Sherlock Fandom - The Good, the Bad And the WTF?

[T.o.b.y]

Just saw this today.  Seems appropriate.  (I love that William Shatner liked this, although he is in a pitched battle over Outlander right now.)

 

https://twitter.com/SamSykesSwears/status/870337061210923008

 

Edited because to early/too stupid to embed a link.

 

What battle? Huh?

 

I think I am still in stage 1. And I intend to stay there! :lol:

 

[Boton]

 

Just saw this today.  Seems appropriate.  (I love that William Shatner liked this, although he is in a pitched battle over Outlander right now.)

 

https://twitter.com/SamSykesSwears/status/870337061210923008

 

Edited because to early/too stupid to embed a link.

 

What battle? Huh?

 

I think I am still in stage 1. And I intend to stay there! :lol:

 

 

 

I briefly went up to stage 2, but I was able to get myself back down to a stage 1, where it's more fun.

[T.o.b.y]

So what is the Outlander battle you referred to?

[Boton]

So what is the Outlander battle you referred to?

 

(Note: I do not personally watch Outlander, so I have no idea about the character or actor names, but this is still epic.)

 

I follow Shatner on Twitter.  He is a huge Outlander fan, and he's also friends with some of the actors, of course.  There is, apparently, a segment of the Outlander fandom that ships two of the actors (M/F) together, much like the Freebatchers do for Sherlock. Problem is, these actors are not dating and have other personal lives, and this shipping is hurtful to them.  But it's *really* annoying to Shatner, who about three times a week will call one of them out about tweeting RP fan fiction about these two actors secretly being in love with one another.  And then a fight will ensue in which other fans get upset because they think he's pointing at them, or they think people should be able to ship anyone they want, etc., etc.  You can extrapolate from being in this fandom.

 

The thing that makes this absolutely fantastic to watch is that Shatner is what, 80? And he was in the franchise (Star Trek) that arguably made slash character shipping somewhat mainstream with all of the Kirk/Spock stuff that came out of the 70s and after.  And here he is, acting like a regular fan boy.  It is so meta, I can't help but enjoy watching it from afar.

 

Tl;dr: if you are on Twitter, follow William Shatner.  

[J.P.]

To me shipping of real people is an absolute no-go. Urgs…

[Boton]

Me too.  I mean, of course I occasionally look at celebrities and wonder if they have an attraction or think they'd make a cute couple, but I'd never actually put that out there in a meaningful way, like fan fiction.  I certainly wouldn't waste the time to put my theories on social media and then insist that I was right about them!

[T.o.b.y]

How funny! I don't watch Outlander either but I follow the series from afar, so to speak, because I did read the first book and I am always interested in adaptations. Now I wonder what actors... No, I don't really want to know.

 

It's disturbing enough to me that some people apparently ship the male protagonist of that series with the sadistic antagonist who rapes and tortures him.

[Arcadia]

I think I fall into the "healthy fandom" category:

1. I like thIs
2. I love this
3. I will make stuff based on this
4. I will make stuff like this
5. I will make my own stuff because of this
6. I will make friends through this.
7. I will introduce others to this.
8. I will share this with the next generation.
9. I look forward to that which this inspires.
10. I'll sell my soul to Satan to gain control of it all even after death

Although with Sherlock I skipped 3 thru 6 and went straight to 7 and am basically stuck there. But in other fandoms I've run the whole gamut.

[J.P.]

This is new - two weeks ago a Polish fan was attacked by a Johnlocker who slapped her in the face and "threw sugar in her hair" (I assume from something she was eating). The attacker recognized the said fan from Wattpad and did it "because we don't ship the same".
Here is the tweet in Polish as evidence (the automatic translation doesn't make much sense though).
https://twitter.com/GinrinWesroe/status/944305938596581376

 

I have no words.

[Carol the Dabbler]

This is new - two weeks ago a Polish fan was attacked by a Johnlocker who slapped her in the face and "threw sugar in her hair" (I assume from something she was eating). The attacker recognized the said fan from Wattpad and did it "because we don't ship the same".

Here is the tweet in Polish as evidence (the automatic translation doesn't make much sense though).

https://twitter.com/GinrinWesroe/status/944305938596581376

 

I have no words.

Me neither. :(

 

Well, except to say this: It's odd, isn't it, that people tend to reserve their most vehement hatred for those who *almost* agree with them -- but who then get some detail "wrong"? I seriously doubt that any Sherlock fan would attack a Brett/Grenada Holmes fan, probably not even an Elementary fan. But God forbid that a fellow Sherlock fan would ship the wrong pairing!

[Artemis]

Ugh... 

 

 

 

[Arcadia]

Someone who does that has more wrong with them than just being an over-enthusiastic fan, methinks.

[J.P.]

Okay, maybe the fact that the fan (and probably the attacker too) was still in school (=very young), gives a slightly different perspective to the incident, but still.

[Arcadia]

Ugh... 

 

 

Ooooo, what is it? Can't see.....

[Carol the Dabbler]

It's an image with this URL (apparently from WordPress, a blog hoster):

 

 

[img=https://i2.wp.com/i.memecaptain.com/gend_images/pQ7fjg.jpg]

 

... showing Captain Picard reaching out to us, with the text "Can't we all just get along."  Maybe you need to have a WordPress account in order to be able to see the image?  I believe that's the blog-hosting site that I signed up with a few years ago (haven't done much with it yet).  What are the rest of you seeing?
 

[Artemis]

That's strange.  :/  I don't have a WordPress but I can see it.  I've posted images from WordPress before with seemingly no issue.

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Anybody else CAN'T see it?

[Arcadia]

Interesting, I Bing'd that URL, Carol, and came up with nothing but suggestions for other links ... not a "does not exist" or anything like that.

 

And when I click on some of the suggested links, I come up with things not remotely related to Picard, or even photos ... one is an "investor's hub", another appears to be some sort of weird blog.

 

Odd ... if I enter the URL a different way, I get: We cannot complete this request, remote server returned an unexpected status code (530)

 

And some of the links give me an "Error 1016", whatever the heck that is. Weird.

 

At any rate, I know exactly the image you mean, having seen it elsewhere, so thanks! 

[J.P.]

--

Edited February 24, 2018 by J.P.
Moved to the JL conspiracy thread

[J.P.]

This might be interesting, even if I would prefer if the author didn't write it in a style of law schoolbook.
A Companion to Fandom and Fan Studies
By Paul Booth

https://books.google.de/books?id=yDJKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA4&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false
 

[Arcadia]

Yikes. I think I'll wait for someone to summarize it for me. :-P