The Johnlock Conspiracy

[Boton]

I agree that if both parties want out, then it's no business of the government's to deny them a divorce (from either today's legal marriage or a future SO registration). But what if only one party wants out? You'd still need rules, though they'd need to be different from what we've had recently...

Having never been party to a divorce or had one in my family, I'm not sure where things stand right now. What happens if only one spouse wants out? Could the same criteria be used for an SO?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Boton]

Speaking of romance as maybe not being the end all/be all, have you guys seen this? I have to admit, this presents an awful lot of options that just weren't really on the table in my formative years, but it's an interesting idea.

 

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/hPuGKes

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Carol the Dabbler]

I'm not sure where things stand right now. What happens if only one spouse wants out?

I've always assumed that a ni-fault divorce required the consent of both parties, but according to what I just read on the internet (sorry, on my phone, so no link), that's not currently the case in Indiana. All it takes is one (or both) parties saying that the marriage is irretrievably broken. Other grounds in Indiana are felony, impotence, or insanity. Oddly enough, adultery is *not* currently one of the grounds in this state.

 

Seems like most of those (with the possible exception of impotence) would work equally well for an SO divorce.

[Pseudonym]

Divorce must be allowed if only one party wants it to happen otherwise it would be illogical. For example, in the case of spousal abuse, the victim might want a divorce and they shouldn't be trapped in a marriage just because the perpetrator doesn't agree. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh, I certainly agree. I was more puzzled about what could be done if there was no abuse, but one party simply wanted out and the other party wanted to stay together. Apparently that's currently covered here in Indiana by the no-fault irretrievable-breakdown clause. And since abuse is (oddly) not grounds for divorce here, I suppose an abused partner would also file under irretrievable-breakdown.

[J.P.]

Look what I found (by chance of course)

Now this is the portrait in Mycroft's house

And a better version of the old painting.

Of course it's not the same picture, the first clearly has Myc's eyebrows, but they do look very similar.

If this is intended, if they indeed made a mock-up of a portrait of John Locke, it's the best joke of the series, and Arwel is indeed evil. I'd ask him, but not in public.

And here are some reactions to it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Sherlock/comments/5olrd1/so_about_that_queerbaiting/

 

[T.o.b.y]

I don't get the joke. What's so funny about using John Locke? Oh... Wait... I got it. Ha! Ha ha ha! Good one, J.P.

[Arcadia]

Oh dear.

Okay, so I don't see any resemblance at all between those portraits, other than the hairstyle. None. But already people are taking it as a given that they MUST be the same person .... *sigh*.

[Pseudonym]

Of course they are the same, if they weren't it wouldn't be offensive, and it means that maybe it wasn't meant as a slight after all. Obviously that can't be true. 

[T.o.b.y]

Offensive? Wut? What did I miss now? I didn't look at that reddit, I avoid the site and it doesn't load properly for me anyway. 

[Pseudonym]

I don't know either, I didn't want to fall down the rabbit hole of investigating. But clearly it's been taken as such. *shrug*

If those paintings were meant to be of Mycroft's ancestors I wish they'd had one that looked similar to Sherlock wearing something spectacularly ridiculous. Like a neck ruff. 

[Arcadia]

In a nutshell ... some people think the painting is an allusion to the Johnlock theory, and are offended that Moftiss would dare make such an allusion without also making Johnlock come true in the way they wished. It must be gay baiting!

[J.P.]

It was interpreted as a finger shown all JL-ers.

Yes. It's THAT bad.

[T.o.b.y]

Oh for the love of... If it's even really a picture of Locke at all and if it was actually used with that wordplay in mind, it's just funny. Goodness. 

I feel kind of sorry for all the people who were disappointed but for me, the way the relationship played out was perfect. I think the reason why I like S4 in spite of everything that I, well, don't like about it, is that I felt like it got John and Sherlock just right and left them in a great place together. 

