#johnlock vs tjlc

[edwardallenpoe]

Hullo dearest! Please tell us about your thoughts on the several cowardly versions of Sherlock Holmes?? 💛

:v

Well then. I suppose I have been forced to, woe is me.

Anyways. The ONLY acceptable adaption I will not be shitting on is Granada. I love u Jeremy Brett 😘 as for everyone else, they are COWARDS!!!!

First reason why they're cowards, being the obvious reason:

Johnlock

(pt: Johnlock)

Not letting Sherlock and John get together. COWARDS. So many adaptions and only, like, one that I know of let them be together??? (That being this amazing short film I watch ten times a day) And it would be different if they let their relationship just be and let them be platonic while still letting them have that familiar depth like in Sherlock & co., but NO, shows like Sherlock BBC and The Irregulars tease and queerbait to hell and back, and even make the one of them queer and in LOVE with the other (like in The Irregulars, John is in love with Sherlock but as far as I know, doesn't tell him because he's unstable or smt idfk) but they don't get together for one convoluted reason or another. It's frustrating as hell because it's not like there was no substance between the two in ACD/Original canon, it's not like the TJLC invented it bc of Sherlock BBC or the RDJ Adaption, no, their relationship was so deep and so real and so beautiful in ACD canon and if there is gonna be an adaption where their relationship stays the same, that's fine, perfect even, but NO, they add extra bullshit that make you think there might be something and then give unreasonable reasons why they can't be together, making you feel like YOUR the weird one for seeing something that wasn't there apparently.

Reason number two why I find most of these adaptions cowards:

Irene Adler

(pt: Irene Adler)

For some reason, every single adaption (except for my love, Granada<3) they fuck her up. Like. ACD Irene Adler vs BBC, RDJ, Enola, ect. Irene Adler are not the same Irene Adler. Who is she????? Because the Irene Adler I heard in The Scandal In Bohemia, was an upper class woman who had an affair with the king of [Forgor lol] and kept the photo of them together as collateral when he ditched her and tried to get married to a princess.

The Irene in these adaptions??? She's a trickster, a Dominatrix, an Assassin, the Lover of Moriarty, and INSANELY IN LOVE WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES. what the FUCK

Like. Please please please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but is there another Irene Adler in the ACD canon??? Who is all these things?? Because when I watched Granada, when I read the story, and now listening to the audiobook (which, off-topic, found a playlist of free audiobooks of all the short stories on YouTube with a fantastic narrator here) The Woman described in these stories, yes can be secretive and sneaky, but was NEVER fucking like RDJ or BBC's level of Irene Adler. It kinda feels like they just picked whatever character they wanted to make a Pandora out of (which is doubly weird that BBC made Mary Morstan like that when they had Irene but I barely acknowledged post season two canon outside of @gaylilsherlock 's fantastic fics, plus they almost completely left ACD canon after Reichenbach which I don't really mind, but post-reichenbach is a whole other post) instead of making their own character. So I find them cowardly for a) not making Irene at least semi-accurate to the canon besides a tiny photo (even tho canon photo was a FUCKING CANVAS- okay I'll stop) and b) not making up a new fleshed out character of her own to be a secret spy.

And uhhhh I can't think of anything else rn. Yeah:D I would complain about Sherlock & Co. But because it's not finished yet and I like how they're treating Sherlock and John's relationship and also them as their own individual characters I don't have too much to complain about, and I would complain about Irregulars but I could not get past the first five episodes. I just couldn't get into it. It kinda felt like they made a whole story that just so happened to have Sherlock Holmes characters in it. Idk tho.

Tldr: Johnlock and Irene Adler deserved better.

(pt: tldr: Johnlock and Irene Adler deserved better.)

[eldritch-elrics]

what IS your thesis about? from the list of items im kinda imagining it's something about different communication styles relating to conveying information? (something something gaylor theory and TJLC as conspiracy vs a more authoritative but absurd documentary style with pannenkoek vs fanfiction making fans confuse canon with fanon vs reddit memes as some kind of "you're normal for thinking this"?) like that is an absurdly wide range of Things. what is he cooking ‼️

hehehe omg i did not expect to get multiple asks about this! paging @scatteredcloud and @the-rad-paramecium , who also asked about it.

my thesis is about the 2022 "nier church incident" wherein a user on the nier automata subreddit started posting extremely-credible videos claiming he'd found a new secret area in the game that no one had discovered before, and the fanbase went absolutely insane. i argue that the incident provides an interesting window into a possible religious studies framework for looking at video game secret seeking as a quasi-religious act of communal orientation and meaning-making

it's very fun to read your speculations about how all the stuff i mentioned could fit into it! unfortunately, most of that stuff is just mentioned in 1-2 sentences; the meat of the fun stuff is mostly related to nier automata, shadow of the colossus, or The Bible.

