Sherlock and The Social Dots

 (Sherlock meta by bassfanimation)

I keep seeing people continue to fight over Sherlock and the meaning of Eurus’ tests so I wanted to write a little thing on it. I’m doing this with a wrist brace on and heinous fibro-turd pain, so forgive any misspellings.

The way I have personally absorbed Sherlock and the meaning of Eurus’s tests is that it’s about Sherlock as an empty person. He is an incomplete picture until he begins connecting the dots that are his social connections and even more importantly, his emotions. Let’s look at his relationships one by one and I’ll explain.

Dot 1: Greg Lestrade 

Lestrade represents respect for authority. In fact, he is the only real authority figure in the series. He’s Sherlock’s ‘boss’ in a way. Bosses need people they employ to be reliable, respectful, and trustworthy. Sherlock treating his boss/mentor like crap, making fun of his intelligence and skirting around him at every chance he gets is terribly disrespectful. Sherlock is childish and arrogant and disregards Lestrade in most cases, even refusing to acknowledge his name. We’ve all had those bosses when we were young that we didn’t respect, so we act like spoiled brats about it even though those people probably have way more experience than we do. They have earned their position via the rout of hard work and being reliable and respectful. By the end of the series, however, Sherlock shows us he has resolved the issue of his respect for Lestrade by politely asking him, by name, a first for the entire series, to please take care of his brother. Sherlock is no longer a bratty child and he has connected the social dot of respect.

Dot 2: John Watson 

John represents friendship, pure and simple. John is literally the “replacement” for Victor, Sherlock’s best friend who was killed when he was very, very little. That left Sherlock as the empty shell that we see at the start of the series. The loss of his friend at such a young age meant that he essentially shut down the part of him that he felt could even have friends. He rejected the idea of personal connections with other people entirely, so that he wouldn’t suffer loss again. John, through all their trials and tragedies, has now healed that wound for Sherlock. Even more, John as Sherlock’s friend, has helped him connect all the other dots. He walked with him step by step to do it. Without John’s companionship, Sherlock would still be empty. John’s maturity helped Sherlock grow up and be the man he was supposed to be, had he not suffered such a terribly traumatic event in his youth.

One other thing John represents is family, brotherhood to be specific. Mycroft was very cold to Sherlock in their youth, even though it’s obvious it wasn’t always that way. In the family videos we are shown, Sherlock absolutely loves his brother. It isn’t until later, after Victor, that he feels so alone. It’s obvious Sherlock loved Victor just like a brother, like the brother he really needed but was taken from him. Sherlock says John is “family” in The Final Problem, and he means it. It also shows just how much emotion Sherlock has. His love is that strong. His friend was his brother, a part of his own blood, even if they wren’t born as brothers.

Dot 3: Mrs. Hudson 

Mrs Hudson represents a parent’s love. It’s clear that Sherlock has a very strained relationship with his parents. He doesn’t hate them, but he doesn’t appear to believe that they care for him. They’re not around when he is still basically a child in a grown man’s body. He has cut them off in his mind. Maybe they weren’t there for him in the past so he continues to believe they’re not there for him now. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hudson dotes on Sherlock, brings him tea and food and generally ‘takes care’ of him. She’s kind but not a pushover. She’s also led a life that is about as tumultuous as you can get, which I think appeals to Sherlock. He always surrounds himself with people who aren’t “regular” people. Mrs. Hudson holds enough action and adventure in her life that she appeals to Sherlock, and she is also loving and sweet to boot. Mrs. Hudson is the connected parental dot for Sherlock.

Dot 4: Irene Adler 

Irene Adler represents sexuality. What’s even better is that Irene represents fluid sexuality, and more importantly, the rejection of labels. Regardless of how everyone has interpreted this, when you get down to the simplicity of it, it is simply about rejection of boxing one’s self in. Sherlock’s box was his own making, his image as the “higher power” that Irene pointed out. Irene’s own box was her sexuality. Both of these people had discovered during the episode that their boxes weren’t taped shut all the way. There was wiggle room. Back to the sexuality part, Irene awakened Sherlock sexually. The entirety of A Scandal in Belgravia was loaded with sexuality, from Sherlock being naked and looking extraordinarily dashing, to the very naked Irene appearing to completely disrupt his logical thinking power. It’s as close to canon as one can get that Sherlock did sleep with Irene after Karachi (judging by Eurus’s reaction to his violin song for her). Sex and intimacy was something Sherlock had very much refrained from in his life and Irene connected that dot for him.

Dot 5: Molly Hooper 

Molly represents authentic love, or “romantic entanglement” as Sherlock puts it. Everything about Molly and Sherlock’s interaction falls in line with how everyday romantic relationships blossom. They began just like kids, with Molly having a crush and Sherlock being a jerk to her, ignoring her, or thwarting her attempts to date other men. As they grow together, they begin to close the gap between them. Molly earns Sherlock’s complete trust, which was monumentally difficult for her to do considering Sherlock’s fear of connecting with people too closely. Molly loves Sherlock through his best times and his worst times, unconditionally, even though he doesn’t appear to return her feelings. From small things we’re shown, however, it feels as if Sherlock does feel something for Molly, but he has compartmentalized it and buried it as deep as he can underground out of fear. Eurus’s test is what forced Sherlock to dig up that box, that box he’d put his heart in and covered it underneath the earth. Eurus forces that box open, and connects the dot of romantic love for Sherlock.

Dot 6: Mary Watson 

Mary represents, I think, coming to terms with one’s self, and the different shades of the self. She represents acceptance. Mary connected with and accepted Sherlock instantly because they were the same. They both came from dangerous lives, they are both morally gray, and they both have a need to be accepted for who they are, the good and the bad. Mary was in many ways, a reflection of Sherlock’s own duality. I think Mary made him question things about himself (no not sexually), and I think she also taught him how much he is worth as a person. She showed him that even though you are this person you’ve constructed out of your own pain, you don’t have to live just as that person. You can have anything you desire and still be you. You can live with shades of yourself, and those around you who truly love you will accept you as that. They will love you for the good that you are, and forgive you for the bad that you are. Mary connected the dots of acceptance for Sherlock.

Dot 7: Jim Moriarty 

Jim represented fear. He represented who Sherlock would have been, had he not had some form of love and connection in his life. He was a madman, a true sociopath. He showed Sherlock what it really would be like if he was who he said he was. We learn very quickly, however, what Moriarty already knew. Sherlock can never be like him because he does have a huge capacity for love. He’s hidden it, denied it, but it is there. Anywhere Moriarty appeared, it caused great fear in Sherlock. Even after his death, Moriarty was in Sherlock’s mind, chained up in a padded room like a some kind of caged monster. As much as Sherlock tried to be like him, he really feared becoming that. He also feared that Moriarty would be the undoing of his friends and family, forever a threat to their lives. Moriarty was an endless threat to Sherlock, an endless fear of madness and murder. Jim connected the dot of fear, true fear, for Sherlock.

Dot 8: Mycroft Holmes 

I admit this one’s tough. I feel Mycroft represents weakness. For all the power Mycroft wields in the government, he’s very fearful of being out in the world. He keeps people as distant as he can manage and still be a part of functioning society. He also did a terrible thing and locked up his little sister and lied to his family about it because he feared confronting it. All along in the series, we see Mycroft chastise Sherlock for things like having friends, being close to people, tangling with psychopaths, etc. Mycroft is a very soft, fearful person, which makes his nickname The Ice Man sort of ironic. Its not that he doesn’t care, he’s just far too soft to care. We see his softness demonstrated with Sherlock, time and time again. He cares so much for his little brother and fears so much for him that he constantly keeps watch on him. Mycroft also tried to help Sherlock by proxy, using John as a means to help Sherlock heal his wounds. In the end, Sherlock comes to realize his brother isn’t a bad person, and that he loves him deeply. In fact, he loves his little brother enough to die for him so that he won’t be left like he was as a child, without his best friend. I think Mycroft regrets being as weak as he is, because he didn’t do more to help his siblings. It just required too much care, and he wasn’t able to fulfill that. In the end, it is Sherlock who is the stronger of them, and he is stronger because of his connected dots. The last dot is connect by Mycroft, and that is Sherlock understanding that he is capable of protecting the weak, that he is stronger thanks to his mind, heart, and soul now being complete.

