Changes in Sherlock Holmes fandom over time

[damned_colonial]

So, this came up in a sub-thread on the asexuality post, and was threatening to get pretty tangential/deraily, so I thought it was worth creating a new post for it.

Sherlock Holmes fandom goes back a very long way, of course. And people have been writing H/W slash for a long time, too. Now we have this new movie, there's a whole new generation coming to the fandom who don't have experience with the older phases of the fandom, and while there is a lot of interesting stuff coming out of the newer fans' engagement with the canon, there are also older fans shaking their walking sticks at those kids on their lawn.

Personally, I'm fascinated by older Sherlock Holmes fandom even if I don't feel very much a part of it. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who was involved with Holmes fandom in its earlier/older incarnations -- any of the Sherlockian societies, or zine-based slash fandom, or mailing lists, or even LJ/DW fandom prior to the 2009 movie -- about your experiences and the changes you've seen.

And to bring it round to the subject of this comm, I'm especially interested in talking about how different groups or generations of Sherlock Holmes have addressed his (potential) queerness. Obviously it's changed over time -- we can have another go-round on the Watson Was a Woman thing and whether or not Stout was really trying to point out Holmes and Watson's queerness, if you like, and if anyone has any other pointers to older Sherlockiana on gender/sexuality issues I would love to know about them!

As for fic-writing fandom, I know when I read older H/W slash online I find it has a different aesthetic and different tropes than modern LJ/DW-centred slash fandom commonly uses. We're Not Gay, We Just Love Each Other is part of it, for sure. 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.) At least, I *think* we're more likely to do that... am I missing stuff from the older fic, and if so, where can I find the fic that talks about these things? And, is this happening because newer generations of fans are more likely to be queer, more likely to be out as queer, more likely to be used to discussing and dissecting queerness online?

Bringing in another post that I found this morning (via), by obsession_inc on the subjection of "Affirmational" vs "Transformational" fandom, do you think Holmes fandom is shifting from affirmational to transformational, and is that a generational shift? (I like obsession_inc's observation that "fixing" the story so that our beloved characters have sex is one of the most common forms of transformation.) I found myself pointing at obsession_inc's post and saying YES THIS and I know I'm going to be pointing to it a lot in future because it resonates very strongly with me, and I'm definitely feeling that resonance in what I see of Sherlock Holmes fandom in its various incarnations.

What do you think?

ETA: I know we're getting linked pretty regularly in LJ comms like holmesian_news, so if anyone comes in from there and would like a DW account to comment on posts here (or post your own), here are three invite codes:

SYMVMRXY9SGCNAAADRN7
ARHCWS7ZK2V66AAADRN8
3AKGFN8AF8B5XAAADRN9

Comments

[language_escapes]

I suppose I can throw my two cents in here... I came into Holmes fandom when I was twelve, which would have been... 1999/2000. Not that long ago, really, but before the 09 film at the very least. And it should be noted that I was pretty clearly asexual at age twelve, and didn't go searching for slash, and didn't even know what slash was until 14, but with all that in mind...

What I DO remember from fanworks of that age were that, for one, I couldn't find many on-line. I presume that they largely had found other niches before I hopped on-line, but yeah, when I started reading over at ff.net, there were only 28 stories in the archive. And of those 28, I remember a LOT of them being modern reworkings of the stories, often with a female Watson and male Holmes.

(Interesting, that Holmes was always the one who remained male, when Watson was reworked as female- I wonder what that means? Was it an effort to keep the hero/protagonist of the tale a masculine figure? Because, reading the stories now, Watson always pegs me as the one who fits more within the male stereotype, while Holmes is the one who transgresses...)

Thinking about it now, actually, I think the fact that people so often reworked the stories in order to create a female Watson is quite telling about how people wanted to understand that dynamic in the Canon, but because of a heteronormative gaze, someone had to become female. Hmm. Simultaneously, I think it could also be very telling in the sense that we often think of the most important relationship being a romantic one, and so the idea of a platonic relationship being the most important in Canon was odd, and so when these authors reworked it for modern settings they reworked it for the assumption that a romantic relationship takes primacy.

