chancellornaberrie:

#i don’t think i can out into words just how pivotal this moment is #because for so long we’ve been presented this female Chinese-American Watson and decided not to question it #“why is her last name Watson? because her father’s white; let’s move on’ ’#“watson doesn’t have to be a white male; here’s proof of that!” #and that’s a perfectly fine way to engage a text#but suddenly we have this; something that engages in the complexity and cultural baggage behind that kind of name; that kind of title; #the cultural heritage and the politics of otherness vs assimilation that an immigrant’s name bears #that’s *huge* in terms of the meta-narrative and how to interpret a text because so many Holmes adaptations are just different variations o #of the same song #Joan Watson was not born a Watson; she stepped into the name #it doesn’t just challenge and update the Holmes mythos but actively interrogates it #by asking it why this narrative is a) so exclusionary and b) so stifling in its interpretations #that’s extremely meaningful in terms of how we engage with cultural symbols and a franchise as symbollic as the Holmes mythos (via @stardust-rain)