In college, I convinced people in my English literature for perverts various Renaissance and 19thC sexualities type English classes who were unfamiliar with the concept of fanfiction to read Holmes fic. (This would have been c. 2001-2002) They thought An Ideal Husband was brilliant but were bitterly disappointed by everything they read after that.
I have a vague memory that I'd also read some Holmes fic online before that, but I've never been heavily involved in the online fandom or had any contact with zine fanfic. (Of course, as a nerdy, Holmes-obsessed kid, it's impossible not to have contact with other definitions of Holmes "fandom".) And for years, I've been using "You know, like Holmes pastiche" to explain the concept of fanfic to family and friends.
Now, I'm not sure what the really old slash looks like or what the gen that might have accompanied it looked like (as opposed to the decades and decades of pastiche casefic), but the main change I noticed immediately post-movie was an upswing in Any Two Guys PWP based around the attractiveness of the actors. (Not that I object--they're certainly very attractive, and I'm not as married to the Jeremy Brett version as most Holmes fans of my same vintage.) Personally, I found myself getting interested in Holmes/Adler romance, which is a first for me (but certainly not a first for Holmes fanfic and pastiche!).
Pre-movie Holmes (online, fanfic-as-fanfic producing) fandom struck me, based on a tiny and probably unrepresentative sample, as being full of queerness. FTM Holmes. Gay subculture-involved Watson. Crossdressing bisexual actresses. Explorations of 19thC sexual identities clearly written by bored students in the same English-for-perverts classes I was taking. A lot of this stuff also struck me as being either more book based or based on a mishmash of many different versions--the expected level of both historical knowledge and Holmes geekery was really quite high. There were footnotes!
I certainly wouldn't say that no book fans like the movies or that no new movie fans are reading the original stories, but newer fans are going to be less burdened by or less familiar with the entire massive Holmes media history since they haven't spent a decade or five reading and watching it.
So, uh, in a highly biased, personal experiance bounded, navel gazing kind of way,
" I feel like slash fandom has really changed the way we address homosexuality in recent years, based on the fic I've read. We seem much more likely to show our characters having had previous homosexual experiences, or being happily and openly bisexual, or being connected to a homosexual subculture, or being non-heteronormative in other ways (genderqueer/transgendered, asexual, kinky, etc."
is the exact opposite of my perception of Holmes fandom. I do see opposing (different? orthogonal?) forces in Holmes "fandom" that consist of taking Holmes pastiche and adding queerness vs. taking slash fandom and adding Holmes and another set of forces that consist of responding to a specific story or a specific adaptation of a specific story vs. responding to the entire history of Holmes pastiche/fic/fandom/analysis, but I don't see either of those pairs as primarily related to the new movie.
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English literature for pervertsvarious Renaissance and 19thC sexualities type English classes who were unfamiliar with the concept of fanfiction to read Holmes fic. (This would have been c. 2001-2002) They thought An Ideal Husband was brilliant but were bitterly disappointed by everything they read after that.I have a vague memory that I'd also read some Holmes fic online before that, but I've never been heavily involved in the online fandom or had any contact with zine fanfic. (Of course, as a nerdy, Holmes-obsessed kid, it's impossible not to have contact with other definitions of Holmes "fandom".) And for years, I've been using "You know, like Holmes pastiche" to explain the concept of fanfic to family and friends.
Now, I'm not sure what the really old slash looks like or what the gen that might have accompanied it looked like (as opposed to the decades and decades of pastiche casefic), but the main change I noticed immediately post-movie was an upswing in Any Two Guys PWP based around the attractiveness of the actors. (Not that I object--they're certainly very attractive, and I'm not as married to the Jeremy Brett version as most Holmes fans of my same vintage.) Personally, I found myself getting interested in Holmes/Adler romance, which is a first for me (but certainly not a first for Holmes fanfic and pastiche!).
Pre-movie Holmes (online, fanfic-as-fanfic producing) fandom struck me, based on a tiny and probably unrepresentative sample, as being full of queerness. FTM Holmes. Gay subculture-involved Watson. Crossdressing bisexual actresses. Explorations of 19thC sexual identities clearly written by bored students in the same English-for-perverts classes I was taking. A lot of this stuff also struck me as being either more book based or based on a mishmash of many different versions--the expected level of both historical knowledge and Holmes geekery was really quite high. There were footnotes!
I certainly wouldn't say that no book fans like the movies or that no new movie fans are reading the original stories, but newer fans are going to be less burdened by or less familiar with the entire massive Holmes media history since they haven't spent a decade or five reading and watching it.
So, uh, in a highly biased, personal experiance bounded, navel gazing kind of way,
" I feel like slash fandom has really changed the way we address homosexuality in recent years, based on the fic I've read. We seem much more likely to show our characters having had previous homosexual experiences, or being happily and openly bisexual, or being connected to a homosexual subculture, or being non-heteronormative in other ways (genderqueer/transgendered, asexual, kinky, etc."
is the exact opposite of my perception of Holmes fandom. I do see opposing (different? orthogonal?) forces in Holmes "fandom" that consist of taking Holmes pastiche and adding queerness vs. taking slash fandom and adding Holmes and another set of forces that consist of responding to a specific story or a specific adaptation of a specific story vs. responding to the entire history of Holmes pastiche/fic/fandom/analysis, but I don't see either of those pairs as primarily related to the new movie.