Politics and Detectives

Number one shark apologist

[the-bedheaded-league]

I find it so hard to believe that Holmes would really let Watson believe he was dead for 3 years because even though he often doesn’t understand how his actions affect others emotionally, he’s definitely smart/empathetic enough to understand how much that would hurt Watson. And I also think he trusts Watson too much to believe that he couldn’t keep the secret of Holmes being alive.

My personal headcanon is that after Reichenbach, Holmes found a way to let Watson know that he was still alive, that he wouldn’t be back for some time, and that Watson needed to keep up the lie that Holmes was dead in order to keep them both safe. Which is honestly just as deliciously angsty to me as the idea that Watson actually thought he was dead for 3 years.

Imagine 3 years of Watson having to grieve a man he knew was still alive. His loved ones comforting him and him not being able to tell them that the reason he suffering so much wasn’t because he knew Holmes was dead, but because he spent every day worrying about his safety. Knowing that the love of his life is out there facing danger without him there to protect him, and meanwhile all he can do is wait breathlessly until the next time Holmes can manage to send him a message to let him know he’s okay. Knowing that at any moment, Holmes might be dying somewhere, and he might never know where or when or how.

Maybe he told Mary, because honestly I get the impression that she’s incredibly good at keeping secrets. Maybe it just came out one night while she was holding him after he broke down sobbing in their sitting room. I think she’d be angry at Holmes at first for causing her husband so much pain, but after Watson explains the whole story, she’d understand. The next time he got a coded note from one of the irregulars with an update from Holmes, he immediately runs to tell her. She’s so relieved to see such happiness on his face, even if it secretly breaks her heart. But it’s alright, in the end. She’s always known that Watson’s heart had never truly belonged to her. Their marriage is practical, almost fraternal, and that’s okay. What they have together is enough. She hopes that one day she can meet someone that she’ll love with the same ferocity that Watson loves Holmes, and she knows that if that day comes, her husband will be more than understanding.

And then Mary gets sick. It’s clear that she’s going to die. And all she can think about is how cruel it is that the two people Watson loves most should be taken from him.

“That man of yours had better come back to you soon,” she says in the weak voice of someone in their final days. “If he doesn’t, I swear that my ghost shall haunt him until he drags himself back to London and apologizes to you in person.”

Startled, Watson laughs. Mary smiles. It’s the first laugh she’s heard from him in weeks.

And then Mary dies, and the one person that Watson could have leaned on for support as he grieved is still lost. And now there is no one else who knows that Holmes is alive, or that Watson spends every waking hour waiting for him.

I do think the part about him fainting when Holmes comes back is true, though. Not from shock, but from pure relief.

Anyway I can’t stop thinking about this sooooo I guess I’m gonna have to write a fic about it. Goddamnit.

[the-bedheaded-league]

Modern AU Holmes and watson being in a QPR (Holmes is aroace, Watson is allo) and they’re legally married because it just makes sense logistically, but they’re not in a romantic or sexual relationship so Watson sometimes goes out to find casual partners, and he keeps having to explain that yes, he’s married, no, he’s not cheating on his husband, because he and his husband never have sex because his husband is not into that and that’s just not how their relationship is.

And it gets kind of annoying to keep having to explain this to people (who are of course skeptical because he could just be bullshitting) and eventually Holmes records a video of himself saying “Hello, I am John’s husband. You have my full permission to sleep with him because I am not at all interested in doing so.” John plays the message for his dates and they think it’s hilarious.

Also if any of John’s dates expresses even the slightest hint that they think he should leave his husband because he’s not getting any sex from him, he immediately ends the date and goes home.

[the-bedheaded-league]

In elementary it’s basically this but it’s reversed, Holmes is the one going out and having to show people a video from Watson saying “Yes, I am his wife, no, he’s not cheating on me, we’re only married for legal purposes and I have no interest in sleeping with this man.”

