Fandom Pitfalls

I want to say I find it amusing that it took 2022 and the Stranger Things fandom to finally slap back at the toxic bullshit that's been happening for years. Between the anti's, the under 18 year old's who have no idea how to curate safe spaces for themselves and just general fuckery, I have found myself one too many times on social media sharing posts and tweets slapping back at actor harassment and gatekeeping.

I want to say Bravo and thank you to these people who have just finally had enough. You are so much stronger than the fans in 2017 or 2020 who just dealt with the bullshit because they were just so damn tired of dealing with toxic fans insisting that they knew what was best for fandom.

Inevitably, all these things I want to say, I can't to the right people and I can't find it amusing. While women, nonbinary and genderqueer people are finding their rights being taken away in real life, it took an AO3 nomination for that toxicity to encroach onto fandom spaces and finally give people a healthy shot of fear to put their foot down and say that's it, we're finished with this.

Rules need to be applied. Old Laws need to be reinstated.

1-The Back Button is your friend. If you start reading things and don't like the content, click the back button and start over. 2- Read the Tags. For the love of all that is holy, READ THE TAGS! I don't like non-con. I don't like water sports. I don't like A/B/O. If those tags are in a fic that I think looks interesting, I scroll right on past and move to something else. You don't flame the author, you don't take it to twitter and demand an author be removed from AO3. If you don't like it, move on. Stop taking it to twitter and tumblr and acting like a MTG or a Boebert and insisting that the rest of the world conform to your narrow views of how fandom should run.

3- STOP HARRASSING ACTORS! For Fucks sake, WHY is this a thing that has to be said? There was a time when fandom had zero to very limited access to an actor of their favorite show. Now with social media, fans feel as if their entitled to tell actors what to do with their characters. We, as fans, do support the show and buy the merch, but that's just it. We support. We don't direct. A lot of you out there are getting really close to the fandom version of "I pay your salaries!"

If one actor doesn't see something the way you do, that's was fanon and head canons are for. It is not your job to insist that you know better than the actor or the producer, or the director. You want something? Get off your ass and write it.

I have never been so happy to see actors refusing to acquiesce to toxic fan demands as I am now. I love that there are certain actors out there (I won't be naming names) who stand firm that the way they played a role was the way they played it and they won't apologize. I love that there are certain actors out there just trolling people. Especially female actors. The misogyny is strong in fandom, even the internalized sort and I applaud any female actor who slaps back. Because some of you deserve it. After chasing women like Kelly Marie Tran, Daisy Ridley, and Leslie Jones from social media, watching actors slap back unapologetically makes me want to follow them and support their careers. I hope this wave of fighting back continues. And spreads. I hope seeing these fans draw a line in the sand and say, no further, spreads further out, encompasses more fandoms, older fandoms and empowers those of us who have kept quiet to finally stand up and lend our voices.

If there are two hot guys*, it stands to reason that they will get shipped. (*the nature of the two hot guys have been mention in other posts). And that is valid.  Shipping is personal. You ship who you love, ship what you like, and all ships are valid. Fandom is inherently queer, it had been for centuries, as long as there have been stories, there have been people secretly (or not so secretly) rearraigning characters to fit their personal head canons.  As far back as Conan Doyle, Wilde, Shelley, Stoker, the Bible, readers have taken characters and fit them in their own image. If that image was two men living together in secret domestic bliss in a set of rooms in London or a vampire having a lascivious affair with both the woman of his dreams and her fiancée, fandom has always prospered.

And until recently, everyone has stayed in their corners and lived and let live.  The invention of the internet and the ease and availability in which people from all over the world can share now share their own thoughts and theories had brought rise to not only the positive aspects of fandom, but the negative as well.  And one of those negatives is queerphobia.

Let’s just put this out there. Characters that identify as opposite sex can have a relationship and it not be a heterosexual relationship.  Let me repeat that.  Not all opposite sex relationships are heterosexual relationships.

This new knee jerk response of “Ew het!” invalidates queer and gender fluid relationships, making it sound as if the only valid relationships are gay relationships.  (When I say gay, I mean the aforementioned two hot men as wlw relationships, unless specified in the canon series, are usually ignored.)

This time around I’m going to be daring and use examples. The most godforsaken, dumpster fire triumvirate of fandom shows ever; SuperWhoLock.

The first in this fandom dumpster fire is Supernatural. On the air for fifteen seasons, there have been many minor queer characters on the show.  Some were the victim of the week, some were there to show that some couples can get out of the hunting business intact. Some, like Charlie, were major minor characters. The popular ship of Destiel ships an angel in a male body with one of the main male characters.  There is also gatekeeping in the fandom regarding a romantic relationship between Castiel and any character identifying as female.  This is one of the fandoms where “Ew het” is automatically thrown around.  Many of the women that are shipped with Castiel in fandom are immortal beings that are genderless and are merely taking on a female form.  Meg, a demon and part of another of the well-known ships in the fandom, is a demon and therefore has no form.  They have taken the form of a female host over the years, but at one time possessed the body of another of the male lead characters. Hannah, an angel that has also been shipped with Castiel, is also genderless and while they have taken the body of a female host, they have also inhabited a male host, that was received positively by Castiel in both forms. While Jimmy Novak, the body that Castiel originally inhabited and then just took the form of in later seasons, was heterosexual, it’s been noted that the angel Castiel, having no preference to gender, could be seen as pansexual or omnisexual.

The actual characters that are gay or lesbian in the shows are often forgotten or pushed aside in favor of a fan favorite ship.  All ships are valid, but automatically insisting that a male/female presenting relationship is automatically heterosexual, especially in this scope of the fandom, is erasing genderfluid queer relationships, making it inherently queerphobic. Seeing Dean Winchester as bisexual but invalidating his romantic relationships with the women in his life is biphobic. Bisexual people have relationships with people of the opposite sex.  It doesn’t make them less bisexual and it is gatekeeping at its worse to insist that only the same sex relationships count.

Continuing with the gender fluidity is Doctor Who. The last two years have brought this fandom its first female Doctor. A year or two before, Moffat paved the way by not only showing that Time Lords can willing change genders in their regenerations in the 50th anniversary episode, but also introducing Missy, the Master’s latest regeneration. The Thirteenth Doctor canonically makes the Doctor gender fluid thereby making any relationship they’ve had a queer relationship.  Their canon second wife, River Song has been acknowledged to be bisexual, making their marriage a queer relationship, despite seeing River only with the male versions of the Doctor so far.

Even other previous relationships with the Doctor, for example, the fan favorite of Ten/Rose, would be in actuality a queer relationship because Time Lords are canonically gender fluid. Even before Ten, Nine actively kissed Captain Jack Harkness, a canonical omnisexual man. The new incarnation of the show has never shied from the Doctor kissing anyone which is refreshing.

The final example in the disaster shows is Sherlock. As mentioned earlier, Conan Doyle’s beloved characters have been the subject of study since the late Nineteenth Century. Now, with the incarnations of BBC’s Sherlock, Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes and even Netflix’s The Irregulars, the subject of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson’s sexuality is a hot button topic for many.

At least 95% of the fandom, the Sherlock fandom, not the literary fandom, would agree that Sherlock Holmes is not 100% heterosexual.  But neither is he 100% homosexual. Most of the consensus will agree that the great detective is queer, whether it be bisexual, demisexual, ace, grey. His relationship with Irene Adler, a dominatrix who said she was gay but also was attracted to men, making her (allegedly) a bi/pan lesbian, as well as his relationship with Jim Moriarty, canonically gay, showed that Sherlock could be attracted to people, perhaps not for the attractiveness but because who they are (as also shown in the relationship between he and Molly Hooper, another gatekept ship). The popular ship, Johnlock, has Sherlock in a relationship with his roommate/friend John Watson. Watson, who was married and has a child, would at most be bisexual. Erasing the canonical women John Watson dated, slept with, and married is again bi erasure at best.

Gay, as defined in the Oxford Dictionary, is: “a homosexual person (typically referring to a man)” (Oxford.com). By this definition, women and nonbinary people cannot be gay as they are not men.  Using it as a “catch-all” in fandom is not only incorrect but queerphobic to the rest of the LGBTQ fans who also identify with these characters.

Outside the popular television shows over the years that have LGBTQ characters as the focus: Queer as Folk, The L Word, Pose, Sense8, and Gentleman Jack, I’ll be adding some old and new popular shows with queer characters who were/are either main or reoccurring characters.  Shows like Supernatural and Law and Order have minor characters who are LGBTQ but only show up for one episode as “random person” or “victim number one” that are too numerous to count.

Disclaimer: everyone has their head canons and their fanons so please don’t come at me if I don’t mention your favorite queer character or have an issue over how they are identified. I am going by a few websites that mention how and when these characters sexually identify.  There are more than a few like Captain Jack Harkness, Willow Rosenburg, Irene Adler that are listed in the bisexual section with caveats that they identify as something else; Jack Harkness, for example is identified as omnisexual and Adler and Rosenburg self-identify as lesbian even after relationships with men.

With those out of the way, let’s count them down!

📷 Everybody's favorite pansexual!

There’s a mix of shows with multiple characters so let’s get the popular ones out of the way first.

