Not sure if anyone has talked about this previously, it seems an obvious one really, apologies if its already been covered. Needless to say, this is generally meant to be a bit funny, talking about fictional characters and situations, not real people or things.
I’m specifically referring to the BBC series staring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, and Andrew Scott as Moriaty.
This is my take:
They are both, clearly, autistic, and masking in different ways - Sherlock is out of the mainstream, but not so far out, economically, but he is deeply, deeply eccentric, and so he is owning more of his innately autistic tendencies and behaviours, his obsessiveness in his work, his cocaine addiction and his incredibly solitary violin playing allow him outlets, healthy or otherwise, for his natural nature. So that’s pretty clear, he’s definitely more obviously living life his way, but for me he loses a lot of points by being incredibly domineering, projecting an outwardly perfect unquestionable persona, and treating everyone around him like some kind of servant or underling.
Moriaty, on the other hand, has a much more conventional job, as an academic, where many of his traits can go unrecognised in an ocean of detail oriented, obsessive over-workers. However Moriaty is clearly bottling up something huge that demands to be recognised, that goes way beyond his already renowned abilities in whatever-he-does-for-a-living - so there’s something unknown to us that’s bothering him that he has to get out, that he can only get out by blowing things up and undertaking a clearly insane plan to become the master of the universe.
But, the thing that gets me about the BBC series is that Moriaty is infinitely cooler than Sherlock, he just has this insouciant, sort of come what may attitude, he may be the master of evil, and lonely and an utter ***, but at least he isn’t going to let it get him down - and here, I get confused slightly with the Andrew Scott priest character in Fleabag, which is basically the same guy wearing a dog collar - doesn’t Moriaty have this essential poetic vision of life, its life as tragedy, but it has an incredible beauty and a liaise faire sort of come what may attitude, that accepts life as it is, whilst going about his life as this tragic theatrical character, like Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon or Mickey and Mallory in Natural Born Killers, basically, in the most poetic, theatrical, insane, bonkers way he possibly can.
Whilst Sherlock seems equally committed to living life his way, and generally being a pain in the *** to everyone who knows him, to make the point that he is different and isn’t going to apologise for it - but he just takes himself so seriously - he’s such a bore! It’s like who would you rather spend some time with, drinking tea, one afternoon, in a pleasant cafe - clearly, its Moriaty, he’s just so much more tuned in to the innate tragedy of life, the poetry of existence, while Sherlock would just bore you to death by showing off about how he noticed you took the Bakerloo line to meet him today, because only on the Bakerloo line do you get the pungent smell of Sulphur that comes from the quarry at Marylebone that was excavated when the dug the line in … YAWN! I think Sherlock’s only redeeming feature is his love and loyalty to Watson, but does he really care that much, or to him, is Watson just a well trained Labrador? His other main plus, in comparison, is that he is not an actual killer, but given this is fiction, that's more of an incidental point rather an an actual positive character trait.
So, though, actually, I love both characters, for me, I have to say I love Moriaty more.