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x_losSo I'm doing a bit of a Fic Of My Childhood tour today. I've loved a lot of Stuff Avec Developed Fandoms over the years, but few fandoms are as venerable and well developed as Sherlockiana.
Today, I remembered The Case of the Haunted Hospital! I used to LOVE this fic! Warning: you will have to descend into the pit of voles for this one.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/524944/1/The_Case_of_the_Haunted_Hospital
Ah, Victorian Prose (tm). Ah, the rich waft of English Cheese--not rare, no, but pure. I still smiled while rereading this--but now I wonder if the issue that sparks the confrontation--i.e. that Holmes is regularly condescending and it demeans and emasculates Watson, who's a perfectly clever, brave man, deserving of respect and decent treatment--should have been further dealt with. The Revelation!!-->sex arc is a clear one, but has Holmes been behaving in this way because:
1) that's just how he rolls--it's social awkwardness, he treats everyone like this?
2) Because he cares for Watson and thus expects him to be operating on his level intellectually and gets frustrated when he isn't?
3) Because he feels like the one more invested in their relationship (as his stated annoyance about the marriage would suggest, and indeed Watson's willingness to marry at all in the fic's universe), and is cruel or demeaning to maintain emotional parity?
If it's the last, then he'll be able to ease up now that Happy Ending has been reached. If it's the first two, it'll only become more of a strain on Watson in the light of the changes that have taken place by the fic's end.
Also, there can't be enough uses of the word 'catamite.' ...well okay, any use is possibly too many. BUT STILL!
Though:
"For I don't believe I should be able to stop if this proceeds any further." --god, fic trope--why so stupid? It has been said before*, but: MY PENIS IS LIKE A LOCOMOTIVE, AND WHEN YOU LET IT CHUG-A-LUG ALONG YOUR TRACKS, WHY, THERE IS NO STOPPING IT!! THOSE WHO GET IN THE WAY MEET TERRRRRRIBLE FATES!! BENEATH THE NEVER-CEASING WHEELS OF MY LOVE...
I guess the root appeal of it is that it depicts desire as overwhelming and denaturing--very Sublime. There is an uncomfortable connotation of rapey-ness here, but that's been discussed before, and better, by others. And why talk about that already dealt-with aspect when we can talk about Bad Art? There are surely more interesting ways to talk about the ways desire has undone a highly ordered character like Holmes--sex is always an alien experience to someone who hasn't ever had it (as the fic implies Holmes has not). And on top of the essentially overwhelming introduction of sexuality in taboo conditions in a highly sex-negative society, you have a character who might feel his very identity challenged by the introduction of a sexual relationship--even one he really wants--into his life.
I don't know why feeling he COULD NOT STOP his locopenis would not TERRIFY Homles-the-intensely-self-directed-control-freak even more than it could Wanton Watson over there (who after all Knows the Ladies of Three Continents...).
* In terms of criticism, not in terms of 'this is a thing many (fictional) ladiez say about my (meta-fictional)** penis.'
** It is a fictional penis ABOUT a fictional penis!! Sometimes I am so deep I give myself the bends.
Today, I remembered The Case of the Haunted Hospital! I used to LOVE this fic! Warning: you will have to descend into the pit of voles for this one.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/524944/1/The_Case_of_the_Haunted_Hospital
Ah, Victorian Prose (tm). Ah, the rich waft of English Cheese--not rare, no, but pure. I still smiled while rereading this--but now I wonder if the issue that sparks the confrontation--i.e. that Holmes is regularly condescending and it demeans and emasculates Watson, who's a perfectly clever, brave man, deserving of respect and decent treatment--should have been further dealt with. The Revelation!!-->sex arc is a clear one, but has Holmes been behaving in this way because:
1) that's just how he rolls--it's social awkwardness, he treats everyone like this?
2) Because he cares for Watson and thus expects him to be operating on his level intellectually and gets frustrated when he isn't?
3) Because he feels like the one more invested in their relationship (as his stated annoyance about the marriage would suggest, and indeed Watson's willingness to marry at all in the fic's universe), and is cruel or demeaning to maintain emotional parity?
If it's the last, then he'll be able to ease up now that Happy Ending has been reached. If it's the first two, it'll only become more of a strain on Watson in the light of the changes that have taken place by the fic's end.
Also, there can't be enough uses of the word 'catamite.' ...well okay, any use is possibly too many. BUT STILL!
Though:
"For I don't believe I should be able to stop if this proceeds any further." --god, fic trope--why so stupid? It has been said before*, but: MY PENIS IS LIKE A LOCOMOTIVE, AND WHEN YOU LET IT CHUG-A-LUG ALONG YOUR TRACKS, WHY, THERE IS NO STOPPING IT!! THOSE WHO GET IN THE WAY MEET TERRRRRRIBLE FATES!! BENEATH THE NEVER-CEASING WHEELS OF MY LOVE...
I guess the root appeal of it is that it depicts desire as overwhelming and denaturing--very Sublime. There is an uncomfortable connotation of rapey-ness here, but that's been discussed before, and better, by others. And why talk about that already dealt-with aspect when we can talk about Bad Art? There are surely more interesting ways to talk about the ways desire has undone a highly ordered character like Holmes--sex is always an alien experience to someone who hasn't ever had it (as the fic implies Holmes has not). And on top of the essentially overwhelming introduction of sexuality in taboo conditions in a highly sex-negative society, you have a character who might feel his very identity challenged by the introduction of a sexual relationship--even one he really wants--into his life.
I don't know why feeling he COULD NOT STOP his locopenis would not TERRIFY Homles-the-intensely-self-directed-control-freak even more than it could Wanton Watson over there (who after all Knows the Ladies of Three Continents...).
* In terms of criticism, not in terms of 'this is a thing many (fictional) ladiez say about my (meta-fictional)** penis.'
** It is a fictional penis ABOUT a fictional penis!! Sometimes I am so deep I give myself the bends.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 04:19 pm (UTC)(My guess for the emotional conflict is 2, with a bit of 1 on the side.)
LOCOPENIS. (The mental image of a penis being crushed beneath a locomotive made me cringe.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 10:57 pm (UTC)I would definitely read distressed-at-being-undone-by-passion!Holmes.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 11:00 am (UTC)I think I HAVE read him resenting forgetting things to remember details about Watson--impressions of the soil in a particular part of Dover for how his skin feels, etc. And that was interesting, and v. particular to his character as an issue.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 02:42 am (UTC)(I once read a Holmes/Watson fic where Moriarty had captured them both, and was going to kill Holmes or something but was giving them a moment to say goodbye. Which they employed by having mad passionate FT sex, of course, but the really scarring thing was that Moriarty kept popping back in, like, "And now, Mr. Hol....oh, you're busy. Still. Um. Muahaha? Right, I'll just...give you two another couple minutes." Like, THREE TIMES this happens in the course of the sexing, and of course in the story he was all leering and threatening and insinuating, but it was so very unintimidating when he kept going ahead and bowing out to give them more time for hot gay mansex and pledges of eternal love. I never quite stopped WTFing over that.)
I think I HAVE read him resenting forgetting things to remember details about Watson
Ooh, this one? I love that one - so short, but so effective.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-14 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 03:01 am (UTC)(This learns me to try to respond to LJ after a long day's drive.)