Sherlock's mod statement on A Scandal in Tumblr
I never thought I would need to write this post, but now I have to and it hurts me tremendously. But the situation that happened last month now requires me to speak as myself, not as Sherlock. You can address me as Shezza or Veritas to avoid confusion with Sherlock the character. I never wanted to break character, and I won’t. So therefore, I will be posting on another blog to avoid directly breaking character on Sherlock’s blog. Now due to all of this happening some of the immersion has been lost and the roleplay is in ruins. Hopefully, doing this, this way, will help me say my piece while keeping the option open to continue playing Sherlock. I need to speak as myself to avoid the confusion about who is speaking, whether it is Sherlock and just part of the ‘game’, or me. This is not a game, not a play, this is real.
John's announcement on March 4th was confusing, not showing if it’s the mod or character speaking. Which is something I am trying to clear now. How this was handled was not professional to say the least. John has made several statements, changing the narrative in each one, as well as posts/comments being either edited or removed. It’s clear that he has been changing the narrative over the time, adapting it to the things other people have taken note of or pointed out. My statement will be fairly detailed, to avoid any confusion. So this will be a very long post.
I decided not to post screenshots of conversations, even though this would make this easier. I will summarise conversations that are important for this situation now. No private chats will be mentioned. I urge the other parties involved to play by the same rules and not reveal personal conversations or things about the people involved.
Furthermore, I will not reveal any personal information of anyone involved, such as names, location, gender/sex, etc. I will talk about the people involved just by their character names or as moderator of that character, and using the pronouns of the character.
Although I know someone already revealed some private information of me in chats to others, which is absolutely disrespectful, despicable and crosses my boundaries. I will strive to keep everything about the parties involved anonymous.
If you (the parties involved) read this, stop talking about my personal information with other people. As if the whole situation wasn’t already horrible enough, as if you hadn’t already crossed enough of my boundaries, you also did that. Absolutely despicable.
Several people have requested that I should share my side of the story, so I will speak up. I’m speaking now to give people closure and to combat misinformation, as well for my own closure. I will not be silenced anymore. The situation won’t be over until I share my part of the story, so people have both sides available and can make their own opinion.
I'm honestly done with other people speaking for me and I'm done with John’s mod depicting me in a certain way, spreading a narrative about me, enabling him with my silence.
However, I am still concerned about certain people’s reaction to me speaking up. I have seen how some people have answered with abuse the last weeks to people speaking up. You will probably ask why I’m only speaking up now, about three weeks later. This is due to several reasons. The situation has taken its toll on me, emotionally shattering me and shocking me to no end, so I first had to process all of it.
The timing of situation has been horrendous, the day John announced the breakup right on the exact day where lots of free time turned into practically none for me, which made it near impossible to sort this situation out while I had to deal with real life stress and responsibilities on top of the shock of what had happened online.
So I needed some time to recuperate from this and collect my thoughts, deal with real life first. And it took me a while to write all of this down and compile all the information.
And probably the most important reason why I’m only speaking out now is, because I was, and still am, scared. I have seen how Greg (@di-greglestrade) and other people like @bewitched-bullet, got attacked for speaking out, with anonymous asks and not-so-anonymous asks and comments by John, Mycroft, Harriet, Mrs Turner and others.
I have received messages from other mods that have intimidated me, most likely with the intention to prevent me from speaking out.
On Sunday 10th March I received a message from Mycroft’s mod saying ‘I’m looking forward to your post :)’. At first I thought it was some kind of mockery because I hadn’t posted anything, but later I realised that this was probably about making a post to speak out, discouraging me and intimidating me. This message was not sent with kind intent. I think most of you saw the message Greg received from Mycroft after speaking out. The next morning on the 11th March I posted the post that told the other’s to leave me alone, because of that exact message the night before.
