Sherlock Happy Fun Time

[marta_bee]

Two bits of fun times from yours truly.

First, Holmestice is through so I can brag about my story. Remember the Doctor Who  episode where Rose and the Doctor meet Charles Dickens and try to stop an alien invasion into Victorian Cardiff, leaving more than a few people dead under suspicious circumstances? Who among us hasn't imagined letting Holmes and Watson have their crack at the case?

The answer is precisely no one, probably. It's still a fun story and gave me a chance to write Holmes and Watson in all their bickering glory, though, and dig into one of my favorite Doyle stories (but so underwritten in fanfic), "The Devil's Foot." Well worth a read if I do say so myself.

In Heaven and Earth (on AO3)

Second, I threw out some questions about Sherlock S4 over at Tumblr today, and would love anyone's opinion here as well. My specific questions below, but I'd be interested in anything you want to discuss:

 

If you thought S4 had an overarching story or point to it, what do you think that was? Does it connect up with the story/point of S1-3, and do you think it’s reached its natural stopping-point or does it still feel unfinished to you? If you think it’s a different story they’re telling now, why do you think they changed tracks? 

I’m particularly interested in why they killed Mary when they did (odd to kill off a major character in the first act like that), and why they introduced a previously-unknown antagonist for the final episode. Particularly if this was meant as the final final episode: what’s the point of Eurus in story terms? I love her; but as an author it’s not a choice I’d make, especially with Mofftiss's good history of developing villains over the whole series/seasons.

Comments

[donut_donut]

I do very much think S4 had an overarching story that reflected back on the whole show, and I wrote about it in my meta, The Eternal Problem: A Meditation on Mortality in Sherlock S4.

In fact, I saw the foundation for this structure as early as S3, and it shows up tangentially in my metas from that era. But TAB really started me thinking about Sherlock's fascination with death and suicide and self-sacrifice, and the tension between that and his own half-acknowledged immortality. (And I wrote about that extensively here) At the time, I wasn't sure it was a theme Moftiss intended to keep playing with, or if it would be a TAB-only thing. But as soon as I watched The Six Thatchers, I knew I'd been on the right track -- even before Mary's death, all that stuff with Samarra played beautifully into my line of thinking, and I started sketching out a new meta right away.

Then TLD came along and WOW, it was even MORE in line with my ideas -- all that stuff about "I don't want to die, but I want you to kill me". Sherlock had never been more ambivalent about the value of his own life and his inability to cast it off, and the harm that had done to others. I almost wrote my meta then and there, but I sat on my hands and forced myself to wait for TFP, to see how Moftiss would wrap all these ideas up in the end.

And well! TFP threw me for a loop, originally. At first glance, it seemed much less death-haunted than the previous episodes, going all the way back to TRF. It seemed to be dealing with other material entirely -- memory, family, isolation, secrecy, mental health... lots of rich, interesting topics but not so deathy. So it took me a while to work that episode into my vision, but in the end I think I found the thread and the larger picture Moftiss were creating.

But that's really just one perspective. I think all of Sherlock is so rich and layered with meaning that there are LOADS of valid, fascinating ways of looking at it. For example, my meta didn't really touch on John's character arc, but I think that was vitally important too -- e.g. coming to terms with his romantic instability and his violent tendencies, both of which have been building ever since S1. And Mycroft's arc has been fascinating too.

I didn't find it at all surprising that they killed off Mary in the first episode. I felt like it was a natural conclusion to her arc -- the decisions she made in her youth were always going to come back to haunt her. If she had died at the end of a series (whether 3 or 4) it would have felt like an afterthought -- we never would have seen John and Sherlock grieve for her. Having her die in the first episode of a series gave a certain gravitas to her death, because we got to see how it affected the people who loved her. It's not like they killed her off and forgot she existed -- she literally haunted the rest of the series. "Kill off" makes it sound like they wrote her out of the show because they were sick of the character, but that wasn't the case at all -- she remained a vital part of the show through TLD, and a significant one in TFP.

As for Eurus, I'd disagree that they introduced her in the final episode. I get that it sort of felt that way because of her changing names and looks, but in fact Eurus first appears in TFP, and gets quite a lot of screen time in TLD. Plus I'd argue that TAB is really about her too, though we don't see her there. Compare that the Magnussen, who only gets the teeniest mentions and glimpses in TEH and TSoT, despite being the Big Bad of S3.

I think Eurus was a reasonable choice for a final(?) Big Bad, because she's so personal for Sherlock. She isn't just some villain off the street -- she's his own flesh and blood. And even more, she holds the key to parts of himself that he has reppressed for most of his life. I have some mixed feelings about exactly how they handled her in TFP, but overall I think I see what they were going for, and there were aspects of her storyline that I found very effective.

But in any case, I think the "point" of Eurus was forcing Sherlock to come to terms with his own darker side. Back in S1, Sherlock wanted to suppress his emotional side and be purely rational -- Eurus was meant (among other things) to show him how that might have turned out.

Okay, I'll quit here, but really, I could dig into these analyses for the length of a dissertation. I get so frustrated when I see fans dismissively being like, "oh, the actors are cute but the writing is terrible", when gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I just think the writing brilliant, and even on my zillionth rewatch, I'm consistently dazzled by these long arcs they've been building through the whole show.