Kiss My Wonder Woman

Gosh. It's a new year already. What the crap happened to the last one, huh? I realize I'm starting to sound a bit senile here, but I mean it. This year has gone by insanely fast. A lot of things have happened, both personally and professionally this year, and most of it has been really seriously awesome. I try not to get too intimate on this blog, but it's not awful to admit that this has been a hell of a year.

It's the year I got to meet my brother-in-law (well, future brother-in-law, but we're not far off now), got to live with some of my best friends (which was awesome), got to strike out on my own after living with my best friends (which was sad), started teaching, realized I loved teaching, finally figured out what the hell I'm doing with my life, and started putting my artwork in frames like a grownup.

This year I didn't get into grad school, I crashed my car, I had a complete emotional meltdown complete with raccoon eyes and mascara everywhere, and I utterly failed at going paleo. Cookies are awesome.

It's also the year that I stopped blogging for three months, then started back up again and realized how much I really love doing this. This year I finally actually made friends with the people I met online (hello!), and I really don't regret that at all. This year I did my first celebrity interviews and finally got to meet a lot of my heroes. I got my first press pass, bought business cards, and wrote for a website other than my own.

Also this year? Wrote almost 200,000 words worth of reviews, rants, and meaningful frustrated ponderings, hit a quarter of a million pageviews, and finally started using twitter. A little bit. I still don't use it that much.

So, thanks. You guys are great. It's been a hell of a year, and I can't wait to see what happens in the next one. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be even more ridiculous. It usually is.

Party on, nerds. You've earned it.

So, I've been a bit down on Mr. Steven Moffat lately (see examples one and two), because he appears to be in the process of conducting an extended poo all over one of my favorite shows, a show that I, as a matter of fact, wrote my college thesis on and to which I am a little bit attached.

Imagine my surprise then when I watched the most recent episode of Sherlock, "The Empty Hearse", and liked it. Not just tolerated, but genuinely liked. I was watching it in a restaurant, as is my wont (or just because it's the holidays and I'm out of food/don't want to eat more toast), and I found myself giggling uncontrollably, fidgeting, and grinning like a madwoman while the waitress kept stopping by to ask if I was really okay. Don't worry. I tipped her well.

Anyway, much as it really does shock me to say, Sherlock is back and it's great and it actually addresses some of the things I've always wanted the show to address, and I would even go so far as to say that it's better than series two so far. It's really just honestly very good and I liked it.

Are you all dead from shock yet? I know I am.

Now, part of this can be explained away rather easily. This episode, "The Empty Hearse" was actually written by Sherlock's co-creator, Mark Gatiss (who also stars as Mycroft, and does an excellent job at both). Gatiss is usually quite good at writing stories with some heart to them, so I'm not that surprised at how much I liked this episode. But still, this is a series where Moffat is still the showrunner, and it's several seasons in, so the marvelous cleverness has worn off a bit, and I'm mostly just gasping that I still, genuinely, like it.

But all of this is very up in the air and sweet and nice, but not actually practical. Let's talk details. What about this did I like so very much?

SPOILERS from here on. Like you haven't already been spoiled by the internet, let's be real.

Unsurprisingly, this episode picks up a bit after the last one left off. While "The Reichenbach Fall" ended with Sherlock jumping off of the roof of St. Barts Hospital in order to save John from being taken out by one of Moriarty's snipers, and then revealed that while John and Mrs. Hudson mourned his death, and the rest of London thought he was a fraud, Sherlock was actually alive, and bound for locales unknown.

Cut to two years later, and John (Martin Freeman) has shakingly moved on. He's fallen in love (with a woman, thank you very much, Mrs. Hudson), and is even getting ready to propose. Of course he misses Sherlock and the excitement of working with him, but he's fine. He's alive. He survived. Good for him.

Or is it? Because John's a bit bored now, and even Mary (Amanda Abbington, Freeman's real life wife) can tell. Also, Lestrade (Rupert Graves, the silver fox) deals with a guilt-ridden, conspiracy-addled Anderson (Jonathan Aris and his beard), who believes that Sherlock is still alive. Which he is, not that Anderson actually knows that.

But the tide is turning. With Moriarty's network almost entirely dissolved, and a looming terrorism threat in London, Mycroft pulls Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) home to London again. And Sherlock is happy to come. Less happy, though, once he realizes that now he's going to have to deal with people and their messy feelings.

Upon discovering that Sherlock is not, in fact, dead, everyone reacts in the following ways: John punches him, a lot, while Lestrade just hugs him. Mrs. Hudson (Una Stubbs) screams like a banshee, and Anderson weeps awkward tears. And the public just thinks it's grand. As does Mary, who immediately likes Sherlock, in a rather surprising turn of events.

The actual plot of the episode is kind of meh. I don't remember a whole lot of it, to be honest. Mostly, though, it's got Sherlock trying to track down the terrorism threat while convincing everyone that he really isn't dead and that he pretended to be dead in order to save them all. John, of course, takes the most convincing. And it isn't until he is sure they're about to die that he finally forgives his friend.

So here's what I liked about this: I don't really remember the case, John was pissed at Sherlock, and Sherlock apologized, at length, to everyone and everything.

We'll go through them in order, and that means we do the weirdest first. Yes, I actually quite like that I didn't get much of the case in here. Why? Because the cases aren't why we watch Sherlock, are they? I mean, I love a good clever detective story as much as the next girl, but there's only so much cleverness you can take in one sitting, isn't there? And besides, we didn't need a whole episode of Sherlock being the cold and calculating genius. We know he's a genius. We know he can solve this one with his eyes closed, which he sort of does. We even know that the stakes, whatever they may be, aren't really that high.

What we want, or at least what I wanted, was some resolution here. Because Sherlock faked his own death, and while that totally seemed like the best choice at the time, it was completely and totally a dick move to do to John, and I want that recognized, damn it.

The problem Sherlock has always had, for me, is that it can feel a bit cold. Sherlock himself isn't in touch with his emotions (though he's more probably on the Austistic Spectrum than a sociopath, because sociopathy isn't actually a thing). He acts in ways that flout societal norms, and while we can cheer for him in fiction, in real life, we'd all think he was a twat. Because he is a twat.

It's part of why I've actually come to like Elementary a lot more than this Sherlock. In Elementary, Sherlock is a twat, but he gets called on his crap with healthy regularity. That's good. I like that. More than that, though, he grows. He matures. He learns that his behavior is unacceptable and he seeks to alter it.

In the first two seasons of Sherlock, the titular character is mostly a fixed point. Things happen to him or around him, but not with him. He doesn't change. He doesn't develop. Past the point where he decides that he and John are friends, we never really get to see any character development. Sherlock just is.

Which is total crap, isn't it? That's not how people work. People are always changing and shifting and moving around. You think you've got a bead on someone and two weeks later they're virtually unrecognizable. That's normal.

So here, seeing Sherlock humbled, seeing him apologize, seeing him take his own actions into account and try to minimize the damage he does to others' lives, it's wonderful. It's refreshing. It's good.

There's a scene around the middle of the episode where Sherlock challenges Mycroft to a deduction-off. It seems like a silly clever little moment, but it quickly turns a lot deeper. Sherlock is worried for Mycroft, you see. Mycroft has always been a loner, like Sherlock, but Sherlock isn't alone anymore. He has friends, family even. He has people. But Mycroft is still alone. And this worries Sherlock. He knows that it is not good to be alone. And that, my friends, is some massive character growth.

Oh, this development isn't wholly absent from the other two seasons, but it's not the focus either. Those seasons were about the mysteries and how clever Sherlock could be to solve them. This episode isn't. It's about Sherlock stumbling around in a city he's forgotten, trying to reconnect with his friends and figuring out who he is now that he's back. It's good.

This doesn't mean he's stopped being Sherlock Holmes, for the record. He's still insanely clever, dryly witty, and a bit cruel when it comes to it. He still locks John in a (hypothetically, though not actually) exploding train car with him until John forgives him for being dead. He's still a prick. But he's a lot better about it now.

I've no idea if the next episode, which apparently takes place at Mary and John's wedding, will be any good, but at least we don't have too long to wait. Episode two will air on Sunday in Britain, and then all the episodes will air in the US later this month. I'll of course be watching on Sunday, and let you know the real scoop as soon as I can.

For me, the real lingering question is much less about Sherlock himself. I'm quite happy on that front, actually. Rather, I want to see if this is the season where the women of Sherlock, who are by and large lovely and interesting creatures, actually talk to each other or break away from having their lives defined by Sherlock and John. It's not that I don't love Molly (Louise Brealey), Mrs. Hudson, and Mary, it's that I'd love even more to see them no longer defined by their male relationships, but allowed something of their own in the story.

Also, Mary, Molly, and Mrs. Hudson solving crimes together would be the coolest thing on earth. Just saying.

This is going to be the weirdest wedding episode ever.

Extras is a weird little book. Well, clocking in at about four hundred pages, maybe "little" isn't the right word. Rather, Extras is a weird, finite book. Rather than covering a sweeping governmental change, the revolution of life as we know it, or even a grand and epic romance, it's about a girl, a misunderstanding, and the future. Oh, and also space travel. On second though, maybe this book isn't very finite after all?

The weirdness of Extras largely stems from its position in the series. Coming at the tail end of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy, Extras is a sort of coda, a quick story that takes place a few years after the trilogy wraps up and serves to show us how the world turns out post-revolution, as well as give us a bit more closure on some of the lingering plot points. Instead of focusing on Tally now, we're introduced to a whole host of new characters - starting with Aya Fuse, our protagonist, and a delightful foil to the ever sure Tally Youngblood.

But rather than follow the usual YA dystopian fantasy pattern, where a strong-headed girl fights against the power of the state so that she has the right to choose between her two equally attractive love interests, Extras takes place in a world after the revolution. It's over. We won. The world is embracing a cultural renaissance. People are happy, or at least engaged, and living their own lives now. Our heroine from the previous books is off in the wilderness somewhere, but she is celebrated as one of the greatest political figures of the times. The world has already changed.

And Aya, the lead character here, isn't much of a world changer. Not some rebel leader or even an accidentally special girl, Aya is a kicker, or blogger. She makes videos about interesting things she finds around the city. She's a journalist. She has a big nose. Her brother is way more famous than she is, and she's constantly agonizing about her popularity levels.

[As a side note, this world does have one of the more interesting ideas about how money would work in a post-revolution society: namely, that money is based on "face-status", or how famous you are. The more popular you are, the more people are talking about you, the more resources you can requisition. Sort of like reddit karma, or whuffie from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. An interesting system, though a problematic one.]

Anyway, the story starts when Aya Fuse, low level kicker, starts to investigate a story about the "Sly Girls", a supposed clique of teenage girls who all, contrary to the general inclination, want to be as unknown as possible. And yet these girls do things that would make anyone famous. They magnet surf on the bullet trains that still tow freight around Japan, and they pull daring stunts, and they generally do ridiculous things, but without telling anyone. Aya thinks this is fascinating. She also thinks that she would like to tell everyone about this, and as soon as possible.

But in the process of going undercover and becoming a sly girl and spying on them, Aya discovers something a bit more sinister: underground bunkers and missile silos and giant hunks of smart matter that seem suspiciously like bombs. It all looks pretty terrifying. And that's without even mentioning the creatures - terrifying, spindly figures with hands for feet and giant round eyes and just generally something out of our nightmares.

I don't want to get too much into the details of the book, because I think it's one that you all would enjoy quite a lot, but I do want to talk about Aya, and why she's an important character to have around. You see, Aya is in a lot of ways like Tally, but in more important ways, she isn't. Aya is not the type of girl who will accidentally cause a revolution. She's not particularly brave, or strong-willed, or even really very daring. She'll go pretty far for a story, but she'll also chicken out at the last second. She wants to be famous more than anything in the world. She lies. She's kind of a bad person sometimes. And you know what?

That's great.

I love Aya because she's the person we all usually are while we're waiting for a Tally Youngblood to show up and save us. Aya doesn't have it all figured out. She isn't all that special. She's just a girl in the right place at the wrong time, and she doesn't know how to deal with all that. She hates hiking through the wilderness. She has no survival instinct, no killer instinct. She's pretty awful at this saving the world thing.

But here's the important part: that doesn't mean she's not important. And it certainly doesn't mean she's not a strong female character.

So what if Aya really loves pretty dresses and kissing her boyfriend and being happy. There is nothing objectively wrong with those things. She's not Tally. In fact, one of the funnier moments in the book comes when Aya meets Tally, and the two of them recoil in mutual horror. They are very, very different people, and that's more than just good. That's awesome.

I related more easily to Aya, because she is a kicker and I'm a blogger and all that, but also because Aya does exactly what I would do if I found out that the fate of the world very possibly rested on my shoulders. She freaks out. She cries. She lies a bit. Actually she lies a lot.

And that's all very human and messy, but you know what? It doesn't make Aya any less important that she's riddled with flaws and mistakes and awkwardness. That's not a bad thing. We're all messy weirdos inside. Aya is strong because she uses her messy weirdness for good. Tally is strong because she's the specialest special to ever special. We need them both.

There is no one way to go about being feminist, or strong, or good. There is no one way to save the world. In fact, there must be more than one. If we deny that any other path than our own is worthy, then we block out the equality and change we hope to bring. So Aya can be a fame-obsessed teenager, and Tally can be a survivalist eating tree-bark, and they can both bring about change.

That's not a bug, that's a feature.

I love this photo and I don't know where it's from. Halp.

Oh my gosh, what is this? Are we - gasp - back to a normal posting schedule? Blasphemy!

Well, blasphemous or not, it's the truth. Thank you all for sticking with me through the crazies of last month, and let's hope that we can stick to something more sane for a bit. Fingers crossed, at least.

Anyway, this week we've got a vast variety of more editorial links, by which I mean that they don't fit into an easy category, except that I find them interesting and worth reading. So, enjoy!

1. The Problem with Female Werewolves from Fangs for the Fantasy. I mean, I generally fangirl over everything that FftF writes, but this is one of my favorites.

2. Female monsters: My mother made me this way from Feminema. You know how most female monsters have messed up mommy issues? Yeah, well, there's a reason for that. A sexist one.

3. Fifty Shades of Grey and the Twilight Pro-Fic Phenomenon from the MarySue. Probably the best explanation of how Fifty Shades of Grey happened that I've seen. Also makes you kind of mind that less.

4. How Harry Potter Became the Boy Who Lived Forever from Time Magazine. About Harry Potter, fan phenomena, and the legacy of one little boy under the stairs. Gosh I love those stories.

5. Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation from io9.com. Science fiction so often is used to glorify people, to assure us of our importance in the universe. But as this article rightly points out, what if we aren't all that important?

6. Forget why fantasy matters. Why does realism matter? from io9.com. HOLY CRAP THIS ARTICLE IS AMAZING. Basically, if you can tell a story with dragons and wizards and time travel, why wouldn't you?

7. Women in the Anita Blake Series from Fangs for the Fantasy. I hate the Anita Blake series, but I've never been able to eloquently express that. So read this instead. It's everything I would say if I weren't so busy frothing at the mouth.

8. The Visual Philosophy of Genis Carreras from Make a Powerful Point. As a philosophy major, I love it when people put these things together - where they find a way to clearly portray complex ideas. And this is beautiful.

