I probably wouldn't comment on the issue in question if so many others have, but the fact that I found out the spoiler on the day of publication wasn't so much due to carelessness on my part but omnipresence on the part of the spoiler.
The Wonder Woman #7 spoiler was released as a sensational description along with out of context scans of the pages. The pages showed a narrator describing the Amazon's crimes (with the Dave Sim-esque metaphor of them draining sailor's lives, which goes deeper into slanderous folklore than the evidence thus far in this reboot supports) and showing them going onto boats in the moonlight, seducing sailors, then attacking them and tossing them off of the side once they're finished with them.
I saw the initial annoyance on Twitter and found myself bombarded with requests for my opinion. I bookmarked and bypassed two articles ranting about Wonder Woman #7 before I stumbled across the spoiler. By this time, of course, the Amazons were guilty of rape and torture as well. I was greatly annoyed.
But not yet convinced.
This did not mesh well with the impression Steve Trevor had in Justice League #2's backmatter, where he insists that the Amazons were peaceful, helpful, and just wanted to be left alone. The idea that a single-sex culture that despises men but is desperate to continue their bloodlines would come upon the injured Steve Trevor, an attractive helpless man of fertile age, and nurse him back to life to let him go and give him the impression that they are "good people" is completely nonsensical.
On the other hand, completely nonsensical breakdowns of continuity do occur in the rebooted DCU on a regular basis, and this was the sort of thing a dark horror writer like Brian Azzarello would be excited to portray.
Of course, Diana was due a trip to Hades. Hades the god is a solemn and just deity that is maligned simply for doing his job and for that thing he did once that his brother did a few thousand times. Hades the Wonder Woman character is a completely different story. And Eros was to be introduced. He doesn't always come off a terribly friendly in Wonder Woman either. At the same time, Steve Trevor, the only mortal male character that had actual genuine contact (and not from a position of power) was the focus of Justice League #7. I broke down and bought the digital copies of both.
I'm very angry at all of you for making me so stressed out.
My first conclusion on seeing those pages in context, as a story told by Hephaestus, was that this is the exact way that Herakles and his men in the Perez reboot would have described their encounter with the Amazons. "We met them, had sex, and they turned on us right afterwards." We all know what happened in the Perez reboot, but that's part of the story. That the Amazons get maligned by the men they meet, warping their reputations in folklore. If I see a story in Wonder Woman and think "That's the way Herakles would have described the Amazons", I am instantly skeptical.
Hephaestus is the storyteller, and he is a generally trustworthy character but he's not a god renowned for the ability to see across vast distances or even just know stuff. He's not Athena, Hecate, or Hades or any of the deities of wisdom and secrets. He's the god of the forge, doing his job, making wonders. Someone else told him this story. He's also a guy who has a bad relationship with his mother Hera and his wife Aphrodite. Where even Ares has daughters and handmaidens hanging around in his entourage, Hepheastus is generally associated with men. He has had bad experiences with the opposite sex and has every inclination to assume the absolute worst about women.
Basically, if someone tells him the Amazons are black widow succubi who would kill their mates and male children, he's likely to believe them and pass that on.
You could ask how we can trust anyone in this run if you want (Granted, that seems to be the point of the run. The world is full of lies. Do you really think Zeus is dead?), but I'm particularly skeptical of Hephaestus here for several reasons:
1) As noted, Steve Trevor in Justice League #2, #3 and #7 acting like the opposite of a man who narrowly avoided death at the hands of black widow succubi who would kill their mates and male children. It'd be one thing if his loyalty to Diana was because she'd defended him against them, but he seems well-inclined towards the people as a whole. Diana's shock and disgust at the story told by Hephaestus suggests she had no indication from her sisters during Steve's time on the island that this is how they would behave. She clearly did not spend the entire time protecting him from attack.
2) Previous issues of Wonder Woman where a major reveal went like this: A goddess tells Diana her Dad was Zeus and her mother has been lying to her all her life, Diana reacts in shock and disbelief and confronts her mother, her mother's actions are understandable and she has a perfectly reasonable explanation for keeping her in the dark on this one, and Diana really regrets judging her so harshly when it's all said and done. I'm inclined to wait for Hippolyta's side of the story on these kinds of accusations now. ("But she's dead!" Oh please, either Hera's stone spell is reversible, or we'll see Hippolyta on the trip to the underworld next issue. Worst case scenario we'll hear her take on things secondhand through a character like Steve or Aphrodite.)
3) Hephaestus is not only a deity that is not omniscient, he is proven wrong in this very issue about an item that he created. He tells Diana the lasso is not a weapon. She soon demonstrates that it can be used as a weapon. Not only that, he tells Diana that her "real power is intimidation" and that the lasso only helps, while over in Justice League #7 Diana uses the lasso for comedic effect on Green Lantern, a character immune to intimidation. (The second is probably the lack of message discipline at DC, but it still makes two examples in this story of Hephaestus being wrong.)
4) The context of this issue, where the main theme is that "Perspective is everything." After telling about the Amazons being black widow succubi who kill their mates afterwards, Hephaestus explains that he saved the lives of the unwanted male children by trading them for weapons. Diana assumes that her family has been selling her brothers into slavery, and attempts to free them. She ties up Hephaestus and tells them they're free. Her brothers beg her to untie him, because they see him as a savior from cruel mothers who would leave them to die. That is how Hephaestus sees himself too, and the person Diana perceived as a villain gives her a pat on the back and tells her to get some sleep.
It's entirely possible that the only theme of this story is that previous assumptions about the peacefulness and compassion of women and the brutality and aggression of men are wrong. I'm not ready to take that as the sole conclusion, though. We haven't heard from the Amazons about that boat. We know that there are stories in folklore about seductive sirens and mermaids. You need LIVING sailors to tell such stories. The seductive maiden who turns on a man the morning after is one story. Another story is how Camelot was brought down when someone saw a snake on Camlann field and raised their sword. Was it policy to go, get laid, and systematically kill every man who saw them? Or was it a rule to periodically go out, get impregnated and disappear but sometimes things got out of hand. Was this just the Amazons turning on the sailors, or was this the Amazons taking to arms when an amorous sailor decided he wasn't satisfied, or wasn't letting go?
As for the boys, honestly I don't think that looks too bad. Ever read a Greek Myth? Unwanted children were left in the woods to die all the time. The Amazons are gender essentialists in all portrayals, like Marston they think that men are inherently aggressive and unwilling to submit to female rule. (Which makes the peaceful pleading of the Amazon brothers the most interesting part here.) They operate from the assumption that any male children would be the end of their civilization. Their philosophy prevented them from keeping the boys, so they cut a deal with the Smith and gave them to someone who would care for them. They no doubt considered themselves kidnder than patriarchal city-states that left girls out to die.
Just because Hephaestus thinks that without him those boys would perish doesn't mean the Amazons wouldn't have found another way around it. The deal with Hephaestus was finding a way around it. Everyone is mad at the Amazons for something they went out of their way not to do
5) Tone. I remember an annual from the Perez era, where it was revealed Julia Kapetalis was anb honorary Amazon. The Perez Amazons, bereft of children, would on occasion rescue shipwrecked chidlrne who washed up on the shores of Paradise Island. They would name them, play with them, feed them and bless them. After a few blissful days of motherhood they would take these children down to the shore and set them adrift so that the gods could guide them back to their families.
No, the Perez gods weren't actually much better behaved than the Azzarello gods.
The Azzarello Amazons actually have children periodically, keep the female children, and give the male children to Hephaestus, who is married to one of their patronesses and known for his gentle temperament.
The Perez Amazons are wise and noble, while the Azzarello Amazons are thoughtless mankillers, huh?
Tone plays a big part here. Everything Perez wrote, no matter how utterly illogical, had the tone that the Amazons were right and the rest of the world was wrong. Everything Azzarello writes has the tone that every except for Diana is up to something, and that something may be sinister. Even Hephaestus seems somewhat sinister in the early parts of these issues. In the Perez reboot Themiscyra is peace and truth while Man's world is lies and uncertainty. Diana is a beacon of truth because she was sheltered, raised in a romanticized past where they still believed in heroes (because despite all the bits about the Amazons having trouble with the Greeks, the Amazons are out of time, an idealized culture that stopped evolving in the Bronze Age), and is stunned at the uncertain world and holds tight to her sense of self against an assault from one direction. The sin of the Amazons in Perez is isolationism, repeatedly in fact. They withdraw from the world and took their wisdom with them. Therefore, everything that is revealed about the Amazons in the Perez run, no matter how objectively foolish it is, is presented as a positive revelation and proof of their nobility.
In Azzarello's reboot, Diana is a beacon of truth who finds lies and uncertainty in all parts of the world. She is a beacon of truth because she seeks the truth. She is being forced to examine not only the ideals of men and gods but also the ideals of her mother and sisters. She has to look at her own origins and hold tight to her sense of self while she is being made to question everything. As a result, everything in the Azzarello run is a negative revelation that shakes Diana to the core, warped to come off as horrifyingly as possible until we've heard both sides of the story.
That said, just because the initial revelation seems negative and horrible doesn't mean that there is no extended explanation for it, or that the characters are actually horrible people. Uncertainty and lies from all directions isn't the same as a certainty that lies are coming from all directions.
As such, I'm not quick to condemn any characters in Azzarello's run for any revealed actions until I get a complete picture. (And even then, Azzarello probably has something else up his sleeve.)
I may be wrong, of course, or in a couple runs I may be cursing Azzarello's name for putting these ideas out there. Because while Justice League is a poorly written book using very good ideas, Wonder Woman is a well-written book using some very bad ideas. But for this one I'm not angry or disgusted. (Yet. Hippolyta has some explaining to do) I'm actually delighted and intrigued at the chance that Diana might have a male relative who hates violence but is good at making/repairing weapons and armor for her.
