[ SECRET POST #3035 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3035 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 081 secrets from Secret Submission Post #434.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[dreemyweird]

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve been a Conan Doyle fan for years, and I am perfectly aware that the guy was not all sunshine and rainbows. He was pretty sexist sometimes, he had some seriously condescending colonialist attitudes (and was consequently very pro-war), he kept spouting spiritualist nonsense - some of which was not merely ridiculous, but also offensive to some of those coping with a loss.
None of these things were a dealbreaker to me. They were flaws I could look past; I felt sure, on the basis of some very solid evidence, that regardless of how mistaken he was in certain regards, he had a heart of gold and would never have e.g. hurt someone weaker than and dependent upon him.

I’m also pretty young and I happen to be very methodical in my research, which would explain the fact that until now I have never got my hands on a copy of the (relatively) recently published biography of Conan Doyle written by an A. Lycett. Nor have I - again, until now - heard of Georgina Doyle’s Out of the Shadows: The Untold Story of Arthur Conan Doyle’s First Family, which was released in 2004 and, to the best of my knowledge, never reprinted.
Having recently stumbled across both of these, I… well, I’m not gonna lie. I’m absolutely heartbroken.

For those not in the ACD community: they both cite previously unpublished materials from the Doyle archive, which seem to suggest pretty strongly that after his first wife’s death, ACD pretty much disowned Mary and Kingsley. Mary goes so far as to write to her brother that in the two years since Louise’s death, she had not heard “a single word of love” from her father. It seems also that ACD had not allowed her to come home for Christmas - only her second Christmas without her mother - despite the fact that she “begged” him to, and even scolded her for such “weakness of character”.

Georgina claims that such treatment made a “shy introvert” out of previously extroverted and outgoing Mary (which sounds like a serious emotional trauma to me??).

And it is all very well to dismiss this as a standard stepfamily feud (Mary and Kingsley were distinctly at odds with ACD’s second wife, Jean), but Mary was literally 17 and Kingsley was 14. They were children who’d just lost their mother, and they were fully financially dependent on ACD.

Um, maybe this is going to sound ridiculous to the people who don’t pay too much heed to the authors of their canons, but this is making me consider stopping identifying as a Holmesian. This is not to mention the fact that I’ve looked up to this man for a major part of my life and that he was one of the things that kept me going when I was suicidal a couple of years ago.

I desperately need some perspective. Is my reaction at all justified? Am I doing something wrong here? I’m a bit of a wreck.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

What is a Holmesian and how do you identify as one? Can you like the books on their own merit without doing whatever that entails?

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[dreemyweird]

That's just a casual term for those in the classic ACD SH fandom. And my problem is that no, I cannot like the books on their own merit. Too much of my love for the canon has been built upon and interwoven with my knowledge and admiration of Doyle.

I realize that is not a particularly common stance in fandom. But it is the way I am. Creators are VERY important to me.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

You have to understand that loving a person's WORK does not mean you love their character.

For example:
tw: rape, ephebophilia

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Pan's Labyrinth with my entire being. It's a beautiful story. But I also have to reconcile that that beautiful story -- which is, incidentally, told from the perspective of a preteen girl -- is directed by a man that supports a fellow director who drugged, raped, and sodomized a preteen girl (Roman Polanski).

No one is perfect. Literally NO ONE is perfect.

You know Ghandi? The dude was a racist and also slept with young women to "test" himself. And yet he did INCREDIBLE and BEAUTIFUL things for humanity.

You can still admire the man's work and his accomplishments without venerating the individual. Please remember that.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

He slept next to young women without having sex with them*, not with them

Kinda important

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[comradesmiler]

Err, Pan's Labyrinth is directed by Guillermo Del Toro, not Roman Polanski.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[dreemyweird]

I know very well that no one is perfect, which is precisely the reason I included the first paragraph. There are things I can accept as normal human flaws, and then there are things that make me not want to associate myself with the person who did them. It's the same IRL. There IS a line, and I think that "consciously hurting your own children who just lost their mother" is pretty far beyond that line for me.

