Boton

I did like the way that Moftiss modernized this speech in the form of Mary's "Baker Street Boys" ending monologue.

I agree, Arcadia. There's a piece out there from the 1940s, I believe, probably tongue-in-cheek but still instructive, called something like "John Watson was a Woman." The argument there is that the way ACD Watson behaves and the goings-on that he reports on are far more typical of a spouse than a bachelor roommate. I do, however, think Johnlock is pretty popular with middle aged ladies as well, though. Just today, I was reading through Tumblr (always a bad idea), and I came across one of my favorite fanfic writers who made a statement that I'll paraphrase here so it maybe better obscures their identity. The statement was along the lines of: I don't pay any attention to MF saying he and BC didn't play their characters as lovers, because they obviously played them as homoromantic life partners with ambiguous sexualities. This is from someone well into adulthood. It's that kind of thing that frustrates me with Johnlock, even though I have learned to read those fics if I want the rest of the plot or to enjoy them as an AU. But it bothers me when fans say "I am going to totally discount everything that has been said by the writers and the actors, and many things that explicitly happen on-screen, that tends to disprove my theory," and then turn around and say "My theory is correct because look at all this subtext evidence I have for you."

I don’t disagree, Hikari. I’m just...annoyed, I guess, that my viewing of something as totally innocent can be seen with layers of meaning that I don’t necessarily see in the character. Now, do I think Moftiss wanted to play with the are they/aren’t they dynamic? Yeah, probably. I think they were probably sitting around having a beer or six and someone said, “You know, we should make fun of the fact that most 21st century readers can read the ACD original as if the two were a gay couple.” (All the period-appropriate arm-in-arm stuff and the time or two you get “Watson ejaculated.”). Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I am probably incredibly naive, but the first time I saw the Angelo’s scene, before I got on the internet, I thought the conversation was very natural. It is unusual for two blokes in their 30s to share a flat, and you do want to figure out what you are getting into. So, you ask three questions: The first one is, “What do you do for a living,” which Sherlock and John both had answered. The last one is, “Are you going to keep dead bodies in the fridge,” which John probably should have gotten to. The one in the middle is “Whose toothbrush is going to be in the bathroom, and how badly do I need a concealing bathrobe and a good pair of earplugs?” I think that’s what John was going for, and then they were both taken aback when somehow they each wanted to be OK with a gay flat mate, when neither guy was sending that signal. Anyway, that’s what I believed until I got online and there was lip licking and sentences diagrammed to allow for attraction and bisexuality and all other stuff. I like the brothers in arms term too, and I think Mycroft was alluding to that with “when you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield.” Just as an aside, I think the brothers in arms effect is why you have so many of the last remaining survivors of the USS Arizona elect to be cremated and buried at sea on the ship with their brother sailors instead of in a plot next to wives and children. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Hi, DF! There's a lot on this forum about the whole friendship/bromance/romance/sexual subtext, so dig in and give us some fresh opinions to consider! I am like many of the people who have already replied: I saw absolutely no sexual undertones in the BBC series, and I was shocked when I got online and found that there were people who thought these undertones were not just there but obvious and intentional. In general, I think we have developed a narrowing definition of masculinity and masculine friendship since ACD's days. Today, the notion that two men can be the most important people in each other's life (even equal to or above a wife) raises eyebrows that there must be "something more" going on. I find that needlessly restrictive, and I enjoy reading/watching intense male friendships without needing to look for sexuality to intensify it. That said, if I had to believe that any incarnation of Sherlock and John were a romantic/sexual couple, it would be the ACD version. It's not that I think ACD intended that, or that there is any period-specific clue that points toward a relationship. It is just that, in an era where one would have been extremely circumspect if one had a same-sex relationship, I find it easier to believe that one could have existed that perhaps John didn't see fit to put into his writings.

It sounds to me like Toby is making sure you're OK, and he's waiting for you when you get to the Rainbow Bridge.

Well, you're right that Walt eventually started really enjoying the drug life, which in some ways made the show so much better. I mean, forget about the responsible job and the respectable family; this is a man who is cut out to cook industrial quantities of meth and sell them in the underworld. I definitely grew to like Marie. I will never like Skylar, but in some ways, I think that's brilliant. Can you imagine, unknowingly giving up a lucrative life with a biotech startup and possibly having a glamorous wife, and then realizing that you are stuck in a home with a decor circa 1982 and waking up next to Skylar for the rest of your life?

I see where you're coming from, but it just seemed that every decision that Walter made or everything that should have worked somehow made his life worse. He left the biotech firm not knowing what it would become, and it turned out making his former BFF and his former girlfriend wildly wealthy. He married Skylar, which I'm sure seemed like a good idea at the time, but she turned out to be a raging beeyotch. (Seriously, I hated her more than I hated most of the drug kingpins.) He had a son, and that son's disabilities, while no one's fault, might mean that Walter needed to provide support forever. Skylar got pregnant with a late in life baby that would further derail any financial security. And then Walter gets cancer while he's working a crappy HS teaching job and an even-crappier car wash job. I mean, with a life like that, you are basically just personal scruples away from a decision to become a meth king.

