps. We still don't know where he lived or what he did before he moved to 221b.

If Moriarty is indeed alive, or has some kind of surviving brother or ally out for revenge, then I am really worried about Molly. Whoever must know of her involvement in Sherlock getting away by now, and I very much doubt she'll be overlooked as one of his friends again. All I hope is that Sherlock won't let anything happen to her. While I really am not in favor of the idea of her becoming his girl friend, I do think that his reaction to the agents who hurt Mrs Hudson in A Scandal in Belgravia would pale in comparison to what he'd do to anyone who laid a finger on Molly. (By the way, isn't it strange how unfazed Molly seems by the fact that a man she dated turned out to be the most dangerous criminal psychopath - and in Moriarty's case, I think the term "psychopath" is really adequate - in England? If something like that happened to me, I'd be a bundle of nerves. Well, I am anyway. Molly is pretty amazing. I have an inkling that she may be quite a tough cookie underneath that sweet exterior).

Yes, we do. Although a party does have to get more than 5% of the votes to get into parliament. But once they're in, they get roughly the same percentage of seats as they have votes. We have two big parties, who have been taking turns with the chancellorship ever since the end of the war and the beginning of the present democratic system. The smaller parties have never been able to govern on their own. But the large ones have become dependent on the smaller ones to get an absolute majority, so we've been having coalitions for ever and a day now. Even what we call "great coalition", where the two big parties team up as government parties "against" the rest, is possible. Just imagine the Democrats and the Republicans trying to rule America together... To be fair, our great coalitions are not exactly famous for being efficient or effective.