And again, that is not how my relationship with the Sherlock Holmes canon works. A great part of my love for many Holmes stories is directly based on what they say about their author's character. I've never been simply a Holmesian, but a Holmesian and a Conan Doyle fan.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[cushlamochree]

I think it's always justified to feel let down when someone you admire does something bad (or when you find that they had done something bad). So in that sense, it's justified.

Uhm. Beyond that... For me, I think, my general attitude is that whatever the person in question may have done, the enjoyment that you've gotten from their works, and the memories and associations that you have with that, are something separate from the things that they've done. But I'm not sure if that applies here - because part of the problem might be that, from what you've written here, it seems like a lot of your particular engagement with fandom has been around ACD the man, and not with just his works. Which makes it a lot trickier. Honestly, I don't know if there's a good answer. I guess all I can say is it sucks when your heroes let you down & I can definitely understand your feelings & I'm sorry. It's a bummer.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

don't know what to tell you than other than idolizing other people

they're never going live up to your unrealistic expectations

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

*stop idolizing

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[dreemyweird]

do people just not read the first paragraph at all or

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[feotakahari]

I'm an Orson Scott Card fan. All I can say is that if you only like stories by authors who aren't horrible people, your selections are going to be awfully limited.

Do you write? This sort of thing is a lot easier for writers--you can create fiction that directly addresses how other authors failed and fell. If you're lucky, later writers won't do the same for you.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[dreemyweird]

Perhaps I should clarify that I don't stop liking things once I stop liking their creators! I just don't get terribly passionate about them. I love plenty of works whose authors are dubious people - but I love them as texts, and this is nowhere near the level of love I experience for books whose authors I admire.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[dethtoll]

I listened to Megadeth almost every day for 10 years. That's nearly a third of my life.

When you're a Megadeth fan you had to get used to Dave Mustaine. He's a very forceful personality and has long had a substance abuse problem, which exacerbated his anger issues. He was a constantly furious creature, and it made for good music, but he wasn't exactly the greatest person to be around and Megadeth was more or less the Dave Mustaine Show, everyone else -- even Dave Ellefson, the only guy who could reasonably be called Mustaine's friend -- was expendable.

So you acknowledge this, but you figure as long as he doesn't kill anyone it's fine. And he's always been something of an angry lefty and a vocal Democrat, even appearing at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.

And then he turned into Ted Nugent. And it was just too much. Everything he's done since he became a born-again Christian has just made me shake my head in despair and outside of the rare listen of Rust In Peace (my favourite MD album) I just can't listen to MD anymore.

[edit] Forgot to get to the point. The point of all this is, I feel like you're justified in your reaction, because it really really sucks to have people you like turn out to be shitheads. I have a friend who's a big fan of Doug TenNapel and TenNapel is a homophobic bigot, which she is very displeased about.

Moral of the story: Never read up on your heroes. They're no match for the legend.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[lb_lee]

I have a friend who's a big fan of Doug TenNapel and TenNapel is a homophobic bigot, which she is very displeased about.

Noooooo. I didn't know about that! I liked his comics, dammit.

--Rogan

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[were_lemur]

On a macro level, it doesn't matter how you choose to identify. It's not going to have any effect, positive or negative, on anyone else.

So if stopping identifying as a Holmesian (forever or just for now -- there's nothing to say that you can't change your mind later and start identifying as a Holmesian again at some point in the future) makes you feel more comfortable, than your should honor that. But if you would prefer to keep identifying as a Holmesian, then keep identifying that way.

TL:DR it's not something you need to justify to anyone else.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

I resent the implication that being a shy introvert is bad.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it was the introversion but the complete personality change.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

Based on a lot of the comments you've made in this thread, I get the impression that you really looked up to Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is pretty easy to admire people. But I think you can also easily be disappointed when those people fail to live up to your expectations, or turn out to have done bad things.

