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talenlee · 3 years ago

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The Johnlock Conspiracy Conspiracy

First of all this is going to be building off a point first cast into relief for me by Sarah Z’s video on The Johnlock Conspiracy. She is both directly connected with the experience of this space and did the research into the actual history of the people involved, a sort of on-the-spot observer recounting her experiences ethnographically. If you want a longer form deep dive on what The Johnlock Conspiracy is, check out that video. I will be providing a quick summary.

I’m also going to talk about fanagement, which I wrote about last year, which is about the way that fan engagement was seen as being a thing that corporate entities could deliberately engage for commercial ends. Fanagement isn’t necessarily an inherently evil or corrupting thing, but it’s something to know about as something that exists, and knowing it exists can colour your relationship to the media created in response to fanagement.

There’s this idea of ‘The Johnlock conspiracy.’

In the agonisingly mediocre BBC mystery drama Sherlock that ran from who cares to also who cares, starring in the loosest sense of the word Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (a man ‘renowned’ for this, The Office and the Hobbit trilogy, on a scale of poisonous influence to actual outright evil), as a modern day re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that has some interesting ideas that it absolutely does not use well, mysteries that are not interesting and a relationship tension that was making itself up as it went along. Much ink has been spilled about how this series is not very good, and that’s good, because it’s a very expensively made bad series that banks on the reliable draw of the same fistful of boring privilege.

Part of what made it popular, sort of, was the tension of the relationship between John and Sherlock. See, they were both men, you see, and what if they kissed.

Now, tumblr is, by volume, mostly connections to other parts of tumblr. If you make something popular, it becomes amplified and exploded and brought to the attention of others and curated into lists. Content that gets shared is the very sinew of what Tumblr is, which means that doing things people share around is a strange form of primacy on the site. Making content is powerful, heady, druglike. Commanding curation where you determine what does and does not get shared is even moreso. It is a space for an audience that is engaged deeply with the concept of being engaged, and in this space, fandom happened.

There’s not a lot of Sherlock. There were big gaps between the seasons. When a season came out, it did not explain itself or deliver on its promise at all. It is, as I’ve said, bad. But it was well made and used actors you’d heard of and was treated as being prestigious and so, when the show came out, and because people liked the idea of what it could be, fandom struck on a conspiracy:

What if this terrible show is secretly great?

And I understand the impulse. It’s heart to a lot of fandom. I can’t possibly have spent this time and energy on something I don’t like, it must be that the thing I like is secretly this thing I really like. And so scaffolding comes out to buttress the idea. We’re not taught that fandom is right – we’re taught that fandom is something that justifies itself by being right. If you have a story in your heart about a Dark Fuckprince and his soft bean injured Watson, that story is real and right, and doesn’t need the official endorsement of the BBC to be good.

Without that armour of love, though, instead the fandom turned into this endless oroborous of hostility centered around three people, who seem to just be total dickheads, great job you. This resulted in the blossoming of what was known as ‘the Johnlock Conspiracy,’ where through thousands of pages of well intentioned fumes, these fans huffed themselves into believing that Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis were secretly building up to exactly what they wanted, and they were the smartest people ever for noticing it. The lack of payoff of their beliefs and the active hostility Moffat had to their ideas and positions in person, that was all part of the conspiracy.

Oh, by the way, that idea – conspiracy – is when you have an unfalsifiable conjecture. If you can’t prove it false, no matter what, that’s when you’re dealing with a conspiracy theory.

The dramatic conclusion to all this was the series ended, their conspiracy was wrong, they theorycrafted themselves a few more months of content, and then most people let it drop.

But what if I told you there was a conspiracy?

Because there was. It just wasn’t the conspiracy they thought.

See, a conspiracy is a real thing: it’s a secret plan to do something harmful. And the BBC, since they published the work that Matt Hill described in Torchwoods Trans-Transmedia: Media Tie-Ins and Brand Fanagement, worked with the parameters of their experiment aggressively.

The idea, as I outlined in my article about Fanagement was that making the program so it could engage fans directly, and give fans feelings of creative ownership over the work would drive viewership and the kinds of engagement they liked (like, paying for things). Fanagement sought to make media ‘gifable’ – low saturation backgrounds with cuts of under a second so you could break a scene apart easily and conveniently. It wanted to make fan media easy to make, and to minimise hard declarative statements.

The lessons learned from this paper included things like ship teasing as a deliberate task – and I do mean teasing, with the idea that you had to do it in deniable and ambiguous ways. Making things definite wouldn’t get you as much fan engagement as keeping things ambiguous, because fans would make an inference based on what you show them, talk about it, then other fans would watch it again to make sure they could argue with you about it.

A mystery show like Sherlock was perfect for this kind of treatment. Treating the series as if there was some really deep, thoughtful question at the heart of it meant that there was always a reason to keep from ‘revealing’ the secret of the story, to string the audience along, like they’d believe or tolerate it, if it was all in service of a clever explanation. You get it, right? After all, we gave you all the clues.

The toxic fandom of Sherlock did not form as much as it was fostered.

A lesson from this experience, a lesson easily escaping notice, is that it’s not that ‘fandoms are all the same.’ They really aren’t. They are wildly varying in the terms of their problems and those problems root causes. What they tend to have in common is dynamics, but those dynamics are expressed in a lot of different ways. It’s not that ‘fandoms’ naturally become toxic and awful. There are fandoms that are generally, quite nice, and they tend to be that way because of the values of the central movers and shakers and the conscious willingness of people who perceive themselves as part of the fandom as taking care of it. The dynamic is the same – you have common nexuses of community that people interact with – and the kind of behaviour that’s acceptable and reasonable is filtered through them. If the idea of asking people to modify their behaviour or respect people’s boundaries is seen as unreasonable, then you can get a toxic space.

Also, as I talk about ‘toxic fandoms,’ understand toxicity is relative. There is, after all, a very real, very unironic Hitler Fandom, and they are probably one of the worst fandoms out there. Being a mean lawyer on the internet is bad, and I’ve no doubt the fandom curators known now as the Powerpuff Girls absolutely wrecked some teenagers’ lives – like, there are definitely people with, I am not joking or being hyperbolic, some PTSD triggers about (say) Tumblr or whatnot, based on the kind of social force these people were leveraging.

And then remember that holding that lever at the high end, right at the top with the most power over it was a company that made TV shows that was trying to make sure you watched their shows.

Also: The tools for doing this are available to all the companies that read the paper.

My advice? Exhort and uplift queer creators. Be positive about it, not negative. Don’t make your time about attacking other people’s dark fuckprince. Bring what you like to life, and bring that life into the light. Share and love each other, rather than find reasons to be mad at one another for how you’re all playing with toys a corporation wants you to treat with respect and only play properly. And as always, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept – so make sure your fandom circles aren’t putting up with some Powerpuff Girls.

Originally posted on my Blog.

#Sherlock #Johnlock #Fanagement #Conspiracy

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 4 years ago

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Chapter 6 – So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish [TST 1/2]

The chapter title comes from the wonderful Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book series – drop this meta and read them immediately.

No, no he [Moriarty] would never be that disappointing. He’s planned something, something long-term. Something that would take effect if he never made it off that rooftop alive. Posthumous revenge – no, better than that. Posthumous game.

This is what Sherlock says about Moriarty in the very first scene of TST, and on rewatch the application to Mofftiss is startling. Trust the writers – a short-term disappointment for a long-term excitement, if you will. The reference to the rooftop is a way of pointing out just how far back this has been planned – in other words, the seeming randomness of the series is not in fact random. But let’s see how that plays out in TST.

This episode opens, as so many have pointed out, with doctored footage, as though deliberately showing us how stories can be rewritten. However, we only get glimpses of the footage at the start of the episode – the extensive old footage is not security camera footage, but recap footage from s3, and specifically the end of HLV. The idea that there is something classified, hidden, that we don’t have the full story, is meant to be associated with the actual show Sherlock, not just the camera footage – it would have been very easy to give us most of the same footage in security camera style, but they deliberately reused shots from the show to make us doubt their own authenticity. So far, so good.

The first thing that I (and most of my friends) noticed about this scene, however, is that it’s not good. The writing is questionable, to say the least. The serious resolution to the problem of Magnussen’s murder is interrupted by Sherlock tweeting, brotherly bickering, hyperactive and possibly high Sherlock being played for comedy (complete with mock opera). And then, perhaps the worst lines of the show so far:

SHERLOCK: I always know when the game is on. Do you know why?

SMALLWOOD: Why?

SHERLOCK: Because I love it.

Like a lot of this show, think about those lines for more than a nanosecond and they really don’t make sense. You’ve got to think about them for a lot longer before they start to again. This, I think, is where BBC Sherlock’s self-parody really starts. TAB focuses on parodying, critiquing and rewriting historical adaptations, but it’s easy to see the merging of all of the undeniably Sherlock elements into one parodically awful scene. The quick quips that are supposed to be clever and that are so common in Moffat’s dialogue are seen in that moment of dialogue – but the quip isn’t clever anymore, it’s empty. The same catchphrase of ‘the game is on’ comes back, and the quintessential use of technology is referenced in Sherlock’s Twitter account, where again his #OhWhatABeautifulMorning is unfathomably glib. Our Sherlock is also better known than previous adaptations for his drug abuse, and this also gets referenced, but here it gets played for comedy, which is incongruous with the rest of the show – in fact, THoB, HLV and TAB all take it pretty seriously, so to see it played off as a joke is tonally questionable. In other words, here we have Sherlock caricatured as a programme, in one scene – and it’s horrible.

(We should also notice that the use of Twitter is important – it underlies a lot of the glib comedy in this episode, with Sherlock later Tweeting #221BringIt (which is so unbelievably queer?). In Sherlock, Moffat use Twitter rather than Tumblr to comment on fan reaction to Sherlock, probably because their older audience will have no idea what Tumblr is, but also because Twitter is much more mainstream in its appreciation. Twitter takes centre stage in TEH, with #SherlockLives and the scene with the support group. The joke there is about the sheer level of how-did-he-do-it mania that gripped the public – so when we see Twitter again, we should be thinking about an extratextual as well as a textual response to Sherlock, and how Sherlock’s behaviour on Twitter in this episode might caricature the way that he is seen from the outside.)

I don’t truly buy that (in this scene, at least) Mofftiss are critiquing their own show in a straightforward sense, because they have dealt with technology better than this (words on screen, technology as useful within mysteries), drugs better than this (John’s, Mycroft’s and Molly’s reactions to Sherlock’s behaviour as well as Sherlock’s own difficulties) and clever quips far better (pick any episode). But in deconstructing this show to its instantly recognisable elements, and making them worse to hyperbolise the point, that scene strips the show of its heart. Interestingly, it’s also stripped of John, who will be the metaphorical heart of Sherlock through the EMP, but is also the part of the show that is missing when it is caricatured as the Benedict-Cumberbatch-being-clever show. This is also a critique of most people’s perception of Sherlock Holmes as a character through history in the sense of the reductive cleverness – Mofftiss are showing us that this is completely empty.

What does this mean for Sherlock himself, bearing in mind that this is taking place in his Mind Palace? The answer is pretty grim – remember that Sherlock is metatextually grappling with his own identity at this point; he needs to discover the man he is, rather than is portrayed as, in order to get out of this alive. In a psychological sense, then, the opening of TST sees Sherlock deconstruct himself as seen from the outside, and as his psyche has traditionally perceived himself, and realise that that version of himself is hollow. This scene, then, is a rejection of the Sherlock of the public eye, as well as Sherlock’s own eyes.

There is a non-explanation for how the Secret Service doctored the footage of Sherlock shooting Magnussen, the response simply being that they have the tech. If the answer is going to be that vague, there is little reason to bring up the question – except to raise it in the viewers’ minds. Making the audience question their belief in the s4 universe is something that happens very frequently, and this is the start of it. A later chapter goes into the parallels that Sherlock and Doctor Who have, but there’s an important bit from Last Christmas (DW Christmas Special 2014) that is relevant here – the main characters, all dreaming, whenever they are asked any questions that can’t be explained in the dream universe, simply reply ‘it’s a long story’. This is a ‘long story’ moment – where no explanation is given, so questions about reality are raised and unanswered.

