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« on: June 13, 2020, 04:41:03 PM »
What an odd little entry. I've never heard the expression "that burns my biscuits." And several other peculiar turns of phrase.
I think the stories are so numerous because fans enjoy writing them, and other fans enjoy reading them. Period. Simple as that. No need to throw the I Ching or study Freud to come up with some elaborate rationale.
Julia fans, and Julia/Barnabas fans (or "shippers," I think the term is now?) became a rising force around the time I learned about fandom and started going to the occasional Festival, back circa 1995. Of course, I don't see my very intermittent participation in fandom as having anything to do with the rise of Julia cultists in the ranks.
A notable thing I have observed with fans who were involved in the 1970s and 1980s is that if they were Julia fans, they were very badly scarred by the contempt in which the character seems to have been held by the big name fans of the period. The fandom then was dominated by Josette fans and Angelique fans. I think Julia fans were considered eccentric at best.
Interestingly when the series started running nationally on Sci Fi, a lot of people referenced Grayson's performances as a major reason for becoming addicted to the series. This actually seems to reflect what was the same case during the broader popularity of DS back during the original broadcast--it comes out if you read the letters printed in the soap opera mags (which did not start until AfterNoon TV in late 1968). It's the real reason why Grayson was in so many episodes--she was genuinely popular with the fans of the period. It had nothing to do with the fact that Sam was a writer, although Dan Curtis was known to be one of Grayson's biggest fans.
I never know how to evaluate Danny Horn's writing about Grayson... I think he does genuinely admire her, but sometimes I think what he mainly admires is how no holds barred she was in her work on the show. That had a lot to do, as we have frequently discussed, with specifics of the production and what the major directors such as Lela Swift and Henry Kaplan (about whose directorial style KLS had some fond, revealing memories to share in her very first book).
G.