I do not see a single caring moment in Mary in the whole of HLV. At least not until the tarmac and I am not sure about that either. 

stoertebeker wrote:

What about Mary comforting her neighbour at the beginning of HLV? And what about TEH and TSoT? There were a lot of loving, caring moments from her - at least I can see them. That's probably the whole problem, if someone detest a character to such extend as some here does, it's almost impossible to see any good moments she had (or one tend to interpreting everything as malice). Like Vhanja I prefer a more differentiated perspective on a character.
 

Yes, my thoughts exactly.

stoertebeker wrote:

What about Mary comforting her neighbour at the beginning of HLV? And what about TEH and TSoT? There were a lot of loving, caring moments from her - at least I can see them. That's probably the whole problem, if someone detest a character to such extend as some here does, it's almost impossible to see any good moments she had (or one tend to interpreting everything as malice). Like Vhanja I prefer a more differentiated perspective on a character.
 

Yes, Mary patted the back of her neighbour comfortingly when she was crying. But right after, she tried to prevent John from helping this neighbour when he decided to find her son for her. In my eyes, this makes her kindness in that scene a bit dubious.

Mary´s kindness from TEH and TSOT, on the other hand, was invalidated for me when we discovered that whole Mary´s indentity is fake. With this knowledge in mind, her kindness could well be a mask and who knows what she was thinking or doing behind John´s and Sherlock´s back where she was not wearing a disguise of a meek and mellow nurse? Well, we could only judge from her actions and her actions in HLV were a bit not good (kicking a coin so that gravely injured Sherlock was forced to bend and pick it up was a good example).

As to villification:
Vilification is a public act that incites others to hate or to severely ridicule individuals because of their race, religion, sexuality or gender identity.

But people don´t have the low opinion of Mary based on her gender, race or religion. People have low opinion on her based on her acts (murders for hire) which include the attempted murder of her friend who offered to help her. And the last time I checked, murders were held to be reprehensible in every human culture on earth. So I´m not sure if pointing out Mary´s bad side can be considered vilification.

I despise characters like Hannibal or Dexter on the same grounds, perceiving their stories as an undue adoration of murderers. Do I "villify" them, according to you?

This spiralling tendency will maybe be stopped by some new data from S4, but with the data available to us now, I still cease to see Mary in a flattering light.

nakahara wrote:

I despise characters like Hannibal or Dexter on the same grounds, perceiving their stories as an undue adoration of murderers. Do I "villify" them, according to you?

I didn't use the term 'villify' (I never heard of this vocabulary before tbh), I used the word 'detest' because that is what I think many people in this thread feel towards Mary.

I just can state that I can not not see the caring and lovely moments we saw of Mary in the first episodes of S3 "just" because of what happened in HLV. I don't think that all of that was an act. Why should it?
I am not happy about the developement of her character in HLV either, I really wish that the writers would have chosen an other back story for her. But I think that people can not be devided into good and bad and that's also exactly what Mofftiss does't do in this series (IMO).

nakahara wrote:

This spiralling tendency will maybe be stopped by some new data from S4, but with the data available to us now, I still cease to see Mary in a flattering light.

Just because people like Vhanja or me doesn't hate/detest Mary, doesn't mean that we like her either. There are nuances between love and hate, black and white, liking and don't liking.
 

Vhanja wrote:

I am unable to see why HLV should nullify what she did in previous episodes (but it goes with what I wrote earlier, it helps explain to me how some people are able to see her as wholly black). I see everything as a whole.

Because it was HLV in which we realised (and were directly told) that the character named "Mary Morstan" doesn´t exist? That this was only the name of a stillborn baby, used as a false identity for an assasin of unknown past of origin? That her personality thus far was only a cover for something else? With this knowledge, why should I believe that the rest of her Mary Morstan image was not artificial too?

Vhanja wrote:

I don't see why everything we see of Mary isn't part of her personality.

Because the authors themselves told you that not everything we saw of her was part of her personality:

SHERLOCK (over phone): Only the very front section of the house remains. It’s just a façade. (He draws in a breath.) Remind you of anyone, Mary? A façade.
 

Last edited by nakahara (May 4, 2016 12:14 pm)

She was a spy and spies, similarily as actors, often act as someone they aren´t, to infiltrate different groups of people... she would be unable to do her job if she was incapable to do that, IMHO.

Very good quote.