#the question was rhetorical btw it was in a 'why is no one making films about activists of colour' way and we all kno why that is

[allthepresidentsmen1976]

okay see the thing is regardless of where i post i AM just going 2 be liveblogging my "research" for a good while i imagine so it's rly all the same <3 anyway this author has just asked why there aren't any films about félix gonzález-torres and i too would like 2 know this ..... i would like a film about félix gonzález-torres please and thank you

[decepti-thots]

If it's not too much trouble, could you explain in simple terms what makes Spotlight: Arcee transmisogynistic? I feel like I must be missing something.

I get that it probably has to do with her being crazy violent and out for revenge because of a forced sex (and gender???) change and that she didn't ask for or agree with, but is that all there is to it?

This is an honest question and I am not trying to troll btw.

I'm happy to share my thoughts with you on it (below a cut, because the subject matter is less fun than I usually tackle on this blog), but with a couple caveats.

First off, I wouldn't answer this if I felt completely ill-equipped to give an answer, naturally. But I do want to stress that this is an answer, one particular perspective from one particular person, and not a claim to any kind of authority; for context, while this opinion is heavily informed by the opinions of trans women I have spoken to and read the thoughts of regarding this comic over the years, I'm not one myself. And more broadly, nobody's opinion is ever going to cover every possible angle on a serious topic, and I can only speak for my own opinion on the matter, informed by the opinion of a few more who I respect. I'm just some rando. You should only ascribe the below as much respect as you think Some Rando Online TM deserves; probably not all that much, hah. ;)

Now that context has been established, what I actually think is below the cut.

I think it can help to put the stuff you bring up in this ask into a broader perspective to explain why these elements are transmisogynistic, which is something we can look at on a couple of levels. One of these is in the sense of how these elements interact with a broader history of similar tropes in pop culture, and another is a discussion of the surrounding context of Arcee having this kind of story told about her given the history of her representations in prior incarnations of TF comics. So let's tackle the former first.

So there's the trope of a forced "sex change" invoked as horror you highlight in this ask, which works to present the concept of "changing sex" in a shocking, traumatic and frequently graphic light; this is something found in all manner of schlocky horror media, hence why I refer to it here as an established and recognizable trope. Spotlight: Arcee did not invent it; the comic is riffing on a stock concept it understands an audience will recognize. (For a recent and particularly blatant example, google the 2016 film 'The Assignment'.)

While an argument can be put forth (and often is) that this only presents involuntary "sex changes" as scary things, distinct from the concept of someone undergoing a voluntary gender transition, that... well let's put it this way: involuntary forced gender surgeries are not a real problem. But they are often invoked as though they are a real problem to cast doubt on the ethics of all transition in real-world transphobic rhetoric, and so the use of them as a horror trope is far from neutral. Simply by suggesting such a thing really is something to be feared, you're implicitly acknowledging the existence of, basically, a transphobic conspiracy theory.

(A similar argument is often had in relation to the famous 'is Silence Of The Lambs really transphobic if it has a passage about how the serial killer isn't a REAL trans woman', regarding the fact that positing that there might be violent men pretending to be trans women to do terrible things is in itself simply an invitation to scrutinize trans women for signs of that supposed dangerous "fakery".)

Spotlight: Arcee on a conceptual level relies upon the idea its audience can accept this invocation of the concept and revel in the horror it inspires in them. Some things in fiction we accept despite them being clearly bullshit, obviously, but we are motivated to suspend our disbelief, and that motivation is often telling. Zombies aren't real, but we pretend they are because of what they do for a zombie story. (Or, if the zombie story sucks, we don't, and we laugh at its failure to convince us.) In Spotlight: Arcee, the motivation to accept the deeply unrealistic concept underpinning it is one that is motivated primarily by a misogyny it assumes is present in the opinions of its audience. Put a pin in that; we'll come back to my arguing that case later when we discuss Furman's prior work. The main takeaway here is that the comic invokes a common transphobic trope that exists to associate transition with violation and threat.

There is also, as you mention, the fact that the comic makes Arcee a woman (by its own internal logic, where surgically altering someone's body non-consensually does that by default) and then has that as the direct cause of her going into a violent frenzy. Needless to say, 'once she was given some indefinable Woman-ness, she lost her shit and became unreasonable' is uh. Well nobody ever accused Furman of being good at writing women of any description, did they.

