May. 3rd, 2014

violsva: full bookshelf with ladder (Default)
Let's put this up here as well.

Apparently I do have things to say! (in response to this) Mostly in Holmesfic, because that’s mostly what I write. Mostly exceptionally specific.

To start with, because people dealing with unpleasant circumstances is pretty much the basic stuff of narratives, and if we’re talking Victorians then you have a full supply of unpleasant circumstances as soon as you use a female pronoun. But they were there, they were doing things anyway.

And because people ask for them, for Yuletide and other challenges and Rarewomen (which I should be finishing now instead of writing this).

It’s not because there isn’t enough of it in fandom, because I’m pretty sure that if there was I would still be writing it. But there certainly isn’t enough of it.

Or maybe it is: because I’m interested in things on the margin of stories and teasing out characters and ideas that are only implied, and a lot of those characters are women.

And because media gets it wrong. Because people (men) spend all their time talking about Irene Adler and warping her beyond recognition and basically talking as if she’s the only woman Sherlock Holmes ever spoke to, and this is wrong. Like, factually incorrect. So I write about other women, instead, in hopes someone else will too.

And that Rex Stout thing is going around and man that makes me angry. It’s just full of a nasty mid 20thC misogyny that I can’t stand. And if you get women wrong you get marriage wrong, you get human relationships wrong, if you write women as aliens then eventually all your characters become aliens.

And because it’s so easy not to, it’s really easy to write stories with no named female characters and way too easy to write stories that don’t pass the Bechdel Test and this is actually really scary, that you can just accidentally not have any women in a story and not notice.

But mostly because women are sexy and women on top of each other are sexy and women are adorable and women having sweet lesbian crushes on each other are adorable and women are awesome and women whacking people with pokers in defense of their loved ones are awesome.

And because if a character just starts creating herself in my head it will be her. That’s just how it seems to work. And I have no problems with this.

Fragment 31

May. 3rd, 2014 06:42 pm
violsva: full bookshelf with ladder (Default)
And this, which I could queue on tumblr when I wasn't feeling fragile and then went ack when I was about to repost it but look, people, I know Greek.

Sappho; translated by, um, me

That man seems equal to the gods
to me, who sits across from you
and from so close can hear your sweet
speaking

and lovely laughter, as they force
my heart to shudder in my chest.
For when I briefly look at you,
speaking is lost,

instead my tongue sticks, subtly
a fire runs under my skin,
my eyes see nothing, roaring fills
my ears,

cold sweat pours over me, trembling
grips all of me, and pale as grass
I am; I seem to be so close
to dying.

But all must be endured, since
a poor and [

May 2025

S M T W T F S
     123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 6th, 2025 12:14 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios