A Long Rant About How Johnlock is Perceived in the Sherlock Holmes Fandom At Large
Sorry that I initially sent this to the asks page. I realized later than long asks go to the submissions page so that’s why I’m reposting this…
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Okay, so this is going to be long, but I want to share with you a lot of my thoughts on Johnlock, how I came to ship it, why I’m heavily frustrated with parts of the Sherlock fandom as a whole, and why I’m frustrated with the current state of things moving forward.
For context, I started shipping Johnlock in August of 2025. Some people in my life suggested that I watch BBC Sherlock, and despite hearing only negative things about it at the time (I frequently got recommended videos such as “Sherlock is Garbage and Here’s Why” by hbomberguy on YouTube), I decided to watch BBC Sherlock anyway, and guess what…I liked it. I liked it a lot. I was especially enthralled with the chemistry between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. It radiated off the screen, and within the first thirty minutes of “A Study in Pink,” I was shipping them. Just that whole scene with them sitting down at the restaurant, and the “do you have a girlfriend?” “do you have a boyfriend?” conversation, as well as the other characters constantly mistaking the two for a couple solidified this ship as one of my new OTPs.
For some reason, I seem to have this curse attached to me where none of the ships I ship are canon: there is a lot of subtext surrounding them all, but they are never explicitly a couple/in love. I don’t know if that’s because most of the media I’ve seen with canon ships seems to be “bam! Through the power of heterosexuality this man and this woman fall in love at first sight and he always saves her” and it’s superficial. It left such a sour taste in my mouth in regards to romance that I absolutely HATED any mention of romance or shipping until I was fourteen. It was then that I discovered queer readings of some of my favorite pieces of media, and I took a strange interest in them, despite not knowing 100% why. A while later, I discovered a slash ship blog and although I didn’t ship the ship the blog centered on, I really enjoyed reading the meta and it completely flipped my perspective on shipping. For me, shipping was no longer about characters HAVING to get together just because “a male and a female character need to kiss” and now more about deciphering possible subtext and analyzing the deep bond and connection between two characters.
So when I watched “A Study in Pink,” and saw the subtext just screaming through the TV screen, I immediately thought, “Wow, I see why people ship this.” And despite somehow sensing deep down intuitively that it would be queerbaiting (after all, most of the references to Sherlock and John being a couple were one-off jokes), I still clung to hope that it perhaps might be canon. I quickly headed online right after finishing the episode and searched up “johnlock” on my browser (remembering AO3 subreddit posts that mentioned that ship name). I searched up fanart, tumblr posts, the r/Sherlock subreddit. That is when I found your blog. I was searching for possible fanfic recs (because I was craving something where Johnlock actually became canon), and I found a couple of Tumblr blogs (mostly older and abandoned) which had fic recs. I browsed through them, and one night I found your stuff, and I clicked on your meta because I was curious (I think it may have been about subtext in the ACD stories, which I had not read at the time), and I enjoyed the meta so much. I read some of your TJLC meta and I also enjoyed that, and then I became convinced that my worst fears were for nothing, and that by the end of BBC Sherlock, Sherlock and John would get together romantically.
Then, because I like Reddit, I went over to the r/Sherlock subreddit, where I got total whiplash. “I don’t see why people think Sherlock and John should be a couple,” some commented. “ACD didn’t make them gay, so why do people want this?” and “fangirls want to make everything gay.” I know I need to stop letting random people on the internet get to me in such a deep way, but I was just shocked. After all, to me, the gay subtext was blatantly obvious. How could people miss it? I thought. I felt disgusting seeing comments everywhere just deriding “stupid fangirls fetishizing gay relationships.” It felt painful, because I ship characters because I like focusing on their deep emotional intimacy and how it could develop into something romantic. It made me feel like I was not a real Sherlock fan for liking Johnlock. And maybe I’m not. I haven’t read the ACD stories yet, and although I would like to someday, I’m so emotionally distraught by the queerbaiting of BBC Sherlock that I feel I need time to calm down from Johnlock not being made canon in an “official” adaptation before I can enjoy the ACD stories for what they are—mysteries, not a romance.
Then came a terrible turn: when I clicked on the Fanlore page for TJLC because I wanted to learn more about it, discovered to my dismay that Johnlock was not endgame and it was queerbait like I first suspected, and discovered also the toxic history behind TJLC, with some members harassing people who had even a slightly different opinion on Johnlock than them. This made me so angry, as I realized that the modern Sherlock Holmes fandom is stuck in the aftermath of these bad actors’ bad choices. There are people in the Sherlock & Co. fandom who are against the idea of Johnlock becoming canon in their fandom “because BBC Sherlock ruined Johnlock.” This also made me upset, because I don’t think a few bad actors’ decisions should make it so a ship can never become canon in any adaptation.
