beingwhatwecan

[beingwhatwecan]

We were robbed of Toshiko speaking Japanese in Osaka accent.

(That or I failed to notice. Unlikely though.)

[beingwhatwecan]

A further word on Tosh's name based on this, because I realised that some people might not know this.

'Ko' in Toshiko is 子 in 敏子. It literally means 'child', but people rarely think about it that way. It's a common ending to a female name. Japanese royal family are especially dedicated to this; almost all the women have had names ending with 'ko' for centuries.

For modern commoners (sorry my first language isn't English and I don't know if this word comes off as offensive I googled translated it), 'ko'-ending names were very popular from 1920s to 1970s. It's supposed to have a distinct Showa-era-ness to it. Tosh, according to some fan wiki, was born in 1975, so she barely caught the end of that phase.

The surname, Sato, or Satou, or Satō. 佐藤. Romanising is a nightmare. Too common to ring a bell for anyone, I think, like Smith. But not everyone could tell you what went on prehistorically with 敏 having to do with women handling tools, so I'll discuss it anyway.

佐 in characters (I mostly look at oracles or seal scripts or stuff then when I talk about this, and it's Chinese not Japanese then) is 'human/people' (亻) and 'left' (左), as in directions, 'left'. Back in those days, left was inferior to right. I think there were similar things in Western culture about that, all the sinister/gauche vs dexter thing. Anyway, because left was inferior, 佐 meant to assist, to aid. In Japanese this bit was kept, and carried to names of military ranks.

藤 means vines, as in the plant. The top, 艹, is a common sign for something to be related to plants, in Chinese, as in most cases of Japanese kanji. Which is not to be confused with Japanese katakana, サ, or 'sa' (equivalent hiragana: さ). But in the case of the surname Sato, it has nothing to do with plants, but the name 藤原, or Fujiwara clan. I'm not very educated about this bit of history, so google it if you want to. The idea is that they gave rise to many surnames containing 'To', such as Ito or Kato. 'Sato' is to aid them.

Last I heard, Japanese people named kids with pronunciations that sounded nice and then chose kanji to work with it that looked nice. Basically. So it's very likely that none of this mean anything at all. But yeah, I'm that person.

佐藤敏子 (no spaces between when you write proper Japanese, but there are adaptations, and don't ask me how they know which is which, they do) is a very common name still. You could look it up and find many women bearing that name living their lives.

I write about this because 'a name you choose is like a promise you keep'. Because the first person in the show that calls her 'Toshiko' in everyday conversation is Mary, and I think that mattered. Because I think about her running translation programmes for alien languages, being bilingual herself.

The thing about kanji is that it tells you what it means, not how it sounds, in contrary to kana. Or your average Western phonetic language. If is has kanji, and you don't look at it, then you lose part of what it is. That's why I keep saying it's a different name. Toshiko is a different name without the 'Tosh' shortening.

Which is fine. You could use different names. It works as compartmentalisation for many. As long as you know it's not the same name.

(To clarify. I said in my last post that the 每 bit, signaled the pronunciation of 敏. Only true in Chinese. Chinese has many words that have parts indicating meaning, and parts indicating pronunciation. 敏 is pronounced 'mǐn' in Mandarin. I haven't researched on this to know how exactly it works, but 母 (mother) also starts with 'm' and it might have propagated to 每 (every) which also starts in 'm'. But I'm conjecturing and I don't know. Not pronounced remotely similarly in Japanese, as we now all know.)

[beingwhatwecan]

Careful the wish you make Wishes are children Careful the path they take— Wishes come true Not free

Careful the spell you cast Not just on children Sometimes the spell may last Past what you can see And turn against you

—'Children Will Listen', Into The Woods.

My general feeling about the episode. Just. Oh. God.

The thing is I liked a lot of things about the episode. I really did. Omega was a bit anticlimatic and the 'you saved me when I was' was very random but it's tolerable. I liked Anita. I really liked the regeneration (on the basis that it had to be done).

