andthenisay said:
""why couldn't she just win/never over it" -- you're not allowed to listen to the scandal commentary or you'll literally track moff down and murder him (i will help)"

I hate everything he says about this episode. E V E R Y T H I N G. Like. Irene Adler got the better of Sherlock because a) she’s a sharp fucking cookie, easily as smart as he; and b) she understands and can use or discard sentiment as she chooses, which is something he’s incapable of understanding or doing. Hur-fucking-rah. She is the only person in the world who ever gets to beat him.

(UM. S2 Sherlock spoilers ahoy, obviously.)

(And word vomit. OH GOD THE WORD VOMIT.)

But then we get her one hundred years later and not only does she seem to be wholly lacking in sentiment except when it comes to her crush on Sherlock (for no discernible reason!) (WHICH, WHAT. SELF-INSERT SOME MORE, MOFFAT, ABOUT HOW EVERYBODY WANTS THE CLEVEREST MAN IN THE ROOM, IT’S NOT OBVIOUS ENOUGH YET ACROSS ALL OF YOUR SHOWS) (and also can we talk for a second about how she has never interacted with Sherlock before she gets Moriarty’s texts but HER SECRET WEAPON’S PASSWORD IS ALREADY KEYED TO HIM WHAT THE WHAT THE WHAT) but she 100% loses her motivation for threatening royalty for her own benefit (jfc, does no one have motivations of their own anymore that don’t involve Moriarty?) and SHE DOESN’T EVEN GET TO BE PARTICULARLY SMART. She doesn’t stump Sherlock with her wits; she only gets the better of him initially because she short-circuits his lizard brain. Which shows some ingenuity and understanding of what makes him tick, but it’s also the same old “woman’s most valuable asset is her body” bullshit.

Aside from drugging him (which even the cabbie did in the pilot, so it’s clearly something the writers think he’s vulnerable to) to escape, the only time she really holds her own with him is when she figures out it was the boomerang killed the hiker. AND THAT MIGHT NOT EVEN HAVE BEEN HER. I thought it was pretty clearly framed as Sherlock’s drugged subconscious taking her form to tell him what he had already worked out (and praising himself for being such a clever boy! which actually I like quite a bit because up-himself!Sherlock is forever and always my favorite Sherlock) AND COME ON. I mean, yeah, it could have actually been her when she came to return his coat/phone and he was somehow lucid enough in that middle period to absorb her words and process them correctly (but not anything else, including being in a position of vulnerability enough to let Lestrade get some mobile video of him? The dude who will do pretty much anything not to be made to look a fool? O k a y.), but in a show that’s gross about 95% of Irene Adler, I don’t think I can read it that way.

I know this has been talked practically to death by people a lot smarter and more eloquent than I but OH MY GOD THE FLAMES

FLAMES

FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE