That John is not nice doesn't equal that he is nasty. Also being nice doesn't equate with being good.

I saw the tendency on the tumblr on the last week and i can only wonder how can people see John so unidimensional. I can only thank the writers of the show that they don't write a character with the issues he has being nice or pitiable. 

First when we meet John we learn that he has at least depression ( i won't dwell on the PTDS, i will do it in the right thread). Now, i was in my life only at the border of a depression and it was hell. It sucked all my life power from me, all my joy, all my wish to meet other people. I felt that i cannot bring them so much negativity but at the same time I felt that they cannot understand in which place i was (they didn't). I had no power to laugh, to be friendly or nice, i stop meeting other people, i really had no power to meet social expectations of being nice and positive about life and and and. I wanted to dig a hole and live there quietly. No, depression is nothing romantic, nothing "nice", nothing that you can switch over when you meet other people. All you can hope is to guard it, to don't let the other feel how vulnerable you are, to don't wound them, to don't spill your depression on them. Your self-esteem is low, and every slightly negative remark strikes you to the bones. So please, please, if you have friends or colleagues who are going through something like this, do not expect from them smiles and nice discussions...
 
So, we meet John at his low, depressed that he is injured, that he has lost his career and his place in society. No, he is not happy to meet Mike, because Mike knows the old John Watson. He is very wounded by Ms. Hudson ". But you’re more the sitting-down type, I can tell." , because he doesn't want to be like that, as an army-doctor he was anything but sitting-down type. He is angry with his life at that moment, not at Ms. Hudson, when he reply so angry back. (and by the way he apologizes right away, he knows that he was a "bit not good"). With the "colleague" vs "friend" is just a big misunderstanding between him and Sherlock and none is here nasty: at that moment John is plagued by the worry that he has no money and no job, no place in society and feels better presented as a professional than as a friend (we know why for Sherlock "friend" was more important than colleague, but at that moment John has not the knowledge of Sherlock past). Yes, Sherlock offers money and free meals but we see how reluctant is John to ask for it and how bad he feels about it - to ask for money means that he is not able to be independent and a whole man. He is proud, not good for someone in his position - but how many people would feel good to receive money from other instead earning by their own power? So John makes the right decision and is very important that he has the power to move on with his life and take a job especially under his value.
 
For true, Sherlock cures his limp and give excitement to his life, but one thing it does not : the depression won't disappear just like that. It will go quiet and hide in John's soul, but when life strikes back it will come in full power, like we see after the fall. Is not Sherlock fault that the depression is not going away, neither John's. He genuinely believes he is over it till the Fall, he believes he doesn't need a therapist, that is this kind of illness for you, the tricks it does, you believe that you are over it, but if you don't work on it, it is just an impression. John learns his lesson after the Fall and gets back to therapy (and is still at it at the time of his wedding).
 
John is very compassionate, but being compassionate doesn't mean that you walks with a smile on your lips and say only nice things to other. We see his face when he sees the dead woman, when he speaks about the still born baby, when Ms Hudson was in danger, when he decide to lie to Sherlock about the Woman, during the Great Game and during the Reichenbach Fall, when he hears about the fake engagement . It is not a "social" mask he just puts on, it is shown how he hates to lie, how he is not able to really lie even when he wants to protect Sherlock, he genuinely believes what he preaches to Sherlock and is true to himself. By his chosen professions he cares about the others, he wants to protect them. He doesn't choose to have a Moriarty as a friend, he chooses a Sherlock.
 
He has his own issues and his own demons to beat, his bottled anger, his difficulty to adjust to civilian life, his low-esteem which doesn't bode too well with Sherlock's kind of compliments (nobody should see him as an angel, he is not), but nastiness is not one of his character traits.
 How he is messed more by Sherlock fake suicide and how explains the way he acts in S3, i will discuss later, this post is already very long, i will let now only this link here http://leandraholmes.tumblr.com/post/85798197888/leandraholmes-sherlock-is-straight-im-going  . 

Well, I appreciate that it's difficult for John to compete (by the end of S3, anyway).  Sherlock does come out the better person in the big ways, with generally more noble motivations.  John never really gets a chance to show how far he would go to save the world. 

It's an odd relationship, but I think they have a kind of understanding.  It goes both ways - I wasn't quite comfortable with the way Sherlock keeps information from John.  I really struggled with that in S2.  Obviously, he had to keep John in the dark in TRF, but in ASIB?   I've just been thinking about the scene with Janine at 221B recently, and Sherlock quite blatantly deceives John over that, for no good reason - John's going to find out the truth a little later that same day.   I would think that the deception would be a huge issue ... but funnily enough, it's not for John.  The only time he gets really angry about it is about the fall, and only because he was left to grieve for Sherlock.   Otherwise, he valiantly puts up with being misled over and over again with barely a complaint, AND whilst having complete faith in Sherlock. 

That, for me, helps to equalise the relationship.  Otherwise, yes, I do think John can seem unappreciative.  I was frustrated by his reluctance to forgive Sherlock for something Sherlock had to do (and that was for John's protection too - the fall) - that's about John's issues.  I didn't like John getting angry with a very vulnerable Sherlock because Mary shot him (you know what I mean) - that's a great scene, but difficult to watch.  He allows the public perception that he's the one who saves Sherlock, when in fact we know that it's at least 50/50 (if anything, Sherlock functions better without John than John does without Sherlock - he knows Sherlock saved him, but he mostly keeps that under his hat). 

