sherlock holmes
I am so sick of people saying that fans of Johnlock hate Mary/Amanda.
I love Mary as a character and that character happens to be a villain.
I also love Amanda and her puppy cuddles.It is possible to love a character but acknowledge that they are not some kind of precious and pure snowflake.
Ugh.
But she’s not a villain. She’s no shining beacon of pure pureness, but she’s not a villain.
Okay, lets look at some facts about Mary:
She lied to John about everything.
She has killed multiple people and went “rogue” and became an assassin who was most likely paid to murder all sorts of people, innocent and bad.
She killed Sherlock, stopped his heart and in this scene you can see that the surgeons have stepped away from trying to save Sherlock and have probably pronounced him dead.
No one is such a good shot that they can know that someone will come back to life.She threatens Sherlock and tells him he can’t tell John.
She is possibly one of the snipers at the pool who worked for Moriarty.
She herself says that if John knew the things she has done that he would not love her anymore.
She is possibly involved with Moriarty or is Moran of both or she IS Moriarty.
Amanda says she is fucking psychopath.
Tell me, does none of this sound like a villain to you?
It’s textbook.Also, this is just a very short list and I could go on and on but I’m pretty sure this gets my point across.
Let’s look at some facts:
- John and Mary love each other, as people. The rest is backstory: fit to burn.
- Mary described her work as an assassin by saying “People like [Magnussen] deserve to be killed, that’s why there are people like me.” It’s a view shared by men who say things like “but he wasn’t a very nice man” and “neonazi; don’t waste your time”.
- When she left that life, she chose to become a nurse. She could have done anything; she decided to heal the sick.
- No one can stab someone through a belt and not kill them until they take it off; and yet. A woman who can shoot a hole through a coin in a dim corridor doesn’t miss a man’s heart at five paces by mistake.
- Invented theories are a sign that you’ve passed beyond finding reasons
- Amanda says that they’re all psychopaths, and she did that because she’s using the word as a causal term for ‘person more suited to the greenworld than mundanity’. Which is its own problem, but not related to Mary’s heroism.
Moriarty was a villain, Magnussen was a villain, that cabbie, Lord Moran, the photographer guy and the random racist-stereotype Chinese gang-slash-circus were villains. (Irene was
almost, but not quite a villain.)
Mary isn’t.
She has a pretty similar backstory to Black Widow, really.
do people even realize that original sherlock holmes was like. the modern day equivalent of an sjw. he let criminals go sometimes bc he knew the prison system didn’t help rehabilitate people. he actively assisted women who were victimized by men and the patriarchy. he probably also generally helped clients that were trans and/or homoerotically inclined, bc he generally helped clients the police wouldn’t or couldn’t like he. was not a dude all these shitty people would have wanted to associate with kjasldkjfasdf
#i don’t think i can put into words just how pivotal this moment is #because for so long we’ve been presented this female Chinese-American Watson and decided not to question it #“why is her last name Watson? because her father’s white; let’s move on” #“watson doesn’t have to be a white male; here’s proof of that!” #and that’s a perfectly fine way to engage a text #but suddenly we have this; something that engages in the complexity and cultural baggage behind that kind of name; that kind of title; #the cultural heritage and the politics of otherness vs assimilation that an immigrant’s name bears #that’s *huge* in terms of the meta-narrative and how to interpret a text because so many Holmes adaptations are just different variations #of the same song #Joan Watson was not born a Watson; she stepped into the name #it doesn’t just challenge and update the Holmes mythos but actively interrogates it #by asking it why this narrative is a) so exclusionary and b) so stifling in its interpretations #that’s extremely meaningful in terms of how we engage with cultural symbols and a franchise as symbollic as the Holmes mythos #anyway: i’m emotional/screaming/dying my skin is clear etc etc (tags via @stardust-rain)
We were on location somewhere and he serenaded me at a restaurant table in the middle of a very crowded restaurant in the evening … and when he serenaded me, he really did serenade me. He wasn’t taking the mickey, it was absolutely serious as only Jeremy could be serious in a situation like that. I was sitting there, and suddenly his voice was floating out all over this restaurant, and he improvised this song all about me and my beautiful wife and my beautiful son. I was absolutely crimson with embarrassment. But it didn’t make me love him any the less.
– David Burke on Jeremy Brett’s irresistible urge to sing
Reblog this if you love Mary Watson
because like 99% of the Sherlock fans I know despise her, and I’m curious if that’s a common opinion?
