#like every piece of media you consume is going to have political undertones in it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dynamics-of-an-asteroid · 7 years

Note

I really would like to know your opinion about Sherlolly and Molliarty 💕

My opinion on Sherlolly grew as my opinions on fandom politics thankfully matured cause it’s really easy to make assumptions about M/F ships since typically they’re filled with everything Progressive Fandom supposedly hates.

But what I’ve come to realize is that Progressive Fandom is kind of full of shit.

It says one thing (“we want better material for this female character!”), but then proceeds to do the complete opposite (takes a male background character with exceedingly less material and creates mountains of fanworks to the point where even the creators start giving him more screen time over the female character). It’ll come up with all these tl;dr think pieces that seek to blame some other outside sources as to why this keeps happening (“men are just written better!”, “there’s just more male characters to choose from statistically!”, etc.), but there’s really no denying which types of ships and characters and dynamics and narratives it actually values when you see what kind of content dominates creative spaces that no one is controlling except the fans.

So I realized a lot of my “concerns” were just the result of theoretically wanting the most subversive conceptualization for the ship as any good Progressive Fandom member prides itself on seeking, but then falling in to the same traps that reinforce a very biased hierarchy Progressive Fandom measures everything by and upholding ridiculous standards that I wasn’t holding everyone else to.

For example, I’ve done the typical “pOoR mOlLy :(( sHE dEseRveS bEttEr tHaN sHerLOcK” spiel everyone seems to say after watching ASIB since that scene is meant to elicit a reaction. She very clearly was in love with him and particularly series 1 & 2 Sherlock, despite whatever good he was doing or moments of ~humanity~ he had, was overall a pretty rude, abrasive dick. He wasn’t this way just to her, but Molly is a legitimately decent person on a show full of assholes so there was some part of me that wanted to protect that, you know?

However, my reaction shouldn’t have been “Wow, Molly deserves better than Sherlock”, it should have been “Molly deserved better from Sherlock because she deserves common fucking decency.” Her unwavering love for him is always considered a problem that needs to be either removed entirely or given to someone else more deserving. It’s never Sherlock’s behavior that’s the problem that needs to get checked because Progressive Fandom doesn’t typically criticize male characters for their actions. You excuse, you explain, you apologize, but you don’t with any kind of negative intention seek to frame their reaction in any given situation as the part that’s wrong. The feelings of white dudes are valued over everything and everyone.

So my reaction of “come on, Molly, let’s get out of here and find you someone better” sounds noble, but all I’m really saying is “Well he’s an ass and we can’t do anything about that, but your crush on him is definitely fixable!” Again, she’s not the problem here, her love for him is not the problem here. He is the problem here, his rudeness is the problem here. There’s absolutely something we can do to fix that and we know this because part of his character arc was about becoming warmer and kinder. “Molly deserves better” is such an empty, meaningless statement when you really get in to it and I cringe every time I see it now.

Plus, something I’ve noticed that seems to be exclusive to the ship is most people in fandom ship one of these characters with Sherlock or are invested in a dynamic that includes him in it. And I guarantee you there’s a scene or a moment or a line that Sherlock was the source of that you had to go fix with fic or meta or some AU gif set or something because you wouldn’t still care about it if you didn’t. He’s done some pretty horrendous shit to these characters that far surpasses what he did with Molly at the Christmas party. But we’re not saying poor John he deserves better (hell we’re not even saying poor Sherlock he deserves better), we’re not saying poor Mycroft he deserves better, or that poor little Lestrade deserves better. It’s always poor Molly, specifically, because Progressive Fandom isn’t about to micro-comb through her material like they do with male characters in order to flesh her out more and find ways to make her a person of equally nuanced value to Sherlock. Then it would be easier to see why he’d extend more than just common courtesy to her, which lays the foundation for potentialness (specifically romance cause no one is gonna flip their shit about friendship), and now you’re sighing in agony about having to deal with a love interest - and worst of all - yet another M/F ship existing.

And listen, I get it - M/F ships have everything and it’s obnoxious. They get the coveted title of being “most likely to happen”, they get all the exposure, all the juicy arcs, all the cast conversations when it comes to their expressions of sex and love and romance being treated as completely plausible and entirely normal, etc. But when Progressive Fandom notoriously doesn’t produce nor consume F/F media let alone at the same rates as M/M media, when Progressive Fandom deeming a female character “too awesome/independent for romance” is basically a death sentence in spaces where romance and pairing up characters is the name of the game - what are people supposed to do with Molly that doesn’t decrease her visibility or sideline her entirely in the name of what? Making sure heteronormativity doesn’t happen? Cause looking at tumblr’s most popular M/M ships that are full of exceedingly harmful gendered stereotypes about the characters then being further conceptualized in to gross top/bottom discourse among other issues, that pesky problem of not reinforcing heteronormativity shouldn’t fall solely on M/F ships cause they’re not the only ones perpetuating it.

