Mofftiss, TJLC, Beethoven, and academic blah blah blah

To start, let me just say that I’m
visiting my family and haven’t been on tumblr very much. I’m not up on who’s
said what since that interview came out. However, I have read the interview,
and I have some thoughts. 

I think I need to back up first, though. When TJLC first came
out as a theory, I loved it. I was completely enamoured of it. I did and still
do see how the writing, acting, directing, etc, all point to canon Johnlock. I
fully agree that that’s the way the story should go - and I say “should”
meaning in a narrative way, a moral way, in a need for representation way, in
an “it’s just the logical conclusion based on what they’ve done so far”
way - all of it. It’s only the final step that ever lost me: I always had my
doubts about the creators’ intentions. It’s partly just that I’m a cynic by
nature and would rather wait for proof than believe blindly. It’s also that I
believe Sherlock himself, who says that it’s a mistake to theorise without
having all of the facts. I’ve already read dozens and dozens of arguments to
this last, that would say that we somehow have all of the facts already, but we
don’t: we’ll have it only when we see it. And it’s also things that the
creators have said all along that just haven’t felt like lies in my gut. Gut
instinct is not logic - I’ll be the first to admit that! But I’ve always felt
that they just don’t seem, based on things they’ve said, to prioritise in the
same way that I personally do. I could be very wrong. I’m extremely open to
that notion! I WANT to be wrong! This is just my attempt to explain which part
of it I can’t subscribe to, and that’s my blind faith in the creators’
intentions regarding this or any other aspect of the show. I just don’t know.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so I’m waiting for the pudding. 

I’ve received more hate than I’d care to
share for having my doubts about the creators’ intentions. I’ve had those
doubts mistaken for a lack of belief that it SHOULD happen, which it isn’t at
all. I literally ship Johnlock as
though it’s my job: I spend nearly as much time writing Johnlock stories as I
do working at my actual job. I have over 1.45 million words of Johnlock
currently posted online. My belief in the ship, in the inherent narrative arc
of the show, in the need for this ship to be made a canon reality - these are
all 1000% rock solid. My only doubt is in the creators themselves. Don’t
mistake me: I don’t think it’s because they’re bad writers or evil people. I do
think that if they don’t do it, that it will have been queer-baiting. But I
also say that with the rider that, as harmful as it is, I don’t think they will
have intended any maliciousness by it. I rather see Steven Moffat as someone
who is almost incapable of treating anything without his tongue wedged firmly
in his cheek. For instance, the fact that he even considers a crossover between
Sherlock and Doctor Who is completely exasperating to me: in the universe of
Sherlock Holmes, there is no magic, no time travel, nothing that cannot be
explained by scientific, logical deduction, by laboratory proof and the
realities of this world. I get that Doctor Who exists in this silly,
science-free zone, which is fine for Doctor Who, but that fact alone says to me
that the two universes are completely incompatible and just cannot intersect
this way. 

That tangent aside, now for the academic blah blah blah. Bear
with me for a minute or two. What I want to talk about is a notion that I
studied during my masters and only semi-grasped at the time. I was taking a
boring musicological seminar on performance practise wherein we all read
chapters of a book and presented them to the class for one assignment. The
topic of the book was who has the ultimate authority over how music is supposed
to be performed. These days, in classical music, it’s usually the conductor who
makes the ultimate decision. Sometimes it’s the performer(s) themselves - say
in chamber music, with a violinist, a cellist, and a pianist: they decide
together how fast they’re going play the “allegretto” section, and
sometimes those choices are based on specific pieces of information, like that,
for Mozart’s music, an “allegretto” was always considered one very precise
speed. In that case, the performers would have deferred to the composer as the
ultimate authority. The chapter of this book (whatever it was) that I
presented posed the question of what happens when the composer is wrong. I know
that sounds a bit ridiculous - people immediately said, upon hearing
this, “but how could the person who wrote it be wrong about THEIR
creation?” 

Beethoven was fully deaf by the time he composed his famous
Ninth Symphony. That doesn’t mean that he couldn’t fully hear the music in his
head, though - he was a brilliant genius of a composer and not being able to
physically hear in no way impeded the genius of his composing abilities. That
said, the tempi (speeds) he indicated in the Ninth Symphony are completely
unplayable. They’re way too fast for even the most virtuosic of players to
manage. It’s been a discussion ever since he composed it. Finally, in the
fifties, a German conductor named Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted the Berlin
Philharmonic playing it at the speeds Beethoven indicated, and although people
found it very impressive that they managed it, most musicians and critics
agreed that it just felt too fast. The uncomfortable consensus eventually came
to be that Beethoven himself did not understand the music that he created. The
author of whatever this book I presented on was suggested the notion that the
music itself could be considered the ultimate authority on how it should go, that any musician playing it should listen very carefully and inherently feel or understand the correct speed, the places where it should get louder or quieter, and all of the other little details.  

At the time, I considered this notion pretty ephemeral and I
think I said as much to my seminar classmates, and they generally agreed, but
the Beethoven case is a strong one. As time has gone by since then, the idea has really grown on me. As an author, I know that sometimes I tell my stories which way to go, but most of the time it’s about listening and feeling the way the story needs to go. It’s not about the author exercising control over their creation; it’s about telling the story that needs to be told in the way that it needs to be told. If you want to get really ephemeral about it, I almost believe that the story is already out there somewhere and that the author’s job is more to capture and translate it onto the page. I know for a fact that my writing suffers when I try to control the direction of the story too much. When I let the story tell itself, it’s always better. 

So: IF Moffat and Gatiss told us the truth
in that interview, which is obviously a very large if, I can agree with them
that these are their characters (or their take on them, at least) and that they
have every right to do what they want with them - but I would also suggest that
if this is the case, and that they’re not actually planning to make Johnlock
canon, then they have made an enormous error and that they have failed to
understand their own creation. Because how could they possibly not see the arc
they’ve written? How could the directors they’ve hired have directed something
that we all see and they don’t? It simply doesn’t add up. 

Meanwhile, I stand where I’ve always
stood, which is here: I have no stance on what WILL happen because we just
won’t know until we see it. But I sure as hell know what SHOULD happen and I
hope they give it to us!!! And then, on top of that, I have to just add that as
a fic author, I will always be on hand to correct the wrongs of canon over here
in this space which is ours and ours alone. IF they get it wrong. Don’t get me
wrong – I’m not even saying that I think that they definitely won’t make
Johnlock canon. All I’m saying is that I personally can’t be sure until the
glorious day that I actually see it, which I hope I one day do. I hope that
every doubt I’ve ever had will be proven wrong and if they are, I’ll eat my
words with glee and go on adding to the glories of canon Johnlock in the fic
sphere, too! The bottom line for me hasn’t changed. I know where their story
needs to go. I hope they’ve been wise enough to see that, too. I guess we’ll
see in January.