ancientsgate wrote:

SusiGo wrote:

Well, considering that Mycroft has a file on his own mother ...

Creepy is as creepy does, I guess.

But (again, to me) it's creepier when a friend is doing that to/about a friend. There could be, I suppose, legit reasons why someone would keep a file about their elderly mother's medical, social, professional, family history, but when a someone does that to/about his peer, a friend who has no idea it's being done.... 

Ah, well. Best not to think about it. Let's just whistle a happy tune and pretend I never brought this up, okay?  heh

Just me but what might be creepy in a "normal" person I find endearing in Sherlock.  Sherlock doesn't do things the way everyone else does.  His file on John is a sign of how much John matters to him. 
 

People, people – you see things in an incredibly negative light.
 
In the abovementioned scene, Sherlock is trying to cope with his best man role in the same manner he copes with his cases (and this is written like that for fun!). Therefore he does scrapbook about John and analyses everything about him in order to manage John′s stag party, John′s marriage ceremony and his best man speech in the best way possible. If you noticed, Sherlock always collects scraps when analysing the case – he mostly glues them to the wall over the sofa. (In the canon, he had whole books with the facts he collected about various criminal cases, criminals, but also various persons who were influential in Britain, so this is nothing new.) The photoshop he does - using John′s cut-out head from some photo – was there as a prop that helped Sherlock to determine how much alcohol John can consume during a stag party. Nothing pathological about that.
 
But of course, we must find something negative on this Sherlock′s activity, because it′s Sherlock doing it. If he collects highly private scrapbook about his friend for the specific project, it has to be creepy – Sherlock is a freak and people like him cannot do anything with some innocent purpose, can they?
 
On the other hand, if you are John Watson, you can collect all the scrapbooks you like, writing maliciously sarcastic comments about your „weird flatmate“ and then selling your scraps commercialy to all the world:
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sherlock-The-Casebook-Guy-Adams/dp/1849904251
 
.... and you are innocent as a lily and a good friend. Right?
 
Similarly, you can write highly public blog on the man you live with without his consent, publicly spreading this comments about him:
 
„I think he might be mad. He was certainly arrogant and really quite rude and he looks about 12 and he's clearly a bit public school and, yes, I definitely think he might be mad.“
 
„Arrogant, imperious, pompous. He's not safe, I know that much. I'm not going to be bored and I doubt we're going to be arguing about whose turn it is to pay the gas bill or what we're going to watch on the telly. And yeah, he is probably most likely definitely mad. But, he knows a couple of nice restaurants so he's not all bad.“
 
„I suspect if he came back and found me and our landlady lying here with our throats cut, he'd just see it as an intellectual exercise. 'Fantastic' he'd exclaim, rubbing his hands together. 'But the door was locked so how did they kill each other?' The policewoman, she called him a psychopath. That seems harsh and it was hardly a professional diagnosis but I look back at what I wrote about him when I first met him. I called him the madman.“
 
„At first, I didn't really welcome him back into my life. I couldn't. I mean I know he's a psychopath and I've accepted that but what he did this time, it was too much.“
 
....and this is the sign of your friendliness, I assume. Of course, it isn′t enought to just diss your acquintance, you also publish his full name and his photo next to it, so that the whole UK and whole world immediately identify this man as being crazy psychopath the moment they see him.
 
What a nice uncreepy friend John is, really!
 

Oh, sorry, my comment was not a reaction on your post, but on this post:
 
But (again, to me) it's creepier when a friend is doing that to/about a friend. There could be, I suppose, legit reasons why someone would keep a file about their elderly mother's medical, social, professional, family history, but when a someone does that to/about his peer, a friend who has no idea it's being done....
 
I wanted to point out that if we find Sherlock′s behaviour creepy because he collects scrapbooks about John, then John is guilty of this behaviour as well – in a much more serious manner.
 
 

SusiGo wrote:

Moreover, for me these are proofs of Sherlock's (in these cases very selfless) love for John. 

I totally agree. I actually love the idea that Sherlock takes the time to collect all sorts of things concerning John in a file. I'm sure he's doing it because he cares about John. Very much cares about John. 
 

nakahara wrote:

Yes, there is a scene in a The Great Game in which the employees of Scotland Yard are snickering that Sherlock doesn′t know a thing about the Solar System. They read it on John′s blog, of course. I highly doubt Sherlock wanted to make that highly private fact about him public. So we can see John as quite creepy sometimes, either.