but, as requested, here is how all the silly things fit:

i use pannenkoek's video as an example of fans pushing the boundaries of games to create new mysteries that weren't intended by the developers. this is specifically in my section about how/why video game mysteries affect people emotionally!

gaylor theory & the johnlock conspiracy are both examples of (non-game) fanbases doing theorycrafting. fnaf/matpat is an example of video game fandom theorycrafting. all of these get like, a sentence each in the project

"hollow knight fanfiction" is because i use the hk fic "stag beetles and broken legs" as an example of fans writing fanfic based on fanfic (in the section where i talk about canon-building)

"kirby lore controversies" is also from the part where i talk about canon-building. specifically, i have a whole paragraph about how hard it often is to tell what video game "canon" is, and use kirby as an example of that

sorry there's actually only one reddit meme! the other one is a twitter meme. anyway, the reddit meme is this:

finally, random other fact: probably the funniest social media post ive had to cite is this one

like, it's extremely funny to have a bibliography that sometimes looks like this:

(please ignore the weird capitalization idk why zotero does that)

[sasukedivorce]

ok obviously if we look at actual canonical content this is hydrogen bomb vs. coughing baby. johnlock will never have “i’ll bear the burden of your hatred and die with you” johnlock will never have “i know your heart and you mine” etc etc. its no contest (and while i am biased towards naruto i have seen most of sherlock)

but perhaps your argument here is that johnlock is more iconic. it has more fics on ao3 after all. the thing we have to consider is how important naruto is in its niche i.e. yaoi. while johnlock was playing second fiddle to destiel in the white men from mediocre tv in the early-mid 2010s fandom, sasusnaru had LONG been a dominating force in the yaoi scene. it was THE yaoi ship of the 2000’s and 2010’s. all your yuri on ice and my hero academia ships merely exist in the shadow of their progenitor god, sasunaru. johnlock will NEVER have that influence, that impact.

and johnlock may have burned bright for the short time it was in its prime but from what i’ve seen its mostly fizzled out after tjlc. sasunaru is still going (relatively) strong a nearly a decade after the manga’s disastrous ending. sasunaru was here before i was born (they kissed in 1999.) sasunaru will be here after i die. vote sasunaru

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Round 2 Side 2

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

hello! what is tjlc?🥺

Hey Nonny!

It’s The Acronym for “The Johnlock Conspiracy”. Check out this post where I recently answered this question :)

[memoriesofatimetocome]

Watching Sherlock season 3 live when it aired is one of my fondest memories whereas watching season 4 live when it aired is one of my worst and that’s the duality of fandom

[watsonpersonality]

I'm just gonna leave this here

*backs away slowly*

HOLD IT. if “dinner” in sherlock is code for sex (with irene adler always texting sherlock “let’s have dinner” and him replying “I’m not hungry”), then what do we make of sherlock asking john in ASiP: “dinner?” and john replying: “starving.”

[villainanders]

BBC Dracula was. what

I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to explain it but I don’t even know where to start. Basically the argument is that a lot of BBC Dracula’s themes are directly engaging with the idea that the “legend” behind literary figures becomes limiting when it stops you from engaging with these characters as people. (I guess it turns out that a lot of Dracula’s limitations aren’t even real and he’s been blindly following them bc they’re part of his legend. And then at the end he decides to die as a man instead of living as a legend.) Vs the end of Sherlock apparently features a voiceover where Mary directly says that who they are as people doesn’t matter because the legend of Holmes and Watson is the only thing that does. Which I will admit, is a WEIRD contradiction to put side by side like that. So the idea is that BBC Dracula (made by the same show runners) is essentially admitting that they ultimately decided not to go through with Johnlock bc they were afraid of upsetting the Sherlock Holmes legend.

I definitely didn’t hit on the full argument here, the case being made is essentially pulled from the entire retrospective, but I do have to admit that the argument IS very compellingly made. I was really sitting there like “WOW that’s so crazy I can’t believe they did that” before I was like “Wait no that is just crazy. I actually cannot believe they did that.” And that’s the story of how I realized I probably would have been very easily sucked into TJLC if I had been in that fandom at that time

[kajaono]

What TJLC means to me has changed in the last few years. I do not believe anymore that Mofftiss wanted to make Johnlock canon

insetad i believe that they fucked up. And I learned so much more. About queer history. About the representation of queer people in media. About subtext, different ways of storytelling, different camera angles ( male vs. female gaze). I discovered my love for victorian books, got in touch with the Raffles fandom, the granada fandom and the ACD Johnlock fandom and most importantyl found out that I am bisexual.

