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#st jeanne's fusiliers
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here's the latest like 270 tons (? im guessing they are 45, 55, 70, 100 tons from left to right) of mechs for St Jeanne's Fusiliers that i didnt procrastinate on thanks to @littlewormspatthegoblin. ive decided im gonna try and paint at least a decal of some sort on all my St Jeanne's mechs going forward, starting with these four. Mostly it will be crucifixes cos they're a bunch of angry nuns with a few exceptions (the inari shrine mikos in the archers for example), but i might get more adventurous. The Annihilator has a shark mouth cos i assume it chews through enemy mechs, what with four AC10s and all that, piloted by a woman who had never so much as cracked a smile before she fired an autocannon, and now claims that God put her in the galaxy just to fire autocannons. i actually got deeper lore for her and the mikos but it all feels kinda ham fisted atm like i can tell yall if ya want but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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ebaeschnbliah · 5 years
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CHANGING  OF  THE  GUARD
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A metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three (and beyond)
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The beginning of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three, really leaves no doubt what the theme of its story is about. When the eye of the camera zooms slowly in on Speedy’s and the famous black door with the number 221 in Baker Street, it seems to take it’s path right through a literal wood of pointy, black spears. Fences built of iron spears that guard the place..
It starts with a row of spears in the forground. When those get blurry, even more spears from midfield move into focus. Finally the camera reveals spears also in the background. That makes three levels of spears, one might say.
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Three levels of spears stand like guardians in front of 221b Baker Street. Could those three levels symbolize the three stabbing victims of The Sign of Three? After all, each one of the three characters is depicted as guard, as protector ... and each one of them gets stabbed. 
TBC below the cut ...
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Stephen Bainbridge 
He is a Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army. The current regiment is known as the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards … ’Every foot soldier bears the mark’  (Soo Lin, TBB). How surprising is it that the ‘East’ zooms in on Bainbridge before he gets stabbed by Jonathan Small? 
Also … the gesture of the woman is interesting. Two Vs make a W (or a M … depends on the turning). It also lets me think of Culverton Smith’s W-gesture in TLD, in the short clip with the man disguised as cock (x).
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Modern Grenadier Guardsmen wear a cap badge of a "grenade fired proper" with seventeen flames (x). Foot soldiers linked to exploding grenades … what a lovely coincidence, especially regarding the ‘passions’ grenade from TFP. :)
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When the changing of the guards takes place, Bainbridge is already wounded and slowly dying. He got stabbed before the changing.
The name Stephen is of Greek origin and means ‘crown’ and ‘that which surrounds’. Saint Stephen was stoned to death and is regarded as the very first Christian martyr. 
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Another little detail caught my attention as well. Just a word used twice to describe a person. 
SHERLOCK: “Elite Guard.” JOHN: Forty enlisted men and officers. SHERLOCK: Why this particular Grenadier? Curious.
And in TRF Sherlock sais:
SHERLOCK: This little boy; this particular little boy ... who reads all of those spy books. What would he do? JOHN: He’d leave a sign?
Max Bruhl left a sign. Stephen Bainbridge wrote a note. Not much of a difference, I think.
Guardsmen   Max and Claudette
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 James Sholto
He is a retired Major of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and Captain John Watson’s old commanding officer. A decorated war hero but not to everyone. Something went wrong when he led a team of new recruits into battle. ‘They all died’ (just like AGRA). Major Sholto, badly wounded, was the only survivor. Press and families gave him hell. Deaththreats and hate almost turned him into a recluse, into a most unsociable man, who spends his retirement way out in the middle of nowhere.
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I’m quite sure this has been mentioned before, the 5th Northumberland Regiment on Foot (’foot soldiers’ too) still uses their ancient badge … St George killing the dragon (x)   Every quiver of his beating heart
‘He destroyed us all’  …  somehow these words sound very similar to the one Sherlock uses in TFP, in a situation where he considers himself to be a soldier: ‘Five minutes. It took her just five minutes to do all of this to us. Well, not on my watch.’ 
As mentioned above, Mary’s dialogue in TST matches the description about the incident with Sholto’s recruits almost identically …  ‘something went wrong’/’but it went wrong’ … ‘I was the only one who made it our’/’they all died; he was the only survivor’. And Mary considered AGRA to be her family ... ‘we were family’. 
