silentauror's Blog, page 783
August 1, 2016
erilainenmuori
replied to your post “New Johnlock fic’s at 8,100 words and going strong. :) It’s a...
replied to your post “New Johnlock fic’s at 8,100 words and going strong. :) It’s a romance,…”
Sounds excellent! I’m going to be baking a Russian honey layer cake to celebrate (and enjoy while reading) when you’re done!
Oooo! Say more about this cake! It sounds delicious!
New Johnlock fic’s at 8,100 words and going strong. :) It’s a romance, centring around the violin.
New Johnlock fic’s at 8,100 words and going strong. :) It’s a romance, centring around the violin.
July 31, 2016
Omg yay! My story Shallow Grave just reached 20,000 hits today!...
Omg yay! My story Shallow Grave just reached 20,000 hits today! This was the only fix-it I wrote (until The Battle for John H. Watson) in which Moriarty was actually alive. It starts with Sherlock walking off the plane and kissing John, in front of Mary and Mycroft, which makes things rather awkward for awhile. It’s one of my rarer first person POVs (Sherlock). Thanks for reading this one and giving it love! It’s the 11th of my 61 stories to have reached 20K hits. :)
the-shadowsmiths:
renaissancedweeb:
surprisebitch:
now this...
now this is true friendship
Considering 10 mil could easily cover the hospital bills, and “shoot your friend in the leg” is very vague, I’d just graze the side or something and split the money.
Better still, do it in Canada where there are no hospital bills. I’m down if anyone wants to shoot me in the leg.
That time when you first realised you could develop a crush on...
That time when you first realised you could develop a crush on someone based on their posture…
my-johnlocked-life:
cumberbuddy:
[x]
Seein’ lots of...
rominatrix:
“One of the great things is that the relationship...
“One of the great things is that the relationship that Sherlock and Watson have, it’s such a strong bond that I can only imagine that the relationship that you and Martin have off-screen it has to be just as similar, is that right?” Ben talks about Martin and how much they love doing the show ♥ x
I love love love Ben talking about Martin and working with Martin and doing Sherlock with Martin. Be still my heart!
Mary's weakness
So, what could the future hold for this dragon slayer and his dragon?
Do you know the story of the Paper Bag Princess? She protagonist gets one over on the dragon because she appeals to his ego. She gets him to show off how many times he can circle the earth and how many forests he can burn with his breath. Until he’s so out of breath he has no fire left and until he’s so tired that he falls asleep.
There’s an interaction between Bill Wiggins and Mary that has always struck me. He, posing as a beggar, asks for money. She’s walking by him until he says, ‘don’t be like all the rest’, then and only then she stops and gives him money. Why? Because this appeals to her ego: she’s not like all the rest, she’s not ordinary, she’s extraordinary.
Bill is there on assignment from Sherlock, he says this pivotal line to her and it would be too much coincidence to think that Bill came up with it. This line was given to Bill by Sherlock. Because Sherlock knows that she’s, ‘clever’,
and has an ego about it: she’s a show-off.
*
Sherlock is purposefully showing her, ‘his hand’, here. He’s letting her know that he made a clever plan for her because she’s clever. The issue of being, ‘clever’, reminds me of Sherlock’s problem with Moriarty at the end of TRF. Moriarty figures out his weakness: he’s clever so he assumes that the way things are done by others who are clever will also be clever. He doesn’t foresee the simplest solution because he favours the overly complicated.
If Sherlock has learnt his lesson from Morirarty and he sees in Mary his own weakness then he could use that against her, make her dance, as it were. Except that he’s making this really obvious to her. He’s making this very explicit: I know you’re clever.
Also, if she’s affiliated with Moriarty, she may literally know about what happened with regard to the key code. She may already be aware that Sherlock is aware that wanting things to be clever is a weakness. If she’s as clever as she seems she should see through the theatrics.
The question, is, as with the cabbie, is this Sherlock’s bluff, or a double bluff, or a triple bluff? His plan to defeat Mary (should things come to that) will it be clever? Or look clever but actually be deceptively simple? Or look very clever, then seem deceptively simply but then secretly be very clever?
