The Hidden Heroines of Sherlock
wellingtongoose.livejournal.comThere has been a great deal of noise made about the blatant sexism of BBC Sherlock and I often wonder have I been watching the same show? Moffat and Gatiss have (intentionally or otherwise) given us great examples of strong, independent professional women. We just have to look at beyond the…
Some quotes from the essay that make my heart sing:
The Molly we see interacting with Sherlock is not the capable professional woman, she is deliberately letting go of her façade because she wants to be that love struck teenage girl again. She is stunned, flabbergasted and thrown off balance by him but in a way she likes that. When you have to be in complete control of your emotions all the time during your professional work, it is nice to meet someone you simply can’t fathom and having a giant crush on them is great way to actually get in contact with your emotions. In her interactions with Sherlock, Molly allows herself to feel the joy, sorrow, surprise and heart-ache of someone who is in love and that isn’t a luxury doctors can indulge in most of the time.
Considering these facts does Molly Hooper sound like a weak woman to you? If you still think so perhaps you would like to tell the next female doctor you meet just how weak you think she is.
Yes. Considering I’m going into medicine, please, please try this. Give me an excuse to lay into you.
Wait. I’m not done. There’s some good stuff about Sally Donovan, too:
Whistle-blowers (which is exactly what Sally has become) are actively persecuted in the police as well as the NHS… This is not a way to advance your career in…the police, it is good way to end it, permanently.
…We have to understand that what Sally exposed is a disaster for the entire Met Police Force, her division and her own career. Many people have suggested that Sally would be promoted to the Lestrade’s position but this is simply not how it is done in the UK…
…A scandal of this magnitude would result in a huge number of high profile cases being retried. The entire division will be tarred by the fallout from this and Sally is not going to escape the damage…
…Sally knew that she was potentially destroying her career but she wanted to do the right thing even if it meant sacrificing everything that she holds dear.
Supernatural 8.19: Perceptions Skewed and Playing the Game
Taxi Driver has to be one of the most jam-packed episodes I have ever seen of Supernatural. It has to solve one trial, a tricky one, in 45 minutes while simultaneously moving along the plot for both Sam and Dean. This makes it a bit more difficult to sift through the action, through the scenes with dialogue that needs to move the story along, and strip the episode down to what it means for the rest of the season.
Pacing issues aside, this isn’t a throw-away episode; it was chock full of necessary interaction, meaning each scene was chosen and edited meticulously, to piece together the scrambled mess we saw. Every scene was deliberate, every single line. We aren’t on episode 5 here, we’re on 19.
I’m a destiel shipper, so the usual warning here, don’t proceed if you don’t want to read this from a slight destiel standpoint. And yes, I am talking about the Dean and Naomi scene.
“I really need to know.”
WHAT ARE THESE NINA FEELS THAT HAVE OVERTAKEN ME.
Obviously, Nina feels homesick and upset during those first couple of days - Patricia’s making her life hell, she’s in a foreign country, and everyone else already have their own friends. And yeah, Amber and Fabian are nice to her. But she needs something to hold onto. Something of her own.
So all of this - the mysteries, the secrets in the house, Sarah - it begins her thing. It’s her thing to be curious and adventurous and daring. It’s her thing to want to save the world and find the answers and keep everyone safe. It’s why she’s the Chosen One - it’s her destiny or whatever, sure. But she’s the Chosen One because she’s innately interested by whatever she say in the attic. She’s drawn to the riddles and the clues. She can’t give it up because that’s who she is - she’s Sibuna. “There is no Sibuna without Nina,” says Fabian in season 3. He’s wrong, there is a Sibuna without Nina and they eventually succeed. But that’s because Sibuna becomes something bigger than what it was originally intended to be - originally it was just about Nina and her neverending curiosity and an inability to just leave these things alone.
