luceti app

[sooochangeable]

Mun

Name: Kim
Livejournal/Dreamwidth Username: solasbeag
E-mail: crazyjumpingbean@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: kujoismydog @ AIM
Current Characters at Luceti:
nobodyspoke - Kim Philby
wouldntbetonit - William Bush


Character

Name: James Moriarty
Fandom: BBC's Sherlock
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Time Period: Just after 2x03 - when **SPOILERS** James shoots himself. **END**
Wing Color: Black. (duh)
History: Here
Personality:

Jim Moriarty, while entirely human, is more than a man.

He's a phantom, idea, genius, mystery; a spider. A story-teller. Sherlock Holmes' mirror. Where Sherlock is on the side of the law -- the angels -- Moriarty is the chaos to his order, the devil. There is so much about them that is the same, and so much that differs them.

It's possible that Moriarty is even more bored with life than Sherlock. He goes beyond convention and over the law, diving into the criminal world for some form of excitement. He craves competition as well, needing an opponent to pit himself against and validate that he is still the only brilliant mind in the world. All he wants in life is to have that connection to another mind, and then best them. He's greedy for everything but when you live a life where you can have absolutely everything no matter what the law says, no matter who opposes you, no matter where you aim your sight... that's just boring. If chaos is unopposed it is no longer chaos. It just is. If you can have everything, nothing has worth. If everybody had money but no water, which would be more valuable?
Moriarty values competition because he has none. He lives for an opponent and yearns to find that he is not alone in his genius, that he does have someone he can relate to.

When he found the consulting blogger detective, Sherlock Holmes, James felt he found that opposition he had been looking for and strove to make a worthwhile game for them both.

Sherlock Holmes has an accurate description of James Moriarty: "He [James Moriarty] isn't a man at all, he's a spider..."

He's right. Moriarty is a spider with many minions, a master of creating webs - his best being the social network of criminals, people who need him dramatically more than he needs them to accomplish what he wants. The simple fact of the matter is that he is the only consulting criminal in the world - as Sherlock is the only consulting detective. And like how the police run to Sherlock for aide when in over their heads - so do common criminals (and normal citizens too) look to James when they need something clever. Which is always.

James is the archetypal villain to the story, the background puppeteer. He always knows something the hero doesn't and is always one step ahead. This will make his time in Luceti interesting as he would then be one of the pieces on the board, not the chess player as he is accustomed to being.

As Sherlock stated in "The Great Game", James Moriarty prefers not to get directly involved in his work, always in the shadows. "Well usually he [Moriarty] must stay above it all. He organizes these things but no one ever has direct contact." And this is true. Each piece of work that we find is orchestrated by Moriarty, but no one ever knows a thing about him. Except his name. He's a great outside observer to everything that occurs.

A disembodied decision maker - Maxwell's demon, able to change the order of things without leaving so much as a fingerprint. In a place like Luceti, where everything is in such close quarters, this will be put to the test.

As a intensely manipulative creature, James is constantly on the look-out for strings to pull and things to dangle over peoples heads. Leverage, incentive to do what he wants, encouragement. These are things James gleans from casual observance or some inside information to use against a person. Once he knew you live in a house of sticks, he'd set it on fire...and then sell you the only fire extinguisher for miles.

Moriarty abhors normality in people and feels he can easily predict someones actions according to the situation. What's truly scary about that is that he can. As an outside observer to humanity, Moriarty has been able to anticipate reactions and actions in people - enough to even play the Holmes brothers as he pleases; who are on the fringes of society themselves. He is disgusted by average. He finds it boring and unsatisfying and frankly not worth his time but he understands it all too well. Now, he will play at normalcy, but it's a parody of normal, not a genuine thing. In every disguise he has (that we see) there's a hint of the real creature underneath the man-mask.

James seems placid, like a pretty little lake with ducks and everything. But underneath is something more tumultuous. More sinister and bloodthirsty than it looks. It is often commented upon; the streak of violence in this man. Where smarts should have negated the criminal strain, it instead amplified it. And with it came the brutality. James Moriarty chillingly remarks at one point that he doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He doesn't say that he won't.