[omnipotentnothing]

Hi just because youre a gay man doesnt mean you can say whatever you want about women

[plaidos]

trans men too

[roseworth]

if you call all feminism terf rhetoric then youre going to believe all feminists are transphobic. also if you call all transphobes terfs then youre going to believe all feminists are transphobic.

[stephexmachina]

some of u r so wishy washy & liberal & spineless when it comes to feminism i really don't have the patience for it anymore. u r so scared of cowardly anons that u rush to distance yourself from any feminist principles that could come across as TERFy to people who resent women advocating for themselves & could not define trans exclusionary radical feminism at gunpoint. & u see yourself as superior for having the nice kind of feminist beliefs, the kind that conceive of the patriarchy as an immaterial force that magically upholds itself & benefits nobody, where the meaning of misogyny should be divorced from the oppression of women as a social class bc what about the people who experience misogyny due to being misidentified as a woman or sharing characteristics w society's narrow definition of womanhood. as if it doesn't all come down to woman-hating!!! all women!!! all of us!!!

[lesbianismst]

just unfollowed someone for rbing anti-manhating sentiments. it's very weird to me and I'm not sorry. there's a rise in conservatism and a big societal push to strip women of our rights and make us men's property, and your biggest priority is lecturing women on how we talk about men?? fuck right the fuck off actually

[lesbianismst]

"but it hurts their feelings!" it hurts MY feelings when my sisters and mothers don't have rights.

"but it doesn't help your goals!" meanwhile men are beating, raping, oppressing, and killing women everywhere to advance the goals of the patriarchy. don't tell me what I should and should not feel about that.

"but it harms trans men/men of color/other oppressed men!" does it? because trans men and men of color have way more serious shit to deal with than women expressing their feelings on the internet. such as transphobia and racism. meanwhile, women in their communities (trans women, women of color) have to deal with all of that PLUS oppression from the men.

you simply cannot convince me that anti-manhating arguments are anything more than patriarchy propaganda. "unhh we have all the power and rights, but if you don't worship at our feet, you're just as bad as us." fuck offfffff

[lesbianismst]

just unfollowed another person for rbing similar sentiments. I am NOT in the mood

[theconcealedweapon]

[stephexmachina]

it's really is like there's a torture machine for women and everybody knows about it and it's called the Women's Torture Machine and everyone's like "yesssss let's put women in the torture machine" so they teach little girls to embrace the torture machine and they force every woman they can inside & every so often there's someone who isn't a woman but shares enough characteristics w society's constructed definition of womanhood that they're are like "close enough into the torture machine you go" & anytime a woman goes "it's unforgivably evil that women have to live w the threat of the torture machine" people on tumblr dot com go "ummmm actually it's not just women that get put in the torture machine are you a terf"

[hopefulfairyfox]

No offense but some of you are so obsessed with never acknowledging that white women are oppressed and it circles back around to claiming that many things that also happen to women of color are somehow not oppressive.

If we refuse to acknowledge the reality of broodmare slavery just a couple of generations ago in a society where you could not get divorced outside of very specific and arbitrary circumstances and marital rape was legal and you could be legally married off by your parents choice as a literal child and you could not own land and you could be lobotomized or given a cliterectomy by your husband and you couldn't get put on birth control and you were expected to do certain labor and legally were allowed to be punished in many ways if you refused or failed to meet your husbands expectations and and and and... You also refuse to acknowledge that it is slavery in places where that is still the norm. (You also refuse to acknowledge how long black women in this country were slaves beyond when their male counterparts were freed as well).

Like yeah, you just showed that white girl! White women were never slaves! Except you also just claimed that the women (who normally are women of color) who are still stuck in these conditions are not slaves either. It can't magically be not slavery when it happened to white women and then slavery when it happens to women of color today. The women being genitally mutilated and married off at 13 and held both economically and through legal barriers in the captivity of their husbands in countries where marital rape is legal are absolutely in shackles right now. They can/are supposed to be legally returned to their husbands if they run away in many places.

