Widdershins:

(sometimes withershins, widershins or widderschynnes) means to take a course opposite that of the sun, going counterclock-wise, lefthandwise, or to circle an object, by always keeping it on the left. It also means "in a direction opposite to the usual," which is how I choose to take it in using it as the title of this blog. We're all in the same world finding our own way.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

"The 50 Shades Of Grey Effect"


This post is a response to the Huffington Post article, The 50 Shades Of Grey Effect: Jane Eyre, Pride And Prejudice And Sherlock Holmes To Be Republished With 'Explosive Sex Scenes'.

I have three main points against this idea.

1) Isn't this what fan fiction was created for?
Other titles to be published under the Clandestine Classics collection include Austen'sNorthanger Abbey and Arthur Conan Doyle's stories featuring Sherlock Holmes.
Now, call me ignorant, but I've been on Tumblr frequently enough to know that with advent BBC's Sherlock there's enough people with OTP's of Sherlock and Watson that anything Clandestine Classics comes up with will have been done five different ways already.

For another title to be -- uh, repurposed like this, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, I wonder if they'll also keep the giant lists of scientific names of sea creatures that Jules Verne was fond of including amidst the adventures on the Nautilus. And if so, can someone please insert one of the sex scenes inside one of these sections?



2) The sex is already there.

"[W]e want to enhance the novels by adding the 'missing' scenes for readers to enjoy."

I'm sorry, but they can't be missing if they were never there to begin with. Part of the beauty of so many of these classics is the way the culture and society that shaped the writer affected the writing. They weren't from a time or place that allowed for this kind of blatant sexuality so they used metaphor to disguise the acts within the writing. The sex is already there people.


3) If we're going to do this anyway, I vote combine this with with the the zombie editions by Quirk Classics.

Imagine it: Pride and Prejudice and Damn Sexy Zombies.

I'm just throwing ideas out here.

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