For me TJLC is all this + my believe that Johnlock deserve each other in every universe. And this why I am still proud to be a part of TJLC

[sauronbo]

How The Final Problem should have ended.

[helplessly-johnlocked]

OMG

I knew about Toms and Mollies but what the heck Mofftiss

OK. WHO THE FUCK ?!?!??!

Who the fuck was going to tell me that “Molly” yes fucking Molly,, is a term used to describe an “effeminate” man that originates back to mid 18th century and early 19th century. What the fuck. I am not lying.

UM. YEAH. THIS PROBABLY ISN’T THAT GROUNDBREAKING, BUT JUDGING FROM SOME POSTS DISCUSSING HOW MOLLY IS A FEMALE JOHN MIRROR (HOW SH/ERLOLLY WOULD BE BASICALLY STRAIGHT JOHNLOCK),,,,,, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH

goodbye going to spontaneously combust now.

someone pls reblog/reply to this, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

[olderthannetfic]

Transformative fandom vs. that other type

darkness-befriended replied to your post “Curious! What about the call the midwife fandom do you dislike?”

@olderthannetfic​ this is an awesome explanation, thank you! I had never heard that term before. So just what people over at BBC Sherlock would call "casual fans"? Not into meta and subtext and fic but mostly into the text as it's presented officially?

Ahahaha.

@darkness-befriended Well... “Casual fans” is extremely judgmental and gatekeeping, and I think terms like ‘curatorial’ try to get away from that sort of value judgment.

(To me, a truly “casual” fan would be someone who tuned in to Sherlock as it aired because nothing else good was on that night. They enjoyed it well enough and then went on their way without ever giving it another thought.)

A “transformative” fan of Sherlock would want to write fanfic about the show, make vids, draw art. They might also like meta, but this wouldn’t be the defining characteristic of their way of being a fan.

This other type of fan might be very, very into meta and subtext because those are about the canon itself. Speculating about what will happen next in canon is a big part of non-fanworks fandom. The difference is that this fan would not be into fic.

Either type could be a delusional johnlock conspiracy tinhat.

From what I saw, “subtext” in a certain part of Sherlock fandom came to mean “Evidence hidden in the wallpaper that Sherlock/John will be canon, and there’s probably a secret last episode!”

Anyone who said “You do realize that’s not how TV production works, right?” was considered a “casual” and to be “denying the subtext” or whatever.

Subtext was assumed to be “The Subtext”, and meta was assumed to be exploring and validating The Subtext, never mind that ‘meta’ (as defined by literally anyone not part of TJLC) could be any analytical essay on thousands of topics unrelated to whether Sherlock and John would ever bone in canon.

The entire TJLC fight went down between different camps of people who liked fanfic--of the same ship even! The vast majority of these fans would have been overjoyed to see canon Holmes/Watson at long last. The difference was whether they believed there was a ~Conspiracy~. Non-fanfic types weren’t even aware of this fight and mostly find it confusing when they encounter it.

‘Subtext’ in normal parlance includes all of the things canon implies, which could certainly include a suggestion that Sherlock is into John or vice versa, but which would also include literally everything else implied rather than stated.

Fans who are curatorial or whathaveyou are into the official text, but that means the actual piece of art the creators made. It doesn’t always mean swallowing every dumb thing they’ve said on a press tour. If nothing else, often an original creator will disagree with the person doing a reboot or spinoff and an actor may disagree with a writer who disagrees with a director who disagrees with a producer. Even if you’re very focused on canon itself, Objective Truth is a bit more complicated than “the text as it’s presented officially”.

Somebody could be writing 40-page essays on film theory and what the lighting in season 3 means to the characters’ psychology and how that clashes with what was said in that interview from last week, but if their conclusion wasn’t “And thus secret future johnlock!”, they’d be a ~filthy casual~ to TJLC proponents.

Words really cannot express how much I despised this fandom movement with its blowhard bullies and their delusions of grandeur.

[one-thousand-splendid-stars]

I finally listened to the podcast.

I’m going to type up my thoughts while they are fresh in my mind. (Disclaimer: I apologize if any quotes are not exactly word for word. I did my best to transcribe without pausing and rewinding.)

So first, I have to say, I appreciated that for once, someone pointed out that we are not the first people to speculate about Holmes and Watson’s relationship and put it in academic writing. It’s nice that we weren’t immediately brushed off as fetishizing fangirls who want to see our favorite actors get it on. I was honestly bracing myself for that kind of treatment, and was glad when she instead talked about the history of the Sherlock Holmes fandom and interpreting the homoerotic subtext. 

