Collating some Sherlockian content

[petronia]

(originally posted to Tumblr)

Onto cheerfuller topics! Season 3 speculation then? :D;

1) The Empty House: de rigueur, plus they have to clear Sherlock’s name and reverse public opinion and all. Supposedly Moffat’s been making noises about covering Watson’s marriage? Which, OK, no one’s done trufax-ACD-canon Mary’s attitude of utter laisser-faire complaisance toward Holmesian shenanigans. But it would still not be trufax-ACD-canon because POST REICHENBACH. ...hich, so is movieverse at this point, and Mary is still alive there, but movieverse is clearly headed for the “fuck it, OT3” gambit. Maybe it will be the story of Watson’s six divorces told in flashback, because Moffat is a troll. In any case, there is well enough material there for 90 minutes.

2) Gatiss has said he wanted to do Red-Headed League, and for all the jokes in S2, that throwaway gag was signally resisted. Of course, it would be easy to telescope that with Three Garridebs, since ACD basically recycled his own plot but more whumpage. Heist movie! This will probably be the “cheesy second episode out of three”.

3) If S3 airs at Christmas time again I’d say Blue Carbuncle, but if it’s summer then not (besides, not TWO WHOLE YEARS mein gott). Copper beeches? Another fusion of a whole bunch of stories, I’d guess.

***

(originally posted somewhere on arboretum's journal)

My reading of Why The Ritchie Holmes Movies Are As They Are(tm) is that... the original original pitch that sold must've been a much more heteronormative story about men behaving badly? Like Shaun of the Dead or Withnail and I or a million Hollywood comedies, cf. protagonist dude (Watson) is torn between the life stage of having immature adventures with his charming but eternally adolescent bro (Holmes) and the life stage of settling down, getting married, and being responsible.

And then RDJ and Jude Law got involved, and decided they were going to play this as Holmes is gay and Watson is divorcing him for being bipolar (but not for being gay).** Downey is a diva about demanding script changes to suit himself, with no upper limit when the director/producers don't fight him. Counter-intuitively, this happens a lot more with multi-million-$ action franchises, because the scripts for these things are a genuine afterthought, always open to changes, and beholden to technical budget and release dates. There were a lot of script delay problems with Iron Man, and I think Hollywood discovered by accident with that film that RDJ is no worse at on-the-fly rewrites than any actual script doctor, and they don't even have to pay him twice.

Ritchie likes a bit of manly-man gangsta homoeroticism in his movies. More to the point, he's a director of localized flash effects, not a "everything must fit my grand vision" guy - all his films are random cool bits strung together on a string. As long as it works, he's going to run with it. So basically his reaction to this was not "can we stick to the original plan," it was "LOLOLOL okay dickwads gchat RP some moar, next take in five".

Then the first film (riding on reasonably low expectations) made buckets of cash, for reasons that probably had as much to do with lucky timing as the actual contents of the film. So when it came to make the sequel, everyone's strategy from the studio on down was "Okay okay, do whatever you did for the first one, but AMP IT UP."

And I really think someone-or-other read Katie Forsythe in the interim. Possibly even the scriptwriters (an entirely obscure duo).

TL;DR summary:

--1st movie writers: did not mean it to be gay
--RDJ and Jude Law: think Holmes is gay and they are starring in a romantic comedy
--Ritchie: TROLOLOLOL
--studio: DNGAF, raking in the $$$
--2nd movie writers: were first in with their treatment because they wrote it in 48 hours by ripping off Katie Forsythe


** There is almost definitely some IRL bleeding into this. Both dudes are pretty probably bi, RDJ is attention seeking, and JL makes poor personal life choices. I don't think they're sleeping together but I suspect they started off their IRL relationship by flirting and took their act public because... they are only getting positive reinforcement for it wherever they turn. = =+

***

According to the Chinese fandom, it is possible to cut off a wrist pulse temporarily by squeezing a stress reliever ball under your armpit the right way. You know: THAT STRESS RELIEVER BALL SHERLOCK WAS PLAYING WITH HALF THE EPISODE FOR NO REASON. Apparently this is a mainstay of Japanese procedurals.

Comments

[lazulisong]

Well Roomie and I figured he cooked up some majorass muscle relaxers that helped him survive the fall, but what of the head injury?

[petronia]

I reckon It Was All A Plant, he fell onto a mattress in the garbage truck, smeared some jam on himself and rolled off the side onto the pavement. All those paramedics were homeless network, Molly cooked the books at the morgue, and Mycroft did the rest. John only checked the wrist pulse, not the actual head injury - and he was head-injured himself.

(I am dead cert Mycroft was in on the fake death from the first, and that was the real import of his apology to John; the Xanatos gambit interpretation is that Sherlock told him to leak his life story, but that may be a stretch. XD;)

[mllesays]

Made my way here via the comments on melannen's post, and my word do I love the series 3 ideas you are having! 6 divorces! Copper Beeches! There's no way these dudes would think to do that one, is there? I just can't even imagine it would occur to them.

