#freddie and jim were gay men in love

[sunnymeddows]

Husbands

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

Anita is everything Mary wasn’t. A supportive, caring female friend who respected and accepted Freddie’s sexuality, to the point where he felt comfortable enough to grab her hand and excitedly introduce her to his boyfriend in front of dozens of people. He could be himself around her the way he never could with Mary, evident by the way he never felt the need to hide his sexuality around her. The way she spoke so positively and fondly about the GL boys in the documentary…God, I just love her.

So many of Freddie’s so called “friends” invalidated his sexuality, both before and after he died. Thank God for people like Brian and Anita who have never backed down in defending it.

Yeah, really. Anita was never in love with Freddie or possessive of him, so she had no problem instantly accepting him as a gay man and respecting his relationship with Jim. It's a good point that Freddie felt like he could be proud of Jim around Anita, to the point where she acknowledged his gay, found family at Garden Lodge, while Phoebe (pre-simp days) said Freddie would tone down that side of himself around Mary. I can't remember exactly what Anita said right now but the contrast is like:

Anita: he was very proud of Jim! :) He built a family of his own with other gay men

Mary: all of Freddie's boyfriends were jealous of me and I didn't understand his relationships with men

Brian and Anita truly are some of the only people who have never invalidated Freddie's sexuality. It's sad how many people Freddie trusted have done so over the years.

[lonelyasawhisper]

Why can't you accept that Mary was the love of Freddie's life? If Freddie were still alive and he knew how you talked about Mary, he would hate you. Yes, he loved Mary and he loved Jim too, accept it.

Because I do not think being the ex-girlfriend of a gay man who’s in a committed, loving relationship, in which he “[didn’t] have to try so hard” or “prove [himself]”, with another man, the man he called husband, the “niche [he had been] looking for all [his] life” is congruent with being the love of his life.

I think she is someone who he loved and cherished very much, one of the few extremely meaningful relationships he had. But I consider the love of Freddie’s life to be someone who loved, understood, accepted Freddie for all he was, someone with whom Freddie felt so comfortable and at home, so that he could be himself around them - and that is not Mary. Not the Mary who said she didn’t understand the relationships he had with men, who Freddie acted a certain way with (and not in a good way) because of this exact lack of understanding of who he was as a person - someone who wanted love, companionship and fulfilment in their love and sex life, just like a lot of straight people, only that he wanted that with someone of the same sex. Now that’s^^^ what I think being the love of someone’s life means, maybe your definition is different 🤷‍♀️

Whether Freddie could see what I say about Mary would not change what I said or will say. (And the fact is he won’t ever.) I stand by my opinion that she’s less than kind to his friends and loved ones, if not downright cruel with some of her behaviour that could not be excused with grief. The way she handled Freddie’s death, especially in the press, reeks of homophobia - and not just ignorant, tactless remarks that could be at least perceived as merely a product of its time, but condescending, callous, insulting cheap shots at his gay loved ones at the height of the AIDS crisis right after Freddie passed. The things she did and said were choices she actively made, and a lot of them imo were done in bad taste. She did it in the public arena going to the press, and it’s horrifying to think of what she said in the context of the overt homophobic zeitgeist at the time, especially what “the love of Freddie Mercury’s life” had to say would’ve garnered a lot of public interest.

Also, I do accept that Freddie loved both Mary and Jim. But do most people who insist Mary was the love of Freddie’s life accept that? What I’m concerned with is that people who hold the belief “Mary was the love of his life” more often than not perpetuate the ideas that 1) he did not love Jim, or not nearly as enough as he did Mary, and 2) because the love of Freddie’s life was a woman, he was bisexual. I mean, what does this belief (“Mary was the love of Freddie’s life”) say? That the ex-girlfriend of a gay man, a gay man happy and in love with another gay man, meant more to him and was more loved by him in comparison to the man whom he called husband? It’s the homophobic implications of that statement and the misconceptions it causes that I have a problem with.

Finally, I am one (1) small blog on Tumblr, and I doubt Mary herself is looking at what I have to say about her. If what I say here offends you, you can very well filter certain tags (I do have a “#mary austin” tag) or just block me.

[a-froger-epic]

And the last thing I want to say is that we know Mary didn't really take seriously the "gay part" of Freddie's life (which it wasn't a particularly nice thing for her to do), so I don't think it really clicked for her how monumental this loss was for Jim tbh. I'm thinking about when Jim said in frustation, "Mary, I just lost my friend, my love, my home, my life!"

In simple terms, I agree with what you're saying.

But also, I don't think it's as simple as Mary didn't take his relationships with men seriously. What she said (correct me if I'm wrong) was that she couldn't understand his relationship with Jim. And I believe that, this makes sense to me from her perspective, though it's hard to put into words what I'm thinking here.

Firstly, I think, like Freddie himself, Mary had some fairly traditional ideas about relationships. This comes back as a theme between them again and again. Freddie calling her his common law wife, feeling that he owed her, that he did wrong by not making her his wife (internalised homophobia, yes, but also an ingrained idea of how life ought to pan out). So he doesn't want her to leave once they break up, she doesn't want to leave once they break up, they're stuck in this limbo between a relationship and genuine unattachment. They are attached, through guilt, through an echo of mutual love, through an expectation of what their life ought to have been. And then come Freddie's male lovers, who he loves fiercely, passionately, deeply - but also in secret, also without the solid framework of what was then a socially acceptable relationship. Because his relationships were not socially acceptable. And I can see, from Mary’s point of view, that she would not have had trouble understanding that he was attracted to men but she would have had trouble understanding how he could be content with a relationship that lacked this framework. I think to her, his relationships didn't look solid enough, and being under threat from society at all times, in a way, how could they be? I think in another way, she never stopped believing, at the time, that he needed "a woman’s touch" in terms of being taken care of. Because she just comes across to me as the sort of person, of that generation, who had this idea of male and female gender roles ingrained in her.

Anyway, all of this is a long way of saying that, yes, I don't think Mary could possibly fully understand Jim at the time of Freddie’s death, which is ironic. Because they both lost the same person, and both loved him.

[queen-thinky-thoughts]

Mary also told Jim Freddie was "waiting for him" right after the funeral... It just leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. And she also apparently told a newspaper she couldn't let Phoebe, Joe and Jim stay at Garden Lodge because her children wouldn't have any friends at school if they were associated with them. To me she really comes off as cold, selfish and lacking a lot of empathy.

The thing about her children not having friends if gay HIV positive men had been living at her house is definitely awful, but more so because it was true, sadly. There was very much that sort of attitude toward HIV positive people at the time. On the one hand, I absolutely think a different person would have criticised the attitudes of the time instead of simply stating them and would have fought to change people's minds - like Princess Diana did - and on the other hand, I understand her concern as a parent who doesn't want their children to be ostracised. Either way, it's clear to me that Mary was never cut out to be much of an activist or really anybody who stood up to anyone. She does not have that in her. Not everybody does.

And that comment to Jim? A cruel comment to make, evidently, seeing as it must have been made in a way that upset him. A lot of what reportedly went down after Freddie's death speaks to me of a whole lot of resentment Mary had toward her position in Freddie's life and also the other people close to him. I don't doubt that she resented his lovers, but not because she was a huge homophobe, or anything like that.

(Oh sure, she had and likely has some homophobic preconceptions, I don't doubt that from the way she's sometimes spoken about Freddie's lovers, though for me there is a difference between somebody who is maliciously homophobic and literally hates gay people/thinks they shouldn't exist, and someone who is generally LGBT-friendly/neutral but has some homophobic preconceptions. Imo, Mary is the latter.)

