Sometimes people walk away from love because it is so beautiful that it terrifies them. Sometimes they leave because the connection shines a bright light on their dark places and they are not ready to work them through. Sometimes they run away because they are not developmentally prepared to merge with another – they have more individuation work to do first. Sometimes they take off because love is not a priority in their lives – they have another path and purpose to walk first. Sometimes they end it because they prefer a relationship that is more practical than conscious, one that does not threaten the ways that they organize reality. Because so many of us carry shame, we have a tendency to personalize love’s leavings, triggered by the rejection and feelings of abandonment. But this is not always true. Sometimes it has nothing to do with us. Sometimes the one who leaves is just not ready to hold it safe. Sometimes they know something we don’t – they know their limits at that moment in time. Real love is no easy path – readiness is everything. May we grieve loss without personalizing it. May we learn to love ourselves in the absence of the lover.
The main reason I’m interested in the character is because we hardly know anything about him as a person from Canon. Sure, there is info, but it’s all second-hand (third-hand, if you include unreliable narrator Watson). And this is it:
Had an estimated total of 20 bank accounts, for money laundering (VALL)
Art collector, or at least had knowledge of famous painters, and Holmes claimed he did not steal La Jeune Fille a l’Agneau, but bought it (VALL)
Skilled teacher, and could come across as avuncular (VALL)
Paid his chief of staff 6,000 pounds a year, which was supposed to be more than the Prime Minister got (VALL)
Wrote a well-received treatise on the binomial theorem at 21 (FINA)
Wrote a book that, supposedly, no one dared review because it was too deep (FINA)
Stepped down as chair of mathematics at an unnamed university because of unspecified rumours (FINA)
Had that snake-like head-twitching tic (FINA)
Thought duelling/wrestling/baritsu-ing/whatever-ing Holmes above a waterfall was an appropriate way to get rid of him (FINA)
Had a brother, a colonel, also named James Moriarty (EMPT)
Had a younger brother who was a station-master (VALL)
Unmarried (VALL)
That still filled 12 bullet points, and there’s probably more I didn’t sift out of the text, but it’s not enough for me! There’s potential for a story behind each of those things.
Holmes was described in excruciating but contradictory detail. Watson was described in mostly contradictory detail. I want the same for Moriarty. (If Doyle had written more stories with him in them, would he eventually have said he had a wife who called him ‘John’?)
And I think of him as a maths-themed Adam ‘The Napoleon of Crime’ Worth about as much as I think of Holmes as a bohemian Joseph Bell: useful from a Doylean view, but far from the solution to my curiosity.
It’s not that I want him to be entirely sympathetic. I’m not against the ideas that he’s misunderstood, pursued personal goals other than crime for fun and/or profit, or was shoved into the role by someone else, though those wouldn’t be my first preferences. I don’t mind thinking of him as gleefully immoral, either. I just want to understand why he became/continued to be himself.
I recently read this quote from the author Jeffery Deaver:
I think every Sherlock Holmes needs a Professor Moriarty, James Bond needs his Blofeld – it’s the brilliance of the antagonists that bring out the brilliance of the heroes.
Ok, two things:
Moriarty was created relatively late, to further Holmes’ character only in the direction of death, so it’s lucky that he was convincing in his role, for someone who popped out of nowhere. Though, arguably, any character would have gotten a villainous status boost if they had been the one to kill Holmes.
But popping out of nowhere also increased his credibility. The best criminals don’t get caught. So he does come across as brilliant in Canon – but like an unidentified object shining from thousands of miles away. What is it? Somebody whip out a telescope.
And because I am neither satisfied with what’s in Canon, nor do I have any serious headcanons about Moriarty, I am on a slow, slow quest to appraise various Moriarties.
But I don’t have any Strong Opinions about who Moriarty should be, so I just go “mm, plausible… plausible… I see you’re having a good time, congratulations… doesn’t fit with Canon, but it’s fun… not to my taste, but whatever floats your boat… I don’t like it, so I won’t read… etc.”
So what this means is, I will never pin down Moriarty.
I think this is a
very important question that often gets ignored when discussing the
starting point for EMP.
