i rewatched baz luhrmann’s romeo+juliet and i discovered this really interesting recurring image of water as suspension from the action of the play, which. yeah. i wanna write an essay about it.
but basically, the skinny is that juliet starts off the movie suspended in a bathtub, not yet caught up in the trajectory of the play, which is later mirrored by romeo dunking his head in a sink to come down from his trip. he does that in a bathroom, distanced from the main action of the party. right after that, he sees juliet for the first time through the aquarium, emphasizing how their love makes them feel detached from the immediate familial conflict of the ‘real world’, and later that night, they kiss in the pool, again desperately trying to escape their families’ rivalries and the impossibility of their love.
when tybalt dies, he falls backwards into a fountain, effectively leaving the main action of the play.
juliet pushes romeo from the balcony just before he goes into exile, and he lands in a pool, once again signalling his departure from the goings-on of the play – although interestingly, he spends that exile in a desert trailer park, so i wonder whether the complete lack of water in arid mantua already tells us that any attempt to remove him from the conflict and its inevitable tragic turn-out is futile.
perhaps most heart-wrenchingly though: just before his final fight, mercutio stands in the ocean, up to his knees in water, shooting at the waves and the sky. not only does he foolishly try to combat the forces of nature, but he’s also half-submerged in water. he almost made it out.
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Different EMP starting points
So, since I’m currently in the process of uploading all my EMP metas to AO3 (here), it just occurred to me that we might need a summary post of all the different proposed EMP starting points. So here goes:
If I remember correctly, the three founders of EMP theory, @monikakrasnorada, @the-7-percent-solution and @gosherlocked originally proposed (in 2016) that Sherlock’s EMP (extended mind palace) starts at the moment Mary shot Sherlock in HLV.
Then there were a lot of people in the fandom who had all sorts of earlier or later EMP starting point ideas (e.g., Sherlock actually jumped off the roof in TRF, Sherlock OD’d on the plane at the end of HLV, Sherlock only slips into his EMP sometime during s4, etc.)
@ebaeschnbliah and a couple of others were proposing very, very early EMP scenarios (i.e. everything we see right from the start of ASiP is already happening in Sherlock’s mind). And @ebaeschnbliah and a few other fans are also playing around with PILOT!verse (i.e. the unaired Pilot is real; the show is not. Or: Sherlock actually slips into his EMP at some point during the Pilot).
In 2017 @possiblyimbiassed had a completely different idea: EMP starts in the gap between TSoT and HLV as Sherlock OD’s off-screen after the wedding at home in his 221b flat. Everything we see at the start of HLV is already EMP.
Shortly after that @possiblyimbiassed re-worked that theory under the influence of an idea that @raggedyblue had come up with. @raggedyblue had proposed that, while Sherlock indeed OD’s (probably in the gap between TSoT and HLV), what we’re seeing on the entire show right from the start (!) is actually not what really happened, what we are seeing is instead Sherlock re-imagining his entire friendship with John right from the start in his mind due to the fact that he read John’s (not entirely factual) blog right before putting that needle in his arm. (This theory that @raggedyblue originally put forward and @possiblyimbiassed has worked out in intricate detail is something I refer to as the raggedypossibly-theory.;))
As for myself: I am not that creative, so I haven’t really come up with EMP starting points of my own. :D While I like all EMP starting points and think they’re all fun to play with, I mostly go back and forth between two ideas:
1. TRF: I.e. Sherlock actually jumped off that hospital roof at the end of TRF.
2. @possiblyimbiassed’s original theory from 2017 was right, and Sherlock OD’d after the wedding. Everything we see at the beginning of HLV is already EMP.
Both theories aren’t originally mine (obviously), but this argument in favour of them is something that just occurred to me:
Both scenarios have one big advantage over all other EMP starting points, the advantage of being closely tied to ACD’s canon!Holmes stories!
