This is John Watson. He’s adorable, right?
He’s also maddeningly tricky to write.
When I started writing Sherlockfic, it was Sherlock who intimidated me, Sherlock I avoided at all costs, for thousands of words, because he seemed like this complex little enigma. But there’s something about Sherlock, once I started writing him, that I found endearingly straightforward. You almost always know where you stand when it comes to Sherlock Holmes.
It’s John who is the tricky one, John who is so maddeningly unpredictable. He seems so dull and unassuming, but, once you’ve written him, it takes roughly two sentences before you realize exactly why Sherlock is so fixated on him. He could be every adjective in the book, really. He is loyal and devoted but he’s also stubborn and independent. He follows Sherlock—as all Watsons must—and he tries to blend into the shadows cast by that overdramatic coat, but if you’ve spent any time at all thinking about him—and Sherlock has—then he’s really the star of the pairing. He is superhumanly tough, cool and calm under pressure, uncowed and unintimidated, but he is also very comfortably human at the same time, friendly and smiling. He likes to laugh and has a good sense of humor and people like him instinctively but he’s essentially a loner at heart and has few close friends, not that any of his acquaintances—other than Sherlock—would ever really stop to consider that, because John is mainly affable and easy-going and can fool anyone into thinking that he’s the most popular person there is.
Almost every time I write John, he manages to have some reaction, some line of dialogue, that surprises me. He’s so very good at rolling with all of Sherlock’s punches, until the moment when he isn’t anymore, and I don’t think I know that line any more than Sherlock does.
He’s with Sherlock because Sherlock attracts him irresistibly, exerts a magnetic pull over him, keeping him in orbit—and, again, that’s how Watsons are—but he’s also with Sherlock because he wants to be with Sherlock. And how Martin Freeman embodies that so beautifully has impressed me more and more and more the more I go back to the canon to check up on my John. Sherlock may be an undeniable hurricane-strength force whirling through John’s life but John also chose him. He wasn’t just pushed around by the fate of it all, he likes Sherlock, he likes his life with him, he’s there because he wants to be.
At least, that’s how I read John Watson. And that’s how I write John Watson. And I like my John, I really do, but it’s taken me several hundred thousand words to figure out what I think Sherlock saw as soon as he looked at him: that it’s John Watson who’s the complicated one.
I guess that’s why Sherlock’s the genius.
Lady Karasu 