Thanks for that podcast, Suzi!  Really interesting discussion, but it did stray quite a way off Sherlock at times (unfortunately, I haven't watched the other shows it talked about). 

It does seem to be a shame that it was this show in particular that people latched on to.  The podcast kept mentioning that 14 year old LGBTQ people need to see themselves on screen, but Sherlock and John were never going to be that, were they?   Whereas in Doctor Who there was a much younger, openly lesbian main character, which was worlds better in terms of representation, but it didn't seem to attract the same following (or maybe I missed it).  

To be fair to Moftiss, and the rest of the team, I do think they were clear from the very beginning that it was a friendship. 

I see what you mean, Susi. But I think there are many factors at play here  (which in itself makes this very interesting, I think). How we interpret at text/show/anything depends on quite a lot - our cultural background, our personal background, our experiences, our preferences, our knowledge base... None of these variables are controllable by the author. 

For instance, there were quite a few back in the HP-days that were convinced Harry and Hermione would become a couple. For J.K.Rowling and for probably the majority of the fans (including me) it was obvious from very early on that Ron and Hermione would end up together. So even when Rowling put, what she described as "anvil-sized hints" into the books about R&H, quite a big portion of the fanbase were convinced about H&H. 

Because when you have a preference, you can so easily interpret what you find so that it correlates with your already existing world-view. This is the psychological basis for just about all belief in conspiracy theories, for instance. And if you think H&H match together better than R&H, you can easily interpret what is a close friendship into something more. Same as with Johnlock.

That doesn't mean that there weren't scenes that were open to interpretation. But "open to interpretation" means exactly that - that the scene could be interpreted both as Johnlock and as "just friends". And when the creators then repeatedly says "just friends" is the right interpretation (according to where they are going in the show itself), then I don't see the problem with it. 

Wow, people are outdoing themselves lately!



Details about the book:

https://iamjohnlocked4life.tumblr.com/post/174676644200/iamjohnlocked4life-sherlock-holmes-collection
 

Oh, Germany is getting a queer Holmes audio book. Amazing times to live in. 
 

Liberty wrote:

It got me thinking, actually, about how much pornography/erotica is visual (film, video, text, photography, painting, etc.).  I'm sure audiobooks are great news for people who have visual difficulties or who prefer to listen rather than see/read.  Maybe they're also fun for brightening up the commute to work!   Or as a bedtime story. 

Probably quite a lot rests on whether the reader has an appealing voice! 
 

Now desperately fantasizing about Ben reading erotica aloud.

Casanova?

Not for me, I have to say...

I think Janine taking selling the story to the press worked particularly well in HLV, because of Magnussen being a media mogul.  Janine was able to have a sort of revenge on him by selling to a rival.  But also, I think, it added to the idea of Magnussen's power - we know that the story wasn't true, and that there was no evidence, but it didn't stop the papers publishing.   Maybe it shouldn't have been such a revelation when Sherlock found out that Magnussen didn't need a secret vault!   This was probably a major clue (although I didn't notice it until just now, when I read your post, Susi!).

Of course, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Moftiss had seen the Sun story (they would presumably have been watching the show), and remembered it, either consciously or unconsciously, when writing HLV. 

 

Slightly OT, but there's one area where I agree so much with the writer - there does seem to be a prejudice against teenage/young women and the things they like (I've noticed particularly with Twilight and Justin Bieber in the past).  It's fashionable to hate what teenage women love, which I feel is critical of young women. 

I have to admit that I've been (and probably still am!) a bit confused by the difference between Johnlock and TJLC.  The writer puts it very clearly that Johnlock is purely about shipping the characters rather than believing it would happen in the show, but I've felt there is a kind of half way house where people believe it's the intention of the show, but don't believe all the "conspiracy" type clues.   I do find it difficult to understand how people could believe in the drink code thing!  But I think the Slate podcast did try to understand at the end. 

I liked the points in the article about the positive aspects of the TJLC community.  It's funny - I'd posted just a while back that I feel it's a shame people latched on to John and Sherlock's relationship (a couple basically shown as straight or heavily closeted, white, middleaged, middle class, etc., men) for representation for LGBT youth, rather than characters closer to their demographic and openly gay.   But I wonder if the community maybe needed something like the "conspiracy" aspect to have those positive benefits?  If the programme had actually shown a romantic relationship, then there would have been no need for the community?

Thanks for the link, Susi. It's always good to get nuanced opinions. TJLC is, as most things, not only good or only bad. It is what it is, to quote John.

My biggest problem with TJLC is that quite a few seem to think (or seemed to think) that their interpretation was the only right one, and if the writers didn't see that and didn't have Johnlock as end game, then they were wrong, misleading, queerbaiting, cowards etc etc. 

She writes in this reply that they do it mostly for fun. But the ones who held the belief I wrote about above are the ones that I think of as "stalinists", to quote Martin. 

I think most tings are fine as long as they are done for fun, with a bit of perspective and a with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek attitude. If people starts to take things like this too seriously, that's when things starts to go badly.