1) There was actually a Reichenbach moment in ACD!canon, after which Holmes’ disappeared for years hiding from both the public eye and Watson. 2) And the fact that Holmes’ gay heartbreak and sorrow find their expression in his drug use is canonical in SIGN and also massively hinted at in the film TPLoSH (Mofftiss’s favourite film).
So, that’s what those two theories have got going for them: Their deep foundation in ACD!canon.
Mostly, I believe in theory 1, though. (I mean, theory 2 has its merits, what with Holmes’s canonical drug use, but it has the drawback of putting the starting point into an off-screen gap between TSoT and HLV.)
Theory 1 is the simplest, really: Sherlock jumped.
There’s a reason why we never got an actual explanation of how Sherlock supposedly ‘tricked’ everyone at the end of TRF and how the jump worked out well for him. (Hint: It didn’t.)
There’s a reason why the last episode of s4, which, on a meta level, pushed us into the same void as the original readers of the ACD!stories after the Reichenbach Fall, is called ‘The Final Problem’ linking it back to TRF (which in canon was actually called ‘The Final Problem’).
There’s a reason why Mycroft’s weird bunker office starts to appear in TEH, etc., etc., etc. …
Sherlock actually jumping and everything being in his head starting with TEH would explain all of that.
It would tie the whole EMP idea to the ACD!stories, and it might even have the advantage of making Mary a figment of Sherlock’s imagination, some nurse he hears (in his coma), a nurse coming into Sherlock’s hospital room and flirting with John. Obviously comatose, jealous Sherlock has to turn her into a great villain after that.:D
So, yeah, theory 1 has a lot of things going for it.
But, as I said, theory 2 (OD in the gap between TSoT and HLV) is also very close to my heart, for various reasons (Holmes’ drug use in SIGN, his symptoms fitting a cocaine overdose, as I pointed out at the end of this thread here: x).
In short, I keep bouncing back and forth between these two theories, basically.
So, this is it. My EMP summary post. Feel free to add more EMP starting points of your own in the comments, if you like.:)
P.S. And then there are obviously those of us who believe that all EMP starting points are true because it’s an ‘Inception’ style dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream scenario, which Mofftiss have, after all, hinted at in both the Sherlocky ‘Doctor Who’ episode ‘Last Christmas’ and the massively Sherlocky show ‘Dracula’…This has been proposed by many different people over time, I believe.
Tagging: @sarahthecoat @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @raggedyblue @possiblyimbiassed @sherlockshadow @monikakrasnorada @fellshish
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“I fell asleep
after I told myself
I’d watch him.
What convinced him
there was relief to find
in the flames outside
when he’d seen already
what I showed him?
I woke to his smell.
The heat of the door
and his turning of its knob
burned to the bone before
he could get it open.
His flesh fell uneven
and beaded on the hardwood.
The circling flames
blew through. A plume
of hellfire brushed me back
from where I’d been standing,
but I rushed
to the one window
to track him. I watched
my brother running, the flames
in a cruel attachment
to his skin, his arms
flailing. He ran
with his mouth open,
screaming,
as everyone outside was,
and crying, though
no tears, no
intimate evidence
of conditions. The fire
took his face,
and for his black skull,
all I could think was
how we’d once been told
that deep down
the two of us were identical,
beyond the arrangement
of muscle and its appearance.
I knew the house
would never let my brother
back in, but even waking
from the dream, I knew
I wouldn’t wake
from any decision
to leave us separated,
leaving everything
in the moment
our eyes opened
to unite us, but even
migrating to the door,
I couldn’t open it.
Between burns
on my hands and anticipating
the pain of the outside,
I failed each time.
I walked back
to the window, watched
my brother disappear.
I was left alone in the house,
my brother finally
let to roam. And though
I knew under those terms
we’d never see each other again,
I knew we found a home
outside the sea
of each other.”
- Dustin Pearson, My Brother Outside the House in Hell.
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