_____________

That’s about all. I only included the major characters here, the ones we see almost every episode. I’ve already talked a bit about how Eurus forces Sherlock to confront trauma, so she represents that last little bit which Sherlock needs to connect everything together. She wasn’t a dot, so much as the one who helped him see the entire picture he’d made. Also, Rosie helps Sherlock in her own way, as Sherlock now has this capacity to care for the smallest of people: children. Rosie is a teeny, tiny, adorable dot.

I mostly wrote this because I had wanted to for a while, but also because some people are still arguing about the 'I Love You' scene. They’re missing the forest in favor of the leaves. The bigger picture is pretty clear on what everyone’s purposes were in the show, and how they affected Sherlock as a man. To become a great man, he needed to be a complete man. All these connected dots make him that man.

Even in Sherlock's mind, Moriarty always underestimates Molly

 (Sherlock meta by creamocrop)

Q: Loved your analysis of the Mind Palace! What's also interesting is that when his "Moriarty" (extreme crazy id?) tells him who will be crying for him, he never mentions Molly: even in Sherlock's mind, Moriarty always underestimates Molly: the one who always counts.

A: Thank you very much! Now, you hit this one on the spot! Moriarty in strait-jacket, wrapped in chains and locked in a padded room is arguably one of the scariest scenes in Sherlock so far. Props to Andrew Scott! 

Now on to the fact that Moriarty missed Molly again! When he was actually listing the possible reactions of the people who cared for Sherlock if he dies, I was actually crossing my fingers and was hoping that he would forget Molly again - and boy was I glad that he did.

Because, you see for me, mind-palace-Jim remaining clueless about how vital Molly is in Sherlock’s life, is very important! The mere fact that this Jim still has no idea about what Molly did for Sherlock, means that even though our dear consulting detective is scared of him (why else would he place Jim in such a secluded and heavily secured place, if he wasn’t), his ability to compartmentalize and keep his mind palace objective and organized remains top-notch. He did not let his fear of Moriarty rule him and leak a very vital information.

Even in his mind palace, Sherlock knows that he is safe from Moriarty as long as the consulting criminal remains in the dark about the woman who mattered the most. See, this again shows how Sherlock associates Molly with safety and survival.

She is the barrier between Sherlock and Moriarty.

She is the barrier between Sherlock and his fear.

Molly got her happy ending

 (Sherlock meta by sherlocked167)

I see a lot of posts saying Molly Hooper deserved better, poor Molly or Molly is such a weak character. Really, are they all watching the same show. So here I am trying my best to negate them.

I think she is the strongest and the most badass character on the show. You don’t need to be a consulting detective, an ex-army man, an ex- super agent, the British Government, a DI, the widow of a drug dealer or a dominatrix to be considered badass. Look at our sweet pathologist Molly, she dated and dumped Jim Moriarty (the Consulting Criminal) and she was so freaking casual about it.

She wasn’t scared or worried even after knowing who Jim really is, and can we please talk about how she casually calls him “Jim” , whereas every other character addresses him by his full name or Moriarty as they are all a bit scared of him. It’s still a bit unclear as to why Jim let her walk away unscathed even after “she ended it” (my Molliarty shipper heart has its own reasons though). Anyway this is just one of the instances to show that Molly is neither a weak nor a timid character.

Now coming to the ILY scene, a lot of wonderful meta is already written about it but I would like to add my two cents to it. Firstly, I think Jim Moriarty is the one who told Eurus about Molly because the Jim we all know ( come on he’s a genius) would take into consideration the various possibilities regarding The Fall. He would have considered the possibility of Sherlock going to Molly for help, as he knows Molly loves Sherlock and would help him regardless of what people say. I think Jim always planned for Molly to be a part of "the final problem".

Anyway coming back to the ILY scene, I don’t know if this was deliberately done by the writers or not but there is an important thing we tend to miss. John “ I see but I don’t observe” Watson thinks the coffin is for Adler and Mycroft “ I’m the smart one” Holmes thinks the coffin is for somebody who loves Sherlock, both of them are wrong because the person who is in the coffin doesn’t write their own epitaph or the engraving “I Love you”. It’s the person who buries them, in this case it’s Sherlock who has to bury Molly if she dies, who writes the epitaph. So the whole point of the scene is to get Sherlock to admit his feelings and say the words to Molly. He most definitely means it when he says it the second time because that is the look of realization of a man who has fallen in love for the first time.

Molly deserves to have her love and feelings returned by the man she’s always loved and that is exactly what happened in The Final Problem. Even Loo Brealey in a recent interview said “ After playing Molly for seven years it was great to do her justice and give her a good send-off if it is the end…” I think this means Molly got her happy ending and we all know what her happy ending is and more importantly with whom. So I don’t understand from where this ‘Molly deserves better’ posts are coming from.

My point being Molly got her happy ending and there is no need to take pity on her or call her weak. Thank you very much.

“Moriarty slipped up, he made a mistake…”

 (Sherlock meta by eugeniebatch and anarfea)

eugeniebatch:

Oh, no. He didn’t.
He told Eurus about Molly.

In those 5 minutes, he told her about the things that would drive Sherlock out of his mind. And of course, he also told her about the person who mattered the most, giving her the opportunity to play with Sherlock’s emotions.

Thus, even after death, Moriarty managed to “burn the heart out of him”.

anarfea:

I thought that Eurus deduced this herself. Sherlock made the mistake of having Molly show up at John’s therapy session to diagnose him. And John refers to her as “the one person who can see through your bullshit.” Eurus watches the whole exchange after she examines him where Molly says “I’m stressed; you’re dying.” She sees what they mean to each other, when they exchange those dark, meaningful looks at the ambulance.

Jim thought that John was Sherlock’s heart, IMO. He connected John to Victor via Redbeard (hence the referring to John as a ‘pet.’ as does Eurus). He thought John is the person who matters the most to Sherlock, and he thought that Sherlock would kill Mycroft to save John, and that he would suffer terribly.

Eurus says that “Moriarty thought you would make this choice.” I think she was hoping that Sherlock would kill John to save Mycroft, because she wanted him to chose his family over his friend. The way she wanted him to chose her over Victor when they were children.

I think that Jim and Eurus had a post-mortem bet going on, about who Sherlock would kill. And I think they both lost, because in the end Sherlock chose to kill himself before he’d kill either Mycroft or Sherlock.

And as for Molly. I like to think that Jim didn’t realize that Molly mattered, and that Eurus did. But the real catch of course, is that neither of them succeeded in burning Sherlock’s heart out in the end. He came to the realization that he loves her. And you can see at the end of The Final Problem that she knows it. If anything, they help Sherlock find his heart again, after it was broken in The Lying Detective by his grief over Mary’s death and John’s cruelty towards him.

Some more notes on The Great Game

 (Sherlock meta by justanotherfangirls)

So Moffat says, sentimentalise him [Sherlock] at your own peril, and we say, bring it on, peril and all. Because this version of Sherlock is a complicated roller coaster of emotions that they could not entirely blame on the fans. They knew what they’re doing; they have direct control of the direction of the show. And this teasing and trolling is both masterful and sadistic, but undoubtedly impressive.