Another similar moment comes when Sherlock says he knows exactly what Moriarty is going to do next – how? And, more to the point, it becomes hugely obvious that he doesn’t. Yet, for the first time in history, he feels happy to sit back and wait on Moriarty, because he knows that what will come will come. This insistence that the future will take its course as it needs to might draw our minds ahead to the frankly ridiculous reliance on predictions that we see in TLD – however, it should also draw our minds across to Doctor Who, and to Amy’s Choice, a series five episode I’m going to delve deeper into later, but where because it’s a dream, the Doctor is able to predict every word the monsters say.

Notice that ‘glad to be alive’ is followed by Vivian saying her name – we’ll come back to this later.

Cue opening credits!

Before going anywhere else with TST, required reading is this meta by LSiT (X). I can’t make these points better than she has, nor can I take credit for them. I’m particularly invested in her description of the aquarium and the Samarra story, as well as the client cases that appear and aren’t updated on John’s blog. Our reading will diverge later on – I think this series is a lot more metaphorical than it is hypothesis-testing, although the latter is a notable feature of ACD canon (see the original THotB) that definitely does happen here as well. I’m going to leave the Samarra story, the aquarium and the cases for LSiT to explain, however, and move on.

When we move into 221B, the fuckiness is instantly apparent from the mirror. You can go here (X) to navigate the whole inside of 221B, and I suggest you do; it’s a fantastic resource. The mirror showing the green wall is simply wrong – the angle that this is shot from suggests that we should see the black and white wallpaper, complete with skull etc. Instead, we see the green wall – and the door. We can tell this is wrong because in the ‘wrong thumb’ case about thirty seconds later, the right wallpaper is reflected in the mirror. Another note of fuckiness that we should spot is that Sherlock seems to be taking his cases from letters, in the mail he has knifed into the mantelpiece – this show has been really keen on emphasising that he uses email for the last three series, so the implication that people are sending him letters is even odder than it would be in a modern show anyway.

(Everybody in the world has commented on the ‘it’s never twins’ line – but to reiterate its importance. Firstly, it’s almost identical to the line in TAB, just with ‘it’s’ instead of ‘it is’. TAB repeats lots of things though, because it’s a dream – well yes, but dreams can’t tell the future. So material from TAB being recycled doesn’t point to TAB being a dream, it points to TST being a continuation of the dream in TAB. The fact that they saw fit to reiterate this line in a series about secret siblings also puts paid to the theory that s4 was plotted in a rush and not in line with previous series – there is a theme here, and they’re pushing it.)

And so we move to Sherlock relentlessly texting through the birth, through the christening – horrible, ooc behaviour for him if we think back to how emotional he was at the wedding. Importantly, this behaviour is all tied up with his obsessive Tweeting, which in turn links in to how the outside world (i.e. us) perceive Sherlock – is this the Sherlock that people want to see on screen? Doesn’t he feel wrong? Sure, there’s an element of self-critique in there from Mofftiss, but the incorporation of the phone obsession leaves the blame squarely with the audience. In case we couldn’t already feel that Sherlock’s character is way off, we have his Siri loudly say that she can’t understand him.

We remember from TAB that Sherlock sees himself as cleverer through John’s eyes, and the reasonably sympathetic portrayal we get in TAB we can probably put down to this attempt at understanding himself from the outside. The water in TST is showing us that we’re going in, and the sad thing is that this is almost definitely how Sherlock has come to perceive himself, but just like Siri he doesn’t truly recognise it. It’s also worth noting here the emphasis placed on God in godfather and later the deliberate mentions of Christianity at the Christening – there is also a tuning out of a culture he can’t really align himself with here, which is more important when we think about the fact that this character has been around since the 19th century.

Water tells us we’re sinking deep into Sherlock’s mind, as discussed in a previous chapter. Water imagery is going to be hugely prevalent in TST, but I want to talk quickly about the subtle hints at water even when we’re not in a giant fuck-off aquarium. Take a look at the rattle scene (which always sparks joy). When we get a side angle that shows both Sherlock and Rosie, there’s a black chest of some description behind Rosie – the top is glowing slightly blue, for reasons I can’t fathom. Then we’re going to cut to a shot of Rosie – despite seeing only a second before that there is nothing on her head, there is a glow of blue on it that looks almost like a skullcap. Cut back to Sherlock getting a rattle in the face, and the mirror is glowing the same blue colour behind him. This is all fucky, and it’s a fuckiness which is aesthetically tied to the waters of Sherlock’s mind perfectly. It suggests that Rosie isn’t real, but more important is the mirror. Earlier on I pointed out how the mirror was showing the wrong reflection; here, the mirror is glowing blue, linking it thematically to Sherlock’s subconsciousness. Visually, we’re being hinted at the process of self-reflection that’s going on in Sherlock’s brain – and the opening of TST is showing him getting it terribly wrong. Note that when the mirror jolted right earlier, Sherlock was proclaiming that it had been the wrong thumb – god knows what thumbs have to do with this, but there’s a question of shifting perception on his person, like he’s trying to locate himself.

The glowing blue light sticks around, and seems particularly associated with Rosie, like she’s the focus of much of Sherlock’s thought at the moment. LSiT’s meta linked above has already picked up on the many dangers in Rosie’s cradle decoration, from the Moriarty linked images to the killer whale mobile. Due purely to a lucky pause, I caught the killer whale’s eyes glowing blue, just like the blue from the rattle scene. He’s thinking about her in terms of the key villains of the show as well as the villains in his mind.

I’m not going to comment on the bus scene because I have a chapter dedicated to Eurus moments before TFP – jumping straight ahead.

We then find our first Thatcher case – others have been pretty quick to point out the significance of the blue power ranger in gay tv history (X), and infer that Charlie is queer coded – much like David Yost, who played the blue power ranger, he is not able to come out without being treated badly. This is undoubtedly important, as is the fact that this is the second time in 12 minutes of this show that they’ve shown us how easily film footage can be faked, and someone can be lied to – you don’t need to have Mycroft Holmes levels of clearance, just a Zoom background. This is important too. But the other thing I want to focus on is that he says he’s in Tibet.

Sherlock comes pretty high on my list of top TV shows, but currently Twin Peaks holds the top spot – it’s an unashamedly cryptic show all about solving mysteries through dreams, so no wonder I like it. It’s made by David Lynch, and in the TAB chapter I talk about how TAB takes a lot of structural inspiration from his most famous film, Mulholland Drive, which has similar themes. I don’t think this is anything particularly interesting beyond an attempt to reference the defining work in the field of it-was-all-a-dream film and tv – David Lynch and Mofftiss and Victor Fleming are the only people I can think of who can actually make that plot look good. But this Tibet moment, particularly as we’re going to be hit by another reference to Tibet later, underlining its importance, I think is a reference to this scene (X) where the protagonist, Cooper, outlines a dream in which the Dalai Lama spoke to him and gave him the power to use magic to solve mysteries. Fans of Twin Peaks will know that the magic doesn’t last long – it’s pretty much an introductory way in, and most of the rest of his important deductions will all be made in dreams. This is one of the most famous scenes in the whole programme, because it introduced the world to the weirdness of what had been set up as a straightforward cop show, and despite Cooper rarely (possibly never?) mentioning Tibet again, it’s still highly quoted and recognisable. As a watershed moment in bringing dream worlds into normal detective dramas (something highly frowned upon according to any theory of storytelling!) this is a gamechanging moment, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to point to Sherlock’s several references to Tibet as a link back to this moment.

We then cut back to Sherlock thinking whilst Lestrade tells him more about the case – what is bizarre here, is that John and Lestrade are clearly visible through what can only be described as a rearview mirror attached to the side of Sherlock’s head. If anyone can tell me what that is, I would love to know. I’m going to assume it’s a fucky mirror, because it’s in keeping with the other fucky mirrors so far. The visibility of John and Lestrade in the mirror is even more odd because it doesn’t match the colour palette of 221B at all. Sherlock is lit largely in warm, brown colours, as is Charlie’s father in the previous scene we’re transitioning from – Lestrade and John are lit in dark blue, to the point where they’re barely visible. This looks like a rearview mirror, but not like the one on the power ranger car – it’s a much older car, out of a different time, like so much in this dream world. The only colour palette they seem to match is the one from the s4 promotion photos – you know, when Baker Street is completely underwater.

Drowning in the Mind Palace. Here we are, back where we started. Sherlock might be thinking about the case of Charlie, but he’s actually reflecting on that world we saw in the promo photos, where he’s struggling to stay alive in his brain. Notice that this isn’t just a split shot, it’s specifically a mirror, so we’re meant to focus on this episode as an act of reflection. There are great parallels between Sherlock and the Charlie case which you can find here (X) – essentially, Charlie and Carl Powers from TGG are mirrors for one another both in their names and in the manner they die (a fit in a tight place, basically). Carl Powers is already a mirror for Sherlock – obsessively targeted by Jim for being the best at what he does. Charlie mirrors Sherlock through their shared trip to Tibet (dreamscape alert) and, we think, through the metatextual link of the blue power ranger. In case you hadn’t spotted it, Powers links back to that too – probably coincidence, but a nice one nevertheless. Carl Powers’s death is by drowning, which we shouldn’t ignore in an episode as loaded with ideas about drowning in the mind palace. The fact that the mirror reflects drowning Baker Street aesthetics should make us think that Charlie is asking us to reflect on Carl Powers’s death, but also on Sherlock’s own – already fatally injured (by a fit or by Mary), he is going to die smothered, unable to cry for help (in a swimming pool/carseat costume (?!)/mind palace). The idea that none of these people could cry for help is particularly poignant because so much of series 4 is about Sherlock being unable to voice his own identity, and as we’ll see once he’s able to do that, that may give him the impetus to escape his death. Think of ‘John Watson is definitely in danger’ back in HLV.

Now. Why is Sherlock so keen for Lestrade to take the credit? It’s another reason to bring up the fact that John’s blog is constantly updating – it’s dropped in a lot in this series as opposed to others – and to make us think about why nothing is happening in real life. But, given that this episode is about Sherlock trying to find who he is, is it a rejection of the persona that goes along with being Sherlock Holmes? Possibly, but he’s going to have to go to a lot more effort than that. John’s blog is the real problem here, making not just Sherlock but Lestrade out to be like they’re not. John’s blog is a stand in for the original stories, which were supposed to be written by John Watson, but TAB has already (drawing on TPLoSH) laid the groundwork for the idea that John’s blog/those stories really do not tell the whole story. So this is coming back with a vengeance here, even though for the first time Sherlock is properly moving against the persona in there, not just bitching about John’s writing style, which is a theme more common to Sherlock Holmes across the ages. John then says that it’s obvious, and when pressed just laughs and says that it’s normally what Sherlock says at this point – so again, when Sherlock stops filling the intense caricature of arrogance and bravado, John the storyteller steps in to put him back in line, even though that means pulling him back to being a much more unpleasant character.

A note here: most of the time in EMP theory, I think John represents Sherlock’s heart, and I try to refer to John as heart!John as much as possible when that’s the case. There are a few cases which are different, but most notable are when the blog comes up – then John becomes John the blogger, and our symbolism shifts over to the repressive features of the original stories and how that’s playing out in the modern world. Although a pain to analyse sometimes, I find it incredibly neat that the two of them are bound up in John as source of both love and pain, which fits our story beautifully.

John as blogger continues in the baby joke that he and Lestrade have going down the stairs – they continue with their caricature of Sherlock, but he doesn’t recognise himself in it. Or rather, there’s a moment when he seems to, but he can’t quite grasp onto it. This is typical of the way he recognises himself in the programme. It’s also worth noting that the image of John as a father is particularly tied into ACD, as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, so tying together blogger and father in this scene cements our theme.

