JustMe

Yes folks I’m going to do it again.

Calling all  established, interested and aspiring fanfic writers.

The second Phryne Ficathon is coming soon. 

Please like and reblog this post to spread the word. We want as many writers as possible.

Further information regarding timelines, guidelines and prompts etc will come soon but as a general idea for this ficathon we’re going with the theme below;

Phryne has taken off for London Jack is staring at a disappearing plane- What happens next?

It will hopefully turn out to be a very au series 4 of sorts while we await news about the future of this wonderful show.

Please let me know if you’re interested in signing up!

so if you (re)blog miss fisher and you’re into people creeping on you and randomly reblogging things from last year or whatever, hit me up.* /attempt to sound like i know how kids talk on the interwebs

*by “hit me up” i mean like or reblog this post so i can find you, don’t actually hit me, please.

They celebrate Christmas in July because Australia is in the southern hemisphere and so actual December Christmas is in the middle of their summer. So some aussies have a Christmas celebration in July, i.e. the middle of their winter when it is nominally cold (but I’ve been to Australia in July, it’s not really that cold at all). This custom has fallen off in popularity a little since the 1920s when the show is set.

ESSIE DAVIS on whether there will be more for Miss Fisher:

I’m going on the journey with this show, wherever that rusty plane flies.

(Series 3 spoilers and lots of opining ahead.) I apologize in advance for the length of this - the keep reading tab wouldn’t work for me today.

As we impatiently await news of any continuation, I keep revisiting the last moments we had on screen of Miss Fisher. 

Before our hero could depart Australia to escort her wayward father back home, the writers took pity on the desperate ‘shippers’ among us and gave us one more glorious Phryne and Jack moment. He came to see her off, she told him to come after her, and they finally kissed. The collective Phrack community lost their minds.

Jack breathlessly declares that he “always feared another man would sweep you away from me.” Then, being Jack, has to cheekily add: “I never thought it’d be your father.”

Phryne’s reply left some people cold.

Why would she say this to poor Jack right after making her romantic overture, and letting him know that she did indeed want him? Why, instead of leaving him feeling sure of her affections, would she so casually toss out this ambiguous line?

As with quite a lot of the writing for Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, this is open to interpretation. What follows is my interpretation. It’s certainly not the only, or necessarily, the correct one. In fact all of what follows is strictly my opinion!

Phryne’s parting line is very much in keeping with who Phryne is, but it also illustrates what I think has been a persistent difference in the way she and Jack view the romantic relationship between them.

The gulf in how they view their relationship results in large part from the difference in the way they view sex. Throughout the three series Phryne has multiple sexual partners, all casual, most of them one and done, so to speak. 

She approaches these dalliances in a straight forward manner. They are about enjoying sensual pleasures, or exploring the “energy that flares between two independent spirits —however briefly.”

Phryne likes men, and flirting. She enjoys sex. For her, a deep, emotional connection to her partner is not a requirement. The act is a physical pleasure, not a way of expressing love.

I think Jack understands that mindset. He knows that sex doesn’t always mean love, and perhaps, in his past there are encounters similar to the ones Phryne engages in, but we don’t really know, since the Jack we see exists only in relation to Phryne.

What we do know is that he’s been married. At some point, he chose to commit himself to one woman. He loved, and wanted to be loved. He wanted the assurance and permanency that comes with promising to spend your life with another person. 

He also knows that it doesn’t always work out that way. His divorce hit him hard and he feels a bit of a failure because of it, but I don’t think it’s soured him to the idea of commitment and marriage. Jack is a romantic. He believes in love.

For Jack, when love is present, sex is much more than a sensual pleasure. It represents a special connection between two people, and an expression of their love for each other. Jack loves Phryne and he wants her to love him. He cannot sleep with her casually. Sex with Phryne would be an expression of his love, and if it turned out to be just one night of sensual pleasure for her, he’d be crushed. He can’t be one of her “parade” of men.

This is where I think they see their relationship differently. 

Jack has never been one of the parade. From very early on, he held a different position in Phryne’s life. At first she may have contemplated a dalliance with him, but by the time he tells her that he’s married, she’s sized him up enough to know he’s not the type to have an extramarital affair. Even if he were, I don’t think she’d bite. That kind of encounter seems too messy for Phryne.

