You know what my favorite thing about the outstretched hands moment in Reichenbach is?

That they’re not actually reaching for each other in context.

The actual context of their hands is that Sherlock is putting his hand out saying don’t come any closer, stay where you are, a halting gesture, and John is putting his up in placation, hands in the air where Sherlock can see them, alright, stay calm, no sudden movements, I promise. That’s the actual context of their hands being up and out.

But the subtext of the scene is so viscerally the opposite, conveyed in the tightness of the shots, the emotional freneticism of the hand-held camera struggling to focus and constantly shifting. The slight lingering in the moment, their fingers outstretched, suspended in the air and framed in such a way that superimposed they would be just barely touching. And worst of all, the fact that the shots are switched in order of cause and effect, John’s hand seen up before Sherlock’s is seen out, confusing the audience for a moment before context settles—for one brief second where, to their eye, Sherlock actually is merely reaching out for that ghost of a touch.

It’s that as every bit of their expressed actions state stay away and I will if you want me to, every bit of the implicit nature of the scene is undermining that and crying out, no, no, I want you with me, don’t go away. My favorite thing is that they’re not actually reaching for each other with their hands, but the show wants us to know that they’re reaching out, somehow, with everything else that they are.

Basically, Sherlock is a brilliantly filmed series, and it should get all the awards.

A rush and a push and the land is ours

Aha, I found it. I think it’s from January of last year? Re-reading this, I’ve realized that I should never attempt to get into Sherlock’s headspace. It accesses every pretentious neuron in my brain and fires them all at once. For the evidence, see the title above, which is what I actually named the original text file.

Sherlock Holmes hates adrenaline rushes.

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“I’ve always assumed love was a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.”

More thoughts about Irene Adler and her role in A Scandal In Belgravia

The minute the phrase “damsel-in-distress” got tossed out, I groaned and put my head in my hands because I put the pieces together and knew what was coming. If the point of the episode had carried the point from the original story (that Irene Adler knows how to play the game of hearts and win), or even if perhaps they carried the pre-twist point of the episode (that she knows how to play the game of hearts, and Sherlock got played, son), that would have been fine. Either of those endings would have worked for me with no problems and perhaps even a small amount of applause. But when Mycroft said she’d played the damsel-in-distress, I saw from 800 miles away that the show would make her one eventually, in karmic retribution for her attempt to manipulate that trope to her own selfish, unsavory purposes. Because how DARE a woman play on a man’s gentler, protective impulses? How dare she hurt the beloved Sherlock Holmes, access his one point of vulnerability and use it to efficiently and ruthlessly manipulate him? That kind of amoral victory Must Not Stand. Because god forbid a woman be capable of emotional detachment (especially when the man has already proven himself emotionally attached, even as abstractly as Sherlock did). And God FORBID a woman come out on top and refuse to apologize for it. She must be brought to her knees, made to beg, preferably both.

(And seriously who else noticed that she said she’d love to make him beg for mercy twice and then it was her at his mercy, twice, in the end. Because even the threat of her sexual potency must be countered and negated. AAAAGHH.)

And here I’m more confused, but WHY couldn’t she actually be gay if she said she was? From a fandom perspective, I can justify it as sexual fluidity, and might even like doing so since it reflects back on John, too (he’s not gay, and she is, but the implicit confession is that they’re both somehow in love with Sherlock, etc, etc, I found myself OT3ing them HARD, lol). But I seriously don’t like what the show itself did with it. Either she DOES consider herself gay and discovers she’s sexually fluid, and that kind of sucks because it’s just used to set up the twist that she’s ~fallen~ for Sherlock (with so many meanings there, siiiiigh), neatly negating her alternate sexuality. Because, you know, in the end she is just the ~strong~ ~Othered~ woman who finally succumbs to her love of the male protagonist, assimilating her into society’s heteronormative expectations, and thus making her worthy of the audience’s acceptance/emotional investment. Or she was lying about her orientation to protect herself, and that lie is summarily stripped from her, rendering her and her narrative position powerless in the face of the male intellects she’d been trying to pit herself against and protect herself from.

Either way, those results are diametrically opposed to her canonical narrative (where she’s smart and calculating and still feels compassion and love and still WINS), and a shitty turn in just about every way—for the character, for the writers, and for supporters of female characters everywhere.

In more succinct words: nooo, I wanted the opposite of this. ;_;

Anons gotta stop leaving me asks while I’m asleep.

I read them in my inbox when I wake up, mull them over while I eat breakfast, and then come back and VOMIT ALL THE WORDS IN EXISTENCE into these poor unsuspecting text boxes. Anyway, this anon asked:

First of all, thank you for the compliment. Second of all, if you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into with me, anon, feel free to follow me through this read more and hear my long-winded explanation about how I completely agree with you up to a point, but appear to approach the problems Kurt and Blaine exhibit in that series from a different perspective than you.

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Anonymous asked: do you have any good fic recs for some future klaine fics?

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer? There’s a reason I had to make this into a text post.

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