Although, I would not have said we “queer’d” the text, as Willa puts it. She says, “Conan Doyle wasn’t trying to create a homosexual subtext when he created the characters, but he did write a deep and committed friendship.” This is a wild speculation of hers that she presented as fact. How on earth can anyone possibly know if the homoeroticism was intentional or not, when ACD could’ve been persecuted for admitting it, or making it more obvious? This is not the only time in the podcast where Willa makes wild speculations or generalizations, which is something that bothered me throughout listening: 

At another point, she led into a discussion on TJLC by generalizing that most of us don't care about how faithful Sherlock is to the original stories.  This is based in what exactly? Yes, many of us are okay with putting new spins on things (not 100% of the time though). But saying we “don’t care” is pretty misleading, considering that a lot of us are really into ACD and non-BBC adaptations. 

I mainly want to comment on how she spoke of the fandom bullying when TJLC was taking off.  I wasn't here in 2014, but I’ve seen many different accounts of what the fandom was like back then from both Johnlockers and non-Johnlockers. In all fairness, it seems like there was some pretty intense bullying going on. I’ve heard crazy stories and seen some jaw-dropping screenshots. Even when I was here, I saw things that just made me go “yikes.”

BUT.

You know who else I’ve seen nasty comments from, as well as tag trolling, threats of doxxing, anon hate, harassment, and general nastiness? Non-tjlcers and non-Johnlockers. Willa completely brushed over this teeny little super important detail, except for a few, easily missable lines. I’m not going to pretend that there was never nasty behavior from TJLC, but I’m also not going to say her description of us was accurate. She presented the TJLC fandom like it was a toxic cult - much like antis often describe us. She talked about fandom bullying as though we were never on the receiving end of it, and weren’t ever ridiculed, or called stupid, or sent anon hate, or harassed. To imply that tjlcers were only dishing it out is just flat out inaccurate. 

So yeah, it did rub me the wrong way when I heard her say that our enthusiasm “unleashed real darkness into the world.” Were some people hurt? Hell yes. Was there bullying coming from both sides of this? Hell yes. So, so, so, so, so, so many people in tjlc were genuinely just staying in their lane, having fun with a fan theory, and being happy. The strong majority of tjlcers never did anything wrong to anyone. I’m sure I’m greatly underestimating here, but let’a guess that there were maybe 5,000 tjlcers (judging by the # of followers I think some BNFs had at the time). If 1% of them were nasty, thats 50 people - more than enough to easily give the fandom a bad reputation. It pisses me off when people don’t realize how loud such a small number of people can be, and project their vicious hatred onto an entire group of people who did nothing wrong, and were simply enjoying their fandom. 

Sure, TJLC hurt some people when things got taken too far. But you know what else it did? It made people happy. It improved some people’s mental health. It helped people make life long friends. It gave people an intellectual hobby. It got people excited. It built a community. It sparked creativity. That’s what TJLC was primarily about. Willa focuses heavily on the negativity and only brushed on this part very briefly. I don’t call that balanced and fair journalism. 

All this other stuff she mentioned? 221b con drama? Toplock vs bottomlock? That’s what she chose to talk about? Really?? Talk about digging up ancient history for no reason. Why on earth spend so much time talking about such pettiness when she could have talked about how this community changed people’s lives. And I know it wasn’t just a matter of not knowing, because she had access to Rebs’s videos, and xe literally did a whole video with people explaining how much this meant to them, and how their worlds were changed. Why not talk about that? 

Why not talk more about the queerbaiting, and the harms it can have on the queer community? Why does queerbaiting matter? This is something many people genuinely don’t know. Why not explain more how Gatiss and Moffat literally admitted they put homoerotic subtext in their show without intending to follow through, instead of jumping right into how angry fans were? Why not discuss the many other examples of queerbaiting in modern fiction, and how were are not the first fans to get duped like this? 

No, instead, we were just fangirls arguing about how fictional characters have sex, screaming at people on the internet, and “unleashing darkness into the world.” But hey, at least Willa feels bad for us because her straight ship didn’t become canon once. 

[inevitably-johnlocked]

what’s tjlc? sorry i’m new to the fandom 😳

Hey Nonny!

No worries!

TJLC was “the Johnlock conspiracy”, where the fandom believed there were clues intentionally added into the series that helped hint at a Johnlock finale. 

Some Posts: 

Johnlock vs. TJLC

 What is A TJLCer? 

