Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat's Great Game of Fandom: Investigating The

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Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Great Game of Fandom: Investigating the Creator-Text-Fan Relationship of BBC’s

A Thesis Presented to the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University

In Partial Fulfilment of Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts English & Communication

Presented by Marie Sophie Kindler [email protected] / [email protected] Studienr.: 58727

Under the Supervision of Ebbe Klitgård Submitted on 28th of June 2017 Abstract This thesis is investigating the reciprocal relationship between author, text and fan. Approaching the modern realisation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes phenomenon, this thesis focusses on BBC’s television series Sherlock. Written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the show is critically acclaimed for its accomplishment to update the Victorian stories without losing its loyalty to the source text. Because of its production approach, the series is particularly interesting for participatory audiences, which is why it gathered an enormous fanbase. Additionally to their intertextual adaptation approach (that references previous interpretations as much as the canon itself), Gatiss and Moffat’s self- declared “fanboyness” attracts fans who celebrate the co-writers for their fannish motivation. However, the ambiguity of Gatiss and Moffat’s fan-producer behaviour has considerably blurred the lines between official production and fandom. Therefore, discursive-struggles between the fans and the co-writers testify the important role of authors for fan audiences. While the fans acknowledge Gatiss and Moffat’s creative power, they contest the ways in which it is wielded. This becomes apparent by looking at the queerbaiting controversy that unleashed in January 2017, shortly after Sherlock’s final episode. While fans enjoy the co-writers’ “great game of fandom” that occasionally teases their participants with riddles and false pretence, queer fans denounce Gatiss and Moffat for their continuous “gay jokes”. Using reception theory, this thesis analyses how the so-called “Johnlock-Shippers” interpret Sherlock as a gay romance between the main protagonists. It is revealed that the writers’ extra-diegetic discourse plays highly into the reading of the Johnlock-Shippers. Because of the authors’ knowledge about their fans’ obsession with Sherlock and John’s unexplained sexuality, it is discussed why the fans disapprove of Gatiss and Moffat’s handling of homoerotic subtext that was not intended to lead to a big reveal in the final episode. The thesis concludes with the perception that the series fails to fully acknowledge or understand the fan, despite its fan-driven approach. Because of the sensitive topic of LGBT-representation in the media, the queerbaiting case reveals how fans put their trust in the creators of their fan object and how perceived irresponsible behaviour is contested with the usage of new media.

Table of Contents

Abstract

1. Introduction ...... 1 1.1 Problem Area ...... 5 1.2 Research Problem and Problem Formulation ...... 9 1.3 Methodological Approach and Structuring Questions ...... 10 2. The Great Game of Fandom ...... 12 2.1 Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Sherlock ...... 12 2.1.1 Sherlock as a Coded Validation of Fan’s Collective Intelligence ...... 12 2.1.2 Sherlock and the Disposition to “Fanboy” Knowledge ...... 17 2.1.3 Sherlock and Perceptions of (Non)-Heterosexuality ...... 23 2.2 The Johnlock Conspiracy (TJLC) ...... 31 2.2.1 The Johnlock-Shippers’ Reading of Sherlock ...... 32 2.2.2 Fanon and Shipping TJLC ...... 43 2.3 The Queerbaiting Controversy ...... 48 2.3.1 Reactions to Sherlock’s Series Finale ...... 48 2.3.2 The Failure of the Authors? ...... 54 2.3.3 The Creator-Text-Fan Triangle ...... 56 3. Discussion ...... 62 4. Conclusion ...... 66 4.1 Recommendation for Further Research ...... 69

List of Works Cited List of Figures Appendix Plagiarism Disclaimer

1. Introduction

I’m very wary of people that aren’t fans of something. I mean, it’s kind of weird not to freak out over cool things. Mark Sheppard, Actor

Today, certainly almost everyone is a fan of something or someone. As the quote above illustrates, being passionate - or even slightly obsessive (“to freak out”) – about the things that positively attract and emotionally involve us, is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it seems to make us more likable; let us appear as normal (as opposed to “weird”). However, as the Oxford English Dictionary points out, it has not always been that way. Tracing the origin of the word “fan” back to the late 19th century, the OED describes it as an abbreviation of fanatic (“fan, n.2.”). This early comparison of fans with fanatics recalls the usage of the latter word in context of religious and satanic practices. Alluding to religious maniacs, “fanatic” was primarily used as an adjective to characterise “behaviour that might result from possession by a god or a demon” (“fanatic”). Referring to the works of Grossberg (1992) and Jensen (1992), Kristina Busse reflects on this negative sentiment about fans that had prevailed until very recently. She states, “fans of popular culture [were] often dismissed […], and media fans in particular [were] frequently represented as displaying unhealthy, obsessive, even pathologic behaviour” (131). Looking back to the late 19th and early 20th century and to one of the oldest mass media fandoms will help to understand such notions.

It was back then that the new forms of mass media and popular culture had caused huge and enthusiastic audiences, leading fans to come into focus of public attention. Nacy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein ascribe it to ideal preconditions that organised fan communities emerged, “as the most deeply engaged fans began to seek each other out” (3.11). Even though this happened over a hundred years ago, Scott Brown compares it to the “fandom as we know it – zealous, fractious, hydra-headed, and participatory”. How is it that the late 1800s and early 1900s were such a fertile ground for fans and their endeavours? Michael Saler suggests looking at issues of modernity and enchantment of the Western civilisation. Max Weber’s captured the zeitgeist of the turn of the century when he described “the disenchantment of the world” (155), an abolishment of “delight and astonishment at the wonders, marvels, and mysteries” in favour of “rationality, secularism, democracy, urbanisation, industrialisation, and bureaucratisation” (Saler 138). Because of scientific progress (e.g. Darwin’s theory of evolution), the rapid

1 industrialisation had resulted in an urbanisation of mass culture that “seemed to rule out any divine purpose of legible meaning to existence” (ibid.).

Saler argues, however, that the “widespread association of modernity with disenchantment is too simplistic” (138), and therefore goes on to outline one way in which modernity and enchantment have been brought together in what he terms “ironic imagination” (139). In his view, the turn of the century provided enough venues for people to “exercise their imaginations” (141), such as illustrated newspapers, magazines, libraries, museums, and films. This in turn created a modernist “double consciousness” (139), a widespread recognition “that perceived reality was to some extent an imaginative construct, and that rationality itself was beholden to imaginative insights and desires” (142). Saler makes the allegory to the experience of being aware that one is dreaming while one is dreaming. He goes on to illustrate how the mass culture of the time produced “worlds of the imagination that gratified the sense of wonder without denying modernity” (144). Several writers of the period successfully addressed “marvels and wonders” in combination with “empirical detail and apparent scientific objectivity of the realists” (ibid. 142). Creating the genre of New Romance, writers like H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle “clothed their fantastic tales in the guise of scientific naturalism” (ibid.).

While these writers found a great echo and many people “found new solace in rearticulating the magical and fantastic”, the dominant intellectual tone of the area and discourses about modernism did not reflect those experiences (Cranfield 68). It was because of how cultural consumption was perceived, that fans were marginalised. As Jonathan Cranfield states, culture “represented a kind of ‘play’” and in the age of rationality, “playfulness could best be preserved beneath the protective veneer of seriousness” (68). Therefore, fans’ “apparent enthusiasm, solipsism and emotional fragility” led to the assumption that “‘fans’ could be directly equated with ‘fanatics’” (ibid.). It is here that the notion of “fandom as we know it” comes into the discussion. This stereotypical view of fans as “emotionally unstable, socially maladjusted, and dangerously out of sync with reality” (Jenkins Textual Poachers 13) was not only characteristic of the disenchanted realists of the early 20th century, but even carried on throughout modern times.

The Sherlock Holmes fandom of the late 19th and early 20th century is a poster child for “fanatic” behaviour since Conan Doyle’s authorial decision to end his stories surrounding the detective led to a wave of fan activism and resistance with a never seen before effect. Even though earlier

2 fictional characters had “captured the imagination of the public” – such as Pamela (Richardson), Werther (Goethe), and Little Nell (Dickens) – the character of Sherlock Holmes “was the first to inspire sober, scholarly biographies (with footnotes as well as societies on both sides of the Atlantic dedicated to celebrating him as a ‘real’ person” (Saler 145). With his four novels, A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Valley of Fear (1915) and the six short story collections (1892-1928) about the mysterious detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Doctor John Watson, Arthur Conan Doyle had created a fandom beyond comparison.

Unsurprisingly then, Conan Doyle’s decision to shove Homes off a fictitious cliff (The Reichenbach Falls) in Switzerland during a battle with his nemesis Professor James Moriarty, ended in fan movements of unprecedented scale. When in The Final Problem (1893) Doctor John Watson narrated, “It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes was distinguished” (The Complete Novels and Stories 737), fans all over the world cried out in disbelief. The fannish outcry found expression in “mourning crepe on hatbands in London and ‘Let’s Keep Holmes Alive’ clubs in America” (Wiltse 108). The Strand, at the time London’s largest circulation monthly, which doubled its sales (about 500,000) with the publication of the Holmes stories (Cox xix; Pound 32), “lost thousands of readers” (Strosser 180), while Conan Doyle was “assailed by huge numbers of letters from fans that oscillated between emotional bullying and straightforward abuse” (Cranfield 74). While the author remained resolute for a decade, he later wrote to a friend trying to explain his radical ending of the Holmes stories. He elucidated, “I couldn’t revive him if I would, at least not for years, for I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day” (“The Author”). The Strand’s sister publication, Tit-Bits, was trying to respond to the public’s wave of protest by taking the fandom’s side. They wrote: [L]ike hundreds of correspondents, we feel as if we have lost an old friend whom we could ill spare. Mr Doyle’s feeling was that he did not desire Sherlock to outstay his welcome and that the public had had enough of him. This is not our opinion, nor is it the opinion of the public; but it is, we regret to say, Mr Doyle’s. (qtd. in Cranfield 74)

Even though Conan Doyle clearly had enough of the detective, “public pressure grew so great” that in 1901 he published The Hound of the Baskervilles, featuring Sherlock Holmes before his death. The fandom’s loud disapproval of Holmes’ death however, let Conan Doyle to resurrect the detective in The Adventure of the Empty House (1903) with an explanation that only

Moriarty truly died while Holmes had faked his death (Armstrong). While collective engagement like that might sound like – from a contemporary view – “just another day on the internet”, before that, readers usually accepted what happened to their objects of affection in literature and then moved on; “fans simply did not do this before then” (Armstrong).

Despite his influence in the fan movement to revive Holmes, it is further impossible to overlook the role of Arthur Conan Doyle’s personality in the reception of his stories. As ironic imagination allowed readers to reflect on reality and rationality in light of a disenchanted modernity, Conan Doyle’s creation certainly fed the zeitgeist of the turn of the century. For Sherlock Holmes re-enchanted modernity without compromising the central tenets of modernity: rationalism, secularism, urbanism, mass consumerism. He made reason magical, the prosaic poetic. He believed that every detail of modern life, ranging from the footprints of a giant hound to advertisements in mass circulation newspapers, was charged with meaning. (Saler 614)

This was the very same reason many believed the detective to be real, as Jacques Barzun expressed in an interview in 1942: “We believe in Holmes because he believes in science and we do too” (Shreffler 26). However, the particular scientific nature of Conan Doyle’s character contradicted the author’s personal one- something that did not sit well with his readers. Referring to photographs belonging to a family in Cottingley, Yorkshire, Conan Doyle had substantiated his conviction by championing that the creatures that were captured in the presence of two teenage girls were, indeed, fairies (“Biography”). The fans could not comprehend how a medically trained man, the creator of a super-rationalist character like Holmes, could have become attracted to spiritualism and went on to publish The Coming of the Fairies (1922) - a public declaration of his belief in the supernatural. Likely, The Coming of the Fairies was “a bigger disappointment for Doyle fans than when he killed of Sherlock Holmes” (“The Coming of the Fairies”). This underlines Arthur Conan Doyle’s significant role for the fans of Sherlock Holmes. Readers particularly enjoyed the author’s way of contextualising and modernising fiction with scientific naturalism, displaying Holmes as a man ahead of his time. The author’s scientific descriptions and detailed medical observations were so precise and convincing that the fans even speculated about Arthur Conan Doyle being Sherlock Holmes himself. The fans’ interest in the writer was ever-present. Conan Doyle’s public confession in his romantic belief in fairies, as well as his very decision to kill the detective and the subsequent approach of keeping silent about his reason, had fans pondering on his intentions, his opinions and his overall role as the author.

Therefore, the thesis at hand takes the original forms of fan engagement with Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes as a departure to start an investigation of a very recent Sherlock phenomenon that exhibits a special trilateral relationship between the creators, the text and its fans. Bearing in mind the “fannatic” behaviour of early Sherlock Holmes fans and their engagement with Arthur Conan Doyle, the summary of this investigation shall be read with knowledge of the historical backdrop to illustrate the ubiquitous, reciprocal relationship of creator-text-fan and its importance to fandom - and how it changed through new forms of engagement offered by the internet.

1.1 Problem Area

As already hinted at in the introduction, fandom offers interesting processes related to the relationship between author and fans. Conan Doyle’s answer to playwright William Gillette’s question if it would be okay to marry Holmes in his stage adaptation, for example, reflects the author’s sullenness with his beloved fiction character. He famously said, “You may marry or murder him or do anything you like with him!” (“Biography”). In fact, besides Gillette, many other writers had started to appropriate the Sherlock Holmes stories, even years before Holmes’ resurrection from the dead in 1894 (Kuhns 53). As it was that Conan Doyle himself “cared little for Holmes” and thus had “such a cavalier attitude towards his first literary success”, it opened the doors for many - fans and professional authors alike – to continue and further explore the world of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (ibid. 57). Hence, it is no wonder that one can scroll through what seems like a nearly endless list of stage adaptations that have been written and enacted up until today and ever since Charles Brookfield’s Under the Clock (1893) (“Conan Doyle On Stage”).

As Lyndsay Fay sums it up, “What we want is more stories, and we will find them – one way or another, by various methods, each suited to our nature and our age and our tastes and our creativity” (2). Because of this constant strive for more and the consequent adaptations and reinventions, the characters of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson carry their own cultural meanings, with key phrases and images that have become inseparable from the figures. Louisa Stein and Kristina Busse state that, for example, Holmes’ pipe and hat, and phrases such as ‘elementary my dear Watson’ and ‘the game is afoot’, “have entered into the wider lexicon of recognisable phrases and images” even though the first “did not originate in Conan Doyle but emerged in later adaptations and interpretations” and the latter being “an intertextual Shakespeare reference in itself” (10). This notion reflects Linda Hutcheon’s belief that “other

5 earlier adaptations may, in fact, be just as important as contexts for some adaptations as any ‘original’” (XV). And even though Sherlock Holmes was introduced to us 130 years ago, with the characters and stories re-envisioned and re-adapted in multiple media forms for over a century, it might be because of their acknowledgment of this Conan Doyle legacy and intertextuality, that “[Steven] Moffat and [Mark] Gatiss have created one of the most highly praised Sherlock Holmes adaptations for modern times – lauded by fans and critics alike” (Faye 4).

The author of this thesis hence decided to investigate this very recent instance of the Sherlock Holmes Phenomenon. It is thanks to the BBC that the world of Sherlock Holmes aficionados is richer than ever, spreading across the globe with individuals self-identifying as fans and corresponding mainly via internet media (Faye 1). In fact, a google search for fan forums surrounding the BBC adaptation produces 591,000 hits, proving that “Sherlock Holmes’s popularity is shockingly inarguable” (ibid. 3). Co-created (written and produced) by Scottish television writer and producer Steven Moffat (*1961) and English comedian, screenwriter and actor Mark Gatiss (*1966) (who also stars as Mycroft Holmes), Sherlock is a crime drama TV- series that first aired in 2010 on BBC One. The series stars award-winning actors Martin Freeman (*1971) and Benedict Cumberbatch (*1976) as Doctor John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Set in contemporary London, Sherlock consists of four series with three 90-minute episodes each; with the special episode “The Abominable Bride” (between S3 and S4) adding up to the total number of thirteen released episodes (March 2017). Sherlock met with critical acclaim, receiving positive reviews with its third series becoming the UK’s most watched drama series since 2001 (Jones). As Stein and Busse judge, Sherlock “succeeds in looking forward and backward at the same time: staying close to Conan Doyle’s canon and its sense of history while at the same time looking forward with a 21st century sensibility and the promise of more adventures in the future” (10).

Sherlock has changed the ways in which one must approach the reciprocal relationship of creator-text-fan, making the triangle more complex considering production, reception and interpretation. Benjamin Poore describes Sherlock “a version of our modern world, but one where the Holmes Canon never existed, and to stuff it with in-jokes for an audience back in our world which is familiar with the Canon” (164). With that, Poore is hinting at the somewhat unusual position that Gatiss and Moffat inhabit as co-creators of Sherlock. Their usage of “in- jokes” refers to the co-creators’ immense knowledge about the legacy of Conan Doyle, putting

6 them into the position of fans in the conception and development of the series. Both creators have repeatedly stated that they believe themselves to be the biggest Sherlock Holmes fans. The fact that Gatiss and Moffat can be characterised as fans and that their fan-driven approach creates Sherlock as a homage to the legacy of Conan Doyle’s works, gives BBC adaptation a strong fannish motivation. It further makes the triangle of creator-text-fan more complex because Gatiss and Moffat simultaneously qualify as creators and fans. And that the creators are also fans is particularly important to the fans of the show.

Linda Hutcheon, in A Theory of Adaptation, advises to consider the adapter’s motivation (95) to evaluate any adaptation and the dynamics surrounding it. She goes on to illustrate that in literary circles “we stopped talking about the dimensions of the creative process some time in the twentieth century” (106). Ever since Roland Barthes effectively entombed intentionality in his essay The Death of the Author, and Michel Foucault declared the author’s position as “a particular vacant space that may in fact be filled by different individuals” (Archaeology of Knowledge 95), intentions of the author were deemed irrelevant in the interpretation of texts. Way before poststructuralist notions however - as seen in the original fandom of Sherlock Holmes - was the thought that the intentions and motivations of the author, as well as his creative process, did in fact play a role for the “fannatic” part of the audience. Sandvoss argues, “the study of fans […] underlines a process of growing intertextuality, multimediated narrative figures, and multiple authorship that has eroded the concept of the author” (“The Death of the Reader?” 67). Though undoubtedly his role also changed in fan studies, the author did not die in the eyes of fans.

To the contrary, Lesley Goodman reveals that fans “do not act as if the source text emerges independently into the world as material for them to play with” (669). That means, the fans do not tend to ignore the author. This becomes especially obvious in fan criticism and complaints that show how “the fannish tendency is not so much to ignore as it is to correct, to chastise. The author is not only alive and well but a disappointment” (ibid.). The fact then that Sherlock is co-created by two of the biggest Sherlock Holmes fans is not only interesting in terms of how the series is produced, but more so regarding how the fans receive and interpret the show. As Hutcheon stresses: knowledge about the ‘maker’s mind and personality’ can actually affect the audience members’ interpretation: what they know about artists’ desires and motivations, even about their life situations when they are creating, can influence the interpretation of any work’s meaning, as well as the response to it. (109)

A TV-series created by fans and for fans changes the audiences’ interpretation as far as they evaluate everything that happens in the show because Gatiss and Moffat are fans - just like them. They associate with the creators in ways of presumed similar interests and intentions on the production side of the show.

This of course is emphasised through the extra-diegetic discourse of Gatiss and Moffat in which they confirm and accentuate their “fanboyness”. Hutcheon states that it is obvious how different adapters are motivated by several reasons, some of which might be very personal. She says, “They not only interpret that work but in so doing they also take a position on it” (92). Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat are very keen to express their position as “fanboys”. For instance, at a panel discussion at the Excel Centre in April 2015 an Italian fan was asking about the creative process of inserting references to Conan Doyle’s novels whereupon Moffat answered: “Well there’s no process, we’re just fanboys getting away with it really […]. No, we just like it. I mean if there’s one we love it’s slipping in the references that Sherlock Holmes fans will get. Sue will pull us back if we’re doing too much” (Sherlockology “Panel Transcript”). That fanboy knowledge is not only a driving force, but also highly regarded in the BBC’s Sherlock, becomes further obvious through the ways in which the show has included some of its fans’ theories and phantasies. A good example is the first episode of series three, The Empty Hearse (2014), which displays numerous ways in which Sherlock could have survived his deadly fall from the hospital roof. The creators clearly drew from fan theories that had circulated the internet, since one scenario involves a romantic involvement between Sherlock and his nemesis Moriarty.

Despite of all that, the series “has maintained a complicated relationship with its fans” (Armstrong) - something that will be elaborated throughout the thesis. Hutcheon states that in today’s endless offering of various adaptations throughout all kinds of media, the adapter must take on a “dual responsibility: to adapt another work and to make of it an autonomous creation” (Hutcheon 85). In times of increased fan participation - and in the case of Sherlock’s creator- fans - however, this task becomes noticeably difficult. The series represents Sherlock Holmes as “coded validation of fans’ ‘collective intelligence’” (Hills “Sherlock’s Epistemological” 27). As Hastie describes, the appeal of TV-series like that “rests on the fact that they are all invested in knowledge; with their narrative tropes and their often open-ended nature, they invite fans to participate in this world of knowledge and to construct further ‘knowledge’” (89). Nonetheless, it seems that Sherlock only values fan knowledge when asked for and still clearly draws the line between its fandom and its producer-fans – despite Gatiss and Moffat’s constant reminder of

8 belonging to the former. Derek Johnson describes how “power-laden discursive struggles play a constitutive role in structuring the fan-text-producer relationship” (286). A very recent event displays how fan expectations and “constructed ‘truths’” about Sherlock and its producers, has ended in an online outcry by a massive part of the fandom.

