Mary, Fandom, and Consent
So, likeā¦ We interrupt your regularly scheduled shrieking about Sam with utter confusion about all this Mary hate Iām seeing? Everyone out there is allowed to love who they love and hate who they hate because preferences are things we are allowed to have without reason or explanation, butā¦
The reasons Iām seeing for the hate donāt really compute?Ā
Because I meanā¦ letās say that, without someoneās knowledge, I justā¦ run myself ragged for them. I work 80-hour weeks and chug energy drinks just to keep going. I prop my eyelids open with toothpicks to keep myself from toppling over at my back-breaking job, and I save up my money while sobbing into my ramen noodles. Then I go to this personāmy sister, letās sayāand I tell her,Ā āIāve destroyed myself to save up all this money. Move to Alaska with me and letās live a wild life in the mountains!ā
And heck, Alaska is awesome, but maybe I havenāt seen my sister in years and I donāt really know her that well, and she has a jobĀ and a missionĀ sheās passionate about, and I didnāt even ask her. I did all of this without her consent, and the effort I put in and the pain I endured was to make this possible. I did make it possible. Regardless,Ā it in no way requires her consent.
Itās like people are taking the coercive Nice Guyā¢ tactics they hate and claiming Mary should consent to do what her boys ask because theyāre good people and they tried so hard?
And itās genuinely true. Her sons are good people and they tried so, soĀ freaking hardĀ to find her.
But she doesnāt owe them anything. They undertook the task of their own will, and sometimes the answer is no.
On top of that, I know we all love the Winchester boys, but they are grown men, even though their loss as young boys has hurt them.Ā
Mary is, in fact, younger than they are, and she diedĀ and ended up in an unfamiliar world decades later. Sheās trying to find a place in it.
And Iāll be the first to say that I want so badly for Mary to hear stories of her sonsā heroism and feel pride and form strong relationships with her boys, butā¦ Mary is an anachronism scrambling for meaning after being torn from heaven to find her infant sons are taller and older than she is.
I love them. And I love Mary. And no one else is required to like her, not even a bit.Ā
But thereās one thing thatās true regardless of whether people like Mary or not: she does not oweĀ them consent to return to a world she no longer feels she has a home in. No one owes another person consent because they tried hardĀ to get it, and they really want it, and itāll just kill them to be without it. No one.
Sam understood that. Possibly because his life has been a litany of coercion and manipulation and violations of consent and assumptions about his choices, he is quicker to acknowledge that Maryās choices are her own and she owes them nothing. But of course that doesnāt mean he and Dean canāt make a counter-offer. In an episode with some otherwise unsettling implications about consent, I really appreciated that scene.
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