And I'm hoping this will be used as a way to bring back Achilles from the Simone run.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Quick Links
The Women Write About Comics Carnival is going on right now and I may not have time to get a post in myself, but here's the first couple sets.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
I wish I could say this was unheard of.
I'm not into the Walking Dead comics (sorry, me and zombies were never a good match), but Cheryl Lynn who is pointed this out on twitter:
"Playboy" Reveals Origins of The Walking Dead's Michonne in April Issue.
That's Playboy magazine, not a 'Playboy' as in a real-life Bruce Wayne, having an exclusive on revealing the origins of the "iconic and sexy" Michonne from the Walking Dead comic.
The zombie survival horror comic.
This is of interest to the soft-core porn mag.
Robert Kirkman seems super-excited talking about it, too:
I don't know when exactly comics and porn started becoming the same thing, but this needs to stop. I know I know, Wally Wood and Joe Shuster and Harry Peters all did dirty comics but... those were dirty comics, with even some winky nods to the regular properties. They weren't like, the same thing. They sure as fuck weren't the same thing as zombie survival books.
What we're seeing lately is the baffling "Well, it's the same audience" mentality. This causes the storytelling art of mainstream comics to get bogged down by ridiculous artists like Ed Benes, who sacrifice dramatic strength for ass shots. And this causes promotional efforts where books like The Walking Dead offer exclusive interviews that drop story information in media that shuts out half the audience.
It would be one thing, if alongside the men's mags we saw some efforts in mainstream magazines and women's magazines to balance it out, and it wasn't exclusive. But this stuff is exclusive, because "Hey, women aren't reading anyway" and "Well, if they are, they must like this stuff because all our art looks like the inside of Playboy anyway."
Do you want to know why female comics fans are angry so often? Why even when we make neutral fannish blogs we inevitably end up turning our articles to issues of sexism? Why often our blogs and columns turn into gender-analysis niche projects?
Because of this. Because of this mindset that it's basically the same thing, that Playboy and all comics (not even just superheroes, this is a horror comic) have this same audience. Because female characters are categorized entirely as male fan service, and we have things like this in Playboy and Wonder Woman's New 52 preview showing up in Maxim.
Because it's infuriating as fuck.
"Well, why don't you drop comics, then?" Because 1) there's still stuff I love. The problem is the stuff I love is overwhelmed with the industry being stupid and sexist. 2) This shit is everywhere anyway, so if I didn't rant about comics here I would be ranting about television, books, my coworkers, or politics here or elsewhere.
And 3) I'm right. And you know it, whether you're nodding your head in conscious agreement or you're getting infuriated and typing up a trollish comment.
This mentality that comics do, can, and only ever will appeal to men so it's okay to take as many measures possible to shut women out and blur the lines between pornography and regular superheroes because the audience loves both, wants both, and will buy more if both are the same (which is just stupid, I can find far wilder and more believable porn than I would ever find in comics on DeviantArt, for fuck's sake, why would you even bother watering down your story with these distractions? You can't compete) and there is no chance of reaching out to other demographics is just plain wrong.
"Playboy" Reveals Origins of The Walking Dead's Michonne in April Issue.
That's Playboy magazine, not a 'Playboy' as in a real-life Bruce Wayne, having an exclusive on revealing the origins of the "iconic and sexy" Michonne from the Walking Dead comic.
The zombie survival horror comic.
This is of interest to the soft-core porn mag.
Robert Kirkman seems super-excited talking about it, too:
"It's an honor to be a part of a historic publication like Playboy," said Kirkman, "I'm thrilled to share The Walking Dead with the magazine’s readers, especially such an important story like the origin of Michonne."
I don't know when exactly comics and porn started becoming the same thing, but this needs to stop. I know I know, Wally Wood and Joe Shuster and Harry Peters all did dirty comics but... those were dirty comics, with even some winky nods to the regular properties. They weren't like, the same thing. They sure as fuck weren't the same thing as zombie survival books.
What we're seeing lately is the baffling "Well, it's the same audience" mentality. This causes the storytelling art of mainstream comics to get bogged down by ridiculous artists like Ed Benes, who sacrifice dramatic strength for ass shots. And this causes promotional efforts where books like The Walking Dead offer exclusive interviews that drop story information in media that shuts out half the audience.
It would be one thing, if alongside the men's mags we saw some efforts in mainstream magazines and women's magazines to balance it out, and it wasn't exclusive. But this stuff is exclusive, because "Hey, women aren't reading anyway" and "Well, if they are, they must like this stuff because all our art looks like the inside of Playboy anyway."
Do you want to know why female comics fans are angry so often? Why even when we make neutral fannish blogs we inevitably end up turning our articles to issues of sexism? Why often our blogs and columns turn into gender-analysis niche projects?
Because of this. Because of this mindset that it's basically the same thing, that Playboy and all comics (not even just superheroes, this is a horror comic) have this same audience. Because female characters are categorized entirely as male fan service, and we have things like this in Playboy and Wonder Woman's New 52 preview showing up in Maxim.
Because it's infuriating as fuck.
"Well, why don't you drop comics, then?" Because 1) there's still stuff I love. The problem is the stuff I love is overwhelmed with the industry being stupid and sexist. 2) This shit is everywhere anyway, so if I didn't rant about comics here I would be ranting about television, books, my coworkers, or politics here or elsewhere.
And 3) I'm right. And you know it, whether you're nodding your head in conscious agreement or you're getting infuriated and typing up a trollish comment.
This mentality that comics do, can, and only ever will appeal to men so it's okay to take as many measures possible to shut women out and blur the lines between pornography and regular superheroes because the audience loves both, wants both, and will buy more if both are the same (which is just stupid, I can find far wilder and more believable porn than I would ever find in comics on DeviantArt, for fuck's sake, why would you even bother watering down your story with these distractions? You can't compete) and there is no chance of reaching out to other demographics is just plain wrong.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
How to Read Womanthology for a Fraction of the Price.
"It's $50! I can't afford it."
"I want it, but it's SO expensive!"
Every time I see that I wish there was a way to knock down the price on Womanthology, and then I slap myself for that. Because it's a charity book, and that money is going towards a good cause.
But what about the people who want to read but can't spare the full price?
Well, I have a solution. Unfortunately, it means that you need 1-4 friends. If you are so fortunate as to have 1-4 friends, you can split the price between the group of you and only pay $10-$25.
There is, of course, only one problem there.
But this is one easily solved in the spirit of the Womanthology project! Each investor can read and enjoy it in an order determined by use of a random number generator, and then when the last person is finished you can donate it to a nearby library for other people to enjoy.
But, I hear you say, then the five of us will have spent our $10 on nothing! No, you donated $10 to Global Giving and your local library, supported your local comic book store and got a good read out of it.
But I don't have the spare ten dollars. I understand. Can you find five friends who do and then check it out of the library once they've donated it?
I don't have five friends who live near me. You can either work out some sort of mail order thing, or convince other people on the internet to do this, and then check out the book by Inter-Library Loan.
I have $20-40 dollars and 2-9 friends. Should we do this with more than one copy? Yes. And let the two people above know which libraries.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Links
This week there was a "Women Write About Comics" blogcarnival, and it's full of good posts. She's got four roundup posts so far.
I had been putting off blogging in order to participate, but I was hit by the double-whammy of a particularly draining workweek and being completely obsessed with Sherlock still so I had to hold off until the next one. It's projected for mid-march.
I had been putting off blogging in order to participate, but I was hit by the double-whammy of a particularly draining workweek and being completely obsessed with Sherlock still so I had to hold off until the next one. It's projected for mid-march.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Happy Birthday Dad!
It's my father's birthday and like so many other special days since I've gone overseas I've had a little trouble catching him. So each year I've been keeping to a tradition where I honor my father's career choice with a panel of my favorite superhero policeman... The original Human Torch.
This year I have a very special page for you, from the fateful Marvel Mystery Comics #7.
What emergency could this be? What justifies frightening the citizens of New York before they've learned that the Human Torch is not their enemy? What is so urgent that, in full fire mode, Jim Hammond must fly down to the sidewalk and run to his friend's house? What matter could possibly be so important that he must scare all of these bystanders in order to quickly contact Johnson?
Why, it must be a truly urgent matter that cannot wait!
Okay, Jim... I know you're excited, and only a few weeks old, and this is a very important decision but... yeah, you could've walked upstairs in non-inferno mode to ask him about this.
But that's okay. That's why there's a training school.
This year I have a very special page for you, from the fateful Marvel Mystery Comics #7.
What emergency could this be? What justifies frightening the citizens of New York before they've learned that the Human Torch is not their enemy? What is so urgent that, in full fire mode, Jim Hammond must fly down to the sidewalk and run to his friend's house? What matter could possibly be so important that he must scare all of these bystanders in order to quickly contact Johnson?
Why, it must be a truly urgent matter that cannot wait!
Okay, Jim... I know you're excited, and only a few weeks old, and this is a very important decision but... yeah, you could've walked upstairs in non-inferno mode to ask him about this.
But that's okay. That's why there's a training school.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
How do you solve a problem like Irene?
I've held off on blogging about Irene Adler because after the double-punch of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Sherlock S2E2 A Scandal in Belgravia everyone seemed to have stated what we need to know about her. They've covered the problems of oversexualizing her, making her a subordinate to Moriarty, making her a love interest, becoming a damsel in distress, giving Sherlock a ridiculous amount of power over her, and the major problem of making it so that she doesn't win out in the end. All of these being things that are not in the slightest canonical (fucking one King does not a Femme Fatale make), undermine the theme of the original story, but somehow appear to be popular in adaptation after adaptation after adaptation.
