Before we begin: This is a scattered collection of the ideas I've been having over the past few days, and is not all-inclusive. Red/Green or John/Sherlock meta would require pages and pages individually, and I'm not currently prepared to tackle either of them in great depth, much less together! This is also based on my headcanons for the Pokémon gameverse and BBC Sherlock season 1—my ideas may =/= your ideas, and that's okay. I am totally open to conversation, but I'm not keen on flaming or spoilers. Thank you for your consideration.

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I was charmed by John Watson/Sherlock Holmes from the very beginning of BBC's Sherlock. Why? Well, because I recognized it. Sherlock/John and Red/Green are pretty similar, and I'd like to tell you how.


I think a good place to start is how similar the character archetypes are.

Person 1 is absolutely brilliant at his chosen field—so good at it, in fact, that his genius hurts him. His skill set is so narrow that it has an unfortunate side result of him not having room or time for much else. He's especially poor at anything related to working with people or social interactions, and he doesn't even seem to try—for one reason or another, he has a tendency to keep his own counsel. He's strong-willed and focused, and once he sets his sights on a goal, he's unstoppable. However, this can blind him to things which are outside his area of expertise/interest, and therefore he can have difficulty simply meeting his basic survival needs (food, rest, etc.).

Person 2 is the one responsible for keeping person 1 alive. He's grounded in a way that person 1 isn't. Person 2 finds person 1 alternately fascinating and infuriating, but always irresistibly attractive. Where person 1 pushes, person 2 pulls. He's brilliant in his own right, in a way that is similar but different from person 1, but he can be overlooked because of person 1's flash and dazzle. He helps person 1 interface with the rest of humanity. Person 2 also has his own skill set, which happens to dovetail perfectly with person 1's, and together, both person 1 and person 2 become more than they could on their own.

Person 1 could be Red or Sherlock, and person 2 could be Green or John, don't you think?

There are other things too, of course. Both pairings are made up of handsome bamfs. They're both difficult pairings to capture in all their complexity, because there are so many layers to each character, and it's worse when they're combined. Both pairings also lend themselves really well to a huge variety of fic types—action/adventure; fluff/domesticity; angst; porn; horror; character study; gen, friendship, and romance. It even leads to weird situations like this:

"When [Person 1] returned, it was like he brought gravity in with him. [Person 2] snapped back into himself, his feet firmly on the ground. There was oxygen here, and sunlight. He could breathe without thinking about it. In his head ran a lovely little chorus: home at last, home at last."

That was a snippet from Space Travel by candle_beck, which is a Sherlock (1)/John (2) fic. But it could really read for Red(1)/Green(2), or even Green/Red, couldn't it?

Granted, they're not identical relationships, just similar. Filling in the details illuminates the unique qualities of each. Red hides behind stoicism while Sherlock hides behind scorn; both ultimately put up a front that's hard to reach over. Both Green and John are able to, despite Red/Sherlock's best efforts, and see to their true intentions/meanings/natures/etc. (depending on situation). Vice versa, while we're at it—both Green and John use social convention as a shield, and their respective others are able to see through their facades to their real selves (and call them on it, or use it to their advantage, etc. etc.).

There are also some places where "person 1" and "person 2" swap key characterizations. The first one that comes to mind is that neither Sherlock nor Green shut up, while Red and John are rather quiet. This leads to a shift in each dynamic; John is a sounding board, Green is filling in silences. Green and Sherlock both use words to mask deeper things—fear of rejection, for example. Red and John use careful word choice (both of them make every word count) to manipulate social situations to their advantage without really letting people know what they're thinking.

The other major difference is that both Sherlock and Green share ambition, while John and Red have none. This changes each dynamic fundamentally. Sherlock is like a cannonball, and John acts as his gunner, making sure Sherlock hits his targets without taking out half of London in the process. Red, meanwhile, is more like an immovable object than an unstoppable force. It's Green's influence that goads him into using his abilities to cause great change. (Even this can flip on occasion—John helps Sherlock think when he gets stuck, and Red's sheer talent can sometimes stop Green in his tracks when it's necessary. But you get the point.)



