{"id":181929,"date":"2014-11-13T14:08:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T14:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/11\/13\/hey-do-you-think-sherlock-actually-never-needed-a\/"},"modified":"2014-11-13T14:08:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T14:08:39","slug":"hey-do-you-think-sherlock-actually-never-needed-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/11\/13\/hey-do-you-think-sherlock-actually-never-needed-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey do you think Sherlock actually never needed a flatmate to help him afford to stay in 221B? I mean then why did he choose such an expensive location; how can he afford such expensive clothes and accessories? And most of all we never actually hear him say that he needs a flatmate to help him pay the rent, just him musings that he must be a difficult person to find a flatmate. But then again why an antisocial person like him was looking for one in the first place. Thoughts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

distaffgospels<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

mid0nz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

loudest-subtext-in-television-d<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Brace yourself, because this is another \u201ctoo farfetched for M-theory\u201d thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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, \u201cWhat?\u201d Of course, it could simply be intended to only code her as \u201cnot that<\/em> intelligent\u201d just to show that Sherlock came from a normal family, but let\u2019s see where we can go if we take it as foreshadowing of her backstory.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s the one who got the cushy government job and provides for them all), and why Sherlock feels his mother is stupid and doesn\u2019t listen to anything: card counting is risky even if you\u2019re good at it. We know that Mummy and Daddy visit America for line-dancing and apparently have done this for years since HLV \u201cisn\u2019t the first time [Sherlock\u2019s] substance abuse has wreaked havoc on their line-dancing,\u201d and that Sherlock was in Florida to help Mrs. Hudson out back in the day, so: it\u2019s not implausible that Mummy could hit up Vegas. In fact, if she likes playing the lottery, she probably would<\/em>. We keep having America come up in Sherlock\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

But it gets better: Sherlock has the book Bringing Down the House<\/a> 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\u2019s past is full of fucked up illegal stuff.<\/p>\n

Plus I don\u2019t 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\u2019s backstory is fucked up in this show and that\u2019s why I can\u2019t wait to hear more of John\u2019s and Mummy\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Anyway, where was I? Right. I don\u2019t 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\u2019t imagine that he would be sitting alone in his giant mansion with huge statues of chess figures and tell Sherlock \u00a0he doesn\u2019t care if he gets evicted, you know?\u00a0We can also guess that Mycroft pays for his parents\u2019 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\u2019t feel right asking Mycroft for it (parents tend not to feel great about being a financial burden on their children).<\/p>\n

So I think Sherlock just said that line about how him and John should be able to afford 221b because the real<\/em> reason would sound too pathetic: Sherlock\u2019s just trying to make a friend because it\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then Sherlock doesn\u2019t care that John can\u2019t pay for anything and doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t seem to be in large supply, plus apparently Sherlock will turn down that sort of thing out of pride. He dresses like a model.\u00a0He makes it rain on his homeless network on the regular. Even CAM doesn\u2019t know anything about Sherlock\u2019s financial status when he targets him with his Shameful Secrets Vision. You can read it as a joke about \u201clol television characters always live outside what their means realistically ought to be\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s a tv cliche that glamorous people don\u2019t seem to have any source of income \u2014 and it might well be just that, but I suspect it\u2019s more.<\/p>\n

My other theory is that it\u2019s 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 \u201cstay off drugs and keep your shit together and I\u2019ll make sure you\u2019re looked after\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Either way, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

My headcanon is that every time John accepted a check for one of Sherlock\u2019s 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\u2019s one reason why John\u2019s finances didn\u2019t look exploitable to CAM. And since I\u2019ve never met a headcanon I couldn\u2019t turn sad, may I suggest imagining that John\u2019s 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\u2019s why he felt comfortable making the wedding so ABSURDLY EXPENSIVE?<\/p>\n

Have a pleasant day, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Glorious exposition, loudest-subtext-in-television<\/a>, but you\u2019ve forgotten the biggest clue of all. Y\u2019all<\/em>. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Where oh where were they line dancing, LSiT<\/em>?\u00a0Mummy has friends in low places. Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. (Hint: I grew up there.)\u00a0Who needs Vegas<\/a>? Smaller casinos are easier marks, no? \u00a0\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oooook-lahoma\u2026 plus reblogging for \u201cShameful Secrets Vision.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

distaffgospels: mid0nz: loudest-subtext-in-television-d: Brace yourself, because this is another \u201ctoo farfetched for M-theory\u201d 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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Hey do you think Sherlock actually never needed a flatmate to help him afford to stay in 221B? I mean then why did he choose such an expensive location; how can he afford such expensive clothes and accessories? And most of all we never actually hear him say that he needs a flatmate to help him pay the rent, just him musings that he must be a difficult person to find a flatmate. But then again why an antisocial person like him was looking for one in the first place. Thoughts?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[2858,15,1810,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}