#is my favorite
Henry Tilney’s unabashed love of muslin and Ann Radcliffe, when contrasted with John Thorpe’s dull-headed dismissal of novels and refusal to shut up about his stupid, blinged-out carriage, is this perfect example of how modes of masculinity that depend on rejecting feminine-coded pleasures are sort of doomed to fail on their own terms. You cannot be a tough, self-assured man when you’re too self-conscious to allow yourself the pleasure of a genre containing such winning titles as Necromancer of the Black Forest just because it’s associated with the ladies.
This is for @sanguinarysanguinity, thanks again! Sorry for the delay, but we’re back now for the ‘Four Headcanons’ Meme. (Coming up next, I will be doing Dean Winchester, Kara Thrace, and Sherlock Holmes himself - thanks so much everyone who has sent in requests!)
As it happens, I’ve written more about Mycroft than any other secondary ACD character. I’ve identified with him since I was a child, and I like trying to imagine my way into his head. For this post, I’ll try to offer some new thoughts first, and then at the end I’ll add links to the fics of mine that are heavy on Mycroft headcanon.
Headcanon A (Realistic): Mycroft has been heavy all his life, it is his natural body type. He also has naturally low energy levels, and though they are unrelated to depression – which he does not suffer – they are aggravated by his chronic insomnia. That in itself would not have kept him from being sporty in his youth, but although he is content and even interested to observe others at play, he found direct participation in most popular sports to be wearing, dull, and uncomfortable. Mycroft is always conscious of the areas in which his ability to observe, calculate, and predict gives him what might be considered an unsportsmanlike advantage. This was particularly true in boxing, billiards, and card games, and for that reason Mycroft found them distasteful despite his clear ability to excel at them. Knowing that developing some other type of accomplishment would reduce the pressure on him to engage in competitions he did not relish, he worked his way through mastering every instrument in the orchestra except for the violin, which he felt should belong wholly to Sherlock. At social gatherings he is a confident performer and can take up any instrument his host has on hand, particularly since it excuses him from dancing. The most common parlor instrument is the pianoforte, so that is the one he plays most often. He also composes, though he has never sought to have his pieces performed.
Headcanon B (Funny): He has no interest in owning a pet of any kind, but he adores birds and is an inveterate bird-watcher. Every year he takes one week’s vacation. While his colleagues imagine that he must indulge himself in fine dining and spend the rest of his leisure in placid museum and library trips, in fact they could find him crouching behind bushes or lying in ditches across the Commonwealth for a glimpse of the species he has not yet seen.
Headcanon C (Complete AU): In my ACD wingfic, I have already given Sherlock the wings of a goshawk and John the wings of a skylark. I would have to do some more research before firmly deciding on Mycroft’s wings, but my first instinct is that he should have the wings of a vulture. Considered large to an unseemly degree and dismissed as gauche if not ugly, they are in fact a perfect fit for his body and a strong reflection of his mind and personality. Although popularly derided as lazy scavengers, and sometimes even considered sinister because they are often pictured bloodily feasting on corpses, vultures in fact represent all the virtues of an omnivorous appetite. Rather than hunting and killing themselves, they clean up the waste and mess left behind by others. In doing so, they do much to prevent the spread of disease, as they are themselves impervious to the kind of rot that would kill most other creatures. Mycroft is mentally omnivorous; he’s unglamorous, underestimated, and ungainly. He’s a vulture.
Headcanon D (Canon Divergence): As with Mary, there is so little canon about Mycroft (he only has a speaking role in two stories, and is briefly mentioned in two more) that what we get is hard to argue with. However, I will say that I diverge from the way that many writers and actors have interpreted canon!Mycroft in that I see him as a less Machiavellian character than he frequently appears to be in adaptations, and I also don’t imagine him as being patronizing toward Sherlock. There’s no denying that he *is* patronizing here and there in Greek InterpreterandBruce Partington Plans, but I mentally convert that into familiar teasing that is stripped of any underlying power dynamics. In ACD verse, as opposed to BBC verse, I concentrate on elements of their fraternal relationship such as unspoken loyalty, natural reserve, quiet anxiety, and occasional low-key, deadpan humour. They get on each other’s nerves when they spend too long in the same room, certainly, and feel no urge to regularly socialize, but the Mycroft that I write is one who respects his brother’s intelligence and choices and doesn’t feel any need to one-up him or to tell him how to live his life.