What Does TJLC Mean?

Johnlock / TJLC Meta (All the Gay Subtext Masterlist June 24/19)

It eventually got really negative/toxic when people started gatekeeping it. I’m not getting into here, but let’s just say it unnecessarily divided the fandom for a long while.

[marta-bee]

I’ve seen people in, like, fandom studies and non-fannish journalism about fandom divide up fannish engagement along these lines. Analytic vs. creative. Analytic isn’t just themes and literary analysis but scientific, philosophical. How does a transporter work and are you the same person on the other end? Just how did Han Solo make the kessel run in less than twelve parsecs? Was Denethor legally right to deny Aragorn the throne of Gondor? (Been there....) Or whatever. This is usually assumed to be a more male-dominated space and is all about geeking out over the nitty-gritty of the canon. Whereaas creative space are, you know, creative. Fanfic, fanart, fanvid, gif makers, whatever. It’s the difference between Reddit and Tumblr in a lot of ways; not that I know much about Reddit beyond its reputation, and not that TJLC crew here on Tumblr wasn’t dipping more than a big toe into the analytic side of things.

(That last point’s actually quite interesting. I wonder how much of the friction between TJLC and non-TJLC Johnlock fans comes from them doing analytic fanwork in a creative space. Not that they weren’t allowed to be fans in that way, but it may have run up against other folks’ expectations of how fans engaged in that space. But that’s a topic for another day.)

Anyway. To a certain extent... I get it. I’ve been involved in both kinds of spaces a bit, and the way that certain discussions are welcome or not does differ quite a bit. Digging into the nitty-gritty might come off as “harshing other folks’ squee” in one environment, where it’s the whole point and all in good fun in another. The problem really comes in when you say fandom is one or the other. Or even that there’s a hierarchy between the two, that arguing over the canon details on Usenet or late night in college dorms over Doritos and Mountain Dew is somehow more what we mean by fandom than those crazy women writing Kirk/Spock porn and mailing it back and forth in their homeprinted zines.

It just ain’t so. They’re different, maybe, but both are good.

it vexes me terribly when people posit being in a fandom and enjoying a piece of media for its themes as seperate things because like. I get into fandoms in order to talk about what I like in a work's themes? I write analysis and fic in order to further explore a work's themes? I get invested in character dynamics because I think their contrasting arcs and motivations are thematically interesting? like these are the same thing to me, I don't get how they're meant to be incompatible.

[brilliantorinsane]

A Good Man

Before watching BBC Sherlock I had never read ACD, largely because I had somewhere picked up the ridiculous notion that cannon Holmes is cold and unfeeling. When I finally started watching the show, with considerable skepticism, I was certainly intrigued by the storytelling and instantly drawn to John and fascinated by Sherlock. Nevertheless, there seemed reason to fear that it was going to offer exactly what I didn’t want to see: a story about a detective who one is expected to love because he is clever and sexy and abrasive, but who has no real heart to him. That, I knew, was a story I would struggle to invest in. 

But then, John asked why Lestrade let Sherlock hang around. And Lestrade began by admitting that he was desperate for the help; but then he added this:

That was it. That, right there, is the line that sold me on the show. I’ll admit it feels a bit heavy-handed; but it is one of my favorite lines anyway because it gave me permission to love Sherlock in all his faults and in the eager hope that he would develop into the good man he already showed glimpses of becoming. That was the first arc I became invested in, long before I shipped  Johnlock and even before I fully latched onto John and Sherlock’s friendship. So Lestrade’s line in TPF: “He’s better than [a great man]: he’s a good one,” ought to have felt deeply satisfying: the culmination of the story arc that drew me into this series in the first place. But it didn’t. In fact, I saw the line coming a few beats before it was spoken and positively grimaced when it was actually spoken.

There are a lot of reasons the line is so unsatisfying, of course, the primary one being the deeply unsatisfying nature of the whole episode and the flood of cheap, rushed callbacks in the last few minutes. There is also the fact that it is clumsily delivered (in terms of writing, not acting), and that Lestrade wasn’t present for the events of TFP, increasing the sense that the statement didn’t grow organically from this moment of the story. But I think there is also a broader reason this line feels wrong: it is not only misplaced within the episode, but misplaced within the series as a whole. The statement appears either too late or too early in Sherlock’s development: the timing isn’t right.

(Continued below the cut, because this wound up rather longer than expected!)