This is just my reading on a woman I don't know much about, but I think she resented Freddie's lovers and she resented his sexuality, because he ended their relationship but wanted to keep her in his life. Equally - and this is where we come back to Mary not being someone who is good at making a stand or perhaps even standing up for her own needs - she decided to stay in his life, too. She didn't leave and distance herself as much as she likely would have needed to in order to really emotionally uncouple herself. She stayed, and I think a part of her deeply resented that she stayed, that she gave so much of her life and energy to this man she did love, but couldn't be with. Equally, because she was so much in Freddie's life, but not actually with him, I think she became quite possessive of him and her role in his life. "You may be his lover now, but I loved him first", "You may be his trusted assistant now, but he's always trusted me", "You may think you understand him, but I saw him grow into who he is today" — I think all that was there. I feel like I can see some of that bitterness radiating off her even in that Garden Lodge Christmas video, although that's reading into things quite a bit, so I don't know.

Anyway, just on an emotional level, I understand her. I get how she must have felt, even while I absolutely think she was responsible for putting herself in that situation, though she may have felt like she had no choice. (There is always a choice.)

You know, it all fascinantes me endlessly from a psychological point of view, the dynamic Freddie and Mary had. And I feel like I know fairly little about Mary, on the whole. Certainly less than I know about the members of Queen or even Jim, I feel like.

And no, she doesn't strike me as a bad person based solely on some of her bad moments, no more than I would say Freddie was a cruel person for writing 'Don't Try Suicide' when his ex attempted/threatened to kill himself, or that all of Queen were irredeemable dirtbags for cheating on their partners on tour, or Brian is a despicable, selfish man for having an affair, etc. I don't think any of that. I just see everyone as human and flawed.

And yes, sorry, I went off on a massive tangent there. Anyway, you can absolutely think what you like about Mary. If she's a horrible person in your eyes, that's fair enough. I'm not actually out to convince anyone to see anything my way, but I'm genuinely interested in the analysis of things, just for myself, when I find that I don't quite follow other people's train of thought.

Thanks for engaging respectfully, anon!

[just-a-poor-boy-queen]

While I love Mercury and Me, I do think there are parts in it that aren’t completely accurate. Perhaps Jim didn’t remember certain things exactly as they happened or his co-writer embellished them. There’s an anecdote of their trip to Japan and Jim writes how one night he, Freddie and Joe all opted for Western meals instead of the local cuisine and dined on steak. But Joe was a vegan 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t hold this against him though. I don’t hold this idea that any degree of fabrication turns a story from nonfiction to fiction. Our memories are unreliable and we have to remember that memories are shaped by perspective. So just because someone writes something that others disagree with, it doesn’t mean it’s a lie, it’s just what they believe happened. Someone may have a distorted view or perspective on an event that someone else views different. Just my opinion though.

I have to admit anon, I am not sure of your intentions behind sending this. Maybe it’s a random thought you had when you saw my post about Mercury and Me, or it is some sort of a ‘gotcha’ for my very strong feelings about Rudi’s book and its comparison to Mercury and Me.

If it’s the latter, then I’ll request you to go back and read those posts again, and look at my tags. I explicitly mention that intentionally lying about something is not the same as misremembering. You’ve given one instance of a factual information being incorrect in Mercury and Me, I can give you another. Jim was also incorrect about the order of performances at Live Aid.

Even if you didn’t send the ask to accuse me or anything, I’ll just elaborate on this point anyway. As you can see, errors such as those that occur in Mercury and Me are harmless. There’s no fallout from them, and no harmful misinterpretation. The reason why I am skeptical to believe anything that comes out of Rudi’s mouth is because he has said things that have very harmful implications. Through his sensationalist bullshit, he has implied that Freddie knowingly passed on the risk of HIV/AIDS to Barbara by having unprotected sex with her in 1987/1988 when Freddie was aware of his AIDS diagnosis. When asked to clarify, he said that he “doesn’t want to create drama”. This was quite recent (last couple of years), and it furthers the stereotype that gay men were ‘reckless’ even after their diagnosis and knowingly passed on the disease. I, myself, have seen so many people say this of Freddie as well. In 2021, mind you.

This is literally just one instance but it shows the contrast between the two individuals quite clearly. This is not a “distorted view or perspective of an event”. It was a clear and detailed, not to mention false insight into what Rudi said happened, and it’s very, very different from implying that a vegan had steak.

It’s also not a case of simple disagreement. It’s about not taking what a habitual liar says at face value. He has tainted his own credibility and that is on him, not me. I was swept away in the euphoria of having a new piece of information about Jimercury as well, initially. But I realised that I do not actually trust Rudi, at all.

I know a lot of you will not see it that way. I have seen a lot of arguments about it, which frankly, do not make any sense to me. But you do you, I guess. Just don’t be surprised when you’re met with raised eyebrows when you cite your source as Rudi Dolezal.

[variousqueerthings]

Some random fictional slashers & monsters who do and don’t belong at Pride

Freddy Kreuger: He spent the whole of the second movie terrorising a gay boy who was in the closet, and he killed his boyfriend! Not invited. Jesse’s at Pride though (with Ron, who’s fine).

Mike Myers: Speaking of killing gay people... Mike. Mike we were rooting for you. Mikey what’s up with that? Rude! Apologise! I can excuse murder, but homophobia!? No Pride for you!

Jason Vorhees & Pamela Vorhees: Pamela supports Jason no matter his identity and Jason deserves to find some community and walk with disability Pride. 

Chucky/Charles Lee Ray & Tiffany Valentine: Obviously they belong at Pride, they’re taking their (canonically) genderfluid kid. They’ll offer to kill all parents who don’t support you and the anti-Pride crowd seems to have thinned considerably all of a sudden...

It: Literally came to being through a homophobic hatecrime. I’d say next, but also “what that clown do....” Problematic fave, sorry.

The Babadook: Goth gender-? king. Has an own float. Dapper AF.

John Ryder: John is at Pride with his boyfriend Jim. They’ve sorted things out. I feel like John would march with the leather daddies. 

Daniel Robitaille: Duh, Daniel’s at Pride. Also has a float to himself -- made to be (rightly) worshipped.

Jennifer Check: Naturally Jennifer is at Pride. She’s making out with all the girls.

Norman Bates: Would he want to go to Pride? It’s very loud for a socially anxious guy like him. He might watch it on TV. Maybe he’d go if he had a boyfriend to take him.

Brandon & Phillip: Phillip is Norman’s boyfriend now, he left Brandon’s whole toxic environment and he’s doing much better. They watch it on TV together. Brandon is at Pride, but he’s being a dick. 

Carrie White: If her girlfriend Sue brings her, then yes, although she’d rather watch the parade than march and Sue watches out for social overwhelm.

Hannibal Lecter: All iterations of Hannibal are at Pride. They hate each other.

Billy & Stu: They’re alive, they’re at Pride, they’re thriving, according to Matthew Lillard they adopt rescue dogs (and they dressed them in little dog Pride costumes).

Ginger Fitzgerald: Ofc this rowdy girl is at Pride. Tbh Katharine Isabelle has a dozen roles that belong there.

Red/Adelaide: They’re at Pride together, mutual sisterly/clone support. Red is gay, Adelaide is supporting.

Countess Marya Zaleska: Every girl in a five mile radius is drawn to her. Jennifer would be jealous, but she’s also in love. 

Adam (Frankenstein’s monster): Angel. Baby boy. On the one hand he deserves to be there. And he’s several gorgeous men in one! On the other hand would he enjoy large, yelling crowds? Anyway, he’s invited.

