Thoughts on the Sherlock-Mycroft relationship 

 (Sherlock Meta by eldritch-horrors and pennypaperbrain)

eldritch-horrors:

The relationship between Sherlock and Mycroft. Fantastic. Both stated and implied. Whether you like or dislike Mummy and Daddy Holmes, that new parent/child relationship revelation throws the Sherlock/Mycroft relationship into some intriguing territory.

I’ve always said that Sherlock could not have become the person that he is without trauma, no matter how much of a genius he is. Trauma takes different forms and levels of severity, but Sherlock’s very normal-seeming relationship with his parents isn’t really indicative of how he ended up. So: normal-ish parents, yet some sort of trauma. What was that trauma?

My take: Let’s tackle Mummy and Daddy first. Mummy is a genius who quit working in academia to be a mother. I don’t think this is true. I think that she had Mycroft and continued her career until it became quite clear that her husband could not handle Mycroft.

Let me back up. I’m going to go slightly into some material that is going to go into Cold Song. I’m smart. I mean, I’m Smarttttttt. I’m not going to throw out IQ points because IQ tests are meaningless and skewed towards western privilege, but I’ve only met a few people as smart or smarter than me. I’m very good at hiding it. I learned to hide it because being a gifted kid is no gift at all. It is a miserable existence.

Average people can be happy. Smarter than average people can be happy. They are the ones that really excel in life. Geniuses? Unless they are very good at cognitive dissonance or find something worth living for, they are fucking miserable. Because they realize that it is all bullshit. All of it. Everything. There is no god. There is no higher order of things. There is nothing but the here and now and other people are ultimately unimportant because we are such small blips on the timeline of the universe. We only have ourselves, and maybe the few people we let in. Even that is a selfish endeavor because their well being is just an extension of our well being. Don’t believe me? The despair of genius is what created the Longnow Foundation, I don’t care what the blurbs say. They want to leverage the longevity of humanity because they know we are blips.

I think that Sherlock once knew the names of all the planets and constellations. I think there is still a telescope in his childhood bedroom. I think that he delved into astrophysics and found out how insignificant we are, and how cruel the universe can be.

Then he deleted it.

I understand Moriarty. He has reasoned out that he is the only one who matters in his universe. Everyone dies, everyone will be forgotten, all the discoveries and beauty of humanity will be gone, not even a footnote in some equally ephemeral alien database. We might only be left in one or two silent probes pinwheeling through space. In that context, what is there to live for? One of the largest religions on Earth revolves around this very thing. All Is Suffering.

It is too, too easy to succumb to devastating depression. I mean, why bother? Why fucking bother. You have to find a reason to exist. You have to find a way to cure the boredom of living as a parasite among other parasites that have no idea how futile their lives are. Take Ted Kaczynski. He was one of the brightest mathematicians of his generation, but he couldn’t handle it and opted out and then acted out. Why? Some of it had to do with past trauma, but part of it also had to do with being a huge intellect, living in a world where most of the decision-makers…are not.

Is it madness? Or is it just a total perspective vortex?

I’ve opted in, to an extent. I have one person that keeps me tethered to human reasoning and empathy. I’m pretty amoral. I married a conscience. I try to care about people and things. Sometimes I fail.

Moriarty opted out. Mycroft Holmes opted in, and plays games, and found a way to thwart the goldfish that would control him, and he only truly has three people to keep him connected to any sort of humanity. Sherlock was undecided at the beginning of ASIP. He is looking for a reason to exist.

So Daddy Holmes couldn’t handle Mycroft. Maybe Mycroft couldn’t handle the intellect and the ennui. I’m thinking Mummy realized what her little boy could turn into, and saw that Daddy couldn’t cope alone, so Mycroft turned into a full-time job so that he wouldn’t become a full-time Moriarty. Then I think she did what a lot of women do. Maybe he needs siblings.

I think Mummy Holmes tried to give her children as much normality and stereotypical mother-love as possible because she worried about Mycroft. I think Mycroft benefited from that, in terms of fitting in and finding socially acceptable ways to amuse himself. Then I think he turned around and really fucked with Sherlock’s head, all the while thinking that he was doing little brother a favor.

Mycroft is Sherlock’s trauma.

Mummy plays down her genius, so Sherlock learned how to deal with genius from the elder brother who has been swimming among goldfish. The brother who played ‘mother.’ The brother who disappointed Mummy. The brother who can be so cavalier about whatever became of a third sibling.

Sherlock’s drug use and rebellion against Mycroft becomes very understandable under those conditions.

Their interaction is so fraught. I love it. Mycroft is an enigma, and seriously unlikable at times, but he was one of my favorite characters of the season.

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pennypaperbrain:

The Sherlock-Mycroft relationship is in some respects the most interesting in the show, I think, for the reasons EH outlines. Mycroft seems to have spent their childhood shaping him, and pretty mercilessly. Was he supposed to be Mycroft’s footsoldier in some early Mycroftian plan, then Sherlock then became a bit of a white elephant when Mycroft found the machinery of the establishment to be a more useful tool? Sherlock is in some respects an abandoned toy (then he found someone who wanted to play with him again in the form of Moriarty – happiness!)

I’ve ranted elsewhere about how cack-handed I think the actual presentation of the parents is, but I can at least see how the mess came about if they were devised with the aim of throwing the Mycroft-Sherlock relationship into isolated relief.

The other interesting thing about the Sherlock-Mycroft relationship is that the writers seem to respect it in a way they respect little else. As a thousand tumblr metas will tell you, Sherlock’s relationship with other characters and Sherlock’s own characterisation are both riddled with inconsistency, but Mycroft’s characterisation and the presentation of the Mycroft-Sherlock relationship really aren’t. It shouldn’t be necessary for a character to be played by one of the writers to escape degenerating into a pseudo-joke on every third appearance… but nevertheless, Mycroft is played by one of the writers, and does escape that fate. Back in-world, Mycroft gains extra stature through not being regularly crapped on by the script.

Which isn’t always good. The show is called Sherlock and not Mycroft, yet season 3 is emphatically bracketed with two occasions on which Sherlock is utterly powerless (being tortured, and crying on a plane on his way to exile and probably death) and then rescued by the all-powerful Mycroft. He can’t really be called a deus ex machina, as he’s too involved in the stories, but he is used as a reset button, and it robs the narrative of satisfaction. I would like to think the writers are ultimately going somewhere with this, but I suspect not.

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