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levshany · 4 months

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how do I put this. Even those who actually track our blogs and are interested in our Aus can get a little confused about what's going on here. but I'll try to explain anyway

we already mentioned the crossover between Anarchists and Tandem and even DRAWED them once, back when Tandem was in development (and by the way, this crossover is canonical for both AUs). Now this story has been continued >:D

Here's some context: It so happened that the Colibri wanted to see what alternative timelines looked like and ran into the king and the jester. Phil was delighted with Colibri and wanted to flirt with them. Jester Collie was categorically against it. so he immediately possessed Phill and tried to fight Tandem. he didn’t succeed because his fusion with Phil is extremely unstable. and here we are

Initially, @angstyhikka and I just drew these three pages, but then @lasymit supported the idea and made a drabble which she allowed me to add to the post :3

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"Let go, bitch! I'm not done with you yet!"

The savage creature desperately squirmed in Philip’s hands. It grabbed onto him, trying to either break free or, on the contrary, rush closer, glaring furiously and baring its shark teeth.

He held the clumsy, collapsing fusion at arm's length and looked at it with slight disgust. His tandem with the Collector was a strange but harmonious union. And what was writhing in front of them right now was the direct antipode of the word harmony.

“Well, I am,” he said distantly.

And with his other hand he grabbed the one sitting inside the demon’s body. Under the flesh soaked in titan blood, he felt a soft essence, like rubber or hot wax. The Collector from this universe felt completely different to the touch.

He stretched them, pulling them away from each other, disentangling them from each other. Paradoxically, bodies that should repel each other by the nature of their forces, like unipolar magnets, clung to each other very stubbornly. But Philip was still stronger with the power of the Collector in his hands, power which he clearly used better than the local... king of demons...

“Ouuuuch ouuuuch,” a boy in the robes of a jester, painted in red and black, shrank on the ground, wrapping his arms around his own chest.

He was not at all like his Collector. Philip had never seen his friend's material body before. But he knew he looked different. For some reason he knew this for sure.

"Who pulls a guy out like that!? Fuck!!", the now-green demon yelled nearby. And he clutched his head painfully.

What Idiots. They vomited three times while chasing him. Philip did them a favor by stopping this outrage.

Now these two were lying helplessly at his feet, groaning and gasping, trying to catch their breath and come to their senses. Now they are separated.

"What were you trying to achieve?" His question was almost rhetorical.

"It wasn’t me, it was all him!" like a child, pointing a sharp, protruding finger towards the Collector, the demon yelled. "I didn’t want to fight at all!"—here he gazed up at Philip with some strange look and batted his eyelashes expressively—"I wanted something else– something more interesting."

"Ohh fuck off, Maggie! You traitor!" came the shout from the red Collector. Philip silently decided to call him the Jester and the demon, by analogy, the King. Philip had already guessed his name. But he couldn’t bring himself to call this savage by that name. Not even in his mind.

He ignored the King's vague attempts to take a tempting pose while still lying on the ground and grinding his teeth from the headache. He turned to the Jester.

"So you're in charge?"

Judging by King's behavior, it would indeed be reckless to put him in charge. But, having always been the decision-maker when paired with the Collector, by right of being the adult, Philip is accustomed to his friend almost never taking the leading role unless circumstances require it. Like a couple of years ago...

“Nuh-uh,” the Jester raised himself up on his elbow and rubbed his chest, inhaling deeply, greedily. "We're bros! Equal rights and stuff."

And he twirled his funny yellow gloved hand in the air.

Something in the Jester’s words pricked Philip. He didn't fully understand what exactly.. Until the King said, in a dramatic whisper:

"I no longer have a brother. You’re dead to me!"

And Philip stood there, trying to remember that the air was not hard, dense lumps, that it did not clog in the throat and did not press in the chest with a dull phantom pain. Meanwhile these two idiots, after a couple moments of aggressive looks, laughed out loud.

“Yes, I would strangle such a brother,” the King squeezed out, wheezing and squinting through laughter, “with my own-"

And he bent over, swallowing the end of the sentence with a cough as the toe of a boot hit him in the stomach.

"Philip! Philip... They've had enough... He doesn't know what he's talking about."

Philip's cheek twitched.

"Ouch... bro, save me!" the King squeaked hoarsely.

And this completely infuriated Philip. He swung his foot again, this time at the face. But he was met by an elastic wall. And the ground under Colibri’s feet, along with all the space, suddenly curved.

If it weren't for years with the Collector in his head, he wouldn't have realized what happened. But now he clearly saw how a couple of dimensions were distorted, folding space into a loop. He suddenly found himself not between the King and the Jester, but at a considerable distance. And these two were already close together. The boy helped his “brother” get up from the ground; King was now leaning on Jester’s shoulders, clutching his stomach. Perhaps Philip miscalculated his strength a little. This happens sometimes... Especially when it comes to emotions.

“Hey! Hitting people who are down is against the rules,” the Jester frowned. "Give us a timeout!"

Philip felt his jaw tighten. How the nodules rolled across his face. But the flaring rage, as it often happened to him, went away as easily as it filled the air in his chest, leaving reddish streaks before his eyes and pulsating power in his fingertips.

“Get out of the way,” he let his hands glow slightly.

"Ohhhh, what about a last kiss, star boy?" the King whined, clinging to the Jester and trying to straighten up next to him, as if hoping to reach Philip from a distance of ten steps and still get the coveted—

A kiss? Seriously, what the hell? Philip directed a confused, irritated look that bore all these unspoken questions at the Jester. He awkwardly shrugged his sharp shoulders, caught in the King’s grip.

"Don’t be mad... Philip, right? Don't be mad at him, Philip. His Majesty has a reason to be an idiot. And he didn’t mean it out of malice about the ‘brother’ thing.”

Philip looked at the Jester more carefully. The collector in his head was silent. But Philip sensed something from him. Philip also noticed the King’s uncomprehending expression.

