@Lola, you make good points here, but my trouble is: if we take everything over the course of S3 at face value, then Mary is the definition of a Mary Sue: pretty in the restaurant and at the wedding, ugly in HLV. She's good humored, she's a lover and a friend. She's understanding of everything in the human nature. But also witty and funny. But wait, we need suspense! Okay, lets give her a dubious past and shoot the main character. Let the suspense endure for the sake of storytelling and let her be more threatening and cold! But now, what a great character!, she's not REALLY bad. So everything is forgiven and forgot. She's safe and happy and holding hands and keeping John in trouble. What do we need Sherlock for??
Ugh... I need a break from this perfection....

mrshouse wrote:

@Lola, you make good points here, but my trouble is: if we take everything over the course of S3 at face value, then Mary is the definition of a Mary Sue: pretty in the restaurant and at the wedding, ugly in HLV. She's good humored, she's a lover and a friend. She's understanding of everything in the human nature. But also witty and funny. But wait, we need suspense! Okay, lets give her a dubious past and shoot the main character. Let the suspense endure for the sake of storytelling and let her be more threatening and cold! But now, what a great character!, she's not REALLY bad. So everything is forgiven and forgot. She's safe and happy and holding hands and keeping John in trouble. What do we need Sherlock for??
Ugh... I need a break from this perfection....

I don't see her as a Mary Sue at all. She has flaws, just like evryone else. Being an assassin, being snarky, shooting instead of reaching out for help, threatening. Those are flaws, not Mary Sue-behaviour. 

To me, it becomes a bit of a false dichotomy - either she has to be a horrible person, or she is a perfect Mary Sue. Again with the black or white.

Swanpride wrote:

@Dorothy Please, allow me my humor. I need it in order to take a stand at a really, really unpopular opinion around here.

I think Mary's motivation for shooting Sherlock are one thing. I can understand why it is difficult to follow the writers there, especially since they deliberatly first make Mary as likable as possible so that her shooting Sherlock come as a shock for the audience, and then twist the whole thing around and after suggesting that she might be a danger to John (without every saying it, mind you, they just carefully word it in a way that it sounds that way but leaves room for other interpretation), reveal that what she did was actually done to protect John (at least in her mind).

But I have trouble when suddenly the friendly banter Mary and John share (and which John obviously enjoys) is supposed to be a sign of her sinister nature, or similiar claims.

BTW: I am not really ready to give Sherlock a pass for some things he does. While he has trouble to undesrstand human nature, he is also a scientist and should know that certain substances are unpredictable. I don't see how feeding John what Sherlock believes to be an unknown poison which is currently driving a man crazy can in any way be waved away as "oh, he socially awkward", or how it is in any way okay for him to feed John another poison which makes him loose a whole day. I can forgive a lot, but that's where I draw the line. Hopefully the writers stop including stuff like this.

The only way she was protecting John was by protecting him from knowing the truth about herself. It was all selfish, and not at all selfless.

as for Sherlock, what you wrote sounds a bit ironic to me. Like I said, I also don't like that he drugged John, but you don't want to give Sherlock a pass (when he: 1 - did it to solve that guy's case and potentially his life 2- apologised 3 - promised it wasn't going to happen again - and he's kept his word so far) but are instead willing to give Mary a pass, when she: shot Sherlock to cover her own arse so just for selfish reasons, was happy to keep lying to John, and even more selfishly was happy to keep putting him in danger since she has people going after her.

Again, you're free to have your opinion and I am not criticising, so don't feel like you have to defend yourself  - I just basically don't understand your reasoning.

Lola Red wrote:

nakahara wrote:

Lola Red wrote:

This is my point, why does it only work one way? The other way around it is head canon, white-painting, different context. Why can’t it be: “Ok, that is another way to look at it”?

OK, I stated many things that excuse John and Sherlock in my eyes + they were visible onscreen during the show. This (and Zatoichi´s) post was mostly ignored here. Please, do a similar thing and list some facts that we can see on screen during the show and are in favour of Mary - especially in HLV. This would be the best proof that not headcanons, but real facts are in play here.
 