9. How to Live Without Irony from NYTimes. Just because sincerity is better, doesn't mean it's easy. It isn't. But it is good.

10. Average Faces from Around the World from MediaDump. Gosh people are pretty.

11. More Romance Tropes We'd Like to See Buried from Fangs for the Fantasy. I'm not stalking them. Promise. I just like everything they write?

12. Punctuation Social Personalities from Doubleday Books. Okay, it's hard to explain. But adorable.

13. The Battle Against "Sexist" Sci-fi and Fantasy Book Covers from BBC News. Basically, author Jim Hines has started a crusade against sexist book covers and we should all join him because he's awesome and also that crap needs to stop.

14. Ukiyo-e Heroes: Donkey Kong Visits 17th-Century Japan from Storyboard. Japanese art remade to include videogame characters? Yes please!

15. Four ‘Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ characters who are better than their ‘Pride and Prejudice’ counterparts from Hypable. So maybe Lizzie Bennet Diaries has been over for a while. Who cares? It's still awesome.

16. An Open Letter to Facebook from MotherWise. If upskirt shots, creeper shots, nude selfies, and general creepiness aren't too much for Facebook, then why do they have a problem with anatomical charts and breastfeeding photos? Because those things aren't designed to titillate.

17. Animated 'Art Story' Film Looks Painfully Adorable from Huffington Post. Every once in a while you hear about an upcoming project that just sounds wonderful and exactly like what is missing from the world. That's what this is. A thing that needs to be.

18. Fallen Princesses: When The Happily-Ever-After Doesn’t Happen from BoredPanda. These are depressing as hell, but I love them.

19. This steampunk girls' adventure novel might actually knock your goggles off from io9.com. Another project that sounds ridiculously amazing.

20. Empathy is the Enemy: The Fall of Orson Scott Card from Pajiba. A very succinct explanation of why we all hate Orson Scott Card now. Because we do.

Well, that's it for this week. I leave you with Clothing of the Future, a cute little video from the 1940s, speculating what people would be wearing now. You know, a couple of them aren't far off...

We'll be back on Monday with a review of The Hobbit. Happy weekend!

It's weird now to look back on myself twelve years ago, when The Lord of the Rings movies were just starting to come out, and I attacked them with all of the glee a sheltered thirteen year old could muster for the only fandom she's yet been obsessed with in her life. That is, in case you were wondering, a lot of glee.

I saw The Fellowship of the Ring seven times in theaters. This is impressive not just because it's a three hour movie and holy crap is that a lot of my life, but also because I was thirteen, and therefore couldn't drive, and the nearest reputable movie theater to my home town is half an hour away. Also, I was thirteen, and didn't have a steady income yet. So maybe the award should go to my parents and friends and friends' parents who all humored me and took me to see the movie and sat through my recitations of its wonders again and again and again. Thanks guys. You're all champs.

It's not weird to me that I was so into the movies. I was crazy into the books (they were the staple of my childhood), and it only seems reasonable that a movie adaptation, especially one as flawless as those films, would grab me by the soul and not let go. That's not the surprising bit.

What's weird is how un-psychotically excited I feel about The Hobbit movies. Seriously. I went to the midnight premiers for those LOTR films. I sat through every single extended edition until I could determine exactly what had been added. I have watched literally every special feature, listened to every single commentary (extended and non), and learned how to make lembas.

I'm not saying this so that you grasp the full depth of my nerdery. I figure you've already got a pretty good picture of that considering that you're on my nerd website reading my nerd articles. (Hello!) What I'm trying to get at here is that the LOTR movies meant a lot to me. They still do. They shaped a lot of who I am, inspired me to spend more time paying attention to pop culture, and honestly changed my life.

The Hobbit, on the other hand, is okay. Just okay.

Look, The Hobbit was never as much of a big deal to me as a kid, so maybe it's not all that surprising that I'm no obsessed with the films, but it really doesn't feel like there's much there. It's sweet, and funny, and clever at times, with lots of chases and puzzles and silly dwarves and all that. But it's not big. I like stories that are big.

Now, to their credit, Peter Jackson and company have done a good job adding scope to The Hobbit movies, so that they don't just exist in this weird, tonally different netherworld from the other films, but that can only do so much when the plot of the story is so...simple.

Again, that's not a diss on the films or the book itself. It's a good book, albeit a very different one, and they're well made movies. But they're not my movies, you know? It turns out that you can't really go back again. And for me, it seems like my time of mindlessly enjoying these movies has passed.

However. None of that is to say that I have not seen The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, or that I didn't like it. I do like it. It's fun, arguably better than the first movie, and quite enjoyable to watch. I like most of the changes they made to the story, and for the most part, I'm a fan of the way they've woven in the backstory of Middle Earth. I did think it was a solid hour too long, weighted down by an idea that they have to show everything and that no scenes can be cut down. But that didn't make it bad.

In fact, I would argue that all the changes they made to the story actually made this a much better film that it might have been otherwise. Allow me to list a few:

Tauriel. I know some people are complaining about her addition, but I'm going to be completely honest, I don't care. I don't care why you don't like her, because I would like to say that those reasons are probably terrible. Tauriel is great. More than that, though, this is a case where the filmmakers looked at the movie and went, "Yeah, this is way too male. We need another girl in here. Can we get another girl in here? Great."

Now, admittedly, I don't love that her story was largely reduced to being a love triangle. Evangeline Lilly herself has been very outspoken about how much the love triangling of Tauriel bothers her, and I have to say that I agree. She would have been a much more interesting character if she hadn't been defined by her male relationships.

I mean, here we have a bunch of things about elves we almost never get to see, all wrapped into one neat little package! She's a member of the guard, so she's military and trained. She's lower class, a Sindarin elf as opposed to one of the higher class Quenya elves (bloodlines, languages, all that stuff - Tolkien is thorough). We've never actually had an elven character who wasn't high class, and here's a wonderful one. Particularly cool? She's aware of her class status and bothered by it. Yay!

Oh, and she's willing to challenge authority she finds unjust, which is also something we've not really ever seen an elf do. Basically, Tauriel makes the elves more believable because she isn't just like all the other elves we've seen before. She's cool, and interesting, and way more than "just" a love interest.

Which doesn't mean that I didn't think her romance with Kili was adorable. It was. Hella adorable.

Beorn and his family. In the book, Beorn isn't really much of a character. He's there, sure, but he's not super interesting, and he's definitely not developed. And that's fine. He's not a bit part of the story, so we aren't really missing anything major. But here, he is developed, and the story is much richer for it.

Instead of Beorn being pretty much this random bargeman and then shooting the arrow that takes down Smaug but otherwise being out of the story, now Beorn has a legitimate reason to be deeply emotionally invested in the story. He has his family's honor at stake, and more than that, their physical well-being. That he eventually becomes something of an antagonist towards the dwarves (and is proven right), only further serves to make him an interesting character. The deeper they go here, the better it is, and that's always a plus.

The Necromancer. While these scenes usually feel like they take twice as long as they should, I do appreciate that this film is trying to set up Sauron's return. I like that we get some context here, an understanding of who Sauron is as a villain and what his influence does. I mean, he's perfectly terrifying in the LOTR movies without him ever needing a motivation or explanation, but as with most things here, backstory can't hurt.

Ultimately, Desolation of Smaug is a good movie probably because it strays from the book, rather than instead of it. All of the really compelling scenes, like with Thranduil warning Tauriel away from Legolas, or when Beorn takes the dwarves back in, or when they're all trying to save Kili - those are the moments that really grab you. The other stuff, with Bilbo and the main company and Smaug, it's fine, but it's not emotionally involving, I guess.

I think part of the genius here is remembering that treasure itself is not a strong motivation. Power is a good motivation, but a better one is what that power can do. We care about characters, so understanding these people in the context of their world and the adventure is naturally going to be more affecting than seeing them flit past as we continue on with the main plot.

And, either way, I'm totally in favor of having more badass lady elves in Middle Earth.

Have you ever noticed that thing where if something is critically acclaimed or nominated for a bunch of Oscars or the kind of movie that people in tweed jackets and pencil skirts praise over specialty wines, it's usually really hard to understand?

Don't get me wrong, I love the wine and cheese crowd (yum), and I have harbored desires to own tweed (but it doesn't work on me), and I like the occasional pretentious art piece as much as the next film student. It's just...why does everything have to be so high minded all the time, in order to be considered "artistic" and "good". Why can't it just make some freaking sense?

Obviously as you gathered from the title, today we're talking about The Secret of Kells, a charming Irish animated children's film about a novice monk who befriends a fairy in the woods outside his abbey, while the abbey hides from the Northmen and work continues on a very important book. That's pretty much as basic as I can make the summary, which I think explains my frustration.

The Secret of Kells is a good movie. Or perhaps I should say that it's a Good Movie. It's the sort of movie that I absolutely should love, because it deals with death and loss and grief and the importance of art for hope, and all those important things, and because it deals with them in a way accessible to small children, and I love it when movies do that. I, for the record, love the parts of Secret of Kells that have these elements in them. They make me happy.

But I also don't get it. And I feel bad for not getting it, like I should be handing over my nerd card, or shuffling shamefaced away from my MFA in film. But I don't get it. It's weird and confusing and there's way too much stuff going on, and it's hella pretty, to be sure, but I've never been one to think that a movie being visually appealing is enough to make up for its not having a plot.

I'm terribly American that way.

It's a good movie. It's just that I feel like this is a case where the pendulum of children's stories has swung a bit too far in the opposite direction. Rather than something like Snow White, where the story is dirt simple and it's all primary colors and good versus evil and simplistic moral lessons and rape idealogy, this is a story with depth and complexity. Just a little bit too much complexity, where looking at the story is a bit like trying to decipher an illuminated text. Oh it's beautiful, all right, but it's fricking hard to read.

The plot, then, goes like this. Brendan, a young novice monk at the Kells Monastery, is a pretty normal little boy. He's always late to his chores, getting dirty, and not particularly good at following orders. This is all much to the exasperation of his uncle, the Father Abbot, who wants Brendan to grow up and be a full monk someday.

Brendan is much beloved in the abbey, though, especially by his three racial stereotype monk friends. Sidenote, while I really do appreciate and applaud the film for including medieval POC characters, which is much more true to history and made the story more interesting, these guys were all drawn in the hands down most offensive way they could be. Take a long look at that picture. Yeah. Racist.

Anyway, the Abbot is frantically building a wall to keep out the Northmen, who are in the process of sacking all of Ireland. They've already raided the island abbey of Iona, where the Book of Iona was being written. As a result, Brother Aidan comes to Kells, bringing with him the book, which is supposed to have some kind of magical powers. It can "turn the darkness into light."

The book itself is an illuminated manuscript, the likes of which have apparently never been seen, and Aidan is a master illuminator. He's getting older, though, and his hands are shaking. He wants to take on an apprentice, and decides that Brendan will do nicely.

But the Father Abbot disagrees. He needs all hands to help build the wall to keep them safe. There's no time for this book nonsense. Brendan, being a little boy, rebels, and asks Aidan to teach him anyway. The first step is to gather berries to make the ink. And the only way to get the berries is to sneak out of the abbey and into the forest beyond. Brendan's never done that before.

The forest is big, and scary, and Brendan gets lost almost immediately. Fortunately (or not), something comes to his aid. A little fairy girl, named Aisling (pronounced Ashley). Aisling agrees to take Brendan to find the berries, as long as he promises never to hurt her forest or come in it without her permission. Brendan agrees, and we are treated to an adorable montage of kids playing and friendship and beautifully rendered forest scenery.

Except for this one bit where they stumble onto the dark part of the forest, where Crom Cruach lives. Apparently he's evil or something. Might have killed Aisling's parents. Not clear.

Brendan gets back with the berries, gets in trouble, sneaks out, and apprentices to Aidan. But he needs something else before he can really start work! A crystal eye that belongs to Crom Cruach. Brendan must sneak out of the abbey again, fight the darkness and defeat Crom Cruach in his cave to get the crystal. And he does, in a kind of trippy sequence that I still don't understand but was very pretty to watch.

Brendan uses the crystal to start work on the manuscript, but time is not on their side. The Abbot breaks in, and the Northmen arrive. The abbey is under attack, and Brendan and Aidan must flee with the book. They travel to a faraway village, while the abbey is ransacked, and there Brendan finally works on the book in earnest.

Years pass, and Aidan passes away with them. Finally, the book is done, and Brendan brings it back to Kells to show it to his repentant uncle on his deathbed.

That's it, that's the movie.

The problem isn't that anything here (other than the racist stereotype monks) was offensive or bad or anything, it's more that when I finished the movie I went, "Well that was pretty," and then, "What, huh?"

Because I legitimately do not understand so many things about this movie. What is the Secret of Kells? Is it Aisling? Crom Cruach? The book? Why everyone kept giving the Abbot flack for trying to keep a village alive? Why those monks were so, so offensive? What? And how about where does Aisling come from? For that matter, where does Crom come from? What happened to Brendan's parents? How did the Abbot live for another twenty years after getting an arrow to the heart? Why does the green ink cause an explosion?

So many questions, and really no answers. But the real issue I had with the movie wasn't that I didn't get it or that it was too artsy for my taste. It was more simple than that: the movie never told me why the book was important.

Because here's the thing. I am all for the arts. I really do believe that arts and movies and books have the power to bring the light in, to save people, to transform lives. I believe that wholeheartedly. But I would have liked, just once, to find out why this book was going to change the world. Or rather, how. What was so special about the book? Is it just because it's beautiful? Because I'm okay with that, but you need to tell me.

This film is packaged like a movie for children, but in the end it really doesn't seem like one. I mean, I don't think it's inappropriate or anything. I like the reality that it shows, where the bad guys sometimes win, and the real triumph is to not lose hope. But I don't get it. I don't get what it's about. And without that, I really can't recommend it.

I dunno, the Abbot seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Dang, this show is hella white.

That was what popped into my head a few nights ago as I breathlessly watched the second episode of the third season of the internet's obsession, Sherlock. I was watching it with a friend of mine - well, I say watching it with, but really we were each watching it separately while on a video call together because we live on opposite sides of the international dateline, and isn't technology amazing - and while I did giggle and hug a pillow and squeal at the appropriate intervals, I also noticed something else. Not just that the show is super white, though we will talk more about that, but deeper. Namely, that Sherlock seems poised to fall into the same trap that annoys the crap out of me on Doctor Who. He's becoming "The Loneliest Man in the World."

Which is complete and total bullcrap and I hate it so much.

But before we get into the part where I rant and rave and make you all very uncomfortable with how deeply I think and care about a show that most people consider diverting or intriguing at most, let's talk facts. What was the episode about?

Obviously, SPOILERS now.

The episode, titled "The Sign of Three" in a callback to the excellent original novel The Sign of Four, takes place about five or six months after the last. While last episode we saw John (Martin Freeman) painstakingly proposing to Mary (Amanda Abbington) while Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) looked on amused, now we fast forward to their wedding day. Sherlock is in a tizzy, or as much in a tizzy as he ever is, over his best man speech. Mostly just floored that he is John's best man at all, let alone that he has to give a speech. In front of people.

Mrs. Hudson (Una Stubbs) warns Sherlock that even though he and John and Mary have all become quite close (and it's freakishly adorable to watch their scenes together), everything will change after the wedding. Sherlock will be left alone again as the married couple insulate themselves and move to Siberia or something?

