Miscellaneous stuff, the blog

Okayee we are going to need to establish some rules. I will not be calling Mary by Lady at all during this entire analysis. I know that is her preferred name by season 2 but I think it's just best to call her Mary for clarity sake. Also, I will not be critiquing her outfit or looks. I made a separate post going through that here (x). I will be looking at her as she is as a standalone character in this series and not compare her to her game counter part for the most part. I think there is more value in viewing her as her own character than compare her to what she is based off of because any argument against the character as a whole will be colored by how she isn't like the game's version. And let me be clear; Mary barely has anything in common with Lady.

Now that is out of the way, let me break down what I hope to explain. Characterization, character growth, character relations, and a little character comparison to the source material. Because a lot of these topics intertwine I will break it down even further to character history, personality, beliefs, motivations, decisions, emotions, and relations. Strap in because this is going to be a long one.

Character History:

Mary Ann Arkham was raised by two parents as an only child. Her mother was Kalina Ann Arkham and her father was John Arkham. Her father's profession was as a professor and her mother's is unknown but could be inferred to be a house wife of some sort. Her parents spoiled her and gave in to her every whim and desire. From the look of her house she seems to come from an upper middle class family. One night, after the movies, her family and her were attacked by a demon in the subway station. Her father froze in fear while her mother ran to protect her. The demon luckily died to a subway car hitting it. After this, her father was ridiculed and ostracized by both the police and the university he worked at, for claiming he and his family were attacked by demons. Devastated by his own cowardice and feeling alone, he threw himself into his research of demons; isolating from his family including Mary. Kalina Ann confronted him several times to no avail. Mary wanted to confront her father but was unable to do so, she instead tried to live normally as she could, playing with her friend and pretending to be a demon hunter. Then one fateful night, she came across her father and mother fighting over a syringe. Her father injected himself with whatever was in the syringe and began to transform. Kalina Ann went to comfort Mary as soon as she realized she was watching, only to be brutally murdered and eaten by a now demonic John Arkham. Mary tried to fight back against her father but ended up being pushed into a table which knocked over a lit candle; causing the house to burn and Arkham to disappear into the flames as he transformed back to his human form reaching out to his daughter one last time.

Mary, after this traumatic event, became an independent devil hunter at some point in her teen years. We can assume she was sent to foster homes and orphanages but in her free time she hunted demons. One night, as she was fighting a demon, Senator Baines found her and offered her a job as a Darkcom soldier. After some brief hesitation she agreed. Years later as an adult she joined Darkcom. She was assigned to a specialized demon hunting team and hunted demons with them. Eventually she came across a group of demons not like the rest. They seemed to not attack immediately when confronted and in fact were following orders from a human to raise their hands to show their lack of hostility. The human in the group made Mary hesitate. Unfortunately, a much more hostile and large demon was attempting to go through the portal, munching on other demons as it tried to wiggle through. This caused the Darkcom team to open fire to stop the large, hostile demon, killing the innocent demons in the process and mangling the human. Mary threw grenades to blow up the facility and the demons within. (End)

Analysis on Mary's History:

Alright so I don't have any major problems with her past. Just some nitpicks that I think could have been done better or differently.

First off, I am not a fan of the fire in Arkham's demon transformation scene. The reason why I am not a fan is because it closely mimics Dante's childhood trauma without framing it as a parallel. Instead, Mary's story is framed being a parallel to the White Rabbit's upbringing. I know the main reason they did the fire is to show how Arkham got his scar but there is other ways he could have gotten it outside of burning in a fire. (In the games the "scar" moves.) I also feel because the scene ended up being a fake out with Arkham's death, we could have had him escape instead. Then in order to control Mary, Darkcom could have coaxed her easily to joining them to help her find her father. It seems wholly unnecessary when the parallel between her and Dante weren't utilized. I also think her mother comforting her was also a call back to Eva comforting Dante before looking for Vergil, another parallel that would have been awesome to see back to back in an episode, but instead we get the white rabbit... Just a missed opportunity.

