Im glad theyve stayed so close to the source material. My fave book was when the squad got locked up in shitty high tech azakaban by a cross between fucking ebony darkness dementia ravenway and jigsaw
I don’t want to get involved in the drama but I just want to say that there were So Many Issues with s4 and 99% of them have nothing to do with johnlock, so please don’t reduce the entire argument to that just because you don’t ship it.
People have legitimate, reasonable issues with this series that merit discussion and to throw the “you just wanted them to be together” argument in our faces is to ignore all of that in favour of blind faith in the show.
One big reason why complaints by Johnlockers get reduced to their ship is because in all of their complaints about this season, not one of them is about the treatment of the women on the show. In my opinion, it delegitimizes your argument if you’ll complain about everything from Mycroft’s personality changes to the throwaway use of the Garrideb brothers but don’t mention anything about
Mary being killed for genuinely no reason other than to create tension between Sherlock and John
Not actually showing the grief over her death for anyone other than Sherlock and John (I know at the end of the day this show is about these two men but this was a great opportunity to show them that the world they live in doesn’t actually revolve around them by showing the grief of Molly Hooper or Mrs. Hudson.)
Having Mary, never once, mention her child in those stupid fucking DVDs. Everything about her character post-death was to bring Sherlock and John back to being bffs.
What was the point of having Rosie exist at all? Just to make Mary’s death sadder? John barely spent any time with that child and there wasn’t even the casual explanation of “It’s just too hard to look at her. I keep seeing Mary and remembering that I failed her….” blah blah blah psychology and grief.
Molly. Fucking. Hooper. Has done literally everything in the world for both Sherlock and John. Helped save Sherlock’s life. Has been there for him through multiple relapses where he puts his life (again, of the man she canonically loves) at stake for a game/case/experiment. But she’s always there. For John she’s also become a close enough friend to warrant being a godmother to his daughter, and probably is the one to babysit her the most while John does his brooding. And what is she reduced to? A very painful and humiliating scene that was almost a lot worse. Then utterly dismissive and outright shitty comments by Moffat about the emotional impact that scene had on that character.
There was no bridge between the ILY scene and the end of TFP when she prances into 221B, beaming?????
Mummy Holmes was in like two scenes and less than three lines to express the loss, confusion, anger, heartbreak, and betrayal over what happened with Eurus. It was most definitely not enough.
Two of the three villains this season were women.
No Sally. No Anthea. No Irene.
Just Mary (fridged) Molly (devastated) and Mrs. Hudson (practically a walking joke)
Frankly, if the complaints are longer than three paragraphs and don’t include even a mention about Mary or Molly, I straight up won’t read it. Because I feel like that was a major problem in s4. Not the biggest, by any stretch of the imagination, but they absolutely deserve to be acknowledged amongst the complaints.
I appreciate your point @mydarlingsarah (it won’t let me tag you, sry), but these are things that get discussed and complained about in the Johnlock fandom. These things have to be acknowledged, because this season was so misogynistic and still there are people telling me I should “stop whining about two fictional character not making out on screen”. Of course I’m dissapointed because I have been queerbaited, but what I find far more distressing is the answer of some people to my valid critique. As if we should accept everything TPTB do and support them no matter what just because we are in a fandom. There has to be critique! So I agree with all of your points of the horrible treatment of women in the show except for one: that we Johnlockers would get reduced to our ship because we wouldn’t voice that criticism. Many beside me did. And all too often there are responses we should stop whining. Sometimes remarks that we should accept that Sherl0lly is canon…? And while I accept other ships (I 100% think Sherlock is portrayed as a gay man, but they left it ambiguous, so think what you wanna think) I am shocked by the way a few Sherl0lly shippers ignore the bad treatment of Molly just to see their ship as canon. Don’t get me started on how the Mary’s story arc was reduced to… whatever the hell that was. I have voiced serious complaints about s4 besides the queerbaiting: – The horrible misogyny. My points were mostly about Mary and Molly but your arguments are very good. – The way they portrayed the violent outburst of John towards Sherlock. It was accepted because of Sherlock’s behaviour and never resolved. It showed that you should accept violence if you think you deserve it and that is such a horribly wrong and destructive message. Actually this was shown again by Sherlock forgiving Eurus. You do not have to accept and forgive the violence that was directed towards you to be conaidered “a good man”. It just made me sick. – The fact that they had explicitely queer villains without explicitely queer heros to balance it out. If just the bad people in your story are queer (oh btw, they actually connetcted Eurus’ queerness to rape.. nice touch) the message you send is pretty clear. – The way they portrayed mentall illness. Just what exactly did they want to show through Eurus? I don’t understand her character the slightest… what illness should she have to get mental superpowers? Why would she get imprisoned like a mad women in the victorian era? Sure, show mentally ill people as something dangerous and inhuman, what could possibly go wrong?
