Tag: mummy holmes

distaffgospels:

mid0nz:

loudest-subtext-in-television-d:

Brace yourself, because this is another “too farfetched for M-theory” thing.

I have this whole theory that Mycroft pays for everything for Sherlock and the rest of his family because Mummy the math genius gambled everything away in Vegas trying to count cards. She plays the lottery still, after all; the fact that the parent of people as rational as Mycroft and Sherlock would think she could beat absurd lottery odds is an interesting blip to have included in TEH. It definitely makes people go, “What?” Of course, it could simply be intended to only code her as “not that intelligent” just to show that Sherlock came from a normal family, but let’s see where we can go if we take it as foreshadowing of her backstory.

Blowing the family money in Vegas would go some way to explaining why Sherlock only has a list of complaints about his mother, whereas Mycroft has a file (he’s the one who got the cushy government job and provides for them all), and why Sherlock feels his mother is stupid and doesn’t listen to anything: card counting is risky even if you’re good at it. We know that Mummy and Daddy visit America for line-dancing and apparently have done this for years since HLV “isn’t the first time [Sherlock’s] substance abuse has wreaked havoc on their line-dancing,” and that Sherlock was in Florida to help Mrs. Hudson out back in the day, so: it’s not implausible that Mummy could hit up Vegas. In fact, if she likes playing the lottery, she probably would. We keep having America come up in Sherlock’s past.

But it gets better: Sherlock has the book Bringing Down the House in 221b, which is about students counting cards in Vegas. We also get some funny mirroring of Mary and Mummy in HLV, in which Mary is coded as a gambler whose personality issues might make her an unfit mother, so that could reinforce the gambler angle on Mummy. We also got mirroring of Mrs. Hudson and Mummy (same initials, mother figure to Sherlock) in HLV, and we know Mrs. Hudson’s past is full of fucked up illegal stuff.

Plus I don’t think Moftiss would introduce a sweet old lady genius whose sons resent her even though she seems REALLY nice, and then not make her backstory shocking in some way. Everyone’s backstory is fucked up in this show and that’s why I can’t wait to hear more of John’s and Mummy’s.

Anyway, where was I? Right. I don’t think Sherlock needed a flatmate for financial reasons. Mycroft knows that solving cases and being a general unemployable weirdo is the only thing that keeps Sherlock occupied and alive, so I can’t imagine that he would be sitting alone in his giant mansion with huge statues of chess figures and tell Sherlock  he doesn’t care if he gets evicted, you know? We can also guess that Mycroft pays for his parents’ expenses because they have a REALLY nice house and stuff, and they get to go to Les Mis performances and line-dancing trips to America. Either Mummy is such a gambler she plays the lottery totally for fun, or she wants more money and doesn’t feel right asking Mycroft for it (parents tend not to feel great about being a financial burden on their children).

So I think Sherlock just said that line about how him and John should be able to afford 221b because the real reason would sound too pathetic: Sherlock’s just trying to make a friend because it’s that, or suicide; we get too much coding that Sherlock is at the end of his rope when the series starts for me to see it any other way. 

Then Sherlock doesn’t care that John can’t pay for anything and doesn’t want John to get a job. He gets a lot of tie pins and cufflinks and other dumb shit for solving cases, but checks for huge amounts of money like Sebastian handed over don’t seem to be in large supply, plus apparently Sherlock will turn down that sort of thing out of pride. He dresses like a model. He makes it rain on his homeless network on the regular. Even CAM doesn’t know anything about Sherlock’s financial status when he targets him with his Shameful Secrets Vision. You can read it as a joke about “lol television characters always live outside what their means realistically ought to be” — it’s a tv cliche that glamorous people don’t seem to have any source of income — and it might well be just that, but I suspect it’s more.

My other theory is that it’s not Mycroft paying Sherlock for shit directly, but that Sherlock is still on the MI6 payroll and Mycroft has to harangue him into taking cases now and again if he wants to keep that money coming. Sort of a “stay off drugs and keep your shit together and I’ll make sure you’re looked after” thing, perhaps. After all, if he just gave Sherlock money directly, he might fear that Sherlock will blow it all on drugs, so it would make some sense that Mycroft would attach several strings to it.

Either way, I’m pretty sure Sherlock would be broke as fuck if not for Mycroft. Or at least I hope so, because that makes Sherlock and John both broke moocher weirdos, which I LOVE. Like always, John would be the one trying to be normal anyway, with his little job at the surgery that he hates, meanwhile Sherlock is like, fuck it, jobs are bad and my brother is rich and exploitable.

My headcanon is that every time John accepted a check for one of Sherlock’s cases, Sherlock waved it away and John just hung on to the money to pay their finances and waited for Sherlock to ask for the rest, but that never happened. So that’s one reason why John’s finances didn’t look exploitable to CAM. And since I’ve never met a headcanon I couldn’t turn sad, may I suggest imagining that John’s wedding was largely paid for by the cushion of money Sherlock refused to accept for cases? Furthermore, may I suggest imagining that Sherlock knew that, and that’s why he felt comfortable making the wedding so ABSURDLY EXPENSIVE?

Have a pleasant day, y’all.

Glorious exposition, loudest-subtext-in-television, but you’ve forgotten the biggest clue of all. Y’all. 😉

Where oh where were they line dancing, LSiT? Mummy has friends in low places. Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. (Hint: I grew up there.) Who needs Vegas? Smaller casinos are easier marks, no?  😉

Oooook-lahoma… plus reblogging for “Shameful Secrets Vision.”