After posting that post, I received some more messages from John, including one last ‘final goodbye’ with nice words and hearts, only that this wasn’t the last goodbye. A few hours later I received another message from John’s mod on another platform, even though I had openly requested on the blog to be left alone. And that message told another story than kind goodbyes with hearts. It said ‘Do you want me to delete the blog, is that it?’, which obviously further scared me. John’s mod knows that I would never want such a thing, that I don’t want the blog to be deleted, that I fear that. Because that means all the hard work we did, our creation, would be lost forever. This further intimidated me. So I created my own backup, manually saving every single post of his, so he can’t threaten to take it away. This took me a while, but I wanted to make sure everything was saved before I speak out in case John retaliates in any way. It was an insane amount of work to save 2 years worth of posts, but I was determined to not be controlled by this intimidation anymore. Please, do not delete.
All of this is why I am only speaking up now, although I am still scared, but I will have to overcome this fear. What happened the last few weeks, did not happen with any of my consent or knowing.
To summarise my main point: I was not informed about being replaced before Monday 4th March, I was shocked and in tears as I was informed about it Monday morning. The only thing John and I had talked about previously was about HIM QUITTING TUMBLR. NOT him replacing me and continuing on. We never exchanged ANY WORDS AT ALL about him replacing me before the day he openly revealed the split. Quite a difference between those things, isn’t there?
Recap
First of all, a small recap of what happened on the blog, for everyone who is not completely aware yet and confused.
On Sunday March 3rd, John answered an ask from an account that claimed to be Sherlock named ‘consulting-sherlockholmes’, but was obviously not me. He interacted with the account as if it was me, but people noticed that it was not me and informed him about it in the comments, as did I. My comments where I stated that this was not me have been removed by John.
On the evening of Monday March 4th John announced in a post that he would stop interacting with my account consult-sherlockholmes, claiming that I had been aware for quite some time now. Which is not the truth. He informed me on the morning of March the 4th in a single message that he would end our association. I think everyone will agree that less than 10 hours count as being ‘informed for quite some time’.
After the roleplay breakup/ooc message John continued to interact with the ‘new’ Sherlock as if nothing ever had happened, as if this Sherlock had been the corresponding roleplay Sherlock all along, as if I had never existed and as if all followers weren’t completely lost about what was going on.
On the evening of March 5th consulting-sherlockholmes deleted the blog. John claims that he ‘did not know who this blog was’, that it was all just a ‘coincidence’ that it appeared and he decided to ‘answer on a whim without a second thought because he liked their ask so much’.
On March 7th another Sherlock blog appeared, which now seems to be the ‘proper’ new blog.
But all of this is missing a crucial earlier date that some people still remember. The 27th of January.
On January the 27th John answered the first ask he received of a ‘new’ Sherlock, also called ‘consulting-sherlockholmes’. Coincidence? We will call this in the future of this explanation ‘impostor Sherlock #1’ for easier understanding.
Same method of sending an ask even though there was already a well known Sherlock associated with this John (me), John answering the ask in the exact same way even though he knew it was not me, and the exact same name of the blog as on March 3rd. I saw people notice and they say that the blog got deleted. Which it did not. It still exists, it was just renamed to ‘sherlockholmescd’, doing its own roleplay with its own John.
Please do not contact this blog about this situation or try to harass them in any way, as they are currently not involved in this situation as far as we know.
Screenshot before the name change on the day the ask was answered:
How the post looks now with the changed name:
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My side of the story
All of this began for me on January 27th. Sherlock impostor #1 appeared, John answered the ask, and I obviously asked John’s mod what was going on, why he would answer that ask when it wasn’t me.