I have done so in the great majority of my posts, but I will go into more depth assuming that you will have the grace to not disregard everything I say as head canon or circumstances that make everything I say invalid. In short, I think (or at least I assume until we get more data) that everything we have seen till now was genuine. So I think that her love for John and her friendship with Sherlock before HLV was genuine, I think her going into her assassin persona was genuine, I think her "I'm sorry Sherlock, I truly am" is genuine, I think the dangerous vibe she was giving off between the shooting and 221B was genuine, I think Sherlock’s renewed trust in her was genuine, I think her relieve at Christmas and at the plane was genuine. For me, that makes for a deeply conflicted character, one that is capable of shooting a friend to protect her secrets, but also for one that can feel love and friendship for other characters. Of cause there is always interpretation of the facts involved. If I would assume that Mary was planted, never loved John or liked Sherlock, then I would interpret the events of HLV different. But as I don’t here is what I hear and see, starting from the shooting as I think that would be the most interesting for you:

“Sherlock, if you take one more step I swear I will kill you” – Mary is in great trouble. She wanted to do this discretely, she wanted to have the life back she had built for herself. Now that Sherlock is here, this is no longer possible. He says he wants to help her, but he even if he means it, he couldn’t. CAM can only be stopped in one way and he has just prevented it from happening.
“No, Mrs. Watson, you won’t” – A.G.R.A knows that the sensible thing is to take this person out, then everything can go largely back to normal (she has helped John get over his grieve once, she can do it again), but Mary does not want to kill her friend, both collide and it almost costs Sherlock his life.
“I’m sorry Sherlock, I truly am” She is, she never wanted it to come to this. She just wanted CAM gone and go back to being with John and being friends with Sherlock.

(I will go from here to when Mary hears that Sherlock woke up with her name on his lips, because everything in between depends on the accuracy of Sherlock’s deduction)

By now she must have fully realized she is in trouble. Not only is CAM still alive, but Sherlock clearly remembers something. She has to get the message across. He cannot tell John under any circumstances, which is what she tells Sherlock in his drugged state.

(Then Sherlock flees the hospital, very aware that Mary poses a danger as long as he has information that she does not want John to hear. Mary goes after him, and through Anderson arrives at Leister Gardens)

She has a gun, and she thinks she is ready to use it once more to ensure Sherlock’s silence. Sherlock disagrees, otherwise he would not put John in the line of fire while he stayed out of the fighting zone. He is right, despite all her threating, she can still not bring herself to shoot him at first side. He starts to explain the trap, getting her to talk. Then he reveals his trick to her. This is definitely the end of her world, now John knows. Defeated, she follows them back to Baker Street, let’s John have his anger without trying to explain anything, she just goes blank and let’s everything happen (this scene plays out mainly between John and Sherlock, Mary only has very few lines in the whole 221B scene). Sherlock actually seems willing to take her on as a client and so, despite his anger, does John. She offers up all of her past in the form of an USB stick, flinching when she has to tell John that the letters written on it are her initials. It hurts to admit that even the name he calls her is not the one she was born with. She takes her chance as Sherlock’s and John’s client, but with every piece of truth she offers, the distance between her and John is growing. She has one request: not having to see this process completing, so she asks him to read what is on the stick without her watching. Sherlock gives his version of the events until the paramedics arrive. She, together with John rush to his aid when his knees buckle, but when the paramedics try to take over she stands back, looking not quite sure what will happen next.

(From there we get nothing until Christmas. It is not clear if John and Mary still live together at this point, but they apparently do not talk much.)

She seems very fond of Sherlock’s parents, but filches when Dad asks her if she is the “sane one”, she knows she isn’t. John comes in and (assuming they had the May wedding they were talking about in TEH and the whole CAM business happened a month afterwards) after almost half a year seems willing to talk, with all the Holmeses just one room away. She reacts snappish. He makes his speech and throws the USB into the fire. She cannot believe he would just take her back like that “but you don’t even know my name”, better even, he starts bantering playfully, so she joins in (we have seen that kind of interaction between them since TEH).

