I've answered a couple of times above - don't want to get too repetitive!  That's just my opinion, and I'm not claiming to know all the answers.   I'll just add that they don't claim to be showing an ordinary friendship - they are showing love, a couple who would kill and maybe even die for each other - it is romantic.  Just not in that way .

Sexual orientation becomes the issue if it is one of the obstacles and/or if it's the thing that's revealed, after being hidden.  And both of these could very easily have been completely avoided, if the writers had wanted to go there.


 

Not reall. Because of what Mark Gatiss wrote about the film. That it was cut and sort of destroyed due to censure. I cannot imagine him of all writers doing the very same thing forty or fifty years onwards. I would rather expect him to set it right. 

I will do my very best. 

Liberty wrote:

nakahara wrote:

Liberty wrote:

But that's exactly it, Susi.  If that team wanted to do Johnlock they would do it.  It wouldn't be hidden away.   I mean, even Private Life was much more overt than Sherlock.   Why on earth would they make something that's more repressed than Private Life, when apparently Billy Wilder regretted that it couldn't have been more open?   In the example you mention (Moffat's writing for Dr Who), the couple are clearly and openly in a same-sex relationship (the fact that it's same-sex isn't an issue, or commented on) and share a kiss, in a children's TV programme - it's not hidden or coded but completely out there.    Whereas in Sherlock, there isn't even a scene as explicit as the one in Private Life  ("the answer is yes - you are being presumptuous"). 

But where would be a fun in that if they stated it so openly? Moftiss love to play with their audience and to remove all the ambiguity away from the story would rob it of most of its charm.

SusiGo wrote:

Liberty: Why would the team have to announce it from the beginning? What if Johnlock is one essential part of the narrative arc in "a show about a detective"? They did not tell us that Mycroft was not Moriarty or that Mary was a killer either. It was developed within the narrative - in Mary's cases we got hints, as Steven has stated - and yet the audience was surprised. I am sure the same thing will happen with people looking back to all the signs of love between Sherlock and John and say "I saw but I did not observe".
 

Short answer: because the way it has been set up would make sexual orientation "the issue".  

They've presented John as straight - ALL his partners have been women.   They could have made one or more partners men, or made them all men, or not shown any partners at all, and any of those approaches would mean that sexual orientation was not the issue if John fell for Sherlock.   In fact, they've picked the one approach where it would be an issue, which suggests to me that they're not going to go there.  The article suggests a backstory about John suppressing his sexuality while in the Forces and beyond, but we get no hint of that in the series - and again, it would make sexual orientation the issue.  It would be possible to write them as lovers  - but they've given it a very difficult setup, if they are going to make the reveal be about romance rather than sexuality.

 
To me this is the strongest aspect speaking against Johnlock, too. There's never been the faintest hint of John being interested in men and not in Sherlock in this kind of way.
Nevertheless I'd call their relationship love - just not on the level of romantic/sexual interest.
 

We don't see John having a big interest in women either. They don't have a high priority in his life when it comes to Sherlock. It's not that important to him.

And John gets jealous when this particular man is dealing with a seemingly interested woman.

But those scenes are very open to interpretation (and jealousy is not always sexual).   We're not all seeing the same thing.

Harriet wrote:

We don't see John having a big interest in women either. They don't have a high priority in his life when it comes to Sherlock. It's not that important to him.

I agree that Sherlock is his priority, but dating women was important enough to him for the writers to put it into the show.   They've chosen to show him dating women (and exclusively women), when there was no need to.   
 

Well, Sherlock is the priority, Johnlock or not!   But what I'm trying to say is that there was no need to write that aspect (John dating women) at all.   And it's the one way of writing about it that is most likely to exclude Johnlock, given the writers history and declared intentions.  (Any of the other options - John not dating, John dating off-screen and we don't really know about it, John dating only men, John dating both men and women - would have set things up quite nicely for Johnlock.).

You could argue that they had to show Mary because she's in the ACD canon.  But I don't agree.  They could easily have changed her sex, or left her out completely ... it's not as if TSOT stuck to the original story (I would say that it references it, but is a completely different story). 
 

Well, actually-- with John married and expecting a child-- Mofftiss *really* made John's love affair with Sherlock confusing. Talk about mixed-signals! So, one of those dates with a woman apparently was the right one. 

Last edited by RavenMorganLeigh (September 11, 2015 7:51 pm)

But John married Mary before he knew she was pregnant. If he didn't love her, and has true love only for Sherlock-- why do that? I've always suspected that in a way, John was punishing Sherlock for TRF. Sort of a "I'll show you what it means to love someone you can't have! Let's see how you like it." The thing is-- that actually makes sense. It would explain a lot.