Comment on Intemperance

  1. Basingstoke Tue 14 Sep 2010 03:25PM UTC

    Basingstoke - Crazy Eyes

    You know, my version of Victorian tolerance comes from Dickens. He's just endlessly sympathetic to odd characters as long as they aren't complete cocks (like the Murdstones, or Uriah Heep). But characters like Miss Mowcher (the dwarf hairdresser in David Copperfield), he tried and failed to present well in a comic role; then when the real lady he used as a model wrote to him saying how hurt she was that he made her a clown, he revised the character and made her a hero in a small role.

    So I think, similarly, Watson doesn't really *get it* in a full PhD in Queer Studies way, but he loves his friend and he's willing to just take it in and try and fail and try again. (Much like I'm doing in my white, cisgender, able-bodied way.)

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    1. seperis Wed 15 Sep 2010 02:54AM UTC

      So I think, similarly, Watson doesn't really *get it* in a full PhD in Queer Studies way, but he loves his friend and he's willing to just take it in and try and fail and try again. (Much like I'm doing in my white, cisgender, able-bodied way.)

      I think that was one of my favorite things about Watson. He didn't understand--and in that time period, he probably couldn't with his mental and social framework--but he accepted that he didn't (and probably couldn't) and just took it as another part of Holmes and resigned himself to learning and stumbling.

      Though I may never get over Holmes' self-surgery. God.

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      1. Basingstoke Thu 16 Sep 2010 05:08AM UTC

        Basingstoke - Crazy Eyes

        If it helps, he was using novocaine. That's one of the cocaine derivatives mentioned in the story. Didn't feel a thing.

        SAW an eyeful, though, but that was an obscene thrill; he's fascinated by the inner structures of the body. Especially his own.

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