hmmmm.

[rabidsamfan]

I've been ridiculously busy, and am at skip a gazillion on my flist, and apparently I'm still thinking about bbc Irene.



First, she's not obsessed with Sherlock, she's obsessed with puns. Which is why she picked that password when she sent the phone to Sherlock for safekeeping, with the smug assurance that he wouldn't catch the wordplay because it was so obvious. As has been pointed out, Molly would have solved it in seconds.

Second, that she consulted Moriarty, not the other way around, using him. And rapidly discovered that she was going to need protection from Moriarty because he's not a good person to owe anything, ever, because he'll sell you out in a heartbeat to a better offer. (i.e. the CIA.) So her desire to have protection is valid and Mycroft Holmes is the only person in a position to help her whom she can manipulate. But the only way to Mycroft is through Sherlock.

Third, that her reaction, pulse and pupils, at Baker Street was because she thought she was going to get one over on Sherlock. She was anticipating winning and getting to gloat (why else would she have hung around after she got what she wanted?)

*sigh* Hounds was much better. But now I am all nervous about Reichenbach...

Comments

[leenah.livejournal.com]

i like your ideas!!!

i refuse to worry about reichenbach. whatever it is is whatever it is. martin freeman's other half thinks it's awesome. i saw a tiny bit of the bbc trailer, and what i saw was sublime.

i believe all will be well. this way is sane. anything else is the path to unhappiness. imho.

:)

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I'm in it for Watson. I'll admit it. And I have no doubt I'll like at least some of it. ;D

[marysutherland.livejournal.com]

I'm still writing fics about Irene as well, to try and fix some of the issues with her character. But I think, fundamentally, she can't be fixed in a way that would make me like her. She is a woman who earns her living from exploiting male stereotypes about women. (I know being a dominatrix doesn't have to be about sex, but it blatantly is with her). So either she successfully plays Sherlock to the end by using these same female stereotypes (in which case she's cleverer than him, but exploitative), or she has genuinely fallen for Sherlock, when he is being at his most MCP (which doesn't say much for her brains).

What I've started doing, but can't finish till post-Reichenbach, is a fic where Molly confronts Irene. Because I think it's only a female character who can stand up to Irene and say a) how dare she associate with Moriarty and b) manipulating people sexually isn't fun.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I like your fics. In fact you've done much to point out the gaping plot holes, and that entertains me far too much.

I'd love to see Molly confront Irene. That would be excellent.

Being a Watsonian by nature (which means I can't place the blame on the writer, dammit) I'm sort of working my way around this Irene -- and not with the expectation of ever really liking her. It's an exercise I had to do for the Ritchieverse Irene as well. (Because both 'verses make the same fundamental mistake of trying to put her and Moriarty into the same storyline.) So get out the salt shaker.

I posit bbcIrene as someone who thinks of sex as being a tool in the toolkit. And one which she can use against Sherlock because it highlights an area where he is incompetent (at least according to the information she has from Moriarty). Her nudity at their meeting is meant to disconcert him (and also to hide clues from him. By putting on makeup which is not necessarily her usual style, etc., and not wearing clothing with any particular wear pattern, she masks the tells which would normally give Sherlock something to work with.

She does mean it when she says that smart is the new sexy. Sherlock thinks exceptionally fast, and he pays her the compliment of offering her a chance to solve the hiker in the meadow problem. When she clues him in to the combination for the safe, she gives him the wrong one -- the one which will set off the gun. (I didn't see any bullet holes on the far side of the room, did you? And she must have to get access to that phone on a semiregular basis.) But she also warns him, wordlessly, about the trap. For Irene to have someone who can follow her like that on first meeting must be extraordinarily rare. (That's also the scene where we see the lack of resistance to puns. Personally I'm betting that she had something on until she realized he was disguised with a clerical collar and then she just couldn't resist "unfrocked".

Okay, so she beats Sherlock at the first encounter, and then decides to mess with his head some more, dropping off the coat with the altered phone. (Now I'm having to reach really hard, yes?) The attack by the CIA has her worried, so maybe she's consulted her consultant and he says if she wants protection she's got to get to Mycroft That means keeping in touch with Sherlock. It starts as an amusing game, and gets serious when someone gets killed. I'm assuming that's Kate on the slab -- the assistant? I can't think of anyone else who might have had/shared enough plastic surgery to look like Irene below the neckline.)

The six month thing? Can't make that work, unless she got out of the country and then had to come back for some reason and had idly kept up flirting with Sherlock as a backup plan. (Incidentally, I can't make that work for Mycroft's "Coventry" plan either. That would have been one very stinky plane...) But if what she's after is getting Sherlock to feel like he's got a connection to her, one which might get him to think she's worth protecting (and she may be able to assess how protective he is of Mrs. Hudson, even if it's protective like a buzzsaw). She may have gotten frightened of Moriarty.

(Query, is Moriarty posing as a terrorist? Or connected with them? That still irks me.)

Anyway, you can see that it's definitely a work in progress. I can sometimes see a tiny bit of daylight at the end of the tunnel, but generally it keeps turning into a train.

:(

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* And since you've been posting your 221Bs here I just realized that I got the "wrong combination" idea from you. I knew it came from somewhere. I really have to start remembering which ideas came from fics and which ones showed up in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep.

Think of it as a compliment. You have made my headcanon what it is today.

[beehive-clover.livejournal.com]

Now those are some theories I can live with! And, yeah, what is with having Irene work for Moriarty all the time? Because she's smart she has to be a bad guy? WTF.

The only thing (that I can remember) that made me laugh during Hounds was the apparently government issued t-shirt. I mean, srsly? Secret gov. project and they made a t-shirt for it? lol

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Actually, I did some time in the Air National Guard, and I saw the T-shirt sort of thing (although it was usually some kind of patch) happen fairly often. The H.O.U.N.D. part anyway. The part I had to grab the salt for was the place name.

[kathie-d.livejournal.com]

I loved bbc Irene. But your headcanon makes her more awesome. ;-)

I had assumed she contracted Jim, anyway!