Fic Rec: The Third Student

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Title: The Third Student
Author: schemingreader
Pairing: None, Gen
Length: 1400 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Verse: ACD canon

Author's summary:This is a story I decided to write after reading The Adventure of the Three Students, after I read a really lovely, sexy slash fan fic, The Greek Tutor, about it. I found the canon story disturbing, and wanted to write a fic in the voice of the one character who doesn't speak a word during the story.

Reccer's comments: Really good gen fic is a treasure that often does not get the recognition, or readership, it deserves. Dealing with some of our negative reactions to and addressing the culture of Victorian England in a way that does not simply berate the past for not being the present, requires empathy, but also a capacity to reflect and a determination to do one's research. This has all that AND a plausible, believable story development and OMC in just a few hundred words. As a big Watson fan, I admit I cringed somewhat at her description of his interaction with the OMC, but in context it is uncomfortably likely that Watson, given his service experiences, would have behaved so.

The Third Student

Comments

[arwensong.livejournal.com]

Wow, what an intense, well done character piece. Makes me have to stop what I'm doing and go back and re-read the story and see all that you saw! Really brilliant!

Arwen, putting down her drink to applaud

[tanpopo03.livejournal.com]

I'm really looking forward to your ACD canon recs! :) Will defo read this one at some point soon.

Also, could you please tag your post?

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that's what comes of trying to post whilst MSNing son and having 'discussion' about feminism with husband simultaneously. Will go fix it now.

[teatotaller.livejournal.com]

I never would have come across that one on my own! You can tell that it was done with a lot of thought. And any story that has an outside POV on Holmes & Watson is a plus.

spoilers for The Three Students, although it doesn't really matter if you've read the rec :)

[sussexdowns.livejournal.com]

Actual question here, am I the only one who actually wasn't offended by the obvious racism in The Three Students? Unlike all Doyle's other racefail, I read this as making the opposite point. Clearly the characters had a strong bias toward suspecting Ras based on his race alone, and the story is written so as to incline the reader toward the same suspicions. But then it turns out it was perfect, blond Gilchrist who'd stolen the proofs after all, and Ras was just, you know, Indian. IDK, I should probably reread this one but it just seemed to me like Doyle was playing pretty heavily on the probable racism of his audience.

Mods, go on and delete this if you feel like it doesn't belong here. Apologies if not, I'm just so curious about this now! It seems like most of the comments on the fic agree with the author's reading of the original story, and now I'm wondering if anyone saw it differently. THIS IS WHY FANDOM IS AWESOME.

But finally, and on-topic, I really liked this story, thanks for reccing it! I love fic that rewrites canon events from another perspective :)

Re: spoilers for The Three Students, although it doesn't really matter if you've read the rec :)

[karadin.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on not being so offended, because yes, Sherlock was treating the student differently, it's even mentioned in this short fic in the beginning. I also realize the author was writing about the world as he knew it 100 years ago, and for me, historical fiction is successful when it's not stating 'this is why they were all wrong back then.'

Re: spoilers for The Three Students, although it doesn't really matter if you've read the rec :)

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

I think there is a difference between being troubled by the racism of the era and accusing Doyle of sharing it. I don't think the author is doing the latter, I think she is commenting on the invisibility (a more subtle form of racism but nonetheless prevalent) of the character, but more in the context of the OMC's overall experience of Victorian Oxford - which to me rings true, especially given what I've seen, when studying colonial history, of first person accounts by non-white peoples of the Empire.

I think this particular historical fiction IS successful in not merely stating "we were all wrong back then" - because some voices back then were also raised in criticism, they just didn't necessarily have the power to make themselves heard until they began to combine.

this is actually not really any less tl;dr :(

[sussexdowns.livejournal.com]

Well, that wasn't quite what I meant. Let me see if I can condense my earlier tl;dr into something actually readable :\

Okay. Take The Sign of the Four. Highly problematic, imo. It's one of his stories that just makes me facepalm and repeat to myself "it was the 19th century, it was the 19th century..." because it's just so casually racist.

Contrast that with The Three Students which was both written and set about 10-15 years later, where the racial bias functions as a plot device. It's a definite misdirection for both the characters (presumably) as well as the reader who, at least at the time of publication, could be assumed to have the same bias. So essentially, he is kind of showing that up as wrong.

That's kind of what I was wondering about; if anyone else read the story the way I did, or if I'm just way off and everyone agrees with the schemingreader's interpretation.