I also six degrees know a person who knows the 2nd RDJ movie scriptwriters and they insist, insist!, that Holmes and Watson are not gay for each other but are just like, two dudes with a really close friendship. (To which I say, yeahhhh sure, pull my other one while you're at it.)

[petronia]

IDK, I always thought Speckled Band and Copper Beeches were accepted by ACD fandom at large as two of the best stories! They are certainly two of my favorites. The series isn't doing the former at this point (well... it's been written up on John's blog, essentially), but who knows about the latter. Wishful thinking on my part. XD

Maybe S3 will begin with Sherlock in the countryside KEEPING BEES. I will laugh so hard if that turns out to be the case.

Movieverse: well, fair enough, that just means the person who read Katie Forsythe was Robert Downey Jr. Which is possibly funnier. XDD

[petronia]

The thing about S3 is that, now that we know it's been signed at the same time as S2, we can assume the writers have been planning for it somewhat even as they were creating S2. They knew it would have to continue afterward.

[mllesays]

Ohh, very true. (And if twitter is any indication, Gatiss is writing something for it right now.)

Copper Beeches is my favorite story, and I would love to see them do it. I'm on the fence about how Violet would be handled, though. On the one hand, Sherlock is learning to be more of a person, so having him interact with a Violet character — a brave and sensible girl who really needs his help — would be a terrific emotional beat for the second episode of the third series. On the other hand... I don't always trust this creative team to handle female characters properly. I do a lot of the time (and I loved how they treated Irene), but not all of the time.

But really, any way it works out, I'm going to love it.

[branewurms]

The ball/pulse thing: saw an anime where that happened. XD;

[coloredink.livejournal.com]

re: Watson's marriage, I have heard the same noises and I am not sure if I buy them, mostly because Moffat seems really really focused on the Doctor/Companion relationship between Sherlock and John, to the point where he writes John having conversations with a woman in a power station about how he and Sherlock are a couple but not in the way that people usually mean. If there is a wife, she will either be relegated to background character so quickly that everyone will tear Moffat a new one for sexism/misogyny (again) OR it will be a Rory Pond situation, which I guess I would actually not object to but sort of needlessly complicates the cases because then all the dynamics of the original Canon will have to be rewritten to include a third point. Marriage/divorce during the interim might be possible, I guess, and would get Watson married without actually introducing an interfering third wheel, but then...what is the point, other than to make sad Watson more sad.

Also, thanks Chinese fandom! I will add that factoid to my memory palace in case I need to use it in a murder mystery I write 30 years from now.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

a much more heteronormative story about men behaving badly [like] Withnail and I

LOL.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Though I guess it's kind of true, because Withnail's got that crazed chemistry that will work with anyone, so long as they don't outright reject him.

[incandescens]

With respect to the rubber ball, I've come across that in a couple of John Dickson Carr novels as well: a character fakes death, leaving one artful wrist outstretched in a "take my pulse here" way, while doing the rubber-ball-squeeze to cut off their pulse.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the quote sounded to me like it was very much at the "ideas we're tossing around" stage (some of those from last season made it, some didn't). I actually agree that the "Watson not living at 221B" aspect of canon is underutilized and there's stuff you can play with there, but I also kind of think the BBC series missed the timing boat on when they can introduce that. I, uh, also think there was a reason Granada didn't go there, and that's because LIFE, WHY MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT FOR YOURSELF.

(The movies are doing it, of course, but... not in the way I'm envisaging, here. XD;)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know, but. XDD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's proper confirmation then. XD (Ex-workmate has left one in his desk, I know, have to go try it out for science haha.)

[incandescens]

Heh.

From what I can remember (there are thirty or so John Dickson Carr or Carter Dickson books accumulated on the relevant shelf), this ploy often involved a distraction that was arranged to occur at the same time or immediately afterwards, to make sure that the Clueless Witness would only have a few seconds to identify the body and observe the stopped pulse, or that there would be other distractions going on at the same time.

It's the sort of trick that works marvellously for giving a single dramatic impression that the person in question is dead, but you then need to remove the body quite fast before anyone notices things like breathing, or checks the pulse at the throat, or so on. That's why the "corpse's" hand is usually extended conveniently so that anyone would automatically try taking the pulse there, rather than checking elsewhere.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Clearly Molly and the homeless network (fake paramedics, truck drivers, passers-by, etc.) were in on it, and the first time Sherlock went and stood on the edge of the roof to look down was the GO signal. John had to stand where he was standing not only to keep him in a blind spot vis Sherlock's fall, but to put Moran in a blind spot as well, since he would need to keep John in range and a visual on Sherlock simultaneously.

Which leaves the question of what Sherlock thought Moriarty was going to do; I doubt it was that.

[incandescens]

That makes sense, with Molly, the Network, John, and Moran.

I'm not sure what Sherlock expected from Moriarty. It was reasonable to predict that Moriarty would at least want to gloat face to face. And Sherlock had the "suicide" planned to coincide with John's return (nice parallel with the original story, with Watson being decoyed off to attend to a "sick traveller").

