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I still get stressed out thinking about the time a post of mine got picked up by sherlockfandomhateswomen.

Basically, I was reccing two Sherlock fics where Irene gets genderswapped – in one, very literally, and in the other Sebastian Moran does all the creepy stuff Irene does and more but it’s a lot easier to see how bad it is when a man is doing it. Irene is a character I want to love, but I was incredibly disappointed by the way Sherlock BBC handled her, so I said:

It’s disturbing that the only way to save the Irene Adler character (who’s supposed to be the smartest woman in the ACD Sherlock Canon) is to turn her into a man, but it somehow seems less fraught, like some of the toxic aspects of Irene’s character, like the way she’s only clever about sex, seem more OK on a man.

As soon as the post got picked up by sherlockfandomhateswomen, I deleted the post, and since this was in the lead-up to the total melt down of the Sherlock fandom, I seriously considered deleting my blog. Also hiding under a rock. And crying a lot.

I ended up rewriting the post, being MUCH more careful about tone, and I think I still ended up expressing what I wanted to say.

But, seriously, a quick note could have had the same effect. I am not someone who spams ship tags with hate.

I’m a person who can’t help but hold media portrayals of women to a higher standard. There are so many sloppily written women, who don’t seem to have their own motivations and character arc, and who seem to make weird decisions for no reason just to move the plot along. So I’m hypersensitive to it.

I don’t want to be pissed off about Irene. I want to love her forever and have her fpreg babies. (Except that in real life there is not enough money in the universe to make me be pregnant again, because I felt like I was dying every day for 7.5 months, twice.)

And now one of the top hits for my tumblr is sherlockfandomhateswomen.

[Edit: I changed this a little to make it clear I was talking about the writing of female characters and not situations where a fully fleshed out female character has flaws.]

 

Constantine: the Hellblazer

I feel like all of the flashbacks are from John’s point of view and may be colored by his current self-loathing. Because, based on the text, it really doesn’t seem like he notices that she’s going transparent. (I don’t think she is actually disappearing in that last panel; I think she is just obscured by his cigarette smoke.). When he says, “What’s all this? Thought you’d left the magical life,” it really seems like he has no grasp of how serious the situation is. Part of the issue may be that the main thing that’s worrying her is that her family can’t see her, and I don’t think John has a frame of reference for that as a bad thing.

If he doesn’t understand how much risk she’s in, I can understand him not being able to be around her. I had a super terrible break up in my early 20s. Where I felt like I was the villain because of my issues with drugs and depression, and it took me years to be able to be friends with her and hang out without feeling like I had to walk on eggshells.

He was also obviously so mad at her (all the defaced photos), which so fits in with my idea of Constantine as someone who falls hard for people in the most immature and destructive way and cannot be a grown up, no matter what the stakes.

It’s interesting (bot not surprising) that Gary was the ghost he cared about the most. After Gary got destroyed, John’s just like, go ahead tentacle monster, eat everyone, I don’t give a fuck.