Just because it's a house position doesn't mean that it isn't still a position of slavery if it's a position that in many circumstances you cannot legally leave. "But some of them like the work! They get food and clothing out of it! They had those kids that they probably loved!" literally is the happy slave fallacy.

There are people who will acknowledge that the prison system now is modernized slavery and still will not acknowledge that the position of a woman in a completely patriarichal society (like we had 100 years ago) is ultimately that of a slave.

The refusal to acknowledge that privilege does not always save you from the constraints of misogyny is incredibly fucking regressive and is STILL holding back the progress of ALL women, including those significantly more oppressed than those you are trying to refuse.

[danikriatura]

The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.

They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.

Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.

The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.

The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.

By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.

According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.

The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.

Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.

Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.

The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.

She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.

She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.

They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.

The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.

The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.

Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.

Source: Kitty Cone's oral history, Bancroft Library.

Verified via: National Museum of American History.

(Some details summarized for brevity.)

[depsidase]

[sailorbrazil]

thursday..... and i bet you wish you were her

[glorious-spoon]

While I sort of get the impulse, it does always get my back up when people talk about something like Animorphs with this attitude of 'omgggg remember these books, how on EARTH were we allowed to read these books, they're so grim and dark and violent and tragic, no adults could possibly have known what they actually contained or they'd have been banned.'

And like. Allowing for the fact that there absolutely are adults who think every distressing topic ever should be banned from children's literature - they're children's books. You were allowed to read them when you were a kid because they were written for kids. Bridge to Terabithia is also a children's book. So is Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and The Giver and loads of other books that deal with heavy, difficult topics. It is appropriate and good for children to have books about these things that are tailored to their reading levels and it genuinely really bugs me when people act like they're somehow not really for kids because bad things happen in them or they end tragically.

[socialpants]

There's an awful trend in reading that's this CinemaSins kind of rejection of abstract concepts and suspension of disbelief, that makes people say it's bad writing when authors use descriptions that aren't immediately one to one with physical reality.

Like it's bad when a "tattoo is undulating" (as opposed to... "drawn in a wave like pattern on the skin"?), or when hair is "wet wheat from a late Summer field" (as opposed to "sort of brownish light yellow that dries lighter, but is not actual wheat stalks growing on someone's head but kind of reminiscent of the color and texture"?), or when when ice cream tastes like midnight at the fair" (as opposed to "ice cream flavour bringing back memories of undefined ice cream flavours that are individually popular but always tied to a memory of late evening at the fair ground and probably smelling vaguely like popcorn and sugar"?).

Please. We have to get back to understanding abstract descriptions that evoke feelings and memories and mental images or things we haven't experienced yet. This hyper utilitarian way of reading and judging text is killing fiction. it's robbing you of experiencing things you haven't actually personally experienced.

[starlitsequins]

i dont mean to victim blame but why do these vampires keep talking to daniel molloy when they know he's daniel molloy

[my-platonic-chemical-romance]

They think they can outsmart him just because he’s a baby

[starlitsequins]

i dont mean to victim blame but why do these vampires keep talking to daniel molloy when they know he's daniel molloy

[my-platonic-chemical-romance]

They think they can outsmart him just because he’s a baby

[lobotomy-jpeg]

[Read the incredible fanfic by @snogfairy this art accompanies here!]

QUIVER IN FEAR (and ant....icipation) for @snogfairy and I have joined our powers in yearning (romantic) to bring you all more Victorian men who are deeply in love with each other v///v

"Without a doubt, to me, it was the moment I could no longer deny the nature of my feelings for you. So I must look back fondly upon it, despite the bitter-sweet memories it causes"

Please please please go read Line's gorgeous work and blow multiple kisses in the comments, thank you🥰🥰

[ID: Digital artwork of Holmes and Watson. Holmes, in his mouse colored dressing gown, is straddling Watson, who has just awoken from a nightmare, pinning his hands to the mattress. His bangs are floppy, falling down his face as he stares down to Watson, who is looking at him with an unreadable gaze. They're both blushing, from their cheeks to the tips of their ears. /end ID]