John's character development in s3

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

mathildalocks asked:

Ivy, with all these efforts in trying to get into the characters' heads are you not itsy bitsy tiny annoyed by John's character development? Apart from all the beautiful meta analysis, I guess deep inside we are all disappointed. Yes he shot someone for S. or sacrificed himself at the poolside, but apart from danger situations did he make choices to step out of his comfort zone? On the other side, we see huge "progress" in Sherlock. I really find it disheartening.

Ivy Blossom:

Actually…no. I’m not annoyed by John’s character development, nor am I disappointed.

I take it from the way you’ve phrased your comments that you wanted to see John become closer to Sherlock, and “step out of his comfort zone” to do so. I’m not sure that’s fair to John, to be honest. I think he does the best he can with the information he has. In fact I think he goes beyond that, I think he bends over backwards, given the information that he has.

To me, series three demonstrates that Sherlock is a) probably gay, and b) completely in love with John, and that John is a) completely in love with Sherlock, and b) pretty confident that that’s unwelcome information. That’s character development I can get behind.

Shall we walk through it then?

For a start, Sherlock died. John mourned about as much as I would have wanted him to (and as someone who wrote more words describing John’s mourning than should ever have been written about it, and then kept writing another 100k words, I feel my expectations were pretty high). John got teary-eyed walking into 221b just before proposing to Mary. He was never going to get over that loss, not ever. He has spent the better part of two years feeling lonely and sad and missing Sherlock tremendously. So I’m not disappointed in that. John clearly loves Sherlock a tremendous amount. Losing him shattered him utterly.

Sherlock came back like a dickhead. John was incredibly hurt, which makes sense. Other people knew Sherlock wasn’t dead, but not John. And Sherlock is mostly playing it like a joke. He has every right to feel alienated, humiliated and infuriated at that point.

But, even in spite of that, John can’t stay away. He forgives Sherlock as he shaves his moustache off for him. He still loves Sherlock, and wants to look attractive for him, even though Sherlock has demonstrated, on every available stage and in every available medium, that he is incapable of returning John’s love in any meaningful way. While that’s not actually true, I’m not even sure Sherlock would disagree with that assessment at this point, and John has every right to believe that it’s true.

The stag night. Come on. THE STAG NIGHT. John pretty much demonstrates that he’s always been open to a physical relationship with Sherlock. Had the circumstances been different, and he weren’t getting married, and Sherlock were gay and into him, that would have happened. John doesn’t mind, my friend. And he’s finally loosened up enough to make it kinda obvious that he doesn’t.

And John assumes Sherlock knows how John feels about him, at least to some degree. He thinks “best friend” at least is a given. He doesn’t understand that Sherlock isn’t incapable of feeling things, he’s just emotionally immature, and he’s no good at evaluating his place in other people’s hearts. It’s a mistake on John’s part to overestimate Sherlock’s ability to understand how John feels about him. It’s a mistake to think Sherlock can’t return those feelings in spades. But these are mistakes Sherlock routinely asks him to make.

Sherlock wants to be seen as a high-functioning sociopath and a deductive genius, so John accepts that about him and behaves accordingly.

John is deeply moved by Sherlock’s best man speech, and wants Mary to stop him from hugging Sherlock, because he desperately wants to hug Sherlock and thinks Sherlock won’t dig that. And look at the hug: Sherlock behaves as if it’s not happening. We’ve never seen Sherlock hug John. Which might really summarize the whole thing, from John’s point of view: he adores Sherlock. He loves Sherlock. He even lusts after Sherlock. And he doesn’t keep it a secret in this episode, really. And while Sherlock might say some of the words right (that one time at the wedding), John hugs him and Sherlock doesn’t hug him back.

I think you’ll find that it’s not John who staying away from Sherlock in His Last Vow. It’s Sherlock staying away from John. Which makes sense, because he’s picking up a drug habit and romancing Janine, and also having a bit of a strop over the fact that John has effectively chosen someone else over him. But John is missing Sherlock terribly. John says he hasn’t seen Sherlock “in ages,” and Mary corrects him, “a month,” like it’s nothing. But it’s not nothing, it’s agony for John, and he hates it. He’s demonstrably miserable, and Billy points it out. The camera points it out too, and his dreams point it out. He wants to be with Sherlock, but Sherlock won’t have him. And John has no idea why.

And it’s John who takes Sherlock home in a cab. John steps in to take care of him. And then he finds out Sherlock has a girlfriend, which, obviously, bends his brain in half. He is rattled, distracted, and jealous. And you can see how distraught he is later that evening, after he’s clearly spent the entire day feeling weird and uncomfortable and probably irrationally angry about it, because when Sherlock asks him to describe what will happen if he uses a keycard on Magnussen’s lift, John takes the scenario a bit too far and imagines Sherlock getting his head kicked in.

So there’s John having some very big feelings about Sherlock abandoning him for a woman, even though that’s kind of irrational. If your shippy heart doesn’t do a little 360 spin around your chest at that point, it really should, because it’s very clear that John considers Sherlock his, even though John’s now married. Because if Sherlock is capable of loving someone, goddamn it, it better not be anyone but John! And then what does Sherlock do? He calls loving him “human error.” Whoops, don’t get too close there, John. You love him, too. Better keep that little detail under wraps from now on. He obviously doesn’t want to hear it.

All the other stuff. Sherlock getting shot. John sitting by his bedside. We don’t see it (possibly because Sherlock is unconscious for a lot of it), but it clearly happened. Sherlock escapes, John goes on a hunt for Sherlock, and fails. And sitting in Baker Street, in his chair, which Sherlock has brought back for him, John realizes who Sherlock would protect. He knows. It’s him. He knows when that phone rings what Sherlock is going to say to him. He knows who shot Sherlock. And Mary confirms it for him. And when Sherlock gets back on the gurney because he’s bleeding internally, John practically has a panic attack. I dunno, John is not making a secret of his feelings here. There’s no “no homo” going on here.

Are you disappointed because their goodbye scene is so restrained? Well, if the love of your life, your soulmate, were leaving you (again), what would you say? John is grateful, I think he’s overwhelmed by what Sherlock did for him and his wife, he recognizes the incredible sacrifice, but he doesn’t know Sherlock is going to his death. What do you say? There’s nothing you can say. Remember they’re being watched. They both need to keep it together. They both barely do. They’re not going to start making out, that wouldn’t make any sense. There’s too much that’s unspoken between them and there’s no way to fit it all into the tiny space they have left at that point. And they both know it. They’ve made their choices. They love each other to the best of their abilities, and I think they both know that’s true at that point, they just don’t know what the best of their abilities actually means yet. And there’s no time to sort it out anymore.

But, wait! There is! Thanks to Moriarty, there is!

And what happens next is a story for another day! Thankfully we have another series or two, at least, to hear it.

No, I’m not disappointed in John in series 3. This is an epic love story. I think he did the best he could, and he’s more upfront about his love for Sherlock in this series than he ever has been. This series was the story of Sherlock’s emotional progress, largely, but John isn’t an unfeeling stump in it.