An Epiphany and a Challenge
Sep. 3rd, 2010 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsI need to stop making ebook covers and make myself a Sherlock icon. That said, I've figured out why I've fallen so hard for the show, and it's not just because I'm avoiding finishing the bathroom or I've mainlined episodes.* It's not even because I've been a moderate fan of Holmes for years.
It's because I fell pretty damned hard for this show 22 years ago.
In 1988, there was a short-run show nominally sponsored by an SF writer that could be more or less summed up as "autistic genius and normal sidekick. They fight crime!" (In a burst of sadism, I'm not going to name it just to see who recognizes what I'm talking about.)
Although Sherlock may be obviously based on the Holmsian canon... it also basically boils down to "autistic genius and normal sidekick. They fight crime!" -- and it's even written by science fiction scriptwriters.
The asocial hero who needs the point of view character to anchor him into reality is an attractive trope... so attractive that I'm wondering in advance how many people aren't going to like it when Moffat & Gatiss follow through on their proposed arc of turning Sherlock from petulant 5-year-old in an adult suit into an actual heroic adult. It's been my experience in fandom that people are far fonder of woobie heroes than they are of action heroes. (That BBC Sherlock doubles down by combining a Stoic Woobie** hero and an Iron Woobie sidekick and then has one of them point-blank discuss them as a couple, even if to turn it down, was pretty much a guarantee that the entire fandom's collective knickers were going to ignite. Taking that away, or being perceived as trying to take that away, ain't gonna be pretty.)
And now, I must leave you to go be a responsible adult. It's clinic shift in the morning & bathroom work all afternoon tomorrow. I need to get the bookshelf and the reading light up. (Admit it. Everyone wants a reading light in there.)
*Something that will always make you either the world's biggest fan or Never Care About That Show Ever. I call it the viral theory of fandom; either intensive exposure infects you or inoculates you.
**Yeah, TV Tropes links. I apologize now for the next four hours you're gonna spend on that site.
It's because I fell pretty damned hard for this show 22 years ago.
In 1988, there was a short-run show nominally sponsored by an SF writer that could be more or less summed up as "autistic genius and normal sidekick. They fight crime!" (In a burst of sadism, I'm not going to name it just to see who recognizes what I'm talking about.)
Although Sherlock may be obviously based on the Holmsian canon... it also basically boils down to "autistic genius and normal sidekick. They fight crime!" -- and it's even written by science fiction scriptwriters.
The asocial hero who needs the point of view character to anchor him into reality is an attractive trope... so attractive that I'm wondering in advance how many people aren't going to like it when Moffat & Gatiss follow through on their proposed arc of turning Sherlock from petulant 5-year-old in an adult suit into an actual heroic adult. It's been my experience in fandom that people are far fonder of woobie heroes than they are of action heroes. (That BBC Sherlock doubles down by combining a Stoic Woobie** hero and an Iron Woobie sidekick and then has one of them point-blank discuss them as a couple, even if to turn it down, was pretty much a guarantee that the entire fandom's collective knickers were going to ignite. Taking that away, or being perceived as trying to take that away, ain't gonna be pretty.)
And now, I must leave you to go be a responsible adult. It's clinic shift in the morning & bathroom work all afternoon tomorrow. I need to get the bookshelf and the reading light up. (Admit it. Everyone wants a reading light in there.)
*Something that will always make you either the world's biggest fan or Never Care About That Show Ever. I call it the viral theory of fandom; either intensive exposure infects you or inoculates you.
**Yeah, TV Tropes links. I apologize now for the next four hours you're gonna spend on that site.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 04:00 am (UTC)In other words, The X-Files. :)
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Date: 2010-09-04 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 12:22 pm (UTC)Alas, neither Probe nor MacGuyver holds up well for me; both of them are based on such antiquated modern technology! But I can rewatch Probe with less squirming because much of it was character-based rather than "Austin builds a machine."
no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-07 02:27 am (UTC)