Going into the Welsborough house, we get a slip of the tongue from Sherlock which is fantastic. He tells them that he is really sorry about their daughter, which at an earlier point in the show might just be a classic Sherlock slip-up. But mixing up genders is actually something which happens quite a lot in this show, and it’s something drawn attention to as significant in TAB.

Sherlock asks John “How did he survive?” of Emelia Ricoletti, when of course he’s thinking about Moriarty, and John corrects him quickly, much like here. A coincidental callback? Maybe not. What’s the first mistake that Sherlock ever makes? Thinking that Harry Watson is a man. What’s the big trick they pull at the end of S4? Sherlock has a secret sister – and Eurus points out that her gender is the surprise at the end of TLD. Eurus is also an opposite-sex mirror for John and for Sherlock at various points and this allows Sherlock to approach their relations from a heterosexual standpoint and thus interrogate them – more on that later. So gender-swapping is a theme that runs through the show a lot. But the similarity to TAB in particular is important here, because in TAB that was our first obvious declaration that this wasn’t just a mirror to be analysed by the tumblr crowd, this was a mirror on the superficial level that had to be broken through. This callback to TAB is a callback to the mirrored dreamscape. Don’t believe me? Look at what happens next. The second Sherlock sees Thatcher the whole room not only goes underwater, but actually starts to shake – another throwback to recognising that Emelia was Moriarty, when the whole room shakes and the elephant in the room smashes. So, again, we’re being told that this isn’t about this case – it’s about something else, and that something is the elephant in the room. Just like the shaking smashes the elephant in the room, the shaking is what tells us about the smashed bust of Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher, whose laws on “promoting homosexuality” were infamous. Smashing the elephant in the room and Thatcher simultaneously between 2015, the 1980s and 1895 is hitting the history of British homophobia for the last hundred years summed up as quickly as possible, and tearing it down through Sherlock’s self-exploration. This is a good fucking show.

You’ll also notice that Sherlock is alone in the room, just for a second, when he has his Thatcher revelation – everybody else vanishes. Again, we’re seeing that the rest of the case is an illusion, providing just enough storytime to keep the audience believing in the dream, and possibly Sherlock too.

[There’s a fantastic framing of Sherlock here between two portraits, a man and a woman, seemingly ancestral – I would love to know more about these, because if I know Arwel they’re significant, and the way they hang over Sherlock is really metaphorically suggestive. If anyone has any info on that, it looks like a really good avenue to explore.]

Blue. Blue is the colour of Sherlock’s mind palace, but this scene ties it firmly to the Conservative party. The dark blue of Sherlock’s scarf nearly matches Welsborough’s jumper, which is in fact a better match for the mind palace aesthetic generally. Thatcher unsurprisingly wears blue as well. If blue is the water that Sherlock is drowning in, how interesting that it’s being tied to the most homophobic prime minister of the last 50 years. There was absolutely no need to make this guy a cabinet minister, dress him in blue, even make Thatcher replace Napoleon – I would actually argue that Churchill is a figure who matches Napoleon’s distance and stature much better for our time. Thatcher is an odd choice, and therefore significant. To tie this to the mind palace further, we then get a shot of Sherlock reflected in the picture of Thatcher as he analyses it – a reflection of him reflecting. In case we forgot what this was actually about.

Sherlock not knowing who Thatcher is – perfectly feasible and actually quite important, although something that I’m not going to resolve until my meta on TFP, because that’s where it comes together for me. But Sherlock playing for time with his further jokes about being oblivious (‘female?’) – that, again, is Sherlock actively playing a caricature of himself. He’s not doing it for fun – he’s doing it to cover up his concern about the smashed elephant in the room Thatcher bust.

The weird thing about the reveal of how Charlie died is that we see what should have happened, if everything had gone right, before we see how he died. I can’t recall this happening in another episode of Sherlock, although I could be wrong. It’s marked by the really noticeable scene transition of crackling television static, as though the signal is cutting out. This is possibly a bit of a reach, but there’s one obvious place where we’ve seen a lot of static before.

Moriarty coming back isn’t what’s supposed to happen. It doesn’t happen in the books. We’re telling the wrong story here. (Bear in mind, from previous chapters, that Jim represents Sherlock’s fear that John’s life is in danger.) Just like Jim returning isn’t the right story, but it’s the one that happened, Charlie’s story isn’t the right story but it’s the one that happened – and indeed, Sherlock needing to save John from a dangerous marriage + suicide is not what is supposed to happen – John and Mary are supposed to be married for good (until she dies) in canon. A whole load of false endings – new stories superseding old ones. Mofftiss has an idea that there’s a new story that’s going to be told, and our strongest canon divergence is the end of s3, when we get into the EMP – and from thereon in to TAB it’s off the deep end, and the same is seen here. That TV static is talking about a new medium for a new age and their refusal to deal with established canon norms. Just in case we didn’t remember, outside in the porch we even get a visual reminder of the TV static with a second’s flashback to ‘Miss Me?’ Bad news is, that means Sherlock Holmes rejecting the norms he’s been given (feasibly represented by the hyperbolic nuclear family here) and instead… dying in his mind palace. Less fun. Carl Powers died too. Sherlock still hasn’t got there quite yet – let’s hope he doesn’t.

The next scene is, I think, very important. We come across Mycroft in a dark room with a tiny bit of light – this is really odd, as the obvious place to put Mycroft would be the Diogenes Club. Yet, although clearly more modern, this reminds me most of all of the room we meet Mycroft in in TAB.

The colour palette is the same as the top photo, and the similar chunks of light falling through suggest that we’re in the same place. I’ve brought in a photo from the aeroplane in TAB to show how the light is designed to mirror that of the Diogenes Club in TAB as well – there is a unity in all these Mycroft’s that we shouldn’t miss. Here I can’t imagine I’m the first one to notice that the light in Mycroft’s office is designed to look like a chessboard, which was an important motif in the promotional pictures for s4. Chess is associated with Sherlock’s brain through Mycroft, most notably in THE where it is contrasted with Operation which represents their emotional (in)capacities. So here we are – Mycroft is the brain, if we didn’t already know, and Sherlock has gone to speak to his brain alone much like he did in TAB. Mycroft has already been associated with the queen a lot; they meet in Buckingham Palace in ASiB, where there is a jibe about Mycroft being the queen of England – we can see here in Sherlock’s head that the brain’s power is vastly reduced by comparing these two episodes. The first time we see Mycroft in connection to the Queen we go to the most famous building in the UK. The second time, Sherlock says he’s going to the Mall, which is the street that Buckingham Palace is on, so we are led to expect a reprisal – and instead come here. There is still a picture of the queen on the wall, but apart from that we are in the darkest room of the show so far, whose grating makes it look under siege. Mycroft’s power in Sherlock’s head is vastly reduced, and indeed the brain’s influence (represented by the queen) over Sherlock’s character is waning as Sherlock struggles to come to terms with his emotional identity.

[Crack/tenuous theory: when Sherlock asks John if he is the king of England in s3, in the drunk knee grope scene, this shows that his brain’s control over his emotions have slipped; references to the queen in relation to Mycroft before have shown that Sherlock does know about the royal family, so this has to metaphorically refer to his own psyche and letting go of his brain’s anti-emotion side. Like I say, crack. But I believe it.]

Again, if we weren’t sure about Mycroft representing the brain without the heart, his rejection of the baby photos is sending out a clear message of juxtaposition with John, who represents the heart. We also shouldn’t fail to notice the water coming over Sherlock’s face again as he struggles to recognise what is important about this. This comes as he is trying to recognise what is important about the Thatchers case. I’m going to try to lay it out as best I can here.

We’ve been through what Thatcher represents to queer people of Sherlock’s age, so there’s already a strong metaphor for homophobia being smashed there. However, let’s look at the AGRA memory stick being uncovered. We know (X) that Sherlock deduced his feelings for John as he was marrying Mary, and so having the smashing of the Thatcher bust at the AGRA memory stick reveal is pretty devastating metaphorically. Why does Sherlock constantly think Moriarty is involved? Well, HLV tells us that the Jim in Sherlock’s mind is his darkest fear – and he’s originally tied up in Sherlock’s mind when he’s first shot, but he pretty quickly gets loose. That darkest fear is exactly what Jim says in that episode: ‘John Watson is definitely in danger’. The reason we bring Jim in to represent this is part of deconstructing the myth of Sherlock Holmes. The whole concept of an arch enemy is made fun of in the show, and rightly so; Moriarty himself tells the Sir Boastalot story which lines Sherlock up with that ridiculous heroic tradition that he’s set himself into, which isn’t what Sherlock Holmes is really about at all. Holmes has never really been particularly invested in individual criminals (although there are exceptions – Irene Adler, for example) – the time he gets most het up is The Three Garridebs, as we all know, when he thinks Watson is dying. It’s his greatest fear, and it’s also what Jim threatens, so Jim has become a proxy for that – and to understand that Sherlock Holmes is not the great Sherlock Holmes of the last hundred years, we have to get under and beyond Jim. Hence what we’re about to see. It’s not Jim, it’s Mary – and this is in very real terms, because Mary’s assassination attempt on Sherlock has left John in danger – but Sherlock won’t put the pieces together until the end of this episode, as we will see.

We should also pause over Mycroft asking Sherlock whether he’s having a premonition – Mycroft is laughing at the concept of Sherlock being able to envisage the future here, which we should remember when it comes to the frankly ludicrous plot of the next episode. Much like the much commented upon “it’s not like it is in the movies” which is there to undermine TST, this line is here to undermine TLD and point out the fact that it can’t possibly be real.

Sherlock describes predestination as like a spider’s web and like mathematics – both of these are to do with Moriarty. In the original stories, Moriarty is a mathematician, and one of the most famous lines from both the stories and the show describes Moriarty as a spider. This predestined future is one that Sherlock doesn’t like – Mycroft points out that predestination ends in death, which is what Sherlock is trying to avoid in this episode, and although Moriarty is never mentioned explicitly, his inflection here suggests that Sherlock is thinking about John subconsciously, without even understanding it. The Samarra discussion brings us back to the question of Sherlock’s death, and links it in with the deep waters of the mind he’s currently drowning in – the pirate imagery becomes really important here, because a pirate is someone who stays alive on the high seas and fights against them. The merchant of Samarra becoming a pirate is not merely a joke about a little boy, it’s a point about fighting for survival – and how will Sherlock later fight for survival? We’ll see him battle Eurus (his trauma, more on that later) head on, literally describing himself as a pirate. Fantastic stuff.

The scene transition where all of the glass breaks and then we cut to a background of what looks like blue water is a motif that runs through this entire episode – we’re smashing down walls in Sherlock’s mind, most particularly the Thatcher wall of 1980s homophobia, and indeed the first picture we see is that of the smashed bust.

Moving on – before we go back to Baker Street, there’s a shot of the outside – that features a mirror, reflecting back on 221B in a distorted, twisted way. Another mirror that is wrong – we’re reflecting in an alternate reality. These images keep popping up. It’s echoed in Sherlock’s deduction a few seconds later – by the side of his chair is what looks like either a car mirror or a magnifying glass, possibly the one from the Charlie scene, distorting his arm. It’s placed to look like a magnifying glass, whether it is or not, which ties in with the classic image of Holmes – but that image is distorted, remember.

Others have pointed out that when Sherlock falsely deduces that the client’s wife is a spy working for Moriarty, he should really be talking to John – and, in fact, this is another proof that this isn’t really, because otherwise this is pretty touchy stuff to be making light of in front of John. Instead, let’s remember this is Sherlock’s Mind Palace – John isn’t John here. What Sherlock does a lot in s4 – and nowhere more than the finale of TST – is displace a lot of his real world problems onto other people because he cannot handle the emotional impact of them, and that’s what he’s doing here. He’s trying to come to terms with the danger that Mary poses, but he can’t do it with John – hence why this scene has a John substitute, because that’s what the client is.

Note that the red balloon is over the Union Jack cushion, reminding us that this scene is about John in danger (see this post X). However, what’s important here is that Sherlock has got it wrong. He’s currently trying to work out why what has just happened with Mary poses so much danger, and he’s imagining Mary as the worst threat he possibly could – in a word, this Mary is a supervillain. But Mary is not a supervillain; he’s got this all wrong, and even as he says it, it’s completely ridiculous. This is not the danger Mary poses – and so out the door the client goes, and we’re back to square one, trying to work out exactly why John is in so much danger.

