Do you ever think about how painful the Molly=John mirroring is during TFP phone call:
Sherlock, his hand forced, having to phone and ask John to do something for him, without revealing the threat to him:“I just want you to do something very easy for me and not ask why.”/ “Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please, will you do this for me?”
But then it turns out the threat is completely set-up, designed to tear the both of them apart:“Oh, do be sensible. […] Why would I be so clumsy?”
The sniper would never have fired at John in TRF. Sherlock only had to think the threat to John’s life was real. The real goal was to drive John and Sherlock apart, burn the heart out of both of them.
And Sherlock can’t stand to think that those two years were for nothing:
“I won. I saved John Watson.”
“You didn’t win, you lost. Look what you did to him, look what you did to yourself. All those complicated little emotions, I lost count.”
And some people still don’t understand why he destroys the coffin.
In Twilight, Bella has absolutely no qualities that make her interesting as a character. She’s shown to have very little personality, in the books or onscreen, and is only made “interesting” (a relative term here) via the inclusion of her sparkly, abusive boyfriend. It feeds into the harmful mentality of adolescent girls that you need a significant other in order to find fulfillment, particularly if he’s significantly older and likes to watch you sleep. Yikes.
Examples:
Bella is welcomed to school by a friendly, extroverted girl and given a place to sit amongst her and her friends. Despite this girl’s kindness, Bella shrugs her off as a stereotypical shallow cheerleader, and spends her time staring wistfully at the guy across the cafeteria from them. Once Edward becomes her official boyfriend, she immediately loses interest in her new friends as her life shifts its orbit to revolve completely around him.
How to avoid her:
Female characters are allowed to have lives outside of their significant others. They’re allowed to have friends, quirks, hobbies, and interests. Give them some.
The best fictional relationships are based off of characters who compliment each other, not one character who revolves around the other. Make sure your female character’s life does not centralize around her significant other.
Strong female characters don’t look down on other girls, even if they are outgoing cheerleaders. Being pasty and introverted doesn’t make you a better person, y’all – if it did, I’d be a decorated hero by now.
Give them aspirations besides getting an obsessive, much-older boyfriend. In fact, don’t give them an obsessive, much-older boyfriend at all – if you do want them to have a significant other, give them one who cares about their interests and accepts that they have lives and goals outside of them.
2. The Molly Hooper (i.e. the starry-eyed punching bag)
Who she is:
Like most things about BBC’s Sherlock, Molly was an amazing concept that went progressively downhill. I used to love her quiet tenacity and emotional intelligence, and was sure that with her strong basis as a character, she would overcome her infatuation with the titular Sherlock and find self-fulfillment. Nope!
Examples:
She remained stubbornly infatuated over the course of five years with an ambiguously gay man who, en large, treated her badly, leading to her public humiliation with zero pertinence to the plot or resolution. Moreover, her infatuation with Sherlock quickly usurped almost all of her other characteristics, leading her to an increasingly immature characterization that was difficult to relate to.
How to avoid her:
By all means, please write female characters who are quiet, kind, and unassuming (a female character does not, contrary to popular belief, need to be rambunctious, callous, or violent to be “strong”) but remember than none of these traits need to make the character a pushover. Let them stand their ground.
Similarly, attraction to men (or anyone, for that matter) does not invalidate a female character’s strength. Just be sure she values herself more than their attention.
As I said earlier, don’t be afraid to make characters who are gentle and soft-spoken, but be wary of making them “childlike,” or giving them an infantile, emotionally characterization.
My best advice for writing gentle, soft-spoken, unassuming women would actually to look to male characters in the media fitting this description; since male characters are rarely infantilized as much as women are by popular media, you’ll get a much better idea of what a well-rounded character looks like.
3. The Irene Adler (i.e. the defanged badass)
Who she is:
Yup, another one of the BBC Sherlock women, among whom only Mrs. Hudson seemed to come through with her dignity and characterization intact. In the books, Irene and Sherlock have absolutely zero romantic connotations, only bonded via Sherlock’s irritation and respect with her substantial intelligence. In the show, it’s a different story entirely.
Examples:
Irene is a badass character who’s turned into a teary-eyed Damsel in Distress via her uncontrollable love for the show’s male lead. It doesn’t help matters that she’s a self-proclaimed lesbian who falls in love with a man, which, unless you’re a woman who loves women yourself and writing about a character realizing she’s bi/pansexual, I would recommend against doing under any circumstances. She ends up being defeated and subsequently rescued by Sherlock – a far cry from her defeat of him in the books.
