When in doubt, always be a frigid bitch, ladies.
(Note that this is not directed specifically at the person who wrote that, you’ll learn and grow dude, but at the depressing concept that a woman without a constant smile/a willingness to get a boyfriend/an eager-to-please personality will inevitably be called one of those things.)
To celebrate the occasion, here’s some of my favourite ladies from fiction!
Row 1: Amy Pond (Doctor Who), Sephy Hadley (Noughts and Crosses), Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Rose Tico (Star Wars), Elsa (Frozen/Disney), Melissa Chartres (The Last Man on Earth)
Row 2: Eowyn (The Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth), Quinn Ergon (Final Space), The Thirteenth Doctor (Doctor Who), Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time), Jane Foster (Thor/MCU), Amy Santiago (Brooklyn 99)
Row 3: Brook Soso (Orange is the New Black), Nebula (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Erica Dundee (The Last Man on Earth), Kitty Winter (Sherlock Holmes), Rose Tyler (Doctor Who), Briony Tallis (Atonement)
Row 4: Meredith Quill (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Missandei (Game of Thrones), Rey (Star Wars), Donna Noble (Doctor Who), Carol Pilbasian (The Last Man on Earth), Esmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre Dame/Disney)
Row 5: Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones), Ash Graven (Final Space), Tiana (The Princess and the Frog/Disney), Sophia Burset (Orange is the New Black), Misty (Pokemon), Clara Oswald (Doctor Who)
Row 6: Bill Potts (Doctor Who), Mary Brown (Paddington), Mako Mori (Pacific Rim), Gwen Stacy (Spider-Man), Jackie Tyler (Doctor Who), Ursula Ditkovich (Spider-Man)
Row 7: Yaz Khan (Doctor Who), Mary Jane Watson (Spider-Man), Marceline (Adventure Time), Michelle (10 Cloverfield Lane,), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow/MCU), Mantis (Guardians of the Galaxy (MCU)
Row 8: Eponine Thenardier (Les Miserables), Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls), Sandra Kaluiokalani (Superstore), Padme Amidala (Star Wars), Martha Jones (Doctor Who), Jasmine (Aladdin/Disney)
Row 9: Beru Whitesun (Star Wars), Nakia (Black Panther/MCU), Diana (Wonder Woman), Chummy Browne (Call the Midwife), Rosa Diaz (Brooklyn 99), Leia Organa (Star Wars)
So, the Sherlock Holmes books don’t have a great reputation in terms of women. Holmes himself “disliked and distrusted” them, many of the ladies in the ACD canon are treated like helpless children, etc etc etc. But…
Allow me to present a case for the defense: Miss Kitty frickin’ Winter.
I’ve been bingewatching the Jeremy Brett Sherlocks over the past couple of days and that particular version of The Illustrious Client reminded me how much I love her. She’s not a typical Holmes woman in the slightest. She’s not rich, she’s not described as being particularly pretty, she had sex outside of marriage, chances are high she’s a prostitute (not said outright in the book, but kinda implied…) and she’s the victim of trauma at the hands of a wealthy, important man.
I don’t know how Victorian society would have perceived Kitty in terms of survivorship, but I don’t think the average person would’ve approved. Kitty is furious, endlessly furious at what’s happened to her. She wants revenge, and she isn’t going to be polite or respectable while she goes about it.
There was an intensity of hatred in her white, set face and her blazing eyes such as woman seldom and man never can attain.
Damn that’s a good line!
But here’s the quite remarkable thing, Kitty actually gets her vengeance in the end, and at little cost to herself. She doesn’t get overly punished for melting someone’s face off, she doesn’t get punished for being a fallen woman, she doesn’t get punished for her rage… she accomplishes what she wants to and survives. Oh man I love her.
(All those gifs are from Granada Sherlock Holmes but I heard a modern-day version of Kitty showed up in Elementary as well. I really gotta watch that.)
A very happy day to Amy&Rory, Quinn&Gary, Enjolras&Grantaire, Peter&Harry, Bubblegum&Marceline, Star-Lord&Gamora, Gail&Erica, Faramir&Eowyn, Finn&Poe, and Disneyverse Esmeralda&Phoebus.
Most of whom never celebrated or had any concept of a Valentine’s Day.
I’m pretty sure that despite having been to the past several times already, this is the first time any of them have gotten to dress appropriately for the era! They’re rocking it.