I love this! I agree with every word! Mary’s ego will be her downfall - because there is nothing in this universe that will ever convince me that she’s cleverer than Sherlock. Not for one second.
July 30, 2016
Mofftiss, TJLC, Beethoven, and academic blah blah blah
To start, let me just say that I’m
visiting my family and haven’t been on tumblr very much. I’m not up on who’s
said what since that interview came out. However, I have read the interview,
and I have some thoughts.
I think I need to back up first, though. When TJLC first came
out as a theory, I loved it. I was completely enamoured of it. I did and still
do see how the writing, acting, directing, etc, all point to canon Johnlock. I
fully agree that that’s the way the story should go - and I say “should”
meaning in a narrative way, a moral way, in a need for representation way, in
an “it’s just the logical conclusion based on what they’ve done so far”
way - all of it. It’s only the final step that ever lost me: I always had my
doubts about the creators’ intentions. It’s partly just that I’m a cynic by
nature and would rather wait for proof than believe blindly. It’s also that I
believe Sherlock himself, who says that it’s a mistake to theorise without
having all of the facts. I’ve already read dozens and dozens of arguments to
this last, that would say that we somehow have all of the facts already, but we
don’t: we’ll have it only when we see it. And it’s also things that the
creators have said all along that just haven’t felt like lies in my gut. Gut
instinct is not logic - I’ll be the first to admit that! But I’ve always felt
that they just don’t seem, based on things they’ve said, to prioritise in the
same way that I personally do. I could be very wrong. I’m extremely open to
that notion! I WANT to be wrong! This is just my attempt to explain which part
of it I can’t subscribe to, and that’s my blind faith in the creators’
intentions regarding this or any other aspect of the show. I just don’t know.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so I’m waiting for the pudding.
I’ve received more hate than I’d care to
share for having my doubts about the creators’ intentions. I’ve had those
doubts mistaken for a lack of belief that it SHOULD happen, which it isn’t at
all. I literally ship Johnlock as
though it’s my job: I spend nearly as much time writing Johnlock stories as I
do working at my actual job. I have over 1.45 million words of Johnlock
currently posted online. My belief in the ship, in the inherent narrative arc
of the show, in the need for this ship to be made a canon reality - these are
all 1000% rock solid. My only doubt is in the creators themselves. Don’t
mistake me: I don’t think it’s because they’re bad writers or evil people. I do
think that if they don’t do it, that it will have been queer-baiting. But I
also say that with the rider that, as harmful as it is, I don’t think they will
have intended any maliciousness by it. I rather see Steven Moffat as someone
who is almost incapable of treating anything without his tongue wedged firmly
in his cheek. For instance, the fact that he even considers a crossover between
Sherlock and Doctor Who is completely exasperating to me: in the universe of
Sherlock Holmes, there is no magic, no time travel, nothing that cannot be
explained by scientific, logical deduction, by laboratory proof and the
realities of this world. I get that Doctor Who exists in this silly,
science-free zone, which is fine for Doctor Who, but that fact alone says to me
that the two universes are completely incompatible and just cannot intersect
this way.
That tangent aside, now for the academic blah blah blah. Bear
with me for a minute or two. What I want to talk about is a notion that I
studied during my masters and only semi-grasped at the time. I was taking a
boring musicological seminar on performance practise wherein we all read
chapters of a book and presented them to the class for one assignment. The
topic of the book was who has the ultimate authority over how music is supposed
to be performed. These days, in classical music, it’s usually the conductor who
makes the ultimate decision. Sometimes it’s the performer(s) themselves - say
in chamber music, with a violinist, a cellist, and a pianist: they decide
together how fast they’re going play the “allegretto” section, and
sometimes those choices are based on specific pieces of information, like that,
for Mozart’s music, an “allegretto” was always considered one very precise
speed. In that case, the performers would have deferred to the composer as the
ultimate authority. The chapter of this book (whatever it was) that I
presented posed the question of what happens when the composer is wrong. I know
that sounds a bit ridiculous - people immediately said, upon hearing
this, “but how could the person who wrote it be wrong about THEIR
creation?”