For the first three seasons, the show plays with our perceptions of Sherlock. Nearly every episode gives us a glimpse of his great heart—only to give an alternate explanation which leaves room to question whether his ‘emotions’ are a cover for his sociopathy or his ‘sociopathy’ is a cover for his emotions. Below I listed what I see as the development of this question throughout the first three seasons, and its eventual answer (or near answer) in HLV:

ASiP: Sherlock is a detective who saves the innocent and brings the guilty to justice—but he supposedly does it only as a cure for boredom and cares nothing for the lives involved.

TBB: I don’t think there are any major instances here; it’s more a continual juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory behaviors: giving John his card but then shutting him out (literally and figuratively); his rudeness to Sarah vs his gentleness when he saves her, etc.

TGG: This is one of the episodes in which the existence of Sherlock’s heart (in terms of his ability to care in general, not romantically yet) is put under heavy scrutiny, culminating in his obvious distress over the death of the old women, which next moment is said to be merely his frustration over having lost the game and to have nothing to do with any emotions about the lives lost. However, TGG does end with explicit and unrefuted confirmation of Sherlock’s heart at the pool scene. After this moment one can no longer deny that he has some heart; but there are plenty of questions left unanswered (at least on a textual level). Apparently he is capable of caring; but is he capable of romantic love? (Not that he would be some sort of unfeeling monster if he wasn’t, obviously. But it is a question the show is clearly interested in interrogating) Does he care more about his friends or his work? Would he be sacrifice himself for his friends, as John proved willing to sacrifice for Sherlock in TGG? These, in that order, are the questions interrogated in season 2—interrogated, but left unresolved.

ASiB: (for a casual viewer) Sherlock seems to be showing romantic interest in Irene, possibly even to be heartbroken over her ‘death.’ But then comes the final deduction, and it’s apparent that he was frighteningly cold and detached to the entire time—to an extent that might almost make one question TGG’s refutation of sociopathy. Then the second turn—he saves Irene, even keeps her phone as a memento! But what does that mean?? Simply that, as TGG demonstrated, he is capable of caring about those in distress? Or that he did have romantic feelings for Irene and his detachment during the deduction scene was a façade?

THoB: After pushing John away under the influence of the drug, Sherlock has what appears to be a deeply heartfelt apology scene with John—it is clear that this friendship means a great deal to him, and he is willing to work to maintain it. He even makes John coffee as a further apology! Until . . . it turns out that, directly on the heels of the ‘beautiful proof of his affection,’ he is attempting to drug said object of affection without John’s knowledge, knowing John has PTSD, and having recently been completely unhinged by the drug himself. Although his compassionate treatment of Henry at the end, together with “going to see a man about a dog,” acts as reassurance that he is not utterly devoid of ‘sentiment,’ the sequence leaves a bad taste in the mouth. If Sherlock is willing to subject John to such an experience purely for the sake of casework, just when their friendship is on more tenuous ground than normal, how much does he really value that friendship? Does the work still mean more to him than his best friend? 

TRF: Here is the answer, right? Now we get our final proof! Yes, the episode flirts with the possibility of Sherlock’s emotional detachment in the way he cuts John off again; in the Richard Brook ‘reveal’; and in his indifference to Mrs. Hudson’s supposed death; but in the end all is revealed: all of that was done to protect John and those he loves. He will sacrifice everything for them: his comfort, his city, his work. And while he survived somehow, one feels certain that he would have sacrificed his life as well if there hadn’t been another way. They episode even hints at a confirmation that he does experience romantic love—that sure looked like a love confession to Molly. To top it off, the episode is concluded with a declaration of the fulfillment of Lestrade’s hopes when John declares Sherlock to be “the best and wisest man that I have ever met.” And so,  for two long years during the hiatus following TRF, the audience was left without a doubt of Sherlock Holmes’s great heart. Then . . . TEH happened.

