>>APPLICATION FOR CITY OF ARIEL

[noticing]

□ Name: Sherlock Holmes
□ Series: Sherlock BBC
□ Canon point: Immediately after Reichenbach Falls, when he’s assumed to be dead but is shown to be alive.
□ History:
There isn't that many episodes yet.

□ Personality:

The textbook definition of a recovering addict, Sherlock Holmes cannot abandon the classic addict mentality that everything relates back to him. To him, he is the centre of the universe and things revolve around him; cases appear because he is the one who will be able to solve them. Selfless behaviour and common courtesy are foreign concepts to him, and he would never go so far as to ask someone ‘how are you’ unless a specific advantage could be gained from doing so. If it doesn’t relate to something he’s currently interested in, Sherlock wants nothing to do with it. This is apparent in the extreme when John reveals that Sherlock didn’t know the Earth revolved around the Sun, as that bit of information apparently ‘didn’t make any difference’ to Sherlock.
The eccentric detective views his mind as a hard drive, and has been referred to by others as a ‘machine’. He stores what information is relevant to him, and deletes what isn’t.

Cocaine was his drug of choice, as amphetamines allowed his mind to accelerate and stay occupied without the assistance of actual intellectual stimulation. Though he doesn’t actually describe his reasons for turning to cocaine in the television series, he does say in the books that “his mind rebels at stagnation”. He alludes to coke as a ‘clarifying’ agent of sorts, though in reality cocaine does a fine job of destroying one’s ability to think, though rectifies boredom like no other drug, which may be why Sherlock was so dependent on it. When the series starts, however, he has been clean for some time, though oddly he panics when a drug bust is called in on him by DI Lestrade.

Like his need for cocaine as a stimulant, Sherlock also was addicted to cigarettes for a long period of time. When the show starts, he has recently abandoned the habit in favour of nicotine patches, but he is more apt to give into his temptation for cigarettes than he is for cocaine, and more public about that particular vice as well. One of his blog posts is him saying ‘I would kill every one of you for a cigarette.’ Even though he’s managed to more or less quit cigarettes, he still has an unhealthy obsession with nicotine, going so far as to use three patches at a time when trying to clear his head to solve a problem.

Once stated by Irene Adler, Sherlock believes in a higher power, said higher power being himself. At any given point in time Sherlock will think himself the smartest person in a room, with few exceptions. He believes he has the ability to solve any crime, provided with enough evidence, and no question is absent a solution, provided it isn’t impossible. He is quoted on his blog as saying “When I've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth.” Though he is indeed a ‘proper genius’, Sherlock is far from infallible and has been known throughout the series to make mistakes. He does readily admit that he usually gets something wrong in his deductions, as demonstrated by his analysation of John and his assumption that ‘Harry’ was John’s brother, when in fact, it was his sister. In other episodes, he is not so willing to admit his mistakes, such as when he thought the sugar in Baskervilles had been the paranoia-inducing agent, when it had in fact turned out to have been dispensed as a gas.

Perhaps his biggest weakness is indeed his ego, which has led him to a couple of egregious oversights on his part, including Irene’s manipulation of him in revealing top secret government plans to her. This could be attributed to his egotistical nature and his need to show off, (which he also readily admits to when first interviewing Henry Knight), or his naivety when it comes to the fairer sex.

And mentioning sex, Sherlock is a complicated sort. While never explicitly stated as asexual, he does tell John that ‘women aren’t really his area’ and though he knows it’s ‘okay to have a boyfriend’, he considers himself married to his work. Sherlock claims sex doesn’t alarm him at one point, to which his older brother Mycroft responds ‘how would you know?’ He is referred to by Jim Moriarty as ‘the Virgin’, and it is implied throughout the series he does lack sexual knowledge, though not due to erotophobia so much as disinterest in the act of fornication. As was mentioned before, Sherlock only does things to gain an advantage, and since sexual pleasure doesn’t guarantee any sort of set advantage, he sees no reason to participate in it.