Beethoven was fully deaf by the time he composed his famous
Ninth Symphony. That doesn’t mean that he couldn’t fully hear the music in his
head, though - he was a brilliant genius of a composer and not being able to
physically hear in no way impeded the genius of his composing abilities. That
said, the tempi (speeds) he indicated in the Ninth Symphony are completely
unplayable. They’re way too fast for even the most virtuosic of players to
manage. It’s been a discussion ever since he composed it. Finally, in the
fifties, a German conductor named Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted the Berlin
Philharmonic playing it at the speeds Beethoven indicated, and although people
found it very impressive that they managed it, most musicians and critics
agreed that it just felt too fast. The uncomfortable consensus eventually came
to be that Beethoven himself did not understand the music that he created. The
author of whatever this book I presented on was suggested the notion that the
music itself could be considered the ultimate authority on how it should go, that any musician playing it should listen very carefully and inherently feel or understand the correct speed, the places where it should get louder or quieter, and all of the other little details.
At the time, I considered this notion pretty ephemeral and I
think I said as much to my seminar classmates, and they generally agreed, but
the Beethoven case is a strong one. As time has gone by since then, the idea has really grown on me. As an author, I know that sometimes I tell my stories which way to go, but most of the time it’s about listening and feeling the way the story needs to go. It’s not about the author exercising control over their creation; it’s about telling the story that needs to be told in the way that it needs to be told. If you want to get really ephemeral about it, I almost believe that the story is already out there somewhere and that the author’s job is more to capture and translate it onto the page. I know for a fact that my writing suffers when I try to control the direction of the story too much. When I let the story tell itself, it’s always better.
So: IF Moffat and Gatiss told us the truth
in that interview, which is obviously a very large if, I can agree with them
that these are their characters (or their take on them, at least) and that they
have every right to do what they want with them - but I would also suggest that
if this is the case, and that they’re not actually planning to make Johnlock
canon, then they have made an enormous error and that they have failed to
understand their own creation. Because how could they possibly not see the arc
they’ve written? How could the directors they’ve hired have directed something
that we all see and they don’t? It simply doesn’t add up.
Meanwhile, I stand where I’ve always
stood, which is here: I have no stance on what WILL happen because we just
won’t know until we see it. But I sure as hell know what SHOULD happen and I
hope they give it to us!!! And then, on top of that, I have to just add that as
a fic author, I will always be on hand to correct the wrongs of canon over here
in this space which is ours and ours alone. IF they get it wrong. Don’t get me
wrong – I’m not even saying that I think that they definitely won’t make
Johnlock canon. All I’m saying is that I personally can’t be sure until the
glorious day that I actually see it, which I hope I one day do. I hope that
every doubt I’ve ever had will be proven wrong and if they are, I’ll eat my
words with glee and go on adding to the glories of canon Johnlock in the fic
sphere, too! The bottom line for me hasn’t changed. I know where their story
needs to go. I hope they’ve been wise enough to see that, too. I guess we’ll
see in January.
It’s not us. It’s them.
I know that the last few days have been upsetting, disappointing, high emotion for many. But, I’m honestly really starting to get uncomfortable with how much we are still throwing the author of ‘that article’ under the bus, and turning on one another.
Yes, perhaps that article wasn’t the finest piece of entertainment journalism (I mean I don’t generally expect much from entertainment reporting anyway). There was definitely some journalistic bias going in, and some weak writing. But she has released the question she asked Moffat, which was originally missing from Part one, was very quick and polite to point me in the right direction when I asked for it, has had the article legitimised by both Mark Gatiss (the show runner) and Sue Vertue (the shows producer, and the one set to lose the most money if they misquoted them and they lost viewers due to it). And yes, she does seem to have a bit of a negative view of certain segments of the johnlock fandom, but she is currently being dog piled with accusations of homophobia and plagiarism so it may be that she’s just a tad raw at the moment.
Here’s the thing. I know we’re all upset. I know some of us are hurt, some are sad, some are in denial, some don’t care at all, because to their mind this changes nothing. All those things are fine and fair to feel. But no matter how you are feeling, let’s remember that there is nothing directly quoted in this interview that either Moffat or Gatiss haven’t said before. In fact Mark’s comments in Part One of this interview almost exactly mirror those he gave at the Mumbai Comicon in December of 2014. The author didn’t make this stuff up. The things in quotes are the things Mark, Steven, Sue and Amanda actually said. If they weren’t, then Mark and Sue would not have legitimatised this interview on Twitter.
