Con.txt panel report: Sherlock vs. Sherlock

[melannen]

Or, as we came up with too late to change the program, "What Makes a House A Holmes?"

This is going to be a fairly short panel report, since when I mod a panel, my public-speaking persona goes on read-only memory as a self-defense mechanism, but I want a place for people to share and continue the discussion.

And also to add the most important thing: I mentioned Lord Peter Wimsey as a canon that has a Holmes cameo, and others in the panel were incredulous about this, and as some of them ought to know Lord Peter canon better than I, I assumed I'd misremembered something.

No, I was right! It was written for BBC Radio by Dorothy Sayers to be read during the program "A Tribute to Sherlock Holmes on the Occasion of his 100th Birthday", and broadcast on 8 January 1954. The text of the story was published in the book "Sayers on Holmes", (but does not appear to be in any of the "Complete Lord Peter" compilations). mayhap was kind enough to post it full-text online a few years back, which is probably how I saw it: DLS does crack; or, The Young Lord Peter Consults Sherlock Holmes. It is a very short story, telling the tale of a very young Lord Peter going to consult Holmes about a matter of a small black kitten which has gone missing. (spoiler: (skip) But don't worry, Holmes saves the day and the kitten is perfectly okay.)

So Lord Peter gets to go on the list of official Sherlock Holmes-related canons after all. :P


We spent the beginning of the panel discussing these many canons, which ones we liked, and which ones only arguably belong on the list. There was also quite a bit of discussion of pre-internet Holmes fandom, especially the more "male-dominated" parts that concentrated more on things like timelines than on Holmes and Watson's epic romance, but also that there has been Holmes/Watson porn being written for over a century, and also how Holmes fandom as an umbrella has changed over time and incorporated all of the new adaptations and theories and media (both for published works and for fandom.)

Unfortunately, I have no notes for this part, so instead, I invite people (whether participants in the panel or not!) to share anything they want about their favorite Holmes-related small fandoms (other than BBC Sherlock and the ACD stories) in the comments to this post, and also any links they have to fics that were mentioned in the panel or that you would like to recommend in small Holmes-related fandoms.

Most of the rest of the panel was spent discussing what it is that makes a canon a Holmes pastiche or homage instead of just being a detective story, and what are the essential elements of the Holmes character.

Here's the list I generated from memory after the panel, in rough order of importance as we voted by show-of-hands:

( What Makes a House A Holmes )

For those who'd like to see my Queen of Swords femslash vid again.

[dessieoctavia]

Especially since on a small screen, the problems with the resolution don't appear. People were very understanding about that, I'm happy to say, which is good, because the series has never been released on dvd in the US, and I only recently found out that it has in Europe. Anyway, a couple of people remarked that they figured the footage was hard to get in a better format, which it is.

Anyway, my roommate (both at the con and in real life) says my link to the info page I made about the fandom didn't make it clear enough, so:

The Queen of Swords femslash fanvid.