Doctor Who and it’s spin off Torchwood has a diverse cast of not only humans and alien life forms, but they come in all sexual orientations as well.  Other than the Doctor themselves being what could be said as gender neutral able to regenerate as both male and female, there is as mentioned before Captain Jack Harkness who loves anyone no matter their gender. From that show came Madame Vastra-Suliran lizard species and her wife Jenny Flint-human. Bill Potts, the companion of Twelve who was a lesbian. Clara Oswald, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones and Professor River Song all identify as bisexual and have been mentioned to have partners of both genders.

Other fan favorites like Delphine Cormier and Cosima Niehaus from Orphan Black, Kevin Keller, Moose Mason, and Cheryl Blossom from Riverdale, Anne Bonney and Captain James Flint, Thomas Hamilton from Black Sails, Waverly Earp and Rosita Bustillos from Wynonna Earp, Piper Chapman and Sophia Burset from Orange is the New Black have integrated into the fan consciousness.

The superhero television shows have their own representation as well. From Sara Lance from Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, Nyssa Al Ghoul, Alex Danvers, and Katherine Kane as openly lesbian characters, to Oswald Cobblepot from Gotham and John Constantine from Legends of Tomorrow who identify as gay and bisexual respectively.

Some of the fan favorite shows, the shows that have a cult following and subsequently devoted meta regarding both the characters and the episodes, host several queer characters, even if some of them aren’t canonically stated yet.  Hannibal has the two main characters: Hannibal Lector and Will Graham stated as bisexual or omnisexual by the creator Brian Fuller as well as Dr. Alana Bloom, who had a relationship with both main characters before eventually marrying a woman by the name of Margot.

Another fan favorite; Supernatural, despite its host of one-episode queer characters host three reoccurring characters who are on the queer spectrum; Charlie Bradbury, who becomes a Hunter and as a lesbian as well as Castiel and Chuck Shurley aka God, both of whom have had emotional/ romantic relationships with men, women, and genderfluid characters and are identified as bisexual.

Lastly, I wanted to take special care regarding the transgender characters in television shows, but they deserved to be recognized as well. Being a cis person, I didn’t want to add people like Jeffrey Tambor’s Maura from Transparent or David Duchovny’s Denise from Twin Peaks because these are characters who were not only played by cis men but ended up being problematic for one reason or another.

I’m throwing coach Shannon/Sheldon Beiste from Glee on this list because while there were some complaints regarding the way and some verbiage that was used in the show, the discussion of an adult transitioning from female to male was one of the first times it was done on television.  The character is played by a cis lesbian who while I’m adding it, please, feel free to let me know if you don’t think this character should be listed.

The other three, Sophia Burset from Orange is the New Black, Ms. Hudson from Elementary and Denise Lockwood from Chicago Med are all played by transgender actors playing transgender characters. There should be more.

So, who do you like on this list?  Who didn’t you expect, you do you think is missed? (personally, Stiles Stilinski from Teen Wolf was suggested to be bisexual, but he wasn’t on any of the lists I looked at, so I didn’t add him.)

Rounding out this show is a cast of amazing actors.  Malcom’s father, Martin aka The Surgeon is played by Michael Sheen. Malcom’s surrogate father, the man who mentored and now has Malcolm assisting him, is Lieutenant Gil Arroyo played by Lou Diamond Phillips.  The cast is rounded out by Malcom’s family, played by Bellamy Young and Halston Sage as mother Jessica and sister Ainsley respectively as well as Gill’s team of Aurora Perrineau as Dani Powell, Frank Harts as JT Tarmel, and Keiko Angena as Dr. Edrisa Tanaka, (in my opinion) one of the best medical examiners on television since 2017.

The show gained popularity quickly because of both lead stars; residual popularity of Michael Sheen from his recent run on Good Omens and The Fold, the online fans of Lou Diamond Phillips eager to see their favorites on the small screen once again. Once in, fans quickly realized that there was more to this show than the initial star power.  As I personally stated once “come for Michael Sheen, stay for Tom Payne.”

It's the truth.

The interaction between Martin, who now resides in Clairmont Psychiatric Hospital, and Malcolm, who is not only dealing with the notoriety of his father being a famous serial killer but his own fears and anxieties that he will become just like him is jarring at times.  Sheen plays the line between loving father and intelligent psychopath brilliantly. We all have issues with our parents, but they aren’t nearly as chaotic as Malcolm’s. Between a serial killer father, a high society, alcoholic mother, and an ambitious younger sister who is determined to make her way up the ladder by any means necessary, it’s easy to understand why Malcolm ties himself to the bed to keep him from sleepwalking from hurting himself from waking nightmares.

With Gil’s team, he has a different interaction.  From JT, a detective who never know what to think of Malcom to Dani, who immediately takes a sympathetic role towards what The surgeon is doing to Malcolm’s psyche to finally Edrisa, the ME who has a huge crush on Malcom and is the only one who is able to understand and connect with his weird sense of amusement, (getting excited over headless bodies while the rest of the team looks on in concern is prime Malcolm and Edrisa content).

Over two seasons, Prodigal Son has held its own on Fox.  Their loyal fanbase, lovingly known as #Prodigies, rallied in the beginning of Season One to let the broadcasting network know they wanted a Season Two.  A global pandemic couldn’t keep them down, the fans continually going onto Twitter to keep the name and interest alive, holding watch parties, keep the hashtags going.  When Season Two came on in January 2021, the fan base was ecstatic and immediately began their push for a Season Three.

On Monday May 9th, 2021, Fox announced it was cancelling Prodigal Son with the final two episodes of the season being the last.

Immediately the fans rallied to save this beloved show. First with a petition, then, led by twitter users @tinkerbritt @ProdigalSaviors has become an organized effort to not only bring awareness to the plight of the show but to convince another network that the show is a viable and comes with a fan base that will follow it to another network or streaming site.  With catchy hashtags such as #SaveSunshine (referencing Malcolm’s bird)  and #BewaretheHeels (Jessica is deadly with heels) this grassroots campaign has been getting traction and has been helped by members of the cast and crew as well.  On May 18th word circulated that Warner Bros was looking into the possibility of taking over the show.

Prodigal Son is an uncut gem.  In its Sophomore season, it can only get better.  There are still so many questions to be answered, not only between Malcom and Dani (Brightwell shippers unite), but JT and the problems he is dealing with as a black man on the police force.  There’s the question of if Ainsley is the one who will truly follow in her father’s footsteps and of course, will Gill and Jessica finally get together (Gillica shippers unite). Story lines and threads ranging from Malcolm’s past and the lingering effects of being a child of a serial killer, the missing victims of The Surgeon, the repercussions of what happened in the end of Season One, so many things to draw from.  And come on, if you haven't seen the Season Two finale, the networks cannot leave us like this! Malcolm Bright fans worldwide shouted at that ending!

Prodigal Son deserves to have it story told. It is one of the prolific shows on television and it deserves to have a chance to shine.

If you want to join the other Prodigies in our fight to Save Prodigal Son, just follow the link below and embedded within this post.

Fan Campaigns work, we’ve seen it multiple times, from shows like Lucifer, who was cancelled by Fox after three seasons and moved to Netflix where it is currently on its 5th season, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which was cancelled by Fox after its 5th season and picked up by NBC for three more seasons, to Sense8, a Netflix series that was brought back for a 2 ½ hour finale to wrap everything up.

Prodigal Son deserves to have it’s name on this list as well.

Stop.

Just stop.  Fandom is for everyone, there has not been nor will there ever be an entrance fee (other than your entire heart and soul) or a magic password to enter a fandom.  There will never be a measuring system to designate If someone is a “true fan” or not.   It didn’t work with the guys who like to give quizzes to see if women are “enough of a fan” and it doesn’t work when we get told we’re just “casuals” instead of fans. As if our heart and soul are dedicated to our fandom. As if we don’t own every single action figure or statue or book or piece of media we can get our hands on to collect.  As if we don’t count pennies to save up to go to a convention to see our favorite person. As if we don’t get excited and rejoice when one of our own gets the opportunity to meet out faves and it’s an exciting thing.

Fandom is an ever growing, ever changing thing and we should embrace that.  It’s a family.  A large nerdy family that nobody else outside our collective understand. The sci-fi geeks might not understand the anime kids, but we accept and embrace them.  The literary nerds might not get the movie geeks, but they can all still get excited when those worlds merge.  The only mundane out there are the people who don’t understand any of it.  No matter who we are; the lost, the lonely, the queer, the misunderstood, the furries, the fangirls, the otakus, the book nerds, the tech geeks. We are all in the same group and it’s unpardonably rude to try to gatekeep inside our community because one small group doesn’t like that another group has a different think space.

For the smaller groups, the shippers, the fans of media that like to think that all media should be custom fit to their size only, damn anyone else who engages with this media.  The elitist attitude of you must get on my train or be left behind.  The gatekeeping of if you don’t ship what I ship, you’re wrong.