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Major John Sholto is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His sons are called Thaddeus and Bartholomew. The renaming of the Major’s first name - from John to James - must have been a deliberate choice. A choice which is reflected in the skip code of TEH ‘John or James Watson … saint or sinner ... James or John’, as well as in John Watson’s middle name … Hamish (Scottish for James).
Major Sholto’s room number is ‘two oh seven’. This reminds me of the ‘double oh seven’ codeword for the ‘flight of the dead’ in ASIB. Two and double …. both means 2. Sure, the number on the door reads 207 but then, it happens several times in this story, that things told and things shown are sometimes not quite the same or vis versa. 
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When the wedding guests leave the church and the reception takes place, Sholto is already wounded and slowly dying. He has been stabbed before.
Sherlock investigates the cases of both guardians
Bainbridge’s note reaches him sometime during the wedding preparations. John and Sherlock arrive just in time to save Private Bainbridge’s life. The case though remains unsolved.
Without knowing it at the time, Sherlock investigates Sholto’s case during John’s stag night. They call the investigation of the ghost-man the ‘Mayfly Man’ case. It remains also unsolved.
Sherlock includes both unsolved cases into his best man speech at John’s wedding and here at last, all the puzzle pieces fall into place and Sherlock is able to solve both cases, which are closely related. As a consequence Major Sholto’s life can be saved as well. 
The person responsible for the attempts to kill Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto is:
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Jonathan Small
‘Brilliant, ruthless, almost certainly a monomaniac - though, in fairness, his photographs are actually quite good’ … that’s how Sherlock describes the killer. Small’s motive is revenge. He is convinced that Major Sholto is responsible for the death of Small’s brother Peter, who had been among the killed recruits. It seems that Private Bainbridge merely had the misfortune and got randomly chosen for the rehearsal of Sholto’s murder. But ... why this particular 'foot soldier’? (I’ll come back to that question later)
Jonathan Small grins like Jim Moriarty and wears a checkered shirt like John. He is a brilliant, ruthless monomaniac and obviously also a womaniizer who has no problems to woo half a dozen women, almost at the same time, into telling him well-kept secrets. Basically … a perfect blend of Jim Moriarty and traditional John ‘three continents’ Watson. 
Like Major Sholto, Jonathan Small too is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His name has not been changed. Only together with his female and not-canon counterpart Janine, Mary’s bridesmaid, who seems to be a lovely blend of Irene and Jim, the name chosen for the antagonist of this episode, appears to gain a special significance. 
Janine - deiminutive of Jeanne, female form of John … ‘little Johnny’
Jonathan - diminutives are Jon, Jonni ... though not related to ‘John’ regarding the meaning of the name, it can still be heard as … ‘little Jonny’  (’You can talk, Johnny-boy. Go ahead.‘ Jim, TGG)
None other than ‘little Jo(h)nny’ (the H makes the difference) is responsible for the almost murder of Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto, the first two stabbing victims of this episode. 
‘Little Johnny’ also happens to be another word for penis … the ‘meat dagger’.
Who’s the third ‘victim’ then?
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Mary Elizabeth Morstan
She is a character full of surprises who starts as a simple nurse who marries John Watson in TSOT. Among Sherlock’s deduction-word-cloud in TEH the term ‘guardian’ can be found and only one episode after the ‘wedding’, Sherlock outs her as facade … his very own facade, because the Empty Houses in Leinster Gardens, on whose front walls Mary’s face is projected, are Sherlock’s property. 
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Mary Elizabeth Morstan isn’t her real name either. It’s the name of a stillborn child from a gravestone in Chiswick Cementry. This connects her character to the other stillborn child of this story ... Rachel Wilson, the pink lady’s daughter from ASIP. The initials A.G.R.A. stand for Mary’s true name, she tells later … but soon this turns out to be incorrect as well. A.G.R.A. was a group of four undercover agents who worked for the British Government. Prior to her ‘retirement’ Mary had been a member of that group. Sherlock describes her as ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Based on the current status, her two first names are Rosamund Mary … the family name is still unknown (if there even is one). 
Why should Mary be the third stabbing victim?
Readers of my theories will probably know that I’m playing for a long time now with a mind palace scenario which stretches from the beginning, most likely in PILOT (or even before) to the end of S4 (x). Back then I wondered ...
Is it really so farfetched to consider the possibility that Sherlock tries to deduce and solve the mysteries and problems of his own live - and his falling in love with John - at first in his mind? Before he comes out?
Over decades - since ACD - the story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson has been told by the famous 'unreliable narrator’. Could it be that this time - with Sherlock BBC - the world will get the true story? Finally told by Sherlock himself? By looking right into his heart and mind and soul? By showing how his brilliant mind works? How his heart and soul expand and grow?
