I want to talk about this photo for a second. The first time I saw this I thought it had to be fan photoshopped because I mean, just look at it. But this is a genuine promotional photo put out there by the Sherlock team. If the beautiful alignment of John’s nose fitting perfectly into the curve of Sherlock’s cheekbone isn’t intimate enough for you, I’d like to point out where John’s mouth has been placed. His lips are almost brushing Sherlock’s neck. One of the most intimate, delicate and vulnerable parts of the human body? Their foreheads appear like they’re touching. Their noses and lips are only visibly inches apart. This is as close as you can get to portraying ‘skin on skin’ without actually touching. And while I’m here I also want to point out how painful this picture is, because while they are so perfectly aligned and fit together in all the right places, both Sherlock and John are looking in completely opposite directions. They are not seeing what we see. They are not seeing each other. They are not seeing how perfectly they fit together in all these intimate places. How to resolve this? I wonder what would happen if they both stopped looking in different directions, and looked at each other…
Holy crap
The addition of this QAF(US) image is genius.
Sure, we’ve got a change of which one of ‘em is looking into the camera but…
The more conventional, emotionally grounded, and yet at the start “lost” one who brings us into the story. With and through him we are magnetically drawn into the orbit of this mercurial, brilliant, no-fucks-to-give, drug taking god-like man who reveals himself to deeply care about justice & goodness & often metes it out in secret. But he keeps a distance from the world with a brusque and sharp edge of self-protection that “we” cannot change & just cannot quit because we see into him, past the exterior shell to the real heart that is hidden from those he does not trust (outside the very few in his closest circle). And above all others, he truly lets only this one partner in – who, in turn, literally authors their lives as fiction. In the end, whether together or apart, they are inseparably bound to the other, forever.
Side note: in Justin’s comics, Justin and Brian become a dynamic duo. In the unaired Sherlock ASiP pilot we have that shot of Sherlock standing atop a rooftop like a caped crusader against the moonlit sky with Robin John gazing up at him. Holy evolving Holmesian queer superhero archetypes, Batman!
