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The Sign of Three » First Thoughts... » January 5, 2014 10:45 pm

beekeeper
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ok I haven't seen it yet, I know...waiting for dp to get back from work...but-

Is there any possibility, any hint that the baby is not actually John's? Or could a seed of doubt be planted with him on that one?

My money is still on her turning out to be a plant, possibly from the Moriaty Era, who has turned.

Series Three News » The Sign of Three - Review (with tiny Spoilers!) » January 5, 2014 9:06 pm

beekeeper
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you know what it is going to be, dont you, the thing we've waited years for?

It will be Sherlock wearing a tie.

 

Series Three Suggestions & Ideas » Who else is nervous/scared about His Last Vow? » January 5, 2014 7:47 pm

beekeeper
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and then, we wait another two years....if we are lucky....to find out what has happened...

Series Three Suggestions & Ideas » Who else is nervous/scared about His Last Vow? » January 5, 2014 7:09 pm

beekeeper
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I agree it will be a choice. I am sure it will be John choosing between Sherlock and Mary. 

The Empty Hearse » Sherlock's Parents » January 5, 2014 3:47 pm

beekeeper
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besleybean wrote:

But what Moriarty revealed was about Sherlock, not his parents.

Well it was information he got from Mycroft, so I assume it was about his childhood and so on. If you have a newspaper article about someone you normally say where they grew up, what their parents did, etc.
 

The Empty Hearse » Sherlock's Parents » January 5, 2014 3:33 pm

beekeeper
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ok couple of points

first, not only am I around the same age as Sherlock, not only am I, like him, British (and English) but my parents are teachers, so I know pretty well what the education system looked like all those years ago.

First, no one in Britain has or had home tutors. At least I have never heard of such a thing. British kids have them with about the same frequency as kids in American or Germany ie never.

Home education I think is a very reasonable alternative, there was (and is) a big home education community in the UK and I knew a lot of home educated kids when I was growing up. Done well, my experience was that it produced lovely individuals. It wouldn't be unusual for a family to home educate to secondary age, ie 11, then send the kids off to school because that's when you start getting much more serious in the UK education system.

Its entirely possible for a bright kid to get a full scholarship to a very posh school, ie attend for free. All the posh British schools have endowments etc for bright kids from poor backgrounds. Of course both Mycroft and Sherlock would have got places under this criteria. Generally, these really posh schools are secondary schools-the ones you attend before are known as "prep" schools and are a lot less high powered. Home educating to age 11 then sending the kids off to boarding school at 11 seems quite plausible actually.

When Sherlock went to university, our universities were free to attend, no fees, nothing. Even now, the size of the fee is not linked to the prestige of the university, and there is a loan scheme which makes it free at the point of delivery. But when Sherlock went-which is when I went-university was free. So that isn't an issue and he could have gone wherever he liked. 

the "other children" comment just makes very little sense really. I think the only way I can work it is that Mycroft and Sherlock have very different ideas about their childhood, both to each other and to their parents, that they ar

The Empty Hearse » Sherlock's Parents » January 4, 2014 11:14 pm

beekeeper
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dartmoordoggers wrote:

Whilst not posh; or upper class, they do look middle class or upper middle class. Certainly the clothes they wear say middle class or retired professional.
As for the 'coach', many older/retired people enjoy the midweek/long weekend breaks by coach. Many are quite expensive; particularly London, and are based around stays in 4 or 5 star hotels. They are also in their 70s so driving any distance would be a chore.
And their eldest would certainly be on a large salary, with plenty of perks; including a 'grace and favour' mansion. I don't doubt that he takes care of any financial 'worries' they might have.

nope. disagree about the clothes.  I don't think you can tell that much from a British person's clothes anyway. 

If they were as rich as Sherlock and Mycroft act then they would NOT be going on a midweek coach break package hotel deal. They would probably either fly or train to London. The point of those midweek breaks is that they are cheap. 

Yes, they might be rich but immensely frugal but...I don't get that impression. I don't think that's what the writers are trying to communicate, especially with John's line about them being ordinary. They are normal, ordinary, lower or middle class probably, and hence like the overwhelming majority of Britons. 

I'd point out that they are almost certainly financially comfortable now anyway, given how wealthy Mycroft is. So their clothes etc will be "nice", that doesn't tell us much. But they do buy a lottery ticket and they do travel on the coach. To me,those are things of habit.

I guess you see what you want to see here. For me.,  I am seeing a real effort to stretch our assumptions about the Holmes brothers, to make them from an ordinary background, to make us wonder what exactly happened, and I think that's pretty amazing. Best bit of the show for me :-)

Re the "other children" comment. I wondered about that too, but them being rich or not doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Even r

The Empty Hearse » Sherlock's Parents » January 4, 2014 2:35 pm

beekeeper
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Yeah, most of the very posh schools will take bright kids on some kind of scholarship, including a full scholarship. I would expect that this would be what happened. You DO have to be stupidly clever but that's not going to be a problem here.