1.2 Research Problem and Problem Formulation

With the end of series four (which most likely will be the final season), fans who dedicated their lives to spreading The Johnlock Conspiracy (TJLC) all over social media, were slapped in the face when the final episode did not end with Sherlock and John getting romantically involved. According to TJLC, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss had planned to let their protagonists end in a gay relationship from the very beginning, and had therefore implanted queer subtext throughout the first three series. Interestingly enough, both creators repeatedly denied any such intentions and clearly stated that “there is no game plan” and how Sherlock will not “culminate in Martin [Watson] and Benedict [Sherlock] going off into the sunset together. They are not going to do it” (Myers). After the release of The Final Problem on the

15th of January 2017, TJLC was still smashed for those who believed in it. Hence, fans gave vent to their anger. As for example, Jordan who went on to publicly announce her hate on her Sherlock fan-Tumblr southlocked: “I’m so f*cking sick of Moftiss [word composition of Moffat and Gatiss] and what they’ve done to so many people. I thought they were smarter and kinder than this. They aren’t”. The Sherlock finale ultimately provoked a shit storm on social media, accusing the producers of “queerbaiting”.

The paradox of this is obvious. How can there be accusations of queerbaiting if the creators clearly, and repeatedly, denied any intentions of portraying gay romance? The repetitious validation of fanboy knowledge in the series, as well as in the extradiegetic producer discourse, certainly played into any anger that know casts a cloud over the Sherlock fandom. As Goodman states, it is not that “fans do not acknowledge the authority and power of the original creators of the texts they consume; they acknowledge that power but they contest the ways in which it is wielded” (664). An undoubtedly fan-created entry in the Urban Dictionary on “fandom” reflects this contestation of producer behaviour. The definition reads, “An awful, wonderful community of people who’s [sic] feelings don’t matter to the authors and creators of books, television shows, movies, etc. … OH GOD THE FEELS – My fandom will be the death of me” (“fandom, n.6”).

Was it the feeling of power over their creative autonomy that went to Gatiss and Moffat’s heads and turned them into evil homophobic TV-producers willing to destroy the heart of their fandom - just for the fun of it? If this is not the case, why did they not go through with a thoroughly modern depiction in a way that would openly portray Holmes and Watson as gay? That certainly would have pleased the fans. And, as they are fans themselves, must the fandom’s satisfaction not be the goal? Instead of finding out if Gatiss and Moffat intentionally “queerbaited” their fans by analysing every instance of gay connotation throughout the four series, the following will concentrate on the reciprocal and overlapping relations among the creators, their text, and the fans. In an attempt to understand the fans’ susceptibility to and their engagement with extra- diegetic discourse surrounding the TV-series, this thesis wants to underline the ever so significant role of the author in fan reception. Doing so, questions about responsibility on the creators’ side, as well as associated questions regarding expectations on the side of the fans, will be discussed in the context of fandom as mediated and maintained in a modern and digital age. Using the “queerbaiting” paradox, it shall be analysed how Gatiss and Moffat wield their creative power and how and why the fans contest their ways of doing it. Understanding the dynamics behind the fannish outcry following the series finale, will hence help to demonstrate power struggles among the creators and fans which, in turn, condense the peculiar bivalence of Gatiss and Moffat as producer-fans in the reciprocal triangle of creator-text-fan.

1.3 Methodological Approach and Structuring Questions

To get an understanding of Gatiss and Moffat’s creative power in “the great game of fandom”, the first part of this thesis will analyse the production approach of Sherlock in terms of its nature and its utilisation of fan-knowledge. Taking the extra-diegetic producer discourse [interviews, DVD commentary, behind-the-scenes material] into account, it will be investigated how Gatiss and Moffat evaluate their creation process. Here, their self-declaration as “fanboys” will play into the exploration of the series’ disposition of fan-knowledge and fandom. Because this thesis deals with the “queerbaiting”-paradox as a case example, notions of homosexuality in both the show itself and in its promotion, will be collated to the producers’ extra-diegetic discourse about love, friendship and Holmes’s alleged asexuality1. All this will contribute to answering the question: How are Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat wielding their power as “producer-fans” in Sherlock?

1 here: conscious decision to abstain from sexual interaction

Before the second part of the problem formulation can be approached, the fans’ reception of and engagement with Gatiss and Moffat’s Sherlock must be discussed. As the “queerbaiting” accusations stem from the so-called “Johnlock-Shippers”, it will be analysed how their fannish reading of the series can be explained using literary reception theory by Hans-Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser. Lesley Goodman’s account of fans’ usage of fictional-worlds theory, as well as Jonathan Gray’s studies of the atomic phenomena of the text, will further help to understand the emergence of those fan readings that see John Watson and Sherlock Holmes in love. As the main objective of the Johnlock-Shippers’ interest, The Johnlock-Conspiracy will be analysed in terms of its embodiment in online social media platforms run by Sherlock fans. Besides, it will be investigated how the Johnlock-Shippers build and maintain their “fanon” of the TJLC using both the original canon by Arthur Conan Doyle and the extra-diegetic producer discourse by Gatiss and Moffat. All this will contribute to answering the question: How can the TJLC be regarded as the sum of Gatiss and Moffat’s producer-fan approach and the peculiarities of a fannish reading of their text?

Based on the previous two, the third chapter of this thesis goes on to explore the “queerbaiting controversy” in more detail. Looking at online postings on Twitter and Tumblr, the Johnlock- Shippers’ reaction to the series’ finale in January of 2017 will be examined to understand the fans’ accusations. Referring to the issues addressed in the problem area of this research, the perceived failure of the authors will be analysed using Matt Hills’s concept of “heretical fidelity” and Rebecca Williams’s notion of “ontological security”. This will initiate a discussion about power struggles between the producers and their fans, which gives rise to questions concerning the role of the author in fandom and associated expectations and responsibilities regarding “the great game of fandom”. Further, elaborations on consequences of said game in today’s online world and ethical considerations relating to gay representation in the media will additionally contribute to the answer of the second part of the problem formulation: How and why do the fans contest Gatiss and Moffat’s ways of wielding their creative power?

2. The Great Game of Fandom

2.1 Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Sherlock

The following will analyse the production approach of Sherlock. Before perceptions of (non)heterosexuality will be illuminated, it will be outlined how fan-knowledge finds approval by the self-declared fanboys, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. This chapter deals with how the co-writers, as producer-fans, wield their creative power.

2.1.1 Sherlock as a Coded Validation of Fan’s Collective Intelligence

The BBC’s Sherlock (2010-2017) joins the ranks of Sherlock Holmes adaptations for television as the twenty-fifth incarnation of Conan Doyle’s creation. However, consisting of feature- length episodes, it might as well be listed amongst the forty-four film adaptations that stretch across the last century, from Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1990) to the very latest Mr Holmes (2015). While true Conan Doyle fans certainly experienced Sherlock based on the original stories, other Sherlock Holmes aficionados might, in turn, be motivated to read the source texts precisely because of the modern Sherlock. Howsoever one experiences the multiple versions that “exist laterally, not vertically” (Hutcheon XV), “traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel” (Benjamin 91). Those traces do not only refer to the original creator’s fingerprints on his stories but also to each interpreter’s (Hutcheon 111). The Sherlock writers, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, are not only very knowledgeable about the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but also about the legacy of adaptations on which they want to build on. This knowledge becomes apparent in the evaluation of and reflection on their creation process.

The co-writers are eager in sharing their ways of adapting Conan Doyle’s stories. As life-long fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective, Gatiss and Moffat discovered their shared admiration of an adaptation, the Sherlock Holmes series (1939-1946) starring Basil Rathbone [Sherlock Holmes] and Nigel Bruce [Dr John Watson] on a train to Cardiff back in 2008 (Audio Com. ASiP). Feeling that those movies already did an excellent job in staying true to the original while also reinterpreting it, they decided that it was time for a proper contemporary adaptation of Holmes and his sidekick. Having worked together on scripts for the BBC’s Doctor Who before, Gatiss and Moffat both took on the role of authors, while Gatiss went on to portray Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, too. Gatiss says on the initial idea of Sherlock, “as much as we adore the Victorian version, they have become museum pieces where people approach them

12 like great edifices” (Ward). Adding how they, therefore, wanted to “blow away the Victorian fog” (ibid.). Stressing their idea of reanimating the original stories, Moffat is keen to express his excitement of Conan Doyle’s genius: “We sort of constantly wanted to say ‘Have you any idea how good this is? How good Doyle is? How good these characters are? You’ve forgotten that they’re actually brilliant’. They Are genuinely brilliant” (ibid.).

Listening to the audio commentary featured on the Sherlock DVDs, one quickly realises how the many detailed references and skilfully interwoven intertextual threads Gatiss and Moffat have included into the series, testify their endeavour of paying homage to not only Conan Doyle but also to his many adapters. With their decision that “everything was canonical…every version, we were not just drawing on the [Conan Doyle] stories” (Audio Com. ASiP), they confirm Hutcheon’s statement that “by their very existence, adaptations remind us there is no such thing as an autonomous text” (XV). The term “canonical” refers to the notion of “canon” which means “the original text(s) and their contribution to the fictional universe” (Goodman 667). For example, it is canon that Dr John Watson and Sherlock Holmes move into 221B Baker Street in 1881, as described in A Study in Scarlet (1887). Therefore, the writers’ way of rendering previous adaptations as canon is not correctly termed, for only Conan Doyle’s words could technically contribute to the canon. In fan studies, canon and its antonym “fanon” play a key role in “maintain[ing] the distinction between the official fictional universe and fan interpretation” (Goodman 667). Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse define “fanon” as “the events created by the fan community in a particular fandom and repeated pervasively throughout the fantext” (9). And while Gatiss and Moffat are eager to express their loyalty to the Holmes creator, “Really obviously, Sherlock Holmes is the work of officer Arthur Conan Doyle, a genius writer (…) And it’s all him, of course it is” (Audio Com. ASiP), it is clear how far the co-writers have strayed from the original text. Especially in their portrayal of the characters, they seem to have taken more inspiration from previous adaptations than the original.

For example, in their creation of Inspector Lestrade, Gatiss and Moffat draw on an episode of the Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett [Sherlock Holmes] and Edward Hardwicke [Dr John Watson], called The Six Napoleons (1986). Since Lestrade is not as developed and reoccurring in the original stories, the co-writers wanted to expand the character in Sherlock, getting inspiration from the adaptation by Michael Cox and June Wyndham-Davies [App. 1]. They further changed the character of Mycroft considerably, confessing “He’s probably not Doyle’s at all” (Audio Com. ASiP). Stating how Christopher Lee’s performance as Mycroft in

13 the movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, influenced their portrayal. Moffat explains, “He’s hugely fat in the books, which in fairness I have to say, is probably his only distinguishing feature in the books (…) And we rather loved what Wilder and Diamond did by making [him] into the Machiavellian figure” (ibid.) He adds, that Wilder and Diamond did not only made Mycroft a much slimmer figure, but also “much more powerful much more dangerous” and one “that Sherlock doesn’t get on very well with” (Ward). Gatiss further likes how the brothers’ relationship is more developed in this adaptation and how they stole the idea of “weird hints of some badness in the past, in the family relationship” (ibid.). Both particularly further liked Wilder and Diamond’s comparison of the Diogenes Club with the British Secret Service and Mycroft’s role in it. Consequently, they “just ran with that. Cause it’s gorgeous. Why would you not?” (ibid.).

Of course, Gatiss question of “why not?” is warrantable as there is nothing bad in a creative production process that indulges in intertextuality. In fact, the very nature of an adaptation can inevitably be equated with intertextuality. As Julia Kristeva writes, “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another” (37). According to Hutcheon, this way of adapting a written text to the screen is quite up to date. For her, no longer can the quality of an adaptation be determined by looking at the ‘fidelity’ to the original canon. She writes, “The ‘success’ of an adaptation today, in the age of transmedia, can no longer be determined in relation to its proximity to any single ‘original,’ for none may even exist” (XXVI). However, their simply declaration of “everything is canonical” and their obvious excitement about various interpretations of the original, moreover clearly indicates how much the writers value and rely on the fanon. Even though “fanon often creates particular details or character readings even though canon does not fully support it – or at times, outright contradicts it” (Hellekson and Busse 9), it is precisely because of such deviations that fans create and enjoy it.

Hearing the co-writers talking about the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, and the ways through which they can argue for a good-looking actor playing the detective despite the canon’s refutation, reflects this notion. Moffat remarks, “There’s an evolving visual impression of Sherlock Holmes. From the very first time he’s described in the Study in Scarlet where he’s explicitly described as very, very tall. Freakishly thin (…) just not an attractive man at all” (Ward). His co-writer continues expressing that already back in the days, the Strand Magazine that published the short stories, featured illustrations by artist Sydney Paget who

14 based Holmes on his brother Walter, who “was a very handsome man” (ibid.). Clearly realising the advantages of having an attractive lead-role, the two playfully joke about how Cumberbatch does not have “a thin hawk-like nose” (SH: The Complete Novels and Stories 276) but that, because of Paget’s art, “we take it as read now that Sherlock Holmes has to be handsome” (Ward). They feel lucky for the artist’s interpretation and other adaptations that went with his portrayal, saying “without Walter Paget, there is no Basil Rathbone, or Jeremy Brett, or Benedict Cumberbatch playing that part” (ibid.).

Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat can therefore be aptly described as fans, since they indulge in what Henry Jenkins calls “textual poaching”. Building on Michel de Certeau’s allegory of comparing readers with travellers “mov[ing] across lands belonging to someone else, like

Once you get past the long ones, or the long one, which is The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is the only one that’s a full-length adventure without some sort of flashback, once you get past that you’re pulling out ingredients. I think that’s a great villain, that’s a great moment, that’s a great scene, and sticking them together. (...) I think you should treat it the way Doyle would definitely treat it, which is to say ‘well, I’ll grab that, oh, that’s cool, I’ll have this’.

Steven Moffat describes the co-writers’ poaching

Figure 1 nomads poaching their way across field they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves” (174), Jenkins illustrates the way fans engage with texts. He believes that fans mine media texts “for elements that are personally pleasurable or useful and then reconstructing new texts from those poached materials” (Textual Poachers XX).

Gatiss and Moffat poach not only the original stories for things they personally like and consequently include into Sherlock in one way or another, but also the numerous adaptations as they, as fans, have a specific interest in the fanon. Their poaching, however, is not always obvious to the regular viewer. For example, hardly anyone will recognise that the “little nod to the Granada series”- as Gatiss puts it - where his character Mycroft says, “If you do choose to move into two-hundred-and-twenty-one B”, is directly copied in pronunciation and stress from Charles Kay’s performance in The Creeping Man (1991) (Audio Com. ASiP). However, there are viewers who do know, and others who are willing to find out, and therefore “track down data spread across multiple media, scanning each and every text for insights into the [narrative]

15 world” (Jenkins Convergence Culture 95). Those consumers are, of course, fans. As Matt Hills states, the commentary track of any TV-Series is “responding to the fan audience’s assumed desire to accumulate detailed information about [the] text” (“Sherlock’s Epistemological Economy” 33).

Without the additional information given out in the extra-diegetic discourse however, Sherlock remains mainly attractive to fans of Sherlock Holmes who are familiar with the canon and the fanon. The “knowingness” of the Conan Doyle legacy and the Holmes universe is, without a doubt, the predominant feature that marks Gatiss and Moffat’s creative power. Hills also believes it is due to knowledge, that Sherlock as a twenty-first century adaptation, enjoys so much success (“Sherlock’s Epistemological Economy” 28) and that knowledge is the “privileged component within the series’ almost instantaneous cultification and fan embrace” (ibid. 29). Again, Understanding Sherlock as a “knowing” text can be difficult for regular viewers, though. The example of how Gatiss and Moffat decided to introduce Sherlock in A Study in Pink (2010), for instance, has left non-fans completely in the dark as they did not get an explanation of why the detective was beating corpses with a riding crop when John met him for the first time. Moffat explains, “The first time he’s [Holmes] referred to in A Study in Scarlet originally, the Stamford character says, ‘I’m not sure his madness goes to beating the subjects in the mortuary’”. Gatiss adds, “It’s actually a reference, it’s not even a thing. This is one of the joys for us, of doing this. (…) There are so many parts of the famous stories that have hardly ever been touched, sometimes, like that, never at all” (Audio Com. ASiP). With their knowledgeable creation process of including details from the original stories while simultaneously drawing from fanon interpretations to build up their narrative, Gatiss and Moffat hence created Sherlock as “a coded validation of fans’ collective intelligence” (Hills “Sherlock’s Epistemological Economy” 27).

“Collective intelligence” as used in the quote above, is based on Henry Jenkins’s interpretation of Pierre Lévy’s concept. Jenkins, who describes how fan communities “pool [their] knowledge because no single fan can know everything necessary to fully appreciate the series” (Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers 139), states, “collective intelligence expands a community’s productive capacity because it frees individual members from the limitations of their memory and enables the group to act upon a broader range of expertise” (ibid.) On the basis that within a certain community, “no one knows everything, everyone knows something”, knowledge of every single member is accessible to everyone else in the community (Lévy 20). Gatiss and

Moffat tap the full potential of Sherlock Holmes’s fan community and its collective intelligence. By making “everything canonical”, therefore drawing on fan knowledge and interpretations of other adapters, the writers can explore Conan Doyle’s stories and characters extensively. As Hills puts it, Sherlock “diegetically invok[es] the validity of fan knowledge” (“Sherlock’s Epistemological Economy” 32). However, he goes on to argue that the series “diegetic[ally] prohibit[s] on recognising Sherlockian knowledge cultures” but opts for a “coded, knowing acknowledgment via a fictional fandom instead” (ibid. 33). Especially to regular viewers, the many references and tributes to the canon and fanon will presumably go unrecognised unless they seek out additional information given out in extra-diegetic discourse.

2.1.2 Sherlock and the Disposition to “Fanboy” Knowledge

Despite Sherlock’s obvious connection to the Sherlock Holmes fandom, the co-writers have a peculiar disposition towards the fans and the knowledge they possess of Conan Doyle’s source material and its legacy. As illustrated in the previous chapter, Gatiss and Moffat’s creative process is heavily influenced by their way of intertextually referencing the fanon and building the series through fans’ collective intelligence. Given that fan knowledge seems to play a vital role, Hills argues that especially the extra-diegetic producer discourse seems to further “desegregate […] fandom and official production” (“Sherlock’s Epistemological Economy” 27). The co-writers achieve that by expressing their motivation as being solely driven by their admiration of Conan Doyle and his creation. This notion is resembled in Steven Moffat’s declaration, “We’re just fanboys” (Sherlockology). His recollection of his first encounter with Conan Doyle’s detective stories emphasises his fanboyness quite clearly. He says, “I remember very very clearly the first time I read Sherlock Holmes. I was utterly utterly utterly thrilled. And it’s one of these rare occasions when it exceeded my expectations” (Ward). Saying that “It was thrilling for me and Steven because obviously, the Victorian version is what we’ve grown up loving” (McAlpine), his co-writer Mark Gatiss enunciates similar feelings. As Charla Strosser states, “Gatiss and Moffat’s own identity as fans is what opens the showrunners up to the idea that fans can, and possibly even should, contribute to the direction of a show like Sherlock with such a rich history and canon” (183).

Self-identifying as “fanboys”, the co-writers create the notion of being on equal footing with other “fanboys” who are similarly excited about references to the canon. Gatiss states, “If you actually know your Sherlock Holmes, there are lots of little things which hopefully bring a measure of delight” (Audio Com. The Great Game). Moffat’s recurring explanations of

17 references to Conan Doyle’s original stories, hence implies that true knowledgeable fanboys will understand those homages since they should be familiar with the canon.

Here’s one for the Sherlock Holmes fanboys, and I bet that a few of you are listening. The name of this young fella who is about to go back and collect his umbrella and die, is James Philemon. Who was recorded in the original stories as one of Sherlock Holmes’s unsolved cases. (…) We should quickly mention for all you fanboys out there. Note the name on the coffee cup (...) it’s called Criterion. (…) Again, for the Sherlock fanboys. I reversed the logic here. In the original, A Study in Scarlet, they find the word “Rache” on the wall and the police assume someone was interrupted while writing “Rachel”. This time around, we inverted, so she is in fact writing “Rachel” and the police think it is “Rache”.

Steven Moffat addresses Sherlock Holmes fanboys on the DVD commentary track

Figure 2 Moreover, the co-writers use their “fanboyness” to justify their ways of adapting Conan Doyle’s work. Goodman describes a main characteristic of fans as having a “fannish impulse (…) to maintain the integrity of the fictional universe” (669). Hence, declaring themselves fans automatically grants Moffat and Gatiss trust and support from the fandom for it constrains the possibilities of their adaptation. In an interview with The Guardian, Steven Moffat says, “Our own fanboyness about Sherlock Holmes means that there are absolute limits to what we do. Ours is an authentic version of Sherlock Holmes” (Jeffries). Preserving the integrity of the Holmes universe through the provision of “both logical coherence (…) and emotional, aesthetic, and moral superiority” is, however, “highly subjective” (Goodman 669). One example shows how this subjective perspective on the fictional universe leads Gatiss and Moffat to focus on certain parts of the story while neglecting others. Even though the original stories feature a possible drug abuse of the detective, “for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting- room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. (…) I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his exes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic” (SH: The Complete Novels and Stories 11), Moffat says that they “weren’t that interested” in “the drug thing” (Audio Com. ASiP). Saying that “people obsess with it”, Gatiss goes on to explain how other adapters fail in understating Conan Doyle’s intention and the true meaning of the drugs in the books, judging, “When it is done generally, it’s done wrongly” (ibid.).

The co-writers fanboy knowledge also implies that they know where the canon “needs” to be expanded. Moffat recalls the ending of A Study in Pink where Sherlock is challenged by the cab

18 driver to pick between two pills, one being lethal. He comments, “The choice of the pills is all from the original. The one thing Doyle doesn’t do, which should have been in the story, the story was crying out for it – it should have ended with Sherlock Holmes being confronted with the choice of the pills. So, we did that” (Ward). This choice is quite common for texts written by fans as Stein outlines, “fan creative texts expand the world of the source text in potentially infinite directions” (247). However, as mentioned before, Stein stresses that “fannish authorship is also driven by a sense of limitation and restriction, as fannish storytelling plays out in relation to the original source text on which it is based” (ibid.). It is obvious that Gatiss and Moffat negotiate this balance based on personal motivation. Remembering the first time he read about Sherlock Holmes’s fake engagement to a housemaid of Milverton in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (1904), Moffat was appalled by Holmes’s scheming, “I was really genuinely shocked by it. I kept waiting for him to say something nice about it and he never did” (Meet the Filmmaker). He therefore had to give Janine2 a scene where she gets a revenge. Moffat says, “It was just me, you know, comforting my twelve-year-old self” (ibid.).

