In Defense of TJLC

Meta
Title:	In Defense of TJLC
Creator:	sherlock-overflow-error
Date(s):	June 14, 2018
Medium:	online
Fandom:	BBC Sherlock
Topic:	The Johnlock Conspiracy
External Links:	original post, archive link
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

In Defense of TJLC is a 2018 meta by Tumblr user sherlock-overflow-error. It was published in response to the podcast episode Decoder Ring: The Johnlock Conspiracy.

So, when a Slate podcast came out this week portraying TJLCers in a jarringly negative light, I was dismayed. What I heard was not the community I know.

This post’s aim is to tell the other side of the story. I’m writing both for people who support TJLC and were shocked to hear of the podcast, and for people outside TJLC whose initial impressions have been skewed by the podcast or other outside sources.

I’ll address four of the most common arguments against TJLC through the lens of the argument presented by Willa Paskin, the podcast’s creator:

1. TJLC, as a theory, is “far-fetched” and merits no serious consideration.

2. TJLCers are dogmatic, ideological, and close-minded.

3. TJLCers have hated on people outside of TJLC to an unusual and appalling extent.

4. TJLC has brought more harm into the world than good.

Some Topics Discussed

"I cannot stress this enough: TJLC is analysis, NOT shipping."

• the difference between TJLC and Johnlock
• TJLC's relationship to the Great Game
• perceived biases (e.g. misogyny and homophobia) against TJLC and its proponents
• evidentiary support for TJLC as a theory
• social dynamics within the TJLC "community"
• a taxonomy of TJLC meta
• TJLC's culture of fan analysis
• toxic fandom and anon hate
• pre-2015 TJLC culture
• Toplock vs. Bottomlock
• 2015 221B Con
• fan reactions to series 4
• perceived factual errors in the podcast
• positive impact of TJLC on fans

Excerpts

All excerpts are from "In Defense of TJLC" by sherlock-overflow-error, which was originally published on Tumblr on June 14, 2018.

"What is TJLC?"

TJLC is short for “The Johnlock Conspiracy.” I must immediately clarify that this name is a joke. It began humorously and is always, always used tongue-in-cheek. Keep this in mind: Many misconceptions about TJLC arise from the fact that we take very few things seriously, as I’ll discuss later.

"What isn't TJLC?"

TJLC is not the same as Johnlock.

Johnlock refers just to shipping John/Sherlock—thinking they’d make a cute romantic couple, without necessarily having any expectation of that happening on the show.

More fundamentally: Johnlock is about creating transformative, creative content. It’s about making something new. In essence, it’s fiction.

TJLC is about analyzing evidence that’s already there. It’s nonfiction.

Ms. Paskin frequently blurs the lines between the two and mourns TJLC for not having the same level of creativity. She explains, for example, that fandom reads into tiny elements of a show to create a transformative space. But TJLC is not transformative. That’s Johnlock.

TJLCers are Doylists. Obviously, someone made the show. That means we analyze character arcs, cinematographic techniques, and rhetorical devices in the dialogue like a researcher in film studies or literature would. Ms. Paskin warns that in the Watsonian Great Game, people kept “tongues planted firmly in cheek; TJLCers, not so much.” And yet, that’s the point! You wouldn’t expect a literary analyst to go “lol maybe The Great Gatsby criticizes society but like who knows” any more than you’d want Watsonians to really believe that because John Watson’s wife called him James, his middle name is Hamish (Scottish for James) rather than acknowledging that Doyle just forgot. A ridiculous premise entails a humorous approach. A reasonable premise entails a rational one.

TJLC isn’t quite the same as highbrow analysis, however, for three reasons:

First, we use our analyses to speculate about the future of the show. We don’t have the privilege of analyzing a complete work. In that sense, the closest analogy I can think of is that of political analysts: examining what’s already been said and done to predict what will happen next.

