Being An Adult Means First Reading Sam's "Well, I'm Back." Quote At The End Of LOTR As A Ten Year Old

I always thought this shot in Age of Ultron looked familiar. The picture on the bottom is the closing scene of John Wayne’s film “The Searchers”, which ends on a rather bittersweet note with his character Ethan Edwards standing outside while everyone else is inside. The similarity isn’t just in how the scenes in both movies were shot, however. 

“Ethan Edwards is a throwback to an older time, a more violent age when the frontier was still wild. He’s a loner, a desperado who’s broken his fair share of laws and isn’t above shooting a man in the back. He isn’t cut out for family life like Martin, and now that his mission is over he’s outlived his purpose.”

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate over-protective Ellie Miller in S02E07:

Claire Ripley comes marching up to the courthouse with her murder face on.

Ellie sees her come in. She knows Hardy is downstairs and that Claire is heading for him. Alarm bells go off.

shit shit shit shit shit

…aaaaand she’s off, faster that Mad Max in his Interceptor, ready to cut off Claire and stop her from getting to Hardy before she does

We see the target, sitting awkwardly alone and pretending to text on his phone.

Ellie has run ahead of Claire and she’s watching her like a hawk, positioning herself between the two of them, ready to fight to defend her large idiot friend

Claire reaches into her backpack. Ellie’s watching her, still a few strides ahead

She looks at Hardy, who is completely oblivious to what’s happening (jfc Hardy this is why she doesn’t trust you to look after yourself)

And bam. When Claire slaps the pendant against Hardy’s chest, Ellie is right there, literally having positioned herself between the two of them to make sure her tall skinny Scottish bastard isn’t in any danger

(ง •̀_•́)ง

Without even thinking about it Ellie ran (ran!) to throw herself bodily between Hardy and a murderous-looking Claire. It turned out to be a complete overreaction on her part, but if Claire had reached into her backpack to pull out a weapon instead of the pendant, Ellie would have been on top of her and wrestling her into submission faster than you could blink, and probably before Hardy was even aware that she was in the building. For all her complaints about him, Ellie is so instinctively protective of Hardy. Her entire attitude is basically “he may be big but he is fragile I’ll fight ur ass don’t test me”

Theodore Roosevelt listed Ulysses S Grant as one of the greatest Americans in history (alongside Washington and Lincoln). This was said in 1900.

Only fifty-so years later, President Dwight Eisenhower would state that Robert E Lee was one of the greatest Americans of all time. 

This post is not an assassination of Lee or his character-- that’s not the point of this. What I am curious about is how this reverence of Grant, who played a key point in keeping our country together and helping African Americans get the right the vote during his Presidency, could then turn so sharply to a reverence of Robert E Lee (a man who, despite his personal disapproval of secession, still fought on behalf of the Confederacy). This strange twisting of reverence is a clear example of the Lost Cause narrative taking root.

We weren’t taught much about Grant’s Presidency during Social Studies/History class. We barely touched on him as a General in the Civil War, except as the man who was called The Butcher and who drank a lot. 

So my question is just how much has this Lost Cause infiltrated our own History books?

Watching/reading Shakespeare's Richard II:

Them: Isn't he a bit overdramatic?

Me: Well, yeah, he's supposed to be an overdramatic shit.

Who I see:

Who I think of:

Perhaps I’m mistaken here, but every time I watch BBC Sherlock all the way through, I feel like the dynamic of Sherlock and John changes between TRF and TEH. Sherlock is still the brilliant detective and John is still the faithful blogger and friend; but it’s their individual reactions to St Barts and the subsequent two years that have changed how they react to one another. 

Sherlock’s still an insufferable prat most of the time, and he still misses social cues 99.9% of the time, but he’s softer around the edges. The way he interacts with Archie, his reactions to James Sholto locked in his hotel room, his MANY little moments with Mary, all reflect on a man who went through hell during his two years away and rather than becoming even more closed off and alienated than normal actually found it hard to be as much of an island as before. His circle of friends is small but he finds it impossible not to be somewhat gentler to them than before Moriarty’s scheme on the rooftop. Or rather, he had come to care for John and Greg and Mrs Hudson a great deal before the rooftop, but Moriarty forced him to actively prove it and once the lid was popped open it was impossible for it to be sealed completely again.