Even though their advantageous usage of fanboy knowledge presumably unifies the official production with the fandom, Gatiss and Moffat’s producer discourse “simultaneously resegregates professional authorship and fan readings” (Hills “Sherlock’s Epistemological” 27). Following John Fiske’s differentiation of fans’ “textual productivity” between official and non-official productions, this “resegregation” can be traced back to “economic[al] [reasons] rather than ones of competence” (39). Unlike typical fan texts that are “not produced for profit” and therefore do not “attempt to circulate (…) outside its own community”, Gatiss and Moffat’s Sherlock needs to be “mass-marketed” (ibid.). This is reflected in a recently published interview harshly titled “Sherlock Creator Mark Gatiss slams fans who find the show confusing … and tells them to ‘go read a children’s book”. There the writer says, “We’re making the show we want to make. We don’t make it a certain way because fans are pressuring us” (Karasin). But it is not always clear statements like that through which Gatiss and Moffat try to secure their authorship. While they are eager to stress how their contemporary interpretation of Conan Doyle’s original is truthful, it also becomes apparent how much their exegesis remains subjective. Moffat explains the essence of the Sherlock Holmes stories saying, “I think arguably, and we would argue quite strongly, that under the surface, you know, the detective stories are merely the surface, is the story of the greatest friendship ever” (Audio Com. ASiP).

2 Janine Hawkins: personal assistant to Charles Augustus Magnussen and modern equivalent to the housemaid of the canon

Other fan readings, for instance those believing the Woman [Irene Adler] to be Holmes’s true love, are putt off by Gatiss. He expounds, “It’s one of these things that, you know (…) it’s inevitable after 120 years of 200 interpretations and all kinds of things that the focus sort of shifts on to other little bits and pieces that get slightly out of control, out of proportion” (ibid.).

That fanboy knowledge is bisected into one that can be “argue[d] for quite strongly”, and one that “get[s] slightly out of control”, is further visible in the ways the co-writers evaluate online fan interpretations. An extract from the audio commentary of The Empty Hearse (2014) shows what the co-writers think about fans’ readings of the canon that see Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes in love. [In the episode, John says to Mrs Hudson, ‘I’ve met someone.’] Gatiss ‘There’s a logic problem here, you know, Mrs Hudson does have plenty of evidence now that John isn’t gay and yet she always comes back to the idea. She just wills it to happen.’ Moffat ‘She just spends too much time on the internet.’ Gatiss ‘This is more or less the last hurrah for this joke because it is getting very boring’ In this example, Mrs Hudson is equated with a large part of the Sherlock audience, the Johnlock- Shippers. Gatiss insinuates that those fans suffer a “logic problem” because they fail to understand that John is not homosexual, despite “plenty of evidence” showing “very clear[ly] that he prefers women” (Hibberd). Moffat’s subsequent statement clearly refers to the many fan sites online that feature art and fiction showing John and Sherlock in a romantic relationship. It also implies that the fans spent too much time obsessing about such interpretations. Saying that “it is getting very boring”, Gatiss eventually dismisses this “joke”, rendering homoerotic fan readings as not to be taken seriously. While they have strong opinions on other people’s fanboy knowledge that diverges from their own understanding of the canon, Gatiss and Moffat are generally thankful for and flattered by the Sherlock fandom. This includes the appreciation of fan created content.

It is very, very touchy when people are properly creatively engaged in the show you’re making. It genuinely is. (…) There is no greater flattery than people not simply consuming it but making more of their own. To look at a show and say, ‘I think I’ve got that, I think I can do better than that, I think I can make something of that.’ That’s the beginning of becoming a creator yourself. So, in a genuine proper heartfelt way, I’m saying that a fandom is the cradle of the next generation of creative people. That’s fantastic. That’s amazing. There is no bigger compliment.

Steven Moffat about fan engagement at Sherlock: Meet the Filmmaker

Figure 3

At another occasion Moffat is asked to comment on fan created texts that circulate the internet, some of which clearly digress from Sherlock and its original source material. He emphasises, “I take it very seriously and I get very cross when people say I’ve mocked it. I would never do that as of anyone who has ever lived, I am the man who writes fan fiction for a living” (“Steven Moffat talks Fan Art”). Again, Moffat is abolishing any lines between his work and that of any other fan by saying that he is merely writing fan fiction himself. His statement clearly “evoke Barthes’s notion of writerly texts” (Busse and Gray 437) which describe the “[t]he reader [as] no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text” (Barthes 4). Even though the co-writers are not only aware of their viewers creative free run, but appreciative and understanding of the fans’ freedom in creating their own productions, attempts of securing their authorship and creative power of Sherlock occasionally filters through. As for example when Moffat concluded his praise of the fans’ creativity at the Apple store event saying, “There’s a weird thing where you can’t really respond to it. You can’t really interact with that because that’s the wrong way around” (“Meet the Filmmaker”). This sentiment mirrors Cheryl Harris’s assertion that “fans help the culture industry recoup their marketing cost for stars and texts in return for its limited access. Real control remains in the hands of the few” (51).

The control that Gatiss and Moffat hold, is further visible in Sherlock’s overall official transmedia context. Stein and Busse detect the “wide range of fan-instigated transmedia authorship” being in “tension with its surprising limitation and control in terms of official transmedia extensions” (14). In Unlocking Sherlock, Mark Gatiss talks about the co-writers’ decision to let John record Sherlock’s cases in a personal blog, “When you read the stories, he is narrating them, you are always aware of his presence. And as soon as you dramatize it, he’s a man scribbling in a book”. Wanting to find a “modern equivalent of Doctor Watson’s stories”, they eventually decided that it “must be a blog” (ibid.). The BBC went on to publish The Personal Blog of John H. Watson (www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk) as a media extension for viewers to read. Henry Jenkins defines such extension as being part of “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience” (“Transmedia Storytelling 101”). Following Jenkin’s notion of “storytelling”, official production therefore also launched a website called The Science of Deduction (www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk) which is the personal online presence of Sherlock. While Sherlock Holmes does publish academic treatises in Conan Doyle’s canon, the website appears to be his “digital home for consulting service, where he offers his expertise and interacts with potential clients” (Stein and

Busse 13). Both official transmedia extensions are aimed at fans of the series who can find entertaining additions, such as comment sections where characters of the show engage with each other [App. 2]. Stein and Busse, however, observe the BBC’s transmedia storytelling as remaining “hermetically sealed” for neither John’s blog nor Sherlock’s website “encourage (or actually even allow) fan engagement with the characters or story directly” (13). Along with restricting audience participation on the extensions, it is further impossible for fans to engage with fellow fans (ibid.).

Even though official production does not allow fans’ direct participation at the show’s narrative world, Gatiss and Moffat’s writing often indirectly asks for fan engagement, something not only the co-writers seem to enjoy immensely. For instance, they put a twist on the original story of The Final Problem (1893) in which Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty plunge into death after a fight at the Reichenbach Falls. In The Reichenbach Fall (2012), the co-writers decided that they would “unlike Doyle (…) kill Sherlock Holmes on screen, in front of everybody” (Ward). Saying that they “did not quite know what that was going to do to the British and American viewing public”, they let Sherlock “die in Watson’s arms and then inexplicably [showed] him in the last shot” (ibid.). In an interview with the Den of Geek! the interviewer asked about this cliff-hanger of the season two finale. Interviewer ‘Will we be set any more homework at the end of this series?’ Moffat ‘What homework were you set last time?’ Interviewer ‘How did Sherlock survive the fall?’ Moffat ‘That’s voluntary!’ Gatiss ‘And it’s good. That’s not homework is it.’ Interviewer ‘It was meant affectionately!’ (Mellor)

Clearly liking the “homework” Gatiss and Moffat impose on their viewers, the interviewer/fan is wishing for more of these producer-played games, “But will there be a mystery? Something for us to ponder?” (Mellor). That not only the fans seem to enjoy Gatiss and Moffat’s “mysteries” becomes apparent when watching the first episode of series four, The Empty Hearse (2014). The episode opens with a meeting of Sherlock fans, who present various arguments through the online platform Twitter about how Sherlock possibly could have faked his own death, while the scenarios are acted out in the show. As Strosser observes, this “scene quite possibly references Moffat’s tongue-in-cheek reaction to the show’s actual fans and, during a long hiatus between seasons, their great investment of time and energy in theorising how Sherlock survived” (183). This “theorising” had, in fact, taken on a similar scale to when Conan Doyle first killed Holmes. Using hashtags like #ibelieveinsherlock, #sherlocklives, or

#moriartyisreal, fans shared their interpretations online and even went as far as to leave notes at the St Bart's Hospital, the filming location of Sherlock’s fall [App. 3].

That the fanboys Gatiss and Moffat indulge in their authorial position and creative power, is again emphasised by Steven Moffat’s ironic answering at the “Sherlock: Meet the Filmmaker” event. Asked why they included a post-credits scene featuring Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty in His Last Vow (2014), three episodes after he shot himself in The Reichenbach Fall, Moffat says, “It was just a final little treat really. Just to wind people up, I suppose”. The Interviewer goes on to challenge Moffat, asking, “Is that final evidence that you always lie about these things? Because people ask you always ‘Is Moriarty dead?’”, whereupon the writer abandons the topic with a sarcastic and vague answer.

I was as surprised as anyone when he [Moriarty] turned up. Because he was definitely dead. You can’t fake shooting yourself in the face. That’s a fact. The back of his head came off. I don’t know what’s going on and I can’t wait to wait for four or five years before we make the next series to find out.

Steven Moffat about Moriarty’s death

Figure 4 This manner of toying with the fans has led many to believe the co-creators fooling to be more extensive not at least because of Gatiss and Moffat’s extra-diegetic discourse: “Interviewer ‘Steven always lies.’ Moffat ‘No, I lie a lot of the times. I’m not as reliable as that.’” (Edinburgh Inter. TV Festival).

2.1.3 Sherlock and Perceptions of (Non)-Heterosexuality

One subject is repeatedly addressed by fans of the series in relation to Gatiss and Moffat’s way of obscuring their intentions to remain the upper hand in their game of fandom. Both writers had to face up questions regarding perceived homosexual subtext in Sherlock, particularly in context of their aim to “bring[…] it [Conan Doyle’s template] to the present day” (Edinburgh Inter. TV Festival). This, according to Gatiss and Moffat, is “not just a question of removing the pipe and the deerstalker” but a more comprehensive task of “finding a modern equivalent for all kinds of things” (Audio Com. ASiP). One could assume that this modernisation process might possibly also include an open representation of homosexuality, for even though Conan Doyle did not spell out a romantic involvement between the detective and his sidekick, some

might argue that the canon did manifest moments which resemble “a revelation of love straight out of the gayest movie moment” (Lyons) [App. 4].

Considering the famous trials (1895) against author Oscar Wilde, which ended in a two-year conviction because of accused sodomy – an intimate involvement between the playwright and poet Lord Alfred Douglas – it would not seem unlikely that Conan Doyle was too afraid to publish gay romance. Adut states that, at the time of Wilde and Doyle, “Britain stood out (…) as the only country in Western Europe that criminalised all male homosexual acts with draconian penalties” (214). However, Conan Doyle might as well have been part of the greater Victorian public that “held homosexuality in horror” (Adut 214) and consequently had no homoerotic intentions in mind. While some will want to follow up “whether the texts written by Doyle would (…) have been more explicitly queer if they had been written in a more homosexual-friendly era” (Smit 11), it is Gatiss and Moffat’s “updated” take on notions of (non)-heterosexuality that are at the centre of this discussion.

If one had only ever seen the very first episode of Sherlock, A Study in Pink (2010), one will understand the fans’ interest in John and Sherlock’s sexuality and in the co-writers’ ways of bringing the subject up again and again. Hardly fifteen minutes into the series, the landlady Mrs Hudson assumes her new tenants to be gay.

MRS HUDSON There’s another bedroom upstairs, if you’ll be needing two bedrooms. WAITER Sherlock! Anything on the menu, JOHN whatever you want, free. On the Of course we’ll be needing two. house for you and your date! (…)

MRS HUDSON JOHN Oh, don’t worry, there’s all sorts round I’m not his date. (…) here. Mrs Turner next door’s got married ones. WAITER I’ll get a candle for this table, it’s more romantic. Figure 6 JOHN I’m not his date.

Figure 5 Mrs Hudson, however, is not the only one reckoning Sherlock and John as lovers. Whenever John encounters family and friends of Sherlock, Gatiss and Moffat plant a gay reference. For instance, when an acquainted waiter is greeting the duo having dinner in a small restaurant – a

24 situation that should not be unusual for two male friends (or even strangers) to be in. Besides two more casual friends of Sherlock, also his brother Mycroft swings aboard the gay-train, telling John “Yesterday you’ve moved in with him and now you’re solving crimes together. Might we expect a happy announcement by the end of the week?” (A Study in Pink). Even the innkeeper in The Hounds of Baskerville (2012), who is gay himself and who is shown in interaction with his boyfriend in the episode, seems to demonstrate his gaydar3 by apologising to John, “Sorry we couldn’t do a double room for you boys”.

Is Gatiss and Moffat’s intention of “find[ing] a modern equivalence without sort of pushing it too hard” (Audio Com. ASiP), reflected in the choice of letting secondary characters enunciate the obvious – contrary to the canon where one had to read the homosexual tension between the lines? Or was the pilot episode the beginning of a proper modernisation of Conan Doyle’s canon, depicting two male leading characters in a romantic relationship? The following dialogue from A Study in Pink might underpin the latter assumption.

SHERLOCK What do real people have, then, in their real lives?

JOHN Friends? People they know, people they like, people they don’t like. Girlfriends, boyfriends.

MRS HUDSON Yes, well, as I was saying...Dull.

JOHN You don’t have a girlfriend, then.

SHERLOCK Girlfriend? No, not really my area.

JOHN Oh right. Do you have a boyfriend? Which is fine, by the way.

SHERLOCK I know it’s fine.

JOHN So you’ve got a boyfriend then.

SHERLOCK No.

SHERLOCK John, um … I think you should know that I consider myself 3 “gaydar” [portmanteaumarried ofto gay my + radar]:work, colloquialism and while referring I’m flattered,to a person’s intu I’mitive really ability to notdetect others’ non-heterosexuality. Some believe that the looking gaydar is particularlyfor any… evolved in people who identify as non- heterosexual themselves JOHN No, I’m… not asking. No, I’m just saying, it’s all fine. 25

SHERLOCK Good. Thank you. JOHN Right okay. You’re unattached. Just like me. Fine. Good.

SHERLOCK John, um … I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered, I’m really not looking for any…

JOHN No, I’m… not asking. No, I’m just saying, it’s all fine.

SHERLOCK Good. Thank you.

Figure 7 As Smit argues, “John’s repeated denials and Sherlock’s silence on the matter implies that, while Sherlock may simply not care about sexuality and relationships, John certainly does” (12). However, while John is more active in clarifying presumptions about his interest in men, Sherlock is neither attempting to enlighten Mrs Hudson about his relation to John, nor is he explicitly stating if he is gay or straight to John. In fact, John is the one to spell it out in A Scandal in Belgravia (2012) in season two, “Who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes but for the record, if anyone out there still cares, I’m not actually gay”.

Gatiss and Moffat provide their own interpretation of Conan Doyle’s stories to explain Sherlock’s intended indifference towards sex.

Although people talk about it being ambiguous or mysterious, the truth is, the books are completely clear: he’s not interested at all. He’s interested in what his brain is doing, not the other end of his body. (…) The fact is people say, ‘If he’s not interested in women he must be gay’. Sherlock’s not interested in men either. That’s just not what he does.

Steven Moffat about Sherlock’s sexuality

Figure 8 While Moffat describes Sherlock as one of “the most asexual characters on television” (Mavity qtd. in Botts), he understands the adjective not as an inborn orientation of “someone who does not experience sexual attraction” (“Overview”) but as the result of a lifestyle choice. Believing that an “high-functioning sociopath” (The Sign of Three) like Sherlock Holmes is too intelligent

26 to bother himself with trivialities of love and romance, Gatiss and Moffat rely on Conan Doyle’s texts to explain Sherlock’s chosen abstinence.

There’s no indication in the original stories that he was asexual or gay. He actually says he declines the attention of women because he doesn’t want the distraction. What does that tell you about him? Straightforward deduction. He wouldn’t be living with a man if he thought men were interesting.

Steven Moffat about Sherlock’s sexuality

Figure 9 Even though the co-writers seem to have a clear view on the detective’s sexuality, and are judging people who read it as “ambiguous or mysterious” to be delusional since “the books are completely clear” about it, one could wonder why they did decide to explore the subject so extensively. In fact, “by establishing this stand on homosexual and non-heterosexual relationships (…) this early in the series and this thoroughly, the creators indicate their interest in exploring the dynamics between the two men from a possible queer perspective” (Smit 12). This sentiment is supported by the fact that even though they don’t believe the original stories to be ambiguous about Holmes’s sexuality, the series does never officially confirm Sherlock’s asexuality [in Moffat’s definition] but, if anything, “raise[s] questions about John’s sexuality” as well (ibid.).

Throughout Sherlock, ambiguous moments between the detective and his sidekick continue to revisit the topic of their respective sexualities. As for example, when John is telling a surprised

SHERLOCK We’re going out tonight.

JOHN Actually, I’ve got a date.

SHERLOCK What?

JOHN Where two people who like each other go out and have fun?

SHERLOCK That’s what I was suggesting.

JOHN NO, it wasn’t. At least I hope not.

Figure 10

Sherlock that he would rather go out with a woman than spent the evening with him solving crimes, as he usually does. John confirms that he himself is not sure if Sherlock is gay or not.

As mentioned before, Moffat and Gatiss want to show “the story of the greatest friendship ever” (Audio Com. ASiP). Moffat says about the “fact [that] they adore each other” (ibid.),

Because it’s a male friendship, it is simply never talked about. They don’t talk like ‘Listen, I think we’ve become friends now, how do you feel about me?’ Never! They never do that. And that’s, I find, the joy in writing that friendship. It’s, you know, it’s subtext; but it really is right at the top of the subtext.

Steven Moffat about the relationship between Holmes and Watson

Figure 11 While the co-writers deny any homosexual intentions to be hidden in the subtext of Conan Doyle’s stories, they certainly seem to read the original’s focus on male friendship between the lines, “right at the top of the subtext”. Hence, Sherlock’s portrayal of the bond between the detective and his friend is sometimes left open to viewers’ interpretation. The dialogue above confirms Moffat’s statement that a lot of Sherlock and John’s relationship is buried in subtext, as does the following taken from The Great Game (2010).

JOHN I’m glad no one saw that.

SHERLOCK Hm?

JOHN You ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk.

Figure 12 In fact, it is scenes like those which leave viewers wondering if Moffat and Gatiss are hinting at possible romantic notions. Unsurprisingly, fans repeatedly address the ambiguity when getting the chance to talk to the co-writers during fan conventions and cast panels. Fan ‘How would you compare this relationship [John and Sherlock] to the one that the Doctor has with his various companions? I mean, does Holmes need Watson for the same sort of reasons?’ Moffat ‘Hello the internet.’ Fan ‘You know it was coming.’ (Mavity)

Here, the fan is trying to fathom the depths of the duo’s relationship by comparing Holmes to the Doctor from another TV-Series Moffat is writing for, BBC’s Doctor Who (1963-today). The Doctor is accompanied by various sidekicks throughout the years, with some of which he forms deeper romantic involvements. Moffat immediately recognises the innuendo, confirming that he is aware of the Sherlock fandom’s preoccupation with the mystery that he and Gatiss left concerning Sherlock’s sexuality. Even though Moffat and Gatiss should “see fans’ questions like that coming”, they do no try to dissolve the obscurities in the show. Instead, they even like to play with the fact that they are aware of the fandom’s dissatisfaction with diegetic clarification. Such as in The Reichenbach Fall, when Sherlock is confronted by a journalist disguised as a fan, confronting him with the question, “You and John Watson. Just platonic?”.

Undoubtedly, the first episode of series two, A Scandal in Belgravia, does little to resolve the confusion about possible non-heterosexual intentions of Gatiss and Moffat. While the introduction of Irene Adler as the first woman - in fact, THE woman - who is not indifferent to Sherlock had viewers “root[ing] for the pair of them”, the episode also compromised John into “the strange not quite romance” (Ward). Irene is repeatedly expressing her perception of John and Sherlock’s relationship. She does so when John and Sherlock first come to see her in her house, a visit the men attempt to get granted by faking an attack on a as vicar disguised Sherlock. After John had punched Sherlock in the face for an authentic after-attack-look, Irene says to Sherlock, “Somebody loves you! If I had to punch that face, I’d avoid the nose and teeth, too”. She later becomes even more distinct when replying to John’s statement about himself and Sherlock not being a couple, “Yes, you are”. Viewers further need to make up their own ideas about Sherlock’s heartbroken reaction when he is eavesdropping on John and Irene who respectively declare that they are (not) gay. Irene’s statement that she is gay and the subsequent sentence “Look at us both” could carry the message “We both like women, but we’ve also both fallen for Sherlock” (Lyn). Even though John is dating women throughout the series and eventually settles to marry Mary Morstan, fans still “wonder whether Sherlock might secretly harbour feelings for Watson”, something that does not get eliminated because Sherlock might have also fallen for a dominatrix “whose hypersexuality can coax his libido out of dormancy” (cuddlytogas).

However, it is not only Gatiss and Moffat’s way of not clarifying Sherlock’s sexuality in the series, but also the show’s overall mindset toward the representation of non-heterosexual orientations that raise questions of a potential queer intention of the writers. Smit observes that

“the dynamics explored by Sherlock (…) opposes modern-day society’s heteronormativity4 by reversing it” (13). Because heteronormativity causes outdated and untruly perceptions on non- heterosexual orientations, deeming heterosexuality as a “natural, unproblematic, taken-for- granted, ordinary phenomenon”, while “same-sex couples are (if not ‘deviant’) a ‘variation on’ or an ‘alternative to’ the heterosexual couple” (Kitzinger 478). Not at least because of Mark Gatiss’s own homosexuality, the series “is aware of heteronormativity and its effect on society, and responds to it by reversing the principle”, which is why “instead of John and Sherlock being perceived as heterosexuals by default, they are immediately recognised as a homosexual couple by supporting characters” (Smit 13). Additionally, the series is diving at heteronormativity by including gay and bisexual characters into the narrative. For instance, when Sherlock is analysing John based on the look of his phone, concluding the deduction by assuming John’s sisters to be a man since he believes the phone to be a present from a recently divorced wife. Because the engraving on the back of the phone says, Harry Watson from Clara xxx, Sherlock misses that Harry stands for Harriette and that John’s sisters is gay. While other gay couples also play a minor role, such as the innkeeper and his boyfriend in The Hounds of Baskerville, Irene Adler also turns out to be homosexual by replying to John’s official declaration that he is not “not actually gay”, “well, I am”, whereupon she is met with a surprised look by John (A Scandal in Belgravia).

