Sometimes I think about the future of self driving cars and how everyone I talk to about that future is like “okay but in an emergency we’ll be able to take back manual control, right?” and I usually placate them by saying, yeah, that’s totally how it’ll happen, but actually we’re already seeing the opposite. Cars with “self driving” features like steering and breaking that kick in and take control from the driver if the driver is about to rear end someone or is in a dangerous situation because the truth is computers can think faster and have better reflexes than us and I think about this going into the future and how if the self-driving cars are able to share their data with each other and learn from the driving experiences of every car on the road soon we’ll have cars that are so massively experienced at driving and avoiding accidents and making microsecond decisions and partial degree turns of the wheels and being so damn precise that automobile accidents will be almost unheard of and that’s when we’ll develop the most wasteful hilarious extreme sport in history where a single human driver will go up against an arena of ultra smart self driving cars and just by driving around recklessly try to coral them into crashing into each other and I tell you I would watch that sport all day.
Mrs. Hudson heard the front door of the building slam shut and a rare quiet settled over 221. Mrs. Hudson decided to take advantage of this, gathering together some biscuits and the kettle that had just finished boiling and carried it all upstairs.
“Yoo hoo,” she called. The door was cracked. She pushed it the rest of the way open, looked over to Sherlock’s chair…and nearly dropped the tea tray. She hurried forward to set it on the table by John’s chair. “Sweetie! Sherlock, Sherlock, what happened?” Mrs. Hudson wasn’t sure she had ever seen Sherlock cry, especially not like this – an ugly, silent sobbing, his face buried in his hands while his shoulders shook. Mrs. Hudson stepped forward, perhaps to put a hand on his shoulder.
“Stop!” Sherlock said frantically, his voice thick with tears. “You’re going to -” he hiccuped. “Going to step on it.” He bent to scoop up a book at her feet. She half-expected him to clutch it to his chest, but instead he walked straight to the bookshelf. Mrs. Hudson didn’t miss how he hesitated in front of the fire, and for a moment she was terrified she was going to have to dive for whatever-it-was to stop him from making an emotional decision. But instead he shelved it, and stayed there staring at the shelf.
“I need to call Molly,” he murmured.
“An experiment? That’ll set you to rights,” Mrs. Hudson said fondly. Sherlock shook his head, still staring at the bookshelf.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Sherlock hesitated. “No, John needs help with Rosie, and I need to go solve something. Anything.”
“John was doing just fine! He’s gone off to the shops with her, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, but she gets sensory overload at the shops. He’ll need someone level-headed to help her calm down when he gets back.”
“And why can’t you do that?” Mrs. Hudson asked, perhaps a little accusingly. Sherlock hesitated – this one much longer than his others.
“The violin irritates him. I told him I was – practicing a composition, and he – he said to stop being such a self-absorbed tit while Rosie was trying to sleep.”
Mrs. Hudson looked at him for a long time. “…It was a lullaby just for her, wasn’t it?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sherlock said quickly. “The only way I know how to soothe her – to soothe anyone – is with the music. And if that’s not going to work…” Sherlock paused. “Just – let Molly in when she gets here, won’t you? I have to go pop into Greg’s office. Make myself of use.”
He asks it on John’s birthday, in the morning, and John scoffs that Angelo’s has yet to get a kids’ menu and if Sherlock thinks John is going to make separate meals for himself and Rosie, he’s gone round the bend.
Back to January, and Mrs. Hudson is puttering around the room, putting books back in their places.
“John, are you going to do anything nice for our boy on his birthday?”
John looks up and gives Mrs. Hudson a look that Sherlock can’t quite decipher – bitter? Amused? Skeptical?
“You know Sherlock thinks birthdays are overrated, Mrs. Hudson. Besides, it’s not as though Sherlock did anything special for mine.”
Sherlock shuts himself in his room for the rest of the day.
x
It was a beautiful day. The sun had been out, the ducks had flocked around their offerings of sunflower seeds and lettuce, and Sherlock had counted at least 23 bees, though he’d been more focused on watching Rosie’s expressions.
“Do you want to get some gelato?” he asks, smiling.