I ended up finding an episode of a podcast that discussed TJLC and its aftermath, and it seemed promising, asking the question of “who gets to decide if Sherlock Holmes is gay?,” but unfortunately it just seemed to paint the TJLCers as stupid when there was literally queer subtext in the actual show. It was disappointing for me, and maybe it was just because of cognitive dissonance where I wanted so desperately for Johnlock to become canon, but I had already seen r/Sherlock both complain about Johnlock shippers AND completely ban all Johnlock content from the sub (even though they allow Sherlolly, Warstan, and probably some others). Some people have criticized the sub for being homophobic for this reason, but some queer people ON the subreddit say “no, it’s not, it’s just that Johnlock shippers are annoying and I don’t see anything romantic between them.” I have also seen people complaining on other forums about Johnlock by saying “nowadays whenever people see a close male friendship on screen they always assume they’re gay,” and complaining that “modern academia is misinterpreting literature to make it gay when it’s not,” somehow not remembering that queer people have always existed but it was illegal to write about it so it would have to be subtext. Now, maybe it’s a bad idea to bring r/Sherlock drama to Tumblr but it has just negatively affected me. Tumblr, AO3, and the Johnlock subreddit (and occasionally YouTube) are the only places where I feel like I can find other Johnlock shippers, or at least people who don’t completely oppose the notion that there may have been queerbaiting on BBC Sherlock. I certainly think there was. Meanwhile, on r/Sherlock, people say stuff like “Sherlock isn’t queerbaiting, you just don’t have enough examples of positive male friendships,” and like, what? Seriously? How do you miss the subtext?
I will admit: I do not identify as a TJLCer. I do not believe that Moftiss ever intended to make Sherlock and John romantically interested in each other. I highly suspect that I would’ve been a TJLCer if I had watched this show before season 4 aired, but because I entered the fandom quite late, I don’t see evidence that Moftiss would reveal that Johnlock is canon after the last season aired nine years ago. At the same time, however, I do think they did intentionally put queerbaiting into their show to mislead people. I honestly find that the gay jokes get boring pretty fast. Why put them in when they add nothing to the story? Why the filming and lighting choices, where they make John and Sherlock hold hands while running together, walking while staring into each other’s eyes and smiling? Why have John’s various girlfriends be hardly memorable, and have Sherlock constantly try to push them away and get closer to John? My take is that a John/Sherlock romance on BBC Sherlock would have strengthened the show’s story by tying up a lot of loose threads mentioned above. Besides, I just love the tropes of mutual pining, idiots in love, friends-to-lovers, slow-burn romance, and angst, and Johnlock has it all. I legitimately sometimes cry because it’s not canon, and because people assume that everyone who ships it is just a delusional fangirl.
To be fair, I do disagree with the toxicity of some Johnlock shippers. I am appalled that some people tried to harass Mary’s actor, and that some people tried to get Mark Gatiss out of a gay charity because of the queerbaiting even though he is literally an openly gay man. Even though I’m disappointed that the gay subtext and baiting didn’t end up with John and Sherlock falling in love, trying to get him kicked out of the charity was a shitty move, in my opinion. Those are not acceptable behaviors under any sort of circumstances, and I do not condone any of them. That being said, why don’t we talk about the toxicity of non-Johnlock shippers too? After all, some TJLCers also got harassed, but we don’t talk about it as much.
I also feel bad because a large portion of my favorite ships are M/M pairings, and those are the pairings people often mock as just shipped by “delusional fangirls.” I have not seen the same mocking in regard to Sherlolly, even though I think there’s less subtext around Sherlock and Molly than Sherlock and John. Despite this, Johnlock seems to be the ship that gets more hate. The thing is, I’m fine if people don’t ship Johnlock. I don’t really understand why some people don’t pick up on the subtext, but then again, it’s clear that I didn’t pick up on the Sherlolly subtext either so I’m fine with them shipping whatever they want as long as they aren’t disrespectful. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a stereotype that all M/M shippers are “teen girls who fetishize gay men,” and this notion has somehow bothered and irritated me, probably because first of all they assume all slash fanfiction is explicit (which it’s not) and second of all because they are implying that all the people who write slash are young, which is also really untrue. I know that I shouldn’t let what other people say on the internet affect me, but it still feels hurtful when people imply that their straight ships are more plausible or canon than other people’s gay ships, even if neither are canon. And then people on Sherlockian forums will complain about gay Sherlock Holmes pastiches, saying “just make your own detective who’s gay, you’re being lazy by making it Sherlock Holmes; Sherlock Holmes is not gay; you know the Doyle estate hates it.” But like, I know the Doyle estate hates it but they can’t do anything about it anymore because all the ACD Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain now. And yet some people on some of these forums will say, “you know that Sherlock Holmes is in love with Irene Adler,” despite this being a thing that later adaptations ADDED. From what I’ve heard, ACD Sherlock Holmes admired Irene Adler’s intellect but had NO romantic interest in her. People will also say, “you know Sherlock Holmes is asexual; he can’t be gay,” not seeming to understand that ASEXUAL is different from AROMANTIC, and Sherlock Holmes could have romantic feelings for someone without it being sexual. Some people have also said, “but John Watson has a wife named Mary Morstan,” but, like, bisexual people exist. Some people have even argued that “homoerotic Holmes and Watson adaptations are not real Holmes and Watson adaptations; they’ve turned them into different characters,” without saying similar things about adaptations that transport the characters into the modern day, like with BBC Sherlock and Elementary. Like, we’re fine with genderswapping characters, transporting them into the modern day, and making Irene Adler a dominatrix but then we draw the line at Holmes and Watson being lovers? WTF?