CAM got to her first?

And that is, indeed, heartbreaking. The problem is, if you start down the road of changing your initial intent, then you will always have a population that is crushed by your work, and you won't have stayed true to your original vision. I always came back to the idea that they said they wanted to modernize Doyle's work so that it created the same response in people as the originals, so texting instead of telegrams. I think, for three seasons, they were successful. Then the pressure from fans became impossible to ignore (in my opinion), and you get something like S4, which certainly had something for everyone and so, paradoxically, nothing for anyone. In some ways, a show like Elementary would have been perfect to portray a gay main character relationship, because it was positioned to simply be a Sherlock Holmes set in the present day (and not be a take-off on Sherlock), so it could have more easily flexed its trajectory to go that direction. I think, once the fandom seemed to just flat out not believe any of the creators' messages about their work, it isn't worth sitting for the interviews any more. This is a place where I do blame the very vocal small minority of TJLC folks who harassed the creators. Once basically everyone from the show said "JL is not endgame," and these vocal fans responded by saying, "You're lying; JL is endgame and I'm certain of it because of the lighting on Sherlock's face at the end of HLV," it didn't make any sense to keep talking about the creation. This would have been true with any segment of the fandom and any ship, but the fact that we were putting the creators in the position of saying "we are not portraying a gay partnership" over and over at a time when the culture as a whole is talking about gay representation makes this a minefield. And I don't believe *for a second* that it is a scheduling problem that stopped the show. If everyone wanted to continue, they would make it happen. "I'm sorry, but I already have plans" is what you say when you want to get out of something you don't really want to do.

I agree. It's one thing to say that you hope a show goes a certain direction, or even that you think it would better serve the audience by carrying a certain message. (And the vast majority of JL shippers almost certainly stop with one of these two positions.) It is quite another to have a segment of the viewership very vocally telling the creators (whether they be writers, actors, or whoever) that the creators' own interpretation of the show is *wrong.* Not to put too fine a point on it, but, even if they created something that could be understood multiple ways, the fact that Moftiss say they did not write Johnlock, and MF says that he and BC didn't act to create Johnlock, must be respected. It's fine for viewers to say, "Great, mate, but you left enough holes that it's open to interpretation, and I like my interpretation better than yours," but it's wrong to say "You must be lying or in denial about your own intentions, and I'm offended if your creations didn't match my interpretation." That has to be exhausting.

I had a similar dream once when I was going through a bad time. I had inherited my grandparents' house (it wasn't really, but it was in the dream), and there were vagrants camped out on the lawn and living inside. In the dream, I kept walking around to them and saying, "It's fine if you used to live here, but this is mine now and you can't stay." They all packed up and left. In a later dream, same house, I discovered wonderful kitchens in the basement, piles of books in the attic, secret passageways on the main floor, and a secret garden out back.

Do you fix the place up? Maybe it means that you are ready to take the next step in your life, but you know you are going to have to do some work to make things the way you want them.

Thank you, Arcadia! [blushes] I'm positive this is not what you are looking for regarding Stamford, but if you were ever curious about whether "Stamlock" could work, this is hysterical (and rated G): https://archiveofourown.org/works/4890850

I totally agree about the internet (including the graphic design travesties). I think part of it, too, is a shift to getting what you reward. Long-form journalism has all but disappeared, replaced by short takes that can be read on a mobile device in less than a couple of minutes. Higher fee print pieces that were expected to take several months of research have been replaced by who can get the hottest, most immediate takes on Twitter. I know several content marketers who are trying to make a living banging out $50-$100 blog pieces designed less to inform and educate than they are to drive traffic; there is no reward for in-depth research. In fact, there is a disincentive; 10,000 words on how to craft a strategic business plan will get largely ignored, while 500 words titled "Ten Things You Can Do TODAY to Grow Your Business" will get enough click through to impress those bosses who will pay that $50 invoice at net 90 and expect another 500 words tomorrow.

Yikes! That's scary.

Do you think it has anything to do with a couple of possible factors: The show is at least nominally a mystery/detective show, which invites people to pay closer attention to try to solve the mystery first. Except the show is so focused on interpersonal interaction that this attention shifts to how people live, like why the TV is where it is and what John has on his desk and whatnot. The internet makes possible a lot of canonical information in the form of blogs or interviews with people involved in props, lighting, costumes, etc. So, you feel like if that much thought went into selecting the wallpaper, then there has to be some meaning behind the salt shaker. Just a thought.

