Jane Doe, J.D.

R.I.P. Elisabeth Sladen, Doctor Who's Apprentice

Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who and two spin-off shows, has died, according to BBC News.

Her death is a huge loss to Doctor Who fans, and to fans of strong female adventure heroes everywhere. It’s hard to overstate how important Elisabeth Sladen was to Doctor Who, and how much she transformed the role of the companion on the show. In many ways, she paved the way for all of the show’s more intelligent, resourceful companions in the 21st Century.

MY CRYFACE FOREVER, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.

Movie Photos: Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair

Rene Russo’s clothing in The Thomas Crown Affair probably influenced my (desired) personal style more than anything else in my formative years. I’d like to thank the costume designers for giving me garment lust for:

• Lace-up corsets over white blouses (which, internet, I am disappoint. I cannot find a single screencap of this fabulous outfit, but it was HOTT. It was a blue pinstripe corset with a zipper in back (I can’t recall it being that strong/tightlace-y, just that the  outline was there) with a sweetheart neckline, over a white blouse, and then it went with a matching pinstripe skirt. I’m gonna have to track down a DVD.)
• Opera length gloves (see above picture, and if you’d seen my high school prom photos, you’d know that I pretty much was trying to emulate the outfit above, to varying degrees of success)
• Cowl neck sweaters
• Winter-white pants
• Pencil skirts and kneelength boots with just a hint of skin showing between
• Camel-colored coats over turtlenecks and tight jeans.
• Colorful cardigans over black tank tops
• Giant sunglasses
• Topless sunbathing while wearing a giant red floppy hat

You just don’t even know how much I’m a fan of the clothes from this movie. I would start a “Fuck Yeah, Rene Russo’s Wardrobe From The Thomas Crown Affair” tumblr, but I could barely even find this screencap, which shows American actress Rene Russo, a thin white lady with red hair wearing a sheer-ish black evening gown and black opera length gloves, dancing with Pierce Brosnan in a tuxedo, whose back is turned.

wildunicornherd:

Run, don’t walk, to fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory, who’s posting about Latin America in videogames right now!

(via )

abudai:

talking to family back home. the administration is not holding back. 

(via liquornspice)

notemily:

radicalranting:

“Why is this foolish book selling so well and generating serious controversy? I think the primary reason is that Chua’s philosophy is not, in truth, as far off from the philosophy of most American and European parents and educators as we might want to believe. Our schools are set up to be one constant competition. We see “Western” parents driving around with bumper stickers bragging, “My child is an honors student.” In school, learning is called work and is work, because all children in the class are forced through each lesson in the same way, at the same time, regardless of their preferences and predilections. The enjoyment supposedly comes from winning—getting A’s, or high honors, or into Yale—but that comes only after you have become good, and to become good in these play-deprived conditions you must be forced against your will to work.”

—

Amy Chua Is a Circus Trainer, Not a Tiger Mother | Psychology Today (via notemily)

Chua also makes a false equivalence between worth and performance. It’s effectively how our schools (and culture!) operate, with “honors student” being a privileged identity and whatnot (which is soso problematic not only because success in school now is almost as indicative of privilege as it is intelligence). But Chua makes the equivalence explicitly…and when you translate that system into plain English, the result is definitely verbal abuse. When she says she’s “preparing them for the real world,” I think we should also question the functioning of the real world, since we’re passing judgment on her parenting.

Just reblogging for the excellent commentary. If preparing people for the “real world” means being cruel and belittling, what does that say about the real world?

I cringe about the title of the article for reasons I can’t quite articulate (I get where the author is coming from in continuing the “tiger mother” metaphor selected by Chua, but for some reason putting them in the context of a circus feels incredibly dehumanizing), but I really like the commentary. If ever there was a time that called for “I reject your reality and substitute my own”, this is pretty much it.

…has begun dating a dude, and is very happy with said dude! (It’s no one on tumblr; no need to bust out the Grease gifs macros.)

Said dude looks exactly like Dick Casablancas from Veronica Mars. I’m finding it quite difficult to not point that out.

Please, Please spread the word on this

abudai:

thepoliticalnotebook:

suesquaredd:

This is a message to anyone and everyone:  Please spread the word on this.  Demonstrations starting today all around the world for the freedom of the Libyan people.  This is not just a matter of Libyan freedom and rights, but of the freedom and human rights of everyone.  Even if you are not in these cities, please reblog, like and invite your friends no matter where they are.  If each of my followers reblogs this, that will be 166 reblogs, which can the spread amongst your followers.  Please help me out, and thanks

For those in the Washington D.C. area: This Saturday, February 19, 2011 from 11:00am- 3:00pm in front of the White House.  There are other cities and dates so please check the link

Calling all my DC Tumbl Friends, this Saturday you have the chance to be part of something important.  Reblog to let everyone know when and where their nearest solidarity protest is.  

List of Libyan Solidarity Protests Abroad

(via thecurvature)

imissedtumblr:

A few days ago someone was reblogging an image of a facebook conversation where anonymous people were complaining about how some people are just looking for something to be offended about, in that “Oh, I’m so above this PC bullshit, tee hee hee” sort of way.

Gentle reader, I laughed until I cried.