If you are angry about the things that Mark or Steven said in this interview, then be angry at them, not at the author of the article. If you are angry about the mean-spiritedness, and at times even homophobia that is occurring in the comments section of the article, or on twitter, or even here on tumblr, then be angry at Mark and Steven, who were the ones who actually said the crap inciting these sorts of attitudes. The author just quoted them.
If you want to believe that Mark and Steven are just lying liars who lie, and johnlock will still happen despite what they say, that’s fine (I honestly hope so myself, or this show is going to be one of the most narratively inconsistent, one of the worst written, and the perpetrator of some of the worst queer baiting ever!), but at the same time you have to acknowledge that their lying in this particular way, just to keep a plot secret, is going to have real life ramifications on lgbtq fans. These kinds of lies do incite the kind of mean-spirited and homophobic responses I have seen online this week. And this has been my biggest beef about the whole mess, honestly. Because lying in this particular way is wholly, and completely unnecessary, and it is causing very real online bullying to real life lgbtq fans.
Think about that for a minute. These two privileged men tell lies (if they are lies) that hurt real life lgbt people (predominately young women), just to preserve the grand plot reveal of their pet fan fic project (that is ironically predominantly funded by one of their wives and their mother-in-law). And they tell these lies when it is completely unnecessary. They could, when faced with questions about John and Sherlock being a couple, simply redirect the conversation, or dismiss the question with a simple, “People can make conjecture about whatever they please. We know the story we’re writing. You will have to wait and see.” Such a statement commits to nothing, and hurts no one.
What upsets me most, through all of this, though, is seeing women turning on women, female fans turning on other female fans, lgbtq fans turning on other lgbtq fans, female fans throwing female entertainment journalists under the bus, while at the same time excuses for and defense of Moffat and Gatiss are absolutely everywhere. Moffat and Gatiss’ words are the things that lit the fire under this madness, and yet I see young women, and young lgbtq fans rushing to defend them. Why?
@madgirlspoem talked about this in an excellent post yesterday. And I want to pull a quote from there, because it was just so good:
“As male creators in a position of power, if you belittle a minority group, for whatever reason, and more pointedly for reasons that are quite narcissistic and petty (”to protect a plot twist”) then you are perpetrating the abuse that has been historically imposed upon them. You become part of the problem, not the solution, regardless of how wonderfully progressive your media work might turn out to be. Guess what: we deserve better. (…) You deserve better.”
You do. You do deserve better.
I made some points on someone else’s post back on June 14th (which was Mark Gatiss specific) about things I’m angry about when it comes to male media creators and their interaction with female fans, and after everything that’s happened the last few days they seem more relevant than ever, so I’m going to post them again here:
I’m angry at misogyny.
I’m angry at being viewed as ‘crazy’, ‘sex-obsessed’, an objectifier of gay men.
I’m angry that the media assumes that just because I ship two men, I’m all of the above and straight.
I’m angry at being invisible in media as a wlw, as a bisexual wlw.
I’m tired of the fact that what small scraps of queer media we do get are controlled predominately by privileged, white, straight or more rarely gay men.
I’m tired that the majority of queer characters we do get on television are privileged, white, gay men.
I’m tired of the fact that when wlw do show up in our media they are still killed off for dramatic impact because women who love women are viewed as disposable objects by male media creators.
I’m tired of the fact that young, queer girls are so starving for representation that they cling desperately to, and idolise, privileged, white, gay men, when those men, in actuality, don’t give a shit about them.This is the last thing I’m going to write about this incident. Watch the show, or stop. Keep believing johnlock will happen on the show, or don’t. But please, please, please do not throw each other under the bus, or fight with each other over this mess. Women should not be attacking other women over something privileged male media creators have said and done.
(((((((((((APPLAUSE!!!!!!!!)))))))))
This is a GREAT article summarising this entire thing. I have some thoughts I’ve been mulling over for the past couple of days, but being on a family visit has tied up a lot of my time. Meanwhile, bravo, sussexbound. This is really well stated!
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