Recently I’ve been writing a pre-canon Mycroft fic, which obviously has caused me to delve even more into my headcanon about the Holmes boys and their childhood. Since I’m also an avid reader of childhood fics, I wanted to put down a few thoughts, if just to work it all out in my own mind. So behold, I share with you my treatise on the Holmes brothers and where they came from.
What?
John has a depression linked eating disorder. In the opening of Pink, after John wakes up, his breakfast consists of an apple that he doesn’t eat. This is very common in PTSD, especially those who have suicidal thoughts and tendencies, which we know John does. It’s not that they are actively starving themselves, it’s that they just don’t see the point eating, as an effort to stay alive.
When he meets Sherlock, John eats dinner as if he is starving. He digs into his food, talks with his mouth full, as if it is the first full meal he has had in months. Which is entirely likely, since John has been home for several months at that point. Again, this is very typical of people who have been suffering this type of eating disorder, and find that they are no longer as painfully depressed.
Sherlock even goes so far as to point out that after moving in together, John puts on an average of a pound a week in weight. John brushes it off as being normal. He doesn’t deny it, he just points out that he is eating more than one meal a day. This implies that he wasn’t eating this often before he limped into Sherlock’s life.
This makes Sherlock’s insistence that John eat even more powerful. He goes so far as to halt an investigation on more than one occasion, to make sure John gets a meal into him. A well-fed John is a happy John, not because he is full, but because it proves that he is happy enough to actually eat.
My heart. MY HEART.
OH MY GOD I HAD TOTALLY MISSED THIS.
Yeah, sorry, not an eating disorder. That’s diminished appetite, which can be a symptom of major depressive disorder, which is often comorbid with PTSD.
Not every disturbance in appetite is an eating disorder.
#I have never in my life had so many feelings over the fact that somebody isn’t wearing shoes
I felt my heart crumple when I first saw it.
Someone needs to analyze this. Emma? Somebody? What is it about the bare feet that is KILLING ME every time I see it? Why?? Why are we having such an emotional response to bare feet?
Because this the only time we’ve ever seen John on screen without footwear (he might have been barefoot in the FALL post-shower scene, but it’s hard to tell). He’s always been shod in one way or another: brogues, sandals, always ready to take off after Sherlock at a moment’s notice. Now that Sherlock’s dead, he has no reason to do this anymore. Also, the way they’re pressed together, instead of flat on the floor, is reminiscent of hands in prayer, or two hands clasped with fingers interlocked. Curled in on himself, vulnerable.
Bare feet are vulnerable. In western society, we usually wear shoes. Sometimes we go barefoot indoors—at home, where we let our guard down—and sometimes people wander around in a park or whatever barefoot. But it’s exposed. Physically, it’s risking injury by stepping on glass or thistles or a bee. And the sole of the foot in particular is something that isn’t public.
John sitting here, like this, is indicating he has nowhere to go. It suggests nakedness and privacy, an intimate glimpse of him, and for John, who is such an active person, it suggests surrender. He’s not even trying, not even pretending to hope something will happen. Or, perhaps, it suggests that he doesn’t want to.
Alternate theory:
Sherlock put John’s socks into a sock index before FALL. John refuses to touch them.
I hate all of you. *sobs*
I never thought too hard about symbolism of bare feet in the 20th century Englishman.
He’s wearing a plain (not garish plaid) dress shirt (not a functional camp shirt—no breast pockets), dark trousers, no jumper or cardigan, bare feet.
Whether or not it’s intentional, he’s dressed like Sherlock.
Sherlock, John is the most precious gift that heaven decided to give you.
First: I think it’s really sweet that John never judges Sherlock for not being able to tell the difference between behaving well or badly when it comes to other people’s feelings. I mean, once he understands that Sherlock actually can’t tell.