My brother actually was in that situation, of being the scholarship kid at a pubilc (ie very posh) school and it is interesting. You certainly learn to blend in and you neverthless remain an outsider. And I have always got that sense from the Holmes brothers, especialy Mycroft. (lol I did post about this before...though my money was on them being the children of circus performers which I accept now seems unlikely). 
 

It's Canon » Johnlock: The Official Debate » January 4, 2014 1:02 pm

beekeeper
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TBH I don't much care either way. I think good writing is the thing. If someone can compellingly write Holmes as a woman, or as a dog, I am up for it. I am a bit of a connessoir of pastiches, ie stories written in the style of the originals, as well as pretty well knowing the originals by heart (i've been reading them a LONG time!), and I've seen writers like Neil Gaiman pull off some great stuff - the Emerald Isle,for example, which places Holmes in the Cthalu mythos is amazing. 

I actually agree that a lot of gay men are extremely conservative generally and also can be quite into the idea of sexuality as fixed. In the bisexual movement, possibly the strongest resistance comes from gay men, and Gatiss himself has said that he doesn't believe in bisexuality or fluid sexuality. TBH, that's quite a statement to make-that he believes that people's identified sexuality is not real or valid. (I think it was some years ago, pre Sherlock). So he is possibly not going to be your person writing about discovering that your sexuality is more complex than you thought. Or maybe he's thought better of those comments. I could be utterly wrong but I think the comments most often identified as queer-baiting are coming from the Moffat written episodes-Study in Pink and Scandal in Belgravia. 

I am not a shipper, not at all, rather someone who identifies with the LGBT community. I have no problem with shipping but I'm not the target audience. What I'd like is an acceptance that the lines between friendship, love, and sexual attraction are not lines in stone, that an awful lot of heterosexual identified people have same-sex attractions or experiences at times (I am told) and that this is just one of those rich and interesting things about human sexuality.

The other issue with the whole "I am not gay" thing is that it is a bit stereotyping of gay men. John clearly loves Sherlock on SOME level. Whether he loves him as a friend, or has a co-dependent need for him, or loves the adventu

The Empty Hearse » There's something about Mary » January 4, 2014 9:38 am

beekeeper
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Swanpride wrote:

I wonder how they got the idea....but yeah, I notice that too, like how the "secret" first floats in and later you read "secret Tattoo". They are trolling us again.

Perhaps guardian means that she grew up not at her parents, but with a guardian.

That would be consistent with canon, where Mary Morstan was sent back to England after her parents died and grew up, iirc, at schools and with relatives.
 

The Empty Hearse » The theory he told Anderson - The actual answer?? » January 4, 2014 9:33 am

beekeeper
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I don't think we are going to get an explaination. You know why? Because, as Anderson said, ANY explaination at this point will be a disapointment to the fandom. We have picked over everything, I really doubt there is anything the internet hive mind has missed at this point.

And yet Anderson's explaination doesn't work really either, as he points out.

So I don't think they are going to tell us. 

I really do think this was repeated more recently by one of the showrunners but I can't remember where or who. I think I read it in print, maybe the Radio Times or something.

The Empty Hearse » So that "clue everyone has missed". Do we know what that is? » January 4, 2014 9:28 am

beekeeper
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TBH I think most theories were actually suggested in the first few days anyway. I can't think of any that I read a little later and thought, wow, thats new. 

Except the identical corpse. I'd read the mask theory, but the identical corpse, no. I think I might have read that a lot more recently but what I remember everyone was saying back in the days after was that someone had worn a mark.

The Empty Hearse » There's something about Mary » January 3, 2014 9:46 pm

beekeeper
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Think I remember that Sherlock deduced John had no close extended family? So he might have family but want to keep apart from them. 

I really, really hope we see Harry. The trouble is that if she is played by anyone other than Catherine Tate it just won't work. I think the fandom has totally decided it has to be Catherine Tate. She isn't listed as appearing in Sunday's episode but that might mean it is a surprise....(crossing fingers...)

But my hunch is that we won't see his family at the wedding. In the books it is the same, we see relatively little of Watson's personal life especially given he is writing the books.

The Empty Hearse » There's something about Mary » January 3, 2014 9:08 pm

beekeeper
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I deffo think there is a link between her and Milverton, that she is the actual target and that she is a whole lot more complex than she appears. I suspect he will force her to tell the truth and that this will rock our perceptions of her. I think she must be a plant or spy or something, but I also think that Sherlock has "read" her and trusted her and the results of his Sherlock Scan are actually always trustworthy. Just as John always technically tells the truth, Sherlock Scans of people always seem basically correct. 

