Grasping Sherlockiana with One’s Mental Tentacle

 Fellow blogger Rob Nunn likes to ask Sherlockians to define the word “Sherlockian” when he conducts his bloggerviews, and nobody seems to have an issue answering his question. Most of us have an answer to what makes another person Sherlockian in our eyes. But there is a tougher question, one which I’ve seen seriously invested Sherlockians struggle with over the years. Identifying as a Sherlockian is easy. Identifying your current location on the Sherlockian map, however, is something entirely different.

If you go to an amusement park, a zoo, or many another attraction with a landscape, you’ll usually find a map with a “You are here” arrow pointing to your current location. The Sherlockian landscape, the mental amusement park where we spend our fun time, has never had a visual map. It has lands within lands, and those lands have connecting borders. Original Canon land borders Actual History land, Pastiche land, and Literary Academia land. But where does Movie land and its parts and offshoots, like Cast Cottage and Movie Universe Fic Forest, lie? 

And while we might park ourselves in one spot for a time, one can’t help but wander Sherlockiana. People come to be familiar with us along certain paths, other folks in areas we seldom  visit, not so much. And we can get so enthralled with a given attraction in Sherlockiana world that we can even forget, for a time, that there are other people right next to us in our explorations of the lands. Or that people in one area can hear folks in other areas. Folks can get on a Sherlock sort of sugar high and crash into folks as they run through the attractions. Others just quietly do their part in keeping the machinery of the established rides running. A few Sherlockians have such a history with Sherlockiana that they become side attractions themselves when they leave the field. (Jim Hawkins setting up John Bennett Shaw displays comes quickly to mind.)

For a small part of the big outside world, the lands of Sherlockiana are expansive and ever-growing. The “You are here” arrow moves a lot, even if you’re just sitting on a bench. And so we wonder. And wander. And wonder.

Nanowrimo versus AI

 Next month is National Novel Writing Month, the annual challenge for writers of all genres and levels to attempt getting 50,000 words under their belts in the month of November. It's been going on since 1999, and I've participated a few times with varying results. Going to try again this year, but there's one thing that's a little different this year . . . AI.

This is the first year that we're all painfully aware that a computer algorithm is out there that can write a 50,000 or more word novel in a much, much, MUCH shorter period of time. At this point, it's not good enough at it to write a great novel, or probably even a good novel, but you know there are already doofuses out there with no scruples or talent having AI write them novels and trying to sell them. Trying a self-published book by an unknown has become much more risky.

So a computer program can write a book . . . and one day, we can imagine, it might be able to write a book as well as a lot of us. Why should we bother writing novels at that point?

Well, we already have robots that can run a marathon faster and further than a human. Why do marathoners still run? 

Because there have always been better runners, even when it was just us humans. Most runners don't run to win. Runners run for the experience, for how it improves their bodies, and a hundred other reasons.

It's the same with writing.

National novel writing month isn't about having a potential New York Times bestseller come December. It isn't really even about testing yourself to see if you can do it. It's about just writing and writing and writing and learning what all that experience will teach you. It might teach you that you can write a novel. It might teach you how to push past writer's block as the artificial deadline makes you learn to first-draft without self-criticism. It might show you parts of your mind that were just waiting to get out if only the other parts would quiet down and let them out. 

Ever watch a kung fu movie where the troubled main character has to go into a montage of repeating and repeating and learning and getting more skilled? Nanowrimo November is that montage for a writer.

Sure, an AI can write a novel or draw a picture for your lazy ass. But it sure isn't going to make you a better human. Remember that movie WALL-E and those lazy lumps that humans had become as the robots did all their work for them? Yeah, that, but for creativity.

As I've mentioned over at the John H. Watson Society website, this year I'm calling my own personal marathon of words "Watsowrimo" and inviting fellow Sherlockians to join in. We've still got over a week until November, so give it a little thought. You will definitely wind up a better person than those AI-using lumps pretending to be creative.

The Third Annual Pub Night at the Dangling Prussian

 Now, if you go to a lot of a certain kind of Sherlockian functions, you're apt to run into folks who ask a certain question: "Are you going to New York?"