Another nitpick is how her first meeting with the White Rabbit went. I could make two arguments here. It's odd she didn't immediately start shooting the refugee demons in general, I can't remember the episode exactly but she feels like the type who would shoot first and ask questions later. Since she stopped to talk, it easily could have been a moment of sympathy she has for the human in the group, maybe try to see if he was brainwashed or something. Instead, we immediately get the team wiping the demons off the face of the planet. If she showed any remorse for her actions after the fact, even just questioning that weird interaction, it could have painted her in a more sympathetic light. Even a moment after meeting Dante for the first time, maybe a flashback to this moment which would be explained later, just a second to be like, "Hey humans interact with demons all the time, maybe one being born between them isn't impossible but that is still disgusting." A moment like this could help weave the narratives together and allow for easier character growth with Mary. Either they should have just followed through and had her shooting the demons without remorse or have her reflect on that event more than twice (Once to disguised Plasma in a passing comment and then to the White Rabbit after the face reveal.)

Mary Ann Arkham's Personality:

Sigh

Do I have to talk about this? Let's list personality traits that describe Mary, both good and bad.

Abrasive, assertive, apathetic, arrogant, brash, bold, careless, close-minded, complacent, confident, courageous, crude, cruel, cynical, defensive, determined, disrespectful, dogmatic, edgy, forthright, foolish, goal-oriented, gullible, hypocritical, ignorant, impatient, impulsive, inconsistent, independent, indifferent, inept, insecure, intolerant, irritable, loyal, manipulative, motivated, nagging, obnoxious, pessimistic, prejudice, reckless, resilient, rigid, rude, sarcastic, self-disciplined, selfish, simplistic thinking, spiteful, stubborn, tenacious, unaccountable, unappreciative, unprofessional, unreliable, untrustworthy, and vindictive.

Lot's of synonyms here. Some are one-offs and others are consistent personality traits. Some even conflict with one another. So we will whittle this list down to 4 major character personality traits.

Cynical

Insecure

Selfish

Determined

I will explain why these 4 fit Mary best starting with the most positive trait.

Mary is determined. Mary has shown determination several different times, including as a child defending herself against a demon attack, chasing a demon into an abandoned building, or capturing Dante. Mary doesn't let anybody stand in her way once she has a goal in mind.

Mary is insecure. Mary as a child showed insecurity when wanting to confront her father as he locked himself away. She shows insecurity when she loses her team or questions her view on demons. She is insecure in how she speaks about Darkcom and about herself to Dante. Being unsure of oneself is not a bad thing always, but it is how you change and grow through that insecurity that matters. I believe her future arc of chasing her father should be about her growing through these insecurities and trusting her instincts at bare minimum.

Mary is very cynical. She believes in the worst of others. She framed Sparda's story as a negative. She thinks Dante's childhood trauma dump is pointless. She rights off Dante's speech about taking responsibility as stupid and pretty much ignores it completely. She immediately thinks Dante will hate her when he is unfrozen. She also thinks her father is evil and wants to confront him when it is quite clear he is a victim as well. And I will give credit where credit is due, she does grow and becomes less cynical as season 2 goes on even though it doesn't feel like a natural progression in her character arc. Sort of just a sudden change in order to make her more likable I think.

Mary is selfish. Mary has main character syndrome and she isn't wrong unfortunately. She only cares about things when it involves her. The only reason she changed to help the refugee demons is because they saved her. The only reason she quit Darkcom is because she felt like she was used and being lied to. The only reason she cared about Dante was because of the guilt she had for betraying him. Then she betrayed him again at the end of S2 to go chase her father. There is barely self reflection and she does not care about others outside of how it effects her. If she learned to put others first and make sacrifices then I think she could grow from this.

Alright so what am I trying to say with all of this? Mary is a very unlikable character. She is the main character of the story and yet it's hard to watch with her on screen. She isn't very relatable in the actions she does, on top of being a bit dumb/foolish. I think the worst part of her character is her being selfish. If someone is going to be selfish then they need other redeeming qualities or likable characteristics, like charisma or humor or something. I had to reflect several times to make sure misogyny didn't tint my view of her so I am trying to think of a male character that is like her, and I can't think of one that isn't a villain or a traitor. Is she sometimes nice? Yes. Mary is sometimes nice but it is mainly to children and those she views as worthy that she works with.

Because of all of these things, I think it is quite obvious that Mary Ann Arkham is suppose to be an antihero. An unlikable antihero but an antihero nonetheless.

Mary's Beliefs

Mary's beliefs do change over the course of the two seasons. She starts out seeing the world in black and white, demons and humans, evil and good. Then she is forced to change those beliefs by demon refugee's who saved her. This made her see the world differently. Then another change in beliefs happened, she saw Darkcom as good. Then Darkcom did some war crimes against her good demon refugees, and now she see's them as bad. Her beliefs change when the plot forces them upon her. This makes her seem very wishy washy on her convictions and a less intriguing character who goes with the flow. I do think she does show some nuance in her beliefs when it comes to Darkcom but other than that I wished some of these changes happened internally without the plot in the moment forcing her.