And while many of you seem to be more focused on Moffat than Ritchie, I think we mostly agree A Scandal in Belgravia was a far better showing, even for all it's flaws. Those of you who haven't seen A Scandal in Belgravia and are jumping to the conclusion that it makes the exact same mistakes Guy Ritchie did in his two movies, you're jumping the gun. Irene's far more formiddable in Sherlock than in either of those movies, she makes a far better showing, and I believe she's placed equal to the level of Moriarty and Mycroft there. At the very least, it's something we can argue about over several seasons. Do my blood presure a favor and actually watch this one before you start throwing the same criticisms Ritchie is deserving of at Moffat.
But there is one big problem that I haven't seen anyone touch on. One major change from the canon that leads to all of the smaller problems with Irene. One major change that is at the core of what pulls the rug out from under those of us who loved the original Scandal in Bohemia story. One major change that betrays a complete misunderstanding of the point of A Scandal in Bohemia and the real reason Irene Adler could win against Sherlock Holmes and walk away from him scott free holding everything she ever wanted.
Stephen Moffat and Guy Ritchie made the exact same mistake that a million fanfic and pastiche writers have before them. They looked at the Rogues Gallery of Sherlock Holmes for a formidable female villain, someone with potential for romance and intrigue, and picked out the perfect-seeming Irene Adler. This is understandable. She's popular among fans, particularly female ones. She's one of his best known opponents, possibly the best known after Moriarty. She looks good in a suit. Her story involves political and sexual intrigue. She's cunning and resourceful. She won.
There's just one small problem.
Irene Adler isn't actually in the Rogues Gallery of Sherlock Holmes.
Look back at A Scandal in Bohemia. She's not the bad guy. She's the good guy. Sherlock's client is the bad guy, wrongly pestering his ex-girlfriend and painting her as a extortionist when all she wants to do is live her life. He lied to Sherlock Holmes. Her explanation for trying to keep a little insurance against future bad behavior from this man is perfectly understandable. The entire story is a misunderstanding.
And that, more than anything else, is why she got to win. Because in addition to being his equal, beating him fair and square, she was also on the side of right and he was the manipulated one.
Listing her among his "villains" is like listing Spider-man as a Daredevil villain.
I think I understand their logic. I love Sherlock Holmes, but there's only a few recurring characters and the active ones are men. But they want a really notable woman, a strong feminine presence (notice I didn't say strong woman character) for female fans to latch onto and straight male fans to be attracted to. And really, we all do. We want a decent dose of estrogen in these stories. Oh, there's Mrs. Hudson and Watson's wives and plenty of the clients, bystanders, victims and villains are women and they run the gamut from smart and willful to pathetic and panicky, but none of them shine like Irene. We love Irene better than any other woman because she was a match to Sherlock and she threw his unbelievable sexism back in his shocked face with three words. So we not only want to see Irene, we don't want her to disappear at the end of the first story like she does in the canon. We want her to come back for a rematch. We want to see her as a regular recurring character.
But because she began as an antagonist, a lot of "further adventures" want to keep that dynamic. So they come up with the interpretation of this character as a badass "Femme Fatale" (a role that in Sherlock's Gallery goes to one Isadora Klein, who lost) and the most coldly clever woman of the canon (actually, Maria Gibson was a hell of a lot more clever than Irene and she would've gotten away with it too if not for those meddling kids) that basically places her somewhere on the supervillain scale. This leads to our next problem.
Supervillains lose.
Oh I know, we've been reading grown-up pessimistic comics for so long we've forgotten this but in Sherlock Holmes stories this remains the rule. The Bad Guy loses. The criminals get caught. Justice prevails. The minor bad guys pay and the major bad guys might dick around for a while before they lose but in the end... Supervillains lose. That's why Sherlock can be the biggest jerk in London and we still love him, because he uses that horrible personality for good and he is very, very effective at it.
And before you say it, yes, Moriarty loses.
Canonically speaking, he loses in the first story he appears in just like everybody else does.
In adaptations it takes a while. That's what makes Moriarty Moriarty. But he always loses in the end. We know this. We expect this. We sat in that theater last month knowing exactly what would happen the second Mycroft said 'Reichenbach.' We'll all be glued to our sets tomorrow even though we're absolutely sure of the outcome. An experimental writer or two might throw this in our faces but the truth of the franchise is that at the climax, two men go over the falls and one man walks away. The supervillain does not walk away.
And so by the rules of the franchise, when we incorrectly position Irene Adler as a supervillain, she loses. And no matter how well you do it (and Moffat does manage this well, while Ritchie's Irene is more a nuisance and a henchwoman than a real threat, Moffat's is a full-fledged crime boss playing at Mycroft's level and poised to win completely at the climax), you're going to miss the appeal of the original story when she loses.
And while many of you seem to be more focused on Moffat than Ritchie, I think we mostly agree A Scandal in Belgravia was a far better showing, even for all it's flaws. Those of you who haven't seen A Scandal in Belgravia and are jumping to the conclusion that it makes the exact same mistakes Guy Ritchie did in his two movies, you're jumping the gun. Irene's far more formiddable in Sherlock than in either of those movies, she makes a far better showing, and I believe she's placed equal to the level of Moriarty and Mycroft there. At the very least, it's something we can argue about over several seasons. Do my blood presure a favor and actually watch this one before you start throwing the same criticisms Ritchie is deserving of at Moffat.
But there is one big problem that I haven't seen anyone touch on. One major change from the canon that leads to all of the smaller problems with Irene. One major change that is at the core of what pulls the rug out from under those of us who loved the original Scandal in Bohemia story. One major change that betrays a complete misunderstanding of the point of A Scandal in Bohemia and the real reason Irene Adler could win against Sherlock Holmes and walk away from him scott free holding everything she ever wanted.
Stephen Moffat and Guy Ritchie made the exact same mistake that a million fanfic and pastiche writers have before them. They looked at the Rogues Gallery of Sherlock Holmes for a formidable female villain, someone with potential for romance and intrigue, and picked out the perfect-seeming Irene Adler. This is understandable. She's popular among fans, particularly female ones. She's one of his best known opponents, possibly the best known after Moriarty. She looks good in a suit. Her story involves political and sexual intrigue. She's cunning and resourceful. She won.
There's just one small problem.
Irene Adler isn't actually in the Rogues Gallery of Sherlock Holmes.
Look back at A Scandal in Bohemia. She's not the bad guy. She's the good guy. Sherlock's client is the bad guy, wrongly pestering his ex-girlfriend and painting her as a extortionist when all she wants to do is live her life. He lied to Sherlock Holmes. Her explanation for trying to keep a little insurance against future bad behavior from this man is perfectly understandable. The entire story is a misunderstanding.
And that, more than anything else, is why she got to win. Because in addition to being his equal, beating him fair and square, she was also on the side of right and he was the manipulated one.
Listing her among his "villains" is like listing Spider-man as a Daredevil villain.
I think I understand their logic. I love Sherlock Holmes, but there's only a few recurring characters and the active ones are men. But they want a really notable woman, a strong feminine presence (notice I didn't say strong woman character) for female fans to latch onto and straight male fans to be attracted to. And really, we all do. We want a decent dose of estrogen in these stories. Oh, there's Mrs. Hudson and Watson's wives and plenty of the clients, bystanders, victims and villains are women and they run the gamut from smart and willful to pathetic and panicky, but none of them shine like Irene. We love Irene better than any other woman because she was a match to Sherlock and she threw his unbelievable sexism back in his shocked face with three words. So we not only want to see Irene, we don't want her to disappear at the end of the first story like she does in the canon. We want her to come back for a rematch. We want to see her as a regular recurring character.
But because she began as an antagonist, a lot of "further adventures" want to keep that dynamic. So they come up with the interpretation of this character as a badass "Femme Fatale" (a role that in Sherlock's Gallery goes to one Isadora Klein, who lost) and the most coldly clever woman of the canon (actually, Maria Gibson was a hell of a lot more clever than Irene and she would've gotten away with it too if not for those meddling kids) that basically places her somewhere on the supervillain scale. This leads to our next problem.
Supervillains lose.
Oh I know, we've been reading grown-up pessimistic comics for so long we've forgotten this but in Sherlock Holmes stories this remains the rule. The Bad Guy loses. The criminals get caught. Justice prevails. The minor bad guys pay and the major bad guys might dick around for a while before they lose but in the end... Supervillains lose. That's why Sherlock can be the biggest jerk in London and we still love him, because he uses that horrible personality for good and he is very, very effective at it.
And before you say it, yes, Moriarty loses.
Canonically speaking, he loses in the first story he appears in just like everybody else does.
In adaptations it takes a while. That's what makes Moriarty Moriarty. But he always loses in the end. We know this. We expect this. We sat in that theater last month knowing exactly what would happen the second Mycroft said 'Reichenbach.' We'll all be glued to our sets tomorrow even though we're absolutely sure of the outcome. An experimental writer or two might throw this in our faces but the truth of the franchise is that at the climax, two men go over the falls and one man walks away. The supervillain does not walk away.
And so by the rules of the franchise, when we incorrectly position Irene Adler as a supervillain, she loses. And no matter how well you do it (and Moffat does manage this well, while Ritchie's Irene is more a nuisance and a henchwoman than a real threat, Moffat's is a full-fledged crime boss playing at Mycroft's level and poised to win completely at the climax), you're going to miss the appeal of the original story when she loses.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
I've run out of synonyms for blinding fury, so bear with me.