How to avoid her:
If you’re writing a badass female character, allowher to actually be badass, and allow her to actually show it throughout your work as opposed to just hearing other characters say it. And one punch or kick isn’t enough, either: I want to see this chick jump out of planes.
That said, “badass” does not equal emotionally callous. It doesn’t bother me that Moffat showed Irene having feelings for someone else, what bothers me is how he went about it.
When writing a character who’s shown to be attracted to more than one gender, just say she’s bisexual. Pansexual. Whatever, just don’t call her straight/gay depending on the situation she’s in. Jesus.
4. The Becky (i.e. the comedic rapist)
Who she is:
Most people who know me can vouch for my adoration of Supernatural, but it definitely has its problems: it’s not as diverse as it could be, its treatment of women is subpar, and yes, there is some thinly veiled sexual violence: all three of its leading characters have dealt with it at one point of another (Dean is routinely groped by female demons, a virginal Castiel was sexually taken advantage of by a disguised reaper, and the whole concept of sex under demonic possession is iffy to say the least.) It’s rarely ever addressed afterwards, and is commonly used for comedic fodder. Possibly the most quintessential example of this is Becky.
Examples:
Becky abducts Sam, ties him to the bed, and kisses him against his will. She then drugs him, albeit with a love potion, and is implied to have had sex with him under its influence.
How to avoid her:
Male rape isn’t funny, y’all. Media still takes rape against women a lot more seriously than rape against men, particularly female-on-male rape, and I can assure you its not.
Educate yourself on statistics for male sexual assault: approximately thirty-eight percent of sexual violence survivors are male, for example, and approximately one in sixteen male college students has reported to have experienced sexual assault.
Moreover, be aware that forty-six percent of all instances of male rape have a female perpetrator.
In other words, treat themes of sexual assault against men as seriously as you would treat themes of sexual assault against women.
5. The Movie Hermione (i.e. the flawless superhuman)
Who she is:
Okay, in and of herself, Movie Hermione is amazing: she’s beautiful, intelligent, and heroic, as well as possibly the most useful character of the franchise. She only bothers me in context of the fact that she takes away everything I loved most about Book Hermoine, and everything I loved about Book Ron, too.
Examples:
Book Hermione was beautiful, but not conventionally: she had big, poofy curls, big teeth, and didn’t put a lot of effort into maintaining her appearance. Movie Hermione looks effortlessly flawless, all the time. Book Hermione was intelligent, but also loud, abrasive, and unintentionally annoying when talking about her interests (which meant a lot to me, because as a kid on the Asperger’s spectrum, I frequently was/am that way myself – it was nice to see a character struggling with the same traits). She was also allowed to have flaws, such as struggling to keep up with academia, and being terrified of failure.
Movie Hermione also took all of Ron’s redeeming qualities, and everything that made him compliment her as a couple: his street smarts used to compliment her academic intelligence, for example, staying calm while she panicked in the Philosopher’s Stone when they were being overcome with vines. He also stood up for her in the books against Snape, as opposed to the jerkish “he’s right, you know.”
How to avoid her:
Allow your female characters to have flaws, as much so as any well-rounded male character. Just be sure to counterbalance them with a suitable amount of redeeming qualities. This will make your female character well-rounded, dynamic, and easy to get invested in.
There’s no reason for your female characters to always look perfect. Sure, they can be stunningly gorgeous (particularly if their appearance is important to them), but it’s physical imperfections that make characters fun to imagine: Harry’s scar and wild hair, for example. Female characters are no different.
If you’re writing a female character to have an eventual love interest, allow their personalities to compliment one another. Allow the love interest to have qualities that the female character is lacking, so that they can compliment one another and have better chemistry.
Basically, write your female characters as people.
God willing, I will be publishing essays like this approximately every Friday, so be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!
Have you ever thought about how terrifying Molly Hooper actually is?
The girl’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy and pathology that makes Sherlock jealous, regularly processes murder victims as part of her routine job, is closely acquainted with police investigative procedure and when she helped Sherlock fake his death she played her part so convincingly that Scotland Yard was completely fooled.
If she wanted, she could easily be the deadliest character on this show. Your ass is just lucky she prefers kittens and fluffy sweaters to recreational murder.
So let’s put on our magnifying glasses and see what’s wrong with this post:
“what is this crap about Molly being a weak character” (I don’t know, perhaps because she’s pining over a man that keeps treating her like shit and instead of growing a pair and moving on to live her life as an “independent woman” who cares fuck all and is happy, she hangs on to him and hopes he’ll change his mind. Unrequited love is the worst and makes its victims abso-fucking-lutely miserable.)
