The Deconstruction of John Watson

 (Sherlock meta by mild-lunacy)

I’ve been thinking about the John characterization in Hubblegleeflower’s post-S3 fic ’In the Dark Hours’, in the context of S4 and specifically The Lying Detective. It really seems on-point, even prescient. I was also thinking about what Ivy said about John’s inherent violence, how “when John is bad, he is terrible”, and how disappointed in himself he was in TLD. The fic makes me think about what John must have wondered about himself *before* Mary’s idealization to have the dissonance hit him *so* hard, that he’d have to punish himself and Sherlock and lash out so extremely. In the fic, a younger John sounds like shades of Sherlock– wondering if there something ‘wrong’ with him for being addicted to danger, for getting off on the rush, enjoying these things to make himself feel alive. That tendency to say and act the right way in order to 'seem normal’– he actually has that in common with Sherlock, except that (of course) John is much better at it.

On the other hand, I agree with John’s own conclusion in the fic and with Ivy that John is actually not 'like that’. He’s definitely not like Mary (as per all those endless debates post-HLV); he *is* a good moral compass after all *because* “he knows exactly what it means to be pointed the wrong way”. At the same time, the fact that he’d wondered about himself seems realistic. Seems *likely*, even. If Sherlock is someone who has tried– and ultimately failed– to make himself into a high-functioning sociopath after Eurus, as I wrote recently, John is coming at his persona from the other direction. Trying to be *normal*, trying to do good, trying to be someone he thinks– he knows– he’s not.

A lot of people depended on John to be Series 1 John even after Series 3, essentially, even though Sherlock told us in His Last Vow that John is addicted to a 'certain lifestyle’ and 'abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people’. John is not surprised, he just says *Mary* wasn’t supposed to be 'like that’; he’s not happy about his attraction to all these things but he was *aware* of it, and he wanted to get away from it. It seems to be that instead of an arc, what we have here is a sort of deconstruction. We started out with John and Sherlock in opposite corners in Series 1, and they’re in opposite corners again in Series 4, except they’re the flipside of each other. Sherlock is the 'good man’ even though he’d shot someone to protect someone else, and John… John is a bit 'not good’, but he has a heart. He’s still human. On the abstract level as well as implicitly, being truly established partners in The Final Problem, they’ve met in the middle.

I know I’ve said yesterday that my problem is that Sherlock’s arc encompasses and sort of *consumes* John’s role, with John not really being able to match Sherlock’s growth due to being the deuteragonist. I agree with @plaidadder’s comment on @ravenmorganleigh’s post, about the growing fannish consensus that “John and Sherlock’s emotional arcs are no longer intertwined” in Series 4. I do still disagree that this means Sherlock’s growth in Series 4 is somehow more about Eurus and Mycroft (and Mary!) instead. Certainly (but more subtly), John’s arc also didn’t suddenly become about Mary either, if nothing else then because everything (but everything!) in this show has always been about Sherlock. Although this means Mary’s not the *point* in The Lying Detective, in many ways it also means that unfortunately, John is not the point either. I do agree with the analysis in that the plot of The Lying Detective is essentially *all* orchestrated by Sherlock (including John’s beating, which was demonstrably part of Sherlock’s plan to stop Smith). The only bits Sherlock didn’t predict were to do with Eurus, and more broadly the fact that Mary was shown to be wrong, because she didn’t know John the way Sherlock did. As I said, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this is because everything is about Sherlock. 

Basically, Sherlock never had to manipulate John into saving him. Rather, he needed to save John Watson in a different way– and in the end, Sherlock did.