As I mentioned, I’ve written a fair number of fics about Mycroft. Here are some of the ones that are heavy on headcanon:
Strangers – I wrote this back in 2009 as a character study focused on the question: in what ways does Mycroft’s brilliance differ from Sherlock’s genius? Why did Sherlock choose detection, and Mycroft politics?
A Choice of Evils – How did Mycroft handle being caught in the middle of the Reichenbach secret?
Rewriting History – This story has a subplot about the impact that World War I had on Mycroft.
Art in the Blood – This isn’t set in the ACD verse, but it’s still Victorian. It explores what might happen if Mycroft changed careers.
And if anyone is also interested in BBC Mycroft, I have these:
Refusing the Knighthood – Star Wars AU. Mycroft as a Jedi Knight, Sherlock as his very recalcitrant Padawan.
Crusade – A Mycroft character study by means of Indiana Jones.
The Almost Empty House – A Potterlock fic in which John and Sherlock are the main characters, but there are some significant scenes between John and Slytherin!Mycroft.
Some kind stranger just came across this old post in the wilds of Tumblr and gave it a like, thereby reminding me of its existence. Thank you, friendly reader! My warm feelings toward Mycroft remain, and he often features in my Holmes stories one way or another. Since writing the above post, I have added a couple more fics to my catalogue in which more of my Mycroft headcanons come out to play:
The Better Part of Valour. This is a Greek Interpreter fix-it in which Mycroft plays a not-insignificant role. It’s told from the point of view of Mr. Melas, who is canonically Mycroft’s neighbor, and he is a very observant gentleman who instinctively recognizes that Mycroft is a good person to go to for help.
The Talking Cure. Set in the 7 Percent Solution ‘verse. Mycroft does not directly appear in this one, but it is a fic that explores an old family tragedy in which he was as much a victim as Sherlock, and there is headcanon here about his relationship with his parents, and also with their childhood tutor, Professor Moriarty.
I love your headcanons (and fics)!
(Not So) Short Opinion On Taylor Swift’s “folklore”
I feel kinda conflicted about folklore. The lyrics are amazing, but all the songs make me feel. so. damn. sad.
Like, pretty much every song sounds sad, and it’s kind of emotionally tiring. After listening to the entire album, I just felt emotionally drained, and not necessarily in a good way. And this is maybe just a personal preference, but I think an album is better if it doesn’t just have only happy sounding songs, or only sad sounding songs. There needs to be a little bit of a break. Lover was an incredible happy sounding album, but it still had some songs that sounded sad. Here, after a while, all the songs start sounding kinda the same. Which is sad (pun not intended), because now I can’t enjoy the lyrics as much as I normally would otherwise.
And I get that this is probably intentional. The focus is very much on the lyrics and the singing, so the music takes a bit of a backseat.
So yeah, folklore. Lyric-wise: ten out of ten. Music-wise: maybe a high five, low six? Somewhere around there.
And unfortunately for this album, my enjoyment of music is more determined by the music than by the lyrics.
Songs I currently feel are worth listening to more often:
betty, definitely betty (the key-change was heavenly, and the storytelling amazing),
my tears ricochet,
cardigan,
the last great american dynasty,
(and I guess also)
the 1.
2 additional notes:
1. Taylor’s singing is great, which, you know, kinda obvious, but I still feel like it needs to be said.
2. One of my biggest pet peeves is when song titles aren’t written with capital letters (same with “the”, “a/an”, “of” and similar words in titles of songs, movies…). This didn’t influence my opinion on this album, but it did annoy me to no end.
i realized after posting Mr. Mistoffeles last night that i don’t think i ever posted the sketches a did a few months prior, when i saw the musical for the first time so,,,
