The world turned toward morning

Oh, look. It’s an actual unpopular opinion for once.

No, really, I promise. This one’s actually unpopular.

I like Sally Donovan.

I actually like her more every time I rewatch the series! And you know, if you don’t like her as an individual, fine. By all means. To each their own. Not everyone is in this for the same stuff I am, etc. etc.

But as a fandom, as a whole: god, would y’all get your fucking shit together?

You know, the funny thing about fandom’s sheer blind hatred (not dislike, but hatred) for Sally as a character is that half the justifications I see are made up. I see people claim she hates Sherlock for being smarter than her: we never see the slightest indication of this. The reason we were actually presented with, back in ASiP, is that she thinks he’s terrifyingly enthusiastic about things like gruesome murders and worryingly lacking in empathy, and that one day he’ll be bored enough to go around making his own entertainment, so to speak. Another example: people claiming they hate her because she took an immediate dislike to Sherlock. UM. WHAT? We never saw them meet. They already knew each other! God! He’s presumably been treating her badly for a while now!

Another thing is the really simple fact that she gets about a million times more hate than Anderson. (Where I’d argue Anderson is more of a dick, tbh.) And most of the hate Anderson gets is the affectionate kind, like, a ‘love-to-hate-them’ deal. I mean, come on, fandom. Seriously?

And I’ve already talked about all the stuff in The Reichenbach fall at great length elsewhere, but just to recap some important stuff:

• She was a police officer in the infinitely unenviable position of not being able to follow up a potential lead (i.e. Sherlock’s involvement) with any kind of reliability because they’d been letting him contaminate crime scenes. Which shoots the due process to hell.
• She was a police officer with every reason to have at least some suspicions about the matter.
• She was a police officer who did, in fact, do the right thing and went to her superiors and let them decide what to do. Why does everyone forget this?! She went to Lestrade! Lestrade went higher up! They were then ordered to arrest him!
• She was being manipulated by someone set up as a master of it.
• C’mon, are you really going to hate on her for that?

And then there’s the freak thing. Look, fandom, I agree: it’s a bad choice of words, it’s a pretty cruel insult, it doesn’t reflect that well on her. I do understand if people dislike her for that. But fandom? You like fucking Sherlock Holmes, the man who goes around insulting people for no reason whatsoever. On a regular basis. With no provocation. Sally, at least, is insulting someone who is a dick to her and does genuinely scary shit like get excited people have been murdered. (Because, again, where is this ‘she calls him that because he’s so smart/misunderstood!’ shit coming from? Did any of you actually watch the scenes with her in them in ASiP?) And yet you hate, really hate and detest, her for calling one guy one insult?

(And you know, for all that I think freak is a really nasty and potentially unfortunate-implications-ridden insult, for a variety of reasons, the way fandom goes on about it, you’d think it was the most unforgivable word in the English language. Jesus Christ. There are worse things in life than calling the douchebag who likes murder scenes a freak. I honestly think people are missing some context here at this stage: they see Sherlock and they see a guy who’s probably been isolated since childhood, because he was ‘gifted’, because he liked weird things, who probably never fit in, and then they hear ‘freak’ and immediately they see it as mocking people for not fitting in, for liking weird things. Which would be great, except Sally isn’t actually doing that at all, for heaven’s sake. It’s a crappy word choice. It’s an insult. It is not the end of the world.)

Ugh, this got longer than I intended. What I mean to say is, fandom? Get it together. Hating on a female character using sexist language is bullshit. Hating on a female character via slut shaming is bullshit. Hating a black female character more than the equivalent white male character, i.e. Anderson, is making me side-eye you. Get over it already.