For the ask game: Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

henlo piaya! 

hmm okay idt i ever hated any pairing a lot unless it was well very inappropriate...like inc*st or smth; i was usually like ok yall can vibe and do ur own thing haha

but i did have a ship i did not have a positive impression of before i got into it: 

ok warning i ramble a lot and i SUCK at using periods so its just one long run on sentence i apologize in advance xD (and i use “like” way too much): 

(the second and third paragraphs can be skipped ish if needed haha)

before i watched sherlock i initially thought to myself that i like, probably wouldnt end up shipping johnlock  (lies...i always end up shipping), and like i knew there was kind of drama about it a long time ago but i wasnt in fandom then so i didnt know and i was scared i’d be like, judged for being a johnlock shipper or whatever so when i went into it i did not have a good view of the ship (i didnt hate it, i just doubted it) (i initially had to watch eps 1 and 2 for brit lit class in school so well that kind of ruined the effect but i ended up rewatching both and then watching everything else)  

but then i was like ok sike nvm its like definitely gay (<- pls imagine this in john watson’s voice for maximum effect) and i was like goddamn the chemistry DAMNNNN (i would do an analogy of two elements that r really good together but frankly ive forgotten most of my chem knowledge and all i can remember is hcl and nacl and neither of those sound like a good analogy) and like just the moments john and sherlock have and like idk the tension between them and especially just the way they just complement each other so WELL?? how?? martin freeman and benedict cumberbatch r really good actors ahdafsl and like how they’d do anything to save the other and the LONGING and just bjaldsuujksdf and they just ugh just THEYRE SO GOOD TOGETHER and i just had that moment of realization at some point maybe after i finished s1 - that pool scene, and i was like....OH. and then i was like WHAT DO U MEAN JOHN GETS MARRIED and THEN SHERLOCK LEFT THE GODDAMN  WEDDING EARLY and OMLL ok also the ajsdfll whats it called i forget but the uhhh the trolley scene?? ive rewatched that scene an unhealthy number of times also so much stuff in the abominable bride and o also irene adler that was really interesting as well (<- both of these i understood a lot better after absorbing fandom content) and i was like wow...johnlock is real but so is the queerbaiting...big sad...

(listen after i finished binging s4 (which i finished at like 4 am one day) i was like WHAT WHAT WHAT i was utterly confused (i had to read some fluff before i could go to sleep that day lmao)) and i was still hesitant to ship even after all that cause i thought the fandom was dead (im what like idk 3, 5, 6 years late?? idk) so i told myself like dont get ur hopes up right,

ok and then i was like...WAIT THERES SHERLOCK BLOGS ALIVE!! A LOT OF THEM!!!! and i was like wait no way and there were so many johnlock shippers!! and i was like no way yooo and then i followed people and then boom i felt like i could finally just ship johnlock like freely and there was like so much content and i was like whoa!!! im- wow this is so cool! like the tipping point for me like the green light for me to ship it and i was like omg no way i can ship it :D and after like consuming a lot of fandom content i understood a lot better, the evidence for johnlock, (it was kind of like a muddled puddle in my brain when i finished binging and i knew i shipped it but i just like idk i needed to clear up stuff in my brain) and wow the meta is so good in this fandom like DAMN yall big brains bro...+ gifs and fanart and fics and all the content and like idk the vibes r very cool (tho a bit intimidating haha) and then fandom then inspired me to make gifs so thats actually what got me started to try and learn how to make gifs haha and also to create this sherlock blog! it was awesome like getting to see people who shipped it like me like on my dash...cause i didnt really know many people who well were as crazy about it as i was (def no one i knew irl rip) 

so um yeah thats how i kind of got into johnlock! a lot of it was thanks to fandom, like me seeing that johnlock blogs were indeed alive, contrary to what i thought before, and the content that helped me understand stuff a lot better, and i was just like overly hyped that the fandom was still alive haha

thanks for reading through all that 😅im sorry if it doesnt make sense i am writing this at an ungodly hour and i always have a habit of rambling so lmk if anything needs explaining (i...will explain properly lmao not keyboard smashing and whatnot)

thank u for the ask!! 

