original here. dated 2012-02-29.
[A/N: This was after teasers for Elementary had come out, but before the season premier. So… not canon-compliant. And the author’s notes below are from 2012–I don’t agree with all of it now, but I thought it would add some perspective on my thought process]
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[[… Before One Must Start To Act.
So I’m writing this CBS!Elementary fanfiction before it actually comes out. To be honest, as I’m a BBC!Sherlock fan and this is a preemptive “I hope Elementary doesn’t suck, but I’m not really placing my hopes all that high” fanfiction. From what I’ve heard, in particular regarding CBS’ remake of John Watson as Joan Watson, I guess I kind of understand–because this is America, and they’ve seen all the shipping of Johnlock and goddamn America’s homophobia sometimes– not that I particularly like the idea. But then again, how many of us BBC!Sherlock fans haven’t read a genderbent fanfiction, am I right? So… it’s not that John is now Joan that bugs me. I also rather like Lucy Liu, and I like that they’re not restricting themselves to a Caucasian actress so that’s cool. What pisses me off about their remake of John to Joan is that Joan isn’t an army doctor. And… I don’t get why that is. So… this is me… trying to fix that?]]
Joan was a good girl. She got good grades. She held a small position in student council. She played clarinet, even if she didn’t really like it, because she was told that music was important to be a well-rounded person. She played softball because she liked it, but she didn’t pursue it as much as she wanted because she was told that academics were more important. She didn’t get into fights at school. She had a healthy, if modest, number of healthy, if modest, friendships. She was quiet and obedient and did everything that was expected of her.
Joan was a good girl. She graduated from high school, top of her class. She applied to colleges with good pre-med programs, and was accepted. She spent another four years getting good grades. She didn’t party and get drunk every night. She did not experiment with drugs. (She may have joined a few poker tournaments that may have had actual monetary stakes, but it was not that big a deal. She made nearly as much as she lost, anyway.) She did volunteer work at a nearby animal shelter and vaguely considered switching to veterinary medicine, but decided to stick with humans.
Joan was a good girl. She received her bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude (pre-med was a very difficult track), then went on to med school. She spent another eight years getting good grades and learning what it meant to be a good doctor. She did not crash and burn like some of her peers, nor did she (ironically) depend on drugs like others. She was in charge of a study group of equally responsible med students, and did not get drunk that often.
Joan was a good girl even in med school. Unlike a large majority of the other good girls, the other quiet and obedient girls, she did not go into pediatrics or oncology or neurology. She was particularly good at surgery. She was especially good at trauma surgery.
Joan’s parents were proud of her. She was their favorite child by default because, as far as they were concerned, she had not done anything wrong. (Not like her sister who became pregnant and only just barely graduated from high school. Not like her brother who was caught selling weed and was still living at home, constantly damaging the family cars.) She was quiet and obedient and did (almost) everything that was expected of her.
Joan was a good girl. She wanted to become a good woman. She joined the army. (She was still her parents’ favorite child by default, but they did not approve.)
Joan was a good soldier. She did everything her commanding officers told her. She completed every task given to her. She did not punch every moron who made a Mulan joke in the face. (Though really, that one was hard.) She went through fire arms training and discovered she was a also a good shot (a fucking fantastic shot), but she stuck with her medical training because that was good that was important (sometimes winning the war isn’t about beating the other side, but making sure your side survives). She saved some lives, and lost others (and killed others) but she was still a good medic. Joan was a good soldier because she was a good woman.
Then she got shot. (She thought she died)
Then she survived. Then she got shipped back home. (She thought she would have rather died.)
But Joan was nothing if not a good woman. And that made her a good soldier even if that made her not a good girl anymore. She could handle living in her parents’ home again, in that bedroom that used to be hers when she was a good girl, listening to her parents say I told you so’s and asking when she would find a husband, putting up with her sister’s visits and condescension about her family and her house and her perfect suburban lifestyle, dealing with her brother’s inappropriate jokes and his wrong assumptions about how the military worked (his stupid video games kept her up at night and sometimes she just wanted to take her old softball bat and go into his room and just start wrecking things until that ache in her chest just went away, jesus christ she was already 40 what was she doing with her life, she needed to get out of there, she’d do anything).
“Yes, can I speak to Dr Stamford? Tell him it’s Joan Watson… Hey Mike, about that job opening–no, I know I said my shoulder would make surgery difficult. But I’ve been doing physical therapy. Ha, yeah, I know–as if I weren’t a doctor, right? But listen, they actually said I’m making surprising progress. I should be at one hundred percent by next month. Oh, really? Two weeks? I can do that. Thanks, Mike, you’re a life saver.”
Looking at the medical records that clearly document the severity of her nerve damage, Joan doesn’t feel like a good woman anymore.
[[Basically the idea is that Joan falsified her records regarding her recovery so that she could get that job as a surgeon. It wasn’t until she lost a patient and they sued did people discover her fraud. As I understand it, that’s the premise CBS is trying to pull off (instead of giving Joan her rightful place as an injured army doctor). In a way, CBS!Elementary kind of has to be about both Joan and Sherlock failing then trying to redeem themselves.
Because, think about it, what would make Sherlock Holmes leave London? He fucking loves London. The only way he would leave London would be if he were exiled or if he felt like he didn’t deserve London. So that means he failed big time. And, you know, is punishing himself by going to New York. In turn, Joan has to be just as desperate and have failed to match.
The thing about BBC!Sherlock is that, though I love both Sherlock and John, they’re perfect. They are characters more than they are people. And that makes sense for BBC!Sherlock. But for any Sherlock Holmes to be outside of London, he has to somehow no longer be a Sherlock Holmes. Elementary’s Sherlock has to be a flawed Sherlock–and not only in the way that Sherlock Holmes as a character is flawed– but as a Sherlock Holmes.]]
JackSGreyson Says 