I'm going to be honest, I know lots of married people, and while, yes, there is a period of "Holy crap, we're legit! We can be disgusting all over each other with an excuse!" that goes on for a few months or so, it does taper off, and life generally returns to normal, just with the occasional ring-cleaning. I don't get what this "Everything will change forever," thing is on about.

Anyway.

Despite having a surprisingly robust collection of friends and supporters, like Greg Lestrade (Rupert Graves, still the sexiest) and Molly (Louise Brealey) and the aforementioned Mrs. Hudson, and even Mycroft (Mark Gatiss), Sherlock takes the idea to heart. That after this wedding, which will be perfect if it kills him, John and Mary will be effectively absent from his life. Forever. Cue the sad violins.

Most of the episode, which is told in slightly confusing, but very entertaining, non-linear fashion, revolves around Sherlock's best man speech. In the speech, written to show everyone how amazing John is, Sherlock mentions several cases he solved or tried to solve, and while giving the speech he slowly realizes that the cases are interconnected. They're not an accident. More than that, they're fixated on this particular wedding. Someone is going to be murdered at John's wedding.

And that simply won't do. So Sherlock starts deducing right then and there. He figures out who the victim is, but he can't figure out who is going to kill them or where or how. And that's the real fun of the show, wading through Sherlock's memories and his deductions as he tries to figure out who is going to do it, without letting the guests know what's happening and without spooking the murderer. It's good fun.

But, like I said above, it's a little...annoying. At least to me, and my cold, dead heart. You see, the whole case really serves to analogue Sherlock's relationship to John. I won't explain it more than that, but the whole case hinges on John and his John-ness, and Sherlock's relationship to John's John-ness. Really, the whole thing is about how much Sherlock is going to miss John when he goes.

Except for the part where John is patently still right there. And so is Mary, who is freaking amazing.

It seems that even though Sherlock swans through life surrounded by people who would drop everything for him (as Lestrade literally does in the first minute of the episode, giving up a career making arrest because Sherlock texts him for help), but is completely and utterly alone because John is getting married.

And we, as the audience, are supposed to be heartbroken that Sherlock, the wonderful, amazing, sensitive Sherlock, is being left behind. What complete and utter bullcrap.

It's crap because let's think about Sherlock and his "friendship" with John for a second. While I do not doubt for one minute that he means all those nice things he says in the speech, I also remember. I have a long memory. I can remember all the way back to last episode, when Sherlock thought the best way to announce he wasn't dead to his best friend was to dress up as a French waiter and make painful jokes at him for a while. Or when he convinced John they were about to die in a firey explosion so that John would have to forgive him for pretending to be dead for two years without a particularly compelling explanation or excuse.

So, to recap, Sherlock is an amazing friend in this one episode, where he learns to fold napkins and writes some violin music and gives an awesome speech and intimidates guests into doing what he wants them to, and this means that we should completely forget all the other times in their friendship when Sherlock has been a complete and utter cock.

Not only that, but we're expected to mourn how alone Sherlock is. That he has no one to dance with at the end. Even though he could go dance in that group with all his other friends, where Molly and Lestrade and Tom and Mrs. Hudson are all dancing in a group. No. He will dance with John, Mary, the bridesmaid he just met today, or no one. If none of those three people is available, then he will leave the reception and walk tragically into the cold.

Sigh.

I don't think I need to say that I don't like this, but I don't. I'm totally cool with Sherlock having feelings and those feelings making him feel isolated, but in this case? His isolation is totally a choice. He's being a dick. And it's annoying. It's also making him a crappy friend, not only to John and Mary, but to everyone else in their group and at the wedding. While it seems sensitive and tragic, what Sherlock is actually doing here is deeply selfish. And I don't like it.

Okay, that rant out of the way, let's talk about race. Specifically, how damn white this was. Last weekend I happened to be marathoning some seasons of Luther on Netflix (awesome show, stars Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson and Indira Varma and Paul McGann - watch it NOW), and I was struck by something. Sherlock is hella white. Like ridiculously, improbably, eyebrow-raisingly white.

Take, for example, the wedding this episode. We are told that John has lots of friends, and that a fair number of those friends are people he met in the army. Fair enough, that makes sense. But are we to believe in this that John built not a single friendship or relationship of any kind with someone who was not a middle-aged white man?

Because that's what the show is telling me. John has no black friends, no Asian friends, no Hispanic friends. He somehow managed to become a highly decorated veteran without gaining a single friend who wasn't whiter than yogurt and idli (which, if you don't know your vegetarian Indian foods, is hella white).

So, are we supposed to assume that John is racist?

Well, no, I'm pretty sure we're not (though I can't rule it out), but the odds aren't in his favor. In fact, in this episode, the only substantive characters of color were Sgt. Sally Donovan (Vinette Robinson) and Dean Thomas from Harry Potter, who gets stabbed. Of these, Donovan is the only recurring character of color that I can think of, and her role in this episode was about five lines and two minutes of screentime. In the whole thing. Dean Thomas was only there to be sort of sympathetic and then nearly die. And even his near death only existed in the story to show what a good person John is.

Minority representation? I think we can all agree that Sherlock isn't exactly winning at this. For that matter, the women this episode, though sassy and fun and very enjoyable, weren't really hitting my sweet spot either. Because as much as I love Molly and Mary and Mrs. Hudson, they each spent the whole episode revolving around Sherlock and his problems. Molly was terrified (rightly) that his speech would be awful, while Mary was corralling her boys around and making sure their relationship was good, with no heed for herself, and Mrs. Hudson was doling out advice on all fronts (and an amazing anecdote about the late Mr. Hudson and his drug cartel).

And while all these women were funny and cool and even sexy at times, they weren't real. They didn't have anything going on except for Sherlock. Even the maid of honor, who must surely have been Mary's best friend if she was her only bridesmaid, spent the whole episode following Sherlock around like a puppy, completely ignoring the fact that her best friend was getting married. Nope! No time for that whole female friendship thing. There's an attractive man here. I must seduce him with my wiles.

It was just a lot to take, especially when mixed in with the "I'm going to die alone," melodrama of Sherlock's plotline. Because somehow all these women don't count. Only John, who has been here the whole time, counts. Just him. Screw you, Lestrade, Molly, Mary, Mrs. Hudson, Tom, etc.

Well, I suppose Tom doesn't care all that much. But he seems like a nice guy, so I bet he does rather care.

We've only got one episode left now in this season, and while I predict that it will involve Mary being kidnapped and Sherlock bargaining his life to save her, I really don't know. But I do know what I want.

I want a cast with a reasonable amount of diversity, some actual, interesting stories for the women of the show, and for Sherlock to stop being an utter tit. We'll see if any of that happens. Sadly, knowing Moffat, I don't have very high hopes.

So, today we were going to talk about The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman, a fine and literary book that would allow me to be all smart and educated and say intelligent logical things about life and the universe and literature and stuff like that.

But since anything I could say about the book is really just what you would gather from reading it yourself, I'll just say this: Go read the book. You'll like it. If you don't like it, you won't have lost out on much, because it's only about two hundred words. And maybe we'll talk more about it someday. For now, however, my evening has been completely hijacked by Teen Wolf and the ridiculous shenanigans of the season 3b premier, and I demand that we discuss that.

Actually, since this is my website, I don't really have to demand anything, but whatever. I demand it of me, let's go with that.

For those of you still not quite up to the curve on your pop culture, Teen Wolf is the surprisingly not crappy MTV remake of the 1980s movie classic. It stars Tyler Posey as Scott McCall, a normal if dweeby teenager who is bitten by a werewolf and suddenly has superpowers. Only, instead of being adored and getting a cool movie ending like in the film, getting bit by a werewolf pretty much just makes Scott's life hell, with hunters trying to make him into a werewolf pelt, insane Alphas constantly demanding that he join their packs, evil lizard monsters, and, oh yeah, that thing last season where he kind of sort of died a little.

Scott McCall is not having a good year. I mean, plus side, he's just proven that he can become a "true Alpha" by turning into an Alpha werewolf without having to kill anyone for the power (which is how it normally works). And he has finally gotten his grades up a little in school. But then there's the thing where he and his best friends, Stiles (Dylan O'Brien) and Allison - also his ex-girlfriend - (Crystal Reed) all were transported to a place in between life and death in order to remember the location of the Nematode, a giant weirdness beacon in Beacon Hills. They did that because all of their parents had been kidnapped and were being held at the Nematode by a psychotic druid who was moonlighting as their teacher and maybe I should stop explaining last season before I make you totally confused.

The facts are these: Scott, Stiles, and Allison all died so that they could find the Nematode. They knew there would be a price when they did it, and now, several weeks/days later, they're paying it. That price?

Mind-crippling hallucinations, dreams, and night terrors. Also, they might be kind of dying. Which is never good.

Each of them manifests in a different way, but all are equally horrifying. Scott, having just become an Alpha, now finds himself unable to control his shift. He nearly shifts during classes, he wolfs out in the halls, he nearly eats his father's face off. To be fair, his father is a jerk. Stiles gets a completely different issue. He can't tell when he's dreaming. At all. Even a little bit. So as nightmare layers onto nightmare and he screams himself awake every night and sometimes during classes and in the halls, Stiles has no way of telling if he's actually woken up or if he's still in a horrifying dream. Also problematic? He can't read anything, which is usually a sign that you're dreaming, but right now he can't really read anything ever, which does not bode well.

And then there's Allison, whose nightmares lead her to hallucinating her dead Aunt Kate (who was a homicidal maniac and one of the main villains in season one) everywhere she goes. She sees Kate haunting her, ripping into her dreams, always smirking and running at her like she's going to eat Allison for dinner. Except, scaring Allison, daughter of hunters and alarmingly well-trained and armed Allison, is not a good idea. Allison fights back against the hallucination, only to wake up and realize that she was just a werewolf's reflexes away from skewering her best friend in the eyeball. Not good.

Said best friend, the flawless Lydia Martin (Holland Roden), is hard at work with the guys to figure out what's wrong, as is Scott's beta (and kind of foster brother, I guess?) Isaac (Daniel Sharman). But Lydia and Isaac turn out to be outmatched in the knowledge having competition. It's new girl Kira (Arden Cho) who has an answer. Mostly because they're discussing it at lunch and she couldn't help but overhear. Which is the best lantern hang I've seen in a while. Anyway, they're stuck in a state between life and death, and they have to figure out how to close the door to their subconsciouses before their own minds eat them whole.

Eugh.

There's also a sideplot where Stiles' father, Sheriff Stilinski (Linden Ashby), is looking into his new casefiles, because now that he knows about the supernatural, it seems like it might be good to reread his old unsolved cases and see if there might be an explanation. This is made all the more urgent by the fact that Scott's dad (the giant bag of jerk) is trying to get the Sheriff fired for gross incompetence. It's not his fault the town is full of pubescent creatures of the night!

The Sheriff might have found a case, too. One of a little girl, Malia, whose body was dragged by a "wild animal" away from the car wreck that killed her mother and sister when she was eight. That was eight years ago, making her (what a coincidence) the same age as the main characters, give or take. And then at the end of the episode, Scott and Stiles run into a wolf who may or may not be Malia. Hard to tell.

Oh, and Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) and Peter (Ian Bohen) have been kidnapped again and are being tortured again by someone we don't know (again). Honestly, the amount that Derek has been shirtless and tortured on this show is reaching ludicrous levels. And what happened to his baby sister Cora (Adelaide Kane)? I mean, I know that Kane is now starring on the CW's Reign, but they could have at least mentioned her.

All in all, it's a great episode and I'm super excited to be heading back in for another season or half season or whatever of Teen Wolf. Yes, the show is racist (they kill off all minority characters without fail - watch out Kira). And yes, it's pretty homophobic (where's Danny?) and sexist (kills off all female villains and most female side characters) to boot.

But it's fun. I know it's problematic. Hell, I have complained about how problematic it is myself. Several times. But I also know that I like it.

So, yes, I'm going to keep watching Teen Wolf. I know that at some point I will get pissed off again, and I know that eventually the whole thing where they keep raping Derek (not metaphorically, literally), and the bit where Lydia has the worst character arc ever, and the part where they refuse to write in Scott's biracial-ness (his actor is biracial, but the character is ambiguous), and the thing with all the sexism ever, and the missing Danny, are going to boil over and I'll rant and rave and swear I'm done. But until then, I'm going to curl up with some MTV and rewatch every scene that has Mama McCall (Melissa Ponzio) in it. Because I can.

Oh, and if you want a much more hilarious recap than I can do, check out Heath's weekly recaps over on her tumblr here. They're awesome.

Let's get one thing straight here: Agents of SHIELD isn't the world's greatest show. It's not bad or anything, and not even interesting enough for me to have something to say about it on a regular basis. It's not good, precisely, more...like meatloaf. Like the televisual equivalent of meatloaf.

Because it's not like it's terrible or anything, and you'll totally eat it if it's in front of you, but you're probably not going to order it at a restaurant.

Then again, most of the diners I like have meatloaf on the menu, so what do I know?

What I'm saying is that Agents of SHIELD, while a perfectly respectable piece of television, isn't great. It's not Marvel Movie Universe great, anyway. It's solid, and fun, and perfectly enjoyable to watch. But it's not really anything to write home about. Except for, and this is why we're talking about it today, Melinda May.

I knew I was going to love Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) from the pilot, because she was just so freaking cool - even if I didn't yet know really why I would love her. The answer, it turns out, is because Melinda May is a perfect, stereotypical action hero. And she's also a woman. She's not a stereotypical action woman. Nope. She's every single action hero trope piled into one character, and oh yeah, she has boobs.

This woman is my hero.

Let's go down the list, shall we? I mean an actual list, too. I got this off of TVTropes.org, because I am a nerd like that. (Do not visit that site if you are short on time. It's a vortex and will suck you in only to spit you out eight hours later, craving salty food and more television.)

1. (S)he* always ends up believing that Violence Really Is The Answer. What I mean here, with relation to Melinda May, is that while she starts the series as the backup, as the "bus" driver and the paperwork person, Coulson's second and just generally the backgroud person, by a couple episodes in, Melinda May is kicking some serious ass. Sure, she believed that she was done with fieldwork and totally not going to fight anymore, but look where that got her. It got her on a specialized team. Where she fights bad guys. All the time.

Hey, sometimes the action life just chooses you, man. And by man, I mean woman. And by action life, I mean exact replication of all of the action hero tropes. Woooo, specificity!

2. She is a Badass. Do I even have to explain this one? I mean, I will.

Part of the fun with Agent Melinda May is that she's the kind of agent that the other agents tell stories about. Confusing, wildly inaccurate stories. The legend of how she got her nickname, "The Cavalry", grows more ridiculous with every telling, but it turns out that the truth is just as badass, if not more, than the fiction. Basically, Melinda May is the kind of hero where just hearing her name makes people want to surrender, which is actually a plot point when Skye (Chloe Bennet) impersonates her in order to scare a bad guy.

Because being Melinda May was the most intimidating thing she could think of. I'm not crying, that's just happiness leaking out of my eyes.

3. When problems arise, she solves them by Cutting the Knot. This (a reference to the Gordian knot and one of the lighter Greek myths) pretty much just means that when a complex problem arises, Melinda May is apt to stare it dead in the eyes, punch something, and solve it.