Dr. Jack Griffin: A pair of tiny shorts and a rainbow-striped bowtie dance about on the Candyman’s float...

[myassgoodbye]

I wanted to put my thoughts out there about Brian’s recent comments on the Brit Awards getting rid of the Male & Female categories. 

It’s important to go over exactly what he said, which I found in as complete a form as is easily accessible at ultimateclassicrock.com: 

“I’m sure… we would be forced to have people of different colours and different sexes and a trans [person] – but life doesn't have to be like that. We can be separate and different. Our generation made a lot of mistake, but not everybody in our generation was wrong and not everybody in this generation is right. A lot of people from our generation who are being called out have actually done a lot of good in their lives.”

Absolutely no one is saying the Foo Fighters shouldn’t win awards or perform unless they get a bandmate who’s a POC, woman, or trans person. He’s also being vague enough about “a lot of people from our generation” who were “called out” for... I guess not having those groups in their bands?? But who? 

“I worry about cancel culture. I think some of it is good but it also brings bad things and injustices. We think in different ways but they weren't necessarily worse ways. For instance, Freddie came from Zanzibar – he wasn’t British, he wasn’t white as such – nobody cared. Nobody ever, ever discussed it. He was a musician, he was our friend, he was our brother. We didn’t have to stop and think: ‘Oh, now, should we work with him? Is he the right colour? Is he the right sexual proclivity?’ None of that happened, and now I find it frightening that you have to be so calculating.”

Sure, there are bad aspects of cancel culture. But that’s not related to the issue at hand: removing the gendered categories. You’re not “canceling” men or women by doing this. I find it very telling that he says Freddie wasn’t white “as such.” That’s the entire reason no one or few people had issues with Freddie. Even today, I think the average person would say Freddie’s white. That’s why no one discussed it. That’s why he didn’t discuss it beyond some vague mentions in old interviews, which called him “exotic.” 

If you look at the 10 best-selling artists of all time, only 2 of them are POC: Michael Jackson and Rihanna. And Rihanna first started making music in 2005. As much as people love to say Freddie was “openly gay” while he was alive, the definition of “open” is very nebulous. Did he go to gay clubs and date men? Sure. Did he give any interviews to the public saying he dated men? No. He kept a distance from Jim when they were going out in public. Maybe the members of Queen didn’t care about his sexuality, but it’s unfair to act like no one would’ve cared if he were out. Many fans would not have been fans if he were entirely out. Maybe Brian and the others didn’t have to be calculating, but Freddie very much had to be calculated about what he did in public. And no one is demanding bands to have their members be in certain groups, so again, this is irrelevant, man.

“It’s a decision that has been made without enough thought. A lot of things work quite well and can be left alone. I get so sick of people trying to change things without thinking of the long-term consequences. Some of these things are an improvement – some of them are not.”

Again, define which “things” are an improvement and which aren’t. Clearly, he wouldn’t be saying this if he liked the removal of the Male & Female categories since that is the primary thing being changed, if not the only thing. In that case, what about that works well? How exactly is Sam Smith, Demi Lovato, or any other non-binary artist supposed to win in the Male or Female categories? They can’t. If certain people are ineligible to win due to their gender, that’s not working well IMO. I’m sure if they just added Non-binary categories, Brian & others would complain it makes it too easy for them to win awards because there are comparatively few non-binary artists. So if you think there’s some better way to handle this, suggest it before just saying the changes are bad. You know what’s a really bad “long-term consequence” of leaving things as is? Non-binary people can’t win awards.

I’m not calling Brian a conservative because he generally isn’t, but on this issue, he seems to be. And very often, conservatives argue the status quo shouldn’t be changed because “look, some things are working well and there could be consequences to changing things and let’s just leave things alone for now.” And for now ends up being forever because they repeat themselves. They don’t propose alternative changes; they just say to hold off for now. Because they don’t want it to change at all and they realize people don’t want to hear the status quo is actually great.

He went on to express hopes for “more understanding” between people with opposing attitudes, so that society could move on from what he described as an “atmosphere of fear” in which people were “afraid to say how they really think.” He continued: “I think so many people are feeling ‘hang on, this isn’t quite right.’ But they don’t dare say anything. Eventually there will be some kind of explosion.”

The thing about understanding is it can’t really exist when 1 side denies the rights of another. If the status quo stays, non-binary artists can’t win awards. If you think it “isn’t quite right” to allow them to be included and to put everyone on equal footing, I’m not sure where the middle ground is. If there is an “atmosphere of fear” around saying non-binary people don’t deserve to be included, good. That means a good number of people think we should be included. It’s like how people would fear publicly saying women shouldn’t work and should only raise kids. I’m glad you fear saying that because it’s bullshit. 

Besides, the UK is generally anti-trans, at least more than the US, and not even everyone who supports trans people supports non-binary people. Maybe he means he’s afraid to say that around his friends, since he’s generally pretty liberal on other issues. If so, maybe listen to your friends, Brian. 

I’ve seen some people here say what he’s saying really isn’t that bad. I’m not saying Brian is the worst transphobe in the land & he should hide in a hole or anything. Your connection to media and the people who make it is your own & it’s complicated. But at the bare minimum, if someone says bigoted shit, which is what this is, acknowledge it for what it is. He’s not trying to say it outright, but it doesn’t take much analysis to see what he means.

[incorrectborhapquotes]

Freddie: until I fell in love with Jim, I thought my attraction to men was purely physical

Roger: So you were gay and then realized you were even gayer

[oatrevolution]

So, I saw the new documentary, and I have some Thoughts. Here are a few of them, very rambling and disorganized, which no one asked for! You’re welcome 😉

one. Phoebe is a treasure. Surely nobody can deny that Freddie was a tiny gay baby anymore, and Phoebe’s care and love for Freddie is still so evident. He brought tears to my eyes and warmed my heart. Phoebe is 100% worth the price of admission (which is zero, because it’s on YouTube, but you get what I mean!).

two. The assertion that Freddie wasn’t bullied at boarding school is completely ridiculous. Yes, knowing Freddie, I’m sure he had great determination and spirit, but also knowing eight-year-old boys, he was tiny and gay and had huge, mockable teeth. You cannot convince me that his time in India wasn’t miserable.

three. I also find it difficult to believe that he somehow didn’t realize he was into men until he was dating Rosemary. Overall, though, I found her segment quite interesting and sensitive to the inner turmoil he faced, and she’s much more bearable here than in her own book.

four. I wasn’t expecting much from Leslie Ann Jones, tbh, but I was pretty upset by her recounting of how Freddie discovered his sexuality and came out to Mary. In her version, he experiments with men, finally tells her he’s bisexual, she replies he’s gay, the end. Notice anything major missing? Oh, yeah: David Minns, who apparently just doesn’t exist. No mention that Freddie, you know, had an actual boyfriend and that’s maybe a big reason why he finally ‘fessed up to Mary. No mention that Freddie was cheating on her for ages with this guy! I don’t even like David Minns that much and I’m angry. No, of course the focus has to be on dear Mary, not how gay Freddie really was...

five. Even though, to quote my beloved Phoebe: “You didn’t have to ask Freddie if he was gay, he just was.” Thank you, Phoebe.

six. There were a couple of lovely sentences on Freddie and Jim’s relationship (also courtesy of Phoebe!) and I melted. Those two deserved every happiness.

seven. Buckle up towards the end and prepare to just cry your eyes out, like I did. Accept your fate. It will be easier this way.

eight. This idea that Freddie was happy all or most of the time—um, disagree. Read the lyrics, listen to the stories where partied-out Freddie calls himself trash as he’s found in a dumpster. Remember that he would have wanted everyone else around him to be happy, to have fun, even as inside he’s a mess of trauma and internalized homophobia. Terrible, aching wounds that can only be ignored for a short period of time.