There is a definite attraction, and they enjoy each other’s company. He likes her flirting and openly flirts back. Somewhere along the line, he realizes he’s in love with her and that’s where things get complicated. He tries to leave, she won’t let him and they settle into a kind of detente.

That she works to re-establish their relationship says a lot. It’s not just about the professional part of it either. I think that is made clear in her conversation with Mac, during the estrangement in The Blood of Juana the Mad.

Phryne: “He had a nasty scare, thought I’d killed myself in a car accident and now he thinks I’m too much trouble.”

Mac: “You are.”

Phryne: “So he’s running scared.”

Jack may have been hard to replace for her professionally. Not too many men of the day would have been as accepting and appreciative of her skills, but, I think Phryne would have felt confident she could operate without him, or operate with him, even if on a far less personal level.

With any other man, she’d have been alright with the “running scared” part. She may have even encouraged it, but Phryne lets into her life the people she wants in, and she’s already let Jack in. I don’t know that she’s intending a romantic relationship at this point, but she wants him in her life, and she’s willing to let him set some boundaries to keep him there.  

“What’s our safe distance?” she asks him. “Two steps behind, two steps in front?”

The Do-si-do is a square dance figure in which the woman circles first her partner and then the man on her right, before returning to her partner. The dancers move among multiple other dancers, but alway return to dance with the partner with whom they started.

Is she asking whether or not they have a chance at an ongoing partnership that might include intimacies without exclusivity? Friends with benefits?

In a waltz the dancers revolve in perpetual circles, but never change partners during the dance. The bodies are close, but not touching. It is intimate, but not necessarily sensual.

The circular nature of a waltz seems to imply that Jack thinks he and Phryne will continue to orbit each other, but not really get anywhere.

“Not a tango?” she says.

The tango is a very sensual dance marked by stylized body postures and abrupt pauses, coming together and then pulling apart. By eliminating the tango, she’s accepting that there will be no casual sex.

She doesn’t leave it there though - she adds: “A good waltz is slow, and close.”

She’ll go along with his idea of their partnership. They can be close, even emotionally connected, without sexual intimacies, but she’s not yet willing to rule out the possibility that things might evolve into something more. 

If they are a waltz, he’s forfeited his ‘safe distance.’  She’s not going to lay off the flirting and innuendo, and he can choose to take it or leave it. He chooses to take it, telling her: “I’ll try to stay in step, all the same.”

He won’t give her up, but the song that plays at the end tells me that Jack doesn’t believe she will ever care for him the way he cares for her.

“I found out that I love you And I thought you loved me too You were only passing time with me…”

By the end of the second series he’s ready for more with her. When he comes to her at the end of Unnatural Habits and tells her he doesn’t alway do the noble thing, he is  indicating a readiness for a physical relationship with her. We don’t get an outright declaration of intent, the writer’s still want to have their fun with us, but, along with moony smiles and sighs, we do get this:

We all know the Phracking frustration that was series 3, and this is where the different ways they see their relationship really comes to a head.

We begin with what are very obviously preparations for a big date, interrupted and postponed, until we wind up with a jealous, drunk Jack ranting about parades. (I already defended that rant, so I’ll only touch on it here). He rails about her other men, she asks “what other men?”

This is huge. Jack still doesn’t understand that he is not “other men.” A long time ago she set him in a different category. He’s already more than the other men she’s slept with, and he really should know this, but he’s hung up on the sex.

Intellectually, he knows that sex doesn’t equal love. Emotionally, he can’t make the separation. He gets jealous of other men that have been with her, and he fears that if she can casually throw them aside, she’ll do the same to him. Or, worse, that one day, one of those men will come to mean more to her, and he’ll lose her forever.

But, Phryne loves Jack, with or without sex. He is her friend and companion. The only intimate male constant in her life. She confides in him, relies on him and stands at his side. Even if he had decided to choose another woman, she’d still stand by him.

Jack finally gets the assurance he needs when she implies she’s not pleased with his attempted romantic overtures to date. 

