Crimes Against Sherlockiana

 Communities.

Gotta love ‘em. Just spent a very lovely weekend in the heart of one of our little "family reunions" as some have called a good Sherlockian weekend. One of my favorite moments even occurred after it was all over and done, when everybody just decided to have their departure breakfast, not in the hotel's free breakfast lounge, but at the local Waffle House. Waffle House restaurants are not that big, but there were fifteen of us, taking up all the booths and seats in the main seating area. Old friends, new friends, and a great spirit of community.

There's a lot of love in Sherlockiana. But at the same time as I was enjoying this weekend's festivities, another friend was going through the opposite side of the coin. Because Sherlockians may be the best people in the world, a fact we will state easily after a good weekend like the one I just had in Dayton, but we also have our assholes and we also have our tempers. We discuss Sherlock Holmes, not politics or religion for the most part, which is our lovely common ground. And most of us have the good sense to steer away from politics or religion when those come up. Texans and Californians can sit down at a Sherlockian dinner table and get along just fine.

But occasionally, one of us will get all fired up with righteous anger at some matter or the other that has nothing to do with the Sherlockian world (or within it) and cause a hard break with another Sherlockian. This has happened twice in the last six months with different folks that I know of, and it's something that happens in communities. Fighting, when it doesn't get physical, isn't necessarily a crime. And being an asshole in itself isn't a crime. But when we get put in a situation where we have to start deciding who our better friend of two Sherlockians is . . . it almost starts to feel like crime and punishment, because oftimes, somebody is going to get ostracized from part of the community, or exile themselves rather than put up with a certain person. Either way, we lose.

As a Sherlockian who has behaved badly upon occasion (and still can blunder into that realm on occasion), but still considers himself a sweet and lovable soul, I really hate to see when this stuff happens to other people. Nobody wins, even if one of the parties gets a whole "God is on my side!" self-righteous thing going and won't let go of it. (Been there, done that.) Because once you start @#$%ing with people's friends, they may not come at you directly, but you can start getting quietly left off guest lists and other such things.

I'm seriously thinking about dropping a person off a certain list I manage right now, for going after one of my friends. And I hate that. It's been done to me, and I don't want to be that person. Nobody wants to be a gatekeeper, even if that gate is only for one individual. (But, goddammit, you don't go after people's friends.) We should all know better, or at least learn that at some point. And we might be at a point where someone needs to learn to do better, because no matter how right you think you are, when you do damage in our Sherlockian community, more people are gonna feel it than you realize. And you might just rob us of some talent we really enjoy, which is definitely a crime.

Sherlockiana is a great community, as we know. Communities as a whole, are a key part of the human experience. But living in a community does not come without some work and some responsibility. We have to actively work on being our better selves, forgiving a few moments of bad choices now and then, and taking serious care when deciding that someone needs to be excommunicated from our personal version of that Sherlockian community. While nobody has the power to completely banish someone from Sherlockiana, even with a full cancellation campaign, a lot of folks will decide to leave due to one asshole treating them badly, or one incident where they got triggered to behave a little badly themselves. 

We miss those people. Our numbers are not so large that we don't notice new gaps. And we're always glad to see a familiar Sherlockian face turn up at a gathering just like a surprise "221B" sticker on a bumper in a parking lot, or a bunch of folks at a Waffle House.

So be careful out there.