Media is not required to cater to us.  Shows are not required to cater to their fans.  It’s nice when it turns out that way, but it’s not required to.  Media is represented by a wide target audience.  The showrunners pitch a show, the networks approve it and it gets made. If it becomes popular, there is still a basic line of general plot to work out.  All the rest is applesauce.  The main idea of a show, a book, any piece of media, is to get from Point A to Point Z, while hitting the 24 other points along the way.  If something can be changed or moved in side points that will enhance the media without usurping the main plot line, it might get added or adjusted.  If it can’t, then it can’t.  No amount of character analysis, meta studies, subtext insistence is going to change that this one specific idea will fit into the linear plot.

It’s not about the showrunner hating their fans or being horrible people or ruining a vision that was not theirs to begin with.  If a piece of media that is being consumed begins to give you heartburn, then stop consuming it.  Find something more palatable to your tastes.  You can’t make chicken into tofu no matter how free range the chicken was.  It won’t work.  You go out and you find the tofu, you don’t go out to people eating chicken and scream about how they aren’t consuming the chicken properly and they don’t understand the subtle nuances that this chicken is actual tofu because when alive, the chickens had soybeans in their feed.  You don’t stand in front of the processing plant and scream about how they hate tofu consumers because they refuse to acknowledge that the chickens they’re processing are actually tofu because some of the processed chicken comes out square so obviously it was meant to be tofu.  You need to go and find the actual tofu processing plant. A place that creates tofu for people who consume it.

Or better yet, make your own tofu.

Granted this allegory went off the rails, but the meaning is clear.  If you don’t like the media, make your own media. Media consumable for small target audiences doesn’t work.  For media to be popular, it must be able to interact with the largest possible target audience from around the world.  Which means that they need to make sure that their product is consumable for everyone, not just a small part.  You don’t own the product.  You cannot dictate how everyone interprets the product.  You can like one thing but if someone else likes the other thing, getting offended and insulted and screaming and targeted harassment and gatekeeping is extremely toxic and immature.  If the idea of someone interpreting media differently from you, up to and including show runners, upsets you that much, as the Gen Alpha kids say, you might need to go outside and touch some grass.

Fandom does not belong to you, it belongs to all of us.  Please stop forcing your religious fervor, your efangelicalism on everyone who doesn’t believe as you do.  You have your church, you have your congregation.  Please stay in your lane.  We all just want to enjoy and get excited about the same things.  We shouldn’t have to hold out enthusiasm for something because there might be a small group of people who get offended that we don’t believe as they do.

Fandom is for everyone.  Let us all enjoy it in our own way.

Sincerely,

Most of us are Zoom-ed out, tired of staring at screens and not seeing people in real life. No more so than in the convention communities.  Friends seen once or twice a year for a weekend are just as meaningful and important as the friends you see every day and we’re missing that.  Missing our con lives, missing our found families.   Many are doing virtual conventions via Zoom and Discord and it has been an experience.  Not only is it interaction with friends you can’t see in real life, but the opportunity for people who wouldn’t normally be able to go to those conventions for whatever reasons is exciting.

Two weekends ago, a Sherlock Holmes con based in Atlanta Georgia decided to do a Zoom/ Discord con and the results were a rousing success.  221b Con held their three-day con all done online with limited panels, chat rooms- both on discord and Zoom, a writers panel and flash fiction challenges.  Because it was online, they were also able to get the star talents of actors David Nellist and Ben Syder to do a Q&A panel.  Both men were friendly, engaging and a delight to talk with.  David spoke of his acting roles both on film and stage including his most recent play, “Sharon and Barry do Romeo and Juliet”. There was also talk of a commercial for Supernoodles, if you haven’t seen it…it’s a thing.  He discussed his community football league; Clapton CFS.  David was supposed to come to 221B Con this year if there had been an in-person event, but his theater run made it impossible, so it was nice that he was able to interact with us in this medium.

Ben was gracious enough to do a Q&A on Sunday morning, the day after we watched his movie: “Asylum’s Sherlock Holmes”, or as it’s more fondly known “Sherlock Holmes with dinosaurs”.  If you have not seen this movie…do so posthaste.  It’s on You Tube and it has become my new favorite cult classic, right up there with Repo; The Genetic Opera and The Room and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

Ben was funny and entertaining and spent time discussing all of our questions and telling us about his adventures in Wales where the movie was set and even stayed a little later just chatting with everyone. Another movie he did “Blind Man’s Bluff” was also discussed and while I haven’t watched it yet, the stories told about it were a trip.  He is my new favorite cult actor.  Hopefully after this global crisis is over, we’ll be privileged enough for both men to appear at this con once again.

The other panels for the weekend ranged from fun to informative with topics such as Women in Canon, Imposter syndrome, Discrimination within the Canon and Discussing Victorian medicine. Of course, there was the Ten-Year Anniversary (a little past, but that’s okay) of A Study in Pink. While Zoom is not everyone’s comfort level, the ones who did join were diverse, fun engaging.  There was laughter, smiles, conversations galore. It was the closest we could all get to an actual con while still being in our pajamas and doing laundry.

A huge thank you should go to the Con runners who set this up and spent the weekend hopped up on caffeine to pull this off wonderfully.  Also huge thanks to Three Patch Podcast who were a tremendous support to the Con runners.  Without all of them, this wouldn’t have happened, and we would be bereft another year without seeing our friends.

What I did not expect was to love it as much as I do and to have so many thoughts about it.  Thoughts, feeling, surprising revelations and low-key frustration about things regarding this show and the fandom.  There was tea that needed to be spilled and I couldn’t do that in a BSI related blog post.  But this is my blog, nobody really reads it anyway so I’m dumping the whole damn tea pot onto the table and we’re doing this.

This is your spoiler warning:  Below be monsters.  You were warned.

If you’re still here then you’re either interested, got sent this as a “look what this bitch wrote”, or you really want to see the tea.  I’ve got words, so many that they’re going to be split out in categories. So sit back, I’m sure I’ll insult everyone by the time I’m finished.

Family

This show is about family.  End stop.  Not the family you’re born into but the family you find.  The Irregulars are a found family.  The first set of Irregulars; Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, and Alice…whatever her last name was. They were close friends and tried to be a family in their own way, until anger, jealousy, resentment got in between that and shattered it leaving everyone left guilt ridden and resentful.  The second set of Irregulars: Bea, Jessie, Spike, Billy and Leo (yes, I’m counting him, he damn well earned his right into this family) are absolutely a found family.  They came together in the workhouse and a bond forged of mutual survival, protection and love was created. A bond that remained firm long after they all escaped and went out on their own. Even in episode six when there is doubt cast along everyone and Leo’s true identity is discovered, feelings are hurt, betrayal is strong and everyone goes their own way for a time, that bond is still there and is plainly shown in episode seven when the group is able to use that familial bond they’ve created and now strengthened to pull Jessie out of the nightmare world that the Linen Man has cast her into. It’s the bond that Jessie uses to convince Bea that sending the mother they both desperately wanted back into the rift was the right thing to do. It’s the bond that keep Leo, Spike and Billy willing to fight against the monsters to the death to protect their home and the victims they’ve rescued, not knowing that Bea and Jessie would close the rift but believing that they would.

Drugs

It was mentioned, even in the trailers and the summary for this series that Sherlock Holmes is drugged.  And yes, in fact for a good majority of the series, Sherlock Holmes is strung out on opium or cocaine.  It’s not the pretty strung out like scruffy hot Benedict Cumberbatch or the effervescent smoothness of Jeremy Brett.  Henry Lloyd-Hughes shows us the dark side of prolonged addiction; head shaven, stumbling around in filthy rags, vomiting over the side of the bed, pissing on the nightstand, wild with withdrawal symptoms. When Bea asks their mutual landlady, Mrs. Hudson about Sherlock, she calls him a drug addict and a bum. In episode four when Bea is in a race with Watson to see who can find Sherlock first, she is assisted in the Opium Den by one of the addicts who tells her “Just because we’re users doesn’t mean we’re bastards. Everyone down here is trying to numb the pain of something, grief, heartbreak, life in general.” The line resonates because while this is happening, the episode is juxtaposition Bea’s trips into the bowels of opium dens looking for an addict with the Palace where Leo is attending a party for the elite.  There he meets Eleanor Morgot who is obviously attracted to his title and position.  Later, on a balcony, she offers him a drug telling him he needs to loosen up.  Leo, high on…a tablet version of opium perhaps, we’re shown his trip in a dream-like quality. A far cry from a bedridden Sherlock on the floor scrambling for the few pieces of what he thinks is opium rather than sugar.  The use of drugs amongst the wealthy doesn’t seem to hold the same distain and disgust as it does in the bowels of London.  Which is an interesting play on society, not only in the time period in the show but even now.  Why is it cool and trendy to see the rich and famous snorting coke off a glass table using dollar bills or popping tablets, yet when Bob in the neighborhood is discovered to be using heroin, he is suddenly the social pariah.  Society’s view of drug use is defined on a scale of wealth and prestige. Sherlock Holmes, caught in the middle of this, his prestige holding at bay much of society’s distain, as seen in episode seven when Gregson doesn’t even blink when Holmes walks in to Scotland Yard wearing a filthy, ripped shirt and a green coat.