There are deeper differences than that, of course. Red and Green literally spend most of their formative years battling each other with everything at their disposal. Green hates everything that he associates with Red—his messy, isolated childhood, the legacy he has to live up to, all the people who judge him and find him lacking, and his own fear of failure. Conversely, Red fights Green in order to be understood by the only person who can do so, due to their shared isolated childhoods, small-town experiences, unwanted judgement from others, and fear of coming up short. They both do a lot of damage through not listening, not talking, and basically having terrible communication skills, but over time they work through their aggression and frustration to discover that they both want each other's acceptance, and how badly they've hurt each other after years of fighting. Eventually, they realize that they want the same things, and that the other person is the only one who could really understand them (and in fact the only one who does understand them completely). That in turn leads to healing and forgiveness. However, considering their antagonistic history, Green and Red will always have a crackling rivalry that John and Sherlock only have a small amount of; their "stable" relationship involves a lot of trolling (for each other and for anyone around them). Finally, the resolution of fighting->forgiveness has an echo in UST->RST¹, which is delicious :D.

John and Sherlock also hit each other's buttons and bug each other a lot, but they fall into sync almost instantly. (It takes Red and Green years to get to that point.) So in a way, they start "ahead" of Red/Green, since they don't have all that anger to work through. However, one could argue that while Red/Green's primary drive is "competition," John/Sherlock's is "experimentation"—partially of course because Sherlock is who he is, but also because John and Sherlock have never seen anyone like each other. While their chemistry is undeniable, it also means that for the first time, they have someone they want to keep. Neither John nor Sherlock are used to how well the other person understands them, either. It must be thrilling for someone to bend to Sherlock's whims, yet not be battered down by them; fascinating to find someone he can control but not really, someone who even controls him somewhat. For John, Sherlock allows him to be both follower and protector, which is kind of everything he wants and needs. He can trust Sherlock, and he doesn't trust easily. However, Sherlock's a pretty terrifying person to trust, because he's so mercurial and also has that really horrific tendency to lock John outside while he gets throttled by assassins; and Sherlock discovers that being attached to someone is terrifying too, because it means that you have something to lose. These ideas also exist in the later stages of Red and Green's relationship, but it's more central for John/Sherlock. And of course, at some point John and Sherlock have to engage in a more mundane "getting to know you" negotiation process, where they learn about who each person was before they met the other, and how that plays into their present and future. Red and Green are never going to have that conversation—childhood friendship has its benefits.



At the end of the day, both Sherlock/John and Red/Green have the same core dynamic, and it's one shared by all of my favorite pairings—the characters in the pairing each have things the other person needs. They shore up one another's weaknesses, rely on the other's strengths, and need each other to form a perfect (, very powerful, and completely bamf) whole. Sherlock and John need each other. So do Red and Green. But they're also strong characters by themselves, ones with some very different motivators and behavior patterns. That means that the characters have a mutable, dynamic relationship, filled with both respect and rivalry, where each person tries to express themselves while also supporting the other. Ultimately, each relationship leads to massive gain for both parties involved. It also leads to areas where they don't always line up, and means they're sometimes pulling hard in opposite directions, and that can lead to the exploration of distance—metaphorical or physical or both.

This kind of a relationship will never really be calm, and always be interesting. And in both canons, the pairing is a power couple that one should never ignore, because they're bound for greatness—or they're great already, however you want to spin it.


So if you're a Red/Green fan, I advise starting your John/Sherlock journey by watching the series (it's on netflix now, and there are lots of places to find it online) and then digging around for fic. If you're at the fic stage, let me know and I'll toss a few recs at you. And if you're a John/Sherlock fan, you may find that Pokémon fandom has a lot to offer you! You might start by digging around Bulbapedia or even playing the original Red/Blue games. You can find a lot of Red/Green fic at the writing comm I share with koyuki—southofreality—but you may also look around my rec list for other writers and their takes on it.

I guess I will close off this meta by leaving you with this tumblr post!

That's it for me right now. I'd love to hear your opinions! Thank you for reading :)



¹ UST = unresolved sexual tension; RST = resolved sexual tension.