Part 3) I have considered writing you about good/evil/absent Mary many, many times. I really want to know your opinion about these things. I want to know what you see when you imagine a "good" (honest, kind, genuine) Mary. I also want to know what you thin

Part 1 of this ask got lost, but I asked and @thedepthsofmyshame told me what it was, and the whole question goes like this: 

I spend a lot of time thinking about Mary Morstan, and when
I think about Mary, I think about you. You have written Mary out in a number of
ways in your fiction, and you have expressed on tumblr that you really don’t
like her. I hate her, but I think she’s a good character, a good villain.
Athough, I wonder if she’s actually a good character, or if I have just
convinced myself that she is a good character since I know that she has
happened and cannot be erased. I have wasted hours of my life thinking about
Mary Morstan, and I am unable to reach a conclusion about her inclusion. Her
exclusion (as in Granada Holmes) would have been my preference. She exists,
though, and if she must exist, I think it is best that she is an evil,
murderous, and duplicitous villain. The world I see when I imagine Mary as good
is a nightmarish hellscape. If she were good, it would all be so much worse. As
I said, I often think of you when I sit and fume about Mary. I have considered
writing you about good/evil/absent Mary many, many times. I really want to know
your opinion; I want to know what you see when you imagine a “good”
(honest, kind, genuine) Mary. I also want to know what you think the best Mary
would be, if you were told prior to S3 that Mary was going to exist but you could
pick how.

Here’s my answer (I’ll put some of it behind a cut, bc it’s long!) 

So, I’m very late in finally answering this, but here goes
at last! Sorry for the delay!

 My first confusion when people talk about Mary, they often
state, “I love Mary as a villain”. I don’t quite get this, to be honest. Does
that mean that you like her or you don’t like her? What does it mean to “like a
character as a villain”? What would it mean to not like someone as a villain? Let’s
consider the other villains in Sherlock so far. There’s the murdering cabbie
Jeff Hope in A Study in Pink, though of course he’s ultimately backed by
Moriarty. There’s General Shan and her gang in The Blind Banker, also
ultimately backed by Moriarty. There’s Moriarty himself in The Great Game.
There’s Irene Adler, also backed by Moriarty. And then there’s Moriarty himself
some more, and some more. Then there’s Magnussen in series 3. Lord Moran gets
such a brief flyover that I won’t even count him because what could one even
say about his characterisation? (He doesn’t even have any lines, does he?) And
then there’s Mary.

Jeff Hope: kills people for money. Is dying of an aneurism. Is
ultimately motivated by the hope of leaving his children better off. Considers
himself an unappreciated genius. Do we generally consider him likeable as a
villain? I haven’t gotten that impression. General Shan: smuggles artefacts of antiquity out of China, kills
her mules. Is financed by Moriarty and ultimately killed by him. Does she have
any redeeming qualities? Possibly not. Is not generally liked by the fandom, as
far as I know.
Irene Adler: uses sexual extortion on her clients, sells out
her country in doing so. Would have left the British government on the brink of
insolvency, had Sherlock not stopped her. Was also being threatened by her
employer (Moriarty). A sexual bully. Generally considered quite likeable for
her playful spirit and witty one-liners.
Charles Augustus Magnussen: uses blackmail as extortion. A
sexual bully as well. Literally pisses on people’s private property. Has driven
at least one victim to suicide. Called an ambulance for Sherlock when he was
shot. Is afraid of Mary Morstan and did not blackmail her despite his
possession of information that would have led to her arrest. Is liked by
exactly no one (that I’ve encountered, at least).
James Moriarty: is a genuine terrorist. List of victims that
could be attributed to him: uncountable. A sexual bully, extortionist,
abductor, a murderer of old women and innocents. Generally adored by the
fandom, likely for his playful spirit and cute Irish accent.
Mary Morstan: kills for money. List of victims unknown. Is
hated by enough people on her own wedding guest list for Sherlock to have
compiled a list. Is manipulative as hell. Fandom: divided as hell. Liked by
some for her cutesy faces and personal style. Hated by others for the history
of violence and present tense manipulation of her husband and his best friend.

