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221bcrowexistential thought-spiral about the angst in A Scandal In Bohemia for @astudyincannon
Maybe it was reading everyone’s posts about Scandal and Sign of Four and timelines, but I went into reading Scandal angsty and unsettled, and then the angst + emotionless machine characterization from the opening sent me into existential meta questions. Here’s some of them in no particular order~~
Do I interpret Watson’s “all emotions were abhorrent to him” and “perfect reasoning machine” as stuff he wrote because he was misunderstanding Holmes early in their life together? Or described him that way to appeal to the public? Or did he do that because he was angry at Holmes because of something they fought about? Or it was a convenient way to explain why Holmes wasn’t interested in getting with women besides him being gay as heck?
Was the fake marriage in the stories a result of them fighting or the cause? A beard only with total communication about it or were there misunderstandings there?
Was Watson as a writer/publisher trying to get the public to want them back together by including this angst? Was ACD? Did ACD want to write a love story with angst as storytelling? Or was the angst a reflection of the restrictions on gay relationships & on writing about them at the time?
Like given that the wife is probably fake, why include the angst? If the author’s aim is to make the stories engaging to the het readers while hiding the gay love story in plain sight for the queer readers using coded and not-so-coded language, then wouldn’t there be a way to just code the wife as fake (which as I understand it is what he does in most of the other stories) rather than write the angst & the pining? Is the angst and pining there to try and rattle the het-marriage-forevers’ cages or were they there as catharsis for the gay readers? As Mix of both? Catharsis for ACD because he was upset to not be able to write about these characters’ love more openly?
How does Watson differ from ACD as a writer? Degrees of remove? Watson is loudly and overtly writing about himself and the fact that he’s writing, whereas ACD gets to hide behind the fictionality of his narrator. But Watson can’t say everything he wants and neither can ACD. Watson can write about what he does and doesn’t include, but he can’t say all the reasons why. Neither can ACD though??
I just saw this post, I didn’t see it before I found your TL;DR post I reblogged a few minutes ago, but you and I seem to be on the same page. I literally read this post going…yes…Yes…YES…yes yes yes….yes to all of this.
You ask a lot of good questions, but you provide a lot of good answers too.
Reblogging to think about all the good points made here.
SOMEBODY HELP!
Seriously though, The Sign of Four is so much angst…I tried to write an ACD-style fix it where Holmes gets his shit together and stops Watson from proposing but I never finish any fic I start.
Holmes and Watson seem to be in a bad place at the beginning of SIGN with all the bickering about cocaine and the snarky “It’s a 7% solution, would you like to try it?” & while they’re fighting Mary Morstan just SHOWS UP and then they do all this ridiculous crap and like a week later Watson is all I’m getting married and Holmes is all FINE.
Also reblogging to think about all of this and hopefully get some more people jumping into the conversation. Great questions! Hopefully later I’ll have some thoughts to contribute.