His intellect is paralleled by very few, and he demonstrates his vast prowess whenever he is able to do so. Other than his usual methods of logical analysis, he has shown his ability to ‘get inside someone’s head’ when he guessed a government scientist’s password just by having the man described to him and having a look around his room. Unfortunately for Sherlock, his abilities aren’t something he can just turn on and off, and they tend to anger people. At university he would be able to tell who was shagging who just by a glance at them in the morning, and found it his duty to inform others which in turn rendered him unliked by his classmates. He tells John that usually when he deduces things about people and rattles them off, people tell him to ‘piss off’. He even goes so far as to have himself put in jail temporarily for demonstrating his incredible if not intensely irritating deductive abilities during the trial of Jim Moriarty. This implies his need to show off isn’t done to reassure his ego, but as a compulsion.

Like John, Sherlock has an addiction to danger and will do anything to stop being bored. Since he’s sworn off cocaine, he finds other dangerous habits to pursue including engaging serial killers in intellectual duels to the death, including the murderous cabbie in the first episode and Jim Moriarty. The detective is also obsessed with being right, even to the degree where he will throw his life away on a gamble, and can be easily manipulated because of this obsession. This can also backfire when Sherlock throws himself into dangerous situations like sneaking into a suspect’s flat only to find a murderer is waiting for him, and he is unarmed, or using his brother’s access codes to break into a top-secret government facility whilst impersonating his brother, an offense which would have him tried as a traitor to the country if caught. Times like those are arguably the only times Sherlock feels alive, and invigorated.

Just like his disregard of sexual pleasure, Sherlock seems to have no real craving for money either. When offered a cheque for five thousand quid to solve a case, he turns it down because “he doesn’t need an incentive”. Likewise with his cases presented to him by Scotland Yard, he isn’t paid to do any of his works, unlike the book version of Sherlock, who had a fixed fee for his services. This is in turn a very unpractical view for Sherlock to hold, and it’s unclear of how he acquires money to pay the rent, or to buy his clothing, all of which are expensive designer labels such as Dolce & Gabbana and Belstaff.

Riddled with dislikable traits, Sherlock wouldn’t be complete without his manipulative tendencies, which he demonstrates time and time again. He uses his lab assistant Molly by complimenting her on her hairstyle to gain access to restricted corpses, knowing full well he’s taking advantage of her romantic feelings for her. Likewise when questioning the wife of a murdered man, he pretends to be an old friend of the victim but provides false information, knowing that the woman will go out of her way to correct him, as people love to contradict others. When he needs to gain information, Sherlock is not above using people’s emotions against them.

At one point, Sherlock describes himself as a high-functioning sociopath, and if one didn’t know him well, it may not seem like too bad of a label for him. It is, however, shown throughout the series that he displays traits that contradict his sociopathic nature, and it becomes increasingly apparent that Sherlock merely wants to be a sociopath, but isn’t one. Jim Moriarty tells Sherlock that he intends to ‘burn the heart of him’, to which Sherlock responds ‘he’s been reliably informed he doesn’t have one’. Moriarty responds with a smile, saying ‘they both know that isn’t quite true’. If he was indeed the true definition of a sociopath, he wouldn’t have bothered to comfort John’s girlfriend after she had nearly been killed by assassins, nor would he have prevented Henry Knight from killing himself. Much to Sherlock’s chagrin, it’s apparent to his friends and enemies alike that he does care about other people, even people he’s not obligated to.