Resulting in this…

It looks like we’re finally getting somewhere, but, alas, and we find ourselves standing in a field with a rusty old plane running in the background.

Before she leaves, she gives him her final and most resolute bit of communication so far. 

Phryne Fisher, the woman that lives life independently, on her own terms and who will never commit to any one man, has told Jack Robinson that she wants him with her on the journey. Phryne is straight forward with men. She doesn’t play games, and she doesn’t deceive. She tells Jack, ‘Come after me. Pursue me. I won’t turn you away and I won’t run from you.’

He can’t quite leave it at that and has to teasingly inquire about other men,

 and we get the line that started this lengthly dissertation.

She’s telling Jack that he needs to stop fretting about other men. It’s not about other men. It’s not about sex. It never has been.

 It’s about throwing herself recklessly into dangerous situations. It’s about driving fast. It’s about being able to pick up and fly off somewhere at a moments notice. It’s about living freely and independently. It’s about ‘a whole world’ out there to explore.

The only worry Jack has is that her adventures might take Phryne away from him. She’s not going to be the kind of woman to ever settle down and live quietly and conventionally, but she’s willing to make compromises to find room for him in her life. She’s telling him that where ever life leads, she wants him at her side, she wants them to be together.

Asking him to come after her is as hopeful a declaration of her love as she could give him, but telling him that there’s a whole world out there, is not thoughtless, teasing or cruel.

 It’s honest and it’s Phryne.

Miss Fisher Murders and Murderers (Epilogue)

The Miss Fisher Murders and Murderers series has finally come to its conclusion. To be honest, I didn’t expect how daunting this task would be. The amount of research and effort going into the process was probably the most among all my series so far. In order to present the facts as accurately as possible, I re-watched each episode multiple times while trying my best not to be side tracked by Phrack, Hottie, or the rest of the lovely characters.

As I pointed out in the Overture, “There is nothing sexy about murders (even though the two detectives most certainly are), so this series is not going to be romantic like Miss Fisher Alternative Phrack Titles. Nevertheless, I hope you will still enjoy it.” Looking back, I think that I had done a pretty decent job, and I am proud of what I had accomplished.

Anyway, since I am a data analyst by trade and simply cannot resist analyzing and summarizing statistics, I am going to present a few findings that I found interesting.

1) @haegtesse raised a question about the number of female murderers featured in the three seasons. She felt that some crime dramas tended to overemphasize female murderers because it was more shocking and unexpected. According to my tally, about 30% of the murderers were female in the three seasons. It may be higher than the statistics in real life (“Males were convicted of the vast majority of homicides in the United States, representing 90.5% of the total number of offenders”, per United States Department of Justice, 2011), but I think that it enhanced the dramatic effects without being totally unrealistic.

In terms of victims, roughly 35% of the murder victims were female in the three seasons. The percentage was skewed by the fact that in Murder Under the Mistletoe, 22 male miners were blown up by Nicholas Mortimer. If we exclude them, the female and male victim percentage would become more even (46% vs. 54%).

2) @whilenotwritingmyphd wondered how many episodes had murder scenes before the theme music. I believe the answer is 30 (out of 34). The only ones that didn’t have it are: Murder on the Ballarat Train (S1E2), The Green Mill Murder (S1E3), Death at Victoria Dock (S1E4), and Ruddy Gore (S1E6). Interestingly, they are all from S1.

3) In terms of methods of killing, the number one is explosion. Again, it is skewed by the miners in Murder Under the Mistletoe. If we exclude them, poison takes the biscuit, followed by strangulation/suffocation, stabbing/slashing, gunshot, and drowning.

4) As I mentioned earlier, family killing was rare in the three seasons. There are 4 spousal murders: Lydia Andrews (husband John), Maurice Sheffield (wife Dorothea), Jimmy Creswick (wife Guinevere), and Nicholas Mortimer (wife Vera). The 4 non-spousal family murders include Murdock Foyle (foster mother Gertrude), Eva Callahan (sister Millie), Marianna Carbone (Nonna Louisa), and Eric Edwards (sister Harriet). Among the total of 95 murder victims, it’s less than 10%. (Note: I didn’t count Eunice as a murderer since Alastair was the one who actually committed the murder.)