“Sherlock needs her for everything” (Okay, this isn’t a fair quote, since OP isn’t being really specific in how the times Sherlock has *needed* her. She shouldn’t be letting him examine bodies when he’s not allowed to, but she’s Molly Hooper and she can’t turn her crush down. Sherlock manipulates her into believing he “likes” her but offering her compliments to get ahead and get what he wants. And the Christmas scene was brutal. Damn right that boy apologized. And in The Empty Hearse, John wasn’t around, and even when he asked Molly to help him solve crimes, who was he thinking of in the middle of a crime scene? Who was he hearing in his head?)
“Molly doesn’t need him at all” (Then why does she keep hanging on him? If she didn’t *need* him, why hasn’t she gotten over him?)
“She doesn’t pine for him and or wait for him to love her back” (…….. Oh god, I had to bury my face in my hands reading that. She doesn’t pine? Correct me if I’m wrong, but when did we start talking about another woman? Oh, we’re still talking about Molly? Oh hon. Of course she pines for him.)
“Sherlock is just in her blood” (You just contradicted your last statement. You say that she doesn’t pine, but here you say that Sherlock is in her blood. I’m going to brush aside my sarcastic response of how this sometimes means you’re related to the other person and tell you that it also means that when you’re obsessed with someone and want to adopt all their habits and think of them constantly because you feel you are connected – hell you are fucking pining. You’re like Heather Locklear pining.)
“She doesn’t become bitter about it” (See morgue scene in The Abominable Bride.)
“Both Sherlock and John rely on her for everything” (*wiping away tears from laughing*) Since I already covered the “Sherlock needs” part, I’m going to cover the John part. Molly doesn’t give a shit about John. She forgets who he is in The Great Game, probably to just get under his skin. They’ve never talked. John is never alone with Molly unless someone else is in the room. And we all know how much you Sherl0llies hate John – one of you even threw out a suggested URL title called “thewrongwatsondied”) – so I don’t know, sweetheart, don’t try to cover your own tracks by suddenly including John in your apparent heart-filled speech. It must have taken you quite the effort to write his name in your post.)
“She is a strong, independent woman and that’s final.” (And yet, there she is in her kitchen in The Final Problem, unhappy, what – 39, 40 years old, probably bemoaning her sad fridge, and yet she gives in when her crush calls her and demands that she say I Love You. It’s for a case, but she says it anyway. I’m going to say this as gently and carefully as I can: Molly is weak and she needs to buck up. Instead of moving on with her life, splurging on a vacation, meeting some new people and maybe a new lover, and practically glowing with happiness – she’s eating a pathetic snack and still in love with someone who, for the past 7 years, never returned her affections. Does that sound like a strong, independent woman to you? Do you even know what a strong, independent woman looks like? Or sounds like?)
Wonderfully stated. Molly is the embodiment of the pining woman, and while I rooted for her in S1-3, in S4 she’s just ridiculous and pathetic. One more reason why I pretend S4 never happened.
I agree but I don’t blame Molly herself as she’s a fictional character. This shit is all mofftiss. They probably think it’s totally normal for a 40 year old woman to spend her time forlornly cutting lemons while pining over a man who doesn’t return her affections. Yeah. It’s not. It’s gross and pathetic and Molly is better than that.
Don’t forget Moffat thinks women are to quote–needy husband hunters. Also, why is the OP so large? I’ll still think it’s rubbish, however big it is. Sorry.
Molly is as pathetic in her pining for Sherlock as Sherlock is in his for John. Molly should have gotten over Sherlock when he told her her breasts and mouth were too small in ASiB. Sherlock should’ve gotten over John that night at the restaurant in TEH. Would’ve saved him a lot of misery if he’d told the ungrateful jerk to fuck off for good.
If I wanted to be charitable, I’d say Mofftiss wanted to show how unrequited love and one-sided friendships make people unhappy. Without the syrupy ending of TFP, it could even be true.
I think it’s interesting that Molly becomes John’s default childcare, along with Mrs. Hudson.
Why?
When were they ever such good friends??
And John’s able to use Molly to hurt Sherlock by giving him his note and extremely hurtful message– “Anyone but you.”
Meanwhile, Molly is still pining for Sherlock. Really unhealthy model for women.
Mary could have been used to show that your entire purpose in life doesn’t have to be to settle down, find yourself a good man, get married, and have his child. She did not have to desperately crave a normal life.