Like, say you've got a berserker staff being passed around and you really need to grab it before it falls into the wrong hands (like the ones it's currently in), but touching it means you go berserker and - sorry, can't finish the thought, Melinda May has already grabbed the staff, taken down the enemy combatants and managed to not go crazy like literally everyone else to touch it ever.

I mean, those are just three perfect examples straight off the Action Hero list**, and here are a couple more.

4. She's got the kind of cold dead stare usually reserved for Clint Eastwood.

I really mean it. She just looks at a suspect and it's like they burst into flame. Or wish they could burst into flame. Or both. Probably both. It's most hilarious when she turns it on the crew, too. Skye spends the first half of the season terrified of her, but also a little in awe. And by this point, all that fear is just more awe. And still fear, because fear is a healthy response to this much awesome.

5. She's the one that everyone turns to for advice. When Skye needs to know how to deal with a situation, she asks What Would Melinda May Do? When Grant needs to figure something out, he takes a tip from his hero. When Coulson is stuck and not sure how to go on, he asks Melinda May her advice. And then manages to interpret her steely silence into something usable.

6. She's completely comfortable with herself. Like, completely comfortable. She doesn't necessarily like everything, but she knows exactly what's there. Massive guilt over casualties sustained on a mission? Nah. She knows it's already there. Raging PTSD? Got it covered.

In short, Melinda May is the kind of action hero that most character really wish they could be. And it's made all the better by the fact that she manages to avoid most of the major pitfalls and stereotypes of being a female action hero.

She's not fetishized at all, we have barely seen her out of uniform, even, and her uniform is perfectly functional and reasonable for her position. She's not a ditz, nor does she have anger management issues. Rather, she's a very reasonable person who keeps her problems in the inside so they can chew on her liver. (I never said Action Heroes were healthy or stable people, for the record.)

And she doesn't fall into any racial stereotypes either. While she is, yes, Asian, she's not an expert at kung-fu or anything. She just fights like all the SHIELD agents fight. Effectively.

I guess what I'm saying is that while Agents of SHIELD is really just an okay show, I will keep watching it for one simple thing: I need Agent Melinda May in my life. I'm never going to bust down a door with my food (I hope) or beat up supersoldiers or fly an airbus, dodging missiles and evading enemy planes, but I do need a badass-spiration every once in a while.

Sometimes it helps just to look at the badass over there and thing, yeah. Yeah. If she can do that, then I can do this.

Sometimes that's all it takes. So thanks, Melinda May.

*Yeah, so apparently TVTropes was just as surprised as I was to find out that Melinda May fits their definition so well. Because all their pronouns are masculine. I shall be changing them to make more sense, but I guess this is here to let you know that TVTropes is a little sexist. Shocker.

**Technically it does say on there that because Melinda May isn't the main character she can't be the Action Hero, but screw them. We all know the truth.

Guys, this week has been insane. I had a bunch of projects due, and of course I didn't work on them over the holidays, because I totally forgot about them! Like a boss. And while I did finish everything, I feel pretty fried.

Which is why I'm sitting around in my pajamas watching the songs from Frozen in Polish. Because I can.

Anyway, if you're half as braindead as I am, you might need some entertaining. Have a couple (bunch) of links I happen to think are awesome. And because I'm super tired and these videos are really cute, I'm giving them to you without a stitch of commentary this week. Enjoy.

1. On Being Round by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

2. Why Can't Women Have the Same Journeys as Men in Film? from Badass Digest.

3. The Horror of Coming of Age: Subverting the Teen Girl Experience in Film from Women and Hollywood.

4. "Hollywood's Not Interested in Stories About Women." from Bitch.

5. On Women and Empathy and Con Games by Robert Jackson Bennet.

6. A New Children's Book Explains what "Witch" Really Means from Bitch.

7. Oops! Etruscan Warrior Prince Actually a Princess from Yahoo.

8. Why White People Can't Quit Blackface from Bitch. (What? I like Bitch.)

9. How to Tell If You're a Feminist in Two Easy Steps from Huffington Post.

10. Cosplayers Photographed at Their Homes Is Kinda Weird from Fashionably Geek.

11. Youtube's Hidden Masterpiece Theater is the Lizzie Bennet Diaries from Buzzfeed.

12. Interview with Ytasha Womack on Afrofuturism and the World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy from Bitch.

13. Psychologists Discover How People Subconsciously Become Their Favorite Fictional Characters from Medical Daily.

14. Cree Language Classroom in Montreal an IndieGoGo campaign.

15. The American media has no idea how to talk about race on-screen from Salon.

16. It’s Not OK That Your Employees Can’t Afford to Eat from Harvard Business Review.

17. Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, Too: A Black Feminist Conversation on Fantasy Fiction for Teens from Bitch.

18. How Hollywood De-fanged Potter's Radical Politics from MuggleNet.

19. The Bechdel Test Sets the Bar Too Low. Let's Write a New One. from Slate.

20. Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet from Pacific Standard.

And a video that's just a little bit too relatable from Jenna Marbles.

We'll be back on Monday. Have an awesome weekend!

I'm not going to claim to be an expert in marketing or how the whole Hollywood money machine works. I mean, I'm not sure anyone can actually really claim to be an expert in that. So much dark magic involved. So much.

Anyway, I don't really understand how it works in its entirety, but I do understand a little, and what I know should help to explain something that's bothered me: Why did 47 Ronin, a movie that is seriously freaking amazing, tank at the box office?

Let me tell you a thing.

Movies are marketed based on a very confusing system (that I only vaguely understand), based around "quadrants". There are four quadrants - teenage boys, teenage girls, adult men, and adult women. Children are kind of another thing entirely, which is why you will see only kids' movies marketed at kids' movies and never shall the twain meet. Which is part of a lot of other problems. But back to the quadrants.

Each of these quadrants represents a hypothetical subset of moviegoers. It's all very self-explanatory, and while it is overly simplistic to assume that these groups have such wildly different taste, it gets the job done. Now, here's the problem.

No one really wants their movie to appeal to just one quadrant. You want everybody to go, right? Make as much money as possible. So you want to make a "four quadrant movie", right? Pack the theaters in with people excited to see your product. So what is a "four quadrant movie?" I think you can probably guess, but I'll spell it out for you. A "four quadrant movie" is a movie that appeals to teenage boys. Why? Because the theory goes, that what teenage boys will watch, teenage girls will watch and adult men will watch it because they want to feel young again/they never matured in the first place, while adult women will watch it because they have to drive their sons to the movie theater.

Take a long moment to let that sink in. According to most popular marketing firms, the best thing a movie can do is stereotypically appeal to teenage boys.

Now, let's watch the trailer for 47 Ronin again. I've got a link to it right here.

There are a lot of assumptions going on here, and we'll break them down, but first, allow me to totally blow your mind (maybe): that trailer is possibly the least representative explanation of the film they could have possibly made. Seriously. The movie was nothing like that. Every scene in there is out of context, they make multiple characters out of thin air, misrepresent the actual plot of the movie, and generally cock it all up.

And here's why.

The idea behind teenage boys as the standard for a popular movie is about more than just the general belief that teenage boys have disposable income and are sexist against movies with female protagonists and demand explosions and decontextualized nudity. The real assumptions are actually more disturbing.

By placing teenage boys as the arbiters of our cultural taste, we imply that not only do teenage boys represent our monolithic movie taste, that taste is white, male, young, and middle-to-upper class. As a result, any movie that is not about young, white, male, middle-to-upper class characters must be redefined so that it can be about them. Marketing believes that we all are or want to be those things, and therefore we will only watch a movie if it is or claims to be about that specific demographic.

And, as you might be able to recall, most movies that differ from this very specific formula are defined by their deviation. Think of Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent - now these are all reasonably different films, adapted from YA fiction, and have a female protagonist. And all of them are "teenage girl movies."Hunger Games has transformed into a more mass appeal property, sure, but at their heart, all of these are about girls. They are defined by how about girls they are, at least in the marketing, aren't they?

Katniss Everdeen, is, after all, the Girl on Fire.

Similarly, any movie that is primarily about non-white people is defined by how about non-white people it is. It's a black movie or a Hispanic movie or an Asian movie or whatever. It's not just a movie, it's a movie about race. And so on and so on and so on. Movies that differ are defined by their differences.

Which brings us back again to 47 Ronin. Like all of you, I saw the trailer fourteen kajillion times this year, and I figured that since I love Keanu Reeves (haters gonna hate) and Rinko Kikuchi, I'd go give it a shot even though it looked sophomoric and kind of terrible.

To my utter and complete surprise, the movie turned out to be a beautiful, thoughtful fairy tale, in which Keanu Reeves is not the main character, there is no pat Hollywood happy ending, the story stays remarkably true to Japanese folklore and myth, and there is much less fighting and a lot more character development than seemed likely. Basically, it's a completely different movie.

So here's what 47 Ronin is actually about. (SPOILERS)

The movie is based on a well-known Japanese myth, and follows the story pretty closely. In the movie, Ôishi (Hiroyuki Sanada) is a samurai in the service of Lord Asano (Min Tanaka), the kindly and thoughtful ruler of Ako. When Ôishi and Lord Asano find a young boy in the woods, Ôishi wants to kill him, as he has the signs of a demon on him, but Lord Asano spares his life and takes the boy into his home. The boy, Kai (later played by Keanu Reeves), grows up an outcast, both because of his weird origin, and because he is only half-Japanese. Ôishi hates him for the dishonor he brings on Lord Asano's house by existing.

Years pass. Kai grows up, and Ôishi becomes no more fond of him. But Lord Asano's daughter, Mika (Kô Shibasaki), does. She loves Kai, and Kai loves her, and it's all very tragic and noble and chaste. Until the Shogun visits, that is, and brings with him Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano). Lord Kira is not a nice guy. Such not a nice guy, in fact, that he brings with him his concubine - who is really a witch (Rinko Kikuchi). Lord Kira and the Witch conspire against Lord Asano, and seek to take his lands. Actually they seek to take all the lands. And they're darn good at it.

First their poison the samurai who will fight Lord Kira's samurai in the tournament. This will bring shame on Lord Asano, but Kai steps in and dons the armor. He's almost home free, too, until his helmet pops off and everyone sees that not only is this not a samurai, it's a demon-touched half-breed. Shame everywhere. Kai is beaten and Ôishi is furious.

Then, later that night, the Witch spells Lord Asano so he attacks Lord Kira. The result is disastrous. Lord Asano is forced by the Shogun to kill himself, Mika is given to Lord Kira in marriage (though she may wait a year for mourning), and Lord Asano's lands are given over to Lord Kira. Ôishi and his other samurai are banded Ronin (or, masterless samurai), and banished from Ako. And then, to add insult to injury, Lord Kira sells Kai into slavery and sticks Ôishi in a pit for a year.

Lord Kira is not a nice guy, okay? Also kind of crazy.

A year passes, and then Ôishi is up, feeble, and ready to take revenge. While he knows that they may die in the process, Ôishi is determined to fight to free Mika and regain the honor of Lord Asano. He also owes a debt to Kai, who realized that Lord Kira had a witch with him long before anyone else did. Ôishi wishes to see that debt paid.

And this is where in the story the action actually starts. But it's action with a purpose, and consequences, and stakes, and all those things that action movies really don't usually have. Plus, the ending of the story is true to the legend. The reward for fighting injustice and overpowering an evil warlord and his witch is simple: you may now die with honor.

There is virtually no nudity, there are only a couple of kisses, the violence is always plot-related and important, there is really only one white character in the entire film and he's not the protagonist, the two female characters (Mika and the Witch) talk to each other rather a lot actually, and the whole film is about the sublimation of self in the pursuit of honor, nobility and the greater good.

I guess I can kind of see why Hollywood didn't know what to do with this.

But really it just makes me sad. This is an amazing movie, guys. It's beautifully shot, the story is well written and compelling and tragic, and it's so delightfully different. This isn't an action movie, it's a fairy tale, and that's fine. Better than fine, it's great. How often do we get to see someone else's fairy tales, as in, non-European ones, on our screens?

The rub is this: 47 Ronin tanked at the box office. It tanked for two reasons: 1, the people who were expecting a big dumb action movie and did go to see it were bored out of their skulls and complained about how not an American action movie it was all over the internet, and 2, the people who were expecting a big dumb action movie and didn't go see it didn't go see it. And this is where our little example up above about how movie marketing works turns disastrous.

This movie failed because it was badly marketed. There is literally no other explanation. The expectations that were shaped in the leadup to its release were, frankly, full of shit. They had no bearing on the real movie, and as a result, the movie was a disappointment. I don't think I can say how sad this makes me.

So, please go see 47 Ronin, if you can. It's a wonderful movie that doesn't deserve to be punished for the shittiness of the market, and, really, don't we want to reward Hollywood for at least trying something different? I hate to say it, but if 47 Ronin bombs, it could be a long time before we get another big-budget non-western action movie again.

At least, one without Tom Cruise saving the Japanese from themselves through the power of white man magic. Because we all know how much Hollywood loves making those.

Like a lot of people, I think, my feelings about the final episode in Sherlock's third season, are mixed, intense, and at times contradictory. Also, they can sometimes be best explained with swears. But since this is a marginally family-friendly site and my mother reads it, we're going to skip right past the profanity and go into the part where I tear it to shreds with my teeth.

I mean, uh, analyze it. Yeah. Man, that got violent at the end.

SPOILERS. We're getting it out of the way early today, because really, if you haven't seen the episode yet, then what are you doing here? I mean that in the nice way, of course, even if it does sound exceptionally bitchy.

Anyway, like I said above, I have mixed feelings. But that doesn't mean it's universally bad. There were actually a lot of parts of this episode that I quite enjoyed, and the overall viewing experience was dramatic and fun and a little bit breathless. I think, in a way, that's the problem with Moffat. Or one of the problems. The first time you watch any of his works, you usually like them. They're fun! But the second viewing, or even when you try to remember the details of the first, you start to realize where all the holes are, and then it just gets bad.

But there are some genuine highlights in this episode, "His Last Vow", and most of them centered around the female cast. So let's talk about those first.

Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey) is absolutely fantastic in this episode. In all of her scenes, she kills it. When she slapped Sherlock (repeatedly) for throwing away the "beautiful gift" of his sobriety, there were literal cheers. And then later, when she appeared as an apparition in his mind palace to talk him through a diagnosis of his bullet wound, she managed to be entirely herself, but also better. We got to finally see her as Sherlock does: a brilliant, incredibly skilled doctor and the one person he can count on to get him through a crisis. It's even more notable to think that Sherlock instinctively turned to his mental Molly rather than a mental John to talk him through it. John's a doctor too, after all. I'd guess that this is because he doesn't mentally categorize John as a doctor, and he does think of Molly that way, but whatever the reason, the scenes were brilliant and I loved them. Team Molly for the win!

Another bit I quite liked was seeing the Holmes family all together. It's always a riot when we get glimpses into the childhood and family life of Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Mycroft (Mark Gatiss), and this was no exception. Made all the more entertaining by the fact that their parents are played by Benedict's actual parents, the scenes of domestic normalcy - with a nice house in the suburbs, ugly sweaters, and a mum who chastises everyone for not calling - were hilarious. Plus, just the idea that Sherlock and Mycroft came from reasonably normal people is freaking hysterical.

