Entropy and Flux

Found out dad already watched the hobbit even though I asked him several times to let me know when...

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:10:52 -0400

Found out dad already watched the hobbit even though I asked him several times to let me know when he could rent it so we could watch it together. So screw him, I’ll watch it with my sister since she’s the only parental figure who has my back.

Body, you gotta be feeling better tomorrow and Sunday. We got shit to do.

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:56:15 -0400

Body, you gotta be feeling better tomorrow and Sunday. We got shit to do.

Things I accomplished today

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:24:42 -0400

1. got food stamps

2. wrote a poem

3. copied of my homily

4. read through the opening of the sermon

5. started coming up with ideas for PRIDE

6. Decided on an outfit for sunday

Things to do

pick up the little brother and hang out with him
get all the crap in one place for sunday
fyse stuff
tshirts
go do a sermon and not die

Questions: What are some themes or concepts you’d like to see in an LGBTQAI+ related sermon?

Fri, 24 May 2013 18:57:02 -0400

Questions:

What are some themes or concepts you’d like to see in an LGBTQAI+ related sermon?

va-st: malformalady: Titanium Rainbow Quartz Cluster. To...

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:53:20 -0400

va-st:

malformalady:

Titanium Rainbow Quartz Cluster. To achieve this brilliant display of color, the Arkansas Quartz Crystals is treated with select minerals, such as titanium, etc. This is done via an electrostatic process whereby the crystals are put into a vacuum and charged opposite the select mineral. High Heat is applied. The select mineral is then put into the vacuum and it “clings” to the crystals. The crystals are then turned over and the process is repeated, so that all areas are covered. This treatment is a permanent and on the outside only.

woah

One thing I really like about my state is our quartz.

Hate to break it to everyone, but this is photoshopped

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:25:12 -0400

Hate to break it to everyone, but this is photoshopped

sailorfailures: scribble-scratch: Just remember that you’ll never love Sailor Moon more than I...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:46:18 -0400

sailorfailures:

scribble-scratch:

Just remember that you’ll never love Sailor Moon more than I do.

°˖✧◝(́◉◞౪◟◉‵)◜✧˖°

ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

I will fight you

Got food stamps! Now I’m gonna go back to sleep because I feel like death warmed over

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:21:08 -0400

Got food stamps! Now I’m gonna go back to sleep because I feel like death warmed over

It’s easy to say “fuck cultural identities, we’re all human” when your culture is not the one being...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:17:50 -0400

It’s easy to say “fuck cultural identities, we’re all human” when your culture is not the one being exploited, marginalized and oppressed. It’s easy to say “fuck borders” when your country is the one who puts up the borders. And it is really fucking easy to say “we all bleed red” when it’s not bodies of your people riddled with bullets because Western capitalism has a price.

Sometimes, it’s like being trapped in your body. You want to sleep, but you can’t. You want to wake up in time for class, but you can’t. You want to keep the plans you’ve made with your friends, but you can’t. You want to hit the gym like you used to, but you can’t. You want to drive whenever you feel like it, but you can’t. Learning that sometimes you physically just can’t is the hardest lesson in the world, along with the slowest. You’ve got to get knocked off your feet by your own body a few times before it even begins to sink in. I’m still learning, I’ll always still be learning.

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:28:17 -0400

Oh my gods so much pain. My everything hurts. My sister and I woke up at the same time with the same...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:07:58 -0400

Oh my gods so much pain. My everything hurts. My sister and I woke up at the same time with the same symptoms wtf. I feel like I’m dying

katymonster: Aw yeah. It’s almost sleeveless season, folks....

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:00:24 -0400

katymonster:

Aw yeah. It’s almost sleeveless season, folks. Body-positivity in yo FACE.

How come your not embarrassed to post naked photos of yourself ?

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:43:41 -0400

Because everyone has a body, so why should I be ashamed of mine? It’s just our culture that says we need to be clothed, we’ve been running around at least partially nude historically longer than we’ve been running around clothed. I love being naked and I hate clothes and sometimes I love my body and I like sharing that with others.

adventuresonpaper: I’ll come back for you i whisper as i caress the books i can’t afford

Fri, 24 May 2013 03:17:48 -0400

adventuresonpaper:

I’ll come back for you i whisper as i caress the books i can’t afford

Richard Castle as Malcom Reynolds WE WILL NEVER MOVE ON

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:49:47 -0400

Richard Castle as Malcom Reynolds

WE WILL NEVER MOVE ON

The Adler Conundrum: How Elementary Solved The Problem of The Woman

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:21:16 -0400

lyrangalia:

By now, most of the Elementary fandom has probably already seen or been spoiled for the season finale double-whammy that was “The Woman/Heroine”. But just in case someone hasn’t, abandon ship now if you want to remain unspoiled, because this bit of rambling meta is going to lay out just how cleverly Elementary updated and made the one woman who bested Sherlock Holmes their own.

Short version: Warning, here there be spoilers.