“We had popsicles before we went out, Sherlock,” John said, sounding tired and disappointed. “Do you want her to be awake all afternoon?”
x
Well. He knows better than to ask John to go on their flat-mate anniversary now. Asking on the anniversary of the night he came back to life results in a dead-eyed, unamused look, and an ominous twitching of John’s fingers.
Asking on the anniversary of the night Mary died, thinking John needed cheering up – well, that leaves him ashamed of not having predicted the reaction. He tries not to leave the flat until the black eye has returned to a normal color and his split lip no longer stings.
Fearing the worst but knowing John needs a distraction, no matter what it is, on the day that would’ve been his anniversary with Mary, Sherlock asks.
John sneers at him. “Christ, Sherlock, what are you going to do, wear a blonde wig and put on a falsetto? Jesus, just leave me alone and make sure Rosie doesn’t wake up.”
x
Sherlock isn’t sure why he never stops asking. Hope, he supposes, is a resilient thing, even as fragile as it is.
😥 honestly though, Sherlock is just trying his very best in what limited ways he is capable of….And instead, John is always reading his intention in the worst possible way 😢
I BEG FOR A HAPPY ENDING PLEASE!
And if ‘happy’ at this point is everyone giving John an intervention and telling him to stop be such a dick then yes!
I’m having a good writing day, @kickingroses, so I’ll give some happiness a shot.
More than once since Mary’s death, Greg had found Sherlock in his office, sitting quietly. And it wasn’t that he would ask for a case, exactly. He said ‘put me to use’, and it gave Greg a bad feeling. Last time, he had told Sherlock there had been nothing on (a lie) and asked if Sherlock would mind terribly forging his signature on a couple of forms to make the paperwork go faster – it would be incredibly useful.
Greg’s heart nearly broke as Sherlock held out his hand for a pen.
Greg had been trying for weeks to figure out where this had come from. He’d talked to Mycroft, who said he knew but was sworn to secrecy about. Mycroft’s lips had been pursed in a way that said Sherlock had pulled out whatever ‘big guns’ he had left to keep Mycroft from getting involved.
Greg talked to Molly next – she told him in a hushed voice about the CDs Sherlock had given her for when she babysat, a beautiful and haunting set of piano and violin duets that had probably taken months to put together, and how Sherlock had warned her never to tell John who had played or composed the pieces on the CD.
When Greg took Mrs. Hudson aside to ask her when Sherlock had gotten like this, Mrs. Hudson’s face had darkened and grown a little – ashamed? “…I know I should tell you, Inspector. But I’m not sure I can. I used the baby monitors to spy on him a bit once. ….’Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it’. Inspector, I don’t know if I can take them away from him. As much as they’re what’s bad for him, they might be the only thing keeping him together. Back in Florida…Frank could be such a sweetheart sometimes, and he was the hottest man I’d known before or since. And when he wasn’t….” Mrs. Hudson had trailed off.
Greg was quiet for a minute. “You think – John?” Greg scoffed, a bit bewildered.
Mrs. Hudson gave him a level stare and Greg’s skin crawled. “Yes, I think John. And it’s not only that looking after John and Rosie is all that’s holding him together. If John didn’t have Sherlock – well – I’m worried…” Mrs. Hudson trailed off, biting her lip.
“You’re afraid he’d turn on Rosie,” Greg said harshly, the steel of a homicide investigator in his voice. Mrs. Hudson flinched a little and didn’t nod, but she didn’t deny it either.
xx
Mycroft had convinced Sherlock to go to a spa of all things. He had assured Sherlock that Molly’s schedule would be made free to look after Rosie, if it was necessary, but that Sherlock had been much too tense and he needed a haircut. Greg had been worried Sherlock wouldn’t accept the offer – that he would feel he didn’t deserve it or he would be terrified to leave Rosie alone. But after weeks of deliberation and long talks with Molly, he had finally gone, and now Greg was perched in John’s chair and Mycroft’s in Sherlock’s while Molly and Mrs. Hudson sat tensely on the sofa.
John walked in and nearly walked out.
“What’s going on?” he asked slowly.