I think that Sherlock must have planned his "suicide" to take place after Moriarty had left the scene, one way or another. It wouldn't have fooled Moriarty. The man would have deconstructed it, worked out how it was done, and added Molly to the "to shoot" list. I cannot see any way that Sherlock intended Moriarty to leave that rooftop alive.

Sherlock was red-queen-racing, with half a dozen balls in the air, but he did have his escape route planned. I can imagine him as setting the start of the scene ("Moriarty and I are both on the roof") and the end ("I jump and 'commit suicide', unless I can pull something game-changing out of my hat"), and intending to handle the rest of it on the fly. He just had to outthink Moriarty.

But then Moriarty pulled the "jump right here and now card or I shoot your friends" card. No time to go with the careful setup. Moriarty would look down and see it. He'd have to jump and die for real. Unless he could find a way out of the either/or situation. And then Moriarty pulled the trigger on his gun, knowing that he was locking Sherlock into it.

(And the only thing that saved Sherlock, and had let him set all this up, was one person's illogical and not particularly reciprocated affection and friendship.)

[perseid.livejournal.com]

Can I just say this is my head canon now, and I'm looking forward to how much of it will be proven true in the new season (which really, cannot come soon enough)

[incandescens]

Thank you!

(And I agree. It cannot come soon enough.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Ahahahah to your summary of how the Ritchie movies came to be (seems extremely plausible to me, though I wonder if Ritchie mightn't have been more complicit, bringing in RDJ and Law from the start suspecting it might go that way?)

And oooooh to the stress ball, very clever!

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ritchie probably is more complicit, yeah, because he seems very much to be a partner in the Great RDJ Script Rewrites (as does eg. Joss Whedon for the Avengers). I doubt he planned it in advance - although I'd like to know how the casting happened. XD (Eg. for XM:FC, dudes signed James McAvoy and then explicitly cast against him for the Magneto role as if they were doing a romance drama.)

[pere-chan.livejournal.com]

dudes signed James McAvoy and then explicitly cast against him for the Magneto role as if they were doing a romance drama

Wasn't that what happened with Sherlock as well? It's like someone's noticed bromance is saleable and is developing strategies around it.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Did it? There's a ping of vague familiarity but I honestly can't remember. XD

If there's one thing I learnt in business school, its how absolutely uninterested biz-minded ppl are re: judging or thinking v. hard about schtuff that they can repackage for money. XDD

[pere-chan.livejournal.com]

(Ben is way more mellow in this icon than I can handle right now)

According to the featurette they cast Ben first and then had readings with a long string of Watsons (among them Matt Smith, but as Aslan says, that's another story) until Freeman came along. I think it was Moffat who said they picked him because Ben's own style shifted round him to fit :D I may have watched that thing more times than was healthy.

Agh, you're so right! At my job their entire strategy is 'Wait, that made slightly more money than the others! Do it again!' Perhaps 'strategy' wasn't the right word at all XD

[naanima.livejournal.com]

Maybe it will be the story of Watson’s six divorces told in flashback - I WOULD PAY IN GOLD FOR THIS IN A MONTAGE. Like, the way 201 started by glossing over all the cases. Yes, yes I would.

OMFG! The stress ball to stop the pulse is AWESOME, and I WOULD LOL IF THIS WAS TO OCCUR! This actually makes much more sense than the theory I was working with - dummy or something.

So, Sherlock told John not to move in order to hide the fact he hit the truck first (so much BOUNCY trash) before hopping onto the ground, put some blood on him, and use the ball to stop his pulse. It took John quite a bit of time to reach his 'corpse' due to Sherlock's homelessness network, and of course Molly would falsify a death certificate.

Question - what did you think of Mycroft in this? I keep on thinking he must have been involved in Sherlock's plan somehow, but for the life of me I can't make it gel.

[ampersandals.livejournal.com]

According to the Chinese fandom, it is possible to cut off a wrist pulse temporarily by squeezing a stress reliever ball under your armpit the right way. You know: THAT STRESS RELIEVER BALL SHERLOCK WAS PLAYING WITH HALF THE EPISODE FOR NO REASON. Apparently this is a mainstay of Japanese procedurals.
I did not know this but it sounds awesome and I would love to see it actually happen

--RDJ and Jude Law: think Holmes is gay and they are starring in a romantic comedy
HAHA, this is too accurate!

Idk, getting John together would Mary would shake things up - it means him leaving 221B - but it no longer makes sense to me, at this point of BBC Sherlock? Plus I probably won't like it (given Moffat's track record) and also I'm scared of the haters. I'm really quite attached to movieverse's OT3 scenario.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm convinced Mycroft Knows(tm). He knew in the original (though I'd have to reread to see if it was from the start, or if Holmes contacted him later. I do remember it was "because he needed funds", lolol Sherlock such a wonderful affectionate person).

Actually, I was just discussing with arboretum how nothing Mycroft said this ep made sense - if his gang captured and questioned Moriarty before the crown jewels heist, what did Moriarty do to convince them of the key code thing when it is so obviously Hollywood Computer Science Handwave(tm)... and turns out to be Hollywood Comp Sci Handwave(tm)??