No, I'm not certain you can.
Which is why we need an arbitrator.
Hence my accepting what the team clearly say in interviews.

This is where some of the frustration here at the debate comes from.

From a Johnlocker's point of view, you collect subtext interpretations, write and read metas on it, prepare gifs, in short you invest time and work in it. And very often, all you get in return is "But I don't see it" or "But the team said". In many cases I suspect that the meta or the Interpretation is not even examined closely. So your work of hours is waved away in a matter of seconds. That is frustrating.

But from a non-Johnlocker's point of view, it must be equally frustrating because you have an opinion you can barely defend on your own. You have to depend on a Team that clearly admit to lie occasionally.

What do you think?

I think you perfectly demonstrated why some Johnlockers are frustrated. :-)

Last edited by Schmiezi (August 25, 2016 6:55 am)

besleybean wrote:

For me personally, I cannot believe that some people are so dismissive of what artists say about their own work.
This isn't interpretation or opinion, we are getting it from the horses' mouth.
First hand testimony has to be given the most weight for me.
I don't always agree with what the creators say.
But I absolutely accept THEY have the final word on their work.

You speak as if everybody lived in the UK and was privy to every interview the creators took part in.
But what about the individuals that simply watch the show in another country or another continent and are unaware that there are any interviews which "explain" it? You mean to tell me their watching of the show is invalid because they don´t know what creators said about it?
What about the people who watched just some of the interviews and then these interviews were retroactivelly declared "garbled interpretations"?
And what weight do interviews hold if they can be made invalid retroactivelly that way?
What about the audience that watched exatly that one interview where the creators deliberately lied - like the general audience which believed TAB would really be an entirely Victorian episode with serious case that would be solved by Sherlock Holmes at the end, because the creators explicitly told them so?
What weight will the subsequent interviews hold for such an audience? Zero, I´m sure.
What if I watched that one interview with Lara Pulver (the part of "the team"!) who declared John and Sherlock "a happy couple"? Should I ignore it? Is her statement invalid? If so, why? She is the part of the team, isn´t she?
And what about Mofftiss contradicting themselves in various interviews? What about their claims that they have the whole show planned beforehand (which is patently untrue - TEH certainly wasn´t planned beforehand)? That they would make Sherlock similar to Basil Rathbone´s Holmes gradually (one again, completely untrue - Sherlock of S3 and S4 couldn´t be farther from Basil Rathbone´s interpretation!). Etc. etc.

With these things in mind, I think it´s best to completely ignore the interviews and just concentrate on the show itself.

 

I have to confess, I absolutely hate the word 'meta' used in this context.
This is purely a personal thing and I am sorry if anybody is offended by it.
I don't think I'd be allowed to say what I call them!

This is my issue, I think.

It always makes me think of meta-analysis, which is obviously different, but I keep thinking of it as a shortened form (and that's why "analysis" keeps coming into my head!).   You can probably tell that I have no academic background in literature, media, etc. 

Okay, I think I have to make one thing clear. I DO see the "subtext" (I even found a detail that I never seen anyone writing about! ). To me it's a kind of parallel SECONDARY INTERPRETATION. But it was ONLY... a running gag (for the lack of a better word), playful and charming. I even enjoyed it for a while until I came upon some militant TJLC followers who spoiled it all to an extend, that now I start to find JL annoying.

I simply cannot understand how anyone can take it seriously, or even make it into a "religion", something to fight over, something that has to be PROVEN, something that HAS to happen (e.g. to fulfill a "queer representation quota"). And trying to force one's interpretation on the makers is an absolute no-go.

Okay, I try to play with the quotations, let's see if it works:

Something I always wonder about is this: if the boys are "only" the closest friends in the world (or hoping to become that again during S4 and 5), can you find subtext readingd for that too? Or is it all main text?

I don't need subtext. It's all clearly in the text.

