devoursjohnlock:

I’ve been reading this recent discussion
about Janine and why she said “I wish you weren’t whatever it is you
are” to Sherlock in The Sign of Three, and I thought I would write up my own
thoughts about Janine in this separate post, because they’re relevant to other things I’m writing concurrently.

I see Janine as a mirror for John.

First,
let’s start with her name: Janine Hawkins, per The Sign of Three and
His Last Vow … or Janine Donlevy, per The Abominable Bride. Janine is a
feminine form of the name John.
Hawkins was the surname of Arthur Conan Doyle’s first wife, Louise.
Donlevy is an old Irish family name; members of their clan held a hereditary role as physicians for another clan.

Just
as Irene is a Sherlock mirror who is partly (not completely)
representative of libido, Janine performs a similar function for John,
which… may explain the necklace she wears in The Sign of Three.

Yeah, I can’t believe I’m making a joke about balls above the cut either, but here we are. I promise it’s clean from here on in!

Building the pattern, when Sherlock and Irene meet, Irene impressively deduces Sherlock, whereas when Sherlock and Janine meet, Janine is impressed by Sherlock’s deductions.

As was pointed out some time after HLV aired, both women wear men’s clothing when they visit 221B. Irene wears Sherlock’s dressing gown; Janine wears what may be John’s shirt instead of Sherlock’s (and sure, the shirt origin is arguable, but I think this parallel holds regardless).

Each of these characters was written to tell us more about their respective mirrors and about the relationship between them.

Caution: broken glass under the cut.

Keep reading

Great read.

“If Janine is a John mirror, then Magnussen telling this story implies that John has already been under pressure from Magnussen for some time, in a way we haven’t been privy to.”

I like CAM’s Murdoch-like media-mogul status for this. For a long time, we’ve seen John under pressure from the press (most notably in TRF as he reads the paper “‘confirmed bachelor’? What the hell are they implying?”) with regards to sexuality and his place in Sherlock’s life. We see him attempting reputation management of various kinds, for both himself and Sherlock, with the press in mind.

This is very applicable to the ‘reputation management’/damage limitation that both Watson (as [unreliable] narrator) and ACD did in the original stories.