This isn't specifically a transmisogynistic issue as much as it is just. A generically misogynist one. The transmisogyny comes in basically because it exists in the same story as the above, and so can't be separated from the whole 'forced sex change' trope.

It's especially worth mentioning Arcee is given some innate, obvious "woman-ness" attribute in-text, like it's something that emanates out from her in a way other characters cannot help but notice despite not knowing what a woman is. Arcee is like 'you can't HELP calling me 'she', you just KNOW that something about me is NOT LIKE YOU' so the metaphor is uh. Not subtle. Women have a Thing and the Thing is Woman-ness and also if you have it you go nuts. (Sidenote: as well as being offensive, this comic is just... REALLY badly written. This part makes no fucking sense.)

So those are the two main reasons it gets called transmisogynistic. Not only because of the things that happen in the comic, but because of how they interact with pre-existing stereotypes in broader pop culture and media.

But there's another reason Transformers fans specifically will point to this comic as an issue, and it's that this whole thing is Furman doing a meta-commentary on why he thinks "woman in Transformers comic bad". Furman has made it clear many times since his original run with Marvel that he thinks Transformers "having gender" is stupid- specifically, he thinks Transformers being women is stupid, because only women have gender and the default is implicitly masculine to him. (Optimus Prime being a masculine looking guy embodying stereotypically masculine traits voiced by a man who is called 'he' is fine, but Arcee is a no-no.)

He wrote a comic for Marvel about how Arcee was created to appease angry stupid human feminists, like this is in-universe why Marvel Arcee is a girl there- it reads completely as some sort of commentary on what he sees as 'political correctness' being forced onto the franchise.

And he kept doing this. His never-realised plans for the female characters in Dreamwave included all the women being revealed as Quintesson sleeper agents. Then, Spotlight: Arcee, where her existence as a woman is an artificial, deeply wrong imposition into a universe that has no need of her or anyone like her, a corruption of what these characters are "supposed" to be.

That it leans specifically on transmisogynistic tropes is less because it's deliberately going for that I think, and more because pop culture often pulls out transmisogyny to communicate a lot of the ideas here about womanhood as artificial or bad or corrupted or whatever. So when you reach for tropes to communicate these concepts, the overlap with media more specifically evoking transmisogyny is pretty much inevitable past a certain point. I don't think Furman wrote Arcee in this comic intending her to be a trans woman, even a horrible stereotype of one. I think he wrote her to be a metaphor for how "forcing" women into things where they "aren't needed" is unnatural and bad, and the easiest tropes that communicated that idea were ones about trans women, and what this says about society's broader transphobia is telling.

This was a lot of words to say about a short, bad comic that almost nobody has read by a guy whose career mostly consists, these days, of comics almost nobody reads. I probably wouldn't have wasted so many words on this comic except that I think it is a useful case study in how to recognise these sorts of things in works that sometimes evade notice because they profess not to technically "be about" trans folks. The key is not in what the "identities" of the characters are (they're fictional; they don't "have identities") as some defenders of S:A have insisted, but in what the tropes they use communicate and reinforce in a broader context. S:A is a shite comic. Don't read it. But if you read it, that's probably the most valuable thing you'll get out of it.

[mo0n-water]

hi :)

i’m sorry to hear that you had a bad day yesterday. i hope that you were able to give yourself some time to feel and then to recover because you deserve it! sending you lots of love and i hope that today was/is bit better.

what time zone are you in, btw?

my tbr is basically just any fic that i’ve seen someone like so it’s extensive and spans many ships and tropes so there’s something for any mood i happen to be in. i mark things for later on ao3 and it’s about 5/6 pages of fics… i can’t remember many off the top of my head but i want to read everything that eyra has ever written because i loved ‘a brief history of dragons’ so much and i’ve been putting off reading choices for forever but i’ll eventually get round to that. and of course black mass, i started it before exams but then i stopped so i’m going to go back and start it again.

i’ll have to give noah kahan a listen, everyone i know has been talking about him recently.