Jim: If you don’t stop prying, I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the heart out of you.
Sherlock: I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one.
Jim: But we both know that’s not quite true.

Before I venture through A Scandal in Belgravia again, which would be hard - I have strong and conflicting feelings with that, I have some more thoughts about this episode.

Firstly, so I have been comparing Sherlock’s deduction of Mr. Chatterjee, way ahead, in The Hounds of Baskerville, with that of Jim. Coincidentally, Mark Gatiss wrote both of these episodes. In both times he was deducing a romantic interest of someone he cares about, someone he would want to protect. Jim was gay, Mr. Chatterjee has a wife nobody knows about. But there are significant differences. Firstly, Sherlock did not tell Mrs. Hudson his deductions the moment he saw Mr. Chatterjee; it was when he desperately needed to deduce and was irritated that John and Mrs. Hudson hid his cigarette stash. But Sherlock told Molly to break it off the first time he met Jim. Secondly, it was so obvious that he hated Jim and was very distracted with him around (Sherlock was rarely distracted especially when he had such an interesting case). He displayed no such hate with Mr. Chatterjee and hardly spared him any more thought. Thirdly, he insults Molly, almost as if he’s mad at her too. He did not do anything like that with Mrs. Hudson. Lastly, at the end of the scene when Molly walks out, his eyes seem to be telling her to come back, he was really expecting her to be grateful to him. And he seemed almost apologetic. But when Mrs. Hudson walked out, he moved on. John even shouted at him to apologize and he only commented on the pettiness of it.

This is not to say Molly is more important to him - Mrs. Hudson is his mother figure, and we all saw how angry he was when people tried to hurt her. I think he did not think it important to tell Mrs. Hudson at once, romantic entanglements are petty and he was otherwise harmless. And Mrs. Hudson would get over it and be back to making them tea in no time. But Jim was harmless too, his deductions only told him 'gay'. And he was insulting Molly about her weight; it was not an innocent comment - he insults Mycroft for exactly the same reason. So he was mad at Molly, unnecessarily annoyed at Jim, deemed it important to tell her that Jim is gay at once in the middle of a case - romance is important if Molly’s involved, and was in the end guilty of his actions because perhaps he knew he was out of line and took the situation too personally (unlike with Mrs. Hudson where he saw no need to apologize). Okay I am now convinced he was indeed jealous.

That tiny moment [at the pool scene] when his emotions betrayed his face, I could imagine Sherlock thinking about how Jim would burn the heart out of him. He was afraid. How easily Jim had gotten to John and strapped bombs into him, how loyal his friend is to be willing to die to save him and kill this dangerous criminal, how close his friend was to death at that moment because of him and his pride, arrogance, and boredom. I do think he also thought of Molly, how easily Jim had inserted himself into her life, how Jim was able to smile at her, to touch her, and how she smiled at him so innocently, trustingly. I think he had deduced that in Jim’s eyes Molly did not count to him, otherwise she would be the one with bombs strapped to her body. And I believe that in this moment he decided that the only way to keep her safe, to protect her, is to never let her get too close to him.

We can only speculate what happens after this confrontation. I think despite himself they grew closer anyway. He would obviously interrogate Molly to the tiniest detail regarding his arch nemesis. He probably became very critical of Molly’s subsequent dates and he uses the Jim card every time. (He knew that Jim wasn’t actually her boyfriend, they went out three times and she ended it. But who knows maybe he just likes hearing it again.) And there’s also this case titled The Ghost of St. Bartholomew’s in Sherlock’s blog which I assumed would involve Molly and it was after the pool confrontation because she never blogged about it.

An interview with Steven Moffat on ‘Sherlock’s Return in s2, the Holmes-Watson Love Story, and Updating the First Supervillain 

(By Alyssa Rosenberg)

Sunday nights are chock-full of great television, but last night marked the long, long-awaited return of Sherlock, Steven Moffat’s brilliant update of Arthur Conan Doyle’s story about an Afghanistan veteran, his brilliant-but-off-kilter flatmate, and their adventures in a London full of shifting social norms, new technologies, and criminals both diabolically brilliant and accidentally malign. And the show came back with a bang, bringing the previously asexual Sherlock up against Irene Adler, an opera singer with a scandalous secret in the stories turned into a thoughtful, melancholy dominatrix in the update. I spoke to Moffat about our contemporary obsessions with sex, watching Sherlock grow up, and how to interpret Moriarty, the world’s first supervillain, in a way that’s not a cliche given all the characters who were based on him.

You’ve adapted both Sherlock Holmes and Jekyll and Hyde, stories from the turn of the century. Are there parallels you see between that time of technological develop and social change and our own? 

Not on purpose. And to be honest, this hasn’t been a long-term plan that I’d adapt victorian fiction. I just like both stories. It wasn’t my idea to do Jekyll, it was a guy called Jeffrey Taylor who approached me about it, and I liked that because I’d always liked the story, and I’ve always been a Sherlock Holmes fan. Is there something particular? I think probably any era is analagous to any other era. People don’t change that much. We’re always doing the same sort of thing. So I think that probably just works. When you’re looking at what causes a scandal in Bohemia as opposed to Belgravia, you have to up the ante a bit, and Irene Adler doesn’t really qualify as a bad girl anymore. She’s an opera singer who married a man and moved house, as far as I can see. As far deadly femme fatales go, she was a little bit on the limited side. I remember when I was reading that story as a kid, Sherlock goes on and on about The Woman, the only one who ever beat him, and you’re thinking, he’s had better villains than this. And then you click: he fancies her, doesn’t he? That’s what it’s about.

I loved that line where Irene says to Watson, ‘you are a couple.’ They’re not sexually involved, but they are partners. Given that there’s always been this speculation over Watson and Holmes, I thought that was an interesting way to resolve the tension. 

It’s always definitely a love story. I don’t see why that means that sex has to be involved. What a weirdly sexualized world we live in where you insist they much be having sex as well. Why would they? John isn’t wired that way, whatever Sherlock is. But I think that whole scene, when Irene Adler has to say she’s mostly gay, she has had relationships with men as well, it’s not what it’s about. Sherlock Holmes is indifferent to sex. So is Irene. She uses sex to get what she wants, and John Watson happily has a string of girlfriends. Sex is not really the issue among any of these people. Love is. Infatuation is. I think John Watson is infatuated with and fascinated by Sherlock Holmes. I think Sherlock Holmes absolutley relies completely and utterly on John Watson and is devoted to him. I think Sherlock is infatuated to the point that he can barely function around Irene Adler. And Irene Adler isn’t initially fascinated by him and then falls for him completely, thinks, ‘There’s another person in the world as damaged as I am, how brilliant.’ Who says any of them are having sex with each other?

Well, it made me think about Victorian relationships, which could be coded and repressive, but also provided frameworks where people could build lives and households along different terms. Maybe our identity categories and relationship categories aren’t really sufficient to describe human nature? 

I was pondering when I wrote that, why is sex so important? And has it always been this important to ever previous era of humanity? I bet it isn’t. I think we’re obsessed with it, to the point where I know a lot of people are saying ‘Well, John and Sherlock clearly love each other, they must be having sex.’ But you can love someone without fancying them. If your’e not wired to fancy someone, you just won’t. But what’s that got to do with it? Really, what’s that got to do with the important relationships? We know that love grows, sex sort of wanes. Older people, you don’t have sex as much later on as you do at the beginning. We know it’s the lesser thing. I always say, you have love stories and sex scenes. That’s the difference in stature in our lives.

And Sherlock sort of realizes in that wonderful and very painful Christmas scene that his indifference isn’t producing the results that he wants. Detachment may not always be as strategic as it was for him before.

