BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 » Mary

SusiGo · June 17, 2015 2:04 pm

I think the explanation is quite simple: Mary is written to polarise and there is not much place for middle ground in the discussion. Most people have a very clear opinion about her.

Vhanja · June 17, 2015 2:07 pm

Harriet wrote:
It could be that exaggerating makes such things worse instead of better.

It could be that not putting all the blame on the minority could also help.

Vhanja · June 17, 2015 2:08 pm

SusiGo wrote:
I think the explanation is quite simple: Mary is written to polarise and there is not much place for middle ground in the discussion. Most people have a very clear opinion about her.

Yeah, in a way that's true. But I feel my opinion of her is quite complex, because she is a complex character. She isn't nice, sweet and innocent. Yet she is not horrible and villan-y. She is, like Sherlock himself, very complex and contain both some very, very good qualities and some very, very bad.

SusiGo · June 17, 2015 2:12 pm

Sorry, but what are her good qualities? Because if the true Mary is the one we get after the revelation in HLV, I cannot see anything good in her. And we have to assume that the other Mary is just a facade.

Last edited by SusiGo (June 17, 2015 2:14 pm)

Vhanja · June 17, 2015 2:14 pm

I think all Mary we see is the true Mary. I think the supporting, funny and caring Mary we see in TEH an TSoT is also the true Mary. Hiding her past doesn't mean, to me, that everything she did before the reveal was a lie. To keep a secret does not mean that all your smiles are fake.

tonnaree · June 17, 2015 2:14 pm

Mod Side note regarding discusions in general. Remember, pro or con, minority or majority, let's focus on the content of opinons and everyone try to not take things personally.

And now, some naked dancing.................................*conffetti*

Last edited by tonnaree (June 17, 2015 2:15 pm)

SusiGo · June 17, 2015 2:15 pm

I think we have to agree to disagree on that. And as I said before, I did not like her that much in TSoT either.

Thank you, tonnaree.

Last edited by SusiGo (June 17, 2015 2:16 pm)

Vhanja · June 17, 2015 2:16 pm

Yeah, I don't think we will get any further on this.

Lola Red · June 17, 2015 2:17 pm

SusiGo wrote:
I think the explanation is quite simple: Mary is written to polarise and there is not much place for middle ground in the discussion. Most people have a very clear opinion about her.

Please refrain from speaking for others. You have made it quite clear that you have "a very clear opinion" of Mary and so have others. That is fine. But there are indeed people who are still making up their opinion and might even wait until next season or longer to make up their mind. That should also be fine. The point of a discussion is not to prove someone right or wrong, but to see an issue from several points and for that every standpoint is valuable.

lil · June 17, 2015 2:30 pm

Mentioning the middle ground Vhanja , I tried quite hard to imagine a headcanon (excuse the word) that made a Mary an ok person to me.
It went something like Magnussen found out about Mary because of Mycroft so Mycroft made Mary Johns sort of body guard type person and etc and then I tried to find a good explanation for shooting an innocent witness and thats where I get stuck because I can give a pass on shooting people like Magnussen , but not on hurting innocents , and it stopped being fun.
As fans that enjoy thinking and talking about Sherlock etc we do it for the fun and Sherlock is pretty much always funny , that fans find it difficult to excuse shooting the hero or finding it amusing is not really surprising.
We are all biased from the start , the writers must know that.

mrshouse · June 17, 2015 2:33 pm

Sorry, but I have never seen Susi aiming to prove anybody wrong here. She discusses and moderates very thoughtfully and open to counterarguments ( which is not the same as getting convinced). Also I never had the impression that she has trouble if anybody clearly states that he has not made up his mind about a matter.

Lola Red · June 17, 2015 2:34 pm

SusiGo wrote:
Sorry, but what are her good qualities? Because if the true Mary is the one we get after the revelation in HLV, I cannot see anything good in her. And we have to assume that the other Mary is just a facade.

I like Irene Adler’s quote of: “Do you know the big problem with a disguise Mr. Holmes? However hard you try, it is always a self-portrait.”
To me that is exactly what makes (or at least potentially, depending on the further developments, makes) Mary interesting: She is both: the loving, supporting woman that we see in TEH and the cold-blooded woman with the gun that we see in HLV. She is the nurse and the assassin. I would actually be quite disappointed if TPTB decide to let her be only one of the two: the sweetheart or the ultimate villain. I like a character that I don’t know what to expect from.