i love love love that you’re asking me questions back, you are genuinely making my day <33

good things recently… one of my friends, who i’m not particularly close to, bought me flowers for my birthday a few months ago after a conversation we had about how people don’t give flowers to each other enough, especially between friends. it was her birthday a few days ago and so i bought her some beautiful flowers and she was so happy with them. it feels so innocent and intimate to give flowers, i love it and i definitely will be doing it more often and without reason.

a lovely thing about my life at the moment is my friendship group. for a long time i’ve felt out of place with other people or not settled but now i feel so safe and comfortable with my close friends. it’s like i’ve suddenly matured and found my place. there are no arguments and no tension and it’s nice to relax into a group that is calm and loving and still exciting. i’ve finally got to the point where i’d have them over to my house just to do nothing with them and that’s saying something because i think domesticity is the highest form of flattery.

i’m looking forward to many things. i’m going to see a performance of the great gatsby tomorrow, i’m going to a harry styles show on friday, next wednesday i’m going to the bfi premier of asteroid city, the new wes anderson film and then next friday i’m going to a music festival, which i can’t wait for! after that it’s about a week or so until me and my best friend leave for our month long holiday through france and italy which i still can’t believe is happening!

sorry, i’ve been waffling for ages but questions:

- what’s your favourite picture on your phone and why?

- what’s your love language?

- what’s your favourite trope?

- what’s your favourite lyric of all time? do you write songs? if you have, what about of the ones you have written?

- if you could time travel, would you go backwards or forwards and what year for both would you go to?

again, sending you lots of love and hoping you feel better soon xx

ps. 264 HOURS

i ended up being a total bitch for a few days & concerning everyone around me, but i’m doing a lot better today! cried it out to the new noah kahan songs, reread looking for alaska, & the intersection of those two artistic experiences happened to help me realize why i was feeling the way i was. isn’t it lovely how art can offer you that? i’m thankful for that today. also thankful for your kind words!

i like your answers, especially in regards to giving flowers to friends. i’ve been thinking a lot about flowers, lately, both as gifts & as a symbol of finding love within grief. that’s a tad melancholic, but i think flowers are so beautiful as a sign of love (to anyone) because they imply a sort of commitment. a flower is going to wilt, so are you going to be there to replace it? rhetorical question. but anyway it makes me think of something john green likes to say about how love is not a feeling, but a choice we make again & again (loosely paraphrased!)

it sounds like you’ve got a wonderfully busy time ahead of you! have fun! lots of experiences. so jealous in regards to the harry show, omg, & the music festival? that sounds like a blast. (actually thinking of going to a music festival on thursday, so i wonder if it’s the same one haha!)

to answer your questions!!

i’m in est! same timezone as nyc. i’m pretty close to cst though. i feel a conflicting sense of loyalty to each timezone. i hope that tells you something about how bonkers i am in personifying things that have no business being that personified. but yeah it’s currently 3:30 am here. (4 now)

i don’t know if i have a favorite picture on my phone? there are a lot that represent really important memories, so it’s hard to choose a favorite. everything means so much to me in the moment. so i have a lot of favorites, but i’ll tell you about one. it’s a somewhat blurry selfie of me & my best friend sitting at a restaurant in savannah, georgia. i like that picture so much because that was one of the best nights of my life - and the best trips tbh, so iconic - and to me it represents a lot of things that bring me joy. (that friend is like the only person who reads these posts, so hello to her <3!!)

everything i do is done in an effort to express love. all of it. one thing that i find underrated is giving someone your time. what says ‘i love you’ more clearly than choosing to spend the day with someone? & what spells indifference more clearly than not making time for someone?

ooh, favorite trope! i think someone asked me this recently, & i can’t remember what i said? hm. well, if you’ve learned one thing about me from this, it’s that i hate picking favorites. but if i had to, i’d say enemies to lovers! i like reading about people learning to look at familiar things in startlingly new ways. i’m a sucker for a good road trip au as well, & stories about going back to a familiar place once you’ve changed quite a bit.