[sunnymeddows]

With every single beat of my heart

Dedicated to the memories of Freddie Mercury and his husband, Jim Hutton.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

I'm sorry to bother you, don't post if don't want explicit drama, but I just so this post and I'm baffled about how downright stupid it is. "I don't have proof Mary was homophobic, she just said some questionable things, but you know who said tons of problematic things? Freddie!" this surely is a new one💀💀💀 (and it's also blatantly untrue lmao, I legitimally don't remember him saying anything even remotely bad as what Mary said about him and his gay peers).

https://www.tumblr.com/flick-of-the-wrist/716773057327497216/do-you-think-part-of-the-reason-that-some-people?source=share

Oh look, more complete and utter wish-washy bullshit all to make excuses for a dead rock star's loser ex-girlfriend.

First, we have the "Freddie wouldn't label himself the way people do today!" as if Freddie didn't explicitly label himself as gay. Next, we have "Freddie wouldn't have cared what people would've called him" as if a rando online knows that for sure, and as if any of us have the right to make that decision for him to justify mislabeling a real human being.

Then, we have "uwu maybe people want to 'eschew' poor Mary to prove Freddie was gay", as if talking about the things she literally says and does is "eschewing" her, and as if we need proof beyond his owns words lmao.

And then there's downplaying everything Mary did after Freddie died by dishonestly presenting all the evidence we have of her being a piece of shit as "a paragraph" from Jim and Phoebe's books. That's just not true. Lol. Here's the kicker: "so what if Mary was a bitch? I can be a bitch, too!" Give me a fucking break. I am sick to death of this fandom being like, "If I don't defend bad people and their harmful actions I will die." Mary stole people's pets, said she "won" after Freddie died, ghosted Freddie's family, and kicked his loved ones out of their house while they were grieving, immediately changing the locks and not letting them take all of their things--including Jim's own family photos. On my worst days, I've never done anything like that! Lmfao that is not excusable behavior. Like speak for yourself, but I'll never be as big of a piece of shit as Mary Austin, actually <3

Lastly, it is absolutely ridiculous to compare a straight person saying homophobic things to a gay person saying potentially insensitive things about their own social group. Mary did say cut-and-dry homophobic things, she said Freddie "became a gay", she couldn't be jealous of his relationships with men because she didn't understand them, and she acted like Freddie intentionally spared her from AIDS, implying that he was knowingly infecting other people. A straight person saying that does not compare to a gay man jokingly using the f-slur with his gay friends. Everyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills knows this.

Anyway, I don't give a shit about "starting drama" anymore because it's a joke that calling out the low-key homophobia and constant defense of bigotry and harmful behavior in this fandom is seen as worse than...the actual bigotry and defense of harmful behavior. I don't care. I've never seen this blog before so I don't know this person or what their usual takes are, but the issue is that this is representative of the bullshit found in the larger fandom, so you're getting a response from me that's more directed at the general fandom lol. I don't care. If people don't want to be criticized for dismissing and defending homophobia and overall shitty people, then they could just stop doing that for the low price of $0.00.

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 12: Three Men in a Boat [TFP 2/3]

[This was completely missing from my tumblr, via every search function and everything! So I’ve reuploaded - thanks anon for letting me know!!]

This section of the meta is going to deal with the events at Sherrinford – I’ve broken TFP up into three sections to try and get the most out of it. This isn’t just a read through like the first part of the meta, it has a specific structure, much like Eurus’s trials for the boys, so it’s really important to take this bit in one chapter. My hypothesis is thus – that each episode of s4 has been a different obstacle to be broken through in Sherlock’s mind, and that each of them is represented by one of the different Sherrinford tasks. It’s essentially an illumination of Sherlock’s progress through his mind – but it’s set up by Eurus, who is Sherlock’s mental barrier, so these are going to represent Sherlock’s darkest fears about each of the obstacles. Ready? Let’s go.

We take up the episode at the pirate hijacking, which is quite BAMF, but also illuminates a couple of things that we should bear in mind going into this episode. The first is that the transition from a blown up Baker Street to Sherlock and John hijacking a boat without a scratch on them is absolutely bizarre and leaves SO many questions – it’s dream-jumping of the most obvious kind. The second is that water has played a long role as a metaphor through the show, particularly in the EMP sequence, and it’s climaxing now – we are in the deepest waters of Sherlock’s mind.

Mycroft and John working together in the disguise sequence is metaphorically lovely – in the Oscar Wilde scene of the last part we saw Sherlock’s brain and heart finally coming together, and here for the first time they’re working together to give Sherlock the ability to go and confront Eurus. This is what makes Mycroft’s line so powerful. He says:

Say thank you to Doctor Watson. […] He talked me out of Lady Bracknell – this could have been very different.

Comic throwaway? Maybe. But given what we know about Lady Bracknell from the first part, this also has a more powerful meaning – heart!John finally stopped brain!Mycroft from being an obstructive force in Sherlock’s psyche, and they started working together instead to save him. This could have been very different is far more loaded than it sounds. All this whilst creating an image of Mark Gatiss as a Victorian aunt – wonderful.

When we first meet Eurus proper, her similarity to Sherlock is striking. She plays the violin – this isn’t a Holmes thing, because Mycroft doesn’t – it’s Sherlock’s motif throughout. Her hair is like a feminine Sherlock, her pallor and cheekbones match Cumberbatch. For reference, this is a picture of Sian Brooke and Benedict Cumberbatch together in real life.

I’ve done a section on why I think Eurus is the most repressed part of Sherlock’s psyche, and his traumatic barrier to love and life – I sometimes glibly refer to this as gay trauma, but that’s its essence. The similarity between Brooke and Cumberbatch in this scene is really compelling, looking the same but lit and dressed in opposite colours. Similarity and difference both highlighted. Even nicer, the white of Sherlock’s shirt is the same notable brightness as Eurus’s uniform, but it’s hidden under his jacket – a visual metaphor for her being hidden inside him.

Eurus gives Sherlock a Stradivarius as a gift. This should set alarm bells ringing for anybody who has seen TPLoSH. If you haven’t seen The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, please do so immediately because my God you are missing out, but TLDR – a Russian ballerina offers Holmes a Stradivarius to have sex with her so she can have a brainy child, and he declines because he’s gay. (This is not just my interpretation, this is genuinely what happens, just to be clear.) Eurus giving Sherlock a Stradivarius is a deliberate callback to the film which Mofftiss cite as their biggest inspiration; just like the ballerina tempted Holmes to feign heterosexuality, so does Eurus – and both make clear that it’s not without its rewards, which is unfortunately true for real life as well. This moment in Sherlock’s psyche also recalls the desperate unrequitedness of Holmes’s love for Watson in TPLoSH, a reference to our Sherlock’s deepest fear at the moment – he has realised his importance but not John’s romantic/sexual love for him, as we’ll see. So here, trauma!Eurus isn’t just referencing closetedness, but is actively drawing on a history of character repression with which to torment Sherlock – metafictionality at its finest.

The Stradivarius is specifically associated with closetedness, but violins more generally in the show are used to show expressions of love that can’t be voiced out loud – think of John and Mary’s wedding, or the desperate bowing of ASiB. So Eurus, gay trauma that she is, telling Sherlock that she taught him to play is a moment of distinct pain – she is the reason he can’t speak his love aloud, but instead has to speak in signs.