I think a lot of this confusion has to do with a misreading of Mary, and Sherlock and John’s relationship to her, or a sort of… overcompensation, I think. Like, a lot of us thought (or rather, hoped) that it’s all going to go to hell after S3, in a way that would justify the fandom’s suspicion and dislike of Mary as well as the fandom’s resistance to the surface reading of His Last Vow. In other words, she’s going to pay, somehow. We were so deeply polarized by His Last Vow, with such a long and bitter fandom divide forming on Mary, that virtually no one actually took the time to synthesize a Mary characterization that actually *included* the facets of devoted (but unfortunately unsuitable and unhappily married) wife and the cold assassin. People were *so* certain that either she *couldn’t* have shot Sherlock if she truly cared about John, or the whole attempted murder thing was genuinely nothing, simply 'surgery’ as Sherlock claimed, because what’s a little murder between friends? Neither option made sense by itself. And so, Series 4 broadly made no sense to people (without really extreme rationalization) because the answer was always 'both’, and The Six Thatchers went as hard in the direction of sacrifice as His Last Vow went for armed assault and implied threats. There was no bridge, and so a lot of connections were just never made, it seems.

I’ll admit that His Last Vow set things up in a way that was (in retrospect) difficult to fix, and I agree with the other point that S4’s characterization issues started in His Last Vow. I just don’t think that Sherlock’s acceptance and forgiveness as well as John’s intense anger (and projected guilt) at Sherlock about Mary are meant to whitewash absolutely everything about Mary’s behavior, *including* things like her abandonment and drugging Sherlock in The Six Thatchers. As The Abominable Bride showed clearly, Sherlock has *issues*; he has severe self-esteem issues in terms of relationships, and specifically in regards to John. Obviously, we can’t just take him at face value when he says Mary’s actions 'conferred a value’ upon his life; I don’t know, I think it’s obvious that this isn’t rational or somehow deserved. Anyway, the kindest interpretation is that she *shot* him but wanted to atone, to do better, to do the right thing in the only way she could. Otherwise, this is about Sherlock and John and their existing issues, although the narrative simply focuses on Sherlock’s agency… to a fault, really.

It’s true (I think) that Sherlock genuinely tried to include Mary because he liked her, and I even think Mary honestly did like him (though of course that didn’t mean she wouldn’t shoot him), but it was always about John. As Ivy said, John is the central figure in both their lives, so both of them have had to accommodate the presence of the other. They’ve *both* done that. I know it requires a certain kindness to Mary to accept this, which may not come naturally, but I think you really cannot parse John or Sherlock’s motivations anymore at this point without accepting that point. To say that Mary (or Mycroft) *replaced* John’s place in Sherlock’s narrative is going much too far, although I do think Eurus did take over and expand on *Moriarty’s* place as Sherlock’s Shadow and antagonist. Anyway, the problem is indeed that Sherlock and John’s arcs are clearly not intertwined in Series 4, which is why John doesn’t get a full, explicitly shown climax. But this is because as I’ve said, John lacks an arc (as deuteragonist), not because it’s now remade in Mary’s image. If he had an arc with Mary, we’d see an actual resolution *through* Mary; instead, Sherlock’s actions and reactions make the difference. That is not to say Mary (and Irene, and Eurus) haven’t mediated and acted as conduits for both characters’ development. Of course, I still agree with @delurkingdetective’s response to Raven’s post. I just think there’s a big difference between a conduit and a focal point. Mary may be a *motivation* for John or Sherlock’s actions, but that doesn’t mean she’s the underlying *reason*. It’s one thing to critique the show for using women as conduits, or Moffat and Gatiss for being too conservative to write this arc between two men explicitly. It’s another thing to mistake a conduit for a character of true importance, a character whose agency truly makes a difference rather an *obstacle*, even if it’s not about Mary or Irene being *romantic* obstacles. They are definitely still treated by the narrative as something for the male protagonist to deal with and ultimately defuse or overcome.

