Aries: Fuck It, time to plant some grass. Taurus: Nope, can’t walk yet. And there’s no food yet, so I don’t care. Gemini: Hey Christians! Do you sin? Now you can buy your way out of Hell! Cancer: Hi, I’m Gandhi, and if Britain doesn’t get the hell out of India I’m going to starve myself in public. Leo: I want to invent time and space. And I know it’s possible because everything is here and it probably already happened. Virgo: FIGHT- wait no, that would be the end of the world. Let’s just keep it cool and spy on each other instead. Libra: China is Whole Again… then it Broke Again… Scorpio: Get the hell out of here. Will you get the hell out of here if I give you 500 elephants? Ok thanks bye Sagittarius: That’s bullshit. This whole thing is bullshit. That’s a scam. Fuck the church. Here’s 95 reasons why Capricorn: The Soviet Union decides to relax a little, and accidentally falls apart. Aquarius: Well, blame something on them and go to war! Pisces: wanna get enlightened in the middle of nowhere?
I really shouldn’t point this out because I am ruining the effect…
… but I‘m doing it anyway. Because did you realise that this is an all-female scene? And I’ll be honest, when I first watched it, even I thought, okay, Moffat, you’re overdoing it now. I had the voices of the haters in the back of my head who keep complaining that Moffat only writes “bad-ass women” - and in this scene, I thought, they had a point.
Until I realised that I am a complete hypocrite. Because if this scene was an all-male scene, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
All-male is the default. We would never ask “Why are there only men in this scene?“ We wouldn’t say “oh look, a male military leader/scientist/superhero/supervillan”. Nobody would ever complain that Moffat only writes “bad-ass men”.
In this scene (and countless others), Moffat is creating a new normal. He is constantly challenging our default and our notion of equality. He writes female roles that we don’t see often in television. And it draws our attention to it because it differs from what we see in the real world. But rather than asking why there is such an amount of “strong“ women all of a sudden, we really should have asked why we find this even worth mentioning.
So next time you want to complain that Moffat “only writes bad-ass women“, check first if it isn’t your own default that is messed up.
My husband and I were married last year in India, and received this as a gift. It is white plastic with fake “ruby” accents. It looks like Dr. Who marries Slutty Transsexual Jesus. I must say it was a good gift though, as it made my usually too-serious husband laugh for about 30 minutes straight.
Disclaimer: There is absolutely nothing wrong with Dr. Who, sluts, transsexuals, or Jesus. It’s just that none of these represent us well as an Asian, monogamous, cisgender Hindu couple. -Iora
