this is my only mslashy icon at the moment, what is WRONG with me?

[labellementeuse]

I think this is the fastest I've ever gotten into a fandom: there was a clips pimp of Sherlock (BBC) on Saturday, I went home and started watching it right away, and now I'm reading John/Sherlock like it's going out of style. This is quite incredible when you consider that the RDJ movie didn't strike me as slashy at all. (What?)



RARR CLIFFHANGER motherfuck! Not a word I use very often! But holy schlamoly! *waves hands excitedly* Also, I have to say, the final half-hour of the Great Game was a) some of the most slashy tv I have ever seen b) probably the only stuff on the show that actually convinced me they're in love. This makes me a terrible slasher I suppose but wow, I only really started to get it when Sherlock offers to buy milk and beans and then when he's clearly TERRIFIED for John, like really, asking him if he's alright, UNDRESSING HIM okay of a bomb but still, shaking – there was practically hugging. This would have been a hugging moment in any other fandom.

And – allow me to digress for a moment – I was thinking that that made me a bad slasher but actually I think it just highlighted a preference: I really don't like buddyslash where one partner isn't emotionally involved. I do sort of have a sick horrible kink for breakup-makeup where people are having casual sex and then one person is more emotionally invested (or, better, the other person can't admit to being emotionally invested because of internalised homophobia/a poor relationship with their father/being previously burned/all of the above/being John Sheppard) and anyway then they break up but the uninvested one realises that really! They were invested! And they get back together! But my point is, that kind of fic is different to what we were getting from Sherlock, because what I felt I was getting from Sherlock was someone who really wasn't capable of that kind of love and affection, was barely in fact capable of friendship. Which makes for an interesting character on an interesting drama, but doesn't really make for a person I want to read slash about. I like schmoop, people, and while I don't expect it in every fic, I feel like it should at least be possible, theoretically, five years in the future, maybe possibly, get schmoop for a couple.

I mean, if I can get schmoop in frigging Supernatural fandom ...!

ANYWAY MY POINT IS. So it took mortal peril for obvious affection to happen, but that's a pretty fine tradition for slashy couples, and I really do See the Slash now. I demand recs.

Here are some other Thoughts About Sherlock:

• Sherlock's dialogue in A Study in Pink about girlfriends "not really being [his] area". What's the consensus on the intentionality of this? Is that intended to indicate that he's simply not interested in romantic relationships, or is it the (slash-goggle) obvious? Naturally I expect that fans will have interpreted it as fans do, and I plan on enjoying that thoroughly, but – well, basically this question boils down to: if I get an icon of Sherlock, can I add him to my "queer in canon" list? Cos I was doing my icon demographics earlier this evening and all I have are one icon each of Kate Kane and Jack Harkness, and two icons of the Doctor who I'm not convinced is even suitable for my purposes.
  I really dislike how common it is presently for the intellectual style of supervillains to be super-effeminate. I know this is just an overextension of the wealthy aesthete supervillain look, but it still drives me up the wall. It strikes me as both homophobic and borderline misogynist and that all makes me rarr. (Also, christ but Moriarty's voice was like nails on a chalkboard. I know it's supposed to do that but ugh.) (Also-also: is anti-Irish prejudice still a thing? I'm just saying.)


• This is something I wrote about Sherlock Holmes last year:
  

  Ryan, in her rejection of the “virtual-as-fake” definition, appears to have thrown the idea of books as generating a cyberspace out with the bathwater. She writes that “[t]he metaphor of the Internet as cyberspace replaces the idea of mobile information with the idea of a mobile user[.]” Before the internet, information had been understood to travel – voices travelled down telephone lines, letters travelled in cars and on mail steamers; in the Internet age, users see themselves as the travellers, visiting different locations in cyberspace where information is located. Yet in “The Five Orange Pips,” Holmes uses his library as exactly that – a cyberspatial extension of his own brain: “... a man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.” Holmes' library is a cyberspace, and it is inhabited by the virtual – the potential of the information he needs, which is actualised when he accesses it – for example, when he opens his encyclopedia to read the entry on the Ku Klux Klan. His American Encyclopedia is a virtual object, holding a great deal of potential solutions to Holmes' puzzles. He can use it again and again, opening it to find different information/actualized solutions, like the toolmaker creating axes out of stone and wood and metal. He can revirtualise the actualised information he acquires from it – perhaps Holmes and Watson encounter another case involving the K. K. K. – as the toolmaker reapplies his stone axe to grinding flour. It is a virtual object located in Holmes' cyberspace library –

  
  So Holmes quite often gets described as a machine in Doyle and it was pretty delightful to me, in the context of the above, when Sherlock said that if he ever did know My Very Earnest Mother etc, he'd "deleted it". Because not really: all he did was take it out of his brain and put it in cold storage where he could get to it later.