[Arcadia]

Same here, I liked the ending a lot, and I thought they left it open-ended enough that you could make almost anything you wanted of it. I almost fear that if it comes back, they'll spoil that ending for me. But hey, a risk I'm willing to take.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Can I go out on a limb and assume that many who think that painting looks like John Locke thus meaning Johnlock should happen, have not seen enough pics of a young Timothy Carlton to know what he looks like (I.e. very similar to the painting) even if the painting of the Holmes ancestor is similar to the John Locke painting because the 2 real people have similar features?

[J.P.]

The appearance of the painting was much too late for a sign of coming JL. You can interpret it as a funny little wink or as a bad, evil mocking. Depends on the side you are on.

[Arcadia]

I see it as over-reaching, either way. There's no resemblance, other than the two men look like they come from the same era. I think it looks more like Charles II than John Locke. Grrrr.

[littlefoot]

Hi all, I haven't posted in quite a while because I belong to the not so small group of Sherlock fans who were so disappointed with S4 and especially the  final episode, that I'm almost tempted to call myself a former fan. I  haven't forgotten, though, how nice and civil the discussions have been here. Kudos to everyone involved here! And I have discovered recently that for some fans TJLC is still very much alive!

I won't go into detail why I was to disappointed with S4. It would take too long and would be off-topic. I've had my say in Januar 2017 anyway. Now I want to talk about TJLC. I belong to those who were totally indifferent to the shipping issue and had no dog in that particular race. So, Johnlock not having become canon hasn't been an issue for me personally and while I disliked almost everything about TFP, the very end and the place in their relationship where John and Sherlock found themselves, was fine with me. I knew of course about Johnlock and the  fandom of that specific ship, but I only learned about TJLC shortly before the last episode was aired - and I was very disturbed by the debth of time consuming and  emotional investment. The material which was gathered and the academic treatment, which sometimes had the quality of a high quality PhD thesis,was impressive and  mind boggling. And my heart was aching for those who had invested their souls in this theory because it was fairly obvious that they had set themselves up for one of the biggest disappointments of their lives. I can totally understand their yearning for some form of positive representation. But Mofftiss had shot down Johnlock as end game so frequently and sincerely, that it was obvious (at least to me) that it really would not happen. In this instance at least the creators had not lied. And yet - after having gone through the wealth of material gathered by TJLC proponents I have to admit that the "loudest subtext in the history of tv" is not a figment of their wishful imagination. It's plainly there. And while every single point can be interpreted ambigously, the sheer amount of ambigous clues cannot be dismissed as totally coincidental. While Mofftiss shot down Johnlock as canon many times, they continued to add ambiguos implications until the very end - which is unfortunate IMO. Why did they so this? I think that the accuations of queer-bating cannot be dismissed out of hand. All the gay jokes were totally funny and offen very intelligent in the beginning. But they became a bit stale over the years. And Mofftiss must've been eventually fully aware of a certain sub-set of the fandom and their specific expectations. Why didn't they tone down the gay subtext considerably? The show would've been none the worse for it. Maybe, Mofftiss simply underestimated certain fandom reactions and became a bit tone deaf in the wake of the show's huge popularity. I will come back to Mofftiss and their somewhat antagonistic relationship with the Sherlock fandom later.