Unfortunately, although I’d like to use the Mary of 'In the Dark Hours’ for insight, the fact is that she is something like a dark conduit herself, a presence mainly felt through her absence from John’s life. In that sense, she is similar to S4 Mary, although I suppose most readers would say it’s very different because this fic’s version is clearly an emotionally abusive character who’s *labeled* so. The truth is, of course, Mary is just as problematic in Series 4 as ever, and John’s relationship to her never improved while she lived (and in fact, he cheated on her, just as he did in the fic, although it was always indirectly). It’s more satisfying to see Mary labeled and understood as abusive, but at the same time… I don’t know if it’s realistic. More importantly, I think this is the flaw of focusing so entirely on Sherlock, and avoiding a truly joint arc and/or canon Johnlock. If Mary *was* abusive, John would need an independent arc to deal with it; more realistically, Mary would have to actually stay longer on the show. In the fic, Sherlock tried to heal him emotionally just as he tries in The Lying Detective, except this goes a lot deeper, and they talk a lot more (and it involves touching, claiming, binding John to himself). Not that I’d ever need or expect the show to go there, but my point is that Mary’s impact *couldn’t* be too deep because then you couldn’t hand-wave it by Mary simply giving her blessings by The Final Problem. In Series 4, John’s issues are more about his self-image, his conception of himself as a moral man, as someone who’s capable of being his 'best self’. Sherlock doesn’t *clearly* say it’s John who makes him better, but Mycroft already said it as far back as ASiP. It’s obvious. It’s also obvious that it’s *Sherlock* who makes John better and he always had. John is just doubting that; doubting himself, doubting Sherlock. He’s ashamed, lost, angry at himself, wishing he could have been the kind of man who Mary had envisioned (even though he’s already the right man for *Sherlock* and is exactly what Sherlock needs– as he implicitly recognizes by The Final Problem). I just think the show expects us to know that implicitly, to understand that without spending the time to spell it out… and they also use female characters as tools to communicate all this, unfortunately. It doesn’t quite… work.

Anyway, the John of 'In the Dark Hours’ struggles very much with that sense of shame, with all the guilt issues. Even if The Lying Detective  John had somewhat different motivations for it, I still think it’s a source of ongoing fracture for John, and it seems critical to all his worst, most violent and stonewalling behavior in the show. Remember in His Last Vow, John exploded into violence (frightening Mrs Hudson) when he assumed Sherlock was implying Mary was his *fault*. He clearly has a severe reaction to that idea, a violent reaction, and specifically with Mary, with his choices. He thinks everything is always his *fault*, and then, of course, he also thinks Sherlock is brilliant, superhuman, can do anything. Could have saved Mary if he wanted; he promised. So, that was Sherlock’s fault. An excuse, as Martin Freeman said. An excuse to let all the anger out, to succumb, to dissociate. And Mary’s hallucination is a sign of dissociating, isn’t it? Not that she’s literally a split personality like with Eurus, of course, but she’s always saying the things John thinks but can’t or won’t say: monster. Posh boy. One of the reasons I do think John has progressed in S4 ('cause even if it’s not a full arc, neither is it a *retread*, in other words), is because of this new insight into John. Series 3 was about Sherlock’s Dark Night of the Soul, and John’s S4 version is a bit condensed: sparked by Mary and mediated by Sherlock. We see John’s darkest corners, but in the end they are simply accepted and integrated because they always have been, by Sherlock. With Sherlock, John is always safe. With Sherlock, John is contained, and even his worst violence is both expected and accounted for.

I think I just continue to struggle with the execution, in part because of the differences between written work and film, as well as issues of genre. 'In the Dark Hours’ is a supremely internally focused fic, in a way that the show could never be. Everything had *always* been mediated by metaphor and external action on the show, from the very beginning. Women were used as the markers and conduits since the start– not just Irene in A Scandal in Belgravia, but Soo Lin Yao in The Blind Banker, who’s a really blatant Sherlock mirror. Perhaps… as much as I wish we could have continued on track with The Lying Detective, and as much as I accept the many valid critiques of the execution and Moffat and Gatiss’s self-indulgence and narrative conservativism in Series 4, this is what fanfic is for, in the end. These conversations.