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My Dearest Holmes: a Review by Katie The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 2, Winter 2015 Contents Foreword .........................................................................................................3 At the Heart by Dora Brown ...........................................................................5 Art by Diigii ...................................................................................................6 Sherlockian Fake Geek Girls by Liz .................................................................7 Through the Decades by Khorazir (Anke Eissmann) .....................................13 “A Perfectly Overpowering Impulse” (SCAN) Or, What’s A Square Like Me Doing At A Retired Beekeepers’ Meeting? by Tweedisgood ...............17 Uninvited by A. J. Odasso ............................................................................20 Discretion by Violsva ......................................................................................21 Art by Ili ........................................................................................................23 The Man with the Watches and the Test of Time by James C. O’Leary ...........24 Art by Diigii ..................................................................................................32 Highgate by Elinor Gray .................................................................................33 Art by Fyodor Pavlov ....................................................................................35 Omi-Palone by Brontë Schiltz ..........................................................................36 Reading Holmes as a Trans Man by Basil Chap ...................................................39 My Dearest Holmes: A Review by Katie .......................................................44 Art by Ili ........................................................................................................49 Bent Back To The Original? Jeremy Brett And The Re-Queering Of Sherlock Holmes by Quentin Broughall ...........................................................................50 Family Portrait by Maia Kobabe ......................................................................54 The Wonders of Shipping Johnlock by Shirley Carlton ..................................55 Art by Button ................................................................................................59 Come at Once, If Convenient by Meow .................................................................60 It’s Psychosomatic, Watson by Meow ..................................................................60 Contributors ..................................................................................................62 Afterword ......................................................................................................65 List of Canonical Abbreviations .....................................................................66 1 The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex http://retiredbeekeepers.tumblr.com [email protected] Copyright © 2015 by The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex All Rights Reserved is retained by their own authors and creators. Volume 1, Number 2: Winter 2015 Cover design and essay illustrations by Basil Chap Layout by Elinor Gray The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 2, Winter 2015 Foreword “... he sat dazing for a moment in silent amazement at a small blue book which lay before him. Across the cover was printed in golden letters Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.” – “His Last Bow,” 1917. hank you for buying/downloading/printing/sharing the Retired Bee- Tkeepers’ second issue of The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. If you enjoy this issue, please pass it on to a friend! If you really enjoy this issue, please consider donating to the Retired Beekeepers. We are an entirely volunteer- run organisation and do not charge any membership or meeting fees, but we do have some small operating costs, including the publication of this journal. We appreciate your support in whatever form and denomination it appears. If you would like a print copy of this journal, please visit retiredbeekeepers. tumblr.com/handbook for information on how to obtain one. The Retired Beekeepers are celebrating one full year of society-hood, and have had a very full twelve months of events and goings-on. We have covered barely one sixth of the canon, but we have gone on adventures, experienced a myriad of adaptations, and eaten a lot of snacks. We’ve discussed topics rang- ing from women in the canon to the role of animals, queerness to retirement, and to the Crime Museum in London. We’ve watched a lot of television and listened to a lot of radio. All in all, a productive year! We can’t wait to see what the next year will bring, and we hope that you will be able to join us. - posed, this seemed like almost too general a theme, having no limitations whatsoever. In practice, however, it means that we have a broad and exciting - ings of literature have gained traction in mainstream academia but have not been given the space and time they deserve in more “traditional” Sherlockian circles. We aim to rectify this, both in our monthly meetings and in our regular publications, and we look forward to sharing with you our collected thoughts, experiences, and interpretations. Believe us to be, dear Bees, Very sincerely yours, Basil, Elinor, and Michele 3 The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 2, Winter 2015 At the Heart Dora Brown After “At the New Year”, by Kenneth Patchen n the cup of our room, in the soft tea I of evening, John In all that is hidden in me, these buried breaths and wantings In everything I am to you, familiar and forsaken, John In the reverence I brought you, in the moment of my leaving In that unswerving night, in those dreamings of my patience, John In all the protestation, and in the calling when my heart was breaking In everything you stole from me, without knowing you were taking the last of my air from me, John In all that you returned to me, by your willing for my truth to prevail In the cause of kindness, to soothe the wretched aching in us, John Before the sun sets, before this warming in your look can be suppressed Before my open ribs are sewn, before my care is folded under linen, John There are the threads of liberation Moisten them with your lips and pull them free And there are ecstasies to sing, John There are ecstasies to sing! 5 The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex 6 The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture No. 2, Winter 2015 Sherlockian Fake Geek Girls Liz (@her_nerdiness) FWatson always have to be gay? Why can’t they just be friends?” I ask queer1 in any major adaptation? Arguably, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Watson are actually a same-sex couple. So when someone asks, “Why do they always have to be gay?” what is that person really saying? I would argue they and Watson challenged by what appears to be a new nexus in the broad Sherlockian fandom: the online slash fandom. Slash fandoms have existed for decades, but the internet has brought slash to the surface of our cultural landscape through increased availability and accessibility. The term “slash” refers to romantic and/or sexual pairings of same-sex couples due to the slash used to denote a pairing, such as Kirk/ Spock. Decades ago, slash fanworks were distributed through paper zines sent in the mail, then through listservs and newsgroups, then through Wattpad, and Archive of Our Own (AO3). In 2014, anyone can peruse the content 24/7 without having to seek out a zine to subscribe to. Interviewers of their characters available online, and many of them are. Some are even enthusiastic about the idea. Slash fandom is, in many cases, largely a queer, female space. In my personal experience, almost everyone with whom I’ve interacted in fandom falls under the queer umbrella, which includes bisexual, pansexual, asexual, lesbian, and gay people who are variously cisgender, transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, or agender. Critically, most members of fandom fall outside the boundaries of a cisgender heterosexual male identity. Though many mainstream publications have assumed that straight women are writing all the 7 The Retired Beekeepers of Sussex gay erotica, that’s not necessarily true. In 2013, a survey of 10,005 AO3 users2 found that users of the site that responded to the survey were overwhelmingly 3 In particular, members of male-male pairing fandoms were slightly less likely to be heterosexual women and slightly more likely to be bi-/pansexual women as compared to all respondents.4 Although this survey is not necessarily representative of the entire fandom, as it constituted only AO3 users who chose to respond to the survey, it provides a useful lens through which to view the online fandom experience. A vibrant community of slash fans has developed in response to the Jr. movies (2009 and 2011) and BBC’s Sherlock (2010). Many of us were although plenty have been reading his adventures since childhood. A thriving community of canon slash fans has also existed both online and pre-internet slash fans, we naturally gravitate towards deep relationships between male special one. We also exist among a broader geek culture on the internet, which has had its own fraught and protracted battle with respect to gender relations. Many facets of geek culture have long been unwelcoming to women, which is 5 who dare to be active and outspoken members of these communities are often threats.6
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