“What’s going on,” Greg said, standing and squaring his shoulders, “is that you’re lucky what you’ve been doing to Sherlock doesn’t fall under the legal definition of domestic abuse. And you’re very lucky he hasn’t come to me looking to press assault charges.”
And then John was stiff, his nostrils flaring. “Assault -!?”
“Oh, John,” Mrs. Hudson snapped, and John’s head whipped around to look at her. “Do you think I’m blind and stupid on top of being old? You thought I was going to miss his black eye? You thought I was going to believe him when he said a suspect hit him on a case? He hasn’t been taking cases that might turn into a fight with a suspect since you started dumping Rosamund on him without even giving him warning! And even when you do that, you don’t trust that he can take care of her! You used to love his compositions, the ones for you, but now he’s not allowed to compose for Rosie?”
“He hasn’t written anything for -” John was stopped by Mycroft rising and walking over to John, ice in his eyes as he held out a sheaf of papers.
“Lullaby of the Flora,” Mycroft pronounced. “My baby brother quite likes wordplay. If he was going to write something for someone with the nickname of ‘Rosie’, what on Earth do you think he’d name a composition for her?”
John glared.
“Sand and Blood is another interesting one, although I’m not sure he’s kept the sheet music for it. He memorized it years ago. Back as early as 2010, perhaps. The last time he had to soothe someone to sleep,” Mycroft said – there was something offensively controlled in his voice. As though Mycroft would sneer at him, but John wouldn’t be intelligent enough to understand if Mycroft did. John blinked. He couldn’t really miss the message behind the title, and it was hard to misinterpret who it was written for.
“I – okay, fine, he wrote songs for us,” John said, wary.
“John. I want you to tell me something. Tell me honestly. What have you been saying to him? Have you called him useless?” John’s silence was all the answer Greg needed. Greg balked. “He did paperwork for me, John. Paperwork. Because I said it would be useful!”
“Dr. Watson, he hasn’t gone to Angelo’s in months. He has stopped playing his violin. He rarely speaks to us. He takes care of your daughter as if she were his own and yet feels as though he is only ruining her. And despite what I like to pretend, my little brother has always enjoyed a touch of flamboyancy. And yet it took him a month to agree to go to a spa as repayment for a favor he did me, because he was worried you wouldn’t be able to find anyone to look after Miss Rosamund. I should have you – how would your crude little spy movies put it? – disappeared.”
John flinched.
“But I won’t. Because he loves you. I will, however, pay for whatever form of therapy or rehab you think may work for you, as many times as you need to go there for it to actually work,” Mycroft said finally.
John stared, and his eyes roamed over his friends – over Sherlock’s friends. He closed his eyes, sank to the floor, and began to cry, nodding. “Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, fuck. I’m so sorry.”
“I,” Mycroft growled, suddenly uncontrolled, “am not the one you need to apologize to! You are only still here because my brother has more forgiveness in him than I would’ve thought possible of any human being! You are going to apologize to Sherlock, Dr. Watson, do you understand?”
“Yes,” John sobbed. “Yes, yes, yes.”
THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I don’t even care that much at this point about John getting better or if he continues being a prick – I just like it being acknowledged that Sherlock has a circle of friends who adore him and would no way let John get away with this (nor his behaviour to Rosie). I hated how we didn’t see any reaction from any of them when John said he hit Sherlock.
If anything John is the one that Mrs. Hudson should have said “Get out of my house, you reptile” to.
I love every part of this, and YES everything @kickingroses said
Gaston really is the most terrifying Disney villain because he could be anyone in the world.
Later he convinces the whole town to set up his wedding with the knowledge that the would-be bride would be thrown into it. Everyone finds his creepy-ass tactics as cute and “boys will be boys” esque. So yeah, he is terrifying.
Yeah, the truly scary thing about Beauty and the Beast isn’t that Gaston exists, but that society fucking loves him. People who deride the movie by saying it’s about Stockholm Syndrome are ignoring that it’s actually about the various ways that truly decent people get othered by society. People don’t trust the Beast because of the way he looks, which only feeds his anger issues and pushes him further away. Gaston isn’t the only one who criticizes Belle for being bookish, either; the whole town says there must be something wrong with her. And her father gets carted off to a mental asylum for being just a little eccentric.
