Wouldn’t you have to say a drive toward lack of acceptance? That doesn’t sound right.
Hmm. Sherlock needs Watson to accept him. Not only does he need the flat share, but he says he needs an assistant. If Watson just said, “Nope, no way,” and walked off, Sherlock’s influence would be gone. Instead, Watson accepts him; he’s enthralled by him.
Maybe there’s something there. I’m not super happy with it.
Could problem be he has been accepting everyone not wanting anything to do with him, personally, so is becoming more isolated and not good. Could solution be non-acceptance of that dynamic when he meets Watson? He was stunned by the positive things Watson said to him, genuinely meaning them. Sherlock reaches out several times. Could non-acceptance be not accepting the usual thing to happen with him and relationships?
During the scene with Cabbie, Sherlock has him beat, but he accepts Cabbie’s invitation to play the pill game anyway. It’s this final acceptance that pushes Watson’s ultimate change.
When they’re at the restaurant (around the 50 minute mark on Netflix), Watson and Sherlock have this exchange:
Watson: People don’t have arch enemies.
Sherlock: I’m sorry?
Watson: In real life. There are no arch-enemies in real life. Doesn’t happen.
Sherlock: Doesn’t it? Sounds a bit dull.
Watson: So who did I meet?
Sherlock: What do real people have, then, in their real lives?
Watson: Friends? You know… people they know, people they like, people they don’t like. Girlfriends, boyfriends.
Sherlock: Yes, well, as I was saying… Dull.
Watson: You don’t have a girlfriend, then.
Sherlock: Girlfriend? No, not really my area.
Watson: Oh, right. Do you have a boyfriend? …Which is fine, by the way.
Sherlock: I know it’s fine.
Watson: So you’ve got a boyfriend then.
Sherlock: No.
Watson: Right. Okay. (chuckles) You’re unattached. Just like me. Fine. Good.
Sherlock: John, um… I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered by your interest, I’m really not looking for any–
Watson: No, I’m… not asking. No. I’m just saying, it’s all fine.
Sherlock: Good. (meaningful pause) Thank you.
While I would say this is mostly an RS scene, it’s also the most intimate look we get at Sherlock outside the realm of solving the case, and it’s full of Acceptance/ Nonacceptance beats.
Present in that conversation is also this idea that Sherlock finds “real people” dull. This echoes something he said earlier, during the Pink Lady scene: “Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring.” This seems related to acceptance or nonacceptance.
Alright, for the sake of argument, let’s interpret Acceptance as Sherlock’s drive is to be tolerated. He wants to be accepted into the investigation. When the police are being non-accepting of him, like at the very beginning, Sherlock’s drive toward solving the suicides is pretty minimal. He’s a bit of a pest during the press conference, but otherwise, he’s out doing his own thing, looking into crimes where his help has been accepted, conducting experiments, and looking for a flat mate.
Once the police invite him in, Sherlock’s drive skyrockets, and the more allowances are made for him, the more driven he becomes, until by the end of the Pink Lady scene, he’s charging off to look for the suitcase by himself and ordering the police around and telling them what to do.
Note also that when the police first show up at the apartment to ask for help, Sherlock asks Lestrade who’s on forensics, and when Lestrade says it’s Anderson, Sherlock balks, his motivation momentarily waning because Anderson won’t work with him (Nonacceptance).
In the end, this doesn’t appear to be a story where the IC’s inequity, whatever exactly Sherlock’s is, get’s resolved. In that case we don’t necessarily expect to see his Solution strongly applied. As far as I know, that’s not required.
In terms of how these things effect Watson, it’s definitely his acceptance of Sherlock and Sherlock’s invitations to come along on various aspects of the case that facilitates Sherlock’s continued influence.
Sergeant Donovan warns Watson to stay away from Sherlock (Nonacceptance), and if Watson heeded her advice, the root of Sherlock’s influence would evaporate.
I’m not sure if any of this is using quite the right approach. Dramatica has this to say about the IC’s Problem element:
The Impact Character’s Problem is the root of his impact as well, so whatever your story explores in terms of your Impact Character will have a tinge of this item to it.