TEH: I don’t know how the TJLC fandom reacted to TEH as I wasn’t around at the time; but as a casual viewer I found it deeply frustrating. Watching it felt like seeing all of that heart I was certain had been revealed in TRF systematically dismantled—or at least called into question. Yes, there was evidence that Sherlock wanted John around, and Sherlock diving into the fire for John was a relieving oasis of confirmation that yes, he cares. But everything else . . . First Sherlock claims to expect that John’s life was simply put on hold while he was away, as if John has no agency or being apart from him. Then, in contrast to all the fulfilling explanations I could have thought up for Sherlock not telling John about his ‘death,’ he pulls out the remarkably unsatisfying: “I didn’t tell you you might not have seemed sad enough; even though I wasn’t concerned about the 30 other people I told, including my parents who most people would expect to grieve most heavily and yet who didn’t even bother to show up at the funeral”! And then there is the explanation of the fall given to Anderson, in which Sherlock claims that the fall was meticulously planned out months in advance, long before the snipers came into play, and John was simply never informed because, you know, apparently it would be more convenient not to have him tagging along, and if John was told ahead of time he might complicate the Holmes brothers’ grand scheme by not crying enough. Nah, better to let him live in terror for a while and then let him grieve for two years. And THEN, as if to rub salt into the wound, the scenario repeats in miniature in the train car—for a moment it looks as if Sherlock is panicking at the prospect that he might have led John to his death and is desperate for John’s forgiveness; next moment it turns out that some if not all of it was another ruse whereby Sherlock allowed John to suffer terror and loss just to get him to say some nice words. This scene also ensures that the audience is forced to doubt the validity of John’s “best and wisest man speech” by having him repeat it just before Sherlock starts looking—yet again—as if he might be a sociopath after all. Of course, as usual all of this could be seen two ways: Sherlock might not be telling the whole truth about why he didn't told John he was alive; we are explicitly told to question Sherlock’s narration of the fall; the train car could have been Sherlock genuinely panicking for John’s safety then later taking advantage of the heightened emotion because he is desperate for John’s forgiveness and doesn’t know how to procure it (which is still a dick move; but a whole lot better than the alternative interpretation). To some extent I saw that possibility, and I never really believed for a moment that Sherlock might actually be heartless. Nevertheless, I sat there stunned at how they had somehow managed to make Sherlock’s grand sacrifice look like it could be the action of a high-functioning sociopath obsessed with grand puzzles, heedless of the damage he leaves in his wake, caring nothing about John’s well-being and simply wanting an adoring puppy to follow him around tossing out compliments (but only when convenient—when inconvenient he can be kicked to the wayside, to be swept back up at Sherlock’s leisure). As little as I believed that narrative, at the time I couldn’t see my way out of at least some deeply disappointed conclusions. It galled me. And it left anyone who prefers to see Sherlock as an unfeeling machine with plenty of material.

TSoT: After TEH, this was a delightful relief. Sherlock’s motives surrounding the fall were still unclear; but at least clearly regretted it. He was obviously pouring himself into making this as good as possible for John, and mourning the loss of his friend he had made mistakes, and his past decisions still weren’t sitting right with me; but just look at how he adores John Watson! Yet even this revelation is temporarily interrogated yet again in the first half of HLV: first Sherlock hasn’t been in contact with John for a month; and supposedly it has nothing to do with his spiraling emotionally after losing John—it’s all for a case! And then there is Janine, and his callous treatment of her makes one wonder whether he has learned anything about caring about the needs of others when it isn’t convenient for “the Work” after all; and now all of a sudden he seems to have had a hidden agenda even at John’s wedding!! And there I was again, terribly frustrated; because I wouldn’t complain about Sherlock having faults (which he clearly has in abundance) but why did the show have to propose a heartless alternative explanation for every major caring or selfless action Sherlock ever commits??? And then . . . 

HLV: Finally, finally, FINALLY: the second half of HLV. From the moment Sherlock runs to Redbeard in his mind palace to the instant in which he shoots Magnusson—the moment in which he sacrifices his life and his work openly and unambiguously, with no possibility of ulterior motive, for the man he has come to love so deeply—there is no more debate. That which fans deduced and many casuals believed long ago has been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt: Sherlock’s ‘sociopathy’ has never been anything but a protective cover for that great heart—albeit a cover that was beginning to resemble the truth through Sherlock’s concerted effort before John brought all his desperate work crashing down. And if Lestrade had been privy to this moment and declared Sherlock to be a good man now, in this moment when Sherlock finally granted his heart open and unambiguous conquest over his cold mask—well, it might still have felt a bit on the nose, but the timing would have felt right.

But . . . at the end of TFP? That doesn’t seem right at all. It’s not (thank goodness) that they yet again call Sherlock’s heart into question during TAB and s4—sure he is still an insufferable a great deal of the time, but his prioritization of those he loves over his work and his willingness to sacrifice himself for them is reiterated over and over. The thing is, on a textual level, his character development doesn’t go beyond reiteration. In terms of quantity, s4 might increase our perspective of the depth of deep his loyalty and love—although even TLD, it seems to me, demonstrates this more fully than TFP—but (again, on a purely textual level) in terms of quality he has made no forward progress beyond mere continuation. So when Lestrade drops the “good man” line that is supposed to bring the series full circle, we are left asking: why now? In what way did TFP complete Sherlock’s growth that HLV did not? That line could have been thrown in anywhere post-HLV and it would have fit equally well (or equally badly). The end of HLV would have been a far better place for the line. Yes, it would have been better . . . but perhaps not the best.

