Well, Harriet, one could read lils post that way. But, Vhanja, I don't think it was aimed personally at you. I read it this way (and that question came up a couple of times):  Is a sympathetic " I'll talk him round" and a witty " I know when you're fibbing" and a warm smile in a lovely wedding dress enough to counterbalance what we get in HLV? For myself I can answer this with a clear No, but some fans see it differently.

Well, lil asked about the morality of such reasoning about Mary, and the reaction is runaround: Taking this question personally as if that would make lils statement less important.
So no need to discuss morals here anymore?

lil wrote:

So much written bout Mary lately - and I am still baffled by the liking and support she has..it seems not to matter at all what she did in the past , the huge lies she told , her planned murder of Magnussen and her assasination of Sherlock as a witness.
I seriously do wonder how any of this is balanced by anything else she may be...pretty..cute...funny. ..and the.. Magnusson deserved to die anyway... I find kind of shocking.....is there really no need for honesty or morality in modern society or relationships?
@I Agree@Solar..
IMO Marys behaviour toward John and Sherlock gets progressivly worse from episode to episode..its ambiguous deliberately...we think...oh was that funny/smart..or hmmm was that bitchy/nasty..and then when all is revealed...we think oh..yes it was nasty.

The Marys actions are all fine line...@look@Sherlock.... defeats the whole...turning Sherlock into a good man arc...does Sherlock just needs to learn to lie @fake it more thus putting on his own more pleasant facade...?.

Very good point , lil.
Sherlock can be charming too while manipulating others, he also does genuinely good and selfless things from time to time - yet his bad character traits are judged harshly by the majority of an audience and no one is looking at them in a sympathetic light.
Mary has some good character traits too, but as you fittingly pointed out, her dark past, her willingness to remove Sherlock from this life when he witnessed her real face, her lies... those are things too grave to overlook them lightly. And yet instead of judging them with gravity they deserve - as it´s in Sherlock´s case - people are dissmissing them with a handwave because Mary smiled and wittingly joked a few times in a pleasant manner.
Too gray characters, even similar on a superficial level, but judged very differently by the viewers.

Is this because Mary is a woman and thus more relatable to an audience of women, or is there some other reason?
 

I think the difference ( I won't call it double standard) is what Solar said: honesty to begin with.

Honesty and that, if we really want to go there and compare their actions, Mary killed Sherlock - and never showed any remorse. In the end it's as simple as that for me.

And since comparing Mary and Sherlock seems to be so much fun, why stop there? Why not continue and compare Mary to, let's say, Moriarty? One big difference: Mary killed Sherlock, Moriarty didn't. With Moriarty, just like with Sherlock, you knew from almost the very beginning what you would get. He at least had the 'decency' to let people in on his game so they knew what to expect.

If you are baffled by why anyone could like Mary, then perhaps reading the reasoning from the posts would give you a better answer than guessing?

lil wrote:

Is there perhaps a confusion here of tv margins of acceptability with IRL....?
As a tv character..taking Mary..as is..and writing murder off as acceptable...these days...is bit of a laugh..but IRL..would Mary supporters really accept an ex assasin..shooter of your best friend..hunted by various agency's and bad guys...etc etc as a friend or a person to trust around loved ones ...
Are some views just for tv personas...and some from IRL POV.
Maybe realism is out of place when talking tv shows.......

Yes, I view tv slightly differently than I do real life. Because in real life Sherlock would probably chew me out in two seconds flat, and I would hate the bastard - end of story. 

nakahara wrote:

lil wrote:

So much written bout Mary lately - and I am still baffled by the liking and support she has..it seems not to matter at all what she did in the past , the huge lies she told , her planned murder of Magnussen and her assasination of Sherlock as a witness.
I seriously do wonder how any of this is balanced by anything else she may be...pretty..cute...funny. ..and the.. Magnusson deserved to die anyway... I find kind of shocking.....is there really no need for honesty or morality in modern society or relationships?
@I Agree@Solar..
IMO Marys behaviour toward John and Sherlock gets progressivly worse from episode to episode..its ambiguous deliberately...we think...oh was that funny/smart..or hmmm was that bitchy/nasty..and then when all is revealed...we think oh..yes it was nasty.