It's rather eerie how like the snake in the garden of Eden James is like. Two-faced and altogether filled with ulterior motives. He even has this little habit (that is capitalized upon in the BBC adaption - Thank God) in the original canon where his head 'oscillates' from side to side like a reptile. The Moriarty in the BBC television series does this frequently during tense moments or when he's pleased with himself.


Strengths:

Of course, James Moriarty's massive intellect cannot go unmentioned. If he had a superpower - it would be his brains. He - in the original canon - was originally a professor of astro-physics in a highly esteemed (but anonymous) university. He also wrote (again in the original canon) 'A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem' at the age of 21, which won him his position as a chair of mathematics. Later on in life he wrote a book called, The Dynamics of an Asteroid which is apparently so complex and amazing that no one can critique it. Of course, these are in the original canon and go to show just what an amazing mathematician and scientist Moriarty is. I mention this because those smarts are in the BBC adaption's James Moriarty. The books his original counterpart wrote have made no mention in the series unfortunately. But they are worth noting when considering that the intelligence of this character has been consistent with each version in interpretation. BBC's current James Moriarty shows off his penchant for amazing schemes, explosives, computers, poisons and acting ability - his intelligence cannot be doubted there.

Moriarty is a fickle and unpredictable character. He can, at one moment, be amiable and charming; then switch face to something cruel and truly terrifying. He is at both times a smiling gentleman in a buttoned up suit and wild animal. He's a contradiction, like Sherlock, only where Sherlock puts on the front of disregard - James pretends to care wholeheartedly when he couldn't be less interested. He uses this as a way to garner sympathy and people's trust, both things that are highly valuable to a man who commits to the game as much as he does.

Moriarty has some of the greatest acts and disguises in the series. And I am not talking about physical disguises like the ones we find in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. I mean the kind of disguise where Moriarty could look exactly the same, and simply put on a convincing enough act to make you think he was someone else entirely. Sherlock Holmes' first encounter with James Moriarty is completely underwhelming as James is donning the persona of 'Jim from IT'. 'Jim' is a quiet, nervous, very nice young man who is dating Molly Hooper. He appears for a grand total of about one minute. Long enough for Sherlock to log that he is gay, but not long enough to leave a lasting impression on the genius detective. Upon James Moriarty's actual reveal as the consulting criminal even Sherlock Holmes - with his gift for faces and recall - is stumped for a very short period of time, then stunned that such a creature could hide under the face of a man like Jim.

Richard Brook is also worth of note here. While Sherlock Holmes did see right through the disguise, the rest of the world witnessed both Moriarty's true persona - the one who broke into the Tower of London and the one in the court - and the person Richard Brook - the popular choice was to buy into the meeker of the two performances.

James Moriarty seems to have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. The likelihood of this being a physical strength is low. It's more possible that James can detach himself mentally from things or focus on something other than pain, it's not exactly clear what it is. The point though, is that James withstood torture from the government for days and simply stared straight ahead as they did their very best to make him talk.

Weaknesses:

One of James' fatal shortcomings is - like Sherlock - he gets bored easily. But rather than turning to drugs or recreational target practice, James will go from one great challenge to the next. It doesn't matter if it's as modest as sitting in a bar pretending to be someone else or as grand as robbing Fort Knox. If it will relieve his boredom, he'll do it. This doesn't mean that he's impatient, however. James can wait months, years, for a scheme to fall through. In canon he plots and plans for 18 months for his game with Sherlock to come to it's end. Most of those months were spent in secret; waiting.

It's not a subject of argument whether or not James Moriarty is insane. The proof is in the pudding and we see it peek out at the audience constantly through his moments in the series. From his utterly horrifying outbursts at the pool scene, to his strangely convincing guises as Jim from IT and Richard Brook and intensely complicated and elaborate plan to bring Sherlock to his demise - it is clear that he is psychologically disturbed. If there was any clear examples they would have to be his grand reveal in "The Great Game" from the very moment we discover he murdered a boy for allegedly laughing at him with a poison put into the child's eczema medication when he was very young (his age is approximated at 9 at the time) to the disturbing repetition of Sherlock's name scratched into his holding cell walls and mirror, written in order to tell Mycroft Holmes what he wanted, we know that James isn't right in the head.

