And to those gods I'll speak bluntly

I’ve been thinking about who Crowley is in the book and who he is in the show, and the gap is significant. (@tbutchaziraphale has fantastic meta over here which I think is spot on.)

Book!Crowley is an optimist, yes? I mean, we’re outright told this:

“Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times—he thought briefly of the fourteenth century—then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.”

Honestly, what a thing for a fallen angel to believe! And to me, it’s powerful, yes, but it never quite answers the question: where is he getting that certainty?

Tv!Crowley, in the meantime, is emphatically not this. He’s never been an optimist, not even in S1—although in S1, it might have been easier to look at A & C and consider them essentially similar to their book selves if a little out of sync.

In S1, Crowley gives the whole “don’t test them to destruction” speech. He cares about humanity deeply, even if he won’t admit it. He will try to stop the Apocalypse.

And there is still a moment when he feels helpless. When he has no innate optimism to carry him through, no deep belief in the universe looking after him or anyone. When his instincts tell him to run, and he tries to follow them. When he despairs. Aziraphale pulls him back out of that despair; they make a stand together. As we know, it works.

But the thing is, the thing is. I find tv!Crowley’s lack of optimism so very relatable.

I find despair so very relatable, too.

We live in an age of deep anxiety. (Climate change, anyone? Just for starters! The promise and wonder of the Moon landing and the end of the Cold War are far in the past; day to day, we deal with the effects of capitalism, of reactionism, of continued exclusionism. It’s far too easy to feel helpless.)

So in S2, Crowley is very much the same character as he was in S1, except we see it even clearer.

He is not an optimist. He wants to run; he wants to escape when faced with Gabriel’s arrival; he wants to protect Aziraphale and himself, and believes that the best—perhaps only—way to do that is by them retreating as far away from the problem as they can.

In Heaven, Crowley finds out about The Second Coming. His need to escape and to keep his angel safe become overwhelming. But he doesn’t tell Aziraphale about the Second Coming, does he? And his repeated offer to run away together doesn't even make sense to Aziraphale. (Not that Aziraphale would want to run if he knew. Quite the opposite, in fact, which Crowley must know.)

Anyway, Crowley already knows that the clock is ticking. Aziraphale is about to find it out. (Do you notice how often, in the last fifteen minutes of S2, we hear nothing in the background but the ticking of a clock?)

And just—the despair, the desire to retreat and escape when you are faced with overwhelming odds, with a fundamentally broken system, are so relatable.

And yet escape has never been the answer.

I hope, of course, that this is what we’ll see in S3 if there is a S3. Crowley deciding, emphatically, that running away is not the answer. 

We didn't get there yet. We were dropped out of the story at the darkest point.

But I think being at this point is precisely what makes Crowley’s confession at the end of S2 transcendent.

Because it’s the same conflict, isn’t it, except on a personal scale. Despair in the face of overwhelming odds, followed by the decision to not give up.

Crowley, who’d been ready to confess, sees what is likely to happen. He sees the way the deck is stacked against him, sees that he is unlikely to get through. He feels the coming loss. 

And then he does it anyway. 

He confesses anyway. He says what he has set out to say, gasping and clawing for every word. He does it at the point when everything appears lost.

And no, we don’t see the effects of it, not yet. We don’t see what he has launched, the hook that sank into Aziraphale, the change it has wrought in Crowley himself.

But his bravery won’t be lost.

We live in a dark timeline. I maintain that this is precisely what makes this story so compelling.

Be brave. Do the difficult thing anyway. Do it anyway. Do it anyway.

Even in the face of overwhelming odds. Especially in the face of overwhelming odds. While not being an optimist in the slightest.

This is what hope is.

This is what we have to do.

(And to all of us who’d lost a comfort story: I’m so sorry. I, too, am still grieving for it. I know, I know.

To whoever needs to hear it: it does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be world altering. It just needs to be done. And I'll sit with you while you do The Thing.

Crowley calling Aziraphale 'angel'

@rollstoast, i did my best

When he meets Sherlock, John eats dinner as if he is starving. He digs into his food, talks with his mouth full, as if it is the first full meal he has had in months. Which is entirely likely, since John has been home for several months at that point. Again, this is very typical of people who have been suffering this type of eating disorder, and find that they are no longer as painfully depressed. 

Sherlock even goes so far as to point out that after moving in together, John puts on an average of a pound a week in weight. John brushes it off as being normal. He doesn’t deny it, he just points out that he is eating more than one meal a day. This implies that he wasn’t eating this often before he limped into Sherlock’s life. 

closes laptop

puts head on table

1. BBC Sherlock is not queerbaiting. It’s fundamentally a queer story, based on a queer interpretation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.