He answered that he did not know who that Sherlock is, but that he found it ‘funny and interesting’. During that conversation I asked him what he meant, tried to ask why he would answer that when it clearly wasn’t me when there could only be ‘one canon Sherlock in our roleplay universe and another one wouldn’t make sense and thus be an impostor’, but he kept dismissing me, just saying that it’s probably a new Sherlock on the search for a John and I should let it go, because the characters don’t belong to us (entirely missing my point that it was about an unknown Sherlock interacting with a John that was already occupied and not about other roleplays) The blog had been clearly designed as a copy of mine, a near identical copy of my name with consulting-sherlockholmes, copying my layout and my first post. I wanted to know from John how we would further proceed with the ‘new’ Sherlock blog, if he would continue to interact with them in case they sent more asks, but he ignored that question. Instead of answering that question, John’s mod suddenly started to talk about quitting Tumblr saying ‘I’m not really sure if I want to keep my Tumblr account actually’, out of the blue without anything else in the conversation having talked about that. This is the first time this topic came up on the 27th January. He said that he wasn’t sure that he wanted to keep his account, after 3 years (although the blogs are 2 years old). It felt weird, why would he suddenly start to talk about quitting his Tumblr on the heels of the conversation about this other Sherlock? It did not fit the conversation, he just suddenly came up with that. He completely stopped the conversation about the impostor Sherlock with that. I was shocked and confused, I didn’t understand why he would suddenly want to quit? It did not make any sense. I was devastated at the prospect of losing the roleplay, and tried to find out more, asking him questions about what he meant, but he didn’t answer.
The conversation stopped for several days because he did not answer me, even though I asked many questions. On the 28th of January I asked him if we should do anything for the anniversary tomorrow, the 29th. I wanted to plan with him together to make something sweet and waited for his suggestions. The only suggestion I received was his silence. He ignored me in chat, ignored my questions, while he continued to post on Tumblr ghosting me in chat.
Without any suggestions, I took matters into my own hands, and drafted the confession. I thought that was what John wanted. It took me several hours, I put so much effort and work into it trying to make it as in character as possible while still conveying emotions. That is why I posted it on the 30th of January because it took me so long I couldn’t finish it in time for the 29th.
What was John’s in character reaction to Sherlock's several paragraph emotional confession? A single gif with 2 words ‘come here’. If that doesn’t scream enthusiasm I don’t know what does (sarcasm). And people noticed that John seemed to not really put the same effort and enthusiasm in the new relationship like Sherlock did, I saw several people mention it and also received some asks about it.
And what was John’s mod reaction? Not reacting to it for several days at all, no words or praise about it, until someone sent an ask with the confession to inevitably-johnlocked, only then he told me that what i wrote was a ‘nice sherlock post and sweet’.
Something he had wanted for so long, and I gave it to him with barely any reaction from him. I should have seen the red flags back then that something was wrong.
I thought if I made John (both character and mod) happy he would maybe find new joy and fun in the roleplay and reconsider quitting, because the reasons he gave me for wanting to quit was being ‘tired and exhausted’(the reasons he gave on his official splitting posts being nowhere mentioned at all).
And because it was their anniversary it was the perfect moment for a confession. I wanted to do something lovely anyway for the anniversary and had thought about making Johnlock canon already at the beginning of January and wanted to start a storyline earlier about it that would have its climax on their anniversary, but it just didn’t work out, with real life issues, stress and complex coordination.
John had wanted a confession for a long time and kept making posts that made me feel pressured to make Johnlock canon (although he knew I (the roleplayer) wasn't ready yet), that I wanted to make an elaborate plan with it, not just a random confession on a random day but something significant, maybe in connection with a case. Like a big significant episode of the show, to make up for what the fans never got. But planning all of that together never really worked out. I wanted Johnlock, but I wanted to make it properly like a grand finale. Not just a random ‘I love you’, I wanted it to be significant, so that the words were actually meaningful.
But he never told me that having different views on how to establish Johnlock is his reason for wanting to quit, like he claimed on his splitting post. He got sometimes annoyed about Johnlock not being canon yet, but he didnt say he would leave because of it. And I gave Johnlock to him, and he still left. How does that line up?
