Cuz a dreamer never sleeps

One of my friends is a Sherlock fan but refuses to watch it online, so she’s only started to watch the second series since PBS began airing it last week.

Wouldn’t be a big deal except that she looks down on me for partaking in illegal activities and keeps going on about how she’s got the “moral high ground.”

It’s funny when people think I’d care about such things. I’d much rather watch a show than have moral high ground.

a quick defense of sally donovan, whom i love.

mswyrr:

wearthewindythong:

warning: this was written in about two seconds and doesn’t articulate my feels very well at all. anyone could do a better job; anyone. even a monkey.

She works so hard, really really hard. And she’s barely appreciated for it.

Can you blame her for accusing Sherlock when
a) It’s her job
b) He was incredibly suspicious
Her job is catch murderers/rapists/etc. Sherlock’s characteristics fit the profile.

In the first episode, she’s trying to protect John. She thinks Sherlock is someone who is high-risk and could endanger John. So, Sally takes responsibility and, rightly, warns him. That’s not a malicious action, that’s compassion.

Being a woman in the UK, it’s statistically shown to be especially difficult for her to advance in her area of the law enforcement career. The fact that Sally is tough and no-nonsense about the workplace is not a bad thing, in fact it’s excellent.

She doesn’t hide her distaste for Sherlock. Yes, this is a good thing. He’s an arsehole. No matter what you say, he is rude and arrogant whenever Sally sees him. But she doesn’t back down, she stands up to him, even when he’s being so incredibly personal, she stands right back up to him.
Sure, it hurts Sherlock when she calls him a freak, but was it really necessary for him to bring up her private life with Anderson in front of all her coworkers?

I don’t believe that Sally’s true personality is actually presented to us in the show. We get a glimpse at the beginning of ‘The Reichenbach Fall’ when she’s smiling and laughing with Anderson, but we never see Sally when she isn’t on the job. She’s a cop, so she’s hardcore at the workplace. Out of work, she’s probably completely different.

Now I’m not condoning Anderson’s affair with Sally, I’d like to make that clear. But I really do think that the fandom should stop demonising her.

The thing is, the narrative is using Sally to represent what a poor, misunderstood victim Sherlock is. It’s also using her to show how scary women of color are. Diversity makes things uncomfortable for white men possibly! By making it so that not every single person in authority they deal with is another white man. HORROR. REVERSE SEXISM REVERSE RACISM SOMEONE STOP THE VIOLENCE. So, no, we don’t get to see more of her life. Or get to see her as a person rather than a roadbloack or a threat or Sherlock. And that’s by design. Sherlock is being written as a sympathetic human being, and Sally is very much not. Sympathy for him is in fact being generated by villifying her. There’s this idea is that daring to question posh white men who give you no reason to think they’re safe and every reason to think they’re dangerous is a horrible, cruel thing to do.

It reminds me of those idiots who actually think men are oppressed when they learn that women go around wondering if men are rapists. OMG POOR BBS. Women’s actual oppression means that they don’t all automatically trust you without reason! HOW SAD FOR YOU, MAN.

Because profiling is good until it leads cops to suspect white men! Even though Sherlock fits the profile of a serial killer rather perfectly, and Sally knows this because Sally is good at her job, it’s not okay that she perform her role as a law enforcement officer and suspect him.

The fact that the only other major thing we’re told about her is that she’s having an affair just further cements that the narrative wants us to side with poor, victimized Sherlock. The challenges he faces living in the brain that he has are used as an excuse for his asshattery every bit as much as Patrick Jane’s dead wife and daughter are used to let him off the hook.

Poor babies torture their friends. But they hurt inside omg DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND.

/sigh/

Sally isn’t even allowed the dignity of being a noble, brilliant baddie. That’s reserved for another white man. She’s just someone to be sacrificed to show how the unwashed masses don’t adequately appreciate their betters.

the doctor and sherlock: “because i’m clever!”

mswyrr:

I just realized. The writers of Doctor Who and Sherlock are not imagining themselves as aristocrats, who just luck into power. They’re imagining themselves as technocrats. The rule of the clever people. Cleverness as a justification for all other privileges.

It’s like they’re saying: of course unearned privileges are wrong! But these specific rich white straight men are clever, don’t you see?! They’re clever!

And in the minds of the kind of geeky white men who grow up loving Holmes and the Doctor and then write those characters themselves, being clever makes it all okay. You really are superior if you’re clever. You have some inherent wonderfulness which pre-exists social oppression. You are a star in the firmament! Everyone should like you and serve you and listen to you (John, Molly, Lestrade, the Doctor’s companions) or they’re wrong and bad and need to be taught a lesson (Sally, Harriet Jones).

Bullying is the only problem you’ve faced, so that kind of social ostracism is very clear and important to you and you write about its pains, but everything else is what? Where? Who?

((laughs))

And people honestly complain about Mary Sues when this kind of naked Marty Stu shit is celebrated.

((rotfl))

Y’all really cannot do wrong, can you, dudes? Except that sometimes bitches point shit out, but it’s okay, just say they’re offensive!

Wait, they cast Lucy Liu as Watson?

I’m really surprised. But also really impressed. You can do great things with this show, CBS. I think I’ll actually watch it now.
~~Would’ve been better if Sherlock were also female but anyway.~~