Sherlock cannot have memories of
people, places, and things that he’s never seen.
So if HLV is where EMP begins, it must
pass the POV test. It doesn’t.
CAM’s MP is introduced at the end of
TEH. How does Sherlock know that CAM has a MP? How does Sherlock
recreate that same MP in his own mind in HLV?
The bomb fire video is not a video when
it’s shown in TEH. It’s inside CAM’s MP so it’s a thought or a
memory. How does Sherlock take CAM’s memory and turn it into an
actual video or a thought of his own in HLV?
Why does the line “Put that on a t-shirt” repeat?
When Mary points the gun at Sherlock,
he does a quick deduction.
How can Sherlock have a memory of this
scene from TEH? He wasn’t there…
If HLV is EMP, then TEH is EMP as well.
POV matters. It can’t be ignored.
Take TAB out of the equation. Fucky
HLV leads directly into fucky TST. And with it goes the POV weirdness. Balloon John and the changes to John’s flat further prove that
TEH/MHR is EMP. Sherlock can’t know what he doesn’t know.
S4 is telling us that this entire show is EMP. HLV is not where EMP begins, it’s the
beginning of the end.
Several times in this show, Sherlock Holmes is referred to as a ‘dragon slayer’. Moriarty taunts him about it in TRF, through a mock fairy tale in a taxi. Mary repeats it in TST, when he offers to help her (again). Even Sherlock’s own brother gives him this title in HLV, although a bit condescending as usual:
Mycroft thinks this is how Sherlock views himself:
I’m not so sure he’s right, though, since I believe Sherlock’s self esteem isn’t really as high as it may seem. Both Mycroft and the villain Magnusen have also mentioned Sherlock’s ‘damsels in distress’ – people he has to save at any cost. John is supposed to be one of them, and that may be very true.
But who is it – to be honest – that usually does the actual ‘slaying’ in our story? Who is the brave knight that goes into battle to take down the enemy?
In ASiP, when Sherlock risks his life just to prove he’s clever, it’s John who ends up shooting the serial killer:
In TBB John is supposed to be on a date with Sarah, but Sherlock lures him into adventures again. When the criminals kidnap John and Sarah, Sherlock comes to their rescue. But he fails to actually save them, and it’s ultimately John who manages – lying on the ground with his own hands tied – to kick the crossbow pointing at Sarah, so that the arrow hits the murderer instead:
In TGG John is kidnapped – again. Sherlock has a gun but can do nothing with it since Moriarty has John covered in explosives. But somehow John always manages to turn the tables around. Who’s the ‘knight’ here?
In ASiB the villain who works for Moriarty is Irene. She drugs Sherlock and plays a dangerous game on him and his brother, and John is lured away for the umpteenth time this show. This ends, however, with John confronting Irene (verbally) in the Battersea Power Station, ordering her to stop playing and tell Sherlock she’s alive.
In THoB Sherlock did – as usual – solve the puzzle, but – also as usual – it was John Watson who ultimately ‘slew the monster’:
An on and on it goes, following the same pattern, although the enemy may shift. I think Sherlock is very aware of this, judging by his best man speech in TSoT: “I will solve your murder, but it takes John Watson to save your life”.
John’s brave loyalty seems to have no limits. In TRF, when Scotland Yard turns upon Sherlock, listening to slander about him, it’s John Watson who punches them in the face.
As we know, John has been an army doctor – which means warrior and at the same time caretaker – from the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. I take it that this regiment no longer exists in the British Army under its old name, but its equivalent today is the The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (source: http://johnwatsonswar.livejournal.com/2158.html ). Interestingly, their cap badge depicts – guess what…
A Dragon Slayer!! I find it hard to believe that the universe would be so lazy…
As an in-joke, maybe the following could also be some sort of clue:
(Bilbo and Smaug the dragon from The Hobbit, interpreted by Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch, who also play John and Sherlock)
In Series 3, though, something serious must have happened. After two years of bereavement, John seems to have changed considerably. He’s brave as usual, but the targets of his attacks have altered, and they really don’t seem to deserve his level of violence. In TEH he hits Sherlock three times hard in the face. In TSoT he somehow manages (unknowingly) to marry an assassin, but he stays with her even later when he knows that she has shot his best friend. In HLV John resorts to beating up a junkie basically to get an adrenaline kick. Not a dragon slayer any more, just a slayer.