Call it the Birthday Weekend, call it the BSI weekend, call it the Pilgrimage of the Potentials, but whatever you call it, the eldest community of Sherlock Holmes fans (by a smidge) spends a long weekend meeting and mingling with their peers. And it's where people go in January.

Well, most of us.

But if you read the headline to this blog post and have seen similar words before, you know that at least one person is committing to sitting in front of a Zoom screen for a long evening on Friday night January 12th. For many a decade, an alternative dinner was held in New York for folks who couldn't get into the annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars, and once Covid was done, the idea of taking that spirit to include all those who can't even get to New York (and a few who did, in past years) seemed like a good idea. So here we go again.

It's time for the third annual Dangling Prussian Pub Night. Here's the registration link, if you already know you're homebound come January 12:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckdeihrzguE9BngTJSLbDNjk1RUNGkjo73

Not sure what will make up the six hours. Most all of the folks who might do a presentation are going to be in New York. And it's far too late across the Atlantic for any of our European friends. Also, Zoom -- there are limits.

But after two previous virtual pub nights at the Dangling Prussian, as we call our Zoom alternative, somehow we make it through with a little program, a little gossip, and a lot of just hanging out, enjoying the company.

I might get back to New York City one day, but for now, I'm comfortable hosting a little virtual get together for those who can't. More on this to come, of course, as we figure out just what will happen in those six hours. But as invitations start to go out for the main event with the BSI in New York, it's time to start planning for everywhere else.

So Pika-Sherlock has a Watson now?

 So I went for a walk this evening, racing that rapidly closing window of daylight that exists between the end of the workday and autumn sunset. And I pulled up that little game I play on my walks sometimes, which I share with several other Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian friends. And then this guy appeared:

I'd seen him out there before, when the movie Detective Pikachu came out, but he wasn't using the magnifying glass so much. And then something different sprang up on my radar for Pokemon I hadn't seen yet.

There were just two new critters out tonight, so one has to suspect their appearance is connected. And if one is a "Sherlock," the other one in the normal sort of hat would seem to be his "Watson."

A little heavier than Sherlock, a little slower than Sherlock, and a different hat. Does that a Watson make?

It seems to be so in the minds of Nintendo, or whatever subsidiary runs Pokemon Go for them. A new game is out for the Nintendo Switch called Detective Pikachu Returns. Is his Watson in the game a Slowpoke type of Pokemon, or is that just something out in the wild for Pokemon Go?

I don't know, but it's time to start tossing those Pokeballs at Pikachus again!

Be careful what you wish for!

 Sometimes we all wish Sherlockiana was more mainstream.

(Side note for those who disagree with my opening line: What? You don't? Yes, I know you're different. Most of us are.)

Sherlock Holmes, even with that RDJ hit movie and BBC series, just didn't catch on as hard as Marvel superheroes or Star Wars. (Disney didn't open a Sherlock Holmes franchise.) Or even Star Trek or DC superheroes. (Paramount and Warner Brothers's attempts to match the Disney stuff.) And I'm kind of fine with that. Because have you noticed what's happening lately?

Thanks to the internet we all know about some things. And we all want to do the cool things.

Only we can't all go see Taylor Swift. Or blooming cherry trees in a specific place in the spring. Or the BSI dinner. (Yeah, I know, we all don't want to go to the BSI dinner. Some of us are different, more than ever now, for sure.) Going to see a full solar eclipse in the middle of a less populated part of Illinois really drove that home for me a few years back -- the local infrastructure was not designed to handle the mass migration of humans returning home as soon as the eclipse was over. Traffic snarls on two-lane highways with stop signs was insane and made you realize how screwed we'd be in a Godzilla movie just trying to drive away from that big bastard.

But what makes Sherlockiana truly great in our less-than-mainstream fandom is how rare it makes us, and how wonderful it is when we gather. I can go into work and talk about Star Wars or Marvel with fifteen people. (If I can find them -- work-from-home is really messing with us.) The rarity of the hardcore Sherlockian makes finding one an exciting event. Of course, it's still exciting to find someone who likes a mainstream fandom as much as you do, as my friend Madeline recently pointed out to me, finding someone who likes that special part of a larger fandom as much as you do can also be pretty cool.

