A Scandal in Belgravia

[fahye]

WHY

JUST

WHY



God, it started SO WELL and there were so many things I LOVED (Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, remote crime-solving in a bedsheet, everything to do with Mycroft Fucking Holmes) and Irene! was! winning! and then it all fell in a bloody heap of sexist crap.

WHAT SOPHIE SAID, basically.

(Hi Soph! I stalked your tumblr because I knew you would bring the coherent and intelligent commentary where all I have right now is capslock and tiny impotent fists of rage.)

Also, I have to believe that Molly is secretly amazing because the alternative is that she is shockingly written and the writers don't give a shit about her (hahah, yes, so unlikely). Therefore my mental canon for her will forever be this fic, and that whole lipstick matching the fucking wrapping paper debacle was her messing with him.

Augh. AUGH. I'm just going to go -- rewatch the first half and then write reams of fic about Mycroft. Yes.

Comments

[sophistry]

I'm still! SO ANGRY! IT'S ALL JUST SO UDSHFDSKJDSJ.HDJ. I don't understand how you can write a character that brilliant for 80 minutes, and then FUCK UP SO BADLY in the last ten. They literally took everything away from her at the end - her camera-phone, her bodily agency, her professionalism, her cool-headedness, her skill and control as someone who lives performativity, her explicitly stated sexuality, EVERYTHING - and had her weeping and begging for mercy (ho ho I C UR SHITTY PARALLEL MOFFAT) and for god's sake, saying things like, "I won't last six months."

The only way I would buy any of that is if Irene were playing them all into next week, but... yeah, no, that is so clearly not what Moffat intended, and just, ARGH.

[fahye]

RIGHT? AND THEN THE SUCCESSIVE ENDINGS FOR HER WERE 'ALIVE AND INDEPENDENT' (SOOTHING LIES), 'DEAD' (THNX) AND 'ACTUALFAX DAMSEL IN DISTRESS SAVED BY MAN' (NO WORDS).

Ok, turning off capslock now.

Ugh. Ugh. It says something telling that they took the only person to canonically beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game, and performed such complete character assassination on her. YES. SHERLOCK IS PERFECT AND INVINCIBLE AND EVERYONE WANTS TO BONE HIM (except the men ew). WE GET IT.

[sophistry]

Upon rewatch, I caught the following charmer of a line from Sherlock, in the palace:

"As Ms. Adler remarks in her masthead, 'know when you are beaten'."

PLEASE EXCUSE ME WHILE I VOMIT ALL OVER EVERYTHING

[fahye]

Maybe balance it out by rewatching the scene where she whips him in the face a few million times.

[sophistry]

I'll be honest and say that that (i.e. primarily D/s-oriented) was where I half-thought they were going to go with her attraction to Sherlock, and I would have bought it, too. BUT NO.

[silveraspen]

Commenting here to reach you both --

OMG WHAT. WHAT. I have not seen it yet and now I am horrified. WHAT.

[sophistry]

Oh, Aspen, it is so awful. It was so brilliant, and then it was SO AWFUL. And like - there are so many concessions I would have been willing to make, so many compromises I would have been willing to accept to see Irene walk out of that with even just her BASIC DIGNITY intact. But they couldn't even do that - because she had the temerity to one-up Sherlock and affect him emotionally (how very dare she!!!), OF COURSE Sherlock had to put her in her place at the end.

[sophistry]

(And that is not even touching the random little racist turdnugget of bonus fail at the very very end. Just. WHAT.)

[metonymy]

IT WAS ALL GOING SO WELL

also

Why does Irene Adler (THE WOMAN, the ONLY ONE to beat Holmes) have to rely on MORIARTY for help

ugh I mean I guess they are setting up an ~arc~ but it still irks me. (And why is it people always complain about Irene's role being blown out of proportion to canon but not Moriarty's? Wasn't he only in one story?)

I am going to pretend the entire ending didn't happen and Irene is merrily swanning about - oh, Italy. Still in possession of her phone and her dignity.

[sophistry]

ALSO, CAN I JUST, ABOUT MOLLY - her scenes are starting to cross the line into legitimately upsetting for me, at this stage. They're not funny, they're just mean, and I don't give a good goddamn whether or not they highlight one aspect or another of Sherlock's character. Like, wow, well done writers, you have successfully highlighted that your male main character is slightly less of a colossal asshole than before, and all you had to do was once again utterly shame and humiliate a one-note female character whose only crime is being interested in Sherlock and expressing it (while not being a superhuman mega ~edgy~ interesting genius, and merely someone who is qualified to conduct post-mortem examinations and operate a fancypants lab).

[fahye]

I knew where it was going about ten seconds into his gleeful rant. Which personally I found to be out of character bordering on sadistic because at least his previous interactions with Molly have been kind of -- unthinking? Like, he's just making observations because that's what he does, and he doesn't care what effect the observations have. But that scene was just cruel, and he was so excited about it, and we know he is more than capable of reading emotional cues so he was clearly just plunging on in FULL KNOWLEDGE that he was gaining enjoyment from her distress, and expecting admiration for it. So when the apology came it seemed to come from...a different person? If you want to show that Sherlock has grown emotionally, at least make it consistent.

Fuck that. If I write Mycroft fic, Molly is getting a leading role and an awesome secret life.

[ashen_key]

If I write Mycroft fic, Molly is getting a leading role and an awesome secret life.

Oh, god, do it, please. That scene was just...I have NO. WORDS. for how much that scene mad me rage - and I got the impression that it wasn't Molly's distress (and oh, god, the poor, poor woman) that made him apologize, but the fact that everyone else in the room (including John, including Mrs Hudson, both of whom are people that he emotionally cares about) was staring at him, and judging him, and being appalled. That's the only thing I can think of that made him stop, rethink, re-contextualize what he said. Hence apology, which wasn't really for her, but for everyone else. Or...I don't know. It just. 23ifjwlkefjsdkljfdkj

I have to think that, I don't know. Molly is still with Moriarty, and Moriarty and Irene are BFFs who share cocktails and plots and secrets (so they are crooked genius equals, do you hear that, Moffat, goddamn platonic. equals., and so Molly was in on the whole 'let's pretend Irene is dead' thing. And that when Irene said she was gay, she meant that she fell in love with women, went dates on women, but still got turned on by the mind-games and power-play she does with everyone, which happens to include the mind-games and power-plays she does with men. Or. Something. I haven't quite thought my theory out, yet, because I watched the ep this morning, and then had work, and have just come home.

But. Just. Irene and Molly. They deserved so much fucking better.

2liruhjsdlkfjsdlkf.

-_-

[ashen_key]

(or, as you linked above, Molly IS Moriarty, and Jim's sister. I will also accept that as headcanon.)

[whatimages]

Jumping in to say YES THIS. I had to leave the room because I couldn't handle the secondhand embarrassment for Molly. GOD, MOLLY ;_; I hope she cracks and gruesomely and cleverly murders Sherlock. And then has a spicy affair with Irene.

Basically, this episode did an awesome job of completely decimating any emotional attachment I had to Sherlock as a character. I'm really not seeing things like personal growth from him, unless that personal growth is backwards into being the literal worst.

MOFFAT!!1

[ashen_key]

Yes, this. All. Of. This.

[whatimages]

I AM STILL SO MAD ABOUT THIS FAHYE. SO MAD!!!

The more I read about it the more I could just spit nails.

Why did I ever think something written by Moffat would be decent? WHY?