It’s far more likely that Sherlock has aspergers, given his social ineptitude, his proclivity to obsess, his lack of communication skills, and inability to determine what is and isn’t socially appropriate. John himself remarks in an episode that Sherlock has aspergers, and given that those with aspergers are prone to abrupt transitions in speech, verbosity, pedantic patterns, and one-sided rants on subjects of their obsession, Sherlock seems to fit the textbook definition of someone with AS. Those afflicted with AS can be lacking in empathy, which may explain why he miscategorised himself as a sociopath. His obsessive behaviour can lead him to hyperfocus, which cancels out his need to eat or to sleep when he’s working on a case. Sherlock claims that eating slows him down, and sleeping is obviously implied to be a waste of time to him, another symptom of AS. The social inability associated with AS would explain his awful timing, especially in regards to the excitement he displays when being presented with a murder, a suicide, or any particularly interesting (read: devastating) case.

Along with his addictive personality and his AS, Sherlock demonstrates boundless amounts of energy which surface occasionally when he’s bored, or more often when he’s going on a tirade. Though usually reserved in hand gestures and body language, stoic even, he can explode into melodramatics at the drop of a hat when he becomes excited over something. This is most apparent when he’s delivering a list of things he’s deduced, and sometimes he speaks so fast it’s difficult to understand what he’s saying. When he isn’t interested in something, he usually appears lethargic and extremely apathetic to others, something that his flatmate comments on often.

Never one to trust the police much, Sherlock assembled a motley crew of his own to acquire information off the streets: his handy-dandy homeless network. Composed of exactly what it sounds like, Sherlock explains that people will clam up when they see a police officer walking around, but people tend to pretend the homeless don’t even exist, speaking as freely around them as they would in an empty room. This ties in with Sherlock’s Bohemian soul, something John describes him as having in the novels. In addition to his rag-tag homeless network, Sherlock also keeps a plethora of strange acquaintances, including a graffiti artist, and a restaurant owner who at one point went to jail.

It could be his AS, or it could be his general antisocial personality, but Sherlock goes out of his way to keep very few people close to him. There are a few exceptions to this, though more often than not, they fall under the category of enemies rather than friends, or worse, ‘useful idiots’.

Irene Adler will always be the woman, a homage to his indescribable respect for her as a person, as the wholesome embodiment of her gender, and one of the only other minds to match his own. His initial meeting with the woman didn’t go as planned as his disguise (and ability to form words) was completely shattered by her greeting him stark naked. Despite his supposed asexuality, it’s implied that unlike john, his eyes examined everything about her form, and he memorised her measurements rather quickly. It’s likewise unclear if the tension between them is sexual, romantic, emotional, intellectual, or otherwise, but it is apparent that there is tension and he does hold some amount of feelings for her. When she was ‘dead’, Sherlock displayed all the traits of a heartbroken man, not eating, not sleeping, playing sad music on his violin for days. She’s the only woman to have bested him, at least for a time, having manipulated Sherlock into exposing a top secret government plan to her, which she in turn relayed to Moriarty. In the end, Sherlock outsmarted her by realising she too held some sort of feelings for him, and was able to crack into her unhackable phone with his name. Captured by terrorists, she was about to die, but Sherlock’s intense attachment to her led him to sneak into karachi to help her execute a daring escape. If anything, Irene Adler is the authoritative (no pun intended) truth that Sherlock does indeed have a heart.

Molly Hooper is one of those poor souls who has to take Sherlock’s abuse on a daily basis, for no reason or discernable advantage. She is obviously in love with him and though sherlock pretends to be oblivious to this, even he isn’t thick enough to have avoided taking notice. One could argue it’s simply his poor social skills that leads him to treat Molly as he does, but there seems to be a darker, more malevolent reason for him doing so. Perhaps it’s because he detests the lack of strength on her part, or because she represents something about the opposite sex he doesn’t like, though it isn’t clarified in the series. He tears her to pieces at a Christmas party over a gift she’s gotten for someone she’s trying to impress only to find out the gift was for him. Despite apologising to her, and telling her in at a later point that ‘she’s always counted and he’s always trusted her’, it seems unclear whether or not he has any benevolent feelings for poor Molly. It’s implied she helped him survive his ‘suicide’ at the end of the series.