Beside the notion of non-heterosexuality in the series narrative, it is also the promotion of Sherlock that might evoke possible queer vibes for some fans. While official promotion pictures accessible on BBC One’s website are not explicitly portraying Sherlock and John in a romantic embrace, some images might indicate more than friendship to viewers who are highly aware of the gay subtext of the show [App. 4]. Indeed, it was precisely because of the last season’s promotion that Mark Gatiss was once again addressed to clarify their take on Sherlock and John’s relationship. Because Masterpiece PBS’s Sherlock, Season 4: Preview teased the fans with an emotion charged trailer that ended with a close-up of Benedict Cumberbatch looking at somebody unknown, saying “I love you”, Gatiss had to straighten out their intentions again.

4 Heteronormative [adj.]: Denoting or relating to a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation

Of course, we're not against it. But as we have explained many times, that's not the story that we want to tell. Obviously as a gay man myself, I have no problem with the notion that a Sherlock Holmes and a Doctor Watson could be in a relationship together, but ours aren't. It's as simple as that. Sherlock is clearly capable of feeling emotion and of falling for someone, but that someone is not John Watson, despite his love and great affection for him.

Mark Gatiss denies gay intentions in Sherlock

Figure 13 Gatiss’s reference to his own homosexuality as well as his way of explaining that even though John and Sherlock are not gay, he and Moffat have nothing against the perception of the duo being romantically involved, hints at the co-writers’ support for queer representation in the media. Gatiss and Moffat are keen to show that being gay “doesn’t matter” and that “there’s no issue” with it (Parker). When asked about representation of minorities in science fiction shows and popular culture in general, Moffat says that it “is quite a serious thing, a serious question” (ibid.). According to him, “you don’t want it to be campaigning. You don’t want to be table thumping about it. You don’t want to essentially tell children that there’s something to campaign about. You want to say this is absolutely fine and normal” (ibid.). While the notion of not mentioning it to render it normal could very much be reflected in John and Sherlock’s unverbalised love for each other, the co-writers are explicitly stating that Sherlock is not aiming at any homosexual representativeness. What is more, Gatiss explains their recurring “gay jokes” to be inspired by the Billy Wilder film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which plays with the idea of Watson and Holmes possibly being a couple [App. 5]. While Gatiss recognises that they might have “done it too many times”, he expresses that they did not fully think about whether their ways of portraying (non)heterosexual characters could raise “an issue” in “the 21st century” (Parker).

2.2 The Johnlock Conspiracy (TJLC)

The following will analyse how queer fans interpret Gatiss and Moffat’s fragmentary text that invites viewers to fill textual gaps and interpret homoerotic subtext as intentional. Resulting from this fannish reading, the Johnlock-Conspiracy will be investigated in terms of its online embodiment. This chapter deals with how TJLC results from a fan-typical handling of texts and the co-writers’ fan-producer approach.

2.2.1 The Johnlock-Shippers’ Reading of Sherlock

Because “any mention of Sherlock and John as a romantic couple is always written off as outlandish and humorous by those outside of the Sherlock fandom” (Smith 164), a queer reading of the series had remained a hidden fan practise until very recently. However, after the end of the series on the 15th of January 2017, voices were being raised which accused Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss of queerbaiting their audience, eventually drawing public attention to what had already occupied the core of the fandom ever since the show’s release in 2010. Namely, The Johnlock Conspiracy (TJLC) that was given its name in early January 2014 during the third season’s airing. The term was first used as a tag on Tumblr on “January 7 and appears to have taken off around January 9-10” (“TJLC” fanlore). TJLC evolves around the fannish reading “that the frankly astounding amount of homoerotic subtext on the show is intentional, and that the writers have been setting up the detective and his blogger as a couple from the start” (Lyn). To get an understanding of this theory, one must turn to reception processes that take place when Johnlock-Shippers view the series.

While not every single Johnlock-Shipper may be a believer of TJLC, every supporter of the conspiracy can undoubtedly be described as a Johnlock-Shipper. The Urban Dictionary describes “shipping” as a verb taken from any fandom’s vocabulary that denotes “interest in the possible (and perhaps more often impossible) romantic relationship between two characters in a piece of fiction belonging to any medium”. Following a nominalisation of the verb, one can be characterised as a “shipper”, as a person rooting for a certain “ship” [abbreviation of “relationship”]. The term is “never used in a platonic way, but if it ever is, people tend to separately emphasise that they are using it platonically” (“shipping” n.4). Adding the word composition Johnlock, Johnlock-Shippers are hence keen on seeing John and Sherlock as two homosexual men in a romantic relationship. As Lyn observes, shippers are “often stereotyped as unrealistic and immature for ‘reading between the lines’” and therefore segregated from “more socially-acceptable form[s] of rabid obsession from fans who accept the universe as it is written”. Their seemingly “rebellious” nature of wishing for couples that are not written as such is product of shippers’ peculiar reading processes, which can be investigated using reception theory.

Even though one should acknowledge that it can be seen as “inappropriate to identify any unitary origin of reception studies” (Livingstone 237–8), and that media texts - contrary to literary texts - are rarely examined as a form of art, Cornel Sandvoss suggest making use of a

“narrower definition of reception studies as reception theory” (“Reception” 232) since it “bears relevance to contemporary literary and non-literary reception studies alike” (ibid. 234). According to Sandvoss, there is common ground between aims of literary theory and those of fan studies, which is why he argues for a “shared essence of both disciplines”, namely “the analysis and interpretation of meaning in the study of texts and their readings” (“The Death of the Reader” 62). For an application of literary reception to the field of fan studies, Sandvoss therefore suggests turning to “the concepts and theories of reception studies developed (primarily by West German) literary theory” (“Reception” 233). If text is defined in a broader sense as “frames of realisable meanings that span across single or multiple communicative acts” (“The Death of the Reader” 64), one can disregard “whether a given fan object is found in a novel, a television programme, or a popular icon” for “fan objects are read as texts on the level of the fan/reader” (ibid.).

What does it mean to read Sherlock like a Johnlock-Shipper then? And how can literary theory help to understand TJLC’s origin? Even though there are no explicit indications that would point at the co-writers “intention of eventually having John and Sherlock enter a romantic relationship” (“The Johnlock Conspiracy” FFA Wiki) in any episode of Sherlock, the #TJLC tag refers to numerous Johnlock-Shippers who all read the series in a comparable manner. Turning to the concept of “horizon of expectations” coined by reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss, one can start to approach the fact that many viewers seem to recount a similar reading of Sherlock that eventually lead to the fandom’s unleashing of TJLC. Jauss’s concept “designate[s] the set of cultural norms, assumptions, and criteria shaping the way in which readers understand and judge [a text] at a given time” (Baldick 157). Originally, Jauss used horizons of expectations to evaluate the aesthetics of reception, stating, “The distance between the horizon of expectation and the work, between the familiarity of previous aesthetic experiences and the “horizontal change” demanded by the reception of the new work” determines the artistic character of a literary work” (25). Thereby, Jauss pleads for a dynamic and relational aesthetic value of any text, as it is manifested and measured “in the horizontal change that is required by the audience in the reception of the text” (“Reception” 236). The horizon of expectation of the Sherlock viewers hence describes “the vantage point (…) that is constituted by the sum of their lifeworld experiences” (ibid.). However, those horizons are “subject to historical change”, meaning that other viewers “may see a very different range of meanings in the same work, and revalue it accordingly” (Baldick 157) at another point in time. That Jauss’s horizons are ever changing and individually distinct is stressed by his “seemingly synonymously” usage of

“horizon of expectation” and “horizon of experience” (“Reception” 236), emphasising that the horizon is made up of the readers’ previously received understandings, presumptions and world views. Having a closer look at the creators of various fan blogs featuring TJLC, one realises that the horizon of expectations of those fans reading John and Sherlock as being in love, seem to share major characteristics.

For example, the author of Tumblr blog clueing for johnlock writes about herself, “Rachel. 25. ENTP. bi / pan. Ravendor. Chaotic Neutral. she/her. Cincinnati area. Forever TJLC”. In a comparable manner, Christel, creator of johnnlocked writes about herself, “I identify as a biromantic bisexual”. On her blog, A Very Camp Gay and a Grumpy Bisexual, Scarlett also states her sexuality on the front page, “Scarlett 17 and pansexual. I believe in Johnlock. TJLC is real”. While such personal declarations are not obviously visible on every single Johnlock- Shipper fan site, it is nonetheless predominantly the fans’ identification with the LGBT community that seems to motivate many of the blogs surrounding TJLC. As eighteen-year-old Maddy from Britain writes, “I live for the day where being gay will have no more significance than being left or right handed” on her Tumblr, Sherlock Is Gay. The horizon of expectations of said fans is shaped by certain assumption, values and norms of the LGBT community – such as the wish for an authentic representation in the media – that an audience solely consisting of heterosexuals might not share, which is why “queer viewers often ‘read’ film texts differently than straight viewers” (Green 32). Barbara Tennison explains the heterosexist logic of television productions and her horizon of expectation as a non-heterosexual: As a gay person who doesn't consider being gay to be abnormal or bad, I object to the idea that an "undeclared" character on screen cannot, within the normal framework of life and the universe, be developed as gay. (…) I also challenge the notion that attraction toward members of the opposite sex necessarily excludes attraction towards one's own sex; bisexuality is also an option. (1) According to Jauss, any reader approaches a text with the experience and knowledge gained through interactions with other texts. In case of queer film and television, such experience and knowledge are often restricted to non-heterosexuals who seek out queer independent media, as “stereotypes and traditional conservative principles – such as the normalising of heterosexuality and the demonising of queer sexuality – persist in (…) movies even as they are being questioned and dismantled throughout our larger culture” (Green 31). Hence, it is not only the shared horizon of expectation/experience that makes Johnlock-Shippers sensitive and responsive towards gay perceptions in Sherlock. Moreover, the “horizontal change” (Jauss 25) it demands of viewers whose previous aesthetic experiences deviate from seeing two gay leading characters

34 in a TV series, influences Johnlock-Shippers to ascribe a high aesthetic value to the text since its potential to contribute to gay representation.

Despite the knowledge that many Johnlock-Shippers share similar horizons of expectation in their comprehension and decoding of Sherlock as a gay romance, yet how can they advocate a conspiracy that is built on that few textual evidence and additional abnegation of the writers? As the previous chapter illustrates, Gatiss and Moffat do play with various perceptions of (non)heterosexuality in their intention of updating a platonic male friendship into the 21st century. They refrain from clarifying Sherlock’s sexuality and continuously also involve John into gay jokes that challenge his perceived heterosexual orientation until his marriage in season three, leaving the depths of their “friendship” up for interpretation. By turning to Wolfgang Iser’s contribution to reception theory, one can investigate how such vacancies in the narrative are completed by readers in their reading process. Like Jauss does in his conceptualisation of horizon of expectation, Iser stresses the importance of the reader’s personal knowledge, for the reader “can only resort to his own experience when drawing conclusions over what is being communicated in the text” (“Die Appellstruktur der Texte” 232). According to him, reading can never be a “prepacked meaning controlled by the author”, but needs to be “an interaction in which the structures and figures of the text collide with the reader’s (subjective) knowledge, experiences, and expectations” because “meaning is created as the reader ‘concretises’ the text” (Sandvoss “The Death of the Reader” 70). How does this concretisation of Sherlock’s gay subtext look like in the Johnlock-Shippers’ reading and realisation of TJLC?

As Iser explains how the realisation of any text “is by no means independent of the individual disposition of the reader” but stems from “the convergence of text and reader” (“The Reading Process 279), it is not enough to simply take the Johnlock-Sippers non-heterosexuality to explain their queer reading of Sherlock. One must also look at Gatiss and Moffat’s text and how it “needs the reader’s imagination” (ibid. 282). The co-writers intentionally conceive the series “in such a way that it will engage the reader’s imagination in the task of working things out for himself” (ibid. 280), which becomes not only obvious by looking at how the show leaves things open to interpretation, but also by hearing the writers’ explanation of why they do so. Moffat answers a fan’s questioning of why Sherlock is not giving away more information about the characters’ future development, saying, “It’s really just basic storytelling. Don’t do the end first. (…) So, we are not really taunting you, we are just saying, you know, enjoy it properly. Enjoy the story in the right order” (Mavity). Iser stresses that such an approach is best, for “if the reader were given the whole story, and there were [sic] nothing left for him to do, then his

35 imagination would never enter the field, the result would be the boredom which inevitably arises when everything is laid out cut and dried before us” (“The Reading Process” 280). Again, also he emphasises the reader’s subjectivity and how “different readers can be differently affected by the “reality” of a particular text” (ibid. 284). Hence, Iser points to the complex creative processes behind reading that are “far above mere perception of what is written” and coins the term “virtual dimension” to describe the creative activity that takes place in deciphering the world of a given text (ibid.).

Iser’s theoretical conceptualisation finds affirmations in how the Johnlock-Shippers explain Sherlock’s sexual orientation. Looking at how TJLC-advocate Jay reads Sherlock’s flirting abilities, resembles Iser’s notion of how individual sentences are working together to not only foreshadow but also to form an expectation in this regard (“The Reading Process” 282). Referring to A Study in Pink, Johnlock-Shipper Jay writes:

When the viewer first meets Sherlock, he is in the morgue (...) while Molly shows obvious interest in him. She even asks him out on a date – well, not that Sherlock understood it that way. (...) This is the very first clue the viewer receives as to Sherlock’s lack of interest in women. Someone as smart as him doesn’t realise he is being asked on a date… curious. We’ll see another person professing their interest in Sherlock later this episode and – surprise – that time he notices!

Figure 14 The “other person” Jay is referring to is John who awkwardly tries to figure out whether Sherlock is in a relationship later in the episode. Having seen how Sherlock does not recognise obvious female flirtation – Molly ‘I was wondering if you’d like to have coffee?’ Sherlock ‘Black, two sugars, please. I’ll be upstairs.’ – Jay uses this knowledge of the detective to make sense of Sherlock’s declaration toward John later in the episode, ‘While I’m flattered by your interest, I’m not looking for any…” (ASiP). Iser elucidates, “Whatever we have read sinks into our memory and is foreshortened. It may later be evoked again and set against a different background with the result that the reader is enabled to develop hitherto unforeseeable connection” (“The Reading Process” 283). The Johnlock-Shippers use Sherlock’s obvious disinterest in Molly, as well as his conclusion about John’s questioning, to be indicative of his homosexuality.

That “every sentence contains a preview of the text and forms a kind of view-finder for what is to come; and this in turn changes the ‘preview’ and so becomes a ‘viewfinder’ for what has been read” (“The Reading Process” 284), is further apparent when canvassing the reasons of the conspiracy more closely. For example, the Johnlock-Shippers read Sherlock’s case solving in the wedding episode, The Sign of Three, as a metaphor for Sherlock consciously realising his feelings for John and enunciating them for the first time. The episode features a scene where Sherlock enters his “mind palace”5 where he talks to possible female suspects, ultimately dismissing them saying ‘Not you!’. Later in the episode when Sherlock should give his best man’s speech in front of the wedding guests, he suddenly turns to John, pointing at him and declares, ‘You. It’s always you, John Watson. You keep me right.’ (TSoT). The Johnlock- Shippers therefore expound:

The sentence ‘It’s always you, John Watson. You keep me right’ pretty much sums it up, especially since earlier that scene, Sherlock has said ‘not you’ to about 100 women and twice to Mycroft, who is certainly more governed by cold reason than Sherlock ever was.

Figure 15

Iser’s account of reading as being a “kaleidoscope of perspectives, preintentions, recollections” (“The Reading Process” 284) is moreover resembled in another example through which the Johnlock-Shippers justify TJLC. In the third and final episode of series three, His Last Vow (2014), Sherlock shoots Charles Augustus Magnussen to protect John and ensure Mary’s safety. Here, the Johnlock-Shippers read Sherlock’s bloody deed based on a statement he had given in the very first episode of Sherlock.

It made Sherlock Holmes a murderer and stripped him of his career, his reputation, his liberty, and quite possibly, his life. Why the hell would he choose that? Was he just pissed he had been outwitted? No: we are given the answer in A Study in Pink, when Sherlock himself explains, ‘Bitterness is a paralytic. Love is a much more vicious motivator.’ Love.

Figure 16 While such a love could very much be platonic, the Johnlock-Shippers read it as one of the most romantic scenes between the detective and his sidekick. This also rests upon the fact that neither

5 A metaphor for Sherlock’s habit to re-tread into a meditative state while thinking about clues

Sherlock nor John ever explicitly state that they are straight (including John’s declaration that he is ‘not gay’).

Since “it is only through inevitable omissions that a story will gain its dynamism” (“The Reading Process” 284) and Gatiss and Moffat make use of this knowledge, TJLC is built upon the fact that both, Sherlock and John, have not yet confirmed their heterosexuality. Iser states that such instances give the reader the opportunity “to bring into play [his/her] own faculty for establishing connections – for filling in the gaps left by the text itself” (“The Reading Process 285). Finding echo in Jauss’s horizon of expectation, Iser goes on to outline the reader’s personal subjectivity in the process of filling textual gaps. The unresolved ambiguity of Sherlock and John’s sexual orientation lets many Johnlock-Shippers to make up their own interpretation based on their sense of identification to the LGBT-community. As a matter of fact, Sherlock is “potentially capable of several different realisations, and no reading can ever exhaust the full potential”, however, queer TJLC-advocates “will fill in the gaps in [his/her] own [queer] way, thereby excluding the various other possibilities” (“The Reading Process” 285). When John touches Sherlock’s knee as the two are sitting opposite each other after their drunken stag night in The Sign of Three, looking at Sherlock, back to his hand and whispers, ‘I don’t mind’, the Johnlock-Shippers hence made their “own decisions as to how the gap is to be filled“ (ibid.). That such a scene leads to a queer reading by the Johnlock-Shippers has perspicuous reasons for TJLC-advocates who say, “this one’s not really open to interpretation; it’s pretty blunt (…). The entire scene is pretty flirtatious” (Lyn).

As implied through Moffat’s statement earlier, the author is very well capable of “exert[ing] plenty of influence on the reader’s imagination - he has the whole panoply of narrative techniques at his disposal - but no author worth his salt will ever attempt to set the whole picture before his reader’s eyes (“The Reading Process” 287). While the Johnlock-Shippers form their virtual dimension, the reading of Sherlock as a love story between two men, they constantly must link different phrases of Gatiss and Moffat’s text together in a “process of anticipation and retrospection” (ibid. 286). Iser describes modern texts as being particularly fragmentary which makes readers nearly exclusively occupied with the search for relations between the fragments (ibid. 285). Anticipating a hint that would support TJLC at any moment, Johnlock- Shippers are particularly keen on linking fragments together to support their reading of Sherlock. That is why they explain a scene where John is entering his credit card PIN as a potential pointer to queer romance.

John’s PIN is 7437, which translates to SHER on a mobile phone keypad. It is the same code that unlocked Irene Adler’s phone and I’m sure we all recall the “I AM ____ LOCKED” display. Conclusion: John is Sherlocked, too. (...) They SHOWED the numbers. They consciously wanted viewers to see them. Why, if not to point to an underlying meaning?

Figure 17 Iser says that “in such cases, the text refers back directly to our own preconceptions – which are revealed by the act of interpretation that is a basic element of the reading process” (“The Reading Process” 285). To be able to make such interpretations, one needs close reading skills which Jonathan Gray attributes to fans in general since they “never escape a deep awareness of the work” (“New Audiences” 70).

However, according to Gray’s description of the atomic phenomena of the text, “fans are frequently more than close readers” (“New Audiences” 70). Gray compares texts to clashing and intermixed atoms since “texts [are] always intersected and interrupted by dense networks of intertextuality making it impossible (…) to regard (…) any of its constituent parts as either independent or truly stable” (68-9). A classic “close reader” to Gray consequently “ignores the text’s outlying regions and interactions with other texts” because such a reader is determined that “the key that will unlock the entire work” must lie “at the very centre of the text” (69). Fans engage in different reading processes since they “actively look ‘outside’ the nucleus to intruders and intertexts, negotiating certain readings of the text, and they may well read over or in spite of it” (ibid.). Such a fannish reading behaviour is also true for the Johnlock-Shippers who actively investigate outside to make sense of Sherlock and its queer subtext.

For example, TJLC argues for an innuendo at Sonnet 57 by William Shakespeare as a subtle hint of non-heterosexuality. Referring to the Doctor Who episode, The Shakespeare Code (2007), which was also written by Steven Moffat, the Johnlock-Shippers point at the writer’s former usage of the number 57 to denote homosexual notions.

THE DOCTOR Come on! We can have a good flirt later”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Is that a promise, Doctor?

THE DOCTOR Oh, 57 academics just punched the air. Come on.

Figure 18

In Sherlock, John is seemingly annoyed at Sherlock for texting with Irene Adler in A Scandal in Belgravia. Having to listen to the text alert noise, John, according to the Johnlock-Shippers, is “interrupting their conversations, making passive aggressive comments” and acts overall jealous, which TJLC-advocates can tell by his declaration that he has already counted 57 texts from the woman (Lyn).

