recent fannish (not-so-)funnies

[martasfic]

New York Magazine just released a new interview with Benedict Cumberbatch talking about what it's like to be constantly pursued by those "Cumberbitches," the magazine's term in their headline. As their cover, they gave us a highly sexualized picture of Benedict, with what looks to be a throng of thirteen-year-old girls worthy of an unannounced "Beatles" sighting, pressing all around his car. The implication is that this is us.

It's not pretty. It's not even accurate. But to our credit, though, we got angry for about five minutes, and then we went to work. First came someone marking up the cover with their response to different parts of it:

http://mid0nz.tumblr.com/post/102927988209

And then someone else came up with a transparent version basically letting us have anything we wanted crowding around his car window.

Like Benedict photobombing himself, sexy Spider-Man, lots of otters,and of course the doge of much memeness.

And the journalists getting rich off writing about him.

And John and Mycroft peering in.

And starving children in Africa.

And a rather creepy Anderson.

At some point I saw John holding up a pregnancy test to the window. I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up to Benedict being chased by zombies. And people are just getting started; to my knowledge pictures of the magazine cover just showed up an hour or two ago. It's really quite encouraging -- and wonderful counter-proof to the article's basic point here -- that this is our response to a really highly unflattering article, not impotent rage but clever parody. Which is precisely what you'd expect from the reality that is the Sherlock fandom. You know, slightly overzealous but for the most part positive, highly creative women and men from all stages of life. I like it.

ETA: You remember what I said about the zombies? Well played, fandom, well played.

Comments

[azriona.livejournal.com]

Huh. One of the things about not being on Tumblr so much these days is that I missed all of this. And I can't decide if that's a good thing or not - I mean, on one hand, it's something of a relief to not be aware of the continual drama of the world ripping and commenting on my participation in the fandom, and what that makes of me, but then again, Know Thy Enemy.

[mildred-bobbin.livejournal.com]

Same, I've spent the last three days offline, moving house and crashing in bed exhausted.

[mildred-bobbin.livejournal.com]

Well surprise, surprise, last week I saw that Jada Yuan had approached prominent fans for their opinions on BC, and now sure enough she's done a hatchet job on his fans. Charming.