"Mary is no better than Sherlock." 

(Sherlock meta by asknerdymind 

and Loudest Subtext In Television)

asknerdymind:

I keep getting this argument in asks and reblogs and have ignored it til now. So, before we begin the comparisons have a disclaimer:

BBC's Sherlock is a work of fiction. Of course I don’t recommend shooting your spouse’s BFF or poisoning your flatmate for experiments. Everything I am discussing here is in the context of a fictional show between fictional characters and will, therefore, focus on plot and motive not “real world consequences”.

"John shot the cabbie. Sherlock shot Magnussen. Mary shot Sherlock."

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things, if presented to NSY, would have an entirely different reaction. Ah yes, that pesky motive. As a writer, motives matter. A lot. They establish character morals and expose their limitations. Or as Sherlock says in A Study in Pink:

"He didn't fire until I was in immediate danger though, so strong moral principle."

Sherlock was saved by John’s shot. John’s motives are not in question. So why did Sherlock shoot Magnussen? Was John in immediate danger from death by face flicking? No. But was Mary in danger from Magnussen’s blackmail? Weren’t many people? He had already driven Lord Smallwood to suicide and Mary to attempted murder. He had placed John in a fire (though he claimed to have people standing by so he wouldn’t die, John was still injured in the abduction.) So, yes, you could argue that Magnussen was dangerous. Sherlock’s motive was to protect people from Magnussen (the whole conversation with his brother makes this clear) and, as he says after the shooting:

"Give my love to Mary. Tell her she´s safe now."

Sherlock’s motives are not in question.

Then we have Mary. Was Mary in immediate danger? Only from Magnussen. The man she DIDN’T shoot. Was Sherlock a threat to her? No, he was offering her his help. So why did Mary shoot Sherlock? What were her motives? Sadly, we as an audience don’t actually know all the facts and Mary seems pretty tight-lipped on the matter. We can only infer from what Sherlock tells us later at Baker Street and the short dialogue pre-shot. And what he tells us is that she “had to” shoot him so she could escape. But if Sherlock was offering to help her, he obviously wasn’t calling the cops. So from who was she escaping?

Not who, but what. Mary was escaping from the truth. The reveal. She shot Sherlock to keep her secret from John.

If you can find me a selfless reason for Mary to have shot Sherlock, I am waiting. She had the upper hand. If she just needed to buy a minute to make a run for it, she could have shot him in the leg or the shoulder and disabled him momentarily.

But she shot him right through vital organs, bone and damn close to the spine. Let’s brush motive aside a moment then and pretend Mary had some noble reason to shoot an innocent man.

Sherlock tells John “Mary saved my life” and calls the shot “surgery” but I believe Sherlock is lying when he says these things. His words don’t match the things we’ve seen. First off being the obvious: Sherlock DIED. Mary killed him. She did not “save” him. She even says:

"Oh Sherlock if you take one more step, I swear I will kill you."

There is even now suspicion that Magnussen called the ambulance mentioned in this meta. But I will disregard that for now because even if she called the ambulance, it doesn’t change the fact that Sherlock’s heart stopped and he was in cardiac arrest as a result of her shooting him. Writers do not usually have the “good guys” shoot and kill the titular protagonist of the show. So I would argue that it’s not shippers who misinterpret Mary as a villain, but that TPTB who wrote her that way.

TPTB wrote in the following scenes:

* Mary threatens Sherlock at Magnussen’s. 
* Mary shoots Sherlock. 
* Sherlock dies but is resurrected. 
* Mary is sad to see Sherlock survived and said her name when he woke up. 
* Mary goes to Sherlock’s bedside and threatens him to keep quiet. 
* Mary hunts down the escaped Sherlock, with a silencer equipped gun. 
* Mary tells Sherlock, again, that she will kill him to keep her past a secret from John.

So, no, I would not say Mary is supposed to be read as a “good guy” after these actions. I would say that reading her as selfish and violent is pretty spot on. Motives matter. A lot.

"Sherlock lied to John too!"

Oh yes, he does. A lot. So does Mary. But let’s focus on the big lies shall we? Sherlock’s big lie: faking his death for 2 years. Mary’s big lie: who she is.

Sherlock lies to John by letting him believe he is dead for two years. Motive? John, mrs. Hudson  and Greg Lestrade have snipers locked on them. Moriarty’s network needs to be eradicated before it is safe for Sherlock to reveal he is alive. So Sherlock’s motives, again, are to protect others from harm.

Mary lies to John by letting him believe she is normal and just some nurse who cares about him and likes him. Motive? We don’t know yet. We can guess a million things. Maybe Mary worked for Moriarty and was assigned to watch John post The Reichenbach Fall to watch for signs of Sherlock’s return. Maybe she’s just a CIA operative on the run who happened to meet John and randomly fall in love with him. We, as an audience, don’t actually know yet. So Mary’s motives, cannot really be judged good or bad.

Continuing the lie:

Sherlock maintains his lie until it is safe to return. He shows remorse once he sees how upset John is. In fact, Sherlock apologizes to John on several occasions throughout The Empty Hearse.

"Bit mean springing it on you like that, I know."

"I don't understand, I said I'm sorry, isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

"Sorry! Sorry again!"

"Please, John, forgive me, for all the hurt that I caused you."

