I’m rereading Les mis again, and one thing I didn’t notice on my first reads is just how Militarized every single town is? Even in scenes where characters are just going about their ordinary day there are always soldiers in the street, and everyone’s always mentioning prison, and the police are always there, and there are always traces of the recent wars all around—
No matter what the characters are doing, the threat of state violence is always There. The threat of the military and police and government is always hanging over them.
Like in Fantine’s chapters with Tholomyes! As the four couples are going on their dates, there are constant references to how “Everything is Fine Now Because the Monarchy has Finally Put Down those Nasty Rebels and is Back in Power Again.”As the couples flirt and play, there are gendarmes in the street and people singing rowdy songs about the return of the king. There’s an entire intro chapter about the year’s historical context, and the rest of the chapters contains sprinkles of anecdotes about the new regime.
Hugo draws what I feel is a pretty explicit parallel between Tholomyes and the new King. We’re told that is fine in Paris because King Louis is on the throne: and we’re told that everything is idyllic in Fantine’s friend group because Tholomyes is its (quote) “dictator” who leads in a way that obligates everyone to obey.
Of course in the end Everything is Not Fine and these dictators can’t actually be trusted to rule over their people, and are going to especially hurt marginalized people like Fantine.
But it’s not just this one subplot obviously, it’s Every Single One. The threat of military violence is the background noise of the entire book.
Montreuil-sur-Mer where Valjean becomes mayor is literally a garrrison town for the military; Paris is always swarming with police and gendarmes; Marius’s story centers on his changing feelings about his Bonapartist soldier father; the Thenardiers live at the Waterloo Inn and constantly go on about Monsieur Thenardier’s military history; like the threat of the military/police is always there in the background of every scene, long before it comes to a head at the barricade.
One of the subplots that illustrates this best is Everything that Happens In Digne after Valjean is released from prison.
Valjean shows his yellow passport to the mayor and is immediately followed by a gendarme before he heads to an inn. His passport causes every inn to refuse service to him. After he asks a kind-looking peasant man at home with his family if he can stay at his house for the night, the man pulls out a gun and threatens to murder him. He attempts to get temporary housing at a prison, which refuses him.
We’re later given an explanation for what the townspeople think and say about their police force, and why they’re so determined to beat Valjean away. We’re told that the townspeople say:
“The police was very badly organized, moreover, because there was no love lost between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to injure each other by making things happen.It behooved wise people to play the part of their own police, and to guard themselves well, and care must be taken to duly close, bar and barricade their houses, and to fasten the doors well.”
Which is a terrifying philosophy that we see throughout the book? The reason everyone is so cruel to Valjean is because in a world where everything is militarized, ordinary people have decided to become unofficial cops. It’s like they believe the problem with their society is that there aren’t enough police/soldiers on the street—even though we see police and soldiers on Every Page.
There’s something terrifyingly familiar about the mentality that looks at cities swarming with police and says “the way to fix this is to Add More Police. Or for regular citizens to Do Police Work themselves!”
And I feel like that tension, that constant pervasive threat of government violence that never goes away because ordinary people are actively supporting these institutions too, is such a tragically relevant part of the book.
The most hated film of its time: Supernatural:Carry OnVampyre(1932)
After I witnessed the trainwreck that was the supernatural finale, like everybody else, I asked: Why this story? Why was their last hunt a crappy vampire nest with the lamest vampires ever? Why a nail?
I haven’t thought about it in the last two months, until yesterday when @sapphic_energy reminded me that Jenny had Supernatural’s first queer kiss. Of course, Vampires have been a metaphor for queerness from as far back as their Balkan origin. As we were musing on the fact that Dean was killed by gay monsters (you could say by its own kind) it hit me. It’s not just that Dean was killed by the hand of a vampire, he died the death of one. Metal stake(rebar) through his chest, the way Vampires were pinned to their graves to prevent them from rising again. And for the first time, Dean was laid to permanent rest. It’s another bury your gay death.
Now, one interesting thing here is that vamps in Supernatural don’t die from a stake through the heart, you have to decapitate them. This is a whole different vampire lore. I wondered if I’ll find other real-world vampire references so I started researching. Their mythology was changed a lot by the movies that portrayed them, but one film piqued my interest. Vampyr is a German expressionist horror film, that was shot in the style of a silent-film. You could say, it’s silent vampires. Vampire mimes. Vamp-mimes!
If you are not convinced by this, for some reason, let me tell you how the movie starts: Allan Gray is a student of the supernatural. During his travels, he visits a small french village and stays at an inn. He is awaken from nightmares by a man entering his room. This father tells Allan that his daughter is dying, and leaves him a book about vampires, with the instruction to only open it in case he dies. He leaves Allan with this book and a quest for his unfinished business of saving the girl from the vampire.
Dreyer’s source material for this film was the 1872 novelle Carmilla, a tale of a lesbian vampire told in the form of a case file from an occult detective. Both the movie and the novella are about a hunt for a female vampire who preys on young girls.
Now, this is a pretty nice similarity to how John left the Vampmimes case to his boys through his journal.
This movie uses much older lore, one yet untouched by Hollywood. In it, Vampires are much more spiritual in nature. They are the damned spirits of the gluttonous sinners, who gave into earthly cravings. They prey on the young. Their bite is like possession, their lust infects the victims who will suffer from blood-thirst while their soul suffers from the repulsion they feel towards their cravings. Thus the vampire slowly drives them to suicide, a sin that will damn their soul to hell. The only way to stop this undead (and exorcising them from the victim) is to find their burial and pin them to their grave with a metal stake so they could not rise again. Lust, cravings, shame. The film’s inspiration from its lesbian vampire source material is undeniable.
TW: Dean’s death.
A lot of us were heartbroken to see Dean give up so easily and die from what was essentially assisted suicide, so I hate to see the parallel between the two films, but it’s there. We can’t get more burry your gays than this I’m afraid.