Darned if I know. I can't say my dreams always make a whole lot of sense. Except my "house dreams." My husband has this theory that when you dream of a house, you are dreaming of your own psyche, and I fairly regularly have dreams about houses that are fairly easy to interpret as walking through my own mind and my own perception of myself. Those are fun.

I think maybe because the show is generally so very well written, it makes people think there are layers that may not actually be there. Plus, I think Moftiss did what few Holmes portrayals have done, and that's make Sherlock, John, and Mycroft very relatable, and increasingly so as the show went on. Because it is so easy to relate to the characters, it's very tempting to put our own experiences on them and to seek confirmation that they are just like us.

I had a dream last night that they released S5 as some four episode arc, and we were all arguing about whether or not that constituted a season. As if we wouldn't count anything as a season at this point!

I kind of think Sherlock would be interested in the kind of conversation we've been having, predicting human behavior from understanding mating as an anthropological thing, not an emotional one. "Oscillating on the pavement means it's a love affair gone wrong. She's young and possesses symmetrical features typically considered a marker of good health and therefore attractiveness, but she is wearing an engagement ring far too expensive for the majority of men her age to afford, so likely an older fiance...."

I did get a good one.

I think it can be as you say, or it can be mutually advantageous. Men get the benefit of a woman who is attractive to them (and men are often the more visual creatures), and they have the advantage of a woman who is likely more fertile and better able to carry children. Women get both financial and physical protection, plus they get the stabilizing influence of an older man when they are finishing their own maturation. Of course, the reverse arrangement happens (older woman/younger man), but it typically doesn't result in marriage as often. But it is, IMHO, part of the reason that a "Mrs. Robinson" situation still gets a wink and a nudge ("lucky guy"). The idea of a woman at her sexual peak but not her reproductive peak temporarily choosing a young man at his sexual peak is also engrained. I also don't think women look for "any old goat" with money. Part of that "marrying up" package is a man who is successful, able to be protective, and demonstrating more typically masculine qualities. The older a man gets and the more he loses some of the markers of masculinity, the more wealth he needs to have to be attractive, until we notice the pretty young thing with the old goat. But that circumstance is more rare; I think the biological urge is probably more toward mating with a man that is 10-15 years the woman's senior at most. I don't blame men or think that them wanting to "marry down" is a fragile ego problem or even a fault. It is, as I've been arguing, partially a biological imperative. The challenge for women like me (and most of us on here) is how we are going to deal with it. I chose to try to play up any physical benefits I had going for me and play down anything other than intelligence, which I was never successful at hiding, and hope for the best. Turns out my hubby later told me he was actively looking for an intelligent woman because having someone to talk to was important to him. (I fell for him on sight, so there's that.)

I agree with this. Men tend to marry "up" in terms of youth and attractiveness and "down" in terms of intelligence and socioeconomic status, while women do the reverse. I can't blame anyone for this; I think it's partially natural. I'm glad to hear that many of you didn't take quite the beating I did in school over intelligence; at least there must have been a few sane school districts out there! In any event, my experience doesn't have to map onto Sherlock in canon. It is just my own way of identifying with him, just like those with ASD often see him as on the spectrum and those who are asexual see him that way too. Sherlock is an interesting mirror in which to see ourselves and have ourselves validated, which is a pretty cool feat for a fictional character.

Someone mentioned Walter White above. For me, I didn't like Walter, but I felt a connection to him because every dumb a$$ thing he did was a response to life kicking him while he was down, repeatedly and without mercy. I think intelligence alone is enough to make many people hate you. I spent my entire K-12 existence being called every synonym of "freak" that you can imagine. It took me until senior year in HS to get to the point where I was starting to feel that being myself, even if that earned me derision, was more important than trying to please everyone. Before that, I did everything I could think of to try to get people to like me; I even ordered a book about making friends and tried to employ the strategies, only to have not just kids, but *parents* say that there must be something wrong with me because of my intelligence. (Parents even told my own parents they were glad their children weren't intelligent like me.) And I promise, I didn't flaunt it about and I didn't do anything profoundly strange; just the normal day-to-day interactions and my grasp of information and nuance in class were enough to make plain exactly how I was different. For that reason, I give Sherlock a lot of room for his behavior, because if he went through something like I did, it makes for an interesting place to be as an adult. On the one hand, you want to protect yourself by appearing to enjoy exactly what makes you different - as long as people are going to think you are only useful as a party trick, might as well embrace it and use it to keep people who can hurt you at bay. On the other hand, the desire for human contact is still there, and every interaction brings the hope that you might find someone who accepts you as you are. I found my "John" in college (no Johnlock implied here ), and I was simply terrified that I would do something to drive her away, because she was functionally my first best friend. She was the one who would say "amazing" when everyone else said "p*ss off." Even before we found out about Sherlock's childhood in S4 (and man, I'm still trying to make sense of all that from a character standpoint), I think the fact of his brilliance alone is enough to explain quite a bit of his behavior and give him some leeway.