Talk:Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock character)

alternate naming convention for title characters

As discussed on Talk:Harry Potter (character), the disambiguation naming scheme is confusing when the name of the character is the same as the name of the fandom. But since there's more than one Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes (character) isn't enough. I moved the page to a possible solution in the hope that there's no other BBC adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that someone wants to document. Er, so does this disambiguation work? If so, we could also have Sherlock Holmes (Granada character) and Sherlock Holmes (2009 character).

And for that matter, Merlin (BBC character). Merlin (Merlin (BBC)) has the same problem.

I checked AO3, but they don't seem to have a solution for title characters with multiple versions.[1][2] Though I don't know how often this situation will arise. --æthel 22:44, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Try clicking on the Batman character tag on the AO3 and seeing how many versions turn up! I think the current Merlin version: Merlin (Merlin (BBC)) works well and looks clunky, but having the bracket info match the Fanlore page name for the fandom seems like it is providing more accurate information. So Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock (BBC)) and John Watson (Sherlock (BBC)) tells you which version you are getting while strongly implying it is a character page. Also, since people are more likely to know that the show is called Sherlock than that it is on the BBC, I think it is more useful information. In the Harry Potter example, editors are almost obligated to discuss movie!Harry and book!Harry on one page, which will work in that fandom, but won't work for the Holmes fandoms.--facetofcathy 23:41, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, you make a good point, but I dread seeing a page named Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes (2009)). I'll move this page back for now.--æthel 23:23, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that will be awkward. I'm not coming up with a better idea though unless we went with Sherlock Holmes-Character that was a short blurb and each individual iteration was a subpage of that. I can't decide if I like that idea or not.--facetofcathy 01:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The only other solution I can think of is to disambiguate by the actor's name, e.g. Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.), etc. Which isn't consistent with Fanlore naming conventions, but I think is similar to the way Sherlockians deal with all the different performances (?).--æthel 03:34, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Which would work now since there is only one (or is there?) print version of the character, but how long until there's a manga or a comic book or something (or some pro author writes Sherlock in Space and claims they invented transformative works)? Using subpages would link the character pages together in a way that the fandoms aren't (which I think is a pro and a con) and the top-level page would function as a disambig. Maybe a poll of the DW comm?--facetofcathy 13:55, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

@æthel:I love the idea of disambiguating by actor name! :D :D @facetofcathy: Subpages create a number of problems we just got rid of by abandoning the subpage solution for that kind of thing. I would like it much more if the main character page acted like a kind of hub page, giving context and linking to everything else. --Doro 14:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I think I could make a rhetorical argument that using subpages for versions of a character is similar to using subpages for yearly instances of a con or a fecfest, but I'm aware there are technical issues (that was why I'm only lukewarm on the idea in the first place), so I'm not going to belabour it. I think actor name differentiates the versions from each other fairly well, but maybe not from the source text name itself. If we go for Shelock Holmes (Actor Name) and presumably John Watson (Actor Name), then for the print version, we say John Watson (Conan Doyle) and Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle)? The first one can be read as meaning the character, but I'm not so sure on the second. Or are we assuming that discussion of Doyle's Holmes with remain on the fandom page?--facetofcathy 15:07, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Doro, I like the idea of the main character hub page arrangement. I think it'll help us keep track of the pages for different versions more easily. Someone started to do this with Clark Kent, but people may have been too intimidated by how complicated the project would be (or just didn't know what to name the pages). So we could start with Sherlock Holmes (character), John Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Inspector Lestrade, Mary Morstan, James Moriarty, etc.

There are multiple print versions of Sherlock, but if we have a central character page, we can put information about all the versions in one place and move the sections into their own pages as they grow long enough. At that point, we can worry about what to name, say, Mary Russell's version of Holmes.

I don't think subpages are going to work; we'd still have to call the subpages something, so why not make them top-level pages? --æthel 01:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Immediate potential issue with the actor-name case: Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century. There is fic for the fandom, but (unlike, say, animated-DCU or Gargoyles fandom) there's no identification of the voice actor(s) with the characters -- and the distinctive versions of Holmes and Moriarty in that series are certainly candidates for character pages somewhere down the line.

