byebyefrost: sussexbound: You know, I should probably clear something up. When I am saying that...

sussexbound:

You know, I should probably clear something up. When I am saying that Mofftiss, and Gatiss, in particular, MAY have been partially motivated to write parts of Season 4 the way they/he did, to completely eradicate a johnlock reading (and believe me it was a choice, because you could tell they had to work hard narratively, and erase a ton of prior characterisation just to ensure Sherlock and John were torn apart, and got almost no screen time with just the two of them), I’m not saying that I think that Moffat or Gatiss personally stroll through tumblr reading our blogs, and hating us personally, or even that they give a shit about TJLC specifically. I’m not that self-centered and delusional, and I don’t even identify as a TJLCer, so I have no personal investment in that sense.

What I’m saying is that johnlock shipping became a big thing. It became such a big thing that the press picked up on it, and creators and the show’s leads were having erotic fan art shoved in their faces on every talk show appearance for awhile post S3, and were even asked to read mildly erotic fanfic aloud during S3 promotional events (which was even less fun for fandom creators than it was for anyone involved in the show, let me tell you; there is a special place in hell for people who break the 4th wall by forcing fan-created content on show creators, uncredited and without the fan artist’s permission). There were aslo people associated with the show who also had very personal issues with this, and chose to engage in very public run-ins with fans on Twitter surrounding the topic (Amanda, for instance, who started conflating johnlock and freebatch for reasons wholly her own). Further more, when Benedict was doing his TIG Oscar run, a big part of the press strategy to paint him as a family man and serious actor, was to throw his Sherlock fandom under the bus as a bunch of horny, teenage girls, or ridiculous middle-aged women who were out of control, and deserved censure.

So when I say that Mofftiss may have chosen to tone johnlock way down, and no-homo almost all of Season 4 as a means of pushing back against a johnlock reading, that is what I’m talking about. And when I talk about Gatiss having an impression of johnlock shippers being a bunch of horny, straight girls/women who simply want to objectify gay men, that’s where I think he got it from. Yes you don’t write to fandom expectation (though it isn’t unheard of), but if you see a segment of your fandom as distasteful, and the press has glommed onto that segment, and that segment alone, and keeps shoving it in your face, and making people involved with the show uncomfortable as a result, you probably do have it in the back of your mind, at the very least, when you are planning and writing. And I’ll add here that I am absolutely NOT throwing fandom under the bus for this. This was almost entirely a press issue (though certain cast member’s personal issues, which played out very publicly, and stans running to cast/creators on tumblr to tattle about tumblr fandom goings on, certainly contributed to the problem)

And yeah, I do think Mofftiss thought they were being very clever, or at the very least self-indulgent with TFP. Moffat admitted as much when he said that this season was just insane wish fulfilment for them. I do think that stuff about Sherlock’s childhood and backstory was in the back of their minds since the beginning, and that thoughts about introducing a secret, third sibling had been there since Season 3. I don’t think that they would write something they utterly hated, and put it out there just to spite a few thousand fans on the internet (though there are way more viewers who shipped johnlock on some level than just TJLCers on tumblr, fyi). They need to make money, and they have multiple international audiences to please.

So I think they had a lot of goals they wanted to reach this season. I think that they were afraid they wouldn’t get the chance to make a 5th season. Many people associated with the show voiced that concern. So, I think they tried to cram all the ideas they originally had for 6 episodes into 3. As a result, nothing was really handled with the skill and delicacy it deserved, and nothing was given the time it deserved. I also think they just got too confident and lazy with their writing (all the scripts came late, which suggests they left them to the last minute). I feel like they decided to retool the Mary character at the last moment, for some reason (I’ll leave everyone to their own deductions there), and what they ended up with was a bloody mess.

So anyway, yes, there were a myriad of factors at play, but I do think that one of those factors was a desire to damp down johnlock shipping, and I think that was for many reasons, one of those being the creator’s perception of and distaste for johnlock shipping fans, due to press coverage and interaction with creators and cast during the post-S3 period.

Thanks for writing this @sussexbound