#why mary

[medhes]

Mary: “The name ‘Rosamund Mary’ is no longer safe to use. I better change it so no one will ever be able to track me down.”

*Names herself ‘Mary’.

*Names her daughter ‘Rosamund Mary’.

[figdays]

“Retro” Velvet Pantsuit // Why Mary

[loveismyrevolution]

??? Why Mary ???

Why it had to be Mary’s voiceover at the end of TFP

After my last meta on Mary’s final speech and the comments on that, I guess it’s important to have a closer look on why it has to be MARY, who made these final words of TFP!!

Many of you were angry and disappointed, that these words were spoken by Mary. That she was the one to give John and Sherlock a sort of permission to become “what they could become”….

But I see some potential here to make sense of it! But this a multi-layered problem!

First of all the problem why this character of why Mary had to get such an amount of space in this adaptation of Sherlock Holmes! I’ll just have a short look at this so I can go on with the initial issue quickly.  There recently was a post of @moffat-rocks (here) that helped me understand the use of Mary’s! Therefor we first have to think about why the writers maybe chose, not to introduce the main characters as gay…. I’ll recite here some thoughts of moffat-rocks:

Why Not Make It Canon From The Start?

There is an argument to be made that the writers should have just introduced John and Sherlock as canonically gay/bi from the get go. 

And, without trying to make excuses, I think it was a writing choice not to do that. Staying close to the books, Moffat and Gatiss went for portraying Sherlock Holmes as a wannabe-sociopath, who has no real concept of romance and views any emotions as a weakness that he pretends he has risen above. 

John Watson actually mirrors this by being highly empathetic on the one hand, but even less in touch with his emotions than Sherlock, bottling up grief, trauma, vulnerability - and possibly bisexual tendencies. (Hence the constant stressing of “I’m not gay.”) 

What I’m trying to say is: The writers didn’t choose to make John and Sherlock straight. They made them emotional shipwrecks who barely know what to do with themselves. They didn’t make them not gay, they just made them “not there yet”.  And I think, in a way, getting “there” is the heart of the entire series. 

So the interessting part for me concerning Mary is: they chose deliberately to make them not not-gay but “emotinal shipwrecks” (what makes extremely sense to me) to stay close to canon and let them develop from here on! Sherlock has feelings and is emotional week, but tries to cover it with “sociopath”-behaviour and has no concept of romance! John is emotional brocken by the war and trying to bottle his trauma (and who knows what else! What do we actually know about John?) up and does not know what do to with himself!

What I’m trying to say is: They both needed Mary and her marriage with John as an “experiment of heteronormativity” to come to their conclusions and to dig up burried feelings!!

Why they made the choice and wrote the part of “villain Mary”, the forgiveness, the redemption arc, the (tragic??) death, ecetera…. isn’t yet that clear to me… But my assumption is that it definitely supports the difficult emotional developpement of John and Sherlock! It made it all much more tricky to come to terms and figure it out!! But it was a very good way to show their unconditional trust and loyalty towards each other! Actually it emphasised the depth of their relationship and pointed out that this more than just “best friends”!!

This is though my way to accept Mary as an ideed not loved but necessary part of the story arc of Sherlock and also for the development of Johnlock!!!

But now let’s return to the voicover at the end of TFP!!

To begin with I’ll point out the necessarity on the surface level: This level shows what on the surface is told, the story casuals would see, without digging to deep in subtext, just the “Oh, Sherlock…yeah, I’ve seen that! Good show!”-level… On this superficial level (but including the intention of Johnlock of course…it’s always and forever Johnlock!!!) it is very important for both of them, that it is MARY telling them, that they can carry on! Sherlock needs it to make peace with his guilt about her death! He’s still intimidated by John’s reaction and that he blamed Sherlock for Mary’s death! Even if John took it back and said otherwise in TLD, Sherlock would always blame himself for causing John so much pain and for his failure to keep his vow! He has to hear it from Mary her self, that he is forgiven, that it is okay to carry on, that she appreciates who he is and what he is doing and that she knows he belongs to John! He makes peace with her, can be reassured about this part of his past! Even though John. Our trusthworthy “I’m broken and guilty because I texted with another woman”-John couldn’t carry on with any other person than Mary after these events that ended his marriage so tragically! He still carries this feelings of guilt because he never could confess to living Mary!!! He wants to be the man he assumes Mary wanted him to be. Therefor he needs her to allow him to be with Sherlock! He needs to know that she always knew his feelings, that this is part of the man, she thought he was! Because than he is allowed to be like that!! He can “go the hell on with that”!! And also that it is okay for her that he keeps on solving crimes with Sherlock, even if Rosie is in his life, even if he made a vow to take care of her!!! So he is allowed to pick up his old life with Sherlock! He couldn’t have done that without her permission!!!

