The Three Gables: A Better Man

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: The Three Gables
Title: A Better Man
Author: scfrankles
Rating: G


Dear Dr. Watson—

Mr. Holmes has long demanded my admiration: unimpressed by social position; reluctant to judge by appearance.

So—your latest story. Joke? Another’s work?

Because that was not the man I met all those years ago.

And I read once, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Yours,

Lucy Hebron Munro



A/N: "I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being." [YELL]

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

She has a very valid point.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I think so - this version of Holmes just doesn't feel like him at all to me.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what happened to that guy? For shame.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

When it comes to thinking about Holmes' personality, I just ignore this bit of canon altogether. There are interesting parts to 3GAB but Holmes feels entirely out of character to me.

[debriswoman]

A rebuke was in order

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

When you compare YELL and 3GAB, you do have to wonder what happened to Holmes.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

3GAB definitely falls under the What the Hell, Hero? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatTheHellHero) trope. (My theory is that a ghost-writer took the bare-bones of a Doyle outline and threw in a comical Negro. Last time ACD did THAT one...)

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

3GAB definitely falls under the What the Hell, Hero? trope. Yes, indeed - and I would say it goes beyond that as well. Holmes just doesn't feel like his usual self at all - in the way he talks, for instance.

[sanguinity]

This one feels like a US-set Pinkerton story to me, quickly and badly retrofitted to be a Holmes story. Apparently the original manuscript is in a private collection? Gosh, I'd like to have a look at that thing.

But yes, Lucy -- a sternly-worded reproof is in order!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

This one feels like a US-set Pinkerton story to me, quickly and badly retrofitted to be a Holmes story. How intriguing... Definitely not an idea I've heard before but it does make sense.

[sanguinity]

Between Dixie's name and his speech, he reads very minstrel-show-inspired Deep South to me -- it was only from a footnote on this read that I understood that his backstory was supposed to be in the English Birmingham, not the Alabama one. And Holmes' interactions with Dixie have that hard-boiled rootingest-tootingest feel that I've come to expect of ACD's Pinkertons. Furthermore, I can see ACD feeling waaaaay more comfortable putting all those racial insults in his protag's mouth if he thought he was writing an American protagonist. We are known the world over for our racism, after all. :-/

Mind you, it's really only the Steve Dixie passages that feel like that to me and I'm probably bringing my own biases into it, but they really do feel like they were lifted from something that was supposed to be US-set.