Molly could have been used to show a woman who fell in love with a man who didn’t love her back, who pined, and then simply got tired of consistently being used and degraded and properly moved on. She did not need to constantly chase after a man who was in no way good for her.
Irene could have been used to show a woman and a man simply enjoying each other’s company – no sex, no romance – simply two people matching wits and smirking about it and just enjoying the game. She did not need to be the unavailable sex object – I mean, lesbian – that eventually gets seduced by the right man.
It’s not really a point of emotional investment to me, but it struck me that for all the fan criticism about Molly’s apparent lack of resolution in TFP, the fact is that the show never really showed her moving on. Note, I’m only interested in this from the perspective of characterization continuity; I have no personal interests at play with Molly or her infatuation. If pressed, I’d say I relate to the pining but don’t actually feel that she’s had enough character development for me to be invested. As Ivy wrote recently, there’s only so much you can expect from minor characters in a show focused on the main protagonist and his… significant other, and Molly’s definitely a minor character who did not have an arc. Then again, even John didn’t have an arc, as I’ve said. However, regardless of your *opinion* of Molly still not being over Sherlock, there was actually little enough reason to think she was. That is an example of reading into things and ‘confirmation bias’, much like the divergent interpretations of Mary after HLV, like I referred to earlier.
Basically, I think there’s a fundamental difference between character *continuity* and character *development*. Molly (and every other minor character) has had continuity without development, except (arguably) for Mary, who seems to have some development in TST without the benefit of retaining full character continuity. John and Sherlock are the only two characters on the show who *definitely* show both continuity and development. A lot of people mistake one for the other or assume they always go together. They do not. In fact, there’s also a third level of growth and that’s a development *arc*, which only Sherlock himself has had on the show.
To sum up, we had this set of ‘new and different’ responses from Molly in Series 3:
Molly was quite willing to be Sherlock’s ‘John substitute’ in TEH, and even dressed and tried to take notes like him for Sherlock, but it didn’t really work out. When she realized it wasn’t working and Sherlock kept calling her John, she begged off from dinner and mentioned having a fiance.
She’s still willing to help Sherlock no matter what, even when it comes to weirder and/or less romantic things than helping on cases, like helping with Sherlock’s Stag Night preparations for his best friend. This is a bit of a subjective thing, ‘cause I suppose helping Sherlock with John could be used as proof of a lack of jealousy. She made a face when she saw the Vitruvian Man page of Sherlock’s little John binder, so maybe she also realized he’s gay (but this doesn’t mean she’d now have to get over him, ’cause that’s just a different reason for him to be unavailable as always). Still, Molly had never previously implied Sherlock was gay or into John romantically. Sure, she said he looks ‘sad’ when John can’t see him, but that’s not necessarily romantic. Anyway, no reason to think she helped Sherlock with any small task for any different reasons than the ones established in ASiP, when she got him coffee.
Then we meet her fiance in TSoT, and he’s a Sherlock clone to the point of copying his coat and scarf. Still, he showed himself to be a bit of an idiot, and Molly stabbed him with a fork when he embarrassed her. In other words, she was apparently looking for a smart bloke who looked and dressed like Sherlock.
When we see Molly in HLV, she’s acting tough on Sherlock’s drug relapse and seems angry and disappointed enough to slap him. She definitely feels close to him in a way that’s not shown to be going both ways (that is, Sherlock cares but doesn’t interfere or offer opinions on her life). Molly’s shown taking Sherlock’s behavior personally and including herself and John as the ‘people who care about you’, though this approach clearly doesn’t work on Sherlock, who makes a sarcastic remark. Anyway, she’s certainly more feisty, but not thinking rationally about Sherlock or able to see him as he is, unlike the flash of insight she showed in TRF. If anything, you could say she’s as attached as ever but a bit more bitter or conflicted about it and/or about Sherlock in general, whom she’d clearly idealized. The implication is that she’s angry he’s not living up to her ideals.
Finally, we see Molly in TST, and she’s taking care of Rosie and clearly feeling awkward about delivering such bad news about John, and feeling sorry for Sherlock. She’s not really acting like a close friend, in the sense of trying to *help* Sherlock with his grief and pain somehow, but she’s clearly still emotionally invested and as awkward about it as ever. Then of course we have proof she’s not over her infatuation in TFP.
