Oh, and on the topic of Sherlock and Irene I found this:
http://asherlockstudy.tumblr.com/post/135350418635/sherlock-irene-john

mrshouse wrote:

besleybean wrote:

2. There is that hesitation when he's putting the phone away,the whimsical look out of the rain spattered window  and the ' THE woman'.
These apart from the 'fuzzy eyed' look, after he learns Irene is alive.

Sorry to be a pain, but this is simply beyond me. People recognize this quite tiny bit of glassy-eyed Sherlock and one little remark sounding like admiration and don't get the epic eyesex of Sherlock and John? They don't get the love letter that is the best man speech? They get naked Irene but they don't get the Vitruvian man? They don't get the whole coming to life for John in HLV?
Has anyone made the experiment of changing Irene's and John's gender?
We wouldn't be in this thread then, I'm quite certain of that...

I think people DO get the love between them.  There's a thread here about their friendship, and I don't think anybody tries to argue there that they are just mates, who don't love each other.    We just don't all see the sex! 

I think naked Irene is not so much about nudity as about a clever disguise (Sherlock being unable to "deduce" her because of it, and him knowing that she knows that!), and the Vitruvian man is also not so much about nudity as about proportions, turning the human body into maths and science (Sherlock wants to know exactly the right amount of alcohol that will get John a precise level of drunk). - at least Molly, seems to take it that way. 

I think if you changed genders, you would get much the same situation.  It would have been possible to make Irene male and still have the same story, more or less ... but I suppose we're still in the situation where there are a higher proportion of (mostly straight?) men in power than women, so there may be less scope for a man for sexual manipulation?    But his/her profession could have been changed (she wasn't a sex worker in the original story anyway).  Yes, they could have made Sherlock fall for a male Irene, and I think that could have worked very well.  But I have a feeling that Steven Moffat is drawn to femme fatale type characters, and so was drawn to writing Irene as female - and also she's female in the story, and they obviously wanted to keep her as "the woman" (would "the man" have worked?  I'm not sure it would). 

The big difference is that we know Sherlock has seen Irene naked. But he probably has not seen John naked and yet he pastes his face onto the body of a naked man. 

I think he sees Irene naked in his mind palace as this was how they first met, how she impressed him, how she beat him the first time, how she earned his respect. IMO this has no sexual connotations.

As for John's file: It is funny enough that Sherlock keeps a whole encyclopedic file on John. He must have collected information for years. But honestly, I never even connected the Vitruvian man with Sherlock's calculations about the intake of alcohol. And while it is about proportions, it is about ideal proportions in an aesthetic sense. Drawn by a man who was probably homosexual and, as we can assume,  interested in the concept of an idealised male body. 

Last edited by SusiGo (December 17, 2015 10:23 am)

Vhanja wrote:

Speaking of Irene switching gender - it could be argued that Moriarty is kind of flirting with Sherlock, in his own slightly twisted way. And it could be argued that Sherlock falls for Moriarty in a similar way that he does to Irene - not necessarily sexually, but intrigued by who they are and what they are able to do.

I think Moriarty does do something like flirting, BUT I don't think Sherlock really falls for him in the way he does with Irene.  I agree that he's intrigued by him, but he does manage to work him out and is usually one step ahead of him.  I think the point with Irene is that he makes a mistake BECAUSE he falls for her.   It's debatable how much of falling for her is sexual (although it seems that Benedict played it as involving sexual attraction), but I think there is something that happens in their relationship that we don't see with anybody else. 

True. It simply does not work. Your best friend marrying does not throw your whole life into turmoil. Losing the man you love to a woman, however, might. 

I don't think of "Jim from IT", but in every scene between Moriarty and Sherlock, I get the impression that he is doing some kind of flirting. However, I also get the feeling that it's more a mind game than anything else.

I do agree that it does seem that Sherlock might have fallen for Irene in a more sexual way than with Moriarty (where I see nothing of that in return). I also view it as Benedict playing it that way with Irene. Well.. not exactly fallen for her, but being - against his own will and choice - sexually attracted to her, which throws him off a bit.

Of course, nothing of this goes against Sherlock being in love with John. But it could go against him being gay. Perhaps both Sherlock and John are bi, then?

Last edited by Vhanja (December 17, 2015 11:10 am)

Vhanja wrote:

I don't think of "Jim from IT", but in every scene between Moriarty and Sherlock, I get the impression that he is doing some kind of flirting. However, I also get the feeling that it's more a mind game than anything else.

Ugh, that is a creepy flirting then...
That is almost as creepy as having an assasin past for a happy marriage and being proud that your kid has nothing to fear then...

mrshouse wrote:

So there, it's another point I don't get: if we assume Sherlock makes a mistake in ASIB because he has "fallen" for Irene it's sensual/ sherlocky-romantic/ he's thrown by her.
When Sherlock makes mistakes almost throughout S3 it's because he's taken aback by a great friendship.
Hmmm... Not logical in my world.

I think in S3 Sherlock makes a huge mistake with Mary, and yes, that seems to be because of his feelings for her.  I don't see him making quite the same mistakes with John (if anything, I think he might be better when John's around) - I could definitely imagine him making misjudgments such as taking risks to protect John, for instance.  

But with Irene there's something different.  He's not making a mistake because he cares, so much as making a mistake because he wants her to care for him ... even knowing what kind of person she is, he decodes her message in superquick time purely to impress her, without thinking through the implications, and in the context of the flirting game that they are playing (she has just impressed him).  Mycroft picks up on it, and apologises for putting Sherlock in Irene's path (he didn't think Sherlock would fall for her, but he did). 

SusiGo wrote:

True. It simply does not work. Your best friend marrying does not throw your whole life into turmoil. Losing the man you love to a woman, however, might. 

Your best friend marries? You're happy for him.
Your bromance buddy marries? Big party!
Your secret love interest marries? You leave the wedding early.

More of a tribute than a nod, maybe, but why not?  Moftiss are Doctor Who fans and writers as well as being Sherlock Holmes fans and writers.  There is loss in the rest of the episode, but I think the point where it really hits Sherlock is towards the end of the episode, just as in The Green Death.    I don't honestly think Jo was supposed to be a secret love interest (or maybe I was too young to read the signs!).  

Edit: just came across this


.. although I think that it's not so much the matching of shots but the feel of of the thing that's similar. 
 

Last edited by Liberty (December 17, 2015 3:36 pm)