So: I don’t really get it. Does “I like Mary as a villain”
mean that the speaker only likes her presence on the show if she is considered
a villain? If so, I don’t see how that changes anything either, since arguably
the worst (morally) villain on the show (Moriarty) is one of the most popular
characters. I think that saying “I like Mary as a villain” is the same thing as
saying “I like Mary”. A better qualification might be “I like Mary but feel
that she needs to serve her time” or “I like Mary but prefer her not in a
relationship with John”.

With writers of this quality, I don’t really think that we
need to debate whether a character was “good” enough to be on the show or not. Obviously
they are; that goes without saying. We can very much have opinions about
whether or not we WANT her there, however. As you said, her exclusion would
have been my preference, too, but there she is. I have high hopes that her
presence will be relatively short-lived and that she’ll leave as little damage
in her wake as possible.

I cannot imagine Mary as “good” (morally) in any way, to answer that question. That just isn’t the character that was written. It just isn’t the canon we’re given. And we’re given a canon with several good
women in supporting roles, not to mention several bit parts that are also great (the first victim of the unwilling suicide bombers in TGG, Tessa and the other victims of the Mayfly Man, for instance)! Mrs Hudson is undeniably good, completely lovable, three-dimensional and
well-developed, funny, caring, utterly unafraid to call people out on their
shit, and beloved by everyone. Molly Hooper is a wonderful character, too!
Intelligent, plucky, sympathetic, funny, multidimensional again, etc. Disliking
the character of Mary Morstan under this particular characterisation in this
particular universe is no sin. This is nothing more or less than forming an
opinion based on what we’re given. It’s true that we’re a bit fickle in our
treatment of the villains of this series. By all rights, we should hate
Moriarty more than we hate Magnussen, but very few people would agree with that
statement! No one should like Mary (a murderer) over General Shan (a smuggler),
yet many people seemingly do. (Not suggesting that there are tons of Shan fans
out there; most people seem fairly indifferent to her in general, whereas Mary
has overt and outspoken fans!)

Additionally, I don’t think that talking about Mary at conventions and
Q&A’s in cutesy terms of forming a spin-off where she and Molly sit around
drinking margaritas and talking about Sherlock and John is a just treatment of
the character that the writers and Ms Abbington have created. I feel rather
strongly about this. It reduces Mary and all that she stands for. She and Molly have nothing in common. They’re on
completely different dimensions as human beings, and I know which of those
dimensions I prefer, personally. But this very notion simply fails to give
credit to the actual canon we were given. Mary is someone who, at some point,
for reasons never made clear, made a decision to become a killer for hire. This
is fact. This is what we know about Mary. It’s valid to write stories about
Mary that give her a sympathetic or understandable backstory. Sure. That’s what
fanfic is for: to make the things you wish had happened in canon a reality
somewhere, somehow. What’s not valid is to impose those assumptions onto the
canon when they’re just not there.

The thing which is more true to canon is to extrapolate
based on what we see. We’re given a character who manipulates, gaslights,
outright lies (enormously, continuously), whose real name we don’t even know. To
write or view Mary as a villain who has yet to demonstrate one single sign of
remorse for anything she has ever done, including in the storyline that we’ve
been shown, is – in my opinion, at least – completely valid. It’s in line with
her canon characterisation. Again, it’s fine if people would rather imagine
something different for Mary, but it’s important to remember that it’s an
imagination without any basis in canon reality.