2. “Sherlock Holmes is gay!”, as a startling reveal, is not what makes Sherlock groundbreaking. The more you read about Sherlock Holmes analysis, the more you realize that this interpretation is not new; it has been discussed repeatedly in different forms over the past 120+ years and will continue to be brought up and either embraced or rejected pretty much forever. Also, Granada genuinely did already produce a gay Sherlock Holmes adaptation; they just didn’t speak its name. I wrote a pretty decent piece of meta about that here, which also contrasts the ways Granada and Sherlock approach the canon. In saying this, I don’t mean to downplay the importance of Sherlock being gay; it is vitally important, and it’s the reason why the Sherlock Holmes saga still isn’t understood, despite a truly ridiculous amount of effort. But if the only rug Mofftiss pulled at the end of the series were, “Surprise, Sherlock is gay!”, it would really not be that impressive; it’s not a new idea.

3. What does make Sherlock groundbreaking is Mofftiss’s “so audacious, so outrageous” aim of re-creating The Great Game (aka The Grand Game, aka The Sherlockian Game) by i) Retelling the story that Doyle told in subtext, only largely as text, ii) Incorporating exactly the same types of inconsistencies and parallels within and between stories that drove fans of the original Doyle stories mad enough to spend 120+ years trying to make a single, logical narrative from it, thereby inspiring their present-day audience to do the same, iii) Incorporating the multiple layers of narrative that Doyle used to both hide the truth and inform the audience that he was hiding the truth, iv) Lying constantly about the nature of their series, both to ensure that it is a true puzzle and to demonstrate in the only way possible that Doyle could have done exactly the same thing. The consequence of this technique is to force the modern audience to re-examine and re-interpret Doyle’s stories, and inevitably his life, through a new lens.

4. Nothing “happened” to Sherlock in S4. The darker turn taken in S4 recreates the darker turn taken in the Sherlock Holmes subtext narrative, which is largely ignored by readers who seek only lighthearted adventure in the canon. The fact that S4 appears to be derivative of other media recreates the experience of reading many of the later Sherlock Holmes stories, stories which are so “bad” and so “out of character” that past and current critics have suggested that Doyle copied or bought them from other writers and simply changed the names. They’re wrong; these stories are an important part of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes saga and are both as original and un-original as the other stories. The use of Brechtian techniques in S4 is also a natural fit for elements of Doyle’s own writing, particularly in the later stories. But fundamentally, the text and subtext themes of S4 are present in canon also, as I began to cover here and have been continuing to write about in, well, everything else I’ve written since then.

5. As things stand now, the subtext narrative of the Sherlock Holmes stories is presented in Sherlock, but not resolved. To complete the story, we require several specific events, including the “I am Birdy Edwards” moment, which Moffat has called his favourite, and the Garridebs moment, which Gatiss has called his. Readers of canon will notice that in Sherlock, several of the big emotional moments of the original stories have been held back, leaving key emotional themes in many episodes unresolved—for example, The Hounds of Baskerville adapting both The Devil’s Foot without “I had never seen so much of Holmes’s heart before” and The Valley of Fear without Watson answering ‘Not in the least’ in astonishment. A final series is required for resolution to be reached. Mofftiss have made this as plain as they can, given the constraints of their narrative form. So, it’s unnecessary to look for reasons why the show has “changed” or “been shut down”. It’s still very much in progress and on track.

6. Because Sherlockian studies have been going on for 120+ years, many parts of the puzzle have already been revealed by now. However, very few people have had the nerve to put them all together as a grand unified theory of Sherlock Holmes, I think entirely because it requires a queer interpretation of Doyle’s work. For a reader to recognize queer themes in the Sherlock Holmes stories is to invite that reader to question the sexuality of the writer, and ultimately, that of the reader himself. This is why old-school Sherlockians fight it so hard: the latent fear that their homosocial societies will be interpreted as homosexual. It’s classic gay panic. The people who forcefully reject the idea of a queer Sherlock Holmes more or less dominate “Sherlockian studies” at present, but that is changing as they age out of the fandom and as academics begin to look more closely at Doyle’s work. We presume that the two Doyle estates also reject it, but frankly they appear to be motivated more by money than by anything else. Sometimes these groups overlap, since one of the Doyle estates is closely associated with old-guard Sherlockians.

7. As far as I can tell, the estates are the only groups who could conceivably threaten Mofftiss’s big gay Sherlock project, and only until the end of 2022. BBC/Hartswood appear to have some kind of licensing deal with one of the estates; perhaps that allows them to do what they want, perhaps not. Regardless, as others have mentioned, all of the stories that remain under copyright have already been folded into Sherlock, at least in subtext. For example, The Blanched Soldier (copyright expires at the end of 2021) contributes important elements to ASIP and TSOT, stretching all the way back to 2010. By the end of S4, all of the Case-Book stories (i.e., all of the stories in the final book) have been referenced at least in subtext. Again, perhaps importantly, the subtext of the Case-Book stories (and many others) remains unresolved in the show. We need one more series to complete the narrative, and it’s going to deliver all of the emotional impact that’s been held back so far, which is why those of us who are reading along expect S5 to be devastating (in the best possible way). Until that happens, only the closest viewers will understand how deeply the later stories have already been referenced in the show.