And if you noticed, the Angelo dinner thread post on the 29th of January was initiated by Sherlock as well, while John hadn’t posted anything before Sherlock’s post about the anniversary. I had to take everything into my hands because John (mod and character) did not do anything. And in the reblog chain you can see how John (character) is very dismissive and mistrusting at first, even though Sherlock was trying to do something nice for him. It kinda hurt how dismissive he was when I was trying to make something nice. But after everything that went down later his behaviour back then should have been a warning sign already. He didn’t even want any of this with me anymore, because he already had made his decision long ago to ditch me it seems, without telling me.
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The next time he answered me privately was on the 31st of January. Ignoring my previous questions concerning the quitting at first, so I had to ask again. Took him another day just saying that he was still tired. Then finally the quitting conversation was taken up again, continuing on for several days.
During this conversation I tried to voice my fears and worries of him quitting, which was met with dismissal. I tried to tell him how important the roleplay was for me, and that I didn’t want to lose it, that it brings me joy and is important for me, but he didn’t take any of it serious or showed any concern about how this was affecting me.
His answers were that ‘he wouldn’t say it brings him joy, it’s just something he does to pass the time when he’s bored’ and that ‘he wouldn’t keep managing the blog to appease me or the followers’.
He further said that ‘when he quits eventually a new John would pop up to take his place’ and ‘that the blogs shouldn’t matter to me that much because real life is much more important’. That was a recurring argument he used, I shouldn't care because it’s not real life, it’s not important, it shouldn't affect me, completely dismissing all of my emotions and anxiety about this. I told him clearly how this was affecting me, trying to find a way to minimise the damage to both of us, but he was dismissive the whole time, not caring. I tried to communicate with him, but he was dismissive most of the time or stalled for days or avoided the conversation.
I knew that this wouldn't work out with a ‘new’ John blog, because everything of our blogs is linked. I knew what kind of chaos it would cause, how difficult it would be to explain in the canon of the roleplay. And look at the situation we have now, it’s exactly that, it’s horrible, messy and doesn’t make any sense. But he just didn’t care about any of that neither in the context of our conversation of him quitting, nor did he care when he decided to ditch and replace me. He doesn’t care what this did to the roleplay, meanwhile I tried to save it. Which is interesting to think about. If keeping the roleplay was so unimportant, why was he scrambling so hard to continue it with another person?
We only ever talked about HIM QUITTING Tumblr, he never said anything that he would just quit interacting with me, ditch me and replace me with a new blog and continue on. He said he wanted to quit, how tired he was, and now he just continues on with someone new, directly contradicting everything he said to me. If he wanted to quit, why did he do all of that? He did all of that so he could continue on, not quit. Quite the opposite.
I tried to discuss with him the specifics of him quitting, trying to figure out how to solve the situation to keep the roleplay going. Asking whether I could help, if the roleplay might be stressing him out if I should take some of it off his shoulders and take over sometimes. This was met with his dismissal, just like every other of my suggestions trying to solve the situation.
I was ready to let him go, but in a way that assured that I could continue the roleplay on my own. I asked if I could take over his blog to continue our legacy when he would quit. After all, it would be the logical conclusion if he wanted to quit Tumblr and his blog would then just stay unused anyway, so giving it to me to continue on for the followers would be the best way forward. But now he is using this in his narrative as if I just wanted to take it away from him because he wanted to leave me, which is not true.
He avoided answering this question about giving me the blog when he said he would quit several times, being avoidant and dismissive again.
After days of conversation he had finally promised me two things: He would hand over the blog when he was done with it and when he would quit, so that I could continue on. And that he would give me the backup file of the blog.
This was another important point for me, that I had a backup so that I could keep the memories safe of all we had created in the last two years.
I have asked for the backup after he ditched me on Monday. Several times. He refuses although he said he would.
After this conversation until February 4th, things returned back to normal for a while. John seemed to be interested in interacting with Sherlock, we had some fun roleplay again. I thought that things would maybe end up well after all, that maybe this was just a small bump in the road. Maybe John just had a bad moment, just a bad week like everyone has. Things seemed to be going well, even though the atmosphere still felt tense and uncertain.
