I'm not even really reading fic these days

[petronia]

But evidently I will keep thinking about this stuff until I get it out of my brain, so:


1) One appreciates the need for a deus ex machina go-to in fic, but when Canon says Mycroft is the British government, can he be like... less literally so? less comprehensively so?... Dudes, have you seen the British government lately? The more control over everything you cede Mycroft in fic, the more I derail mentally castigating a fictional character for shiz that's not even in the fic. It really cramps my style. Also, this is a fascist fantasy. So, yanno, examine that impulse and metaphorize it or put kink quotes around it or whatever, but you have to own it.

If you go back and read ACD!Holmes' explanation of what he meant by that phrase, he kind of makes Mycroft sound like... Wolfram Alpha. Or IBM Watson. A version thereof who belonged to a good club.


2) Mycroft/Lestrade is a crack pairing. We get that much. A lot of it doesn't have much light to shed on the canon. (It does shed light on issues in point 1, which I think is maybe why it exists - fandom unconsciously solving problems of its own creation.) I'm not invested in it, meaning that SHEER HUMOURLESS PEDANTRY is what motivates my annoyance when ppl say, "They don't even meet in canon!" Because: in the cap-C Canon version of BRUC, Mycroft goes to Lestrade first, and they show up at 221B together.


3) I have figured out what it is with White Collar. It's like this isn't the real series; the real series was the stuff that happened earlier, the cat and mouse game between Peter and Neal and their respective teams, romantic interests, underworld enemies... This is a fluffy speculative futurefic by someone who has a kink for collar devices.

Comments

[branewurms]

gdi num lock was off

3: HAHAHAHAHAHA omg

[petronia]

I keep doing that thing, you know, when you're reading fic for a canon you don't know, and part of your brain is trying to reconstruct the plot and content of the actual series? Like that.

[charmian]

Also, this is a fascist fantasy. So, yanno, examine that impulse and metaphorize it or put kink quotes around it or whatever, but you have to own it.

Holmes fandom has fascist tendencies? XD Eh, but fans examining the political implications of their kinks is something I'm not v. used to, but perhaps things have changed since then.

[petronia]

Well, they don't have to write an essay. XD In fact, there are ppl in the fandom who I think do this particular thing very well - who write pure id fic, bdsm AUs, vampire stories, what have you - but if the implications of the setup/power balance are such that there can't be consent (eg. slavefic), well, that's what the story says. So the reader is like, "But this isn't actually a happy ending! It's creepy!" The response to which being, yes, of course it's creepy, anyone who tries to make this situation out to be non-creepy isn't owning the implications of what they're writing.

Holmes fandom as a whole... someone wrote a scathing essay about the hegemonic (colonialist?) aspects of Sherlock, quite early on, and she was essentially correct - but IIRC she felt it could have been done better, and I'm not sure it could have, because the accepted analysis these days is that Holmes/the mystery genre is a product of and indivorceable from industrialized capitalism, right? It's about reinforcing rationalism, property laws, returning to status quo. I'm not unpacking this well but I think you've read a lot of the same essays I have, surely. XD When I was reading Trek there was a lot of genderswitch being written, and it worked very well. People do the same with Sherlock, but they have to work harder, because the character (!= any interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, just this one) could not be anything other than an upper-class white male. A woman or a POC would have to have more self-preservation. The genderswitch Watson stories work better, but that particular interpretative tradition has been going on for a really long time. Which is probably deserving of analysis in and of itself. XD;

Going back to the weird "scope creep" of Mycroft Holmes' character, that's also longstanding interpretative tradition Sherlock-the-series is just running with. One of the Mycroft stories intersects pre-WWI spy fiction (a la Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, Kipling's Kim - "Bruce-Partington Plans" was written 1912, set 1895, and "His Last Bow" is an outright espionage story), so over the years this has basically become, oh, Mycroft runs MI6 from the shadows. XD (The first "M", according to Alan Moore IIRC.) I guess Moffat-Gatiss's problem is that there's not a lot of criticalness in the squee; they're not owning the creepiness enough, essentially.

[charmian]

Mmm, but if they do that, isn't it like, not pure id fic? Since that is pretty much the definition of the super-ego. I guess I've been in anime fandom too long, so that even the canon creators owning the creepiness is a departure from the norm.

I'm not sure... Aren't there some leftist mystery writers? Most of the mystery essays I read dealt with the golden age/noir novels, not the current state of the genre.

[petronia]

The way my id works, there's no disjunction between creepy and sexy. XD

[coloredink]

I'm pretty sure "Mystrade" exists because people think Rupert Graves and/or Mark Gatiss is hot and want to slash one or both of them with someone, but don't want to disturb the OTPness of Sherlock/John. . . so they just slash them together! There is no argument against it since the characters barely interact, so yeah.

Also, your analysis is always fascinating and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[petronia]

Yeah, Occam's Razor... XD When a crack pairing develops a sort of gravitational stability of its own, though, I usually assume it's because it's answering a question. Even if not one the canon posits.

(People also do write OTP-disturbing options in Sherlock, quite a lot, although that's another subtler phenomenon at work - in certain strong-OTP fandoms, the canonical argument for the OTP relationship is such that fanfiction can't really do anything to it. So people don't start wank, because even if you break up the OTP in a fic, it's not a threat. Whereas in fandoms where the choice of fandom-majority OTPs is arbitrary or arguable, the sway of public opinion is all you need.)

[coloredink]

No, it's true; I hang out on the kinkmeme and have seen quite a few requests for OTP disturbance. XD But it's true, it's not a threat. Actually, Sherlock fandom as a whole is refreshingly wank-free. (Watch, now that I've said that something horrible will happen.) I have no idea why/how this is, but doubtless you have theories.

But you bring up a good point re: perceived threat levels to OTP in fandom. Immediate examples include Harry Potter and Avatar: the Last Airbender, where the OTP(s) were not revealed until the very end, and oooohhhhh the outrage! No such wank, as far as I can tell, in SGA fandom, where McShep appears to predominate. Fascinating.

[petronia]

It's not actually wank-free, we're all suffering quietly under the main comm mods, at least one of whom doesn't seem to understand that "get the hell off my comm if you find my methods offensive" is not an acceptable stance when there's basically only one centralized comm that counts, i.e. you have the ability to actually kick people out of the view of fandom. XD; That when you have power, it behooves you to be nicer, even if you didn't ask for the power. It would have come to a head long before this, except Sherlock Holmes attracts rationalists, big surprise. XD;;