Tyger Tyger

gender nonconformity

a profile in which the nose features prominently

striking and unusual voice

sexually repressed but in a way that I can work with

notable height (in either direction)

glasses

other unusual physical features (red hair, freckles, protruding ears, vitiligo, etc.)

visibly haunted

condemned by god to an eternity of suffering

I say this not to invoke a "holier than thou" persona for what i'm about to talk about, but because I personally relate to Sherlock a lot- in most adaptations at least, and most certainly in the books and S&Co.

Obviously Sir Doyle did tell us we can do whatever we please with his detective- but for some reason (probably the anicent ape part of my brain that makes me territorial over my special interests) I can't STAND the aromantic headcanons some people apply to Holmes! I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, of course you can do whatever you want with your favs, but here's my perspective:

Over the years i've noticed that people tend to infantilize autistic people (such as myself), and even though a lot of autistic folks ARE aromantic/asexual/both, including myself being an aromantic, I also tend to notice that people apply those labels to characters who are just...on the spectrum. Even if the character expresses sexual or emotional attraction to another character in the story. Often times, the people who assume this about these characters aren't autistic, either.

Since Sherlock Holmes is one of the most prevalent and obviously autistic characters in a peice of media that old, people are bound to have mixed views on him- including his sexuality. This post isn't meant to imply Johnlock is the only 'correct' ship, but, merely to express my perspective on why people might default to that headcanon. A few of the arguments i've seen for an aroace Holmes have been that he shows no particular interest in women; my reply to this is that he's meant to be gay. Full stop.

Arthur Conan Doyle even had influence on Holmes after he met with Oscar Wilde- one of the most famous gay writers of all time! It's no surprise that he would write the detective in that way. It just irks me that people read it that way, especially when it feels somewhat like a slight towards autistic people; something to imply that we are simply either too stupid or too childish to have sex or feel romantic attraction. Most autistic people i've met are absolute freaks in the sheets.

Maybe during Pride Month when a lot of aromantic and asexual people are probably more likely to be posting about aromantic/asexual Holmes headcanons and their love for and their joy in such ideas is not the best time to be talking about how much you "can't STAND" such headcanons, and posting such things anyway in the character/fandom tags as well as the asexual and aromantic tags is in fact still 'yucking people's yums'. And I mean this in the kindest possible and not at all condescending way I promise but I see from your intro post you are very young and therefore probably (happily for you) you've probably missed a lot of this """discourse""" (in fact, hatred and bigotry) that's been thrown at asexual and aromantic people for the past 10-15 years or so in particular, but you are basically parroting some of those ideas even so - acting like aspec headcanons are somehow 'infantilising', making it sound like asexuality = sexlessness and aromanticism = no emotional feelings, the idea that you can't headcanon autistic or widely believed to be autistic characters as asexual because that's treating them as "childish" or infantilising them (even though you literally acknowledged a lot of real actual autistic people are asexual/aromantic and even though a real actual orientation is never going to be childish or infantilising), trying to make it sound like these ace/aro headcanons are mostly coming from people who aren't autistic themselves, erasing asexual people who do have sex for whatever reason or who are kinky or are "freaks in the sheets" as you call it. Again I'm not being condescending here, just stating a fact, but I've been in the Sherlock Holmes fandom for a lot longer than you have and I have seen this time and time again, people insisting we're 'not allowed' to headcanon Holmes as asexual/aromantic because both 'he's autistic and saying he's ace is infantilising him' and 'he's gay and saying he's ace is homophobic' and asexual people be called ableist and/or homophobic just over ace headcanons. I've seen people deny that anyone who headcanons characters (including Holmes) as asexual is themselves autistic. I've seen asexuality called "desexualising" characters including Holmes over and over again, where aphobes just act like asexuality is a made up fanfic trope and just about 'not fucking' instead of being an orientation and one possessed by millions of real and diverse people and which has nothing inherently to do with sexual activity or attitudes towards sex. I've seen similar things said about aromanticism and about aro headcanons being used to 'dehumanise' characters or whatever as if aromanticism is also just a made up fic trope and not a real and diverse orientation.