People nowadays often make fun of TJLC for making up complex theories that the showrunners were probably not even thinking this deep about when they made the show, but while I agree with this criticism, isn’t that what literary analysis is about? Sifting for hidden meanings and alternative interpretations? Writers often write in meanings they didn’t consciously intend unconsciously. And it did not take me much deep digging to see the romantic subtext behind some of John and Sherlock’s interactions in BBC Sherlock.
I’m worried that unintentionally, the bad actors in the BBC Johnlock community have upheld the status quo of people being against even the idea of Holmes and Watson as lovers by being toxic. Now whenever the idea of “Johnlock” is brought up outside Tumblr, people are shaking their heads going, not this again. And honestly, I can’t blame them, even though I feel the urge to. Although I am craving canon Johnlock content, I understand that people have been hurt by toxic BBC Johnlock shippers. The issue I take with this though is that it seems like people are blaming ALL BBC Johnlock shippers for something a large portion of the community DID NOT DO, seeing the idea of Sherlock and John getting together romantically as a frivolous, naive idea. I’m tired of this. I wish I was part of the fandom back in 2016, so I could conspire, theorize, and talk about Johnlock with people still waiting, still hoping for it to become canon in BBC Sherlock. I respect Moftiss’s decision not to make them canon because it’s their show, but seriously, if not Johnlock, why the camera angles, the effects, the expressions, the gay references, everything? And yet we’re the ones derided as “delusional”? How is that supposed to make sense? Sherlockian societies have long been against people even bringing up the idea of Holmes and Watson being lovers, but why? Are they afraid of people raising legitimate arguments for them being lovers? What’s ironic about all of this is that there is a 1941 essay, “Watson Was a Woman,” by Rex Stoat, arguing that Watson must be a woman because he and Holmes act like an old married couple. The idea of Holmes and Watson as lovers is not new. Why is it being derided now? Is there any way to break this status quo so the Sherlock Holmes fandom as a whole can have this discussion? Because right now, it seems to me that we are at the same place where we have been for the majority of the fandom’s existence—unopen to even just the sliver of possibility that Holmes and Watson could be a couple.
One day, if I still care about this, I’m going to write up a comprehensive piece of meta arguing that Johnlock was indeed queerbait, that Johnlock is completely valid, and talk about the future of Johnlock in the Sherlock Holmes fandom as a whole. I’m not going to promise release dates or anything, but I’m so frustrated about this all that I feel like I need to write something about this.
Anyway, despite all of this, thank you for your blog. It helped me realize that I could both headcanon Sherlock as ace and as in love with John. It gave me meta to read, look over, and think about. It was a spark of light that still flames in my heart, giving me hope for Johnlock, even in a time where actually getting canon Johnlock seems highly unlikely.
Also, in my eyes, Sherlock and John in BBC Sherlock slowly come to understand their feelings for each other. John questions his sexuality, and eventually realizes that although he is not gay, he is also not straight, either. There’s a lot of pining, angst, and misunderstandings, but in the end, there is a happy ending. I know that’s not canon, but it’s how I personally see Johnlock.
(submitted by the-curious-crow-788)
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Hi Lovely!
OKAY first of all, I greatly apologize for the delay in replying to this ask the first time around, and I’m sorry that you felt I had ignored you to send it a second time 💜. I have very limited time in my off hours at least until summer, but I’m between projects right now and I have the spoons to reply, so I’m doing this!! *HUGS* Let me know if you’d rather the Anonymous version be posted and I’ll copy-paste the response from here into that... I chose this one because you go into more detail about your thoughts on this one. I just can’t colour-code my links on submissions so apologies ahead of time. I’m replying to each section as I read it.