Mirrors and parallels

Let’s discuss mirrors and parallels together because I’m going to be going back and forth on these.  And we’re starting with the huge one, the Irregulars vs the Irregulars- it’s all fun and games until the monsters become more dangerous and someone goes through a rift. I’m talking about Alice, Sherlock and John mirrored in Leo, Bea and Billy.  My thoughts on John Watson will have their own section so I won’t get into much of them here, but by episode three, I could see where this was going.  Bea, who hadn’t really had any sort of attraction to anyone, finds herself attracted to Leo.  Billy, who has secretly loved Bea as more than an arrant sister for possibly years, suddenly has competition in this well-spoken newcomer and is forced to watch as Bea and Leo grow closer. On the other side, as we learn in episode five, Sherlock and Watson are riding high on their success as consultants to Scotland Yard when Alice arrives, and suddenly Watson has competition for Holmes’ affection and is forced to watch as Sherlock and Alice grow closer. How Billy deals with it throughout the final few episodes and how we see Watson deal with it are in no way mirrored to each other. While resentment and jealousy do grow in these two characters, it is Billy who realizes first that Bea is a person with her own thoughts and feelings, and she’s allowed to like whomever she wants.  Did it hurt him? Hell yes, the clueless idiot took out his frustration with not only trying and failing to make Bea jealous, but getting into fights including with Leo. But hating Bea and hating Leo for something nobody can control is pointless and by the end of the story, Billy chooses his family, willing to sacrifice and standing beside Leo in the end. Watson, on the other hand, doesn’t come to this realization until he experiences the losses and guilt of his choices and sees them played out once again in the next generation.  His frustration and jealousy festered for almost two decades before he was faced with the realization that nothing would have changed and only then, did he begin to let go, both figuratively and literally.

Speaking of Watson and Bea, the parallels between their two characters run true through the first episode- starting with their first meeting and ending at their last. Loyalty, stubbornness, anger, frustration with their lot in life, the anguish of people leaving them, all of it plays out between these two in blinding contrast and none so much as the theme of forbidden love.   The same characteristics that makes Bea such an expansive and intriguing character are also with Watson, just hidden under layers of resentment and guilt. The scene in episode four when Watson comes around the corner and sees Sherlock and Alice kissing and realizes he is never going to have the one thing he truly wants paralleled with the scene in episode eight where Leo tells Bea that he sacrificed his freedom for Billy’s release. He was going back to the palace and marrying someone names Helena.  Bea realizes in that moment that she will never have the one thing she truly wanted. There’s a scene between Watson and Bea when they’re hiding out in a closet in an Opium Den waiting for security to go past them.  He looks at her and says, “ It amuses me to think you can best me, I am better educated, wealthier and stronger than you are, tell me , what ability is it that you think you have that I don’t possess in greater abundance?” And while that may be true; John Watson is a man of means, ex-Army, particular friend of Sherlock Holmes and a doctor, he has forgotten what made him that way in the beginning. Everything he was, everything he is, that is covered under layers of bitterness, he sees either consciously or unconsciously in Bea. This is what highlights the final scene between Bea and Watson, when she breaks down and while it’s not proper to touch, he does so anyway because he understands.  “Everyone leaves me” - “I won’t” Realization and acceptance and shared grief makes this scene extremely powerful.

Finally, let’s talk about John Watson

I’m going to be honest, I made it through the first six episodes with plans to make buttons that said, ‘John Watson is a petty jealous bitch’, because damn. And before anyone comes at me with the idea that I don’t understand and of course John had the right to be upset or worse yet, heteronormativity (although, honestly, the lack of Alice hate is either shocking or I’m not in the right places), let me say that yes, I understand, but watching Billy take a angry visible step back from Bea and Leo juxtaposed with John attempting to open a rift so he can keep Sherlock in town and then making the obvious choice to ignore Sherlock’s plea for help when it came to saving Alice.  A choice that he had to make again with Alice’s daughter Jessie.  Watching John in the first six episodes all the signs are there, the old married couple, where John is shouting out the window at an escaping Sherlock that he doesn’t even want to see him again to the vicious way he comes after Bea when she discovers who he truly is.  Hell, we as the viewers don’t even see Sherlock and John in the same scenes together outside of the flashback until episode seven. This is how we see John Watson because up until then, this is how Bea sees John Watson. They’re told by Mycroft Holmes, the Linen Man, hell even by Sherlock Holmes through his story that John Watson is the wart on this story, he is the danger, he is the reason this is happening again.

Episode seven though, is where Royce Pierreson shines as John Watson. Because episode seven and eight takes a man that is universally hated by everyone in the series and flips it to a man who is trapped by society, rules, honor, duty, and his own self-loathing who tried to keep things as they were only managing to ruin things completely.  He turns from a cruel example of classism to a sympathetic character, a man who’s trying to do things right, who wants to fix what he did.  By episode eight, I was not only love John Watson as a character, but I was sympathetic to his situation.  His attempts at denial and rationalization in episode seven that finally culminated in the first time he ever spoke the words aloud “I love him” was just…damn, rip my heart out Royce and stomp on it because you’ve got me. From that moment on, all thoughts of buttons were gone from my head and I was, possibly for the first time, firmly in the John Watson Appreciation Society.  Royce never says a word during the scene when Alice returns and Sherlock is overcome with emotions, but you can just see in his eyes the dagger slowly piercing his heart and how he is silent, allowing the sisters and Sherlock to have their moment with Alice.  Even when Jessie begins to close the rift and Alice returns to Purgatory, he remains still, finally moving when Sherlock looks at him and utters those first self-aware words he might have spoken the entire series “You’ve been a better friend to me than I deserved John”.  And when he is once again faced with saving the man he loves or a woman that Sherlock loves, he finally lets go, making the choice to help Bea save Jessie and letting Sherlock step into the rift to be with Alice.  It’s a painful scene and it’s what makes the final scene mentioned earlier between he and Bea even more powerful.  She looked at him as asks, “How do you stop loving someone?” and his reply with “You don’t.” Just. Heart wrenching.

I have never shipped Johnlock in any of the series, but congratulations Royce Pierreson, you’ve got me shipping Johnlock.  Not only Johnlock but canon Johnlock.  It might be unrequited (maybe, there was a hint of subtext and there’s always Season two) but it’s canon.

Which leads me to the important question and one in which I will dump out the remainder of my tea: I checked Twitter and social media the weekend The Irregulars came out. I never heard a peep about this.  There is a show out there, with Holmes and Watson, that is set in Victorian London (monsters and cross-dimensional rifts notwithstanding) where the showrunner has explicitly given canon Johnlock and I haven’t heard a peep about it?  Why is that?  I have my theories, but I really hope they aren’t true because it just gives credence to long held theories. I’m hoping that I’m just maybe not in the right groups, but my social media feed is vast enough that something would have eked through but all I hear are crickets.

It seems my teapot is empty.  Anyway, let me hear your thoughts. Preferably here.  Like I said, I’m not a popular blog so I’ll be surprised if this one picks up traction. But hey, come and talk.

Rusty Quill, the production company who took a chance on this horror podcast, the writer/creator/voice actor, Jonathan Sims and the director Alexander J. Newall constructed a podcast that originally had the same vibe as The Black Tapes but quickly surpassed and overtook it. The plot, for those who haven’t heard it yet (and why haven’t you?) revolves around the newly minted Head Archivist, Jonathan Sims (yes, the same name, something Sims regretted later), and his curation of his newly inherited job at the Magnus Institute in London, England. He was given three assistants, Sasha James, Tim Stoker and Martin Blackwood. In five seasons, each season hosting 40 episodes each, listeners have front row access to listening to the at first disdainful Sims, trying to make sense of the mess his predecessor left him followed by the rapid paranoia and downfall of Sims, culminating in his transformation and the inevitable conclusion. What at first sounds like a series of random recordings of people giving statements of paranormal and supernatural happenings; bugs that seem to sense fear, doors that appear out of nowhere, people who aren’t quite right, being buried alive or disappearing, listeners quickly discover the pattern and connections with many of these statements no only to each other but eventually to the Whole. There are Fears: fourteen in all with the eventual fifteenth making an appearance later in the series that each of these statements connect to.  All these Fears are interconnected themselves making this a Web of epic supernatural proportions.  Not all of this happens in just London, there are Institutes around the world, as are there statements that are given from other countries. Each of the Fears has an avatar who is the physical representation of their chosen Power; Jane Prentiss, for example is an avatar for the Corruption.  If you have a fear of bugs or trypophobia, she is not the person you want to meet.  Another is Annabelle Cane, the avatar for The Web.  Personally, as someone who is extremely arachnophobia, Annabelle is not my favorite person. The success of this show came about not only because of the amazing writing and intricate weaving of the plot and characters, the producing and sound mixing, but the fans, who connected with this podcast and rose it to almost cult like heights.  Between Reddit, Discord and Tumblr as well as not Tik Tok, fans have spent five years taping up red string ™ but sharing their theories, dissecting the episodes for hints and clues and creating their own Sherlock Holmesque group of fan theorist who discussed the future of the Institute and the inhabitants within. The voice actors such as Sims and Newall who play The Archivist and Martin, everyone’s favorite large tea making assistant, respectively, create characters that fans have connected to, support, and are invested in.  Mike LeBeau, who voices everyone favorite disaster bi, Tim Stoker, quickly became a fan favorite, as did Ben Meredith who voices Elias Bouchard, the boss everyone loves to hate and Alasdair Stuart who voices Peter Lukas, the other boss everyone loves to hate. Not to mention The Admiral, a cat that belonged to Georgie Barker, who became so beloved that at the beginning of Season 5 everyone was worried about the feline’s fate. From the beginning, Jonathan Sims promised us there wouldn’t be a happy ending, so unlike most troupe horror movies, we don’t expect people to live.  Honestly, I expected Martin to die six episodes ago, so I’m blessed he’s still with us, but there isn’t going to be a happy ending for anyone.  And we, the fans accept it.  Which is why this is going out on Wednesday, the anniversary of the first episode back in 2016 and the eve of Episode 200, aptly titled “Last Words”.  That and after Thursday, I know I won’t be in the right headspace to write this article. Episode 200 drops Thursday March 25th, 2021 at 4pm GMT for everyone, so we’ll all experience the pain at the same time.  I hope their servers can hold the bandwidth that’s about to be used for this. So, to everyone at Rusty Quill. 

