I knit stuff. Sometimes I even post about it. But usually I just watch movies. And I'm currently on a serious Hobbit streak, so . . . watch out.
How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them — A Misstep-By-Misstep Guide, Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman (via ecwritersblock)
Sanderson, this is for you.
However, even this ambiguous portrait of female power proved too much for Moffat to stomach. Granted, he allowed her to keep her smarts. But, at the same time, her acumen and agency were undermined every which way. Not-so-subtly channelling the spirit of the predatory femme fatal, Adler’s power became, in Moffat’s hands, less a matter of brains, and more a matter of knowing “what men like” and how to give it to them; of having them by the sexual short and curlies, or, perhaps more aptly, on a nice short leash. Her masterminding of a cunning criminal plan was, it was revealed late in the day, not her own doing, but dependent on the advice of Holmes’s arch nemesis, James Moriarty. A move that, blogger Stavvers noted, neatly reduced her from “an active force to a passive pawn in Moriarty and Holmes’s ongoing cock-duelling”.
More troubling still, Moffat’s Adler blatantly fails to outwit Holmes. Despite identifying as a lesbian, her scheme is ultimately undone by her great big girly crush on Sherlock, an irresistible brain-rot that leads her to trash the security she has fought for from the start of the show with a gesture about as sophisticated – or purposeful – as scrawling love hearts on an exercise book. As a result, Moffat sends Adler out into the world without the information she has always relied on for protection, having made herself entirely vulnerable for the love of a man. Lest we haven’t got the point yet, Holmes hammers it home. “Sentiment,” he tells us, “is a chemical defect found in the losing side.”
And then there was the jaw-dropping finale, which somehow managed to smoosh together a double-bill of two of patriarchy’s top-10 fantasies. All those troubled by female sexual power – or the persistent punctuation of orgasmic text alerts – were treated to the sight of the vamp laid low, down on her knees, about to have her block knocked off by a great big sword. And, at the same time, our hero miraculously appeared to save his damsel in distress. Medusa and Perseus, Rapunzel and her prince, all wrapped up in a potent little bundle. Symbolically speaking, it was really quite impressive. But for those of us crazies who like to think that women are, y’know, just regular human beings, it was, politically, really quite regressive.
"Jane Clare Jones; Is Sherlock sexist? Steven Moffat’s wanton women (The Guardian)
This is from The Guardian. Sorry, let me repeat that. This is from The Guardian.
You have to understand: for the past two years, I thought I was alone in my Moffat-inspired indignance. Just a couple of months ago, I realized a vast crowd of Tumblr-ers shared my opinion, and that was … I can’t describe how much of a relief that was. And now this? This is like that relief multiplied by six!