That’s why it was very important that it had to be MARY to speek this words! No one else than Mary could have given them this permission, could reassure them both, that it is okay!! No one else could have set them free!!

And second level, the level of symbolism and metaphors is much more difficult and much less obvious! Here I go with the reading of @ebaeschnbliah, that Mary is, even as all the other villains, a part of Sherlock’s deamons of his past. ebaeschnbliah recently posted and commented some things, to make this level clear ( X X X X X)…GO AND READ!! It opens a new view on the show!!! But for my subject it is most of all the mirror meta on Sherlock and Mary I’m relying on!!  I will have a try to explain it here as well, but don’t hesitate to contact for further discussion! Because from here on it is very much personal reading and interpretation…

This metaphorical level of reading is based on the EMP theory (if you’re not familiar with it check out here) and symbolic reading of the whole show! This includes that all villains are sort of Sherlock’s mirrors, or more symbolic part of his character! This is meant as that these villains embody the deamons he has to fight on his journey to become the good man he used to be!! In ebaeschnbliah’s reading Mary embodies Sherlock former character, the pre-Reichenbach-Sherlock, the “highfunctioning sociopath”, selfish, calculating, hiding secrets,…! This based on the high level of mirroring each other, that suggests, that they are actually the same, two parts of the same character, two sides of a medal… Reading everything with this metaphor (Mary = Sherlock’s former self) in mind and assuming everything takes part in Sherlock’s mind (EMP) it would be like this (very short-cut and not totally thought through!!!): This former part of Sherlock was the one that has fallen in love with John, but it’s no pure love but possesive and selfish and this part would go on with his destructive lifestyle. Real time Sherlock has changed after TRF, get’s in conflict with his former self and risks to lose John (it nearly even kills him = Mary shooting Sherlock), because Sherlock thinks the former Sherlock is what John likes and he has to leave it that way!! But in the redemption/death scene of Mary Sherlock realizes, that he has to let go this former self, that he has to allow himself to be the new Sherlock for John, that it is even needed that that part is away to carry on and take the next step!! He allows himself to change! Even read the words Mary is speaking with the Mary=Sherlock in mind like in this post of @isitandwonder!! He also imagines trust-issue-John to be frightened/angry but most of all self-conscious about this developpment! But by the feeling of nearly losing Sherlock again, he would be able to take a step towards Sherlock! He also can let go his mental image of Sherlock as he was pre-Reichenbach, confess things, make peace with the past and look forward…

With this metaphorical reading in mind the final voiceover makes much more sense! I wrote about it here in “Mary’s speech in Sherlock’s mind”! Because it all takes place in Sherlock’s mind then! He’s talking to himself! Allowing himself to move on and even though stay who he is … he is good the way he is! And in symbolical/metaphorical reading it is his former self that can let go, that allows him to move on! He’s taking farewell to his former self … he has changed, he IS definitely moving on!! To become what he always should have been!!

I’m convinced we will never see Mary again! She fulfilled her duty in this storyline and John and Sherlock's character arc! And by this time I’m convinced that we needed this storyline to come to this point! Without that they wouldn’t be able to carry on! Both of them are just by now able to take the next step and we never have been closer to a relationship between John and Sherlock in which way ever!!

So this got rather long…sorry! But I hope I could make my point!! Thanks for reading!! And I would love to here your thoughts on this!!

@gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @isitandwonder @tjlcisthenewsexy @monikakrasnorada @yan-yae @longsnowsmoon5 @tendergingergirl @may-shepard @marcespot @shawleyleres @impatient14 @skulls-and-tea @thanangst (sorry tag seems not to work) @multivariate-madness

[alvodra]

The feelings

[high-functioning-tardises]

Sherlock season 4

Laptop: *Episode ends*

Me: That's it?

Sister: Mmhm

Me: That's it?

Sister: Um.. You can see the credits rollin-

Me: THAT'S IT!?

Sister: YES. JESUS FU-

Me: That can't be it-

[wildflower-skies]

I’m so weird and obsessive and intense I don’t have a chance

[operacontour]

Imagine Tommy Körberg doing the Crawford jump/spider monkey crawl in Barnum with me on the balcony.

[darlingthetruthis]

Diary of the Dead (2007)