XistentialAngst's Blog, page 10

welovethebeekeeper:1895itsallfine:Putting aside the unnecessary promo teasing, and the writing...

welovethebeekeeper:

1895itsallfine:

Putting aside the unnecessary promo teasing, and the writing mess that this whole series was, if they had ended it with a cliffhanger I would have seriously considered that they had always planned explicit confirmation for S5. But since they made it such a clear ending, and since it would have been so easy to add one more small scene, I just can’t do that. And I’m kind of glad not to hope for 3 more years just to be disappointed.

I agree, better to show their hand now and we move on.

Yes. There’ve been too many reports of both Ben and Martin saying S4 might be the end. And it’s the only series they didn’t end on a cliffhanger. There might be more? But I don’t think that’s at all certain, and even if so, it would be probably 3 years minimum.

The fact that they went so far out of their way to NOT put johnlock into S4 convinces me that they have made up their minds about that. They lie in interviews, yes, but the text is the text. After TAB the text (to me) said they were going there, but after S4 it clearly says they are not. It would have been so easy to do it or at least set-up hope for it but they didn’t.

I honestly don’t know if I truly mistook lots of the previous episodes, especially TAB, or if they changed their mind. I guess they were queerbaiting with no intention of ever having it be text. What a waste.

bang-a-ranga:glassofgaytea:one of the biggest things that makes zero sense to me throughout this...

bang-a-ranga:

glassofgaytea:

one of the biggest things that makes zero sense to me throughout this entire thing is that, we know they deliberately queer coded these characters. like it’s undeniable, the entire fucking text supports that. they based their sherlock off of TPLoSH where holmes is gay and in love with john. mark says it’s desperately unspoken, and that billy wilder regretted not fully going through with it. so, we know that he’s gay. and yet, if it was never their intention to make that explicit, then WHY did they always so aggressively deny that sherlock was gay any time they were asked about it? why not just say ‘we can see why people would think that, and it’s open to interpretation’ or something like that? what is the point in deliberately queer coding your characters, to the point of one of them on all fours wiping semen-like fluid off his lips as he transitions into the other man’s mouth, if you’re just going to shout at fans who pick up on that? shout down and belittle the queer audience who say, ‘I see this, I understand what you’re doing with this character’ like ???? that is what makes NO sense to me, whatsoever. what the fuck was the point of all of this

I honestly think the short answer is that what’s happened before is the best predictor for the future. Conclusion: they’re self-obsessed bullies, just like so many white male “artists” before them. They wanted to straddle the will-they won’t-they line and never commit to it. They upheld the persistent Judeo-Christian phobia of the impurity of sex and especially same-sex sex and the pseudo-intellectual disgust with romantic love. Yes, this means homophobia and tragically, this means internalized homophobia in Mark’s case, but in the current world this is the rule, not the exception.

I’d say we did the legwork they wanted us to do. We ate their crumbs and told ourselves it was enough, that the abuse and starvation would pay off in the end with a feast. On top of this, they became aggressive when we demanded they pay up. I’m going to guess they’d never been called out on this level before–SO MANY PEOPLE picked up on the queer coding, probably due to a combination of Martin and Ben’s chemistry and the current political climate. Look at Doctor Who: they play will-they, won’t-they with EVERY POSSIBLE PAIR. This time people just wouldn’t leave them alone about it, though.

TL;DR *shrug* They’re obsolete, imo. They used tired gay jokes and suggestive content because it was a tried and true crowd-pleaser. They didn’t want to pay up, they over-corrected in Sherlock S4 to reflect THEIR vision and nobody else’s, and now… *spreads arms, looks around*

And I’m livid.

Yes to all this.

thesetison:They’re blurry, but here are the potential first...

thesetison:

They’re blurry, but here are the potential first setlock pics of the cast, Martin and Amanda at Mint and Mustard. (x)

This scene probably just ended up on the cutting room floor. But it’s proof that there is footage we didn’t see.

deathfrisbeeofbakerstreet:freeman-martypants:Yes, thank...

deathfrisbeeofbakerstreet:

freeman-martypants:

Yes, thank you

Wow um like okay I don’t even I mean how??