I've been blogging for quite some time, and I've had a few of these dry periods where I don't post much and when I do it tends to be something lackluster or sad. I suspect these periods happen because I'm not especially anxious or angry about something fictional (and I have a rule where I try not to blog politics or work) usually use this blog as an outlet for rage. I do this for rational and irrational reasons. I prefer expressing my anger to bottling it up. I've found that if I dedicate some time to writing about my reaction I can often find the underlying truth to it, the real cause of my anger rather than the often frivolous-seeming trigger. It lets me network my outrage, find people who feel the same way about these things and commiserate. And it lets me do some writing that can be clever and beautiful.
I'm not about to say everything on this blog is clever and beautiful, but every once in a while I get a turn of phrase or an analogy that makes me really proud. I think there's a poetry to ranting, if you really get yourself going, and you can come up with some vivid images and phrases to convey your level of upset to someone who is not reacting as severely. I'll often get a little carried away by that and express a higher level of indignation than I feel.
All the more disappointing then, when I run across something so infuriating, so gut-wrenchingly awful and insulting that I can't outline my reasons for it or come up with a pleasing way to express just how terrible I think it is.
I came across that today. The preview for Secret Avengers #21, courtesy the vigilance of David Brothers:
Let's move in for a closer look, just to make sure we're seeing this right.
Yes, that is Captain America saying "I'm going to let my friends torture you" like it's some sort of cool badass fucking thing for him to say.
I agree with David on the reasons this is vile. This subject for Americans is too raw and important to be treated like this.
And maybe it's a trick, and he's just trying to intimidate the guy but you know what? Fuck that. Fuck that stupid idea where it's okay to pretend we don't have any principles like it's not something that treads on the line of not actually having any principles, where it's okay to pretend threat of torture is good because it's not as bad as actual torture.
And oh god, just the thought that this character, the symbol not of everything my culture is but every ideal my culture aspires to be, actually walking out of the room to let someone else do this is so infuriating I can't even verbalize it. I was so angry when I read that page that I had to stand up, and walk back and forth doing breathing exercises so I wouldn't fall into a hyperventilating frenzy at just how careless a treatment of the subject and the character this is.
There's a way to handle this and show the character isn't perfect. Ed Brubaker wrote a scene in the "Winter Soldier" storyline where one of Captain America's colleagues, a Vasily Karpov, tortured a Nazi for information. He didn't interrupt. He in Karpov's territory, outnumbered by Karpov's men, and had the rest of the Invaders and the war effort to think about it. He stood outside the tent brooding, and confronted Karpov about his methods. He showed clear disapproval, but he compromised himself and it was clear to him they only shared a side against a common enemy. And later when Karpov turned out to be a fucking horrible piece of shit it was reinforced that the sorts of people who do these things are bad people, at least. At best, it reinforced for the character that he should never have allowed this sort of shit to go down in a camp he was in, or allied himself with that sort of man.
This? This is bullshit macho posturing. This is "See how badass he acts and sounds?" This is the loophole as a joke to show he's kinda clever, in addition to being unprincipled. This is treating Captain America like one your anti-heroes, because hey, everyone loves them and really they're the only kind of heroes you can write.
Except he's not like them. As David says, he's like Superman and represents the best of us. Captain America is your honest-to-god every good thing from the American culture, everything worth saving of our values, placed into a body that can make a difference in the world. He's the guy who is not only supposed to adhere to the moral standard, he sets it for the other heroes. Your anti-heroes, your fallen noir stars, your monstrous demeanors that cover hearts of gold and tarnished but upward-looking souls will pull this. They're coming from the bottom up, and steeped in the flaws of humanity. Captain America is already up there, though. He's established as an idealized hero, to the point that in the MArvel Universe he is the indicator of which side occupies the moral high ground. Having him do something like this, even in his Steve Rogers super-soldier leading a covert team garb, Says something about the moral high ground.
Even as a trick (ETA: It is not a trick), this is the further dilution of the sincere sadistic brutality into acceptability as "tough tactics." This is a complete misunderstanding of Captain America, the subject of torture, and the reality of what's going on in the United States right now.
The only thing left to say is Fuck You, Warren Ellis. Avengers is not Nextwave. Captain America does not fucking act like that, especially not for one of your cheap fucking jokes.
I'm not about to say everything on this blog is clever and beautiful, but every once in a while I get a turn of phrase or an analogy that makes me really proud. I think there's a poetry to ranting, if you really get yourself going, and you can come up with some vivid images and phrases to convey your level of upset to someone who is not reacting as severely. I'll often get a little carried away by that and express a higher level of indignation than I feel.
All the more disappointing then, when I run across something so infuriating, so gut-wrenchingly awful and insulting that I can't outline my reasons for it or come up with a pleasing way to express just how terrible I think it is.
I came across that today. The preview for Secret Avengers #21, courtesy the vigilance of David Brothers:
Let's move in for a closer look, just to make sure we're seeing this right.
Yes, that is Captain America saying "I'm going to let my friends torture you" like it's some sort of cool badass fucking thing for him to say.
I agree with David on the reasons this is vile. This subject for Americans is too raw and important to be treated like this.
And maybe it's a trick, and he's just trying to intimidate the guy but you know what? Fuck that. Fuck that stupid idea where it's okay to pretend we don't have any principles like it's not something that treads on the line of not actually having any principles, where it's okay to pretend threat of torture is good because it's not as bad as actual torture.
And oh god, just the thought that this character, the symbol not of everything my culture is but every ideal my culture aspires to be, actually walking out of the room to let someone else do this is so infuriating I can't even verbalize it. I was so angry when I read that page that I had to stand up, and walk back and forth doing breathing exercises so I wouldn't fall into a hyperventilating frenzy at just how careless a treatment of the subject and the character this is.
There's a way to handle this and show the character isn't perfect. Ed Brubaker wrote a scene in the "Winter Soldier" storyline where one of Captain America's colleagues, a Vasily Karpov, tortured a Nazi for information. He didn't interrupt. He in Karpov's territory, outnumbered by Karpov's men, and had the rest of the Invaders and the war effort to think about it. He stood outside the tent brooding, and confronted Karpov about his methods. He showed clear disapproval, but he compromised himself and it was clear to him they only shared a side against a common enemy. And later when Karpov turned out to be a fucking horrible piece of shit it was reinforced that the sorts of people who do these things are bad people, at least. At best, it reinforced for the character that he should never have allowed this sort of shit to go down in a camp he was in, or allied himself with that sort of man.
This? This is bullshit macho posturing. This is "See how badass he acts and sounds?" This is the loophole as a joke to show he's kinda clever, in addition to being unprincipled. This is treating Captain America like one your anti-heroes, because hey, everyone loves them and really they're the only kind of heroes you can write.
Except he's not like them. As David says, he's like Superman and represents the best of us. Captain America is your honest-to-god every good thing from the American culture, everything worth saving of our values, placed into a body that can make a difference in the world. He's the guy who is not only supposed to adhere to the moral standard, he sets it for the other heroes. Your anti-heroes, your fallen noir stars, your monstrous demeanors that cover hearts of gold and tarnished but upward-looking souls will pull this. They're coming from the bottom up, and steeped in the flaws of humanity. Captain America is already up there, though. He's established as an idealized hero, to the point that in the MArvel Universe he is the indicator of which side occupies the moral high ground. Having him do something like this, even in his Steve Rogers super-soldier leading a covert team garb, Says something about the moral high ground.
Even as a trick (ETA: It is not a trick), this is the further dilution of the sincere sadistic brutality into acceptability as "tough tactics." This is a complete misunderstanding of Captain America, the subject of torture, and the reality of what's going on in the United States right now.
The only thing left to say is Fuck You, Warren Ellis. Avengers is not Nextwave. Captain America does not fucking act like that, especially not for one of your cheap fucking jokes.
Saturday, January 07, 2012
I don't often blog about work, but then I rarely think about the future.
I seem to be settled into another one of those weird phases of disconnect, where I'm removed from the rest of my social circle at the same time I begin to consume media created by others rather than make it myself. It's weird, you'd think these periodic fits of reclusiuveness would be the perfect time to order my life, do creative projects, or even just blog but instead I read, go through all of the analysis and reaction in my head and never sit down to type it out.
I don't consider this a depression, though. I've been depressed in the past and my avoidance of creativity and society coincided with withdrawal at work. This is more like when I first got to Germany, when I threw myself into my job and found myself without energy for the rest of my life for a few months. I'm doing the same at my new base. I've gotten very energetic at work, where I'm currently filling the position of what's not even a glorified secretary, where I answer phones, track jobs for the other shops, and give briefings. For a few months I was on the lovely, relaxing night shift and was able to spend most of my time focusing on getting fit. Then I spent a period of time where I rushed into work and spent my first hour in preparation for a briefing which was actually in preparation for another briefing that turned out to be in preparation for a third briefing later in the day. In between this I answer phones and coordinate things. When I'm not doing that I'm spewing profanity because I've run across inefficiency, incompetence or sexism. I spend a good 95% of my day talking. About once a week I lose my voice.
This isn't my actual job, though. Sometime in the near future I'll be moved to my actual job, which is still removed from the parts of my job that I love, which mainly involved taking things apart and putting them back together. It's still technical work, but less of the blood and bones of the machine than I'd prefer. I'm in a unit that's filled with software technicians, and I am a hardware technician. I don't know what they're required to know, but a disproportionate number of them suffer from Alpha Male Nerd syndrome and I'm too old now to be dealing with that sort of bullshit from people who were in middle school when I was getting Ace Awards in Electronics Principles. (I don't even think most of these brats took Electronics Principles.)