Mary's Decisions

Can I say I think she is a dumbass? Because I think she's a dumbass. I don't think it's even her fault that she makes dumb decisions. I 100% blame the writers for most of the stupid things she does. One of the decisions I do believe to be her own foolishness is when she decided to take her team and chase after the White Rabbit without considering the fact that it may be a trap. I think her pride and impatience is what got the best of her here. As for the decision to syringe Dante, that may have been her own stupidity, but I also think the writers are more to blame for how that turned out because by that point in her character growth she should have began to trust him. Her working for Darkcom after realizing they did in fact murder her good refugee demons is fucking crazy. Working for them after they sacrificed army soldiers also whack. Any amount of trust she had towards them should have been 0. In fact, given how highly she ranked in the agency I am surprised she wasn't trying to expose Darkcom. See after Darkcom betrayed her, I thought her cynicism was going to come into play and she was going to distance herself from them and show more distain but instead she kept going like business as usual. Her decision to manipulate Dante after she betrayed him... insane choice. See in S2 it really felt like the plot was molding her decisions and not her character. Kissing Dante felt like it had to be done because of the plot, having sex with Dante felt like it needed to be done because of the plot demanded them not keeping a look out for trouble. Her leaving Dante at the end of the season felt like she did it because of the plot instead of her own motivations.

Mary's Motivations

Mary's motivations is to save the world from evil. Pretty simple. What is complicated is what she defines as evil. I am fine with simple things so to me there is not much to talk about. Her motivation at the end of S2 may have changed from strictly this to vengeance for her mother and her life as well. That would line up with her video game counterpart but backwards. Lady in the games starts out hunting demons for vengeance and then ends up hunting demons to not let anyone get hurt like she had.

Mary's Emotions

Mary is very angry and it doesn't feel natural. And this is where I will be comparing her to her game counterpart because I feel as if this anger is based off of Lady's emotional state in DMC3 rather where Mary should be on her own in the show.

In DMC3 Lady lost her mother about a year prior. We don't know the details around the whole event but we do know she is chasing after her father for killing her mother. Lady also is a teenager, I think she is 16, someone correct me in the comments but she is quite young doing all of this. Lady's anger feels raw and justified, her life just got flipped upside down, she was going to school and hanging out with her friends a year prior and now she is hunting down her father with a rocket launcher named after her dead mother.

Mary on the other hand feels like she never grew up emotionally. I don't know how old she was in the show when she lost her parents but I am going to guess around 8, that is the age Dante lost his mother so it only makes sense they tried to do a parallel, her father presumably died in the fire and her mother was of course killed so she is fighting demons because they were the initial thing that caused her family to fall apart. The problem with her anger in the show is it doesn't feel as controlled as I would expect from someone who has lived a lot longer and was trained as a soldier. If her anger was more like a low simmer I might be able to accept it but she is always angry, all the time. As the leader of a team I expect her to be more level headed but I guess not.

Mary also struggles with moments of genuine vulnerability. The moment she has on the bridge with Dante isn't good. She claims to see how he is when no one is watching and yet, that has never happened. Dante and her were always together with other people when they weren't fighting. It feels so forced. Then her talking to a frozen Dante about what is going on and her guilt. I am glad we heard it but Dante doesn't hear about it until episode 5 after they started romantically pursuing each other. It would have been nice to have her open up as a friend first.

All this to say, Mary is emotionally stunted and immature. Her character growth here is nonexistent as she never really considers other people's feeling just her own. Her own emotions are stuck in her childhood trauma and for a 20 something year old woman, that is embarrassing. Not to say trauma doesn't shape up even when we are older but it really feels like she has the emotional maturity of an 8 year old. "I like something, thus it's good. I hate something, thus it's bad." We'll see if in S3 she grows up or not but given that Dante is her emotional support I am not feeling too confident.

Mary's relations:

This will be the last main section of this post. I will be discussing Mary and her relationships with other characters. I'll discuss 3 characters, The White Rabbit, VP Baines, and Dante. I would discuss her father but there isn't much there as of right now and can be summed up to resentment.

The White Rabbit:

The White Rabbit and Mary is interesting. It is kind of obvious they were trying to go for a Batman and Joker angle with the two but it kind of falls flat. Mary does not challenge the White Rabbit in his beliefs to set herself apart from him. Instead she agrees that yes humans are the real monsters. I would have like to see her at least try and challenge him. There were genuine things she could have challenged him on like Sparda's decision to separate the two realms or on who is pulling The White Rabbit's strings if hers is being pulled by VP Baines. The avenues were there, but because none of them were taken it made these two as foil characters not stand out.