Phobia, by definition, is the extreme or irrational fear or aversion of something.  Homophobia or transphobia are both extreme and irrational aversions to gay or trans people.  So extreme that it often ends in violence.  Mobs have formed because hetero people (mostly men) are so full of hatred at the idea of two men kissing or a trans individual living their life that they need to end it. By that rule, heterophobia can’t really be a thing.  There are articles or news broadcasts showing instances where mobs of angry gay people go out and beat up a straight couple of a cis person.

Heterosexuals and cis people are privileged groups so associating a sort of term to them that is used to define disgust of minority groups feels disingenuous. While there is possibly straight hatred or disgust among the gay community, it rightfully stems from traumatic events and being told they aren’t worth anything.  However, it’s not an extreme aversion to straight people. There has to be another word people can use.

This discussion stems from a conversation had in a group discussing a trend seen in fandom over the past few years- specifically, if there is a show/ movie with two handsome white male leads (yes, I’m specifying and I’ll explain that in another blog post) and a female regular character who could potentially be interpreted as a romantic interest (this takes out women who are authority figures (other wives, mothers, matron presenting, plain, already established in a relationship or in some cases, canonically established as a lesbian), inevitably the phrase “find Blank a girlfriend” or “Blank is a lesbian, I don’t make the rules” will appear.  In cases where there is more than one handsome male lead, the term “pair the spare” has been tossed around, which is, shipping the third person with someone else, thereby taking him “off the market” and leaving the chosen two free from obstacles.  For the woman, however, the term “queer the spare” is more accurate. (I wish I came up with that phrase.  All kudos to that goes to Inkbleeder on Tumblr).

I’m older.  Somewhere between fandom mom and fandom grand mom- the reviled “fandom elder” (you can take my fandoms from my cold, dead, rotting corpse of a hand)- when I first stepped into fandom the terms for getting rid of the PFRC (potential female romantic character) was “fembashing”.  Fembashing was the act of turning the PFRC into a shrill, whiney, manipulative harpy whose only job was to torment the two white male leads and keep them from being happy.   This (mostly) doesn’t happen anymore in fandom because it will get one rightfully called out as a misogynist.

The new favorite alternative to this is publicly announcing in the fandom that “Blank is a lesbian” (usually without any proof to this proclamation) thereby dehumanizing her to character trope and freeing the way for the preferred male characters to have their relationship. The advantage to this is the woman can now be regulated to “quirky bestie rooting for the 2 guys” or my personal favorite, “human incubator to be tossed aside after birth”.  Both roles mean that the former PFRC can now be safely used as a plot device and tossed away or forgotten after her purpose is finished and the fandom gets the added bonus of insisting that they love this character. She’s perfect and of course there’s no hate for her because look, she’s in some of the fics.

Here’s the problem.  Lesbian characters are not plot devices.  Canonically lesbian characters on television shows and movies are not there as the quirky bestie ready to set up the two guys.  In Supergirl, Alex Danvers is a bio-engineer and former director of the D.E.O.  She is not the type of person one would call “quirky”.  Waverly Earp on Wynonna Earp, while described as quirky, she is an expert in ancient cultures and languages working towards helping to breath the Earp curse. While she is in a relationship with Nicole Haught, their sexuality is not the only thing that defines them.  Sara Lance in the Arrowverse.  I dare you to call the White Canary the quirky bestie.  And finally, Charlie Bradbury.  While the first time she appeared in Supernatural was as a foil to stop Dick Roman and later on, her character could’ve been called the quirky bestie for Dean, she was so much more than that.  A hunter in later episodes, Charlie fought monsters with both her skills on a keyboard and her skills in weapons. While her sexuality was a large part of her character, it wasn’t the defining part. These are just a few of the many canonical lesbian characters on television. Women who are fully fleshed out characters and are not there as a standby for the male characters. They aren’t the afterthought.

In 1991, Silence of the Lambs, a runaway hit thriller staring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins came onto public consumption and introduced the world to the phrase “quid pro quo” and the name Hannibal Lecter became a well-known name.

In 2013, a series by the name of Hannibal staring Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy premiered on television and was immediately embraced by the fandom community.  Dating long before Silence of the Lambs, the show features a BSU consultant by the name of Will Graham who is called into service because of his unique ability to profile serial killers.  He develops a professional and later, a personal relationship with Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

In the beginning the question of Will’s mental state was brought up, the reason Lecter was introduced into the series, he was hired on assess Will Graham after cases to make sure his fragile mental state was not deteriorating.  It allowed Hannibal to get close to Will and manipulate him in an attempt to turn Will into a killer like himself.  The show ended after three seasons and during those seasons, the show’s creator, Brian Fuller, made cinematography magic with his sets and scenes, a lot of them gruesome yet exquisite.

Hannibal became fandom’s gory darling, the relationship between Will and Hannibal being the main fodder. This was furthered by the support of Bryan Fuller’s comment in Collider stating that he saw Hannibal as being in love with Will Graham. https://collider.com/bryan-fuller-hannibal-silence-of-the-lambs-interview/

Just this past week, a new twist on the Silence of the Lambs timeline premiered with Clarice. Clarice takes place a year after Silence of the Lambs and the Buffalo Bill murders. She is pulled from the BAU and sent to a task force run by Ruth Martin, the mother of Buffalo Bill’s only surviving member, Catherine.  Created by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet, Clarice is not affiliated with Hannibal, the Series, in any way, rather, it is a telling of Clarice Starling’s story after the events of Silence of the Lambs.

Here’s where it differs. And remember, this is only the first episode.  By the time I post this, there will be two episodes out.

In the opening scene, Clarice Starling is sitting in a therapist’s office.  The therapist, a man with no name as of yet, is trying to get her to tell him about her feelings regarding the one-year anniversary of the Buffalo Bill murders.  He even has a copy of a magazine that features her on the cover with the title “Bride of Frankenstein.”  The more he pushes the more she holds back, telling him the rots answers that most FBI therapists want to here.  Finally, she mentions the magazine was bought by him as a trigger to see if she would break and he tells her that he thinks she’s not stable enough to go back in the field because she refuses to use to the “survivor” in relation to her encounter with Buffalo Bill.  She is not a survivor, she was never kidnapped, she was an FBI agent doing a job.  He also cites her relationship with Hannibal Lecter, insinuating that it was more personal in nature than he thought necessary.

Before he can put her at a desk, she is called back into the field by Ruth Martin and put under the team led by Paul Krendler, a man who Clarice “upped” in the movie when she was a trainee.  He doesn’t want her there, insists on a profile after seeing the first two bodies and when she can’t give an accurate one because she doesn’t have all the evidence, he tells her she had to tell the press it’s a serial killer.

It’s already shown that Clarice has a bit of trauma with press conferences and this is something that keeps coming back.  The press want Clarice and Paul Krendler just wants her to be the face of his team and tells her that she will say what he tells her to say.  Clarice is not taken seriously by Krindler, by anyone else in the office, (there’s a scene where men from the other unit that share an office, coat her desk drawer with lotion and leave that lotion and a basket in the drawer and then laugh about it).  Clarice is blocked at every turn by men, even her therapist calls Krindler and tells him to bench her because he’s worried about her mental state.

The first time we meet Will Graham, his mental state is mentioned as tenuous, yet the FBI have no problem throwing him right out into the field.  Clarice was a trainee who managed to catch a serial killer, and somehow she’s considered too “fragile” to be put on any cases other than desk jobs.  In fact, throughout the entire first episode, the only person on her new team to take an interest and believe what she says is Thomas Esquivel, an ex-special forces soldier turned agent who believes in what she says.

From the first moment of this show the misogyny was right out on view, there is no hiding that all of the men in this show do not like Clarice because she’s young, she’s a woman and they are intimidated by her talent.  Her only support comes from Agent Esquivel and her friend and former trainee Ardelia Mapp.

I mention the misogyny because it’s not all on the show. It’s from the fans as well. The first time I was reminded the show was on was when I noticed Hannibal was trending on Twitter. The day and time frame Clarice aired its premiere, Twitter was lamenting that they wanted a season four of Hannibal.  While researching for this blog, I used IMDB to get names and plot points.  And came across this comment about the premiere:

“Can we bring back Hannibal, please?