It's just that Belinda's situation is really distracting and it's a horror story one layer after another and I cannot. It's that even if I say okay she accepts a child she does not remember giving birth to remarkably well and takes the kid into her life without hesitation, and okay she's ready to travel with the Doctor after all without visiting her family that she talks about throughout the season because why not. Even if I say okay to all of these things, I can't get over the fact that her life gets rewritten without her consent with something we will never now if she wanted or not.

And I miss her flat with her messy roommates because I really, really liked that bit.

I've been thinking about Into The Woods since, I don't know, I noticed the child thing. And everything feels too much Ever After and not enough Children Will Listen and I honestly don't know.

[beingwhatwecan]

I'm not very coherent but the entire episode just had me screaming what the fuck are you doing to Belinda Chandra???

Like, it's so freaking mad that I'm actually questioning my sanity. Like, am I supposed to take the ending as it is and think they mean it? Like, seriously? Seriously seriously seriously?

Like, I'm finding everything DEEPLY DISTURBING

I'm listening to Into The Woods again don't mind me it's the kids thing the wanting kids the children will listen the last midnight and careful what you wish for because everything is deeply disturbing and agony

[beingwhatwecan]

'Tosh' is not the stressed syllable in 'Toshiko' (not that Japanese stresses work the same, but in this case it's most likely 'shi'). And that vowel 'o' doesn't sound the same. And as far as Japanese goes, 'Tosh' is an extremely random way of taking out a part of a name... It's always a syllable ending with a vowel. Always.

It's that thing. It's essentially a different name.

And I know her nationality is British. I know she technically probably has a British passport to have worked for the government. But she speaks Japanese with her mother and she uses chopsticks fine when eating Chinese. You know it's there.

So, being a Japanese name, it's surname first.

Sato is like the most common surname ever, so everyone knows it's 佐藤. Toshiko isn't all that rare. Wikipedia writes Toshi in hiragana, and ko in kanji. People don't really do that, as far as I know. It's all kanji, or all hiragana, and all hiragana is rare the last time I checked. Either way, I remember reading at some point it's 敏子, which makes enough sense to me. 敏 is agile, clever, quick, sensitive, etc.

敏 as a kanji comes from Chinese originally. Back in the days, like, very back in the days, left-hand side 每 meant women or mother (the bottom bit 母 is still mother; this is also the part that signals the pronunciation), and the right-hand side 攵 used to be 又, and both meant action with hands.

Quite literally women handling tools or women managing hair, depending on when you're looking at and who's doing the explanation. It's the 'handling stuff' bit that got into 'quick'. And then quick movement (agile, nimble), quick thinking (clever).

(Then because they are brought up together a lot or something, it also means 'preserverence', which I don't think made it to Japanese meaning of the word. So.)

Tosh is in tech so I thought the 'handling tools' was neat, in an unexpected way. Anyway Toshiko Sato = Sato Toshiko = 佐藤 敏子. That's the name.

[beingwhatwecan]

Was in the mood of rewatching the first half of Rogue (yeah well). Though I chose not to get to it, the last time I saw someone kiss a person they are interested in to get something from them so that they could get themselves on a suicide mission, was Torchwood S2E07 Owen to Tosh. God I hate that episode.

Anyway. Wanted to check that I still liked the Libertango in the BGM of the dance. I did and I do. Shout-out to Grishuk/Platov 97 OD too; gorgeous, as always.

[beingwhatwecan]

Disclaimer: never seen a Classic Who Rani episode. Know her from wikipedia.

I like to think the Rani is building a particle accelerator (destroying reality to expose the underworld) to find something she thinks exists but hasn't been studied (Omega). And she stole the Doctor's funds (his doubts) with a Plan because she ran out of budget (Time Lords/Ladies).

And I like the concept of doubt. Doubt-cracking-how-the-world-works sounds science-y to me.

[beingwhatwecan]

Sometimes think, in TLD, John's Mary and Sherlock's "isn't that right Mary" or something, are kind of like Next to Normal.

Di deals with Gabe's death by denying his death and imagining him alive. Dan deals with it by denying his existence in the first place. And it makes sense, because Diana gave birth to him. It's harder to forget an existence that came from within her.

It's been a while so I don't remember the specifics, but I know that Dan's healing began when he could see Gabe.