So your first experience isn’t unlike mine, except I started watching it because I loved Martin Freeman and I knew he was in it, and my RL friends suggested it to me since I liked Martin in The Hobbit. I got into the series during the S2 to S3 hiatus, just before S3 aired. Fell in love with it. But I’m also a clueless gal who didn’t “see” Johnlock until my own self discovery because I didn’t know I was hella-ace and context clues really went over my head. Basically “I love the chemistry and I don’t know why?” kind of deal, LOL.
I ALSO seem to be cursed with regards to my fave ships, AND I got SO irritated at heteronormative ships because no one was just friends, it seemed (again, before I realized I was ace, I just didn’t understand HOW or WHY people just... saw each other and wanted to fuck, LOL). These days now it’s the frustration of queer ships that have BEAUTIFUL relationship development and then it just doesn’t go beyond that? I got too into learning to read subtext during the S3 Hiatus, and the building blocks for Johnlock were there. I think the first OTP I shipped and it went somewhere was OFMD’s Stede and Blackbeard. Of course that got cancelled, oof. Next one is Aziracrow that was SWAK-canonized, albeit rather tragically, and I remain hopeful for a happy ending for them as well with S3 in a couple weeks.
I agree with you about meta changing my view on characters of any gender getting together; meta really helped with that for me as well. I still do cringe a LOT at ships that just happen with no development whatsoever, but I’ve learned to just ignore it and move on.
Regarding the negativity within fandom spaces, gosh we’ve been dealing with that forever, and honestly I don’t understand why. Ship and Let Ship is a popular fandom motto. But many of those “against” Johnlock fail to realize that the ‘ship has been around for over a century, since the ACD canon days. It’s not a new phenomenon and it’s going to persevere for a century more. Apparently the ACD stories are very queer-coded. I haven’t personally read all of them so I can’t confirm.
[if you want to read some more, I’ve a few posts on this meta here about ACD and if they couldn’t be made explicit]
It just humours me that the idea of fandom being “a bunch of teenagers” is STILL, in this big year of 2026, the prevailing belief about Fandom. LOOOOOOOOOL who the fuck do they think started message boards in the 90s, and write the millions of words of classic fanfics that everyone recs and loves? Oy. Ageism is ridiculous.
Regarding the queerbaiting, yeah, and I can understand how some don’t see it (as I said, I myself didn’t either initially, but I was not against it at all), and it is really, really petty that so many fan spaces and even fan events don’t let Johnlock be a thing? It is unfortunate that a lot of bad actors ruined it for everyone, unfortunately, meanwhile Johnlockers CONSTANTLY were harassed during the heydays from Other Shippers and Johnlockers were basically lambasted for defending themselves and were cheered on for driving Johnlockers away. I tried to stay to the sidelines for all of that. Most of the antis got bored and moved on to Shit on Other Fandom Ships (from my understanding) because yikes on trikes LOL. And I personally never got Sher1011y or Adb10ck, but, as I said, not my ships, Ship and Let Ship and all that is my general feelings about it these days.
And I’m shocked people find my blog on Reddit or Facebook, tbh. I don’t go searching for my blog online. “Blissfully unaware” is better for my mental health.
And regarding the sexualities, YES, that was a huge point of contention during the hey days as well. Meanwhile forgetting that a LOT of the fandom figured out their sexualities here. I dunno. I certainly did [the link there goes into a lot more meta about my thoughts on John and Sherlock’s sexualities so it covers a large chunk of my response to what you’ve written here]. A lot of the reason many of us have issues with S4 is because EVERYONE and everything is so out of character and makes no sense and it has NOTHING to do with the ship itself. But, like you said above, people will jump to the “Johnlockers Ew” conclusion to why we dislike S4. *shrugs* Whatever. I’m too old to care these days.
Anyway, that all said, I think you should write your meta; people still indulge in them, and I will be happy to help you find anything you need for it (I keep a VERY intricate backlog of all the posts I’ve ever reblogged for the past 10 years)! And thank you SO SO much for your kind words about my blog and what it means to you. I also prefer romances and ships that develop over time, so yeah, Johnlock really did feel like it was going to go the distance. I have hope that one day some adaptation from a Big Name Studio will finally Go There, but for now, I enjoy my fanfiction and Fan-Funded Mini Movies, and enjoying my fandom space here on Tumblr.
And finally, I agree with your take on BBC Johnlock. Gay-Ace Sherlock and Bi John forever. 💜
Thank you so much for your ask/submission, and hope you have a great day 💜 Sorry again for putting it off for so long.