edit sorry this post is both long (if the readmore fails i am truly truly sorry) & longwinded im just reflecting and thinking; (another edit: u can probably just read the tl dr and get it)

anyway allow me to spin some very personally based theory here for a mo while i put off/warm my fingers up from the cold in preparation to email my therapist

so growing up i had, i think only, het ships, but i never quite had the ones you were (narratively speaking) “supposed to” have

in most media i recall when i was a kid, there were like, 2 diff structures of character romance plot arcs in media i consumed, there was the main lead and 2 best friends model, where thered be the star of the show who had outside romantic leads and the 2 best friends (who were always a boy and a girl) would have their secondary romance, OR there were ensemble shows where there was a more clear romance set up between the main boy and main girl, then side characters whod pair off in whatever ways ended up happening. in the first, see: hannah montana, the second, see: zoey 101. obv this isnt a hard rule and there were loads of exceptions but like, lets just say i tended not to care for the romances set up for the main girls in the trio models, or quite as hard for the main boy and girl in the ensembles, and in general if there was an obvious romance between two leads i either didnt care or outright hated it

basically i never liked the ships they set up for us in straight media, as a kid (namely, a girl) i liked being that “ew pink!” “i hate valentines day” sort of contrarian, but what i remember actually disliking was the predictability of it, because i clearly still shipped characters, so it wasnt /really/ that i hated romance, per se

looking back on it i think it was probably or at least to a degree more like that i hated the hetero expectation of it- i can nit pick down to more specific examples of why i disliked the main pairings (kataang, for example, i thought was weird bc katara acted like a mother/older sister figure to aang, and i didnt feel like there was romance between them at all except where it felt shoehorned in) - maybe it was also that i thought it made more sense for a main character to be with someone they clearly already spent a lot of time with and not some random new hot boy in town (i very distinctly remember shipping miley and oliver on hannah montana, and i believe that was the first time i ever read fanfiction @ age like... 11 lol) as is often the case w like these things.

theres another level to this though, which is that i notice i tended to ship characters who were more vaguely similar to each other, like, physically (ie, similar heights, or hair colors mainly) obviously this is funny now since my main pairing is johnlock which is such a physically different ship we can construct them from basic shapes and colors and theyre still recognizable as who they are, but i have some thoughts about this- but i think there might be two interesting things about this again in retrospect

first of all, this sounds silly ik, but shipping the vaguely similar ones as a child’s way of queering heterosexuality is an interesting concept and not that difficult, like, two boys are also vaguely similar to each other in a similar way a boy and a girl with the same hair color and height might be, which is something i thought of a while ago

the other way in which this is really interesting to me now, that i think might have been more actually pertinent to myself as a trans child, is that i think i shipped the characters i did in an attempt to morph the concept of boy and girl? to find the boy counterpart to every girl??? that second one makes more sense actually. anyway, i digress

2 start off i definitely had gender feelings starting from a very young age so i think these observations ring more true than just reflections, PERHAPS

so the first thing i remember shipping, ie wanting them to be together, thinking about it an inordinate amount of time outside watching the films, even imagining them eating ice cream together in their pjs (i was NINE DHFJGghfkg) was jack sparrow & elizabeth swan from potc (basically my franchise of choice as a kid bc i never read harry potter) now this doesnt quite fit the “visually similar” thing bc actually orlando bloom looks more like kiera knightly and is prob due to them like making out in one movie, but i think this works for the “shipping as gender expression” theory, because elizabeth swan dressed up as a boy, spent most of that movie wearing boy’s clothes, etc- meanwhile jack was a wacky pirate which like hello duh i’d want to be. so i wonder if beyond the fact that they kissed and flirted, there was something to this concept of me wanting two characters to be together, meant i wanted to marry together two conceptual things happening with two characters, or absorb the cool dude and the boyish girl characters into each other to make one whole archetype for myself? i likewise shipped aang and toph (toph who, normally doesnt really have anyone to be shipped with, since she likes sokka but he has a gf) who we all know is the VERY boyish girl character, so boyish im p sure her actually being a trans dude later in life is a p decently accepted headcanon (i dont actually delve into aatla fandom though so i can only hope) 