I’m not going to pause over the next moment of importance for too long because many have covered it – let’s just notice that Sherlock’s face is overlaid with a smashed Thatcher bust, and remind ourselves that these are the walls of homophobia in Sherlock’s brain. Also note that this matches the half-face overlay of the water in the previous scene, linking the two (although the scene with Ajay later will cement that anyway).

Next up: Craig and his dog. Nothing can be said about dogs that hasn’t be said in these wonderful metas by @sagestreet (X). Nevertheless, let’s note that this dog is coloured the same as Redbeard, and Mary (a Sherlock mirror in this episode, and in this scene – their clothing matches, and their joining of skillsets to exclude John is the link that has always united them as mirrors) compares John to the dog. We know from the metas linked above that dogs are linked to queerness in the show, but let’s remember that John here is not John – John represents Sherlock’s own heart. It’s going to take longer than this for Sherlock to acknowledge John’s queerness. I don’t think Toby the dog is that important – instead, this is foreshadowing for the more significant dog to come in TFP. The dog also allows for another bit of self-parody in the show – the close-up on the dog running through chemical symbols and the map link directly back to the chase scene in ASiP, but this time everything is different. We have no clue really what Toby is chasing or what the crime that has been committed is – they’re not even running, they’re walking! All we have are cool, if ridiculous, graphics – and, brought down to style without substance, it’s nothing but comic parody. This is important because the opening of TST is so parodic – we’re back to questioning whether the things that people associate with Sherlock and think they like about Sherlock are the right things. The fact that Toby reaches a dead end here is important – he’s a weird loose end to have hanging through the episode. When things in Sherlock normally tie together so nicely, this is a section which has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the plot other than to look a bit silly. But fundamentally, we’re talking about the superfluity of style and image here; we’ve been talking about it for a long time in relation to previous adaptations, but TST brings it in in relation to Sherlock itself.

Skipping past more bust breakages, the next scene is John and Mary in bed together – and the first thing we see is them, once again, in a mirror. There’s nothing wrong with this mirror (as far as I can tell) – everything seems to be in order! But it doesn’t break the theme of mirrors misreflecting, because this is the scene that introduces unreliable narration on a big level – this is the scene which deliberately excludes John’s texts to E. John and Eurus are gone into in another chapter so we’ll move on again.

Craig’s quote about people being weird for missing the olden days is, of course, crucial to this reading of Sherlock. It’s pretty on the nose for a show whose protagonist is idealised in the Victorian age – and sums up Mofftiss’s feelings towards the Vincent Starrett 221B poem that I elaborated on in the TAB chapter of this meta: essentially, that it always being 1895 is a very bad thing! Craig’s mockery of this nostalgia puts it into more comprehensible modern terms for us, but it also links Thatcher and 1895 again as pasts to be broken with. It’s also important that Craig says that Thatcher is like Napoleon now – although the titles of most episodes are taken from ACD stories, it’s rare that an explicit reference is made to the link between the titles (nobody mentions scarlet vs. pink in ASiP, for example). This is the first time that I can find that Sherlock shows self-awareness from within the narrative that there are extranarrative stories being played out. I’ve said before that I don’t think Thatcher and Napoleon are a good comparison; whether it is or not, Craig’s reference is actively pulling a metatextual part of Sherlock’s history into his story and forcing him to reckon with it. This is important, because he develops expectations of how this story is going to play out (black pearl of the Borgias) which are wrong – because they’re based on what he has learned to expect of himself as fictional character. We could only have such a reference within the Mind Palace.

For the sake of splitting this meta up to make it readable, I’m going to call time on this half of TST, and we’ll pick it up tomorrow at Jack Sandiford’s house. (Also I don’t know how much text tumblr allows and this is a long document.) Until then!

#emp #tst #tjlc #meta #bbc sherlock #my meta #mine #thewatsonbeekeepers #chapter six: so long and thanks for all the fish #tjlc is real #emp theory #the six thatchers #johnlock

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tea-at-221 · 4 years ago

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The TJLC Debacle: 3 years out from S4 and counting; the copyright mini-theory; so much salt I’m bloated; but in the end, there is peace (I love you Johnlockers)

Ugh, don't even talk to me about Mary.

Don't even talk to me about the way Mofftiss have said they're sick of responding to fans on the subject of Johnlock. Of how they've said they're "not telling anyone else what to think or write about them" (as if they could stop us; as if they even own Sherlock themselves. Do keep reading, because this point becomes much more relevant and in-jokey later on). Don't even mention how they've bitched and whined incessantly because--god forbid--fans got *really really* into their show and emotionally invested.

They're so eager to discount all the beautiful little moments they wrote as accidents. And Arwel, who planted all those props, continually demonstrates that he's on their side (a not-very in-depth-analysis of his Instagram account and the way he interacted with fans towards the beginning of the pandemic showed as much, but I think maybe he’s grown a bit wiser and quieter since at least in terms of Johnlock and all things elephant-related. I don’t know for sure because I stopped looking.)

Anyway--they'd actually prefer for us to celebrate our own intelligence, is I suppose a charitable way of looking at it: our ability to make connections between things in the show; our metas on symbolism; our insightful fanfic; etc., and denounce them as the bad writers that they ultimately are.

More under the cut.

(This post may be of interest to you especially if you came to the fandom a bit later: multiple links to things of relevance/quotes/explanations appear both within and at the end of this entry.)

Because what makes a writer good?

Well, an ability to make people feel an emotional connection to their work, for one. I know this is just my own perspective, but if not for Johnlock, all my emotion about the show would evaporate. There wouldn't be much else there. Other people might get something, but I wouldn’t. Is some of the writing witty and entertaining regardless of any inferred/implied Johnlock? Yeah but, eh, a lot of shows have some good writing and I just don’t give a damn about them.

What makes a writer good?

Not making promises to the reader/viewer that they'll never keep. Plot holes, leading dialogue ("There’s stuff you wanted to say...but didn’t say it.” “Yeah”) never followed through on, puns that are apparently, I suppose, unintentional (e.g. "'Previous' commander?" "I meant 'ex'").

Uh, not writing continual gay jokes that aren't actually pointing toward the inference that people are making them because there's actually something going on there under the surface. (How about just don't make those jokes ever.)

Not being, apparently, oblivious (? questionable) to the queerbaiting they're engaging in *as they’re writing it.*

Acting like their LGBT audience is in the wrong/the bad guy, instead of choosing to remain respectful in the face of dissent. Instead it's just, "we never wrote it that way" / "We never played it that way."

A lot of those other mildly witty shows don’t actually blatantly drag their most passionate fans face-down through the mud the writers themselves created. Imagine that.

I'm not even a fan of Martin Freeman anymore, for the way he handled the whole thing (getting angry, the comments he made about how the fans made Sherlock “not fun anymore”...apparently Martin’s packing up his crayons and going home?)...no offense to anyone who is still a fan of his. I don’t make it a habit to drag him. I do to some degree understand his frustration with having the whole situation taken out on him--he’s just an actor in the show--but I simply wish he’d remained as cool and professional about it as Benedict Cumberbatch instead of pointing at the fans. You’re pointing in the wrong direction, mate.

What also irks me at the end of the day is this: the subsection of people who legitimately responded badly to the TJLC/S4 debacle and went above and beyond to harass the writers and actors/actresses on social media are *few and far between*, but we've been lumped in with them by what feels like...everyone, Martin included. TJLCers/Johnlockers (not the same group, but often treated as such) have been made to look like a bunch of rambunctious, immature, demanding children time and time and again in the wake of S4.

They'd rather, what, suggest John was so in love with Mary? THAT was the relationship they wanted to uphold in that show as so significant and...what, a demonstration of how honorable it is to respect your heterosexual relationship despite, you know...ANYTHING?

Yeah sorry, I don’t believe in that. John’s text-based affair, whether a disappointment for some as to his supposed character, was a very human reaction and I kinda sorta feel like I would have reacted MUCH more strongly than that had I been John. But nope. He stayed with Mary and was *ashamed* of his wandering eye. Ashamed that maybe he wanted to be admired by someone. I can’t think of a scene, off the top of my head, where Mary ever interacted with John without belittling him in some way--if not with words, then with consistently patronizing glances.

The message here is that heterosexuality is not just acceptable, but VALUABLE, however it manifests--but god forbid anyone see a queer subtext. (Why are lgbt+ writers some of the very WORST offenders where this is concerned? And they defend it! Is this childhood nostalgia/Stockholm Syndrome of the very fondest variety or what? Gay angst is all they got if they got anything at all, so it’s still good enough as far as “representation” goes?)

They really want to tell the story of John as so emotionally/mentally fucked up that he surrounds himself with unstable people time and again. They never give any reason *why* he might do that (which they could have done even soooo subtly), or delve into his past--just, apparently it's okay to assume that Sherlock's comment about "she's like that because you chose her" is exactly that.

No. Sherlock and Mary are NOT the same. Not...*remotely*!

Mary is underhanded and evil. She lies. She manipulates. She schemes. Her “love” is based on selfishness, and her assumption that John is a simpleton and hers to mold. She's in it for herself.

Sherlock hides. He prevaricates. He feels. He loves John. He does fucked up things in the name of love, but always for the benefit of those he loves. When he screws up, which he obviously does, it’s painful to us as the audience because we see that it is painful for him when he recognizes and regrets it.

I have never seen Mary regret anything. Those crocodile tears at Christmas? More manipulation. Inconsistent with anything else we were shown about her as a character.

To even think for a SECOND that people could ship Mary and John and mentally condemn John for cheating on Mary AFTER SHE SHOT HIS BEST FRIEND...as if marriage is the be-all-end-all free pass in which every sin must be forgiven until the end of time...as if John broke any covenant with his wife beyond those she broke from the very moment she walked into his life *with an entire fake past.* Is just. Well. It's asking us to accept gaslighting as healthy, loving, normal, *preferable* behavior, so...given the source that message is coming from, it's all a bit meta.

THAT. Is insanity. Maybe Mofftiss are the sociopaths.

How these men could write characters they themselves understand so little (or tell us they understand so little because their emotional maturity has yet to surpass that of the average three-year-old’s), I will never know. I can only imagine that they have absorbed, by osmosis over their lives, real and nuanced human behavior...then churned it back out again in their writing unaware, a bit like psychopaths who teach themselves what "normal" people do so that they can pass as psychologically sound in regular society.

Remember, we *are* talking about men who do these sorts of things:

Moffat says that Sherlock is celibate and that people who claim he's misogynistic when he does things like make Irene Adler imply she's attracted to the detective (even though she's a lesbian) are, ironically, "deeply offensive" (despite lines like "look at us both" in Battersea. We aren't your therapists, Moffat--we don't care what you meant, we care what you said, and what you *said* was clear. *Implying* it does not let you off the hook).

Gatiss has proclaimed that "I find flirting with the homoeroticism in Sherlock much more interesting" than the idea of ever making a show addressing LGBT issues. (That link is to a reddit forum, and I can't find the original interview anymore, but I assure you I had seen the actual article myself ages back and can't find it online again now along with some of the Martin quotes I wanted to link to. And nevermind what Gatiss has done with LGBT shows/issues since--my focus here is on what he has said, versus what he and Moffat have since claimed regarding their queerbaiting.)

Here’s a transcript of this screenshot:

"...many people come up and say they didn't realise." Despite this lack of public awareness, being part of the gay community is clearly important to Gatiss: "The older I get the more I want to give something back. I mean, I keep meaning to do something." When asked if he'd be interested in making a series about gay issues his response was enlightening:

"No, I don't think I'd make a kind of gay programme. It's much more interesting when it's not about a single issue. And equally, I find flirting with the homoeroticism in Sherlock much more interesting. Of course this reflects the grand picture of everyone's strange make-up; there are good gay people and bad gay people. I wouldn't like to make an issue film around the culture of being gay."

