It would not be groundbreaking because male friendships are the standard since the dawn of time.
It would be a change if they made it for a male-female couple because romance it's the standard since the dawn of time, even if it would be a misuse of romantic coding, which are a language and not a reality that is needed to represent strong friendship.
Plus it would be discrimination because the use of coding consistently used for romance in male-female couples is used differently. Not just a misuse, but a reinforcement that couples already discriminated are different.
Quite the contrary, it would put representation steps back.

Even if one for some reason wanted to subvert the rules of romantic coding, it cannot be done on kind of couples that due to discrimination barely had any romantic coding for them if not aimed at queerbaiting.
It would be like "Let's subvert the male friendships that have always been there, some times with romantic coding for queerbaiting, with a male friendship and romantic coding."

Last edited by Ho Yay (January 28, 2016 6:22 pm)

I think in British tv the old tropes are dead  . It's not new or ground-breaking to have romances of any kind and hasn't been for a long time . The Fall on BBC2 has Stella as a female bi lead , Broadchurch has two main characters as gays , and in those series the tropes - clues etc in several scenes let you guess the kisses were coming before they actually did .No one really cares about sexuality in the UK anymore?
I suppose the global fall out could be epic and out homophobes by the nation , which would be very funny.

What I want to know is: who sets these rules and who says the BBC team have to stick to them?!

Whisky wrote:

These tropes... it's like somebody tells me, you have to learn the language to understand anything. And I'm feeling like: why? The show always made sense to me without knowing any tropes.

I'm not talking about male friendship as standards. I am talking about the kind of friendship we see in Sherlock. If we get stuck with a) and b), as in a) standard friendship an b) classical romance, there will never be anything groundbreaking happening in between, I quite agree.
 

People already know the trope language if they have seen TV with any romance in their lives, it's heteronormativity that blinds to the coding, there is an actual issue in society, you understand your native language even when you haven't studied grammar.
Representation that there is now is far from enough even if it's there and not as varied as it should, it's still an issue. Sherlock specifically would be the slow burn romance which defies all hetoronormative arguments that I've seen in this thread and others on why they don't look like a romantic couple. Just the fact that this arguments have been used here marks how much this kind of representation is needed. Plus if with this kind of coding this representation wasn't given it would reinforce the idea that those heteronormative arguments were right,
BBC doesn't have to stick to anything, but queerbaiting hurts people.
And a romance of this kind will be quite groundbreaking both because it's rare and because it has something to teach about equality in representation.
Super strong male friendship have been the standard along with regular friendships since the dawn of time as well. The mere use of romantic coding for male-male non romantic couple hurts representation alone independently of what happens in other shows. Queer couples are still discriminated and are just getting better now, you don't do anything groundbreaking by keeping queerbaiting on.

Little Weed wrote:

Also the Moff wrote what was essentially a guidebook to romantic tropes in a comedy setting in his show Coupling. In fact the fact they haven't found the country squires legs in TAB brings to my mind an episode of Coupling titled "The Man with Two Legs" because it's now lodged in my world view as a reference point which is what tropes are.

Good point, Little Weed. Never knew Moffatt wrote similar thing. 
 

And it´s quite a proof that Steven knows how these romantic tropes work and what impression you will arouse when you´ll add them into the story.

Interesting on how the human mind works . Maybe that explains S Korea as a hugely into films and media nation , recognising it as a romance from the beginning.? Also thinking Japan . 
Everything is changing though and has already changed for a lot of people. The old always makes way for the new. Sherlock is definitely part of whats paving a way , or even laying a yellow brick road.

Last edited by Mothonthemantel (January 28, 2016 8:39 pm)

besleybean wrote:

Yes, I'm sure he used them to great effect when writing John and Mary.

 
Yeah... "Where are you going?"

@ Little Weed It's the only romance I see in BBC Sherlock.

Last edited by besleybean (January 28, 2016 8:44 pm)

besleybean wrote:

@ Little Weed It's the only romance I see in BBC Sherlock.

 
That's fine... beaslybean each to their own after all...

I think it's adorable Sherlock has cushions on his chairs... Steve doesn't even know what cushions are for...