From what I can tell, Sherlolly shippers are the only people placing her in multiple kinds of dynamics and narratives that seek to explore the depth of her character without treating all of her material with Sherlock like a joke or a predicament that must be changed (which is different from fixing some bumps or gaps or straight up missteps that may be present, and there are some, but no one is denying that). Sometimes it’s a reversal of expectations, sometimes it’s not, and that’s pretty standard summary of any ship in fandom, really. You don’t have to like what they’re doing, but the door is always open for these diverse, inclusive stories Progressive Fandom wants so badly to be brought to the table yet I get the feeling they won’t be walking through it any time soon.

so tl;dr - the ship isn’t bothering me and any faux-criticisms I had about it in the past I can easily say about other ships, including my own, so it’s not fair to condemn one but then bolster another with the same elements. As long as they aren’t engaging in anything harmful or pushing any Ists, Isms, and Phobias, which they aren’t, I’m cool.

And I’m not even gonna lie, I could not stand Molliarty in the beginning stages of fandom.

I hated how Jim from I.T. was treated as a separate person from Jim Moriarty just to give Molly a cuter and more fun version of him to continue dating (to be fair, this ship isn’t the only one that did this, [don’t even get me started on the Richard Brook\twin thing omfg], but I loathed this trend regardless of who did it more cause particularly with Jim everyone would always push the ‘we don’t know anything about his private life!!’ excuse to justify wildly ooc shit [and still do to this day]).

I hated that narrative of Molly ~softening~ monstrous beast!Jim with her kindness and in return he became obsessed with having her love him, but she couldn’t cause he’s a bad person or whatever, so he’d protect her until his dying days instead (I recognize the trope, I personally can’t stand that trope, but I still don’t understand why it was applied to this dynamic).

I hated all the creepy undertones in a lot of the really early fanworks that were like “come with me little girl and you’ll never be hurt again” (look, MY ships are capable of creepy undertones, but particularly with this ship it felt more like an impending sense of doom that Molly was getting herself in to a really skeevy, fucked p situation which is gross).

I hated with a goddamn passion that still consumes me to this day that Little Red Riding Hood/Big Bad Wolf aesthetic cause it’s just piggybacking off what I just said of this lecherous devil ready to devour this unsuspecting and naive victim (as you can imagine I don’t like imbalanced dynamics so a lot of this one is just personal irritation too, but it still feels like you’re having to compromise their characters by bastardizing the shit out of them in order to get this to work).

I hated how Jim was treated like her sassy gay best friend who’d stay up at night watching Say Yes To The Dress with her and Toby, and gushing about cute boys when someone did a more platonic bff take on the ship (this was the biggest one for me because Andrew was walking a fine enough line as it was with Jim to not have everyone go ahead and throw his character into stereotype hell anyway and I hate most fanworks with Jim for this very reason, so again this problem isn’t exclusive to the ship).

And I hated how Molly tapping in to her inner darkness thanks to Jim awakening it somehow always took the form of her becoming sadistic and murderous to illustrate how strong she really is in an effort to put her on even footing with him so she’d get the love and respect and appreciation she wasn’t getting else where through being his faithful killing babe (besides having problems with women having to become badass and bloodthirsty in order to equal strength of any kind, the implication she can only be treated right through bad people is unsettling).

After making that list, I realized a lot of why I couldn’t stand it was tied to general misinterpretations of their characters that was floating around fandom, so putting those specific versions of them together to make a ship out of it was unforgivable to me. I’m gonna make an assumption here and say I’m willing to bet a lot of their earlier stuff wasn’t made by the shippers themselves and that it was people from other ships making material for it based off what they thought it was. So for all I know a lot of what I hated wasn’t even what the ship was about cause I know that’s the case for old stuff about my ships. None of us really had the numbers to change public opinion about how we perceived it, so there’s a lot of lingering misconceptions thanks to those works and I might have just listed all of them for Molliarty, I don’t know.

But a lot of this seems to have gone away now in any case? Not all of it, but it’s been replaced with lighter, more comical material which is still not the ballpark I’d personally place them in, but I’m not in that inner circle of shipping so I don’t know why it took that turn. They could be trying to counter fanon ideas surrounding the pairing, they could be trying to build up a more diverse selection of fanworks, I have no idea, but the ship doesn’t bother me in the same way it use to mostly because I’ve become too indfferent for most ships to even get a reaction from me anymore tbh

#this came out longer than expected #apologies if this somehow ends up in the mobile tag

6 notes · View notes

spiceukonline · 6 years

Text

Meghan Markle does not prove Britain's racial tolerance

It took a lot not to smile when I heard the news that Prince Harry was to marry his long-term girlfriend, Meghan Markle.

In this country, with our confused sense of how one is to express their “patriotism,” to not smile at anything related to the Royal Family, especially if you are a person of colour, is the equivalent of outing yourself as an anarchist and scrawling “DEPORT ME” on your forehead.

Also, it’s only polite. I am British, after all.

And yes, whilst the world continues to turn, I am happy for them- even if I am slightly peeved we don’t get a day off for the pleasure.