Instead Gatiss' interest seems to lie in making a drama where sexuality is, if not mundane, part of the wider framework: "I'd quite like to do something about a quite happy, ordinary gay person who's just incidentally gay. For example, a three-part thriller for ITV where the lead character just happens to be gay; when they finally go home, say 45 minutes in, and they had a same sex partner. That to me would be genuinely progressive. It wouldn't be a three-part gay thriller for ITV. It would be that this character just happened to be gay."

--End article quote.

And instead, who is canonically gay in the series? Well, Irene Adler. The innkeepers at the Cross Keys. And perhaps most notably, the *villains*, because that's a helpful trope: Moriarty and Eurus are, in S4, both implied to be at least bisexual.

Any character should be able to be any sexuality, this is true. But can we have some main characters, the good guys, give some good representation? Can't we start making that the standard, rather than the villains and the background characters? Because so far, that is the exception and not the rule.

Writers need to be aware of the damage they are perpetuating. We are not quite in a world yet where any character should be able to be any sexuality but isn't, yet we have no problem with saying the villain is LGBT+ or looks different/functions differently than much of the viewing audience.

"Male friendship is important and valid, not everything has to be gay"--this is a popular point with casual heterosexual viewers (and, to my chagrin, some of my LGBT+ friends) who don't fully grasp what "queerbaiting" is, often even when it's pointed out to them.

The lens of heterosexuality is real. My first time through watching BBC Sherlock, I didn't see the Johnlock at all. I had to look for it and read about it. When I saw it, the lens was lifted for me, and it changed my life and the way I view things forever (and for the best).

But back to my point about how little Mofftiss seem to understand their own story/most ardent fans, and then on to my other theory: in S4 it must be that they dropped their “psychopaths emulating empathy” act and indulged in their own "insane wish fulfillment" by doing away with all of the meaning, continuity, and sense. Right?

So, here’s the alternate theory. One which is not, please remember, in their defense.

Remember that S4 is what Mofftiss are *happy* to have us believe is what they'd do with these characters, given the chance to do whatever they wanted. I repeat, in Moffat’s own words: “Insane wish fulfillment.”

Okay I get it, this pasta has been over-salted.

Without further delay: MY COPYRIGHT RESEARCH THEORY THAT EVEN I DON'T PUT MUCH STOCK IN AND WHICH DOESN’T MAKE UP FOR THEIR CRUELTY EVEN IF TRUE

Part of me also raises an eyebrow at S4 as perhaps an example of the effect of the Conan Doyle estate on any modern production in the US. While it’s true that all of Sherlock is part of public domain in the UK and has been for quite a long time, Gatiss and Moffat still talk about it being partially under copyright. Specifically, the last 10 stories. I’m supposing that this means that because Sherlock airs internationally, or due to whatever contract the BBC has with the Doyle estate, they are still limited by the copyright as to what they can “publish”.

The Doyle estate is known for being a pain in the ass when it comes to abiding by copyright law as everyone else knows and practices it. They’ve tried to argue, for example (in 2013 and, much more recently, with the advent of Enola Holmes), that because Holmes and Watson were not fully developed as their final selves until the conclusion of all 10 stories still under copyright, then perhaps the characters themselves should still be protected, basically, in full.

It’s true that certain elements of the remaining stories are still under copyright here in the US (Watson had more than one wife--uh huh, we have that to look forward to, Johnlockers; the Garridebs moment is still under copyright--yeah, I’m getting to that too; and Sherlock didn’t care much for dogs til later so that’s not allowed either, fuck off Redbeard), but the estate’s problem in 2013 seemed to be based around a fear that *gasp* some day--if not right now!--anyone could write a Sherlock Holmes story in any way they pleased, changing the characters however they wished to and giving those characters “multiple personalities.”

See the following excerpt from the Estate’s case:

“...at any given point in their fictional lives, the two men's characters depend on the Ten Stories. It is impossible to split the characters into public domain versions and complete versions.”

(Click for full transcript.)

Obviously, by this point, that’s been done in multiple iterations. So I dunno. Their argument was *more* than muddy to begin with--they just grasp at straws to stay in control, it seems.

But okay. Backing up: wasn’t there sort-of a Garridebs moment in S4?!?? you cry. Yep. But imagine this: the Conan Doyle estate taking Mofftiss to court to argue that they depicted the Garridebs moment--a moment still under copyright--in The Final Problem.

Did they, though? Did they really?

The fandom cried out about the ridiculousness--the utter disappointment--of that moment when it was shown. It was not what we would have expected/wanted. We didn’t see John injured, Sherlock reacting with tender outrage to the good doctor’s attacker.

Instead we saw some ludicrous BS that was as bad as the clown with the sword-gun-umbrella. More of that.

I think Martin probably found that it was easy to produce real tears when he thought about how fucking terrible the S4 scripts were.

Ahem. Yet, this all seems very Mofftiss-flavored in terms of humor.

I can all-too-easily imagine them saying, “HA. We’re going to show some of these supposedly copyrighted things--and if they take us to court, they’ll be laughed out of the room.” Could that explain some of the overall S4 fuckery?

Sherlock wasn’t supposed to like dogs til later stories, as previously mentioned-- is that why Redbeard pulled a “Cinderella’s carriage” and transformed into a pumpkin (Victor Trevor)? Hmm. Sigh.

It...doesn’t actually appear that the estate has any qualms about taking laughable stuff to court, I mean...*shrug.* They have the money to do it, and money is the name of the game, because you’ve got to pay for rights (cha-ching sounds).

Yep, it does seem that the estate is open to the copyrighted materials being made reality, but who knows for what price or with what caveats. The BBC isn’t, so far as I’ve ever heard, known for throwing money around. Early Doctor Who would be so much less entertaining if they’d had any sort of budget. (And in fact, more of the older episodes would exist, but apparently the BBC--in part to cut costs--reused some of their tapes.)

My bottom-line bitter is this: Mofftiss do like to amuse themselves. To please themselves and no one else, as they’ve shown time and again. Sure, they could do whatever they wanted with S4...and they did...but they were also cruel about it, and that’s what I’ll never forgive them--OR the BBC--for.

A lot of fans gave up after series 4. I was very nearly one of them. I was angry, like just about every other Johnlocker and/or TJLCer, but I was really truly heartbroken. I couldn’t look at fanfiction. My days were full of bitterness and I keenly felt the lack of the fandom outlet that had become so essential to my mental well-being. I didn't know how to overcome the disparity between TJLC and what the show actually was. I didn't know how to separate the things I loved so much from the shitty writers and the way the BBC handled things with their whole response letter (that atrocious, childish blanket response they sent to everyone who complained about S4, not just the Johnlockers/TJLCers. Related to your complaint or not, if you filed one post-S4, this was the response you got). I still boycott BBC shows/merchandise, just by the way.

I tried to link to the blanket response letter but the link didn’t want to work (it’s an old reddit post; I had difficulty finding a copy of the letter elsewhere though at one point it wasn’t so hard...Google is weird these days y’all...tell me it’s not just me) so here’s a screenshot:

Transcript:

“Thank you for contacting us about “Sherlock”.

The BBC and Hartswood Films have received feedback from some viewers who were disappointed there was not a romantic resolution to the relationship between Sherlcok and John in the finale of the latest season of “Sherlock”.

We are aware that the majority of this feedback uses the same text posted on websites and circulated on social media.

Through four series and thirteen episodes, Sherlock and John have never shown any romantic or sexual interest in each other. Furthermore, whenever the creators of “Sherlock” have been asked by fans if the relationship might develop in that direction, they have always made it clear that it would not.

Sherlock’s writers, cast and producers have long been firm and vocal supporters of LGBT rights.

The BBC does not accept the allegations leveled at “Sherlock” or its writers, and we wholeheartedly support the creative freedom of the writers to develop the story as they see fit.

We will of course register your disappointment.

Thank you for contacting us.

Kind Regards,

BBC Complaints Team

So how about that? *Did* they “register our disappointment”? We can actually check that. The BBC’s website has a monthly summary of complaints received. So what did they receive in January 2017, the month S4 aired?

Huh, what do you know. Sounds like that blanket response was exactly the “fuck you” it came across as.

But the show--the FANDOM--had filled a need in my life, and so I had to own that and make it mine, or just...let something in me die: something that felt like an actual vital organ. I had to decide that these characters mean something to me beyond what anyone else tells me they should. I had to accept my own perceptions as truth, as I do with everything else in my life. I had to overcome the idea of canon as law (BBC Sherlock isn't canon anyway; ACD is canon. BBC Sherlock is, in the end, badly written fanfiction--or--worse?--decent pre-slash fanfiction distorted by consistent lies and the hazing of the LGBT audience, topped with the dumpster fire of S4′s incoherent nonsense).

I had to take the good and throw away the bad, just like anyone else who chose to stay. The good bits of the show...dialogue, yes. Plot points, yes. These awful writers did write some good stuff sometimes.

They just broke all the unspoken rules of what not to do to your audience. And then did and said everything they could not to apologize, and to justify their own failings. Which, in the years since I began shipping queer ships beyond any others, I have unfortunately experienced more than once.

So, my vulnerability has been yeeted into the vacuum of broke-my-trustdom: no one can tell me what things should mean to me. I will decide.

I decide that all of the FUCKING AMAZING writing in the Sherlock fandom is a staple in my life that makes it worth living. And that that's okay. And takes precedence over anything the writers or anyone else associated with the show could ever say or do.

Johnlock can not be taken away. It doesn't belong to them. It never did, even if they brought us to it. It belongs to us. To the group of amazingly creative, brainy, empathetic, resourceful, vibrant, resilient people who make up this fandom.

So thank YOU, all of YOU, for giving me Sherlock, Johnlock, and TJLC.

I am SO SAD for those who never found a way to make peace with this fandom again. Let me just say that I understand that inability entirely.

I am fortunate that I found the ability in myself to cling to the joy (something it has taken my whole life to be able to do). I hope others will who haven’t yet but wish they could.

Let Mofftiss and whoever sides with them stay angry and bitter and vicious, always looking over their shoulders for anyone who dares to whisper about subtext.

I’m proud to be part of what they’re whispering so angrily about.

Thanks for sticking it out if you made it this far. I know this was very self-indulgent and rambly.

Articles of interest:

A Study in Queerbaiting (Or How Sherlock Got it All Wrong) by Marty Greyson

“We never played it like that.” - Martin on Johnlock

Henry Cavill on the Enola Holmes lawsuit

More on that--and by the way Sherlock isn’t allowed to like dogs

The way Sherlock creators told fans Sherlock & John aren’t gay is so rude

Especially for those new to the fandom who may not know the distinction between TJLC and Johnlockers and want to know more about TJLC's evolution/what it is/meta through the years

Moffat's view on asexuality, offensive to me in particular *as* an asexual person (same article where he claims he isn't misogynistic): "If he was asexual, there would be no tension in that, no fun in that – it's someone who abstains who's interesting."

Yet he says Sherlock isn't gay or straight and that he's trying to keep his brain pure which is a "very Victorian attitude"

(Nice historical research there, Moff--actually the Victorians were sex-positive).

Sherlock fans were robbed of the gay ending they deserved

Benedict Cumberbatch has lashed out at his Sherlock co-star Martin Freeman over his negative attitude towards fans

BBC complaints January 2017

Martin Freeman: 'Sherlock is gayest story ever'

From 2016: UNPOPULAR OPINION: "Sherlock" Isn't Sexist or Queerbaiting; It's Actually Trying to Stage a Revolution

Queer-baiting on the BBC's Sherlock: Addressing the Invalidation of Queer Identities through Online Fan Fiction Communities by Cassidy Sheehan

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lordendsavior · 5 years ago

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In the latest episode of HBO’s new NSFW teen drama Euphoria, there was sex scene between Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. Well, kinda. One of the characters in the show, Kat (played by Barbie Ferreira), is famous online for writing One Direction fan fiction, specifically about Larry Stylinson, the name given to the theory that Styles and Tomlinson were, in fact, lovers. The sex scene in the episode actually comprised of versions of the two former boyband members in an animated scene lifted from one of this character’s stories. It’s unfortunate that the animation left Styles looking a little like Lord Voldemort and Tomlinson like a sweaty teenage boy.