The Marys actions are all fine line...@look@Sherlock.... defeats the whole...turning Sherlock into a good man arc...does Sherlock just needs to learn to lie @fake it more thus putting on his own more pleasant facade...?.

Very good point , lil.
Sherlock can be charming too while manipulating others, he also does genuinely good and selfless things from time to time - yet his bad character traits are judged harshly by the majority of an audience and no one is looking at them in a sympathetic light.
Mary has some good character traits too, but as you fittingly pointed out, her dark past, her willingness to remove Sherlock from this life when he witnessed her real face, her lies... those are things too grave to overlook them lightly. And yet instead of judging them with gravity they deserve - as it´s in Sherlock´s case - people are dissmissing them with a handwave because Mary smiled and wittingly joked a few times in a pleasant manner.
Too gray characters, even similar on a superficial level, but judged very differently by the viewers.

Is this because Mary is a woman and thus more relatable to an audience of women, or is there some other reason?
 

For Mary: At least in this forum (I’m not past of any other discussion groups) her negative actions seem to be (by and large) not at all dismissed. If anything I feel around here they spill over to every other aspect of her character. Because of her actions in HLV everything she did before that is now dismissed as false and manipulative. If there is truth in this or not will only be shown in future seasons, but for now it remains speculation. Until then I personally choose to continue seeing her as a character that seems to have both vices and virtues. I do not know if that is because I am a woman. Than again, I see Sherlock as a character with vices and virtues too (albeit with a different set of them) and I am neither a man, nor a genius, nor a private detective, so I have no idea where that comes from.
 
For the earlier Mary “having to” encourage the boys to go on an adventure together: I feel John and Sherlock are terrible at communicating with each other, especially in times of distress. In TGG John misses Sherlock’s reasons for his apparent disinterest in the victims’ fate, while Sherlock shies from John’s expectations of him being a hero. In ASIB both of them lie to each other about the fate of Irene Adler. In THOB Sherlock lashes out at John when he feels his foundation shaking. In TRF fall John again fails to see behind Sherlock’s reasons for seemingly not caring (about Mrs. Hudson’s apparent death) despite the fact that he has witnessed Sherlock throwing a man out a window (several times) after he had laid a hand on Mrs. Hudson. TEH is basically fuelled by their inability to properly communicate with each other (Sherlock’s clumsy re-appearance, John’s inability to react to that in a not physically violent way, Sherlock’s inability to properly apologise for the grief he caused John without simultaneously making John belief they are both about to die, John’s inability to tell Sherlock he has forgiven him all along without having to think they are both about to die). But until Mary played a more active part, there was never anyone around to witness those two heading towards the next emotional disaster. They where always alone for it, crashed (sometime quite heartbreakingly) and then had to work it out from there. So when Mary see’s that Sherlock is about to break down under the anxiety about the impending wedding, she tried to avoid that disaster from happening, giving Sherlock the chance to express all his love for John in a more opportune manner during his speech. And yes, a few months later the same person, in very different circumstances, decides to shoot Sherlock rather than risking loosing the life she has build for herself.

 

Last edited by Lola Red (March 13, 2015 2:58 pm)

lil wrote:

Is there perhaps a confusion here of tv margins of acceptability with IRL....?
As a tv character..taking Mary..as is..and writing murder off as acceptable...these days...is bit of a laugh..but IRL..would Mary supporters really accept an ex assasin..shooter of your best friend..hunted by various agency's and bad guys...etc etc as a friend or a person to trust around loved ones ...
Are some views just for tv personas...and some from IRL POV.
Maybe realism is out of place when talking tv shows.......

lil, I absolutely agree with you real life is something completely different to me than a fictional world (even one that resembles the real world in some ways). IRL, Mary would be a monster for shooting an unarmed man and likely many more in her lifetime, John would be both stupid and heartless to stay together with the woman who lied to him and almost killed his best friend and Sherlock would be all of the above for shooting an unarmed man, keeping Mary around and even helping her covering up her past murders and leaving his best friend with someone with such murderous tendencies. Yet, in the fictional world that the show has created, I can empathise with all of these characters and even root for them, most of all Sherlock himself.