Howard Ashman, who collaborated on the film’s score and had a huge influence on the movie’s story and themes, was a gay man who died of AIDS shortly after work on the film was completed. If you watch the film with that in mind, the message of it becomes clear. Gaston demonstrates that bullies are rewarded and beloved by society as long as they possess a certain set of characteristics, while nice people who don’t are ostracized. The love story between Belle and the Beast is about them finding solace in each other after society rejects them both.
Notice how the Beast reacts when the whole town comes for him. He’s not angry, he’s sad. He’s tired. And he almost gives up because he has nothing to live for. But then he sees that Belle has come back for him, and suddenly he does. In the original fairy tale, the Beast asks Belle to marry him every night, and the spell is broken when she accepts. In the Disney movie, he waits for her to love him, because he cannot love himself. That’s how badly being ostracized from society and told that you’re a monster all your life can fuck with your head and make you stop seeing yourself as human.
Society rewards the bullies because we’ve been brought up to believe that their victims don’t belong. That if someone doesn’t fit in, then they have to be put in their place, or destroyed. And this movie demonstrates that this line of thinking is wrong. It’s so much deeper than a standard “be yourself” message, and that’s why it’s one of my favorite Disney movies.
Yeah okay, that might have been the intended message of the movie, but the Beast is literally an abuser, he literally abuses and imprisons Belle, she tries to escape (as many abuse victims do) and ends up back with him because it’s just too scary out there without her abuser whose violence protects her.
It’s literally textbook abuse, textbook stockholm syndrome, and it’s great if you can find positive messages in that movie but please don’t hand-wave the abuse that Belle endures or the fact that her happy ending is literally her reward for loving her abuser and choosing to stay – and her reward is no longer being terrified and imprisoned.
Please don’t ignore the damaging messages in that film just because you want to talk about one of the better ones – how many young children have seen, will see Belle terrified of a controlling person with an explosive temper and zero self-control, and then see that if you just love someone like that enough they’ll turn into a kind and gentle prince?
This story might have been great if the Beast hadn’t been written as abusive. Or if he had been and Belle had succeeded in leaving. Or if her staying with him was read as tragic. But as it stands, we’re supposed to think it’s romantic that this young woman fell in love with a cruel and terrifying person who imprisoned and controlled her.
We hear too many stories like that already and if you justify the Beast’s abuse of Belle because others have rejected him, or because it’s somehow her job to love her abuser because he can’t love himself, guess what, you’re supporting one of the more popular narratives that real-life abusers use to control their victims.
No.
I’m sorry but you’re wrong.
Belle did not fall in love with her abuser.
I will not deny that Beast was abusive in the beginning. He was downright beastly. And Belle hated him. And feared him. And was disgusted by him.
And it’s only then that Belle starts to care about him.
Leading to them slowly developing a friendship and eventually “something more”.
Leading to one of the most beautiful Disney moments:
But even then, when her father is shown in the woods, Beast tells her to go and Belle goes!
She only comes back, not because “it’s just too scary out there without her abuser whose violence protects her” (that’s just ludicrous!) but because she genuinely cares about the man that the Beast became. (And she despised the monster that Gaston had become.)
The point of the story is that, over a period of time, the ‘monster’ became humanized and the ‘human’ became a monster.
YES. MOTHER. FUCKING. THIS.
I have gotten so sick and tired of people diminishing Belle’s personal power and the importance of her story by saying she only stayed with the Beast because of “Stockholm syndrome.”
This movie starts with Gaston and the Beast having basically the same entitled attitude towards the world: they feel they’re OWED whatever they want because they’re somehow superior. Belle is the catalyst and the lynchpin, and the difference in the characters of the two men becomes blatantly obvious in how they react to not getting what they want from Belle.
Gaston sulks and pouts and tries to force her to marry him, to the point that he convinces the entire village to help him plan a shotgun wedding with an unwilling bride, institutionalize her father, and even storm a castle to murder an unknown “monster,” still with the idea that with no Beast, Belle will be “his.” The most telling thing is that despite how much Gaston claims to want Belle, the moment she publicly rejects him (”He’s no monster, Gaston! YOU are!”), he immediately dismisses her as crazy and locks her in a cellar while he goes off to kill the person she actually cares about.