Would TPTB do such a thing? Stay in Sherlock’s mind over the span of multiple episodes? Follow his train of thought … show his evolution … in such a way? I don’t know. But it sounds thrilling to me. (Nov 2016)
Based on those early ideas I gradually came to the conclusion that Sherlock BBC tells the story of how Sherlock Holmes deduced his own persona. He does this the same way he investigates his criminal cases … by setting up scenarios in his mind and repeating those until he has found the correct solution (The Stage is set). Investigating his own case - the pink one - in such a way, would mean that all the characters which appear on Sherlock’s ‘mind stage’ represent different aspects of himself. Some of them may be based on real life persons, most of them are probably entirely created by Sherlock’s imagination. I like to compaire this process to a ‘mind journey’ or to a long (dramatic) dialogue, Sherlock holds with himself. This propably doesn’t happen during a dream or in a state of coma, as I thought back in 2016. A lot of time and thinking has gone by since then. Nowadays I presume that a conscious thinking process would fit better with the literal character Sherlock Holmes, whose deductions are always built on facts, science, reason and logic. It would be rather OOC that a man like Holmes would base an important, life changing decision on anything else than his razor sharp mind. Anyway, it’s just one of many theories.
Mary now … ever since I noticed the lot of similarities this character shares with Sherlock (x) my view on her started to change considerably. To me she isn’t the woman anymore who comes between Sherlock and John but instead the facade Sherlock Holmes created and married to his traditional, eternal friendship with John Watson for the sole purpose, to hide his romantic feelings and his sexual desire for the friend behind this protective wall. Mary is Sherlock’s facade, his guardian, his firewall … because:
John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him and I would lose him forever – and I will never let that happen. Please … understand. There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening.
In my opinion, these are Sherlock’s own words and they express his fear of what might happen to the uinque friendship he shares with John, if the friend ever discovers the true nature of his feelings for him. Sherlock would do anything to stop that happening, even if this means that he has to incarcerate his emotions inside a high-security facility, behind elephant glass and chain his sexuality with iron bonds to a wall in a padded cell, like a hound from hell.  
The ‘meat dagger’ incident
Sherlock tells the wedding guests - Major Sholto sits among them - about the unsolved Bainbridge case and asks if any of them has got a theory how that guard might have been stabbed. What kind of murderer can walk through walls, which weapon can vanish? Molly’s fiancé Tom (both characters are mirrors for John and Sherlock) assumes it could be a case of ‘attempted suicice by meat dagger’ ... something that would have been self administered. 
A lot has been written since then about the ‘meat dagger’ as a metaphor for 'penis’ …. for ‘little Johnny’.  :)
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Sherlock sees only one feature of interest in the whole case … while he tried to solve the mystery, the eternal friend saved the life of the guard. And just the same happens a little while later with Major Sholto, the other guardian. It turns out that both men - both guardians - have been stabbed by the same killer … Jonathan Small … little Jonny, the meat dagger ....
There’s only one other character in this episode who has been stabbed unknowingly as well. That’s Mary. And in her case it’s indeed … ‘stabbed by meat dagger’ because Sherlock deduces her pregnancy by the end of the episode. Or expressed in computer language:  the firewall has been penetrated by the virus.
The ‘father’ might be John or David, Mary’s ex. It doesn’t matter if one views the story metaphorically where all characters represent aspects of Sherlock himself. Going by his looks, David is clearly a mirror for John, while his history regarding the constant online observation of Mary, connects him to Mycroft, the brain. David seems to be a ‘blended’ mirror like Jonathan Small (John/Jim) or Janine (Irene/Jim). A mirror who represents the ongoing interest of the brain in the feelings hidden behind the facade. 
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When Sherlock marries John and Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend. He tries to ‘downgrade’ those feelings. And yet, Sherlock allows three ‘social ancounters a year’ but ‘always in John’s - the traditional friendship’s presence’. That sounds very much like the ‘calculated risk’ Mycroft takes with Eurus. Both ‘brothers’ seem to be ‘love-addicts’ in need of a fix, once in a while … when the burden of ‘holding oneself to a higher standard’, of ‘keeping oneself right’ gets too heavy … or too boring. In that case it could propably happen that one takes the frustration out on the wall … then the wall has it coming …  :)
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The moment of revelation
When Sherlock is blinded by the flashlight of ‘little Jo(h)nni’s’ camera, he suddenly realizes that the cases of Bainbridge and Sholto are connected. That the stabber has to be the same person. It’s the moment when the first domino piece falls and knocks over the next, and the next, and the next …. leading to a chain reaction of revelations at the end of which Sherlock knows without any doubt that his new facade had been penetrated again … this time though by a ‘kill shot’. He’d been hit by AMO (the perfect ammonition), fired by the crack shot that is his eternal friend. The seed of love has been laid without Sherlock noticing the ‘chink in his armour’ through which Cupid’s arrow hit home. Now love has taken root behind his facade and is growing. 