There is also, of course, the necessity of mentioning the fact that James is painfully human. He just has an exceptional brain in a completely unexceptional body. This manages to infuriate him to no end and he constantly presses it past it's limits with eating and sleeping. Needless to say he can get sick, bleed, hurt and die despite having a high pain tolerance.

Samples

First Person:

Isn't this lovely?

Everyone's soooo content. Cozy. It's nice being ripped from your own world isn't it? Refugees of the universe and no one cares anymore. Or ever did for that matter.

First few days and it's all calamity, everyone's all atwitter aren't they?

[And his voice pitches high. Mocking concern and anger and fear.]

"Where am I?"
"What is this place?"
"What are these things on my back?!"
"This is wrong! This is sick!"
"I'm scared."
"What are these Malnosso really up to?"
"They can't make me fight! I won't!"

[A sad, wet chuckle. And then the calm roll of a faint Irish accent is back.]

And all these questions for what? All these brave -- stupid -- people think that for them it'll be different, they'll be the one to stand against it?

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

It's utterly pointless. You rebels never last. After the first bloody week it's like nothing's ever happened. Like you've always been here, like you've always had wings and lived in a bubble. All of you sucked in by the gracious plenty of Luceti. Like children to your mother's tit; it's disgusting.

You forget this is a prison. Home comforts included. But a prison nonetheless. You're all prisoners here, experiments, cannon fodder. Sheep.

[He starts to sing:]

Baa baa black sheep....

[And sighs.]

Brainwashed the lot of you. I can't believe I'm actually saying this either but....

I want to help. Yes, yes sheep I want to help you.

I think it's time we got a little excitement stirring in Luceti. Something to get the blood stirring and the hearts pumping and the neurons firing. A friendly wake-up call.

Because it is time to wake-up sheep. Face the terrifying, horrible, fearful reality and cower properly. Or stand up and fight tooth and nail.

After all, what is good supposed to do without some evil? You're all so useless without me.

God, aren't you bored? Aren't you sick of this monotony? This predictability? I could puke it's so lifeless.

It's why I'm doing this. All of it. And I hate it. I have to get personal, I have to do everything myself.

Daddy can't hold your hand every step of the way, sheep.
But he will for now.

For now.

Third Person:

This world was by leaps and bounds less amusing than his. Firstly, and most irritating, the criminal element was non-existent. Literally. Yes there were some people who stood roughly between the two polar opposites of 'good' and 'bad'. But it was all circumstantial. Completely subjective. Someone's idea of 'good' always did something 'bad' and 'bad' always benefited the person committing the act. If they were smart enough to make it so.

Which typically they weren't. But that was where James came in; he helped people. Evil, horrible, disgusting, morally unsound people. But if it looks human, sounds human, and smells human...it's probably human.

And stupid.

Odds are it's dumb and too simple-minded to come up with some clever way to be horrid and evil. So James does the rest. Comes up with the elaborate schemes, complicated plans, hoaxes and cons to let them carry it all out and watch. It passed the time, and he was never bored.

But here it was different. Here it was safe and everyone was good or neutral or something in between and no one wanted to cause trouble or be chaotic or burn anything. James was alone. Yet again.

While annoying ... it wasn't completely debilitating. He could still function in that respect somehow but it was so very boring anyways. It was these people. Luceti's favorite sons and daughters.

James had many names for these people. Boring, useless, annoying; sheep, lemmings and humans too. The last was especially venomous. For being a human in every physical sense of the word, James Moriarty definitely hated them.

He wanted to introduce some proper fear into these creatures eyes, see their concern fall from the Third Party to something much closer to home. An immediate threat. Something real and much too dangerous to contend with. Give good something to chase again. James didn't like being demoted from chess player to game piece. And he intended to misbehave.

After all, how else was he supposed to get some attention? Some relief from this every growing boredom. Playing with the sheep would soon grow to lose it's novelty. And he'd need something bigger, better and more clever. Oh if only dear Sherlock were here....