 

Sherlock believes that underststanding the Solar Systems justs clutters his valuable memory space, but seems to know a lot about what kind of underwear gay men wear.
 

nakahara wrote:

....  I wanted to point out that if we find Sherlock′s behaviour creepy because he collects scrapbooks about John, then John is guilty of this behaviour as well – in a much more serious manner.  

I disagree. John's blog is kept in public, with Sherlock's full knowledge, and Sherlock has John's permission to read what he writes there, talk about it with anyone he wants, etc. So it's not the fact that Sherlock is keeping a file/scrapbook/dossier/whatever it is on John, it's that he's doing it without John's knowledge and express consent. IMO anything done behind someone's back is suspect and stalker-ish, just by its secretive nature.

I'm sure Sherlock feels he has John's best interests at heart, keeping that file-- he always feels justified about his actions, no matter how off-putting they might seem to others. After all, the rest of us are idiots, and we only use a small percentage of our weak minds, so why would we understand? And why should we be made to understand? He knows best, after all.

And none of that exactly points to any kind of conventional romance between them, does it. ha Talk about trust issues!
 

SolarSystem wrote:

..... I actually love the idea that Sherlock takes the time to collect all sorts of things concerning John in a file. I'm sure he's doing it because he cares about John. Very much cares about John.  

Huh. You guys are really forgiving of Sherlock's.... ways..... aren't you. I realize this is a fictionalized scenario we're talking about, and that a lot of what they get up to on that show borders on sci fi, but.... I started this calling-it-creepy thing earlier today because it dawned on me, how *I* would feel, if I found out a friend had been keeping a secret dossier about my private stats, for reasons of his own.  I shouldn't go there, wondering about how any of that would plug into a RL scenario, since the show is so very, very far removed from RL. As I already said, let's whistle a happy tune and just go on to another subject, shall we?
 

ancientsgate wrote:

SolarSystem wrote:

..... I actually love the idea that Sherlock takes the time to collect all sorts of things concerning John in a file. I'm sure he's doing it because he cares about John. Very much cares about John.  

Huh. You guys are really forgiving of Sherlock's.... ways..... aren't you. I realize this is a fictionalized scenario we're talking about, and that a lot of what they get up to on that show borders on sci fi, but.... I started this calling-it-creepy thing earlier today because it dawned on me, how *I* would feel, if I found out a friend had been keeping a secret dossier about my private stats, for reasons of his own.  I shouldn't go there, wondering about how any of that would plug into a RL scenario, since the show is so very, very far removed from RL. As I already said, let's whistle a happy tune and just go on to another subject, shall we?
 

But that´s just it – the scrapbook Sherlock keeps on John is removed from real life in an exactly same manner as John´s blog. It was written as a joke in the show. And you have no real proof that John is unaware that Sherlock is actually collecting such thing on him – he spends so much time in his presence, he surely is informed about what Sherlock does. 

So if you want to treat Sherlock´s scrapbook as some stalkerish thingy (despite having no evidence that Sherlock has any malicious intent in collecting this or using the scrapbook in any sinister manner, as it is heavily implied that Sherlock just collected it in connection with John´s marriage) then you must also admit that: 

In real life, if you have written such things as John has written on his blog (about Sherlock being a madman and a psychopath) and then revealed the full name of a said person and publicised his photograph, you would seriously harm the reputation of that person. Such behaviour would border on a defamation and a libel. Just imagine that you are in that situation and that your colleagues read about things you did in the confines of your flat, in privacy, because your flatmate amuses himself by describing them on the internet. It´s equally unpleasant as sharing a flat with your stalker. And I´m not sure if it would be safe to unravel so many details about Sherlock´s cases and criminal investigations publicly. It would probably bother the police too, if somebody wrote about such things before the trial of caught criminals and would be detrimental to the investigation as a whole. 

But of couse, John´s blog is just a joke, created for our amusement. Just as Sherlock´s many quirks. So it saddens me that you took TsoT, where Sherlock is most supportive, loving and self-sacrificing in his relations to John and twisted this little thing to make Sherlock look creepy. 

If you want to see Sherlock Holmes behaving creepy, watch SH version of TV Granada, starring Jeremy Brett. That show had many instances of SH entering the bedroom of John Watson and observing him stalkerishly, while JW was sleeping. Such thing never happened in BBC Sherlock and Sherlock, despite having many unpleasant characteristics, never showed any marks of such behaviour. Watch them for comparison and you will see the difference immediately.
 

Last edited by nakahara (April 29, 2014 9:26 pm)

SusiGo wrote:

Could you so something about the colour? 

Yes 
 

Interesting ... and true.