I know fandom gets a lot of mileage out of the “bit not good” thing, which I enjoy, but I also think it’s a sort of bittersweet phrase coming from Sherlock’s mouth. It sounds like something he’s been asking himself for most of his life. Because he doesn’t say, “oh, was that inappropriate?” he asks, “not good?” as if his goal is to be good.
But good is never his goal. Great, maybe. Right. Brilliant, certainly. Flawless. Impressive. But never just good. Never morally good, either. He is not, I don’t think, a good person. The fact that it comes up in ethical or moral situations makes it sound like a really old criticism.
We don’t dissect cats on the pavement, Sherlock. That’s not good. It sounds like something you tell a child, because more complex words and meanings are either too harsh or will be lost on them. You’d say something is not good rather that telling a child they’re doing something bad. As opposed to using language even stronger and more precise than that. I like this element of the show, because it demonstrates that for all Sherlock’s sophisticated and mature intellectual prowess, he reverts to childhood notions of good and not good when it comes to social interaction. As if the more mature distinctions and nuances are completely beyond him.
I also appreciate that John says one word to Sherlock to get him to realize his behaviour is inappropriate. “Timing.” It suggests (as most things in Hounds do, thank god for you, Mark Gatiss) that they have had a previous conversation wherein John attempted to explain to Sherlock that the timing of his commentary can sometimes be improved, because people are frequently not ready to hear about Sherlock’s deductions in moments of pain and weakness. John’s “timing” line here sounds like he’s reminding Sherlock of that conversation (or set of conversations). This rings especially true because Sherlock knows exactly what John means with that one word. He’s instantly frozen by it, too. He listens to John. He takes John’s direction extremely well.
This relationship is so well-written. *dreamy sigh* That’s fine, you can go on about Cumberbatch’s cheekbones. I’m going to be over here pining over that character development and relationship building. I have such a crush on these narrative structures!
They are such sassy bitches to each other (and everyone else actually)
You know, there are three real loners in this story, as far as I can see: Sherlock, Mycroft, and Moriarty. They are so bright, and/or so psychopathic, they really can’t form normal human relationships. They are (or were) all three of them dominantly alone most of the time. That came across with Mycroft primarily, who has lots of influence but spends his holidays alone, but also in Moriarty. And Sherlock…but only before he met John.
It is actually quite a feat, Sherlock finding John. Don’t you think? John comes back to London as lonely as Sherlock must always have been. But he is not exactly a loner. He has lots of friends. It’s surely him that arranged that Christmas party. He knows that Lestrade’s name is Greg. He’s clearly an introvert, but not he’s not a solitary person, really. If he hadn’t met Sherlock, he would have probably met a nice lady, gotten married, made a wide circle of friends. If John hadn’t met Sherlock, Sherlock would have no one. John is now his constant companion. Sherlock loves having an audience, someone to take care of him, someone to help him. He’s settled into having John around remarkably quickly. Wooing and winning John Watson is probably the great feat of Sherlock’s life. (Let’s not fool ourselves: Sherlock did woo and win John Watson. Have we ever seen Sherlock work so hard to impress anyone has he does with John? His discomfort when John thinks the flat is a disaster, explaining himself and his deductions without annoyance or frustration, his calm patience with John’s contributions, curing John of his psychosomatic limp, the bizarre intimacies?)
Moriarty clearly envies Sherlock this relationship. He sees it as the big difference between himself and Sherlock. He sees it as a weakness, but in the end I think he was jealous of Sherlock’s relationships. John, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, okay. But mostly John. “I should get a live in one.” That’s a bit of a lonely statement, I think.
I wonder how Mycroft sees it. You’d think he’d be a bit jealous too. No one seems quite as alone in this story as Mycroft Holmes.
Well, now Sherlock is alone again too. He must miss John so much. At least as much as John misses him. Probably more.
You have to wonder what the backstory is to this one. I mean, people who know and love Sherlock are absolutely, 100% convinced that John is Sherlock’s date the moment they see Sherlock and John together. It’s a running gag, obviously, but it wants explaining.