Also, I don't think his blog is very good. 

Yes, I agree. I think S3 shows John's worst side and Sherlock's best side, and I've been working to equalise things myself!  I think part of the trouble is that the primary thing that draws him towards Sherlock is Sherlock's more negative side - the danger, the recreation of the battlefield atmosphere.   Although I think there are a lot of other things that draw him to Sherlock, that's the biggy, the one that we're shown repeatedly and which both John and Sherlock acknowledge.   So I sometimes get a sense of John making Sherlock into that, whilst ignoring some of his better qualities - it's as if he WANTS him to be a sociopath (but at the same time, he must know he's really not - as evidenced by his trust in him). 

Sherlock doesn't really help matters by keeping things from John, because John ends up seeing more of the sociopathic stuff, and less of the compassionate, heroic stuff.   He doesn't know that Sherlock saved Irene's life, for instance, and Sherlock makes sure he doesn't know that. 

I know where you are coming from. I also don´t see John as really nasty. I just wish that he would get rid of his trait to write ugly stuff about Sherlock behind his back.

Consider - after Sherlock´s public image had just recovered in TEH, his best friend suddenly publicly accusses him of a crime. He writes verbatim that Sherlock hired two cutthroats to assault him, violently seize him and drug him and stick him into the blazing bonfire, dangerously playing with his life - "because he is a psychopath". This is no light stuff - this is a dangerous libel able to destroy Sherlock´s career anew. Because what would the members of society (whose belief in Sherlock was badly shaken by the accussations against Sherlock in TRF) think when they would read such stuff? "Oh, John is a former army doctor, he doesn´t really mean that..." No! They would think: "The man was a dangerous wacko all along, it´s a pity he didn´t really die."

John is not stupid, so why is he doing an irresponsible stuff like that? Is that a retaliation for Sherlock´s lies? But those lies didn´t had the power to injure John. A libel of this kind, on the other hand, could destroy Sherlock completely....

Well, I would not take it that seriously. We know John tends to be sassy and does not mince his words but these sentences are immediately followed by:
=14px"Nah, I know it wasn't really."

And later:
"But then the whole kidnapping/bonfire thing happened. And he saved my life, of course. And I went to say thanks and... I was hooked. He's like a drug. He told me about the terrorist plot and I was hooked. I had to help him."

Which is quite telling. 
 

nakahara wrote:

I know where you are coming from. I also don´t see John as really nasty. I just wish that he would get rid of his trait to write ugly stuff about Sherlock behind his back..

 
I just want to point out that John's blog can hardly be considered "behind Sherlock's back."   We and John knows that Sherlock reads every word of it and often responds.  I think in a way John is taking the piss when he writes those things because he knows Sherlock will read them.

I was rethinking this scene again, today. What do we say about coincidence?!
I may have mentiond before, I have always read that scene completely differently to everybody elseI
To me, Seb says' Friend?' Meaning' Boyfriend.'
This would make a lot more sense as to why John then says 'Colleague'...and would fit into his usual denial of them being a couple.

Lovely light - I really enjoyed reading your very thoughtful post, too.


I'm among those (the minority though, I think) that think that John correcting Sherlock's "friend" to "colleague" in TBB was more about protecting both himself and Sherlock from any snide remarks (or even just thoughts) on Sebastian's part, than about pushing Sherlock away. It happens before Sebastian reveals how he knew Sherlock and how they all hated him at uni, but I always thought that John somehow immediately instinctively felt that Sebastian was the type that would gloat over any (real or supposed) weaknesses of Sherlock's, and that he stepped in and tried to shield Sherlock from any of that, even before Sebastian confirmed that it was necessary.

I also agree with what others have said in this thread, that John, in TBB, was at a real low point in terms of money, social standing and professional self-esteem, and that he would rather not be seen as someone who depended on Sherlock both emotionally and economically.


As for John's blog and the tone of some of his posts, particularly concerning Sherlock, that is a matter that keeps puzzling me. I think most of the blog is fun to read and it's nice that it exists, but I often feel that that is not really John's voice speaking there. Like the John from the blog and the John from the show are two different persons.

Of course, within the Sherlock universe, the blog is the "official" face of things, while what we see in the show is kind of the private, uncut version of events. So of course John would not put each and every detail in the blog, and he wouldn't be too keen on revealing too much of just how much he loves (bromance or romance, it really doesn't matter in this context) Sherlock (and neither would Sherlock be). But still, a lot of it just jars. Maybe it's just due to the fact that the blog is not written by Moftiss but by someone else...
 

Last edited by La Jolie (November 4, 2014 8:09 am)

Moftiss don't write the blog?  That explains a lot.  I don't feel it's John's voice either. 

Actually, my main complaint about is that it's just not that great to read.  Doyle's Watson managed to do some quite gripping write-ups of Sherlock's cases, but BBC John's are rather dull, to be honest.   I'm not convinced it would take off as a famous, followed blog in the way that Watson's stories did.