Contradictions in the creator quotes

consultingcaitlin:

gloriascott93:

I now stand firmly corrected in my misassumption that the big reveal would mean we would revisit the entire show in light of the ending and see an intricate plan. An emotional context we the audience were meant to miss. I was right. As were others. Problem was, it was a sister all along. Unfortunately the sister rugpull rather than a romance rug pull is the less convincing story arc. What we got instead was a finale that makes in retrospect much of what preceded it seem nonsensical at surface level if we accept the finale as the “solution” or the definitive story. How did we get that wrong?
I was never a conspiracy fan. It relied on too much “it can only mean one thing” from mountains of data. When the narrative and the claims of creators lying as a benevolent secret keeping was all that was necessary to see a romantic endgame. I opted always for a simple solution. The simplest most probable answer. And that was heavily reliant on my trust in Mofftiss as good storytellers and good show runners. That was for me my biggest error.

If this was not “gay” but “trash”, how did it to get to be *this* trash?

How is it we were so wrong in predicting the endgame across various different theory camps of this fandom? What weaknesses on their part were we overlooking? Or not privy to? Or ignoring. Or not adequately assessing - so that coincidences were ironically a sign of laziness, or clever writing instead turns out to be poor writing - a series of tricks rather than a plan?

Because the end result is simultaneously infuriating and “Meh.” Two things that should not comfortably go together. A rug pull should leave you so impressed you don’t mind being infuriated. You applaud and shout, “oh you tricked me! Well done! How DID you do it?!” And yet, here we are.

Some fans are deciding to keep the faith - hoping for a final rug pull that will show they really were as good as we believed. I’m not there. I am opting to make a deduction and coming to a probable conclusion based on the data we have. No conspiracy. No cruel intentions. Just a series of unfortunate events.

For as much as I am loathe to say this, I think from an executive production point of view, the absence of someone like Steven Thompson means the absence of a critical third voice.

I don’t know why he left but he should have been replaced by *someone*. Mofftiss were clearly given far too much credit and license. Where was the necessary script editing to rein in their now glaringly patent self indulgent natures?

Keeping secrets to the degree they have, and being allowed to, has been proven a big executive error. Because no one was able to say hold on, how will this play out coherently? Virtually every single thing that frustrates the viewer from TEH on right through to the last frame of TFP could have been avoided if they had had a 3rd voice they listened to and who had the authority to thoroughly critique their plans. They were over indulged in all the wrong places.

TAB was a masterpiece but I suspect not for the reasons *they* think it was. They literally do not appear to have seen what it was they were writing. Or they did and defied the results on screen.

Every critique I have, or have seen, comes down in the end to that. Letting them keep secrets from their cast and crew was a glaring warning that there was no one with the authority or the necessary expertise on board to keep them in check and join up the dots.

Moffat and Gatiss have clearly been working without an outside writer’s voice who has authority that they would listen to. Since TEH it has been a problem that only compounds. The errors build on themselves.

It resulted in a finale that many critics and fans are unconvinced by for *multiple different* reasons. It was only at the end that we see just how much they were driving the show haphazardly and possibly the wrong direction.

There’s an analogy that comes to mind. One reason a manager is paid more than their secretary is that if the secretary makes a mistake their errors have less consequences in the grand scheme. You will likely notice their failings very quickly. The manager meanwhile has the ability to make errors that will not only have bigger impact but will not necessarily be immediately obvious. The more power you have the longer it will take for the true and full negative impact of your decisions to be realized. Because as a decision plays out it creates other decisions in a ripple effect that take time to play out. Of course you can offset this by critiquing the decisions before finalizing them, and thinking through what the consequences might be. If you don’t then what will happen? You can only trust the manager. You assume *they* have thought it through and assessed the potential flaws and risks and negative outcomes. That they have a plan to offset any negative consequences or prevent them from happening.

Making sound decisions demands either a high level of self-critique or a system that lets criticism in. To test your plan. To raise the issue of unintended consequences. Not with an intention of blocking success but to *ensure* it.

This show was, I fear, failing at that far earlier than anyone really knew and I don’t think TBTB see it even now. A clear warning flag that many of us picked up on at the time was AA not being told Mary was going to be revealed an assassin. That was an error that not only impacted her performance (think of her as a secretary who realizing an error she didn’t even mean to make or even knew she was making then has to then self-correct on the fly). but it crucially should have signaled a much bigger managerial error that would have a series of far more fundamental negative results. That secrecy meant that no one else got to say, um… are you sure about this plot line? Have you planned any of this out adequately and considered the long term consequences on the narrative? Because if you head down this path you may not be able to undo it. You can’t just make it up as you go. Think this all out. How will this all fit? What ongoing story are you serving here? Where do you want to land?

