A shadowy game!

I love it when movies cornily stick in their own title. Sherlock Holmes 2: Let's Get Holmesy or whatever it was called was excellent, awesome, and fabulous. And did I mention it was fun? It was very fun. We had a blast!

I love the chemistry between the pair of them, and in some ways I think this script might've been a little tighter. I loved the first, though, and you never really can tell if a movie is multi-watch material or not until you watch it again later. (When the DVD comes out, I will at last know.) I don't know if talking about foreshadowing with people so often has made me pay more attention to it or this movie just had a good amount of it, but the foreshadowing was cleverly done. I'm still tired of all the slow-motion (damn you, Zack Snyder!) but at least in these movies the slow-motion sometimes comes as an excuse to monologue about the exact fight choreography Holmes is planning to use.

Now do Arsene Lupin, guys! I love him so very, very much.

I'm extremely tired. Blah. But movie times! They are fun. Edit: Though notably, the previews were all for movies I don't have the slightest interest in seeing. Lame!

Edit edit: Did I mention how adorably catty Holmes and Watson were? And how I really enjoy Holmes's sulking and Watson's oft-used much-suffered face? I didn't? Oh, well, I really like those things a lot. Just so you know.

Also, liked the guy they cast for Moriarty.

Feminism and what it means to me, or you

Followed la_vie_noire (a random whim! I remembered her from the olden days and went to check her current blog) to this very well-constructed list describing the kinds of abuse that women experience when speaking up for their own equality.

Here's the thing. I have experienced all of this abuse from people in person, because I'm loud and probably annoying, and I talk about this kind of stuff a lot. I am incapable of sitting through Avatar and not noticing that Sigourney Weaver (who I think of as Ripley, and most people probably also do) is playing a character who exists to show off the positive feminine qualities of a) being a strawman b)having motherly qualities c) not being as good at the job she trained her whole life for as A Man d) getting silenced in conversations by male characters, even those who by no rights would outrank her in a realistic depiction of the setting she is in and worst, e) dies ignominiously, after being the vehicle for the salvation of the "good guys". (Let's not even get started with my dislike of the noble savage story here, or the fact that we got around having ANY colored persons in the main cast by making them all pale-blue CGI characters (except Michelle Rodriguez, who ALSO died; or the fact that these so-called good guys were so good because they went around mindraping everything on their fucking planet. Let's just try to stick to the one, big problem of the sexism in this movie.)

The worst part about this abuse is that people who are otherwise completely rational, forward-thinking, intelligent, friendly, or even believe themselves to be in favor of equality and women's rights-- people who by all rights should be aware of this abuse-- are often the people who are the source of the abuse. To them, it's funny to joke about raping lady characters, and their friends are weird for 'overreacting'. To them, it's completely acceptable to have spent many years calling me, behind my back, "the temperamental one", because evidently, feeling passion about something automatically nulls the validity of my arguments.

These are people who would call me the volatile one, when they are best friends with someone who used to get into fights, or once beat someone with a golf club, or once got so angry over a debate about whether X Men 3 was good or not that they punched a tree. As an adult, not a teenager.

You know why I'm the volatile one? It's because I'm female. Not just because I'm female: but because I'm female, yet I act, talk, and think like they think a man should act.

Some of these people I have distanced myself from. Because you know what? I don't need to be friends with someone who can't be bothered to respect who I am, or to acknowledge me in conversations. Some of these people I've tried to stick by because I believe they're capable of learning from their mistakes, and understanding that yes, women really ARE being oppressed, and no, men really AREN'T being attacked as much as women.

You know what a big problem in society is? The lack of fluidity in gender roles. Because just as I get flak (called "butch" or "emotional" or "fat" or "ugly" by people because I am not their standard ideal of a woman), so do my male friends who have a gentle nature, like cooking, and think kids are adorable. I'm not even talking about my male friends who kind of want to wear dresses, or my friends who are biologically male, but have chosen to become female because they prefer it-- but you know what, all of those friends get just as much flak as I do. Men, standard men, can quit whining about how they're just as oppressed and I'm making a big deal out of nothing, because they are the ones that built this society, and they are not suffering this problem. But the women who want to be feminine shouldn't feel like being feminine means they have to stand by and "let the men talk" when conversations are occurring. The men who want to bake and like to paint and write poetry should not be called faggots and bullied and harassed by people around them just for feeling the way they do.