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The name chosen for that love is Rosamund - Rose of the world, as the dialogue in TST confirms. There’s a real rose of that name - Rosa Mundi - an old rose depicted in a work of Sandro Botticelli “Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child”. This rose is also known by the synonym ‘rosa versicolor’ - which means ‘rose of many or changing colours ... iridiscent’.
The word iridescence is derived in part from the Greek word ἶρις îris , meaning rainbow, It is the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to gradually change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. (X)
Sherlock - the ‘virgin’ he is called in ASIB by Jim and Irene - announces the pregnancy of Mary (I still wonder if this means that he is the 'Gabriel’ of A.G.R.A. - the angel who announces virgin Mary’s pregnancy). And during the stag night, John is labeled with ‘Madonna’. Another name for Virgin Mary. This turns the eternal friend also into the ‘virgin’, just like Sherlock and Mary. Another ‘sign of three’ one could say. 
Three virgins - three novices - who will now start a new journey on a way they have never travelled before. Sherlock will finally encounter romantic love and accept it ‘it is what it is’, the facade will ‘get retired in a pretty permanent sort of way’ as the brain blatantly puts it in TST and the traditional ‘eternal’ friendship will have to change into a romantic-sexuell relationship. A morphing together of friendship and sex - John and James - would be a quite logical consequence, I guess.
In TST the little baby is christened with the name Rosamund, a name that can be traced back to ‘rainbow’ … Rosie for short.  And rosy=pink!
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‘Oh, what a night! ... I was never gonna be the same … I felt a rush like a rollin' ball of thunder spinnin' my head around n' takin' my body under’ 
No wonder this song has been chosen by the creators to accompany this scene. Overwhelmed by emotions - surprise, confusion, amazement, shock, joy, panic, uncertainty, concern, fear - Sherlock isn’t able anymore to carry on with this ‘wedding’ .... with this renewed ‘changing of the guard’. He walks away alone into the night. The case is solved. Sherlock is aware of what happened. Now he has to deal with the consequences. Should he really replace his guardian again or should he finally stop pretending, stop lying, drop the facade and confess his deepest secret?
Because if you tell them and they decide they’d rather not know, you can’t take it back. You can’t unsay it. Once you’ve opened your heart, you can’t close it again.
This confrontation, Sherlock fights with himself, becomes the centrepiece of the following episode (HLV) where Sherlock is completely torn into. One half of his being, still protected by the facade, is at war with the ... ‘other one’, the slowly increasing emotional side of him. But somewhere deep inside his mind he probably knows already that this is a war ‘he must lose’. And so Sherlock has to go deeper ...
TAB doesn’t only take Sherlock back to his literal roots. In this episode Sherlock investigates again two of the main threads of the story and ties them together through the ‘bride’ … FALL and HOUND. Mary, the facade, feels already ‘left behind’ and John, who represents Sherlock’s now fully acknowledged, tender feelings, directed at his friend ... ‘does grow up so fast’. The episode ends with Sherlock, who throws himself into a torrent of water=emotions and follows Jim Moriarty, Mr Sex, down the Reichenbach Fall … right into the emotional rollercoaster that is Series Four. 
Like the investigation in TAB, this series runs backwards as well. TST repeats the events of S2 and S3 while TLD zooms in on S1. I persume this happens because Sherlock applies an ability he describes to Dr. Watson as ... ‘reasoning backwards’:
“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically…Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically.”  (ACD  A Study in Scarlet, Conclusion) 
There’s one important change though, which will alter everything. Sherlock now adds baby Rosie, the pink seed of love, the AMO-factor, to his equation. As a consequence his mask, his facade - that what ‘thatched’ and guarded him - crumbles and falls. And Sherlock accepts the change … It is what it is. 
