"The character of Mary Morstan was removed from the stories in which she originally features: nothing..."

“The character of Mary Morstan was removed from the stories in which she originally features: nothing ought to get in between Holmes and Watson. She would have got in the way. Watson was more in love with Holmes - in a pure sense - than he could have been with a woman.”

- Jeremy Brett (via monwatson)

Bless you, Jeremy Brett.

On that subject, though, let’s just talk about disliking Mary for the sole reason that she gets in the way of my otp. I was fully prepared to like Mary - in the same way that I like Molly or Janine: I like them perfectly fine, but they’d best keep their mouths the hell away from Sherlock’s. :P Otherwise I have zero objection to them as characters. I don’t dislike either one of them for being female. I don’t dislike either one of them, period. I dislike Mary quite a bit, on the other hand. I just wrote a story extrapolating the abusive behaviour I see beginning in canon to its extreme possibilities - but I wrote it because I already see it there in the canon. I dislike Mary because she kills people for money. Not for necessity, or to defend her country. Not as a last resort: for money. For personal gain. And she shot Sherlock. Let’s just stop this nonsensical argument of “you just don’t like her because she gets in the way of your otp” right now.

That said, however… she really, really did. In any universe, in any characterisation, Mary Morstan was always extraneous. After this most powerful, most enduring friendship in English literature, no third parties were ever needed and that’s just the bottom line. Jeremy Brett knew that. Even Arthur Conan Doyle knew that.