I was getting quite depressed for a little while, because I'd worried a recent career field realignment had forever taken me away from the basic electronics work that I enjoy so much. Then I got my promotion study material, and found that even though a lot is cut out there's still enough of the basics to keep me happy. Still, the further I get from circuits and signalwaves the less joy and pride I take in my work. Which brings me to the ever-present question of what I'm going to do when I leave the military. No one stays in forever, and my first enlistment was basically a way to push final plans for the future down a few years. Sooner or later I'm going to have to take up a second career. All my life when I've considered higher learning I and everyone around me assumed I'd go for the softer social sciences or liberal arts, because I find it so easy to dedicate my leisure time to that and I disliked math so much in school. The idea of physics, engineering, or any of the hard sciences was not even brought up. But I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go into engineering. It's not something I study on my own, but it's the natural direction to go now that I've spent so many years in an electronics career field to realize what parts of the work I enjoy, and more importantly what parts of the work I can do best.
I don't consider this a depression, though. I've been depressed in the past and my avoidance of creativity and society coincided with withdrawal at work. This is more like when I first got to Germany, when I threw myself into my job and found myself without energy for the rest of my life for a few months. I'm doing the same at my new base. I've gotten very energetic at work, where I'm currently filling the position of what's not even a glorified secretary, where I answer phones, track jobs for the other shops, and give briefings. For a few months I was on the lovely, relaxing night shift and was able to spend most of my time focusing on getting fit. Then I spent a period of time where I rushed into work and spent my first hour in preparation for a briefing which was actually in preparation for another briefing that turned out to be in preparation for a third briefing later in the day. In between this I answer phones and coordinate things. When I'm not doing that I'm spewing profanity because I've run across inefficiency, incompetence or sexism. I spend a good 95% of my day talking. About once a week I lose my voice.
This isn't my actual job, though. Sometime in the near future I'll be moved to my actual job, which is still removed from the parts of my job that I love, which mainly involved taking things apart and putting them back together. It's still technical work, but less of the blood and bones of the machine than I'd prefer. I'm in a unit that's filled with software technicians, and I am a hardware technician. I don't know what they're required to know, but a disproportionate number of them suffer from Alpha Male Nerd syndrome and I'm too old now to be dealing with that sort of bullshit from people who were in middle school when I was getting Ace Awards in Electronics Principles. (I don't even think most of these brats took Electronics Principles.)
I was getting quite depressed for a little while, because I'd worried a recent career field realignment had forever taken me away from the basic electronics work that I enjoy so much. Then I got my promotion study material, and found that even though a lot is cut out there's still enough of the basics to keep me happy. Still, the further I get from circuits and signalwaves the less joy and pride I take in my work. Which brings me to the ever-present question of what I'm going to do when I leave the military. No one stays in forever, and my first enlistment was basically a way to push final plans for the future down a few years. Sooner or later I'm going to have to take up a second career. All my life when I've considered higher learning I and everyone around me assumed I'd go for the softer social sciences or liberal arts, because I find it so easy to dedicate my leisure time to that and I disliked math so much in school. The idea of physics, engineering, or any of the hard sciences was not even brought up. But I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go into engineering. It's not something I study on my own, but it's the natural direction to go now that I've spent so many years in an electronics career field to realize what parts of the work I enjoy, and more importantly what parts of the work I can do best.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Winding Down.
Every time I've come up with a post idea in the past few days I've put it aside until after the New Year, because around this time of year everyone else is doing an end of year wrap-up or something about resolutions.
This is a fairly ridiculous impulse, because I never do an end of the year wrap-up. My memory is geared towards things like the exact wording that was used on the phone, a national stock number, or the name of an obscure Wonder Woman villain. I'm not particularly good with dates, as my family (who have seen their birthdays forgotten nearly every year for the past decade) would attest. A year-end wrap-up would require me to remember things from earlier in the year, and even more dauntingly, remember just when in the year they happened.
In the meantime, I don't place much stock in New Year's Resolutions, because anything that requires more than a couple weeks is planning too far ahead for me. I hate planning. I went out of my way to form a lifestyle which excuses long-term planning, I'm not going to muck that up with New Year's Resolutions. Instead, I do End of Year Resolutions and this year I have busted all but one of them.
Still, if anyone is interested in a snapshot of this point in my life:
I have work this weekend, so I'm spending a quiet evening at home rather than going out.
I finished a Dispatches from the Fridge post, and am feeling rather satisfied that I've managed to post most of the weekends since starting it. We've managed 93 posts this year, nearly two per weekend.
I'm sitting in the middle of my uncleaned living (broken resolution number one), watching episodes from the old Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett. Lately, that series has been something of an obsession for me, and I'm getting a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I'm chatting with Kalinara about Sherlock Holmes inspectors.
I live in the middle of the village, rather than on the edge this year, so I'm surrounded by people setting off fireworks. I can see them from my window, but I hadn't noticed last year how much like artillery they sound. I didn't have any particularly interesting experiences in Afghanistan, but the sound is a bit unsettling.
I managed to beat the 50-book mark this year again. I used to keep track of every year I tried on Librarything, but sometime in 2011 I decided to delete all of my tags and start over. I wish I hadn't done that. Here is this year's list if you're interested.
The one strange end of year resolution I completed was to read through all of the comments on this post. (Warning: it gets pretty transphobic around the 700s.) Basically, one of the old and rather irritating personalities in the mainstream feminist community, Hugo, was interviewed for that blog. Hugo is quite disliked by a number of readers, and so they discussed that. Hugo's whiny, patronizing, and uninteresting so those who dislike him have ignored his blog for several years, and missed the post where he confessed to attempting to murder his ex-girlfriend and got out of being arrested because the police got the idea that she was suicidal from someone he chooses not to name. (Safe bet it rhymes with Lugo.) Someone who had been paying attention brings this up in the thread, and it is promptly shut down. Begin shitstorm. A post about the virtues of forgiveness follows this, with closed comments. Then an apology post that had reached 956 comments by the time I finished it went up.
I felt compelled to read through the entire thing to get links and elaboration on the murder thing, because it couldn't have been what it sounded like. But yeah, got high, saw her sleeping there, decided he needed to put her and himself out of his misery, tried to gas her. So, what it sounds like. Then it was a matter of disbelief that people were actually defending him. In the end I posted a comment siding with the "Are you kidding me?" faction and left.
On the bright side, through the tangents I read about some interesting comments and found out about some interesting books.
I was also duly reminded why I dislike the main political feminist blogs, and why I stopped reading them, and stopped reading and linking to a lot of the "Big Name Feminists" out there. I ducked out a few years over the whole mess about the tasteless illustrations chosen for Marcotte's book, but I'd been softening since so many of my newer friends who weren't around back then seem to be linking these guys. Much trouble as I've caused, I really don't like to be the one who constantly brings up old shit, especially if the people have finally recanted in the meantime and I just missed it. Based on these events, I'm going to guess nothing has improved.
Anyway, my apologies for the dim tone of this post. I had a long day at work and look forward to a long workday tomorrow. For 2012, I intend to exercise more (for the sake of my job), clear out some of the squalor in which I am living, shoot for the 75 book challenge, and use less profanity in day to day speech.
Those are only intentions, though. I resolve to drink a little wine and finally write that post about Irene Adler.
This is a fairly ridiculous impulse, because I never do an end of the year wrap-up. My memory is geared towards things like the exact wording that was used on the phone, a national stock number, or the name of an obscure Wonder Woman villain. I'm not particularly good with dates, as my family (who have seen their birthdays forgotten nearly every year for the past decade) would attest. A year-end wrap-up would require me to remember things from earlier in the year, and even more dauntingly, remember just when in the year they happened.
In the meantime, I don't place much stock in New Year's Resolutions, because anything that requires more than a couple weeks is planning too far ahead for me. I hate planning. I went out of my way to form a lifestyle which excuses long-term planning, I'm not going to muck that up with New Year's Resolutions. Instead, I do End of Year Resolutions and this year I have busted all but one of them.
Still, if anyone is interested in a snapshot of this point in my life:
I have work this weekend, so I'm spending a quiet evening at home rather than going out.
I finished a Dispatches from the Fridge post, and am feeling rather satisfied that I've managed to post most of the weekends since starting it. We've managed 93 posts this year, nearly two per weekend.
I'm sitting in the middle of my uncleaned living (broken resolution number one), watching episodes from the old Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett. Lately, that series has been something of an obsession for me, and I'm getting a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I'm chatting with Kalinara about Sherlock Holmes inspectors.
I live in the middle of the village, rather than on the edge this year, so I'm surrounded by people setting off fireworks. I can see them from my window, but I hadn't noticed last year how much like artillery they sound. I didn't have any particularly interesting experiences in Afghanistan, but the sound is a bit unsettling.
I managed to beat the 50-book mark this year again. I used to keep track of every year I tried on Librarything, but sometime in 2011 I decided to delete all of my tags and start over. I wish I hadn't done that. Here is this year's list if you're interested.
The one strange end of year resolution I completed was to read through all of the comments on this post. (Warning: it gets pretty transphobic around the 700s.) Basically, one of the old and rather irritating personalities in the mainstream feminist community, Hugo, was interviewed for that blog. Hugo is quite disliked by a number of readers, and so they discussed that. Hugo's whiny, patronizing, and uninteresting so those who dislike him have ignored his blog for several years, and missed the post where he confessed to attempting to murder his ex-girlfriend and got out of being arrested because the police got the idea that she was suicidal from someone he chooses not to name. (Safe bet it rhymes with Lugo.) Someone who had been paying attention brings this up in the thread, and it is promptly shut down. Begin shitstorm. A post about the virtues of forgiveness follows this, with closed comments. Then an apology post that had reached 956 comments by the time I finished it went up.
I felt compelled to read through the entire thing to get links and elaboration on the murder thing, because it couldn't have been what it sounded like. But yeah, got high, saw her sleeping there, decided he needed to put her and himself out of his misery, tried to gas her. So, what it sounds like. Then it was a matter of disbelief that people were actually defending him. In the end I posted a comment siding with the "Are you kidding me?" faction and left.