Then, in TFP, the third episode of S4, Sherlock puts the results of his deductions under the sharp lens of his emotional core, for the ultimate experiment … the final distillation … to produce at last a clear solution. Still missing is the chemical reaction that should follow the application of that solution, one might say. :)
Back to the three ‘guardians’
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My husband is three people
During the wedding preparations, John tries to interst Sherlock for this curious case. John says the sentence ‘my husband is three people’ twice, interupted only by this short dialogue:
SHERLOCK: Major James Sholto. Who he? MARY: Oh, John’s old commanding officer. 
Taking John’s words ‘my husband is three people’ literally, then he is talking about his own husband … which will soon be Mary. Husband, not wife, because Mary represents an aspect of Sherlock, his facade, his cover ... his ‘thatch’. As mentioned above, when Sherlock marries John to Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend … one could also say …. he places a commander at their/his side. And this is exactly what Mary does in later episodes. She decides who mowes the lawn, chooses the name of the baby and that it is her to take John home and not vis versa. 
Husbands can be equated with facades, with commanders, with guards. All of them serve as protectors and defenders of Sherlock’s true feelings for the friend. 
Who could have been the first ‘husband’ … the first facade, the first guardian?
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Neither of us were the first
This is what Mary tells Sherlock, while John welcomes his ‘privious’ commander. Is she really talking about sexuell experiences of her brand-new husband with another man, just to taunt Sherlock? Viewing the Mary-character as an aspect of Sherlock himself and not as a real wife that comes between two men, I heavily doubt this. Applying a metaphorical reading to the story, wouldn’t it be much more likely that this conversation is about their - Mary’s and Sholto’s - assigned profession. Neither of us were the first … guardian.
Mary is the husband to be, the most recently chosen facade, John’s new commanding officer, an undercover agent of the government.
Major James Sholto is John’s old commanding officer, Sherlock’s previous facade, which turned out to be not strong enough. 
The only other guard in this story is Stephen Bainbridge, Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The foot soldier named after Saint Stephen, the first martyrer. 
And isn’t there somthing strikingly similar regarding those three guards as well as a noticeable increase in drama and strength, which so often happens when sequences are repeated on Sherlock’s mind stage?
Private Bainbridge guards the Queens Palace. The ‘East’ zoomes in on him, then he get’s stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - without noticing it. A changing of the guard takes place. Bainbridge almost dies beneath a shower of water.
Major Sholto guards the Queens country. He fights on a battlefield in the East beneath a burning hot sun. Something goes wrong and all the recruits under his command die. Badly wounded himself, Sholto has to leave the service and change into retirement. He gets stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - and almost dies.
Mary secretly works for Mycroft, the government, the ‘queen’ -  as an undercover ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Her last operation took place in the East. Something went wrong and a lot of people died. It first looked as if Mary had been the only surviver (like Sholto). She marries ‘Johnny-boy’ Watson, gets stabbed by his meat dagger, becomes pregnant and …. dies not long after ‘PINK-RAINBOW-ROSIES’ birth.
The Sign of Three is about the ‘changing of the guard’. It takes place inside Sherlock’s head. But the marriage of John and Mary, that Sherlock arranges so heartbreakingly beautiful (and so strikingly yellow), turns out to be utterly pointless. Because the bride, the husband, the new commander, the facade is already pregnant ... had been stabbed before the wedding ... before the changing of the guard. 
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The Yellow Face connection
This isn’t new. It has been discussed before in this interesting meta  About Yellow Face  by @darlingtonsubstitution  (sadly the part below the cut is gone) from 2017. As mentioned in the comments there, the creators of Sherlock BBC once refered to their favourite ACD stories. Yellow Face was among them but ... they wouldn’t be able to adapt it, because of the sensitive content, they said. This isn’t quite true though, it seems. On the contrary, the colour yellow features most prominently in Sherlock BBC … and not just the colour itself. 
It starts with Sherlock’s and John’s first date at Angelo’s. The whole scene is drenched in yellow. PILOT even more than ASIP.
A secret code of ancient cyphers, sprayed in yellow paint, leads to the Yellow Dragon Circus. 
Golden cats and big ‘yellow’ felines - lions - roam the story. 
Yellow is the colour of the smiley face on the wall of the 221b living room. 
There’s an assassin who carries a yellow ladder and a yellow tool case with a gun in it. 
A bright yellow mask has been placed inside a box, alongside a train, a phone, nicotin patches and a note. 
The main colour of the wedding ... bright yellow. It’s the wedding that leads Sherlock to the revelation ... to his love deduction. 
