It’s fair not to like Mary. Objectively Mary isn’t a very nice person.
Then again, while he’s a far cry from a contract assassin, neither is Sherlock, and John’s not exactly doing the best himself.
John does his best not to be a dick, but. Honestly I am SO FUCKING THRILLED at John’s characterization at this point. He IS a good person (better than the people he loves most), but he’s also an addict. And when he can’t get his fix, bad things happen to his personality.
(And potentially, scarily, they could happen to the people around him. At this point, John’s poorly controlled outbursts of rage look to me like anger as a coping mechanism gone wrong. So far, Sherlock’s been the only person John actually attacked during them—except for a DCI that one time(!!!)—and he and Sherlock seem to have some unspoken agreement about negotiating and managing this stuff. But still.)
And Sherlock enables him. Actively and consciously enables him. He tells Mary to keep John in trouble, because Sherlock thinks John needs trouble to be okay.
And I mean. From a mental health standpoint, that is SO UNUTTERABLY FUCKED UP. And Sherlock KNOWS that. But either he thinks that therapy wouldn’t be able to help John, or he just doesn’t care.
I wonder about that. Is it because Sherlock’s experience is that therapy mostly doesn’t help, either with him or with John? If he really does have PTSD (and at this point, I believe he does as strongly as somebody can who is not trained to diagnose and treat mental health), It’s true that even with treatment, it’s possible John wouldn’t be able to entirely overcome his condition. Some people with PTSD can find it mitigated but not entirely cured. (Not that I am advocating for people to not try therapy based on the assumption that it won’t work.)
Maybe Sherlock sees it as doing his best by John to help him manage his condition if it can’t be overcome? (Not that it works that way; in the long run, this lifestyle would reinforce PTSD rather than help it.) Or does Sherlock choose to interpret John’s differentness as being ‘special snowflake’ rather than damaged? Or again, does he just not care? He likes it, so he’ll keep John like this?
It’s funny to realize that while Mary and Sherlock may be more amoral, ruthless, and well-trained, on a daily basis John may be the most dangerous (and endangered) of the three of them, simply because his condition—whether adrenaline addition or PTSD—makes him more erratic in his violence.
They are all so fucked up and I love them this way. ;_;