The Johnlock-Shippers are also deducting cinematographic choices as intertextual references to romantic intentions of the co-writers. As for example the recurring depiction of Shaftesbury Avenue with the statue of Anteros, Greek God of requited love. Because the statue is shown in the opening titles, as well as in The Blind Banker, in Sherlock: The Network6, and in a case description on John’s blog called The Geek Interpreter, TJLC-advocates conclude “that Johnlock has been requited since the pilot, or in the least that the sexual attraction has been present since the pilot – on both sides” (Jay). Gray believes that any information fans “find elsewhere” will always be related “back to the textual nucleus” (70). This goes for the Johnlock- Shippers reading of John’s reluctance to reveal his middle name (John H. Watson) and his eventual surrender to Sherlock’s nagging in an outburst of jealousy because of Irene’s flirting with Sherlock (His Last Vow). The Johnlock-Shippers believe that Gatiss and Moffat have chosen the name Hamish because of Scottish writer, poet and former soldier, Dr Hamish Scott Henderson (1919-2002), who “lived for a time in London with another man, loved storytelling, and wrote poetry about his experiences in WWII’s Desert War” (Lyn). And who, more importantly, “was openly bisexual and hated the word ‘gay’” (ibid.).

Gray goes on to explain that ongoing television series differ from books because they keep the viewers hanging between the airing of episodes, “whereas finishing a book allows us to treat it as a spatial whole to some degree” (“New Audiences” 69). Because there can be days, weeks, or even months between episodes, Gray argues how “all manner of intruders and intertexts” are hence allowed to “inflect [the fans’] textual gestalt”, pulling them “away from the work” and “set[ting] [them] in motion” (ibid.). While the thirteen-month break between series one and two and the nineteen-month waiting time until the release of the third series were already exceptionally long, Gatiss and Moffat nearly drove their fans insane during a three year pause

6 Sherlock: The Network: Game application released by Sherlock’s official production [The Project Factory & Hartswood Films] in 2014. Users can help Sherlock by navigating the streets of London, discovering clues, solving puzzles and piecing together cases.

40 between the third and fourth season of Sherlock. Unsurprisingly, the fans turn to the co-writers’ extra-diegetic discourse (e.g. the audio commentary on already released episodes), feeding their virtual dimension with producer statements concerning additional information about Sherlock. Gray notes, “the very nature of fandom suggests willing informants: they feel strongly about the text(s) in question and have considerable interest in them” (77). Besides gaining knowledge during panel discussions, interviews, fan conventions, and other possibilities to talk to the co- writers in person, the Johnlock-Shippers also turn to social media to, filling textual gaps in their reading of Sherlock through extra-diegetic producer discourse that is shared and discussed by fellow shippers [App. 6]. On Twitter, Johnlock-Shippers like to let other fans know when they have encountered homosexual vibes in an episode yet again, therefore TJLC-advocates confirm and validate each other’s queer reading [App. 7]. This sense of a collaborative interacting and reinforcing of their reading of Sherlock to maintain TJLC mirrors Lesley Goodman’s account of fans’ textual approach.

Goodman employs concepts of fictional-worlds theory to argue that the fans’ reading of texts is heavily influenced by a distinction between texts and universes. Her contribution to fannish reading synthesises what German reception theorists Jauss and Iser have stated about horizon of expectations and textual gaps but brings their ideas into a more fan-specific setting. She draws from her colleague Marie-Laure Ryan in her account of fan activity with texts. Constructing a fictional universe [Ryan: textual universe], fans engage in what Goodman calls “principle of minimal departure” by filling in textual gaps “with information about the real world” (665). Any missing information about Sherlock and John’s sexuality is hence reconstructed in the Johnlock-Shippers’ fictional universe that features them as a couple, for such a universe will always “conform as far as possible to the actual world unless otherwise indicated” (ibid.). Because most TJLC-advocates identify with LGBT orientations and there are enough indicators to non-heterosexual notions in Sherlock, queer Johnlock-Shippers are likely to construct a homosexual perception of John and Sherlock since “the only difference between the fictional universe and the text are real-world details not supplied by the text” (ibid.).

Moreover, “information about the real world” further includes the knowledge the fans have of Gatiss and Moffat and their creative process. That is why TJLC frequently involves the co- writers’ actions and/or statements; whether in form of extra-diegetic discourse or Gatiss/Mycroft’s acting in Sherlock. The Johnlock-Shippers firmly believe that the co-writers are lying to the fans to protect TJLC. Nevertheless, this fact does not keep them from

41 influencing the fans’ fictional universes because TJLC-advocates read Sherlock based on Gatiss and Moffat’s self-declared “extra lying powers” (Mavity), filling ambiguous moments with real life information about the writers. In The Sign of Three, Johnlock-Shippers analyse Sherlock’s mind-palace scene as the self-realisation of his love for John. Sherlock’s deduction that one suspect’s knowledge about John’s wedding could only be a coincidence, is interrupted by Mycroft’s sudden appearance.

MYCROFT Oh, Sherlock. What do we say about coincidence?

SHERLOCK The universe is rarely so lazy.

MYCROFT So the balance of probability is…?

SHERLOCK Someone went to great lengths to find out something about this wedding.

MYCROFT What great lengths?

SHERLOCK They lied, assumed false identities.

MYCROFT Which suggest…?

SHERLOCK Criminal intent.

MYCROFT Also suggest…?

SHERLOCK Intelligence, planning.

Figure 19

The Johnlock-Shippers believe that Mark Gatiss is “actually talking about the creators’ lying constantly about their plans regarding Johnlock” (Jay). This scene addressing intentional lying and planning is read based on the co-writers’ statements about the importance of non- heterosexual representation in the media and Gatiss and Moffat’s understanding that it should not be “campaigning” since it “is absolutely fine and normal” (Parker). Moreover, both writers are known for toying with their fans about plot and character development and the shippers are

42 highly aware of Gatiss and Moffat’s ways of securing their creative power by concealing the big picture. Therefore, especially those of the Johnlock-Shippers who believe in TJLC, constitute their fictional universe around the fact that nothing they see in Sherlock can be taken for granted since homosexual notions will never be obviously addressed and any intentions of a queer romance are unlikely to be revealed until the very end.

2.2.2 Fanon and Shipping TJLC

TJLC-advocate Keagan Ashleigh, who publicly declares, “Heteronormativity is bullshit” on her Tumblr-blog Vatican Cameos, traces the roots of The Johnlock Conspiracy back to the fans’ general assumption about the co-writer’s attitude towards LGBT-representation in the media. Referring to a Gay Times magazine interview with Mark Gatiss, Keagan Ashleigh’s post explains that the Sherlock-writers want to follow in Russell T. Davies’s7 footsteps who, according to Gatiss, engaged in “extremely ground breaking” work by “introduc[ing] incidentally gay characters” on TV (Scott 31). Quoting Gatiss’s statement, “I think when the day comes that you have a big detective show where the first half hour was this man at work and he’s a maverick and all the usual things and then we went home and his boyfriend says, ‘Are you alright?’ it was just a thing, then something would have genuinely changed” (ibid.), Johnlock-conspiracists conclude that the co-writers’ intent to picture Sherlock and John as an incidentally gay couple, too. Believing in the TJLC thus means to believe that Gatiss and Moffat “build up a romance in a way people don’t really see it right away”, because “the fact the characters are gay is not the central point” (keagan-ashleigh). Instead of depicting “a story about two gay characters finding love”, Sherlock apparently wants to show “the story of a detective and a former soldier finding love” (ibid.). However, the Johnlock-Shippers’ sentiment clashes with producer assertions stressing that the two of them will never end up together (Hibberd).

Interestingly enough, shipping TJLC implies to grasp the extra-diegetic producer discourse only in light of Gatiss and Moffat’s unusual fan-producer approach which inevitably initiated the conspiracy in the first place. Even though TJLC-advocates argue that “the contents of the show itself are enough to cancel out any argument against Johnlock” despite anyone else’s belief, they continue to explain that “it doesn’t matter what [the co-writers] say” about Sherlock or John’s sexuality, since Sherlock’s extra-diegetic producer discourse is as much part of Gatiss and Moffat’s plan as the series itself (“The Creators Lie”). Believing that “people who care as

7 Stephen Russell Davies (OBE): *1963; Welsh screenwriter and television producer whose works include Queer as Folk, Bob & Rose, The Second Coming, Casanova, Doctor Who, and the trilogy Cucumber, Tofu, and Banana.

43 much as those who make Sherlock” would not construct “every scene and plotline” pointing to “John and Sherlock’s inevitable union”, Johnlock-conspiracists are certain that “everyone involved is hiding the truth” (ibid.) by constantly lying about where the series is headed. For instance, joolabee is trading off the “great deal of extra-narrative denial from the showrunners” against the fandoms’ knowledge about the co-writers’ history of lying about plot developments. She argues that especially Steven Moffat “is a notorious liar, openly admitting that he purposefully misleads and falsifies things he says about his shows” [App. 8]. Even though extra- diegetic producer discourse should hence not be taken seriously, it was an explanation about the showrunners’ creative writing process, uttered by Moffat during the Sherlock cast panel on the San Diego Comic Con in 2015 that became the tagline for TJLC [App. 9]. Moffat talked about their writing process that always aims at pulling the rug underneath people’s feet. He stresses that a true “gut punch moment” however, does not subsist of the surprise effect alone, but on the viewers’ realisation that they were told repeatedly about an imminent twist but failed to listen (Flicks And the City).

As Johnlock-Shipper Rebekah, creator of YouTube channel Rebekah TJLC Explained, evaluates TJLC’s main achievement, “We were told. And we were listening”. Rebekah therefore spreads the word of Gatiss and Moffat’s supposedly secret mission through videos in which she breaks down every episode of Sherlock to convince the rest of the fandom of the “big surprise” [App. 10] that Gatiss and Moffat have planned to create Sherlock as “the first version of Sherlock Holmes with a canon relationship between Sherlock and John” (“The Creators Lie”). The key to the conspiracy lies in understanding how the co-writers’ “fanboyness” does not only condense in the concurrent execution of a faithful and updated adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work, but also in how such an approach would only be detected by likewise devoted fans who pay close attention, both to the original canon and to the series’ utilisation of it. Many TJLC-conspiracists hence evaluate the fan-producer approach of Gatiss and Moffat by comparing Sherlock to Conan Doyle’s source text; such as Rebekah who, in collaboration with fellow Johnlock-Shipper Fox Watson (queerwatson.tumbrl), unveils how the co-writers’ secret- mongering is due to Conan Doyle’s ensconced intentions expressed in Watson as an unreliable narrator.

Arguing that Watson’s account is not only unreliable because he’s telling their story from his own perspective but also because he is writing records of Holmes’s cases to published them, Rebekah and Fox believe that the “carefully edited and carefully constructed story [only] relates

44 to a sum of what actually goes on” and that Watson “hides a lot of things (…) deliberately” (“Adapting the Stories”). This includes the details of Holmes and Watson’s relationship which is “hidden in this very fascinating way of reading between the lines of what Watson is saying to us and what he’s not saying to us” (ibid.). Johnlock-advocates believe that Gatiss and Moffat notice the original’s unreliability [App. 11], which, for example, is why John’s blog posts and what the viewer sees in the episodes differ in a way that “John, like Watson, is downplaying himself and that his portrayal of Sherlock isn’t entirely accurate” (ibid.). Moreover, there are some instances in dialogue that apparently proof how Gatiss and Moffat try to comprise Conan Doyle’s pattern of leaving the viewer in doubt about what might actually happened [App. 12]. TJLC particularly draws on a few scenes of Sherlock, where John and Sherlock talk about how inaccurate John’s stories truly are, saying that the co-writers wanted to let the audience know he was lying [App. 13]. Just as in Sherlock, “the writers lie, and then tell us they’re lying [App. 14]” (“Adapting the Stories”).

TJLC argues that Gatiss and Moffat’s “long game of concealing the truth before they make their big reveal is all a reference to that part of the canon” (“Adapting the Stories”). They strongly believe in the co-writers long drawn out conspiracy, because they think it is a fannish approach that stays true to Conan Doyle’s original. Despite the showrunners statements about Holmes’s alleged chosen asexuality, Johnlock-Shippers refuse to accept how fans such as Gatiss and Moffat would overlook the notion of supressed homosexuality [App. 15] in Conan Doyle’s work, and instead opt to trust that “they brought this show to the modern day (…) because it allows Sherlock and John to be together publicly” (ibid.). Conclusive proof that also the co- writers deem Watson’s retelling of romantic and sexual feelings to be distorted can, according to TJLC-advocates, be found in the special The Abominable Bride, the episode that depicts the characters in Conan Doyle’s original setting of Victorian London. Because of a scene in which John is trying to get Sherlock to reveal his emotions [App. 16], Johnlock-Shippers conclude that the co-writers shot their understanding of the Victorian original to make fans aware of their queer intentions in the contemporary version, since “the canon was practically made for something like TJLC” (“Adapting the Stories”).

In the eyes of Johnlock-conspiracists, true fanboys such as Gatiss and Moffat – who stress the difficulty but importance of bringing Conan Doyle’s world into modern days [App. 17] – are aware of “the history of a hundred and thirty years of Holmes adaptations” and know that their modern retelling will be the most authentic homage since it can finally make “Holmes’s dearest

45 dream” of being with Watson publicly a reality (“Adapting the Stories”). This intention is apparently most obvious in Victorian Sherlock’s musing about how much he would be at home in a modern world, since he had always known that he was “a man out of this time” (The Abominable Bride). TJLC fan blogs therefore like to quote Mark Gatiss’s explanation of The Abominable Bride’s last scene [App. 18].

That last scene where the – the credits roll and then it suddenly goes back to Baker Street … and Sherlock says to John, ‘This is my idea of what the future might look like’. So, which really poses the possibility that the entire series (…) is just the fevered imaginings of a real Victorian man. (…) So maybe the whole thing is just a Victorian man’s idea of the future.

Mark Gatiss about the ending of The Abominable Bride

Figure 20 The writer’s statement hence serves to support TJLC belief that the “Sherlock showrunners intended from the beginning to create a slow-burn romance between Holmes and Watson” using “subtext, metaphor, emotional development, and parallelism” (joolabee).

Johnlock-Shippers who advocate TJLC thus use the internet to share, discuss and analyse their queer reading of Sherlock. On ReelRundown, “a site created by film, animation, and television buffs”, one can find an introduction to The Johnlock Conspiracy that lists twenty-nine points of references for its origin and persistence (Lyn). Writer, filmmaker and fan, Jay, has also published an essay on his personal blog Multifandom-Madness, “to show that TJLC has a point to people who have not spent endless hours reading up on it, who are sceptical, or who are just interested in the topic”. In doing so, many fans rely on Ariane DeVere’s textualization of all Sherlock episodes and additional extra-diegetic producer discourse (e.g. DVD audio commentary, special feature transcripts and written records of interviews) which she shares on her website, arianedevere.dreamwidth.org. Therefore, it is easy for regular Sherlock fans to enter the conspiracy and become TJLC-advocates themselves. However, maintaining the Johnlock-Shippers’ reading of Sherlock does not only revolve around plucking the text to pieces to proof the co-writers reported fidelity to Conan Doyle, but also in saving, sharing, analysing each other’s account of TJLC.

The fannish theory is graphically embodied using modified screenshots and GIFs throughout social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, whereby the latter seems to be the most used tool for hardcore fans. While many user-names already suggest a relation to

TJLC (dailytjlcreminder, heisjohnlocked, consultingdads, johnlockshire, tjlc, conspiracycaz), the Johnlock-Shippers mark their contribution with hashtags to ensure a distinct attribution to TJLC and to make it easier for fellow shippers to find entries through filtering and search engines. Such hashtags include #sherlock, #gay, #johnlock, #tjlc, #gayships, #gaysubtext, and as of late, #queerbaiting. Tumblr-blogs such as the johnlock conspiracy, which declares “JOHNLOCK IS SO FUCKING IMPORTANT TO ME AND TO SOCIETY AS A WHOLE”, or the page Poetry or Truth? #TJLC Lives that features a cover picture where Sherlock longingly stares at John, have made it their business to serve as a source of anything Johnlock, eagerly sharing and referencing other fan sites who also spread TJLC. Commitment and engagement of that kind reflect Jenkins’s characterisation of fandom as “an interpretive and creative community actively appropriating the content of television [or literature] for its own pleasures” (“Media Consumption”). TJLC-blogs create spaces in which shippers “are passionate about their creativity and the topics that spur those passions” (ibid.).

In that sense, the Johnlock-Shippers serve as a clearly recognisable example of today’s participatory culture. The internet’s accessibility has dissolved restricted locations, time zones and language barriers, which makes it easier for the Johnlock-Shippers to spread TJLC relentlessly and allowing for anyone’s participation. Jelissa for example writes about herself, “I was born and raised in Malaysia. I started my obsession with BBC Sherlock since 2014 (…) the thing that got me into BBC Sherlock was actually Johnlock. (…) I’m now forever sucked into this hell hole” (fangirllock). Belonging to the subdivision of creative cultures, the Johnlock- Shippers are “encouraged to create, share, and comment all within a safe and supportive environment” (Jenkins “What Do We Now Know”). This safe environment of infinite possibility is due to the Internet’s introduction of digital fandoms that offer a “new form of anonymity” because “fans adopt a persona characterised by only their screen names and avatars while freely communicating with each other” (Smit 21). As previously mentioned, many Johnlock-Shippers thus share intimate facts, such as their sexuality or personality types while otherwise staying mostly anonymous; e.g. “Gemma – NZ – INFP – 4w5 – bi” (hawksmoor17). Moreover, the internet’s anonymity also stirs the fans’ creativity, enabling Johnlock-Shippers to infiltrate social media not only through reblogs and retweets but by taking up character identities of the series and creating content under their names.

For example, the Johnlock-Shippers behind the Twitter accounts @contactSH and @contactJHW therefore spread TJLC by sending each other tweets, creating the notion of

Sherlock and John being a couple that enjoys flirting online. Links to their conversation are, in turn, featured on TJLC-blogs, because such fan creations give immense pleasure to fellow- shippers. lilbabylestrade for example regularly shares John and Sherlock’s twitter interchange, writing “THIS IS MAKING MY DAY I LOVE THEM”. This establishes Johnlock-Shippers as active consumers who use the media to gratify their desires. Sundet and Ytreberg explain active audiences as being motivated by and characteristic of socialising, emotional engagement and experimentation. In an active meaning construction, Johnlock-Shippers engage with the text by analysing and sharing their interpretations, and by expanding and altering it; most frequently done in fan fiction and fan art displaying John and Sherlock as a couple. The popular platform for fan-created stories, fanfiction.net, currently delivers 6,252 hits tagged with “Johnlock”. However, also Tumblr serves the purpose for writers to publish fanon, and to experiment with creations of other users, may it be through adding to analyses of certain episodes or by sharing someone else’s artwork.

2.3 The Queerbaiting Controversy

The following explores the reactions to Sherlock’s final episode to understand the Johnlock- Shippers’ accusations against Gatiss and Moffat. With the knowledge that the co-writers repeatedly denied any queer intentions, it will be analysed how and why the disappointed fans still blame the authors for a non-romantic ending of the series. This chapter deals with the blurred lines of the author-fan-text triangle that causes power struggles among its participants and discusses questions concerning responsibility and expectations.

2.3.1 Reactions to Sherlock’s Series Finale

While those believing in TJLC construed Sherlock’s gay subtext as Gatiss and Moffat’s way of hinting at their secret mission, other Johnlock-Shippers looked at the “overt homoeroticism between Sherlock and John” (Tatum) in a different light. Already in the beginning of 2014, the feminist website Bitch Flicks published an article by a Sherlock fan who addressed that the series “is pretty damn queerphobic” (ibid.). Arguing that writing subtext into the show does not equal representation but on the contrary “invokes queerness as mean-spirited comedy”, Tatum uses the term “queer baiting” to describe how Gatiss and Moffat “coyly stigmatise and degrade an identity to obsessively remind the audience of everything that [the] characters are not”. Hence, they create their show “just as exclusionary and discriminatory” as any other TV-series that steers clear of homoerotic subtext altogether. Even two years before Tatum’s article, media

48 blogger Kerishma also describes Steven Moffat’s “pretending to rep queer characters, while keeping any possibility of open queerness from moving beyond mere subtext” as queerbaiting the audience. She describes queerbaiting as a “privilege that allows fandom (and writers and producers) to serve up nudge-nudge-wink-wink queer subtext with nary a thought about actual LBGTQIA invisibility in television” (“On Queerbaiting”). In fact, as a Tumblr post by orbitingasupernova shows, Moffat’s Doctor Who fans already accused the writer of his shady run around with queer fans back in 2012. orbitingasupernova states, “Queerbaiting is what most shows with (predominantly white) male leads do. Put a little gay subtext in there to stir up interest, and then every so often go to the press, shout NO HOMO NO HOMO NO HOMO at the interviewer, and everything is fine”.

However, as the BBC had merely aired the second series of Sherlock about five years ago, John and Sherlock’s romantic future had not yet been set in stone; that is if one was not following the Johnlock-conspiracists theory of the co-writers’ slow and subtle introduction to the protagonists’ happy ending. However, with Sherlock’s thirteenth and final episode The Final Problem, which aired in January 2017, the queerbaiting upbraiding splashed over to the advocates of TJLC as the endgame of Sherlock was not the affirmation of Johnlock but the wrecking of their ship. The reactions to the fourth series hence testify a fannish outcry among all those Johnlock-Shippers who feel disappointed and betrayed by the co-writers’ alleged prolonging of a false promise. A promise that had been reinforced by the promotion of the last season, as the marketing from BBC’s iPlayer featured the question ‘Sherlock Holmes in love, but with who?’. Particularly the release of a second teaser video promised the revelation of Sherlock’s love interest. In that trailer, Sherlock’s enemy’s voice-over says, “What is the very worst thing you can do to your friends? Tell them your darkest secret.” To which Sherlock gives a surprising and untypical statement by looking at someone behind the camera: “I love you.” (Sherlock). While TJCL-advocates were clapping each other on the backs, other Sherlock fans were already expecting yet another season filled with homoerotic subtext that remained unfulfilled in the end. For example, @bookofmxrvel posted on Twitter, “okay look I love Sherlock as much as the next guy and the trailer has me shook but they really need to stop with the queerbaiting”. Other Johnlock-Shippers shared her sentiment [App. 19] of calling out Moffat and Gatiss for “adding even more to it” without any true “intention of ever following through with the hinted at near-relationship” (Gerdes).

