swimmiesofdoom:

crumplesnacks:

so i’ve seen a lot of criticisms of elementary’s move to combine the characters of irene adler and moriarty, and i want to address some of those criticisms because i think that this twist is absolutely freaking brilliant and i want to shout from the rooftops about it. so, here we go. one day i will actually learn how to write meta that isn’t so long it requires a read more.

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forgive us, but this is a load of balls.

it is a desperate attempt to try to render something feminist when, in fact, it is balls.

the elementary fandom have been in this mode since the begining with the casting of lucy liu as watson, as if making watson female is, inherently, enough, when it is not.  (now, if they had made HOLMES female, well.  that would be another thing, wouldn’t it?)

now, in eliminating irene adler and transforming “her” into moriarty, we are all supposed to go oh WOW, look, a female villain, amazing, there’s never been anything like THAT on television before!  this is fake subservision.  it is fake because in positing the female of your species as villain, you pretend that this is in any way similar to positing her as powerful or individuated.  the fact is, even as a male, moriarty was entirely a dependent upon holmes.

see, everything revolves around holmes in the non ACD canon.  holmes as the Great White Male Genius who can behave any way he wants, and everyone else must be obsessed with him.  this is why a female watson was not impressive, any more than bbc’s sherlock’s male watson has been anything other than pretty pathetic.  you can fantasize them having sex all you want to, these watsons are entirely dependent upon holmes.  in fact we suspect that’s why it’s easy to fantasize sex between holmes/watson in all new incarnations, because their relationship takes on a particular appearance of sub/dom dynamics.

moriarty is entirely dependent upon holmes.  interesting, irene adler was NOT.  which is why she has been subsumed into a form of moriarty, who excercises typical female power over a man by seducing him and breaking his heart, but who then proceeds to reveal herself as, just as the male form, obsessed with who?

sherlock holmes.

this not an improvement, it is balls.  irene adler is obviously too individual and complicated for the writers of elementary to get their minds around— a female NOT interested in holmes?  OMJ!  what?

let’s fix this by making her the fixated villain, and let’s let the fandom come up with clever rationales in order to dodge the fact that we couldn’t handle irene adler actually outwitting holmes in whatever modern way she would have done it— too tough for us!  too complicated!  can you imagine, writing a modern female irene adler who isn’t smitten in some way with holmes, and actually portraying her as outwitting him and then MOVING ON WITH HER OWN LIFE BECAUSE SHE ACTUALLY HAS ONE OF THOSE???  no, that’s too hard.  and we can’t have a woman, The Woman, actually, you know, outsmart our fairhaired boy and walk away.  and, worse, have him care about it, and her not.  oh HELL no!

and then what would we do about watson, anyhow?  joan watson’s self esteem is questionable to begin with, which is fine for actual characters resembling real human persons, but contrasted to a woman who just walked away?

let’s make adler into moriarty!  now we don’t have to think anymore!

fortunately for us fish, we now have another weeknight free so we can learn all about this “twerking” thing.  we are pretty excited about that.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the IS <INSERT PERSON/PLACE/MINERAL> TRULY FEMINIST?! rants. Usually holier-than-thou fuckery abounds. Glad you folks got free time to learn about twerking though.