Going out on a limb

isitandwonder:

tjlcisthenewsexy:

monikakrasnorada:

I know we all most of us agree that in TBB Soo Lin is a Sherlock mirror. But has anyone taken a really hard close look at the story she tells about her life before?

SOO LIN: You saw the cipher. Then you know he is coming for me.
SHERLOCK: You’ve been clever to avoid him so far.
SOO LIN: I had to finish … to finish this work. It’s only a matter of time. I know he will find me.
SHERLOCK: Who is he? Have you met him before?
SOO LIN (nodding): When I was a girl, living back in China. I recognise his … ‘signature.’
SHERLOCK: The cipher.
SOO LIN: Only he would do this. Zhi Zhu.
JOHN: Zhi Zhu?
SHERLOCK: The Spider.
(Putting her right foot up on her opposite knee, Soo Lin unlaces her shoe and takes it off. On the underside of her heel is a black tattoo of a lotus flower inside a circle.)
SOO LIN: You know this mark?
SHERLOCK: Yes. It’s the mark of a Tong.
JOHN: Hmm?
SHERLOCK: Ancient crime syndicate based in China.
(John nods his understanding and turns back to Soo Lin.)
SOO LIN: Every foot soldier bears the mark; everyone who hauls for them.
JOHN: “Hauls”?
(She looks up at him. His eyes widen.)
JOHN: Y-you mean you were a smuggler?
(She lowers her gaze and puts her shoe back on.)
SOO LIN: I was fifteen. My parents were dead. I had no livelihood; no way of surviving day to day except to work for the bosses.
SHERLOCK: Who are they?
SOO LIN: They are called the Black Lotus. By the time I was sixteen, I was taking thousands of pounds’ worth of drugs across the border into Hong Kong. But I managed to leave that life behind me. I came to England.
(She smiles a little.)
SOO LIN: They gave me a job here. Everything was good; a new life.
SHERLOCK: Then he came looking for you.
SOO LIN: Yes.
(Upset, she swallows before continuing tearfully.)
SOO LIN: I had hoped after five years maybe they would have forgotten me, but they never really let you leave. A small community like ours – they are never very far away.
(She wipes tears from her face.)
SOO LIN: He came to my flat. He asked me to help him to track down something that was stolen.
JOHN: And you’ve no idea what it was?
SOO LIN: I refused to help.
JOHN (leaning forward): So you knew him well when you were living back in China?
(She nods.)
SOO LIN: Oh yes.
(She looks up at Sherlock.)
SOO LIN: He’s my brother.
(Elsewhere, the hands of what is presumably a woman wearing black nail varnish open a box and fold back the tissue paper covering the contents. The box contains sheets of black paper. The hands take out the top sheet and lay it on the table.)
SOO LIN: Two orphans. We had no choice. We could work for the Black Lotus, or starve on the streets like beggars.
(The hands have folded the sheet of paper a few times, pressing down to set the folds, and now open the sheet out flat again. They fold one of the corners up, then turn the paper around to start folding up the opposite corner.)
SOO LIN: My brother has become their puppet, in the power of the one they call Shan – the Black Lotus general.
(The hands continue folding the paper.)
SOO LIN: I turned my brother away. He said I had betrayed him. Next day I came to work and the cipher was waiting.
(The hands have nearly completed their work and the paper is now folded into an intricate shape.)
(In the museum, Sherlock lays the photographs on the table.)
SHERLOCK: Can you decipher these?
(Soo Lin leans forward and points to the mark beside Sir William’s portrait.)
SOO LIN: These are numbers.
SHERLOCK: Yes, I know.
SOO LIN (pointing to another photograph): Here: the line across the man’s eyes – it’s the Chinese number one.
SHERLOCK (pointing to the first photo): And this one is fifteen. But what’s the code?
SOO LIN: All the smugglers know it. It’s based upon a book ...
(Just then almost all the lights go out. Soo Lin looks up in dread. Sherlock straightens up and looks around sharply.)
SOO LIN (softly, her face full of terror): He’s here. Zhi Zhu. He has found me.

(x)

This sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?   
So, if Soo Lin’s ‘life story’ is a mirror for Mary’s, then who can we substitute for the Brother and Shan??? Who is she working for????

@tjlcisthenewsexy @isitandwonder @ebaeschnbliah @inevitably-johnlocked @sherlock-little-weed @stillgosherlocked @deducingbbcsherlock

I really think you’re onto something, and there’s a Mary layer in there. But this scene was already so complex, especially for me since I read an Irene layer in there, and now my brain is literally melting. 

OMG @monikakrasnorada, this could really work. Perhaps we shouldn’t take characters as one-to-one mirrors for other characters, especially when looking at minor protagonists? Could their narrative function be to shed light on the main characters? Give us hints, clues…?

OK, Soo Lin’s brother is the Spider…
‘James Moriarty isn’t a man at all – he’s a spider…’ I’m not sure if Mary and the man we know as Moriarty are blood-relations but they still could have been in this together. The brides in the crypt were not related either but called Emilia Ricoletti their sister nonetheless.

But both Soo Lin and Zhi Zhu
were only puppets on a string

and have been working for someone else, someone influential and powerful, even called a General, which gives her an air of official authority. Who’s the equivalent to that in Sherlock’s world? His own brother Mycroft - which would be some kind of double mirroring for Soo Lin and Zhi Zhu.

In the end Shan get’s cought in her own web. She has failed and must succumb to the rules of her organisation. Does this foreshadow Mycroft’s fate as well?

I do like this. Soo Lin / Zhi Zhu (two orphans who got involved in a crime organization) = Mary / Jim Moriarty. Shan = Mycroft?

Just because Soo Lin was sympathetic doesn’t mean Mary has to be. After all, Soo Lin ran away from her life of crime and tended to teapots at a museum. Mary maybe too also tried to legitimately run away from a life of crime (that remains to be seen) yet she went after Magnussen and shot Sherlock. Not so sympathetic.

The telegram about her family at the wedding from CAM – could have been referring to the crime organization? Also the people who would ‘want to hurt Mary’.

I didn’t get the feeling Magnussen was close enough to Mary to be the ‘other orphan’, however you want to parse out the names. I got the feeling she was more just another potential blackmail resource to him (a ‘pressure point’ to get to Mycroft) rather than having a specific relationship with her. But I dunno.

Definitely something here though!