application to he waits dreaming
✢ The Player
Player Name: V.
Age: 22
LJ: couldbdangerous
AIM / MSN / Y!M: AIM (hodudududuh)E-mail: easypeasyeasypeasy@gmail.com
Other Characters: --
✢ The Character
Character Name: Sherlock Holmes
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Canon Point: Post-The Great Game
Age: 32
Appearance: Have a look.
Abilities / Powers: Sherlock Holmes solves mysteries, and he's damned good at what he does. His powers of observation and reasoning are impressive, and his knowledge, though not vast in scope, is incredibly detailed where it matters. He absorbs information and processes it with unusual rapidity, which allows him to discern a number of things from the tiniest of details. He can read people with unusual ease, and others are often surprised and unnerved by the seemingly impossible things he can deduce about them based on the tiniest details.
His knowledge is, as aforementioned, very specific. Only those things which he sees as being immediately useful or useful to his work in the long term are stored in his memory. As such, while his knowledge of such subjects as chemistry, anatomy, and forensic pathology is incredibly detailed, there are also areas in which he is astoundingly ignorant. Anything that cannot be related to his work is systematically ignored and often derided.
Sherlock is also astoundingly manipulative and capable of shifting between a number of personalities at the drop of a hat. He's a very good actor, capable even of crying on command, and he has no qualms about using these abilities to get what he wants.
Physically he's not overly strong, though he's certainly more capable in a fight than he looks. His career often takes him dangerous places, and he's learned how to fight around his natural disadvantages. He can be quite quick if the need arises. He's also quite resilient to hardship, both physically and psychologically, and often goes days without food or sleep when he's on cases.
Sherlock can also play the violin, though generally the noises he induces his to make couldn't really be described as playing. He finds that the discordant screeching helps him focus.
Inventory: His clothing, his violin, a switchblade, his lockpicks, his detective's kit, his lighter (though no cigarettes), and his mobile phone.
Personality: Sherlock Holmes is not an easy man to deal with. Even at the best of times he's often arrogant and cold, intentionally distant from other humans. In the show's canon he describes himself as a high-functioning sociopath, but a number of actions he performs seem to contradict that statement. Regardless, it's a useful diagnosis and one which people are more than ready to believe given his behaviour. He can, at times, even be cruel, though often this is unintentional. He's capable of reading people very well, but he doesn't always understand them.
Under the cold, distant exterior, however, is a modicum of insecurity. Sherlock's relationship with John Watson, the only person he lets close enough to be referred to as a friend, shows his desire for approval and external affirmation. "Genius," he says, "needs an audience," and John is his. Later events prove, however, that Sherlock wants more than an audience - that John genuinely means something to him, that he not only accepts the doctor's company but approves of it, and finds him valuable. This belies an emotional depth that Sherlock generally tries very hard to keep hidden. It calls the diagnosis of sociopath very much into question.
That having been said, it is important to note that he's he's not a man who harbours hidden respect and care for everyone. His affection for John is the exception, not the rule. He's still perfectly capable of being ruthless and manipulative, and without John present to act as his conscience he has no qualms about hurting people, physically or emotionally, to get what he wants. He is more than capable of being petty and cruel simply because it pleases him. Anything is fair game in the pursuit of stimulation and an end to boredom - whether be it hurting people, putting their lives at risk, or risking his own through his work or his cocaine use.
For all of his manipulativeness and callousness, however, Sherlock is also profoundly incapable of truly understanding the way that people work. He can read them, he can look at them and see what they've done and where they've been, he can read motivations and follow them to their logical conclusions, but he's also socially inept in certain situations and does not seem to be capable of predicting or comprehending even John's reactions to some of the things he says and does. Oftentimes his insults seem to be at least partly unintentional, and he seems confused as to why they're unacceptable.
John in particular gives him a great deal of trouble, their friendship and understanding of one another aside. A man who must have felt all his life, and was likely told on more than one occasion, that he can't make friends will inevitably find this sudden and spontaneous relationship so late in his life to be odd. John is anomalous and Sherlock adores anomalies - even if, as in this case, he's incapable of quite understanding them. His actions in the show - using John, then ignoring him, then drawing him increasingly further into his work - shows the inner conflict he must feel, and is also demonstrative of the fact that he's slowly working to reconcile it.
Sherlock is, in the end, a bit more than the average eccentric genius both in terms of the genius and the eccentricity. He's a madman, cruel but largely harmless, dizzyingly knowledgeable but also profoundly ignorant. He's arrogant and prideful, comfortable with himself and in some senses stubbornly set in his ways, though he has also come perhaps childishly to believe the things others have said about him - sociopath, madman, friendless, unlikeable, unloveable - though he seems to have transformed them from insults into points of pride, things which he chooses to emphasize about himself alongside or indeed sometimes above his more admirable qualities.
History: Not much is explicitly stated about Sherlock's early days in canon. We know that he studied at university, probably in chemistry, and it is strongly implied that he had a past drug problem - likely cocaine, drawing on the Arthur Conan Doyle canon. The series begins with his first encounter with Dr. John Watson - the man who was to become his steadfast companion, friend, and flatmate as events unfolded. The two met for the first time through the intervention of a mutual friend, Mike Stamford. The introduction was one of convenience: John couldn't afford a flat in London on his own and Sherlock was looking for a flatmate. The next day saw them meeting at 221B Baker Street. Sherlock had already moved in, and he seemed to assume that John will as well. However, before any of this could be decided, Sherlock received a visitor.
Detective Inspector Lestrade of the Scotland Yard arrived to request Sherlock's assistance with a case - four apparent suicides, all in identical circumstances. Sherlock accepted, but before leaving he asks if John would like to accompany him as an assistant. So began their adventures together.
The resolution of the case saw John shooting a man to save Sherlock's life, despite the fact that they'd first met hardly 48 hours before, and the first appearance of a particular name which would come to mean a great deal to the both of them in the future: Moriarty.
John also decided to move in with Sherlock at this point, and not long afterwards another case came to their attention. Another series of murders, with each victim having been threatened with a mysterious cypher shortly before their deaths. John also got a job at a local surgery and a date with his boss, a lovely redhead named Sarah of whom Sherlock doesn't appear to approve. The conclusion of the case saw John and Sarah kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity. Sherlock rescued the both of them in the nick of time.
Not long after that, in a lull between cases, a suspicious explosion was set off across the street from their flat, and John and Sherlock are drawn into a game orchestrated by a mysterious figure: Moriarty. Sherlock was given a series of puzzles to solve within a set time limit: fail, and people would die. Finally he went to confront Moriarty on his own in an indoor swimming pool, only to find that John had been kidnapped and strapped with explosives just like the other victims.
The series ends during this confrontation; no canon resolution has yet been presented. This character's history assumes both Sherlock and John have survived along with Moriarty.
First Person Sample: Linky one.
Third Person Sample: Linky two.
Other: Ta!