Talk:Johnlock

Some unused sources from my draft

Farghaly, Nadine (2015-12-23). Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes: Essays on Film and Television Adaptations Since 2009. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-2281-1.

Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century : essays on new adaptations. Internet Archive. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland. 2012. ISBN 978-0-7864-6840-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Gloudeman, Nikki. "Is Sherlock Holmes Gay?". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2025-02-04.

Fathallah, Judith (July 17, 2014). "Moriarty's Ghost: Or the Queer Disruption of the BBC's Sherlock". Television & New Media. doi:10.1177/1527476414543528. Rusalkii (talk) 20:02, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 12:23, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that fans of Johnlock used "the set designer's fondness for elephants" to make the case that their preferred pairing would be written into the show?

• Source: "....analyses that identify every aspect of the show, from the cases to the other characters to the lighting design to the set designer's fondness for elephants, as all being clues to a canonical Sherlock/John relationship?", https://www.google.se/books/edition/Queerbaiting_and_Fandom/zrG8DwAAQBAJ page 91

• • ALT1: ... that the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in Sherlock is one of the most studied examples of queerbaiting? Source: "Scholarship on the 'queerbaiting' tactic has focused primarily on the BBC's Sherlock (Fathallah, 2015; Sheehan, 2015)." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1367877916631050, note that this article was published in 2016 so it's possible this information is out of date
  • ALT2: ... that well before fans of Sherlock shipped Johnlock, Graham Robb argued that Sherlock Holmes had a "distinctly homosexual lifestyle"? Source: "Holmes has a distinctly homosexual lifestyle", https://archive.org/details/strangershomosex0000robb, page 264, book was published in 2003
  • Reviewed: Did you know nominations/Christ's Entry into Jerusalem
  • Comment: Hooks in order of my preference, but pick whichever is your favorite. Will fill in QPQ later today, I wanted to get the hooks written up.

Created by Rusalkii (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 6 past nominations.

Rusalkii (talk) 20:45, 22 February 2025 (UTC).

• This is a really, really interesting article on such an interesting topic and I really think that with a little bit more expansion it deserves a chance for GA! There are no sourcing issues or any other issues I can see, article is long enough, and earwig does not show any copyright violations. I have also run the IABOT so more of the sources have now been archived :) QPQ has also now been done. I have two small suggestions (though they are not make or break) - I think the lead could be slightly expanded, and I suggest that the "Queerbaiting" subheading could maybe perhaps be changed to something like "Accusations/discussions of queerbaiting"? However, the article is good for go to DYK - Well done, you should be very proud! :) I think ALT1 or ALT2 should be used (with a slight preference for ALT1) - ALT0 is also good, but I think some readers could find it a bit difficult to understand and hence I think the second and third hooks would be best. DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 06:17, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Also slightly prefer alt 1. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:53, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Happy to go with Alt1 if people without context find Alt1 confusing. It was rather difficult to write the hooks (and article!) without contantly slipping into unexplained fandom jargon and I'm afraid that left the hook rather convoluated (the way I'd phrase this in fandom contexts would be "... that Johnlock shippers used "the set designer's fondness for elephants" to argue that their ship would become canon?", and I think you can sort of still see the circumlocutions.

Re: GAN, I've tried to nominate at GAN twice now and I just find something about the process really stressful, I think because the wait is so long that all my excitement about the article disappears and it turns into this unpleasant obligation. I've changed the Queerbaiting heading. I'll think about the lead, it definitely could use expansion but I left it so short because I wasn't really sure what to say. Rusalkii (talk) 22:18, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

If it helps at all; if you bring it to GAN, I would be happy to review it immediately :) I think this has a chance to get to GA and I'd love to help you! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 06:39, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Not sure about these sources

The Cassandra Collier thesis might be dubious per WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Also, the WP:RS-ness of the Wendy C. Fries quote is unclear as currently cited. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I was iffy about the thesis too, but it's cited in a couple other papers. I can try to dig those up tomorrow when it's less midnight.

