sussexandbeesplease:

here’s a thing: I had literally no idea of johnlock/the concept of shipping/fandom communities/anything related to slash pairings before I watched sherlock, and after the first episode I went searching to see if they were/were going to be romantically involved in this version, or if that was even a thing. again: I went looking after ONE SINGLE EPISODE. I know I’m not the only one with that experience.

The meta is intelligent and well thought out, tjlc is amazing (and hilarious and brilliant and I adore it so, so much), but before the meta, before tjlc, there’s simply the show. And the show, on its merits alone, is what led me to the idea of sherlock/john. To me, the show stands by itself, and acting like tjlc is a delusion built by fangirls nitpicking at details is completely untrue.

The text of the show gives you a john who, 2 years later, still can’t visit baker street, it shows you drunk idiots straight up flirting on the stag night, it shows you a heartbroken sherlock after John’s wedding, it shows you that one month into a supposedly happy marriage john is cycling to work due to a bit of chafing, and it shows you sherlock building up to and deciding against a final declaration of love (seriously, what else was he going to say?) Those events textually happen IN THE SHOW, and while meta does wonders to expound on said events, to argue that tjlc and the idea of johnlock endgame are based solely on subtext, solely on tiny details, is simply false.

To me, the meta is the icing on top of the multi-layered and very dense cake of the narrative – and sure, you can have one or the other, but if your cake is awful, all the icing in the world isn’t going to be able to hide that. Essentially: meta and tjlc largely aren’t based on subtextual or tenuous connections, they’re based on the narrative structure itself, which I firmly believe supports johnlock endgame. Someone get me some damn cake.