Additional thoughts on Sherlock S2E1

[petronia]

1) That was also fanfiction but not Katie Forsythe (the motto of the BBC Sherlock comm). I hope the Whedon Avengers movie is also like this, i.e. a Billy-Crystal-Oscar-skit-esque summation of the entire preceding year in fanfictional thinking.

2) Moffat and Gatiss would like you to know that if you insist on writing ridiculous D/s-verse AU scenarios, you should at least get some Word Of God on who is what.

3) The "canon references" in this one are basically the diggerdydum subject header approach, and I mean this in the nicest way (i.e. I LOLed). I hear you can already get a "geek interpreter" t-shirt.

(...I think I forgot to mention that that Gabaldon book contained toward the end the WORST groaner music pun of all time? Of all time!)

4) I did find the wrap-up dodgy - did we really need the visual of Irene in a hijab about to be beheaded? Seriously? Seriously?! WITH A CHINESE GREATSWORD - but it was a real emotional roller-coaster, before that. I should be majorly annoyed that the script didn't let Irene win (I've given up on Adler and Holmes not being "interested" in each other at all; if you're going to do that, may as well do it like this), but the fact is, she almost did win comprehensively, and it was such a vicious win, it felt devastating. It was a more emotionally vicious length, I got the impression, than this Irene Adler would have gone to to take down your average joe. Not just the "haha I was suckering you with the damsel in distress gambit", but that she 1) framed the goal as being about Mycroft instead, and 2) explicitly handed Moriarty his goal assist points, both of which are direct low blows to Sherlock's ego.

Sororial unit and I are emailing, right now, about whether the lesbian!dominatrix! stuff is annoyingly over-sensationalized. I'm on the side of it being unnecessary (other than, yeah, a straight update of the ACD story would have to involve some sort of sex tape-like material), but not annoying because it's such a good metaphor for what was actually going on between the characters. I remember a discussion on Iwa na Hana re: Penguindrum and Mishima, about how for certain strong-willed, control-freakish folks, "romantic love" is inherently a win/lose power play proposition - the first person to "care" fucks up and loses. Even though, if you didn't "care", you wouldn't even be playing the game.

(I am putting quotation marks around certain words, not for irony, but to indicate we're operating in a context where these words mean something similar but not identical to what people mostly mean by them. Even though I can't exactly define what. XD;)

To me the crux of the affair was when she drops it at the end and says, "I said all that because it is part of the game", and he smiles(!) at her and says, "I know, this is just losing". Like a physical D/s scene, pain and bloodletting are the purpose.

4a) ...And thus the crux of our argument seems to be whether Sherlock has sub tendencies (i.e. "derived pleasure" "from that experience") or none at all. XD; I can't imagine that Irene can't tell if someone's pupils are dilating and why, but unfortunately at key moments neither camera nor anyone else was in a position to know.

4b) DEAR INTERNET FANDOM: how can you be this unfamiliar with the concept of a woman who identifies as a lesbian but is occasionally attracted to a man in a mostly intellectual D/s kink way? HAVE YOU LOOKED AT YOURSELF IN A MIRROR LATELY?! I can't even

5) Speaking of pupils dilating, was Sherlock actually high in the scene where he comes home after listening in on Irene and John's conversation (he did, right? or am I imagining that? must rewatch). There were some weird-ass camera effects happening there. Also, I got the impression that his physiological reaction to Irene's knockout drug was more something (stronger, fucked-up) than what it was meant to cause. Also-also, the fact that Mycroft and John (and Mrs. Hudson!) may have had a real conversation at some point about Sherlock's "danger nights".

6) Mycroft could be his own separate post. Geebus, was the acting ever.

7) Lestrade/Molly omgggg. Actually, the entire Christmas party scene. Christmas. Party. At 221B. Scene. Martin Freeman can do more with a one-second reaction shot than any actor in the business today.

Comments

[troisroyaumes]

the concept of a woman who identifies as a lesbian but is occasionally attracted to a man in a mostly intellectual D/s kink way?

Yes, that's similar to how I saw their relationship. I was a bit confused when going through Tumblr reactions b/c I saw Irene's attraction to Sherlock (and vice versa) as D/s but not sexual, so I didn't see it at odds with her being a lesbian. I mean, pupils dilating and elevated pulse doesn't necessarily equal sexual arousal; there are other forms of physical arousal as well. Actually kind of how I see Light/L despite all the fic that argues that relationship as being sexual too.