So, just a quick refresher: In the original ACD canon, Irene Adler appears in one story, A “Scandal in Bohemia,” and is mentioned in others, as the woman who bested Sherlock Holmes and ran off to her own life and is never seen again. From Dr. Watson’s perspective, Holmes did not love Irene Adler, but that he did feel an immense respect for her.

In many of the adaptations since the original story was published, the role of Irene Adler as The Woman has been expanded, usually to that of criminal, and usually as a love interest for Holmes.

And for a while, it appeared Elementary not only went down the same path, but that she was also dead (which again, a nice nod to the original canon and ACD’s complete inability to remain internally consistent but that’s another point altogether), leading to cries of her being “fridged for Sherlock’s manpain”.

But lo and behold, not only do we find out in the season finale that Irene Adler is still alive, but that she isn’t in fact Irene Adler at all, but Moriarty herself. And this is a twist that, as far as I know, has not been played with in modern Holmes adaptations (though if it has happened in pastiches, someone please tell me).

And why not? It’s brilliant.

On Irene Adler as the Holmsian Love Interest… again.

One of the most problematic and most prevalent themes of the Adler-as-Love-Interest tropes is how despite she being the woman who beat him, that Holmes eventually returns to save her. The idea that Holmes has feelings for Adler because she’s beaten him is, I think, an acceptable read of canon. It’s clear that he has some strong regard for her, and whether it’s taking into account Watson as unreliable narrator or adaptation degeneration, the idea that Holmes felt something for Irene Norton nee Adler does not seem too much of a stretch.

(Why it always has to be love, well that’s another discussion entirely on the changing views of rationalism and love, one I’m nowhere near qualified to really expound on)

But the fact is that the return is always to the trope that Irene Adler, having beaten Sherlock Holmes, requires saving by him. And Elementary sidesteps this beautifully by having Irene Adler succeed in fooling Sherlock Holmes, and going on her merry way.

And this is the part where the idea gets a little complicated. Because by the end of the episode we realize Irene is and always has been Moriarty. So does Adler really beat Holmes? Or is it Moriarty who does. What does that mean for the Adler/Holmes narrative in the scope of A Scandal in Bohemia?

Trying to answer that question is where things get very interesting for me, and really brings to light for me how extremely clever the Elementary writers were. I think it’s very useful to distinguish between Moriarty and Irene Adler despite them being the same person, because the show itself takes such pains to set them apart. And for a good reason.

Things to note about Elementary’s Irene Adler: Much the same as “A Scandal In Bohemia“‘s Adler, she is content to have one encounter with Holmes and be gone on her merry way. Moriarty’s motivations for experimenting with Holmes, for observing him, are related to this fact, but the key is that the core of Irene Adler, the one who encounters Holmes, impresses him with her intellect (and in this case, intellect AND appreciation for art preservation), and then walks away from him with exactly what she wants, remains the same.

It gets a little more complicated, when we remember that Adler is, in fact, a construct of Moriarty’s. And how much could Moriarty be willing to walk away if the entire point of the exercise is to observe Holmes in his natural habitat?

But that too, is made clear in Moriarty’s reveal. Moriarty-as-Adler is still perfectly willing, perfectly capable of walking away from Holmes. Moriarty-as-Adler still wins by successfully fooling Holmes by faking her death.

It is Holmes who falls, who is deeply affected and deeply moved by his meeting with Adler. In the story, that deeply moved leads him to stop underestimating women, to give her the title of The Woman, the one that eclipses and predominates the entirety of her sex; in Elementary, Holmes ends up with a heroin addiction. But in both he is still deeply moved by having met her.

And Moriarty-as-Adler doesn’t need rescuing by Holmes. She isn’t saved, she doesn’t need to be. She walks away from Holmes with her agency and the very core of her being firmly intact.

Which is far truer to the text than would initially meets the eye with the red herrings of Dead Girlfriend and Bohemian Painter and The One that Got Away that had been thrown our way.

Some people might consider it a bit of erasure, for Irene Adler as a character to be revealed as Moriarty in disguise, I actually really like the twist, for a simple reason:

Irene Adler was The Woman to Sherlock Holmes, the one woman who eclipsed and predominated the whole of her sex, the only one to gain the honourific of The Woman from Sherlock Holmes.

And Irene Adler doesn’t exist. Irene Adler as The Woman is a construct, a fantasy, and Elementary very simply puts that out there. That the person Holmes considered The Woman, the single one, the woman who is representative of women. That person doesn’t exist. No perfect woman exists. Not for Sherlock Holmes, not for any one.

When stripped of artifice and the Sherlockian trappings of intelligence and meetings of the mind, the courtship of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, and the revelation of Moriarty-as-Adler, speaks to something incredibly basic:

Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl turns out to be not as perfect as boy thinks. Boy is distraught. Boy (with help of Friend) Gets Over It.

