I am thinking that Mary Sue might have slightly different meaning for different people. I didn't view Mary as a Mary Sue after S3, but I started to after TAB. Not because she is highly competent - Molly and Irene are both highly competent in their own fields. Irene is also a character that is strong and able to survive, yet she is far from a Mary Sue.

In TAB (the modern day scenes), Mary seemed to not only outsmart Sherlock, but also Mycroft and the entire MI6. I don't think that is a positive thing. 

It reminds me a bit about Peter Jackson's reasons for not having Faramir being able to ignore the power of the ring (as he does in the book): You spend an entire movie building up the power of this ring, and how strong it it. Having a person come out of the blue and being able to easily ignore it, would be to negate and diminsh the power of it. 

Same thing with Sherlock and Mycroft. Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be a master in his field, one of the most intelligent men in Britain. He is outsmarted only by his brother, who is even more clever. And then, out of blue, comes this character who can see through Sherlock, outsmart him, outsmart his brother and hack MI6 from her mobile phone in less than two minutes. To me, that is not being highly competent. That is being a Mary Sue. And it negates the position of Sherlock and Mycroft that they have spent several seasons trying to build.

Moriarty is almost a match, which you need if your hero is to have a nemesis.

Irene seemed to outsmart him, but at the end she didn't - because of sentiment. She showed her weakness, that she wasn't perfect. Neither was she smarter than Sherlock in his own field, she played to quite a different strength. Which makes her interesting.

@Vhanja She made Sherlock rescue her and Mycroft thinks she's dead!
@Nakahara: you don't think Mary has flaws?!

Last edited by besleybean (July 19, 2016 8:42 pm)

Oh, we cross posted.

besleybean wrote:

@Vhanja She made Sherlock rescue her and Mycroft thinks she's dead!
@Nakahara: you don't think Mary has flaws?!

She didn't make Sherlock rescue her, I got the impression he did it by his own accord. Also, Mycroft think she's dead because Sherlock was a part of it ("It would take Sherlock Holmes to fool me").

nakahara - I don't think Mary shooting Sherlock is treated as a virtue in the series. To me, that becomes the opposite of Mary Sue - disliking a character so strongly that everything the character does or doesn't do is seen through a negative filter and interpreted as something bad. (I think Sherlock could win the prize for malicious sarcasm, so Mary certainly doesn't outrank him in that field).

Last edited by Vhanja (July 19, 2016 8:50 pm)

Maybe... I don´t try to claim that my POV is the most correct one and the POV of others is not.
It´s just the impression I have after watching S3 anf TAB. I don´t know why, but Mary´s conduct doesn´t seem very kind or witty to me, although it probably was an intention of the authors to make it seem that way.

Her Mary-Sue-ness in TAB can be forgiven because TAB is entirely a made-up fantasy and the people in it don't actually have to conform to realistic standards, particularly with a character that Sherlock still has very little clue about. Assuming he didn't read the AGRA stick (which I think he may have, but let's assume not) then he still doesn't know the first true thing about her, which in his eyes, makes her seem extremely powerful.

Edit: And if he DID read the stick, then he knows she's powerful and dangerous, and would present her that way in his hallucinations/dreams/MP.

Last edited by GimmeCat (July 20, 2016 1:14 am)

I think that Mary in TAB has a strong connection to Mycroft and that this is not a coincidence but Sherlock's way of thinking. If you wish, please have a look at this:

http://stillgosherlocked.tumblr.com/post/147590764083/mycroft-mary-m

I agree that it's no coincidence. There has to be some explanation for Mary having apparently no connection to Mycroft pre-TAB, and then Sherlock seeing them as connected in TAB. 

I think also, though, the "M" in TAB is a reference to ASIP - we think it's Moriarty and it turns out to be Mycroft.   Which of course could mean that the "M" in TBB means exactly the same thing.  They did leave that one open. 

Mary Sue definition is much, much larger and does not neccessarily mean that Mary Sue must be an Author´s Avatar:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

In the case of TAB, we really don´t know if Mary´s breaking the security of MI6 was real or not. To me, it seems real enough - the last scene of Sherlock waking up on a plane directly continues the dialogue about drugs from this scene. How could they continue their musings about drugs, if the first part of it was only in Sherlock´s head, I wonder? (What isn´t real, IMHO, is the scene with Sherlock waking up in a hospital and ending with dug up corpse jumping at Sherlock.)

Which, in result, means that Mary outsmarts Mycroft, MI6 and their security, easily finds the case hundred years old and even deduces what Sherlock was doing during his 4 minutes long exile.