It’s rather like the Twelfth Doctor, who starts out as oblivious to social cues and more of an anti-hero than any Doctor before, a man who is harsh and unforgiving to those who anger him and has absolutely no recognition of friendship or even the desire to hug; who by the end of his tenure and with the help of his companions, whether it be Clara or Bill or Nardole or even Missy, has softened to the point where he even initiates a hug with Bill and Nardole and clearly has no desire to break it. Of course, Sherlock and the Twelfth Doctor are both written by Moffatt, so it’s not so much of a surprise that their dynamics are so similar.

John, on the other hand, grew sharper due to St Barts and the subsequent two years. His anger with Sherlock’s necessary deception is unrelenting and viscous, and it’s clear that even if he forgave Sherlock of it in TEH we can still see its latent existence all too clearly in TLD. He’s a man who fell to pieces once again in the wake of a life-changing tragedy and when he managed to glue himself back together some of the pieces were either missing or more brittle. He has less patience for Sherlock’s actions, he actively confronts Sherlock about the latter’s drug use during TAB, and I will not even get started in on the morgue scene during TLD. (That will be addressed later in another post eventually.) Where Sherlock’s learned response to the two years-hiatus is newfound understanding, John’s is anger, which all culminates in TLD and finds a somewhat solved dynamic in TFP. 

You know what character in the Outlander series was shafted in the television show?

Duncan Innes. That's who. And it makes me really mad to think about the fact that this incredibly shy, loyal, hard-working, slightly-bumbling, flawed man was literally written down to nothing but a plot device to add drama between Jocasta and Murtagh.

Practically nothing exists of his backstory from the books, and none of the characters feel for Duncan in the show the way they do in the books. He's not a former inmate of Ardsmuir so he doesn't have any of the backstory with Jamie, nor the mutual respect that forms so much of their friendship in the books. He's not with the Frasers at all in S3 (Voyager), so he gets no time at all to bond with Claire and tell her his past of being a fisherman caught up in Culloden, and any of his visits he pays them in Drums of Autumn (S4) is given to Murtagh instead. He simply appears in s5 as nothing more than drama that doesn't need to be there, and the series writers even admitted that in the show Jocasta marries not for love for Duncan but out of fear of being hurt by Murtagh. The major difference shows in the exchange between Jamie and Claire in the episode 'Better to Marry Than Burn':

Jamie: It should be Murtagh at Jocasta's side.

Claire: If Murtagh isn't here today, then it's his own choice.

While in the books, while I wouldnt say it's true love between Duncan and Jocasta, there is mutual respect and fondness, and it's made very clear that Jocasta does choose Duncan of her own free will to finally marry for her own satisfaction and not by the machinations of others. What's more, Jamie gives his full blessing to the match, pleased to hear that Duncan has proposed marriage at the end of Drums of Autumn:

'"I've no claim on any of my aunt's property, Duncan-- and wouldna take it when she offered. You'll be married at the Gathering? Tell her we'll come, then, and dance at the wedding."'

There are so many other examples I could find in the books to further my case but I currently don't have the time to read through books 5 and 6 again looking for specific passages. So just know that Duncan Innes in the show is a pale imitation of the Duncan in the books, and I sincerely hope that we'll see a bit more fleshing out of his character in the upcoming season 6. He's not perfect by any means in the books, but he feels so much more real than he does in the show. I love Murtagh to bits as a character, but I feel like his survival after Culloden in the show takes a lot away from situations that happen later in the story, and certain characters, and adds a lot of unnecessary drama to an already dramatic story. Duncan is an unfortunate casualty in that way.

Congratulations to the writers of the Dirty Dancing remake, you've convinced me that the original was actually amazing all along.

Watching the DW episode The Doctor’s Daughter and I only just realized that the music that plays during the scene when the Doctor is talking about Gallifrey and the Time War to Jenny is a slower, melancholy version of ‘This Is Gallifrey; Our Childhood, Our Home’ and I was NOT PREPARED for the stab to my heart.

A thought: Good Omens, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Welcome to Night Vale each give off distinct, yet related energies.