It’s simple and it’s powerful and it is poignant. And it flies in the face of every single romantic comedy in the media. By breaking Irene Adler down into a fabrication, Elementary shows us how hollow the idea of The Woman, The Man, The Perfect Ideal of Your Choice, is.

And, you know what, that’s awesome.

On Irene Adler Being Beaten By Sherlock Holmes… Again

Some people have said that by making Moriarty Irene, that it again takes away Irene’s agency that she is not the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes, but the woman beaten by Sherlock Holmes. And once again, this is the part where putting a distinction between Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes is helpful. Irene Adler is a construct of Moriarty’s, and it was Moriarty who was defeated.

But not by Sherlock.

Moriarty was beaten by Joan Watson.

Let’s repeat that. Sherlock’s overdose was a ruse. Sherlock being in the hospital was bait for Moriarty, and it was Joan Watson who beat Moriarty, who diagnosed Moriarty and beat her.

Joan was right. Moriarty remains (as both herself and in the Irene Adler guise) the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes. And who in turn was beaten by another woman, by Joan Watson.

How is that not absolutely beautiful and a clever way of keeping the core of what made Irene Adler so deserving of respect for Holmes while still remaining true to the Moriarty narrative of Moriarty being beaten. And in this case, even as Moriarty loses (in this case to Joan), Holmes loses too. Instead of losing his life (as the original intent of ACD’s Final Problem), Holmes loses a bit of his own history, a part of himself that was both painful and formative and something that was good that he obviously treasured.

But having addressed “The Final Problem,” let’s circle back to “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Holmes loses to Adler in “Scandal” because he underestimates her because she’s a woman, because he found himself believing the cultural myth of that period, that woman are inherently inferior to men, that they can’t be as clever. And he loses, to his detriment.

On Elementary, it’s not Holmes’ misogyny and buying into the cultural myth that is his downfall. This time it’s Moriarty’s. Moriarty buys into our cultural myth. Moriarty is a woman, Moriarty is the one who should know better than Holmes that women are a force to be reckoned with. And yet Moriarty buys into internalized misogyny and underestimates Joan Watson.

Think about it for a minute. Internalized misogyny is not being perpetuated by the hero who is then rewarded. Internalized misogyny is being practiced and perpetuated by the antagonist and her downfall is directly related to her internalized misogyny. Her dismissal of other women, as seeing them as competition, mascot, as lesser directly relates to her losing.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

In the current media landscape, we are still regularly reinforced by the idea that women should be seen as competition, where we all buy into (to varying degrees) a social expectation that women are lesser desirable, are expected to be less interesting, less well written then men. We all buy into that to varying degrees. But suddenly we have Elementary, we have a show that not only updated a classic canon to the modern age by the inclusion of peoples of colour, but one that proceeds to update the myths and shatter the idea of people as paragons of their gender, that manages to make internalized misogyny a trait that doesn’t just exist but is actively negative.

How cool is that?

Now, if only we can stop with the Microsoft product placements.

I think I just jizzed a little bit.

I see what you did there.

Fri, 24 May 2013 01:53:15 -0400

I see what you did there.

cruisecontrolforcool: chronic illnesses are like being stuck playing hard mode but you don’t...

Fri, 24 May 2013 01:24:46 -0400

cruisecontrolforcool:

chronic illnesses are like being stuck playing hard mode but you don’t actually know what any of the buttons do and there is a reasonable possibility you are holding the wrong controller altogether

I play life just like I play video games, I mash all the buttons until me or the other person dies.

curvaliciousfashion: “Attractive and Fat” Many of you have...

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:56:46 -0400

curvaliciousfashion:

“Attractive and Fat”

Many of you have probably heard of the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch’s controversial and flat out rude comments that the company doesn’t sell XL or XXL sizes for women because they want “cool” people to wear their clothes. Well, this blogger wrote an open letter to Jeffries and included these photos of herself and what is considered a “typical” male model body type.

Some quotes from her letter:

“The only thing you’ve done through your comments (about thin being beautiful and only offering XL and XXL in your stores for men) is reinforce the unoriginal concept that fat women are social failures, valueless, and undesirable.”

“This is largely attributed to companies like yours that perpetuate the thought that fat women are not beautiful. This is inaccurate, but if someone were to look through your infamous catalog, they wouldn’t believe me.”

“P.P.S. You should know your Large t-shirt comfortably fits a size 22. You might want to work on that.”

This has to do with fashion, though perhaps not in the way this blog has so far posted. But this sort of confidence is the sort of thing that we want our choices in clothes to reflect. You should be able to wear whatever you want and feel confident - no matter what other people may say or think.

DAYUM

k so june I’m doing two services but after that I’m totes going to try and volunteer at...

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:40:38 -0400

k so june I’m doing two services but after that I’m totes going to try and volunteer at the center for equality to do AIDS education/testing because that would be working even though I wouldn’t be getting paid.

Also trying to get more comfortable talking to people, which running services and doing the youth religious education is also helping me do.

Slowly getting over my fears.