You could have just posted about how you headcanon Holmes as gay or whatever and how much you love that idea without any of the rest of this, without talking about your dislike for other headcanons, without making it sound like there aren't people who are both asexual/aromantic and gay, without trying to disprove ace/aro headcanons, without regurgitating the aphobic rhetoric that treats these real orientations as being just about behaviour and as desexualising or infantilising or whatever else and acting like autistic characters aren't allowed to be asexual/aromantic, without implying that people are coming up with these aro/ace headcanons largely because of some kind of bigotry and not because these are primarily coming from people who are very commonly ace and/or aro and autistic themselves and they also, like you, "personally relate to Sherlock a lot" ("Often times, the people who assume this about these characters aren't autistic, either" - sorry but this is simply not true of Holmes or probably of most other characters commonly headcanoned in this way. Just because you personally haven't seen this doesn't mean you have a right to try to claim many of the people with these headcanons are not themselves autistic).

For those with a blorbo who's blorbo still has new media, are you satisfied with the way their story is going?

in which this whole recent plot line made me think that maybe they could have saved the moment from the dancing men (I think that’s what it’s called? That one very popular moment) for this storyline, however without making Moran try to kill Watson because that’s a stupid idea) which could’ve sparked Sherlock more intrigue with the Spider? However I have no idea if this is better or not tbh

Meanwhile I guess Mariana doesn't get to be traumatised about everything that happened or if she is traumatised her trauma doesn't matter cos Sherlock and John have to go off on ~adventures~ and Mycroft has to do his gay James Bond shit and """funny""" bickering with Sherlock. It's annoyed me before how Mariana is always the one who gets shoved out to go visit her parents or whatever and misses so much and now they're doing the same thing again (and the one time she got to be really really awesome was, unfortunately, in The Empty House or in other words the worst story they've done which I will never want to listen to again).

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I feel like they had more potential to do more with him to make him more like the og moran, and I wouldn't be shocked if they added a "moran substitute" that's either Moran or by giving him a sibling or just an apprentice or smt like that. Just a thought.

It's its own adaptation, it's bound to have character changes that differ from others and the original story lines. Creative liberties and all that. I'm basing my opinion off of only sherlock and co, not looking at other adaptations, and I don't mind the portrayal of him. Don't really have a reason for hating him (the portrayal) without looking into other adaptations, which is slightly unfair when looking at new adaptations. They are their own version that should be looked at like that.

I mean I kind of get it to some extent, people who were not already invested in the character or don't know anything about the canon or the character already or people who don't give a damn about the 'bad guys' anyway and just want the 'good guys' to win always not seeing any issue with how badly he was portrayed in it. But at the same time I feel like their portrayal of Moran doesn't even make sense in the context of S&Co itself because they kept going on about him like he's some brilliant major villain yet he barely did anything, then they just killed him off in a very strange way which treated killing a person pretty much like it was a joke and doesn't actually matter at all, and he just seems to be quite stupid and not really competent at anything except apparently beating people up (plus also seemingly much of his criminal career was just working in a bank which doesn't exactly make him sound like a really dangerous criminal either), which not only undermines this idea that he somehow deserved to just be executed, essentially (and by John. Armed police maybe would have made more sense but not John) because he really doesn't come over as that dangerous or capable or any worse than countless other criminals, but also it undermines the police (who couldn't find Moran), it undermines Sherlock (who never actually seemed interested in Moran not even when he thought Moran was 'the spider') and it undermines Moriarty and how dangerous he really is too (because it's like, that is the guy who Moriarty values so highly?).

I think adaptations don't have to follow what other adaptations do (and it's fairly pointless comparing this to other adaptations anyway in terms of Moran specifically, since so many of them never used him at all or also portrayed him badly), but they've got to have some sort of solid basis in the original material surely but with Moran he's just practically unrecognisable and they just seemed to change everything about him for the worse to try to make him seem as repellant as possible instead of actually developing his character properly to make him into an effective and capable and actually menacing villain with at least some sort of depth (also I don't even know what was up with all his swearing. I kind of get the feeling it was meant to be funny? But then if it was meant to be funny that seems like it makes him feel even less actually dangerous, if they're just trying to portray him as this 'comic' figure).

About the only detail they did seem to keep was him working for Moriarty and mattering in some way to Moriarty (which makes it even more bizarre really that they drastically altered so many other things about him, because a LOT of adaptations and pastiches have either ignored Moran completely or erased or denied his closeness to Moriarty).

Also there are some people who already really like Moran who don't seem to see anything wrong with his portrayal in it and that's just totally wild to me cos it's like, Moran is supposed to be really clever and a competent stealthy hunter and killer and be trying to get revenge on Holmes after The Final Problem plus also he doesn't die in the canon (nor is he shot by Watson), but they just threw all of this out in S&Co to turn him into this one dimensional 'baddy' with no depth at all and then he dies, but some existing fans of the character seem to see no issue with this.