Then John’s mod became more distant and absent again.
John was not posting at all between February 21st and 26th.
On February 25th I was online and bored, desperate to roleplay with someone to occupy my mind. But John wasn’t there, so I first turned to the followers to give me something to interact with. And then Moriarty appeared, asking Sherlock if he wanted to meet up. It was just random and improvised, so I just played along. It was not supposed to be a major plot point, it was just a random thing, but everyone got upset about it, including John (the character, maybe the mod too who knows), who said things like ‘he is not on speaking terms with Sherlock right now’, making a whole drama out of it when there was none. I have a feeling that this was not just the character speaking, and that he might have exaggerated this situation trying to make Sherlock seem bad and prepare the situation to ditch him. During that time John did not interact with my Sherlock at all anymore, neither did John talk (ooc) to me.
Between February 26th and 28th John and I had another ooc conversation about how to handle the blog when he is absent, if I could help him in any way, if coauthoring John’s blog would help him when he was tired, and I wanted to ask and talk about the specifics of what the process would be of him quitting, as well as discuss the future of the roleplay and what his plan is. John perceived this as an argument, even though I was just trying to talk to him like roleplay partners should to plan our future because of the afore mentioned quitting. I like to plan for future possibilities. I was simply making suggestions, which got all dismissed, and when I asked John for his own suggestions he did not give me any.
When I voiced how I truly felt, my honest emotions, I was accused by him of being ‘manipulative’. (No one should ever feel like they can't express themselves. It's also not the first time he has done this.) Once again being dismissive of my emotions, not caring if something he did hurt me and just telling me ‘that I have to learn to cope with that’.
After a while I just realised there is no use in discussing. I just couldn’t take it anymore and I did not want the situation to further escalate. I thought if I gave him a few days he would calm down again and would be ready to properly talk about how to continue the roleplay. I interpreted his knee jerk hostility as a sign they need space. That was the last message before his breakup message.
On Sunday March 3rd at 8.40 PM John answered a new ask by the newly created blog consulting-sherlockholmes (Sherlock Impostor # 2). He had not talked to me for a week at that point, John had not interacted with my Sherlock. I knew that something was off, and tried to make people aware in the comments that this new blog was not me.
The next Morning Monday March 4th, I received a message from John at approximately 8 or 9 AM. This was John’s breakup message, informing me for the first time that he would stop interacting with my Sherlock account and cut ties. It was formal and cold, sounding like a message from a boss that had just fired you from your job. I was devastated as I read it, breaking out into tears because I could just not believe it. I was in complete shock, as we had not talked about this before, only ever talking about him quitting Tumblr, but not about him replacing me to continue on. Just throwing me away like that and having his fun with a new Sherlock.
It hurt, and it still does. After everything we achieved in two years, everything we went through together, he just decided to throw it all away. He seemed to not care at all how it would affect me, even though he knew how much it hurt me.
He also once said that when he quits he would ‘always communicate that clearly in advance to you and handle it with care’. That’s the third promise he has broken then.
On March 4th between 8.30 AM and 6.57 PM John then just continued to reblog Impostor #2 as if nothing had happened, as if that had just always been his corresponding Sherlock.
At 7.52 PM John announced on his blog that he had severed our association, claiming that I had known about it, which I obviously did not. So he interacted with a new Sherlock before he even announced that I had been replaced, and then just continued as if he had not just destroyed our roleplay.
On March 5th at approximately 6 PM impostor # 2 consulting-sherlockholmes suddenly deleted their blog. Then John claimed that he had not known that Sherlock, it was just a random ask and that he had just interacted with them on a whim.
But why would he ditch me the next day after a, according to him ‘random’, Sherlock blog appeared? A blog he didn’t know? Why would he ditch me, someone he has worked with for 3 years, just for some stranger? It doesn’t add up. Either he cares about me so little, that he even prefers some stranger who he knows nothing about, or all of this had been planned. I don’t know which one of those is worse, but either way it doesn’t paint a good picture of him.