“What’s wrong with ‘brother’?” The King sounded surprised.

And then Philip understood. And his face froze.

Yes... yes, what need is there to remember such things? He himself tried to forget for a long time... If he succeeded, would he be the same now as the king in front of him?

Looking at this wretched shell of a “King” who’d forgotten everything important about himself and the loyal “Jester” still standing steadily at his side, the Collector in Philip’s head began to sob. They both, it seems, had the same thought. It’s scary to look at the reflection of a future that never happened.

The jester smiled at him guiltily- at both of them. And then he confidently and widely showed about fifty teeth to his King.

"People don’t like such familiarity, you fool! You can’t just kiss someone the first time you meet."

"But it's okay to fight them when you first meet?" Philip was indignant...

Yes, it's Philip. He cannot refuse to call this man by his own name. Philip himself could one day become such a “king.”

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also @kenku97 helped us with translation and added this comment, I gotta show it to you ;v;

"I thought “The collector in his head sobbed” needed more context for people who aren’t as tightly wrapped up in these AUs as we all are. To understand why Collie’s crying, you need to point out how Tandem Collie sees himself in the Jester. They’re both caring for a Philip who is forgetting himself and the people closest to him. Jester is living out Tandem Collie’s worst fear: what will happen when Philip can’t remember anything anymore? What will become of their friendship? And it’s bittersweet because the King and the Jester are still friends, even though the Jester basically had to start over from the beginning. Jester Collie is quietly carrying all of those memories inside his heart of a friend who has basically disappeared while still learning about and loving the brand new person his friend has become. It’s so sweet and so sad.😭"

that's pretty much all for now It’s hard to return to drawing after the holidays. and this is not even a new art you see, but last year’s. therefore this comic cannot be considered the first work of this year sadly

#Hikka said anarchist fusion looks like Jasper from SU and now I'm thinking about that one ep where Alexandrite and Malachite were fighting #“you to should spent some time apart” ehehehehehee #I love this possession thing #this concept is so fun to play with #tandem au #toh tandem au #anarchist au #toh anarchist au #the king and the jester #phill the demon king #collie the jester #phillip wittebane #toh phillip #toh collector #toh colibri #toh tandem #my art #my comic

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castillon02 · 3 years

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Felix’s Shark Attack

Image description: a wooden shark head with a wide open mouth, angled as if coming out of the blue surface it’s resting on, silhouetted against a red background with black lettering on it that reads, “He disagreed with something that ate him.” The shark could be interpreted as making a wide-mouthed laughing or smiling face. :D

Sidebar: the writing on this craft is a tracing of the note used in the License to Kill movie. I was a little bit entertained to note the use of all-caps while still maintaining a larger first letter at the beginning of each word. Apparently lowercase is beneath this villainous writer, but they still gotta follow the rules somehow, you know?

Meta: Sharks and Bond Media

Threatening ocean-going creatures are a recurring motif in Fleming’s work. Sharks, barracuda, crabs, and the infamous “Octopussy” all have their moment of villainy (or, in the case of the crabs in Doctor No, presumed villainy). However, sharks in particular have suffered from their portrayal as monstrous killing machines in popular media, a reputation which the Bond series has contributed to.

Most prominent of all shark portrayals in the series is an incident in which Felix is lowered into a shark tank and grievously injured in the novel Live and Let Die and in the second Dalton!Bond movie, License to Kill. Both canons include a taunting note from the villains to Bond, “He disagreed with something that ate him,” a pun on the classic phrase, “He ate something that disagreed with him.” It’s possibly one of Fleming’s darkest moments of humor! He uses that humor to show the terrible lack of empathy on the part of the villains, but it also serves to put even more of a cartoonish spin on the violence in the story, prompting the reader to be more entertained than horrified by it.

The shark incident with Felix also serves to foreshadow later moments in the novel: first, Bond is dragged over a coral reef until he’s bloody in an attempt to turn him into shark and barracuda food; second, the villain, Mr. Big, dies of shark bites. (Mr. Big, having trained the sharks in the area to eat people he threw overboard, is in some ways narratively responsible for his own death.)

In Fleming’s imagination, sea creatures seem to be ever-present menaces, but it’s important to remember that the shark used by the villains to maim Felix is also a victim, having been illegally captured and starved. In the novel, human interference with sharks has altered their behaviors. Moreover, sharks in real life unfortunately have more humans to worry about than Bond-level supervillains.

Sharks are massively overfished, with millions killed each year, largely due to bycatch, netting practices, and demand for their fins for shark-fin soup. In addition to this, many shark species are suffering from habitat loss due to human activities. Some shark species are now classified as vulnerable or endangered. This isn’t just bad for the sharks, but bad for the oceanic ecosystem as a whole: as top predators, sharks play an important role in controlling the populations of numerous aquatic species. (World Wildlife Foundation)

Shark encounters are extremely rare, and fatal shark encounters much more so. Even in the case of a shark biting someone, it is often not because the shark is going in for the kill or “attacking,” but because the shark is curious and its mouth contains most of its sensory organs. Once it realizes that the person it bit isn’t a tasty seal, a shark tends to spit them back out and go looking for a better target. A shark’s space should be respected, but its hunger for human flesh has been greatly exaggerated by popular media. (National Geographic)

In closing:

Villains, please use robotic attack-animals rather than tormenting a vulnerable or endangered species for your own entertainment!

Q Branch, Batman had already figured out non-lethal shark repellent in the 60s, and I bet you’ve improved the formula since then, right?

Agents, if you’re ever in Felix’s EXTREMELY RARE situation, your best hope is to go for the eyes and the gills.

Civilians...you can now go swimming in the ocean without being terrified! Please enjoy a lemon ice lolly on the beach for us.