Jim Moriarty was once described by Sherlock Holmes as a spider at the centre of a web, a criminal mastermind whose genius rivaled that of Sherlock’s own. The sentiment shared between them seems to be one of the utmost respect, and an undying hatred contested by none. Par Mycroft, it seems these two have been doing a little dance around each other since they were boys, as one of Moriarty’s first crimes was also one of Sherlock’s first (though unofficial) cases, that being the death of Carl Powers. Moriarty first presents himself as a fan of Sherlock’s, and Sherlock is all too happy to play the games and jump through the hoops Moriarty provides for him, but Jim’s intentions become more sinister until they relationship climaxes in on the rooftop of St. Bart’s morgue, where Moriarty, having ruined Sherlock’s reputation via manipulation of the press, delivers Sherlock an ultimatum: kill himself, or all of his friends will die. The detective realises that there is a way out of said ultimatum, and that’s to discern the information he needs from Moriarty, to which Jim responds by killing himself just to keep Sherlock from outsmarting him.

Mrs. Hudson is Sherlock’s sweet old landlady, a little bit of a bubblehead at times, he bemoans her treatment of him. He’s a little mean to her at times, telling her to shut up and also being rude to her through John’s blog, but when she was captured by an American CIA agent and interrogated, Sherlock made sure to execute the fullest extent of his revenge by throwing the man out the window multiple times. He also remarks fondly when John says Mrs. Hudson should leave England for a few days that if she were to leave, England would fall. She exists as somewhat of a mother figure to Sherlock.

Mycroft is his frustrating older brother, the only reappearing familial relation of Sherlock’s throughout the series. Sherlock acknowledges Mycroft as his ‘archenemy’, a word coined by Mycroft but not denied by Sherlock, and goes out of his way to make his brother’s life as difficult as possible when he can. He inserts insults whenever possible, prodding him about his diet and even insinuating he was a ‘queen’ a few times. Although Sherlock is often annoyed by his older brother, he does seem to have some amount of begrudging respect for him, having said in the books that Mycroft’s deductive genius far surpassed that of his own abilities, but also stated that the elder holmes was too lazy to come to his own conclusions and often had others doing the legwork for him. Mycroft often calls on sherlock to help him solve one case or another, though has found the younger Holmes’ naivety has gotten him into some trouble before. The similarities between the two of them are striking, and some of Sherlock’s aspiration to be a sociopath may have been because of Mycroft, as at one point, Mycroft tells Sherlock that ‘caring is not an advantage’.

DI Lestrade is portrayed as cheerful, definitely in over his head, but trusting of Sherlock and even cares about him, and it’s alluded that he helped Sherlock out of his drug addiction a while back. He does treat Sherlock like a child sometimes, but only because the detective is frustrating and uncooperative given all the leniency Lestrade allows Sherlock. When Moriarty informs Sherlock all his friends will die, Lestrade is one of the people named by Sherlock himself when trying to figure out who these friends are, which shows the detective does indeed care about him. Though he obviously doesn’t care enough about him to have learned Lestrade’s first name, having been surprised to find out what it was in one of the episodes.

Perhaps the most important relationship of all is the relationship Sherlock has with John. John is his flatmate and best friend, and as he states, ‘I don’t have friends. Just the one.’ John suffers constant albeit unintentional abuse from his flatmate, as John is smart but nowhere near as much as sherlock. Sherlock refers to his mind as ‘average’ quite often, and Sherlock seems to go out of his way to ruin John’s dates, though whether this is intentional or not isn’t clear. Sherlock relies on John for many social cues, especially when he’s commenting inappropriately about a murder, (like in Reichenbach when he’s describing the idea of the children dying faster the more sweets they eat) or questioning the motive of someone where sentiment is involved (like in Baskervilles when asking about why the restaurant owners couldn’t bring themselves to put down their dog). He also relies on John, often sending the older man out to perform favours, as humiliating and inane as they may be. John ends up taking care of Sherlock where the detective is unable to do so, everything from attending to him as his Doctor to mundane things like buying the milk, which Sherlock seems incapable of doing himself. Sherlock also believes John is a terrible writer and hates everything he posts on his blog, possibly out of jealousy for the attention John gets, or perhaps because of John’s tendency to ‘romanticise’ things.

