I have officially been in too many fandom wars

[neadods]

I have officially been in too many fandom wars. Because my reaction to finally reading the essay that's caused so much anger in Holmes fandom was to shriek...

... with laughter. Because it's all about someone who couldn't keep those awful Brett fangirls out of his hobby, and now the leaders of the REAL fans are letting in all the Cumberbatch fangirls AND THAT OFFENDS HIS DICKENSIAN PRINCIPLES! If you let in people like that, they'll just go and interrogate the text from the wrong perspective!

The supplanted SMOFs of Trek and Who fandom will doubtless chime in to sing the Butthurt Battle Hymn in harmony.

Me, I'm going to continue to be equally as proud of Watson's Tin Box and Sherlocks NYC and DC. And the canon on my phone is going to have to continue to live pixel-by-pixel with a metric ton of BBC fanfic.

For fuck's sake, has shouting "YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!" ever actually chased the kids off the lawn?

*eyeroll* Here, have Lucy Liu being buried in Pomeranians.

Comments

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Ms. Laredo did herself no favors in the transcription; she should have gotten somebody to proof it. Unless the original really did mistake "vagrant" for "vaguest" ,"Issac" for "Isaac" (prob. Asimov?), and contain "something French". That would be hilarious.

Then again, the pompous ass who wrote it definitely used "commensurate" when he meant "equivalent", so who knows?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I think she may have used some sort of software automatic pdf converter; the pattern of the errors suggest as much (and, yes, she should have proof-read it).

Me, I'm still boggling at this:

I wrote that the “fan,” as opposed to the “elite devotee,” is commonly an individual of half-ideas, half-expressed—or possibly only enthusiasm with few or no ideas at all. Since much contemporary “fandom” occurs on the Internet, I am reminded that Twitter allows only for communication limited to 140 characters, hardly a medium for a complex idea—even for a single idea. And because of the Internet’s immediacy (one can bang out on the keyboard any ill-considered notion, even one substantially longer than a “tweet,” and instantly flash it to many thousands), this can lead easily to the casual slovenliness of expression that contemporary electronic media engender.

Remind me, again, what was Holmes' preferred means of communication? The sodding telegram. And "Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same" is both less than 140 characters and the second best telegram in fiction.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'll be picking up the conversation in full this afternoon, but I can't wait until then to ask.... What's the first best telegram?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

"Better drowned than duffers if not duffers won't drown."

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Hee! Sorry, somehow I missed this.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm still boggling at most of it. Fans are illiterate, but they write fanfiction. SF fans are egregious blots upon the landscape, but a founding BSI member was one. Twitter is too short for a single idea... but the two most famous lines in canon are "Come at once" and "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" both of which neatly tweet. Holmesian fandom holds the founding of the BSI in its hearts. (Really? Do ask an ASH member about that someday.)

Not to mention the nasty apples-to-oranges of comparing a written statement to a verbal one, and an ad hoc verbal one at that.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

H/T Tom Lehrer: "I remember the rose that your teeth used to clench, love/When you tried something French, love/All I got was a thorn."

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Interesting. On the recording I have it's
And I envy the rose/That you held in your teeth, love/With the thorns underneath, love/Sticking into your gums.

Aha! There exists http://dmdb.org/lyrics/lehrer.diff.html . God (once again) bless the Internet.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I think the Masochism Tango got enough problems even with the moderately sanitised version of the lyrics. The London stage show Tomfoolery managed to get away with rather more

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Saw that at the Criterion. Still laughing.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

More this afternoon, but undoubtedly Isaac Asimov, who was BSI. And Futurian, and both writer and fan of that awful, awful, SF and its illiterate fans who have managed to bang out so much of that "fanfic".... (that he called fans illiterate and then went on to diss fanfic was when I almost fell off the couch.)

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

An online check shows the first documented usage of "fan" in the sense of "enthusiast" going back to 1689. There's also a dispute as to whether it's a shortened formation from "fanatic" or back formation from "fancy" (as in the Regency term for boxing enthusiasts).

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I've still seen "fancy" used in that sense today. "Cat Fancy" magazine, etc.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Monica Dickens' best novel (in my opinion) is simply called "The Fancy" and it's about rabbit breeding. But pigeon fanciers are fanciers and not "fans"

[inamac.livejournal.com]

The premier UK registration body (of which I am a Delegate Member) is still The Governing Council of the Cat Fancy. One of their rules sets out penalties for the crime of 'Bringing the Fancy into disrepute'.

Mind you, we still have a Siamese Cat Society of the British Empire, the cat world being rather slower to change than fandom.

I ought to write them into a Holmes story....

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Chalk another one up for the cat world.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I have a horrible suspicion that "something French" comprised the words milieu and metier. In which case she undoubtedly did play into the hands of the pompous prof.