Over the past few days I’ve been archiving lots of older stuff (from the bits of my old tumblr/twitter/facebook that the Internet Wayback Machine caught.) After all, the clue’s in the OVERLY DEVOTED Archivist name. So I thought I might post links to some choice older nonsense here, meticulously labelled, for your viewing pleasure.
Les Miserables
The saddest piecharts you will ever see (2013)
Long, rambling, very annoyed review of the BBC miniseries (2019)
Guardians of the Galaxy
Sean Gunn is the most underrated actor in the MCU! (2018)
A Theory about a GOTG scene (2018)
Ego and Yondu As Foils, Giffed (2017)
Snippets of interesting stuff from the GOTG Vol 2 commentary (2017)
The music of the GOTGs/Meredith Quill’s Subconscious (2017)
Yondu’s redemption arc (2017)
Spider-Man
Attn: MCU on Harry Osborn (2015)
On Parksborn (2014)
How The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did Harry dirty (2014)
Gwen Stacy’s actual personality (2014)
Old But Surprisingly Good Fanfiction
What’s Left Of You (GOTG)
Goodnight (GOTG)
The First Casualty (Star Wars)
Pretty Dresses (Star Wars)
Humanity in the Abstract (Adventure Time)
Don’t Ruin It (Steven Universe AND Les Miserables! Yes really.)
I had a few problems with The Last Jedi (though no more than most Star Wars movies really) but you know what wasn’t one of them? Rose Tico. I loved Rose. She was 100% utterly totally A Mary Sue. And that was AMAZING.
No, really. I am very very pro-Mary Sues and I think you oughta be too. Rose’s story has been told in a thousand fanfictions, not just for Star Wars but for every fandom. The ordinary, overlooked girl who becomes a heroine, kisses the hero, BITES the bad guy (man I wish that scene wasn’t cut), flies a spaceship, saves her crush. As one of those people who used to write (or at least read) those fanfictions, it felt terribly gratifying to meet Rose.
(When told about men these stories are usually received differently.)
I’ll forever be furious that Rose’s role in The Rise of Skywalker was reduced because of all the assholeish trolling and complaining. What other reason could there have been? There were still plenty of places her story could have gone, even in a movie as overstuffed as Rise was. At the very least the camera should have cut to her during the big Resistance speech about all the people they had lost, because she lost someone too.
Anyway, on the tiniest chance Kelly Marie Tran is reading this, Rose was a wonderful character and I’m so sorry you had to put up with racism and misogyny and body-shaming from “fans.” I hope one day they’ll feel ashamed of themselves.
“The Daemon-Cages,” an absolutely incredible hour of television, takes pains to inform us that these doctors experimenting on innocent children aren’t happy about it. Dr Rendal up there (played by Amit Shah, I knew I recognized him, he was in Doctor Who) seems by far the most human of the bunch. He listens to Lyra at a crucial point. He doesn’t overtly mistreat the children, he just presses the buttons. He has doubts.
But he still did it. He helped destroy multiple lives and set into motion the events which led to Billy’s horrible death in the arms of his mother. So when he tries what all of us here in this world know as the Nuremberg Defense, he gets exactly what he deserves.
I loved the new Aladdin film an embarassing amount. I thought it was wonderful. So it was somewhat disheartening to learn that Mena Massoud hasn’t had an audition since, and even more disheartening to see that Billy Magnussen’s white prince character on the other hand is getting his own spin-off for no reason. Oh god Disney, the optics of that, what the heck?
But anyway, an awful lot of the reaction to all this seems to be “So? He wasn’t any good anyway” and that baffles me because he was! He was charming, funny, could sing well, could dance well… he felt like the animated Aladdin come to life, and I can’t be the only person that felt that way, surely?
Massoud was fantastic and thoroughly deserved to win the role, so I hope things get better for him from now on. In the meantime, enjoy these gifs, which I hope adequately display the dude’s range.
(Also? Robert Pattinson was in Twilight for god’s sake. Now he’s Batman. Just sayin’.)
So you probably know that I had a couple of issues with Endgame, especially what happened to Gamora, and this is my attempt to fix them. (Pay attention, James Gunn.)
Title: A Scar on the World
Fandom: MCU/Guardians of the Galaxy
Characters: Gamora, Natasha
Summary: Gamora is trying to come to terms with being alone and displaced in time. Luckily, the universe isn’t done with either her or Natasha Romanoff.