Will the Real John Watson Please Stand-Up

 (Sherlock Meta about fan fiction by sherlockcharacteranalysis)

So, when I first started reading Sherlock fanfiction, I tried to pinpoint, for every one I read, what exactly about it made it work or not work for me. For me, ultimately, it always came down to the characters. If the characters felt real and fundamentally true to their BBC originals, then I liked the work, even if the plot was a bit jumbled at times.

What I’ve noticed also, over the many fanfictions I have since read, is that John Watson is a much more difficult character to write than Sherlock Holmes. Almost any fic I consider decent as a whole seems to have a pretty good characterization of Sherlock, but I’ve read works that I would consider really well written that doesn’t seem to get John completely right.

I think this happens for two reasons: 1. Sherlock’s personality allows for more interpretations than John’s does and 2. John’s personality is deceptively simple when actually it is as complex and multi-faceted as Sherlock’s.

Sherlock’s personality is loud, and the contradictions inherent in them are out bright and clear in the open. He’s ridiculously confident of his abilities and yet at the same time strangely susceptible to others’ admiration and praise. He claims not to care for people, yet risks his life over and over in service of the greater good, whatever his reasons. He shows kindness when you wouldn’t expect him to, callousness at the most inopportune moments, and from time to time, fierce love for those around him. He’s an enigma, and any writer knows that they have to find a coherent way to reconcile these aspects of his personality in order to do his character justice.

However, with Sherlock, there’s often a great disconnect between what he shows and what’s going on in his head (it’s in fact the source of all the seemingly paradoxical aspects of his personality). What he shows only indirectly conveys what he means. The enigmatic aspect of Sherlock gives the writer a great deal of creativity to fill in that mysterious inner world with whatever they see fit. Sherlock’s character requires that we make up our own interpretations of who he is.

John, on the other hand, is a much more straightforward person than Sherlock in that his actions much more directly convey what he thinks, feels, and believes on the inside. Therefore, the writer cannot stray as far from what we are literally shown about John on the show. Sherlock is a character with many solutions, but with John I think there are at most only a few. Moreover, John is a quieter person than Sherlock, and he doesn’t have the same degree of eccentricities that are just screaming for an explanation. So it’s much easier to overlook important aspects of his personality and end up with a John Watson which, though makes sense as a whole and resembles the original in some way, is missing some crucial aspect of the character.

John Watson is both a doctor and a soldier, which says loads about his personality. He’s both a caregiver and a protector; they both have equal weight in his personality, and mischaracterization of John often happens when one of these aspects is given a disproportionate significance compared to the other. I’m thinking of too-nice John or conversely, too-violent/angry John.

The other important thing about John Watson is that he is the most important person to Sherlock.  Sherlock loves and respects John more than anyone else in his life (including, I’m almost certain, himself), and it’s crucial that any characterization of John be able to show us why. Why has John Watson, and no one else, captured Sherlock Holmes’ heart? I’ve read many John Watson’s who, while interesting characters in their own right, doesn’t seem like the kind of person that Sherlock would love and let himself be influenced by.

To me anyway, the reason John is so special to Sherlock is twofold. One, John admires and appreciates Sherlock’s intellectual abilities for their own sake, not just for the practical results they deliver. (As did Moriarty and Irene, both of who captured Sherlock’s interest.) This means, by the way, that John needs to be pretty intelligent himself, even if he’s not a creative genius. Secondly, and most importantly, John believes in Sherlock in a way that no one else does: he believes that Sherlock Holmes is a good person (or even more:”the best man and the most human, human being I have ever known”), not just potentially (as Lestrade does), but as he is already. He treats Sherlock as just another person with both virtues and flaws, emotions and desires, and the ability to decide for himself what’s best for his own existence.

John loves and accepts Sherlock as he is, and John believes that Sherlock is someone amazing and good and capable of being understood, which I don’t think anyone else does. Even the others who love Sherlock, like Mycroft, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and Molly, probably would like to change some aspect of Sherlock’s personality and/or don’t consider him fully understandable.  Moreover, Sherlock Holmes also believes that John Watson is a Good Person. John retains his composure under the heaviest of pressures and always, always, always tries to do the right thing according to his beliefs. This is something that I think Sherlock actually aspires to himself; he’s just far less clear as to what those beliefs are which leads to huge errors in judgment like risking his life to play the pill game with the cabbie. So the fact that John does this all the time would definitely be extremely admirable to Sherlock, even if he rarely says so. And so, for this Very Good Person to love Sherlock completely unconditionally the way that he does is beyond priceless to Sherlock (or anyone, surely).

So, any characterization of John which goes against this fundamental relationship between Sherlock and John just screams WRONG to me. I’m thinking of any story where John tries to terminate his relationship with Sherlock, or where he won’t forgive Sherlock for Reichenbach or Baskerville or even worse, because Sherlock didn’t act in some conventionally expected way. Especially baffling are the ones where John chooses Mycroft over Sherlock, or becomes some kind of assassin/vengeful killer. The whole point of John Watson is that he is an unassailable moral anchor for Sherlock. A John Watson who would admire Mycroft’s Machiavellian personality or be driven to obviously immoral acts of violence would not have earned Sherlock’s love and would most definitely not have inspired the positive changes in Sherlock that we saw on the show. I doubt such a John Watson would even be capable of committing to and loving Sherlock the way that he so obviously does.

Anyway, with all that aside, here are a list of fanfictions that I think really highlight John Watson’s character. (There are definitely others with good characterizations out there as well—basically any fanfiction I’ve recommended does unless I mention otherwise, but these really stood out to me):

Only Intelligent by Basser

Here, John is an amazing human being who will do anything to help Sherlock, but he also doesn’t put up with Sherlock’s enormous amount of bullshit. That’s John Watson in a nutshell.

To Light Another’s Path by Beautiful Fiction

Here, John is even better than how he is on the show, displaying an emotional understanding of Sherlock that I don’t think he currently has but will easily get to after some more time with the mad detective.

Sympathy for the Devil and Mycroft Holmes by scifigrl47

I love John in this, even though I think John on show definitely does not have this level of astuteness. Like above though, I can definitely see him getting there after some more time dealing with the Holmes brothers. (John was already way more astute about Mycroft’s schemes in Reichenbach than he was in The Great Game, for example.) Yet the idealized version here makes it extremely clear all that is good and admirable about John Watson.

(And here’s hoping I won’t make the same characterization mistakes in my own writing!)