Beast sulks and pouts…and then makes significant changes to his behavior and his manners, both to show Belle that he cares for her and that he CAN be a better man. He changes both FOR Belle and BECAUSE of her. He pays attention to what she says, what she doesn’t like, and what makes her happy. And she’s not afraid to tell him, in no uncertain terms, exactly what he’s doing wrong.
“If you’d hold still, it wouldn’t hurt as much!” “Well, if you hadn’t run away, this wouldn’t have happened!” “If you hadn’t FRIGHTENED ME, I wouldn’t have run away!” “…..Well, YOU shouldn’t have been in the west wing!” “Well, you should learn to control your temper!”
This is not the behavior of a woman too afraid of the Beast to leave and too cowed by abuse to stand up for herself. The Beast literally shouts in her face, and she barely flinches. This is a woman in full control of her life and completely able to make her own choices. If the Beast hadn’t changed, if he’d acted like Gaston instead of demonstrating radical self-improvement, if she thought for one second that her life was truly in danger, she would have left and never come back.
She’s spent the better part of her adult life standing up to and actively shutting down an overbearing and physically intimidating man who shows immediately and repeatedly that he has no respect for her wishes or her personal space. She is not going to back down just because someone growls and blusters at her, no matter how big his teeth are.
Belle is a force to be reckoned with.
And the message here is not, “If you love someone enough, you can fix them.”
The message here is, “If they actually love you, they won’t be abusive.”
I know this is long and all, but I want to at least emphasize that last part:
“If they actually love you, they won’t be abusive.”
Talking about a movie or not, that’s huge. It’s something I certainly wish I learned much sooner
Also, Belle doesn’t stay with the Beast after the wolf attack because
“it’s just too scary out there without her abuser whose violence protects her,” she stays because he got hurt saving her life and while the only reason her life was even in danger to begin with was because he flipped his shit (a fact which she is not afraid to confront him with), she’s willing to allow him enough grace to help him in turn instead of leaving him freezing and bleeding in the middle of the woods. Because Belle is not just brave and smart, she’s also noble–noble enough to take her father’s place in captivity because she’s younger and healthier and can survive it, and noble enough to walk back into the lion’s den to help someone who needs her, even if he’s done little to deserve it up until that point.
Belle is nobody’s victim. She is the hero of her own damn story and deserves your respect.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am always ready to fucking FIGHT people who pull the stockholm syndrome card.
Okay I have something to add to this, and I haven’t seen Beauty and the Beast in years and years so it might not be 100% accurate, granted, but it’s my big issue with this whole argument.
To me, Beast isn’t abusive. He’s angry, he’s cruel, he’s entitled, he has no idea how to properly express his feelings, but he is not abusive. Gaston is.
The key for me here is that Beast isn’t manipulative. He doesn’t try to twist words around. He responds to logic, even if he doesn’t like it. Yes, he cuts Belle off from the outside world. But he doesn’t do it out of greed, or out of a desire to overpower her. He does it out of desperation and a limited world view, which he learns is wrong.
Compared to Gaston, who was very accurately profiled above: He doesn’t listen to Belle whatsoever. Instead, he turns things around to suit his own desires and wants, and tries to recreate reality. Logic doesn’t work on Gaston, because Gaston will twist everything around. He’ll manipulate, he’ll go behind your back, and he DOESN’T CARE if it’s wrong, he’ll just find a way to go around anyone who stands in his way and make them think it’s right instead. Gaston is the one who will make you doubt yourself–the one who’s going to try to convince you that you’re crazy if you don’t get in line with him. Belle’s happiness is never once part of the equation.
Is Beast a good guy at the beginning? No. The people around him live in fear of his anger. He doesn’t know how to listen. It’s not a good way to be. But the level of difference between Beast and Gaston is staggering, and the way people casually earmark Beast as “an abuser” frustrates me.
Leaving tungle.hell like rats on the Titanic 