Not too long ago, I was bored and surfing the Sherlock page on TV Tropes. (Naturally, I should have been in bed instead.)
The description next to Fridge Brilliance is what really caught my attention; this was something I had been thinking about ever since I apped the character, AKA the question of, "What's really keeping Sherlock from becoming a murderer himself? He's certainly clever enough for it. It'd keep him from being bored all the time."
The obvious but not exactly satisfactory answer to this is the fact that he's Sherlock Holmes. The character himself is, with such a rich history and many different versions, expected to solve murders and not commit them.
But if we want to get a little deeper than that, the TV Tropes page gives a good, if only surface reason. (Jen will copy pasta because she is lazy.)
"Sherlock's comment about hubris and the "fragility of genius" explains why he tests his intellect by solving crimes rather than committing them (as Sgt. Donovan suggests he will someday): it allows him to be incredibly clever and then brag about it, whereas criminals can't very well flap their mouths about their evil schemes without being caught."
I did think about this, of course, while playing around with the question in my head. Sherlock is very much a genius in what he does, and to his belief all geniuses need an audience. It's logical enough that he doesn't want to deal with the inconvenience of being hunted down by the police, or being caught; it even suggests that eventually, an intelligent killer would wish to be caught, if only for the sake of his fifteen minutes of fame.
The only problem I have with this being his only reason is that... this alone, really, doesn't sound like it would be enough to stop Sherlock. After all, wouldn't it be even more of a challenge to not get caught? Wouldn't you achieve enough fame through the complexity and jarring nature of your murders if you managed to continue to do so long enough? Wouldn't playing games with the police/detectives/etc. be enough to satiate your boredom? The risk of getting caught certainly didn't stop Moriarty, and both he and Sherlock are very much alike in many ways.
So basically why hasn't Sherlock turned into Moriarty? Or why won't he, sometime in the future? How about some canon.
Moriarty: Do you know what happens if you don't leave me alone, Sherlock? To you? Sherlock: Oh, let me guess. I get killed. Moriarty: Kill you? No, don't be obvious. I mean, I'm going to kill you anyway, someday. I don't want to rush it, though. I'm saving it up for something special. No, no, no, no, no. 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. Moriarty: But we both know that's not quite true.
Yes, that's right, kiddies. Deep, deep, deep down, somewhere beneath all those sociopathic tendencies, Sherlock does indeed have a heart. Of course I know that this can strictly taken to mean that he has feelings and not necessarily morals, but I think that, given the nature of the character itself (see: It's Sherlock Holmes), the two can be very much related.
I tend to think that this version of Sherlock, though keeping the immensely unrivaled analytical skills of all the previous ones, is somewhat less mature in his moral development, as if the development itself is just beginning. The potential is there; it just has barely taken root.
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Not too long ago, I was bored and surfing the Sherlock page on TV Tropes. (Naturally, I should have been in bed instead.)
The description next to Fridge Brilliance is what really caught my attention; this was something I had been thinking about ever since I apped the character, AKA the question of, "What's really keeping Sherlock from becoming a murderer himself? He's certainly clever enough for it. It'd keep him from being bored all the time."
The obvious but not exactly satisfactory answer to this is the fact that he's Sherlock Holmes. The character himself is, with such a rich history and many different versions, expected to solve murders and not commit them.
But if we want to get a little deeper than that, the TV Tropes page gives a good, if only surface reason. (Jen will copy pasta because she is lazy.)
"Sherlock's comment about hubris and the "fragility of genius" explains why he tests his intellect by solving crimes rather than committing them (as Sgt. Donovan suggests he will someday): it allows him to be incredibly clever and then brag about it, whereas criminals can't very well flap their mouths about their evil schemes without being caught."
I did think about this, of course, while playing around with the question in my head. Sherlock is very much a genius in what he does, and to his belief all geniuses need an audience. It's logical enough that he doesn't want to deal with the inconvenience of being hunted down by the police, or being caught; it even suggests that eventually, an intelligent killer would wish to be caught, if only for the sake of his fifteen minutes of fame.
The only problem I have with this being his only reason is that... this alone, really, doesn't sound like it would be enough to stop Sherlock. After all, wouldn't it be even more of a challenge to not get caught? Wouldn't you achieve enough fame through the complexity and jarring nature of your murders if you managed to continue to do so long enough? Wouldn't playing games with the police/detectives/etc. be enough to satiate your boredom? The risk of getting caught certainly didn't stop Moriarty, and both he and Sherlock are very much alike in many ways.
So basically why hasn't Sherlock turned into Moriarty? Or why won't he, sometime in the future? How about some canon.
Moriarty: Do you know what happens if you don't leave me alone, Sherlock? To you?
Sherlock: Oh, let me guess. I get killed.
Moriarty: Kill you? No, don't be obvious. I mean, I'm going to kill you anyway, someday. I don't want to rush it, though. I'm saving it up for something special. No, no, no, no, no. 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.
Moriarty: But we both know that's not quite true.
Yes, that's right, kiddies. Deep, deep, deep down, somewhere beneath all those sociopathic tendencies, Sherlock does indeed have a heart. Of course I know that this can strictly taken to mean that he has feelings and not necessarily morals, but I think that, given the nature of the character itself (see: It's Sherlock Holmes), the two can be very much related.
I tend to think that this version of Sherlock, though keeping the immensely unrivaled analytical skills of all the previous ones, is somewhat less mature in his moral development, as if the development itself is just beginning. The potential is there; it just has barely taken root.