Second, we evolved from a fandom space. That means that the barrier between TJLC and Johnlock, between nonfiction analysis and creative fiction, is never as solid as it would be in academia. Furthermore, a significant number of TJLC meta writers also engage in fictional fanworks, making it more difficult to distinguish where hard analysis ends and transformative work begins. I’ll go into some of the nuances of meta in a bit.

Third, the people in TJLC are generally queer women and often young. And we can’t discuss biases against fandom and TJLC without acknowledging sexism and homophobia. When a film critic writes a theory, it’s deep; when we do, it’s ludicrous. Paradise Lost is fanfiction just as much as AO3, but only the former is treated as legitimate literature. Theories about straight couples are plausible; ones about queer ones are suddenly delusional or fetishization. Adult fanboys are mature content creators; fangirls are hysterical.

"TJLC As a Theory"

Ms. Paskin’s assertion, which does not acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, again conflates Johnlock shippers with TJLCers. Johnlock is about transformative fiction; TJLC is about nonfiction analysis. Ms. Paskin also suggests that TJLCers are “queering” the text, except that queering generally implies a queer theory approach to something that wasn’t queer to begin with. Our whole objective is to reveal that the text was originally queer.

Ms. Paskin supposes that TJLC is “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.” But TJLC isn’t based on anything the creators have said. It’s based on analysis of the show itself.

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that TJLCers believe Moffat and Gatiss are deliberately lying when they say that Johnlock will not become canon.

And normally, I would agree! Except that Moffat and Gatiss have a long history of lying through their teeth about plot developments. For example, they vehemently repeated that The Abominable Bride would be a stand-alone episode completely independent of the show, but it turned out to be a drugged Sherlock’s theorizing about Moriarty’s plan. And before Series 4, they said that Mary would become a long-running character, then killed her off in the next episode.

So it’s not a stretch to think that they could be lying about one more thing, particularly when TJLC relies on independent evidence from the show itself.

"The Behavior of the TJLC Community"

Ms. Paskin rattles off several far-fetched TJLC theories that make TJLC as a whole sound ridiculous. Furthermore, she implies that TJLC is a monolithic community with a “dogmatic” belief in all of these theories, such that criticism and discussion don’t exist. Guess what? I’m in TJLC, and I don’t believe half the theories she mentioned. That’s because TJLC is much less uniform than its detractors would believe. Furthermore, the general level of confidence that people have in a given piece of evidence depends on its strength. In other words, the more evidence for something, the more likely that TJLCers agree on it. The less evidence for something, the more likely we are to treat it as just something cool that could turn out to be coincidence.

"TJLC Culture"

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that many TJLCers regarded TJLC as far more well-supported, even certain, than “an opinion or a possibility” or “just one ship among many” (14:50). And yet, in an academic setting, isn’t it normal to think that the theory you researched and support is correct? Again, we hit the boundary in how the public perceives highbrow research and fan analysis. TJLC was not “just one ship among many” because (again) it’s not a ship, it’s a theory based on research and analysis. So naturally, we had a higher level of confidence in TJLC becoming canon than a shipper with an unsupported ship would.

The podcast, having painted TJLCers as delusional, dogmatic crusaders, goes on to argue that TJLCers hated on people outside TJLC to an unusual and deplorable amount, such that TJLC’s main effect was to increase toxicity in the Sherlock fandom.

For starters: Yes, a few TJLCers did fit this despicable mold. I universally condemn people who went out of their way to attack people outside or inside the community. They are an insult to TJLC’s values of inclusivity and rational debate. And my heart goes out to the people who suffered as a result of them.

But guess what? All the TJLCers I’ve talked to agree with that. Because the fact is that awful people form an incredibly small minority of TJLC.

The anonymous attacks on TJLCers had several results. First, TJLC developed a culture that stresses avoiding confrontation with outsiders: leaving other shippers be, unless they seek out TJLC posts. For example, some of the first things I learned were to misspell other ship names on TJLC posts so they wouldn’t show up when people wanted content promoting that ship, and not to reblog posts from outside shippers’ blogs with TJLC-related comments. Far from attacking outsiders, the whole point is to let people who disagree with TJLC do their own thing.

