johnthreecontinents:

shinka:

scenes that are technically useless in a narrative sense if the show is only and just only a crime show

• the boyfriend/girlfriend discussion in asip
• jim from it posing as gay and sherlock deducing his homosexuality in tgg
• the whole scene in battersea station between john and irene
• the ‘clean-shaven’ comment in teh
• sherlock going to ogle some soldiers in tsot when we know bainbridge is still on duty and so sherlock doesn’t need to look out for him
• janine and sherlock at the end of tsot when they’re dancing and janine ‘i wish you weren’t what you are’
• the entire john/janine scene and john being jealous in hlv
• again, janine/sherlock in the hospital, except for the newspapers and janine’s comment on ‘what kind of man sherlock is’, the scene doesn’t give us more details on the plot itself

i know i missed some of them but look at these: they don’t need to be in the show, they don’t give us hindsight on the plot but they are still there because they are all about sherlock and john, their relationship and their sexuality

“Every given detail is important.

We have X minutes. If we give a detail, it better be important.

Oh, sure, we can set up a Red Herring or two, but we had better expect the viewer to attach importance to any detail we let loose in the plot. Shame on us, if we later expect the viewer to be surprised by the importance of the detail we let slip.

This is an Omnipresent Trope. It is rare for an author to devote a thirty page chapter of a book describing a character’s entire wardrobe of clothing unless said wardrobe provides great insight into a character or is being used as a metaphor for the human condition. A theater company is going to spend much more time working on the costumes of the lead characters than the costumes of those who only appear in a single scene- unless that single appearance needs to be emphasized as being extremely significant. In short, there is a fine line between good World Building, and rambling on about pointless crap- conservation of detail is all about filtering out irrelevant information to highlight the actual plot or interesting aspects of the setting.”

- The Law of Conservation of Detail

just sayin