So how do these vampires compare to the final’s vampires? The Vamp-mimes felt different to me even on my first watch. They fit with the non-supernatural lore nicely. Their horrible(and seemingly unnecessary) skull masks make them symbolically more undead, they kidnap young children, the father had to open the door for them(invite them in), we see them exclusively at night and their leader is a lesbian vampire, Jenny.
So let’s say I accidentally stumbled upon the inspiration of this horrible episode. The question is still, WHY? There are two very good reasons why Dabb might have referenced this film.
The protagonist is a man who in his obsession of the supernatural lost sight of what’s real and what is fantasy. Dreyer with his esoteric approach managed to create a dream-like metaphysical experience. The line between dream and reality is not blurred but invisible. It’s visuals create a ghostly world of dancing shadows and ethereal visitations. With its odd pacing and no basic structural logic, the film keeps viewers confused. It’s unsettling compositions, at times leaving the viewer to wonder what exactly is real and what isn’t. At one point Allan’s spirit leaves his body and witnesses his own burial. Oh! And the german title of the film? The dream of Allan Grey. The whole film is an “it’s all a dream” trope basically.
BUT this would be a reference not to the plot, but to how the viewers see the film. So how about a reference to how the viewers felt about the film? Let me copy-paste Wikipedia:
“At this premiere, the audience booed the film which led to Dreyer cutting several scenes out of the film after the first showing. At a showing of the film in Vienna, audiences demanded their money back. When this was denied, a riot broke out that led to police having to restore order with nightsticks. When the film premiered in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 1933, Dreyer did not attend. In the USA, the film premiered with English subtitles under the title Not Against The Flesh; an English-dubbed version, edited severely. Dreyer soon had a nervous breakdown and went to a mental hospital in France. The film was a financial failure.”
Lucifer knocking over the entire house of cards - but he used glue.
Okay. We see you BuckLemming. We see you Dabb. We see you.
“Don’t worry ya’ll, we cheated. They may have knocked over what we so carefully built, but it still holds together just fine. This thing we built has what they call structural integrity. It doesn’t fall apart quite so easily.”
GUYS, THE FINAL TWO CARDS EXACTLYFALL OFF THE HOUSE OF CARDS THEY CAREFULLY BUILT.
@caswhoevenisshe Thank you for your cursed insight. You are valued.
I think I’m just fully realizing, as I’m half-rewatching the show via YouTube reaction videos…we really weren’t supposed to love Dean. And we really were not the target audience, and by we I mean a much larger segment of folks than you may think. Eric Kripke (and also Robert Singer) didn’t want a bunch of queer OR mentally ill folks OR women OR people of color OR abuse survivors. Hell, he didn’t even really want an audience of macho manly men!
Eric Kripke was aiming for an audience of Eric Kripkes–the kind of whiny pseudo-intellectual nerdbro who finds men like s1 Dean threatening in real life, thinks being rejected romantically by a woman is comparable to real hardship, views any unfamiliar form of intimacy with some base level of suspicion, and expresses disgust at other men’s promiscuity not because he has more “respect” for women (and don’t get me started on the puritanism of equating sex with disrespect automatically), but because he resents that he can’t do the same.
When and why did the word attachment become a congruent synonym for love within the Star Wars fandom??
Sometimes I feel like reading Star Wars one shots or fics and it’s often the same statements that make me cringe and close the tab. Like „love isn’t allowed blah blah blah“, „the order is flawed because I cannot love another openly“, „how can the Jedi deem love wrong, it’s only natural“, etc.
Like what?
Even the movies make the distinction between love and attachment. Anakin tells Padmé for example that the Jedi do in fact love.
It’s just that the order comes first because as a willing member of said order that’s your duty. A partner would always come second. „Don‘t lose a hundred just to save one.“
And I mean even in real life there’s a clear difference between the two words: love and attachment. Most people wouldn’t tell someone they have feelings for, „I am attached to you“ rather than „I love you“. And I feel like just when you read those two phrases, they give off a completely different vibe. „I am attached to you“ seems more selfish, sort of cold and temporary, it implies a fear of loss somehow, whereas love sounds purer and honest and selfless and everlasting. (But maybe that’s also just me.)
And also how come when people say the Jedi or their Order was flawed, the only flaw they end up mentioning is the attachment rule. And that’s also only a flaw for them because they confuse attachment with love…
But like, you’re telling me an entire culture and people is flawed because they don’t put selfish borderline toxic romance on a pedestal, but rather see the flaw within exactly that type of „love“. And that to you is wrong because why?
Oh and of course how could I forget? The only other flaw that keeps getting mentioned is that they „didn’t do enough“ and they „let“ Anakin fall to the Dark Side and „allowed“ the Empire to rise. Yeah, let’s take all autonomy away from the edgy handsome villain and blame everybody else, because he baby.
Jedi have to go above and beyond to please the audience and are blamed and taken apart for every little mistake or not even mistake, just for „not doing enough“. But when is it actually enough? It seems to me never. What good they actually did gets ignored. On the other hand villains get to do the worst of the worst but get babied and praised for the smallest of kind acts. It’s just complete hypocrisy.
And to top it all of, a lot of the times the good guys or in this case Jedi are deemed as arrogant without really showing any sort of arrogance. What’s up with that? Why are they arrogant to you? Because they point out wrong from right, try to strive to do good over and over again as best as they can? I feel like people just really like doing what they want and desire with no regard to right or wrong and do not wish to be called out for it or face any sort of consequence. And when there’s somebody who does call out wrongdoings, they deem them as arrogant and hypocrites. And so the Jedi become the „actual bad guys“ and the bad guys become the heroes, who „are actually in the right“.