5) Who were the deadliest killers in the three seasons? Number one was Nicholas Mortimer from Murder Under the Mistletoe, who killed 27 in total, including the 22 miners. Number two was Murdock Foyle with a body count of 10 across 3 episodes (Blood and Circuses, Murder in the Dark, and King Memses’ Curse). Eugene Fisher had 5 people’s blood on his hand between Death at the Grand and Death Do Us Part. Jimmy Creswick from Dead Air was also responsible for 5 deaths, including the two Oswalds.

Among the female killers, most of them only committed one count of murder, but there were 4 who killed twice: Hety (Death by Miss Adventures), Genevieve Lamaire (Murder a la Mode), Lily Luscombe (Framed for Murder), and Eva Callahan (Death Defying Feats).

6) Last but not least, the crime solving rate of the two detectives and their associates were impressive. Not only did they catch all the killers of the current cases they investigated, but they also solved a number of cold cases along the way (e.g. Dorothea Curtis, Pierre Sarcelle, Guinevere Redpath, Fabrizzi, etc.). If we count those in, their crime solving rate was actually over 100%. Kudos, everyone!

As always, your feedback and corrections are welcomed and much appreciated. Also, thank you for hanging in there with me till the end. My next series is in the works; please stay tuned to find out what’s coming up.

My next series is going to be much more light-hearted to give my readers and myself a little break. That’s exactly what I love about this show; it strikes the right balance between playfulness and seriousness, so you have plenty material to work with either way. See you all then!

@missfisherobsessed @kanste @izzyandlouie @heavyheadedgal @villasyl15 @michele02132 @flashofthefuse @crazycatschickenlady @balticprincess @sadlyoutofideas @revskell @mari-go @whopooh @slightlycomic-attitude @missingmissfisher @hazelhaegtesse @rithebard @julesfriend2

There was a class where I showed up but ended up not signing the sheet, I remember it clearly because I came up at the end of class to sign it while she was talking to people and I felt like and idiot because I kept flipping through the notepad and couldn’t find the sheet to sign so I just left. But I doubt she’s going to believe me because I’ll be she’s used to students saying any damn thing to improve their grade.

Tell her about your depression and anxiety, and that you’re fighting.

I did with my professors, and they were kind and understanding - maybe she will be too.

Miss Fisher Random Thoughts (183)

I have a confession to make, and I hope that after this post, I don’t get banished from the MFMM fandom forever. Here it goes.

There is no argument that the scarf scene in Marked for Murder is one of the top 5 Phrack moments. However, I always secretly wished that Miss Fisher didn’t have her sleuthing hat on. Many of you already knew that I am not a big fan of this hat, and I felt that it was a bit of shame that she didn’t look more like her glamorous self in this romantic moment.

Before you fire up a rebuttal or send me a hate mail, please know that I had a change of heart thanks to suzilynn. Her comments on my Instagram post made me reconsider my perspective. She said:

“I like this hat not because it is attractive, but because it isn’t. It shows even Phryne is willing to ‘dress down’. And of course, underneath she’s as glamorous as always.”

It dawned on me that perhaps that is exactly the point. At that moment, when Jack roped her in with his scarf, she was not the rich and glamorous socialite. She was the ordinary girl from Collingwood and the clever detective partner to the policeman from Richmond. Just like the song at the end:

My baby don’t care for shows My baby don’t care for clothes My baby just cares for me My baby don’t care for cars and races My baby don’t care for high-tone places … My baby don’t care who knows it My baby just cares for me

Thank you suzilynn for the comments. I will never look at this scene the same way again, and that is a wonderful thing!

There’s a couple of handy chart for sound acquisition here. They should 75-100% understandable.

Kids that age will begin to experiment with storytelling but still have some difficulties in distinguishing between truthful retellings and their flights of fancy.  They will begin to use words to indicate time, though their perception is skewed- “Yesterday” might mean any time in the past, for example, or something that was described as tomorrow will still be tomorrow after it has passed by.

They are great mimics and can use words in an appropriate context without actually understanding what they mean. This can result in hilarity.