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The Radio Times along with several other newspapers have reported that A Study in Scarlet along with other classic novels are being given erotic rewrites by a 'specialist' publisher. In ASiS Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson have an affair (how original).
The author of the new version (I am struggling here not to use inverted commas liberally scattered) is quoted as saying writing it was, 'One week of writing bliss.'
My observations...
I am astonished that she could have taken a whole week writing it. Of course there are many, many masterpieces of fiction that have been written in a week.
Let us not leave anything to the imagination of the reader because we all know most readers are STUPID.
Let us hitch our coat tails to Fifty Shades of Grey which is adult fan fic anyway.
My daughter's observation on 50 Shades of Grey for what it is worth. Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley when she was 18 years old so why can a grown woman not produce something better than this Twightlight porn for adults with no critical faculties etc. etc.
Words fail me...
www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-07-18/fifty-shades-of-sherlock
Watch out! Here comes another bandwagon!
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What the hell?! :D
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be amused or shocked.
What is that, even? People look at classics and think: "Hey, this needs some more sex in it"? Really?
Okay. It's fine to write fan fiction but can they stop... publishing it as books? Especially when it seems to be some cheap porn stuff?
Well, if this is anything like 50 shades of grey it's shit. (No, I haven't read it and I'm not planning to, but read reviews and excerpts.)
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What's Fifty Shades of Grey? Never heard of it sorry, although doesn't sound like I'm missing much.
To me this just seems like a Johnlock fan fic in an actual book instead of just online. Kind of crazy that anyone would consider publishing it, but they are probably an "adult" publishers anyway who only do erotic stories.
For some reason I don't mind reading Johnlock online, or taking part in role-plays but the idea of this book just really annoys me and I definitely have no interest in reading it. Just another person jumping on the popular SH bandwagon.
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They are doing a whole list of classic stories. Pitiful is the word that leaps to mind. You haven't heard of Fifty Shades of Grey? Lucky you! I certainly am not going to pay good money to line that woman's pocket for a book that glamourises an abusive relationship. Basically a Twilight for adults SDM mummy porn book. Treats her readers like idiots, which sadly, most of them probably are. End of rant!
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You don't know Fifty shades of grey? Have you been living under a stone? :D Just kidding!
Basically the whole internet is making fun of it and IRL it's best-selling. Davina described it pretty good.
But really, if you want to do a Johnlock... This stuff is for fanfics. And that's alright and you have no borders when fanficing. And it can be totally shit because most of the people are not professional writers, but that's totally fine. Just don't publish it as a book and try to seem innovative (because it's really not).
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lol@ what is 50 shades. Sorry, but even I know about it & I don't listen/watch/read about books.
This type of book has been done before, but yes a huge bandwagon leap here. And for me, a giant groan. In case anyone is living under a rock, I don't like fan fic because it takes one person's work (their ideas, characters and meanings) and 'rapes' it, letting the fan fic writer take some kind of credit for the brilliance that was there before they started. They don't have respect for the original piece, they they change it, they mock its very soul & then call that art??!! It's like playing dress ups; if they were any god they'd write their own stories, build their own characters. But no, they are lazy & take the easy way (like many things these days) and use someone else's creations.
These books, esp if promoted online in these Sherlock forums, will give a new burst of "fan ficcers" the urge to pillage through more of the canon. Just more rubbish for me to scroll past, delete or ignore.
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Agree Kazza. One of my main complaints, and my daughter's too, is that these lazy, unimaginative folk cannot even create their own stories, they are merely cannibalising what someone else has already created. I am referring to the works published and sold to the gullible public in the main here. If someone wants to read fanfic then that's up to them and there is masses of free stuff out there, some of which is well-written however to pay someone for their musing is another matter entirely.
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Most books written based on classics end up being crap. I read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, and it was the most ridiculous thing ever. I also read Death Comes To Pemberley by P D James, a respected writer, and it was pretty average. The only time I have come across a book using another author's characters that actually worked was The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which told the story of the first Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
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I read The Wide Sargasso Sea ages ago. I think it works because it takes a character about whom we know very little and constructs a whole new story.
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hepzibah wrote:
.... I read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, and it was the most ridiculous thing ever. .......
Good God...Pride & Prejudice & Zombies...you have to be kidding me...
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Don't know WHAT you mean? They are such an obvious combination like...strawberries and cream...or Holmes and Watson! Lol
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Davina wrote:
...You haven't heard of Fifty Shades of Grey? Lucky you! I certainly am not going to pay good money to line that woman's pocket for a book that glamourises an abusive relationship. Basically a Twilight for adults SDM mummy porn book. Treats her readers like idiots, which sadly, most of them probably are. End of rant!
Amanda shares your opinion
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Davina wrote:
Don't know WHAT you mean? They are such an obvious combination like...strawberries and cream...
and laxatives
or Holmes and Watson!
and Anderson
Lol
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More from Amanda
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I do wish everyone would follow this advice and save their money. The 'author' couldn't even be original with the man's name in the story. Let's just nick a bit/ a lot of The Picture of Dorian Grey as well shall we?
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Davina wrote:
The Radio Times along with several other newspapers have reported that A Study in Scarlet along with other classic novels are being given erotic rewrites by a 'specialist' publisher. In ASiS Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson have an affair (how original).
The idea of their having a sexual relationship is not original, but I find the idea that someone would do this version of ASiS for the mainstream book market to be original, for sure. It shows how far we've come in our attitudes about gay relationships, IMO. I mean, that there's a mainstream audience out there, people who will plunk down good money to read it.
The author of the new version (I am struggling here not to use inverted commas liberally scattered) is quoted as saying writing it was, 'One week of writing bliss.'
My observations...
I am astonished that she could have taken a whole week writing it. Of course there are many, many masterpieces of fiction that have been written in a week.
