...and then he said...

*** HI, I'M MUTLEY2 This is my MAIN blog. Here I reblog mostly Sherlock, but also some Merlin, Avengers, Big Bang Thoery, Stargate, Due South, funny stuff, rants, whatever. *** I do have separate Sherlock and Merlin art blogs (though the Merlin one is pretty much abandoned) but reblog everything here anyway. On the Sherlock blog I am Glassdildo and Merthurtydfil on the Merlin one. *** Please note that if you want me to follow you back, I only follow on this main blog, not the art ones THANK YOU *** MY SHERLOCK BLOG MY MERLIN BLOG

[conch-sart]

A smart guy in a dumb hat by rilakkuma1212 Reffed from a recent setlock photo. I’m really confused because the Sherlock one episode special has the whole cast dressed in Victorian era clothes. So I mused over what the showrunners were thinking while drawing Sherlock. I think he’s sorta recognizable?

[paintedprintedpaper]

we all laugh about when benedict face planted wearing the sheet 

but lets talk about how rupert didnt realize there were steps and flung down them

[bakerstreetbabes]

Precious kittens.

[actualvampireang-deactivated201]

was fanfic any different in the Olden Days

OH BOY AND HOW. So I am not So Much Of An Old that I was around when print zines were the thing. I got into fanfic-type fandom through the internet. But here are some changes from the late 90s to today:

- In slash fandom, there were a lot fewer main characters written as expressly queer. There was a lot of (in retrospect) very teeth grindingly annoying “We’re not gay we just love each other” type romances. 

- Fic was mostly distributed via mailing lists (email), not by web archives, although some mailing lists also would web archive their stuff. People tended to be more monofannish because you would just participate in the list — people are more multifannish now because we follow specific people through their blogs and get introduced to their other interests, but this didn’t happen as much back in the day. People were definitely still multifannish, though. I’ve always fandom hopped.

- The aesthetic was very different. A lot of older fanfic reads in ways that were more influenced by profic romance novels, whereas modern fanfic has sort of its own, more realist style. (TBH there are also a lot more realistic/pomo style romance novels these days as well.) The stuff from the early 2000s, in comparison to 90s and earlier fic, and in comparison to modern fic, tended to be more experimental stylistically. Overall, fic tended to be longer, but also more uniformly long. There weren’t really many of those 200k monsters either.

- Not a lot of postmodern type fic conceits (i.e. stuff like the one where steve and bucky watch all the movies made about captain america while steve was in the ice, or SGA fic told through excerpts from academic papers, etc.) Early 2000s fandom went through this weird magical realism phase, also.

- In our headers, we used to measure story length in file-size, not in word length. I think this change came about in the early 2000s.

- Real Person Fic was like, not even discussed. It had its own mailing list where we kept basically all of it, and you didn’t mention it in polite company. Then suddenly in 2000-2001 all these legitimate people got into NSync fic. But before that, it was pretty taboo in a lot of fannish circles.

[some-stars]

re: point one, there was also an enormous amount of time spent on characters agonizing over being attracted to other men. like, i was reading something a while back that was actually written in 2003 but by someone who’d been in fandom for a long time and obviously hadn’t changed their aesthetic much, and the first time the pairing started making out, one of the guys suddenly had to stop—and i thought it was gonna be like, traumatic memories, or just general intimacy issues, or whatever. but it was because it was ~all too new~ and he had to take a few more days to adjust to the whole gay thing.

oh and then along the same lines you had guys running out to try and have sex with women and fail, or have sex with women but find it so unsatisfying, before ultimately admitting that they wanted this particular dick. also, considering the prevalence of WNGWJLEO, it was oddly mandatory to point out at great length how much each character never really loved his previous female partners.

basically fandom now, at least the well-written part of it, is a million times less homophobic and biphobic and, believe it or not, misogynist. obviously there were always exceptions, especially with the really good writers, and especially as you move into the late nineties. but as a rule, so much improvement.

oh, and every love confession required a full name. Firstname Middlename Lastname, I love you. where does that even come from, seriously?

i will give them this—there was a lot less badfic that was technically bad, like, unreadable and full of errors. shit got edited back in the day. someone was gonna pay money to print five hundred copies of that and they did not want your terrible spelling to fuck it up.

oh, and not related to anything else, but: usenet! usenet was a super important venue for many fandoms. this actually continued well into the 2000s for certain fandom circles—not slash-focused media fandom in general, but there was a lot of overlap. i was reading alt.tv.angel during season two, and there were fic writers i recognized posting there. and of course earlier on, the alt.startrek.creative.* groups were central.

[shortvideosandstuff]

[pardonmewhileipanic]

my ass would be on the ground CRYING

[thistie]

Martin being 4.3 years old during BOTFA press junket. (source, thanks to constantlyfreemaned)

[sulietsexual]

Inara Serra Outfit Appreciation

[constancecream]

[x]

[deserthearts]

So if her brooch is really a cuckoo, I have something you all should know….

A ‘Kuckuckskind’ in German literally translates to ‘the child of a cuckoo’ and it references a child whose father is not its biological father. He is a married man with an adulterous wife or, in a vanishing definition, a married man who unknowingly raises someone else’s child as his own.

[beauxtiful]

Somebody wants a time travel buddy.

[sherlocked-development]

[bb8pls-deactivated20161030]

these fuckin nerds

[tomdelongeboard]

im like 96% sure my patronus would be john and sherlock making out

[thefrogman]

There is also a death for the immortal jellyfish. He is very bored.

Artwork by Chris Gugliotti [webcomic | tumblr]

[glassdildo]

Any of my followers into Stargate?  I took my website down but I’ve begun to put everything back up slowly.  Starting with my original fandom and with some of my own personal favorites.  The one above, for example can now be read here

First Published: February 17th, 2005 Rating: Adult Pairing: Jack/Daniel  Word Count: 32,177

Summary: Daniel is looking for something that’s been missing from his life for too long. Jack can help him find it, if only Daniel would open his eyes and really see. Illustrated fic

[flannelsmash]

BBC News: "Fabled Franklin Arctic ship found"

[tastefullyoffensive]

[consultingtimedetective-deactiv]

Rupert Graves selfie!!!

[bakerstreetskulls]

his hair is so greyyyyy

[221bee-deactivated20201105]

reminder that there were actual, talented, trained and experienced people who stood in a room and decided, “yes, this is the angle we’ll use. yes, we’ll have sherlock drop to his knees before john rather than stoop. yes, we’ll do it this way rather than from the side or a close-up of hands removing the bomb vest. this is the one. this captures exactly what we want to capture.”