And still the only answer the BBC complaints team sent was about queerbaiting. It was terribly disrespectful. And still I see people being smug about this. And still I see people saying that the ones complaining are embarassing. That they’d put shame on fandom.
This is not a problem of Johnlockers not reacting to the misogyny. This is a problem of people reducing the criticism of Johnlockers to their dissapointment of being queerbaited.
so here’s the thing. sometime in 30, maybe 40 years, there will be a wildly successful sherlock holmes adaptation in which sherlock and john are gay/bi and in a relationship. it won’t be the first one that does it – they’ll have been queer in every adapatation for decades, to the point where people in their teens and twenties don’t even realise there was a time when they weren’t.
so this show, it will be successful, and it will have a huge fandom, and its fans will start looking into the original stories and into previous adaptations. of course they’ll watch the more recent ones
first, which they probably watched as kids. and they’ll read the acd stories and discuss the homophobia at the time and oscar wilde and all the things we’re talking about, but there will probably be widespread consensus by then that acd always intended them to be read as lovers.
so when they’re done with their weekly watchalongs of the more recent sherlock holmes adaptations, they’ll turn to the classics. they’ll watch granada first, because its fame will have endured, and they’ll see jeremy brett and david burke/edward hardwicke making eyes at each other and smiling and standing just a tad too close and, like us, they’ll see that they intended to play them as lovers, husbands. then they’ll watch rathbone, perhaps, though they’ve been warned of the characterisations. and then they’ll start digging out some of the more obscure things. someone will find howard holmes, and they’ll watch that marvellous domesticity in black and white, they’ll find livanov and solomin and be delighted at the touchy-feely russian husbands, and maybe if they’re really scraping the barrel they’ll watch the dinosaur thing or young sherlock holmes or the endlessly distressing seven percent solution.
and then one day someone will come into the chat or whatever their equivalent will be with this rare thing they’ve unearthed, this hartswood adaptation, some thing the bbc commissioned in the early 2000s, and they’ll be super excited because hey, that’s relatively recent as these things go, “how come we haven’t heard of it? and weren’t these actors pretty big names in their day?
my nan has a picture of martin freeman in her kitchen.”
and a few of you who are young now will be there, fandom elders by then, and like with rathbone, you’ll warn them: it’s het. it’s weird. it’s…. but they won’t listen. “how bad can it be? we made it through the dinosaur one and the veggie tales cartoon, how much worse can this really be?” they’ll say. and they’ll start watching, and like with howard and granada, they’ll be delighted. “look at those glances! those touches! that standing just a tad too close! totally married! we’ve found a treasure here, the first explicitly gay adaptation! i can’t believe we’ve never heard of this before!”
and then they’ll get to series 4. and then they’ll realise that was it. that was the end. and they’ll be shocked, and confused. “but i thought the 2010s were more progressive than this? didn’t they have gay marriage and quite a few out trans and gay politicians?” and you will sigh, and you will tell them what it was like, living through this. and you’ll dig out a link to the wikipedia site for an archaic term that they’ve never heard of: “queerbaiting”. and they’ll read it in horror and maybe write a paper about this reprehensible practice for their social studies or media course. and as some of the worst and most recent perpetrators of this awful thing, they’ll name mark gahtiss and stephen moffatt.
because that’s how they will be remembered. as ignominious footnotes or not at all.
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