The honest answer–– as someone who has been in and out of the fandom, was a teen when the Prequels came out, and has always been pro-Jedi–– is: from the very beginning. The advertising for AOTC very much leaned on the forbidden-love trope and many people watched AOTC with the expectation that, as usual for forbidden-love stories, things would work out for Anakin/Padmé and the people “keeping them apart” to be proven wrong in the end. They did not expect Lucas in ROTS to then deconstruct the trope, show the consequences of “burn the universe down to save your lover,” and have Anakin be the direct cause of Padmé’s death.
The dialogue in the “attachment is forbidden; the Jedi are encouraged to love” scene in AOTC is not as clear as us pro-Jedi fans would wish. To teenaged me, Anakin was clearly saying that in order to get into Padmé’s pants and may have been twisting Jedi beliefs to justify why it’s okay to sleep with her. Lucas went very, very hard on the “show don’t tell” writing but the problem with that is some things need to be told, and if they are told, they need to be said from the mouth of someone who the audience knows won’t become Darth Vader.
(As a somewhat tangential but still related example: one of my grad school classmates in 2020, when our professor talked about not letting our students get attached to us, asked, “But isn’t attachment a good thing?” I actually used the pro-Jedi arguments/reasoning about attachment (without mentioning I got it from SW) to explain why it wasn’t a good thing. The professor backed me up 100%. Many people in the US really do think there is no negative meaning to the word attachment; they think attachment means connection.)
Worst of all, especially nowadays, people don’t realize Lucas was (is?) Buddhist. He was pretty darn clear about that during the Prequels; I’m not sure I knew any dedicated fan who didn’t know that. But that’s been forgotten over the years and the break between old fandom and new fandom with the rise of Tumblr and the Sequels bringing in new people doesn’t help anything. So the fact that a Buddhist made a film trilogy showing Buddhist ideals is just… ignored.
Yet despite all of that, I’m still firmly a pro-Jedi fan and have been since I saw the OT in 1994 and dived headfirst into what’s now Legends. Once you read what Lucas meant, when you think about the fact that the Prequels are a tragedy and deconstructing the forbidden-lover and will-do-anything-to-save-you tropes, yeah. It’s pretty clear the Jedi are meant to be the good guys and what attachment actually means.
tl:dr what if the ‘Jack the Ripper’ case in The Empty Hearse was a hint about Mary’s past that Sherlock, distracted and upset from his homecoming, simply missed?
A FEW DISCLAIMERS: I’m not a native English speaker and this wasn’t betad, so excuse the less-than-perfect English. Additionally, this is my first ever piece of meta so excuse the amateurism. Lastly, this may have been picked up before by other meta writers and if so - I’m not aware of it, as I’m quite new to this fandom.
As I was rewatching The Empty Hearse last night, researching for my newest fic, the Jack the Ripper scene/case stood out to me yet again. This is the first time I’ve watched the episode with such attention since reading @loudest-subtext-in-tv M-Theory in full, and since then I’ve been watching the episodes far more critically.
This case/scene always stood out as very strange to me. It’s the first official case Sherlock accepts with NSY immediately after his return, while he’s supposed to beworking to stop a devastating terrorist plot.
My funny little theory is that this case is actually subtext/hint/metaphor for fans who are questioning Mary’s background and the motivation behind her attachment to John. More importantly, to those who wonder how Sherlock could have possibly missed out on the hints that Mary was not who she said was.
The case, such as it is, would not even be a ‘1’ in Sherlock’s eyes, but as others have said before, the cases featured in episodes are supposed to say something about the show - subtext, essentially. And one of the biggest suggestions in M-Theory is that Mary was planted as John’s partner by Moriarty for a number of reasons: in the short run, to be able to get a sense about Sherlock and his status (is he actually dead? is he communicating with John?) and in the long run, to ‘burn Sherlock’s heart’ by having him find out hat John had moved on.
My rewatch last night suddenly made the scene seem a bit different than before. Let me guide you through it (transcription with credits to Ariane DeVere):
Sherlock and Molly (a John mirror and a de-facto replacement of John in this episode) are shown into a crypt that houses a skeleton. This is a NSY case, since Lestarde is the one bringing them into the crypt.
LESTRADE: This one’s got us all baffled.
SHERLOCK: Mmm. I don’t doubt it.
This skeleton is the same ‘skeleton mystery’ that Sherlock was reading about earlier in the episode. The skeleton is surrounded by an empty carafe and wine glass on one side and a syringe on another. I read that some fans seem to think the skeleton is wearing Sherlock’s clothes (which made me laugh as I remembered this scene from The X-Files).
Now, let’s start with the obvious. We have a skeleton in a discussion about Mary’s secret past life. Mary literally has skeletons in her closet, skeletons that Sherlock has to pick up on in order to question who and what she is. In a way, if this is supposed to be subtext, it’s fairly on the nose.
Sherlock begins deducing immediately using his sense of smell, represented by writing on the screen:
PINE?
SPRUCE?
CEDAR
NEW MOTHBALLS
…
Fire Damage
So in my reading of this, Sherlock sniffs for and maybe expects ‘old-timey’ smells - pine, spruce, cedar. @loudest-subtext-in-tv, in a post that no longer exists, pointed out that this is a hint to Sherlock’s state of mind - he spruced up for meeting John, and was instead met violence and rejection, leaving him pining. Hmmm. Instead what he actually smells are new mothballs and fire damage.
The new mothballs smell seems to be his first hint that something is off - a skeleton in this stage of decay should indicate a long period of time in this condition, but instead that new mothballs suggest that the timing is off.
Let’s not ignore the ‘fire damage’ smell as well. Something was burning. Is it Sherlock’s heart?
MOLLY: What is it?
(Sherlock gets out his phone and holds it up high to try and get a signal.)
MOLLY: You’re on to something, aren’t you?
SHERLOCK: Mm, maybe.
(John’s voice sounds in his head and the words he speaks appear in Sherlock’s mind.
SHOW OFF
Sherlock senses that something is off, that it doesn’t add up, but something stops him.
It’s John berating voice, telling him off in a way that’s very similar to the night of their reunion.