So, ultimately, it is not a question of if but when S5 will appear. Any number of things can influence the the length of the post-S4 hiatus (i.e., scheduling conflicts) and the pandemic may further affect these. If Mofftiss are concerned about a copyright suit, then S5 would not air before Jan 1, 2023. I don’t see any evidence that they care about it, but who knows. I doubt that they would design a puzzle and tell us to solve it if they were afraid that we might actually solve it. The inclusion of late canon stories in early episodes of Sherlock suggests to me that they don’t mind being caught at it.

Tagging a few people on the other thread below the cut.

So I’ve noticed that everyone said a lot about John & Jim mirroring each other. What purpose does it serve to the show (or the game 👀)?

And do you happen to know any metas on that too?

My anonymous friend, you have stumbled upon the most important mirror of BBC Sherlock! (Well, that's me saying that, bear in mind that I am heavily of the "Moriarty must be alive if TJLC is happening" persuasion)

And it has everything to do with The Game. The way I read it, Moriarty is essentially a stand in for everyone Mark and Steven think are "getting it wrong." The "fans" and the "storytellers," who misunderstand the point of the stories and the societal forces that have kept the true story from being told.

John Watson, meanwhile, is the reason we have a Game to begin with. Well, if you're playing The Game he's the reason. If not, then you can discount every inconsistency in the canon as mistakes on Doyles part. But that's not where the fun is, the fun is in believing they're intentional and Watson is hiding things from his audience: the truth about Holmes.

So in this version John and Jim have very similar roles, both are telling a story about Sherlock, both misunderstand him in fundamental ways (and most interestingly, they both know the information the other is missing), and, most importantly, both want Sherlock Holmes to be theirs.

If BBC Dracula was the game changer for you, watching Granada Holmes (1984-1994) was the thing that changed how I saw Johnlock and how I could engage with the text. After hearing lots of good things... how Watson never marries Mary Morstan... how Jeremy Brett (Sherlock Holmes was a queer man... Jeremy Brett saying "if it cheers the gays up I'm thrilled" in regards to the question if Sherlock and John were a couple... I decided to give it a watch. Honestly after a few episodes it quickly became my favorite Sherlock Holmes adaptation, and Jeremy Brett and David Burke have become my favorite Holmes and Watson actors (which was a bittersweet realization honestly, I couldn't imagine telling my 15 year old self that Benedict and Martin would not longer be my favorite).

What I found in the stories was a Sherlock and John who were happy with one another. Two men who shared their lives quite overtly. I won't go into all the details but while they may have been keeping secrets from the audience, I never got the impression they were hiding things from eachother. It's easy to read into it that they know they're both in love with eachother. The conflict of the show is in the mysteries, not their unspoken feelings

Sherlock and John and their electric, immediate connection was what attracted me to BBC Sherlock, but then that love brings both of them a lot of unresolved suffering. Furthermore, almost all of the Holmes stories where some element of homoerotic subtext is present (Private Life, Mr. Holmes, the RDJ movies, even the canon) pairs it with unresolved suffering between Sherlock and John. The relationship got me hooked, but then never delivered. It's stressful to me, and there's no payoff.

To put it dramatically, Granada Holmes made me realize I didn't have to live like this. Not to enjoy the Johnlock dynamic. I didn't realize there was so much air to breathe. It made me realize that I didn't actually want to play an elaborate game with Steven and Mark, I just wanted to enjoy a love story about two men who Understand eachother and were happy together despite being in a repressive era. While I still enjoy the first 10 episodes of BBC Sherlock, Granada Holmes has given me more of what I actually wanted out of the stories than BBC Sherlock ever did. I won't be entirely content until I get a canon queer Holmes adaption... but until then I'm as happy with Johnlock as I can be, because I figured out what I actually wanted from the story and how to find it.

TL;DR

If people miss the romance of BBC Sherlock through a Johnlock lens and just don't want to get back into the game, I can't recommend looking around at other Sherlock adaptations enough, particularly Granada Holmes. You might find what you need elsewhere.

Post script to my too long ask: for good canon ACD Johnlock I cannot recommend Katie Forsythe's entire fanfiction canon enough.

For closure I especially would recommend the two-parter Sign of Change and Cauldron: A Love Letter. This story does what no other Holmes adaptation has ever managed to do. It brings up the two canon events that (if they actually happened) must have wrecked the John and Sherlock relationship the most: John's marriage and Sherlock's fall. It ties them together, breaks your heart completely, and then *this is key* ultimately has John and Sherlock walk the difficult path to reconciliation and happiness again. I don't think a good Series Five of BBC Sherlock could fix me as much as these two fics have honestly.

Once again. Thank you. TJLC Explained was good times, and honestly if I had the chance to tell myself pre-2017 that I was getting my hopes up for nothing and BBC Sherlock would one day not even be my favorite Holmes adaptation anymore I wouldn't. The journey and excitement though misplaced was just so special and fun I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I hope I'll be seeing more projects of yours, Sherlock based or not!

Jaskier: this is my house, and I may stand wherever I like!

Geralt: where's the spider