• Actually I like that passage, from the Holmes story "The Five Orange Pips" (which got namechecked in The Great Game, as you will have noticed) so much that I'm going to reproduce it in context:
  

  Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. "The ideal reasoner," he remarked, "would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits in a very precise fashion."
  
  "Yes," I answered, laughing. "It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis."
  
  Holmes grinned at the last item. "Well," he said, "I say now, as I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which has been submitted to us to-night, we need certainly to muster all our resources. Kindly hand me down the letter K of the 'American Encyclopaedia' which stands upon the shelf beside you. Thank you.”



Pursuant to g/t I've decided to try being a Better Fan, which is happening in three ways:
- I'm going to leave a comment on every fic I read on the AO3 this month. Perhaps I should rephrase: every fic I like/finish. It might be pretty short - as I said to china_shop at g/t, I am pretty critical, and often after I've gotten the six-word squee out of the way I only have negative things left to say, but I HATE giving outside of approved spaces - but yeah, we talked about how archives get fewer comments because people expect archive commenting to be crap, but the AO3 commenting services is actually about as powerful as LJ/DW's, so there's really no excuse.
- I'm going to start deliciousing fic again. I don't think I've delicioused a fic since yuletide last year. tsk tsk.
- I miiiiight start uploading my own fic to the AO3. This is a vexed decision because I kind of heartily dislike a lot of my old fic, but I also heartily dislike people who are all, my old stuff sucks, don't read it! Because you never know who might really want that Dairine/Kit Evanescence songfic, right? (I wish I was making that up. But no.) Anyway, decisions! They are difficult! Sigh.

Somewhat relatedly: I have both AO3 and DW invitations, and anyone who wants one should let me know!

The other fannish thing I've been doing lately: more icons. These ones are Nikita icons (WATCH IT. WRITE ME FSLASH. TY.) But first!

MOTIVATIONAL. (cap is from docrock06 at rawr_caps, I fussed with it a little.)

Teasers:

1. 2. 3.


4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22.


Credits:
- caps for 1-13 from forensicduck's screencap recap of 1x04.
- caps for 14-22 from docrock06 in rawr_caps.

Rules of Engagement
- I like it when people comment, crediting is nice but not essential
- nobody likes a hotlinker
- textless icons can be used as bases. also if you want me to put text on something I can. but I'm not very good at typesetting, so you might want to do it yourself.

Comments

[jeeps]

I haven't read a ton of Sherlock myself, but some recs I would defs trust if I were to go looking for it: here and here.

[labellementeuse]

Thanks so much! asdfg so much fic, it's amazing.

[caramarie]

Dairine/Kit Evanescence songfic

That is so adorable.

[labellementeuse]

I wrote it in sydney during a heatwave when I was like, fifteen. I mean this fic is bad. but we all have to like ... go through it, right?

also cara! I really liked your apocalypse sex vid!* and I liked more or less 100% of everything about your Chris Ryan post this afternoon. romance novel? amaze.

*I know, reducing your cleverly crafted vid to "apocalypse sex vid" is pretty much a crime :P

[caramarie]

Totally. I wrote a very angsty Sailor Moon fic to a Savage Garden song once.

I admit that the main driver behind including Sarah/Kyle in the vid was just that they had the best sex scene. :D

[paxpinnae]

Obligatory modpimp: sherlockbbc is a living, breathing community here on DW, with fic, icons, and more podfic than you can shake a stick at, and we're planning on rolling out some exciting stuff in (hopeful) anticipation of new American fans after Sherlock airs over here on PBS on the 24th. Come join us! We have cookies a friending meme!

Oh, and if you want recs, I have a crapton saved here. Personal favorites include this genderswap and everything sam_storyteller has written so far.

[labellementeuse]

eee, exciting! I think that's like, practically my first fandom comm on DW! Thank you!

eeeeeexcellent re: your recs. mmph I am deliciously buried in Sherlock recs, it's so amazing.

[labellementeuse]

PEE ESS can I just say, I love so hard that you list YW as a fandom you're always in. I feel like that SO MUCH and some days it feels like it's basically me and trialia out there in the black so like, yay.