MOLLY: Trains?
SHERLOCK: Trains.
What a weird exchange for two Londoners in a crypt, wouldn’t you say? We’re being called out about the trains. Here’s what LSiT writes about trains in this episode:
We then get a lot of trains and tunnels imagery, which carries both sexual connotations, and the idea of twists and turns and paths intersecting at various places. If this is meant to be a visual metaphor for Moriarty’s plot and the involvement of Mary, Mycroft, and Magnussen, it certainly works. We got train track imagery two episodes in a row during John and Sherlock’s investigations in the The Blind Banker and The Great Game, after all, both of which revolved around Mycroft’s involvement with Moriarty. It visually suggests the idea of connections.
John’s breathing of Sherlock in his mind continues throughout the scene.
MOLLY: Male, forty to fifty.
(She looks round at Sherlock.)
MOLLY: Ooh, sorry, did you want to be …?
SHERLOCK: Er, no, please. Be my guest.
(John’s voice sounds in his mind again.)
JOHN (voiceover): You jealous?
(His second word appears simultaneously in front of Sherlock’s mind’s eye.)
JEALOUS?
SHERLOCK (angrily, through gritted teeth): Shut up!
Sherlock is distracted by none other than John accusing him of being jealous when Molly (John?) approaches the skeleton and asks if he wants to inspect it - to look into it, to see what mysteries it’s hiding.
MOLLY: Doesn’t make sense.
LESTRADE: What doesn’t?
(Sherlock gently blows away the dust around the hand and continues blowing towards the edge of the table.)
MOLLY: This skeleton – it’s … it can’t be any more than …
SHERLOCK and MOLLY (simultaneously): … six months old.
This six months hint, I think, was the thing that made me think of this scene in the context of John and Mary’s relationship. I think by this point it’s agreed upon in fanlore that John and Mary have known each other and/or dated for six months when Sherlock returns. John is probably already living in Mary’s flat in October, about a month before Sherlock comes back - so much so that Lestrade comes over there to give him the DVD containing Sherlock’s video message. This, despite the fact Mary’s first comment on John’s blog is left on April (prompting Harry to ask ‘Who’s Mary?’), so that could roughly suggest the ~six months timeline is correct.
So we have Sherlock confused - we have a case of a skeleton (some secret) that’s not as old as it’s supposed to be (Mary’s identity as Mary Morstan) and something significant happened to it around six months ago.
Sherlock pulls out a book from the drawer in the table -
How I Did It
By
Jack the Ripper
And, after being berated by John inside his head yet again, Sherlock explains:
The-the-the corpse is-is six months old; it’s dressed in a shoddy Victorian outfit from a museum. It’s been displayed on a dummy for many years in a case facing south-east judging from the fading of the fabric. It was sold off in a fire-damage sale … (he gets out his phone and shows the screen to Greg) … a week ago.
LESTRADE:So the whole thing was a fake.
SHERLOCK: Yes.
(He turns and heads out of the room.)
LESTRADE:Looked so promising.
SHERLOCK (already out of sight): Facile.
So here we have a few more things that points in the direction of hints we’ll hear and see again S3 and M-Theory: a shoddy victorian outfit, like Mary in TAB, a dummy, like in His Last Vow, and of course the fire, burning and even ripping Sherlock’s heart out (Mary shooting Sherlock in the heart).
Would this be Moriarty, playing a game of clue with Sherlock, telling him ‘this is how I’m going to burn your heart’? By planting a dummy, displayed for many years, on a corpse that’s six months old?
Lestrade, who - let’s remember - opened this scene by telling Sherlock ‘this one’s got us all baffled’, announces it was all a fake, having looked so promising. Is Lestrade mirroring Mrs. Hudson’s words earlier in the episode? Surprised that John had moved on and was somewhat baffled by John and Mary’s relationship?
Also, a note about Jack the Ripper and Moriarty from Baker Street wikia:“Due to the very nature of [the Jack the Ripper] case, it has proven to be very popular to pit [Sherlock] against one of history’s most infamous killers. The sheer amount of times these two have clashed through various media rivals that of Sherlock and Moriarty.”
And then Molly, John’s mirror, wonders out loud:
MOLLY: Why would someone go to all that trouble?
SHERLOCK (offscreen): Why indeed, John?
Dear Molly here is actually asking the right question - why would anyone go through all that trouble?
Sherlock, distracted and confused and even somewhat disappointed seems to be missing out on the clue entirely, even when Molly raises this very obvious question herself. Is it Sherlock’s fear of upsetting John further that prevents him from looking more deeply into this?
Is this Moftiss’ explanation for how Sherlock missed out on such a huge clue, as it was standing right in front of his eyes?
Of course, later in the episode we discover that sometime during this scene Sherlock figured out who actually placed that skeleton there - it was Anderson, in what others note as an attempt to convince Sherlock to come out of his hiding after his return.
Anderson represents the show’s fans in this episode, and when Sherlock berates Anderson for wasting NSY’s time by staging a fake crime scene it almost seems as if Moftiss are berating the fans for asking stupid questions about Mary and her relationship with John.
In a way, they sort of rule out this entire post - it was Anderson, not Moriarty. But let’s not forget that according to M-Theory (and in general) Moriarty works via proxy. It was Anderson and Donovan who fell for Moriarty’s trap of suspicion in TRF. How difficult would it be for Moriarty to push Anderson to do something like setting up a fake crime scene?
Also let’s not forget that while Anderson is ridiculed in TEH, he’s the one who knows where to find Sherlock in HLV (either because Sherlock wants him to find him in his bolthole, or because Moftiss are saying the fans are right and are on track).
Hey, this is pretty neat! I don’t think I ever consciously connected that there’s a Sherlock-dressed dummy in both TEH *and* HLV, even though I talked about the symbolism of the dummies separately; it didn’t occur to me because the HLV one was actually John, but it drew upon the ACD canon actual-dummy used to foil Moran, so there is a real matching pair. The HLV dummy scene deals directly with Mary’s past with allusions to Moran in canon, so it makes sense that the dummy in TEH is related.
