I am so ready for Harry Watson

 (Sherlock Meta by Loudest Subtext in Television)

Anonymous said: Do you think Harry Watson's ever going to appear on the show? I sorta kinda desperately want her to be the Sassy Gay Friend and run around telling John and Sherlock what stupid bitches they've been.

Loudest Subtext in Television:

LOL, I am so ready for Harry Watson. I REALLY want more backstory about John because all we have is Sholto, which is still left so vague. We know nothing about John’s childhood or parents or Harry. We got a decent amount of Sherlock backstory this series so I’m guessing we’re going to get more of John’s backstory next series.

I want Harry to read Mary to filth.

I want to see what Harry’s like when she’s drunk and when she’s sober. I want to know all about Harry’s teenage years and how she came out and how she handled it and how their parents handled it. I want to know if their parents were accepting or not. If they weren’t, it could explain John’s secretiveness about his sexuality to some extent… but then, he’s not close to his parents if they’re still alive — they weren’t at the wedding — so if they weren’t accepting, it would have had to have affected him pretty deeply for him to still care. But it absolutely could have! That wouldn’t be very unusual, really! People cut their parents out of their life all the time and still feel compelled to conform to what their parents wanted them to be.

I mean, the writers chose to give John a queer sister for a reason, right? There’s some reason for her drinking problem, and some reason John and Harry aren’t close to their parents. Is it because their parents rejected Harry when she came out?

Does John have some strained, tenuous relationship with them he hopes to keep intact by maintaining a heterosexual lifestyle? That would actually be pretty common for a bisexual person. My mom is weird about bisexual people, so I figured I would avoid the drama and just tell her if I ever ended up in a serious same sex relationship… but then I married into a heterosexual relationship, so it’s never come up. It can be difficult for gay or straight people to understand, but you just don’t think to yourself, hey, I’m going to go start a needless argument with my parents and come out even though I don’t have a pressing reason at the moment. You think you’ll do it when you have a same-sex partner and it matters. There’s also the common reaction parents have where they’ll tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about — especially when you’re younger — so you wait to have the same sex partner as proof. Then once you’re older, it just gets weird to bring it up for no reason. Everyone else knew when I was 14 and I didn’t hide it at all otherwise, and I never felt ashamed of it, but parents are a sticking point for people. My mom would get over it, but if John knew his parents wouldn’t, that’d be all the more reason to sweep it under the rug until there was a pressing reason to bring it up.

Or has John seen that Harry’s life has gone poorly, perhaps in part to her being openly queer? Was she targeted for bullying or something? When Harry goes on her drinking binges and John has to clean up after her, does she cry a lot about queer-related stuff? Does she present as very obviously queer and get shit for it? Have shitty things happened to her when she goes out with girlfriends? Society, on average, tends to be a bit more accepting of queer women than queer men, so does John see that and think it’s best to just keep it on the down low until/unless he gets a boyfriend? Again, that’s a very common thing for pan- and bisexual people to do. We can adopt heterosexual privilege to avoid trouble, and it generally doesn’t cause us the same inner turmoil as it would a gay person, so it’s sometimes paradoxically the best decision for one’s well-being. Even gay people have to do this sometimes. John may feel he’s just avoiding needless trouble by presenting himself as heterosexual. I think if Sherlock made it clear he was interested John wouldn’t hide it anymore, but until then, John doesn’t have much to gain by being openly bisexual.

I also want to know if Harry is older or younger than John. I’ve always assumed she was older, but do we ever have that confirmed? It would have an impression on John if she were older and he had to watch her struggle with her sexuality. He would have reason to embrace heterosexual urges and deny homosexual ones. That could also be the case if she were younger, but it may be more dramatic if he had seen that drama before he dealt with puberty himself.

I also wonder who they’ll cast as Harry.

It would make sense that we don’t see John’s queer sister until the show is ready to take on John’s orientation more in-depth. Aaargh, I can’t wait.