(At about this point, Mary faints and we only see her again at the plane. John’s questions to Sherlock imply that only Sherlock and Mycroft know about the details of the mission)

She gets out of the car, they have to say goodbye to Sherlock. They liekly think that thanks to Mycroft he has avoided going to jail, but he has to do some kind of job for him. CAM is gone, John is back at her side and Sherlock seems to have forgiven her completely, they hug, he even calls her his girl. As far as Mary knows, her nightmare has ended and despite all her mistakes there is no lasting damage done.

Actually, your explanation-- well thought out as it is, actually makes me dislike Mary even more. She's like a teenager whose priorites are, "Me, mine, MY relationship"-- and could care less about their impact on anyone else. Killing Sherlock, according to you, was-- though regrettable-- an acceptable risk for her-- as long as she got to "keep" John.  And the reason Mary didn't shoot Sherlock again at Leinster Gardens was because her face was projected on the outside of the building. 

One of the things I'd like to see people address is the weird, sing-songy, creepy way she threatened Sherlock in the hospital? That was beyond the pale. 

Vhanja wrote:

mrshouse wrote:

@Lola, you make good points here, but my trouble is: if we take everything over the course of S3 at face value, then Mary is the definition of a Mary Sue: pretty in the restaurant and at the wedding, ugly in HLV. She's good humored, she's a lover and a friend. She's understanding of everything in the human nature. But also witty and funny. But wait, we need suspense! Okay, lets give her a dubious past and shoot the main character. Let the suspense endure for the sake of storytelling and let her be more threatening and cold! But now, what a great character!, she's not REALLY bad. So everything is forgiven and forgot. She's safe and happy and holding hands and keeping John in trouble. What do we need Sherlock for??
Ugh... I need a break from this perfection....

I don't see her as a Mary Sue at all. She has flaws, just like evryone else. Being an assassin, being snarky, shooting instead of reaching out for help, threatening. Those are flaws, not Mary Sue-behaviour. 

To me, it becomes a bit of a false dichotomy - either she has to be a horrible person, or she is a perfect Mary Sue. Again with the black or white.

Everyone else doesn't shoot somebody just to keep lying to their husband about being an asassin! That's not just flawed, it's lethal and criminal! Not to mention being a  back-stabbing false friend, who you can't trust as far as you can throw her! This is NOT what normal people do. 

Dorothy83 wrote:

Liberty wrote:

But we don't get told that Mary killed "innocents", or that she did it "for money".  That's speculation, which may or may not be correct.  

You're right. We don't get told that. We get told something much worse: that was she did was so bad that John will stop loving her if he found out (by her own admission). Which, gosh, gives me shivers - do you think John would stop loving her if he found out that she did what he also did - killed criminals??

No, he wouldn't. So what has she done?? Tortured people? Killed children? what?

As you can see, it's really hard to feel better about Mary even if we cling to the fact that we don't get told in detail what she's done.

Liberty wrote:

The only target we see is the same one that Sherlock later feels justified in murdering 

Do you really think he feels justified? Because I don't see it that way. I see a man who has screwed everything up, naively provoked an evil man who will now certainly go after not only Mary but also his best friend (as in fact CAM starts doing straight away!) and is now desperate. I see a man who perfectly knows a murder in cold blood isn't justified hence why he makes sure he does it in front of MI6 so John wouldn't be implicated and they would know exactly who to arrest, a man who sinks down on his knees and accepts whatever punishment is coming his way. A man who has resorted to the extreme, illegal option in order to save John's life - but knows that it shouldn't have gone this way.

How exactly does he feel justified?

Liberty wrote:

And the big thing is, that we need Sherlock to figure out Mary - Mary's background only becomes possibly OK because Sherlock seems to trust her and because he carries out a similar crime and we still accept him.   We're shown a way in which murder can be acceptable in this fictional world.  I mean, if we'd been told before HLV that Sherlock would try to solve a case, but ended up murdering a businessman because he couldn't find the evidence he wanted, then we'd think that was unacceptable.   But we get a different view when watching it.