Comparing the two dummy scenes is cool, reading this brought to mind that Mary accentuated her Sherlock-like traits to draw John in: intelligent, a bit bossy, dark sense of humor, helpful skillset, comes across as nice but in an unsettling acerbic way that John relates to and is motivated to believe the best about, etc. So a Sherlock-costumed dummy in TEH is a great symbol not just of Sherlock getting his heart burnt out by Mary showing up six months ago, but specifically of Mary assuming an attention-grabbing Sherlock-ish facade six months ago and Sherlock not being able to fathom why such a thing would be orchestrated because his mind is too preoccupied with losing John to think clearly.
I’m on the fence about whether Moriarty is directly involved in that case by manipulating Anderson. It’s simplest to speculate in terms of Moriarty exerting direct leverage over people, such that they’d be aware they’re pawns, but I also take it seriously that Moriarty is capable of manipulating people without ever directly interacting with them or threatening them, just by planting ideas via intermediaries for them to pursue. For example, in M-theory I said that Dr. Frankland was probably working with Moriarty to cover up his crimes, and Moriarty’s interest in seeing Sherlock’s reaction to fear gas (to see if it disables Sherlock’s ability to think clearly) made it a mutually beneficial arrangement. But the way Moriarty gets Sherlock involved in the case is to have Dr. Frankland suggest to Henry Knight that Henry get Sherlock on the case, which is how we get the weird scenario of Dr. Frankland summoning Sherlock to expose his own conspiracy. That doesn’t make sense for a normal criminal to do, but Moriarty deliberately baits Sherlock just to watch him solve crimes, and Moriarty doesn’t have any affection for the criminals he exposes for that entertainment. So Henry Knight was a pawn of Moriarty’s without even knowing it, just because he was manipulated by someone working with Moriarty.
So while I believe Anderson’s guilt that he fell for a Moriarty scheme and wrongly accused Sherlock is pure, and he would not agree to do anything for Moriarty even if threatened, Anderson and Donovan were unknowingly manipulated in TRF to carry out Moriarty’s schemes. If I’m right that both Anonymous and theimprobableone are Moriarty’s aliases, then Moriarty is always pulling strings online, behind masks. It would be really easy to pose as a fan of Sherlock’s online and suggest the scheme to Anderson, or befriend a member of The Empty Hearse club online (ahem, goth Sheriarty chick) and have that person suggest they try to summon Sherlock back with that scheme, etc. The Jack the Ripper scheme is perfectly in line with Moriarty’s MO to bait Sherlock into solving orchestrated crimes.
hey guys, at some point over the last few years Google Drive had an update that makes the old link to the drive not work – basically if you use the old link I have to manually approve every single person who tries to get access
The drive has everything I could save from @loudest-subtext-in-tv (including M-Theory) a few gems from @heimishtheidealhusband (like the brilliant and still relevant “Ghost Stories are Gay Stories” and essays from other people who were active at the time.
I still think that according to the show we watched, Johnlock is canon. It’s just too bad that the only two people who didn’t realize it were the showrunners
Please spread this new link around and tag anybody who you think might want to read these great metas!
Irene introduced to the audience with a riding crop and a woman in bed to show that she’s gay and Sherlock introduced to the audience with a riding crop and a dead body to show that he’s gay but very very lonely
nothing fucks me up like sam’s willingness to accept rejection, like it couldn’t have been any other way, like it’s what he deserves
demon bobby tells him to lose his number and he doesn’t question it. a fake voicemail from dean tells him he’s a monster that needs to be put down and he doesn’t question it. lucifer tells him he is the only real thing sam will ever know, and he believes him. because it’s all his fault. he left his family, he started the apocalypse, he lost his soul and did terrible things, he let lucifer play him, he failed charlie, he failed kevin, he failed eileen, he failed rowena, and he failed dean, time and time again. and he isn’t clean.
and yet he has faith, he has hope. for the world, his brother, his enemies. just not for himself. he was doomed the moment a demon set foot in his nursery.
he keeps going anyway, because as long as he is more useful to the world alive than dead, then that’s what he’ll remain. he doesn’t matter. everyone else does. he doesn’t matter.
there has to be at least oneangel who believes that michael getting stuck in the cage was punishment from god for trying to take the easy way out by using adam instead of dean, right? like, it was never supposed to be adam. the michael sword was supposed to be dean. that was the Divine Plan. but the archangels, in a show of hubris or doubt or both, decided that a substitution would be good enough. they decided that they had the right to make that choice.
andthat’s why everything in heaven went to shit after the not-battle at stull. the archangels failed the test.
I see a lot of people talking about Galidraan of late and not knowing the full details of the incident as far as canon goes? And lots of confusion over what exactly happened? So to give a run down of events:
- Jango and the (True)* Mandalorians were contracted to take out insurgents by the governor of Galidraan. The insurgents were armed combatants and appeared to have a fortified base.
- Insurgents defeated, Jango goes to the Governor for payment. Payment is apparently the location of Tor Vizsla and Death Watch.
- Tor Vizsla and Death Watch are with the Galidraan Governor and attempt to kill Jango. Jango flees out a window but jetpack is damaged and he is forced to crash before he can make it back to camp. He tries to signal Myles of trouble but comm line is garbled.
- Governor tells Tor Vizsla he called the Jedi for help. Claiming Mandalorians were slaughtering political protesters - technically true from a certain point of view. Tor says to add that the Mandalorians were killing women children as well and that Death Watch would make “proof”.
- Jango arrives too late to warn the rest of the True Mandalorians that the whole job was a trap and they needed to run.
- Dooku orders the True Mandalorians surrender with Komari Vosa, his padawan, adding essentially “or else.”
