I just want to know why you like Sally Donovan

 (Sherlock Meta by sylviatietjens)

Anonymous asked: Hello! I just wanted to know why you like Sally Donovan. I thought people didn't like her because she kept calling Sherlock a freak and putting him down. And she asked John to keep away from him. She also accused Sherlock of being fake in the last episode of series 2. I didn't like her at all because of all of this but I just wanted to know why you liked her just in case I've been missing something. Thanks!

sylviatietjens:

I love Sally.

What you have to remember is that Sally does not have the access to Sherlock’s character that the audience has. Prior to season 3 (and even during it), Sherlock rarely exhibits kindness and consideration to anyone but John, and even that is often subtle. To everyone else, he comes across as rude, arrogant and unfeeling.

Sally is a professional. She holds a high position in Scotland Yard, which is something that she would have worked very hard for, particularly considering that she is a woman of colour (and there’s a lot of institutionalised sexism and racism in the police force). Then an amateur (Sherlock has a degree in chemistry, he’s not a qualified police officer) comes along and is given control even though it’s not his job. Whilst doing so, he behaves in an insulting and intrusive manner by making completely unnecessary commentary about her sex life in a professional setting (“I assume she scrubbed your floors, going by the state of her knees”) and belittles professionals for their efforts.

Then let’s look at telling John to keep away and series 2. Sherlock has told people that he is a sociopath. We have seen him in various suspicious situations (e.g. having the suitcase in his possession, which he said would be in the possession of the murderer [of course he obtained it from the dump, but Sally had no reason to know or presume that]), and there was no logical explanation to the girl screaming upon entering the room other than Sherlock having been involved. Sally is paid to look at the facts and analyse them, and presuming Sherlock to be guilty was the most logical analysis. I’d also be the first to warn someone to stay away from a self-confessed sociopath with an appearance of psychopathy who knows an awful lot about murder, assists on cases for free (“He likes it. He gets off on it.”) and appears to have no friends by choice.

Sally is very good at what she does. If she wasn’t, Lestrade wouldn’t put so much faith in her. As to the calling Sherlock ‘freak’, of course I don’t agree with that, but I don’t condemn her for it, either. Sherlock, after all, has done much worse, e.g. prioritising his curiosity over human lives (see the conversation between him and Jeff Hope outside 221b in A Study in Pink) and was probably the initial antagonist going by their comparative behaviour around other characters. Besides, she’s a character mostly defined by her professionalism, and ‘freak’ just doesn’t fit in with that. It feels like a quick means to get the audience to side against her even though she’s arguably a morally better person than Sherlock is.

Sally is not perfect, no. But she is intelligent, sensible, hard-working and logical, and aren’t those the precise traits for which we value Sherlock? In fact, doesn’t she often exhibit them to a greater degree than Sherlock?