On the bright side, through the tangents I read about some interesting comments and found out about some interesting books.
I was also duly reminded why I dislike the main political feminist blogs, and why I stopped reading them, and stopped reading and linking to a lot of the "Big Name Feminists" out there. I ducked out a few years over the whole mess about the tasteless illustrations chosen for Marcotte's book, but I'd been softening since so many of my newer friends who weren't around back then seem to be linking these guys. Much trouble as I've caused, I really don't like to be the one who constantly brings up old shit, especially if the people have finally recanted in the meantime and I just missed it. Based on these events, I'm going to guess nothing has improved.
Anyway, my apologies for the dim tone of this post. I had a long day at work and look forward to a long workday tomorrow. For 2012, I intend to exercise more (for the sake of my job), clear out some of the squalor in which I am living, shoot for the 75 book challenge, and use less profanity in day to day speech.
Those are only intentions, though. I resolve to drink a little wine and finally write that post about Irene Adler.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Review: The House of Silk
Because the true canon of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries ceased around 84 years ago, and it was limited to a mere 60 tales plus apocrypha, even fans like me who feel no particular need to seek out fanfiction for other properties have a ravenous appetite for even terrible new stories. Mere faithful film adaptations aren't enough, we crave new tales. We want those stories Watson hinted at. We long for the stories that were too shocking and too entangled with the news of the day to publish. We seek out the confrontation with Jack the Ripper. We need the build-up to The Final Problem. We demand The Giant Rat of Sumatra and the other stories for which the world was not yet prepared.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of writers willing to give us new mysteries. Though the quality varies from time to time. (Do not read any take on The Giant Rat of Sumatra. It is no fault of the ambitious writer who tackles that tantalizing title that it is too much to live up to, but it is simply a fact that no rational explanation could live up to it.)
I've read some truly awful Sherlock Holmes fanfic in my day. And I don't mean awful because we found it on some poor young person's unprotected tumblr, I don't mean the sort of awful that was dashed off in an hour in response to a kinkmeme. I mean stuff people actually got professionals to publish and stock in bookstores.
But I've read some pretty good stuff. I've read some stuff that is pretty good despite falling to the perilous tropes of fanfiction, where the writer's style is aped awkwrdly and there is fanservice thrown in to the detriment of the story momentum.
And I've read some pretty great stuff too, some great stuff that no one has been willing to publish even. (Why is Marcia Wilson's You Buy Bones self-published when the first half is better than most of the stuff put out in the last 84 years?)
So even when I saw that little sticker saying that ACD's descendants have put their stamp of approval on the story, I still consider it fanfiction and I donn't mean that to diminish it. It was professional published by an bestselling writer, so I expected one of the better works I'd seen but I didn't expect it to succeed in capturing the style of the original sixty stories. But to that end, the House of Silk may be one of the finest pieces of fanfiction ever written.
This is probably due to his conscientious avoidance of the habits that annoy me the most about contemporary Sherlock Holmes writers. The mysteries are completely original plots that do not erase any of the canon stories. (Contradictions are okay, ACD did that all the time and we just blamed it on Watson being a bad notetaker, but I can think of a number of works that exist on the premise that entire stories were inventions of Dr. Watson.) All of the dialogue is new, no seeing Sherlock reuse his old phrasing in order to make him sound like himself, but it effectively captures the voice of the original writer. He alludes to other stories, but in a way that seems natural to Watson's train of thought. The characters are true to the original stories, while fitting the nicely into the trends of modern fiction. Horowitz's Watson is familiar and strong enough to carry the plot when Sherlock is out of sight. His female characters live up to modern expectations of character without being unrealistically enlightened for the era. New characters fit nicely into the traditional roles allotted for new characters: clients, villains, and victims, and he doesn't try to introduce a new detective or partner to tag alongside the main attraction. The appearances of fan-favorites like Inspector Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes aren't just a favor for the fans, their presence is logical and important to moving the plot along.
That's not to say there aren't continuity errors, contradictions, odd reasonings and other little problems. Thing is, all the little errors in this book are along the same lines of the sorts of errors ACD made back in the day. The real triumph of this work is that he manages to capture the voice so well. I suspect there was meticulous editing and rewriting to make the style match without just copying it. When you read this, you are reading something written in Dr. Watson's voice.
And he does that without sacrificing any of the other necessary elements in the book, the characterization and plotting are all up to par.
I only have one word of warning at the risk of spoilers, and that is that when the promotional materials state that this is a story too shocking to have published a hundred years ago, they aren't exaggerating. The book captures the Watson voice so well I just blew that off because that character has a very different idea of lurid that I do. The events depicted could easily have happened in the 1890s but would never have been published. I recommend this book, but with a trigger warning for sexual assault. True to the Watson voice, though, Horowitz doesn't linger over the details. It's referenced, not explicit, and not against a major character.
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
Mulholland Books
304 Pages
Fortunately, there is no shortage of writers willing to give us new mysteries. Though the quality varies from time to time. (Do not read any take on The Giant Rat of Sumatra. It is no fault of the ambitious writer who tackles that tantalizing title that it is too much to live up to, but it is simply a fact that no rational explanation could live up to it.)
I've read some truly awful Sherlock Holmes fanfic in my day. And I don't mean awful because we found it on some poor young person's unprotected tumblr, I don't mean the sort of awful that was dashed off in an hour in response to a kinkmeme. I mean stuff people actually got professionals to publish and stock in bookstores.
But I've read some pretty good stuff. I've read some stuff that is pretty good despite falling to the perilous tropes of fanfiction, where the writer's style is aped awkwrdly and there is fanservice thrown in to the detriment of the story momentum.
And I've read some pretty great stuff too, some great stuff that no one has been willing to publish even. (Why is Marcia Wilson's You Buy Bones self-published when the first half is better than most of the stuff put out in the last 84 years?)
So even when I saw that little sticker saying that ACD's descendants have put their stamp of approval on the story, I still consider it fanfiction and I donn't mean that to diminish it. It was professional published by an bestselling writer, so I expected one of the better works I'd seen but I didn't expect it to succeed in capturing the style of the original sixty stories. But to that end, the House of Silk may be one of the finest pieces of fanfiction ever written.
This is probably due to his conscientious avoidance of the habits that annoy me the most about contemporary Sherlock Holmes writers. The mysteries are completely original plots that do not erase any of the canon stories. (Contradictions are okay, ACD did that all the time and we just blamed it on Watson being a bad notetaker, but I can think of a number of works that exist on the premise that entire stories were inventions of Dr. Watson.) All of the dialogue is new, no seeing Sherlock reuse his old phrasing in order to make him sound like himself, but it effectively captures the voice of the original writer. He alludes to other stories, but in a way that seems natural to Watson's train of thought. The characters are true to the original stories, while fitting the nicely into the trends of modern fiction. Horowitz's Watson is familiar and strong enough to carry the plot when Sherlock is out of sight. His female characters live up to modern expectations of character without being unrealistically enlightened for the era. New characters fit nicely into the traditional roles allotted for new characters: clients, villains, and victims, and he doesn't try to introduce a new detective or partner to tag alongside the main attraction. The appearances of fan-favorites like Inspector Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes aren't just a favor for the fans, their presence is logical and important to moving the plot along.
That's not to say there aren't continuity errors, contradictions, odd reasonings and other little problems. Thing is, all the little errors in this book are along the same lines of the sorts of errors ACD made back in the day. The real triumph of this work is that he manages to capture the voice so well. I suspect there was meticulous editing and rewriting to make the style match without just copying it. When you read this, you are reading something written in Dr. Watson's voice.
And he does that without sacrificing any of the other necessary elements in the book, the characterization and plotting are all up to par.
I only have one word of warning at the risk of spoilers, and that is that when the promotional materials state that this is a story too shocking to have published a hundred years ago, they aren't exaggerating. The book captures the Watson voice so well I just blew that off because that character has a very different idea of lurid that I do. The events depicted could easily have happened in the 1890s but would never have been published. I recommend this book, but with a trigger warning for sexual assault. True to the Watson voice, though, Horowitz doesn't linger over the details. It's referenced, not explicit, and not against a major character.
The House of Silk by Anthony HorowitzMulholland Books
304 Pages
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
A moment to brag
I've been quiet all month, mainly due to lack of internet, but I wanted to take a moment to brag.
I’ve done this before, but never had anything serious come of it. It was mainly a “get used to writing fiction and/or every day” thing. This year due to work I basically only wrote in large spurts once a week. (Another reason I wasn’t constantly posting wordcounts and angst about writing.) But I managed something surprisingly coherent.
It is not anything worth reading at the moment, and is loaded with typos and ridiculous ideas.
Nor is it a well-crafted plot with in-depth characters. That wordcount? I actually ended before the 50K and added another subplot with a minor character to drag out the ending.
But I am proud of myself. I did a "realistic" fiction story (it is still an adventure/detective genre book, though) the whole way through. I don't have five bazillion pointless subplots. Even the one I added at the end could easily be retrofitted to go with the rest of the plot (and it has a ready made pivotal point for my main character that didn't suit her at the end but would definitely make sense earlier.) I did not have aliens land at any point. The premise is totally absurd, and I took some leeway with probability, genetics and demolitions but that's all within the genre. The plotlines actually fit with each other. And I avoided padding. There are some nice in-depth descriptive scenes, and a few points where it gets redundant but really I just wrote plot the whole way through. If I did rewrite and edit it, it would actually get a lot longer.
All-in-all I put out something I could clean up and still shop around as a novel this time. It's not as funny as the last one, but it's there.
I am now officially an "Unedited novel the desk drawer" writer. Go me.