- Jango orders the True Mandalorians to open fire.
- aside from Jango, seemingly all other Mandalorians are killed. (Silas was revealed to have also survived the incident in the previous comic issue). Before collapsing in defeat and being taken captive Jango kills several Jedi bare-handed.
- Dooku looks over the battlefield troubled by the entire incident. He and the rest of the Order eventually learn the truth.
- the Governor sells Jango into slavery unbeknownst to the Jedi and Republic.
* I put True in parentheses because the Open Season comics refer to Jango’s group simply as Mandalorians.
Adding some comic panels for context to this post.
The insurrectionists the True Mandalorians were hired to kill. As seen they are armed and have a fortified base:
Some exposition on the deal between the True Mandalorians and Governor of Galidraan:
The trap Tor Vizsla, Death Watch and Governor set up:
The ultimatum the Jedi give and Jango’s choosing violence:
Also the fact that Jango learned that it was a Death Watch trap just before the Jedi arrived:
And gets shot down trying to escape, only to see the Jedi’s ships and try to get his people to evacuate:
I admit I thought about adding those panels but didn’t since my OP discussed that plot point and I was trying to keep the post addition short.
But I’m glad you added them because it does highlight that when faced with the realization Galidraan was a Death Watch trap Jango chose Flight first (a bit literally too). He was trying to get him and his people out of a bad situation, attempting to order evac.
It’s only when the Jedi get the the True Mandalorian camp and order they surrender or face ‘swift justuce’ for crimes they didn’t commit that Jango switches from Flight to Fight.
Okay, I may be a bit biased, but just reading the pages provided, this is what I see happening:
Jango and the True Mandalorians have been tricked. Jango knows this and wants to get his people out of there.
Death Watch has made things look very bad. They killed innocents and framed Jango and Friends.
The Jedi show up before Jango can get his people off world.
Dooku says “You stand accused of murder. Surrender now and we will ensure you are treated fairly.”
His apprentice (I am assume) says “But fight us, and we will bring swift justice!”
Jango drops down and says “Mandalorians open fire!”
Those are the facts.
Here is how I interpret the dialogue. What Dooku is saying by the Mandalorians will be treated fairly is that there will be a chance for them to explain there side of the story. It’s just not right here when everyone is holding blasters. The Jedi are here to make sure no more innocents are killed, which will be ensured when Jango and his people surrender. Then a proper investigation can be held, which is the proper time and place for Jango to explain when nobody is in danger of being shot.
The Padawan’s wording is poor and obviously influenced by her emotions, like disgust at the innocents killed. What she’s trying to say is if you don’t surrender and decide to fight us, we will kick your butts. And we will not be playing nice.
Jango arrives and says to himself. “Yeah, kriff that. No one will ever believe that we didn’t kill those innocents. The galaxy and Jedi don’t like us historically. If we lay down our weapons, we’ll just be killed anyway. Better to fight our way out and have a chance of making it out alive.” So he orders the Mandalorians to fire.
What we have here is a bad case of physical and cultural misinformation. The Jedi have bad info on what has happened. They also have a mouthy padawan with poor word choice. The Mandalorians don’t know that when the Jedi say they will be treated fairly, they really mean it and will do their best to make sure it happens.
Jango thinks firing the first shot is his only option. He does, and the Jedi respond by fighting back. No one was perfect, but they were all trying their best. It’s written as a tragedy, destined to end in loss because none of the good guys had all the information they needed for things to end well. No one is to blame.
This post is getting really long and I genuinely appreciate people responding to this post and adding to it. I know that’s not the norm on tumblr anymore but I’ve been on this hellsite since 2012 (even if this blog is significantly younger) . I kind of miss post threads getting lengthy like this.
I admit, I originally made the OP when a lot of people started posting about how ‘Jango shot first’ and how this drastically changed their opinion of Galidraan. Mostly implying they went from blaming the Jedi for it to blaming Jango. I found that sentiment unfair. So I made the OP to try to clear the air and let people draw their own conclusions based off a more in-depth explanation of events.
And reading back over the post I can see that I wasn’t as unbiased as I could have been in recapping events. This is not because of any anti Jedi sentiment, I just don’t like Komari Vosa and that bias definitely bled through. Sorry about that. Thank you for pointing that out and addessing it.
Heh, I was definitely in the blame Jango boat until this post. All I knew about Galidraan was from Wookiepedia. But before I reblogged I felt I should give Jango the same benefit of the doubt as I was giving the Jedi, especially since it was now clear he was in the middle of trying to evacuate his people instead of retaliating against those who tricked him. Your post definitely changed my view on Jango in this to be much more positive. So thank you!
I’m pretty sure a good part of the immediate “blame Jango” was because for so long, people who had never seen the comic- including myself- had been told the Jedi were at fault, it was the Jedi, the Jedi were the bad guys, blame the Jedi, etc, etc, ad nauseam.
So seeing the part where Jango just ordered “open fire” was a relief and such a nice change from the Jedi bashing.
I somehow doubt that this will change the Jedi Haters’ minds, and we’ll still be stuck with the bashing, but this new info is nice.
Oh for sure. Some of it was definitely a pushback against anti Jedi sentiment.
Another part of that is definitely fanfic and the fact the two characters most likely to bring up Galidraan are also the two characters that canonically blame the Jedi for it; Jango and Dooku.
It is In Character for them to blame the Jedi even though the Jedi weren’t really at fault. So to hear about the event from all the fanfics about Jango and/or Dooku, it really sounds like Jedi did this really terrible thing with little to no counter argument about it (Jedi generally agree what happened was a tragedy which doesn’t clear things up).
So finding out ‘Jango shot first’ came across as this huge revelation to a lot of people. Like fanfic writers were lying about how Galidraan happened and now the truth was revealed. When it’s fairier to say it’s a case of Unreliable Narration due to characterization.
