Professor of Sherlockology and Advanced Snape Studies

I posted the following question to my Tumblr a little while back in responses to some of the arguing over shipping and assumptions being made about why people ship. I'm often frustrated by the simplistic and reductive assumptions that emerge in this kind of wank and wonder where other people are coming from. I expect we all ship for a number of reasons. The prompt elicited a number of really interesting responses which can be read in the notes to the post, but I'd love to hear more. Behind the cut are my own.

Have you ever thought about why you ship what you ship? And I don’t mean just what you like about a particular pairing but also what purpose it serves in your life.

Is it due to something you are dealing with personally? Is it a way to blow off steam and have fun (and if so - why this ship and not others)? Does it feel safe for you for some reason? Is it more about community than about you? Does it reflect past experiences, regret, hopes and wishes or even examined/unexamined prejudices? Does it get at something you cannot get at in any other way?


( On shipping... )

[Originally posted to my Tumblr]

I find myself reading copious amounts of fanfiction when I am troubled by something. It’s like I’m looking for answers - a mirror, a model, a map for addressing something in me that needs work.

And other times I read fanfiction looking for validation for things I struggle with but don’t want to change about myself. I seek solace in the angst and successes of these fictional characters to reassure myself that it will be okay and that the hard times are all a part of life.

There are still other times when I read fanfiction to escape from the troubles and the struggles of reality or the noise in my head. I seek universes and plots that are so wholly engrossing and different from what I experience or see around me that I can forget for a little while.

Original fiction can certainly serve these same functions but not always as immediately or as often. There is also something so reassuring about going down these paths with familiar characters, who I can rely on as a constant while I deal (or don’t deal) with whatever it is occupying other parts of my mind.

A recent article highlighting differences between BBC Sherlock and Elementary was just featured on ONTD, which generated a lot of discussion by ONTD's fans of Elementary, highlighting what they liked about that show and found lacking in Sherlock. You can read (*Note: Spoilers for Elementary*) the full comments here, which reveal a very different interpretation of the characters and storylines  (and the fandom) in Sherlock than I share. But they do point out things I have heard in favor of Elementary, which addresses things many have found lacking in the BBC series.

I am curious to watch Elementary when it finally becomes available for me to view online here in Sweden. It sounds interesting, and I wonder if it will hook me the same way Sherlock has done. All the positive things I keep hearing about it also made me wonder if it's catching on as a huge fandom phenomenon and if the Elementary fandom will soon be outstripping the Sherlock fandom in its generation of fanfiction, cosplay and fanart.  Thus, in the interest of science, I decided to do a little research on this. I decided to investigate whether there was a difference in the number of fan works posted to Ao3 for each show after the first 9 months. I picked 9 months because Elementary's first episode aired in the US about 9 months ago (September 27, 2012).

It was a bit tricky searching for Sherlock BBC fanworks because people don't always use the same tag for the show, so I decided for the sake of consistency to take a conservative approach and only searched the tag "Sherlock TV" for BBC Sherlock related fanworks and "Elementary TV" for Elementary related fanworks. This is at best a first stab, and any suggestions on how to refine my methodology for the next go round would be appreciated. Here's what I found:

	Sherlock	Elementary
First Airdate	July 25, 2010 in UK	September 27, 2012 in US
First Fanwork on Ao3	The Perils of Urban Warfare by phantomjam July 27, 2010	a thousand roads by Medie March 4, 2012 (prior to first airdate)
Fanworks on Ao3 after 9 mos	1988 (as of April 30, 2011)	514 (as of June, 30, 2013)
Total Fanworks on Ao3 as of July 7, 2013	33,661	525

Created with the HTML Table Generator

I find this an interesting snapshot. After the first 9 months, there were more than three times as many fanworks under the Sherlock TV tag than the Elementary TV tag. There are no doubt a lot of factors at play here including the fact that Sherlock's far fewer episodes and longer wait time mean fans have more time on their hands to create whereas Elementary fans have more episodes to look forward to each week. It could also suggest that Sherlock fans felt they needed to fix something about the show that Elementary fans do not (as suggested by the writers of the article above). Or it could mean that there is something about Sherlock that generated a lot of enthusiasm in its viewership that resulted in the creation of creativeworks. It could be that Elementary fans may be more likely to engage in different fannish practices that aren't archived on Ao3.

I am going to continue to dig around a little more because this is relevant to my interest in uncovering stories on fandom (and fangirls in particular) for my documentary. This was a spur of the moment thing brought on by reading that article. Your own thoughts and advice and checks on my methodology are welcome.