12 February 2021 | by [redacted]

And by that I am of course referring to the excellent series featuring Mads Mikkelsen's amazing portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. That series had great style, fantastic atmosphere, and stellar directing, editing, and acting. They planned to tell the ultimate Hannibal Lecter story but only were able to make three seasons out of a seven season plan. So, here we have a Clarice Starling series that had been in the works for years but didn't get the train running till now. So the premiere - Meh. Rebecca Breeds makes a very good Clarice but nothing else is up to her level. The cinematography isn't bad but the atmosphere is lacking, the characters are none too memorable, and the storyline isn't attention grabbing enough. I give it about a season at least.”

I don’t know the time when this posted, but I’m not surprised by the comment at all.  Comment and review bombing seems to be the way that fans express their “disappointment” about their old shows not getting anything…or rather, their favorite male characters not getting more screen time.

On the same page, the below link was posted.  This was one day after the first episode of Clarice premiered:

Clarice: Season Two? Has the CBS TV Series Been Cancelled or Renewed Yet? 13 February 2021 | TVSeriesFinale

A freshman series about a female criminal profiler who is pushed down, ignored, harassed because of her sex.  It’s almost a case of life imitating art.

I was going to leave this post as it was and post it today but last week the second episode aired which showed Clarice pushing past childhood trauma to face down a cult leader and a corrupt government system thereby earning Krendler’s respect and her position on the team.  And while Thomas Esquivel told her that a team is only good if each of its members understand that they can trust and support one another, thereby hopefully foreshadowing that this team will eventually accept Clarice as one of their own and in turn she will do the same, it took her risking her life by going back inside the compound, disregarding orders and singlehandedly getting the information needed to put both the cult leader and head of the County Sheriff down for the count for Krendler to finally see her worth and decide to keep her on the team.

For those who don’t really know the show: In its second season Prodigal Son is the story of ex-FBI profiler Malcolm Bright who was fired for his risk-taking habits and came back to the NYPD at the request of Captain Gil Arroyo.  Malcolm Bright is also Malcolm Whitly, the son of the influential and extremely wealthy Whitley family.  The Patriarch of the Whitly family, Dr. Martin Whitly, a convicted serial killer known as “the Surgeon”, is currently in a secure psychiatric facility. His son Malcolm put him there.  Malcolm now works for the NYPD under Gil’s team that includes Detectives JT Tarmel, and Detective Dani Powell and Medical Examiner Edrisa Tanaka. While not solving crimes, Malcom must deal with his tenacious television reporter sister Ainsley Whitly and their wealthy, hovering mother Jessica Whitly.  As well as his father who is trying to make his way back into his family’s life via Malcolm by assisting via telephone with certain cases.

Except for the Whitly’s (who while wealthy are probably not very good role models), the entire main cast is made up of people of color:  Filipino, Black, Asian.  While the first season was introductions to everyone and dealing with Malcolm’s lost memories regarding his father, the father/ son dynamic, cultivating a loyal fanbase and potentially starting some ships both purposefully and accidentally (I’m looking at you Brightwell and Maldrisa shippers), this second season started off with a bang.  Something that might have been relegated to a side plot, I feel, had become larger than this season’s overarching plot and will end up and absolutely deserved to be in equal standing.

In the first season, we are introduced to JT, the by the book detective who doesn’t like Bright in the beginning but by the end of the first season, they’re…okay. We also meet JT frankly adorable wife Tally and discover that he’s going to be a dad.

In season two, months have passed, and JT is acting Captain while Gil is out on medical leave.  He brings Bright in on a case involving a justice killer. At the end while back up is being sent to Bright’s apartment for the final conflict, Dani rushes up while backup is on its way and JT is right behind her.  He arrives moments before the back up and when they arrive, he directs them up to the apartment.  What happens instead is something we’ve all seen on the news this past summer. The first cop that arrives tackles JT and presses him against the wall, baton at his throat telling him to stop resisting.  The terror in JT’s eyes is startling as he realized that these officers, the one holding him and the other five who have their guns trained on him are not going to let him explain that he’s a cop.  It isn’t until Dani runs out holding her badge and Malcom following close behind, both of them yelling to stand down, that he’s a cop does the office let go of JT and step back.  Back at the station, Gil is furious and wants to take it to I.A., but JT insists it won’t do any good and he needs to think about it.  He has a family now and he doesn’t want the retaliation.  The scene ends with Gil, Dani and Bright supporting his decision and telling him they have his back.  JT is emotional and for good reason.  The people who are supposed to be working with him just tried to kill him.

Episode two didn’t let up; in the middle of a chase, Gil tells JT to call for back up and what happens is enraging.  As JT calls on his police issued walkie for backup, the person manning the other end tells him that the line if for police use only and uses the term “boy” before disconnecting.  Later, it shows JT and Dani standing outside the office watching Gil yell at the dispatch for not sending officers for a potential hostile situation.  JT decides to not file a report mentioning that he has a family to worry about and he must work with these people. It is harassment and emotional terrorism at its worst.

In the first episode this season, Dani and Bright are talking and Dani mentions the institutionalized racism she’s been dealing with. With this show being categorized as a police procedural, showing this sort of dangerous institutional racism within the police force is both tricky and important.  While police shows have mentioned an episode or two of racism within the force, it’s usually an episode and the one bad cop is taken to task by the white Captain and the entire thing is brushed over.  The good thing about this show is so far, all the people in power we’ve seen on the force have been people of color.  It also makes it harder to pull the “white savior” role as Bright, while on the team, has no real standing with the NYPD and could be kicked off cases in a heartbeat. Jessica, with all of her wealth and ties (or not, make up your mind Jess) to Gil, can’t really do anything expect throw money at the issue.  The brunt of the conflict will lie between Gil and his team facing the police force including these cops who “are just doing their job” and the veil of secrecy that lies within the Thin Blue Line. It’s not something that can be erased in a five-episode arc and I really hope it’s not.  The racism within the department has been established, it can’t be erased with the firing of the cop who attacked JT and it can’t be addressed with the Commissioner coming in to make everyone go to training to make it all magically go away.

The showrunners spent the entire first season introducing us and making us love these characters and given the current climate of the world, this was a bold and correct decision, one that needed to be addressed.  I know there is talk on message board stating that this season is too “political”.  Black Lives Matter, is not political, institutionalized racism within the police force is not political. Men and women of color that are on police forces are risking their lives to do good and make streets safer and do not deserve to wonder if they’re going to take “friendly” fire from one of their own.  This year we’ve heard too many stories of officers who were threatened out of uniform and officers who spoke up only to be removed from duty. This isn’t a new thing. Nobody should be murdered for living their lives, for sleeping, for complying with proper police requests.

Personally, as a white person, watching these scenes hurt.  Watching JT’s reactions hurt. Hearing someone who was supposed to have his back use a term that has racist undertones when said as it was, made me furious.  Which is what it’s supposed to do.  But this is also a dangerous road the showrunners are taking.  There is no clean and easy way out of this, to have it discussed and “fixed” isn’t reasonable nor believable anymore, to ignore it after three episodes isn’t doing it justice. I don’t know how this will turn out, but it absolutely needs to be addressed this season.  To the extent of having it a plot equal to Malcom’s covering up a murder and hiding the body without getting caught.

The show, which should have ended with a bang in May of 2020, halted production with seven episodes to go.  The once all-star cast that was supposed to return for the Series Finale was scrapped due to the global pandemic and instead concessions needed to be made and the final episodes were scaled down for safety reasons.

I’ll give a brief rundown of the final two episodes.  While the final three were the ones that raised a whole heap of controversy, I’m not going to bother with episode 15x18 for the moment, because while I think it was poorly done, my reasoning is different from others and honestly, that could be a blog post all its own.

Warning:  Below this (for the 5 people on the planet who haven’t either watched it or heard about it somewhere) will be spoilers for the final two episodes.

Episodes 15x19 “Inherit the Earth” and 15x20 “Carry On” were the quintessential Series finale and epilogue a show this long running needed.

The opening of “Inherit the Earth” finds everyone on Earth Prime (inside joke) gone, disappeared.  The Rapture has come, and it seems that only Sam, Dean and Jack are the only ones alive.  And a dog named Miracle (who I feel was the shows rally cry and the one I was invested in.  I mean dammit Chuck, you Thanos-ed the world but then you took that adorable dog away from Dean.  I hope you go DOWN!)

Jack feels a presence and is led to a church.  Inside they find Michael. Archangel Michael, still in the body of Adam.  He’s hidden out from God’s wrath and wants to help the Winchesters take down God.  In the previous episode, the brothers get Death’s book, but only Death can open it.  They’re hoping that Michael can override the lock, but it doesn’t work.   Dean gets a call from Cas asking for help and to open the bunker door (obvious red flag because…Cas is gone, but okay…)  Outside is not Cas but Lucifer with a reaper.  Lucifer wants to help get rid of God.  To do that, he kills the reaper he has hostage thereby making her the next Death.  Death opens the book and begins to read.