When Sherlock plays ‘him’, rather than Bach, to Eurus (he has a big Bach thing with Moriarty in s2, take from that what you will because I don’t know!), he’s playing Irene Adler’s theme. As a fandom, we’ve generally agreed on associating Irene’s theme with sexual love, which ties in nicely with Eurus’s question – has Sherlock had sex? It’s unanswered. At the end of ASiB, Irene calls Sherlock the virgin, suggesting that he hasn’t.

My favourite moment in s4 without a doubt is Jim dancing to I Want To Break Free. I know it’s the most boring thing to say, but my two greatest loves are Andrew Scott and Freddie Mercury, so it was like Christmas. Here it is also Christmas, but there are two possible timelines. I hypothesise that this refers to Christmas 2010, but it’s absolutely conceivable that it could be Christmas 2009. If we acknowledge that Sherlock is in a coma in 2014, then five years ago is Christmas 2009; however, given that we’ve jumped to 2015 in dream time, I’m going to make the guess that Jim’s visit to Sherrinford is supposed to take place in 2010. This ties up with the idea that this is when Moriarty first started taking an interest in Sherlock, who had never heard of him before ASiP, particularly as this is all in the EMP.

I firmly believe that Jim represents the fear that John is in danger – I highlight this in the chapter on HLV, where you’ll recall we first encounter Jim in the EMP and he sends Sherlock on his journey through the EMP with the words John Watson is definitely in danger – a pretty big sign. Even without this, though, his biggest threat to Sherlock has always been hurting John, whether in TRF or with the idea of burning the heart out of him with Semtex. It’s not unreasonable then to assume that MP!Jim first getting inside Sherlock’s subconscious to represent this fear happens in 2010, when he first meets John. He slips in and stays there, and he melds with Eurus. We see this in the powerful visual of the two of them dancing in front of the glass as Jim’s image slowly becomes Eurus’s reflection – the fear of John dying embeds itself into the gay trauma that Sherlock has stored up, even without him realising it. This ties in nicely with the choice of I Want to Break Free, which is famous for its use of drag in the music video – Jim melding into Eurus is the dark side of queer genderbending that we hate to see. It’s also a pretty fitting song name for an intensifying of repressed gay trauma, even without the association with queer king Mercury.

[A side note to all of this – there were wonderful TEH metas about trains in tunnels being sexual, which isn’t just a tjlc thing but is a well-established idea in cinema – Moriarty’s consistent train noises here seem like a horrifyingly inverted version of that sexual longing.]

Task 1 – The Six Thatchers

The governor is set up as a mirror for John in this task, which provides some helpful context for the episode as a whole. Heart!John makes this comparison himself, by drawing out the similarity between the situation with the governor’s wife and his with Mary, though in this case the governor does kill himself because of his wife – or so it seems. The suicidal instinct matches with everything we’ve learned about John in s4, but I want to hypothesise, perhaps tenuously, that he’s more connected with Eurus than we might think. We know that Eurus has had control of the governor for quite some time, and one of the things we hear her saying to the governor in the background of the interrogations is that he shouldn’t trust his wife. This is an odd thing to pepper into the background when he’s about to commit suicide for her, and perhaps suggests that he’s more of Eurus’s pawn than he lets on, though I grant this may be spurious.

The idea that he distrusts his wife because of Eurus is important, however, because we’ve already seen John engage with Eurus in various forms, but this seems like an extension of E; Eurus, aka Sherlock’s hidden self, has been making John doubt Mary, even before she shoots Sherlock. John cannot know she’s a spy at this point, so it’s unlikely he’s doubting her goodwill; he’s simply doubting her.

Before we look at how the actual task impacts the governor and how that illustrates what’s really going on in TST, it’s worth pointing out that it is the governor’s engagement with Eurus which prompts the entire shutdown of Sherrinford and forces Sherlock (with brain!Mycroft and heart!John ever at his side, of course) to engage once and for all with Eurus. This points to everything that s4 has been telling us – that Sherlock’s understanding of the relationship between him and John, including his power to save him (we’re going to see the governor play the foil here) is what sends his brain into stay-alive-overdrive. Sherrinford is the peak of this.

Summary of the task, for those who hate TFP: Sherlock is given a gun and told he can pick either John or Mycroft to kill the governor, otherwise the governor’s wife will be killed by Eurus. As I’ve written about in its chapters, TST is about Sherlock trying to get to the bottom of Mary and why she tried to kill him – and, of course, the impact this will have on John. In brief, by displacing the shot onto Mary in his mind, he’s discounting his own importance and instead thinking about what it will mean for John to lose Mary. His greatest fear is that losing Mary will break John, and it isn’t until the end of TLD that he recognises that the return of John’s suicidal ideation isn’t over Mary, but over him. TFP presents the horror version, the version of TST that Sherlock’s trauma wants him to believe but which he has to overcome. In this case, Mycroft and John resolve to keep the governor alive in their passivity, but that passivity – Sherlock’s coma – is not enough to keep the governor from killing himself over Mary. This is the most feared outcome from Mary’s death that Sherlock can think of – his fear of losing John combined with John’s love of Mary, which in TST Sherlock is still taking as read.

Double naming in this show should never be neglected, and in this case we learn shortly before the governor dies that his name is David. Again, the dramatic manner in which we learn this (on the moment of execution) draws our attention to it – we know another David in this show.

Yup – Mary's ex who’s still in love with her from TSoT. So even though Sherlock is experiencing the panic of John killing himself for loss of Mary, his subconscious is still pointing out to him that that’s not what’s happening here. This mirror version of John that he has set up, who is broken by the loss of Mary as Sherlock fears in TST, is actually the other man in Mary’s life – even with Eurus forcing the worst possible scenario onto him, this still can’t quite fit John’s character. And so we move onto the second task.

Task 2 – The Lying Detective

This section of the Sherrinford saga is the three Garridebs, the closest thing that the fandom has ever got to a collective trauma. I do think, however, that it’s fully reclaimable for tjlc and means the same as we always wanted it to; I also think that it’s possibly the most gutting part of Eurus’s metatfictional power play.

If you haven’t read The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, it’s quite short and the most johnlocky of the Holmes canon, so I’d thoroughly recommend. For the purposes of mapping bbc!verse onto acd!verse, however, here’s the incredibly short version. A man called Evans wants to burgle Nathan Garrideb, so he calls himself John Garrideb and writes an advertisement from a man called Alexander Hamilton Garrideb (make of that what you will, hamilstans) declaring that he wants to bequeath his fortune to three Garridebs. “John” gets someone to pretend to be a Howard Garrideb to get Nathan out of the house to meet him – he comes to burgle the house but Holmes and Watson are lying in wait. He shoots Watson, and Holmes thinks Watson is seriously injured and so we have this wonderful section:

“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say you are not hurt!”

It was worth a wound–it was worth many wounds–to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

“It’s nothing, Holmes. It’s a mere scratch.”

He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife.

“You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?”

Mofftiss have referenced this moment as being the greatest in the Holmes canon for them, the moment when we see the depth of Holmes’s affection for Watson, and so it seems odd to waste it on such a tiny moment in TFP. Many fans, myself included, were really upset to see Eurus drop all three Garridebs into the sea, the implication being that tjlc would never be real, and it was that moment that caused many (including me) to walk away. I came back, obviously, but I completely understand why you wouldn’t. However, I want to map one Garridebs story onto the other to show how they might match up.

The Garridebs that Eurus presents us with are not the three Garridebs from the story. In the story, there are three physically present Garridebs – Nathan, John and Howard – although admittedly only Nathan is an actual Garrideb. Alexander was completely invented by John and existed only in a newspaper advertisement. Evans, alias John Garrideb, is the criminal in the Garridebs story; Alexander is an invention.