A canary trainer, a trainer of yellow birds, turns out to be the killer. 
Norbury, the case of the Yellow Face from canon, plays a vital role in TST 
The finish of a race is marked with a bright yellow band that floats slowly to the ground while a ‘confessing’ serial killer, who is a mirror for John, passes as winner, signaling a W with his fingers, while the fingers from the ‘East’,, next to Private Bainbridge, signal a double V.
Yellow is the colour of the sun, of fire, flames and explosions.
Yellowbeard ….
But one of the most important links to Yellow Face is the following one:
JOHN: Mary, I may not be a very good man, but I think I’m a bit better than you give me credit for, most of the time. (Sherlock BBC, TST) 'I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.'  (Grant Munro, The Adventure of the Yellow Face)
This piece of dialogue connects John to Grant Munro, the husband of Effie, the woman who hides her secret child from a previous marriage behind a yellow mask. She doesn’t do it out of some dark or sinister motive as Sherlock Holmes is convinced at first. Her former marriage had been legal and she'd loved her late husband dearly. Lucy, her little girl, can truly be called a child of love. But Effie fears to reveal Lucy, because the girl is ‘different' and the mother is anxious to lose the man she loves now, because of this. She is torn into between the love for her child and the love for her husband.
She (Effie) drew a large silver locket from her bosom. 'You have never seen this open.'
'I understood that it did not open.'
She touched a spring, and the front hinged back. There was a portrait within of a man, strikingly handsome and intelligent, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent.  (ACD, The Yellow Face)
ACDs Yellow Face is a case without crime, without any devious betrayal. Instead, it’s about love and the fear to lose  love, because at that time in ACDs story, it’s about a love not accepted by many. 
'That is John Hebron, of Atlanta,' said the Lady (Effie), 'and a nobler man never walked the earth. I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him; but never once while he lived did I for one instant regret it. It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine.   (ACD, The Yellow Face)
In ACDs Yellow Face, the ‘first husband’ is of ‘African descent’ … just like Private Bainbridge, who is the ‘first guardian’ - the first of the three ‘identical husbands’ - in Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three. He is the one who represents Sherlock’s earliest facade … the guardian of the Queen’s Palace.
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Just like @darlingtonsubstitution presumed more than two years ago, I’m now more convinced than ever, that Moffat and Gatiss did adapt ACDs Yellow Face and they not only included it in Sherlock BBC, they made it into the main theme of their story (beside ‘hound’, ‘fall’ and ‘scarlet/pink’). In their version though, the focus shifts from ‘unacceptable’ skin-colour to ‘unacceptable’ sexuality. 
Sherlock BBCs baby ... Rosie ... Sherlock’s baby ... represents love. And this love is pink and has been given a name that can be traced back to ‘Rainbow’. The Sign of Three tells the story of the ‘changing of the guards’ and how Sherlock finally discovers the AMO-factor that will alter his life completely.
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When I discoverd Sherlock BBC for the first time (back in 2011) I was thrilled by that fascinating crime drama and its two charismatic leads. Now, after 13 episodes, it has grown into so much more than just an excellent crime drama among others. The way I read it, Sherlock BBC is a wonderful and stunning story about equality. Inside Sherlock’s mind, the great detective doesn’t only solve the greatest secret of his life. No, the actors Sherlock chooses to represent the different aspects of his persona, are as diverse as the colours of the rainbow. They are old and young, male and female, beautiful and ugly, strong and weak, rich and poor. Neither gender, sexuality nor the shade of skin colour or from which corner on this planet someone comes, is of any importance. Anyone can be a part of this Sherlock Holmes. That’s what makes this adaptation so absolutely unique to me. Sherlock himself becomes the rainbow of his own story. 
Thanks for reading to anyone who is still there. :))))  I leave you to your own deductions. And thanks @callie-ariane​ for your invaluable scripts.
December, 2019
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Episode spanning metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC: 
From PILOT to TGG  ….      About the meaning of S1 
From ASIB to TEH  ….  The big question - what is the meaning of Reichenbach
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les-sept-couleurs · 7 years
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Le P. Jules POUCHARD est né le 14 février 1879 à Bais (Ille et Vilaine). Il deviendra « l’aumônier du 1erRégiment de Fusiliers Marins »
Jules POUCHARD, prêtre du diocèse de Rennes, après ses études au grand séminaire, enseigna à Bordeaux et fut précepteur à Paris (précepteur des enfants du Prince et de la Princesse de Bourbon-Parme).