My two cents: for indexing purposes, the obvious solution might be a category -- "Sherlock Holmes - Characters" or perhaps "Sherlock Holmes (universe) - Characters". As for ways to differentiate versions, perhaps the answer is to take a page from early Sherlockian criticism, which assigned a unique abbreviation to each of the canonical stories (for example, SCAN for "A Scandal in Bohemia"). I'd recommend a 6-7 character limit for abbreviations, so that for example, the new BBC series might be SHER-10, the "Mary Russell" novels might be "SH-RUSS" and "SH/22C" would apply to Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century. A key to the abbreviations would be necessary -- perhaps placed on the category page for the character pages -- but then one could have character pages with relatively manageable titles, on the order of "Sherlock Holmes (SH-RUSS)" or "Mycroft Holmes (SHER-10), and so on. --djonn 05:10, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

We can certainly make subcategories for Sherlock Holmes Characters and/or categories for the individual adaptations. The abbreviation solution has a certain elegance, but could cause confusion. Are there any established abbreviations for the different adaptations?--æthel 06:04, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know there aren't well-codified abbreviations for any of the pastiches/films/fics/etc.; there are simply too many out there. OTOH, "RUSS-L" is a long-established name for a mailing-list associated with the Mary Russell series fandom, which is one reason I latched onto the abbreviation idea in the first place (while leaving the L off of the proposed abbreviation for the series proper). (As far as I know, I coined "SH/22C" myself when I created the page for Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, basically to avoid having to type the series name too many times over).--djonn 11:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow, lots going on here!

Hub pages - I like the hub pages; Sherlock Holmes (character) and John Watson are great starts, and I think they'll be really useful. Something like List of Sherlock Holmes Characters might also be good down the road; for BBC'verse I added in a Character section to list the character pages. I think it would become pretty ambitious for the pages to try to both fully encompass the original Doyle characters and address all other incarnations, so perhaps the original Doyle versions should also get their own separate pages. (I'm feeling this way currently about the Sherlock Holmes page: it's ambitiously trying to both cover Doyle's original and be a sort of hub page to cover all fandoms; I'd prefer it to be a hub page, and have a separate Doyle'verse page, so both subjects can continue to expand. I should probably be bringing this up there though.)

Character page names - I love the actors and I know I could keep up with the pages named that way, but I'd prefer something more consistent for characters of the same source.

At least for Sherlock (BBC) characters, I'd like to just use "(Sherlock)" after the character name. The "(BBC)" is used to distinguish the source from disambiguation, but the characters themselves aren't in conflict with other "Sherlock" character pages, so Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock) and John Watson (Sherlock) would work.

It's still confusing because Sherlock is the first name for all Sherlock Holmes incarnations so naming something Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock) could mean anything. I think in these situations we should disambiguate by what works best and for Sherlock and Sherlock Holmes (2009) I think disambiguating by actor name is the way to go. However, there is no need to always use the same disambiguation criterion, so other Holmes versions could be named differently (see dreamwidth discussion). --Doro 09:18, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

For Sherlock Holmes (2009), before I address character pages I'd like to address the main page: with the sequel coming out next year, "(2009)" will not be accurate anymore so the page might need to be moved. (Are there other fandoms that this has happened to?) On places like Holmesian_news, this film is the "Ritchie"'verse, so perhaps that page should be moved to Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie); then Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie character) for RDJ's Holmes, John Watson (Ritchie), and so on. It would be similar for Sherlock Holmes (Granada) (which already uses the "Granada"'verse distinction), and then Sherlock Holmes (Granada character) for Jeremy Brett's Holmes.

-- Kylara 08:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There are Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Battlestar Galactica (2003). For disambiguation purposes it works fine to use the year it first aired, even if it was on the air for more than a year. --Doro 09:18, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I created a character subcategory.

Disambiguating Sherlock characters with (Sherlock) makes sense to me since there is only one Sherlock tv show (and until this adaptation, I've never seen anyone refer to the character as just "Sherlock", so I don't think it's confusing), but this approach won't work for any other Sherlock Holmes version (except Mary Russell). Disambiguating by actor name would also work for several adaptations, though not for Granada Watson. And (Ritchie) is also a viable alternative for (2009) since it's short, unique, and follows the way actual Holmes fans differentiate the sources.--æthel 22:50, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

tropes discussion

ffa has an interesting thread on fic tropes for Sherlock that we could incorporate here: Re: Fanfiction trends you don't understand--æþel 17:07, 25 December 2011 (UTC)