Second, the vast majority of TJLCers despise anon hate because they receive it unusually often. I’ve never seen a community with so many posts reminding people never to resort to it because they’ve seen how it hurt TJLC bloggers.

Third, a handful of TJLCers who got repeated and unwarranted hate did get more combative. But when looking at their later behavior, it’s important to understand that many of them became less willing to compromise on TJLC because they’d seen toxic fans remain unwilling to compromise or debate with them.

"What the Podcast Left Out"

Swimming in descriptions of TJLC as a source of hatred, the podcast glosses over one tiny little detail: that TJLC genuinely improved the lives of the vast majority of TJLCers.

I came out because of TJLC. I learned how to analyze literature because of TJLC. I discovered new parts of history and the queer people who have always been part of it. I found a community of curious, passionate, funny, and kind people who I could talk to.

And I’m just one person. I know people who found lifelong friends because of TJLC, wrote books because of it, became students of gender and sexuality studies, found a community of support when they had mental health, financial, or other personal problems, and had a blast theorizing about the possibility of landmark LGBT representation. Heck, Rebekah of TJLC Explained filmed hours of people talking about how much the community meant to them. And I even know former TJLCers who, though disappointed with the show, still appreciate how much it taught them about queer theory, queer history, and themselves.

Evaluating TJLC as a whole, it’s not far-fetched, dogmatic, or primarily a source of “darkness.” It’s a legitimate theory, supported by debate and rational analysis, that improved the lives of far more people than it ever hurt.

Five Categories of TJLC Meta

In the subsection entitled "The Behavior of the TJLC Community: How Theories Work," sherlock-overflow-error outlined the following taxonomy of TJLC meta:

We can divide TJLC meta into five basic categories:

1. Foundational meta

These are well-respected analysis of character arcs, dialogue, and other clearly deliberate plot elements such as this one. Pretty much all TJLCers agree with them. These are your best-researched, most widespread meta; they form the true basis of TJLC. Here are some examples. And yet they hardly show up in Ms. Paskin’s discussion, because they don’t make TJLC sound too far-fetched.

2. Circumstantial evidence

TJLC can stand on foundational meta alone, but there’s also secondary evidence to support it. This includes the “drinks code” (the theory that beverages serve as symbols on the show, supported by subsequent creator remarks) and similar theories that can’t hold up TJLC by themselves, but do provide extra evidence and add nuance to theories about character arcs and plot development.

3. Accessory meta

These are analyses of elements that could well turn out to be coincidence due to scarce evidence. If true, they allow us to establish character arcs in greater depth, but it’s perfectly possible that any given one is coincidence. These include the theories on wallpaper and lighting that Ms. Paskin reports as though they were the pillars of TJLC. They’re theories that I read and go, “Hm, interesting; maybe.”

4. Spinoff theories

These are theories that deal with specific paths the show might take. They generally have groups of supporters within TJLC, but each spinoff theory usually only has a smaller group of supporters within the larger TJLC community.

It’s important to note that many major theories don’t have to do with Johnlock at all. Take M-theory, the idea that Mycroft and other characters are under Moriarty’s thumb, or EMP, the idea that some episodes take place in Sherlock’s mind palace. If, as Ms. Paskin asserts, TJLC is about wishful thinking and wanting Johnlock to be canon, what would be the point of these? Furthermore, if TJLC is monolithic and dogmatic, why do we constantly discuss and critique these theories in constructive discussions? I had to make a whole table of theories after Series 4 because everyone’s opinion was so different!

5. Crack theories

These are usually clearly labeled “crack” and are never meant to be taken seriously. Again, TJLC contains a lot of humor. So sometimes, we goof off and write theories like this one that are clearly ridiculous, usually with an exaggerated conspiratorial tone, to have fun in the spirit of the Watsonians. Unfortunately, some people outside TJLC think we actually take these theories seriously and accordingly treat us as crazy people. Guys… Ctrl+F “crack” first.