another thing about this ship thing, is most of my ships had brown hair (like miley and oliver), just like i always have, and in certain cases the girl character would look a LOT like me (i also shipped logan and quinn on zoey 101, which to my surprise n delight actually came true later (although looking back im like... 11 yr old me is glad they made out a lot but adult me is like uhhh why were the kids on this show making out a lot? anyway thats another issue) and i def was a weirdo girl with glasses and long brown wavy hair) which sort of further fuels my feeling that this was an attempt by my brain to do 1 of 2 things, if my own involvement really was a greater motivating factor in this thing, 1. ship MYSELF with a boy (which is like def possible for my gay kinnie ass, but not quite my thesis here) or 2. morph these boy and girl counterparts by imagining them together, seeing them together, etc

for example, i realize now, when i was a kid i drew an avatar sona for myself and said sona looked an awful lot like how id imagine a katara/zuko fusion would be, and the fact that i shipped zutara (very hard lol) was what lead me down this thought path rn

i feel like even to me this concept sounds weird and far fetched but like, gem fusion made enough sense for someone to write with its clearly, usually, romantic implications and we all “get” that, so whom knows???

another thing ive noticed while writing this is for a good few of these ships you can argue the boys in them can be read gay, like jack sparrow and zuko and aang, which feels even more strongly like me trying to marry my gay boy feelings to my tomboy realities [thinking emoji]

the biggest reason i think this makes sense to me is because when i was 10 i became obsessed with the idea that this boy i was friends with and i were secretly twins separated at birth, like i was so into the concept that we looked alike, i like hoped and wished so hard for it to be true, i wished a christmas miracle would happen for fucking real and a magic door in my house would open and be his new room and itd all work out perfectly! and you might think this was a manifestation of my difficulties with my family and wishing to leave it, but in my dream world my parents were still my parents and he came to live with us- which makes me think the obsession of ME looking like this BOY was a manifestation of my gender feelings, which i think can maybe be traced to this concept of pairing a visually similar, possibly gay, brunette boy to every brunette and/or tomboyish girl

anyway. if you actually read all of this id love it if you lmk somehow (doesnt need to be a like) like this is clearly very long and strange but i hope it makes sense. i think i stop myself a lot from ever commenting on gender or theory or whatever but i am a living breathing trans person who has experienced things and i have opinions and i dont think im claiming anything destructive with this lol i think its not unusual to reflect on the way you interacted with the world as a gay/trans kid

also im obviously not saying that shipping straight things is somehow inherently queer, im not trying to retroactively claim something about straight ships, like, those two characters are still functionally straight, and i definitely also shipped probably all of them for normal shipping reasons (although, kid ones, so less “oh theres a lot of ACTUAL romantic subtext between these two” but rather “oh theyre friends and would be cute together!” (or like they kissed and i was like O: )) but im just trying to theorize about something its possible my tiny trans brain was trying to express- and who knows maybe im not the only one!

anyway i guess the TL;DR is: when i was a kid i had a lot of “unconventional” straight ships- i already observed that i eschewed the main canon pairings in kids media in what was probably my tiny baby brains rejection of hetero culture, but i also actively shipped side characters who looked like me, and also looked like each other (ie, both tall and brunette, a boy and girl counterpart of Each Other) OR characters who seemed to be a gayish boy and a tomboyish girl, and im theorizing that maybe the reason that was was my tiny trans brain wanting to gem fusion those two together because of my Gender Feelings and fuse the boy with the girl and this desire manifested in shipping therefore thinking about a lot these pairings of boy and girl counterparts

