Anonymous asked: your thoughts on Irene Adler.
I don’t know, I wasn’t too thrilled that they made her a dominatrix - I thought that was pushing the Strong Woman trope quite a bit. I was also a bit upset that, in the end, her feelings provoke her ‘downfall’. I don’t agree with that at all, seeing as most male characters seem to remain ‘strong’ even with feelings of affection for somebody. I don’t know. I did, however, adore all interaction between Irene and Sherlock: the strong contrast between their fields of expertise, Sherlock only knowing logic and Irene only knowing sex as a way of approaching things. That’s what made everything hurt so much, I think. But even though I think there was genuine attraction on Irene’s side, I suppose, hidden behind bold attack, Sherlock is another matter entirely. It’s very easy to say that Irene challenged his rationality, being ‘the only woman he ever came close to loving’ or something like that - I strongly disagree. His fascination, to my mind, only stems from the shock of having someone who is able to keep up with him up to a very advanced point. The exotic intrigues - Irene communicating in her rather racy fashion just makes her even harder to read and therefore more complicated a puzzle. This weighs even heavier when you take Doyle’s novels into account. So altogether, while I didn’t agree with some parts of her portrayal and while I believe that she does not in any way constitute a love interest &c. I thought that the dynamics between Irene and Sherlock were brilliantly distributed/written/played.
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