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POLYAMORY AND NON-MONOGAMY IN THE SHERLOCK FANDOM
How much polyamory/consensual non-monogamy fanfic is there in the Sherlock fandom? This analysis addresses this question, and more:
- How does our fandom compare to others in this regard?
- What relationship configurations, topics, and ships are most common?
- How do asexuality and polyamory interact?
- How did the fandom handle poly/open relationships after S3?
In partnership with the threepatchpodcast, I took a look at these topics in the Sherlock fandom from a quantitative perspective.
Note: This topic is more personal for me than a lot of the stats I've done in the past; I read and write some poly/non-monogamous relationships, and I am in poly relationships myself. So I'm also going to talk about real life experience vs. fanfic here, and get somewhat philosophical about relationships and tagging practices and so forth. Thoughts & discussion from other fanfic readers and writers -- and people with experience in other fandoms -- welcome, as always!
HOW DO OPEN/POLY RELATIONSHIPS GET TAGGED IN THE SHERLOCK FANDOM?
Here are the relative popularities of some poly-related tags on AO3:
Because Threesome and Polyamory are the most common of these tags by far, most of the rest of the analyses will focus on these tags.
But are all open relationships and consensually non-monogamous situations getting one of these tags? Let's take a look at how Johnlockary gets tagged, and see:
These categories are mutually exclusive. So this chart shows that the majority of works with the "Sherlock Holmes/Mary Morstan/John Watson" tag are NOT tagged "Polyamory," "Threesome," or other common non-monogamous tags. Many of those fics may contain things that could be classified as polyamory, threesomes, open relationships, or similar concepts. But it turns out that a lot of these concepts are going untagged in the fic.
One takeaway: if you're a reader searching for non-monogamous relationships on AO3, searching for specific relationship tags will bring up more works than searching for "Polyamory" or for "Threesome", or any other specific tag.
Aside: This presents an interesting tagging dilemma for some writers. I tend to write more poly fic that involves a vee arrangement, where John is dating both Mary and Sherlock but Sherlock and Mary aren't dating, vs. a triad, where all of them are in a relationship (I'm borrowing both vee and triad from poly parlance that doesn't seem to have made it to AO3 tags). I would normally think to tag this as Sherlock/John and John/Mary, but not Sherlock/Mary/John. However, I reach more interested readers if I use the S/M/J tag as well. OTOH, I've had people write to me and say they don't like polyamory involving these three characters -- but it turns out they only want to avoid triads, not to vees. So I'm not really sure what best tagging practices are, but I think it might help if terms like triad and vee were more common in fandom.
HOW MUCH POLY/OPEN FIC IS THERE IN THE SHERLOCK FANDOM?
"Polyamory" and "Threesome" are both less popular in the Sherlock fandom than on AO3. There are 251 AO3 "Polyamory" fanworks, which is less than one percent (0.41%) of the Sherlock fanworks. And there are 529 "Threesome" fanworks (0.87%). Compare to AO3 averages:
There are even fewer works that use the term "polyamory" in their metadata on FFN. There are only 104 fanworks returned across all fandoms when you search for "polyamory", and only 7 "polyamory" FFN works in the Sherlock fandom! "Threesome" is more popular overall on FFN, but there are still only 25 "threesome" FFN works in the Sherlock fandom. (This is probably in large part a reflection of the lack of freeform tags on FFN; there is no "Polyamory" or "Threesome" tag there, so it's all about what people say in their titles and summaries.)
How does Sherlock compare to specific other fandoms here? Let's look at the percentage of various fandoms' works that use each tag:
Compared to many other popular fandoms on AO3 (though this is an incomplete list), Sherlock has a relatively low usage of both "Polyamory" and "Threesome." One interesting point here -- the fandoms that use "Polyamory" the most are all RPF fandoms. I don't have any immediate theories as to why that should be.
A previous analysis of mine showed that polyamory correlates somewhat with how much overlap there is between popular ships in the fandom -- if two popular pairings overlap, there will probably be more poly fic.
WHAT TOPICS ARE DEALT WITH IN SHERLOCK POLY/OPEN FIC?
These are the most popular other tags within the Sherlock "Polyamory" tag:
... Well, okay then. ;) Despite the fact that this tag cloud appears to be mostly sex-related, I've found in the past that "Polyamory" is less sex-focused than "Threesome" and some other tags (and possibly more plot-focused, if one takes "Angst" to be mildly indicative of plot:
But still, there is relatively more sex-related tagging co-occuring with the "Polyamory" tag than in the Sherlock fandom as a whole.
WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON 3+PERSON SHIPS?
There's been a bunch of fandom discussion post-S3 about Johnlockary (Sherlock/Mary/John), but while that ship is rapidly growing, there are others, too:
Despite the recent growth of the Johnlockary ship, the most popular 3+ person ship is Sherlock/Lestrade/John, closely followed by Johnlockary. (They may soon swap.) Mycroft/Sherlock/John is in third place, followed by S/J/Moriarty, S/J/Molly, S/J/Irene, Molly/Moran/Moriarty, Richard Brook/Moran/Moriarty, S/J/Sarah, and Mystrade/Johnlock.