And I will confess- I wrote five novel length modern AUs with a male Holmes and a female Watson, and as an adult who actually knows something about queerness now (I lived in a very isolated, conservative area and never even heard of homosexuality until I was 14), I think I very much saw a queer relationship between Holmes and Watson but, since I didn't think it was possible to have a romantic relationship between members of the same sex, I felt that I had to switch to a female Watson in order to convey the sort of relationship Holmes and Watson had in a modern context.

Of the slash I did see and actually remember from later, I do remember it often being the We're Not Gay trope. At the very least, Holmes had often never been with anyone else, male or female, and no one had ever interested him, except for Watson. And for Watson, Holmes was the only male he had been interested in. I'm not sure- is that still pretty common? I'm actually not too aware of the new stories that sprung from the 09 film.

As for the Affirmational versus Transformational question, I'm really intrigued about how that also ties in with published fanfic. Because we still have that Voice of Authority, but then I look at some of the sheer CRACK that's been published, and the lines blur for me a bit. Because I associate crack fic with the transformational aspects of fandom, where we do whatever we want and put the characters in new situations that, yeah, would never have worked if we stuck with creating new versions of Canon. I think we can see a clear split between works that attempt to imitate and mimic Watson's writing style and focus on the case and deductive element, versus works that set Holmes and Watson against Dracula, which is one of the most popular pastiche tropes around, or the Phantom of the Opera, or Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, or even literal ghosts and zombies and other things that don't fit within the estabished Canon universe, other than in the sense that these other characters were created in similar time periods. And these are the least cracky of pastiches I can think of at this moment.

Even with that question of published fanfic in there, I would say that I think Holmes fandom is moving towards the transformational, especially with the 09 movie fans flooding the Internet. I think that in some ways, in the past, fandom was primarily held in the hands of whoever could join the BSI and other large organizations, which, in my experience, aren't really into a queer interpretation of the text. But now we have 09 movie fans mixing with Canon-only fans mixing with fans who grew up with Granada!Holmes and Russian!Holmes, and we're all coming out of the woodwork, as it were, with the release of the new film- even if people didn't like it and thought of it as blasphemy, they're interacting with people who loved it, and I think that's blurring the lines between the "authority" and the people.

... I have no idea if ANY of that was coherent at all.

[sibyllevance]

Very coherent and fascinating! I'm not familiar with Doyle's books but I truly enjoyed the 2009 movie and I really enjoyed this overview of your experience, I found this interesting in particular: 'Thinking about it now, actually, I think the fact that people so often reworked the stories in order to create a female Watson is quite telling about how people wanted to understand that dynamic in the Canon, but because of a heteronormative gaze, someone had to become female.'

[torachan]

I'm not sure- is that still pretty common? I'm actually not too aware of the new stories that sprung from the 09 film.

Sadly, this is still very common, even with film canon. I find it really, really frustrating.

[damned_colonial]

You wrote:

(Interesting, that Holmes was always the one who remained male, when Watson was reworked as female- I wonder what that means? Was it an effort to keep the hero/protagonist of the tale a masculine figure? Because, reading the stories now, Watson always pegs me as the one who fits more within the male stereotype, while Holmes is the one who transgresses...)

Just looking at this and thinking "huh." And also that this should be a top-level post! Would you be able to post something about it on the comm? It seems like a really interesting train of thought to pursue.

[language_escapes]

I'm sorry for the delay in reply- I will get on this as soon as I am able. I actually graduate from my undergraduate college in... eight or nine days, so I'm rather swamped with this whole "finishing school" concept. But after that I get several weeks before I begin my PhD, and will happily devote my time toward preparing a post on this. Thank you for asking me!