besleybean wrote:

My money's on the latter.

 
A gut punch?
Nooooo!!! I really can't take any more of those

A gut punch of Johns own choice this time tho.
John had all the details and dangers to himself and Sherlock.... in his hand .
He chose to throw it on the fire , he didn't/doesn't want to know.
Sherlock let John choose , but my money is on Sherlock knowing what was on the memory card.
I don't see Sherlock letting it just be burnt/forgotten. .not knowing annoys him.

Apparently not knowing..is Johns MO this time.
John is prob right in a way for now...pregnant Mary stalemate (he wont love/like her anymore) thing.

I don't know if this has been pointed out before, but today because of "Swan or Sydney Opera House" and dancing and ballet I thought of Swan Lake. From the German Wikipedia article I got that the story of the ballet (music composed by Tchaikovsky btw) is about a prince named Siegfried who has to choose a bride. He wants to marry the Swan Queen Odette, who has been turned into a swan by the evil sorcerer Rotbart (which means "Redbeard"). Only true love can break the spell. At a festive ball the prince expects to see Odette again, but instead the sorcerer appears with a dark woman (Odile) who looks just like Odette. The prince falls for the trick and swears he loves Odile, and dances with her. Then he realises what he's done and runs back to Odette. In some adaptations they both die, in others one of them dies, or they both live happily ever after.
So, do you think this could be an intentional reference? Mary would be Odile/Odette (black and white swan, evil and good), Magnussen would be the "evil sorcerer" who turned her into his creature. If the plot was roughly based on a ballet, that would also explain why S3 is so overly dramatic. In ballet and opera people are never just unhappy or so, they always "die", especially when they lose their true love. And it's Sherlock's perspective. That would be like him, to see life as a play/ballet/opera. (He definitely does a "dying swan" a couple of times.)
I would conclude that Sherlock as a child was a nerdy little boy who liked ballet dancing (I bet his peers hated him ). So much that he named his dog after the evil sorcerer from Swan Lake. When Mycroft asks him if he remembers Redbeard, perhaps that's a hint that Mycroft knows about Magnussen and Mary and that Mary is not what she seems to be. But also not really evil (and Magnussen is not a murderer, and also sometimes useful to Mycroft), otherwise Mycroft would have intervened. He just warns Sherlock not to get involved.
Opinions?

Yes, I think that Mycroft - sometimes misguidedly and often in a slightly cruel way - tries to remind Sherlock not to get emotionally attached because he knows Sherlock can't deal very well with emotional upset.
We know Sherlock wanted to be a Pirate as a boy so I think the dog - probably his only friend - was given a Pirate's name.
It's not unthinkable though that the parallels to Swan Lake were thrown in as a clue

Also, at the wedding Mary is wearing a white dress (of course), while in the scenes where Sherlock sees her as a "liar", and when she shoots him, she's dressed in black.

lil wrote:

What's a bit sad is that Mycroft has been right so far he warned Sherlock about Addler , Mary, and Magnusson.
I also think to some extent Sherlock was emotionally compromised with Moriarty.
Every time so far emotional environment has seemed to lead to bad endings, and being let down ,
except with John.
Maybe it's set up a bit to be that way.
Idk.

. . . . and further except with Molly. I've often wondered why Sherlock has a hard time seeing how true Molly is . . . . is it because Molly's in love with him?

besleybean wrote:

Sherlock is fully aware of Molly's reliability and is eternally indebted to her,.

And yet he seems to treat her more with kid gloves than John, and John is also loyal, steadfast, and Sherlock is eternally indebted to him as well.

Willow wrote:

Dr. Seem wrote:

besleybean wrote:

Sherlock is fully aware of Molly's reliability and is eternally indebted to her,.

And yet he seems to treat her more with kid gloves than John, and John is also loyal, steadfast, and Sherlock is eternally indebted to him as well.

Well, I think that you need to bear in mind the fact that Sherlock is something of a closet romantic; he would deny it indignantly but his view of women is, to a degree, romanticised. His assumptions about motherhood are romanticised; his mother gave up her brilliant career as a mathematician to have children so he imagines that's the way it works. He does try to defend and protect the innocent, hence my 'It's the baby, stoopid' analysis of the choices he makes, and he is immensely protective of Mrs Hudson, even though he can be really rude to her at times. He is the only person Lady Smallwood could turn to for help, because he is the only person willing to go up against CAM on her behalf.

Given that this is what Sherlock is like I am not surprised that he treats Molly with more kid gloves than he does with John; John is, after all, a guy. And one of the greatest lessons we see Sherlock learning about emotions is when he hurts Molly; we see him realising it, and we see him regretting it, and we see him trying to repair the damage as best he could. I am not surprised that he tried to do better in future with her, and I am not surprised that he would stand there in Barts and let her strike him repeatedly; he owes her a debt of honour, and he knows it. And those blows are repeated in his Mind Palace scene; Molly once again is the person who wants to save his life, as she did in the Fall.

John is the guy who would have got him killed, entirely unintentionally but killed nevertheless, and he's just been shot in the chest by John's wife. It is an indication of just what John means to him that he manages to claw his way back from Moriarty's dungeon, but Molly is the person who gives him the time. And Mycroft of course, but Sherlock sees no reason to use kid gloves on his brother...
 

Really, really interesting insights, here. 

I agree with how you're thinking as well, Kittyhawk. Losing a pet can be heartbreaking. I've lost pets myself, dogs and cats, both as a child and as an adult. And even though it was of course heartbreaking at the time, and I still can feel sad about and even shed a tear if I think too much on my dog that I had to put down five years ago, I don't freeze up just by the mention of the pet's name like Sherlock does.

That is not a normal reaction for the "normal" loss of a pet. Not when we're talking about a dog who died over twenty years ago.

The fanfic idea is of course just speculation, but it would make sense that there is more to it than "just" the death of a beloved pet for Sherlock to still react the way he does. I do know a grown man who still can't deal with a dog he lost about fifteen years ago. For him, it's about not being able to deal with his grief.

My personal thesis lies more in that ally - Sherlock having learned a long time ago to not deal with his emotions. Whenever he's frustrated, angry, bored or hurt, he still lashes out with tantrums like a child. He pouts, yells, demands attention, demands people around him to attend to his emotional needs whenever he feels frustrated or bored, even to the point of the tube scene in TEH - putting John in a believed life/death-situation just because he needed his forgiveness. 

That makes me wonder if he simply hasn't dealt with the death of Redbeard, only tucked it away somewhere deep in his Mind Palace. If you do, then the grief will still be raw everytime you think about it.

I can imagine that the death of Redbeard might also have been the experience that led Sherlock to choose Mycroft's "caring is not an advantage" philosophy. The loss was so painful that he decided to divide himself as much as possible from "the fly in the ointment" that is feelings.