I found a stupid story I had written in one-shot for Johnlock and besides the topic, it was decent??? Like I feel like my brain has physically died since that time.  I feel like I could never write that sort of thing again??? I want to find my writing for anthony so i can see how i was see what i could write i wasnt super amazing i wasnt some eloquent writing magician, but it was so good????? imo at least like  looking back at it now i cant believe I was the one who wrote it like i used to be so INTO writing. i wanted to be an author i had so many stories i had this one story called dreamer where some young high schooler had the power to see the future in her dreams and it was just so young adult bullshit about boy next door and magical powers and father of boy hated girl and wanted to kill her but they were in looooove and the cat could talk and just like IT WAS INDEPTH idk her sister could teleport but didnt know how to control it it was before that sort of genre of young adult blew up  but fuck man it was deep then theres the misfit knights and it hurts so much to think theyre never going to be.... a thing i mean theyre my tangible dolls now but that might be the closest thing they ever get to being i always dreamt and still dream of them being an actual book an actual story maybe a comic maybe just beautiufl art i think everyone that makes a fantasy world and works this hard and long on characters dreams of them being a published book or even a movie or somethign but it makes me feel empty that theyve fallen so far away from me theyve vaugly been characters for a little less than 10 years i think maybe i made them “kind of” in grade 8/9 but anthony really became a thing in grade 10/11 i believe so 2009/2010 i think hhhhhh i have fuckign picture frame collages of cole and anthony and kia and chance and thomas and blaze, one big one just dedicated to anthony and i FUCK i want so badly to dedicate myself to making them more but i dont have motivation enough to motivate my motivation ive been stuck in a depressive down spiral for so fucking long and im pretty sure my brain has literally become impaired because of it maybe its not that maybe i cant fix this? there was some article about sever depression literally hurting your brain and i dont know if ill get it all back and i worry about that maybe im just rusty and my brain hasnt had enough exercise but man its hard... to want to try for myself when i just cant stay motivated im not so depressed, not by a long shot, but its still lurking around in my system making projects impossible i want to write but  im not good enough and if i practice i might be but then all the work i do will be useless because ill get better idk it sounds fleeting i wont be as good as so many other people out there and ill be stuck in the pit of young adult unsold books i want my babies to be important but theres aspects of them that arent mine  hell thomas isnt mine at all so i have always been so hesitant to write or draw him  because i dont know enough about him and it feels bad because hes so fucking important to the story and the trio this cant be a duo its a trio but idk i want to know more about him i want to see what he looks like i want to draw him and cole and anthony over and over and kiss their little faces

ive been in a spiral of suffering since 2012 college was my highlight. since graduating 2014 i died inside and dropped out of second year and my brain has suffered since and i dont know where to start and its all so daunting i just let it roll ontop of me and hold me down because i dont know w hat to do about it all and if i do i just cant scrounge up the motivation to motivate my motivation into full blown motivation.

That 21st century Sherlock Holmes fic everyone is watching

this is going to be a Sherlock-hate-stemming-from-unfulfilled-Johnlock rant and im sure most of my small amount of readers doesnt give two craps about this so be glad i learned how to hide text. also some spoilers maybe? carry on with your dashboard if you will. 

(main spoiler is that Johnlock didnt happen onscreen, but im sure tumblr has already made you aware of that.)

but imma rant here a bit because i’ve got nowhere else to do it and no one else to direct it to. also people are still hoping for more episodes that will make Johnlock a thing, but until that happens (if it happens) this is what i have to say about it.

first off im hoping you arent using the word “canon” to refer to anything more than just the BBC Sherlock rendition of these stories, since you cant make Johnlock Holmesian Canon because ACD never explicitly made it a thing. (as of now ACD Canon will be written so and BBC canon will be written so).

Mofftiss were all about trying to put a twist to the original stories but still keep the basics intact. sure they took their own spin on things, particularly with season 4 ep 3, but im glad they tried keeping to Canon and that they made references to it. they address many different things, like The Woman, three-continents Watson, Mrs Hudson’s missing husband, G. Lestrade and so many other loose ends that ACD didnt give a flying fuck about because he wanted Sherlock dead. fans were the ones that literally brought him back from the grave.

there was also the fact that at the time ACD wrote the stories, bromances were more commonly accepted (i dont see any old newspaper clippings being outraged with their relationship as being unbiblical so im kinda assuming). people can yell from any rooftop they want that the fact that Holmes and Watson -- in Canon -- go out for a walk “arm in arm” or that Holmes tells Watson at one point “quick, man, if you love me!” and Watson does what he asks, or that Holmes is ready to kill a man for (possibly) maiming Watson means that they are gay for each other, but that doesnt mean its true. you can argue that it is exactly what that means until you turn blue, and i will argue that it is exactly what it doesnt mean until i die too. 