From a Johnlocker's point of view, you collect subtext interpretations, write and read metas on it, prepare gifs, in short you invest time and work in it. And very often, all you get in return is "But I don't see it" or "But the team said". In many cases I suspect that the meta or the Interpretation is not even examined closely. So your work of hours is waved away in a matter of seconds. That is frustrating.

This is a very strange concept.
So I am making T-shirt designs. Does it means that people are obligated to like them and buy them, only because I have invested hours and hours in making them?
Nobody has to read your stuff. Or to deal with the contents. If I'm convinced that JL won't happen, I will hardly try to analyze the lighting in the bar, the color of John's shirts, or when he licks his lips. And any reasoning why JL should happen, against obvious facts and statements, will be totally irrelevant too.

You speak as if everybody lived in the UK and was privy to every interview the creators took part in.
But what about the individuals that simply watch the show in another country or another continent and are unaware that there are any interviews which "explain" it?

We are living in a www-ed world. Any information you want is only some clicks away.

But you don't need any of the background to watch and interpret a work of art. Do we need to ask Shakespeare what he meant if we wanto to watch Hamlet? And IMO there is enough in the show itself to see that JL is nothing more than a humorous theme woven into the story.

What if I watched that one interview with Lara Pulver (the part of "the team"!) who declared John and Sherlock "a happy couple"? 

It's funny - people see metaphors proving JL, but take this line so completely literally...

And what weight do interviews hold if they can be made invalid retroactivelly that way?
What about the audience that watched exatly that one interview where the creators deliberately lied - like the general audience which believed TAB would really be an entirely Victorian episode with serious case that would be solved by Sherlock Holmes at the end, because the creators explicitly told them so?

1. depending on when the interview took place (I don't remember): maybe because they might have changed their minds about the story after the interview - the changes are made in the creative process until the very end.
2. Well, it depends on your POV. If you look at TAB as a reality and the XXI century parts as a drug induced dream, you have a closed bubble. TAB obviously is playing with the concept of not being sure which reality is "really real".
3. Sherlock did solve the case. He showed how it was possible for the Bride to "kill from the beyond".

And yes I believe the WithAnAccent interview was serious and MEANT THE WAY it was.

Finally something that belongs to the field of interpretations - but I have seen the reaction as someone tried to bring up Johnlock/shipping in Mofftiss panel at Sherlocked. They looked not amused at all, and I almost saw their auras making a group facepalm.

I hope I'm not repeating myself with these.  I'm forgetting where I've got up to!  But I think it was here

.• Why was Sherlock’s first thought John when he woke up?
He knows he’s at home with John and knows Irene has been there, solving his crime (and kissing him!), and wants John to find her.  He's not actually talking about John - he's talking about "the woman". 

• Why did John cancel his date to look after Sherlock?
He’s worried about him. 

• Why did John get annoyed at Sherlock’s erotic moan text alert?
I don’t think he is at first.  It’s more that Sherlock insists on not changing it.  (And Sherlock is actually kind of showing off, I think.   He could quite easily change it.  But he's letting it be known that he gets texts from this extremely attractive woman).

• Why did John count the texts that Sherlock got from Irene?
I don’t know, but he’s always pretty interested in Sherlock’s “personal” life, or lack of it.  And this is rather secretive.
John doesn’t know the content of the texts until Irene tells him, so doesn’t know what’s going on.   

• Why did Sherlock ignore all of these texts?
Playing the game, waiting to see what Irene’s move will be.   And trying to show that he’s not interested (when he finds that it only makes him look more interested, he does end up texting her!) 

• Why did John’s girlfriend say that John is 'a great boyfriend and Sherlock Holmes is a very lucky man’ and that she didn’t want to 'compete with Sherlock Holmes’?
She realises that John is too involved with Sherlock to have a good relationship with her.

 Was John just winding Sherlock up?
As in, knowing the exact number of texts would be a very Sherlock thing.
So John was responding how Sherlock would?