□ Age: Early 30’s (it isn’t specifically stated in canon)
□ Gender: Male
□ Appearance: Described by multiple people throughout the series by his cheekbones alone, Sherlock has striking, sharp features. A long face, a strange, almost bulbous nose, a mop of curly dark hair, thick albeit light brows, and piercing white-blue eyes. He’s rakishly thin, yet it’s revealed (in a bout of fanservice, no less), that the detective is rather well-built.
□ Abilities/Powers:

Logical analysis - Deduction, Induction, Abduction
Incorrectly assumed to be purely a deductive genius, Sherlock fully utilises all three types of logical analysis.

Deduction refers to: If A is B, and B is C, then A is C. For example, All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. It ascertains that if the premises of an argument are true, then the conclusions is likewise guaranteed to be true.

Induction refers to: The percentage A of the sample has the attribute of B. Therefore, the percentage A of the population has the attribute B. For example, all of the swans observed in a park have been white. Therefore, all swans are likely to be white. Induction refers to making generalisations based on specific examples, which can lead to fallacious conclusions. There are other forms of inductive inference, including but not limited to statistical syllogisms, projections, and mathematical inductions. All are methods used by Sherlock.

Abduction refers to: A is an inference made to explain B. For example, the grass is wet. The grass is not usually wet, but if it had rained the night before, the grass being wet would make sense. Abduction was originally referred to as ‘guessing’, and it is often an extremely flawed way of reasoning. It also happens to be the favourite method of Sherlock Holmes, and the way he is able to solve most of his cases.

Mind Palace - Method of Loci

A spatial mnemonic developed by the ancient Roman, this particular technique claims that if one is to devise a location, a building or some sort, they can place memories within it like one would place objects in a room. In effect, one can remember anything they’ve ever wanted to remember if done correctly. Sherlock uses this as one would use google, having committed a vast amount of information to what he refers to as his ‘mind palace’, which insinuates something about the grandeur of the building he chose as his spatial mnemonic. Comparable to a selective eidetic memory.

Fighting Abilities - Bartitsu

There is a certificate hanging over his bed, indicating Sherlock has received formal training in the British discipline. His combat aptitude comes into play when American CIA agents have him and Irene at gun point, and within the span of thirty seconds, he, collaborating with Irene, have them disarmed and knocked out. It can be assumed he is more than capable when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.

Advanced Knowledge of Chemistry

In addition to his logical analysis, Sherlock shows a competence for chemistry unparalleled by most university professors. If deduction is one of his innate abilities, chemistry is his passion, and more often than not, he can be found in his kitchen, examining something under his microscope. Being he was able to find a pair of kidnapped children by simply examining the substance on the bottom of a shoe under his microscope, it can be assumed he knows quite a bit in this field.


□ Personal Items:


♠ - One pair of black trousers and his D & G ‘purple shirt of sex’
♠ - One pair of black shoes
♠ - His Belstaff ‘Millford’ coat and blue scarf
♠ - His Eschenbach magnifier
♠ - His violin and bow
♠ - A box of nicotine patches, 30 set
♠ - His iPhone and charger
♠ - His Sony laptop and charger
♠ - His microscope
♠ - His Derek Rose Savile Row Woburn 8 navy robe


□ First Person Sample:

I will avoid pointing out the obvious,
in return, I ask you avoid being boring.

The technology available here implies
a collective with more resources than
any known country at the moment.
Terrorist involvement is unlikely, but
not impossible.

If there are others in this establishment
who care more about finding answers than
distracting themselves with this city’s
tedium, contact me.

SH

□ Third Person Sample:

Here!

and

Here!