Having finally seen it

[canis_m]

I thought the audience is meant to take her attraction as being at least partly sexual, though? I mean to what extent her invitations were in earnest vs. "part of the game" is an open question--and I totes agree that regardless of Sherlock's supposedly authoritative diagnosis, the physical symptoms are ambiguous, sheesh--but if "dinner" is the new "dancing" (cf. DW, thanks Moff -_-;) I didn't think she was inviting him to a purely intellectual D/s encounter, if only because...they were having those already, ahaha. And I thought this was meant to be another sense in which Sherlock "wins": that Irene--who identifies as lesbian, even--is in fact attracted to him sexually, among other forms of attraction, while on his side he manages (probably? maybe?) to keep the sexual out of it. With shades of ye old-fashioned tropes like, yanno, Woman as helplessly sexual being vs. cold hard male intellectual purity, or whatever. Of course even if her attraction did include a sexual aspect that doesn't somehow negate her lesbian identity <--should go without saying!

For me the moral of the story was "even het dudes and lesbian ladies want a piece of that." As for ~The Woman~ as ball-busting and brain-busting dominatrix who ultimately needs to be rescued with a giant sword, yeah, I'd be hard pressed to side-eye Moffat any harder than I'm already side-eyeing him.

Re: Having finally seen it

[petronia]

I do think there is some element of the sexual there, on both sides - for one thing, no matter what Sherlock might tell himself there is no such thing as a mind-body divide, and sex is as much a mental as a physical process. Even if he wasn't physically aroused (and he wasn't behaving like he wasn't :P) that energy was already sublimated into their interaction. If in the alternate universe Sherlock had gone along with Irene's "dinner plans" something would have happened, but I suspect it would've been mostly bondage and talking. I can't picture them just going into the next room and making orgasms.

Also, yeah, Sherlock thinks he wins by keeping the sexual out of it, but I'm not sure 1) the audience is meant to accept unambiguously that not-having-sex-feelings = winning (let alone Mycroft's philosophy of "not admitting to any feelings ever, FOREVER ALONE"), and 2) the only reason Sherlock even thinks he succeeded in that is because - as Mycroft points out - he doesn't have enough personal experience to grok where the boundaries of sex and romantic emotion are to begin with. It would have been nice to have an Irene Adler who wasn't heavily sexualized front and centre, but to the extent that she is, it's not the fact that she's attracted to Sherlock that sets up the contrast. XD;

That shiz was an actual Chinese greatsword. Possibly inherited from that circus in the Blind Banker. I mean, Moffat aside I'm beginning to think there is one person in the props department who is a complete nutter.

Re: Having finally seen it

[troisroyaumes]

Oh, I don't disagree that there's a sexual element to it...I guess I just don't see that as being the dominant note of their attraction, more like a harmonic overtone? Especially since the way I see this version of Irene--sex, sexuality, sexual attraction are things that she very much has experience controlling in herself and others, so I don't see that as being sufficient to cause her to slip. So it leads me to read the root of the attraction as primarily nonsexual, with the sexual aspect layered on top as kind of an instrument in the game they're playing. I mean, invitations to dinner seem more like the cherry on top to me rather than wanting to move to a new level; I'm not convinced that they could get any more intense than the intellectual D/s encounters they were already having.

I think from a Doylist perspective, you're absolutely right that Sherlock was meant to "win" by not giving in to his sexual desires, while Irene was meant to "lose" because she did. I just had trouble really buying that message from the way I interpret the characters and the way the actors seemed to portray them. I mean, I really just can't believe that Sherlock is a sexually attractive man to begin with; I can see John being romantically attracted to him and Irene being intellectually attracted to him, but I don't really see him being so amazingly sexy that they would primarily desire him in a sexual way. (This may also be affected by the fact that I think Cumberbatch is interesting to look at but not actually good-looking.) The way I was perceiving the narrative, I was a bit WTF at Irene losing at the end; it felt discontinuous with the construct I had built up of their relationship before that point. >>; And then whole "rescue" at the coda just left a sour taste in my mouth.