So in the end when John moves on, he doesn't see Mary anymore. In other words he accepts the death as it is.

And because TLD makes an extremely confusing case with Sherlock's grief and moving on, if I take that his "isn't that right Mary" as some sort of coming to terms with things, then it could be that he's allowing that version of her, that voice of himself taking her shape, to be there.

But TLD is a mess and I don't know anything.

[beingwhatwecan]

Technically. Technically, when Doctor was torturing Kid, he did not know the truth about Hellia, and he didn't know Belinda was alive. And that does make a difference.

But I think at least the torturing bit was meant to be a horrifying moment and it was shown as that. Hurt people hurt people, the difference between good and bad, etc.

The problem is in the follow-up... The verdict and that nothing really changes. When you do grand reveal that the villain isn't so villain and there is a bigger villain out there, isn't it common courtesy to at least do something about the bigger villain? Or promise that you will do something?

Surely that's two things they were addressing with Hellia? Stereotype and genocide? Cora singing could only affect the former, surely?

That, and I honestly thought they were going to draw a parallel between the Doctor and Kid. Like. Come on.

[beingwhatwecan]

I just had this feeling that since TSoT it has always been about saving lives... HLV saving 'people who are different' eg Mary. TST still saving Mary. TLD saving John. TFP saving Euros.

Last time I watched TSoT was ten years ago and apparently I just figured:

The "Not you, you" bit regarding MindPalace!Mycroft and John. MP!Mycroft was about narrowing it down to find the murderer. John was about finding the victim. Solve crimes VS save lives. Sherlock got nowhere with the former and succeeded in the latter, in this particular case where no one died yet.

[beingwhatwecan]

Was reading the scripts and I think they changed Lady Smallwood's first name from Alicia to Elizabeth instead of the other way around.

In HLV script, Magnussen reads her in one of the first scenes as Alicia, but the rest of the script refers to her as Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, the underage person that Lord Smallwood had correspondence with -- she's Helen Catherine Driscoll in the show, but Helen Elizabeth Morrison in the script.

If you change Elizabeth to Alicia, there's no need to fix Helen's name. I think it works better if they looked at Helen's name and thought Lady Smallwood looked like an Elizabeth and had to change Helen's name as a result.

Have no idea what happened in TLD regarding that card...

[beingwhatwecan]

Was thinking about how, in TFP, Sherlock smiled a little when Mycroft said "I don't imagine it's much of a target".

And was distinctly reminded of Torchwood, in 2x13, somewhere in the video Tosh left she was like, "at least it wasn't an incident with the toaster" or something. Jack smiled, Gwen didn't, and Ianto didn't.

That was one of the moments I found inexplicably In Character for everyone. I don't know. There are people who just can't laugh at a joke in such circumstances (in death), and there are people who would always laugh at a joke, and then there are people who laugh at the joke because of the person that the joke is coming from.

[beingwhatwecan]

Near the end of the episode, when Aliss and two of the troopers go into the airlock, the display registers four entities in the airlock itself.

Shortly afterwards, there is a blast of kinetic force in the room with the Doctor, Belinda, Mo and Shaya which knocks them to the ground. After that, we see *something* moving behind Belinda, as well as confirmation that she can hear whispering. Then, after Shaya shoots Belinda, there is a gust of air that seems to move towards her.

So. So...

I think there are two entities.

And I think the Doctors stunt with the mercury mirror is to blame.

I think that the entity being reflected caused it to duplicate, with one staying on Aliss whilst the other followed after the fleeing group (this is the entity the Doctor and Belinda see moving down the corridor after them). My reason for believing this is that, as I'll outline further later, the entity is not a rules based creature that attacks according to programming. It is cruel, it is patient, and it honours no law. I don't believe that it would not attack it's own reflection like a dumb beast.

After this event, we never see any characters in the position that would normally activate the kill with Aliss, ie the Midnight Zone. Only ever slightly to one side or another. Importantly, we don't see either Aliss or the other troopers again in the episode- I believe that during the very end of the episode, somewhere aboard their ship, the entity becomes active again...