Eventually, those fans ended up being right for even though Sherlock did end with the revelation of a big secret, it did not involve the detective and his sidekick declaring their love for each

49 other. While Gatiss and Moffat nonetheless included an emotional ending that showed Sherlock and John welcoming strange clients with even stranger cases in their shared apartment in Baker Street yet again – and even went as far as to showing the glimpse of a scene that suggests that both men are raising John’s daughter Rosie together – neither Sherlock’s homosexuality nor John’s bisexuality or any romantic feelings between the two were confirmed. On the contrary, the promising looking “I love you” that had Johnlock-Shippers hoping for the best, turned out to be a means to an end directed at Sherlock’s secret admirer Molly Hooper. The reactions on Twitter were immediate and mostly directed at Gatiss and Moffat themselves. Such as Kathryn Owen who wrote “Dear @Markgatiss @Moffatdoctorwho I hate you. I can’t cope right now. #Sherlock” (@WWEJLSter) and Gregory Breen who expressed, “Always lovely to start the year with a punch in the gut from @Markgatiss and @Moffatdoctorwho #Sherlock” (@gregorybreen).

A proper shit storm was kicked off by those who had shipped John and Sherlock from the beginning and who placed their trust in Gatiss and Moffat’s modern adaptation. #Bring221Back, who specifically set up a Twitter account to vent the fans’ spleen, posted, “#bring221back because #moftiss were high when they wrote s4 #sherlock” (@piavds). Others tried to point out why the Johnlock-Shippers had certain expectations by referring to Arthur Conan Doyle’s original, “Are the #Sherlock writers aware that the previous queer readings of the ACD canon could be the reason many fans expected romance? #NotAJoke” (@OpNorbury). Most fans, however, turned to the co-writers’ seeming indifference towards their responsibility as producers. Calling Gatiss and Moffat out for queerbaiting their non-heterosexual viewers, lilyalex explains, “it’s still queerbaiting when you are gay, it’s still queerbaiting when some queer villains are in it #sherlock #norbury #bbcqueerbait” (@xlxrxW). Referring to Mark Gatiss’s own homosexuality and the fact that the fourth season featured two gay characters, this fan does not allow any half-hearted representation or excuses. Playing on the title of the last episode, Homokaiser also accuses the co-writers of not caring enough for LGBT representation in Sherlock, “’The Final Problem’ aka ‘The Final Proof That We Don’t Give A Fuck About Queer Representation’ #Sherlock #Norbury” (@AndalinVidron). Relying on the series itself that provably went through with its gay subtext till the very end, others highlight the ambiguity of the co-writers’ intention and the text of Sherlock, “excuse me while I’m watching a show full of queer subtexts wrote [sic] by a gay man but it admitted [sic] it was NOT GAY AT ALL #bbcqueerbait #sherlock” (@softlysoftly_). Moreover, not only Gatiss and Moffat were under fire, since many fans lost their trust in the BBC, too, “I’ll never trust the bbc again when they

50 promise me queer representation after what they did with #sherlock #norbury” (@nougatpocket).

Using the fast diffusion of the internet, some frustrated fans went on to start a social media campaign on Thunderclap, a crowd-speaking platform that “allows a single message to be mass- shared, flash mob-style, so it rises above the noise of […] social networks” (“What is Thunderclap?”). The initiators appealed to the public to use the hashtag #Norbury to show Gatiss and Moffat their disappointment of The Final Problem.

Sherlock's The Final Problem was incredible disappointing for fans and casual viewers alike. We wanted a way to express our frustration and we thought that tweeting #Norbury - the code to let Sherlock know he'd got cocky or full of himself - felt appropriate. So, a week after the episode was filmed we are going to all tweet the hashtag Norbury. Please join in!

Figure 21 Alluding to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes and his story about the Munro house in Norbury in The Adventure of the Yellow Face (1893), as well as to Sherlock’s evil character Vivian Norbury, the campaign purposefully decided to use #Norbury as it can be understood as a code. While in the canon Holmes said to his friend, “Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you” (565), the Johnlock- Shippers’ reclamation of the key word intends to demonstrate how Gatiss and Moffat have taken their creative power too far and that queerbaiting accusations of their fans should not be taken lightly. The Thunderclap call ended on January 22nd 2017 and reached 58,063 people.

While the Thunderclap only ran for a month, former TJLC-advocates and Johnlock-Shippers quickly picked up #Norbury on Tumblr as well. After the series’ finale, someone even created a whole Tumblr-blog, called Operation Norbury, that aims at “denouncing the Sherlock writers’ use of queerbaiting and the BBC’s lofty response, which caused harm to their most loyal fans” (Operation Norbury). Furious Johnlock-Shippers use this blog to collect questions that can be submitted to a Sherlock fan convention panel, as well as to “call attention to the horrible queerbaiting (…) and make people understand why the LGBT community is still so very upset about this once wonderful show” (opnorbury). The extensive list of questions was compiled of Twitter and Tumblr posts and includes inquiries such as: o Why did Sherlock show an obvious disinterest in women during his first minute of screen time? o Why did Mrs Hudson assume that John was Sherlock’s new boyfriend?

o Why did John say that he was ‘moving on’ from Sherlock? o Why did John grope Sherlock’s knee and say, 'I don’t mind’? he fans were trying everything to receive an official statement. Therefore, one Johnlock-Shipper was collecting signatures for the petition Make Hartswood Films, BBC, Gatiss and Moffat Answer for the Queerbaiting of Sherlock. It states that “underneath all these things were numerous call-outs to queer literature and history, queer coding, and subtext that Sherlock and John would move beyond the lines of friendship” and that “thousands of LGTBQ people, including youth, were drawn to the series for the hope of representation and a happy ending” (Whimsical Ethnographies). The petition also refers to the co-writers’ repetitive mentioning that they are “updating the stories because no one else ‘got it right’” and request, “You brute, we want to know why you did this. And to you, I say, ‘Norbury’” (ibid.).

Many TJLC-believers blame their very own conspiracy for the disappointing ending of Sherlock. For example, patheticmortal-wtchemicaldefects posted on Tumblr, “LISTEN, WE WERE NOT WRONG (…) I DO NOT KNOW WHY THEY DECIDED NOT TO CONTINUE WHAT THEY WERE DOING? MAYBE BECAUSE TJLC DISCOVERED IT ALL, MAYBE BECAUSE WE KNEW ABOUT JOHNLOCK?” According to those fans, the co-writers were opting at an unpredictable ending and were forced to change the plot to something the fans had not already figured out (Hicks). Other TJLC-advocates begin to question their close reading of the series, pondering whether Gatiss and Moffat only included so many hints because the fans grew to like it too much. As one Johnlock-Shipper expresses on Twitter, “I blame #Moftiss for getting us addicted to hidden clues and witty deductions: now we see contents even where there isn’t any #Sherlock” (@ZabettaM). Because many former TJLC-believers question themselves, it is unsurprising that some of them have decided to leave the Sherlock fandom behind all together.

Tumblr-user sherlockshite, for instance, published an emotional farewell letter to her fellow fans, saying that “I’m sorry I had to leave you during this crisis” but that her “mental well- being” was in danger as she thinks she’s going crazy. She “can’t take it anymore” and suffers

I lost all my hope. All my hope for Martin’s [Freeman] statement “This is the gayest show”, Benedict’s [Cumberbatch] statement on “Love conquers all”, BBC Three’s tweet on “Sherlock back and he’s in love. But with who” (…) Moftiss’s statement on “This is the story we want to tell”. BBC’s statement on “Groundbreaking and making television history”. I’m all done with that. These were all lies. They feed on false hopes. Figure 22

52 from the endless dreams about the show and about how often she spent her waking hours dedicated to the fandom by reading fanfiction, drawing fan art, and re-watching episodes. Clearly including Sherlock’s extra-diegetic discourse in arguing for TJLC, sherlockshite simultaneously excludes all the co-writer statements that denied any gay intentions: “Yes, they told us all the fucking time. But still, the show speaks for itself. I don’t need anyone telling me that it’s not a love story when clearly, the show says it is!!!!!” Self-reflecting on her fannish behaviour of putting all her hope into TJLC, she still concludes that the co-writers were probably not lying as much as the fans assumed, saying, “I was JUST SO STUPID TO NOT HAVE LISTENED. TO NOT HAVE LISTENED TO THE WRITERS THEMSELVES. THEY ALREADY TOLD IT” (sherlockshite).

All the while, there were also some Johnlock-Shippers who were trying to keep TJLC alive by spreading news about a possible fourth episode of series four. This idea was born out of Sherlock’s statement in episode twelve where he talked about a fourth hidden recording device, saying ‘Must be something comforting about the number three. People always give up after three.’ (The Lying Detective). Many fans think this could be hinting at a secret, yet to be released, episode – the so-called “lost special”. When Steven Moffat was asked about the rumour at the BFI screening for The Final Problem he very clearly denied any further plans, however, the fans interpret it as a confirmation. Moffat said, “It doesn’t reflect the fact that there’s going to be a fourth episode – for heaven’s sake, what kind of secrets do you think we’re keeping? ‘Let’s go home and check. Oh, look! Episode four, the lost special…’” (Bone). The Lost Special (1898) was also the name of a short story published as part of the Round the Fire series by Arthur Conan Doyle that did not use Sherlock Holmes’s name but still implied to be a story featuring the detective. Hence, the fans conclude:

Hang on a minute. Did Moffat intentionally reference a Conan Doyle detective story called ‘The Lost Special’ when he said that? Wouldn’t it be a very Mofftiss thing to do to reinterpret a piece of the Sherlock Holmes creator’s work in an unexpected way? As every Sherlock fan knows, Steven Moffat is not averse to lying to keep Sherlock’s secrets hidden.

Figure 23

However, the last best hope was officially dashed by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s appearance at the Cambridge Union on the 20th of January, just days after The Final Problem was aired. There, fans outright ask them how they are drawing the line between tokenism and representation, whereupon Gatiss answered, “I don’t see why a programme has to become the

53 kind of grail for anyone’s expectations. I just don’t think that’s fair. The show is extremely popular, and we do our best in every way we possibly can.” Clearly being affronted by the fans’ queerbaiting accusations, Gatiss stresses the impossibility to please everybody. His co-writer Moffat added, “Sherlock’s quite a small world, actually, so we can’t do everything in that.” He further explains that a show like Doctor Who allows for more latitude and that he and his team are “working harder every year to try get that better.” Nonetheless, he stands with Gatiss in stating that it is not about “satisfying the activists or satisfying the pressure groups”, because he believes it more important to remind all children that they are right and welcome. Quickly adding that he supports the existence of pressure groups, since “those are pressure groups in a good cause”, Moffat concludes with a conciliatory tone, “just because not everything the pressure group wants happens, doesn’t mean the people to whom the pressure is applied don’t agree with them. It’s just that not everything is possible all the time. (…) It’s not as easy as everyone assumes it is” (Dickinson).

2.3.2 The Failure of the Authors?

On the face of it, Gatiss and Moffat can only be presumed innocent since they expressed their intentions right from the start and denied any rumours of a big romantic ending for Sherlock and John ever since the fans started to build TJCL. However, after a quick glance at the Sherlock fandom online, it becomes obvious that the co-writers are the ones in the line of fire because the Johnlock-Shippers deem their disappointment in the series finale to be due to the failure of the authors. Turning to Rebecca Williams’s account of post-object fandom, one can begin to comprehend where the fans’ anger is coming from and why it is concentrated on Gatiss and Moffat’s perceived miscue.

In the mediated world of today, fandom has become an integral part of everyday life to many people and thus influences “how we form emotional bonds with ourselves and others” (Gray, Sandvoss, Harrington 10). For fans, beloved texts hence serve as a “blanket” that sometimes substitutes for motherly feelings of warmth and security (Busse and Gray 429). The shattering of TJLC pulled away that blanket and destroyed the safe haven for many, for instance for Hanna who writes, “I miss the days when I’d spend hours and hours on this website doing nothing but scrolling, but now I can’t do it anymore because it just reminds me of what there used to be; hope, love" (tjohnlock). Moreover, as studies (Crawford 2003/4; Kuhn 2002; Stevenson 2009) suggest, fandom should be considered as a “continuing part of an individual’s life” and “one that can have a profound impact on their sense of identity and self-narrative” (Williams 2).

TJLC-believer Kate, for instance, explains, “I think that when you have a group of people that genuinely care about each other, genuinely care about you, and genuinely want you to succeed, that is so so powerful” (“Why TJLC Matters”). Additionally, most Johnlock-Shippers share how TJLC has influenced their self-discovery. avocadonaomi for example states how the TJLC- community has helped her to “come out as a young gay woman” (ibid.), while Kayleigh goes as far saying that she would not come to realise what she would have turned out like if “Johnlock had not been such a presence in [her] life for so long during [her] developmental years” (ibid.). Rei adds, “It’s through TJLC that I learned that, yes, you can love girls and, yes, you can be a boy even though you’re born a girl” (ibid.).

Drawing on Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, Williams explains that because individuals engage in such self-reflexivity that allows for the evolution of a self-narrative by “continually integrat[ing] events which occur in the external world, and sort[ing] them into the ongoing “story” about the self” (Giddens 54), they gain “a sense of ontological security or trust in the surrounding world” (21). TJLC-advocates put all their trust into Gatiss and Moffat’s modern adaptation that seemingly unfolded the story of how John and Sherlock come to terms with their respective bi- and homosexuality. Elly reflects on Sherlock’s slow enfolding love story considering her own realisation that “homosexuality is not just something to be tolerated”. Because Sherlock had provided her with the necessary ontological security by portraying sexuality as “incidental” and focussing on “the love story”, Elly abandoned her “Christian mind-set of the ‘heterosexual lifestyle’” and came out as gay” (“Why TJLC Matters”). Therefore, Williams’s conceptualisation can help to describe the Johnlock-Shippers involvement with Sherlock as a “pure relationship” because it provided them with “two necessary rewards: the reflection of a desirable self-narrative and ontological security” (23). Simply because young adults often lack the confidence to come out of the closet in a society that still holds heteronormative sentiments, ontological security can offer an “emotional inoculation” against potential threats that would prevent the individual from “sustain[ing] hope and courage in the face of whatever debilitating circumstances she or he might later confront” (Giddens 40). Therefore, Hana of the TJLC-community declares, “TJLC has helped me come to terms with and be proud of my sexuality. (…) It has taught me to be aggressively gay in a way that I would not have come across until much later in my life” (“Why TJCL Matters”).

As William points out, “Threats to self-identity and ontological security are often deeply felt” since a “community’s sudden inability to provide ontological security impacts upon fans’ established self-identities” (26). Because Sherlock is the product of Gatiss and Moffat,

55 unsurprisingly, fans turned to the source of their community’s security as soon as it failed to sustain their safety net. Nonetheless, can the co-writers be blamed for not ending the show with showing John and Sherlock as a gay couple? Given that they did not explicitly unrolled any queer intentions but, on the contrary, repeatedly denied any such rumours? According to Williams, the Johnlock-Shippers from the LGBT community were particularly receptive to TJLC since “fans may actively seek out the most appropriate objects to enable them to construct their identities” (26). Thompson further stresses that people “increasingly draw on mediated experiences to inform and refashion the project of the self” (233). Were the TJLC and the recent queerbaiting-accusations thus the result of desperate queer teens who mutually encouraged each other’s absurd readings to come to terms with their own sexualities? Something that could have happened in any other show’s fandom which stars two leading characters of the same sex? Looking deeper into the creator-text-fan triangle and Gatiss and Moffat’s fannish adaptation approach, will reveal how the Johnlock-Shippers’ queerbaiting shit storm can be seen as the result of the co-writers’ peculiar role in the Sherlock fandom that called for an unusual approach to the usual discursive struggles that occur between any TV-production and its fans.

2.3.3 The Creator-Text-Fan Triangle

Discovering that, after the finale, a queer Johnlock-Shipper had to turn to an online platform asking, “At what point does friendship become ‘queerbait’?”, implies that some fans are wary about blaming Gatiss and Moffat for a disappointing ending of Sherlock. Confirming the notion that audiences do not simply respond but rather interact with media messages in a variety of ways (Abercrombie and Longhurst 3), this uncertain fan comments that “most of the ‘proof’ that John and Sherlock are interested in each other is sourced from fan theories, dubious interpretations of interactions (…), fandom projecting what they want to see onto the characters” (Newt). While Newt “100% agree[s] that it would be awesome to see Johnlock”, he also professes that he did not expect that the show’s homoerotic subtext “would be followed through with”, meaning that he does not perceive the series itself to be queerbaiting. However, knowing that Gatiss and Moffat “are very much aware that there is a queer interpretation of the material”, Newt is looking for a rejoinder to his question whether “the treatment of the show by the writers creates queerbait if the show itself does not”. Reflecting that the co-writers’ constant encouragement “to not overlook any detail” and to “make own conclusions” baited fans with a “false hope that Johnlock might happen”, Newt’s analysis is dead on target. It is precisely because of Gatiss and Moffat’s own handling of the source text and the way they

56 promoted Sherlock as a series for fans by fans, which prompted fans to expect to see “TV history” being made (Willia).

Hills’s explains that the co-writers engage in something he terms “heretical fidelity” in their adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. In updating the original, Gatiss and Moffat are keen to express that decisions of their creative process may be “heresy” but at the same time they condone those decisions by saying that they are nonetheless done in fidelity to Conan Doyle since they are pointing out textual non-authenticities of previous adaptations (“Sherlock’s Epistemological” 36). Moffat explains that their version is most loyal, stressing that “it is being motored by a couple of geeks” [App. 20]. Hills therefore argues that “the show’s parameters are, to an extent, suggested by Moffat and Gatiss’s own status as ‘Sherlock Holmes fanboys’”, something that is repeatedly addressed in publicly accessible extra-diegetic producer discourse (ibid. 34). Hence, fans are aware that the co-writers - every bit as any Sherlock fan – “draw[…] in the margins and read[…] between spoken and unspoken lines” in their everlasting desire to discover more narrative (Faye 6). Even though a modernisation requires heretical deviations from the Victorian version, fans believed that the co-writers’ intention to “outgeek” any previous adaptation would ultimately condense in something that no other adapter has ever addressed before: the hidden romance between Holmes and Watson.

Because Gatiss and Moffat are eagerly expressing that they are fans who want to secure the fictional universe of Conan Doyle, it is rather difficult to explain their textual variations and subjective choices are solely being due to profit-oriented television production and personal preferences, without losing interest of devoted Sherlockians. Therefore, Hills cautions to not simply accept the co-writers’ extra-diegetic discourse of heretical fidelity that illuminates Sherlock as “non-period pastiche [that] supposedly remains true to the spirit of Conan Doyle’s work at the same time” (“Sherlock’s Epistemological” 28). However, the Johnlock-Shippers do welcome the possibility presented by Gatiss and Moffat, that a modern retake could be a loyal interpretation, misreading the extra-diegetic discourse’s heretical fidelity as an indication of the co-writers’ fannish fantasy to slowly unfold the hidden queer core of the detective stories. Even though Gatiss and Moffat are forced to “discursively secure their status as professional, autonomous creatives” by re-segregated their production from “the fandom” (ibid. 37), the Johnlock-Shippers evaluate producer statements that dismiss deviating queer fan readings [App. 21] as the co-writers’ way of concealing their plans to maintain the suspense of “the great game of fandom”.

In fact, through their self-identification as “fanboys” who know how exciting storytelling works, and their notorious indulgence in pretending to know how to tease their fans just right, Gatiss and Moffat have established that they hold the reins in the creator-text-fan triangle. Sherlock fans seem to equally love and hate this imbalance of power. One fan sumps up the relation with a made-up dialogue between the co-writers and their subdued followers.

Figure 24 johnlockshipper221b, on the other hand, tweeted, “When you want to thank moftiss for creating BBC Sherlock but also shoot them in the head for creating BBC Sherlock", expressing how the co-writers’ unpredictability may stir fannish excitement, but also causes emotional insurgency. callofthewilde further points out how the co-writers’ exaggerated effort to provide “gut punch moments” often overshoots the fans’ expectations of the series.

Figure 25

Even though Gatiss and Moffat use “fanboyness” to justify their own adaptation, and despite of the obvious fan-invested production approach that seemingly tries everything to deliver a pleasurable fan-experience for their devoted viewers, the co-writers’ extra-diegetic discourse

58 still testifies the ongoing competitive struggles between the fans and the fan-producers. Johnson terms this conflict “fan-tagonism” and stresses that each party “codif[ies] the fan-text-producer relationship according to their respective interests” (287). Even though “struggles over interpretation and overall discursive dominance” are common for any fandom (Johnson 286), Gatiss and Moffat’s bivalence as fans and producers blurs any lines between the creators and their fans, rendering “implications of the creators’ participation in fan behaviour” as “ambiguous” (Smit 38). Even though Sherlock encourages fans to dig deeper into the narrative and to make connections between clues and hints to the Holmes universe, the co-writers’ fan behaviour of interpreting and envisioning the source text is clearly set apart from fan tendencies to construe what Sherlock provides them with. Larsen explains that it is perceivable in a fan- producer relationship if a show truly acknowledges fandom, for example by making fundamental changes because of it. Referring to Gatiss and Moffat’s nod to the many fan theories in The Empty Hearse, he says that the co-writers expressed their superiority in the relationship as the example shows how they thought, “Oh, yeah, we know that you’re talking about this online, so here, we’ll dangle this carrot in front of you” (Maloney). Johnson argues that fan-tagonism usually provokes that “fans construct competing ‘truths’ about the series, its producers, and its relationship to fandom” (286-7).

As Busse and Gray mention, such “truths” often stem from “unconventional relationshippers” (436). This is because fannish disagreements about a text – such as those between Gatiss and Moffat’s “platonic Johnlock” and the queer fans’ “romantic Johnlock” – are “played out in terms of having access to the ‘true’ reading rather than as competing interpretations” (ibid.). Whilst TJLC- advocates firmly believed in Gatiss and Moffat’s “true” reading of the original as queer romance before the finale, they now tease the co-writers for overlooking Conan Doyle’s seemingly obvious Figure 26 message.