Nothing about this has to do with Johnlock, please do note.
This is nothing but an attempt to answer your question about how one “should”
feel about Mary Morstan in this universe. And THESE are the facts we’re given:

Mary kills for personal gain
Mary lies about everything
Mary stole her current name from the tomb of a stillborn
child (classy)
Mary shot the title character and came within a hair’s
breadth of killing him
Mary followed up with threats, including stalking said
character with a loaded, silenced gun
Mary would rather have killed her “friend” than told her
husband a single piece of truth about herself
Mary has not apologised or shown any other form of remorse
toward Sherlock
Mary was angry with John for being angry with her for having
shot Sherlock
Mary allowed Sherlock to take the full fall for removing
Magnussen as a threat to her without so much as a thank you
Mary manipulates, gaslights, and belittles John, and John
clearly does not like it
Mary is unapologetic about this as well
Mary sided with Sherlock the night he revealed his non-death
to John
Mary has a knack for earning people’s hatred very quickly. At
the time of series 3 she had only been Mary Morstan for five years. Of the
people she chose to invite to her own wedding, her maid of honour was someone
she befriended in order to spy on her blackmailer, and a large number of her
invited guests including some of the groom’s relatives hated her already (David
is an exception, obviously)
Despite having only just reconciled with John, Mary refuses
to consider allowing him a say in the naming of their child

THESE are the facts about Mary. I teach literature analysis
now and then (in my advanced adult ESL classes) and if you had to break down
the overall bullet points of the things that characterise this woman, these are
them. We have NO canonical basis for assuming anything good about Mary, and
plenty of canonical basis for seeing the bad that’s right in front of our eyes.

I don’t think that I “write Mary as a bad person”. I think
that I genuinely make an effort to write Mary as close to canon as possible,
and I don’t like what I see in canon. That said, I actually have written Mary in ways that attempt to understand her perspective. I have one story that Mary fans actually adored, to my personal horror, lol. I’ve written her on a huge scale, from “only” being petty and manipulative (The Green Carnations, Right Hand Man) to being terrifyingly world-domination-type evil (The King is Dead), or physically abusive as well as emotionally (Scars - and that particular story is an extrapolation from canon rather than a direct reproduction attempt, as I’ve said numerous times). I’ve written from her perspective three different times, in Moving on/Making do, Stand-in, and Want. I actually worried that, with the first of these, people would think I had become a Mary stan, that she was too sympathetic. I also wrote a very short sketch of a possible look at what John and Mary’s marriage could even be in my little fic The Shadow of Doubt, wherein I tried to see a way that this marriage could work in any way at all, based on a foundation of lies. It’s not that I can’t see anything sympathetic in the character, but even so, I feel that I factually have to see her as unapologetically bad. 

This also has nothing to do with not liking female characters on Sherlock in general, In fact, I like almost all of the female characteres of Sherlock wiht the sole exception of Mary. I like Janine. I like Irene
a bit, though not as much as the others. I adore Mrs Hudson. I like Molly. I like Sally when she’s not calling
Sherlock a freak. But I do very genuinely loathe Mary Morstan. I can’t possibly
say whether that’s “as a villain” or what, because that doesn’t really mean
anything to me, you know? I hate Magnussen, and he’s a clear-cut villain and
well-written character. I do like Moriarty, but it’s difficult to say why. It’s
only for that latter that I can understand how anyone can possibly like Mary –
she’s clearly a horrible person, but so is Moriarty, yet people do like him. Then
again, he’s not married to one of the two main characters and positioned in
such a way as to cause horrific amounts of emotional damage, either.

I don’t know if that answers your question in any way at
all, but that’s my stab at it! Your last question was “I also want to know what
you think the best Mary would be, if you were told prior to S3 that Mary was
going to exist but you could pick how”. Hmm. I would say that the answer to
that is the way I wrote her in Against the Rest of the World, the last story I
wrote before S3 aired. In essence, she was there but off-screen for the entire
story, until John broke up with her at the end. She was strong and
understanding and a little bitter, but she had dignity and wished him well. That’s
the best I could have hoped for, I think. I see what you mean about it being easier in a sense, to accept Mary’s presence on the show if she’s a clear-cut villain. In my interpretation of the facts we’re given, she is, and that IS something. 

Sorry for the delayed and then super long-winded response. :P