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buneesi replied to your post: loudest-subtext-in-television replied…

i have a long held suspicion Mycroft is genuinely asexual and Sherlock in his youthful brother-worship said “Oh yeah, ok im that too” aaaaand wakes up one day 36 years old and cluelessly sexually attracted to his flatmate. woop

DING DING DING

Okay, not only does this make a lot of sense it’s got me thinking.  While I DO like Mystrade and whatever Mycroft/Anthea is called, part of me always reverts to Mycroft as being forever single.  The idea that it’s him and not Sherlock who is actually asexual is a REALLY interesting take.  That Sherlock did – and still does to some extent – idolize his brother is obvious.  However, I’d never thought of Mycroft’s sexuality as something that would impact Sherlock’s in this kind of way.

It’s clear to see how Mycroft’s personal distance from others has effected Sherlock.  I’ve often seen Mycroft’s genuine emotional distance from the rest of humanity as one of the factors which as lead Sherlock to try and force a distance between himself and the rest of humanity that he finds difficult to maintain.  (Not the only factor, mind you, but one of them.)  He needs much more human contact and socialization than Mycroft does even while he clearly thinks that he shouldn’t.  Again, that Mycroft has an impact on that is obvious from the discussion in the hospital in SiB.  I’ve often thought that the speed with which Sherlock began dragging John along with him as soon as he determined that he could speaks to his starvation for human interaction.  John was still more or less a stranger in SiP but that doesn’t stop Sherlock from dragging the guy onto a crime scene.

Now, many asexual people still desire romance and the emotional closeness that the rest of humanity has.  I’ve even known asexual people who have and maintain romantic relationships.  However, what if Mycroft weren’t just asexual but also aromantic as well.  Sherlock himself tells us that Mycroft played “mother” for him a child so that it would be natural for him to internalize Mycroft’s genuine lack of need for those kinds of connections as being the way he himself should be.

This idea also makes what Irene said all that much more interesting.  Mycroft she calls The Ice Man, someone with no need or desire for interpersonal relationships.  Sherlock, on the other hand, she calls The Virgin – not someone who doesn’t need or want romantic/sexual relationships, but just someone who has not had one.  And If you picture the look on Sherlock’s face, that hurt.  She sees that he wants things he himself doesn’t want to want and then tosses it in his face in front of the ONE PERSON who really is what Sherlock aspires to be.  He protests far too loudly that he doesn’t care what Mycroft thinks and therefore to have the fact the he DOES want/need this kind of thing broadcast in front of his bother would be painful in the extreme.

totally brilliant. just a small additional note, this also fits in with the scene when sherlock approaches mycroft essentially in concern that mycroft must be unhappy and lonely. until now i just hadn’t thought about it much, and i guess just considered it a small side narrative about mycroft’s emotional life. now that i really think, though, perhaps that scene was really all about sherlock after all. maybe in coming to know and love john and thereby truly understand how lonely and miserable he was living the life he had modeled after mycroft, he (wrongly, ostensibly) assumes that mycroft must feel that same way and simply not have the perspective to understand. so the point of the conversation wasn’t to give us some small, random glimpse into mycroft’s inner life, but to give us a richly contextualized window into sherlock’s. essentially, we are shown that sherlock has come to recognize how important human connections (and john) are to him and to understand how lonely he was before.