#007 fest #team00 #castillon writes #felix leiter #the temptation to post this for Food Day was incredibly strong #sharks #nb: bond mentions shark repellent in one of the books but you know I'm not gonna pass up the opportunity for a 60s batman reference #long post

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junicai · 3 years

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S1:E1 Red Light, Green Light

| warnings | canon-compliant warnings, such as extreme violence & gore, strong language, and explicit death

| tag list | @bat-shark-repellant @blackwhiteandshadesofgrey

The bar closed some time after four in the morning, each night, every night.

Miyeon - or Minnie, as know by the patrons of the establishment - was the last staff member to leave the building each night, like clockwork. She locked up the doors, prepped things for the morning shift by cleaning down the counters and tidying away any stock left out front, and took her coat from the backrooms before leaving the building.

She’d slip the keys into a small pot beneath the windowsill with the scratch in the glass pane, and begin her way home.

All in all, it normally took her a half hour or more to do all of that, and so she’d walk home accompanied by the drunks already mourning their hangovers to come in the morning, her coat wrapped tightly around her middle to protect against the biting cold.

The black coat hadn’t been hers originally, hence why the shoulders were too broad for her frame and the buckle was long broken, but it was long enough to cover the short skirts that were a mandatory part of her uniform, and that was good enough for Miyeon to tug it out of the back of her wardrobe every time the temperature began to drop from the summer highs.

She held it closed in front of her as she walked down the streets; slowly veering off from the lighted areas into the outskirts of the city, where if there were streetlights at all - they were most definitely broken, or on their way out.

When footsteps sounded behind her, Miyeon already knew what to do.

It was a regular occurrence, she supposed. Men, specifically the heavily intoxicated ones, saw a single woman walking home alone, on an unlit street, and sprung at the opportunity.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Quickening her pace, Miyeon shifted from a leisurely walk to a brisk pace, glancing over her shoulder in the reflections of shop windows to see if she could catch a glimpse of the man who had taken it upon himself to follow her home tonight.

But, each time she got the chance to peer into the glass, there would be no one there - and the footsteps would get louder and louder in her ears until they were ringing like alarm bells in the otherwise silent night.

Throwing caution to the wind, she broke out into a run - cursing the heeled boots she wore to give herself height over the bar counter as they hindered her speed and threatened to trip her up with each step.

Careening around the corner, Miyeon’s eyes fixated on the neon lights of a convenience store - a flickering 24/hour sign glowing in the window.

Not sparing a second to look over her shoulder, she put all her effort into a last burst of speed - passing over the threshold of the store just as she felt a hand glance off of her shoulder.

The door swung shut behind her, and then Miyeon was left alone in the store with just the sound of her laboured breathing to accompany the buzz of an air conditioner unit.

The clerk behind the counter was eyeing her with sleepy regard, blinking slowly.

Shifting her eyes away from the half-asleep student, Miyeon sent a glance through the window of the store to see if the man had gotten bored of trying his luck or was waiting around to try again in a minute or two when she re-emerged.

Seeing no one in the shadows, she let her shoulders drop minutely, exhaling in relief.

“Can I help you, miss?” The student called out from behind the counter, rubbing his eyes once before turning slightly more attentively to face her.

Miyeon shook her head, already heading towards the door again. She had a mid-morning shift to get to, and it was already nearing five in the morning. The faster she got back to her bed, the better.

As she passed the shelves, a bright pink collection of plastic in the centre caught her attention. She slowed her pace, looking on thoughtfully at the small containers of strawberry milk.

The door tinkled behind her as it swung closed, and Miyeon stuffed her hands into the pockets of the coat, feeling the two bottles of milk in either one.

“Hello.”

Miyeon jumped nearly a foot into the air, cursing. A man stood across from her on the other side of the doorway, a black briefcase clutched in his hand.

“Would you like to play a game with me?”

The green jumpsuit she wore had the three numbers 013 printed in block white on the left side of her chest - the sleeves hanging down over her fists, excess material bunching around her wrists.

Miyeon pulled the sleeves down to hide the scarred mass of her left wrist, blinking hard at the transition from the artificial lights in the pastel-coloured staircase to the bright natural light that flooded the roof-less room.

People clad in the same outfit as her flooded in through the doorway after her, forcing her forward towards the centre of the strange room.

“All players, please wait a moment on the field.”

Miyeon brought herself to a stop, looking around at the other people in confusion. There were no other doors to the field asides from the ones they had all entered through - three sets of blue barn doors - but on the opposite side of the field, stood a large doll statue of a child-like girl.

With a clang, the barn doors swung closed, the metal rattling with the force of it, and Miyeon could feel dread settling in her stomach at the sound.

“The first game is red light, green light.” The high pitched woman’s voice came out over the speakers that Miyeon couldn’t locate on the walls, and she watched as the doll spun around to face the tree that was placed behind it. It’s arm bent to place it’s hand onto the trunk, while the woman continued to explain the instructions of the game.

“You can move forward when the tagger shouts green light, and should stop when the tagger shouts red light. If your movement is detected afterward, you will be eliminated.”

Player elimination had been mentioned in the clauses of the contract Miyeon had signed before leaving the room they had all woken up in, although what exactly it entailed had been vague.

“Red light, green light?” A man stood near to Miyeon said in confusion. “The game we played as kids?”

Another man beside him nodded slowly. “I think so..”

The woman’s voice repeated the instructions, as the players were ushered back to behind a line on the ground, Miyeon placed off towards the right of the group in the middle.

Her father had played this game with her often as a child, before he’d really gone and lost his mind, and one of his biggest tips to winning was to stay in the middle of the group.

The more people around you, the better chance you had of the tagger not seeing you move, and the bigger your chance of winning.

“Those who cross the finish line without getting caught in five minutes pass this round.”

Miyeon eyed the distance from behind the line to the other side of the field with worry. It was a longer stretch than she had initially thought, and with only five minutes to cross it - there would definitely be people that lost this game just because they ran out of time.

“Then, let the game begin.” With that, a timer clicked to life atop the head of the doll, and she began singing.

Miyeon moved forwards quickly with the rest of the group, planting her feet just before the song came to an end and the doll’s head whipped around independent of it’s body.