However, the co-writers are eager to enunciate that other fans tend to “extrapolate[…] all kinds of love affairs” from the source while it is only they themselves who understand Conan Doyle’s true intentions [App. 22]. In fact, Johnson explicates that fannish debates usually evolve around the dispute to which extent the source text determines the fictional universe (286). For example, @lovingherwasgay states, “moftiss implying that if we believe in TJLC then we never read the

59 books ???? the fuck ???? yes we did and it literally only feeds it ??????”. Groups within a fandom hence “agree on central interpretive choices and values” and on “particular events, characteristics, and interpretations of the actual text” (Busse and Gray 436). As already illustrated before, a community like the queer TJLC-advocates “will read certain canonical events with a particular lens towards supporting [their] pairing choice” as their interpretation is “inflected by shared presupposition” (ibid.).

The season finale reactions show that – even though Gatiss and Moffat do not share the same reading – “fans become indignant” when the series or creators “seem to contradict or betray the canonical fictional universe” (Goodman 668). Even though such a “canonical fictional universe” is the result of subjective interpretation, each interpretive community assumes their reading to be accurate: “Johnlock was, is, and always will be canon. Amen” (waiting-for-sherlock) vs. “They’re just friends. You can’t really quantify it” (Wilson). As mentioned before, a consistent continuity of a narrative world provides an ontologically secure Figure 27 world to fans who live out their devotion in a supportive and trustworthy environment, something Hills terms “hyperdiegesis” (“Fan Cultures” 138). However, the shared hyperdiegesis of the Sherlock Holmes fandom “can lead to varying meta-texts because of different fan desires and interests” (Johnson 286). Yet, divergent meta-texts – as the fannish projection of a text’s potential future – “cannot be met by any singular, canonical iteration” (ibid.). Moreover, according to Ryan, “the text and the fictional universe are both created by the author and therefore both authoritative”, which is why Goodman concludes that the fictional universe remains “a site of contestation due to the unreliability and vulnerability of individual texts and the fallibility of authors and producers” (666). Because Conan Doyle holds the authority over the meta fictional universe of Holmes and Watson, fans become furious at Gatiss and Moffat’s attempt to claim authority over plot and character development in Sherlock:

The reactions to Sherlock’s series finale reflect what fan studies describe as “fanon discontinuity”. Comparing Sherlock’s forth season to the recently publish Harry Potter

60 extension Harry Potter And The Cursed Child (2016), umrart writes, “SERIES 4 IS TO BBC SHERLOCK WHAT THE CURSED CHILD8 IS TO HARRY POTTER. Poorly written fanfiction”. Not being satisfied with “certain events in a show’s continuity”, fans decide to “mentally writ[e] out” a “plot or ending [that] rubs on the wrong way severely enough” (“Fanon Discontinuity”). Therefore, many Johnlock-Shippers choose to ignore the official ending altogether and explain their decision by explaining that Gatiss and Moffat did not put enough effort into the last season, “‘People always give up after three’ / Guys… I’ve finally understood / Why series 4… is bullshit and full of… plot holes / Mark and Steven already …give [sic] up … after … series 3” (wildholmes). Goodman calls this the “hack” judgement by saying that fans often attribute “disappointments to the failure of the creator, rather than accepting an incoherent or unsatisfying fictional universe” (671). Following Harris and Alexander’s notion that fan practices must be seen as “intensified, more visible instances of everyone’s everyday struggle over cultural meanings and cultural space in a battleground of commodified culture” (45), the queerbaiting controversy presents itself as an example of how such struggles affect the complex creator-text-fan relationship. Because of Gatiss and Moffat’s heretical fidelity discourse and the co-writers’ decision to set the series in the present, Poor argues that “Gatiss and Moffat are in the driving seat, deciding to update a watch to a mobile phone, an opera singer to a dominatrix. Hints and clues relating to the canon allow fans of Sherlock to play along at home, to guess likely denouements and series finales, but only Gatiss and Moffat have the correct answers” (164).

8 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: a two-part West End stage play written by Jack Thorne based on an original new story by Thorne, J. K. Rowling and John Tiffany that premiered on 30th of July 2016.

3. Discussion

Because Sherlock’s epistemological economy calls for the expansion and policy of fan intelligence, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat can preserve their appreciation of the canon and to expand Conan Doyle’s fictional universe to their liking at one go, hence “reasserting their own authorial power and separating them more clearly from (other) Conan Doyle fans” (Stein and Busse 18). Like Hills, Basu recognises that Sherlock is “torn between respecting and updating Conan Doyle’s canon in a way that prevents it from fully interrogating itself and its underlying ideology” (ibid. 23). Therefore, the series “remains on the side of author(ity) rather than the postmodern free play of multiple authorships” despite Gatiss and Moffat’s pretence to “embrace authorial multiplicity” (ibid.). Hills explains that television authorship is often “produced as a matter of creative autonomy” (“Sherlock’s Epistemological” 36). Just as the co- writers’ extra-diegetic producer discourse displays, “fan expectations are disregarded, as are previous versions of Holmes, but fidelity to ‘the famous stories’ is preserved” (ibid.). Basu thus concludes that Sherlock ultimately fails to “fully understand” or even “acknowledge” the fan (Stein and Busse 23). Gatiss and Moffat’s implicitly devalue fan activity, such as derivative fan art of Johnlock-Shippers, in favour of their own alleged “heresy”. Accordingly, Hills finds “a tacit hierarchy of (un)acceptable fan practices threaded through the textual and discursive moves of Sherlock” (“Sherlock’s Epistemological” 36). @johnlockreminds’s tweet contests this unequal distribution of power and complains about the co-writers’ production that is disguised as an act of fannish devotion, “Remember Moftiss are just fanboys with money. No better than any other fan artist. Just more privileged”.

Surprisingly, the fans’ realisation only comes with the wisdom of hindsight. This could be due to the technological advances and rise of social media of the last decades that proved to be “empowering and disempowering, blurring the lines between producers and consumers, creating symbiotic relationships between powerful corporations and individual fans, and giving rise to new forms of cultural production” (Pearson 84). Especially in fandom, the internet has impacted on and shaped four interconnected areas, namely, communication, creativity, knowledge and organisational and civic power (Bennett 7). Because of the fans’ increased opportunity to intercommunicate with fellow fans and to exchange knowledge and products of their creative work faster and more easily, it is no wonder that also showrunners and networks tend to roam social media platforms since “awareness of a dedicated fandom builds dedicated viewership and long-term success” (Maloney). However, Zubernis explains that the relationship between fans and producers is “an artefact of the way social media, especially

Twitter, makes fans feel” and hence “seems a lot more reciprocal and closer than it is”. He argues that social media makes fans believe to be heard, something that he deems “wishful thinking” because it remains a “constructed intimacy that’s not really intimate at all” (Maloney).

Gatiss and Moffat were very keen on “rewarding” their fans with an occasional retweet or with an answer to the many questions they received by Twitter. For example, when @GeorgieAnais asked about the deal with Mycroft’s umbrella Gatiss replied, “It’s used to stop one from getting rained on. You should try it.” Remarkably, the co-writers’ tweets often teem with sarcasm and with arrogant confidence about their superiority in the great game of fandom. After series two, for example, Gatiss replied to @ohcararara’s statement that she could not come to terms with the imminent three-year hiatus, “Three years in the canon @ohcararara, then years in real life…”. However, the fans did not seem to mind the unfriendliness but, on the contrary, interpreted it “as sassy, which is a running joke within the fandom” (Smit 29). Smit argues that even though “the creators do not respond to every tweet addressed to them, their reactions are numerous enough to make the fans feel heard” (34). This is a smart move, as Maloney illustrates that producers make a “massive, incredibly lucrative business” in pretending to have a feigned- relationship of equal power by “giv[ing] fans what they think they want”. Though Zubernis says, “That kind of affectionate, ‘nod-nod, wink-wink’ fan service that shows started to do a while ago has been done for so long that it causes a rift sometimes between fans and producers”. Nowadays, fans are more likely to complain, ‘If you’re gonna tease us, where’s the follow- through? Why wouldn’t you follow through?’ because people start questioning TV-producers’ pretence a little more (Maloney). Moreover, since “complaints of fans are constantly gaining influence in arts and entertainment”, the Sherlock fans are “aware of their own economic power as consumers” and – as the queerbaiting shit storm exemplifies – “willing to exert it” more openly nowadays (Goodman 673).

Undoubtedly, the Johnlock-Shippers’ insurgency reveals that fandom assigns certain responsibilities to the author, especially regarding sensitive topics such as queer representation in the media. Following fans’ own habit of distinguishing between Fandom-Is-a-Way-of-Life (FIAWOL) and Fandom-Is-Just-a-Goddamned-Hobby (FIJAGH), it becomes obvious that being a fan can be a central facet of one’s identity that influences all aspects of live, or merely one of many hobbies that may only be temporary (Busse and Gray 431). The Johnlock-Shippers are not willing to let Gatiss and Moffat’s FIJAGH-approach go unchallenged, particularly because of the co-writers’ awareness of the queer fans’ FIAWOL-engagement with the series. As members of the LGBT-community, the queer Johnlock-Shippers desire mainstream

63 networks to “present gays and lesbians in the context of their own identity, desire, community, culture, history or concerns” and not only as a subsidiary narrative thread in “the dominant heterosexual metanarrative” (Fejes and Petrich 402). Even though “homosexuals (…) develop complex interpretive strategies” that help them “cope with the overwhelming heterosexist and homophobic bias of media content” (ibid. 410), Gatiss and Moffat provided their fans with enough textual evidence to assume that the co-writers were highly aware of the issues of non- heterosexuals that are “minimized or totally obscured” (ibid. 398) in mainstream media. Not at least because of their extra-diegetic discourse, former TJLC-believers are upset that the co- writers would suddenly shirk responsibility, “Moffat and Gatiss have actually talked about that. Like they have actually said in public panels that it is their role as TV show writers to put this representation in media – none of it makes sense!” (Willia).

Confirming Larsen’s notion that “If anyone is going to get hurt in the fan-producer relationship, it’s going to be the fan” (Maloney), Gatiss and Moffat did not ethically consider their naive decision to include the occasional gay joke in Sherlock while at the same time coming out in favour of more authentic gay representation. While it should not be forgotten that the co-writers repeatedly denied any homoerotic notions between Sherlock and John in interviews, they still failed to recognise the implications of their fragmentary text and habit to obscure their intentions with lies. If they did not want to be “blame[d] for things that aren’t there” (Parker), they could have ceased the homoerotic subtext as soon as they realised that some fans were getting their “false” hopes up. Even though Gatiss’s statement that Sherlock does not “have the shoulders to bear every single issue and every single campaign point” (ibid.) is justified, it was the co-writers who initiated the speculations about a possible romance in the first place. While they indulge in the “fun part” of being successful and adored producers who can regulate their game of fandom, they do not seem to realise the utter devastation they have caused. Mentioning suicide hotline workers who had to support some fans during the aftermath of the series finale, Willia also utters how the queerbaiting case left her emotionally drained, “I don’t know if I can start trust anyone. And I know I’m strong and can walk away from that and be strong, but some people can’t”.

Nowadays, when every statement is not only quickly distributed but also irrevocably stored and easily detected at all times, the co-writers should not be surprised that fans resort to extra- diegetic discourse in their reading of Sherlock. Nonetheless, many things are taken out of context which is why Moffat complains, “people were just nicking quotes from old things I said in other situations to pretend I said something new” (Parker). This is particularly dangerous for

TV-series with a large fanbase since no other viewer is more inclined, let alone committed, to search the internet for more insight into the narrative than the fan. Being fans themselves, Gatiss and Moffat surely know about the desire to absorb every possible information about one’s object of devotion. Interestingly enough, the co-writers even share their fans’ keenness to scrutinise the motives of their favourite authors, for Moffat replied to the question what he would ask Arthur Conan Doyle if he had the chance, “I would ask if he’d be honest with me and tell me [if] he was definitely through with Sherlock Holmes. And I want the truth. I don’t believe him” (DeVere “Sherlockology Q&A”). Even though Gatiss firmly believes that in order to make a successful, suspense-packed show, they had to become “congenital liars” (DeVere “The Game is On”), both co-writers are aware that lying can cut both ways. Gatiss says that even when they are telling the truth for once, no one believes them, which can be “a rather brilliant thing” when trying to keep a secret. However, Moffat adds that their gained reputation of how much they enjoy doing it, “is not really true” because all they want to provide their fans with is an unspoiled and surprising experience – which is why they “make everybody distrust everything” (DeVere “All the Other”).

While this sentiment of playing the great game of fandom in favour of their fans led Gatiss and Moffat to become critically acclaimed writers of one of the most popular series in British television, it eventually turned the scales against them.

4. Conclusion

Even though 124 years have passed since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle provoked one of the first public fan uprisings with the publication of The Final Problem (1893), the thesis at hand revealed that the fandom surrounding the famous detective and his sidekick still does not shy away from taking the person in charge to task. Despite fan studies’ efforts to abolish the public’s negative preconception about obsessed fan behaviour in the last couple of decades, the recent queerbaiting controversy surrounding Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Sherlock, demonstrates that fans still go to all lengths in defending their position. For the non-participating observer, the online shit storm against the co-writers might evoke notions of incomprehensible fanaticism; similar to when the rationalists of the late 19th century had to face the extreme forms of cultural consumption and activism of those who had found a way to exercise their ironic imagination through fandom. However, since research proved the profound impact of fandom on identity formation and individual fulfilment, fan reactions can offer serious insight into reception processes that go beyond simple fanatic response. Back in 1893, as well as today, the conflict between the most devoted part of the audience and the creator of its admiration, can help to conceptualise important facets of the correlation between popular culture, identity and the modern self.

Most importantly, the thesis outlined the ever so significant role of the author for fan reception. Gatiss and Moffat’s self-declaration as fanboys and their fan-driven approach to adapt Conan Doyle’s stories, play into their fans’ evaluation of the series which dictates assumptions about what the co-creators should be aiming for in Sherlock. Hence, this thesis investigated how Gatiss and Moffat wield their creative power and how and why the fans contest their ways of doing it. In relation to the queerbaiting controversy that was kicked off in January 2017, the following was discovered:

The co-creators may exercise a modern adaptation process by intertextually referencing previous adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but their creative approach forces them to do two things. First, to guarantee loyalty to the Conan Doyle legacy and to gain support and trust from the Sherlockians, Gatiss and Moffat need to stress that Sherlock will stay true to the original; something they achieve in repeatedly expressing their fanboyness and admiration of the source. While a series that manages to not only pay homage to Conan Doyle, but also to his many adapters is intended to be the ultimate love letter to the Holmes universe, it still demands to be set of against the multitude of fan interpretation that accumulated over the last hundred

66 years. Secondly, therefore, Gatiss and Moffat must regain their authority and present the series as an autonomous work. Hence, they are keen to outline instances where previous adaptations misunderstood the true message of the original and justify changes in their version to be due to the goal of “getting it right”.

Even though Hills therefore condemns the co-writers’ extra-diegetic discourse as one of heretical fidelity, the fans did not mind Gatiss and Moffat’s approach of reinventing an updated version that seemingly manages to stay true to its Victorian predecessor because they did an excellent job in creating a critically acclaimed TV-series. This can certainly be ascribed to their yearlong experience as scriptwriters as well as to their own fanboyness which taught them to write in a manner of suspense and surprise. Their knowledge of storytelling prevents them from giving away too much and presents Sherlock as a somewhat fragmentary text that needs to be deciphered. Fans are not only willing to participate in this great game of fandom that proposes the occasional riddle but seem to love the endless teasing. To ensure a long-lasting fan interest, Gatiss and Moffat tossed in yet another rule of the game that was meant to cause confusion. Taking away the assurance that everything they say is true, the co-writers adopted a habit of pointing out that they might be lying and that nothing they say in extra-diegetic discourse is a guarantee of what they are going to do in the show. This way, Gatiss and Moffat simultaneously kept themselves out of harm’s way and reinforced the notion that Sherlock is supposed to be fan-created show that understands the desires of fellow fans.

The reactions to the series finale revealed that a portion of the Sherlock fandom does contest the ways in which Gatiss and Moffat have taken the great game too far. Sherlock Holmes unexplained sexuality is not a new matter of dispute. In fact, the co-writers’ updated take on perceptions of (non)heterosexuality in Sherlock suggest that Gatiss and Moffat are aware of the mystery surrounding the detective presumable disinterest in women. Their decision to allude to those who read a romance between Holmes and Watson as a running joke throughout the four seasons, does not sit well with queer viewers of the show. In their heretical fidelity discourse, the co-writers gave the impression to seek after an adaptation that contrasts with preceding ones because others failed to understand the dynamics of the protagonist’s relationship. Since Gatiss and Moffat’s adaptation approach encouraged fans to dig deeper and read between the lines, Johnlock-Shippers evolved The Johnlock Conspiracy to denote to the co-writers’ secretiveness and ambiguity about John and Sherlock’s sexuality. The reactions to the last episode, however, revealed that TJLC-advocates did not contest Gatiss and Moffat’s platonic understanding of

Conan Doyle’s Watson and Holmes, but more so the seeming casualness with which the co- writers went ahead with homoerotic subtext that was not meant to lead anywhere.

Because the many textual gaps concerning John and Sherlock’s sexualities were filled with queer content by queer viewers, the disappointed TJLC-advocates are disputing Gatiss and Moffat’s indifference to a warrantable reading of their series. Moreover, the Johnlock-Shippers’ protest under the hashtag Norbury exposes the fans’ unwillingness to longer accept the co- writers’ monopolised power of getting to decide what reading would be most loyal to Conan Doyle. Why would it be true to the original to omit Sherlock Holmes’s drug addiction, but far- fetched to take homoerotic notions further and display two men in an open relationship? While the Johnlock-Shippers know that, being the writers of the series, Gatiss and Moffat get to decide, they nonetheless contest their continuous innuendo at possible romantic feelings. While the gay jokes surely provided the audience with additional comic-relief, the writers managed to entertain viewers with witty dialogue anyway. Given that they were aware of the fandom’s preoccupation with TJLC, Gatiss and Moffat could have averted the queerbaiting shit storm in time. That they failed to do so suggests that – despite its comprehensive fan invested approach – Sherlock fails to understand and to acknowledge the fan but remains an impressive fan- disguised creation of intelligent TV-producers.

A driving force that blurred the lines between the fans and the creators of Sherlock is undoubtedly the internet’s offer of new media. Whereas fans of the original Sherlock Holmes fandom had to resort to more elaborate measures, such as to declare their discontent through mourning crepe bands or to assail the author with abusive letters, disappointed Johnlock- Shippers nowadays benefit from the internet’s accessibility and rapidity. While Holmes fans had to wait years to get Conan Doyle to respond to their requests, social media has made it easier to unleash a flood of tweets, videos, articles and blog posts that are re-tweeted, linked and shared under unifying hashtags. However, the internet also brought disadvantages, especially for Gatiss and Moffat. They not only realised the impossibility of hiding from such a flood but also had to experience first-hand how their statements are divorced from their contexts. Because knowledge is retrievable through one click, Sherlock fans do no longer ponder about the author’s intentions and personal opinions, but go on to roam the online world for more information into the show’s narrative world. However, while Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could discretely sink into obscurity by simply not responding to his fans’ letters, the age of the internet, and the co-writers’ previous engagement with it, do not allow Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat to simply abdicate their responsibility.

4.1 Recommendation for Further Research

As the time and scope of this thesis did not allow a more elaborate investigation, it would be interesting for further research to conduct interviews with some of the Sherlock fans. Doing so, it would not only be insightful to get a personal response from the disappointed Johnlock- Shippers, but also from those fans who condemn a queer reading of the series. Following the show’s finale, some fans came out in favour of Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, arguing that The Johnlock-Conspiracy is far-fetched and that the co-writers’ doing did not supply any indication of a possible romance between John and Sherlock. To get a better understanding of diverging readings of the series, it would be worthwhile to perform a focus group with both parts of the fandom to receive more data on how and why some fans interpret homoerotic intentions. It would further be revealing to investigate if there are also heterosexual fans who advocated TJLC and how the series finale affected their emotional well-being. In fact, more psychological studies could provide knowledge about ramifications and influences of active fan participation and the consequences of post-fandom disappointment. Moreover, analysing the original fandom’s engagement with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in more detail could additionally contribute to understanding how the internet influenced the relationship between authors and their fans. As it might be of interest for students of media studies, further research could enquire the BBC’s position towards the queerbaiting accusations and maybe go as far as to figure out how far the co-writers might have been constricted in their writing.

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"What is Thunderclap?" Thunderclap. Thunderclap, Inc, n.d. Web. 26 May 2017. Whimsical Ethnographies. "Make Hartswood Films, BBC, Gatiss and Moffat Answer for the Queerbaiting of Sherlock." Change.org. Change.org, Inc, n.d. Web. 26 May 2017.# wildholmes. “People always give up…” A Very Camp Gay and A Grumpy Bisexual, 7 May 2017, wildholmes.tumblr.com/post/160412334684/people-always-give-up-after-three. wildholmes. "Sir ACD: "Someday the true..." A Very Camp Gay and A Grumpy Bisexual, 27 April 2017, wildholmes.tumblr.com/post/160053109154/sir-acd-someday-the-true-story- may-be. Willia. “What the heck – About queerbaiting in The Final Problem (Sherlock 4x03).” YouTube, 16 Jan 2017, youtu.be/KEAsk3Il3jk. Williams, Rebecca. Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-narrative. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Print.

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@bookofmxrvel. “Okay look I love Sherlock as much as the next guy and the trailer has me shook but they really need to stop with the queerbaiting.” Twitter, 11 Dec 2016, 1:17 AM, twitter.com/bookofmxrvel/status/807741031999565824.

@GeorgieAnais. “@Markgatiss whats the deal with Mycrofts umbrella? Me and @Gen_Louisa wanna know.” Twitter, 21 Apr. 2013, 9:01 AM, twitter.com/GeorgieAnais/status/326002737525452800.

@gregorybreen. “Always lovely to start the year with a punch in the gut from @Markgatiss and @Moffatdoctorwho #Sherlock.” Twitter, 01 Jan 2017, 2:14 PM, twitter.com/gregorybreen/status/815681956956569600.