So – what happens if we substitute John for Alex in bbc!verse, as in canon they are the same person? This is interesting, because double-naming means that John becomes the killer. Whilst it’s true that John Garrideb is known as Killer Evans for his murder of a counterfeiter back in America, in canon he is done for attempted murder – of John Watson, of course. Here we have a situation where a John is set up killing John. This is exacerbated by the victim in bbc!verse being called Evans; Roger Prescott, the counterfeiter, would have been a much more canonical nod to the books, so we can assume that the choice of Evans is therefore significant. It should be noted that Evans and John/Alex Garrideb are the same person in acd!canon - so killing Evans is a representation of suicide. But, in case we weren’t there yet, the reason that Evans took the name ‘John’ is acd!canon is very likely to be because Evan is Welsh for John – so whatever way you look at this situation, you have Sherlock deducing John killing John.

This is, of course, exactly what Sherlock deduces at the end of TLD, far too slow, when we see Eurus shoot John in an exact mirror of the shot from TST – I explained in a previous chapter why this means that John is suicidal without Sherlock. However, much like the passivity of Sherlock, John and Mycroft in the first task, here we see that Sherlock’s act of deduction is good, but can’t actually save anyone; Eurus kills off our Garridebs moment as Sherlock is left to watch, and it’s notable that heart!John is the most distressed about this. Remember, in the first task Eurus left Sherlock with an image of a John who was suicidally devoted to Mary, and although the Garridebs moment is one which metafictionally highlights the relationship between Sherlock and John, she’s still presenting him with a Garridebs moment in which he is fundamentally unable to save John. This is a direct result of the Redbeard trauma that Sherlock has experienced – helplessness is key to that, and this is what Eurus has come to represent in his psyche. But – Eurus isn’t real, Eurus is testing Sherlock, trauma trying to bring him down, and Sherlock’s job in TFP is to break through the walls that his consciousness has set up for him.

The power in Sherlock saying I condemn Alex Garrideb is heartbreaking, then, because it is Sherlock recognising that he is the reason that John is going to die. Eurus is there to make him confront that reality, which she explicitly makes him do. We get the split-second moment where he thinks he’s saved Alex, and then he’s plunged into the sea – but remember, this is Eurus taunting Sherlock, presenting him with worst-possible-scenarios. TFP is set up as a game for a reason – it is a series of hypotheses cast in Sherlock’s mind by his trauma that he has to break through one by one. Remember, although she’s ostensibly trying to hurt Sherlock, Eurus’s ‘extra’ murders in the first two tasks are aimed at hurting John, which wouldn’t make sense if he weren’t the mp version of Sherlock’s heart.

Task 3 – The Final Problem

Pretty much straight after this episode aired, people were pointing out that Molly is a clear John mirror and that pretty much all of the deductions Sherlock makes here could be about John. Again, we’re seeing Sherlock’s emotions being resolved in a heterosexual context – the presence of Eurus means that he’s unable to process them in their real, queer form. However, if we take Molly to be a stand-in for John in this scene, it may tell us what TFP is about – and the scenario that Eurus presents will be the worst one, the thing that is causing Sherlock the most pain.

TLD/the previous task have shown us that John is in imminent danger, so the transition to Molly Hooper’s flat being rigged with bombs is not a difficult one; we must assume this to be the suicidal ideation that we’ve just deduced. The time limit suggests that Sherlock is running out of time to save him (fucking right he fell into a coma SIX YEARS AGO). Putting Molly in a bad mood isn’t really necessary for this scene – they make her seem a lot more depressed than she would necessarily need to be, and they emphasise her aloneness and her ability to push people away, which isn’t something we know Molly to do. These traits are all much more important in the context of a suicidal John – they paint a much clearer picture of someone who is depressed and alone than we really need for this scene, where it’s not relevant to the surface plot.

Sherlock and the audience believe he has won this task, but of course he hasn’t - there were never any explosives rigged up in Molly’s flat, and it was a ruse to destroy his relationship with Molly. This is what he fears then – what if he’s wrong? What if coming back to life because he loves John won’t save him – it will destroy him and their relationship? The problem to be wrestled with is how to save John – according to the symmetry of these tasks, that is the final problem. We know that the scenario Eurus has presented isn’t real, but Sherlock doesn’t; he is being held up by his inability to cope with interpersonal relationships, and to get to the bottom of that we’re going to need to understand what he’s been repressing – part 3 of this meta.

There’s a wonderful shot just as Sherlock is destroying Molly’s coffin which zooms up and out through a ceiling window, all the way above Sherrinford, as though to emphasise not how remote Sherrinford is but just how deep inside it Sherlock is. Given what we know about the height metaphor as well as the water metaphor, this shot is a pretty clear way of telling us – this is as deep inside Sherlock’s mind as we go, this is the nub. But Sherlock smashing up the coffin has another powerful connotation – he's refusing death. In terms of metaphor, he’s refusing John’s death – there will be no small coffin, because he will not let it happen – but the visual of him smashing the coffin also suggests that he is rejecting his own death. The two are, of course, inextricably linked. Our boys’ lives are tied together.

Epilogue: The Hunger Games

I can’t watch this without thinking of The Hunger Games, I just can’t! But regardless of how much Sherlock seems like Katniss in this section, let’s press on. I don’t count this as one of the typical tasks, because this isn’t Eurus presenting a ‘haha I tricked you scenario’ - far from it. This is Sherlock’s way into unlocking his repression. The key takeaway from this scene, as we’ll see is that trauma has hurt Sherlock, and it’s going to try pretty hard here to mutilate him – but it can’t kill him.

We get a great line from Sherlock at the beginning of this, where he tells John that the way Eurus is treating him isn’t torture, it’s vivisection. Because it’s an experiment? Perhaps. But the more logical way to phrase this would be that it isn’t vivisection, it’s torture. Torture is much more emotionally charged than vivisection as a phrase – from a writer’s perspective, this phrasing is strange because it seems to negate rather than intensify the pain our characters are undergoing. Why, then, would vivisection be more important than torture? Well, put simply, vivisection is the act of cutting someone open and seeing what’s inside – and that’s what we’re doing. This isn’t just an analogy for experimenting on people, it’s an analogy for going literally inside somebody. In EMP world, then, these words are well chosen.

Sherlock is offered the choice – John or Mycroft? Heart or brain? We might initially think that this is Eurus pressuring Sherlock into death, but that’s not the case at all – we know from the early series that Sherlock has survived before (although very unhappily) with just one of these two dominating the other. It has taken his EMP journey to unite them into a functioning entity, and Eurus is bent on destroying that, mutilating either his emotional capacity or his reasoning, the two parts that make him human. This is a good sign, as well, that trauma has been acting on Sherlock through the first three series, when his psyche was dominated by brain!Mycroft - Eurus is keen to revert to that state, when trauma had control. It is touching, then, that brain!Mycroft is willing to relinquish that control and leave Sherlock with his heart, perhaps because this new unity allows him to recognise how damaged the Sherlock he created was. We should also note that this diminishing of Sherlock’s heart is compared to his Lady Bracknell, which we know to be his repression of all Sherlock’s romantic/sexual impulses – except this time it’s less convincing, because his brain doesn’t believe it anymore. What is also devastating is heart!John’s lack of self-esteem or knowledge, the sense that he isn’t useful to Sherlock, which of course will be proven wrong.

[if anyone has thoughts on the white rectangle on the floor, do let me know. It’s bugging me!]