Vhanja · June 17, 2015 2:37 pm

I don't need to find the shooting to be ok or justified to find Mary a complex and non-villany character. Just as I can't justify everything Sherlok does either. I don't want to and I don't need to. I like that these people are flawed. Not just cutely flawed with a rude remark here and there, but that they actually step so far out of the line that I can't find a way to justify their actions. That intrigues me.

I agree with what you said, Lola. It's more or less exactly how I think as well. I don't need to make Mary into the loving nurse only to find her intriguing.

Last edited by Vhanja (June 17, 2015 2:38 pm)

lil · June 17, 2015 2:46 pm

Maybe explained badly , point being that the pov that everythings all fine with Mary now and it's been explained , is likely the majority pov of the general audience outside of the forum.

Lola Red · June 17, 2015 2:47 pm

mrshouse wrote:
Sorry, but I have never seen Susi aiming to prove anybody wrong here. She discusses and moderates very thoughtfully and open to counterarguments ( which is not the same as getting convinced). Also I never had the impression that she has trouble if anybody clearly states that he has not made up his mind about a matter.

You misunderstood. I never meant to say that Susi tried to prove anyone wrong. I just ask her to refrain from speaking for others by exclaiming that “there is not much place for middle ground in the discussion” when there have been and still are people who would like to discuss exactly that: the middle ground. Which, in my opinion, is just as valuable for the discussion that the extreme positive or negative ones.

SusiGo · June 17, 2015 2:53 pm

Lola Red: Wow, what did happen in here? I really cannot see anything wrong in saying that some people are of such and such an opinion after having discussed this subject for more than a year. I honestly feel a bit insulted if you insinuate that I am speaking for people who do not share my opinion. I have never said "all people" or "all members" or anything that like. But those who share my opinion will hopefully will not mind myself speaking for them as well.

Last edited by SusiGo (June 17, 2015 3:03 pm)

Lola Red · June 17, 2015 3:07 pm

I did not mean to offend you, if I did I apologize. Yet I still feel that your wording might have been unlucky. “There is not much place for the middle ground in the discussion” has a strange ring to it when people are doing (or trying to do) exactly that. I can understand that after a year of discussing you might feel that you have heard most of the opinions and that there is not much left to talk about. But the fact that there are people who still wish to keep discussing (and that includes all possible views of the character, form the negative over the undecided to the positive) shows that there is a place in the discussion for these viewpoints. It is up to you to decide to join or to ignore the discussion, but there is a place for it and it is exactly what I created this thread for.

Last edited by Lola Red (June 17, 2015 3:08 pm)

tonnaree · June 17, 2015 3:09 pm

Lola Red wrote:
SusiGo wrote:
I think the explanation is quite simple: Mary is written to polarise and there is not much place for middle ground in the discussion. Most people have a very clear opinion about her.
Please refrain from speaking for others. You have made it quite clear that you have "a very clear opinion" of Mary and so have others. That is fine. But there are indeed people who are still making up their opinion and might even wait until next season or longer to make up their mind. That should also be fine. The point of a discussion is not to prove someone right or wrong, but to see an issue from several points and for that every standpoint is valuable.

I don't think Susi was really "speaking for other people." She's just expressing an opinion bassed on what she has seen here in the forum and in the fandom in general. I myself I've seen that Mary as a character has been a very divisive subject all over the fandom.

SusiGo · June 17, 2015 3:31 pm

Yes, tonnaree, and thank you.

And I think the fact that I still join the discussion after all this time shows that I neither wish to ignore it nor think that I have heard everything and that there is nothing left to talk.

Lola Red · June 17, 2015 3:36 pm

tonnaree wrote:
Lola Red wrote:
SusiGo wrote:
I think the explanation is quite simple: Mary is written to polarise and there is not much place for middle ground in the discussion. Most people have a very clear opinion about her.
Please refrain from speaking for others. You have made it quite clear that you have "a very clear opinion" of Mary and so have others. That is fine. But there are indeed people who are still making up their opinion and might even wait until next season or longer to make up their mind. That should also be fine. The point of a discussion is not to prove someone right or wrong, but to see an issue from several points and for that every standpoint is valuable.

I don't think Susi was really "speaking for other people." She's just expressing an opinion bassed on what she has seen here in the forum and in the fandom in general. I myself I've seen that Mary as a character has been a very divisive subject all over the fandom.

It seems to me to boil down to a misunderstanding. Going by her hurt reaction Susi obviously did not mean “there is not much place for middle ground in the discussion” to translate to “no-one is interested in a discussion of the middle ground viewpoint”. I am still not quite sure what her true meaning was, but I assume something along the lines of “few people have yet argued the middle ground viewpoint” (please correct me if I am wrong)