The Fries quote was in a published book, I'll try to adjust the citation. If that doesn't fix the issue feel free to remove, I'm not inclined to go to bat for it too hard. Rusalkii (talk) 06:50, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I adjusted the citation, and it seems fine, but my default assumption is that any name we let talk to the readers needs a. Author, writer, academic, alt-med blogger, what have you. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Per the book and Amazon , Fries is an author, added that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:02, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think Collier has a great way to describe her. "Master's student in gender studies" is not particularly helpful imo - and looking at that source I just realized it's a master's thesis not a bachelor's thesis, oops. You can see a bit of her career after her masters here, but describing her as a gender studies lecturer seems somewhat misleading given that she wasn't at the time of publication. Rusalkii (talk) 18:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Since it's master's, it probably fits better as EL/further reading than source in the article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:08, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I did dither about this, but one of the specific things called out as making a master's thesis more likely to be reliable is being cited elsewhere, which Collier's is in several of the academic sources here (, , google scholar pages gives 20 cites. While that certainly isn't revolutionary it shows a certain degree of impact/respect by other scholarly sources, imo. I'm going to see what in there I can cite elsewhere, let's see if perhaps I can sidestep the question without removing much content. Rusalkii (talk) 06:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Okay, that's two down, but that's the easy part, both of those had a second source saying pretty much the same thing right there. There's also "a BBC report on its interest in developing LGBT content", which I am very sure I read in multiple sources but am having trouble tracking down, stand by... and  Done.

The hard part: I lean on her very heavily for the last paragraph of "The pairing". The problem here is that the vast majority of the sources talk about the fandom, not the pairing, and yet it feels wrong not to include anything at all about how it's actually written and what people are getting out of it. I did spend a fair bit of time trying to find higher-quality sources here, or at least more variety, and came up pretty blank. I think there's a bit in Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over The World, I think I gave up on extracting that because it's all rather vague but I'll see what I can do.

This section is by far my weakest source-wise, I also use a fandom blogger who does analysis of AO3 stats every year (I think this is okay because it's just reporting numbers in one convenient place we could check ourselves, but I recognize this may be wistful thinking here). Rusalkii (talk) 06:32, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

WP:PARITY, second paragraph, might be on your side here. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:38, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Also, re:surnames, for fictional characters I believe the style is to use how they're typically referred to within the story and/or by the author, which for the TV show is first names. Rusalkii (talk) 06:51, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rusalkii Didn't know that, I was going by WP-knee-jerk, and Elementary was in my head. I can change it back, but is this mentioned in a MOS or essay somewhere? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:01, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Tried to find a YouTube compilation of Jonny Lee Miller yelling WATSON!!, but no luck. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It's mentioned at MOS:SURNAME. I haven't seen the series, so I'll follow your lead here, I'll change it back if you say so. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

My memory of the series is to be honest extremely fuzzy and I never did see more than the first season, but you can see some examples of the characters using first names here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series). And the media uses first names as well, ex . Rusalkii (talk) 18:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

This source is pretty respectable. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:17, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

(Note that we should use surnames when referring to the original series characters -this convention is a pretty convenient way to distinguish between Holmes, Victorian gentleman, and Sherlock, 21st century detective.) Rusalkii (talk) 19:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Rusalkii, might interest you. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:24, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Johnlock/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Rusalkii (talk · contribs) 00:06, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk · contribs) 01:52, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey! I will be reviewing this :) Expect comments by the end of the weekend. I really love this article and am glad it has been made as it is such an interesting topic. I checked earwig and there are no issues there so I will do a thorough review in the weekend. However, in the meantime, this article could do with 1 or 2 more free images, so if you could add them that would be great :) DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 01:52, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, I did look but I couldn't find anything that seemed obviously fitting. There's no freely licensed fanart I can find (though perhaps I can replicate my success with Mpreg and get some) and screenshots from the show would be lovely but of course not free. I suppose I could add images of Moffat and Gattis, do you think that would be an improvement?