En août 1914 est créée la Brigade des Fusiliers marins : 2 régiments et une section de mitrailleuse soit 6000 hommes environ.
Le P. Jules POUCHARD devient aumônier volontaire du 1er régiment de Fusiliers Marins.
En décembre 1915 la Brigade est dissoute.   En décembre 1915 il est alors nommé aumônier des Canonniers Marins puis du bataillon des Fusiliers marins.
Durant ces années de guerre il prend part à la bataille des Flandres (Gand, Dixmude, Steentracte, Nieuport) ; il sera à Verdun de février à juin 1916, puis dans la Somme ; en 1917 il est au Chemin des Dames ; en 1918 il se retrouve en Argonne, à Montdidier, au Chemin des Dames. A partir de 1919 il est l’aumônier de la Mission navale de Syrie.
Les citations et décorations :
Ordre de l’Armée, 1er février 1915 : « Resté seul aumônier de la brigade, a toujours montré le plus grand courage et le plus grand dévouement à secourir les blessés jusque sous le feu de l’ennemi »
Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur le 17 décembre 1915 : « aumônier du 1errégiment de fusiliers-marins pendant toute la campagne ; a fait preuve dans l’accomplissement de son ministère, d’un dévouement, d’une activité, d’un mépris du danger qui ont été, pour les hommes, un précieux réconfort. Cité à l’ordre de l’armée pour sa conduite pendant la journée du 17 décembre 1914 »
Ordre des canonniers-marins, 4 octobre 1917 : « N’a cessé de faire preuve du plus bel esprit de devoir dans l’exercice de ses fonctions, séjournant toujours au milieu des unités les plus exposées, notamment à Verdun de février à juin 1916, sur la Somme de juillet à décembre 1916, en Champagne d’avril à juin 1917, en Belgique de juillet à octobre 1917 »
Chevalier de l’ordre de la Couronne de Belgique, 1919
Croix de guerre belge, 1919
Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, 30 avril 1920
Plus tard il est aumônier sur la « Jeanne d’Arc » où il achève en 1924 sa carrière d’aumônier de la Marine.
En 1926 il créé, à Rouen, l’Amicale des Fusiliers Marins.
En 1930 il devient aumônier de l’hôpital militaire Bégin à St Mandé (94).
Durant la seconde guerre mondiale il est en Bretagne ; et entre en Résistance. Revenu pour quelques semaines à Paris en janvier 1944 il est arrêté par la Gestapo à la fin du mois ; il est libéré quelques jours plus tard mais décède le 7 février 1944 à St Mandé.
Source: Site du Diocèse aux Armées
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put the finishing touches on the commando, shadowhawk, and thunderbolt this morning, after getting distracted yesterday by redoing the bases of the rest of the company and muddying their feetsies. St Jeanne's Fusiliers now have 610 tons of usuable mech, tho they are a little, uh, light on light mechs, which i plan to rectify when the kickstarter mechs arrive, but until then they gotta deal with much limited scouting ability
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@agbpaints as promised yesterday, the frankenhammer, picked up from a junkyark on solaris vii for four and a half million c-bills, and since had its internals replaced with as much clan tech it’s latest pilot, one Olga von Bierhals, a woman intelligent and industious enough to peruse any path she chooses. She chooses to challange clanners to batchalls of possession in her ‘Warhammer’ only to rain on them more LRMs than they know how to counter.
i painted the archer too, since i already had the paints out for St Jeanne’s Fusilliers, and tried my hand at free handing a sakura tree decal, since the pilot is a former miko (in keeping with the group’s theme religious professions). And finally touched up the bases of my three kurita mercs and added some weathering on the feet. Ive decided that they’re called Hanako’s Hellions, formed by Sakamoto Hanako, the youngest of fourteen children to Baron Sakamoto. From a young age she concluded that she wasnt going to inherit the family title without an immense amount of fratacide, which she was against on teh grounds that she actually liked her brothers and sister, she instead decided to try and find her fame through martial prowess
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do you think a protestant and a russian orthodox christian can find love on the battlefield?