A Few Random Musings on Holmes, Lestrade, Conan Doyle, and Sherlock
eldritchhobbit.livejournal.comIn my current trip back through Arthur Conan Doyle’s works featuring Sherlock Holmes, I’ve been thinking of the character trajectories across the stories, especially regarding Holmes’s relationship to Lestrade (less celebrated that the brilliant Holmes-Watson partnership, but nonetheless …
This is a very nice, to the point assessment of Sherlock’s growing relationship with Lestrade, both in ACD canon and within the BBC incarnation.
(only thing I’d say is that Lestrade’s first name can’t be short for ‘Gregson’ because he mentions Gregson as being one of the other D.I.’s who let Sherlock in on the Yard’s cases when he’s reprimanded by the Chief Superintendent during TRF, but it’s so minor and trivial and eldritchhobbit’s analysis so heartwarming to this Lestrader, I don’t think it’s important to correct.)
Okay so I think it's time we talk about the problem I have with Robert Baratheon
[WARNING: Here there be spoilers.]
“Oh goodie!” I hear you say, but seriously. Everything about that man irritates the fuck out of me. Also, most of my Robert-feels are directly tied in with my Lyanna Stark feels.
Anyway, let us begin:
So here’s a quick sketch of what we know about Robert yeah? His parent’s Steffon and Cassana were sent by Aerys II to the Free Cities to find Rhaegar Targaryen a wife (Because you know, Steffon Baratheon was Aerys’s cousin and all that shiznizz), and on their return they died in a storm in sight of Storm’s End - which you know, is quite sad face. Anyhoo, Robert was then fostered out to Jon Arryn, where he met poor dead Ned and they became bros.
Fast-forward through childhood and Robert has developed a massive man-boner for Ned’s sister Lyanna - going as far as to say he loved her (even though you know they hadn’t really met, and we have no idea what she thought of him ‘loving’ her) and eventually they were betrothed - which in modern vernacular Jon Arryn and Ned’s father sat down and said “One day these two shall marry” - because we’re talking Feudal ages here where children, and in particular women, were property and marriage for romantic love did not exist.
Robert of course, would have been thrilled by the prospect of his betrothal to Lyanna - hell, he may even have decided to only sleep with two or three women that night, you know because broface wanted to show that he loved her and all that shit. [If you haven’t picked up that I consider Robert Baratheon to basically be a medieval version of your average stereotypical college frat boy, then consider yourself informed.]
Anyway, let’s pause for a sec and consider what we know about Lyanna: She was beautiful, she was wilful, she was headstrong, and she could kick arse if she needed to. Basically she was a Northerner through and through - see Arya for comparisons. We know at the Tourney of Harrenhal, she bitchkicked the douches who were going after Howland Reed. To me, this kind of signifies that she would have been perfectly capable of making up her own mind on things - and I like to think that she wouldn’t have been all that impressed by the declarations of love coming out of the mouth of the devilishly attractive Robert Broratheon.
Speaking of the great tourney of Harrenhal, that’s when shit went down. Rhaegar Targaryen saw Lyanna, got a man-boner for her, rode past the Jewel of House Martell, and awarded the laurel to Lyanna. Scandal Ensued, Westeros Weekly and Noble! ran trashy stories on Lyanna being a homewrecker, Elia Martell being a frigid cow, and Rhaegar secretly being gay or a loverat, or both. Then “Rhaegar carried Lyanna off” and all hell broke lose.
Now, GRRM has never actually revealed to us whether Lyanna went willingly with Rhaegar, whether he did in fact carry her off (and considering the perceived value of women that’s not outside the bounds of possibility) - but… and I could be completely wrong, I get this sense that there was more going on then met the eye, maybe Lyanna and Rhaegar had been carrying on an affair and they decided to damn the scandal and just go off, maybe this was Lyanna’s way of rebelling. The thing is, we just don’t know.