I would say Sherlock shows remorse for his actions. I would say TPTB went out of their way to show us that he shows remorse for his actions. Even though what he did was for morally good reasons, he still feels guilty for lying to John.

Then there is Mary. Her lie is maintained until Sherlock accidentally discovers it. So she shoots him, but he manages to live and decides to tell John the truth. Even knowing his life is in danger to do so, he reveals Mary to John. And Mary has to deal with the consequences.

I would love to say she also showed remorse and was sad and asked John and Sherlock to forgive her “for all the hurt that I caused you.” I would love to fill this up with screen shots of her apologizing. But you know what you get when you look for transcript texts of Mary saying “sorry” or “forgive me”? You only get The Empty Hearse. Mary says ‘Sorry’ a lot for minor things. Laughing through John’s proposal. "Sorry". Pointing out that Sherlock would need a confidant. "Sorry". Not admitting she hates John’s mustache. "Sorry". But shooting Sherlock… Lying to John for almost a year. Mum. Not one "sorry" or "forgive me" or "I feel so rotten" or "I understand why you are upset". For me, her silence speaks volumes, No remorse.

Instead we get snark:

"Oh! Are we doing conversation today?"

Retribution:

Actions speak louder than words you may say. So let’s see how each of them let John handle the emotional fallout of their lies.

Sherlock lets John beat him up without fighting back. Despite being injured and tortured not 24 hours prior, he lets John wail on him for as long as he needs to. Sherlock then gives John his space and lets John come to him in his own time when he is ready. He says to everyone who asks about John that he is not in the picture or working with him anymore. Sherlock believes John may not ever take him back and he will just have to move on and try to make do without him. As long as John is happy he will leave him alone. Sherlock is told John is in danger and immediately drops everything to rescue him. Again, he assumes nothing and lets John come to him.

He tricks John with the bomb at the end, after removing them from danger (switching the bomb off) he emotionally manipulates John into telling Sherlock whether or not he’s forgiven. Sherlock finds out John does forgive him so he reveals his lie.

And yet there’s Mary. At Baker Street, Mary is pretty quiet. Her offered words are limited and only after she asks Sherlock “how much do you know”? She also, presumably, gives John his space as it seems they haven’t talked in six months and he may not even be living with her. The only scene we get post domestic is six months later so it is hard to actually fill in missing scenes. What we do have to go on is Mary refusing to stand up when John asks her to come to him so he can speak his prepared words. We have her face and attitude looking put out. We have her tears when John says he will stay with her but is “still basically pissed off”. So we can tell she is happy to hear him say these things. But we cannot tell if she shows remorse or feels guilty for what she did.

Also note that Mary is perfectly willing to continue the lie, even though John’s life is in danger (she doesn’t know the fire wouldn’t have killed John). She would rather have John dead than knowing the truth. Mary never gives up the truth voluntarily. It has to be forced out of her.

TPTB don’t make these choices on accident. If they wanted to show us a sympathetic Mary, they could have. Multiple times. So my argument and that of TJLC crew is that we weren’t supposed to view her positively. In contrast to Sherlock, Mary comes off as selfish where he is selfless. This is not subtext or deep reading. This is just dialogue, plot and action presented in the show.

Do I think Sherlock is the ‘perfect’ boyfriend/mate/partner for John? No, and neither is Mary. Hell, neither is John for anyone else. But this is BBC Sherlock not a soap opera. They are flawed human beings not fairy tale lovers. I can argue that what I have seen so far tells me John and Sherlock compliment and complete one another. Mary, on the other hand, does not.

Loudest Subtext in Television: 

This, so much. Ships entirely aside, it genuinely disturbs me when people try to say Mary is anywhere near morally equivalent to John or Sherlock. And I say this as someone who likes Mary in terms of being an interesting character. If your spouse came home and said, “Man, I had to kill a guy today because he threatened someone else,” most of us would find that forgivable. If your spouse came home and said, “Someone offered me money to kill a guy today, so I did,” most of us would find that horrific (and so would the legal system). That’s basic morality.

If you found out your spouse had been habitually killing people for money as a career, that’s even more awful — and what’s even more awful than that is if they kept it a secret. And what’s even MORE awful is once you found out about it, they never apologized and refused to acknowledge they’d done anything wrong or even showed remorse for the fact you’re upset. And also they shot someone you care about in the heart. I mean, christ. It isn’t delusional shippers misreading the show, we’re NOT SUPPOSED to like Mary. Casual viewers generally don’t forgive Mary after His Last Vow from what I’ve seen, and they don’t ship anything.

Seriously: Mary is no better than the cabbie John shot in the first episode. She kills people for money. She may be worse, even, because at least the cabbie was setting aside money for his kids. As far as we know, she’s no better than the Golem or any of the snipers we’ve ever seen on the show.

People can like or ship whoever they want, but I don’t understand the need some people have to adopt their morality to fit a fictional character solely because they like that character. Like, I LOVE Moriarty, but I would never start saying he’s morally equivalent to John or Sherlock, and I would never act like it’s no big deal he kills people for money. I have a minor Sheriarty thing but I would never profess that it would be anything other than pretty sick and fucked up if it were to actually happen on the show. The kind of stuff Jim and Mary have done isn’t something you can just wash your hands of.