It’s the beginning of a three-episode process, as you’ll discover, where Sherlock grows up a bit, becomes more of a man, stops being the genius child…he was completely blind, he was completely blindsided by who that present was for, he realizes she cares for him. He realizes she’s really hurting. And he realizes, possibly for the first time in his life, that he doesn’t like what he just did. He thinks ‘I’ve got to fix that.’ He’s been cruel before, but it’s always been srot of accidental, or it’s been minor. And he thinks ‘I’ve got to fix that. That’s not good enough. I can do better than that. And I do care that I’ve just hurt her.’ What Mark and I always say is our Sherlock is twenty years from being Basil Rathbone. And our Sherlock is twenty years younger than Basil Rathbone. The accomplished version would never be that cruel, would never be that silly. Probably isn’t a virgin. I can’t imagine that man as a virgin. Something happened, somewhere. I think Sherlock would have to, somewhere. He’s a man with a past…You see more of this in Baskerville, where he encounters fear, and doubt, and loss in Reichenbach Falls. These are the fires in which the great hero is forged. He’s not the Sherlock Holmes we know and love yet.

What about Mycroft, who is also a long way from the man we’re told has his fingers in the affairs of state but mostly spends time hanging around his club? 

To be honest, Mark and I sort of took that version of Mycroft from Billy Wilder in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, where Christopher Lee plays Mycroft, and Mycroft is slim and he’s actually rather cold, and he’s like a frightening Secret Service guy. The original Mycroft we’ve left a long way behind. It’s again trying to put Sherlock Holmes where he would be. You somehow know he’s got to come from a rich family because only a rich family would indulge him. Whereas his brother’s done magnificent things and is worried about his tearaway brother who’s recently announced he’s going to become a private detective and help solve crimes.

And how about Moriarty? You’ve sort of leveled him up from a Fagin-esque runner of crime rings to an international terrorist. 

With Moriarty, Doyle does such a brilliant job of writing a mafia don before they were invented. Every other supervillain ever since sounds like Moriarty. Goldfinger sounds exactly like Moriarty. He invented the supervillain. If you do him like that now, he sounds like the biggest cliche on earth. So we did a quite different kind of Moriarty, one that would be more alarming, I suppose, to Sherlock. He’s super-clever. But then I don’t think super-clever people behave the way that super-clever people used to. He’s different. And you could not do Moriarty the way he’s done before. Everyone else has done it. Sherlock and John I think are very much the originals, but Moriarty is different.

What if the events of S3 were in fact Moriarty burning the heart out of Sherlock Holmes

 (Sherlock Meta by stephisanerd)

plaidsuitcase said: Loved your analysis of His Last Vow--It got straight to the heart (pun intended) of what I felt throughout that episode. And it also makes me wonder... What if the rooftop scene in Reichenbach was the beginning of The Game and not the end. What if the events of S3 were in fact Moriarty burning the heart out of Sherlock Holmes. The moment Sherlock's plane takes off he's won and steps back out of the shadows.

stephisanerd: (This ask is in response to this piece.) (Also, YAY HEART PUN.  Clearly I like those.)

That’s something I’d probably actually be willing to bet on.  Maybe not a whole lot of money but some. I originally had that quote in there and a couple of thoughts about it, but I cut a whole lot of things for flow and clarity because it was long, and I was already trying to do so much. (The number of metas I need to write/ones that I have half-written just keeps growing.)  I’d say this series went a hell of a long way towards burning the heart out of Sherlock.  but there’s also this that makes me think that Moriarty (Or whoever else is involved) was playing the long game.

In The Reichenbach Fall, Mycroft and Sherlock were basically playing into Moriarty’s plan and letting him destroy Sherlock’s reputation—Sherlock said this of it when they were on the run:

 ”Everybody wants to believe it – that’s what makes it so clever. A lie that’s preferable to the truth. All my brilliant deductions were just a sham. No-one feels inadequate – Sherlock Holmes is just an ordinary man.”

In some ways, it’s what Moriarty was trying to do with the lies.  He was trying to convince everyone that Sherlock was a fraud, but also that he was only human.  Sherlock and Mycroft let him do it, but like the fall itself, it was a bit of a magic trick.  Sherlock came back with his reputation intact.  It was only temporary. He still gets to “be Sherlock Holmes”

This series may not quite have proven that Sherlock Homes is an ordinary man, but it’s brought us pretty close. Just like it came close, but not quite to burning the heart out of Sherlock.   They’re all still kind of standing there with their facades sort of intact at the end of the His Last Vow, but it’s not going to take much to blow them down.  The whole series feels like the set up for what happens next, and being as that involves Moriarty in some for or fashion, I’d be willing to be that it’s exactly what he intended.

(And since I’m sure someone will ask I’ll go ahead and say it.)  I’m sure it involves Mary and what she was/is.  I’d be willing to bet that she was involved at some point in the past with Moriarty and what he’s doing.  I know there are some theories that she’s kind of the mastermind of the thing or that she’s still involved, but I tend towards thinking she’s a bit of a pawn as well.  Not because I like her, and not because of anything that happened in the last episode, but because of this.  Moffat and Co. are reallllly fond of foreshadowing and putting texts in the show that are relevant in more than one place and way.  I’m working on a piece that’s basically a list of quotes from A Scandal in Belgravia that were relevant/were probably relevant to this series, and there are so many (And not just the obvious ones—there’s the love/loss/redemption one, but there are so many TINY things too.)

In The Empty Hearse, when Sherlock apologizes, this is part of the exchange.

SHERLOCK: I’m sorry.
JOHN: What?
SHERLOCK: I can’t … I can’t do it, John. I don’t know how... Forgive me?
JOHN: What?
SHERLOCK: Please, John, forgive me … for all the hurt that I caused you.
…
JOHN: It’s just to make you look good even though you behaved like… I wanted you not to be dead.
SHERLOCK: Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for. If I hadn’t come back, you wouldn’t be standing there and you’d still have a future with Mary.

Sherlock is supposedly apologizing for the bomb, but on rewatch, you know he’s disabled it right before he begins speaking there, so it’s really an apology for what he did to John.  That last line is different though.  It is the only line in the entire sequence that is only relevant in one way as far as we can see.  It only refers to the bomb ruse and in no way serves Sherlock’s apology for what he did to John over the past two years.  HOWEVER, I would be willing to bet quite a bit actually that it also has a double meaning.  It’s too perfectly placed and too perfectly worded not to have one.  I think that line will prove to eventually need to be as part of Sherlock’s apology as the rest of it.  I think whatever happens next, it will need to be true that if Sherlock hadn’t come back, John could have had a future with Mary.  If she’s playing them all, then that wouldn’t be the case.

(And yes, I’m basing my opinion on one line I think has to be foreshadowing, but the double-meaning/foreshadowing is Moffat’s MO, so I feel justified.)

Jim Moriarty - Hiiiiii!

 (Sherlock Meta by wellingtongoose)

What exactly is wrong with Mr Moriarty?

I’ve always thought of him as evil but for the first time I look at Mr Moriarty from a medical perspective.

Is he mentally ill?

And if so, what does he have and how did he become this way?



Assumptions to Begin

As with all my metas, I assume that the Sherlock “universe” functions exactly the same as “real life”. If you believe that in the Sherlock “universe”, Jim Moriarty is pure evil and rose fully formed from the fires of hell that is your prerogative and this meta is not going to be of any interest to you.

If you disagree with what I’ve said, don’t torch my message box like its Bonfire Night – have a reasonable discussion with me.

This was written very quickly and skips over many details, may be technically inaccurate, uses terrible abbreviations and makes generalisations,  - so do message me if you need clarifications and explanations.

