This is a very interesting piece which I have forwarded to my friend who is looking at Sherlock and his numerous interpretations for her PhD. Thank you!
But THANK YOU THANK YOU for that link to Tumblr, to the musings on Susan - THAT made my heart soar! God, I want to read all that too, Hell, I want to write it! I wonder what the coordinator of the MA in Creative Writing would think if I said I wanted to forget all the original work I've been thinking about for next year and the year after, and instead follow a character from CS Lewis, and make her story the triumph it should be?
On second thoughts, the original author of that piece should do it. I'll buy whatever she writes.
It's an amazing validation of Susan, isn't it? Makes something soaring and triumphant out of Lewis's punitive prudery. Really good modern children's and YA fiction makes one realise how hopelessly doomed he was in trying and write sexuality out of the story lock, stock and barrel. Bloody religious allegory.
I'm getting to teach Sherlock next year in an undergrad TV studies seminar devised entirely by myself, which means I'll either go Rathbone/Sherlock/Elementary, or I'll go Sherlock/fanfic/generic reinterpretation. Or possibly both. Either way, undignified and entirely unacademic squeeing is present :>. I'd love to chat to your PhD-writing friend.
I'll ask her to pm you - can I just say how entirely envious I am of both of you, getting to do this kind of work with these amazing characters?? I think I shall have to work in a trip to Cape Town next year, for research purposes, you understand, and sneak in to one of your seminars :)
That sounds like an amazing course. I'd love to have a look at your course material sometime, if you wouldn't mind. It would also be great to chat.
This is a very interesting piece. I confess I hadn't thought about Irene Adler in these terms before. I found this character much more interesting than the original, mainly because we see so little of her in the original story that Holmes's regard for her seems somewhat overdone to me. But I take your point about Moffat's female characters.
WRT Susan - I LOVED that piece about her. Lewis's treatment of Susan always makes my blood boil. If you've read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, this (http://archiveofourown.org/works/84577) is a lovely crossover story with Narnia, inspired by Neil Gaiman's 'The Problem of Susan', another interesting take on what must have happened to Susan after Narnia.
They're both maddening because there's so much there that's good and interesting and creative, and borders on brilliant mythmaking, but I think for female viewers there's often a faint discomfort. I must re-watch Doctor Who, I think, and look at exactly how far Moffat's sensibility extends beyond his episodes. I also have the faint niggling feeling that Russell Davies doesn't like women very much - I'll never forgive him for what he did to Donna.
Don't have much time, but wanted to pop in and say thank you. I learned a great deal about what I'm missing in regards to women in fiction from this post, but mostly it just became a lot clearer to me why I both love and hate Sherlock.
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But THANK YOU THANK YOU for that link to Tumblr, to the musings on Susan - THAT made my heart soar! God, I want to read all that too, Hell, I want to write it! I wonder what the coordinator of the MA in Creative Writing would think if I said I wanted to forget all the original work I've been thinking about for next year and the year after, and instead follow a character from CS Lewis, and make her story the triumph it should be?
On second thoughts, the original author of that piece should do it. I'll buy whatever she writes.
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I'm getting to teach Sherlock next year in an undergrad TV studies seminar devised entirely by myself, which means I'll either go Rathbone/Sherlock/Elementary, or I'll go Sherlock/fanfic/generic reinterpretation. Or possibly both. Either way, undignified and entirely unacademic squeeing is present :>. I'd love to chat to your PhD-writing friend.
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That sounds like an amazing course. I'd love to have a look at your course material sometime, if you wouldn't mind. It would also be great to chat.
This is a very interesting piece. I confess I hadn't thought about Irene Adler in these terms before. I found this character much more interesting than the original, mainly because we see so little of her in the original story that Holmes's regard for her seems somewhat overdone to me. But I take your point about Moffat's female characters.
WRT Susan - I LOVED that piece about her. Lewis's treatment of Susan always makes my blood boil. If you've read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, this (http://archiveofourown.org/works/84577) is a lovely crossover story with Narnia, inspired by Neil Gaiman's 'The Problem of Susan', another interesting take on what must have happened to Susan after Narnia.
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It's been very difficult to explain why I just want to smash these two shows into a wall somewhere.
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