VP Baines:

AKA daddy 2.0. It's weird that she imprinted on this guy. I kind of hoped that we would have seen more from their past together. Her acting like his loyal lap dog seemed weird given how they met. I think her being wary of the guy but reluctantly following orders would have been a more interesting angle. As it is, I don't know why she looked up to him. He offered her a job but also threatened her when she was a teenager. I think the talk in the van after Mary got her shit rocked by the secretaries was a good start but I would have like to see more interactions. Him congratulating her personally after missions, him checking up on her, just something to show why she was so loyal.

Dante:

The temptation to post my first incomprehensible rant is looming over me but, I think I should actually structure what I am trying to say with this one. Dante and Mary's relationship is not good; it is unhealthy and stupid. All through season 1 Mary treated Dante like a nuisance at best and an enemy at worse. Okay. The two of them starting out that way isn't necessarily a bad thing, that gives them room to grow. Since relationships are two way streets, Dante treats Mary differently through out Season 1. At first he underestimates her, he even flirts a little bit, but then is annoyed when Mary tries to burn him in the truck. I find it interesting because even in these first few episodes, Dante's perception of Mary changes, Mary however actively see's him as a fool and a threat so she doesn't give him any respect. Then the two separate after being attacked and Dante's head being partially blown off by a device Mary implanted in his neck. (Mary never apologized for that btw and Dante never held her accountable because even if he survived I am sure it hurt like hell and it actively got in his way to taking down The White Rabbit.) Alright the two come back together after Mary saves Dante. Mary is a bit less hostile towards Dante but is still stand-offish. She demeans him. Dante of course doesn't hold her accountable for being an asshole to him but the plot continues. After the building blows up and Dante grabs Mary and jumps out the building taking the brunt of the fall, she blushes once she realizes she is on top of Dante and then punches him in the face. Dante rightfully calls her out for not appreciating the fact he saved her life. But before that conversation could go anywhere the plot has to keep going. Mary ignores him after realizing that the entire building was decimated with refugee demons and Darkcom soldiers inside. Dante has a moment where he takes responsibility for his father's ideals and desires to pick up Sparda's mantle to go face the White Rabbit only to, yes you guessed it, be ridiculed by Mary and shot in the leg and imprisoned in a van. I could go on and on and on about this pattern since it happens several times during the first season and a bit into the second. Mary eventually betrays Dante by putting him on ice, feels guilty, and then decides to manipulate him instead after he is taken off ice. No responsibility or consequences for her actions, almost a whole episode covering up her actions. Dante writing it off as their thing they do while being absolutely head over heels in love with her, for some reason... But Mary begins to treat Dante with a little bit more respect after she leaves Darkcom. Yes he does finally scold her for lying to him but once again before the conversation got good, the plot interrupted. Then we get the infamous kiss at the end of Episode 4. Mary kissed Dante. And the problems with this are endless. First off, Mary showed no real interest in Dante, it was obvious up until very recently that she didn't even like him and thought he was a moron. At most she thought he was cute but cute does not equal romantic feelings. After this in the next episode they end up having sex after a surface level heart to heart and I can't with this. At the end of this season she betrays Dante once again and abandons their planned meet up to go chase after her father.

Guys. If a woman like Mary ever approaches you or betrays you even a fraction of this much, fucking run. Don't be like Dante enabling this behavior. I am not against hetero relationships but they have to be earned, not just two people of the opposite gender mushed together like some badly written fanfic. This still somehow turned into a recap rant of their relationship but it is so hard to not trash every aspect of it. I hope Dante stops trying to pursuing her after this and actively ignores her. Oh and Mary does this weird manipulation thing that my ex did where she paints herself as a monster and that Dante is too good for her which yeah bitch you kinda are the monster. Like Mary is abusive as hell towards Dante and it isn't funny it's just sad.

Final thoughts:

My final thoughts on Mary are that she is inconsistent, unlikable, abusive, manipulative, and stupid. She doesn't make for a good protagonist or even an entertaining one as her decisions leave the audience frustrated and unsatisfied. I think there are many pathways the writers could have gone to make her an interesting but flawed character and they chose not to. She is a horrible character wearing the skin of one of the best female representatives in gaming from the early 2000s.