HeroinOrHeroine

I multi-tasked through my first viewing of Hounds of Baskerville and had to restart it halfway through because I didn't pay enough attention and had no idea what was going on.

I guess it's all perspective. To me, Sherlock seems full of emotions. He's bored, irritated, frustrated, angry, stressed, joy-jumpingly happy on occasion. I'm very good at knowing how the other person feels about a situation. I'm a social worker, so part of that is training, part of it is personality. For example, yesterday my friend was telling me about how he had worked hard on setting up this meeting that was outside of his job but very helpful to the client. When he got to work yesterday, his boss had impulsively taken the client over to have an impromptu meeting, knowing that my friend had set a meeting up, so all his work was invalid. Then my friend asked one of my least favourite question: "how would you feel about that?". So my response was something similar to, 'I would guess that you probably felt very betrayed. All that hard work and you didn't get to see the reward in the client's face. And maybe you felt very disrespected by your boss'. See there, I social-worked my friend. Haha. Even though I knew exactly how he was feeling, and view it as a completely rational and reasonable response, it is not how I would react. I would shrug my shoulders and think, "cool, less work for me and the client got what they needed'. A huge component of being empathic is acknowledging that even though someone's feelings are different that yours would be, they are still valid. It's not about how you would feel in a situation, but how that specific person feels in the situation.

Hmm. I relate to a couple different aspects of the show. Like Sherlock, my job involves inferring information from my observations of the environment and from being very good at reading people. Unlike Sherlock, though, I am incredibly empathic. Also unlike Sherlock, I have a very limited range of emotion. Like John, I am a bit addicted to adrenaline. I try to limit my fixes to playing moderately violent sports and other forms of exercise rather than guns and chasing criminals. Like Mycroft, I am probably overly protective of my loved ones. Overall, I relate to Mycroft the most. He likes solitude, he's always got a plan, he's really good at manipulating people into wanting to do what he wants. I try to only use my powers for good rather than evil; I'm not sure Mycroft does. I don't really relate to Molly at all, although she's what I'd like in a friend. Same for Mrs Hudson. I like people who's personalities are opposite of mine.

I was going to make a sad, pathetic goal to watch it by this weekend, but maybe I'll change that into a dedicated, committed goal instead?

I really need to rewatch this episode. It has some of my favourite elements in it (Sherlock's drug use, that whole drug den scene, Janine - love her!) but I watched the whole series again and then, when it was time for HLV, I couldn't do it and switched to Dr Who. Why can't I watch it?!

Eeee, those are adorable. I'm going to have to get my hands on the Mycroft one for sure.

HoB is excellent TV-watching. I think part of the problem between John and Sherlock in the fireplace scene is that John considers them friends and his feelings are hurt by Sherlock's aggressive attitude. That would make it difficult to act like an objective doctor in that scenario. To be honest, I feel a little bit repelled by Sherlock in the fireplace scene, so I apply that the John.

We usually have a few days of intense heat in August but average summer temperatures are around 30 degrees, which is still fairly hot. It's even hotter today: 38 degrees. This is very unusual for this early in summer and is making everyone paranoid about tornadoes. We had tornado-strength winds a couple weeks ago which resulted in huge trees being uprooted and crushing cars and roofs, and semis being blown over. Always an adventure on the prairies!

I just want to take a minute to complain about the fact that it's 37 degrees here today (Google tells me that's 98.6 Fahrenheit, Americans). It's way too early in the season to be this hot. We can't go outside for any length of time. Such a waste of a weekend.

One of these Titan figures, but an exclusive one for Nerd Block. I got the 10th Doctor but the one I got has glasses and a pinstriped suit. I'm not a toy collector but my boss has been bugging me about not having any personal items in my office so I might bring him to work.

Yep, Classic. I had actually unsubscribed in January but then they dragged me back in this month with the promise of both a Sherlock item and a Dr Who item.

I'm not sure where to put this, but I feel like this fits. I was surprised to get this awesome shirt in my Nerd Block today. Yay! It's pretty casual for me but I'll be happy to lounge around the house in it!

Primitive texting. An excellent description! Oh? Then I guess I do understand what a pager does. Yay me!

The final scene of this episode might be my favourite of the entire series. I love the red herring of John showing up, Moriarty's delightful insanity, Sherlock's pacing and scratching his head with the gun and John's crumbly legs. It's so well done and so entertaining to watch! I don't really understand what a pager does. Like primitive texting?

When I rewatched this episode yesterday, I made myself a couple notes for discussion. The first one was that I really enjoyed how happy Sherlock was to give the secretary the news that her hairpin was worth millions. I thought his smile looked really genuine and he looked pleased. Now, reading through the comments, I've learned that the actress was BC's girlfriend at the time, which was news to me. Maybe that explains some of the happiness. The other note I had was that I thought the ending was interesting: John sees the graffiti artist spray-painting outside the window but doesn't draw Sherlock's attention to it. The graffiti is of an eye, presumably Moriarty saying, "I'm watching you"?. Is it ever mentioned again? It seems like foreshadowing but I don't recall it being significant in any way in subsequent episodes.

Oh man, the possibility of it being hosted in the US makes me so torn between my love of Sherlocky things and my hatred of masses of people.

I don't think Sherlock is any better of a person than he was before John. I think he's always had certain people that he cares about and is loyal to, and his friendship with John caused him to widen his circle a bit to include John and the people John cares about. It would be impossible to know whether victims matter any more to him post-John than before as we don't see any of Sherlock's escapades prior to meeting John. Being a good or a bad person is an interesting concept; entirely subjective. I don't know that I've ever met a 'good' person by my standards - I'm certainly not one. Sherlock definitely wouldn't be one. I tend to think that the vast majority of people are just the sum of their experiences and are overall neither good nor bad.

Is it too late for me to join in on this? I've already missed a couple, I see. That's what I get for being such a sporadic forum checker-inner!

You remembered all that off the top of your head?! Sweet fancy Moses. all I could remember was the fish and chips.

Maaaaybe. Haha! I don't necessarily think we see ourselves in Sherlock; maybe more that we see him in relation to ourselves? I see the world through pretty cynical glasses, therefore I see Sherlock through those same cynical lenses.

I've always seen Sherlock as more of an antihero; I think he did grow up to be a pirate of sorts. He does whatever he feels is necessary with little to no regard for law, has no problem stealing from people who care about him and is manipulative and an excellent liar. I also think he is a huge romantic. Reading others' interpretations of Sherlock's character is so fascinating. I wonder how much of ourselves we put into our interpretations?

When you ask your friend if she wants to travel to London (from Alberta) in January with you "just because" then mumble something about Speedy's Cafe under your breath.

If I were to analyze it a wee bit: I think a (maybe large) part of it is that all of the vulnerability shown by Sherlock, John and Mycroft makes me uncomfortable. Which probably says a lot more about me than it does about the episode.

(I'm just going to come in here with a totally different topic because I have a feeling this debate could go on for days. Feel free to ignore me and carry on). I know I really like this episode, but I keep rewatching the series right up to HLV and then starting over. I just can't bring myself to watch it again. I don't know why.

Neither can I! I hate it and I avoid competitive situations whenever I can. Oh man, I live for competition. I mostly compete against myself. I always want to do better than last time. It's funny; I've never really considered board games as socializing. But then the games I play tend to require too much concentration for there to be much chatter.