57circlesofhell:like i don’t even do mary wank to be mean like i don’t even like to call...

57circlesofhell:

like i don’t even do mary wank to be mean like i don’t even like to call people “mary stans” b/c i’m sure some people hate my readings of sherlock and john’s character and that’s fair, but at the same time I’m baffled by the idea of mary being characterized as “uwu pregnant and scared and in love” when she has literally done more morally reprehensible things than CAM, the most gross and unlikable character in the whole damn universe, with no remorse. She is the only character thus far to nearly kill the main character, she is the biggest threat Sherlock has ever faced, so no she’s not going to just be hanging out with them all buddy buddy next series like nothing happened.

Even if they both “love” her at this point (i doubt it but bear with me), she betrayed them, manipulated them to keep them from knowing the truth about her, and put them all in harms way without their knowledge so she can maintain her stolen identity and avoid ever having to own up to whatever it is she’s done (which could’ve been anything from cool vigilante justice to murdering innocent people for hit money). 

And the fact is, none of the characters know who she is. John knows more about Billy Wiggins’s past than he does Mary’s. That’s not a great foundation for a marriage tbh, to be married to someone who likely fabricated every story they told you about their childhood (i.e. mary probably claimed to have been native to England when it’s possible English isn’t even her first language), who may not have the personality you think they have, who may have hurt and killed various important people for who knows what reasons, and so on and so on. No one knows what’s real with her, and you can’t easily be friends with someone who’s never let you see their truth.

And literally the only reason I ever feel the need to wank like this to mary is that people are robbing her of some of her more interesting character traits to make her out to be a benign character when she appears to be incredibly dangerous and single minded. If I saw a lot of people insisting that Moriarty put John in semtex and blew up old women b/c he was just scared and a bit emotional or w/e, i’d be wanking at him too, but no, people do that with Mary b/c she’s not as established as a villain and apparently it’s unfeminist to call a character who has murdered people without remorse a villain responsible for her actions and in control of what she’s doing.

Absolutely.

Also, and this will not make me popular, so let me just go sit in the corner in advance, BUT –

There’s this disturbing trend in any fiction–TV, books, etc–where you can’t have a female character be unlikeable without getting cries of “misogyny!” on par with the broo ha ha over BC in the Zoolander 2 trailer. As a writer who writes lots of published books, I can tell you, it is so frustrating and limiting. Literally, you can have a bitchy or mean or slutty or evil character–AS LONG AS THEY ARE WHITE MALE. But God help you if they are female, a POC, queer, or whatever. Because that’s not PC.

Not to rant about what may seem to be an unrelated issue but… it’s not unrelated. I feel like if Mary were a male character, *everyone* would be all into the ‘secretly a villain, snake-in-the-grass, danger-at-the-hearth’ thing. But because she’s female it’s somehow misogynistic to think of her as a villain. No. In fact, it’s way cooler, and to me more empowering of women, for her to be a super villain (bigger than CAM or Moriarty) than for her to be the nice little wifey that John and Sherlock adore. Hello! I honestly don’t get it.

XA