But the manager was trusted rather than questioned. The only negative consequence was thought to be its impact on Amanda. No biggie. She’s a professional. She can recalibrate to accommodate the performance errors she unwittingly made. Tiny errors that Mofftiss assumed were no big deal, having incorrectly assumed that it would be a better surprise reveal if she was acting blind of what was to come. But that meant she was serving a different story than them. She had no choice but to. It put emphases in potentially the wrong places. Her fellow actors are in turn then reacting to her acting choices and she is reacting to them. But that notion that if they don’t know anything, or, “just assume your character knows nothing because it doesn’t matter”, is not how acting works. They didn’t trust her. I suspect they were doing this all along to their actors. Not actually trusting their skills or adequately hearing their own unfolding insights from inside the characters. So that the cast were acting repeatedly on false sets of assumptions. So too probably were the directors and crew. As a result, what shows up on screen is not what they all think they are making. They all think they are making a slightly different show.

And the widest gap is between what Mofftiss had in their heads and what was on screen. Next down the pecking order is what Martin and Ben thought they were doing. In light of TFP there are acting choices and editing choices over which take of a scene to use (going by the commentaries) that suggest there was no 3rd party with the authority to hear their conversations and say, have you considered that the actors understand the characters better than you do? If that’s true, how might they see the path they are on? Do you realize that if you use this take you are placing an emphasis you should then follow through on.

And no one had the power to point it out and not be shrugged off. So in retrospect, there are scenes that now seem totally overplayed or emotionally on the wrong foot. And the problem is, which ones were out of character in light of TFP? Because I think that’s up for debate.

This was a show attempting to be very clever and yet apparently was very much NOT thought through. The fundamental fan error was assuming stuff could not possibly be coincidence. Others went further and assumed not just endgame narrative but an incredibly intricate conspiracy that they were hiding in plain sight so the fans could guess what the end game was.

But that was never the only option. The one thing that kept getting sidelined was the possibility that they thought they all knew what they were doing but didn’t. That their plans were flawed. And that it wasn’t that they were intentionally writing a narrative that fans could subtextually read. Rather the creators could not see it. Which produced a ton of unintended coincidences. They wrote it and acted it and designed around it and scored it and could not see the wood for the trees. Because what Mofftiss said ultimately ruled at the end.

And that is paradoxically *why* the love story works. Why there are so many coincidences. Because the story we read fitted the rules of storytelling even while Mofftiss tried to defy those very rules. To insist they weren’t telling it.

They simply ignored what many others could see - the story they were telling in spite of themselves. They assumed their intent was more powerful a force. And in that burned the heart out of their own show. So that the finale focused on Sherlock and Eurus in a self indulgent Bond meets gothic horror genre fantasy when in fact this was always meant to be about Sherlock and John. Even platonically, they failed in TFP to deliver on that adequately. They shoved it to the side so it was virtually a subplot. The wrote the wrong kind of ending for a story they were all unconsciously writing, acting, directing, designing, scoring. The very heart of ACD’s stories. The bond between the 2 heroes. A love story, even if one that was limited in its physical or sexual expression.

They tried to refocus at the end on John and Sherlock and in their fast cut blink and you miss it montage they made yet another massive error. A huge one.

They gave Mary the voice that rightly belonged to go back to John - the Boswell, the blogger, the original storyteller. So he could explain what he and Sherlock are. They did it in TAB. Sherlock understood that in TAB. That John’s public narrative is not the truth. That there is an emotional story the public doesn’t see. An emotional Sherlock the Strand reading or blog reading public doesn’t see. They should have let Sherlock’s intuition and unconscious insight be proven right in real life in the 21st century. They should have replayed that aspect of TAB in the real world. Instead, confusingly, they did the exact opposite - so much so John couldn’t tell if Sherlock was faking his own self destruction.

He couldn’t tell the story if he tried. He needed a second opinion. A big clue that they had made a mistake - the same mistake that led them to introduce Mary’s DVD messages:

Mary was never the storyteller. But they tried to make her one. It was a very flawed decision. One of so many. All interlinked. And all ultimately as result of not thinking it through. They stopped serving the core story and served themselves on a personal fan boy level. They tried to be clever and completely missed the emotional context which they claimed was what this show was supposed to all be about. At a surface textual level. And a brief montage of the future feels like a rushed and inadequate pay off to that original intent. With the wrong narrator - with Mary as our intermediary - we are now inexplicably kept more at a distance from them than we were at the start. After going through hell with them.