And John does seem to have hit rock bottom in TLD when he assaults his beloved friend in a most brutal way, even hospitalizing him, unfairly blaming him for the death of the person who almost killed Sherlock before. This is really not the John Watson we used to know. The ‘bravery of the soldier’, the ‘strong moral principle’ has turned into abuse. Let’s hope that what we see is some kind of nightmare rather than the real John…
Now I actually don’t believe that Series 4 is real – I think the last episodes are part of some sort of mind game where most scenes take place inside Sherlock’s head and perhaps even inside John’s, corrupting their perception of reality. Possibly even most of HLV might be fake. And to me, one of the strongest indications of it is this unsolved business with John Watson’s personality change. Sherlock may have claimed that love is a vicious motivator already in the first episode, but if his actor was honest when he told us that in the end “Love conquers all”, then there really must be more to come – and soon, please!
You know what is so, SO Mofftiss about that plane metaphor?
@possiblyimbiassed and I had proposed a while ago (x) that the dead (‘asleep’) people on the plane represent the audience and that the plane itself is basically the show.
Well, go and watch TFP again. What are we told about the plane (=the show)?
In TFP, John asks, “Is the plane big or small?” And the girl on the plane replies, “Big.” Then she adds, “There are lots and lots of people on the plane.”
In other words, it’s one huuuuge audience. Lots and lots of people watch this show.
And then, Mofftiss take it one step further and have Sherlock ask, “Outside the plane window, is it day or night.”
And the girl replies, “Night.” (‘Cause people watch TV in the evening. Makes sense.)
But then Mycroft (=the author) adds, “Well, that narrows it down to half the planet.”
Yes. Half the planet watches ‘Sherlock’! Gee, Mofftiss, modesty is not your strong suit, is it?:) How proud were you of that line, I wonder?
Also, in ASiB we’re told that the plane is probably not from one of the more superstitious countries…so, yeah, they’ve conceded that there are countries were it’s at least more difficult to show this kinda thing (‘superstitious’ being code for religious fundamentalist, basically).
And they told us one more thing, remember…
The driver is ‘asleep’, too! The little girl in TFP repeats several times that she can’t wake the driver up. The driver is dead to the world, too.
And who is the ‘driver’ of a TV show? Yes, the TV channel.
So, not only are there millions and millions of viewers who don’t get it (=are dead on the plane), the TV channels are ‘asleep’, too (=aren’t privy to what BBC ‘Sherlock’ is all about either).
Mofftiss, you smug bastards. What are you telling us there?
That the TV channels (drivers) in the countries that constitute ‘half the planet’ don’t know what they’re dealing with: a gay romance! The drivers (=TV channels) are all ‘asleep’, too.
This should turn out to be one interesting spectacle to watch once season 5 comes out…
P.S. And I kinda doubt those ‘asleep’ TV channels include the BBC. At least someone at the BBC probably knows what this is all about (=is not metaphorically ‘asleep’), but it’s possible that, even at the BBC, there aren’t that many who are ‘in the know’.
I was reading Sherlock’s post on John’s blog – which also is the very last post on that blog – when I realized something in the comments section that I probably should have noticed ages ago:
Does this ring any bell? ANYONE!?
Talking about elephants in the room, but this has been there since Series 3, hiding in plain sight. Three things stand out to me:
1. Sherlock is hinting heavily about John’s wedding as a crime scene and what happened there. He seems very lonely and desperate for some attention; he has been leaving comments for two days, but no-one cares. John and ‘Mary’ have apparently read his post, but they both merely tell him to shut up.
2. Finally, when John no longer responds at all, Sherlock allows himself to be distracted by Mrs Hudson, and they’re about to play CLUEDO. As in “clue”.
We were being given a never ending stream of Sherlock content for WEEKS! So much to analyze and pour over! All of us were so happy and excited for s4….
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