Meanwhile, Lucifer and Michaels big show down seems to be just smack talking back and forth.  When Death comes back and begins to read the passage of the book that tells how to stop God, Lucifer stabs Death, killing her and takes the book.  Surprise, it seems he was playing for both sides of the team.  Who didn’t see that coming? Lucifer pulls a “join me” speech to Jack giving Michael the opportunity to kill Lucifer by metaphorically stabbing him in the back.

The four then make plans to stop God.  Going out to a particular spot, Sam begins to cast a spell he says he found from the book.  Chuck appears, having been warned by Michael (remember that stab to the back?).  Michael’s reward for serving his Father is death.  Chuck snaps him out of existence and then turns his sights on the Winchesters.  In true final Big Bad mode, instead of snapping them out of existence, he decides to beat them both into submission.  But the Winchesters will. Not. Stay. Down.

In the plot twist that Chuck did not write, when Death made Jack into a bomb and sent him to the Empty, the explosion had a different sort of effect.  Basically, he’s become a metaphysical power vacuum.  When Lucifer and Michael were fighting in the Bunker, Jack was absorbing their power.  Each time Chuck punched one of the Winchesters, Jack absorbed the power until finally Jack was powerful enough to confront Chuck.  With one hand to the face, the power transfer was complete and hosannah on the highest, Jack becomes God, leaving the now very much human Chuck to fend for himself.

Raised by the Winchesters and having Castiel as his surrogate father figure makes Jack the chilliest supernatural being ever.  He snaps back everyone (including Miracle) and tells the brothers that he is keeping a hands-off approach.  He’ll be there but humans are responsible for their own outcomes from now on.  He disappears and the episode ends with the Winchesters riding off into the sunset.

Episode 15x20 “Carry On” picks up five years after.  Miracle is living with the Winchesters at the Bunker and they’re just going around living their lives. Still hunting monsters, saving lives.   Dean even gets to a pie festival, a nice nod to Dean’s love of pie. Everything looks like it’s back to normal.

They come across a suspicious death and kidnapping of two children, one that Dean recognizes from their father’s journal.  They find it and discover that it’s a nest of vampires that only hunt once every couple of years, keeping their victims alive to drain them dry.

The Winchesters go to where the nest is and find the vampires and the kids.  Sam gets the kids to safety while Dean starts taking on the nest.  During the fight, already there’s hints that this is not going to be a normal battle.  The Winchesters are down more than they’re up and not fighting as a unit.  Sam is knocked down several times and while they managed to kill the nest, the final vampire grapples with Dean and slams him up against a post, where there was a piece of reverb sticking out.  Sam cuts the head off the final vampire.  That’s when he realizes Dean had been stabbed and moving him off the spike would do more damage.  Dean asks Sam to stay with him, knowing his journey is over.

With the exchange of power form Chuck to Jack, the Winchesters are no longer God’s “Chosen Ones” anymore, meaning they are just like all the other Hunters who have come before them.  Their lucky charm is gone.  In what is arguably the most emotional scene in the series, Sam stays with Dean until he dies.

Sam returns to the Bunker and gives Dean a Hunter’s funeral. He only remains at the Bunker for a bit longer until he gets called to a job and leaves (with Miracle) the bunker forever.

Dean wakes up in Heaven and has a talk with Bobby on the porch of Harvelle’s Roadhouse.  This, I think was part of the things they had to work around.  As much as I would have loved to see Ellen and Jo greet Dean (I think it would’ve been extremely emotional), I also understand why it wasn’t done.  Bobby explains Heaven.  Where it was once a line of doors where souls were destined to relive one memory over and over, it is now the Paradise it was promised to be.  The woods and open country are host to (almost)everyone Dean knows and loves; His parents, Rufus, Ellen and Jo, other Hunters who have been his “family” along the way.  It’s almost perfect.  Dean tells Bobby he’s going for a drive and climbs into Baby.  The song, poetically, on the radio is “Carry On” by Kansas and Dean drives.

The montage bounces then between Dean driving and Sam living his life.  You find he was married and became a father to a son he named Dean.  The years fly by as Dean drives and it is understood that Sam finally had the life he wanted from the start, the family, the son he plays ball with and help with homework.

The final scene is an older Sam on his deathbed His son comes to him, holds his hand, tells him he loves him and it’s okay to go. The scene changes to Dean stopping on a bridge overlooking a river.  He gets out of the car and hears a noise behind him.  It’s Sam.  The two brother’s hug and then go to stand by the railing of the bridge and look out…together.

The End.

Even knowing that this was the pandemic ending and not the ending they planned, I enjoyed these final two episodes.  Like I said, episodes 19 and 20 played like a finale and the epilogue.

The story of Supernatural has always been about the Winchester brothers.  From the beginning, during the middle and at the end, the story was always going to begin and end with Sam and Dean. Everyone else in the story were just side characters.

It was not surprising to me that the very vocal majority hated it.  I had a “been there, done that, bought the tee-shirt” moment when I began to scroll social media and watched post by post of people who shouted that they felt cheated and that this was not the ending they were promised.  Even people who never watched the show and should’ve known better where shouting for something that was, quite obviously, never going to happen.

I waited this long because, I was busy with something else and I wanted to wait until I thought through everything before I put down my thoughts.  So a month later, I watched two videos on You Tube, from Destiel shippers discussing their thoughts on the final season.  I won’t name names.

The first video was almost two hours long and was from a person who admits they left the fandom for a while.  While a lot of things I could sympathize with, they brought up the term queer bating multiple times (I am not going to get into the criticism of queer baiting because, this post is already too long, and I plan on writing a blog about that later) as well as the dangers of bringing fandom theory into creator spaces.

I am of the firm belief that fandom content should not be brought into creator spaces. Not only do most showrunners have their own ideas for the shows, but there is also the inherent risk of ego stepping which could lead to drastic changes being made to shows in ways fans weren’t expecting and don’t like (I see you Jeff Davis).  It can also lead to legal issues, especially if during one of these and idea coming from fandom space nudges it’s way into the creators’ mind and there is unintentional plagiarism.  It can happen and is a reason that most creators do not read fanfiction or discuss fan theory until after the show is over.

The other reaction video mentioned they were disappointed (and I saw this in other spaces as well) of Castiel being in Heaven but not seeing Dean.  I have a theory about that.  In Episode 19 at the end, Jack states that unlike Chuck, he has faith in the humans, and he plans on being strictly “hands off”. Our fate is in our own hands now and we can do what we want.  Where Chuck liked the accolades and often sent angels to do his dirty work on Earth, especially when the Winchesters weren’t doing what he wanted, if Jack is implementing a “Hands off” approach, this could also mean that the remainder of the angels (old and new) were given instructions to remain “Hands off” as well.  They have their side of Heaven which they are rebuilding and reorganizing, but they are to stay on their side and never the twain shall meet.  Angels were never meant to walk among the human races.  This is maintaining the status quo.  Dean knows that Castiel is in Heaven once more but is content with that knowledge.  Once Sam appears to him on the bridge, Dean has everything he wants; his brother, his family, and a quiet life in which to settle. At last, Sam and especially Dean have found their reward.

This past Saturday one such convention, The Left Coast Sherlock Symposium, went virtual and offered me, being in the Midwest and on the heels of what would have normally been my local annual convention last weekend, an opportunity to attend a convention I wouldn’t normally be able to go to. The entire Symposium, lasting about three hours between all the panelists with a four-hour social hour afterwards, pulled in speakers from around the country to host lectures.  While there were a few hiccups (because what is a Zoom meeting without a few hiccups) and a cat loudly expressing their displeasure early on (again, what is a Zoom meeting without a cat), the symposium was entertaining, informative, endearing and all around perfectly wonderful. The symposium, opened by a speech by Elinor Gray, who gave heartfelt thanks and acknowledgments of the indigenous people who lived on the land before the us, hosted five speakers, Bonnie MacBird, author of Art in the Blood series of Sherlock Holmes book as well as an actor, teacher, and artist.  She hosted a wonderful panel on “The Observations of Baker Street”.  Her lecture included wonderful pictures that showed Baker Street and Marylebone beginning from Regent’s Park and going down to Wimpole Street.  Some of the places along the virtual tour mentioned were the Holmes Hotel, which was the original spot of Bedford College for Women, the place where Charles Babbage met Ada Lovelace, the old and new pictures of the Baker Street tube station, Madam Tussauds and of course the home on Wimpole Street where Arthur Conan Doyle lived for a time. Most of the places she mentioned were listed on the Booth maps of London which she mentioned in her lecture.  https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map/14/-0.1174/51.5064/100/0The second lecturer was Rob Nunn, author, and teacher of children.  His lecture was entitled “A Friend of Mr. Sherlock is always Welcome”. He spoke of teaching a Language Arts curriculum to fifth grade students as well as how to encourage children in a forever love of reading, not only Sherlock Holmes but any books.  He gave us eight core lessons of how to not only encourage students to read and to nurture interests but to encourage and nurture fellow novices and people who express an interest in Sherlock Holmes.  Out of all the lessons he gave us, the one that needed to be repeated over and over was his final lesson: Sherlock belongs to everyone. The third lecture was Angela Misri, author, and journalist.  Her lecture was on “The Responsibility of Writing about Baker Street”.  She discussed writing pastiches while still being accurate with the canon. Writing in someone else’s world as opposed to creating a world from scratch is that the author must keep to the canon that the original author created.  She listed five of her rules that she feels an author writing pastiches in Arthur Conan Doyle’s world should follow.  Out of those rules the one that stuck out was her first; Respect what Conan Doyle wrote but don’t copy him.The fourth lecture was with three student filmmakers: Mina Huffman, Caroline Duessel and Taylor Dolniak who wrote, produced, and created a student film called “Sherlock Holmes and the Furtive Festivity”, now available on You Tube. The film was a screen writing project about an older Holmes and Watson that focuses on a relationship between the men.  The project was created for those who follow and appreciate a Holmes and Watson romantic relationship. They discussed the process in which they worked through the making, the hiring of the actors and how they found the place that ended up becoming 221B.The final speaker of the symposium was Les Klinger, Annotator, Editor, World’s First Consulting Sherlockian, as it says on his website. Mr. Klinger finished the day by reading letters, correspondence between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. John Watson.  The correspondence details how Conan Doyle became the unofficial literary agent of the case studies of one Mr. Sherlock Holmes.  The chronology of their relationship as well as the stories, the pub dates, up to and including the final

