Schmiezi wrote:

Liberty wrote:

ITo set him up as (outwardly) straight and then make him fall for Sherlock needs a whole lot of backstory.

Why?

I've seen it happen with my best friend. She was straight, still is, and yet there was this woman she fell in love with. No "backstory", no long developement. They met, fell in love and are happy for 15 years now, married for a few.  She still isn't interested in other women, when she has a crush on a fictional character it's always a man.
But her wife is her one exception. I don't see why Sherlock should not be that exception for John.

Yes, these things happen in real life, as I said.  (Although with women rather than men, in my experience).  But this is fiction - and I think it doesn't work well to set up a character as straight and then having them fall for the same sex without that being part of the point, if you know what I mean, just because it's unusual.  I think audiences would need an episode which explained it, maybe showed John pondering about his sexuality, etc.  As I said, it could be done with clever writing ... but I think it would have been better to make John gay from the beginning.  And I think the writers could have "got away" with that, but chose not to. 

I've left Sherlock out of it, because I think he's written as more ambiguous, from what I've seen.  Irene Adler suggests that he would be straight if he wasn't repressing his sexuality, but it's not a given.   Again, I think we'd need some story about why he stops suppressing his feelings - which could be fun, actually.   I rather like repressed/asexual Sherlock, though.

Liberty wrote:

I think audiences would need an episode which explained it, maybe showed John pondering about his sexuality, etc.  As I said, it could be done with clever writing ...

 IMO it has been done with clever writing already ...
 

Anything could happen.
It's what actually does that matters.

Liberty wrote:

....
Well, I haven't watched all the episodes yet, so I haven't seen them set it up yet.  I'm disappointed that they didn't make them gay to begin with if that was the route they were going to take - quite a missed opportunity (as the potential was there from the beginning).   ....

 
Well, but wouldn't it be a bit... boring? Wouldn't it be much more interesting the actual way? If they would go it - just saying. 

And I agree, you never know the reasons why someone "was straight" and turns out to be bi or gay later.
Some might suppress it, some might don't know it consciously, for some it may suddenly change...  I have no personal experience, so I just can guess "blindly".
Maybe you check the "Comprehensive Johnlock Guide"-thread. For signs from the beginning until now.
E.g. Johns inability to keep any girlfriend as long as Sherlock is with him.
Mary appeared after Sherlock was "dead", so.... It could tell us something about John, right?

I'm still catching up, so don't want to read about all the signs yet and spoil it for myself.  I wouldn't see difficulty in holding down an opposite-sex relationship as meaning somebody was gay.  I do agree that it would be more interesting if John was straight and still fell for Sherlock ... but I don't know if I want that kind of story.

I actually really like the friendship.  I've had "romantic" friendships in the past, and I love seeing an on-screen one.  It's a special relationship - in a way it's not as run of the mill as a sexual relationship.   Not everybody has those sort of friendships.

And this is going to sound superficial, but I don't think that in this series Sherlock and John are on the same level of attractiveness.  I mean, Sherlock is absolutely stunning: he glows. Whereas John seems more moderately attractive.   It's not just the actors - I could quite believe Cumberbatch and Freeman in a romance if they were presented differently (in a different series).   I understand that John has qualities which complement Sherlock, but on an attractiveness scale, they don't match. 

Last edited by Liberty (July 13, 2014 4:04 pm)

I think this is not really an argument and beauty is always subjective. I know that there are many people who find Martin Freeman very, very attractive. And in reality there are many happy couples that may be regarded as not equally attractive.