I suspect that around TRF they began to lose the plot. They began to think details don’t matter. Even though they then discovered fans were weaving intricate explanations for how sherlock lived they persisted in letting details go. Waving it all off to please themselves and evade scrutiny. Mistake.

All the contradictions in cast and crew commentaries and interviews point to that. And fans, me included, assumed they were smarter than that. We kept trying correct the story to make it make sense by assuming they must be telling a different story. Problem was we didn’t give enough air time to imagining a trash ending and looking for clues of what it might be. We wrote far too generous meta. We gave them way more credit than they were due. They really weren’t the storytellers we thought they were. They were just fan boys amusing themselves for a rug pull that was in the end not very interesting or as original as they think. And certainly not groundbreaking.

Rather than correcting what everyone else got wrong, they hatched up an inadequate plan and made poor decisions. Everyone else put far too much trust in them as writers. And it all culminated in an ending that throws up huge retrospective questions about swathes of what preceded it. It potentially breaks the story so that a rewatch will not make sense.

I see little or no reason to come to any other conclusion. It fits all the rules of probability. They just weren’t good enough writers. They put ego before the heart of the narrative and were indulged by too many others.

There may be other probable conclusions. But the least generous is the most sense making one to my mind right now. It requires no leaps of logic.

This is really well thought out.

In essence, Mofftiss became untouchable, too big to fail… But in not having anyone to rein them in, the smaller missteps added up to an avoidable disaster.

I still maintain, in addition to all of this, that they were initially planning a Mary as villain reveal and at some point abandoned it in a fit of pique because the observant fans figured out their big reveal and it wounded their pride.

wssh-watson:bakerstreetqueerbaitingtime:I can’t believe that in the end those people who said...

wssh-watson:

bakerstreetqueerbaitingtime:

I can’t believe that in the end those people who said Mofftiss just wanted Mary to shoot and basically kill Sherlock because it looked cool, they never intended for it to have any real consequences. Her past, yes. Shooting Sherlock? No. I can’t believe those people were right.

I mean, that’s the worst writing I can imagine, but … they did that.

it’s the worst.

not only does it assassinate john’s character for him to forgive her

it also assassinates every storytelling rule ever, because only antagonists shoot and kill the protagonist

but here the antagonist got redeemed and got the last word and??? basically the dragon wins and the good guys are eaten?

sounds fake but okay

I woke up thinking about the elephant glass

byebyefrost:

miadifferent:

adlerforpresident:

cosmicgoat:

sussexbound:

In TAB the women’s only mistake was breaking the glass, revealing the illusion (revealing the truth buried beneath symbol and subtext?).

The elephant in the room is, of course, the romantic love and attraction between John and Sherlock, as reinforced a couple times in TSoT, and no matter what Arwel says on Twitter, continually visually threaded through TAB as well.

In TFP, in yet one more dig, they reveal that the glass never really existed at all. There was no illusion to hide, no elephant in the room. The only thing there, behind the non-existent glass was a damaged, crazy woman who really just needed a hug.

I love John Watson

yorkiepug:

And I will NEVER forgive Mofftiss for what they did to his character.

seducemymindyouidiot:There is not a single episode of s.4 that I would voluntarily watch again....

seducemymindyouidiot:

There is not a single episode of s.4 that I would voluntarily watch again.

TST with the Mary and Sherlock are best buds and poor sweet Mary.

TLD is the one I’d consider rewatching, but it’s tainted by the OTT Mary grief and misplaced blame not to mention that awful scene in the morgue

And I don’t even think I need to explain why I never want to see TFP again.

This is so true. Mary ruined E1 and E2 for me. TLD is by far the best of the lot, and I liked a lot of it, including Culverton Smith. But the annoying Mary ghost-Yoda is off-putting.

Do you think Mark and Steven are going to explain at least WHY? Because they've cleary made some sorta of twisted self-sabotage with this abominable last episode.I can't believe they've dedicated their entire life to ACD and then made this parody wtf

Imho they’re not going to give any explanation because they think they haven’t done anything wrong. They are narcissistic. They destroyed their toy like a toddler would do. They resent our cleverness. They resent that we expected them to be coherent. They’re such megalomaniacs and such cowards. They act like they’re the greatest experts on ACD and yet they shit on the canon. Look at everything they did in TFP. What they’ve done with their show is terrible. It’s not only the nasty queerbaiting - it’s the mockery of the stories, the character assassination, the whole travesty. With time, I expect to hear about the truth from some of the cast. But I don’t expect anything from Mofftiss - just mockery and gaslighting. I’m so sad and so, so furious.