For those who don’t know, here’s the road so far.  The series began on September 13th, 2005 on the CW, what was then called the WB.  The show is about two brothers, Dean and Sam Winchester, who drive around the country in their father’s Chevy Impala and fight monsters, ghosts, and demons.  The first season read like a book of Urban Legends.  The brother fought everything from werewolves and vampires to The Lady in White.  Demons first cropped up in the first season culminating in the brothers being joined by their father, John Winchester, on the hunt for the demon who killed their mother.

The fourth season brought in new series regular, an angel by the name of Castiel.  According to Kripke, the creator of the show,  it was only supposed to be on for five seasons, however before the end of the fifth season, the actors who portrayed the Winchesters signed on for a sixth season and Sera Gamble took over the reins for Kripke who took a step back from production.

After that, it all just… went.  The show stepped away from the Winchester family moto of “Saving people, hunting things, the family business” and went about taking on the powers of Heaven and Hell culminating in the Season 15 battle of fighting God himself.

That’s a very bare bones summary of the show.  On the surface, to anyone walking towards the fandom these days (after being in a bunker or frozen in ice for the last twenty years) it’s a scary series with vague religious undertones (and overtones) with the occasional monster.  But it’s so much more than that.  Even a slight scratch on the surface will show the uncover so much stuff…so much.  This is a show that started out with lore and devolved into man versus God.  This is a show that makes fun of itself at least once every season and even had one episode titled “Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!”  While a lot of these start out funny, there’s a story behind them, a moral to them, however obscure.  Even in Season 13’s iconic episode, “Scoobynatural” (yes…it’s exactly what it sounds like), there is a nudge towards “don’t think fantasy is better than reality because it’s not” vibe before the end.

This show has started charities like Random Acts, founded by Misha Collins, Support Supernatural and Castiels Angels, and the Always Keep Fighting campaign which shines a light on mental illness and suicide.  In the span of the fifteen year run of this show, fan themselves have donated millions of dollars to different charities and funds designed to raise awareness, to help homeless, build schools and houses, support victims of hurricanes and other natural disasters.  If there’s one thing the Supernatural fandom does, it’s come together to make the world a better place.  The boys make a call and the fans respond in droves.

While there is a charitable and supportive side to the fandom, there is also the dark underbelly of the fandom by way of the dreaded armada that can’t agree.  The Supernatural shipping fandom rival the angels and demons in their religious fervor of their elected ship.  One cannot put a toe into any part of the Supernatural fandom without being saturated by shipping and the ship wars.  That, my friends, is a completely different post but suffice to say that I personally have only ever witnessed the enormous level of  fervor and vitriol that is  the Supernatural shipping fandom rivaled in only one other fandom.  But after fifteen seasons, there has to be some bad.

Nevertheless, this has been a long and winding road that the Winchester’s have taken us on.  So many laughs, too many tears, anger, heartbreak, and most of all hope.  There’s a quote said by the surrogate father of the brothers, Bobby Singer, “Family doesn’t end in Blood” and that is so true for this fandom.  This show has brought strangers from all over the world together to celebrate two brothers.

The Enola Holmes series, of which there are six books, chronicles the life and adventures of 14 year old Enola Holmes, the younger sister to Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes from the moment her mother disappears to the time when she establishes herself as a educated young woman to Mycroft’s satisfaction.

Millie Bobbie Brown, the actress best known for her portrayal as Eleven on the Netflix series Stranger Things, co-produced the movie and  while there was some controversy towards the end of this, in the form of the Conan Doyle Estate suing for copyright infringement, stating that Sherlock Holmes seems too emotional in this interpretation and that is a direct infringement of the final six stories that are still copyrighted under the Conan Doyle estate. I could do an entire blog post on Sherlock Holmes and emotions but that’s for another time.  As of time of this posting there has been no court date set.

While the movie took liberties with the first book: cutting out most of the first few chapters, expanding the interaction between Enola and the Viscount Tewksbery, the entire scene in the dodgy part of London by the docks, there were things that were added that made the story interesting.  Upping the age of Enola from fourteen to sixteen, adding much more regarding the women’s suffragist movement in London, the breaking of the fourth wall, all of these were things that made the movie entertaining and intriguing for the viewers.

I read the first story, The Case of the Missing Marquess, when this movie was first announced, and the story is good.  It’s young adult, more junior young, set for readers between 11-13 years of age. It’s Holmes for younger readers, giving a taste of mystery and cases, introducing young readers to the world of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes through an intermediary. I’ll admit, in the beginning there were a few things I wasn’t sure of.

While Millie Bobbie Brown as Enola Holmes was a breath of fresh air, the introduction of Henry Cavill as the consulting detective was concerning to me. I am not too proud to admit that I was wrong.  Cavill’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes as a side character is perfect support for his younger sister.  Claflin’s portrays the perfect foil, as the older brother Mycroft, the stuffy Victorian male who is more attentive to tradition very anti-suffragist.  What I didn’t like was Mycroft being less intelligent than both of his siblings.  Mycroft Holmes was described by Conan Doyle as equally if not more intelligent than his younger brother, preferring to use his vast intellect for the good of the British Government. Overweight, the eldest Holmes preferred to use his vast intellect in the confines of his office or his rooms at the Diogenes Club.  In this movie, Mycroft was reduced to a stogie, pretentious Victorian male, jealous of his brother’s intelligence and n willing to accept that both his mother and his younger sister had any intelligence whatsoever.

  Try it.  On particularly stressful days or when anxiety is too much, pop in a horror movie, anything from the 70’s/80’s slasher flicks to modern jump scare horror.  Immediately, your focus is on the movie, the situations in the movie, the tracking of the horrible thing lurking just around the corner waiting to get the victims in the movie.  Perhaps you’ll scream, frightened from one small jump scare or the cat that always seemingly appears out of nowhere right before the masked killer appears to stab the victim.

Screaming releases stress and even the small frightened scream you do at a jump scare is enough to relieve the buildup of anxiety and stress in the body.  Focus is entirely on the horror movie and not on the viewers situation, giving them a reprieve of sorts during and for a short time after the movie.

With the rise of true crime podcasts, spurred on by people’s desire to “understand the darker side of our nature”  and, podcasts in general, one genre has popped up and risen to popularity over the last four years, the audio drama podcasts.  A good majority of audio drama podcasts have a hint of the unusual, or the horrific, or the quirky in them.  The truly good audio drama podcasts have a mixture of both thematic elements and characters that the listeners care about and are invested in.

When listening to a good audio drama podcast, there’s always something that catches your attention.  It could be the idea of an unheard-of town in the middle of the desert that just isn’t quite normal. Or a reporter who started out doing slice of life stories who gets embroiled with an enigmatic professor chasing around conspiracies through clues on old tapes, or a dusty research archive in the middle of London that is host for unspeakable eldritch horrors. There’s something about the series that is quirky and keeps you coming back weekly or bi-monthly.  They are stories where, for anywhere between 12-30 minutes the listener is transported and are able to forget about anxiety or the stress of real life and just enjoy the interactions throughout the storyline.

Then, like any truly compelling show, the characterization pulls you further into the story and soon listeners are invested in the characters, they empathize with the shy footfall jock who’s an empath and his journey of self-discovery and happiness, or the crotchety old WW2 vet who cares more about his best friend than even he wants to admit or the genius lonely girl on a spaceship who’s only friend becomes the soldier who was sent to contain and confine her.

Like television, we are shaped and changed by our interaction with these characters, we become invested, empathetic to their trials and tribulations and, especially now with the lack of new content on television due to Covid, these audio dramas are quickly becoming our escape from reality, our need to find an escape are quickly putting these shows, as well as horror anthology podcasts and as always, the true crime podcasts, higher and higher onto the charts as more and more people are turning to podcasts for their escape. And that’s a good thing. Because, these shows are good!  They’re very good and deserve to be recognized a legitimate media, not just some person in a closet.  There is heart and soul and talent and emotion tied up in these podcasts and the love the creators have for their creations, for the people who love their creations, comes out in every episode.