Sherlock must be really jealous…

If there was any character that actually does fit the profile of a “high-functioning sociopath” it would be Jim Moriarty not Sherlock Holmes.

However this term doesn’t exist (and never did). Moriarty’s condition would be described in modern psychiatric terms as: psychopathic/severe personality disorder (more on this later).

What exactly is a personality disorder and how does this explain Jim Moriarty?

“Personality disorders are enduring (starting in childhood or adolescence and continuing to adulthood), persistent and pervasive disorders of inner experience and behaviour that cause distress or significant impairment in social functioning. Personality problems manifest as problems in cognition (ways of perceiving and thinking about self and others), affect (range, intensity and appropriateness of emotional response) and behaviour (interpersonal functioning, occupational and social functioning, and impulse control). “ – Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry.

A really bad, scientifically and technically inaccurate, analogy involving computers…

 

This is best I can do to explain just how personality disorders work.  I don’t know much about computers, though so bear with me.

When we are born our minds are like a brand new computer off the production line. The hard disks are empty and unformatted; there is a basic operating system, which can be modified later.

The operating system is our “personality”. It dictates how we perceive and react to external stimuli. Some components of personality are genetic but the environment also plays a large role in the development of our personalities. At the current moment scientist are not sure exactly how genes and environment interact to produce distinct personality disorders.

Going back to the computer, as we interact with our environment we received inputs. We build up a hard disk full of data (memory) and software (skills). The content of each individual computer is different and depends on the environmental inputs. Although the basic operating system gives everyone similar potentials and constraints, the exact programs on individual computers mean that there is great variety in what tasks can be accomplished on each computer. Hence people have different skills, talents and gifts depending on their environment.

What happens in a personality disorder is that (and this is a terrible analogy) a virus infects the computer and corrupts the operating system. Please do not go away thinking personality disorders are infective, they are not!

On the surface it may appear that this computer is functioning normally but when you go to do certain tasks, you discover that it does not function in the same way a non-infected computer would.

The virus is a “bad” combination of external/environmental inputs that the patient is exposed to very early in life.

Because “infection” happens so early the virus becomes an integral part of the operating system and user does not realise that this computer should behave differently. In the same way patients with personality disorders tend to think they are perfectly fine and it is psychiatrists who are “nuts”.

Inputs into this computer are processed differently and do not produce the same output as other machines. In the same way stimuli that usually produced one emotional response in the “normal” population may produce a completely different emotional response in patients with personality disorders.

 This probably explains why Jim Moriarty’s response to “people have died” is “that’s what people do!”

(I originally thought this emotional response filled with frustration and anger was due to Jim loosing someone early in life and is still not past the anger stage of grief but it seems less likely.)

Personality disorders fundamentally distort the patients’ way of thinking and thus their way of functioning. They cannot understand why “normal” people think the way they do, in the same way that “normal” people cannot understand them (and label them insane or criminal).

Full Marks Mr Moriarty and that is not a Compliment

 

What is Psychopathy?

Psychopathic personality disorder (PPD) is considered a separate but related diagnosis to Dissocial personality disorder (DPD), which is characterised by a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others. DPD is considered the most common personality disorder with a prevalence of between 1%-5% of the general population in the UK. Compare this with schizophrenia which has a prevalence of between 0.5%-1% in the UK.

For more on DPD read this meta.

However, most psychiatrists regard psychopathic personality disorder as a more severe manifestation of DPD. We must remember that, like any psychiatric illness, DPD exists on a spectrum and PPD is at one extreme end. Psychopaths have all the characteristics of DPD but to a more severe degree. In a highly unscientific way, I would describe them as just more “insane”. The same veneer of normality exists in PPD; they may even be better at disguising their abnormalities. However when the mask slips, it becomes obvious that these people are “psychologically disturbed”. Patients who are on the opposite end of the DPD spectrum will often be described as “nasty” and “criminal” rather than “insane”.

Psychopathic personality disorder is diagnosed most commonly using the Hare Checklist, a 20 point long list of characteristic psychopathic traits. These 20 traits are further categorised into three subgroups.

 Factor 1 traits are all to do with narcissism.

A high score in this category correlates with high social potency (ability to function well in society at least on the surface) and high achievement but does not correlate with high suicide risk. In fact these people who score highly in factor 1 are deemed very unlikely to commit suicide and are never put on “suicide watch” in hospital unless they have another psychiatric problem.

Factor 2 traits are all about antisocial behaviour patterns.

Most of the listed criteria are identical to the checklist for diagnosing DPD. People who score more highly in this section than Factor 1, usually have low socio-economic status and a high risk of suicide.

Therefore psychopathy itself has a spectrum of manifestations from narcissistic, charismatic and high achieving psychopaths at one end to poverty stricken, repeat offending criminals at the other.

I am quite convinced that Jim Moriarty firmly falls into the narcissistic end of the spectrum.

If we look at the checklist, we can see that he scores very highly over all, but better in Factor 1 than Factor 2.

The factors in italics are the ones that I do not feel Moriarty consistently demonstrates from what we can see on screen. I am not going to a great deal about each trait because this meta would be very very long.

Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism”

* Glibness/superficial charm (superb acting skills, charmed Kitty Riley very quickly)
* Grandiose sense of self-worth
* Pathological lying
* Cunning/manipulative
* Lack of remorse or guilt
* Shallow affect (his genuine emotion is short-lived)
* Callousness; lack of empathy
* Failure to accept responsibility for own actions (“That’s what people do!”)

Factor 2: Case history “Socially deviant lifestyle”.

* Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom (committing heinously clever crimes, getting Sherlock to come out and play)
* Parasitic lifestyle (unknown)
* Poor behavioural control (screaming in the middle of a conversation…)
* Lack of realistic long-term goals (no, definitely plans well into the future)
* Impulsivity (“I’m so changeable”)
* Irresponsibility (this is not failure to accept responsibility for crimes but rather unable to carry through with commitments)
* Juvenile delinquency (Carl Powers )
* Early behaviour problems (unknown)
* Revocation of conditional release (unknown)

Traits not correlated with either factor

Promiscuous sexual behaviour (unknown – we are really looking for multiple examples of cheating behaviour or several sexual partners in one night)

Many short-term relationships (unknown)

Criminal versatility (Jim in a nut shell)

Jim scores a solid 13 out of 20 which is enough to get him diagnosed.

In reality, if we had more information about Jim he could probably score much higher, perhaps even 18 or 19/20, which would make him a highly psychopathic individual – enough to get him sectioned and committed to a high security psychiatric unit.

In some cases their extreme traits make psychopaths diagnoses much easier if you know exactly what to look for. The average DPD suffer is more likely end up in prison than a psychiatric unit but people with PPD (at least the ones who get caught) are more likely to be sent to high security mental hospitals.

I don’t doubt that any qualified psychiatrist would be able to do a spot diagnosis on Jim Moriarty if they could see the scenes that we did.

However I am convinced that Jim has more than just psychopathic personality disorder. His intense obsession with Sherlock, emotional instability and the fact that his ended up committing suicide are good indicators of another personality disorder:

The Borderline between Psychotic and Neurotic



Borderline personality disorder is so called because it was considered that suffers are on the borderline between psychosis and neurosis.

A very bad, non-PC joke:

What is the difference between psychosis and neurosis?

Answer: the psychotic patient believes 2+2=5 and thinks you should too; the neurotic patient knows that 2+2=4 and is disturbed by this.

In effect, psychosis is characterised by delusions (belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary), and neurosis is characterised by an inability to cope with reality.