Sherlock is clearly a loner. He knows people (quite a lot of people, actually, more people than John appears to know), but he doesn’t choose to spend his time with any of them. He just solves puzzles. That’s all. He doesn’t enjoy the company of other people. He doesn’t go out for dinner with anyone, ever. (That point ever-so-nicely underscored by his bewildered question to Irene in Scandal.)
It’s pretty apparent to us by now that Sherlock isn’t particularly moved by attractive women. He doesn’t particularly react to Irene at all, even when she’s propositioning him. Maybe others have seen that in him too; he doesn’t seem interested. So they may make the next logical step (“Oh, he must be gay, that’s fine.”) even though he isn’t particularly moved by men, either.
Maybe Angelo told Sherlock ages ago that he was always welcome in the restaurant, any time, with anyone he likes (“Bring a date! It’s on the house!”), and Sherlock never turned up. Then one day, months and months later, he appears with a fellow he’s clearly fond of. Sherlock must be fond of this bloke, he must be trying to impress him, right? Because he’s willing to spend an evening over dinner with him, an event which Angelo has never witnessed. He’s willing to sit in a restaurant like a normal person with this fellow, so he must be tremendously special to Sherlock.
Sherlock doesn’t have friends. So maybe no one jumps to the conclusion that Sherlock has just made a new friend, because…well, he could have been friends with dozens of people but chose not to be. Mrs Hudson loves him, Molly loves him, Angelo loves him, Lestrade loves him too: there must be others, people he’s helped and rescued along the way, people who respect his brain even if they think he’s entirely too odd for this world. I’m sure there are a number of people who would be more than happy to sit across a table from Sherlock if he ever felt lonely. But he never takes anyone up on that. People who admire him are just a side effect of his work. He doesn’t solve the cases for them and their reactions. They’re an unintended but not entirely unpleasant side effect. He doesn’t appear to give them much thought at all. He ignores them.
For some reason, Sherlock takes to John almost immediately, and goes about trying to impress him. Everyone around him notices that: Mycroft asks about a happy announcement, Mrs Hudson makes her assumptions, as does Angelo. Sherlock is the observant one, but everyone around him sees that John is special to him. John doesn’t feel particularly special yet, because he doesn’t know Sherlock. He doesn’t know that Sherlock has just made every possible exception for him.
Sherlock doesn’t take John to Angelo’s in order to work on the case. He takes John there to trick him into losing the limp. Sherlock takes John out for dinner to cure him.
There are three explanations I can think of for that behaviour, all of which I think are true.
The first is that it’s another curious puzzle for Sherlock to solve while waiting for the next break in his current case. (“Can I cure a psychosomatic limp? I bet I can.”)
The second is that John will make a better addition to Sherlock’s life minus the limp (there are, after all, seventeen steps up to 221b, and he doesn’t want to give up his bedroom on the first level). It would be better if John isn’t struggling up and down stairs. Sherlock is not a patient man. I’d say that Sherlock realizes that John would be more of a help on cases minus the limp, but I don’t think Sherlock realizes yet just how critical John will become to that enterprise. (This is, after all, before John turns the tables and impresses the pants off of Sherlock by shooting a cab driver through a window.) If he did realize it, I’m sure he’d have cured that limp long before dinner time.
The third explanation for Sherlock’s act of kindness is this: “You’ll be impressed with me if I can cure you.” The distance Sherlock is willing to go to impress John is kind of epic, when you think about it. It doesn’t look epic to John at the time, but if he ever considered Sherlock’s behaviour after the fact, from the vantage point of knowing him for a year or more, he must marvel at it a bit. Sherlock took a complete stranger to dinner. That’s unheard of. Sherlock takes a very special and unusual interest in John immediately.
No wonder Angelo thinks they have a romantic connection. This is Sherlock pulling out all the stops. It must be love.