But at this point, the really douchey side of the Westerosi patriarchy reared its ugly head. Ned’s older brother marched into the throne room and demanded to duel Rhaegar - as you can imagine Aerys the Mad King took that wonderfully. Ned’s father, and the father’s of Brandon’s companions, were then summoned to the south and summarily executed. Ostensibly, this was the reason Robert began his rebellion.
But let’s be honest. Robert used the death’s as an excuse because Lyanna was “stolen” from him, and the thought of her being raped by Rhaegar drove Robert near mad. Rape is horrible, it’s disgusting and it is one of the worst things that a human being can do to another. But let’s not pretend that sex for Westerosi women is in anyway enjoyable, or even often consensual. It is viewed as a wife’s duty to offer herself up to her husband whenever he so chooses. Robert for his part, would of undoubtedly committed many rapes on the battlefield because that is what war was like (even in the real world boys and girls, soldiers rape and sexually assault those they conquer), so let us have no illusions about what Robert was enraged by. Lyanna - who he considered to be his property by virtue of his gender, her gender, and their betrothal, to be his property - was “stolen” from him, with a high likelihood that the chance to claim her “maidenhood” or virginity would be taken from him. I mean, I’m sure he probably cared that she had been taken from a romantic point of view, because you know he “loved” her, but that is essentially the crux of the issue. Robert’s so-called property was taken from him, and he wanted her back.
We also need to think about Ned for a second. His brother and father have just been killed, his sister has (to his knowledge) been carried off by the Crown Prince, and yet Robert is the one taking everything fucking personally? Really? Really bro? If I were in Ned’s shoes I would have been pissed as well, and as such I can understand him participating in the rebellion because you know THE KING MURDERED MOST OF HIS FAMILY. But Robert didn’t have that deeply personal reason to begin the rebellion. All he had (as I’ve mentioned) is Lyanna being “taken” from him.
Then of course, the rest happened - Elia Martell and he children were slaughtered, Aerys was killed, and Ned fought his way to his sister’s side in time to watch her die in what is strongly hinted at being childbirth.
tl;dr - I find Robert to be a bit of a douche for basically starting a rebellion because the girl he liked (who may not have even liked him back) either ran off with or was carried off by another dude.
It’s really interesting to see HOW DIFFERENT this Fabian is to season 3!Fabian though. Because that Fabian is sassy and proud and likely to encourage Patricia rather than not. But this Fabian is sweet and insecure and - well, not jaded. He’s still Fabian - he’s awkward, he’s smart, he’s curious, he’s determined. But the transition from sweet to snappy Fabian is actually beautiful because FABIAN ISN’T SWEET and to see him grow into his relationship with Nina… to see him actually be more of himself (or at least, the himself we come to learn that he really is) is wonderful.
“Everyone fancies Mick, what makes you so different.”
Wow wait I didn’t really appreciate this line until right now because it REALLY reveals Amber’s mindset in the beginning. She’s just like everyone else - she likes the good looking, athletic guy so obviously everyone else does too.
Amber has very little awareness/empathy in the beginning. She has no tact (“Amber, queen of tact”), she’s pretty selfish/self-centered (being upset with Mara for hanging out Mick even though they are just studying), and here you see her lack of perspective. She doesn’t understand how someone could not fancy Mick. And yeah, maybe it’s a throw away line to emphasize how popular Mick apparently is, but it also highlights how Amber expects everyone else to understand her, and think like her, but not the other way around.
(Which of course makes her development over the course of the season - greatly in part because of Sibuna - so beautiful.)
Ok I’m paused while I wait for Kara to go do something before we start the second act of our second version of Les Mis of the evening, so I will comment a little more on the Homestuck update.
Sticking this behind a cut because emotions are running high on all sides and I’m dealing with it by sidestepping the racial issue and examining the in-universe implications of this whole mess.
Revisiting the Idea of Family: Freaks and Geeks
Last night’s episode, Freaks and Geeks was a surprisingly healthy and refreshing episode, particularly following the traumatic episode Goodbye Stranger.