OH I LOVE YHIS. i love this so much. favorite song lyric!! okay omg i adore you for asking this.

all-time favorite: “i was cleopatra / i was taller than the rafters / but that’s all in the past now / gone with the wind” from cleopatra by the lumineers - i know that one’s technically like half a verse but UGHHH i can’t explain how much it means to me. and that whole song just means everything to me.

current favorite: “if i could leave, i would’ve already left” from paul revere by noah kahan. OUCH. this motherfucker from vermont captured my small town appalachian pain so succinctly.

favorite of mine: “i like to say i can’t get homesick for tennessee, ‘cause i’m always thinking of kentucky.” i love that line but it also haunts me because whenever i sing it, i get overwhelmed with this deep sense that the people listening Know Too Much lmaooo

time travel question! fun. okay so i have no interest in spending the rest of my life in the future or in the past, but i would like to spend a yom kippur in jerusalem in the time of the first temple. so that’s what i’d do if i could time travel. i don’t want to travel to the future at all, because that sounds like a lot of responsibility & i am a coward haha.

for your questions… there is a lot i want to ask you that wouldn’t sit well with your interest in continued anonymity, like what your name is, & how old you are, & where you’re from. also lots of other things that i’m not even gonna write here because they’re just embarrassing. i am giving you these instead!

- what is something kind that you wish someone would do for you?

- what is it that you like about anonymity? you could just as easily send asks with your name attached, so i’m curious what makes anon preferable to you

- and, of course, favorite song lyric? (also, favorite harry song? gotta ask)

sending good vibes & flowers 💐

[kanmom51]

So like ppl (I don’t think I need to specify what group of ppl they are) are trying to “debunk” gcft again on Twitter…and it’s been nearly 4 years. Like damn lol jikook rlly be living in their heads rent free. It’s kind of sad to see though, people saying that jimin was just the only available model or completely neglecting Jimin’s whole existence and saying it was just for the fans. Some also say that it was supposed to be a vminkook trip instead (where does this theory come from btw?), and some even say that tae was actually there but wasn’t filmed (LMAO). I’m guessing they watch a certain channel that uses a lot of rainbow text :/ I feel bad because the message that jk was trying to express through his art was completely lost on so many people:(

I don’t really understand why they feel the need to say things like this; if it really meant nothing, why are they still talking abt it 4 years later? Jk rlly impacted ppl w gcft and I’m here for it.

And yet again, thank god I'm not on Twitter.

JM was the only available model? For GCFT??? So now it's not a private trip with a travel vlog anymore, it's a work trip with JM the only available model tagging along???

Can they get anymore ridiculous than that? Rhetorical question, because, apparently they probably can.

The Vminkook theory was around for a while now. It came from a conversation the three had in BV2, one that was totally taken out of context. It wasn't about adding the dots here, it was about drawing the dots themselves and making up a stupid story to explain off JK&JM's private trip together.

How stupid can you be claiming Tae was there but wasn't filmed? So, JK filmed the available model, loving him through the camera, added a soundtrack that says he's in love with him, and left out his boyfriend, who was there with him, from this couples short film? OK, sorry, now that I wrote it down it makes sense. Taekook are real. NOT!!!

"if it really meant nothing, why are they still talking abt it 4 years later?"

You answered your own question anon. They are talking about it 4 years in because it DOES mean something. It means EVERYTHING, and they feel the need to downplay it or debunk it or whatever, because it is what it is, a love ode from JK to JM.

And btw, maybe it's better that it is lost to some people, that they cannot see it. Maybe that will keep JK&JM safe. The ones that needed to see it for what it was did (mainly JM of course, but also those that would support them and their relationship).

[sepublic]

This is probably annoying to you but, do you mind if you pseudo- psychoanalyze Matt as well? I mean, for the record, if you look back at episode 9, he DID try to help Luz and Gus while in detention. "The first thing you gotta do is... oh no. Already?"

I did notice that, too! It’s possible that he was willing to make friends, or Mattholumule just wanted to seize the opportunity to be in charge of others. More on that later...

(BTW It’s not annoying, it’s actually a lot of fun to get asks like these!)

If I had to give a read on him based on what little we’ve gotten...

Well, the impression seems to be that this guy is kind of an outcast, and for a bit of a reason- He IS genuinely a jerk. But I also have to wonder if the initial reason for that was something else, and his bitterness over this led to him being a bully to others...?

