I’ve seen a lot of talk about what ‘normal’ fans do, and I think it is rather interesting because it isn’t a question of whether or not people ship or pick up on subtext or craft AUs in their head— it is honestly just an issue of scale.
In the past few years, I have taught ASiS and ASiP to my students. I don’t mention fandom in class. I don’t talk about fanfiction or ships or ‘OMG They should totally kiss.’ My students are not in fandom. When I had them set up a tumblr as part of a daily writing assignment, most of them said, “What’s tumblr?” Out of about 200 students, only two of them mentioned that they had heard of Sherlock before we watched it in class; most of them thought Sherlock Holmes was just “that movie with Iron Man.” (I may have gone back to my office and smacked my head against my desk a little when a student suggested that Sherlock Holmes was based on Batman.)
But here is the thing: I teach developmental students. Most of my students have never read a book before they took my class or the last book they read was way back in the 3rd grade. They don’t write outside of text messages to their friends. We approach Sherlock Holmes in a basic— if fun— fashion. My students are learning comprehension skills and learning how to write paragraphs, so we don’t have a whole lot of time to talk about this or that camera angle. The purpose of the assignment is to encourage them to read intensely and practice their writing skills by comparing the two versions of the story.
And this is what I have learned and observed about the ‘normal’ Sherlock viewing audience during the course of the class.
“that’s what people do!"
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