“Player 324. Eliminated.” A bang rang out around the field, freezing everyone in place.

Miyeon’s left hand twitched, and she fought down the tremor that threatened to put her out of the game immediately after starting - her eyes fixed on the slumped over form of player 324.

A rock landed heavy in her stomach, her hand twitching.

“Green light.”

She moved forwards, more tentatively this time, putting one foot in front of the other carefully.

“Red light.”

Miyeon watched as another player - this time with black hair as opposed to the bleached blonde of player 324′s - shuffled forwards to the prone body on the floor.

A moment passed, before he was flinching backwards, turning on his heel and sprinting towards the group with a look of pure terror on his face.

The group flinched as one when another bang rang out through the field, and his chest exploded in blood.

There was silence, for a moment, before it was replaced with the screams of hundreds of people terrified of what they had just entered a room for, terrified of the meaning eliminated implied, terrified that they too, were the next to be shot.

Miyeon stood stock in shock still as the field around her erupted into chaos.

People turned on their heel and fled towards the doors as more shots rang out around them, bodies falling to the ground in bloody heaps. It turned into a stampede of green, players falling over each other in an attempt to pry open the doors that were held fast against their desperate attempts.

Most people’s terror caused them to react in one of three ways - fight, flight or freeze. From what she could see, the guns firing at them were well out of reach by a normal human being, and therefore virtually impossible to fight; leaving either flight or freeze.

Fortunately for Miyeon, the icy jolt of terror that was coursing through her veins had frozen her in place - she didn’t think it would have been possible for her to move if she wanted too - because those that chose flight, those that ran from the guns were mowed down like it was a culling of a herd.

Just in front of her, a man flinched back from another shot that reverberated around the field - and Miyeon placed a hand onto his back, holding him steady.

“Stay. Still.” She hissed, knowing that if he flinched back he’d take her down with him and then they’d both be dead.

Miyeon could feel the shuddering breath that the man exhaled, remaining in his original position. Carefully, she retracted her hand from his back, uncovering the number she’d placed her hand over a moment ago.

Player 218.

It felt like hours before the shots stopped ringing out, the once pristine ground marred with splashes of crimson red blood and bodies only identifiable by the numbers on their backs.

Without having to turn around, Miyeon knew there were piles of bodies stacked upon each other at the doors, people having stepped on their corpses to try and peel open the doors only to be shot down in the efforts as well.

It was human nature - selfishness is the default most humans reset to in moments of crisis; and Miyeon was pretty sure that this qualified as a moment of crisis.

A final, single bang rang out through the deathly quiet field, a cry following it before the unnatural silence settled again, like an iron blanket over the field.

“Let me repeat.” The mechanical woman’s voice came out over the loudspeaker, unflinching. “You can move forward after the tagger shouts green light, and should stop after the tagger shouts red light. If your movement is detected afterward, you will be eliminated.”

Miyeon couldn’t help the disbelieving cough that broke from her chest. Eliminated. She didn’t think anyone here had signed up for elimination from life.

The woman’s voice called out the instructions again, finishing with the announcement of the re-starting of the game. The doll’s head spun around smoothly to face the tree once again.

“Green light.”

Miyeon flicked her eyes up to the digital countdown on the wall. Nearly two minutes had passed during the panic, and there was still over three quarters of the field to cover.

No body moved.

“Red light.”

The field was still - like all the living players were mimicking the dead.

“Green light.”

Out of her peripheral vision, Miyeon watched as an elderly man skipped through the centre of the group, emerging at the front of them all just before the doll called out, “Red light.”

It seemed to spark a realization in the rest of the players, because the next time green light was called out, people slowly began moving towards the opposite end of the field, limbs held tightly in towards their bodies and tension lining their shoulders.

Miyeon had only taken two steps forward before player 218 in front of her was stopping.

“Hyung.” He called out, still facing forwards. “Don’t turn your head, just listen.”

Miyeon let out a shaky breath, weighing up the benefits of running around the man in front of her and losing her cover, or waiting out the conversation that he so desperately needed to have in the middle of Playground Games: Extreme Edition.

“You’ll die if you stay like that.” Miyeon realized belatedly that the man he was talking to was another player splayed out on the ground with a body on top of him. She had originally thought him to be dead, but now realized that he was panting with the strain of holding himself still under the weight of a second person.

“I think that doll is a motion sensor.” Player 218 continued. “You won’t get caught if you hide behind someone.”

Ding ding ding. Someone’s got brains around here.

With that, the doll’s head spun around to face the tree once more - as if sensing the end of the conversation - and player 218 moved quickly forward with Miyeon following close behind.

The calls of green light, red light were coming faster now, and as the digital clock counted down to two minutes exactly, Miyeon could feel sweat beading at her hairline.

They moved across the field swiftly, player 218 hidden behind a taller man, and Miyeon hidden behind 218′s broader frame.

With each few step forwards, another two or three players were eliminated, bodies falling to the floor with deadened thuds.

The end of the field was approaching - marked by a thick red line that taunted Miyeon. That red line was all that stood between her and her life, but the clock had slipped below sixty seconds now, and she was running out of time.

The man in front of her seemed to sense that too, because he sped up his pace with each few seconds of movement they were allowed until he was borderline sprinting across the field before freezing in place once more.

She kept advancing, paying minimal attention to the people she passed on the ground lest she too become one of them.

The red line was quickly approaching now, the game becoming a desperate race against the clock as the players charged forwards across the field. Everyone was running now, and the first person crossed the line with a dramatic leap, people flinging themselves across it to be safe from the bullets that continued flying across the field.

Miyeon crossed it right after her shield did, rolling over the ground before coming to a stop with her leg resting over one of his.

She stayed there, for a moment, trying to catch her breath, until the man beneath her jerked up suddenly - eyes fixed on two players still on the field.

Miyeon lifted her head up, watching as player 199 caught player 456 by the neck of his jumper, holding him upright just as red light echoed out through the field.