Namely, in the Welcome to Hexside short, as well as just in general, Mattholumule clearly gives the vibes of a butt-monkey who suffers. He’s someone who fails a lot at things and isn’t very competent, and people don’t think highly of him. The dude suffers and gets left behind, and nobody bats an eye- Not Bump, not even one of his fellow HAS members, who literally just watches as part of her salad attacks him. Granted, we don’t know if the commercial was filmed before or after his inclusion into the HAS, but the general idea is clear.

Believe it or not, his first appearance, voiced no less, was in Covention! I didn’t recognize him at first, but when Bump is making his presentation for the Emperor’s Coven, he repeats a rhetorical question frequently asked of him, “What is the height of magical achievement?”, and Mattholomule excitedly offers his answer of... inflating his head to a gigantic size and crushing a nearby student. Nobody is impressed and Bump feels shame in himself for Mattholomule’s failure as a student.

So Mattholumule has SOME genuine excitement for what he’s doing, and later we even see him talking to Lilith and observing her conversation with Eda with that same smug grin of his. @anistarrose even pointed out that he accepted a piece of paper from her, possibly a contact number or something! And we hear from Mattholomule himself that he wants ‘drama’ and ‘power’. Then he briefly cameos in the beginning of Episode 10, excited for the Hexside VS Glandus match.

If I had to guess, and some of this IS speculation... I get the feeling that Mattholomule is someone who’s a failure at a lot of things, kind of a loser who’s dumb not only in the academic sense, but also with common sense in general. He finds out that Luz is banned from Hexside and waits until AFTER the HAS meeting to sic the Trouble-Detectors on her... Meaning by then, he’s already exposed. True, he tries to take control of his narrative and apologize, but that’s something he would’ve done even if he didn’t know Luz was banned. The dude is just pretty dimwitted in general!

Not only that, but I bet Mattholomule is aware of his shortcomings- When he gets snagged by the detention monster, his tone is less surprise and more disappointment, with “Already?” implying that this sort of failure is something that happens often, and he hoped it wouldn’t come this quickly. Mattholomule seems to know that failure is inevitable for him, which is possibly why he wants power and status- To make up for this. I bet he was at least a little genuine when talking about how he wants approval... Of course, he’s also a bully, which could also stem from him wanting to make others feel small to make himself feel big, etc.

Mattholomule mentions that he’s been through detention several times before, possibly implying that he’s also familiar with the Detention Monster we see, but we can’t know for sure. As Luz said, he IS a bit of a jerk, and definitely a schemer- But he’s also incompetent. He probably got in trouble for cheating and a bunch of other antics meant to make him look cool or something. Mattholomule tries to seize leadership of the HAS because he wants power, authority, and respect because as a failure and an outcast he doesn’t get it much- Of course, even as the new President of the HAS his position was given solely out of pity and as an after-thought, and after seeing him lie once, I doubt the other HAS members will take Mattholomule’s ‘findings’ too seriously. So either way, he still messes up.

To sum it all up, the dude has a napoleon complex. He desires power and authority, and when he has the chance to tell others what to do, he takes it. Unfortunately, he’s also really dumb, incompetent, lacks charisma, and is an overall failure, which likely leads to people looking down on him, amidst Mattholomule being a jerk and a bully as well. He wants to be the center of attention in his own way, and I imagine he may be interested in joining the Emperor’s Coven for power and authority... But given his track record, I highly doubt he’ll be accepted. At this point he’s basically a joke character.

As much of a scheming jerk as Mattholomule is, he’s still also clearly a kid with genuine excitement and possible enjoyment for things that could be fueled by real fun and not just a desire for prestige. The guy can’t catch a break and he knows it... He’s like the Team Rocket trio, or Robbie Rotten- Always up to something but always failing through a combination of others and his own shortcomings. I also wonder that if offered genuine friendship, Mattholomule might actually take it wholeheartedly.

Also, he likes drama... possibly just a random facet of his personality, but also maybe because he likes seeing others in chaos because that makes him feel big and ‘in control’, as if he’s orchestrating things. Or he’s just that kind of petty, spiteful, and envious person who likes seeing others unhappy because he’s unhappy.