Why, do you think a week is a long time or a short time? As a writer of homoerotic fan fiction in the past (admittedly, original works, not slash versions of existing stories), I often spent several weeks getting things written up, through the beta process, and out there. It can be done in a day or two or three, but not usually. Writing is *work*.
Let us not leave anything to the imagination of the reader because we all know most readers are STUPID.
In that case, if we were only allowed to use our own imaginations to get John and Sherlock together, what would be the need for all that fabulous slash fan fic out there, in this and 100s of other fandoms? It doesn't make us stupid that we want to see someone's take on what they think the S/J relationship would look like.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comments? I dunno.
Let us hitch our coat tails to Fifty Shades of Grey which is adult fan fic anyway.
Are Sherlock and John in FSoG? I hadn't heard that. (joke, that's a joke)
I read S/J slash because it's S/J.; they're the two I want to "see" together. I don't do bondage or D/s or pain or anything kinky like Irene Adler was into; I just don't go there. So I would never compare FSoG to what I like to read my fictional men doing together. And I have zero interest in reading anything M/F-- boring, tedious, dull, ordinary (IMO again). It takes all kinds of boats to float all kinds of interests, for sure.
My daughter's observation on 50 Shades of Grey for what it is worth. Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley when she was 18 years old so why can a grown woman not produce something better than this Twightlight porn for adults with no critical faculties etc. etc.
Not every fictional work is aimed at every fictional reader. Which is why your average bookstore has 1000s of titles, just in the fiction department, although probably a very small gay fiction section. It's easy enough to pick and choose what I want and leave the rest in the dung heap, even if all the mass market dung beetles are currently crawling all over said dung heap and having a party! (don't you like my metaphors? lolololol)
Just my two cents, marked down from five, apropos of nothing.
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I agree whole heartedly with your comment about writing being work. It is work. I meant my comment sarcastically. I know of no masterpieces that have been written in a week. I have no objection to fanfic of any type. My objection to this particular publisher is that they are quite obviously jumping on a bandwagon to make a quick buck and that their currency is debased. Regarding using imagination i mean just that. There will, if 50 Shades of Grey is anything to go by, no need for the reader to use any imagination at all because the writer fills in all the gaps (no pun intended).
I think the dung beetle metaphor is both apt and funny. I know that there is no one type of readership and I have no problem with that; it is the cheap hitching on to the shirt tails (again no pun intended) that gets to me. That plus what seems to me like laziness. The writers, no doubt, will when possible snitch ideas from the fanfic that has already been written.
Needless to say I shall not be paying any of my hard-earned cash to buy any of these books. There are so many wonderful books out there and I would rather spend my money on them.
Last edited by Davina (August 2, 2012 6:13 am)
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Speaking firstly as a fanfic writer who publishes on the Internet and secondly as a writer of articles published in professional education journals and books...
I say, more power to a writer who can make the jump from fanfiction to "real" publishing. Nowadays, it's so extremely hard to get published in the mainstream that anyone who can deserves whatever success accrues from that. If someone doesn't like a book, then don't read it. Fifty Shades of Grey, which I've heard lots about but haven't read, obviously won't appeal to everyone but neither will Man Booker- or Pulitzer Prize-winning books. If something like Fifty Shades helps the publishing industry be profitable, then I think it's all good.
As for fanfic writers being lazy because they appropriate already-established characters instead of creating their own, I have a different viewpoint: I see writing such stories as a tribute to the original characters, and a way of making those characters live again. Granted, the fanfiction I write is based on a TV show of forty years ago and is no longer in production, but all the writers in that fandom whom I know (and I know a lot of them, some even in RL) are very serious about being true to the characters and setting of the original work. We see writing fanfiction as a way of keeping the show alive, not as plagiarizing the work of others because we can't be bothered to write something original. And even though I was a published author long before I ever began writing fanfiction, I have learned more about writing since I started my fanfic "career."
Lastly, while some people may be turned off by the idea of an erotic Study in Scarlet rewrite, there's always the possibility that someone reading that version will become curious about the original and seek out ACD's works. Then, maybe, that person will become a fan and read the canon. It seems to me that that is not so dissimilar from what's happened with the BBC's Sherlock and Sherlock Holmes as written by ACD. Certainly, it was only after watching the TV show that I became interested in reading the canon. If the TV show never existed, how many of us would be reading those stories now?
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I agree that the basis of fanfic with writers being inspired by the original characters to continue their story perhaps in a different way, is good. However, and this is a big caveat in this case, this is not what has happened here. Fanfic writers have not sent off their manuscripts to a publisher to hopefully get them published. What has happened here is that a publisher has cynically looked at the success of the Twilight fanfic that is Fifty Shades of Grey (Gray) and has jumped onto this profitable bandwagon with no passion for the original subject(s). If fanfic writers had independently approached the publisher with their wares my attitude would be different but in this case it will remain a negative one because the publisher is doing this for no other reason than to make money and is not giving new writers a chance to break into the mainstream either, as those writers commissioned to write are already established.
All power,to the elbows of true fanfic writers. Those who write from a passion for their original subject matter and characters and from a desire, even need, to write stories about them.
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Each to their own I guess.
I don't like fanfics at all. The original characters & meanings are 'lost' so often that I have never read one I liked and mostly I don't bother finishing reading them , I discard it as 'what are they on about?'
I like what I like BECAUSE the writer depicted them in certain way. What some see as 'a tribute' to the original, I see as changing what I liked to something that someone else prefers. It would have to be a damned good writer to sway me from those thoughts.
And honestly in regards to Sherlock Holmes, the amount of garbage I have seen labelled as 'fanfic' is just immature dribble from people who don't understand the original to start with. Harsh words maybe, but it explains exactly what I think of it.