As for the second entity, I believe that this one does latch onto Belinda, before moving from her to Mo rather than Shaya. My evidence for this is that unlike with every other carrier of the entity, we never actually see anything behind Shaya, not even in passing. We don't even hear whispering (feel free to verify, I did relisten to that sequence a few times but can't be sure). The gust of wind is circumstantial, and only means that the entity moved very quickly in that area.

Oh, I hear you cry, but Aliss said that the entity always moves to whoever killed the original host! Here's the thing- the entity is cruel (see Midnight, plus the mention of it laughing as it emerged from the Well), and likes to play games. It is not, from what we've seen, a creature bound by rules like, say, the Weeping Angels- it stalks, it seeks the vulnerable, it sows distrust, paranoia, and confusion. I don't believe that such an entity would play by any rules when it's existence is on the line. Therefore, as is supported by the very final scene of the episode, I believe that the entity moved not to Shaya, but to Mo.

Meaning that Shaya killed herself entirely in vain.

Meaning that everything was all for nought.

And that, dear reader, is the most cosmically horrific part about this episode.

[beingwhatwecan]

The fact that when 15 figured out he was on Midnight again, he immediately went: Don't listen to me, listen to Bel.

[beingwhatwecan]

Aliss Fenly, who we know initially lied about being 'clean' to get home, despite knowing the entity was behind her. Who shot her best friend before she could kill her, and let her body lie there for fifteen days untouched mere feet away. Who was the only person left in a facility that had had its security footage tampered with. Who had a suspiciously fresh wound that could have been caused by breaking a mirror with your bare hand. Who went in an airlock to escape with two troopers... and four life signs.

[beingwhatwecan]

wait. that’s what Midnight was about.

it made everyone turn their backs on each other.

and that’s what made it dangerous.

but now that’s literal. you turn your back on someone and you kill them. you go behind someone’s back and it kills you.

because that’s what it learnt the first time it met the Doctor. the first time it met any other life. it learnt how they turn on each other, how it can gain power by making monsters out of people.

so this is what it became. because of what they did to each other.

[beingwhatwecan]

THIS. That Moriarty 'woke her up' does not have a direct causal relationship with the Governor allowing human contact for Euros. It may lead the Governor to think that human contact could be made, aka a foundation, a necessary premise accomplished, but that is not a sufficient cause that the Governor would do what he did.

He could not stop once they have started, but it does not mean he had no control that it started.

My opinion on why the Holmes parents reacted the way they did is a, let's say, different view on the causal relationship of what Mycroft did. I believe Mycroft and Uncle Rudy thought, that Euros ended up being homocidal and everything-else-she-is-that-is-out-of-my-vocabulary-range, despite the confinements they placed on her. Looking back, that is. Which is why Mycroft insisted in that Extremely Unfortunate Family Meeting.

Whereas I believe the parents think that she turned out the way she did (if they even have a clear idea of what she did) because of how she was treated.

And I suspect this is also what John believed at the end, when he said 'what comes around goes around'. Or else I'd find it extremely weird when he was just rescued from a well that I thought he was chained to and stuff but things just happened? Like the whole song wasn't about where John/Victor was but there's probably like one single well in this whole place and idk?

What Sherlock thinks, though, I'm not entirely sure. I guess he sort of gets both, and that looking back no one could have known which it was or how much of either would be a factor, so that he defended Mycroft?

Yet another Problem

In “The Final Problem,” we learn that Mycroft has been attempting to use his violent, insane sister Euros’s predictive abilities in order to prevent terrorist attacks.  He overestimates his ability to control her, though, and she succeeds in breaking free and wreaking havoc through everyone’s lives.  "This is my fault,“ he tells everyone at one point.

And it certainly seems like it is.  That’s what I thought on first viewing.  This is the kind of mistake Mycroft might make, driven by an established character flaw of arrogance as well as his established habit of prioritizing national security over almost everything else.  Bad Mycroft!  Let’s torture and humiliate him from beginning to end of this episode to punish him for it!

Except…is that really what happened?

Consider what we know Mycroft did: he spoke repeatedly to Euros in order to gain information when he forbade everyone else to on the grounds that it was too dangerous; he gave her a violin; and he gave her five minutes with Moriarty.  What were the results of these actions?