if Canon is why Moftiss didnt feel like they should make it canon -- because they saw that this was a time period thing and nothing more -- then let them have it. no need to get red-to-the-face upset at them for not using this opportunity to give the LGBT community some representation. they never promised you that (pretty sure like they promised the opposite), the show was never about romance, and you can find that elsewhere. you can argue that they did queerbaiting (hell the originals have queerbaiting too if you read it in this generation), and they might as well be if you want to look at it like that, but these men are professional trolls. bad analogy: i could complain about them baiting us about Moriarty being dead or alive until the bitter end but that doesnt change what happened. again, profound apologies that it is an awful analogy because a character’s state of being is not on the same level as queerbaiting, but it proves my point: these men are trolls and we knew it from the start. some people probably kept watching because they hoped for a glimpse of Moriarty, with the cliff-hanger and all. but i wasnt caught off guard about the resolution of that loose end, just like i wasnt caught off guard with the fact that they never made Johnlock a thing. im thinking thats because i read the books and i had enough faith in Mofftiss to hope that they would do the right thing and respect the stories. 

now, did they possibly throw in subtext and Arty cliffhangers in there for the sake of baiting fans? heck yeah they probably did. the first like 10 minutes of TEH was all about pretty much mocking the fans in a loving way and then still making people question the solution they did give at the end of the episode. people are upset about that one too. did the final montage of Sherlock do that with all the ships? heck yeah. Johnlock was an open door, Sherlolly was an open door, even Mystrade was! MorMor was never rejected either, people. come on. 

if they didnt ship Sherlock with anyone in the end, it might be because they dont want to lose fans and so left all ships open for interpretation. most of all i think they wanted to keep Canon intact, and so they didnt mess with that friendship or with Sherlock’s sexuality -- i personally think if anything he is ace, from the stories themselves, but i digress. i commend them for leaving all of that open. theyre douchebags, i get it. but if you hate a show because of that, then you werent watching it for the show. you were watching it hoping it would become a romance, when in reality all it ever was advertised as was a crime show. 

if you want to watch a rendition of Sherlock Holmes where the stories are defenestrated and anything goes, have fun with Elementary -- they are lots of fun to watch if you imagine its pure fanfic, cus those writers didnt give much of a flying fuck for the stories. again, i feel like Mofftiss felt like finally doing their own thing and tying all loose ends their own way with the latest episode, but i feel like at this point they had the right to. they created enough of their own canon loose ends. by resolving those, they made me feel deeply for characters that never existed in Canon. and they made me appreciate old characters even more.

i will also say that people have been shipping Holmes and Watson since the dawn of time. Johnlock isnt a new 21st century thing. it’s been there. for FOREVER (dont quote me on that). and what have people done about it? wrote fanfic. write a tv show that will give you the representation you think you deserve. or find one that already does that.

but please don’t hate. Moftiss can be dicks at times, im not denying it. they have reacted poorly towards fans before. but its their story, not yours. a little respect would be nice. they respected ACD and still managed to do their own thing -- BBC Sherlock is literally nothing more than their Sherlock fanfic put to television and shared with the world. they just happen to be making money off their fic. 

no one is hating on your fic. dont hate on theirs.  

P. S. also, please, if you want to hate on them for season 4 (i want to hate on them for season 3), do it because of bad storytelling, plot holes, and loose ends, and mostly for making that episode the love child of Saw and Bond. i was not prepared for that. i’m at peace with it, i think -- it was brilliant, it was awful, and it was everything in between. what they promised us as good writers was to not make those mistakes that i mentioned above that you can hate them for. (i for one am all about suspension of disbelief and enjoying the ride for what it is. but like, seriously, how often do TWO genius kids come from one family???).

P. P. S. Jeremy Brett will always be my fav (sorryBennynotsry).