Mycroft says that he acknowledges there is a heart somewhere inside of him – again, this is emotionally powerful in the context of the brain/heart wrangling that we’ve seen inside the EMP. Just as Sherlock’s psyche has tried to compartmentalise them all this time and they’re finally working together, now there’s an acknowledgement that the compartmentalisation into personae is maybe inaccurate as well – brain!Mycroft’s pretence to be emotionally detached is not in fact correct, as we’ve been suspecting for a long time.

Brain!Mycroft also states that it’s his fault that this has all happened because he let Eurus converse with Jim. If you spend any time thinking about the Eurus + Jim meeting, like many elements of this show it doesn’t make sense. There isn’t a feasible way this could have been planned, recorded etc in five minutes, and although it’s true that Jim could have come back to shoot the videos under the governor’s supervision, it’s not clear why he’s so important. Unless he takes on the metaphorical significance that we’ve assigned him, letting Jim see Eurus seems pretty unimportant – he is only the garnishing on Eurus’s plan. Instead, Mycroft is at fault for letting John be in danger – not only did Sherlock misdeduce Mary (although we can lay the blame for that at the feet of heart!John - see meta on TST), his reasoning was blinded and so he missed John’s suicidal urges and the danger to his life. Brain!Mycroft holds himself responsible – all of these EMP deductions are way late, comprised of things Sherlock should have noticed when his brain wasn’t letting his heart in.

Five minutes. It took her five minutes to do this to all of us.

The lighting is dramatic, so I can’t properly gauge Ben’s expression at this moment, but his eyes look crinkled in confusion, just like they are at the moments when a sense of unreality starts to set in in TAB. Indeed, these aren’t very appropriate words for when you’re about to kill your brother; it’s like he’s being distracted, like there’s something important that he’s missing. Mofftiss are drawing attention to the sheer impossibility of the situation – and Sherlock’s nearly there. His Katniss Everdeen move, threatening to kill himself, is the recognition that his trauma doesn’t have that power – it can hurt him and deform him by twisting his psyche into unbalance, like it has before and like Eurus is trying to here, but it cannot kill him. We can see that Sherlock has risen above the one-sided dominance that he began the entire show with when Eurus shouts at him that he doesn’t know about Redbeard yet – that’s not going to change his mind today, but it’s a direct throwback to the days when it would have, in ASiP with the cabbie. Character development, folks.

The shot of Sherlock falling backwards into the dark water links to two aspects of the EMP. One is the continued metaphor of water to represent sinking into the depths of his mind. The water is so dark it looks oily – it could be argued that this is the oil that is corrupting the waters of his mind as we finally cut to the repressed memories. I quite like this reading, though I have little other oil imagery to link it to in the show. The other notable point is the slow-motion fall backwards – instead of showing Sherlock, John and Mycroft all falling, we cut to Sherlock falling backwards exactly like he did in HLV when he was shot by Mary. This is a really clear visual callback. Even though we’re going deeper, we’re linking back to the original shooting, back in reality, suggesting that this depth is paradoxically going to lead us back to the start. To go back to the oil imagery, don’t forget that oil floats on water – although it looks like we’re sinking, there’s a real sense that these repressed memories are actually pulling us to the surface of Sherlock’s subconscious, quite unlike the deep zoom out we saw when Sherlock was destroying the coffin.

And that’s it for part 2 of the TFP meta! Part 3/3 will deal with such highlights as John not being able to recognise bones and presumably getting his feet pulled off by chains. Good thing this is just a dream. See you then!

[a-froger-epic]

You said Freddie "was in love with an idea of Mary". I don't understand this and some other people's opinion on this. They were in a relationship. They broke up, because Freddie was gay and couldn't have romantic relationship with her. They stayed friends, which isn't unsual (see Joe). He couldn't love her as a friend? Only "the idea of her"? She didn't deserve to be loved? Why is it wrong to ask Phoebe about her? Why the fandom tries to forget she ever existed? She's known Freddie for 22 years.

Alright, I will elaborate then since I think you've misunderstood what I said there, and that is fair enough because I didn't explain.

I'm really not keen on getting into any discussions about Mary, to be honest, which is why I said none of this is a hill I'd like to die on. I'm not interested in defending how Mary acted after his death, there's a lot of valid criticism and it's true that their relationship is and was often misrepresented in a way that is disrespectful to Jim and the very fact that Freddie was a self-identified gay man. So I understand the frustration with that. But anyway, here are my thoughts on Mary and Freddie and their actual relationship with each other.

Let's start at the beginning. Although none of us can really know what their relationship was like, I personally think it's clear that they clicked very well in the beginning, on some level.

Let me just pre-empt this again by saying that pretty much all of this is speculation and my personal opinion, I'm not trying to tell anyone they're wrong. This is just my take. Don't come for me. Let me have my opinion, please and thank you.

I think they fit well in the way that, knowing Mary's background (deaf parents, started working full-time at 15), she was very used to being in a caretaker role and Freddie liked, in many ways, to be taken care of. I think she was also somebody who was not very outspoken with her emotions, not very emotional overall, and I think that actually perhaps suited Freddie quite well. Because I think that her keeping her feelings close to her chest gave him the excuse to do the exact same. Why do I think so?

Having read Rosemary's book, it's apparent that she is a very emotional person and what ended up happening, is that Freddie opened up to her in ways he never did with Mary. He never, until their break up, let on to Mary that he wanted to be with men. Freddie and Rosemary, by contrast, were only together for a year or so and he could not stop talking about it. Rosemary was open, so Freddie was open. I think Freddie was a bit of a chameleon when it came to relationships, which stemmed from his deep desire to be loved and accepted. He wanted to please, he wanted to be a good fit for his partners. I think that was sometimes detrimental for him because he would push himself to be somebody he wasn't. I think incidentally with Mary it sort of worked out quite well for quite a long time. I think that while they did have feelings for each other, there was also a lot of unspoken things, an emotional distance, and I think that made it easier for Freddie to be in the closet as long as he was. Again, having to grow up so fast, I think Mary was someone who learned to swallow things down and not address them and just function. In a way, Freddie had a very similar approach.

Now, let's talk about love and what I meant by him being in love with the idea of her. I believe that Freddie definitely believed and felt that he was in love with her for much of the time they were together, in part because I think he really, really wanted to be. Here was this girl who was in many ways perfect for him, the kind of girl his parents were thrilled about. Also, quite importantly, somebody who believed in him and did support him. I remember seeing one interview with her where she says her first impression was that he was this charismatic, long-haired musician and seemed so confident. Not at all like the person underneath, I think she goes on to say. But it did give me the impression that being as young as she was at the time, there was definitely a sort of wide-eyed admiration of his huge personality there from her side. And I think that stroked his ego a lot. I'm sure that later on in their relationship, she did become somewhat disenchanted with him and most likely even frustrated with him much of the time, but again, being someone who keeps themselves to themselves, I think she put on a brave face and funnily enough he did the exact same thing.

It think that towards the end of their relationship, they functioned as partners, rather than a romantic couple. I think Freddie clung on for a very long time - if not forever - to some ideal of what his life should/could/might have been if only he hadn't been gay (internalised homophobia galore), and that is also what I mean by being in love with the idea of Mary. The idea of the beautiful fantasy relationship with a woman he was never able to live up to, and I think a lot of guilt stemmed from that, for him. That he should have been able to give her that, but he couldn't. That he had failed her. That, therefore, he had to provide for her as long as he lived. Because if he hadn't been gay, he could have married her and everything would have been brilliant - which, you can't tell me, that his parents did not likely think exactly that. I will eat a hat if his mother did not once bemoan that he hadn't or wouldn't marry her. Again, I repeat, this is some deeply ingrained internalised homophobia I'm talking about, I'd be hesitant to say that Freddie was even aware of it.