We may or may not see more of Mattholomule in the future. Dana DID say he was her favorite ‘jerk’ character, and one of the shorts included him. His role is likely to be pretty minor however, mostly relegated to B-plots, but hoo knows?

[dr-gloom]

Discussion is how we learn, expand our views, and come to understand others' viewpoints. If you're going to block everyone who expresses their views and call it hate because they disagree with you, why did you make a post trying to discuss an issue in the first place?

it wasn’t a post trying to start a discussion, it was an opinion i had that i screamed into the void. if i wanted to make a discussion i would have asked for people’s opinions. this is one of the problems with tumblr; people assume they have an innate right to debate every damn thing they read, but believe it or not most of the time people dont want to debate or discuss, they just want to vent, or scream into the void, or share their pov

there are a couple people who’ve reblogged my post with a list of indie films that i didnt block because thats all they did and idc, they can do that, fine

but im not gonna sit here and stare at the assholes insulting me over having an opinion, so i block them to get the comments out of my feed, as is my right as a tumblr user. you make your own experience, as they say

the fact that their indie recommendations get removed from the notes sucks, i wish it didnt happen, but they should really learn not to insult people if they want to engage in a discussion. the moment you insult someone they stop listening to understand and instead listen to defend. its counterproductive and i refuse to put myself through that for a bunch of strangers

if they wanna talk about their opinions and make a list of indie movies, they are more than welcome to make their own damn post

now yall need to fuck off, im sick of blocking people. you dont even know me, why the fuck do you care about what i think (thats a rhetorical question btw)

[language-escapes]

*cracks knuckles* Okay, so we’re doing this.

Let’s talk about Sherlock North.

Sherlock North is a new Holmesian adaptation that was announced yesterday.  It is described as a contemporary crime fiction series, taking place in Finland during Holmes’ Hiatus.  While on the run, he ends up solving some cases in a small town with the help of someone named Johanna Watson.

In the space of twenty-four hours, the tag is FULL of people saying it’s going to be awful, that it’s homophobic and engaging in ‘het-swapping’, that Watson being a woman is boring and overdone, etcetera etcetera.  The entire tag is full of this.  Twenty-four hours old, not even close to being filmed or produced, and the tag is full of people decrying it as bad.

I mean, we know NOTHING about this adaptation.  There’s a Holmes, there’s a Watson, takes place during the Hiatus, that’s it. Boom.  What the hell is there to hate yet?

Those of us who are veteran Elementary fans are familiar with this, of course.  We’ve lived through this before, and still live through it because people continually fail to understand that if you’re ragging on something, you should avoid landing it in the tag.  But let’s go ahead and address some of the things people are saying about Sherlock North.  Let’s take a look at the claims and see if they hold any water.

Because Watson is a woman, it means that Holmes/Watson won’t be a homosexual pairing; that’s homophobic.

Come here.  Sit down.  I’m going to hold your hand through this, because this is going to hurt.

Holmes and Watson aren’t a canon gay pairing.

I wanted to say it quickly, like ripping a bandaid off.  It’s going to hurt, it’s going to sting, but it also needed to be done.  The truth of the matter is that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, in the original canon, aren’t a homosexual pairing.  Now, we can certainly talk about how we interpret the text (I am a lifelong Holmes/Watson shipper; I will go down with that ship), and subtext, and coding, and all of these things, but the fact of the matter is that, in canon, Holmes and Watson are never actually written as romantically together.  Again, in terms of subtext and the way we interpret it?  Absolutely, it is easy to see them as being in love and so married and all.  But it isn’t canon.  It’s all interpretation.

What this means is that making Watson a woman is not, in itself, homophobic.  They are not ‘het-swapping’ because neither character was written as explicitly gay.  It’s just not possible.  No one is removing a real homosexual relationship from the story.

I know, it fucking sucks that it’s 2017 and we’ve never had a mainstream media Holmesian production with an explicitly queer Holmes or Watson, LET ALONE an explicitly queer Holmes and Watson that are in a relationship together.  I know that a lot of the people in the Sherlock North tag right now are angry, betrayed, bitter BBClock fans who thought that their show would make the subtext text, only to find that that didn’t happen.  And it sucks, I get that.  But that doesn’t make a totally different show homophobic.  And being hurt doesn’t excuse lashing out at a show and making unfounded accusations when, again, it was literally announced twenty-four hours ago and we know nothing about it.