I’ve done this before, but never had anything serious come of it. It was mainly a “get used to writing fiction and/or every day” thing. This year due to work I basically only wrote in large spurts once a week. (Another reason I wasn’t constantly posting wordcounts and angst about writing.) But I managed something surprisingly coherent.
It is not anything worth reading at the moment, and is loaded with typos and ridiculous ideas.
Nor is it a well-crafted plot with in-depth characters. That wordcount? I actually ended before the 50K and added another subplot with a minor character to drag out the ending.
But I am proud of myself. I did a "realistic" fiction story (it is still an adventure/detective genre book, though) the whole way through. I don't have five bazillion pointless subplots. Even the one I added at the end could easily be retrofitted to go with the rest of the plot (and it has a ready made pivotal point for my main character that didn't suit her at the end but would definitely make sense earlier.) I did not have aliens land at any point. The premise is totally absurd, and I took some leeway with probability, genetics and demolitions but that's all within the genre. The plotlines actually fit with each other. And I avoided padding. There are some nice in-depth descriptive scenes, and a few points where it gets redundant but really I just wrote plot the whole way through. If I did rewrite and edit it, it would actually get a lot longer.
All-in-all I put out something I could clean up and still shop around as a novel this time. It's not as funny as the last one, but it's there.
I am now officially an "Unedited novel the desk drawer" writer. Go me.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
100 words on my personal life and over 1700 words on Wallander.
Now that I'm settled in at work and have time to pursue home internet, I can't find the landlord. So yeah, will probably still be scarce for a bit. In the meantime I have plenty to preoccupy me without net access. I'm doing a low stress Nanowrimo (trying to write the requirement each day but not focusing my entire November and every interaction on making the damned wordcount), I've got loads and loads of beautiful (non-comic) books to read. I have books I've read I mean to review so I can sit and write reviews. I have a cluttered apartment to clean and the German trash system to navigate. Arts. Crafts. Comics. Sorting. Oh, and a new fandom.
Those of you who watch me on Twitter'll know this one. I ordered a DVD based solely on a preview and boy am I glad I did. It is AMAZING and so far the books I've gotten through are AMAZING too.
For those of you who skipped the post title, it was Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh, based on novels by Henning Mankell, and rated EW, MC and AM for Extremely White Cast, High Body Count, and Abject Misery.
(Slight spoilers below)
So let's go over the amazing in increasing order from unsettling to excellent.
I admit first of all that the opening episode--Sidetracked--left me confused. Not because of any clumsiness with the filming or the writing, the story was good and the characters made sense. Just, as an American, it left me baffled. It's set in Sweden. Produced by the BBC. So, it's a British show about a Swedish cast based on a Swedish book. And in the British show about the Swedish cast based on the Swedish book there is a serial killer (Who is not the good guy.) that is appropriating Native American culture.
With no Native American characters around to comment on how fucked up that is.
It kinda overloaded my brain there. I wasn't sure exactly how to process that setup. My initial impulse--even in enjoyment--is to analyze that sort of thing when I notice it, and it's hard to analyze a culture that's not yours first off. Then it's a culture that's not yours interpreted through the lens that's not yours. Then it's about cultural appropriation, which is not my strong point.
However, if you are offended by what the villain is doing and how they're perpetuating stereotypes... You'll probably at least get some satisfaction over what happens to them.
Outside of that one, there's another episode that deals with actual racial violence. (Faceless Killers.) It's not perfect. The core cast of the show is all white, and pretty much all the POC characters in this episode are there as a plot point. (And I know someone out there is about to tell me I'm being unfair to even discuss the racial makeup of the cast because the UK and Sweden are in Europe, the homecontinent of all white people. So before you do that A--open a god-damned almanac and B--if there were nothing but white people in Sweden this episode would not work.) It's complex, though, and covers the interlacing problems of individual everyday prejudice, nativism, and public hysteria against the backdrop of a murder investigation. That's quite a bite for a 90-minute story and like with Sidetracked I still want the book to see how differently it's handled in the longform.
While the other episodes don't overtly address inter-racial interactions, there's definitely a heavy examination of Swedish xenophobia going on in all six episodes and in the one book (The Fifth Woman) I've managed to obtain. I'm not qualified to comment on Swedish culture, but I think I can safely recognize a theme. Watch whenever anyone mentions having been to Africa or being interested in America. Most of the time they will either be evil or get killed. Or both, in some cases. Thing is, while the surface problem might SEEM to be that the outside world is encroaching in on Sweden... in the end, the source of violence is usually something that's been below the surface in the Swedish countryside all along. And even when the initial crime is actually from outside Sweden, it's overwhelmed by the potential for violence that's present in the country already. The big challenges in the stories are problems that originated inside the culture that are covered up with anxieties about the rest of the world. The scalping killer in Sidetracked is not from the Western Hemisphere, it's a Swede who'd be fucked up either way. The real cause of the events in Fifth Woman is not the act of violence on another continent, it's violence that had been occurring in Sweden for decades.
While this is going on, though, there's another amazing thing. There's backstories of sexual violence in the first, second, and sixth episodes. And the way the cops handle this is fucking incredible.
They take the reports as the truth, and don't question the victim's histories, motives, or behavior.
And the way the writers handle this is incredible. They don't come up with a stupid twist later on that so and so is lying to get revenge or manipulate the characters (*middle finger to Season 2 Dexter*) or some shit. There's no "this is a story about sexual violence, with a twist that perpetuates the myth that this sort of crime gets falsely reported more than it actually does", it's more that a sexual assault happened in someone's past and THAT is why this event, this event, and this event happened. It's never the big crime of the story but it's never trivialized. And it's not every female character you see, just some characters.
And the way the director handles these revelations is incredible. It's not shot graphicly or sexualized or brought out as the big titillating revelation. It's part of some character's history, part of the horrible shit that happens in the world that leads to other horrible shit and in particular the horrible shit that lands on Kurt Wallander's desk.
I wish these were the guys in charge Law & Order: SVU, honestly. I hate that it's so rare to see a police show handle sexual violence in a way that doesn't make me ragequit it.
Thirdly, and this I can demonstrate with math, Wallander is uniquely suited to my own appetite for brutality. This series is a bloodbath. It is a tastefully subtle bloodbath (they don't go overboard with the onscreen deaths), but a bloodbath nonetheless.
They rarely show the body directly or linger for long on the grotesque stuff when they do, but in the cold open to the first episode a teenager sets herself on fire and things just get worse from there.
While recounting how much I love this series, I did a body count for one of my coworkers. There are no less than six deaths in each episode of the first season. In the second season, it dips down to four for one episode but there is a violent and traumatic shootout. The other episodes are up to par, at least six people meet gruesome ends over the course of events.
6 deaths over 90 minutes. That's a higher average than Dexter, folks.
Oh, and the first novel I got my hands on? I tried to count to compare. Mankell offs five people in the prologue. And sometime around the fifth chapter he sinks a boat and several hundred people die. (Also, the villain does much more damage to the cops in the climax of the novel than the climax of TV adaption.) Really, after 11 books I'm not sure how there's anyone left alive in Ystad.
Also, even though Wallander is consistantly portrayed as overweight, out of shape, forgetful, racked with insecurities, and reluctant to kill even the most horrible murderers he runs up against... He still manages to be a fearless badass in the big confrontations. I suspect he's just one "I'm getting too old for this shit" away from superpowers.
And finally, there's the most amazing thing and this one is done better in the book not because of any failing of the television series but simply because a novel is better set up to handle it: Kurt Wallander's sad, sad life.
Which really is something that needs to be examined episode by episode and book by book. It is so bleak it's actually absurdly amusing at some points. Each episode ends with a moment of quiet where the sun shines and the murders have stopped and everything is well with Southern Sweden but that's cinematography set against things like funerals. The ending to each episode reinforces that Kurt can only connect emotionally with another human by sharing mutual feelings of despair and convincing themselves to forget them for just a moment of sunlight on their faces.
It's kinda awesome, and I think I love him.
My amusement at misery aside, this goes beyond being chronically unlucky and mostly pessimistic. Wallander is a genuine man of constant sorrow type, and while the depressed cop stereotype in fiction can be excessively melodramatic, he's pretty relatable in his despondency. Sure, he cries more than any other TV cop I've seen, but it's usually at a point in the episode where you'd expect someone to be stressed to tears. Though really, when you take into account the disaster area that is his personal life and the job that is slowly killing his soul and his complete lack of hobbies (and for this character, not having outside interests from his work is a major character trait and not an oversight of the writer), he should be crying a lot more than just after an intense scene. If he were to start his day by weeping it would be perfectly understandable and natural, just because he's Kurt Wallander and he has to start his day. He is soaked in anguish, and every way I look at him he doesn't deserve to be. (Yet he's convinced he does.)
Basically, the world is built to a point where if you watch from outside the world and take into account what's going on, you watch this poor hapless bastard in disbelief and may even find yourself laughing at points like when Kurt's late for a date, the lady tells him off/storms out, and then--while he's standing dejectedly in the middle of the pub--the lights turn out. (This indicates a dead body at the power station, by the way, that Kurt gets called in to investigate) but at the same time you really sympathize with this guy's suffering because it's not a result of selfishness, or brooding over his bad luck. He definitely causes some of his own problems, but where I can be hard on characters I tend to naturally side with "You need to lay off yourself" a bit for this guy.