Markle, unlike some of the past and present girlfriends and wives of the Royal Family, did not exactly spring from nowhere. She’s a successful actress and campaigner for women’s rights who was in the public eye long before she met Harry. She’s not the ideal character for a rags-to-riches story, which is why the media seems to be clutching at straws just to stick an adjective in front of a sub-heading that describes her as “different,” “controversial,” or, my personal favourite “revolutionary.”

This pictorals however, are offered purely based on the fact that she is mixed-race.

If, God forbid, this was America, where the so-called “one-drop rule” still reigns supreme, being mixed-race would translate to meaning “non-white,” translating to “black.” See “First Black President Barack Obama” for further reference.

Prince Harry, who announced his engagement to Meghan on Monday, has spoken out about the “racial undertones” of press coverage surrounding their relationship. Source: Guardian.

Here, in the land of hope, glory and political correctness, “mixed-race” is a buzzword used synonymously with “diversity,” “multiculturalism” and “tolerance.” Much of the media coverage surrounding the engagement focused on how the royal coupling was a true reflection of Britain’s multicultural society, and how “far” we’ve come as a nation.

The BBC did a suspiciously hastily put-together feature on interracial couples reacting to the royal engagement, whilst a clearly bored and uninspired freelancer for the Metro wrote what can only be described as a God-awful piece titled: “It’s a great day for interracial relationships and mixed-raced girls everywhere” (I can tell you with complete confidence that I’ve had better days).

The problem with these articles wasn’t the choice of topic, exactly- I’m a strong advocate for seeing more issues surrounding British mixed-raced individuals in the mainstream media- it’s the narrowness of their perspective.

The hype around Markle’s mixed-race heritage unapologetically feeds into stereotypes about biracial individuals. Arguably, Markle conforms to what former Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman called the “perfect type of mixed-race,” with fair skin and straightened hair. Many women of black and white heritage, myself included, have darker skin and curly, afro hair which, thanks to our Eurocentric standards of beauty, are seen as less desirable. Efforts to paint Markle as a patron for this imaginary mixed-race community, therefore, excludes many of us who do not have this “beauty privilege,” which is a common assumption.

“Markle serves as a chilling reminder that no matter how great our accomplishments, our ghost of ‘incompleteness’ will continue to haunt us.”

There is also the issue that Markle’s biraciality only became of paramount importance when attached to the value of marrying into the Royal Family, arguably the epitome of white imperialism.

Markle said she was “disheartened” that media coverage focused on her ethnicity. In that moment, I did not relate to Markle as a mixed-raced woman per say, but as a woman of colour who just gets it. Speaking about growing up biracial in an interview, she remembers not knowing whether to tick ‘black’ or ‘white’ when filling out a form, so she left it blank. This sense of uncertainty followed her into her acting career, being too “black” for white roles and too “white” for black ones. What Markle does do, if we are insistent on depicting her as symbolic of the mixed-race experience, is serve as a chilling reminder to mixed-race people that no matter how great our accomplishments, our ghost of “incompleteness” will continue to haunt us.

“Markle’s biraciality was only deemed worthy when attached to the Royal Family, the epitome of white imperialism.”

I suppose one of the key questions is why mixed-raced people are spoken about as an emblem of advancement when black Britons are hardly ever spoken about in the same manner. If we’re so tolerant as a nation, then why are our institutions (the media, government and education included) still using black people as symbols of crime and deprivation and those from South Asian or Arab backgrounds as depictions of terrorism and backwardness?

Then again, perhaps I’m just another millennial snowflake being overly sensitive- after all, it seems as if every other advert on TV now features a mixed-race family. These adverts are not intended to represent multicultural consumers, but rather serve as a tool to meet a diversity quota that tells them mulit-culturalism sells. As we’ve seen from many botched diversity promoting advertising campaigns such as Dove’s PR disaster, the decision to represent ethnic minorities isn’t a genuine one, in fact it’s a resentful one- a means to an end to get publicity praising their liberal values, which we gobble up and flock to buy their products.

The explosion in the number of adverts featuring mixed-race families are intended to promote multiculturalism, but are they just selling us a lie of racial tolerance? This Old Navy ad caused public outcry for its support of the “genocide of the white race.” Source: NBC News.

What these commercials do, like the press’s incessant race-focused coverage of the royal engagement, is sell us an ideal of a multicultural Britain. What’s more, it placates us into believing that our nation is a tolerant one, a principle which many BAME individuals would disagree with. From the rise in hate crime, the fact that BAME children account for 60% of child arrests and the day-to-day micro-aggressions that slice through our skin like a razor even though we’re made to believe we’re crazy because the scars are never visible.

Nevertheless, I like to believe that for a pessimist, I’m rather optimistic. Whilst I will be glued to my television when the Royal wedding does take place, I think it’s important that we see it for what it is- a celebration of love and commitment between two individuals. Forcing a multicultural symbolism on top of it is just too complex and heavy a burden to bear, and on quite the contrary, proves how far we still have to go as a nation in understanding racial identity.

#britain #Georgia Chambers #meghan markle #Mixed Race #multiculturalism #Prince Harry #race #royal engagement #royal family

0 notes