Sherlockspurpleshirt wrote:

SO
Here I am, watching Reichenbach Falls (again) to torture myself, and discovered that he does indeed DIE in his purple shirt of sexy. I am now thoroughly depressed.
SECONDLY
I recently saw a post asking why Sherlock is the way he is.
You know how he is with his "cheek bones and popping his collar up so he looks cool"?
I wonder if he started smoking because it "looks cool"...

Thoughts on why Sherlock is the way he is?
 

I doubt the smoking was anything to do with self image. I think it ties in with his addictive personality and his general misuse of substances to either stimulate or calm his mind. Obviously they allude to Sherlock's drug problem in the BBC version but they probably didn't want to have the entire series depicting a man who is hooked on cocaine/morphine (it's cannon but if I remember rightly he wasn't off his face on every other page.) So they picked up on the smoking instead. Now Holmes was always a big smoker and was depicted smoking more often in canon than he ever was shown to be using. I reckon the smoking started young for BBC Holmes though.
 

QuiteExtraordinary wrote:

Maybe Mycroft started with the smoking and Sherlock copied it when they were young. And Mycroft still regrets it.

Ah hah! Now that would be something. Poor Mycroft, he feels like he's to blame for everything Sherlock does.

Now... the coat... I reckon this *is* (at least partially) an image thing. He is aware of the impression he makes on other people. And the coat is just another way to portray that image. John calls him on it on THoB with him turning his coat collar up. Which ellicts a rather childish response from Sherlock.

The coat, visually, is like a superhero cape (superheroes being 'good' as well as 'great'.) And it is also thick, covering a large surface area of his body more like a kind of shield. His coat and his scarf are his uniform, his suit of armour against the world, and he knows it looks damn good when he turns the collar up.  Seeing as ACD's stories wouldn't have existed in this version of reality I reckon Sherlock was really into Batman as a child (I read somewhere about the creators and that Batman was influenced by Holmes and that the Joker was meant to be his Moriarty.) And also possibly a bit of a Trekkie (again THoB) I know the quote is a canon original but in this reality the books never existed so Sherlock is essentially quoting Spock (hence John's downright heartless teasing of him in that moment of utter weakness.)

Last edited by Mnemosyne (June 30, 2013 9:48 am)

When John talked about putting the coat collar up and Sherlock denied it: "I don't do that"
I hear Benedict talking. As if he tells us that it's the props people who dress him and turn the collar up to make him look cool.

I think he was a rebellious teacher and got hooked on smoking.  It's as mundane as that, everybody's story.