thatmuchlove:

weirdsociology:

Look what you’ve done, internet.  Look what you’ve done.   Now I can’t stop thinking about Lucy Liu as Watson. 

Things That the Writers Could Do Horribly Wrong with an Female Asian-American Watson

• Make her not a veteran (because girls aren’t in the military and if they are they don’t get shot at, right?)
• Use the Watson gender-swap to trot out the same tired heteronormative sexual tension between Holmes and Watson as every other TV show.
• Make her have a string of boyfriends, much like Watson’s wives, but (in all too-prevalent TV logic) have the plot either punish her or other characters judge her for her love life (because it’s okay for men to womanize, but not the other way around.)
• Tokenize her Asiatic ancestry by making her have Insane Martial Arts Powers(tm).
• Not have Holmes and Watson live together because romantically uninterested women and men can’t live together.
• Have Holmes and Watson live together and use it as an excuse to further #2 on the list, with probably lots of Holmes awkwardly ‘accidentally’ walking on Watson in the shower.
• Use her existence as a lazy excuse for not writing in other women and POCs.

Things That the Writers Could Do Fantastically Right with a Female Asian-American Watson

• Keep the war hero background, migrating war-wound and all.
• Make her a heteronormative character and have their friendship be totally platonic.  (This is, sadly, probably only slightly more likely than Obama being one of our reptilian overlords.)
• Make her have a string of girlfriends, much like the original Watson.  (This might preclude the awesome of the previous one, so, maybe… bi?)
• Still marry her off to Mary Morstan.
• Have them live together and subvert the ‘sexual tension’ trope by having Watson in the shower and Holmes barge in and start brushing his teeth because he Does Not Give a Fuck and have Watson be like Dude Whatever We Live Together It’s Not a Big Deal and keep on soaping behind her ears.
• Use her as a starting point for introducing a more gender- and race-diverse cast.

I can’t be the only one who’s thinking about this…  Add yours to the list!

Oh. Oh yes. I approve of everything on the yay list, regardless of how unlikely it may be.

I’m sort-of-kind-of following this debate and I like everything on this list, but once again I feel compelled to point out that the point “Make her a heteronormative character and have their friendship be totally platonic” is not “only slightly more likely than Obama being one of our reptilian overlords.” I mean, yes, it is unusual. But The Mentalist is totally all over that one. Male Sherlock. Female Watson. Both are hetro. Both have relationships. Both are very good looking. But they’re just friends. Sure, the fandom ships the hell out of them (guilty!) but canonically, their relationship is completely platonic. It’s fabulous and I adore it.

This kind of relationship is not impossible and it’s not a “never been seen on tv” deal. I’m quite proud of how The Mentalist has been able to pull this off, and I’m disappointed that apparently no Sherlockians are aware of this.

Anyway, I’m interested to see where Elementary goes with this, and I hope they do a good job.