I got a screenshot of the most common tags used with the pairing on tumblr, which is arguably original research but be converted to a chart similar to File:Mpreg fic tags.png or used as is (I think. I am not actually 100% on the copyright status of interface screenshots, I'd need to double check that first). A screenshot of what you get if you search AO3 for the pairing would also be great but the individual summaries would definitely be copyrighted even if the interface would not be. the first image here is freely licensced, but I don't find it particularly elucidating.

( is such a perfect illustration of the entire TJLC mindset that I am tempted to hunt down cupidford and ask if they'd release the image, but probably this would be somewhat out of line) Rusalkii (talk) 02:45, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Denkmal für Sherlock Holmes und Dr. Watson Moskau

Sherlock Holmes & Watson - The Greek Interpreter - Sidney Paget

Hubert Willis as Dr. Watson, Eille Norwood as Sherlock Holmes and Douglas Payne as Peterson in 'The Blue Carbuncle' (1923)

We could use something more or less generic, but it would be mostly decoration, I think. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:42, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey, apologies for the lateness in reviewing this! I have just gone through and I first want to say well done! It is extremely interesting and you have done amazingly. Here are my comments on how to improve:

Full review:

Lead - I think it can be expanded upon a bit.

Background:

1.)

2.) "In Strangers – Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century," - Can you please clarify if this is a book/essay/film etc?

3.) "in Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World" - same as above

4.) Could you please briefly explain or link Fandom?

It'd be nice to explain it further but I don't think that works with the flow of the sentences there, linked. Rusalkii (talk) 18:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

The pairing:

1.) "were tagged Sherlock Holmes/John Watson" - I think this could use a rewording e.g. "were tagged as "Sherlock Holmes/John Watson""

2.) "The same year, it was the 72nd pairing in terms of new works added" - Could this please be clarified? Was it ranked 72nd?

3.) "and avoiding the homonormativity that other slash ships often fall into." - This is very interesting; can it be expanded upon a bit?

4.) "Johnlock fanfiction often frames their relationship as "fixation or obsession", which creates less healthy relationships" - Can this be expanded upon too? And what does "creates less healthy relationships" mean? I was confused when I read it

5.) I found the last sentence difficult to understand - could this please be expanded upon or clarified?

I'm going to wait to rework anything about this paragraph (points 3-6) until I've reread the Collier source. Rusalkii (talk)

How's that? (Figured I'd wait until after work but I'm actually waiting on a thing to finish running and pretending I don't have any other work tasks.) Rusalkii (talk) 20:25, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

6.) The quote box should have a ref

Fandom:

1.) "Johnlock fans are usually "young, female, queer, and neurodivergent"." - I think this should be changed to something like "X believes that..." or "Statistics show that..."

Hmm. So that's the quote in Hoffman , but they cite Anselmo for this line, which I have just reread, and that extensively discusses the fans being female and queer ("my research on the Tumblr community dedicated to Sherlock and John’s love story (a community known as “Johnlock”) suggests that an overwhelming majority of fans identify as female-born and subscribe to a queer identity.” This includes young trans men and asexual/agender people. I must add that, in my eighteen months of observation-participation on Tumblr, I have never encountered a member of the Johnlock community who identified as heteronormative and cis male." but explicitly denies them beig exlusively young ("My use of the neologism “girl fan” is thus consciously charged. In the context of this article, the moniker deliberately defies age brackets, being applied to describe female-identified fans in their teens and early twenties, as well as thirtysomethings and middle-aged bloggers." ) and doesn't mention neurodivergence at all. I think this could use some reworking, let me think on it for a bit... Rusalkii (talk)

Okay, reworked. I found that quote striking enough to include. This does drop the "neurodivergent" which I think is useful, I may readd it upon going through the source again. Does this address the attribution concerns? female + queer is found in pretty much every single source that discusses this at all, I could attribute it further but I think that would be kind of false precision. Rusalkii (talk) 20:25, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Feel free to readd the neurodivergent bit, I do not hvae an issue with it. DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 19:14, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

2.) """the serial numbers filed off"" - What does this mean? And did the fanfiction remain a Sherlock Holmes related one?

3.) "Some Johnlock shippers lashed out against Amanda Abbington, who played John's love interest and wife in the third season" - Can this be expanded upon (e.g. why were fans angry?)?

