You know, I have never been one to actually buy into fannish ships. I mean, they’re fun to run with, and it’s fun to take things from the show and reinterpret them with a different spin.
But really and truly, I had not, previous to this season, believed that Sherlock and John canonically had a Thing. When the writers called ‘no homo,’ I believed them.
But after this episode, I no longer ship Sherlock and John ‘fannishly.’ I no longer buy the writers’ insistence that these characters are not attracted to each other. I don’t think it’s the people who want a queer reading they’re lying to. I think the ones they’re lying to are the homophobes they (or the BBC) are afraid they’d upset with an explicit queer relationship.
Fine, we may never see them snogging explicitly on screen. But it’s IN THE TEXT.
Janine and her “I wish you weren’t…whatever you are.” In the midst of her saying that, the camera cuts from facing them one direction, to facing the other, where behind them, John Watson is standing in the doorway. Indicating that ‘whatever he is’ is explicitly tied to John Watson. It’s being said in an absolutely explicit romantic context, and that is the answer. ”I wish you weren’t all about John Watson.”
The stag night, and John pulling himself up on Sherlock’s knee, with his “I don’t mind,” and Sherlock’s “Me too,” and…well, everything. Sock feet by Sherlock’s knee. Their body language in those chairs, as they lean in and out of each other’s space. John’s utterly unguarded, wide open way of sitting and the way their legs keep bumping and tangling and moving.
Mary and “Neither of us were his first,” with all the equivalency that line draws between John’s relationship to Sherlock and the relationship to THE WOMAN HE’S MARRYING TODAY.
The candlelit dance with Sherlock playing.
The moment directly after, when Sherlock tells them he thinks Mary’s expecting, and the way all three of them react, and the “We can’t all three dance” and the looks on their faces like they’re all a bit disappointed about that.
John’s attempt to confide in and praise Sherlock when they’re staking out the palace guard.
“Donde estas, Yolanda” from the previous episode.
I could just keep going. There is a point at which ‘queerbaiting’ becomes a ludicrous concept, a point at which you are no longer making a joke, but making reality in your story. And if, at that point, you still insist that the queerness isn’t there, then you are lying, either to your viewers or to yourself.
What’s more, the show is explicitly, EXPLICITLY inviting us to read between the lines. It is handing us vast amounts of narrative real estate that it is not showing us but is reminding us IS THERE, all the scenes to which the characters refer but we don’t see. THEY DANCED TOGETHER. And in so much as referring to a moment like that, the show is inviting us to ask ourselves: what else has happened in those offscreen moments that we never hear about?
Key point to remember: this is how queer fictional narratives coded themselves for decades. We never, ever see ALL of a character’s life. This is not the Truman Show. And the technique was to insert just those little things that made you ask yourself, “What aren’t we seeing? What aren’t they telling us about? What is happening in those private moments?”
And furthermore, at least one of the show’s writers is steeped in that tradition. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. It is ALL ABOUT THAT. The offscreen narrative that we don’t see. And Gatiss keeps talking about it lately. TELL ME THAT ISN’T CODE.
At this point, the mere concept that anyone could attempt to relegate this reading of the text to ‘obsessive fannish imaginings’ is laughable to me. I am trained in literary analysis, and I could write a fucking scholarly paper on this, and if anybody involved in the development of the show wants to argue otherwise, then they can take it up with each other, because if any of them really believe that then CLEARLY they are not all writing the same story.