So, okay, it looks like ACD was an asshole. This doesn't mean that his works didn't have meaning. This doesn't tarnish the fact that it kept you going when you were suicidal. Those things have lived beyond him and they're bigger and brighter than him and anything he did in life.

He was just some guy, in the end. We all are just people, and people do disappointing stuff. I bet you've done some stuff you regret, too.

Don't focus on idolizing the creators, because you are going to be disappointed. This won't be the first time and it won't be the last that a human has done something stupid and shitty. That doesn't mean their works can't be important or valuable or good, or that they can't have any good impact on people.

It's good that you're still here.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[dreemyweird]

Thank you, nonnie. You are right, and I am grateful that I have learnt so many facts about him and that I admired the image of him that was created by these facts, even if it did turn out to be inaccurate. Because, yes, it did help me and still does.

I am also not saying that the SH canon is not valuable or important, because it is, it is brilliant literature and it brought much good into the world. My "I don't want to be an active SH fan anymore" really has more to do with how interlinked Doyle's personality and his work are in my mind.

But I can't agree that thinking that an author is a good (albeit flawed) person is necessarily "idolizing" them. There are flaws, and then there are fuck ups on a major scale. One ought to distinguish these.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[ex_mek82]

I generally try to separate the creator/person and their beliefs from their output, if I can. But if they've said/done/supported anything I find morally reprehensible, that's where I drop them cold turkey.

In this case, I'd probably reconsider being a Holmesian, but that's just me.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[(Anonymous)]

Context is everything. At the time, 12 and 14 would have likely been considered "almost adult" though I'm not justifying his seemingly callous attitude. Plus, his beliefs would have screwed him up a good deal, as well. I read one Victorian-era Spiritualism book and those people were legit cray cray man. The other thing I should say is, you're reading very subjective sources, and you may never get the objective truth (such as it is) as to what happened, so long ago. You can't even get at the real objective truth between two conflicting parties that are still alive here and now. I want to add that it seems to me like the ACD you looked up to (idolized? sorry if that's a bit harsh) wasn't objective either, it was something within your own self, acting as a pressure relief valve. (Eh, so to speak.) So ACD in and of himself, has not really disappointed you, rather the ACD you built up in your head does not match up with subsequent facts you have discovered.

Does any of that help?

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[grausam]

damn, that sucks. Sorry :(

I got into Murder Rooms through your posts on f!s. While I was never that deeply invested in him, I did grew fond of him partly through that depiction/other infos. So, thanks for sharing your further readings.

As for your disappointment, I agree with your perspective. Starting over with a new wife and family seems unjustifiable selfish to me, especially when they were in their teenage years. If he couldn't get over his "sentimentality" to be fair even after his death, even worse.

I mean, it would have been worse for other reasons if they had been younger, but by then he should have come to love them as people.

I'm sure there are other, actually all around awesome people that deserve your enthusiasm and interest more.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[solticisekf]

He wasn't a good father but as I understand he did support his daughters financially? So there's that at least. Victorian era is famous for emotional repression, especially for men.

Of course your reaction is justified! That's an unpleasant surprise.

Liking problematic things is ok. I think you'll see which course to take here, how being a Holmsean makes you feel.

Re: f!s, I need some perspective :( (Arthur Conan Doyle drama)

[lb_lee]

Rogan: Enh, I think it's reasonable enough to feel disappointed when you hear about those things. I definitely felt some wind out of my sails when I found out Roald Dahl was an anti-Semitic old coot.

Miranda: I think it's normal to have to reassess when we learn some things we don't like about someone we admired... especially when it's someone treating their own children badly! If it helps at all, this doesn't take away the good things Doyle's work did for you in your times of need. You just know different things about him now, things that might prevent you from enjoying it. And that's all right! Sometimes that happens. Sit on it, think about it for a bit; I'm sure you'll find the right choice for you.