I realize there a lot of opinions and responses that people have to this, whether it’s happiness or disappointment, but my point is that the one thing it’s *not* is surprising. I also realize that people *were* surprised, but this is mostly due to projection or ‘real life behavior’ assumptions, which rarely apply (particularly on BBC Sherlock, which typically picks the more dramatic over the more realistic response). You may or may not think Molly ‘should have’ been over it by now, or maybe you think it’s great that she isn’t. Either way, I mostly don’t have an issue, although I probably disagree regardless. Essentially, there’s really no reason for characters to do the ‘healthy thing’ when people so often don’t, but on the other hand, there’s nothing cool or special or even romantic to me about endless pining for a person you’re idealizing and can never have *or* grow much closer to unless you stop pining. Regardless, it is what it is, and furthermore it is what it’s been since we were introduced to these characters, more or less.
OK, so that was my understanding of the text as it stands, but I just wanted to add that I understand @jedilock’s critique and comparison to Doctor Who (at least in broad strokes, ’cause I don’t watch Doctor Who). The feel-good ideal is certainly ‘very affirming’, as Sherlock would say. The woman who’d been pining– for the sake of that woman– should grow as a person and realize her own worth, and (essentially) move on with her life. That would be best. Fixating on someone who cannot give you what you want definitely isn’t romantic, admirable or satisfying to watch (except for either people who project onto the character and insert their own happy ending, or people who just… like angst). However, I can excuse and/or dismiss the argument if it’s made on those grounds *alone*. I’m not particularly interested in fiction portraying the healthy and/or best case scenario, nor do I have a problem with all minor characters being fodder for Sherlock’s growth, as Ivy described. Except those aren’t the only grounds for critique by far.
One, there’s the issue that while it’s fine that Molly’s not really that important to the narrative and doesn’t need an arc, her continued fixation is simply… hard for many viewers to swallow because it doesn’t ring true. Even if a character doesn’t get an arc, their responses *do* have to change and develop with time to some degree, and we *have* seen some movement in Series 3 (even if my original post clearly shows that it’s easy to overstate the nature and the degree of Molly’s development). As I said, her motivations didn’t *change* in any fundamental way. However, she was not completely divorced from the effects of time, either. So it’s easy to feel that a real person (who is not a minor character created for a certain purpose) would not feel as Molly feels, not to the degree and *intensity* we see in TFP, most of which was there purely for the drama. That sort of forced drama is definitely a concern in terms of writing.
Two, there’s the use of a woman to further a man’s emotional growth and give him cathartic suffering, to the detriment of that female herself, which is definitely problematic. This has been a theme with Molly, Irene and even Mary in BBC Sherlock, as @delurkingdetective has discussed. That is probably excusable with Molly or even the category of ‘minor characters’ in general, but definitely worth critiquing when it’s actually an example of a trend with the treatment of women specifically in Moffat’s writing.
The larger issue is primarily a certain laziness, a reliance on tropes and reusing old, comfortable characterizations. This isn’t to say that tropes are *bad*, really… but used carelessly, they may confuse the audience and mess up the characterization of the protagonist (which is presumably not what anyone wants). One example is obviously all the extensive usage of romantic tropes in Sherlock, which certainly helped give some of us the impression the show’s structure meant to follow through on those signals. Perhaps even *more* problematically, the writing reuses some of Sherlock’s *own* mistakes and blind spots for plot convenience in ways that don’t entirely make sense in context. It’s not just *Molly* who keeps making her old mistake, over and over again, in ways that aren’t fully believable. The bigger issue is something like Sherlock’s behavior with Norbury in TST, as @delurkingdetective described. To have Sherlock trust that Norbury won’t or couldn’t kill him after being in a similar situation with Mary, *and* going on to be super-predictive detective again in TLD might explain why *John* lost faith in him, but it could easily justify the *viewer* losing faith in the show, as well. He wasn’t emotionally compromised with Norbury the way he was with Mary, so there’s no real excuse for his arrogance overriding his ability to predict and understand murder and murderers except pure plot necessity.
In essence: Mary had to die. Molly had to be in love. Sherlock had to suffer. And that is simply not good enough writing.
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.
It was a rather boring one in retrospect. It was clever — Molly was actually trapped inside the coffin and they had to solve a puzzle to get her out. But while it was a clever puzzle and we liked it, we were the only ones who liked it. It was just another puzzle and it wasn’t something Eurus would be particularly interested in putting Sherlock through because she’s more interested in the emotional then why he’s clever. So we scrapped it and I’m glad we did because I rather like the replacement scene.
‘You’ve said you originally had a completely different scene originally for that Molly sequence that you scrapped, what was it?’
Sherlock Fandom Archive 