[ SECRET POST #5450 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5450 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 22 secrets from Secret Submission Post #779.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Show: "John, are ya gay?"
"Nope!"
"I bet you're gay."
"Nope. Only into the ladies."
"You sure you're not gay, mate?"
"Can't hear you - too busy fucking women on top of this John's Not Gay parade float"

Fandom: "I can't believe the showrunners led us on like that and then didn't even make John gay!"

[(Anonymous)]

"If anyone still cares, I'm not gay."
"Well I am. Look at us both."

Don't pretend that people weren't led into it. It was intentional. It was one of the few genuine cases of queerbaiting.

[(Anonymous)]

90+% of fandom and zero casual viewers ever thought anything was happening there, but sure. Whatever makes you feel better.

[(Anonymous)]

I think what the writers were going for was a sense of "With the way they're committed to each other, the fact that they aren't gay for each other is irrelevant."

Unfortunately, the writing wasn't very good, so it ended up coming across a lot more like, "No homo, definitely no homo. Unless... Lol, jk... Or are we?"

I definitely never thought Johnlock was going to be canon, but I do feel like the writing was grating and didn't really track the way they wanted it to. Also, "They're so close that the fact they're not together Like That is irrelevant" is not the brave and meaningful storytelling a lot of writers think it is, IMO.

[(Anonymous)]

Because it's not like always being assumed gay and denying it is ever done as plot to foreshadow that a character is gay and in the closet/denial....

I only saw a couple episodes of Sherlock and don't care one way or another about Johnlock, but in principle this is a bad way to a make your case against it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah... it's not exactly rare for a character who's supposed to be in denial, or wink-wink-nudge-nudge not straight, to basically have a running dialogue that goes like "I'm not gay, I just have an extremely close and important bond with another man, but totes not gay, but this other character kinda implies we're in love, but I'm super not gay!!!!!" Usually it's played for laughs though.

[(Anonymous)]

Is that really a thing in mainstream media? No, really, name some examples of prominently gay characters who start out as running gay jokes and then come out. Queer characters in mainstream media either show up queer, or the writers develop a "coming out" arc for some existing character whose straightness hasn't been too well-established previously.

That trope IS a thing in fanfic.

[(Anonymous)]

There’s Mac from It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia, for one. And really, there’s reason the tropes ‘Have I Mentioned I’m Heterosexual Today?’ and ‘Armored Closet Gay’ exist on TV Tropes, and that’s just the name of the trope there. It goes by other names elsewhere, such as ‘The Homophobic Hypocrite’, as displayed in this Rantasmo video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sD_vMrmX4c4

So yes, this kind of thing does appear in mainstream media, and isn’t just some device invented for and only used in fanfic.

That doesn’t mean that it’s justified to act like a character will always end up gay just because of a running joke. And the running jokes themselves can frequently be a offensive themselves, being based purely on stereotypes and outdated views. So actually going down the path that the fandom wants when there’s no real basis but jokes and stereotypes wouldn’t always be a great idea for representation.

Plus, I just personally think JohnLock would have been a terrible relationship, in BBC Sherlock at least. So queerbaited or not, I’m not the least bit upset the writers never went down that path.

[(Anonymous)]

Arrested Development is a pretty blatant one.