It's Ruth Calder from BBC Shetland, a thing about which I am not subtle at all, and it's not strictly true that no one else cares, because I talked about her so much that now several of my beloved IRL friends will stand in a holiday house kitchen with me listening to me opine on the specific circumstances under which she's a sub.

But @cosmic-llin and I did create this fandom in its current form from whole cloth, and it remains really very very very tiny, so I'm counting her as obscure!

As per the shooting script for her first episode of Shetland:

"DI RUTH CALDER - late 40s, sharp, intuitive, irritable."

(I don't buy that she's late 40s, actually - Ashley Jensen who plays her is in her 50s, and I think even this show is afraid to have a woman lead be 50+, but there we go.)

She's a fucking mess, she's terrible at acknowledging her own feelings and she'll run a mile from having to deal with anyone else's. She's incredibly clever and sharp and perceptive, she won't take any shit and she'll say exactly what she thinks, and she has no patience at all. She'll barrel into things at full speed and if she deigns to think about whether it's a good idea it'll only be if it goes catastrophically wrong. She left home, alone, at 18-and-two-days, and never went back, and is fiercely, brilliantly and destructively independent. She's very closed off, would rather sit on a wasp nest than let anyone know a single thing about her, but then she starts accidentally spilling her whole self to Tosh and Tosh alone within half an hour of meeting her. She's extremely good at her job, and isn't fussed about dating and doesn't want children, and she loves music and sex (and Shetland itself though she won't admit it) and she has atrocious taste in men (because she projects things onto them that she doesn't know how to want in her own right).

Anyway, I love her with my whole entire heart.

Originally posted by walkthegale

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