As an aside its kind of interesting, we really learn very little about John. Sherlock is meant to be this great man of mystery but we have now met, we assume, his whole family, not to mention someone he went to uni with and Mrs H. John otoh, we know relatively little about.

I thnk my thing with the skip code, on reflection, isn t that she spotted the code but the langauge she used to describe it. It sounds like a technical thing, non layperson and yet her known skill areas-linguistics and nursing-aren't obviously comptable with it. As a native English speaker I might have said "skip a word code" but not "skip code.". TBH I would have thought its more a thing a mathematician might know. Yes its a nod to the books, the one with Victor Trevor-can't quite remember the name-but Holmes solved the cipher, neither Watson nor his friend Victor Trevor had any idea at all.

The Empty Hearse » Mycroft » January 3, 2014 8:58 pm

beekeeper
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re the ring. Anthea wears an identical one on her right hand. So did one of the "doctors" who attended Sherlock after the fall. So I assume it to be a Secret Service (or whatever) ring not a wedding ring.

The Empty Hearse » So that "clue everyone has missed". Do we know what that is? » January 3, 2014 8:55 pm

beekeeper
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yk, I am starting to wonder if it hasn't been revealed which makes me think maybe Sherlock wasn't telling the truth to Anderson after all....

The Empty Hearse » Sherlock's Parents » January 3, 2014 8:30 pm

beekeeper
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ok they came down on the coach

and were worried about losing a lottery ticket

not posh, not upper class. 

Britain's coaches are not really such that people travel on them out of choice. They use them because they are cheap. When does Sherlock travel by coach? 

Really like it. What I would love is if it turns out John's family is extremely posh. The absolute opposite of what I'd assume.

The Empty Hearse » So what do you think about our Consulting Detective? » January 2, 2014 11:29 pm

beekeeper
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yeah but I don't think this is normal behaviour for a male friendship. I think it is really manipulative and not very nice at all. Certainly if someone behaved like this toward my son or my brother or if either were in a friendship where this was ok, I would be deeply concerned.Very deliberately making someone think they are going to die, in order that they tell you they forgive you and care about you and so on? I think that crosses a line. It actually is sociopathic, and highly manipulative, and the fact that John does not run a mile, well...tbh thats interesting. Tells us a lot about him and what he sees as normal and ok or at least, what he will accept in Sherlock.

I do actually like that about the show. We are not meant to see Sherlock as flawless or adorable, he really is quite deeply screwed up at times. 

In all honestly, I would rather it wasn't there, I think it is quite disturbing really. But since it is, it tells us something quite important about what one character considers ok behaviour toward a friend, and what the other will put up with from a friend.

The Empty Hearse » So what do you think about our Consulting Detective? » January 2, 2014 11:01 pm

beekeeper
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Mouse wrote:

"Sherlock's behaviour looks as if he had found out that he can not only win through his intellect but also through emotional manipulation using his own person. We saw fake tears already in TGG but now his skills have improved. The situation in the tube carriage was perfectly acted to make John talk about his feelings.
I am not quite clear why that was necessary."

I'm with you. That scene ruined the episode for me. I don't expect him to be all warm and fuzzy, but egads...poor John. Why does John consider Sherlock his best friend again?

yes I found this almost disturbing, actually. The Sherlock we see here is almost like a drug for Watson. There is a line in A Study in Scarlet where Stanford says something like "I could imagine him giving his friend a pinch of a vegetable alkaloid out of curiority" (ie a potentially quite nasty poison). We have not really seen his emotional cold bloodedness or manipulativeness in full, or directed at John, before, and it feels quite wrong, especially since John is now, presumably, in a rather more healthy relationship.

It does feel like some crazy codependent thing, tbh, not actually any kind of love or friendship or comradeship or whatever you want to call it but something that, in the final analysis, is rather sinister.

I am guessing that shippers will be seeing this rather differently ;-)

The Empty Hearse » There's something about Mary » January 2, 2014 10:49 pm

beekeeper
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The other reason I'm going to go for guardian as a role not as a newspaper is that, tbh, reading a specific paper isn't terribly interesting. I don't think the vast majority of the watchers are going to go, "wow, she votes for a centrist party but reads the most leftwing of the broadsheets. Dissonance or what?". I mean as a political geek I would love it if it did, but I don't think most people are that aware or interested (which is fine). I don't think it tells most viewers a huge amount extra over Lib Dem and given that I reckon every word there was chosen quite carefully, unless its a plot point somehow, I'm not convinced.

I actually think what is notable about a lot of these words is that they are quite ambiguous. Its as though the writers expected us to freeze frame and endlessly debate them or somthing.....

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