Why it doesn’t matter what Benedict Cumberbatch thinks of Sherlock fan fiction

Fan fiction gives women and other marginalised groups the chance to subvert the mainstream perspective, to fracture a story and recast it in their own way. It’s not for the benefit of middle-aged men with a vast audience and little understanding of the form.

By Elizabeth Minkel

(Photo By Please, please, please journalists: stop asking celebrities about fan fiction. Photo: Getty)

Apparently Benedict Cumberbatch has a thing for interstellar bondage. It must be his favorite kink. Why else would he, when talking about Star Trek on Top Gear last summer, jump to his favorite John/Sherlock fic trope the second Jeremy Clarkson made a well-worn Kirk/Spock innuendo? “If I talk about a relationship between two men in a drama, they’re immediately ‘at it’,” Cumberbatch said, sounding, well, kind of annoyed. “The world wide inter-lie will just basically go splat. There’s a load of fan fiction which has me and John Watson floating in space on a bed handcuffed to one another . . . not just with handcuffs, either.”

Then just this week, in an interview with Out editor-in-chief of Aaron Hicklin (ostensibly to promote The Imitation Game and discuss the legacy of Alan Turing), he goes there again. Complaining about how women express apparently misguided sexual interest in his depiction of Sherlock, Cumberbatch can’t help but bring up his favorite trope. “Because, you know, they either want to make John [Watson] into a sort of cute little toy, or me into a cute toy, or we’re fucking in space on a bed, chained together.”