@johnlockreminds. ""Remember Moftiss are just fanboys with money. No better than any other fan artist. Just more privileged." Twitter, 28 Jan 2017, twitter.com/johnlockreminds/status/825492003408445441. @lovingherwasgay. "moftiss implying that if we believe in TJLC then we never read the books ???? the fuck ???? yes we did and it literally only feeds it ??????." Twitter, 26 Jan 2017, twitter.com/lovingherwasgay/status/824723875330195456. @Markgatiss. “Three years in the canon @ohcararara, ten years in real life...” Twitter, 12 Jan. 2012, twitter.com/Markgatiss/status/157513853922590720. @nougatpocket. “i'll never trust the bbc again when they promise me queer representation after what they did with #sherlock #norbury.” Twitter, 26 Feb 2017, 11:25 AM, twitter.com/nougatpocket/status/835933763154624516. @OpNorbury. “Are the #Sherlock writers aware that the previous queer readings of the ACD canon could be the reason many fans expected romance? #NotAJoke.” Twitter, 20 May 2017, 15:00 PM, twitter.com/OpNorbury/status/866050913429069824. @piavds. “#bring221back because #moftiss were high when they wrote s4 #sherlock”. Twitter, 2 April 2017, 12:58 PM, twitter.com/piavds/status/848625737980665856. @softysoftly_. “excuse me while im watching a show full of queer subtexts wrote by a gay man but it admitted it was NOT GAY AT ALL #bbcqueerbait #sherlock.” Twitter, 11 Feb 2017, 02:37 AM, twitter.com/softlysoftly_/status/830365201471987712.

@WWEJLSter. “Dear @Markgatiss @Moffatdoctorwho I hate you. I can’t cope right now. #Sherlock.” Twitter, 01 Jan 2017, 2:00 PM, twitter.com/WWEJLSter/status/815679208345182208.

@xlxrxW. “it's stillqueerbaiting when you are gay, it's still queerbaiting when some queer villains are in it #sherlock #norbury #bbcqueerbait.” Twitter, 28 March 2017, 05:41AM, twitter.com/xlxrxW/status/846703857312972801. @ZabettaM. “I blame #Moftiss for getting us addicted to hidden clues and witty deductions: now we see contents even where there isn't any  #Sherlock.” Twitter, 22 Jan 2017, 13:03 PM, twitter.com/ZabettaM/status/823274971195670536.

List of Figures

Figure 1 Steven Moffat describes the co- Source: writers’ poaching in an Interview Mellor, Louisa. "Moffat and Gatiss on with Den of Geek! Sherlock Series 3, Fandom & Secrets." Den of Geek. DoG Tech LLC, 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

Figure 2 Steven Moffat addresses Sherlock Source: Holmes fanboys on the DVD Gatiss, Mark, Moffat, Steven and Sue commentary track of A Study in Pink Vertue. Audio Commentary. Sherlock: A Study in Pink, BBC, 2010.

Figure 3 Steven Moffat about fan engagement Source: at Sherlock: Meet the Filmmaker Abbington, Amanda, actor. Cumberbatch, Benedict, actor. Freeman, Martin, actor. Moffat, Steven, producer/writer. Vertue, Sue, producer. Sherlock: Meet the Filmmaker. Hosted by Boyd Hilton. Apple Inc., 2014.

Figure 4 Steven Moffat about Moriarty’s death Source: at Sherlock: Meet the Filmmaker Abbington, Amanda, actor. Cumberbatch, Benedict, actor. Freeman, Martin, actor. Moffat, Steven, producer/writer. Vertue, Sue, producer. Sherlock: Meet the Filmmaker. Hosted by Boyd Hilton. Apple Inc., 2014.

Figure 5 Dialogue excerpt from A Study in Source: Pink “A Study in Pink.” Sherlock: Season One, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Paul McGuigan, Hartswood Films, 2010.

Figure 6 Dialogue excerpt from A Study in Source: Pink “A Study in Pink.” Sherlock: Season One, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Paul McGuigan, Hartswood Films, 2010.

Figure 7 Dialogue excerpt from A Study in Source: Pink “A Study in Pink.” Sherlock: Season One, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Paul McGuigan, Hartswood Films, 2010.

Figure 8 Steven Moffat about Sherlock’s Source: sexuality Mavity, Anne. “Steven Moffat: Sherlock Interview.” YouTube, 18 May 2014, youtu.be/LuGbWXhArww

Figure 9 Steven Moffat about Sherlock’s Source: sexuality Jeffries, Stuart. “'There is a clue everybody's missed': Sherlock writer Steven Moffat interviewed.” The Guardian Saturday Interview. Guardian News and Media, 20 Jan. 2012. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.

Figure 10 Dialogue excerpt from The Blind Source: Banker “The Blink Banker.” Sherlock: Season One, written by Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Steven Thompson, directed by Euros Lyn, Hartswood Films, 2010.

Figure 11 Steven Moffat about the relationship Source: between Holmes and Watson “A Study in Pink.” Sherlock: Season One, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Paul McGuigan, Hartswood Films, 2010.

Figure 12 Dialogue excerpt from The Great Source: Game “The Great Game.” Sherlock: Season One, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Paul McGuigan, Hartswood Films, 2010.

Figure 13 Mark Gatiss denies gay intentions in Source: Sherlock Harnick, Chris. "Could Sherlock and Watson Ever Be a Couple on Sherlock?" E! Online. E! News, 15 Dec. 2016. Web. 12 June 2017.

Figure 14 Johnlock-Shipper Jay’s account of Source: TJLC Jay. “Johnlock 101 – An Introduction to The Johnlock Conspiracy (#tjlc).” Multifandom-Madnesss. nowreallifehasnoappeal.wordpress.com, 17 Jan. 2014. Web. 06 May 2017.

Figure 15 Johnlock-Shipper Jay’s account of Source: TJLC Jay. “Johnlock 101 – An Introduction to The Johnlock Conspiracy (#tjlc).” Multifandom-Madnesss. nowreallifehasnoappeal.wordpress.com, 17 Jan. 2014. Web. 06 May 2017.

Figure 16 Johnlock-Shipper Lyn’s account of Source: TJLC Lyn, V. "The Johnlock Conspiracy — Romance and Holmesian Deduction in the Sherlock Fandom." ReelRundown. HubPages Inc., 19 Apr. 2016. Web. 06 May 2017.

Figure 17 Johnlock-Shipper Jay’s account of Source: TJLC Jay. “Johnlock 101 – An Introduction to The Johnlock Conspiracy (#tjlc).”

Multifandom-Madnesss. nowreallifehasnoappeal.wordpress.com, 17 Jan. 2014. Web. 06 May 2017.

Figure 18 Dialogue excerpt from Doctor Who’s Source: The Shakespeare Code “The Shakespeare Code.” Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series, written by Gareth Roberts, directed by Charlie Palmer, Hartswood Films, 2012.

Figure 19 Dialogue excerpt from The Sign of Source: Three “The Sign of Three.” Sherlock: Season Three, written by Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and Steven Thompson, directed by Colm McCarthy, Hartswood Films, 2014.

Figure 20 Mark Gatiss about the ending of The Source: Abominable Bride We Live Entertainment. “Sherlock Season 4 SDCC 2016 Panel with Benedict Cumberbatch.” YouTube, 26 July 2016, youtu.be/faq- rvlkjZk.

Figure 21 Thunderclap call to use #Norbury Source: Hashtag Norbury. "#Norbury." Thunderclap. Thunderclap, Inc, Web. 26 May 2017. Figure 22 Excerpt from Sherlockshite’s farewell Source: letter to the Sherlock fandom sherlockshite. “I’m leaving the BBC Sherlock fandom.” Question All Things, 2017, sherlockshite.tumblr.com/ post/156488986338/im-leaving- the-bbc-sherlock-fandom.

Figure 23 Fans misinterpret Steven Moffat’s Source: denial of an upcoming episode Bone, Christian. "Steven Moffat Denies Rumours of a Secret Fourth Sherlock Season 4 Episode." Sherlock's Home. Wordpress, 13 Jan. 2017. Web. 27 May 2017.

Figure 24 Tumblr-post by solipsexual Source: solipsexual. "Moftiss: you’re a Sherlock fan." We need more cloud, 19 Dec 2016, 4:53 PM, solipsexual.tumblr. com/post/154692336240/moftiss- youre-a-sherlock-fan-in-fact-youre-an.

Figure 25 Tumblr-post by callofthewilde Source: callofthewilde. "What the writers think..." I Have Oscar Wilde Stickers, 16 May 2017, callofthewilde.tumblr. com/post/160748050914/what-the- writers-think-we-want-saw-alcatraz.

Figure 26 Tumblr-post by wildholmes Source: wildholmes. "Sir ACD: "Someday the true..." A Very Camp Gay and A Grumpy Bisexual, 27 April 2017, wildholmes.tumblr.com /post/160053109154/sir-acd- someday-the-true-story-may-be.

Figure 27 Tumblr-post by sociopathliar Source: sociopathlair. "Moffat: Sherlock and John..." Sociopath Lair, 15 March 2017, sociopathlair.tumblr.com/ post/158437382144/moffat-sherlock -and-john-are-better-with.

Appendix

App. 1: Steven Moffat about Sherlock’s Detective Inspector (DI) Greg Lestrade

“The version that Mark and myself fell in love with was The Six Napoleons version, whereas at the end of the story, Lestrade says to Sherlock Holmes, shakes his hand and says, ‘Look, I see how proud we are of you and if you’d came to Scotland Yard every now and then we’d shake your hand’. And Sherlock Holmes is visibly moved. And we saw that, you know, Sherlock Holmes hasn’t noticed to some degree - Doctor Watson hasn’t noticed - how much Lestrade admires him. Is frustrated by him. But admires him. Because we find that, sort of, the most moving version of Lestrade.”

Source: Gatiss, Mark, Moffat, Steven and Sue Vertue. Audio Commentary. Sherlock: A Study in Pink, BBC, 2010.

App. 2: Characters of Sherlock engage with each other on the show’s official transmedia extension The Science of Deduction

Source: http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/forum

Appendix

App. 3: Fans leave notes at St Bart’s Hospital after Sherlock’s fall from the rooftop

Source: M@. "A Phone Box Shrine To Sherlock At St Barts." Londonist. Londonist Ltd., 19 Nov. 2012. Web. 13 June 2017.

App. 4: Example of gay subtext in Conan Doyle’s original Holmes

Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.

‘You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!’

It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation. (1038)

Source: Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1993. Print.

Appendix

App. 5: Examples of BBC’s promotion material that Johnlock-Shippers evaluate as carrying particularly strong gay connotations

Source: johnlockshire. “Throughout four series” The Signs of Two, 10 May 2017, the-signs- of-two.tumblr.com/post/160524920606/youngqueenwerewolf-johnlockshire-throughout.

III

Appendix

App. 6: Mark Gatiss explains their recurring “gay jokes” to be inspired by the Billy Wilder film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

“We thought that was a good idea to run with that. In the 21st century it wouldn’t be an issue. People would just assume. Maybe we’ve done it too many times I don’t know. That’s all it is. He explicitly says he is not interested. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. I’m a gay man. This is not an issue. But we’ve explicitly said this is not going to happen – there is no game plan – no matter how much we lie about other things, that this show is going to culminate in Martin and Benedict going off into the sunset together. They are not going to do it. And if people want to write whatever they like and have a great time extrapolating that’s absolutely fine. But there is no hidden or exposed agenda. We’re not trying to fuck with people’s heads. Not trying to insult anybody or make any kind of issue out of it, there’s nothing there. It’s just our show and that’s what these characters are like. If people want to do that on websites absolutely fine. But there’s nothing there.”

Source: Parker, Valerie. "SDCC 2016: Sherlock & A Case of Sexual Identity." With An Accent. With An Accent, 27 July 2016. Web. 05 May 2017.

App. 7: Example: A Johnlock-Shipper shares her reading of Sherlock on Twitter

Source: @Twihard_Dilara. “In SDCC Moffat talking about “ bromance” They complete each other, a DUO” Duo= persons commonly associated with each other; COUPLE #Johnlock.” Twitter, 31 July 2016, 6:01 PM, twitter.com/Twihard_Dilara/status/759916983064203265.

Appendix

App. 8: Example: A Johnlock-Shipper tweets during an episode of Sherlock and thanks the co-writers for a “Johnlock moment”

Source: @SherlockAwake. “That was obviously #Johnlock. Thank you #Moffat and @Markgatiss.” Twitter, 1 Sep 2013, 1:32 AM, twitter.com/SherlockAwake/status/374087369286111233.

App. 9: Occasions on which Steven Moffat confirmed that the co-writers like to lie

“If I were organising you a surprise party - which would be in itself a surprise I suppose - and you asked me: ‘Are you organising me a surprise party?’ I’d say, ‘No.’, because that’s kinda what you do. Either we say nothing at all, we literally lock ourselves away, or… We’re not going to tell you what happens next; of course not. Why would we do that? You wouldn’t even like it if we did.”

Source: Plumb, Ali. “Empire’s Sherlock Series 3 Spoiler Podcast Special: An in-depth interview with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.” Empire. Bauer Media Group, 20 Jan 2016. Web. 17 May 2017.

“Anything is possible. But we do our best to surprise you with a combination of lies and deceit. So, we’re never going to tell you what we’re going to do.”

Source: Cornet, Roth. “Benedict Cumberbatch and Steven Moffat on Sherlock’s Big Return for Season 3.” IGN. Ziff Davis, LLC, 20 Jan 2014. Web 17 May 2017.

“And whether or not I’m telling the truth right now is another situation”

Source: Martin, Denise. “Sherlock’s Third Season to Stream Exclusively on Netflix.” Vulture. New York Media LLC, 30 May 2014. Web. 17 May 2017.

Appendix

“Sherlock lives in his brain - everything is transport. Unless we’re lying. Again”

Source: skulls-and-tea. “Question: What is your opinion (if any) on Sherlock’s sexuality.” Skulls and Tea at 221B, 09 Jan 2017, 2:16 PM, skulls-and tea.tumblr.com/post/136978688181/question-what-is-your-opinion-if-any-on.

App. 10: TJLC’s unofficial “tagline”

“So that moment, the gut punch moment is easy. It’s building. Cause you want- when a twist comes, it’s not that it’s surprising, that is thrilling. It’s the fact that you go: ‘I just have seen it! I was told! I was told repeatedly this doesn’t make sense.’ And then the rug is pulled. And it’s like you’ve been warning them for ages: ‘We are gonna pull this rug in a minute. We are. You aren’t paying any attention but we are gonna pull this rug!’ So when you follow through, you’ve got to think: ‘I was told and I didn’t listen.’”

Source: Flicks And The City. “Sherlock Comic Con 2015 Panel – Rupert Graves, Steven Moffat, Sue Vertue.” YouTube, 09 July 2015, youtu.be/TtWPTMZRgzY.

App. 11: TJLC’s quote by Mark Gatiss about the “big surprise”

“There’s a master plan. There’s a plan. There is a long-term plan. Very long term.”

Source: Murphy, Shaunna. "'Sherlock' Boss Reveals The Christmas Special Is About 'The Role Of Women'" MTV News. MTV, 10 Nov. 2015. Web. 17 May 2017.

App. 12: TJLC’s proof of the original’s unreliability

“The reader will excuse me if I conceal the date or any other fact which he might trace the actual occurrence.”

Source: Conan Doyle, Arthur. “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories: Volumes I and II. Bantam Classics Series. New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2003. p. 906. Print.

App. 13: TJLC’s proof that Gatiss and Moffat imitate Conan Doyle’s unreliability

Sherlock ‘Unlike the nicely embellished fictions on your blog, John, real life is rarely so neat.’

Source: “The Empty Hearse.” Sherlock: Season Three, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Jeremy Lovering, Hartswood Films, 2014.

Appendix

Sherlock ‘So, for funny stories, one has to look no further than John’s blog! The record of your time together. Of course, he does tend to romanticise things a bit, but then, you know, he’s a romantic.’

Source: “The Sign of Three.” Sherlock: Season Three, written by Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and Steven Thompson, directed by Colm McCarthy, Hartswood Films, 2014.

Mrs Hudson ‘According to you, I just show people up the stairs and serve you breakfast! Sherlock ‘Don’t feel singled out, Mrs Hudson - I’m hardly in the dog one.’

Source: “The Abominable Bride.” Sherlock: Victorian Special, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Douglas Mckinnon, Hartswood Films, 2016.

App. 14: TJLC’s proof that Gatiss and Moffat want close readers to notice their lying

John ‘Never on a case. You promised me - never on a case.’ Sherlock ‘No. I just said that in one of your stories.’ John ‘I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it.’

John ‘Why do you need to be alone’ Sherlock ‘If you are referring to romantic entanglement, Watson, which I rather fear you are - as I have often explained before, all emotion is abhorrent to me. It is the grit in a sensitive instrument-’ John/Sherlock ‘-the crack in the lens!’ Sherlock ‘Well, there you are, you see.. I’ve said it all before.’ John ‘No, I wrote all that. You’re quoting yourself from The Strand Magazine.’ Sherlock ‘Well, exactly.’ John ‘Those are my words, not yours! That is the version of you that I present to the public: the brain without a heart; the calculating machine. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it.’

Source: “The Abominable Bride.” Sherlock: Victorian Special, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Douglas Mckinnon, Hartswood Films, 2016.

App. 15: TJLC’s proof that the co-writers point out that they are lying

“In fairness, I do say I’m lying. And then I lie and people get cross by the fact that I told you! (...) You can’t lie all of the times. You put a lie some of the times. That way no one can trust you at any point.”

Source: We Live Entertainment. “Sherlock Season 4 SDCC 2016 Panel with Benedict Cumberbatch.” YouTube, 26 July 2016, youtu.be/faq-rvlkjZk.

VII

Appendix

App 16: TJLC’s example of homoerotic subtext in Conan Doyle’s original

“He shook his head sadly. ‘I glanced over it,’ said he. ‘Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.’ ‘But the romance was there,’ I remonstrated. ‘I could not tamper with the fact.’ ‘Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.’”

Source: Conan Doyle, Arthur. “The Sign of Four.” Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories: Volumes I and II. Bantam Classics Series. New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2003. p. 125. Print.

App 17: TJLC’s proof of dialogue that shows how Gatiss and Moffat shot the Victorian special episode to really point out their queer intentions

John ‘You’re a living, breathing man. You’ve lived a life, you have a past.’ Sherlock ‘A what?’ John ‘Well, you must have had…’ Sherlock ‘Had what?’ John ‘Hm, you know…’ Sherlock ‘No.’ John ‘... experiences.’ Sherlock ‘Pass me your revolver, I have a sudden need to use it.’ John ‘Dammit, Holmes, you are flesh and blood, you have feelings, you have… You must have… impulses.’

Source: “The Abominable Bride.” Sherlock: Victorian Special, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Douglas Mckinnon, Hartswood Films, 2016.

App 18: TJLC’s proof that the co-writers spent a lot of time modernising the original template

“It was key to us from the beginning to try and show people that it as being made by people who love Sherlock Holmes. There’s nothing casual about it. Steven and I put an awful lot of work into devising the new world of Sherlock.”

Source: Digital Spy. “Mark Gatiss on ‘Sherlock’.” YouTube, 22 July 2010, https://youtu.be/hoIT4bw6jGs.

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Appendix

App 19: Last Dialogue in The Abominable Bride

Sherlock ‘Perhaps I was being a little fanciful. But, perhaps such things could come to pass. In any case, I know I would be very much at home in such a world.’ John ‘Don’t think I would be.’ Sherlock ‘I beg to differ. But then I’ve always known I was a man out of this time.’

Source: “The Abominable Bride.” Sherlock: Victorian Special, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, directed by Douglas Mckinnon, Hartswood Films, 2016.

App 20: Johnlock-Shippers turn to Twitter to express their anger

Source: @koukounut. "I hope the word "queerbaiting" becomes obsolete in 2017 and no ever uses it ever again unless talking about BBC Sherlock." Twitter, 10 Dec 2016, 8:15 PM, twitter.com/koukounut/status/807801051147632640.

Source: @QueerMages. “Has BBC Sherlock gone too far with the queerbaiting in this trailer 79% Yes 21% Yes.” Twitter, 11 Dec 2016, 2:08 AM, twitter.com/QueerMages/status/807889708571394048.

Appendix

App 21: Moffat explains that Sherlock is most authentic version

“Partly because we’ve committed this huge heresy of updating it, we sort of want to say to everyone who knows the originals, ‘Look, everything else is incredibly authentic’. In fact, you’ll never see a more obsessively authentic version of Sherlock Holmes than this one, because it is being motored by a couple of geeks.”

Source: DeVere, Ariane. “Sherlock Season 2 DVD Extra: ‘Sherlock Uncovered’.” Sherlock - Series Two. BBC. 23 Jan 2012. Web. 17 May 2017. Transcript.

App. 22: The co-writers dismiss fannish interpretations of the original

“We have no desire, no interest in doing anything that is totally wrong for Doyle. We’re not gonna massively contradict him. I mean, minor things (...) yes, but … We don’t stick to the canon; it’s not a restriction. It’s an amazing platform, that’s what it is. It’s not a cage. It’s a stage. There’s nothing restrictive about it. But no - we’re not going to do what Doyle would never have done. No. Not because we feel obliged, not because we feel constrained, but because if you want to get Sherlock Holmes right, do what Doyle does.”

Source: DeVere, Ariane. “‘Sherlock’ Special DVD Extra: ‘Sherlockology Q&A’.” Sherlock - The Abominable Bride. BBC. 11 Jan 2016. Web. 17 May 2017. Transcript.

App 23: The co-writers express that they are able to recognise Conan Doyle’s true intentions

“It’s one of these things that, you know, (...) it’s inevitable after 120 years of 200 interpretations and all kinds of things that the focus sort of shifts on to other little bits and pieces that get slightly out of control, out of proportion. And so, for instance, the woman who beats him, I think, she’s called that because she’s the woman not because he’s in love with her necessarily but because she’s the only woman who beat him. So, she, out of all the women who are indifferent, she’s the one who’s not. And actually, out of that, people have extrapolated all kinds of love affairs. There’s nothing wrong with that. But actually, it’s funny how those things can become a completely different animal to what their originally intended to be.”

Source: Gatiss, Mark, Moffat, Steven and Sue Vertue. Audio Commentary. Sherlock: A Study in Pink, BBC, 2010.

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I declare that this submission is my own work. I further declare that neither this submission has been submitted nor parts of this submission have been submitted for assessment in another course and that in every case where I have drawn on the work of any other author, this is fully acknowledged in the text of my submission and the work is cited on my bibliography.

Signed: Date: 28th June 2017