But while that aspect of the show might not have been real, the conspiracy of Larry Stylinson very much is. Since One Direction were launched off the back of The X Factor in 2010, Tomlinson and Styles have been dogged by rumours that they are embroiled in a love affair. On Tumblr – a breeding ground for fan theories, fan art, fan videos and fan fiction – fans would collect GIFs, images and videos of the pair that “proved” that they were in a relationship. A lingering glance was decoded as a lustful stare, the brush of knees during an interview a sign of a secret intimacy. These in turn would mutate into smutty fan fiction about the pair, where these unspoken sexual wants could play out in full explicit glory.

In the tradition of Bennifer and Brangelina, their names, like their desires, were brought together for the portmaneu Larry Stylinson. Shipping them – the act of wanting two people to be together romantically – became a way of life for some fans. To this day, these fans, known as Larries, are unwavering in their belief, love and support of Larry Stylinson.

The same cannot be said for Louis Tomlinson. For nearly nine years, he has been dogged by rumours and speculation about his relationship with Styles. This latest outing of Larry in Euphoria is just another example of the theory’s pervasiveness. After the scene aired, some fans on Twitter messaged Tomlinson to see if he had been consulted about the scene. His reply was telling. “I can categorically say that I was not contacted nor did I approve it,” he wrote.

For years, Tomlinson has categorically denied that Larry is real. In 2012 he responded to a fan stating that “Larry is the biggest load of b——- I’ve ever heard”, and in a 2017 interview with The Sun, the Doncaster-born singer said that he found the rumours disrespectful of his relationships with women and shared how it had also affected his friendship with Styles. “It took away the vibe you get off anyone. It made everything, I think on both fences, a little bit more unapproachable,” he revealed. “I think it shows that it was never anything real, if I can use that word.”

The decision to include the animated Larry sex scene in Euphoria has provied divisive. On Twitter, One Direction fans have dubbed it “disrespectful”, “vile” and an “embarrassment”. Even self-professed Larries called out the scene and some fans went so far as to start a Change.org petition to have the scene removed from the episode. (At the time of writing it has over nearly 17,000 signatures.)

The fandom’s rejection of Larry, at first, seems hypocritical. How can the very people who have spent years perpetuating the narrative that Tomlinson and Styles are romantically linked show annoyance when that same narrative gets utilised in wider media? However, fandom, specifically fan fiction, is a contradictory and confusing beast. The thing is, Larry Stylinson is bigger than the two boyband members at its core. Their supposed romantic relationship really has nothing to do with them at all.

To give a brief history of fan fiction, the medium, while it always existed in some form, came to prominence in the 1970s in fanzines for the TV show Star Trek. Then known as slash fiction (the slash refers to the forward slash that divide the two characters, for example “Kirk/Spock”), these early writings reexamined scenes within Star Trek episodes where it appeared that there was coded queer behaviour, language or sexual tension. A chance meeting on the bridge of the USS Enterprise could result in steamy sex behind a computer console. A violent clash with a Klingon that left either Spock/Kirk injured, may end with a restorative tryst in a hospital wing.

As fan communities evolved from zines to online forums, so fan fiction became more widely accessible. Forums gave birth to sites like fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, where every intellectual property from Harry Potter to Bob the Builder was free game. And not every story written was sexual, either. Many fan fictions, while romantic in nature, kept their plots suitable for all ages. They also mainly took fictional characters and queered formerly heteronormative (or platonic) senarios.

Incorporating of real people – celebrities, public figures, popstars, actors, artists – into these stories propagated during this online boom of fan fanction. Portals like nifty.org had dedicated sections for celebrity fan fiction, while sites like Wattpad, a sort of social media site for writers to share their work, filled with stories about famous people. During One Direction’s imperial phase, Wattpad especially became a hive of 1D fan fiction.

And not all of it was slash fiction, either. Anna Todd’s popular YA novel After, which became a movie this year, had its beginnings as One Direction fan fiction on Wattpad. That story featured a heterosexual relationship. Her literary success follows in the footsteps of EL James, whose Twilight fan fiction was repackaged as 50 Shades of Grey.

Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that much fan fiction, smutty or not, specifically draws on queer narratives. The reasons for this are multi-faceted. Demographically, fan fiction is predominantly written by women. In the case of Spock and Kirk, it has been argued by academics that in queering their relationship, women were able to carve out safe sexual spaces in the world of fiction away from the dominant glare of patriarchal sexuality.

According to fandom academic Camille Bacon-Smith, the fact that the gender of the characters was the same allowed women to reconstruct men without the toxicity of masculinity. The American writer Joanna Russ added to this, suggesting that in this safe space, women were able to explore their fantasies outside the confines of heteropatriarchal normalcy.

In fact, Constance Penley, a professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote in her book Nasa/Trek Popular Science and Sex in America that the gender of the characters was irrelevant. The act of having characters acknowledge their homosexual desires, she argued, was a metaphorical one, grounded in a desire to change “oppressive sexual roles”.

Still, exploring sexual desire with fictional characters doesn’t feel like an ethical problem. Neither, really, do private fantasies about real people. But fan fiction takes those private fantasies and makes them public. If authors like JK Rowling and Annie Proulx (Brokeback Mountain) take umbrage with fans writing their own stories using their made up characters, how do real people feel about having their lives dissected and fictionalised for entertainment?

The problem is the blurred line between celebrity and the human being. As celebrity’s lives playout on websites, television and physical media, their real life stories – often fabricated for headlines or sales – become a sport. There’s a twisted sense of ownership over these people. The public, as a throbbing and beating entity, made them famous. Their payment is their lives. The boundaries begin to disappear, and these human beings become characters in a soap opera. The internet, which its unending ocean of content, only helps to conjure more moments that fans can decode or adapt for their fics.

The implications of this are different for everyone. Stars like Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott, who played Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty respectively in the BBC’s cult favourite Sherlock, take the fictionalised versions of their lives in their stride. In an interview with MTV, Cumberbatch, while acknowledging that he found some of the racier stories weird, called it “flattering”. Daniel Radcliff and James McAvoy also seemed to be able to find the humour in it (although, again, acknowledging that they find it “really weird"). There’s also those who just outright ignore that this phenomenon exists.

Harry Styles, despite being one half of Larry Stylinson, has only ever alluded to it once. After the release of his debut solo album, fans speculated that the track Sweet Creature was about Tomlinson. In an interview with a radio station, Styles said: “I think people are always gonna speculate what songs are about, and I don’t think I’d ever want to tell anyone that they’re wrong for feeling what they feel about a song. Even when they’re not necessarily right. But I think if you really listen to the lyrics, I think you can work out if it’s really about that or not, and I would lean towards no.”

However, this level of ambivalence isn’t always easy. In a recent interview with British GQ, Taron Egerton expressed his discomfort with people writing fan fiction about him. “I don’t know why people think I’d want to see that,” he said. “I don’t love it at all.”

It seems that Louis Tomlinson exists firmly in this camp. And unlike these other celebrities, the ship he was involved in evolved into a full blown conspiracy theory. Fans accused management of keeping his and Styles’s relationship a secret. Paparazzi pictures, performances, interviews, press cuttings, tweets and Instagram posts were dissected for clues that the pair were linked. Tomlinson and Styles were bombarded on Twitter by fans, the first comment under every post on social media almost always being “Larry is real”. That level of scrutiny would have been difficult for anyone, but for a teenager progressing into young adulthood it was unbearable.

What’s debatable is whether any of these fans and their libraries of “proof” and “receipts” actually believe that Larry Stylinson is real or whether shipping them is just an extension of their fan fiction fantasies. For the millions of One Direction fans, the members of the group, while clearly real people, were also mythic, so far removed from their realities that they were almost imaginary.

Anyone who has ever truly obsessed over a band or musician can understand that this distance between true human interaction incubates a need to develop an alternative form of intimacy, be it through listening religiously to their music, attending concerts or cooking up fantasies.

And because of the inequalities in knowledge between celebrities and non-celebrities, where we know everything about them and they know nothing about us, these fantasies, and in turn our perceptions of them, become skewered. This mutation is the perfect breeding ground for fan fiction and conspiracy theories as we attempt to fill in the blanks in our intimate knowledge of celebrity lives.

In the case of One Direction, whose fans were mainly young girls and gay boys, this fantasy became a way to explore their own sexual wants and desires. It’s what the showrunner of Euphoria, Sam Levinson, told The Los Angeles Times he was trying to convey by having the character of Kat write 1D fan fiction.

The fact that the members of that boyband were in a similar age bracket only intensified things. Intimacy and a coarse understanding of celebrity saw the lines between fantasy and reality blur, accelerated and magnified by social media. In a way, it stopped being about Styles or Tomlinson and became about the fans, the community they’d found, a safe space to explore their desires in which those desires were often mirrored and supported by others in their community.

Does all that make real person fan fiction okay? Speaking to i-D, sex psychologist Jess O’Reilly, put it like this: “How might is make someone feel? How would their parents, partner(s), kids or friends feel about reading it? How would they feel if their friends and family read your work? How would you feel if someone published a similar story about you, your child, your partner, your best friend, your sibling or someone else you love?”

For Tomlinson, who has repeatedly shared the impact the sexual speculation had on his relationship with Styles, maybe a line has been crossed. His discomfort with the theories and fan fiction, along with countless other public figures who take issue with it, should be respected.

And, really, in the pantheon of fandoms, Larry Stylinson was its own perfect storm of burgeoning internet cultures, the proliferation of social media and cute boys singing pop bangers. The need to share sexual desires in fan fiction and, by extension, romantic celebrity conspiracy theories, feels more complicated than mere right or wrong, but rather an expanse of grey, ethical ambiguity.

It also feels too late for it to stop, too. Perhaps, as the role and makeup of what constitutes celebrity evolves, accepting fan fiction in its myriad of forms, like with gossip and rumours, is par for the course. Clearly, it’s up to the individual to figure out if they’re okay with that.

#this is a very decent take on RPF

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kweerpop · 5 years ago

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Week 14: Oh, no ma’am!

All from Zoolander 2

The above screenshot shows Benedict Cumberbatch portraying a non-binary model named All. First of all, the name All is pure mockery. Simply because one does not adhere to a binary one is now EVERYTHING? No. Wrong. In fact, in the film, the character is even asked if they have a “Hot dog or a bun.” If you need me to explain it to you, All is being asked if they have a dick or a vagina.

It makes sense that with increased visibility comes increased mockery. After all, if equality is truly equality, then everyone is at risk of being made fun of. However, I think there should be some “cooling off” type period wherein we get to discuss historical taboos. In Queer Theories, Donald E. Hall writes, “Indeed, ‘naming’ something -- even in prohibitive fashion -- does carry with it the possibility of identification ‘with’ as well as ‘against’” (28).

While giving power to the non-binary and transgender movements has allowed for individuals identifying within those communities to be supermodels, etc., false notions of what it means to belong to such a group (such as that in Zoolander 2) that can do damage to the group and to the movement.

Ethnographical goldmine: Sarah Rose, a user on a petition website called Care2 , created a petition and in the description wrote, “Cumberbatch’s character is clearly portrayed as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals . . . This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority.” The petition has since closed but it did get over 25,000 signatures.

#week 14 #week14 #qs304 #qs 304 #csun #zoolander #Benedict cumberbatch #Owen wilson #ben stiller #all #zoolander 2

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writsgrimmyblog · 6 years ago

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On the Fourth Wall and Transformative Works in RPF Fandoms

The fourth wall is a massively complicated area, which engages debates around fan labour, the power dynamics between TPTB and fandoms, the power dynamics between celebrities and celebrity oriented fandoms and the silencing/shaming of transformative works, specifically erotic fanart and fanfiction.