If this is your argument against Sherlock North, how about you go watch some adaptations with queer characters?  How about The Adventures of Jamie Watson (and Sherlock Holmes), which is on youtube?  In that show Watson is bi, and Holmes is ace, and a number of the supporting cast also have LGBTQ identities.  Or S-her-lock, which can also be found on youtube.  Watson is trans and Holmes is an aro-ace.  I can recommend both of those adaptations wholeheartedly.

Watson as a woman is boring; a woman as the sidekick and help-meet, how original.

That’s primarily a matter of opinion, and you’re welcome to it, but I have to say, I’m offended on canon Watson’s behalf.  That’s all you think Watson is?  A sidekick? A help-meet?  I know Holmes calls him that in canon, but it’s also Holmes who claims that all emotion is useless and then tries not to cry when Watson gets shot.  I wouldn’t think of him as a reliable narrator, is all I’m saying.

And Watson as a sidekick is… I mean, I guess technically Watson COULD fit into that role, but that rather diminishes what a good Watson is.  A good Watson is brave, and loyal, and stubborn, prone to a temper at times, clever, a full partner in the investigations, compassionate and insightful, generous, self-sacrificing… what I’m saying here is, if you read the canon and just saw Watson as a sidekick, I suggest you go read it again.  And bring along the lenses that help you interpret the text as queer, because those lenses will definitely help you remember that narrators are often unreliable.

Watson as a woman is overdone.

Let’s see, in terms of mainstream media adaptations, I know of FIVE where Watson is a woman while Holmes is a man.  FIVE. They are:

They Might Be Giants (1971), with Joanne Woodward playing Mildred Watson; The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective (1976), with Jenny O’Hara playing Joan ‘Doc’ Watson; The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1986), with Margaret Colin playing Jane Watson; 1994 Baker Street (1993), with Debrah Farentino playing Amy Winslow; and Elementary (2012-), with Lucy Liu playing Joan Watson.

Five women Watsons. If we expanded the selection to include women Watsons against women Holmeses in mainstream media… we have six. That sixth one is Russian, btw. Not sure how mainstream it actually is, given that it doesn’t even have a Western world release.

If that’s your idea of overdone, I hate to break it to you about men Watsons and men Holmeses…

They only ever make Watson a woman so that Holmes and Watson can be in a romantic relationship together without having to incorporate a gay romance- THAT’S homophobic!

See point one regarding the homophobia.

But in the adaptations where Watson is a woman, IS there always a romantic relationship between Holmes and Watson?  Is this actually a thing?  This is a rhetorical question, I know the answer- no, they’re not always a romantic item when Watson is a woman.  In the most popular of the five adaptations above, They Might Be Giants, yes, Watson and Holmes are in a romantic relationship by the end.  The film is a cult classic, so I can see why it has imprinted on everyone’s mind, and why the heterosexual-appearing (bisexuality is a thing! As is pansexuality! As is asexuality! Not all of these are visible from the outside!) relationship between a woman Watson and man Holmes is something everyone remembers.

But in the other four? One can maybe argue sexual chemistry in some of them (it would take some arguing, though; it’s more subtext than text), but there is no actual romantic relationship between Holmes and Watson.  So if the creators of these productions made Watson a woman in order to have a romantic relationship with Holmes without queerness, they did a horrible job of it, because they forgot to actually include the romantic relationship.

(Fuck, those of us who watch Elementary just want Holmes and Watson to fucking HUG.)

Making Watson a woman isn’t progressive, it’s regressive; even if you get rid of the romantic relationship stuff, they often remove Watson’s key characteristics, like Watson being a doctor, or Watson being in the military.

Every single woman Watson is a doctor of some form.  Some of them aren’t practicing doctors, it’s true; neither was canon Watson when we first meet him, and in the stories he doesn’t actually start practicing medicine again until after he marries Mary Morstan, which happened in ~1887/1888 (don’t get any Holmesian started about dates…).  1888 was a full seven years after he met Holmes.  So even canon Watson, while having a medical degree, was not a doctor when we first meet him.

