But if you are fighting boredom, you probably don't take the low maintenance path to pet keeping.

You're trying to apply "ease of use" to good "life choices" for a psychopath. I don't see how what's easy is at all relevant. But I wanted to point out that sustaining animal life doesn't have to be challenging--you are setting arbitrary constraints on what that life consists of. You might not be spending time doing complex poodle cuts, but to Moriarty petting a dog and making topiary of its hair might be equally boring.

Getting reward out of suffering is a thing in and of itself, and trying to substitute for it based on a hierarchy of difficulty is a radical oversimplification of human psychology.

It may be possible to survive such a fall through landing on your feet, but you'd have significant ankle injuries. Now, we don't know how long the graveyard was after the fall, but he really didn't give that impression.

What we saw: Sherlock falling facing away from the building, so he'd be perpendicular to the walkway. Sherlock landing (well, sort of. We don't see him hit, but we hear it) (seemingly from a pretty short height, really) with his body parallel to the walkway.

How much time passed between those two shots, we don't know. Also, John did not see him hit, either. There was an outbuilding and a laundry truck in the way.

I...may have been having this conversation for a few months now.

It may be possible to survive such a fall through landing on your feet, but you'd have significant ankle injuries

I know someone who fell 20' or so and landed on her feet then dropped to her butt. No ankle injuries, but most of the metatarsals were broken and she had a small fracture in one of the lower vertebrae.

I think it's one thing to randomly survive such a fall with minimal injuries, but to plan to deliberately survive a fall is another matter.

But I'm sure Sherlock will have various and sundry facts to astound us with as to why he was assured of his survival, and survival in the best of terms, not just alive as a vegetable or a parapalegic or laid up for a year with every bone in his body broken.

If nothing else, it made for some immediately emotional fanart narratives.

I assume he landed on something that neither John nor the assassin could see because the view was blocked.

OMGWTF has Sela Ward done to herself? I didn't even recognize her on House!

I feel like in the tradition, it's fine for it to be an unsurvivable fall, because that's how Conan Doyle wrote "The Final Problem," with Holmes dying on the Reichenbach Falls for real, and then took it back.

Did Ward's character and Cameron die on House?

I have to say, I prefer the movie version of the Reichenbach Falls, because it's pure human protective instinctive emotion, a split-second decision (and that the surviving was reliant on a bit of five-fingered discounting of a random doohicky), as opposed to this silly trickery and manipulation that seems too complicated and dependent on too many variables. And cold and calculated. Until I see the mechanics, I can't believe the emotions Sherlock was showing in that final showdown. The whole thing stunk of meta manipulating to make certain things work out, and not character-driven decisions. (Yeah, yeah, I know there was Sherlock's earlier scene with Molly setting up some sort of subterfuge, but, that seems to rely too much on Sherlock being omniscient. I guess, in the end, I'm not as engaged by clever craftiness and chess-thinking that almost leaves no room for gut and heart. Although I'm sure everything I just said is fighting words for someone).