Derived from the abstract notion of the fourth wall in the theater (i.e. the three walls of the stage and the ‘invisible’ wall between action on stage and the audience) discussions of the ‘fourth wall’ have extended into film, television and take on its own definition as part of fandom parlance, with its increasingly more illusory and permeable construct in today’s social media driven world.

Fandoms are under more scrutiny than ever as non-fandom people pick up on intra-fandom activities and ships, and the fourth wall disintegrates as a result. It’s not just fans that break the fourth wall. It’s frequently dismantled by celebrities, the media, talk show hosts, TPTB and so on. There are a lot of convincing articles that suggest the fourth wall actually should come down, because clinging on to its last bricks heightens the sense that we should be ashamed of creating fanfiction, fanart, vidding and so on, particularly stuff with an erotic and/or ship focused slant. However, I think the conversation, when it comes to RPF, is different.

Here’s why.

Celebrities who have no real understanding of fandom space, often get weirded out when they find they are the subject of RPF fanfic. In a hot button moment in my early days of being active in this (Radio One RPF) fandom, I expressed views on that which I have since refined. Honestly, I do think a bemused response is understandable from people with zero knowledge of the role of fandoms in pop culture or the creative freedoms those spaces have historically provided to participants operating within them. Where I sit now is that I wish celebrities who benefit enormously from a large fandom with a significant transformative element might invest a little time to work out what these spaces are all about, and certainly not disingenuously exploit those spaces for humour and/or financial gain, but I get the understandable moment of not being sure what’s going on and reacting in a way that doesn’t jive well with fandom. By way of early caveat I’m also stripping out debates around any kind of harassment (ship related, stalking and so on) from this post, because if I haven’t been abundantly clear about it before, I think that is NOT okay. This post focuses on the celebrity response to RPF - real person fiction - and specifically erotic works of fanfiction. It does not deal with how celebrities might respond to attempts to establish any kind of ‘real person fact’, because that’s a whole different ballgame. FWIW, on that, I’m with V. Arrow’s excellent essay on RPF in Anne Jamison’s ‘Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World.

Some celebrities have been confronted with the information that the fictional characters they play are the subject of transformative works, and even that breaking of the fourth wall has historically not gone great for fandoms. With the exception of some fandom darlings like Tom Felton in Harry Potter fandom, it has frequently been met with the dreaded ‘no homo’ response or convention circuit engagement which makes fandom at large feel ashamed for seeing slashy potential in subtext. As much as people want to hold creators to account for capitalising on large slash ships without offering any meaningful endgame, there are also large portions of those fandoms that wish those questions wouldn’t get asked in public forums in the first place, because of the spectacular potential they have to go wrong. See, Jensen Ackles on bisexual Dean Winchester, William Shatner on Kirk/Spock, Benedict Cumberbatch on Johnlock, the Phelps twins on Weasleycest and countless others.

The difference with analysing how these conversations play out in the case of the examples above and RPF, is that the former engages debates around text/subtext, queer readings of texts, authorial control over narrative, queerbaiting in media and so on. There are undoubtedly all kinds of blurred lines which include debating the utility of shutting down slash ship questions in fan-driven forums when shows actively play with those ships in canon, the issues with framing shipping as activism and so on, but these are all big topics in and of themselves. The tl;dr is that celebs can get weird about transformative fandom activity, even if such fandom activity is centered on the fictional characters they portray. When it comes to transformative works in an RPF context, you might argue the image a celebrity cultivates as a fiction in and of itself and to an extent there is an artificiality in terms of what gets presented to the world at large, but fundamentally, a lot of the language we use to talk about fictional narratives doesn’t easily translate in the context of real people, because they’re not fictional characters. They are real people, living real lives.

That’s not to say I think people creating transformative works in RPF fandoms should feel more squeamish about doing so, but I do think the conversation around the sanctity of the fourth wall is different in RPF fandoms. For a start, for some people part of being in an RPF fandom is actually all about breaking the fourth wall. Interacting with your faves in a publicly visible way is part of celebrity fandom. However, I question the extent to which it is appropriate/helpful to extend that celebrity/fan interaction to the workings of transformative fandom and the slashing, femslashing, shipping and headcanoning associated with it. Let’s be very real about the fact that if celebrities are responding negatively to what fandom does with its interpretation of the fictional characters they depict (and oh boy I have thoughts on that which I will shelve for another day), the potential for a celebrity to find erotic works of fiction about themselves or their friends weird must surely be heightened.

This is ultimately why, in my view, @ ing celebs about fictional ships and headcanons rarely, if ever, ends well, with the possible exception of celebrities who are fannish themselves - i.e. the ones who can speak back to fandom in their own language. It most frequently ends up in a situation where not only the person sending the original message - but the fandom at large - is led to feel like your fave disapproves of something you put a lot of unpaid labour into producing and feel proud of, and it’s a pretty awful feeling. I’m staunchly in defense of RPF and I will bring out all the receipts which back up my perspective if required, but I have no desire for any of the stars of my RPF fiction to ever become aware of the fiction I’m writing about them in real life. I don’t want their approval, I certainly don’t invite their censorship, and I ultimately produce transformative works for the people that are here for it, i.e. the people in fandom who want to read the stuff I write.

When it comes to debates about the fourth wall with fictional narratives, there’s an element of holding the fiction to account, of exploring how shipping finds its way into the narrative but the actual (invariably queer) ship doesn’t. That is all part of a broader campaign for diversity in media, which in and of itself is loaded with the complications of vitriolic ship wars, skewed perceptions of fan/creator control, investing in commercially viable content where the queerness resides within subtext and is hyped within fandom space as opposed to less commercialised and already diverse queer content and so on.

With RPF and the fourth wall, you strip away a lot of those issues around diversity in media because - aside from debates about problematic faves - your faves just are. The fiction that exists is the facade of celebrity, but it has a real person behind it all and the possibility of ‘changing the narrative’ doesn’t hold weight in the same way as it does with fiction. For many celebrities their ‘celebrity’ image is very much part of showing the world their authentic selves.

When the transformative side of RPF fandom intersects with the actual celebrities in question, I always come back to who benefits from the works produced within these communities. Aside from the arguments about the financial benefits a large ship can wield, primarily, transformative works offer a space of great creativity, solace and freedom for the participants within those fandoms. That’s the thing I feel most strongly about protecting. When celebrities are confronted with transformative works featuring even the characters they represent on screen, let alone fiction or theories about themselves or their friends, their response to that has the potential to upset the fandom at large, and that just makes everyone feel like shit. I would dearly love to see the fourth wall as an impenetrable construct in these spaces for that reason, but it’s not always to be. This post is a slight subtweet to something that happened in the particular fandom I’m in today, but it has, I hope, broader application.

I struggle to see the upside of showing RPF celebrities transformative works featuring them, but, if you have counter perspectives, please do share. I’d love to know your thoughts.

#fourth wall #ugh #i promised myself i would stop having Opinions #for a while #i just think this topic #is actually interesting

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redcarpetview · 6 years ago

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Complete Listing of 70th Emmy Awards Winners

Tiffany Haddish and Angela Bassett present an award at the 70th Emmy Awards. Invision/AP

Colin Jost and Michael Che host at the 70th Emmy Awards. Invision/AP

The Television Academy tonight celebrated the 70th Emmy Awards, recognizing excellence in primetime programming and individual achievement for the 2017 – 2018 television season.

The 70th Emmy Awards were broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on NBC. Hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che and produced by Lorne Michaels with Done + Dusted, the telecast on NBC featured 26 awards, presented by celebrated performers from television's most acclaimed shows including Alec Baldwin (Saturday Night Live, Match Game), Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things); RuPaul Charles (RuPaul's Drag Race), Benicio Del Toro (Escape at Dannemora), Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method), Tina Fey (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Claire Foy (The Crown), Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), Taraji P. Henson (Empire), John Legend (Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert), Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale), Sandra Oh (Killing Eve), Issa Rae (Insecure), Andy Samberg (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Saturday Night Live) and Constance Wu (Fresh Off the Boat).

Additionally, Emmys were awarded in 96 other categories at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on September 8 and September 9.

For more information, visit Emmys.com

2018 Emmy winners

Drama Series

Winner: Game of Thrones

The Handmaid's Tale This Is Us The Crown The Americans Stranger Things Westworld

Comedy Series

Winner: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

Atlanta (FX) Barry (HBO) Black-ish (ABC) Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO) GLOW (Netflix) Silicon Valley (HBO) The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix)

Limited Series

Winner: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

The Alienist Genius: Picasso Godless Patrick Melrose

Variety Talk Series

Winner: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah Full Frontal With Samantha Bee Jimmy Kimmel Live Late Late Show with James Corden Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Variety Sketch Series

Winner: Saturday Night Live (NBC)

Portlandia (IFC) Drunk History (Comedy Central) Tracey Ullman's Show (HBO) At Home with Amy Sedaris (TruTV) I Love You, America (Hulu)

Reality Competition

Winner: RuPaul's Drag Race

The Amazing Race American Ninja Warrior Project Runway Top Chef The Voice

Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Winner: Claire Foy (The Crown)

Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid's Tale) Sandra Oh (Killing Eve) Keri Russell (The Americans) Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld)

Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Winner: Matthew Rhys (The Americans)

Jason Bateman (Ozark) Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us) Ed Harris (Westworld) Milo Ventimiglia (This Is Us) Jeffrey Wright (Westworld)

Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

Winner: Thandie Newton (Westworld)

Alexis Bledel (The Handmaid's Tale) Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) Ann Dowd (The Handmaid's Tale) Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) Vanessa Kirby (The Crown) Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid's Tale)

Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

Winner: Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones)

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid's Tale) David Harbour (Stranger Things) Mandy Patinkin (Homeland) Matt Smith (The Crown)

Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie

Winner: Darren Criss (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story)

Antonio Banderas (Genius: Picasso) Benedict Cumberbatch (Patrick Melrose) Jeff Daniels (The Looming Tower) John Legend (Jesus Christ Superstar) Jesse Plemons (USS Callister episode of Black Mirror)

Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie

Winner: Regina King (Seven Seconds)

Laura Dern (The Tale) Jessica Biel (The Sinner) Michelle Dockery (Godless) Edie Falco (The Menendez Murders) Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story: Cult)

Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series or Movie, or Dramatic Special

Winner: Ryan Murphy (The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story)

Scott Frank (Godless) David Leveaux and Alex Rudzinski (Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert) Craig Zisk (The Looming Tower, 9/11) Barry Levinson (Paterno) Edward Berger (Patrick Melrose) David Lynch (Twin Peaks)

Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Movie, or Dramatic Special

Winner: William Bridges and Charlie Brooker (Black Mirror)

Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus (American Vandal) Tom Rob Smith (The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story) Scott Frank (Godless) David Nicholls (Patrick Melrose) David Lynch and Mark Frost (Twin Peaks)

Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie

Winner: Jeff Daniels (Godless)

Brandon Victor Dixon (Jesus Christ Superstar) John Leguizamo (Waco) Ricky Martin (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story) Edgar Ramirez (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story) Michael Stuhlbarg (The Looming Tower) Finn Wittrock (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story)

Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie

Winner: Merritt Wever (Godless)

Sara Bareilles (Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert) Penelope Cruz (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story) Judith Light (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story) Adina Porter (American Horror Story: Cult) Letitia Wright (Black Museum episode of Black Mirror)

Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

Winner: Bill Hader (Barry)

Donald Glover (Atlanta) Anthony Anderson (Black-ish) William H. Macy (Shameless) Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm) Ted Danson (The Good Place)

Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

Winner: Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

Pamela Adlon (Better Things) Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish) Allison Janney (Mom) Lily Tomlin (Grace and Frankie) Issa Rae (Insecure)

Outstanding Directing For A Comedy Series

Winner: Amy Sherman-Palladino (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

Donald Glover (Atlanta) Hiro Murai (Atlanta) Bill Hader (Barry) Mark Cendrowski (The Big Bang Theory) Jesse Peretz (GLOW) Mike Judge (Silicon Valley)

Amy Sherman-Palladino accepts her award at the 70th Emmy Awards. Invision/AP

Outstanding Writing For A Comedy Series

Winner: Amy Sherman-Palladino (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

Donald Glover (Atlanta) Stefani Robinson (Atlanta) Alec Berg and Bill Hader (Barry) Liz Sarnoff (Barry) Alec Berg (Silicon Valley)

Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Winner: Alex Borstein (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

Zazie Beetz (Atlanta) Aidy Bryant (Saturday Night Live) Betty Gilpin (GLOW) Leslie Jones (Saturday Night Live) Kate McKinnon (Saturday Night Live) Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne) Megan Mullally (Will & Grace)

Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Winner: Henry Winkler (Barry)

Louie Anderson (Baskets) Alec Baldwin (Saturday Night Live) Tituss Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta) Tony Shalhoub (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live)

Regina King accepts an award at the 70th Emmy Awards. Invision/AP

2018 Creative Arts Emmys winners

Television Movie

Winner: Black Mirror: USS Callister (Netflix)

Flint (Lifetime) Paterno (HBO) The Tale (HBO) Fahrenheit 451 (HBO)

Guest Actor in a Comedy Series

Winner: Katt Williams (Atlanta)

Sterling K. Brown (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) Bryan Cranston (Curb Your Enthusiasm) Donald Glover (Saturday Night Live) Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live) Lin-Manuel Miranda (Curb Your Enthusiasm)

Tiffany Haddish on the Tonight Show (NBC). Photo courtesy of NBC.