When green light sounded out again, both men came charging forwards, rolling across the red line just as the digital clock counted down to zero.

Miyeon felt the tension bleed out of the man she was still half laying across, and she slid away from him just as the final players still on the field seemed to realize that their time was up.

Successive shots had the players still standing falling into heaps onto the ground, and Miyeon turned her head away towards the wall.

No green light came to start another round, and Miyeon let her eyes slip closed and her head fall backwards onto the ground, breathing deeply.

#*daeun.writings #squid game #kdrama #stray kids #stray kids additional member #squid game x original character #netflix #original character #oc #jyp entertainment #this is incredibly self indulgent <3

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finalproblem · 6 years

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🦈 Shark Repellent

Time for a bit of a rehash. But at least it’s been nearly a year? (Yes, I am absolutely framing my slow posting speed as a positive. Thanks for noticing.)

See, I need a post (for reasons) I can link to that explains how I think Mary faked her death in The Six Thatchers. But last time I wrote this up, The Lying Detective hadn’t even aired yet. It seems needlessly confusing to link back to that old version with all of its didn’t-know-what-would-happen-next baggage.

Plus I wanted a version that focused more on the basic mechanics of the hoax. So I’m leaving out some chunks of explanation about how I reached certain conclusions and about canon parallels. You can dig back a year if you care about that.

Here goes. (Again.)

The little bit of canon background you do need:

Since after Series 3, I have argued that Mary is an adapted version of Birdy Edwards, a character from Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Valley of Fear.

When bad folks from Birdy’s past finally caught up with him after years, Birdy faked his own death by gunshot.

Birdy’s wife and friend both helped with the fake death / cover-up.

I could talk a lot more about The Valley of Fear if I let myself, but I’ve done that already. So this time, let’s just cut to the working premise that: Mary is a version of Birdy, she faked her death by gunshot because she needed to get away from baddies from her past, and she was assisted in this endeavor by her spouse and a friend. (You can decide if I’m being too generous with the word “friend” when I tell you it was Mycroft, but whatever.)

Sherlock wasn’t in on the fake death plan.

Even Vivian Norbury (the woman who shot Mary) wasn’t in on the plan.

How does that work?

The mechanics:

Sherlock was on Vauxhall Bridge when he figured out Vivian Norbury was the one behind the Tbilisi incident. He immediately ran off toward the MI6 Building.

Sherlock must’ve spoken to someone in Vivian’s office soon after, because he later explained that was who told him Vivian would be at the aquarium.

Sherlock sent texts to Mary and John (still daylight outside their window) to tell them to meet him at the London Aquarium.

The Watsons had a discussion about who would watch Rosie, and then it was implied that Mary would go ahead and John would catch up after finding a sitter.

Implied but not shown.

This is significant because without changing anything we were shown, it leaves a gap for Mycroft to have called the Watsons before Mary made it out the door. It would’ve been easy enough for Mycroft to have heard what was about to go down directly from Sherlock or from someone Sherlock had talked to at MI6.

So here we’ll assume an intentionally missing scene where Mycroft told the Watsons, “You know how we’ve been working on that secret plan to fake Mary’s death because something-something-bad-people-from-the-past-who-were-out-to-get-her? Here’s our chance to get out there and make this fake death happen, kids!” (I mean, I’m probably paraphrasing a little.)

And the idea that Mycroft and the Watsons had at least a little time to put a fake death plan in place offscreen there works, because it was dark out by the time Sherlock arrived at the aquarium.

Mary was the next to arrive, explaining John was on his way. (This was, of course, part of the plan.)

Vivian asked Sherlock and Mary to let her go, while not-so-subtly reaching into her handbag.

Mary responded angrily, prompting Vivian to pull a gun from her handbag. As soon as she goaded Vivian into getting the gun out, Mary softened and backed away. («I want to make sure you’re ready to shoot me and that you think it was your own idea, but I don’t want it to happen yet.»)

In a cab elsewhere in London, John was apparently calling someone to let them know they needed to go to the aquarium right away. The audience never found out who specifically he called.

There are a few different options here that work with the fake death, but the simplest is to say John called Lestrade—who was also not in on the plan. So that’s what I’ll go with for this post. («Hey, Greg, if you and a couple officers wouldn’t mind coming round to the aquarium so you can be witnesses to a totally real tragedy that isn’t fake at all, that’d be super-helpful. Thanks.»)

It may be worth noting that in this scene we got an unusual (for this show) and seemingly gratuitous shot from the windshield of John’s cab. And if you stop to identify the landmarks and buildings from that view, the cab was on Whitehall Street near the Department of International Development. Which happens to be right along the route if one were to, say, drive the single mile from Mycroft’s office at the Diogenes Club to the London Aquarium. Just saying.

Back at the aquarium, it was Sherlock’s turn to needle Vivian. Mary looked concerned and tried to caution him more than once. («Come on, man, be careful. I know you don’t know this, but it’s not time for her to shoot me yet. If this goes wrong you could actually get hurt.»)

Mycroft was the next person to arrive at the aquarium, with Lestrade and some police officers a few of steps behind him.

Obviously in the fake death scenario we’re building, he wasn’t actually surprised to see Vivian there since either Sherlock or someone at MI6 had already let Mycroft know that Sherlock was looking for her.

(And even without the fake death in play, I still think it makes more sense to read Mycroft’s line as “this is unexpected that you’d be the person behind Tbilisi because I would’ve arrested you a long time ago if I’d known” than it does “this is unexpected because I came down this shark tunnel with absolutely no idea who our suspect was” seeing as how the first thing Sherlock did when he thought Lady Smallwood was “Amo” was to let Mycroft know. But that’s all beside the point because this is 1000% a fake death post. SO BACK TO THAT.)

Mycroft cast a look to his hard left—towards Mary.

Cut to a close shot of Sherlock, then to Vivian, then back to a wider shot of Sherlock (as he demanded the gun) with Mary visible in the background.