All of this was just too similar to what occurred with Sherlock impostor #1, same name, sending asks and John answers them without second thought.
If this had just been a random Sherlock (impostor #2), a shot in the dark at a taken John, why did they put in so much effort into their ask, writing several paragraphs? Why were they referring to events on my blog, as if intended to just take right over? Why did it seem as if this had been arranged before the ask was sent? Why did John immediately interact with them, not just answering the ask, but continuing to reblog it as if it was me? Why did they seem to be in sync in their answers, as if this had been all agreed upon in private?
John’s narrative of ‘just answering to a random Sherlock who he didn’t know’ does not add up, especially when it happened 2 TIMES. WITH THE SAME BLOG NAME.
Another thing that I should mention is that John, Mycroft and Harriet are very close to each other and communicated lots OOC. So if John had planned anything, he would have informed Harriet and Mycroft about it as well. Meanwhile all the other characters didn’t know about his plans of replacing me, including myself. So you can see quite well which characters immediately adapted to the change because they knew about it (John, Mycroft, Harriet) while the other characters who were not included in John’s plan were dumbstruck and had no idea what happened (Sherlock, Greg, Moriarty, Irene, Mrs Hudson). So if all of this had been consensual and the others had been informed about the change for a long time, why was everyone surprised and had no idea what was going on except those close to John? It's also clearly visible which characters immediately jumped to John’s defence when people started to question what was going on, Mycroft and Harriet, while the others were sceptical, didn’t speak out or spoke out against them like Greg did. Greg spoke up about Mycroft, but immediately got attacked by John and Harriet because they are a close knit group. Another interesting fact is that Mrs Turner didn’t post anything since months, but then appeared in a comment section that talked about the situation, which also indicates she is involved. So John most likely had associates, and one of them might be the new Sherlock now most likely. It’s likely that John, Mycroft and Harriet might have worked on this plan together, without telling me.
And I think John’s, Mycroft’s and Harriet’s posts and arguments that have now been deleted but are still out there as reblogs or screenshots tell quite a telling story on their own, especially how they treated people who questioned what was going on with arguments and attacks.
So John, if you are reading this, I do not want you to contact me again, except in the following cases. A) You follow through on the things you promised B) A proper apology for everything you have done or C) Actually telling the truth with no more lies. In any other case I will not interact. I don’t feel safe talking with you. Tumblr is now watching, so if you do anything to hurt me everyone will see it. If you post any private conversations or information that has nothing to do with the situation you show to your followers what kind of person you are if that is the way how you deal with the situation and how far you are willing to go to hurt me.
I presented you followers with my side of the story, so that you have both sides and can make up your own mind. I wanted to be as detailed as possible, so people can understand the timeline and how everything happened.
Thank you to everyone who is still here and willing to read this whole novel I wrote, and everyone who questioned John's narrative and was curious and observant questioning what had happened. I want to thank everyone who encouraged me to speak up, and the people who still speak about it and didn't let themselves be silenced, giving other people the opportunity and platform to talk about it. And I'm sorry for everyone who liked to read the blogs but now lost it, for everyone who the blog was a place of comfort. I have received many messages about people missing Sherlock and the blogs, and I’m sorry. But I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be able to continue on after this pain. In a certain way the roleplay is now destroyed anyway, given the two main blogs are now split, the two blogs everything else was built on.
If you have any further questions about this situation, please ask them here on this blog, and not over at Sherlock’s. I am trying to strictly separate asks that should be answered by Sherlock or the moderator. However, if a question makes me too uncomfortable or is not answerable without revealing personal information, I might decide to not answer it. And answering might take a few days sometimes, so please do not get angry if your question does not get answered. Especially from Monday to Friday it might sometimes take a while. And I will shut off anonymous ask for a while to prevent harassment, if someone wants to harass me they will have to show their face.
More posts will follow, but this post is already enormous and I didnt want to overwhelm everyone with too many posts at once.