And then there's Janine (Yasmine Akram). Janine was arguably my absolute favorite thing about this episode. No, not because Sherlock finally got a girlfriend. That part felt confusing and out of character (until we figured out why he was doing it), but Janine was still lovable. Oh, I rather pitied her at the start, but as the episode wore on, she became increasingly interesting, which is a true rarity for a female love interest, especially on this show. In fact, it was the very end of her storyline that made me adore her.

Look, I'm not usually a fan of revenge at all, but I loved Janine's. It's brilliant. Not insofar as it really worked to punish Sherlock, because as we'll discuss at the end, her telling the tabloids all about their fictitious sex life really did nothing to change Sherlock's career, life, or even personal relationships, since no one who knows him would believe it. But I like it for its poetry. Sherlock uses her to get what he wants (access to her boss), and Janine uses him right back to get what she wants: which is apparently a lovely cottage in the country. Fair's fair, after all.

More than that, though, I loved that she was shown to be absolutely right in her anger. That she was shown not to be overreacting or freaking out, but that she was perfectly justified in wanting to wipe that smug smirk off his face. She did, after all, date him for months, thinking it was a real relationship. He proposed to her. Damn straight she's pissed and wants revenge. I think that was my favorite line of the whole episode, actually. When asked if she's ever going to be done getting her revenge, she responds that she'll just pop up every now and again for "a top up". I like her. And I like the story for letting me like her.

And then there's John (Martin Freeman). Specifically, the scene where John asks what he did to deserve this (this, of course, referring to the whole "my wife is actually an assassin in hiding" thing), and Sherlock responds, "Everything."

Why is that good? Because it's totally true. John Watson is addicted to fear and scary people. He's genuinely quite crazy, for all that he's the normal one of the bunch. When you look at his closest friends and loved ones, it's all his sociopathic best friend and his drug cartel running landlady, his medical examiner friend and his assassin wife (Amanda Abbington). John Watson is arguably crazier than anyone else on the show because he's the only one unaware of precisely how crazy he is.

Also, I think it was a brilliant way to answer the question of why John's wife turned out to be an assassin. Because of course she is. John Watson wouldn't just marry anyone normal. Normal doesn't do it for him. Case in point? His previous girlfriends in the first two seasons. Both normal and both reasonably forgettable.

But now we come to the parts I didn't like, which are, of course, rather more numerous I am afraid.

It's not that I didn't like the episode as a whole. I enjoyed it immensely. Lots of giggles and groans and the occasional high pitched squealing noise that apparently sounds a bit like a vacuum cleaner in a neighboring room (thanks, Duc, for that apt analogy). I love that Mary turned out to be a bit of a scary person and that she wasn't the ultimate bad guy. I love that she tried to assassinate a guy while pregnant. And I love that she is clearly the most competent person in that group.

But I don't love the fact that they stole her resolution. In fact, I loathe how the story was executed from pretty much that point on. From the condescending, "That's where they sit!" to John's decision to wait literal months to forgive her or even speak to her at all - while I recognize the emotional realism of that, it still felt pretty horrible to realize that John had been giving his pregnant wife the silent treatment for months, making her wait to see if he would forgive her, condemn her, turn her over to the police, what?

When he does finally deign to speak to her, it's to say that all of her fears were for nothing and he doesn't care who she is or where she's been, only what her future is. A sentiment that is lovely and romantic, but ultimately a bit offensive. He should care where she's been and who she is, for no other reason than that they will inform her future.

Not in a judgey way should he care, but in a simple, practical way. I expected more of you, John Watson. Certainly more than deciding that defining your wife as being just your wife was good enough for you.

It's not. She's more than just that, and it might be helpful to know exactly what. And furthermore, how insulting is it for him to demand the truth, then literally burn it and assert his own truth about her life on top of it. John's actions in this story, understandable or not, are extremely troubling. He throws things, has violent outbursts, gives his pregnant wife the silent treatment for months, and then rewrites Mary's whole story to better suit his desire for a normal wife. Instead of getting a story about Mary this episode, we got one about John. And it wasn't pretty.

All of that aside, we're still not even to the really annoying bit. That part comes when Sherlock drugs Mary (and his entire family) only to drag John out so they can make a deal with Magnusson that will free Mary, presumably. The problem here is that Sherlock has decided all of this without consulting Mary. He's not even deigned to mention it to her. He just decides that this is the best way to deal with the threat, even though Mary is a highly trained assassin who presumably knows how to infiltrate a house a hell of a lot better than either Sherlock or John.

Think about it. They had to go through a ridiculous charade to get into Sherlock's office, while Mary just appeared and disappeared with no trouble. Don't you think it would have been helpful to figure out how she could help?

And more than that, don't you think Mary deserves to be the one to take the shot? In the beginning she's demonized for wanting to kill Magnusson - it's a sign of how terrifying she is, how little John knows her. But as soon as she's been reaffirmed as John's lovely wife, she's too delicate to kill anyone. Sherlock shoots Magnusson, yes, but Sherlock is the hero, and therefore his action, which is exactly what Mary wanted to do, is justified and correct. If Mary shoots him she's a murderer. Sherlock shoots him and he's the hero.

Should I even point out that John murdered someone in cold blood in the first freaking episode? Why can't Mary kill someone? She's clearly good at it, and probably much better at compartmentalization than either of the boys. She also wouldn't get caught doing it in front of twenty police officers.

But the real frustration in this episode is the utter lack of consequences, for Sherlock in particular. We see in the beginning that Sherlock has gone back on drugs. Yet there are no repercussions to this. He does not act high, go through withdrawal, experience a side-effect when hooked up to morphine after being shot, there are no drug interactions, not even a note on his chart. Sherlock Holmes can spend the night in a crack den, high as a kite, and no one can tell him not to because he's right. It's all fine.

This stands in blatant contrast to Elementary, of course, as much of Sherlock does, where the entire show is actually formed on the understanding of Sherlock (Johnny Miller here) as a recovering drug addict. In Elementary, Sherlock's drug problems are no laughing matter, nor are his disturbing social tendencies and occasional felonious habits. In Sherlock, it's all fine, because Sherlock's the one doing it and Sherlock never does anything wrong.

There are no consequences to Janine's shaming of Sherlock in the press, which ultimately means that he was able to date a woman for a month, make her believe he loves her in a gambit to get access to her boss, and he gets out scott free. He gets shot in the stomach but somehow manages to escape the hospital, traipse around London, confront someone, and then casually call the ambulance to pick him up at exactly the right time, and then recovers out of sight.

Oh, and he shoots a prominent businessman in the face at point blank range with an unregistered gun in front of about twenty police officers, and his punishment is what, exactly? Four minutes on a plane before the plot decides it needs him again? Exactly what can't Sherlock get away with? Because he has now literally gotten away with murder.

And, of course, Moriarty may or may not be back (I'm betting on not, because that would be ridiculous, but what do I know?), and Sherlock doesn't have to leave, and it's all very exciting, right?

Eh.

Look, I really did enjoy this episode and this season in general. But I'm pretty freaking tired of all the bullshit that goes along with it (sorry, Mom). I'm tired of weird sexism and racism and plotlines that don't make sense and everyone bowing down to our lord Holmes. I'm tired of all the Moffat crap, basically. And it doesn't escape my notice that this episode, which bothered me the most out of all three, is the only one written exclusively by him.

A tip of the hat, good sir. Thanks for reminding me why I dislike you. As if I'd had time to forget.

I love you, Janine.

I was going to write about this book last week (but then I got distracted), and I was having trouble thinking of something to say about it. To some extent, I'm still having trouble deciding what precisely to say here, and some of that is good and some is bad.

On the one hand, it's always a bit hard to talk about anything by Neil Gaiman. Not because it's so bad or because it's so good, but because it's so incredibly by Neil Gaiman. He has an incredibly distinct style of writing, and to a large extent I don't really feel like I have anything new to say about his style. It's interesting. He writes a sort of modern fairy tale that I really like and enjoy, although I do miss a bit of the sharp humor I find in some of his earlier works, that seems to be less prevalent now.

Neil Gaiman is an incredibly talented writer. His stories always take turns you don't quite expect, feature new characters in new ways, and showcase the intense creativity lurking below all that curly hair. There is, for the record, quite a lot of curly hair.

There is, however, an extent to which Neil Gaiman bores me. I know, you're not supposed to say that on the internet, but I did. I love his stories, I really do, but they all feel a bit the same after a while. Or at least his recent ones do. They all feel like a rainy November afternoon, which is nice, but a bit samey. And I should know. I live in Western Washington, where every day is a rainy November afternoon (except for the two weeks of sunshine in August and the four days of snow in December).

It's, again, not that these are bad stories, or that they have an unpleasant tone. More that I feel as if Neil Gaiman is slowly stagnating, and I really wish we could shake him out of it, because he is a fantastic writer and there must be something new and exciting and terrifying hiding out in that aforementioned big brain.

Now, on to The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and its particulars.

The story, which we'll go over first and then discuss some particulars that worked and didn't work, a format I use literally every time but somehow still feel the need to explain, is deceptively simple on the surface. Our hero, whose name is never mentioned, and that makes me feel a lot better because I could not for the life of me remember it, is back in his childhood hometown for a funeral. On the way to the reception afterwards, he gets a bit lost and ends up at the farm where one of his childhood friends used to live. Feeling nostalgic, he stops in to say hello, and ends up sitting out back, staring at the duck pond, and reminiscing about the time when he was seven and he actually met Lettie Hempstock.

Most of the story is then told in flashback. Our narrator is a lonely child whose family is going through a bit of a tough time financially, causing them to rent out their spare bedroom (or rather, the narrator's bedroom - he now has to bunk with his sister, ew). When one of the lodgers steals the family car only to commit suicide in it just down the road, our hero meets Lettie Hempstock, who lives at that farm. Lettie is eleven, probably, and just the kind of friend a lonely boy would want. She's funny and quick and likes gross stuff and is very matter of fact, and oh yeah, she's a little bit clairvoyant. Her mother and grandmother aren't all that normal either.

But our hero is a little kid, and it all rolls off his back until he wakes up in the night gagging on a silver shilling. He shows it to Lettie the next day, as well as several other disturbing stories about people finding money, and she figures out what's going on. Someone in the spirit world is trying to give people money in order to gain a foothold in their world. She's got to banish the spirit, flea, whatever, before it does more harm. And she allows, in a move that they will all later come to regret, our hero to come along.

He's a little boy and he makes a mistake, and brings something back from the spirit world with them. A "flea" as she puts it, which burrows away as a worm in his foot. But that worm grows a lot bigger and more troublesome when he pulls it out, appearing again as Ursula Monkton, their new nanny.

The boy knows that Ursula is the flea, knows that she's terrible and must be stopped, finds something infinitely sinister in her and her false nicety, the way everyone loves her, how pretty she is, but he can't do anything about it. Literally. Ursula won't let him leave the property. She's faster than he is, stronger, better liked, and, well, a grown up. Eventually, though, the boy is able to escape and get help from the Hempstocks - help that does solve the problem, but rather raises another one - because while Ursula is a problem that can be got rid of, she left something in the boy that can't. At least not without taking his heart with it.

And I don't mean that she left something metaphorically in him. I mean that she bound a little bit of her foulness inside his literal heart as a backup plan. It's pretty oogy.

From here it's all terror and tension, with a lot of weirdness to boot. Ursula shows her true form, there are these terrifying things called "The Cleaners", there's an ocean that fits in a bucket and contains all the knowledge of the universe, oh, and the boy's father might be having an affair. With Ursula. I'm not going to explain much more than that, so that you actually read this silly book, but that's the gist. It ends again with our hero sitting by the duck pond, shocked that he had forgotten so much, and being informed that of course he forgets. He always forgets. He's been back many times, and each time he remembers, then forgets. He looks at the ocean in the duck pond and he remembers, then he goes back to his normal life.

That's how it ends.

It's funny, though, because the scariest part of the book for me isn't the bits at the end where it looks like the world might end and it's a fight between life and death. No, for me the scariest parts are in the middle. Ursula Monkton is the scariest villain I can really think of. Because she preys on those fears that we all have, fears left over from childhood, that never really leave us.

Honestly, this is the basic form of most child abuse, and as a child abuse narrative, this is genuinely terrifying. There's something so rightly horrifying about being vulnerable and afraid while someone hurts you, and knowing that you cannot stop them, because they are bigger and stronger than you, and knowing that you cannot tell anyone, because they are better liked than you, more likely to be believed, and most of all, knowing that it will not end.

Makes me uncomfortable just to think about it.

So when I think of The Ocean at the End of the Lane as a metaphorical exploration of repressed memories of child abuse (which the book genuinely contains - the man has completely forgotten about an incident where his father, under Ursula's influence - holds his head under in the bathtub until he passes out), it's a much better book, actually. I know that's strange, but it's true. There's something really interesting about the stories we tell ourselves to feel better about horrifying situations, and this one is a good one. It's about the importance of remembering, but also the importance of forgetting again. And how much difference one kind face can make.

The other thing I really love in this book is the Hempstocks themselves. They're clearly witches, even falling into the simple Maiden, Mother, Crone categorizations, but they're fantastically different. While they share a common sense of purpose, and a plainness of speech and behavior, each Hempstock woman is quite different - in temperament, ability, and relationship to the narrator. But none of them are stereotypical. Not at all. They're real people, who happen to be a bit magic and kind of immortal. Well, not really immortal. Timeless, maybe? Scary, definitely.

They're just really interesting characters, and perhaps the biggest complaint I have about the book, besides the rainy afternoon in November comments, is that we got to see so little of them. We spent a lot of time with the narrator, which is all well and good, because he is the narrator, but there were a fair number of life details included that were just all right, and the page space might have been better spent giving us a peek around the Hempstock farmhouse. Just saying, I'm dying to look around that place.

Overall, though, whatever my complaints about the tiredness of the style or the meh-ness of the ending (it was a bit meh), the book is good and I enjoyed reading it. There aren't that many more things you can demand of a book. It had interesting female characters, a compelling story, a non-annoying child protagonist (impressive), and ended when it needed to.

And that's not half bad.

As we set out on another season of Teen Wolf, one where, despite my emotional connection to the show, I feel comfortable predicting that the female villains will die horrible gruesome unnecessarily violent deaths and then stay dead, the minority characters will either be evil or die (or both), and Derek's character will continue to be tortured, raped, abused, and generally degraded, all while everyone tells him what a piece of crap he is (it's getting weird, guys), I think the moment is upon us to look back on a character who had her ups and downs, but is now, definitely, missed.

I'm talking about Erica Reyes.

Now, Erica is kind of a weirdly controversial character. It's weird because she's awesome and I don't understand why more people don't love her unconditionally, but also because her "crimes" are actually quite minor in the scope of the show, and the hatred negotiated towards her seems to be largely female in origin. And I'm not cool with that. But first - who the crap is Erica?

Well, Erica Reyes (Gage Golightly) was the third werewolf that Derek turned upon gaining his Alpha powers. The first was Jackson (Colton Haynes - much better on Arrow, thank you very much), then came Isaac (Daniel Sharman, who is dreamy), and then Erica. Derek's idea of building a pack seemed to revolve around giving people what they need. Using the bite as a gift not a curse. Jackson needed somewhere he could belong, a family, and while it didn't really work out for him (turned into a giant lizard man), the intent was there. Isaac needed to get away from his abusive father and find his own strength. Boyd (Sinqua Walls) needed to connect with people and feel power, since he felt very disenfranchised. And Erica - well, Erica probably had the most compelling reason.