Mary surreptitiously glanced across the room behind Sherlock—returning Mycroft’s look.

Presumably this is when Mycroft gave Mary a nod or other prearranged signal off-camera to let her know everything was in place to proceed with the fake death plan.

Which is why immediately after looking at Mycroft, Mary did a funny little thing with her mouth.

You’ve probably heard this one in a spy story before...

During World War II, British and American secret services developed the "L-pill" (lethal pill) which was given to agents going behind enemy lines. It was an oval capsule, approximately the size of a pea, consisting of a thin-walled glass ampoule covered in brown rubber to protect against accidental breakage and filled with a concentrated solution of potassium cyanide. It could be carried in the mouth, shaped as a false tooth .... To use, the agent would bite down on the pill, crushing the ampoule to release the fast-acting poison. (x)

The classic “suicide pill” is only a starting point for us, though, since the whole deal here is Mary faking her death.

So rather than cyanide, I think our own former spy Mary had a glass capsule of curare hidden in her mouth. After getting the signal from Mycroft, she chomped down on it. (Curare’s only dangerous if it enters your bloodstream, but the broken glass capsule would take care of that detail.)

We’ll come back to how curare works, but a fun fact first: it is a poison that was namechecked by Holmes in one of the canon stories.

As soon as Mary bit down on the curare capsule, the clock started ticking for her.

She needed to get shot soon.

When Vivian pulled her gun on Sherlock, Lestrade was the only one to try to talk her down. Mary and Mycroft did nothing—they wanted the situation to escalate.

Vivian fired, and the bullet flew toward Sherlock.

Only to have Mary leap in front of Sherlock and take the bullet for him. She was always the one who was going to get shot that night, not Sherlock.

[And here we have to pause to address the fact that, no, in the real world it isn’t physically possible to jump in front of a bullet after it’s fired. But it is a common trope used in TV and movies to up the drama of a situation. They had to choose between accurate physics and the drama of giving the audience that heartstopping moment of seeing a bullet headed straight for the central character. They chose drama. Not unlike when Sherlock spent way too long falling off that hospital roof in TRF.

Some fans see the bullet jump as a sign that nothing about this scene was real. Which, okay. That’s totally your call to make, but then this really isn’t the theory post for you. Because personally, my take is that if the whole thing was going to be revealed as imaginary they wouldn’t have bothered building in all the pieces they needed for a faked death explanation. And I don’t begrudge them a little TV showmanship here, especially since it’s far from the first time it’s happened in this show so I’m used to it by now. There’s also something to be said for needing the flying leap to establish that this was an intentional choice Mary made, and the way that fits the internal story logic even if it doesn’t fit “real” logic. But I’m dangerously close to off topic now. Moving on.]

Knowing that Mary was trying to get shot does explain why she didn’t just shove Sherlock out of the way.

A spray of blood appeared from the middle of Mary’s torso.

This is where the layers really start stacking up, so let’s tackle several of them.

The blood was fake, from a pre-placed blood pack. That’s part of why Mary needed to make the effort to dive in and get hit in the center of her body.

The other reason she needed to get hit in the torso was because she was wearing a low-profile ballistic vest under her shirt. A protective vest won’t do a person any good if they get shot, for example, in the head.

Here it’s also worth noting that between the time we saw Mary at home and her arrival at the aquarium, she put on the jacket seen in this later promo picture:

The jacket was large and loose enough on Amanda to buy some plausible cover for any extra side, shoulder, or back lumpiness that could go along with an eventual ballistic-vest-under-the-shirt reveal.

A bullet-resistant vest and a blood pack? Is that all there is to it?

No, for two reasons.

One, while attempting to fake your own death by gunshot isn’t the safest thing to do in the first place, even in that scenario it’s riskier than necessary to jump in front of a standard speeding bullet just because you’ve got a protective vest on.

Two, even if the vest is great at stopping all kinds of bullets, it doesn’t make them disappear. The vest just deforms the bullet on impact, stopping it from penetrating your body. There’s still a chunk of metal left. And if you’re trying to pretend a bullet killed you, you can’t have a squashed bullet stuck in the outer layer of your clothes or falling to the floor with a clink after it hits you.

How did Mary and Mycroft get around this problem? It’s all about the featured vocab word of the episode:

Change the ammo in the gun, and you change the rules.

What kind of ammo could you swap out for standard bullets?

First of all, it wasn’t a blank cartridge in the gun. I’m just getting that out of the way because I know fans like to guess blank cartridges were used any time there’s a suspicious gun death on this show. But the whole point of blank cartridges is that they don’t have a bullet, and we were very clearly shown a bullet in this instance.

There are a number of other possibilities I looked at, but (barring any magic spy bullets from Mycroft’s pals at Q Branch) my favorite real-world option is frangible ammunition.

“Frangible bullets are intended to disintegrate into tiny particles upon target impact to minimize their penetration of other objects.” Generally this means the bullets are made from some form of compressed metallic powder, but they do look like normal solid metal bullets.

(Images above via frangible ammo manufacturer SinterFire.)

To be clear: Frangible ammo still isn’t, like, a toy. Don’t try any of this at home.

But tests have shown that as long as the right conditions are met, frangible bullets don’t penetrate ballistic vests. And since this is a TV show and Mary and Mycroft were controlling the conditions... Sure, that works as a way to get shot but not penetrated by a metallic bullet without leaving an obvious hunk of metal behind as evidence.

Granted, it’s still being hit by a projectile at close range. It probably hurt, and Mary probably had some nasty bruising. Still preferable to actually being murdered, though, if you had the choice? Seems like it.

But surely Vivian Norbury wasn’t conveniently carrying around a gun loaded with practice ammo. If Vivian wasn’t in on the plan, how did her regular bullets get swapped out for frangible ones?

Stop and think back about a couple of things we already know:

Vivian kept her gun in her handbag.

Vivian’s office knew she’d be at the aquarium that evening, per her weekly routine.