That, at least, seems to be true of Acceptance.
I think I see what you’re going for, but no, I don’t think you have to go that way with it.
What if we said that the way Sherlock influences others is through being intolerable? Watson thinks he’s brilliant, but pretty much everyone including Watson seems to find him intolerable. Not just because of his ability to read into minuscule clues, but just his general personality.
This seems like it’s up to Dramatica. I don’t think Acceptance can be interpretted as intolerability. Even a lack of Acceptance shouldn’t be the same as Non-acceptance as far as Dramatica is concerned, at least afaik.
Either way, fortunately, what is most important is how Sherlock influences Watson, and I’m satisfied that Acceptance is at the root of that influence.
From a theory standpoint, I don’t understand how Non-acceptance works as Sherlock’s Solution. Even so, I don’t know that it’s that big a deal.
Heck, if you look at official analysis of Star Wars, it looks they pretty much just threw up their hands when looking for illustrations of IC Problem and Solution.
After sleeping on it and mulling it over a bit on the road this morning, I have an interpretation that is fairly simple and I feel good about.
Sherlock’s behavior is bad and antisocial. The problem is that no one is trying to correct it. Instead, he is largely Accepted, which exacerbates the bad behavior.
With the exception of Anderson and Donovan, who aren’t in a position to do much about it, everyone Accepts Sherlock. Lestrade invites him into the investigation (and it’s implied he’s done so many times over their five year aquaintence), Watson moves in with him, the coroner let’s him horsewhip cadavers and gets him coffee, Mrs. Hudson gives him a deal on the apartment, the restaurant guy gives him free meals. And Sherlock acts badly toward all these people to one degree or another. Why change when you’re getting free meals, cheap flats, and the respect of the chief inspector? All these things enable Sherlock’s bad behavior.
What would resolve it is Rejection. If Lestrade wants Sherlock to treat him with respect, then he should demand it, instead of Accepting him because he’s “a great man.” If Watson wants Sherlock to learn not to drag him across London to borrow his phone just because Sherlock was too lazy to go downstairs, Watson shouldn’t give him his phone. Being a bit grumpy about it isn’t enough; he should not tolerate it.
Okay, so I just saw something for Sherlock’s Acceptance that I think works really well and I think you’ll like it because it works in the stuff about trust, but first…
The example I’m about to give for Acceptance doesn’t rely on either of these, but just wanted to say I believe that both of these are acceptable. I can look in the software if needed, but there are lots of examples in the Query System that use the wording “lacks a drive of…” I can see where you’re coming from with bringing it up, but it’s really just a way of saying “instead of too much of an element, this perspective suffers from too little of it”. That’s where I was getting intolerable from. The definition for Acceptance include “a decision to…tolerate”. When one suffers from too little of the ability to be tolerated, it is intolerable, which is not the same as Rejection (non-acceptance).
Now for the good part…
A couple things kind of all hit me at once with this. I wasn’t really happy with anything I had come up and was trying to find a new way to look at it. With your line above in mind, I wondered what was going on with Watson when Sherlock wasn’t around. The first scene that came to mind was Sally talking to Watson after the lady in pink scene. She’s telling him that Sherlock is a freak and one day he’ll leave a body somewhere to be found and that he doesn’t have any friends, etc, but Watson still trusts Sherlock. Then there’s the scene where Mycroft wants Watson to spy on Sherlock, but Watson won’t because, as Mycroft says, he began to trust Sherlock very quickly. And then that reminded me of the scene with the therapist and how you suggested she might have an influence for just that one scene, and of course it’s the scene where she writes that he has trust issues. But he doesn’t have trust issues, he has Acceptance issues. Even though we’re told that Watson has trust issues, Sherlock influences Watson to be very accepting of Sherlock.
I don’t know that it feels very strong the way I explained it, but it felt very strong when it came to me. I like it enough to accept it, so it sounds like we’re finally both happy with this point. What’s next?
RS.
It’s Reduction/ Production for problem/solution, which is the same as Watson’s symptom/response. That doesn’t always happen does it?
