I have a theory that ACD and Hornung were having a secret competition to see which of them could slip in the most innuendo without getting called on it.
I think they both made a valiant effort - but I think Hornung might have won.
Although it's hard to see how anyone would miss it!
Oh hell yeah. Nothing subtextual about any of it: Raffles is wall-to-wall homoeroticism and Bunny is wildly jealous any time Raffles pays any attention to anyone else - girls worst of all. His mancrush is off the scale, and Raffles knows it and cheerfully exploits every last drop of it. I think Hornung knew exactly what he was doing, too. He and ACD were good friends and admired each other's writing - Raffles was meant to be the moral flipside of Holmes, and I think he just saw the more subtextual, asexual bromance of Holmes and Watson, and romanticised or even sexualized it.
I love it all, by the way! Big fan of Raffles, they had a Complete Works in the school library and I practically had it signed out full time for yeeeears.
IDK why they're not fandom catnip either. Bunny is more flawed than Watson but also more endearingly aware of what a wet spaniel he is being, not to mention how he's both too besotted to resist being corrupted, but still fascinated and repulsed by it. Holmes seems to sort of exist in a bubble where his own social background (and Watson's) are immaterial, not to mention what either of them actually lives on. With Raffles, there's much more of an interesting socio-cultural backdrop. Raffles wants to live like a gentleman, his cricket fans want him to be a gentleman... which means he isn't supposed to need to do anything venal like 'earn a living' - but he's not actually well-off enough to do that. And Bunny, who does come from a slightly 'better' class and more established money, is weak-willed and gullible and has frittered his own fortune away. All of which drives them both: Raffles in particular gets fabulously bitter and bitchy about his own status as the kind of unpaid entertainment to the gentility, which is part of what
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This caused a lot of sniggering. Also, when I got to the line "When you want me, I'm your man!", I started to imagine them being played by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley.
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I think they both made a valiant effort - but I think Hornung might have won.
Although it's hard to see how anyone would miss it!
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I love it all, by the way! Big fan of Raffles, they had a Complete Works in the school library and I practically had it signed out full time for yeeeears.
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Although the casual racism in the second story is a bit shocking.
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