After all, as we all know there is one more question about Sherlock’s heart that it yet to be answered; a question that, for all Mofftiss’ protests, has been relentlessly harped on in a way impossible to miss even from a purely textual, heteronormative perspective; interrogated in ASiP, ASiB, TAB, TLD, and endless smaller moments in between: the question of whether Sherlock feels romantic love.

Let me reiterate again: I do not equate being a complete and good human being with being in a romantic relationship or with experiencing sexual or romantic attraction. However, IF Sherlock does experience romantic attraction, and IF he is in love with a certain John H Watson, then for him specifically the journey from great man to good man is not yet completed in its fullness. Because if Sherlock is hiding away that love, his development is not fulfilled by being willing to die for John; he must find the courage to disclose himself fully to the man he loves, and he must learn not to die, but to live with him and for him, in a far deeper mutuality, not the relationship of savior/damsel in distress that Sherlock—by loving but refusing to be loved—has perpetuated.

I’ll end this ridiculously long post with one final observation: Sherlock has been called a good man three times now—twice by John and once by Lestrade (or three times by John if you subscribe to TFP is John’s TAB theory). But as we have relentlessly reminded each other over these last two months, “people always give up after three,” and I like to think Sherlock’s goodness will be declared one last time. And while the declaration was not false in the first three instances, this time the fullness of its truth will have come to pass, and the timing will finally be right.

[teaandforeshadowing]

TJLC SURVEY 24-HOUR UPDATE

Captions explain how many responses there were for each question. You can right click and view in another tab for a closer look than the stinky tumblr view.

After 24 hours (2/5/17 3:22pm EST), we got a total of 2606 responses! Thank you so much to those of you who answered right away! If you haven’t taken the poll yet, don’t worry, it’s still open!

That being said, it’s a lot of data to go through alone, so in 4 hours I was only able to generate these 7 charts. I am working on putting together some box/whisker plots for the quantitative data, but here’s a rundown of the averages:

The average TJLCer is 21.38 years old.

The average TJLCer has been a fan of Sherlock Holmes for 6.49 years.

The average TJLCer has been a fan of BBC Sherlock for 3.83 years.

The average TJLCer has been a part of TJLC for 1.75 years.

The average rating for TJLC is 8.35/10.

I interpreted a lot of the responses I got for the pie chart data in my own way, omitting a lot of varied responses that didn’t fit into a category, and or were a slight variation on a category - I apologize to those minorities I had to shoe-horn into other identities for the sake of simplicity.

For Pronouns, 327 people indicated that they identified with more than one, so there is some overlap in the chart. Here are the responses I got that I organised into the “Other” category:

Ey/em Ne/nem/nir Xe/xer Xe/xem x6 Ve/vir x2 Ve/vim/vis Xe/xer x3 Xe/xyr Ze/zem

For Gender, I got a lot of responses for identities that I did not originally include as categories, so I decided to give them their own categories! No overlaps there, but any answers I got similar to “female” or “im a girl” were omitted since I could not determine cis/trans.

For Sexuality, 158 people indicated that they identified with more than one, so there is some overlap in the chart. I had to do a lot of interpreting with this, so if you said something like “straight-ish”, I put you under “Straight” and “Questioning”. As stated in the poll, prefixes are indicative of both sexual and romantic orientations. A lot of people answered with “demisexual/romantic”, which I included under Ace-spec.

I got a lot of varied data for how long people have been fans, so I converted all the data in terms of years: 11 months, 12 months, 1/13 months all got rounded to the nearest whole year; 2 months, 3 months, and 4 months got rounded to X.25 years; 5 months, 6 months, and 7 months got rounded to X.5 years; 8 months, 9 months, and 10 months got rounded to X.75 years. All data that was less than 1 month (aka all the TJLC newbies) were included in the “0.25 years” category. I also got a lot of responses saying “X+ years”, so I rounded down and specified in the charts that all values are at least X years. I omitted all responses for BBC Sherlock that were more than 7 years, and for everyone who answered more than 3 years for TJLC were included in the “longer” category (they would have otherwise been omitted as well).

There is a LOT of data to go through, so if you would like to see a specific correlation, please let me know! (ex. Fave episode vs. Rating, or Age vs. Fave Holmes) In order to not waste literally my entire life on this, I will only generate charts and release data for what you ask me for - so if you want it, ask for it! The survey will remain open for as long as we need it to be, so if you’re still asking for charts and data 3 months from now, so be it!

Please let me know if you have any questions concerning the data, I should be able to have all the raw data sorted out for public viewing by the end of the month! 

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