The thing that struck me most true about this article, for all that it reminded me of some pretty bad times with my real-life friends saying the same kind of shit described here, is the paragraph about female beauty being treated as the norm. I've been talking about this for the last few weeks in increasing agitation, actually, because everywhere I turn, I see only pretty women ever cast in anything. I don't feel like "weight" is the real factor here, in that fat men and women are equally treated as bad, though I will point out, not for the first time, that the "fat" woman model in Star Wars: TOR is just voluptuous and sexy, and the "fat" man model is actually HUGE. The only upside is that both models are still muscular, which somewhat soothed my ruffled feathers over this. Hollywood is the worst offender-- you often won't even see a man with a non-model face in movies. But you might see a haggard man, or a weird-looking man. You might see an old man. They'll all have actual lines and be interesting characters.

Women are 18-30, must be attractive, and must be dependent on men in this medium-- because women must be "beautiful". Worse, take it out of the movies, and my well-meaning so-called feminist friends-- the girls I can't really be VERY close with because they will say things like what I'm about to describe-- they'll express their support for me in ways such as 'don't worry, you're BEAUTIFUL' or tell me about how sexy and powerful I am.

You know what, I am sexy. And polyamorous, and bisexual, and powerful, and female.

NONE OF THAT has to do with my value as an individual. Nothing. I'm also overweight, I'm loud, I'm crass, I like to use words that are trigger sensitive and I laugh like a supervillain.

I'm smart, and I'm dedicated and I'm creative. I'm strong. I'm fast. I'm helpful. I'm caring. I'm passionate.

I have a violent temper that I keep carefully under control and have to fight to keep in check on my bad days.

I write exceedingly explicit porn, but I'm not ashamed of that.

I write exceedingly explicit psychological and bodily torture as plot devices in stories, and I AM a little ashamed of that. But I'm an author, and I find that conflict for my characters is REALLY INTERESTING. So I write it anyway.

And you know what my problem is? I don't mind if you call me beautiful, but 'beautiful' doesn't mean anything. My feminist friends clearly know jack shit about me if that's the first compliment that comes into their heads. "Beautiful" is just another way to keep women from ever being interesting, complete people on their own.

I was just talking to my dad on the phone yesterday, checking up on him and mom and making sure that I didn't actually scar them for life when I bought them Oglaf for Christmas (which, if you don't know, is a hilarious, racy webcomic made by the exceedingly witty and brilliantly artistic Trudy Cooper, of Australia).

The conversation went something like this.

Dev: How was the comic, did you guys like it?
Dad: Yeah, we both read it it! It was great.
Dev: Haha, yes! I love it, I'm really glad you guys aren't grossed out or anything. I just thought, "You know, what is that cultural weirdness where you treat your parents like they're higher-class than you and can't joke about porn?" I figured, you tell me fart jokes, why can't we joke about sex?
Dad: Oh, totally! Well, it was a lot of sucking and fucking, but the writing was still great. And the art was cool.
Dev: That's good, I'm glad. Hey, and you're not mad about me snarking Avatar when you guys made us watch it, right? I noticed you were pretty quiet, so I worried I might have offended you, been kind of a jerk, you know?
Dad: What? Oh, no! No, I understood.
Dev: Whew! Okay, good, because I was actually kind of worried! Not even a chuckle from you and I thought "er, I think maybe I'm just being a total JERK" haha!
Dad: Oh, no no. You were very funny.
Dev: Well, you know. Every now and then, a girl likes to be told if she's funny.

Which pretty much dovetails back into my point. What's the use in having my parents tell me if they think I'm beautiful? They think weird looking bugs are beautiful. Or fat babies! And if my parents can't even give me a meaningful compliment about who I am and not what I am, like some kind of chattel, what kind of message am I getting from society? Nothing good, that's sure.