The MI6 Building is a short walk (or shorter transit ride) from the London Aquarium. For Vivian to go all the way home to Wigmore Street and get her gun after work, only to return to the aquarium each week would be silly. It’s much more likely she always carried her gun in her handbag, even at work. (Maybe she had permission because she worked in a spy office. Maybe she was just sneaky. I’m not really going to worry about that detail right now.)

Oh and hey...

Earlier in the episode, someone decided it was worthwhile to show people who were paying very close attention that Vivian did carry her handbag around at work.

For whatever it’s worth, they even took a promo picture that establishes Vivian’s I-carry-my-handbag-at-work cred:

So let’s run a theoretical scenario...

1) Sherlock thought the case over on the bridge and realized he was wrong. He called Mycroft and said it wasn’t Lady Smallwood behind Tbilisi—it was Vivian Norbury.

2) Mycroft could see where this was going, realized it was an opportunity to fake Mary’s death like he’d been secretly working up to with the Watsons, and went into action before Sherlock could make his next move.

3) Mycroft told Lady Smallwood she was off the hook. Better yet, he knew who framed her. And now Lady Smallwood had a chance to help bring the real culprit down. (It’s not strictly necessary for Lady Smallwood to be a part of any of this, but I’m including it because I like the idea of her getting a measure of revenge by taking part in an anti-Vivian plan. And we saw by the next episode that Mycroft does trust Lady Smallwood with important secrets.)

4) We know Sherlock spoke to someone in Vivian’s office to get the aquarium tip. Who’s the only other character we know for sure works in Vivian’s office? Her boss, Lady Smallwood. If Lady Smallwood—in person, over the phone, or through a third party—lied and told Sherlock that nope, Vivian wasn’t around now but she’d be at the aquarium that evening, that would’ve bought Team Fake Death some needed time.

5) Sherlock texted the Watsons to let them know to go to the aquarium. Before either of them left home, Mycroft contacted them to say it was time for the fake death plan. Mary and John proceeded to work out the details with Mycroft before any of them arrived at the aquarium.

6) Back at the MI6 Building, Lady Smallwood created a distraction that allowed her to get hold of her secretary’s handbag for a moment. Just long enough to get the gun out of Vivian’s handbag and swap out the regular bullets for frangible ones.

7) Vivian left work for the day with her gun in her handbag and headed to the aquarium as usual, now an unwitting accomplice in the fake death plan.

(Oh, and the kicker? As of the next episode, handbags became a bit of a running theme.)

So the frangible bullet from the handbag gun hit Mary, broke open her hidden blood pack, and then crumbled to pieces when it hit her ballistic vest.

The police restrained Vivian and escorted her away, clearing the scene of non-recurring characters.

Sherlock put a hand on Mary’s “wound,” but never got as far as properly inspecting it or even taking his glove off.

Sherlock told Mycroft to get an ambulance. What, no mobile phone signal in the shark room? More like he left the room to go stand in the hall for a minute pretending to make the emergency call. Because this was all a plan and any medical assistance they needed was already in on it and standing by.

Speaking of...

John arrived in the room just as Mycroft left.

Now, this was just 12 seconds after the bullet hit Mary.

This was not a tragic coincidence of John arriving mere seconds too late.

This was a dude standing a little ways down the hall waiting to hear a gunshot.

And once he did, he rushed in so he could be the doctor on the scene. That way no one else would have a chance to figure out the trick. (This is so much like the technique Sherlock used to fool John into thinking he was dead after the fall that it’s kind of hilarious to see it get turned around.)

We could also pause here to consider that the alleged reason John was arriving at the aquarium after Mary was because he had to find an available babysitter and wait for them to arrive. Yet he showed up at the aquarium a mere 4.5 minutes after his wife did. Even if we assume there was some time condensing in the editing and double or triple that... Either John had amazing luck getting a babysitter (maybe he grabbed the first person who happened to be walking past his house?) or ultimately it wasn’t about the babysitter at all. For example: Mycroft called, all of the Watsons went to the Diogenes (hence John’s later cab location), Rosie got dumped on Anthea’s desk, Mary popped a ballistic vest on and drove to the aquarium, and John waited five minutes before taking a taxi. Or any variation of that general concept.

John rushed over to Mary and put his bare hand on her “wound.” Presumably this was meant to look like an effort to stop the bleeding. Except of course she wasn’t really bleeding and a blood pack only holds so much fake blood, so the blood stain never really grows for the rest of the scene anyway.

Nevertheless, this faux first aid was enough to get Sherlock to back off and leave the situation to John. Which was the point.

Mary began a big ol’ goodbye speech.

And this—this is where we need to come back to talk about curare as promised.

Curare is a funny kind of poison. It actually works by causing paralysis of “every voluntarily controlled muscle in the body (including the eyes).” The paralysis comes on in stages. “It first affects the muscles of the toes, ears, and eyes, then those of the neck, arms and legs, and finally, those involved in breathing. In fatal doses, death is caused by respiratory paralysis.”

It doesn’t stop your heart, though. That’s super important. Because that means if curare gets in your bloodstream and your lungs shut down, you can still avoid death as long as you get artificial respiration in time. If someone helps your body keep breathing, you’ll be okay. There are also antidotes that help the curare paralysis be reversed more quickly.

So Mary’s giant goodbye speech? That was her running out the clock, waiting for her muscle groups to paralyze one by one. Once it got to her lungs, she’d look very convincingly dead. No more breathing, and she couldn’t blink or twitch a finger even if she wanted to.

The only tell that curare-poisoned Mary was alive would’ve been the fact that her heart was still beating.

But that’s not a problem when your in-on-the-plan doctor husband was the only one who was allowed to check your pulse.

When Sherlock tentatively reached out a hand...

...John lashed out at him, effectively keeping Sherlock away from fake-dead Mary. No observing for you today, detective!