It might be worth starting up higher in the structure and working our way down. Whatever you all want to do.
I will throw out that there does seem to be a sense of Reduction and Production in the whole “Who would possibly want to be my flat mate?” being said by both (Sherlock off screen).
We can start higher up, but I want to throw this out while it’s fresh on my mind. Sherlock basically says he’s using Watson as a fill in for the skull at one point, reducing Watson to an object that Sherlock can chat at.
lets start with defining the relationship. It’s clearly a new relationship that wasn’t there before. It grows in a positive way. What do we call the relationship, though? I’d say friendship, but is that it? Or is it flatmates? Or crime solving partners?
Crime fighting pals ?
Everybody showed up at once =)
My takeaway is what was unspoken but understood by them with warm humor is that now he has chatting back in his life.
I’m leaning toward new flatmates being the closest. It seems like most of the RS stuff revolves around the apartment. I think the crime-fighting partners mostly falls in the OS.
Growing friendship is probably fine. They seem like friends at the end. I definitely understand the hesitation to use the word “friend.” It seems inaccurate when referring to Sherlock Holmes.
There’s a couple mentions that he doesn’t have friends, and I think the point is that, for whatever reason, John is the first. But, yeah, flat mates or friends are both pretty close but not quite all the way there.
So we can say the friendship is growing in a positive direction and experiences conflict of Mind. Thoughts on what that looks like?
It’s funny. I suspect it will be near impossible to come up with a succinct label for their relationship because the characters in the story don’t know either. In fact, the difficult to define nature of their relationship causes some moments of conflict.
Donovan stops Watson at the police tape. “Who’s he?” Sherlock: “A colleague.” D: “How’d you get a colleague?”
In the house at the crime scene, Lestrade: “Who’s he? I shouldn’t even be letting you in here.” Sherlock: “He’s with me.” L: “But who is he?” S: “I said he’s with me.”
Donovan: “He’s not your friend. He doesn’t have friends. So who are you?” Watson: “I’m nobody. I just met him.”
Mycroft: “What is your connection to Sherlock Holmes?” Watson: “I don’t have one. I barely know him. I met him… yesterday.” Mycroft: “And since yesterday, you’ve moved in with him and now you’re solving crimes together. Might we expect a happy announcement by the end of the week?”
And of course both Mrs Hudson and the guy at the restaurant mistake their relationship for a romantic one.
How cool would it be if this is actually connected to whatever conflict the RS introduces to the story?
Growing Pains? Bridging Minds? A Pair Afoot! All I can see is Holmes whispering Hello to Watson on the street in disguise, or coming in dirty disguise while Watson stopped by and was waiting for him. At age 19, I read one story in the complete works volume, then spent the next few days reading every single one of the rest, enthralled. This is so much fun, thinking about their first encounter. I guess I had subconsciously assumed they had met as doctor and patient, but then there was Speilberg’s Young Sherlock Holmes to open my mind.
I think you may be on to something. They aren’t really sure what they are, but anytime someone thinks of them as gay, or asks Watson to consider spying on Sherlock, Watson starts getting all uptight. I think that works as the relationship having conflict from being considered by others or through contemplations.
Interesting that they can’t just be…dire warning, major bribes
The Boiling Point? Getting Centered?
Yeah, I find the Contemplation aspect a bit easier to wrap my head around than Mind / Fixed Attitude. A present consideration of should we move in together sort of hangs over them right up until the final act, which is pretty light on RS.
The inequity between them appears to be related to what they know about each other or how much they ought to know about each other before moving in together. Sherlock thinks he’s got “enough to be getting on with.” But Watson is getting new info throughout most of the story. Donovan warns him to stay away. Mycroft tells him to pick a side. Watson asks Sherlock personal questions at the restaurant. Then there’s those great couple of beats when Watson thinks he’s got a handle on Sherlock, and he insists to Lestrade that there’s simply no way Sherlock would have recreational drugs only for Sherlock to give him a meaningful look.
Any idea how to illustrate Mind?