Erica, as we learn very quickly in her story, is epileptic. She's been epileptic her whole life, and it's taken a massive toll. The frequent seizures destroy her quality of life, made all the worse by the fact that she is in high school, where the students would rather film her and put it on the internet than figure out how to help. Erica is pissed off, tired, and ready to die.

When along comes Derek. Now, admittedly, Derek turns Erica in possibly the creepiest way ever - by wheeling her down to the morgue when she's in the hospital, then going all, "Do you want power?" seductive on her, only for you to remember that this chick is definitely underage - but the intent here is actually pretty awesome. Derek seeks out the people who most need the bite, and asks if they want it. Erica most definitely freaking wants it.

Her transformation is extreme. One day she's mousy, at the back of the classroom, frizzy hair, dark circles under her eyes (you know, a normal person), and the next she's a glamazon. Transformed. Strong. Healthy. And dripping with vitality.

So, obviously, it goes to her head.

And this is the part where a lot of people start to dislike Erica. But not me. I actually love her for this. I love that the power and the makeover, and the presumably hundreds of dollars that Derek spent making a teenage girl feel better about her wardrobe (talk about scenes I wish were included), make Erica kind of a bitch for a while. Because she's not perfect. She's a teenage girl who went from crippling illness to alarming health in about a day. Of freaking course she's gonna be a little wild.

I love this bit because Erica is so much more interesting for it. She's pissed off, now that she has the time and energy to be, and she's perfectly happy to make other people miserable for it. She's mad at Scott (Tyler Posey) for helping her when she fell - because he saw her weakness and she hates her weakness. She's pissed at Stiles (Dylan O'Brien) for ignoring her when she was ordinary and always lusting after the perfect Lydia (Holland Roden). She's pissed at everyone for everything, and it's not hard to see why.

The fans all hate her for one specific thing, though, and that's a bit silly. Yes, she brains Stiles with a part of his own car. But, really, are you that surprised? Stiles is a bit of a twat about her transformation, her Alpha - the guy who gave her perfect health after years of illness - just asked her to make sure he's out of the way, and she's pretty sure Stiles is protecting a monster. Yes, the braining is excessive, but it really does make perfect sense.

The real problem with Erica is that she's so underused, actually. Because while she is a bit oversexualized, she's a really interesting character. She ends up dating Boyd, which is cool, and they run away together, which is even cooler, but then they get caught and she gets killed, which is so totally not cool at all. Actually, it's really offensive. Because it is used as yet another reason why we need to get the big bad this season. Erica's death is a catalyst, but Erica's life? Apparently not worth all that much.

And that's a damn shame, because there were so many little details that Erica made more interesting in the show, just by being there.

Like, what is it like to suddenly be healthy after years of debilitating illness? What's it like to get your period as a werewolf? How does having an extremely high pain tolerance translate into fighting? What's up with werewolf sexuality - because it looks pretty damn fluid from here? Does turning into a werewolf make you more hungry or hungry for different things or have to shave your legs more or make you care about shaving your legs less?

I want to know. I want to know all the things, and I wanted Erica to be the one to tell me, because she is super duper freaking interesting.

Which is, I can only assume, the reason she is dead.

This gets back to the real problem on Teen Wolf. The female characters, aside from Allison and Lydia, who have love interest plot armor, are disposable, interchangeable, replaceable. We needed another female character in season two, so we got Erica. Erica became too hard to write (I guess?) in season three, so we got a new girl - Cora (Adelaide Kane). Cora's actress gets her own show so she's written out and never referred to again so we can have a new girl - Kira (Arden Cho).

Do you get where I'm going with this? It's like the writers genuinely don't believe that their audience has the capacity to like more than one woman at a time. And, more than that, they seem to believe that killing these women off for the development of the male characters is totally okay. It's really, really not.

Erica is amazing. She's beautiful and smart and damaged and a little power-hungry and ambitious, and it's all great. She's so totally not perfect, and it's an amazing antidote to the rest of the show. She's a screwed up teenager who makes terrible life choices and I love it.

I love Erica because she was true. She was exactly the person she needed to be in that situation, and because the beginning of her story is quite possibly one of the more brilliant starts to a monster story I've seen. I don't hate Erica for the way her story later fell flat. I hate the writers for that. I hate the writers for a lot of things, but I think killing Erica might be one of the biggest.

Don't punish your characters because you don't know how to write. And don't you dare imply that anything about Erica Reyes was less than fantastic, because it wasn't. She was amazing, not because she was perfect, but exactly because she wasn't.

"I have a beautiful everything." Damn straight.

And the award for meme of the week goes to Miss Officer and Mr. Truffles. *dies of cute*

You know what's awesome? Getting to catch up with a friend from out of town. You know what's even more awesome? Doing it over cheeseburgers and used books and frittering the afternoon away with one of your favorite people.

What I mean to say is that I'm having a fantastic weekend, and I hope you are as well. Either way, here are some links to stimulate your brain bits. Have fun!

1. The Princess Archetype in the Movies from Women and Hollywood. Are you an Artemis or an Aphrodite?

2. The Day the Movies Died from GQ. Because decrying the death of things is the real American pastime.

3. The Rebel Warrior and the Boy with the Bread: Gale, Peeta, and Masculinity in the Hunger Games from Bitch. Because Peeta's not unmasculine just because he likes baking cakes.

4. To the Academy: Consider the Women from Women and Hollywood. It's Oscar season again, guys.

5. Can We Nitpick Skyfall's Evil Plan for a Moment? from Vulture. It falls apart on a second look.

6. Where Have All the Women Gone in Movies? from LA Times. Statistics don't lie. They obfuscate, but they don't lie.

7. Starship Troopers: One of the Most Misunderstood Movies Ever from The Atlantic. Hey, satire is confusing, okay?

8. How Classic Disney Movies Made an Entire Generation Suck from Cracked. True story.

9. Will Hunger Games Fans and Twilight Fans Ever Get Along? from The Daily Beast. Well, they do both like violence.

10. Neville Longbottom is the Most Important Person in Harry Potter—And Here’s Why from Tor.com. This article. THIS ARTICLE.

11. Frozen Is the Best Disney Film Since The Lion King from The Daily Beast. Why are the ones about family always so much better?

12. What Really Makes Katniss Stand Out? Peeta, Her Movie Girlfriend from NPR. Team Katniss, though. All the way.

13. 13 Reasons Every Feminist Needs To Watch The Punk Singer from Buzzfeed. Gonna be honest, the numbering here is pure coincidence, which makes it way more awesome.

14. Gender Inequality in Film from NYFA Blog. Er, this is my alma mater. And since when did we go legit and research having and well read? This is weird, guys. Weird. Good graphic, though.

15. The Best Part of Catching Fire is What it Says About TV News from Bitch. Caesar Flickerman haunts my nightmares.

16. Can We Talk About The Rape Scene In The Wolf Of Wall Street? from Jezebel Groupthink. Reasons I have not seen this movie yet.

17. The Vulgar Genius of The Wolf of Wall Street from The Atlantic. Also reasons I haven't seen it.

18. The Feminism of Hayao Miyazaki and Spirited Away from Bitch. Love this guy and his movies. So wonderful.

19. How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood from The Atlantic. Netflix is amazing and terrifying, as in, inspiring of terror and amazement.

20. A Girl Who Walks Home Alone At Night, an Iranian Vampire Western from The MarySue. Yes, that's "Things I Wished for for Christmas" for $800, Alex.

And, finally, a lovingly worded, beautifully animated letter to JJ Abrams, begging him not to ruin Star Wars from Sincerely Truman.

That's all for this week. Tune in on Monday for more shenanigans, including but not limited to, the race relations in Hairspray, Disney's Robin Hood, and the princess politics of Reign.

It's a funny thing to find out that one of your good friends doesn't read your blog because he's sick of you calling everything he loves racist.

Which is why I was almost kind of hesitant to talk about Hairspray today, because, you guessed it, this movie is a teensy weensy bit racist. I mean I love it, but there is definitely stuff here that could be improved.

On the other hand, it tries. And you have no idea how happy that in and of itself makes me. Hairspray desperately tries to depict race in a fair and even-handed manner, and that's kind of, in a very strange way, the problem. But we'll get to that in a minute.

So when Hairspray came out in 2007, I was already well on my way to being the intellectual giant you see before you now (well, sort of - I was in college?), and I was already quite familiar with the story in the movie. Sadly, as has been overshadowed by the blistering popularity of the shiny happy musical, Hairspray was originally an independent film, put out by John Waters (master of sketchiness) in 1988. The original, while possessing the same basic story is a very, very different movie. Where the remake (which is based much more on the stage musical they made based on the original film) is all shiny, happy, squeaky clean fun, the original is, well, gritty.

Or as gritty as a movie about a bunch of teenagers singing and dancing on a variety show in the early sixties can be. Which is, as it happens, rather gritty.

I mean, there's just so much social commentary in the original version that didn't make it into the remake. It's so much harsher and deeper. And it's so much...dirtier? Less appropriate for children, at any rate. But I think what I love about the original, and what failed to translate into the remake, no matter how incredibly, disgustingly catchy those songs are, is the irreverence the film held for everyone and everything. The remake is too reverent, almost, making sure its viewers know the lessons they must learn and the important values that must be conveyed.

The original is a sour patch kid, and the remake is a shot of pure sugar straight to the bloodstream.

But we aren't really here to talk about the original. Not exactly, except to say that this movie, more than most, really helped shape my filmic taste, especially my taste in humor. It's a good movie, for all that it's insane, and I love it.

The plot of the movie(s) is simple. [Note, from here on, we're just referring to the 2007 version.] Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) is an overweight teenager with surprisingly liberal views, a lower-class family background, and a dream to be a local television star - specifically as a dancer on The Corny Collins Show. Tracy is a good dancer, and it's not so much that her dream is drastically out of the question, but that it's so close and yet so far. Still, Tracy never gives up hope, and one day her hope is rewarded. One of the regular dancers has gotten pregnant, so they're holding tryouts for a new girl! Yay!

Tracy drags her best friend Penny (Amanda Bynes) along to the audition, where she does show she can dance, but tragically is cut out of the competition by the racist, angry, bitch-queen that is Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer, in one of her best performances, I kid you not). Velma's the show's choreographer, and makes sure that the spotlight stays on her little darling, Amber (Brittany Snow), and Amber's dreamy boyfriend, Link (Zac Efron). Velma Von Tussle isn't going to let anyone get in the way of Amber's future success, especially not some low-class little fat girl.

Velma's not a very nice person. That's actually most of what makes her so fun. She has literally no redeeming features. It's fantastic.

Anyway, Tracy gets detention for cutting school and winds up meeting all the black kids the school has somehow been hiding. Because of course they're all in in-school detention. She meets Seaweed (Elijah Kelley), a Corny Collins castmember who appears on their monthly "Negro Day". Seaweed and Tracy hit it off pretty quickly, which makes sense. They both love to dance. Seaweed teaches Tracy a cool new dance, and this cool new dance is exactly what she needs to get the attention of both Link and Corny Collins himself (James Marsden). Bam, Tracy is the newest member of the Corny Collins Show.

It seems like everything is smooth sailing from there, too. Tracy is more popular than she's ever been, she's leading the charts, her family is making some money, and she's finally realized her dream. Plus, Link has totally noticed her. Score!

There's just one problem: Velma Von Tussle. Velma can't really take shots at Tracy, since Tracy is so beloved by her city Baltimore now, but she can take aim at everything Tracy loves, like her parents, Link, and her progressive values. So, Velma cancels "Negro Day", effectively ending all minority representation on Baltimore's local stations.

Naturally, the black community is outraged by this. Well, maybe outraged is the wrong word. They're stoic and tragic and noble instead. Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah), the host of "Negro Day" and mother of Seaweed and Little Inez (Taylor Parks), leads the black community in a peaceful, noble protest of the segregation on Baltimore's channels. Tracy defies her parents' wishes and joins their march, only to accidentally bean a police officer with a sign and go on the run from the cops.

She runs to Penny, who unsuccessfully hides her - side note, Allison Janney is amazing as Penny's mother and seriously this cast is just great - until they are both rescued by Seaweed and his friends. Oh right, and Penny and Seaweed are in awkward, adorable love.

The Miss Teenage Hairspray contest is the next day, and while Tracy is officially still wanted by the police, everyone knows that if Tracy wins the contest then she'll be back on the show. Or something. Actually, besides being a moral victory, I'm really not sure what Tracy getting on the show will accomplish. But, whatever. Plot.

The gang enacts a ridiculous scheme to get Tracy inside the building, where she storms the show and gives an inspiring dance, in a suitably unsubtle black and white dress. Then Link decides to break the code and bring Little Inez in to dance, and the phones light up. Before you know it, Little Inez becomes Miss Teenage Hairspray, and the Corny Collins Show is officially integrated! Velma gets fired, Amber apparently turns out to not be terrible sort of, and Corny and Maybelle make eyes at each other in the host booth.

It's all adorable and well-sung and charming, and so cute that you completely forget that it's kind of, well, offensive.

Now, let me get a few things out of the way first. Like I've said, I really do love this movie. Yes, I love the original more, but that doesn't mean this doesn't hit the spot sometimes. I like musicals, I like body positivity, and I like female-driven stories that aren't primarily about romance. This has everything I like, for the most part. Tracy is a fantastic character. She's likable, fun, and she doesn't feel the need to change herself in order to be more attractive to the guy she likes. She just figures that as soon as he finally sees her, he'll fall in love. Which he does. Tracy might be overweight, but she likes herself and the way she looks.

Actually, that might be my favorite part of the film. While Tracy's weight is used as a target for everyone who dislikes her, and she never denies that she's heavy, she genuinely doesn't seem to care. She likes herself. And for a teenage female protagonist that is ridiculously huge.

But then there's the thing I don't actually like about Tracy, and, to be fair, it's not her fault. It's the writers. You see, Tracy, for all that she's lovely and progressive and amazing, entirely benefits by stealing the efforts of black people. And their spotlight. And a lot of things, really. Which is just depressing. True, probably, but hella depressing.

When Tracy gets her big break, it's because Seaweed taught her a cool new dance that was only being danced in the black neighborhoods. Then Tracy busts it out at a school dance, but since she's dancing it on the white side of the segregated gym, people notice. Bear in mind, this is a dance that Seaweed either created or brought into the area, and Tracy is the one who benefits.

Her first day on the show, Tracy says that the only change she'd make is that she'd "make every day 'Negro Day'!" And while that's admirable, it really is, what it serves to do is put a link in our minds between this white teenage girl and civil rights. Instead of linking civil rights issues to one of the actual black people in the freaking story.

Then, later, she goes on the march with Maybelle and Seaweed, and when the march turns sour, all of the media attention is on Tracy. Again, not actually her fault. But what happens in the narrative is that a white girl shows up at an event with hundreds, maybe thousands, of black people, and the media only pay attention to this one white girl. One.

In fact, the manhunt for Tracy and her competing in Miss Teenage Hairspray massively overpowers the actual story here: that Baltimore is enforcing segregation laws and that there was a huge protest, and hey, maybe the black community has something to say here?