It’s not something I really paid attention to before it became discourse. Largely because I knew Jango was Biased about Galidraan and to take all the Jedi hate Jango has as characterization rather than an accurate account of events.
It’s definitely become something I take more care in writing about now. Make Jedi characters explain their version of events in more detail, have other chatacters argue against Jango’s or Dooku’s retelling of events. Or even just writing Jango’s character differently to give a fairer portrayal of events.
the fact that the swords thorin and company find in the trolls’ hoard are from gondolin is just WILD to me like imagine ur just u kno. on ur adventure, fighting minor magical creatures, and you find these objects that are 7,000 years old from a city of elven warriors that was destroyed by Satan and was then. Literally Obliterated along with the rest of the subcontinent in a war between the gods.
OH and like……imagine elrond in this scenario!!!!
so you’re elrond and you’re like uhh 6,440 years old (i did the math, this Is how old he was in the beginning of The Hobbit) and you’re dad’s family was from gondolin but it was destroyed before your birth and then when you were a young adult the entire Fucking Subcontinent of Beleriand was destroyed and washed away by the ocean, so its not like anyone could even visit the ruins of gondolin Anyway
and you’ve always heard stories of gondolin, you know survivors, some of them still live in rivendell but like…..It’s Gone! and has been gone for…..6,000+ years! so you don’t think about it much
and then 13 grumpy dwarves and a hobbit and your old pal mithrandir (who is up to his Old Tricks again) show up in your house one summer night with the sword of your great grandfather Turgon, the king of gondolin!!??? and the sword of ecthelion the balrog-slayer?????
like imagine this grumpy dwarf hands you a sword and asks what it is and you look at it and realize its 1) the sword of your great-grandfather who died before you were born and 2) somehow survived the fall of gondolin, the war of wrath, and like……..then 6,000 years of on-and-off wars and turmoil and Shit in middle earth before winding up in the possession of some trolls and then JUST happening to be found by a party of dwarves and a wizard
And he’s just like : OK, Thorin, look after it. Because we are very definitely not having any arguments about heirlooms here.
Rivendell Welcomes Dwarves. Even Dwarves carrying heirlooms of my house that were stolen. This is not Doriath, Thorin is not from Nogrod, and we are absolutely not doing a replay of the massacre of Sarn Athrad over a sword I don’t need.
astrabear said: I’ve only seen random episodes here and there, but it sounds like the show started as a more faithful adaptation of the movie (which had horrible misogyny) and evolved into something much more thoughtful and humane.
Okay, so MASH is my comfort show and I am absolutely biased about it. But I do want to address this quickly because it’s important:
MASHstarted exactly as you’d expect of a war time show filmed in the 1970s. The men talk quick the women are loose and the jokes and tongue in cheek comments are cringeworthy.
Season 1 is the worst by far, but I’d argue this trend continues up until the end of Season 3.
There are two reasons for this:
1. Trapper John, one of the original characters of the MASH book and movie, is a married man who is an adulterer. (Hold that thought).
2. Colonel Henry Blake, the man in charge of the 4077th MASH is…an idiot. He’s a fine doctor, but he is not an army man and he is constantly manipulated by everyone around him. He’s a weak character that is a speed bump - not a hindrance - to everyone else’ idiocy. He can’t stop anyone, he can’t help anyone, he’s just there.
At the end of season 3, Blake dies off screen. Also off-screen, just before the start of season 4 - Trapper John Leaves.
Remember what I said about adultery? It’s one of the big Sins that the show’s most odious character, Frank Burns, is mocked for. His illicit relationship with Margaret has so much drama because Frank is married. Frank and Margaret’s affair is constantly mocked and teased…Henry and Trapper’s infidelity…not as much.
Our Hero, Hawkeye, has a whole episode where he agonizes over having a relationship with a married woman and doesn’t think he can morally justify it. It makes for some fine hypocrisy all around.
Start of Season 4, we get BJ Hunnicutt, devoted husband and father, and Colonel Sherman Potter, career soldier who had fought in both world wars.
And it’s in season 4 that things change.
No more is the constant unchecked mayhem permitted. Sherman allows a certain level of chaos, but there is a threshold and the whole unit responds to that threshold.
Furthermore, BJ serves as a *perfect* foil to Hawkeye’s womanizing. He neither condones nor encourages it, but he doesn’t partake. he loves his wife Peggy and his daughter Erin. He will do nothing to harm them. This, subtly, seeps into the narrative of Hawkeye’s character too. He loves women, but his interactions become more meaningful and less physically charged.
He still sleeps around, but it’s not as blunt. His motivations are more emotional and his words stop being patronizing and instead start having some depth of character.
Alan Alda starts directing episodes. He’d done his directorial debut in season 3, but season 4 is when he begins doing it in earnest.
Then, Season 5 - Margaret breaks up with Frank. She’s sick of being his dirty secret and she wants to have a real relationship. She gets one, and horrifies Frank for the remainder of the season as he tries to get her back and she refuses.
Alan Alda starts writing AND directing episodes, and now we’re in the money slot.
Season 6, Frank leaves and our crew is complete with his replacement: Charles Emerson Winchester III.
Each season from the start is getting better and better, but it’s really season 6 onward that fly.
Frank had been a foil and a villain, but he was a tired joke by season 6. He was a terrible surgeon, and now that Margaret had freed herself from him, he had no place in the unit. Charles was a wonderful surgeon and now the entire crew is talented, smart, and the only conflicts they have are of the intellectual kind.
And Alan Alda is a man who loves the mind.
Every time an episode started with “written by Alan Alda” you were in for a ride.
This show shied away from nothing.
Gay soldier afraid to be outed? Hawkeye was there defending him.
A soldier survives the war only to find out that he has leukemia? (That was Patrick Swayze and Laurence Fishbourne’s cameo episode btw) - we’re going to have a whole episode dedicated to crisis of faith.