There's some more about this in "Mary in the Middle", I remember thinking it could use some expansion since the ways the show + shippers interact with Mary is interesting, let me take a look. (But the short answer is "because she was a love interest for John who wasn't Sherlock", I've added that in). Rusalkii (talk)

Right, I reread that entire source and actually it's about how Mary is "used to ensure that the performance of sexuality in BBC Sherlock was mainly heterosexual", which is relevant and interesting but I'm having trouble extracting a good summary for the article. It also doesn't really belong in the "fandom" section. Rusalkii (talk) 20:55, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Worked it in a bit further up. Rusalkii (talk) 05:41, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

4.) "instead favoring explicitly heterosexual interpretations" - What does this mean?

5.) "Some fans reported mental health issues following their disappointment with the fourth season" - Can this be clarified as to whether it is because they wanted Johnlock to feature?

6.) In this section, I think that some of the "Johnlock"s should be replaced e.g. "Fans that believed in TJLC became so convinced that the fourth season would end with Johnlock" could "Fans that believed in TJLC became so convinced that the fourth season would end with Holmes and Watson getting together"

I don't see any other instances where this change makes sense, where else were you thinking? Rusalkii (talk)

Accusations of Queerbaiting:

1.) "and while denying it in commentary" - I think it should be "and also denying it in commentary" (If you could clarify what commentary means that would also help)

Change to "while denying it" without the and since I think "while" is actually important here (emphasizes that they're doing it simultaneously). Rusalkii (talk)

2.) "Characters in the show repeatedly mistake Sherlock and John's relationship as romantic,[38] which John denies with increased frustration or anger" - I think this sentence could be higher up in the article as it focuses on the relationship more rather than accusations of queerbaiting.

Hmm, I see the point here but I do think this is constantly mentioned when discussing how it may be queerbaiting, since it's one of the central reasons why people think this. I will try to contextualize that a bit. Rusalkii (talk) 18:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

On further reflection I think you're right. There's some context that could be added the the queerbaiting section related to this but the way it ended up it's a better fir in the pairing section. Rusalkii (talk) 05:41, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

3.) "while elsewhere" - where/when?

In various interviews and probably also social media, I am not sure mentioning specific interviews is useful here - my source is commentary saying that he repeatedly denied this. I could add "in interviews" but I'm not sure this adds much? Rusalkii (talk) 18:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

4.) Who are Moffat and Gatiss again? I think reminding the readers would help.

5.) The quote box should have a ref and I think "The Gay Elephant Meta in the Room" should be italicised

6.) "have expressed frustration at fans interpreting the relationship between the leads as anything but platonic" - Could this be expanded upon?

Yes. This will require some digging through my sources but I definitely recall extensive discussion of the relationship between the fans and showrunners in this respect. Rusalkii (talk) 18:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Expanded that and added some more content to the queerbaiting section. How's that? Rusalkii (talk) 06:50, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Great work! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 19:23, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

7.) "Sherlock is one of the most prominent examples of media accused of queerbaiting, and one of the primary sources of academic scholarship on queerbaiting." - I think this could be further up in the section.

Other:

1.) Some paragraphs are quite small and I think they can be merged together

I've merged one paragraph, but I think most of my small paragraphs are a result of my creating one paragraph per subtopic and merging them would loose this logical distinction. Of remaining short paragraphs, there's:

• the one on the character's sexuality ("Most commonly..."), which I suppose could be merged into the paragraph right below it? but I find that makes the transition confusing, since that isn't mostly talking about sexuality
• All three paragraphs in the first section of "Fandom" deal with very different topics. That entire section is quite choppy, which ideally would be improved by better transitions and/or expanding on the content, but I think merging the paragraphs would not be an improvement. I'd appreciate any suggestions for making that text flow better, though. Rusalkii (talk) 18:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

2.) There are a lot of sentences in the article that seem to reflect one author/critic's opinion and not necessarily the majority opinion, so some of the statements should be rephrased as "Author x reported that fans were..." etc

Hmm, so I don't think I see anything other than the Collier paragraph that might meet this description, could you point out any other instances? I attribute that at the beginning but then there;s a couple sentences that are attributed only implicitly. I've sprinkled another "according to Collier" in there but actually some of these claims are in Jamison as well, and they're really the only two sources that talk about this so one could say that it is in fact a "majority" opinion (of two). The outsider/defamiliarization thing is clearly in both of them so I have left that unattributed. Rusalkii (talk) 06:54, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

3.) Is Sexuality in Tolkien fan fiction needed in the See also section?