Note: all external links were included in the original post.

Responses

devoursjohnlock wrote in a reblog of the original post:

Wow, thank you for putting in the time to refute the podcast point by point. I’m horrified that it’s the first google hit for TJLC; hopefully, some people from outside the fandom will find their way to your post.

You know me, I can’t leave a discussion of Doylist vs. Watsonian interpretations alone… I found it interesting that you describe TJLCers as Doylists and not Watsonians, because I’ve always considered myself a Watsonian first. Surely, the “Mofftiss are queerbaiting” or “Mofftiss can’t sell johnlock to China” arguments represent the Doylist approach.

But looking at it from your perspective, it seems our reading of the show requires both approaches. We’re Watsonians in the sense that we require in-universe explanations for plot developments and everything from score to wallpaper choices. But we’re Doylists in that we think Moffat and Gatiss made these deliberate film-making choices to both tell and to conceal their story, and also in reading their metafictional references – Moffat and Gatiss are participants in this artwork; they are self-referential.

Likewise, I now read Doyle the same way: I need in-universe explanations for subtextual plot developments, but the clues are, again, often metatextual; they’re allegories to past or contemporary history, mythology, or literature, and references to Doyle’s own life, all of which draw attention to the act of writing the story. And, as in BBC Sherlock, authorial intent becomes part of the story.

So, now I find myself wondering if an unintended consequence of BBC Sherlock will be that the terms Doylist and Watsonian can no longer be applied within the Sherlock Holmes universe at all.

iamjohnlocked4life wrote in a reply to the original post:

Look, I’m STILL using the TJLC tag on my blog, I’m not an “anti” – but even the concept of an “anti” is one of the worst parts of TJLC. It embodies the toxicity and othering of huge swaths of fandom, and was related to things like people trolling the sherl0lly tag and ganging up on other ships. If you didn’t see or experience it, you are one of the lucky ones.

While I agree with many of your points, this still feels like a cherry picking defense, from someone who did not experience that time in fandom. People DID get hate, in anon asks and in their AO3 comments, for writing toplock. The assertion that was never a serious issue dismisses what writers experienced during that time.

Condensing the shit of 221bcon 2015 down to a paragraph in this lengthy analysis is shortchanging so much of the pain inflicted within the fandom. And a few of the links in regard to these areas are not actually good or accurate sources (read: highly biased) I appreciate you acknowledged Emma’s pain - what about that of the abuse survivors who were outed via unsanctioned video online while discussing their trauma? I was at that 221bcon, and saw the video that was released without consent. Awful.

I’m not surprised you came into fandom in late 2015 based on this. You missed the very worst of the post-s3 and post-221bcon 2015 shitstorm. You probably saw a bit of the fallout from it, but when you first enter fandom there’s always a honeymoon period of at least 6-8 months, so I’m guessing you still missed some of the stuff that was going on at the beginning of your fandom experience.

spenglernot wrote in a reblog of the original post:

Thank you, @sherlock-overflow-error. This is so helpful. As someone who discovered TJLC in July 2017 and knew next to nothing about fan fiction at the time, I found TJLC theories fascinating and thought-provoking. It wasn’t about shipping for me. It was and is about the analysis. I learn so much about literary analysis and LGBTQ issues by following TJLC blogs. And it has helped me re-engage with a part of my intellect that I left behind, years ago. Thank you so much for your thoughtful rebuttal.❤

immaculate-benediction-bitch wrote in a reply to the original post:

I agree….i think…it was a long read. I left tjlc and feel queerbaited. Was pissed! I’m still pissed! I would never however attack mofftiss or any of the actors. That’s mental. Now here on my tumblr yes. If i ever saw them in real life, dear God no! I’m still hanging around here in the Sherlock fandom because I’m a huge Benedict fan. Also at one time this show meant the world to me. I live in series 1-3 and TAB. S4 doesnt live here on my tumblr.

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