What I find interesting about this episode, and I will be writing from a slight destiel perspective, (so don’t read on if you aren’t into that) is that it brings into question the big overarching idea of “what is family?”. The entire show’s premise, arguable, is about the importance of family. We have the show start out with the importance of familial love, love for your brother, love for your father.
What do you consider to be the turning point/catalyst in Riza's relationship with Roy (as far as your headcanon/timeline goes)?
[[ There are probably a couple of points of major growth. There wasn’t one moment where it was like “That’s when it starts.” Rather, over the course of their knowing each other there are certain points that solidify the changes in their attitudes.
There must have been a moment when they were young, pre-war, when they realized they enjoyed each other’s company in a more than just acquaintances way.
The next point would probably be the moment he burns her back. During the course of the war, she was convinced that he would hate her- that he was suffering because of her. But I feel like the moment when he actually does what she asks, does that for her, that the self-hatred is sort of muted by overwhelming grattitude.
So she decides to follow him, because she understands his way is the only way she can live after what she’s done. She can’t atone, but if she dedicates her life to creating and helping, then she can at least deserve to live.
There’s an overwhelming trust there- though, of course, there are residual issues from PTSD and from their childhoods that need to be addressed. At least for me, that happens in the future, a good amount of time after the Promised Day. When he approaches her in a way that’s more affectionate than just friends, just trusted partners, she starts to see herself differently. I guess my own thread arc got a little funky at this point, but basically the major turning point in their romantic relationship would be when he makes her realize that she’s not just needed (as she’s always been) but wanted just for being her and not for what she can do or what she provides. ]]
Emma (and Henry), circa season 1 (character analysis part 2)
By the time we see Emma calmly walk after a fleeing jerk, she had practically blocked Neal from her mind except as the clearest lesson to never trust anyone ever but also as this strange illusion of the perfect life she’ll never have. And Henry was like a dream, because it was so long ago and so removed from her life that she could sometimes honestly forget she ever was pregnant.
And then Henry came back knocking on her door.
Supernatural 8.17 Sneak Peek Analysis
There is a lot going on in this sneak peek, but the most ridiculous argument that I’ve heard is that Sam asking Dean about his prayer is about Sam being upset that Dean “asked for help” or that Dean just went to the most “powerful creature” he knew.
Sam asking Dean about the prayer, has nothing to do with him questioning Dean’s faith in Sam himself doing the trials! Sam knows he is hiding his pain from Dean, and that Dean suspects something…so why call him out on it? As of right now, they’ve got things under control. Sam asked Dean about it, because as an outside viewer on the Dean/Cas relationship, he wants Dean to know WHY he is still praying to Cas. This isn’t meant to be answered by Dean to Sam, it is for Dean to answer for himself.
First order of business: Updates on fertility study. Second order of business? -->
- Me: *desperately needing to take a course on meta-analysis* How did they even conduct this analysis when people can't even out friggin' measurement consistency?!
- Advisor 1: IKNOWRIGHT?! And like they didn't even covary out overall life satisfaction. HOW CAN YOU NOT DO THAT WHEN YOU'RE EXAMINING LIKE 13 OTHER POTENTIAL MODERATORS?!
- Advisor 2: Well the paper is from 1995...
- Me: I've decided that all studies should be multi-method because lol...
- Advisor 1: ...Everyone is so inconsistent in measurement! We don't even know here if the measures are psychometrically stable!
- Me: RIGHT. OMG lol remember the Myers Briggs? I retook that the other night.
- Whole lab: Lolololol
- New student: Did y'all see that movie about Carl Jung?
- Whole lab: Huh?
- Advisor 1: OH MY GOD CARL JUNG WAS SO WEIRD. He and his wife and his mistress lived together in the same house. Personality researchers are really fucked up!
- Advisor 2: Let's rent it and have a lab party after we submit our SRCD proposal!
- Whole lab: YAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!
- *end scene*