Now, here's the thing. Freddie was someone who could not be alone, we know this, and he was someone who could not let go of people easily. He stayed friends, if he could, with many of his exes. And I think he was terrified of the thought of losing Mary - who he was used to, who he relied on, who he felt deeply guilty towards because he wasn't the man she deserved - when their relationship ended. Basically, he wanted the to have the cake and eat it, too. And he got that, in a way. He did get to keep her in his life, she agreed to that, and I don't think that was at all times particularly healthy for either of them.

I think Mary resented that Freddie was gay. Again, I don't even think it was a very conscious thing, but I think she absolutely believed that if only he hadn't been gay, they would have been perfect for each other. I don't think she ever stopped feeling like he was the one that got away. I think this led to her deeply resenting a lot of his circle and his lifestyle, resenting having to be involved in it, which I think is a large part of why she burned all bridges when he died. I think she felt free from an obligation that she herself had put on herself. I think the woman could have done with some therapy, tbh, I think they all could have. Anyway.

When I read what Phoebe said in that interview, what jumped out at me was that this was an important dinner with Freddie's parents. I think Freddie took solace in the idea that he could bring Mary out to dinner with them and it was almost as if it was real. That they had the son they wanted, in the way that he knew they didn't. I'm tearing up writing this right now because it's really heartbreaking to me.

But that is what I meant by the idea of her. I think, also, Freddie was generally very romantic. I think he was a bit in love with love, overall. And I think he held that fantasy somewhere in his mind forever, of what could have been, if only. And I think Mary did the same.

Of course it isn't romantic. It's terrible, it's sad, there's so many things wrong with it. But that's what I think their relationship with each other was. I think it always carried an echo of his perceived failure to have been the man she thought he could have been, he thought he could have been, if only he hadn't been gay.

Tl; dr - I'm not interested in erasing Mary from Freddie's life, any more than I'm interested in erasing anyone else who was important to him from his life. I do think he had a lot of love for her, and she for him. I don't think acknowledging that takes away from his love for his husband or makes him any less gay.

[queen-thinky-thoughts]

What are your thoughts on freddie calling mary his "common law wife", that is assuming that he said it? Do you think that was him trying to adhere to his public persona and make sure his privacy is protected, or he was being truthful or literal? Or do you think it's a bit of both - that he meant there was a "marriage" in their relationship even though they're not officially together or romantically involved?

Yes, he did say that.

I think it was a mix of a few things, personally. Firstly, I don't think that, to the end of his life, Freddie ever came to see marriage as anything but something that existed between a man and a woman.

Please hear me out before you all get the pitchforks and burn me at the stake. I beg. Thank you.

I'm not basing this just on Phoebe saying exactly that. I think what Phoebe presumed - that Freddie would never have married a man because he believed marriage was between a man and a woman - is not a logical presumption to make, because if Freddie had lived, he too would have experienced the changing times and likely re-thought a thing or two which he used to believe. Phoebe is basing this on Freddie's beliefs at a time when marriage between two men was impossible, unthinkable, ridiculous, in the eyes of the world.

Given the amount of internalised homophobia which comes into play when we're talking about Freddie, to me at least it seems that he never stopped believing that there was something wrong with him. That being gay was ultimately wrong. That the right/natural/normal thing would have been to marry a woman and start a family. I think the highest level of self-acceptance he reached was that he accepted he was "abnormal" and was as okay with that as he could be. As many marginalised people do, he embraced being different, in that way. It makes perfect sense to me that he would have believed marriage only existed between a man and a woman. The vast majority of people believed that, at the time. (Please have a look at this, for example, which only goes back as far as 2003. In the 80s gay marriage was barely even on the table as a future possibility. In 1985, the first bill had only just been passed to allow registration for domestic partnership in West Hollywood. The entire concept of same-sex marriage equality was in its infancy.)

But wait! - you'll say. Freddie called Jim his husband! They were married in their own eyes!

Yes, and no. Freddie and his friends also called each other 'she' and women's names, Freddie also referred to himself as 'Mother' when writing letters to his friends. Another trend which originally stemmed from gay culture is calling your partner 'Daddy' without any connection to the actual meaning of those words. Were Jim and Freddie as good as married? Absolutely, they were in a committed relationship which was as meaningful and loving as any marriage. (Just by the way, no two people have to be legally married to love each other. A marriage certificate is not proof of real love. I know that should be obvious, but it's worth saying.) Did Freddie and Jim really, truly think of each other as husbands, in the same sense as they thought of hetero couples as husband and wife? Who knows. Maybe. Personally, I find it unlikely because same-sex marriage equality is a concept which is more modern than the times they lived through and grew up in.

Having said all that, back to Mary. I think that Freddie believed for the entire duration of their relationship (the romantic part, followed by their friendship) that it was his fault the relationship had failed. That the problem was him, that he 'owed' it to Mary to provide what he would have provided, had he been her husband, and that she was the closest thing to a wife (in the traditional sense) he had. So, with all that in mind, I don't find that quote surprising or strange at all.

To him, she was the woman he should have married but didn't because he was gay. He thought she was the only who should have been his wife, and so, aside from there being no romance involved, he viewed her as such. I doubt he ever even stopped to think about it much. She played his girlfriend in front of the press, in front of his parents, that was her role. There is nothing sweet or romantic about it, for me. It simply speaks of the mindset of a man riddled with guilt and internalised homophobia. What does "common law" mean, by the way? "A common law marriage is a legally recognized marriage between two people who have not purchased a marriage license or had their marriage solemnized by a ceremony."

So, as good as married. And what did the concept of "wife" mean to Freddie, who grew up with parents who'd had an arranged marriage?(This isn't a confirmed fact, but the chances that theirs wasn't an arranged marriage are very small.) I think wife would have probably meant to him a woman, specifically a woman, by his side, both for public image and as somebody who offered emotional support, somebody he trusted and could rely on. Mary certainly was that.

Did he also say it because it helped misdirect speculations about his actual lifestyle? Oh, of course. That part would have been such a natural thing for him to do, something he would have done instinctively and constantly - the hiding of his true self - that he would have done it quite without thinking.

[just-a-poor-boy-queen]

The way people will do the absolutely MOST including disrespecting and disregarding the people in Freddie's life so that they can put some homophobic asshole at top tier because they just cant get over the fact that freddie was GAY, will never fail to stun and amaze me. They are not the fans that they think they are, freddie went through a lot to be open about who he was (to an extent, in those days) and he suffered tremendously trying to find a loving and caring partner like Jim, do they really think that they are doing him a service by completely ignoring these facts?! They are ignoring and overlooking his struggles and that is not what support is called. They really would have rather him stay in a closeted painful relationship rather than be with the man he loves, its genuinely sad that these "fans" would wish that for him.

It’s interesting that you say this, because I recently came across some comments by a mary stan that were absolutely disgusting. They’re extremely homophobic and… yeah, here they are:

In the second ss, this person isn’t talking about drugs, but Freddie accepting himself as a gay man. I can say that because they always comment shit about Freddie’s sexuality, even once saying, “why did he waste that beautiful body on men?”

It infuriates me to see such people call themselves fans. I mean, look. I am the last person who’d dictate or lecture anyone on how to be a fan. But I cannot help but judge these arseholes who do not even accept Freddie for who he was, much like I judge people who don’t see Mary’s homophobia.

Idiots such as this commenter are plentiful on Instagram (and Facebook as well but I am not on there). And at first it’s infuriating to see their comments but a while later, I just feel sad. Sad that even 30 years after Freddie’s death, people refuse to accept him as he was, all to protect a toxic fantasy in their head.