you are the roots that sleep beneath my feet and hold the earth in place

[coyotesuspect]

Dear God lj, what is this comment fuckery? If you haven't already, please voice your disapproval here and here.

I've changed my comments here and at my fanworks community to customized, because at least then I have icon drop down, subject lines, and the thread and parent buttons. Also, comments pages are not actually painful to look at that way.

I also may start actually moving base to dreamwidth.

Anyway.

In news that is not lj fucking shit up again, I've been busy! In no particular order: The quarter ended. Finals happened. I did the best I've ever done (A, A, A, A-). Which probably points to how much happier and better-adjusted I am this year than I was last year. My internship from this summer wrapped up. I made some soccer friends (hi rhombal) I saw the National in concert. (They were amazing.) I did all my Christmas shopping. I lived in a blanket fort with gold_bluepoint and zempasuchil for over 48 hours (spoiler: we drank a lot and watched Supernatural). There were more roommate shenanigans. I cut off almost all my hair. I got a twitter.

And I flew home for the holidays. (:

Also, I made this Annie/Britta mix for pada_something for Christmas!


I tried to read between the lines you wrote inside your black notebook

And I saw Sherlock II today with an old friend. I enjoyed it a lot, even as I had a lot of problems with it.

I miss you guys. I keep meaning to be more involved with lj again. But now that it actually physically pains me to look at most comments, I will probably just flee back to the dark safety of tumblr. ):

ETA: Comments now contain spoilers for Sherlock Holmes II: A Game of Shadows

Comments

[lavendergaia]

Congrats on your grades!

As is my habit in your posts to pick out the tiniest things, YOU CUT OFF ALL YOUR HAIR? I think you should tell me all about how awesome it is so I have someone to blame when I do the same thing. ;)

Also lesbian!Britta = everything good in the world.

[coyotesuspect.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm pretty proud. (:

Ha! Totally fair considering my posts tend to be GIANT DUMPING OF THINGS WHAT I DID. My new hair is totally wonderful. It's so light and easy to take care of and wash and looks totally cute. I am really happy with it.

Yessssss. Your Annie icon is totally cute btw.

[lavendergaia]

I'm getting a haircut hopefully sometime this week and I have recently become enamored with Jessica Stroup's short bob, but I could never pull it off so I am super jealous of you. I bet you look fantastic though! Aren't you cold though, you live in like the arctic tundra up there.

Annie is pretty cute all by herself, I've noticed. That entire cast is.

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

YOU SHOULD TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR HAIR AND PUT IT SOMEWHERE LIKE LJ OR FB OR SOMEWHERE
g_b and I want to seeeeeeee :DDDDDD

[coyotesuspect.livejournal.com]

I will! As soon as I have access to a camera. ): It is actually kind of close to young Molly Ringwald though.

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

ALREADY ENCHANTED :D

[pada-something.livejournal.com]

i don't know a single person who's liked the new layout for comments-disabled-pages. seriously. i'm still with mine because i'm clearly out of my mind, but jflsdkhglksj (i just tend to dislike really fast my layout if i see it too much) ANYWAYS.

HOLY SHIT CONGRATS ON YOUR FINALS. you kicked ass like i knew you wouuuuuuuuuuuuuld

i love my fanmix.

and i wish you were back for goodzzzz. :|

[coyotesuspect.livejournal.com]

I've seen a few comments saying they don't mind the new comments page, but yeah. On a whole, anger and disgust seems to reign.

:D Thanks bb!

^___^ Yay I'm so glad!

I AM GOING TO TRY. I SHOULD BE WAY LESS BUSY NEXT QUARTER.

[familiardevil.livejournal.com]

So happy you're feeling better this semester my princess <3333333 You are flawless and I love you.

[coyotesuspect.livejournal.com]

You are the flawlessest. :* I ruv roo ruh ruh ruh

[scorpiod1.livejournal.com]

I just can't with the new comment lay out. EVERYTHING IS WRONG ABOUT IT. I've enabled custom comment pages and then set everything view in my style (and then got a new layout because I needed one xD) to cope BUT STILL :| I MISS THE DEFAULT, IT WAS SO SOOTHING. It's weird reading fic like this :|

BUT FUCK YEAH, THOSE GRADES ARE AMAZING <3________<3 GO COYOTE GO :DDDDDDD

Tell me your feelings on Sherlock II? I've heard a spoiler that's making me never want to watch :|

[coyotesuspect.livejournal.com]

IT'S SO TERRIBLE. SO TERRIBLE. And my paid account ran out a couple weeks ago, and I was like, oooh, I'll get around to renewing it. But now this happened and I don't want to but I don't have any icons anymore. ashlfqkwdqs,n My life is so hard.