I don't know if a slight tone shift would have done the trick, though, since TJLC eventually became a quasi-religious movement, and the members started to interpret everything as an affirmation of what they believed to be the true end game. And the most amazing and very disturbing thing: a considerable number of Johnlock fans still believe in this particular end game! How so? Well, one argument is, that the BBC didn't allow Mofftiss to go through with their grand plan. So, what did they do? They f..cked up S4 and specifically TFP deliberately and made it so ludicrous and over the top that it would be obvious to every intelligent fan, that S4 couldn't be taken seriously. Exibit A: of course the John-Locke (Marc Gatiss) portrait weeping bloody tears because Johnlock wasn't allowed to blossom openly! I have to admit there is some true  ingeniousness in this argument, since I have also marveled how and why this initially so brilliant and intelligent show could go so off-the-rail and finish with an episode which felt  less like the "brainy is the new sexy" Sherlock of the first two seasons, but more like a bad cross of James-Bond, Hannibal, Saw and Superhero movies with a liberal sprinkling of Shutter Island,  and wasn't grounded anymore in at least a resemblance of physical laws.  IMO Mofftiss truly and wholeheartedly jumped the shark -  no, they lovingly embraced the shark, and the big question is: why?? I have no intelligent answer to this. But I was startled to discover that some TJLC proponents have taken the conspiracy to the next level: I read a very well researched 70plus page thesis which argued that S4 was just the fourth act of a five-act story arc, and that a fifth season was always mandatorily planned and mapped out from the very beginnining by Mofftiss. And S4 was deliberately bad and totally different from the other three seasons  - well, because the fourth act of a drama is often the weakest. One cited example are the Hannibal novels by Thomas Harris, where the fourth installment is apparently so legendarily bad, that it's almost ridiculous. And according to the argument of this thesis Mofftiss set out to deliberately mirror the Hannibal novels - in order to right the ship in a powerful fifth season, where Johnlock would be finally be allowed to blossom and become canon! The scary thing  is the high academic level and the amount of quality research which has gone into this thesis. It totally  sucks you in - until you realize how unrealistic this line of thought really is. How likely is it that Mofftiss made S4  deliberately bad and totally "un-sherlocky" because their grand plan was all along to redeem themselves in a final fifth season, where Johnlock becomes canon - and everybody and their grandmother is totally okay with it because it feels absolutely right after the botched and implausible fourth season. If that really was the grand plan, then there was a very obvious glitch: there may not be a fifth season for a very long time, and a deliberately botched S4 certainly doesn't exactly help! I'm fairly certain that Sherlock will eventually be revisited. Maybe there will be a fully fledged fifth season, or there will be stand-alone episodes like TAB.  But the sheer length and uncertainty of the downtime in between seasons doesn't allow the pursuit of a grand overall endgame anymore. And the majority of the more conventional fandom simply won't grasp the finicky differences between Kant-influenced  and Hegel-influenced  story arcs 😉

Meanwhile, the phenomenon and the vehement reactions of the TJLC community after S4 had been aired has attracted the attention of the social sciences, and they have become the subject of academic studies. This is an indication that we are looking at something which is more than the ordinary displeasure of certain fans with their favorite TV Show.  So, what happened? My guess ist that after S2 Sherlock became such a huge media phenomenon that it was almost impossible to handle the expectations of the various fan factions. Not only The Johnlock shippers who had the clearest sociopolitical agenda, felt let down after all. Those brainiacs  who had skillfully investigated every little apparently deliberately planted clue, in order to predict what would happen, felt equally let down because very little got ever fully and plausibly explained - although Mofftiss had clearly encouraged the fans initially  to hunt for hidden clues. And like the true believers of the TJLC community, there are still people out in the Tumblr realm who continue to analyse clues and develop elaborate theories, just like in the good old times after TRF had been aired in 2012!  And just like those who see clues for Johnlock-as-endgame everywhere, these remaining clue hunters are convinced that what they discover is real. And they are probably quite right to a certain degree. Yes, the clues are there sp- probably because the makers sprinkled them deliberately in order to be free to pursue a variety of different story lines later. This is a very common practice in script writing for multiple-season TV shows. The Problem with Sherlock was the huge surge in Popularität and fandom Activity after the second season. This led to so many speculations that someone must've eventually have come very close to the intended solutions - and Mofftiss reacted accordingly. In S3 they introduced selfawareness and a sort of half mocking fan service into the show. And they tried to beat everybody's expectations by evading all clear cut explanations and solutions. This is especially evident if we look at the three explanations of how Sherlock survived his fall, which have been offered and then immediately called into doubt in TEH. This introduced a certain amount of antagonism between Mofftiss and certain factions of the fandom. And I really believe it influenced their writing since they must've felt compelled to up the ante continuosly in order to stay unpredictable and  stay one step ahead of those pesky fans and their many different demands, lol! The long downtime in between seasons may have had a very negative effect insofar as everybody - makers and fans alike - had too much time for evaluating and turning over every little detail. I think that in the end this wasn't conductive for developing a fully satisfying and  well constructed story arc and may have also led to a certain tone deafness. There have been too many outside distractions and perceived interferences. Martin Freeman once alluded to this phenomenon and explained that this was a joy killer to a certain extent.

