rise-up-prince-of-heart:

oxfordtweed:

° Watson is no longer the accomplished and decorated war hero and army doctor, two aspects of the character which have always, in some way or another, coloured the way the character behaves and the decisions they make. Not only does it change the character, but it sends a message that women aren’t capable of fighting for their country.

° Related to the above, Watson has no longer been invalided home from anywhere. Again, this is not only important to the character, but sends a message that war wounds are only sexy on men and that women are too weak to go through that.

° She’s a disgraced surgeon who’s lost her license. Oh. Not only has she had the military career erased, but she’s incompetent as well? Fabulous. There are so many other reasons for her to be able to be Jonny Lee Miller’s Boswell without also taking away the one thing that does make her successful. This is completely unnecessary, and once again sends the message that women can’t cope in fields that are predominately male-dominated.

°Joan Three Continents Watson will never fly. As much as I’d love to see this aspect remain intact, I strongly doubt it will. And I think this will be the biggest disappointment of the lot.


Poor reasons to be annoyed with CBS right now:

° Watson is a woman, so all the gay will be erased. What gay, exactly? The only Holmes I can ever recall as being canonically stated as gay was from the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and Watson was horrified to learn this. All other adaptations where homosexuality is mentioned have been rife with ‘lol they said “gay”’ jokes.

° Watson being a woman will kill the ship. Yes, because heterosexuals are so disgusting. Oh wait…

° I prefer to look at manmeat in my porn. … I don’t want to live on this planet anymore. I can’t even begin to articulate how ridiculous this is.



TL;DR: Yes. it is fine and dandy to be upset for CBS, but a lot of people are being upset for the WAY wrong reasons.

The very worst fucking part of this whole thing is the erasure of Watson’s history as a veteran.  That was the very fucking CORE of his character and removing that pretty much makes him (or her in this case) NOT Watson. It would be the equivalent of turning Sherlock from a detective into, shit, I don’t fucking know. The point being is that CBS pretty much is making Watson a completely different character. If they had kept who Watson is (a veteran, a doctor, the limp, etc.) and made Watson a woman, hey, that’s cool! That’s actually kind of a neat thing to do there and Lucy Liu is pretty great, but it’s so damn frustrating that Watson is now a doctor that lost her license? What the actual fuck? 

So, pretty much the above post is spot on. Why are people actually complaining that Watson is a woman? Who the fuck cares? A woman isn’t capable of keeping up with Holmes or she ruins your precious ship? Christ, that’s misogyny at its finest.

Yes exactly. I was trying to put my frustrations to words last night, but this is exactly it. We all read the same articles last night, they all said the same thing. That Liu’s Watson was a doctor who lost her license due to a patient’s death. 

….

……? What kind of surgeon loses their license because someone dies? Someone dies all the time. So, it must have been… malpractice? Okay, I’m assuming this would be a plot point and not actually true? Regardless, it’s a really shitty first glance. 

The bit with Joan not being a war hero actually makes me want to scream. John’s always walked the really nice line between pretty-general-easy-going-average-guy, and, Colonel John I-Had-Bad-Days Watson, in the original and many renditions of the work. When you take away the war, and the war wound, that sent him home, you take away the meat that gives John such a good relationship with Sherlock. 

Guys, guys— I think CBS just licensed another version of Bones.