Hmmmm! Well, I’ve read in a lot more fandoms than I’ve written in. I only write in a fandom when I feel like I have something to say or something to work out—some question I want to answer for myself about the characters. This might be a thing that’s changed in the Sherlock fandom…or maybe not. It could be because it’s an ongoing series, or possibly because it’s Sherlock Holmes and it feels more like a publicly shared thing rather than a story that specifically belongs to someone. It’s already an AU of the original, so it just feels…natively fannish.
I find it hard to write women in romantic relationships. When someone puts a woman character into a romantic relationship, I am always instantly suspicious. As a kid (and still, to a lesser extent, now), I got to the point where I felt like a girl wasn’t allowed to be a major character or a dynamic force in the story without having a boyfriend (and frequently they were just there to get kidnapped and rescued anyway). It drove me nuts. So, even though there are rare exceptions where the relationship feels…I dunno, natural and reflective of the woman as a person (Casablanca, Fringe, Farscape, and Firefly come immediately to mind), I tend to have a kneejerk reaction to het pairings, and often I would prefer not to have a female character at all (if you’re going to turn the girl into a token, then just leave women out of it and I’ll identify with the male hero, thanks) than to have her shunted into a relationship.