It ist what it is. We still have many episodes of brilliant tv! Right now I don't feel a desire for a fifth season. But I know that I will watch if there will be new Sherlock episodeds. S4 ended in a way which allows the makers to take the show into all sorts of directions. An a hiatus of several years may be helpful and heeling. But I also would not be sad if there won't be any new episodes in the forseeable future. This is a distinct possibility because of the leading actors'  jump into super stardom. Scheduling conflicts may be the greatest obstacle...

[littlefoot]

 😉

[littlefoot]

Sorry for the solitary emoji. I tried to edit this comment, and the emoji was all that remained. My editing program doesn't work very well...

[Carol the Dabbler]

35 minutes ago, littlefoot said:

Sorry for the solitary emoji. I tried to edit this comment, and the emoji was all that remained. My editing program doesn't work very well...

It's not just you -- the new software makes it really tricky to edit-out emoties.  If you restrict yourself to the original Sherlock-forum emoties, I don't think there's ever such a problem.  But the newly-available cell-phone-type emoties are "stickier" somehow.  I can sometimes delete them, but it tends to take several tries so I'm never sure exactly what did the trick, and therefore have trouble replicating my results reliably.

Thanks for your carefully thought-out comments.  I mostly agree with you, and may reply to a few points later.  Anyhow, welcome back! 

[Arcadia]

 Hey, Littlefoot, glad to see you back. I think I mostly agree with you too, except this part...

13 hours ago, littlefoot said:

And yet - after having gone through the wealth of material gathered by TJLC proponents I have to admit that the "loudest subtext in the history of tv" is not a figment of their wishful imagination. It's plainly there. And while every single point can be interpreted ambigously, the sheer amount of ambigous clues cannot be dismissed as totally coincidental. While Mofftiss shot down Johnlock as canon many times, they continued to add ambiguos implications until the very end - which is unfortunate IMO.

 … because I'm one of those weird people who simply doesn't see any "Johnlock" subtext in the later seasons. Quite the contrary; I thought S3 and S4 made it clear that "the one" for Sherlock was Irene, and the one for John was Mary, and that was that. But I accept that other people see it differently.

I was going to add something but it's getting late, I'll try again tomorrow.

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

I thought S3 and S4 made it clear that "the one" for Sherlock was Irene, and the one for John was Mary, and that was that.

They did have that rather extended joke in TEH, where Mrs. H. refuses to believe that Sherlock and John were not a couple.  And the two hugs.  Can't offhand think of any other obvious ones, but it's past my bedtime.

[Arcadia]

7 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

They did have that rather extended joke in TEH, where Mrs. H. refuses to believe that Sherlock and John were not a couple.  And the two hugs.  Can't offhand think of any other obvious ones, but it's past my bedtime.

But John's reaction to Mrs. H's assumptions indicated (to me) that no way in heck were he and Sherlock ever a couple. Not in "that" way. In fact, I remember thinking that's why they put that joke in, to show John's reaction. Although if that's the case, I gather it rather backfired with some people.

And if hugs are an indication of sexual orientation, then every person I've ever met is bi. 😛 (Two hugs? I remember one at the wedding, was there another one?) (Oh, wait, you mean in TLD. Got it.)

I am willing to bet that if Sherlock were to give Molly a consoling hug after her heart was broken, the Johnlockers would shrug it off as meaningless, and the Sherlollians would jump on it as "proof" that the two are madly in love. The obsession some folks have with romance is quite remarkable.