Then we arrived at the Hair Sniff of Death™ (happens at about 1 hour, 19 minutes, and 59 seconds in on my copy).

Crank the sound up, and it definitely sounds like John whispered Mary’s name. Not that it would be very strange to whisper the name of someone who just died, but then he seemed to continue with an inaudible whisper in Mary’s ear.

Curare paralysis mimics locked-in syndrome, meaning Mary would still have been conscious and capable of hearing John even though she couldn’t respond. So this would make sense as a moment for him to whisper some kind of reassurance that everything was going to plan and she’d be okay.

Okay as long as she got some oxygen soon, that is.

By the end of the scene, only Mary, John, Mycroft, Lestrade and Sherlock were left in the room. And by my count, Mary had only been fully passed out for less than a minute and a half. So, granted, there’s not a lot of time to play around. But as long as Mycroft got Lestrade and Sherlock out of there basically right after we cut away from our characters, John would’ve been able to start artificial respiration before the usual window for preventing brain damage due to lack of oxygen closed. (Sherlock was in shock and of course Greg has a tendency to do whatever Mycroft tells him to 😉, so it’s plausible enough that Mycroft could’ve hustled them out quickly.)

Since Team Fake Death knew about the curare in advance, they could also have had a dose of antidote standing by so the paralysis would wear off faster.

Mary recovered from the curare, Mycroft dealt with the paperwork and covered up anything that would look suspicious, blah, blah, blah. You’ve been watching this show long enough to know the fake death drill.

John opted for cremation for Mary’s body, precisely because there was no body and it’s easier to hide that if there’s nothing left for anyone to dig up.

And thanks to A Scandal in Belgravia, we’ve already established that Mycroft knows how to get his hands on an urn full of substitute human ash.

The last little bit of fake death business in the episode was John walking through a cemetery.

With this shot edited in after all the aquarium stuff, it’s easy to watch and assume John is at the cemetery for reasons related to Mary’s death. Easy to assume that, but... there’s nothing there to actually confirm that assumption.

Let’s try coming at this from a different angle. What’s another reason for someone in this show to go to an old-looking cemetery? Mycroft gave us one a couple of episodes ago in His Last Vow.

Mycroft: Five known bolt holes. There’s the blind greenhouse in Kew Gardens and the leaning tomb in Hampstead Cemetery.

Sherlock had a bolt hole in Hampstead Cemetery, and Mycroft knew about it. If they needed to hide Mary somewhere for a little while after the fake death, a cemetery bolt hole’s a pretty good spot. John could pretend he was visiting his wife’s cremated remains... and then pop over to the leaning tomb to visit his actual wife. (If you watch this part for real, it does look like John may have turned his head to make sure he wasn’t being watched near the end of this shot. Though it’s almost impossible to be sure, since he’s out of focus by then.)

And, y’know, the leaning tomb in Hampstead?

That did come up as the third place on Mycroft’s list of bolt holes to monitor at the end of The Lying Detective.

So it was on the writers’ minds.

“But why would they fake Mary’s death?”

Since His Last Vow, they’ve been setting up the idea that bad people were after Mary, and that’s why she needed to stay hidden in her “normal” life.

And then in The Six Thatchers, bad people did try to kill Mary.

But here’s the catch.

Those people were Ajay—whom Mary previously believed to be dead—and Vivian Norbury—who no one saw as more than a secretary.

Ajay and Vivian weren’t the baddies Mary was hiding from.

There’s still someone else out there who wants her dead. And if that person was getting a little too close...

Mary had a straightforward enough motive for faking her death. Same as Birdy Edwards in the novel. If your enemies think you’re dead, they stop looking for you and you get to stay alive.

Also easy to see why John wouldn’t mind helping his wife and the mother of his child avoid being murdered.

Mycroft... Eh. There might be enough to Mycroft and Mary’s backstory that he actually wants to help her for her own sake. We don’t really have enough details filled in yet, but it’s possible.

Even if Mycroft doesn’t care about Mary as any kind of friend, though, considering she used to do work for the British government, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to guess some of Mary’s enemies are also Mycroft’s enemies. Maybe faking Mary’s death is a means to an end in luring them out.

There’s also the problem of Sherlock’s obsession with protecting Mary and keeping his vow. How many times did it almost get him killed in this episode alone? Mycroft and the Watsons could’ve all decided it would really be better if Sherlock didn’t get murdered trying to save Mary from a particularly nasty baddie lurking on the horizon.

[I do have thoughts on making this vague baddie more specific, but that’s a discussion for another post.]

“But how could John be in on it?”

I agree that from The Lying Detective on, John was genuinely grieving for his dead wife and not putting on an act. We saw him behaving that way even when there was no one in-show around to observe his behavior. So how does that square with the idea that he helped Mary fake her death?

The short answer: TD 12.

The writers set up a scenario that makes no sense if John remembers what happened... and then introduced a drug that can wipe memories (and corrupt older memories) in the very next episode.

John helped Mary and Mycroft with the fake death, and then they TD-12ed him until he didn’t remember doing it. (Whether that was always the plan or Mary and Mycroft sprung it on John later because they’re both okay with being a little ruthless, who knows.)

There’s a lot more I could say about this, but this post is already very long. Plus I already wrote a bunch of TD 12 posts back when Series 4 was still airing, and I have things I haven’t written any posts about yet that I’d really like to. So maybe I’ll bash through TD 12 again in a future post? Eventually? I dunno.

The point is, there’s a magic memory erasing drug. I don’t think it’s a problem to say John doesn’t remember doing something.

“I don’t buy it.”

Okay.

You don’t have to.

This isn’t really a “talk you into it” post.

It’s more of a “I needed to have this written down in a relatively clean way so I could move on and write about new things” post.

Some of the new things I plan to write about (eventually) will help explain more of how this fits into what happened in The Lying Detective and The Final Problem.

Maybe you’ll feel like the Mary faked her death thing makes sense then.

Or not.

It’s fine either way.

🦈🦈🦈

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