Walking on the Tightrope

 

In the UK we use a different diagnostic manual to the DSM-IV (used in America), called the ICD-10. The psychiatric diseases listed are mostly the same but under different names, and the diagnostic criteria are subtly different.  The ICD-10 equivalent of Borderline personality disorder is Emotional Unstable Personality Disorder (EUD).

Moriarty may not fulfil the diagnostic criteria (depends on the psychiatrist diagnosing him) but he definitely possesses certain unique traits of emotional unstable personality disorder that cannot be explained by any other diagnosis.

F60.30 Impulsive type

At least three of the following must be present, one of which must be (2):

1.     marked tendency to act unexpectedly and without consideration of the consequences

2.    marked tendency to engage in quarrelsome behaviour and to have conflicts with others, especially when impulsive acts are thwarted or criticized; (The patient does not need be in a lot of quarrels per se, psychiatrists look for people who have instigate or escalate conflicts with others to an unnecessary degree that cannot be explain simply by anger or humiliation. I think Jim Moriarty’s intent need to destroy Sherlock in Season 2 demonstrates the qualities we are looking for)

3.     liability to outbursts of anger or violence, with inability to control the resulting behavioural explosions

4.     difficulty in maintaining any course of action that offers no immediate reward

5.     unstable and capricious (impulsive, whimsical) mood

F60.31 Borderline type

At least three of the symptoms mentioned in F60.30 Impulsive type must be present (above), with at least two of the following in addition:

1.     disturbances in and uncertainty about self-image, aims, and internal preferences

2.     liability to become involved in intense and unstable relationships, often leading to emotional crisis

3.     excessive efforts to avoid abandonment (possibly? He did kill himself because he didn’t want to continue living in a world without Sherlock to “play” with).

4.     recurrent threats or acts of self-harm

5.     chronic feelings of emptiness.

6.     demonstrates impulsive behaviour

From a semi-professional view of point, I think Jim Moriarty’s obsession with Sherlock throughout the show is pathological. It is beyond the realm of what psychiatrists would regard as “normal” or “acceptable” obsession. He forms an intense interest in Sherlock despite not meeting the man and sacrifices his own gain in order to entice the object of his obsession through a maze of challenges that culminates in an audience with Jim.

It may just be because he sees in Sherlock a kindred spirit. In the psychiatrically well population, people do not normally attempt to destroy others they feel are similar to themselves nor do relationships usually end in suicide.

We do not have a good solid foundation for this diagnosis as there is reasonable doubt whether he may have EUD because there is much more room for different professional interpretations with regards to whether Moriarty clearly demonstrates enough of the criteria.

However having two personality disorders can alter the presentation of one or both of the disorders. Jim’s primary psychiatric disease has to be Psychopathic Personality Disorder and the development of this disorder may have contributed to an atypical presentation of EUD.

A psychiatrist would not disregard the EUD traits, whether or not he is diagnosed. From a practical point of view, these traits change his behaviour pattern so that it would deviate from what psychiatrists expect of “psychopaths”. EUD traits also influence assessment of suicide risk – with EUD traits Jim has just gone from a very low suicide risk to a high suicide risk.

A common observation that is not included in the diagnostic criteria is that people with EUD do not have a coherent solid sense of self. In other words they “do not really know who they are”. For most suffers this leads to uncertainly, low self-esteem and being easily influenced by others. For other suffers this produces the phenomenon we seen in Kitty Riley’s flat. Moriarty is incredibly convincing when he turns into Rich Brook - it is also as if he turns into a completely different person.

Creating a mask is a key symptom of psychopathic personality disorder but becoming an entirely different person is a feature we see in people with one kind of EUD. It is quite easy for such individuals to simply take on the role of another because they completely believe that they have become fundamentally different. They do not “perform a role”, they “live the life”.

In conclusion - if Moriarty were to walk into a psychiatric clinic he would most likely to be labelled as psychopathic personality disorder (narcissism predominate) with an emotionally unstable component.

Two is Good Company

 

Can you actually have two personality disorders?

Yes, and it’s incredibly common. Most psychiatric illnesses have co-morbidities. This means that there are often one or more accompanying disorders in addition to the main psychiatric disorder.

EUD and DPD as separate conditions give psychiatrists more grief than any other disease. These patients require very intensive management and never get better. There is no medically recognised effective treatment for personality disorders; most of what we do revolves around keeping the public and the patient safe. For EUD suffers we can give all manner of support and occasionally mood stabilisers like anti-depressants to reduce suicide risk. For DPD patients we either commit them to a secure psychiatric unit or if we cannot, we like to keep an eye on them until they inevitably end up in jail, again.

How did Jim become the Person he is?

 

There is no consensus on the actual agent that causes EUD or DPD. However there has been one very consistent finding in many large scale retrospective (examining past history) studies done people with personality disorders:

Child Abuse

As I’ve said previous the “seed” for personality disorders is sown very early in life. We do not know exactly how the different personality disorders arise from abuse but there is no denying the strong correlation. Correlation does not equate to causation and there are many flaws to retrospectice studies. Thus child abuse is considered a “risk factor” for developing personality disorders rather than the actual cause.

Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder has the strongest correlation with childhood abuse, in particular sexual abuse. There haven’t been any large scale studies of the effect of genetics on EUD. It is know that first degree relatives of some with EUD have a higher risk of developing it than the normal population but this can be due to sharing the same environment.

Dissocial personality disorder/Psychopathic personality disorder appears to have a larger genetic component than EUD. We know this because when we study sets of identical twins raise in separate households and different environments, we find a significant percentage (~30%) of twins both develop DPD. Studies have also shown that physical child abuse and severe neglect correlate with the development of this disorder.

We must remember that is both genes and the environment in tandem that leads to the development of personality disorders. The identical twin concordance rate for DPD is only ~30% which means the ~70% of the factors the lead to this personality disorder are environmental.

It is important to remember that only a small minority of child abuse victims go onto the develop personality disorders, but nearly all patients with severe personality disorders have been abused as children.

Where Headcanon meets Statistics. 

In order for Jim Moriarty to end up the way he did, statistically he is very likely to have been abused as child. It is also likely that one or both of his parents had personality disorders as well. If I had to make an educated guess, I would say his father had DPD (as it is more common in men than women) and his mother had EUD (as it is more common in women than men).

Alternatively, his parents may have simply suffered from a myriad of social problems. The most common cause of parenting which results in children with personality disorders is drug addiction. It may not actually be the drug addiction that leads to abuse and neglect (though most psychiatrists think it is), it may be the entire socio-economic environment that these families inhabit. Poverty and all the associated problems increase the risk of child abuse, which increases the risk (how ever minute) of developing personality disorders.

Side note - Jim Moriarty may have been born with a genetic predisposition to DPD into a middle class family. His father might have also suffered from DPD, which may explain why Jim developed a more severe form. A significant minority of business leaders, politicians and dictators do have DPD. However the vast majority of people who develop psychopathic personality disorder/DPD are born into socio-economically deprived families.

Most commonly psychiatrists see:drug addiction, violent crime, domestic abuse, parents/siblings with psychiatric illnesses in the social/family history of patients who have developed DPD. To reiterate, we usually see all of these risk factors in the patient’s home environment not just one or two. 

I doubt both his parents stayed in his life for very long. EUD traits often manifest themselves in children who have suffered a string of abandonments – and they are relatively more common in children who have been spent a long time in social care. On the other hand, one or both of Jim Moriarty’s parents might have raised him to adulthood, which would only exacerbate the severity of his personality disorder.