I have objections to this too. We've shown that the murder can be acceptable? Really? What we've shown is that Sherlock will be sent to his death. Either that, or possibly life imprisonment. What about that sends the message that what he did was acceptable?
As I mentioned above, in my opinion we are told that Sherlock is desperate, and finds himself having to choose between the lesser of two evils - John suffering, or his own suffering after murdering CAM. Neither of those are shown as acceptable, as I see it.
Also, once again - I don't see any similarities whatsoever between what Mary did (which would make John stop loving her) and what Sherlock did (which in fact saved John's life and which didn't make John stop loving him, at all).
 

I actually can't agree more with this post, Dorothy! Well said. 

And as much as it galls me that shooting Sherlock apparently wasn't enough to make John stop loving Mary-- it does make one wonder what the heck is in Mary's past that actually would turn John completely against her!

Swanpride wrote:

Dorothy, Sherlock apparently DID do it again or at least multiple times. During "A Sign of Three" he mentions off-handly during his wedding speech that John once lost a whole day because he poisoned him. The one reason I forgive Sherlock is because John apparently forgives him, and he is the actual victim. It is the same with Mary. Her "victims" have sat judgement over her, and who am I to demand that she gets punished further for lying to John and shooting Sherlock if those two have decided that she is worthy of their forgiveness?

 
And there again is the question, have John and Sherlock really forgiven her?  As with every other aspect of Mary's story, opinions vary wildly.

mrshouse wrote:

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

And as much as it galls me that shooting Sherlock apparently wasn't enough to make John stop loving Mary-- it does make one wonder what the heck is in Mary's past that actually would turn John completely against her!

 
Now that is a very good question, Raven....

The only thing I could think of (besides horrible things I don't want to imagine) is that she's done something she knows would offend John. So not just something everybody would think disgusting, but something that especially John would find unforgivable.

Maybe that Mary had an agenda against Sherlock and John and hurt someone they know before she fell for John for real. Or she is involved with Moriarty. Or it has to do with politics and wars and the army. Maybe she was the assassin in TRF aiming at John. Or she messed with Harriet. Or whatsoever would make John hate her. Maybe she simply wanted to confess that shooting Sherlock was exactly what she wanted and on the stick is the confession how much she loathes Sherlock.
Yeah, what do I know.
My strongest suspicion is still that she was planted next to John, plotted against him and Sherlock (hence Janine), but fell for John for real. Or is still lying when she says he wouldn't forgive her.
Round and round and round it goes.

Last edited by Whisky (September 18, 2015 6:38 pm)

I am not sure about the original story, but isn't Mary Morstan portrayed as a victim in the beginning? As someone who has experienced wrong? Which would mean there is also a positive connection, if we refer to the original story.
Mary could also have suffered. Be forced to do what she had done. As we know nothing about her past, we cannot fully judge her responsibilities. We assume she willingly, happily chose her career. But we don't know if that was the case. We know she turned out to be a very difficult character with many faces. But if we were presented a backstory where she was the victim, forced into an assassine job (imagine blackmail), and she then kept the job because her mindset was formed that way by then... what would we say? Probably we could even manage forgiveness, and see her positive. That's the problem about the black hole. It could hide stuff that pushes Mary inevitably on the dark side, but it could also redeem her - not in a legal way, but on an emotional scale.
But of course, if Mary really was such a character, she probably wouldn't offer her true backstory herself. On the stick could be all the explanation, Mary could have secretly hoped for John to read it and forgive her, and the scene where John destroys the stick would mean disappointment to Mary, but as he still forgives her, it doesn't matter anymore.
I'm not supporting that theory, I'm just trying to say that we really have no proof yet...
 

Last edited by Whisky (September 18, 2015 7:31 pm)

SusiGo wrote:

But we should remember that not the stick is A.G.R.A but Mary herself. So it is not necessarily the stick (i.e the treasure chest) that has to be empty, it could also be Mary herself. Empty in the sense of a blank, of someone unknown, a sort of black hole. 

Yes, and she kind of is to us at the moment, isn't she?  A great big unknown.    We don't even know why she stopped assassinating.  (Or even if she did?)

 

Last edited by Liberty (September 18, 2015 7:35 pm)