On FFN, as I said, it's far harder to find threesome/poly fics. But I did find 16 Jollock fics (John/Sherlock/Molly) on FFN, which possibly makes it the most popular poly ship there (Sherlock/Molly is the most popular secondary ship on FFN, so that's perhaps no surprise). By contrast, there are only 3 fics that use the shipname Johnlockary. I couldn't find any Sherlock/Lestrade/John, but it might just be that I don't know a good term to search for. (Update: I tried Johnlockstrade, which seems to be a common AO3 tag, and I found 3 fics with that shipname on FFN.)
WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON POLY CONFIGURATIONS?
As I mentioned above, there are various polyamorous configurations possible, even with three people involved. In most of the poly relationships I know of IRL, there is no assumption that dating someone also means dating their partner(s), and doing so is not relatively infrequent. Even in the groups of 3,4, or 5 people I know who have started a household together, in pretty much every case, not every pair of people is having sex. And most people I know are not polyfidelitous -- they may have a primary partner (or triad, quad, etc), but they are also free to date other people outside that relationship.
In Sherlock fanfic, by contrast, most of the poly fanfic I've seen involves a triad rather than a vee. And it seems like some of the relationships are polyfidelitous, at least in practice -- they're not continuing to date other people.
To test this intuition, I looked at the "Polyamory" tag, and then I looked at how many fanworks were left once I excluded ones that included "Threesome", "Foursome", or the two most popular poly ships:
Only 30% of the Poly tag is left after I exclude these other tags -- meaning that 70% of the "Polyamory" tag also has some indication of a probable threesome or triad, rather than a vee or other configuration. (though I will caveat that there are probably a lot of vee fic authors that, like me, ended up using the S/J/M tag, so I'm also ruling out some vees here). This pattern supports my intuitions.
My hunch is that this triad-preference stems partly from the fact that a lot of authors have an OTP -- two people that they really like to see interacting -- and some of those authors are interested in exploring how those two people interact when a third (or more) is added to the relationship. But they aren't particularly interested in watching the two people go separate ways in their dating lives.
HOW DO ASEXUALITY AND POLYAMORY INTERACT?
The Sherlock fandom has the highest usage of the "Asexuality" tag on AO3, by a lot. I've notice that IRL, some partners with a difference in sexual desire choose to explore polyamory or open relationships. What about in fanfic?
Far more poly/open Sherlock fic is also tagged "Asexuality" than Sherlock fic in general. Also, more acefic is tagged "Polyamory" than in the Sherlock fandom in general (2.8%).
HOW DID JOHNLOCK AUTHORS WRITE DIFFERENTLY AFTER S3?
If you’re a Johnlock shipper, there are at least a few options for writing that ship post-S3:
- AU/canon divergence
- John and Mary break up
- character death
- infidelity
- unrequited love
- polyamory or other consensual non-monogamy
There's no consistent way of tagging breakups, but I looked at how several other corresponding tags have changed over time in their usage (keeping in mind that S3 happened at the beginning of 2014):
(Keep in mind that this also includes non-Johnlock stories -- it's overall tag use in the fandom. But Johnlock fics make up about half the Sherlock fanworks on AO3.)
There's a general increase in tagging (number of tags used) over time on AO3, and we can see that these tags all get used on a larger percentage of Sherlock fics every year. From 2013 to 2014, it seems like there was a particularly large jump in several of these tags; maybe mostly canon divergence and infidelity fic.
But we also see a big jump in Johnlockary and "Polyamory" from 2012 to 2013. possibly comparing 2013 to 2014 isn't the best choice -- because there was already a lot of writing about Mary in 2013, after Amanda was cast to play the role. We can look at the average percentage across all of pre-S3 (2010-2013) and compare it to the average percentage post-S3 (2014). Looking at the percent increase between those numbers post-S3:
While use of the "Polyamory" tag doubled (increased by 101%) after S3, the S/M/J tag got about 5x as much use after S3 (this is presumably in part because it got very little use before we had a canonical Mary character, but there was some, since we have ACD canon and other adaptations to draw on when creating characters). "Infidelity" got about 4x as much use post-S3, with "Canon Divergence" also seeing almost as large a surge.
If we look in more detail at monthly usage of various poly/open tags, from 2010 to present:
(Blue is "Threesome", red is S/M/J, yellow is "OT3", and green is "Polyamory".)
There was a big spike in usage of "OT3," "Polyamory," and especially S/M/J right after TSoT, and then a partial drop-off after HLV (less pronounced for "Threesome"). However, "Polyamory" and S/M/J didn't drop back to previous levels. There's a lot more poly fic and Johnlockary fic being written now than pre-S3.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Fandom is often very OTP-focused (at least for non-gen fics), and this is very true of the Sherlock fandom. However, a growing number of fanworks are addressing polyamory and other consensual non-monogamy. There's still a richness of opportunity here to explore new tropes, relationship trajectories, and relationship configurations. If you think that might be interesting to you, go explore, enjoy, and create!
Also, listen to the TPP Polyamory Roundtable coming out in September if you want to hear yours truly opine further. :)
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The raw data for most of these analyses (and more) is here. (It's not necessarily well-labeled or organized; feel free to ask questions.)