(no subject)

[stardust_rain]

title: Dixon's Girl

source: Elementary, s1-2, Sherlock BBC s1-2

music: Dessa - Dixon's Girl

characters: Joan Watson, Sally Donoval, Soo Ling Yao (+Molly and Irene)

password: dixon

warnings: some fast cuts, canon-typical violence, canon-typical violence towards women, blood/corpses. 

notes: This is my first meta vid and I have a lot of feelings about this song, I have a lot of feelings about this show and I have a crap ton of feelings about Joan Watson and Sally Donovan and how they’re respectively treated and how these shows treat women of colour, most of which I hope to express through the vid. 

This came together before Elementary S3, and Sherlock S3.

dixon's girl from stardust rain on Vimeo.

You gotta be big to treat pretty girls bad. A kinda-sorta crossover. (or: Breaking the fourth wall with Joan Watson and Sally Donovan.) A meta-vid.  

stream on vimeo | download: 81MB

Oh, someone taught
Your walls to talk 
But if they ask me, I ain't heard a thing

Back to the wall
Bat to the ball
Back to the drawing board
[X3]

Again

There was a snow storm in Jackson,
When you and I met,
At a club called Saint Sebastian's,
But the sign said something different.
I remember thinking that I didn't have a shot at Mississippi.
Television told us which roads they were closing.
"There goes the rap show."

Everybody knew you as the wife of a famous man.
Everybody who knew said, "There goes Dixon's girl again. 
Even the walls all lean closer, when she plays the piano real slow."

Haven't met too many women in this business that I really like,
But you could hold a little liquor, you could hold a conversation
You could hold your own mic, and,
Even that night, I learned the truth about your man:
You've gotta be big to treat pretty girls bad.

And it's not much, but my money's on you
It's not much, but my money's on you
It's not much, but my money
Not much, but my money
Not much, but my money
My money's on you

Well I heard from the rest of the world, you're in trouble.
Bad news moves like fire that you fight on the phone.
And I'm too far away, my well-wishing can't touch you,
But I think of you still, more than you might suppose.

Everybody wanna see you with your hair down, 
Wanna hear you hit the high note.
Wanna know if they can get you for a little less, girl.
I don't. I know,
How the stones can fly, had some hard goodbyes.
Call me up, day or night, free drinks and bad advice.

And it's not much, but my money's on you
It's not much, but my money's on you
It's not much, but my money
Not much, but my money
Not much, but my money
My money's on you

Back to the wall
Back to the bar
Back to the drawing board
[X3]

And it's not much, but my money's on you. 

dreamwidth | tumblr 


again, this is my first meta vid and I couldn't find a beta, so concrit is hugely welcome!


 

Comments

[some_stars]

i haven't actually seen either show, but i've seen enough gifsets to tell who's from what, and i really liked this. such a great choice of song for the material. i had a lot of meta feelings about it despite not having feelings about the shows so i suspect that means it's pretty good!

[stardust_rain]

thank you! I always feel like I went a bit overboard trying to add in-narrative context with the shows, but I'm glad this worked.

[kabal42]

Thank you so much for this! I am going to have to watch it a couple of hundred more times, but I wanted to comment right away and tell you it is very thought-provoking and good. I had not thought about the parallels between the treatments of these two women before. The song is great too (I love hearing new songs via vids) and fits the theme so well. Thank you again.

[stardust_rain]

Thank you for commenting! This was something that was talked about a lot in both Elementary fandom circles since season 1 premiered, and I've been wanting to do something for a while.

[damkianna]

So I'm usually really bad at commenting on stuff I loved, but I've already watched this vid like 10 times since downloading it earlier and I just feel like I should say SOMETHING, like, you deserve to know that you've made something awesome and you've so completely captured everything my heart feels about both of these shows and about the places where one fails and the other succeeds. I'm probably really biased by how much I've learned to dislike Sherlock since first watching it, but I love this vid and everything I see in it, and thank you so much for making it.

[stardust_rain]

oh wow, thank you so much!

[frayadjacent]

This is a great vid. It really conveys to me a sense of love for the characters, and wanting more for them, as well as anger at how the shows/other characters treat them. There were so many great moments -- damn, that shot of Lestrade shoving Donovan with the car door, that was harsh. And Joan hanging up the phone when the music changed was such perfection. And all the "my money's on you", and how you kept the focus on Joan and Sally for the first part, which made your perspective strong and clear, and then used what you'd established to expand to other characters at the end. That was awesome. This is a great vid! I love how it highlighted the characters' competence, too, especially Joan. <3

[stardust_rain]

Oh, thank you so much! That part with Sally was the one of the last clips I cut in, because I wanted to focus on Sherlock and Sally and seasons 1-2 first and foremost, but I felt it went with "which roads they were closing". I'm glad you liked it!

[tehlime]

OH MY GOD THIS VIDDDD I want to force everyone who watches these shows to sit down and watch this vid. I am absolutely in love with how you constructed this, it is so coherent in how it presents the way women of color are treated in each of the shows, and it was just incredibly cathartic to watch the narrative you created. I literally threw my hands in the air at one point. Amazing work, absolutely love it!

(Edited to say that if I had to pick one tiny criticism, I don't think you need to cut between clips and black quite as much in the beginning. I think fewer cuts to black would have been a tiny bit more effective, but it's a minor note. SO GOOD going to have to rewatch it again.)

[stardust_rain]

AHH, thank you so much! Narrative structure was something I was very nervous about, because it all made sense in my head, but I didn't know how anyone would see it. So happy this worked for you!

And, yeah, I think I was trying too hard to synchronise it to the flow of the music, but on re-watch it's a bit jarring.

[sasha_feather]

downloading! :)

[sasha_feather]

I enjoyed this a lot! It is super great.

[paradigm_shift]

Nice! Came across this while browsing tumblr, and I really liked it.

[sol_se]

This is so great. I love it.

[aurumcalendula]

I love this!

[keerawa]

Oh, ouch. Nicely done, with a contrast that is downright painful to me as a Sherlock fan.

In some ways, TPTB are LESS problematic than the fans. I wrote a story in which John, soon after Sherlock's return, loses his shit at a crime scene when he runs into Donovan, almost to the point of physical violence. And I thought it was .. petty damn dark, but most of the comments were quite gleefully unsympathetic towards Sally Donovan.

Thank you for the thought-provoking vid!

[haggis]

Would love to watch this - how do I get the password?

[stardust_rain]

As said in the vid description, the password is dixon

[haggis]

D'oh! I missed that! Thank you, that's an excellent vid :D

[purplefringe]

I'm on a Dessa kick at the moment and just discovered this amazing vid which I somehow missed when you first posted it. It's SO great - really sharp, and biting. I love how the focus is on Joan and Sally but also expands to other marginalised female characters. I love how you show them working and doing what they are good at, and being unrecognised - or even pushed aside - for it. All that hard WORK that they do, which is the flipside of the whole 'white male difficult genius' thing that Sherlock has going on. I love it. Thank you for making it.