• (I'll move my comment if you don't want them "inside") I added that. No article needs a WP:SEEALSO section, but IMO it fits well per Frodo-Sam-"old" fanfiction-"enable readers to explore tangentially related topics"Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:13, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Eh. I'm not the biggest fan of it here but I also don't feel particularly strongly either way. I've removed it for now, if @Gråbergs Gråa Sång wants to go to bat for it you two can fight that one out :) (Incidentally, Gråbergs, I did actually manage to find two sources that - in passing - compared TJLC to Larries, so now I'm tempted by adding that in but I don't actually think it makes sense in a see-also section without context and it isn't actually due weight to include in the article given that I have all of three sentences or something in the sources.) Rusalkii (talk) 06:50, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

I won't fight for it, an article doesn't stand or fall on See also. I was thinking of adding Larries too, there are similarities. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:55, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

4.) The article switches from using the last and first names of the characters - I think they should be consistently first names

• It's per MOS:SURNAME: "For fictional entities, use common names. For example, Jason, Luigi, and Wesker." The originals are Holmes and Watson, but the Sherlock ones are Sherlock and John. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Yep, that. We had a discussion about this a little up the talk page. Rusalkii (talk) 18:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

5.) Regarding the image, I think maybe including the image of the statue of John and Sherlock would be a good idea - what do you think? Or Moffat and Gatiss.

• Added statue, see what you (plural) think. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:25, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Personally I don't think it adds much but I don't think it hurts either, so fine either way. Rusalkii (talk) 18:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I am sorry that there is so much – I am not trying to nit-pick, I am just trying to help the article be as amazing as possible and help readers understand more per WP:READERSFIRST. Please let me know if you need any help or have any questions and please take your time, there is no rush. Once these have been addressed I will do a Source spotcheck and hopefully pass the article :) Well done again! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 15:50, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

No, nitpicks are great :). I'll be going through this today, looks like it's mostly quick fixes and a couple more substantive comments that might take me a little longer. Crossing out what I think is addressed, feel free to reopen if you're still not happy with them. Rusalkii (talk)

Okay. I think I've addressed everything here. Feel free to un-cross-out anything you think is not fully complete, I was using that as much as a personal todolist as anything. Rusalkii (talk) 06:50, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

My personal biggest remaining issue is the choppiness of the last two paragraphs of the first part of the Fandom section. It ended up very "miscellaneous trivia", and while I do think that both of these facts probably merit inclusion it'd be really nice to find a neater way to work them in. I now discuss Mary a bit further up, so it's possible that the death threats should go there? I don't love it, but it may be better. Then we have Siken + Braden, which would work nicely along with some more information about who writes Johnlock fanfiction. I may take a look and see if I can extract anything from the sources that would give me a nicer transition there. Rusalkii (talk) 07:36, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Hey, I am satisfied with the changes. Well done! Ypu have done really well. One thing though - I think the sentence in the last section "fans sent formal complaints to the BBC under the hashtag "#Norbury"" could be expanded, as I did not know what Norbury meant and other readers may have the same. Regarding your last point, I think that it is fine - I do not see it as trivia. However, if you want to move things around that is fine, it won't make or break or the article. DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 19:26, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Spotchecked Sources #7 #13, #15 and #16. One final thing - some of the websites in the sources (e.g. The Guardian) are not linked - can you please link these? However, this is not a big issue. Hence, I am going to pass this article - well done! I think I have addresses your questions but if you have anymore please leave a message on my talk page or email me and I will be happy to help. Well done and thank you! :) DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 19:40, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.