From group studies of adopted children we have discovered that just exposing a baby to 12-18 months of abuse and neglect is enough to make a permanent alteration in some that will eventually lead them to develop a personality disorder. Most of this data actually comes from studies of Eastern European babies adopted by Western parents from the former soviet bloc. These babies arrive looking psychologically normal (because you can’t really do psychiatric tests on a baby). However many of them developed personality disorders (mainly DPD) despite living nearly all their lives in home environments that did not expose them to any of the risk factors for developing DPD e.g. abuse, neglect, poverty etc. Upon further investigation into the backgrounds of these children from their respective orphanages, researchers have discovered that they were almost all subjected to horrifying abuse as infants.

Jim Moriarty might have been adopted by a perfectly nice middle class couple, who absolutely adored him but he would still have turned into a psychopath.

Jim’s life has been anything but good but it is also, in my eyes, a tragedy. Statistical - it is more likely that his parents would have suffered from a whole host of social and psychiatric problems then it is for his parents to be responsible citizens or well off/middle-class.

Their household would probably have made “dysfunctional” sound like a compliment. They were obviously not fit to have a child, let alone raise one but the social services didn’t do the best thing which is to remove the baby immediately. Jim might have suffered through long months of abuse before he was eventually removed by which time the damage was already done.

Life in the care system in the UK is pretty dire. I doubt it is any better in Ireland. Statistics show children are less likely to leave school with any qualifications, much more likely to be addicted to drugs, and chillingly must more likely to die before they reach adulthood.  Moriarty survived but the time in care must have simply exacerbated his personality disorders.

Is Jim Moriarty to blame for the fact that he commits such heinous crimes? A significant proportion of psychiatrists argue that people with personality disorders should not be regarded as criminals – they should be seen as very ill people.

This meta is not entirely speculation. I’ve laid out the psychiatric reasoning for Jim’s diagnoses. There is scientific evidence to support the various risk factors that are involved in the development of personality disorders. This certainly isn’t an academic paper, heavens it would be laughed out of the face of the earth if it was (no references see) but there are facts to support my conclusions, which are more deductions I think than imaginations.

Moriarty and Irene Adler

 (Sherlock Meta by thenorwoodbuilder)

Anonymous asked: What advices exactly did Moriarty give Irene? Like being naked in front of him and play dead?

thenorwoodbuilder:

Hallo to you, too, dear!

Well, this is a question which elicits a trip in the realm of (almost) pure speculation, but I’ll try and give you my (reasoned, I hope) opinion.



We know for certain that it was Irene to contact Moriarty, as many others before her had contacted him: in order to avail herself of his expertise as consulting criminal. We may reasonably presume that, as soon as Moriarty heard what kind of compromising materials Irene possessed (not only Her Highness’ photographs, but, even more, the MOD man’s email), he immediately realized that she wouldn’t have been an ordinary client (in which he was probably no longer interested…), but she could instead represent a wonderful occasion for a first attempt at “burning the heart out of” Sherlock (and Mycroft). Even more so, because Moriarty probably already knew Irene Adler by fame - for the same and, at the same time, opposite reasons why Mycroft, too, knew her - and immediately realized that she wouldn’t have been just a witless tool, but, instead, a very valuable and “creative” (albeit unknowing) ally, in his play against the Holmes Brothers… Just irresistible!

We also know - or at least might presume from Irene’s reactions during her conversation with Mycroft - that Morarty had not informed Irene of his long-term personal plans about the Holmes Boys, and she only realized that Jim wasn’t just a paid consultant, but had his own - and more cherished - personal agenda for her to play along when Mycroft told her that Moriarty had already proven himself “desperate for his attention”. Which, I presume, induced her to give Mycroft and Sherlock a bit more information about her agreement with Moriarty than what had been requested by Moriarty himself…



This said, I really can’t see either Moriarty giving Irene detailed instructions, as if she were a brainless minion or client of his, or Irene needing such kind of detailed directions.

The trick (almost, or better, partly) worked because Irene Adler had a genius of her own in manipulating people, and particulalry men: this Moriarty must have instantly understood, and decided to use at his advantage.

I think that the “advice” he gave to Irene was mainly of two kinds:

1) Moriarty provided Irene with A LOT of information about both Mycroft and Sherlock - and particulalrly, of course, about Sherlock.

We know that Moriarty had begun to collect information about Sherlock even before the events portraied in ASiP (as the cabbie knows of Sherlock’s past as an “addict”, and tells him he has a “fan” who follows his work quite closely), and we can quite safely assume that he only doubled his efforts to know everything possible about his obsession through the whole series (actually, I presume that, when he got himself kidnapped by Mycroft’s men, Moriarty already knew the largest part of the information he then obtained from Mycroft himself: the point was not to gather further information, I presume, but just to use a brother against the other, to induce Mycroft to betray Sherlock, and then let Sherlock know about this). In the same way, as soon as he decided that the game would have been much more fun if played against both the Holmes Brothers, I’m sure he collected equally detailed information about Mycroft.

And with “information” I don’t only mean personal biographical details, but also, and even more, details about their modus operandi, their habits, their patterns of decision, their way of reasoning and behaving, their characteristics and quirks…

And I think that the first, priceless help Moriarty gave to Irene was to make her privy to this capital of information about both Sherlock and Mycroft, so that she could find by herself the better way to manipulate them: their weaknesses, their soft spots, their blind spots. After all, Irene’s speciality is “to know what people like”: that is, once she has enough information about someone (and I’d bet that she is quick enough in finding information on her own, when dealing with “ordinary” people…), she’ll be able to manipulate almost anyone.



2) Moriarty also probably suggested to Irene her opening gambit - that is, it was probably him the one who (knowing quite well both Mycroft and the Secret Service, and Sherlock) told her how to play the cards she had in the most profitable way. Thus, I presume that was Moriarty to suggest her to hook Mycroft with the compromising photographs of a member of the Royal Family BEFORE letting slip any hint about the encoded e-mail with the CIA, in order to induce Mycroft to involve Sherlock in an investigation just to find himself in the need to try and (unsuccessfully, of course) force him out of it once the true magnitude of the case was revealed to him, so ensuring Irene a grip on Sherlock and a way to manipulate him into doing what she wanted in order to stitch Mycroft up and, through him, get a fortune for her camera phone from the British Government.

Apart form this, I think that everything else was left to Irene’s ability. She IS clever, VERY clever, she has an incredible talent for psychology and manipulation, she is able to immediately understand how to play people in front of her. This natural ability, combined with the information provided by Moriarty, was more than enough to suggest her the better way to deal with Sherlock.

After all, we see her trying on several dresses (costumes!), while getting ready for her first meeting with Sherlock. Thus, we are clearly shown that SHE is the one to choose her own strategy, her own opening move, in her personal duel with Sherlock. She is the one who foresees that the best way to catch Sherlock aback, to wrong-foot him could be to abandon any disguise (which, after all, “is always a self portrait” and always tells some information about the person who wears it…) and to try and shock him by appearing completely naked.

And I presume that she, too, was the one who conceived the idea of appealing to Sherlock’s secret sentimental and chivalrous side, also taking advantage of his inexperience with women and sentiments, and therefore devised the plan to fake her own death, after having obtained Sherlock’s interest, only to then trick him into helping her out of relief and misplaced protectiveness.

More generally, I think that Irene was the sole and only “director” of any interaction with Sherlock: she is a master at this kind of things, she has a genius for manipulating people, ans she needs no lessons from anybody, Moriarty included. Also, this is the kind of plays she herself enjoys - she says it herself - and she enjoys them also because she is a master, at them.



As I’ve already written several times, Irene is, under many respects, Sherlock’s equal, his female equivalent, and his true “kindred spirit”, albeit on the criminal side (NOT Moriarty!). Her only problem - the only reason she needed to consult Moriarty - was to know how to use the bunch of explosive information she owned, in the most profitable way: she needed someone more intimately acquainted with the methods and reasoning of the Secret Services, in order to be able to play a game at such an high level; to venture herself in this kind of blackmail without an adequate knowledge of the field and an adequate back-up would have been a suicide, and Irene was too clever not to realize this. So she consulted the renown criminal mastermind, Moriarty.