As for the military stuff… look.  In the first place, in the US military, women couldn’t serve in combat until 2013.  For the UK, restrictions on women in combat weren’t lifted until 2016 (though they could serve as combat medics and join other, technically non-combat groups).  But in the second place, and more importantly, our canon Watson served in the imperialist, colonialist British military in the Victorian era, a deeply awful time when the military engaged in genocides.  England is somewhat ashamed of that heritage, at least on some level (not on enough levels, of course, and not enough to get them to knock it off even now, but that’s neither here nor there).  Why the fuck would we want Watson serving an imperialistic goal, especially if a show doesn’t have the time or resources or, hell, interest to unpack what all of that means?  Very few shows can engage well in the complexities of military service, even ones ostensibly centered around them (*squints at NCIS*).  Frankly, I’d rather my Watson not serve in the military this time around if it means not having to deal with showrunners struggling and failing to make sense of the military mindset.

(ETA: Winslow was with the Red Cross during the Panama invasion. Thanks @sanguinarysanguinity!)

(Disclaimer: my entire family is military; believe me when I say this shit is complex, and needs a lot of energy devoted to it to do it right.)

The name fucking sucks.

Well.  I won’t argue with you there.

(Anybody know if this is just a translation of what the name is???  Because then I understand why it’s so bad.  Is it just a working title?)

The sum up

Take a look at all of those complaints I listed.  These are the complaints I saw over and over and over again when I went through the Sherlock North tag today.  Are you sensing a theme here?  Is there something in common with all of these arguments?

I want an explicitly queer Holmesian adaptation as much as the next H/W shipper.  I dream of it.  If someone gave me money to make my own adaptation, hells to the yeah would make them queer and in love.

But that doesn’t actually seem to be anyone’s main problem, to be honest.  The main problem people seem to have is that Watson is a woman.  

Someone can argue till they’re blue in the fact that the reason they’re upset about a woman Watson is because they want a gay Holmes and Watson relationship, but the fact of the matter is, we don’t have that relationship in any media, at all, and yet people still watch that media anyway.  And you can certainly be sad about the potential for a gay relationship being gone.  I do get that, and respect that.  

(Sidebar: in the world of things I find hilarious is the fact that, in this adaptation, Holmes and Watson COULD BE a gay couple!  They could be happily married!  Because John Watson could be back in London, sad because his husband was killed by Moriarty because THIS TAKES PLACE DURING THE HIATUS. Johanna might be a totally separate character!  Or Johanna IS our Watson, and Holmes didn’t know Watson before the Hiatus in this adaptation.  You know why that’s a possibility?  BECAUSE WE KNOW EXACTLY THREE THINGS ABOUT THIS ADAPTATION.)

But the hate?  That’s some bullshit right there.

If your issue is that Sherlock North is yet another adaptation where Holmes and Watson won’t be a gay couple, I do understand that disappointment. I would also like to point out that just because Holmes and Watson won’t be a gay couple in Sherlock North doesn’t preclude queerness, so you will want to rephrase that argument.  Watson could be a lesbian.  Holmes could be ace.  One or both could be bisexual.  Remember that queerness is this whole big range of things.  We don’t know enough about this production yet to say one way or another.  Just remember that two white dudes touching isn’t the only way to be queer, and that disappointment over the lack of white dudes touching shouldn’t lead to woman-bashing.

And if a woman Watson is your issue you don’t need to worry.  There are literally hundreds of other mainstream media adaptations with man Watsons.  In some of them, there are barely any women at all!  You can avoid women to your heart’s content.

Ultimately, most of the arguments against Sherlock North are just ridiculous.  It may suck.  It may be brilliant.  But it doesn’t have a cast, or a production crew, or any fucking funding yet, so we literally know not a single thing other than a general, broad concept.  So take a deep breath and step back.  Go hate women elsewhere.

(You know what I would like to see?  Some of this same outrage if Sherlock North ends up being a predominately white cast.  But if it has a white cast, suddenly we’ll hear all about how Scandanavia is just so white, it only makes sense for the cast to be white… and if folks got upset about race problems, they’d need to examine their own favourite Holmesian adaptations more critically, and we all know that ain’t gonna happen.  *sips tea*)