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Got my Clan Adhoc Star today and i wanst planning on painting anything but then motivation struck so here we are, a Kodiak that showed up today and a Blackjack ive had for a while
Mother Hildegard was in charge of St Jeanne’s Abbey went it was set ablaze. Prior to its bruning, she and some of the feistier of the sisters under her had been aiding the Lyran war effort against clan Ghost Bear, and though she knew it was a risk to everyone at the abbey, she simply felt uneasy about sit idly in a building named after the patron saint of soldiers while others fought and died to protect them. After she and the survivors joined forces with Colonel Nachthardt (a name the mother suspected the colonel simply made up), they formed St. Jeanne’s Fusiliers. In their edventures since, as the life as mercs forced them to commit greater and greater atrocities, Hildegard simply acepted that she was going to hell, and planed to send as many clanners there before her as she could, piloting the Kodiak she stole from them, with the aid of some of the more criminally inclined of her flock, early in her mercenary career.
Never was there a woman more pious than Sister Oksana. She would pray every morning and every morning, entreat Mother Hildegard to hear her confessions every sunday (either ignorant or uncaring of whatever other business the Mother needed to attend), and spreading the Good Word, to any that would head her call. Colonel Nachthardt assigned her to a blackjack out of frustration, but damn it all, Oksana was actually a greatly compotent pilot, and so continues to plague the Colonel to this day
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my first two for St Jeanne’s Fusiliers, an oc merc company composed of forcefully discharged officers, religious fanatics, and ex-religious fanatics who now adhere to a philosophy of Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll. Since Blake only knows why the clan buster version of the black knight wasnt the one that cam in the comstar command level ii kit, i had to sort it out myself with a power sword that my cadian shock troopers werent using. Anyway, some lore is under the cut if anyone is interested
The Black Knight is piloted by the retired Col Nachthardt, formerly of the Lyran armed forces and pressured into accepting an honourable discharge, due to injury, for political reasons. Needless to say, she was bitter about the whole experiance, and decided to start her own mercenary company in the hopes that she could use it to one day enact her revenge upon those who had wronged her. At the time, she was approached by a large group of displaced nuns with an upsetting eagerness to commit violence, and together, they formed the St Jeanne’s Fusiliers, with Col Nachhardt acting as Tactical Officer and second in command.
The Highlander is piloted by Sister Claire, who held firm to her faith after her convent, St Jeanne’s Abbey, was burned to ashes by Clan Ghost Bear. She had not always been a pious woman, and had in fact been a mechwarrior in the Lyran military before being dishonourably discharged for gross negligence and given the option to go to prison or be sent to St. Jeanne’s Abbey for the rest of her days. During her years at the abbey, she found peace in worshipping god, and after that peace, and the lives of many of her sisters, had been cruelly ripped from her, she came to the conclusion that it was her duty to visit God’s wrath upon those who had desecrated those hallowed grounds. However, once returned to the cockpit, she realised that she and her companions were required to commit greater and greater sins in order to survive to see to their vengance, and began to wonder if it was really worth it. Had it perhaps not been God’s will, but the Devil’s schemes that led her down a path she could no longer stray from?
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matrim-cauthons-hat · 5 months
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Cleo sat across from the clanner her outfit had a captured. that she had captured. she had decided to dress up for the occasion and so wore her old habit. it was a familiar weight she likened to and old childhood home. it had been a long time since she donned it. she looked the clanner up and down. Ghost Bear, long hair tied into a loose ponytail, a little over two metres tall.
"so you're my... bondsman, do your people call it?"
the clanner inclined her head, "aff. you defeated me in honourable combat."
there had been nothing honourable about it. Cleo had gotten sepperated from her lance and stumbled into a clanner's smaller mech. a little combat stim aided bravado led to her challenging the clanner's bigger mech to a duel. if she was paying attention she would have ambushef thr clanner and saved herself a ppc and the arm that housed it.
cleo leaned back, putting her boots on the desk between them and lighting a cigarette. "Olga, was it?"
"aff."
"well, Olga, i hope you will excuse my bluntness, but you should know that not a one of us amongst St. Jeanne's Fusiliers is particularly fond og Ghost Bear. ive had yo stop three of the sisters from trying to poison you, and a forth from trying to garrot you. dont worry, I'll keep doing my best to keep them off your back, though by the size of you i dont think you need worry too much about garrotting. cigarette? they're pricey ones."
"neg."
Cleo stuffed the cigarettes back into a pocket under her robes. "well, just let me know if you change your mind. what I'm really interested in is your culture. as far as i understood, us mercs were dezgra, honourless, to the clans, why submit yourself to us at all? no loss of honour to disregatd the honouless, right?"
olga shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable.
"its fine, you can tell me another day if you wish. anything you needwhile you're here, just ask. you're going to fit in just fine with the rest of us hypocrites."
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