But, when it came at how to handle Sherlock Holmes, I bet it was all fruit of her brain…

Cheers!

Favourite screencap of the day - Realization

 (Sherlock Meta by thenorwoodbuilder)

MH: I wish our lot were half as good as you
IA: I can’t take all the credit, I had a bit of help. Jim Moriarty sends his love.
MH: Yes, he’s been in touch. Seems desperate for my attention. 

Look at Irene’s face when Mycroft says that Moriarty had already tried to get his attention before - look at the way her expression changes slightly: she appears suddenly worried, and recollecting.

THIS is the moment when she realizes that Moriarty wasn’t just a consultant at her service, whom she hired and who pursued only the interest of his “client”, but he had his own agenda, instead, in which she was only a pawn.

And - I can’t be sure of this, but I suppose it’s plausible - when she, then, volunteered  some more information about Moriarty (the fact that Moriarty had given her “advice about how to play the Holmes Boys”: that is, the fact that Moriarty was collecting information about them, and was obsessed by BOTH of them; this sounds quite like a warning, doesn’t it?), it’s possible that she was actually trying to “return the favour” to Jim, to create some little difficulties for him with the Holmes Brothers (who would certainly have gone after him, after this debacle…).

Finally, it’s possible that, when Sherlock rescued Irene in Karachi, she also provided him with whatever further information she could have had about Moriarty and his organization, which would have helped him (and Mycroft) in arranging their plans against the Consulting Criminal. (This could also fit enigmaticpenguinofdeath's interesting theory according to which Mycroft DID know about Irene being still alive. Actually, I’m ready to accept that, IF Mycroft knew that Sherlock had saved Irene, all his intricate manoeuver of sending John - we all agree, the most hopeless liar in the world… - to deliver to Sherlock his pleasant white lie, was presumably aimed - amongst other things - to send to his little brother the message “I know that she is alive. Now you know that I know. And I’m sure that you know that I know, because not even an idiot could have been deceived by poor John. So be warned: if she’ll keep quiet, I’ll let her be - she is ‘officially’ under witness protection, and ‘unofficially-but-officially’ dead - but if she’ll create any more trouble, don’t think that you’ll be able to save her again under my nose: you never did”. Of course, Mycroft would have been much more willing to agree to this little tacit deal, had Irene proved herself useful in their campaign against Moriarty…)

A man after my own taste. 

The Woman and the master-criminal.

 (Sherlock Meta by abidos)

About Moriarty in ASiB, and what it can tell us about what happens during the following two episodes.



In this part we’ll look at  ASiB again, but from Moriarty’s point of view.  It would probably help if you read the analysis from Mycroft’s perspective first.

This is the second part of a longer piece concerning what happens during The Reichenbach Fall.  The first part can be found here, although it has no direct relation to this piece.

We’ll begin with the scene at the pool and the question of what made Moriarty change his mind.

The conversation itself gives very little clues.  He picks up the phone:

“Hello? … Yes, of course it is. What do you want?”

Then she talks again and he starts screaming and threatening her that she’d better not be yanking his chain, and then he says a few more interesting things:

“Sorry. Wrong day to die.” (to Sherlock)

And

“So if you have what you say you have, I will make you rich. If you don’t, I’ll make you into shoes.”

There are two things we can get from this.  One is that this is the first time they talk, and two, what she claims to have is very relevant to Jim, and that he changes his mind over when he will kill Sherlock.

Let’s begin with looking at what Irene is not offering him.

* Pictures of the royal family.  One, it is hard to imagine Moriarty being particularly interested in them.  Two, they have nothing to do with Sherlock.  I have seen the theory that they do, because when the existence of the pictures were to come out it would be a sure thing for Mycroft to get involved, and that he would rely on Sherlock to get them.  However, as I already pointed out,  Mycroft was not the one to get Sherlock involved in the case.  Also, it seems a stretch that Mycroft would be guaranteed to get tasked with solving the problem, or that he would use Sherlock.

* The MOD mail.  Again, Moriarty has just thrown the USB-stick with the Bruce-Parrington plans in the pool, he is not about to get excited by a mail that might hold relevant information.  Besides, Irene would not contact someone as dangerous as Moriarty unless she was sure of the value of what she had.  This is not the case if she doesn’t know what the mail says.  And if she does know, she doesn’t really need Moriarty.  Also, the link to Sherlock is again tenuous.  The MOD has many projects, Mycroft cannot be involved in all of them.

So what do we know?  We know it is important to Jim, so it must be hard to obtain, otherwise he would have already had it.  That must mean that Irene was in a rather unique position when she obtained it.  We also know it has to do with Sherlock, specifically with Jim’s plans of getting rid of Sherlock.



Let’s leave this matter for now and look at Moriarty’s involvement in Irene’s plan or, rather, how he chooses to reveal his involvement.  Some have argued that Irene mentions Jim’s influence, and particularly his interest in both Holmes brothers as a form of revenge because he has betrayed her ( I disagree strongly with this theory) or as a way of diverting Mycroft’s attention.  This idea makes little sense since, at this point, Mycroft is already aware of Moriarty’s participation, and Irene knows that he is, the information is only news to Sherlock.

So why does Moriarty contact Mycroft?  It is not necessary for the plan to work.  After receiving the text, Mycroft is expected to deduce Irene’s involvement in the leak, in order to lend credibility to her claim of possessing a lot of vital information, so it cannot be a way of keeping her hidden.  On the other hand, given Irene’s predilection for manipulation and gloating, she would have chosen to make the revelation herself.  And Jim has no personal interest in Mycroft, his obsession is wholly focused and Sherlock, Mycroft only comes into it as far as he is related to Sherlock.  In The Great Game Jim completely dismisses the Bruce-Parrington plans, even though accepting them would have allowed him to create huge problems for the older Holmes.  If we are to believe Mycroft’s account of events, during the interrogation he is only of interest to Moriarty as a source of information about Sherlock.

So what did Moriarty want?  What could he have expected to gain from taunting Mycroft?  Well, I would say, exactly what he got, that is, some alone time in an underground facility.

 

There is one more point that might be interesting to consider.  The fact that Moriarty and Irene decided to make Sherlock and Mycroft pivotal in the plan.

Let’s start by looking at it from Irene’s point of view.

There is no reason to assume that she is even aware of who Sherlock is by the time she calls Jim for the first time. Even if, at this point, she already was fixated on him, she wouldn’t know about Mycroft, besides, she shows no interest in him.

Now, is it reasonable for us to assume that Mycroft’s connection to the MOD mail was known when it was chosen to be the object of their scam?  It’s importance must have been apparent, for other reasons than the assurance of the MOD man, since both Irene and Moriarty would have considered the possibility of him lying.  Furthermore, the second Sherlock decodes the e-mail, Moriarty sends the message to Mycroft, so he, at least, must have known that this was a project of the older Holmes. After all, the MOD has many of them, and Mycroft cannot be involved in all of them.

The plan would have worked if, instead of Mycroft, Irene had tried to blackmail anyone else, it is doubtful that he is the only one in a position to negotiate with her.  I pointed out that Sherlock’s involvement was crucial to the negotiation with Mycroft,  but had it been with anyone else, Irene would have simply needed some personal leverage over this person, something she would have had little problem of obtaining.

 

So we see that Mycroft, and very probably Sherlock’s involvement in Irene’s plan was precipitated.  We know he likes to play with Sherlock, but again, we are faced with the question of why he would involve the older brother.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.