Guest Actress in a Comedy Series

Winner: Tiffany Haddish (Saturday Night Live)

Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live) Jane Lynch (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) Maya Rudolph (The Good Place) Molly Shannon (Will & Grace) Wanda Sykes (Black-ish)

Guest Actor in a Drama Series

Winner: Ron Cephas Jones (This Is Us)

F. Murray Abraham (Homeland) Cameron Britton (Mindhunter) Matthew Goode (The Crown) Gerald McRaney (This Is Us) Jimmi Simpson (Westworld)

Guest Actress in a Drama Series

Winner: Samira Wiley (The Handmaid's Tale)

Viola Davis (Scandal) Kelly Jenrette (The Handmaid's Tale) Cherry Jones (The Handmaid's Tale) Diana Rigg (Game of Thrones) Cicely Tyson (How to Get Away With Murder)

Structured Reality Program

Winner: Queer Eye (Netflix)

Antiques Roadshow (PBS) Fixer Upper (HGTV) Lip Sync Battle (Paramount) Shark Tank (ABC) Who Do You Think You Are? (TLC)

John Legend on stage at the 70th Emmy Awards. Invision/AP

Unstructured Reality Program

Winner: United Shades of America With W. Kamau Bell (CNN)

Born This Way (A&E) Deadliest Catch (Discovery) Intervention (A&E) Naked and Afraid (Discovery Channel) RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked (VH1)

Host for Reality/Reality Competition Program

Winner: RuPaul Charles (RuPaul's Drag Race)

W. Kamau Bell (United Shades of America With W. Kamau Bell) Ellen DeGeneres (Ellen's Game of Games) Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn (Project Runway) Jane Lynch (Hollywood Game Night)

# # #

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oijio · 6 years ago

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70th Emmy Nomination Predictions

Last year, five new dramas broke into the race, and they’re looking to be as strong as they were last year. With former champ Game of Thrones returning to the race, though, people need to make some room. Should be interesting. On the comedy side, Veep, which has won the Best Comedy three years running, is off this year, including its leading lady Julia Louis Dreyfus who has won six times in a row, opening up the Comedy race. Looking forward to seeing some new faces over on that side. Here are my predictions for the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards!

Outstanding Drama Series The Americans The Crown Game of Thrones The Handmaid’s Tale Killing Eve Stranger Things This is Us

Alternate: Westworld Spoiler: Ozark Wish (not including any above): Dark; Orphan Black

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Comedy Series Atlanta Barry Black-ish Curb Your Enthusiasm GLOW The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Silicon Valley

Alternate: Modern Family Spoiler: Will & Grace Wish: The Good Place; You’re the Worst; Broad City; One Day at a Time; The End of the F***ing World; Dear White People

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Limited Series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Godless Howards End The Looming Tower Twin Peaks

Alternate: Genius: Picasso Spoiler: Patrick Melrose Wish: American Vandal; Alias Grace

~*~*~*~*~

The rest after the cut!

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding TV Movie Black Mirror: USS Callister Fahrenheit 451 Flint Paterno The Tale

Alternate: Electric Dreams Wish: Black Mirror: Black Museum

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Jodie Comer, Killing Eve Claire Foy, The Crown Mandy Moore, This is Us Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Tale Sandra Oh, Killing Eve Keri Russell, The Americans

Alternate: Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld Spoiler: Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones Wish: Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series Sterling K. Brown, This is Us Freddie Highmore, The Good Doctor Matthew Rhys, The Americans Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan Milo Ventimiglia, This is Us Jeffrey Wright, Westworld

Alternate: Jason Bateman, Ozark Spoiler: Kit Harrington, Game of Thrones Wish: Matt Smith, The Crown

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Alexis Bledel, The Handmaid’s Tale Millie Bobby Brown, Stranger Things Ann Dowd, The Handmaid’s Tale Lena Headey, Game of Thrones Chrissy Metz, This is Us Thandie Newton, Westworld

Alternate: Uzo Aduba, Orange is the New Black Spoiler: Yvonne Strahovski, The Handmaid’s Tale Wish: Vanessa Kirby, The Crown

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones Noah Emmerich, The Americans David Harbour, Stranger Things Justin Hartley, This is Us Anthony Hopkins, Westworld Mandy Patinkin, Homeland

Alternate: Joseph Fiennes, The Handmaid’s Tale Spoiler: Noah Schnapp, Stranger Things Wish: Sean Astin, Stranger Things (Note: fun tidbit, five of last year’s seven nominees are ineligible or in a different category this year - makes for a lot of space, but also there are tons of people fighting for spots here)

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Pamela Adlon, Better Things Alison Brie, GLOW Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Allison Janney, Mom Tracee Ellis Ross, Black-ish Lily Tomlin, Grace & Frankie

Alternate: Jane Fonda, Grace & Frankie Spoiler: Debra Messing, Will and Grace Wish: Aya Cash, You’re the Worst; Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex Girlfriend; Kristen Bell, The Good Place; Ilana Glazer & Abbi Jacobson, Broad City; Ellie Kemper, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Jessica Barden, The End of the F***ing World

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Anthony Anderson, Black-ish Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm Zach Galifianakis, Baskets Donald Glover, Atlanta Bill Hader, Barry William H. Macy, Shameless

Alternate: Eric McCormack, Will and Grace Spoiler: Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory Wish: Ted Danson, The Good Place; Chris Geere, You’re the Worst; Alex Lawther, The End of the F***ing World

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series Alex Borstein, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Laurie Metcalf, Roseanne Leslie Jones, Saturday Night Live Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live Rita Moreno, One Day at a Time Megan Mullaly, Will and Grace

Alternate: Jessica Walter, Arrested Development Spoiler: Betty Gilpin, GLOW Wish: D’Arcy Carden, The Good Place; Kether Donohue, You’re the Worst; Jane Krakowski, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Andrea Martin, Great News (Four of the six nominees from last year are also ineligible this year, exciting)

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Louie Anderson, Baskets Alec Baldwin, Saturday Night Live Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Brian Tyree Henry, Atlanta Tony Shalhoub, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Henry Winkler, Barry

Alternate: Sean Hayes, Will and Grace Spoiler: Ty Burrell, Modern Family Wish: LaKeith Stanfield, Atlanta; Jaime Camil, Jane the Virgin; Manny Jacinto, The Good Place; Marc Maron, GLOW

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series/TV Movie Hayley Atwell, Howards End Jessica Biel, The Sinner Laura Dern, The Tale Michelle Dockery, Godless Elisabeth Moss, Top of the Lake: China Girl Sarah Paulson, American Horror Story: Cult

Alternate: Regina King, Seven Seconds Spoiler: Cristin Milioti, Black Mirror: USS Callister Wish: Letitia Wright, Black Mirror: Black Museum; Sarah Gadon, Alias Grace

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series/TV Movie Antonio Banderas, Genius: Picasso Darren Criss, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick Melrose Jeff Daniels, The Looming Tower Kyle MacLachlan, Twin Peaks Al Pacino, Paterno

Alternate: Michael B. Jordan, Fahrenheit 451 Spoiler: Jesse Plemons, Black Mirror: USS Callister Wish: Jimmy Tatro, American Vandal; Douglas Hodge, Black Mirror: Black Museum

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series/TV Movie Penelope Cruz, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Laura Dern, Twin Peaks Nicole Kidman, Top of the Lake: China Girl Angela Lansbury, Little Women Judith Light, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Merritt Wever, Godless

Alternate: Naomi Watts, Twin Peaks Spoiler: Elizabeth Debicki, The Tale Wish: Anna Paquin, Alias Grace

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series/TV Movie Bill Camp, The Looming Tower Jeff Daniels, Godless Edgar Ramirez, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Peter Sarsgaard, The Looming Tower Michael Shannon, Fahrenheit 451 Michael Stuhlbarg, The Looming Tower

Alternate: Ricky Martin, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Spoiler: Brandon Victor Dixon, Jesus Christ Superstar Wish: Cody Fern, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Reality Competition Program The Amazing Race American Ninja Warrior Project Runway RuPaul’s Drag Race Top Chef The Voice

Alternate: Dancing with the Stars Spoiler: Survivor

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Reality Host Alec Baldwin, Match Game Gordon Ramsay, Masterchef Junior Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, Project Runway Jane Lynch, Hollywood Game Night RuPaul, RuPaul’s Drag Race W. Kamau Bell, United Shades of America

Alternate: Queer Eye, Queer Eye Spoiler: Ellen DeGeneres, Ellen’s Game of Games

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series Jodi Balfour, The Crown Pam Grier, This is Us Diana Rigg, Game of Thrones Marisa Tomei, The Handmaid’s Tale Cicely Tyson, How to Get Away with Murder Samira Wiley, The Handmaid’s Tale

Alternate: Laverne Cox, Orange is the New Black Spoiler: Kate Burton, This is Us Wish: Rinko Kikuchi, Westworld

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series Alan Alda, The Good Fight Matthew Goode, The Crown Michael C. Hall, The Crown Ron Cephas Jones, This is Us Gerald McRaney, This is Us Peter Mullan, Westworld

Alternate: Jimmi Simpson, Westworld Spoiler: Sylvester Stallone, This is Us Wish: Hiroyuki Sanada, Westworld

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series Blythe Danner, Will and Grace Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live Tiffany Haddish, Saturday Night Live Lisa Kudrow, Grace & Frankie Jane Lynch, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Wanda Sykes, black-ish

Alternate: Maya Rudolph, The Good Place Spoiler: Molly Shannon, Will and Grace Wish: Tessa Thompson, Dear White People

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series Bryan Cranston, Curb Your Enthusiasm Donald Glover, Saturday Night Live Bill Hader, Saturday Night Live Jon Hamm, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Leslie Jordan, Will and Grace Bob Newhart, The Big Bang Theory

Alternate: Chadwick Boseman, Saturday Night Live Spoiler: Sterling K. Brown, Brooklyn Nine Nine Wish: John Cho, Difficult People

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Variety Talk Series Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Jimmy Kimmel Live Last Week Tonight with John Oliver The Late Show with Stephen Colbert The Late Late Show with James Corden Real Time with Bill Maher

Alternate: The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon

~*~*~*~*~

Outstanding Variety Sketch Series At Home with Amy Sedaris Drunk History I Love You, America Portlandia Saturday Night Live Tracy Ullman’s Show

~*~*~*~*~

Another Emmy nomination prediction list done! Gonna be Game of Thrones vs. The Handmaid’s Tale it seems, with THT getting more nominations than it did last year. Will be interesting to see which of the five new shows that arrived last year can maintain their momentum. Hoping for some new, new faces everywhere else!

#LISTS #predictions #blog #personal #mine #emmys #emmy #predix #prediction

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