I'm really sleepy and drained after working on my Baker Street Babes essay all day.  No, I still haven't started writing!  But I've finished the major bits of research and I've got about half the outline and 14 pages of notes.  So I'm going to take a break to babble incoherently about Moriarty before I stumble into bed.

Ugh, this is going to make no sense with all my sleepiness, but here I ramble:

As fennishjournal told me, ACD's Moriarty used the word "owe" to mean he was going to get Sherlock for interfering with his criminal activity.  Series 1 Moriarty is mostly about that, although he's also interested in the man whom he sees as his double:  all genius, no sentiment.

But when he sees at the pool that Sherlock is every bit as smart as Moriarty but also has gotten someone to love him, and that Sherlock and John would die for each other, he's mortally jealous.  He did not know until then that he was lonely and unloved.  He thought he was just different from ordinary, boring people, so love wasn't an option.  But Sherlock proves that you can be extraordinary and still know love.  This destroys Moriarty's innocence and self-protection, much as the sight of Lily Potter dying for Harry destroyed Voldemort for years.  And like Voldemort being obsessed with Harry, Moriarty becomes obsessed with Sherlock, wanting to believe that Sherlock has answers and that capturing and destroying Sherlock will somehow yield answers or a companion or at least vengeance on Sherlock for being the cause of Moriarty falling from being an angel, "so much more" than a man, to just a pathetic, unloved madman.

So Moriarty owes Sherlock a fall = he has to make Sherlock suffer for having love in his life.  He is upset that Sherlock is no longer his mirror; like everyone else, Sherlock has become boring because he has pressure points, people whom he wants to protect, and therefore it's depressingly easy to manipulate him.  Sherlock must be punished for that, too.  Moriarty punishes Sherlock for abandoning him by becoming someone who can love, like everyone else, so he pushes the issue.  He keeps saying "you and I are alike," challenging Sherlock to agree by remaining a genius without love so Moriarty doesn't have to be alone, or else telling him to be damned and have love and know that his loved ones will die.  That's why there's the ongoing theme in TRF of Sherlock either being or not being himself.  It means will Sherlock act like the Sherlock before he "fell" for John, making decisions based on mental games rather than sentiment?  Or will he change, become the good as well as great man Lestrade is hoping to see, "fall" from being superhuman to being a boring mortal?  John tells him not to be himself for the trial and Sherlock can't help it and is held in contempt of court; Sherlock complains he can't just turn it on and off.  Lestrade tells Sherlock to go easy on traumatized children ... and Sherlock is the one who finishes with "not to be myself."  Then there's Sherlock asking Molly if she'd help if Sherlock weren't the person she, or he, thought he was.  The line from John saying he knows Sherlock for real.  The impossibility of Lestrade doubting Sherlock, despite Moriarty's fantasy that King Arthur would wonder if Sir Boast-a-lot's stories were true; Lestrade knows Sherlock for real, too.  It is very difficult for Sherlock to change from his smart-aleck self to someone who slows down and becomes mortal and makes decisions based on love.  We see that when he flees in handcuffs and has to learn how to slow down because he's always shackled to someone else.  That's exactly what it's like to have life decisions and desires influenced by concern for another person.  Loving someone and accepting their love means accepting the hurt when someone dies, because "that's what people do."  The man who had to abandon, in Baskerville, his outdated self-image as a person who doesn't have friends, the man whose closest thing to a friend used to be an enemy, leaps off the roof like an angel falling from heaven and immortality down to earth and mortality and messiness and love, not only sacrificing himself but dooming his loved ones to the almost unbearable pain of losing him.  This is Sherlock Holmes falling and saying yes to love.  Moriarty forced this on him as punishment for having made Moriarty feel and know, as well as punishment for choosing to be with John rather than accompany Moriarty to hell.

Ugh, I have no idea if these words or sentences made sense.  But I feel relaxed enough to go to sleep now.  Must hack those pages of notes into an outline and a draft tomorrow.  Rawr.