(no subject)

[melannen]

Hi! I am still lacking energy to do anything serious online, but here are some things anyway:

Signal boost via zvi: If, like me, you recently got weird malware on your system that tried to get you to install anti-virus software, and couldn't figure out where from because you'd only been on trustworthy sites, you probably got it from an ad running on Livejournal. Just so you know. ETA: a thread about it on lj news - if you think you got hit, drop in and leave a comment, it might help.

(I think I got my system clean - I have Spybot running to stop unauthorized registry changes, and cleared out a bunch of suspicious files - but will probably be doing a format + reinstall as soon as I have time to think anyway.) When is DW going to be able to syndicate flocked lj posts so I never have to go back there again? Plz?

*****

I am one of those boring old fans who's been around long enough that the slash-misogyny argument just seems tired; yes it's important, but it's the same thing I read about in 2003. And 2005. And 2007... So instead, here are some awesome Sherlock Holmes stories about women:

Commonplaces, by Astolat. Irene Adler goes to visit Holmes after "The Final Problem."

Thoughts Without Words by Katie Forsythe. Holmes goes to visit Irene, and a conversation is had. (If you've been reading Holmes fic, surely you've found Katie Forsythe's work already, but this one is just *amazing*. It's full-on unreliable narrator - SCAN is given an entirely new interpretation, as is Holmes' history - yet the Holmes and Adler here are so amazing that I get it confused with canon. And I almost suspect the naked!Adler scene in the movie was based on this story.)

Five Times John Watson Quite Unintentionally Saw Irene Adler Naked, by flowers4ophelia. Irene and Holmes carry on together and annoy Watson a lot. Movieverse, though not necessarily contradictory to bookverse.

An Ideal Husband by Irene Adler. Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes both receive the same visitor. (this is also heavy on the Violet Hunter, who was in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" and seems to be the third-most-loved-by-fandom female from a case.)

Enclosed by Recessional. Mary Morstan receives a visit from Sherlock Holmes. Recessional has been writing a lot of really excellent Mary Morstan fic of late: you should read.

Blood Shift by Toft. Mary Morstan and Watson find something necessary in each other.

five times Mary suspected Holmes and Watson were more than friends and one time she knew it to be so., by Lady Paperclip. Mary Morstan is visited by certain inescapable deductions. And also Irene Adler, which is sometimes the same thing.

Leaving, by Telanu. Holmes visits Watson and Mary.

Congenital Defects, by Branwyn. Mary Russell is visited by a series of increasingly wodehousian mishaps as the result of an inconvenient aunt.

Honeycomb Series, by LizBee. Lizbee has written most of the Mary Russell fic that I actually liked; this series deals with Russell's Jewish identity and her marriage to Holmes.

Suppressed, by Jane Turenne. Mrs. Hudson visits Watson.

Miss Madelyn Mack, Murderess, by Flourish. Miss Madelyn Mack is visited by sudden and unexpected violence.

...in other words, Holmes fandom and its subsidiaries are full of amazing female characters, and people should be writing more stories about them. Especially Mrs. Hudson, who I suspect has a lot of unplumbed depths. (I know there's a published series where she solves the cases and secretly feeds the clues to Holmes - it even sounds sort of good; I'm keeping my eyes out for it - but I am suddenly convinced that Mrs. H has been in the employ of Mycroft - aka M of what will eventually be MI-6 - for a very, very long time. Pre-dating the time at which she was assigned to keep an eye on his brother.)

****

And on that note, I just picked up the first Irene Adler novel (well, okay, the second, because why read a series in publishing order when you can read it in the order you find it at the public library). I'm only about ten pages in, and I'm provisionally liking it. But I can't get past the fact that this Adler is apparently a soprano. Adler's a contralto, isn't she? This is actually very important to her backstory, considering the different expectations of a contralto and soprano in classical opera!

Did I in vain spend all that time looking for pieces for contralto and violin solo? (Well, no, it wasn't in vain, because I found Yehudi Menuhin playing Erbarme Dich, which I fell in love with instantly and only wish he had a better contralto to play for. I want Madelyn's secret recording of Holmes and Alder performing that to exist in RL. Please.)

****

While I'm asking about minor canon points, here's some more, in various fandoms:

1. So a veteran of the second Anglo-Afghan war naming his dog "Gladstone" is roughly the equivalent of a veteran of the *current* Afghan war naming his dog "Gordon", right? People who know more about Victorian politics than me: What statement exactly is that making?
   
   I only know as much about Gladstone and Disraeli as anyone who's read "The Annotated Alice" far too many times, but the longer I watch Holmes-movie-fandom without *anyone* mentioning that the dog's named after the PM, the more I notice its absence.



2. Sarah Jane Smith currently drives a lime green Nissan Figaro, and used to own a bright red Volkswagen Beetle named Ethel. Does anybody know what model Volkswagen she was driving in "School Reunion"? And did she have a car during her Old Who appearances, and if so, what was it?