Did he fall under her control as a result of talking to her?  No.  The other Holmeses, even the slow one, seem mysteriously immune to her influence.. Did she give him bad intelligence, thereby costing lives?  No; as far as we know, the intelligence was worth it.  It’s hard to imagine Mycroft continuing otherwise.

So, talking to her himself was not in itself harmful.  In fact, it seems to have saved a number of lives by allowing three major terrorist attacks to be thwarted.

What about the gift of the violin?  Well, unless she used a violin string to garrote that poor nurse, there was no harm in that.

What about Moriarty?  Surely it was the height of bad judgment to put two insane masterminds together for a chat?  Certainly in the abstract it seems so.  Indeed, we’re told that it only took five minutes with Moriarty for Euros to "do all this [the whole TFP plot] to us.” But…did it?

Take Moriarty out of the picture.  Assume for one minute that that meeting never happened.  How does that affect what happened in TFP? It doesn’t, except that Euros would have had to film her own cartoonish video bumpers.  (I admit, they were pretty annoying…!)  Moriarty at this point (apparently the ASIB Christmas) is already a criminal mastermind, already obsessed with Sherlock, already “playing the Game.” Euros didn’t turn him on Sherlock; he was already fixated there.  And we never hear that Moriarty did anything for Euros on the outside to make her escapades possible; indeed, with her ludicrous abilities, she wouldn’t need him to.  Everything that she does, she does under her own power.

(There is some basis for speculation that Euros inspired Moriarty to kill himself at the end of “The Reichenbach Fall,” but can anyone seriously argue that it would have been better for Sherlock, much less for the rest of the world, to have the insane criminal mastermind still out there committing his terrible crimes?)

Well, but the episode says that Mycroft “woke [Euros] up!”  Surely he’s to be blamed for that!  To that, I say two things.  One, while you can blame Mycroft for not anticipating the harm that could have come if Moriarty had actually done something, anything, relevant as a result of his meeting with Euros–that’s his job, to understand that kind of thing–how can you do so for not guessing that giving Euros a violin would happen to lead to her murder spree?  I don’t think anyone could have.  It’s not exactly the normal sequence of events, after all.  She’d been semi-catatonic for years, and her psyche was too opaque.  You can’t hold someone responsible for the consequences of their actions that they truly could not have anticipated.   Second, talking to Euros, giving her “treats”–doesn’t that reflect, however twistedly, some attempt to connect with her?   Isn’t that what she supposedly wants, the way that alleged emotional savant Sherlock saves the day at the end?  She can only play her duet with Sherlock at the end because Mycroft got her a Stradivarius! You can’t have it both ways: either trying to reach her is a kind, loving act, or it isn’t.

But, sure, a great many bad things happened in TFP.  Someone has to be to blame.  Who?  Easy: the Governor.  Not to speak ill of the dead, but if he doesn’t ignore both Mycroft’s strict and explicit instructions not to speak to her and the actual evidence he most likely sees first-hand, over and over again, of the horrible things she can do to people who do, none of the episode happens. None of it.  Euros is never able to escape.  She never accomplishes anything.   Without the Governor, nothing.  With him, everything except some rather embarrassing video.  Mycroft made some poor judgment calls, but none of them actually led to any of the misery and death we saw in the episode. The worst thing he did was trust an obviously mature, established professional to follow the security protocol that he had been given and which, if obeyed, would have protected everyone.  What a fool!

This flaw in the show’s plotting is painfully typical of recent Sherlock, which often gives the impression that an episode is constructed from an outline of Dramatic Moments in which no one never bothered to fill in the transitions.  As I said above, it’s really not that hard to construct a sufficiently plausible scenario by which Mycroft’s actions do clearly and foreseeably cause harm and in which everything is his fault.  In fact, in this particular case, I’d say it’s easier than the baroque, convoluted scenario they chose, which falls apart under the slightest stress.  Again and again, the writers want to get from point A to B to C to D, but connecting the dots is too tedious.  Instead, they just announce that there’s a line.  And then use it as a stick to beat a character with.

I’m just saying: when Mycroft goes rogue and burns the world down, I’ll understand.