I come to tumblr to look at picspams of Sailor Moon and image manips from Doctor Who and things that are yellow and happy looking dogs and have deep and meaningful discussions about toaster waffles and learn more about musicals and talk about bras and shoes and be reminded that abby jean is awesome and all those things, and yet somehow I can’t see to go even 24 hour on Tumblr without having someone cleverly tell me that people like me, people like my husband, people like my friends, should be eradicated from the planet for the sake of society.  Over the past few days it’s been the idea that people with disabilities should be prevented from having children because there shouldn’t be more disabled children because they’re a burden and disabled parents are abusive anyway; there’s been a big discussion on whether or not people talking about their experiences of psychophobia are making shit up. There’s been weeks of people saying talking about *ist language is “language policing” rather than an attempt at discussing how language reflects our beliefs about other people.  There’s been some oh-so-funny discussion about how some people just deserve to be raped because hey! they criticized someone famous on the internet once.  There’s been people taking the personal time to write someone to tell her they hope she gets raped for talking about racism and colonialism.  There’s been “lol too sensitive” directed at trans people and gender-non-conforming people for wanting to be included in the “us” who can be affected by abortion and forced sterilization.  There’s been the constant stream of “Today in the media I consume the main female character was raped/the main female character was fridged/the only representation of disability was as the villain/the only representation of trans* people was of horror/let’s all have a nice debate on whether bisexuality exists”.

I want to watch T.V. and not cringe when someone in a wheelchair is brought on.  I want to be able to see a person who is like me who isn’t brought on to be a very special lesson to a white person about the meaning of life, or as a violent criminal.  I want a story about a trans* person written by a trans* person and played by a trans* person.  I want to see a blind person portrayed as a person who happens to be blind, not as a Seer played by a sighted person who talks about how uplifting it was. I want to see a movie where no characters are white washed, that passes the Blechdel Test and the Brown Betty Test and does both without people even noticing because it’s become common place to see movies that reflect who-we-are rather than the expectations of white men.

If I could go 24 hours surfing the internet as I usually do and not run into any of the hate and derision directed at me, at people in my life, at people I care about, at some people I really dislike but do not deserve the shit piled on them, at people who I don’t know but I do know are ignored and marginalized in society…

Well, then I could come on Tumblr, look at pictures of cute boys reading books while puppies lick their faces, and stop being so lol sensitive.

…and has to put a condom over the other to take a shower?

This lady.

Yaaay, stitches.

Liquor&Spice: as you read about the trail of Brisenia Flores's murderers...

radicallyhottoff:

Please note how rarely MSM is calling her murderers white supremacists and how rarely the organization they are a part of is called a hate group.

Notice how key phrases like “hotly contested issue” keep coming up as code words for “white supremacist violence.” Notice how…

emilyswash:

sententiola:

… there’s another thing this season of The L word has reminded me of.

A while ago I was in court for work, mostly just observing.  Both our solicitor and our barrister were heavily pregnant.  They came to court, they did their jobs, they went away again.  And I realized: this is something you never see.  Not on television, not in films, not in books, not in comics, not on the stage — nowhere.  Pregnant people working.  Doing jobs.  Or working on personal projects.  Or going to parties.  Or, you know, anything that isn’t all about being pregnant.

The only kinds of fiction where pregnancy even seems to happen at all are ones that focus on families or friendship-groups or neighbourhoods or other social settings.  It’s always a plot-point.  It’s never just a characteristic that a character happens to have, like a haircut or a broken leg or an enthusiasm for crossword puzzles.  A member of an ensemble cast can be pregnant, but not the lead character in a solo story.  You don’t get pregnant detectives in police procedurals or pregnant speechwriters in political dramas or pregnant investigative journalists in thrillers.

Wasn’t there something about holding as ‘twere the mirror up to nature?  Never mind that that’s a rather unambitious ambition for drama: writers aren’t even trying to do that.  They’re just repeating ideas about pregnancy that have been handed down the generations by our misogynist authorial ancestors.  I don’t know whether those ideas were ever true, but they aren’t true now.  And I don’t imagine writers know they’re doing it, or that they’re consciously pushing the idea that pregnancy should take over your whole life and make you stay at home eating and reclining and being wholesomely spherical.  They just assume that’s how it is.  It just shows how strong and deep these assumptions are that they can actually override one’s direct experience of reality.

Of course a lot of pregnant people do stay at home and nest, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But there is something wrong with sending audiences the subliminal message that that’s the only normal option, the only healthy option, perhaps even the only physically possible option.  Which is what most fiction seems to do.

i think i’d say marnie in misfits is pretty close to being a character who just happens to be pregnant ‘cause she is! i mean, it’s an ensemble cast, as you said, and it still plays into the plot, with nathan wanting to get extra money so that he can support the baby and the like, but i think that much is only natural? marnie still has sex, even!

BUT YEAH, she’s literally the only case i can think of. we really don’t like to see pregnant people doing anything not-baby related (because obviously thinking of not-baby for a single second while one is growing in you means that the baby is MOST DEFINITELY going to be born a serial killer, with EVERY DISEASE).

I’d also add Interim Police Chief Karen Vick in Season 1 of Psych to the list. Since Kirsten Nelson was pregnant when the pilot was filmed, they wrote her pregnancy into season one, but never as a center-of-attention thing. (I can’t remember how much off-desk police work she did at the time—part of me vaguely remembers her arresting someone, but it’s been so long since I broke up with Psych that I can’t be sure.)

(via nuditea)