The reason people are excited to see her on TV is partially because she's a favorite on the show, but also because she's just been plastered all over their sets for being at an integration protest, and now it looks like Miss Teenage Hairspray is about to become a referendum on integration in Baltimore.

Again, that's not really a bad thing, per se. I really love that Tracy is written as a character who cares deeply about race relations, who really and truly wants Seaweed and Little Inez dancing with her up on the show, and who is willing to risk her dream to help others. That's all admirable and amazing, and I don't want to dismiss that.

But that doesn't change the fact that the writers have cocked this up. Because instead of Tracy coming across as a concerned citizen, and a good person, what she is a White Savior. She is the girl who will single-handedly free Baltimore's black community from its oppression, and she will do it with the power of dance. Dances that she learned from them, of course.

Sigh.

Unfortunately, all of this masks the even larger problem in Hairspray, which goes back to the original movie and why, ultimately, I think that one's better. Simply put, the black people in the 2007 Hairspray aren't funny. I don't mean that in the minstrel-y, horrific "entertain me" way, but I mean that in the most basic sense, the black people in this movie don't get to be funny. They don't have funny songs, or funny dances, not really. They sing about their race. Or their nobility. Or how it's okay that everyone discriminates against them, because they will persevere.

They don't get to be in on the joke. They have to stand on the sidelines being all noble and stuff, while everyone else has a fun time. And it's a damn shame.

Why the hell do you cast Queen Latifah, who is incredibly funny, as your black female lead, and then not give her anything to do? Everyone else in the movie gets a chance to laugh at themself. Velma gets her awkward seduction of Tracy's dad. Penny and her mother have an entire subplot of hilarity. Corny Collins gets to snark around in the background. Heck, even the deeply painful John Travolta as Tracy's mom gets some kicks in. But not the black characters. Nope. Seaweed gets only a couple of jokes, and by and large, he's defined by his relationship to Penny or his race. He doesn't really have anything else, and sadly, he's lucky. Pretty much all the other black characters are defined only by their race.

I'm not saying that the story of Hairspray is inherently bad. It's not. I love that this movie aims to tell a story about race relations and feminism and changing social mores in Baltimore in 1962. I think that's seriously amazing.

It's just that there was a way to do it better. There was a way to do it and let everyone be in on the joke. As it is, however, the black people aren't a part of the fun. They have to stand over there and give Tracy her depth as a character. We know she's deep because she cares about integration, right? But that's the thing - if you take that away, all the scenes of the black characters are actually kind of deeply offensive.

Like, all the black kids are in detention? And it's only black kids in detention? That might have been an interesting commentary on the higher likelihood of minorities to be incarcerated if the film had managed to toss an aside, or have a snarky comment, or even just make a joke about it, but it didn't. The black kids are in detention because obviously they are. The black kids live in the bad part of town because of course they do, but don't worry. You white kids are safe. Because no one in this neighborhood harbors any ill will about the treatment of minorities in Baltimore. You'll be fine.

Oh right, and Motormouth Maybelle is all noble and stuff, or she's singing about how she's super hot (which is a great song), but she's singing it while black women dance around with plates of cornbread and green beans and ham.

Deeper sigh.

Just, it's like every time this movie tries to portray black people it has a seizure and manages to say the worst thing possible. And you kind of want to pinch its cheek for trying so dang hard, but you also want to slap it for getting it so annoyingly wrong.

And, coming around again, this is what I like about the original over the remake. While the original is much darker, and more definitively not a "nice" movie, it's more honest. Yes, there are struggles and this all sucks sometimes. But you know what else? You can still laugh about how terrible the world is. Just because life is hard doesn't mean you have to go around being all stoic. The world is a ridiculous and silly place. Laugh at it.

It's a message I think we can all agree with.

Was your mom in the Navy?

So, you know how I keep railing on the Disney princess movies and I complain a lot and everyone has this lingering question in the back of their minds about what kind of a horrifying, deprived, scary childhood I had to make me so adverse to fun?

Maybe you're not actually asking that question. I'm gonna answer it anyways.

The truth is that I had a pretty decent childhood all around. And while we didn't actually have cable, and the only shows I saw until I was thirteen were pretty much limited to Sesame Street, Wishbone, Kratt's Creatures, Bill Nye, and The Jim Lehrer News Hour, I did see movies. A lot of movies. Because when you don't have cable and have already read literally every book in the children's section of the library that is within walking distance of your house, eventually you turn to something else. Something different. Something like, say, Disney movies.

And pretty much every other movie too. It's not that I had a deprived childhood, or that I suffered because I never got to see anything and as a result I'm hyper critical. My parents actually took time and effort to make sure that we were exposed to good culture and high art and all that jazz. It's not that I didn't get enough Disney in my childhood to get it, it's that I got so much of everything else that I developed a very discerning Disney palate at a young age.

Also, I got to see a lot of amazing old films and got a strong education in classical music via the radio and the library, and I guess that part of what I'm saying is to support your local libraries because they are freaking awesome.

But the other thing I'm saying is that it's not that I don't get Disney. It's that I've seen enough Disney to be picky about it. So when I say that Robin Hood is one of my favorite classic Disney films, I hope you understand that there is a hell of a lot of thought going into this. And also a fair amount of gut feeling, because let's be real, who doesn't love this movie?

Put out in 1973, Robin Hood is weirdly positioned in the Disney canon. It's smack in between the two great periods of Disney popularity - in between the Disney princess eras, basically. It comes after Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, and before The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. This was a hard time for Disney. They didn't quite have the formula down yet, they were reeling from the death of their founder, and honestly kind of struggling to figure out what audiences wanted to see. So, for a while, Disney picked from the legends and fairy tales genre. And from that we got, dun dun DUN, Robin Hood.

I feel like I shouldn't have to explain the plot on this one, since the plot is exactly the same as every other Robin Hood narrative, but I'll give you a brief synopsis. Robin Hood is a nobleman who has turned outlaw in order to enact justice on the wicked Prince John, who is hurting the country as he rules in his brother's (King Richard's) stead. Robin and his merry men (or in this case, pretty much just Little John) rob from the rich and give to the poor, all while they merrily escape from the Sheriff of Nottingham and the evil Prince John.

There's really very little actual plot in this movie. Which isn't exactly a bad thing, as it happens.

Oh, there's Maid Marion too, the lovely noblewoman that Robin is in love with and who loves Robin back. She's being kept hostage by Prince John, and Robin has to save her. Or maybe just give her an opportunity to escape and she'll save herself. There's an archery contest, a lot of heists and jail breaks, jokes about how terrible Prince John is, and a triumphal return of King Richard. So pretty much every Robin Hood movie ever.

What makes this one different, though, is how they do it. And I don't just mean that they do this by giving us a whole cast of talking animals and silly gags and one of the most memorable villains in the Disney canon (I'm talking about you, Hiss), but by making the story genuinely emotionally resonant. And that? That takes skill.

It's weird, because usually when we talk about movies that really get at your heart, they're ones that have a solid story arc, that go somewhere. Stories where the characters transform and you emotionally join with them on their journey. None of that really happens here, but we get the same effects. Why?

Because when you think about it, nothing really does change in Robin Hood. At the beginning of the movie, Robin is a good guy doing bad things. At the end of the movie, he's a good guy who doesn't have to do bad things anymore, but not because he changed, because the circumstances around him changed. Maid Marion is lovely and sweet and kind and later in the movie she is still lovely and sweet and kind (though, surprisingly, with a little kick). Prince John is a whiny cry-baby. Hiss is deliciously evil and the only smart one around. Clucky is my favorite character. No one changes at all.

And as far as the plot goes, there really isn't much. The people of Nottingham are being taxed unfairly. Robin steals money and gives it to them. Robin wins an archery contest and saves Maid Marion. The Prince takes it out on the people by taxing them more. They go to jail. Robin and Little John break them out of jail and steal all the money from the treasury. King Richard comes back. Robin and Maid Marion get married. The end.

No, seriously, that's a good summary of everything in this movie. And for all that it's episodic and simplistic and really more of a panto than a plot, it's not bad. It's actually really amazing. Because for all of its simplicity, this movie knows exactly where to hit you: in your empathy.

It's not that you empathize with the transformation of the characters, and it's really not that you think of yourself as Robin Hood or Maid Marion or even Little John. Pretty much everyone I know who has watched this movie empathizes most with the people of Nottingham. The random nice people getting screwed over because their king decided to fight a war and left his idiot brother in charge. The people of Nottingham are shown to be kind, good, and poor as all get out. But they're also feisty and lovable and desperate to change their lot. You feel for these people. You love these people. And you desperately want Robin to save them.

I think that's what this movie really taps into. The childlike feeling that we are in deep over our heads, that the world is about to eat us, and that we really, really need someone to swoop in and stop the evil Prince John from taking our money.

I'm just going to say that as a reasonably cash-strapped adult, this resonates with me.

But it's really a very classic story. For all that Robin is the underdog here, he's also sort of not. He's underestimated, but no one really believes that Robin can't do it. There's really never a question of whether or not Robin will be okay. Whether he'll save us. We know he'll save us because he's good, and we know he can because he's freaking Robin Hood! Of course he can!

Which is why the one moment when you think he can't, when he sacrifices his freedom to save a little baby rabbit (oh gosh, I'm getting all feelingsy just thinking about it - I need a lozenge), it's devastating. Robin is the hero. He's our hero. He has to live. He just has to.

Fortunately, he does. And Nottingham is saved, yay! But the real thing that's saved is our hope. Because Robin Hood doesn't just represent a fox in a weird green hat, he's the hero we all want to save us. And more than that, he's the hero who wants to teach us how to save ourselves.

One of my favorite parts of the movie (aside from the one where the church mice give Father Tuck their last farthing and oh crap the feelings are back) is when Robin meets with a young rabbit who is probably his biggest fan. Now this little rabbit is down on his luck. His mom is a single mother, he has like four siblings, all young, and they are dirt poor. Robin comes to them on the little rabbit's birthday, just as the Sheriff has stolen everything they have. Not only does Robin give them money to replace what they lost and then some, he also gives the little rabbit a present: he gives him a bow and arrow, and his very own hat.

It seems like a little touch, but it really isn't. The message here isn't "hey kid, to reward you for being so poor, I thought I'd give you some of my old stuff", it's "hey kid, I see that you are down on your luck - here, have something you might be able to use to protect your family." Hey kid, have some hope. Hey kid, want to learn to be strong?

Guh, this gets me every time. Because the real message of Robin Hood isn't so much that if we wait for a hero then eventually someone will come, but rather, if we work together, we can save each other. And that hits me right in the deeply seated love of community and togetherness and happiness. Dang.

I mean, there's also stuff in here about how the movie works as a stinging indictment both of over-taxation and the free market system, and how it's actually kind of communist, if you think about it (Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor, according to their needs not their contributions), but the real thrust of the movie is in the way that Robin doesn't fight for the villagers, he fights with them. He helps them fight. He's the hero, but he's a hero who leads, not one who does it all on his own.

That is why this movie is one of the best Disney films. It's one of the rare ones with a genuine moral center that doesn't suck, and one where the villain is honestly quite realistic. Prince John loves power and money, but he doesn't know how to deal with the consequences of his actions. He's not an evil mastermind - none of them are, not even Hiss. They just have the power to be bad, so they are bad. It's really simple, and for all that simplicity, probably the truest version of the story. Plus, they're all really funny.

And just before we go, I want to give a quick shout out to Clucky, Maid Marion's friend. Clucky is possibly my favorite character in the movie precisely because she's the opposite of Maid Marion. She's bawdy, violent, snarky, and vehemently political, and not only are she and Maid Marion friends (which is awesome in and of itself), but Clucky is shown to not just be Maid Marion's tag along, but to be a desirable woman-ish creature in her own right.

Clucky isn't bad because she's aggressive and funny and strong, she's great. She's different from Maid Marion, but the story never says that's a bad thing.

Just another thing to love, and just another reason why Robin Hood really is one of the best.

Like I said in last week’s review, while I quite like Neil Gaiman’s work overall, his recent stuff feels kind of bland to me. Like a rainy November afternoon, or like a big bowl of beef stew where someone forgot the salt, or listening to a song that sounds nice but the volume is down too low and you can’t figure out what the lyrics are. It’s like that. This is to say that there’s nothing really wrongwith his books, but that they lack that extra something that would give them oomph. And in the case of The Graveyard Book, I’m pretty sure I know what that extra oomph is.

The Graveyard Bookis well written and interesting, following a young boy who escapes the murder of his family when he’s a little baby by wandering into a graveyard and being adopted by the ghosts there. He grows up as the only living citizen of the graveyard, parented by Mr. and Mrs. Owen, ghosts, and guardianed by Silas, who is unspecified but definitely not human. Or dead. Other.

The boy, Bod, which is short for Nobody Owens, has lots of adventures and learns lots of interesting things while he lives in the graveyard, but Bod does long to get to be out with his own people, in the sun, talking to living, breathing humans. He can’t because the man who killed his family is still out there, and Silas suspects that the man, Jack, is still quite interested in murdering Bod.

The book itself is largely episodic, with the only running throughline being that of Bod and his past and Jack’s attempts to kill him. Like I pointed out yesterday, episodic doesn’t necessarily mean bad, but it does mean that the story lacks a defined structure, and while Robin Hood can definitely get away with it, this book rather suffers.

The problem is that The Graveyard Book doesn’t appear to be aboutanything, not in the grand sense of the word. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is about childhood trauma and the scar tissue we build over things we’d rather forget. Braveheart is about the difference that one life, and one passion can make in the grand history of the world. The New Girl is about the joys of finding your family. Most stories are really about something.

And that makes sense, doesn’t it? The stories we tell and the stories we love are the best indication of who we really are. I love stories about people of principle standing up against a great evil and trying to save the world. That’s why I love movies and shows as disparate as Supernatural and Chariots of Fire and Rang de Basanti and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have a strong tendency to write stories like that too. Because that is what I love, that is what’s in my heart, and that’s what comes out.

Good stories are a reflection of the writer’s soul. Bad stories are too, I guess, but they’re much more disconcerting, when you get down to it. And I think all of this finally comes back to the real problem I have with The Graveyard Book and Neil Gaiman in general, which is, simply, that I worry about his stories. They aren’t about anything a lot of the time, and that bothers me.

How do you manage to write a story that isn’t about anything? What does that say about the writer?

Of course, the other possibility here is that The Graveyard Book is about something, but I have missed the understanding of what that is. In other words, I just don’t get it. And I don’t rule out that possibility. I’m not perfect, I’m not an infallible analysis machine, and sometimes I just don’t get stuff. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it, but it does mean that I miss the larger emotional resonance. It’s not the end of the world, but it is annoying.

Still, for whatever reason, The Graveyard Book leaves me cold. It’s a cute story with some really interesting elements, but it doesn’t meananything to me, and therefore I have a hard time loving it.

There’s a lot in here to be commended, though, whatever my personal preferences.

The whole thing is, of course, beautifully written. Neil Gaiman has a gift for prose, and this book is no exception. Bod is a really compelling character, and his strange childhood is both entertaining and chilling. You really feel for him, and hope that one day he’ll be able to come out and live in the daylight. Silas is interesting, Ms. Lupescu is one of my favorites, and generally speaking, the cast is fun, well rounded and the story engaging. But somehow it’s just not enough.