Maybe that's because of Kurt's motivations. He's not trying to prove himself, or aching to put away bad guys, or working off a history of personal trauma in his job. He's more personally invested in the people around--not just the victims, but he feels for the witnesses and the villains. He sees himself really clearly in everyone else, even the most monstrous people. Like he's missing a protective filter a lot of others have, something that lets them look at a killer and go "That's an inhuman monster I have nothing in common with" and instead has him being reminded by their crimes of his own actions. And while he's doing that, while he's getting tunnel vision and focusing on the killer and the victims he ends up completely missing the emotional cues from people he sees every day (Svedberg, Linda, his father) and he avoids them while chasing the monster. He's more guilt than self-pity and he's very introverted and empathetic at the same time. And I get a real impression that it's clinical, that his brain is set up to see things this way. If the viewpoint character were Linda rather than Kurt, I imagine things wouldn't seem quite so horrible all that time.
And there's just little moments in the novel and in the series that seem to me like something I could see a real person doing when they are operating under this level of crushing desolation every day of their lives. There's something deeply compelling about a character who gets that across and still manages to accomplish the stuff he accomplishes in these stories.
Also, Rupert Graves plays a bearded character in the 5th episode, which convinces me we're one "Oh, that's the name of Lestrade's identical Swedish cousin" away from a crossover.
Come on, BBC. You know you want to.
Those of you who watch me on Twitter'll know this one. I ordered a DVD based solely on a preview and boy am I glad I did. It is AMAZING and so far the books I've gotten through are AMAZING too.
For those of you who skipped the post title, it was Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh, based on novels by Henning Mankell, and rated EW, MC and AM for Extremely White Cast, High Body Count, and Abject Misery.
(Slight spoilers below)
So let's go over the amazing in increasing order from unsettling to excellent.
I admit first of all that the opening episode--Sidetracked--left me confused. Not because of any clumsiness with the filming or the writing, the story was good and the characters made sense. Just, as an American, it left me baffled. It's set in Sweden. Produced by the BBC. So, it's a British show about a Swedish cast based on a Swedish book. And in the British show about the Swedish cast based on the Swedish book there is a serial killer (Who is not the good guy.) that is appropriating Native American culture.
With no Native American characters around to comment on how fucked up that is.
It kinda overloaded my brain there. I wasn't sure exactly how to process that setup. My initial impulse--even in enjoyment--is to analyze that sort of thing when I notice it, and it's hard to analyze a culture that's not yours first off. Then it's a culture that's not yours interpreted through the lens that's not yours. Then it's about cultural appropriation, which is not my strong point.
However, if you are offended by what the villain is doing and how they're perpetuating stereotypes... You'll probably at least get some satisfaction over what happens to them.
Outside of that one, there's another episode that deals with actual racial violence. (Faceless Killers.) It's not perfect. The core cast of the show is all white, and pretty much all the POC characters in this episode are there as a plot point. (And I know someone out there is about to tell me I'm being unfair to even discuss the racial makeup of the cast because the UK and Sweden are in Europe, the homecontinent of all white people. So before you do that A--open a god-damned almanac and B--if there were nothing but white people in Sweden this episode would not work.) It's complex, though, and covers the interlacing problems of individual everyday prejudice, nativism, and public hysteria against the backdrop of a murder investigation. That's quite a bite for a 90-minute story and like with Sidetracked I still want the book to see how differently it's handled in the longform.
While the other episodes don't overtly address inter-racial interactions, there's definitely a heavy examination of Swedish xenophobia going on in all six episodes and in the one book (The Fifth Woman) I've managed to obtain. I'm not qualified to comment on Swedish culture, but I think I can safely recognize a theme. Watch whenever anyone mentions having been to Africa or being interested in America. Most of the time they will either be evil or get killed. Or both, in some cases. Thing is, while the surface problem might SEEM to be that the outside world is encroaching in on Sweden... in the end, the source of violence is usually something that's been below the surface in the Swedish countryside all along. And even when the initial crime is actually from outside Sweden, it's overwhelmed by the potential for violence that's present in the country already. The big challenges in the stories are problems that originated inside the culture that are covered up with anxieties about the rest of the world. The scalping killer in Sidetracked is not from the Western Hemisphere, it's a Swede who'd be fucked up either way. The real cause of the events in Fifth Woman is not the act of violence on another continent, it's violence that had been occurring in Sweden for decades.
While this is going on, though, there's another amazing thing. There's backstories of sexual violence in the first, second, and sixth episodes. And the way the cops handle this is fucking incredible.
They take the reports as the truth, and don't question the victim's histories, motives, or behavior.
And the way the writers handle this is incredible. They don't come up with a stupid twist later on that so and so is lying to get revenge or manipulate the characters (*middle finger to Season 2 Dexter*) or some shit. There's no "this is a story about sexual violence, with a twist that perpetuates the myth that this sort of crime gets falsely reported more than it actually does", it's more that a sexual assault happened in someone's past and THAT is why this event, this event, and this event happened. It's never the big crime of the story but it's never trivialized. And it's not every female character you see, just some characters.
And the way the director handles these revelations is incredible. It's not shot graphicly or sexualized or brought out as the big titillating revelation. It's part of some character's history, part of the horrible shit that happens in the world that leads to other horrible shit and in particular the horrible shit that lands on Kurt Wallander's desk.
I wish these were the guys in charge Law & Order: SVU, honestly. I hate that it's so rare to see a police show handle sexual violence in a way that doesn't make me ragequit it.
Thirdly, and this I can demonstrate with math, Wallander is uniquely suited to my own appetite for brutality. This series is a bloodbath. It is a tastefully subtle bloodbath (they don't go overboard with the onscreen deaths), but a bloodbath nonetheless.
They rarely show the body directly or linger for long on the grotesque stuff when they do, but in the cold open to the first episode a teenager sets herself on fire and things just get worse from there.
While recounting how much I love this series, I did a body count for one of my coworkers. There are no less than six deaths in each episode of the first season. In the second season, it dips down to four for one episode but there is a violent and traumatic shootout. The other episodes are up to par, at least six people meet gruesome ends over the course of events.
6 deaths over 90 minutes. That's a higher average than Dexter, folks.
Oh, and the first novel I got my hands on? I tried to count to compare. Mankell offs five people in the prologue. And sometime around the fifth chapter he sinks a boat and several hundred people die. (Also, the villain does much more damage to the cops in the climax of the novel than the climax of TV adaption.) Really, after 11 books I'm not sure how there's anyone left alive in Ystad.
Also, even though Wallander is consistantly portrayed as overweight, out of shape, forgetful, racked with insecurities, and reluctant to kill even the most horrible murderers he runs up against... He still manages to be a fearless badass in the big confrontations. I suspect he's just one "I'm getting too old for this shit" away from superpowers.
And finally, there's the most amazing thing and this one is done better in the book not because of any failing of the television series but simply because a novel is better set up to handle it: Kurt Wallander's sad, sad life.
Which really is something that needs to be examined episode by episode and book by book. It is so bleak it's actually absurdly amusing at some points. Each episode ends with a moment of quiet where the sun shines and the murders have stopped and everything is well with Southern Sweden but that's cinematography set against things like funerals. The ending to each episode reinforces that Kurt can only connect emotionally with another human by sharing mutual feelings of despair and convincing themselves to forget them for just a moment of sunlight on their faces.
It's kinda awesome, and I think I love him.
My amusement at misery aside, this goes beyond being chronically unlucky and mostly pessimistic. Wallander is a genuine man of constant sorrow type, and while the depressed cop stereotype in fiction can be excessively melodramatic, he's pretty relatable in his despondency. Sure, he cries more than any other TV cop I've seen, but it's usually at a point in the episode where you'd expect someone to be stressed to tears. Though really, when you take into account the disaster area that is his personal life and the job that is slowly killing his soul and his complete lack of hobbies (and for this character, not having outside interests from his work is a major character trait and not an oversight of the writer), he should be crying a lot more than just after an intense scene. If he were to start his day by weeping it would be perfectly understandable and natural, just because he's Kurt Wallander and he has to start his day. He is soaked in anguish, and every way I look at him he doesn't deserve to be. (Yet he's convinced he does.)
Basically, the world is built to a point where if you watch from outside the world and take into account what's going on, you watch this poor hapless bastard in disbelief and may even find yourself laughing at points like when Kurt's late for a date, the lady tells him off/storms out, and then--while he's standing dejectedly in the middle of the pub--the lights turn out. (This indicates a dead body at the power station, by the way, that Kurt gets called in to investigate) but at the same time you really sympathize with this guy's suffering because it's not a result of selfishness, or brooding over his bad luck. He definitely causes some of his own problems, but where I can be hard on characters I tend to naturally side with "You need to lay off yourself" a bit for this guy.
Maybe that's because of Kurt's motivations. He's not trying to prove himself, or aching to put away bad guys, or working off a history of personal trauma in his job. He's more personally invested in the people around--not just the victims, but he feels for the witnesses and the villains. He sees himself really clearly in everyone else, even the most monstrous people. Like he's missing a protective filter a lot of others have, something that lets them look at a killer and go "That's an inhuman monster I have nothing in common with" and instead has him being reminded by their crimes of his own actions. And while he's doing that, while he's getting tunnel vision and focusing on the killer and the victims he ends up completely missing the emotional cues from people he sees every day (Svedberg, Linda, his father) and he avoids them while chasing the monster. He's more guilt than self-pity and he's very introverted and empathetic at the same time. And I get a real impression that it's clinical, that his brain is set up to see things this way. If the viewpoint character were Linda rather than Kurt, I imagine things wouldn't seem quite so horrible all that time.
And there's just little moments in the novel and in the series that seem to me like something I could see a real person doing when they are operating under this level of crushing desolation every day of their lives. There's something deeply compelling about a character who gets that across and still manages to accomplish the stuff he accomplishes in these stories.
Also, Rupert Graves plays a bearded character in the 5th episode, which convinces me we're one "Oh, that's the name of Lestrade's identical Swedish cousin" away from a crossover.
Come on, BBC. You know you want to.
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