PTSD? Hawkeye had it and showed it. He had a therapist, Sidney, who sat by his side more than once as he tried to come to terms with what it mean to be a doctor patching kids up on an assembly line during a war.
Sexism? Margaret Houllian evolved from the sexy nurse trope to a confident woman who was brilliant at her job and deserved respect
American war crimes? The fate of children fathered by americans and left behind during the war? Language and cultural barriers? the impact of america on the indigeonous peoples of Korea? Slavery? Prostitution and child trafficking? Drafting? Mental Health? A PLUS SIZED WOMAN OF COLOR TELLING A WHITE MAN OFF FOR NEVER LOOKING HER WAY WHEN HE SLEEPS WITH EVERY OTHER NURSE, AND TELLING HIM THAT SHE’S CUTE AS HELL AND DESERVES ATTENTION?
This show went straight for the heart strings every time.
Then it gave you an episode where to deal with the Horror, the MASH made an olympic games for themselves and Margaret beats everyone in a crutches race.
Father Mulcahy constantly discusses the orphanage - WAR orphans - that he cared for. We see them, and we see the children.
We see the pain and horror and trauma episode after episode blindsiding you when you least expect it.
It’s all fun and games until a baby is left on your doorstep because it’s american born and will be mutilated or killed if it stays with its korean family.
That sniper that’s been shooting at the MASH unit all episode? he’s a scared kid separated from his troop and he didn’t know what to do. They find and treat his wound anyway.
MASH could have been Frank Burns all the way, it could have been Blind Authoritarianism and Down With The Commies, but Frank was always the enemy of the show. He was always the villain. The show never once glorified America or its actions in the war, and instead showed the very real consequences of America to both the Korean people and to the Americans who were forced to be there in the first place.
MASH isn’t a great show because it’s an Army Strong show. It’s a great show because it’s real. It showed the struggles of a diverse cast of characters in a horrible situation, and it refused to back away from the pain.
And in that pain, it showed people trying their very best to find ways to keep moving on. It’s the found family of all found families. And the reason MASH will likely never have a remake, is that it was SO AGAINST American Military Dominance that it would be seen as UnAmerican today. Even as it remains an American Classic.
Give MASH a shot. Start at Season 4, and when you fall in love - go back and watch Season 1-3 to appreciate just how much every actor, writer, and crewmember fought to make this show what it became.
I’ve no idea how much of this show I’ve seen; it’s one of the ones that if I’ve seen any given episode, it’s because Mom had the TV on in a room I happened to be in at the time. I knew it’s good, but clearly I should watch it in order sometime, I hadn’t realized there’s narrative arcs.
(Also clearly it has an audience that never picked up on, like, any of this. My evidence: my mother likes this show…)
I wanna talk a little bit about Trapper John vs. Frank Burns.
The show predates me but I’ve seen a lot of it, and most importantly, I’ve seen the movie on which it was based, because if you’ve seen the movie, you’re a lot more aware of something the TV series downplayed.
You see, while both Trapper John and Frank Burns are cheating on their wives, Frank Burns is alsoamassive hypocrite, not for having the affair with Margaret, but because he’s a socially conservative evangelical Christian, and judgemental as hell of the sins of others while engaging in those same sins.
Whereas Trapper John is not.
In the film, that’s a lot more obvious. It’s not entirely gone from the series, either, but the Christian part is toned way down - enough that if you don’t know it already, you’re probably not super likely to pick it up.
(The judgemental of others part isn’t, but that doesn’t work as well without the rest. It makes him more petty than hypocritical.)
Burns was part of the of the social faction which became the evangelical segregationists which became the anti-abortion movement which became the moral majority which became the religious and radical right and the horror show which is the Republican Party of our time. He’s the people Barry Goldwater - no great shakes himself - referred to when he quite accurately said:
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.
Truest thing Barry Goldwater ever said.
But that’s who Frank Burns is. The first time he hooks up with Margaret, it’s supposedly for bible study.
And that’s why he’s judged for his behaviour by the show, while Trapper John isn’t. Not because of the sin itself, but because of the sheer, unmitigated, unending hypocrisy of everything he says he believes vs. everything he actually does.
Now, you can say that’s not enough for you and that’s fine, tastes and so on. And you can wonder why the evangelical Christian angle was toned down so much for the TV series if you want, but I think we know the whys of that. And you can certainly say that playing that down weakened what they were doing - I’d certainly agree.
But there is a reason, and there is a point.
Frank Burns’s callous hypocrisy is why.
Seconding everything OP and @solarbird said. I’m currently on my first sequential watch-through of MASH, having seen the odd episode here and there when I was young at my grandma’s house. I’m in season six right now, and the tone change from season four on was dramatic. And yes, the other characters mock Frank Burns not because he’s flawed - they mock him because he loves to tell other people how they should live their lives and criticise their lack of morals, when he’s the worst kind of hypocrite.
I also MUST add that another reason the show improved after those early series was because Loretta Swit (Margaret) made a stand. She’s missing from a big chunk of episodes in season four, because she refused to come back until her character got some better writing. She took a job on stage instead while she got her assurances for some character development. And so in season five, Margaret dumps Frank, who was never going to leave his wife for her, and moves on with her life. Loretta took a risk, and made the entirely male creative team give their female lead some respect.
The sad thing about MASH, for a show made nearly fifty years ago now, is how much of it is still relevant. All that commentary about war, about humanity’s flaws, that’s all very pointed today. Having said that, there is some stuff that definitely hasn’t aged well. The worst of it is some of the racial portrayals, especially in the early seasons. It improves as the show progresses, but there’s still an attitude in what I’m seeing that all Asians are interchangeable, and the audience won’t know or care if a Japanese heritage actor plays a Korean. And yes, the misogyny, as already referenced. So be aware of that if you’re going in. But I do think the good and relevant stuff outweighs it, and from season four on, you can see the creators were really trying, even when sometimes they still (by today’s standards) got it wrong.