Part of this is my general disposition against episodic stories. But more than that, I think this has to do with my need for the media I consume to mean something. It’s all well and good to tell a good story, but if you aren’t telling it to me for a reason, then I kind of feel like we’re wasting each other’s time. I don’t mean I want you to be preachy or annoying, but I do mean that I want to know you better as a result of the story you tell me. Tell me who you are, and don’t skip on the feelings.

So this is totally appropos of nothing, but did you know that horses are really, really loud?

I did not. Not until I moved to a horse farm, that is, and now I have a front row seat to how incredibly not stoic and silent horses are. I mean, yes, there was a really loud donkey living down the street from us when I was a kid (I had a weird childhood), but it had nothing on these horses. For crying out loud. Literally. Crying out loud.

Anyway. Let's talk about Luther, season two!

Even though I know that the comparison is largely unfair, I have a lot of trouble not looking for similarities and differences between Sherlock and Luther. After all, they're both BBC crime dramas, both feature incredibly talented casts of BBC regulars, and both of them put a fair amount of effort into making their episodes more cinematic and beautiful and artistic than a lot of crime shows.

But when I do compare them, and I can't really help it, I usually come to the same conclusion. That Luther is smarter, better written, better acted, more sensitive to the realities of the world, a much more realistic representation of people, character, crime, and especially women, and generally an amazing show. And that Sherlock is more fun.

Honestly, I really hate that this is how I feel. Because I'm not kidding when I say that Luther is my Christmas list come true of what a want in a television show.

The show follows DCI John Luther (Idris Elba), a somewhat disgraced detective with a bad history of mental instability and accidentally murdering his perps. In the first season, he's just coming back on the job after probably maybe killing a guy, and his whole life is in a shambles. His wife, Zoe Luther (Indira Varma) has left him and is in a much healthier relationship with a coworker, Mark (Paul McGann). His friends are all convinced he's about to go off the deep end. His partner, DS Justin Ripley (Warren Brown), has been assigned to him and is kind of terrified of him, for good reason. And oh yeah, Luther's closest personal relationship is with Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), a sociopathic murderer.

Suffice to say that the show is a little less than chipper. The second season, which follows directly on the heels of the first, has Luther under investigation again, though this time for the death of DCI Ian Reed (Steven Mackintosh), who was a dirty cop that killed Zoe in order to frame Luther for his crimes. Luther, for the record, didn't kill Ian, but he was there when Alice shot him. Alice, having no particular conscience and an unhealthily strong attachment to Luther, admits happily to the murder, then buggers off to hide out in Mexico or something, while Luther stashes Mark (another material witness) in a safe house.

Apparently seeing Zoe's murderer shot is what it took to bring Luther and Mark together. Isn't that sweet?

Funnily enough, though, the real arc of season two isn't about Zoe's death or Alice's exile, or even the ongoing investigation. Instead, it's about Jenny (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), the daughter of a murder suspect from one of Luther's old cases. It seems that Jenny has managed to get herself in way over her head, doing pornography for the mob (I forget which mob, but one of the bad ones, doubtless). Luther rescues her, or kidnaps her, depending on who you ask, and decides to set about rehabilitating her. All while he tries to keep the mob off their backs, investigate murders, and convince his fellow cops that he's not about to start gunning them down or anything.

It's a bit of a tight line to walk, and a huge part of the season has to do with watching Luther painstakingly edge along the border between good cop and dirty cop, as his best intentions threaten to tip him over. Luther isn't in danger because he's too close to the criminal element, his real flaw, as a detective and as a man, is that he's far, far too compassionate for the work he does. And he takes it all far too personally.

You see, the real difference between Sherlock and Luther isn't about the format or the fun or even the race of the main characters. It's to do with the central conceit of the story. Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant man who understands every mechanic of how to commit a crime. John Luther understands why people commit crimes, and ultimately, I think that matters more.

For all that Luther is an unhinged, scary, angry black man of a protagonist (and I mean angry black man in the sense of the old stereotype, which is totally being subverted here), he's actually a deeply kind person. And that is his problem.

Luther can't turn away a person in need. He doesn't like Caroline, Jenny's mother. Actually, I'm pretty sure he hates her. But when she calls him, afraid that her daughter has gotten herself into trouble, Luther can't hang up on her. He has to go looking. When he finds Jenny, and she doesn't want to go with him (which is actually quite sensible on her part - he looks terrifying and she doesn't know him), he can't say no. He can't leave her there, not when he knows how dangerous it is.

When Jenny (SPOILERS) kills a man in self-defence, Luther can't just walk away and let her face the music. He can't even call the police and report it and wash his hands of the matter. He knows that the man was in the mob and that Jenny would be killed before she ever reached a court. He knows that Jenny was scared and being stupid and running. And he knows that he can't leave her to fend for herself.

The difference between Sherlock Holmes and John Luther is compassion. Luther falters and falls because he cares too much about the people under his wing. He loves Jenny like his own daughter, so he perverts justice in order to see her safe. He loves Zoe, and so he watches a man be murdered in her name. He wants to keep the people he loves safe, so he gives information to the mob, so he takes out murderers, so he hides bodies. John Luther is not a nice man, not a quiet man, and probably not a man you'd want to meet in a dark alley, at least not if you have anything to hide.

But he is a good man, a kind man, and a worthwhile one. He does horrible, terrible things, but always for such righteous reasons.

No matter that Luther is determinedly not funny, and rather dour, and sometimes really hard to watch. It's amazing for the simple fact that John Luther is good, no matter what he does to the contrary.

And there's something brilliant and comforting and great about this subversion of the "angry black man" stereotype. Because John Luther is angry, black, and a man, but he's also the one cop I would most like to take my case, were I ever made a victim. I would want John Luther there, because I know he would care about me and my story and getting justice.

I'll trade any number of one-liners, running gags, and zippy action sequences to know that.

I have quite honestly been shocked this year by how much I enjoy Brooklyn 99. I was not overly fond on the first viewing - Andy Samberg's character annoyed me and I just wasn't sure that they would be able to pull this off. It looked to me like the whole show was going to be brought down by some annoying white guy jokes, while everyone else looked on and cringed.

As it turns out, I was wrong. And I am 100% okay with that, because that means we get this show. This wonderful, weird, amazing little show. I'm honestly quite grateful for that. Allow me to tell you why.

Brooklyn 99 is a show with a concept so incredibly simple that I am genuinely shocked no one did it before: it's a workplace comedy about cops. That's it. How the hell is this the first major show like that? I mean, The Unusuals tapped some of the same points, and was awesome btw, but since it had a stronger affinity for drama, it got lumped into the already over-saturated cop drama pool. Brooklyn 99 is a comedy, and I don't know if I've ever seen a straight up sitcom about cops before. Have I? I feel like I would remember that.

The real strength of the show, though, is in its characters, and for me, the strength of those characters is in the way that every single one of them, down to the weird terrible ones, is a developed, interesting person. It's like Christmas and magic all at the same time.

I mean, yes, you've got Andy Samberg playing Detective Jake Peralta (actually, they're all detectives, so I'm not going to use that as a modifier, because it'll take too long), and he is kind of really annoying, but get this. That's the point. Jake Peralta is supposed to irritate you. You're supposed to be exasperated with him most of the time. And yeah, you kind of like him, because the show manages to delve ever so slightly into the psychology of a man-child working as a detective who has so, so many unresolved issues and needs a therapist more than pretty much any tv character since House, and I should hate Jake. But I don't.

The thing is, if Jake were the only character with real development on this show, or even the main character, which he seems to be but he really isn't, I would hate Brooklyn 99 with the fire of a thousand suns. I don't hate it because he isn't the main character, and because everyone else on the show is just as developed and just as interesting. You have Andre Braugher glowering in the corner while Chelsea Peretti yucks it up on center stage, and Melissa Fumero tries desperately to brown nose with no success, and Terry Crews is a big old manly man terrified that he's going to get hurt and be unable to provide for his adorable baby daughters. Guh. I love this cast and this story so dang much.

Especially one Detective Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz).

The reason I singled Rosa out for SFC Friday (and that's not to say that we won't talk about the two other women on this show at some point in the future, because I'm sure we will) is because out of all the female characters I've seen, Rosa is probably the closest to the "strong female character" ideal, the one that everyone talks about and critiques and complains about. And I mean that in a good way. Rosa is the strong female character in a comedy, and it works. It works so dang well. It works because everyone takes it completely seriously.

When I say that Rosa is the "traditional" strong female character, what I mean is this: Rosa is scary. Terrifying, actually. She's got the kind of stare that makes you want to hide behind a desk, she almost never smiles, she hates everyone (openly), and she is very, very happy to use physical force to get what she wants. She's not a woman in a man's world, she's a Rosa in Rosa's world and all of you are unlicensed trespassers. She has a gun. She will shoot.

But she's also got depth. Because even though Rosa is a stone-cold badass, she's also a person, and this show is awesome enough to want to highlight that.

So we find out that Rosa went to Catholic school for a while, and left, not because she was kicked out, but because she got accepted into ballet school. Of course, she did get kicked out of ballet school for punching ballerinas, but still. We find out that she hides weapons all over her apartment, but that she also believes that people should be treated honestly and well, and that she hates having to lie. Not that she won't, but that she really doesn't like it.

She's loyal - her friendship with Jake has gotten them through a lot of scrapes, and it sustained them both through the police academy - but she's also comfortable with her boundaries - when Jake betrays her trust, Rosa does not hesitate to get her revenge (and oh is it sweet). In short, we love Rosa because as much as she is kind of totally a stone cold bitch, and she would feature very easily in one of Kate Beaton's "Strong Female Characters" comics, she's also a person, and a dang cool one at that.

Plus? She's got female friends, strong female relationships, and doesn't feel threatened by other women. She's not one of those, "No, I don't like women, I like men better," people. She doesn't like anyone, not really. But it's not about her being such a cool woman, and therefore being the exception to the rule that women suck. Rosa is a woman who is cool, and she has women friends and man friends, and she sees no reason why that would be a problem.

However. As much as I love Rosa, sometimes I get the feeling that the show doesn't feel the same. Or rather, that the show doesn't understand why I love Rosa. I love Rosa because she is hilarious and terrifying and utterly unapologetic. But the show seems to think that I love Rosa because she's funny, and I'll love her more if she ends up dating this schlubby white guy with whom she has nothing in common and whose pursuit of her is reaching terrifying levels.

Um, what?

The character in question, Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio), is Rosa's partner. And that's fine in and of itself. Actually, I really love Boyle's character when you view him on his own. He's the perfect counterpoint to Rosa. While she's all traditionally masculine attributes wrapped up in an attractive lady package, Boyle is a very traditionally feminine character, who still manages to be a very good cop. They really do make a great team. It's really funny watching Boyle go on and on about his foodie preferences, trying to be butch and manly and then putting together a dollhouse, or accidentally spewing honesty all over everyone.

The problem comes in with the way that the writers have made Rosa and Boyle interact. Because Boyle has a crush on Rosa. And the writers seem to believe that if he keeps bothering about her, it'll happen. Which is just wrong.

Look, I'm even okay with having Boyle having a crush on Rosa. She's a BAMF, and totally crush-worthy, and one of my favorite running gags has to do with all the guys she arrests being pretty much in love with her. It's not hard to tell why. Rosa is one of those characters where you know she could have either been a cop or a terrifyingly effective and unrepentant criminal, so, again, it makes sense. And it's funny. It just makes you like her more that she always shuts these guys down, quick and efficient. No flirting or prevaricating, just, "Ew. No."

I'm pretty sure that's an actual quote, too. *Swoon.*

But the thing with Boyle is a problem. Boyle has a crush on Rosa, which is fine, but the way he pursues her is really, really unsettling. Oh sure, parts of it are funny on their own. He's obsessed with her, but she terrifies him (understandably), so when she actually agrees to go to a film festival with him, Boyle freaks out and buys a ticket to every single movie, because he doesn't know what she'll like and he's afraid to ask. On its own, funny. But combined with everything else? Weird.

Because Boyle keeps pursuing Rosa even when it's clear she's not interested. Even when it becomes so clear that he can't take a hint that Rosa straight up tells him she's not interested, and Boyle claims he'll respect that decision. He looks like he's going to move on (which would be healthy and normal), and then he pulls some crap like this: "When you do go out with me, and I know you will..."

Ew. No. Stop. Gross. What the hell, guys? When you do go out with me, and I know you will? That's what a stalker says about three days before the police catch him wearing your skin.

I really respect the way that the writers have written this relationship, up to a point. I really loved that Rosa likes Boyle as a person, and doesn't want to hurt him, but has absolutely no interest in him romantically. That's fine. There's no reason why she really should like him, honestly. Yeah, he took a bullet for her, but it was a cop thing, not a romance thing. They have nothing in common. He's not her type. So, yeah, she's going to let him down. She respects him, so she's going to let him down gently, but it's not her thing. She's going to tell Boyle the truth and then proceed to not date him. Respect.

It's just that Boyle doesn't stop. He doesn't stop going after her, and to this point, at least, the writers haven't made it clear that this behavior is not okay. Dude. You tried, she said no, the thing to do now is accept that gracefully and move on.

All this? It's creepy. No. Stop.

I guess what I'm saying is that I love Rosa Diaz, and I feel protective of her. Not that she really needs my protection in story, but I feel like she might need it from the writers. She's such a cool character. She knows exactly who she is, and she likes it. She's not burdened with an over-amount of guilt, she doesn't really doubt herself, and she's completely comfortable with her own attractiveness, physical competence, everything.

Heck, she even goes so far as to intentionally perpetuate terrifying myths about herself because she thinks it's fun. I love that.

What I don't love is the idea that Rosa should in some way change or bend or lower her standards to date Boyle. Because she is genuinely not interested, and the narrative would have to do a lot of work to explain why the hell she should be. Don't go trying to make me think that Rosa is being a bitch for not dating him. She's not. She's being honest.

When did that become a crime?

Never change.

Happy New Year! That Was Quick.

Character Development, Resolution, Wait What? (Sherlock: TEH)

Strong Female Character Friday: Aya Fuse (Extras)

Linksgiving (Why Fantasy Matters, Twilight Fanfic, and More)

Can We All Just Agree That Tauriel Is the Best? (The Hobbit: DOS)

Think of the Children! Tuesday: The Secret of Kells

Dang, This Show Is Hella White and Other Thoughts (Sherlock: TSOT)

Returning Shows: Teen Wolf (Kill Me With Feels, Why Don't You)

Strong Female Character Friday: Melinda May (Agents of SHIELD)

Linksgiving (Hunger Games, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and More!)

When the Marketing Sinks a Movie, Or, Reasons to See 47 Ronin

A World Without Stakes and a Show Without Oomph (Sherlock: HLV)

Eternal Rainy November Afternoon (Ocean at the End of the Lane)

Strong Female Character Friday: Erica Reyes (Teen Wolf)

Linksgiving - Movie Edition (Skyfall, Starship Troopers, and Disney)

It's About Accepting Yourself, and Also Racism (Hairspray)

Think of the Children! Tuesday: Disney's Robin Hood

I Need It To Mean Something (The Graveyard Book)

Whatever You May Think of Him, You Can't Deny He Cares (Luther)

Strong Female Character Friday: Rosa Diaz (Brooklyn 99)