Is Sherlockiana "niche" enough to be kind of hip and cool at some point? 

Sure, and that leads to eventual larger popularity, and the waves we see around a Seven Per-Cent Solution or a BBC Sherlock, when we see a new influx of Sherlockians. We need those to keep our fandom engine running at a certain level. But do we ever want Sherlock to be NFL football popular? With big-name Sherlockians making millions and you have to pay a hundred bucks to get them to sign your book?

Nawwwww.

It's hard enough to get into the dang BSI dinner as it is. (Yes, yes, I never go, but someone has to stay home and leave a chair open for the new kids.) Mainstream might not be for us. (Though if Disney was to buy out BSI Inc. and take it over . . . hey, the January dinner might be in Florida! And held at "Baker Street Land" or something like that! Quick, somebody sell the BSI to Disney!)

Insert your comments below . . . I promise the moderator will get to approving them for publication sometime in the next week.

The Three Watsons

 At the August meeting of the John H. Watson Society, we did a little thing called "the Watson Rorschach test" wherein we took three photos from antiquity and imagined that each was the real John Watson whom we were meeting for the first time. How would we react? To find out what the Watsonians thought, you'll have to listen to the Watsonian Weekly podcast for Monday September 11. If you did, however, here are the three Watson picture discussed there.

Test Watson One

Test Watson Two

Test Watson Three

There you have it, the three Watsons we discussed. (Note: Not real John Watsons. No idea who they really were. Found the pictures in a bookshop that sold old pictures.)

Sherlockian influencers, then and now

 I was contemplating the dinner packets of the annual Baker Street Irregulars dinner this morning and their diverse contents, and it reminded me of how Sherlockiana has had influencers long before the internet and TikTok videos.

The dinner packets at the BSI dinner have long held a variety of things. Christmas cards, promotional flyers, assorted treasures one can never predict, and some regular treasures one can. Why promotional flyers? Sure, there are a hundred or two people you can sell something to if you want to sell a limited number of items to. But marketing-wise, it would seem like a very small market.

But the one thing that the Baker Street Irregulars have long been is a gathering of influencers.

Who are the most enthusiastic Sherlockians in any city, the ones that are probably responsible for the local scion societies, the ones that talk to the most other Sherlockians? Traditionally, pre-internet, they were probably also the people who were a part of the Baker Street Irregulars if they had any means to get to New York in January. They'd go to the annual gathering, then fly home to give news and tales of adventure to the members of their local Sherlock Holmes group, show off any new books they found at the Mysterious Bookshop, and share those things that excited them the most.

Which kind of made them influencers, right?

We have the big ol' internet now, and our connecting points are a lot more random than key publications and important events -- which are still there, and still do the job, of course. But we are so wired in for the latest and greatest that our influencers aren't limited to those channels. And now we have more specialist influencers -- look to your favorite part of the hobby and you'll probably find someone whom you look to for all the good tips on a given area of Holmes specialty.

Sometimes it's still just that certain friend who is plugged into more connections than you. We all have our private circle of influencers whom we just call "friends" to be sure. People who like what we like are always going to draw us in certain directions. But there are also those people outside our inner circles who shine their light on books or collectables and suddenly make us find ourselves on Amazon or Alibris, etc. looking for an item we hadn't thought about before.

I don't know of anyone who has the phrase "Sherlockian influencer" in their bio, but I'm suddenly curious to see who those folks would be. "I'm not really a Sherlockian scholar, but more of an influencer." But, as I say that I'm realizing some definitely existed in the past. For example, I don't want to say John Bennett Shaw wasn't a scholar or a man of letters, but hot damn, was that man an influencer of the top level! Entire Sherlockian societies began due to his influence as he Johnny Appleseed-ed his way around the U.S. 

Who are our biggest influencers of today? I can think of a couple of candidates, but is that title something they would find complimentary, with the social media image that the term conjures? (Do we have Sherlockian Kardassians?) Don't want to insult anyone, of course, but it is something to ponder upon, on a Saturday morning, as one does.