Thanks bb. :#)

re: Sherlock

I enjoyed it. It's a fun, fast-paced movie, and it's at its best when Sherlock and Watson are bantering and bickering. It is tremendously, fantastically gay. Gay gay gay. Delightfully so. The plot is crazy and doesn't make much sense, and it's impossible to really understand what's going on until Sherlock explains it all in the last third. But that doesn't matter because rainbows shooting out of your ass GAAAAAAAYYYYY

HOWEVER. The spoilers I assume you're referring to are ones re: treatment of women in SH. So, warning, from here on out this contains SPOILERS FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES II

So I'll say this. Mary Watson is wonderful. She doesn't have a lot to do, but she does a lot with what she's given. She's intelligent, collected, kind, practical, sweet, and ruthless when the occasion calls. I came out of the movie wanting another separate movie about her.

The movie also introduces a new female character, Simza. Who is, if not quite as hearts in my eyes as Mary, still a well fleshed out, interesting, and dynamic character. And I think the Holmes franchise, even if it never passes the Bechdel test, does at least give us a decent stock of female characters who are there to be more than eye candy. (It's a low bar, I admit).

Aaaall that being said, they do kill off Irene Adler before the fucking title card even runs. It's pretty appalling. And while this (thankfully) does not then become an engine of mangst for Sherlock (There's no ~~~I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. I SHOULD HAVE SAVED HER. MY PAIN. MY MAAAAN PAAAIN), it's still a waste of a really interesting character. And it's pretty problematic.

There's also a pretty ceaseless amount of casual misogyny from both Sherlock and his brother Mycroft, that was obvious in the first movie and doesn't end here. Mycroft's is played for laughs (gross) and Sherlock's is- I think- more of an attempt to show how upset and conflicted he is over Watson leaving him for the ~~~women's realm of domesticity~~~ (still gross).

END SPOILERS

And overall, the Sherlock films (as there in most media we consume) clearly value the quote-unquote platonic male-male bond over that of the romantic male-female bond. I think the Sherlock films (particularly this one) do- or at least try to do- some interesting things in examining whether or not that's a good value to have, as is manifested in Sherlock's inner struggle over whether he should drag Watson along or leave him to be happy with his bride. (and okay I lied about spoilers, but here's another tiny one: One of the main driving forces of Sherlock during the movie is to protect John and Mary end spoiler).

But all of this is obviously problematic on a lot of levels.

There's the issue in the first place of Sherlock-John being a more valid and important relationship than John-Mary. This is not necessarily a view I think the movie ends up endorsing (and since it's Sherlock Holmes, I'll give it a pass; this issue speaks to a larger fucked up cultural trend of valuing male relationships over male-female ones). But this is the interpretation fandom has, and will, run with, because fandom has a nasty habit to erase women. But also because while we're given a Mary Watson who can more than hold her own with John and Sherlock, she's not really around either of them through most of the movie. The movie does a lot of the erasing for fandom.

[coyotesuspect.livejournal.com]

Then there's the obvious issue of even though Sherlock-John is the primary relationship axis upon which the movie revolves, and which drives the movie's emotional drama, it is a straight relationship. They're friends. But this isn't really a valid interpretation given the emphatic homoerotic overtones throughout the entire movie. I'm a slasher; I see gay where no gay exists. But let me tell you: This is the most gay I have ever seen two characters act towards each other who were not actually in a gay relationship with each other. I think the movie (and the actors) know exactly what they're doing. They're playing up the homoerotic aspects of the relationship, without actually having the balls to have gay characters or a gay romantic relationship. I think other people have spoken about this nasty trend elsewhere and about other shows and movies, but it's obviously insulting to have queerness used as bait, but never actually addressed.

so tl;dr: It's a fun movie, Sherlock and John are very gay and play off each other very well, it has obvious gender and queer problems that are emblematic of wider social trends and *I think* it might be trying to subvert those a little but ymmv, and some of the treatment of female characters (who I quite like) is obviously gross and problematic.

/o\ I HOPE THIS WAS HELPFUL AND NOT JUST LONG.