3. Can anybody get access to a copy of the article "A Pocket Telephone," Literary Digest, Vol. 44 (March 30, 1912) p. 639 ? I can't, not even after stealing my sister's JSTOR login, but I would really really really like to read it!



4. Is there anything anywhere in primary or secondary Star Trek canon about the cultural significance of male Vulcan hairstyles and/or beards? (Other than the obvious.)



5. I swear that within the last several years there was a find somewhere in England of items related to witchcraft that included what was probably a prosthetic phallus: does anybody else remember this? For obvious reasons it is difficult to google. Or any citable links to archeological finds of life-sized false phalli in England in the last century?

***

And on the off-chance you haven't found it yet: asexual_fandom now exists! And I didn't even have to be the one to start it!

Comments

[starlady]

Yes, I noticed that Gladstone is named after the PM. I have decided, given how many times he winds up paralyzed on the rug, that it is probably some subspecies of irony. Or at least, in my movie-ish fic set in 1882, they have a dog named after the current PM.

*hugs links to self*

[jest]

I'll now curse at livejournal...I totally got that malware.

[merrily]

Here via the Dreamwidth network function -- thanks for the recs! They were great! Also, I'm going to be at a research library tomorrow that happens to have a set of "Literary Digest" spanning 1890 to 1930. It doesn't seem to be digitized (my JSTOR access also pulled up zip), but I'll see if it's easily scannable.

[mllesays]

Mmmm, recs. Thank you!

(And I'm sure this was rhetorical, but Irene is most definitely a contralto; it's like the second thing Holmes says about her in "Scandal".)

[finch]

I just picked up a few of the Irene Adler books at the used bookshop because I heard a few good things about them.

Also, thanks for the recs!

[nike]

Great recs!

And does your browser have the option of doing ad-block, flash-block, or no-scripts either under the tool settings or as add-ons? That'll not only stop the ads, but the malware too.

[flourish]

<3 !

[naraht]

So a veteran of the second Anglo-Afghan war naming his dog "Gladstone" is roughly the equivalent of a veteran of the *current* Afghan war naming his dog "Gordon", right? People who know more about Victorian politics than me: What statement exactly is that making?

The analogy is not quite right. Gordon Brown is far more linked to the current war in Afghanistan than Gladstone was. Among other things, Gladstone does not actually seem to have been PM during the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

What sort of political statement the scriptwriters thought they were making with the name, I'm not sure. As for why Holmes would have chosen the name, I would have to speculate more about his political leanings.

[crantz]

oooh. Ima have to go through those links later.

[legionseagle]

I dunno what it would mean to Guy Ritchie (or his scriptwriters) having a dog called Gladstone, but if I named an animal Gladstone I'd be planning for something really, really nasty to happen to it and for everyone to be perfectly happy and relaxed about that. My reasons for detesting the historical Gladstone are multiple, but if we start with the fact that his opposition to women's suffrage was so implacable that he told Liberal MPs that if they voted in favour or even abstained they'd be kicked out of the Party even when there was a paper majority in favour of women's suffrage in the house, that his maiden speech was in opposition to Wilberforce's 1988 Emancipation Bill (his father owned upwards of 10,000 slaves and when slavery was abolished in the British Empire he sneakily tried to replace them with a system of bringing in Indian indentured servants to the West Indies) and he intrigued throughout the American Civil War to have the British Empire recognise the Confederacy as a separate nation you might get a flavour of things.

[shirasade]

Oooh, shiny recs - thank you! (Also, once more I'm glad I'm on a Mac. Gah, LJfail!)

[executrix]

About Irene Adler: I'm sure the real answer was a widespread belief that nobody cares about *opera* so you can say anything. But to fanwank: "prima donna" is used fairly broadly like "diva" today, both in the positive sense ("you are a goddess!") and a negative sense ("you raise hell if there are no hand-painted purple M&Ms in your dressing room").

And Irene Adler could have had a wide-ranging voice, so she could, at a pinch, sing a soprano role but her securest range was as a contralto.

[blktauna]

When is DW going to be able to syndicate flocked lj posts so I never have to go back there again? Plz?

Right there with you.

[jonesandashes]

Here via metafandom for the bit about malware (argh), and pleasantly surprised by bonus Sherlock Holmes links. Thanks for those! They look great. :)

[elleth]

Here via metafandom, and fascinated by the meta. I've subscribed to your journal and granted you access in return (fair is fair even if it's bound to be unimpressive and uninteresting), just thought I'd let you know.

Also: Was it you who posted a poll re: the sexual orientation of fans? I'm not talking about the lovely number-crunching, but a poll of your own... thought it was you but can't seem to find it anymore.

[technocracygirl]

Thank you so much for this list of fics!