The Fangirl Inside Me

Sherlock: The fandom that made me a fangirl

I remember how I entered into the world of fandoms.

I was a fangirl way before I knew what fandoms are. My mother was a huge fan of the great detective Sherlock Holmes. She used to tell me how she stayed up late to listen to the audio shows in the radio when she was a kid. She loved the way Mr. Holmes solved all the mysteries. I remember she bought me the Bangla (my language) translation of the stories and novels of Sherlock Holmes. And then once we were in a DVD store and my dad caught the sight of some Sherlock Holmes show DVDs, so just because he heard a lot about it- he brought those home.

According to my mother, you lose your power of imagination if you watch the movie before you read the book. This is actually true. When a movie is made, a big part of the book is lost. Imagine there's a book about a rabbit, and in one part it's written that- "the rabbit started to hop."

Okay, now when I'm reading this line, I'm imagining the rabbit hopping from left to right. Maybe you've imagined it hopping from right to left. Some people may imagine it hopping in one place. But what if it was shown in a movie? There would be only one scene and everyone would see it in the same way, there would be no room for your own imagination.

So yes, I decided to read the novels and short stories before I watch the show. I watched the DVD pack though, it was a Granada Television series. Sherlock Holmes was played by Jeremy Brett, David Burke played Dr. Watson. Soon I read the whole book and started watching the series. And yeah, I fell in love with Jeremy Brett. I started fangirling so hard on him but I didn't even know that what I'm doing is called fangirling. 

I cried my eyes out when I found out that Jeremy is dead. I wanted to die too. I wanted to go to him and tell him that I love him so so so much. I printed tons of pictures of Jeremy Brett and used to hang them in my walls. He was every where, in my books, my notebooks, my bed, my wardrobe. I watched all his movies, I memorized his whole biography. I listened to all the songs he sang, well, at least those I found on the internet. For some months Jeremy Brett was my everything! I still miss him. Jeremy Brett was amazing. He's the best Sherlock Holmes ever. EVER.

One day I was in BBC's website and I saw something like, "Modern Sherlock". I was super sensitive about Sherlock, I was a bit angry because they've started modernizing everything. "Sherlock is a cool classy thing," I thought, "No wonder they've messed it up".

I was wrong. It was 2014 when we finally had a television at our home. My mom didn't like television as she thought it destroys the power of imagination and thinking, plus watching it is a waste of time. We read daily newspaper and one day I saw an article about Sherlock which was about season three. It said, "Sherlock is coming back!" with a little description of season 2. There was a beautiful picture of Benedict Cumberbatch, so I thought of giving it a try.

That was the exact moment I entered in the world of no coming back. Benedict Cumberbatch made a brilliant modern Sherlock. I can't forget the "Mind Palace" scenes. And it wasn't only about solving mysteries. The show was also about the profound friendship between him and Dr. Watson, his love for his landlady, and there was so much more! There were so many things to learn, so much to see! And as I'm a child of this generation, no wonder this version of Sherlock was my favorite.

I started liking every Facebook fan page about Sherlock and I came to know there is some place called Tumblr where all the weird people meet. This was life changing. I met so many new people who are fangirls like me, so I was never bored. They are obsessed as much as I am so I can talk about the things I love all day long and they won't hate me for it. For months I was only obsessed with Sherlock, I kept sharing and reblogging everything about the show all the time. This was irritating to my non-fan friends and they used to tell me Sherlock is not everything. There are so many other shows and I must try watching them too. Tumblr and the other fandom pages made me realize that this is actually true, and I came to know there is something called SuperWhoLock which has a large fan base which consisted of three fandoms called Sherlock, Doctor Who and Supernatural. 

Thank God I started watching Sherlock that day. This show was the door to all the fandoms I'm in now. This show was the beginning of the change in my life. Now I'm a proud SuperWhoLockian and part of so many other fandoms. I've learned so many things no one else could ever make me know. This is how the story of my fandom life began, this is how the fangirl inside me started to grow up.