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Notice how a lot of folks aren’t aware of the disgusting things Gaiman did, specifically BECAUSE he went quiet. Rowling doesn’t want to go quiet because she’s a crusader: discriminating against trans people is a goal for her.
yes, she sees herself as a kind of martyr and victim of a witch-hunt, which does change how she responds to the cultural backlash she receives for her behavior.
Yeah, Gaiman keeps a low profile because he wants people to forget what he did. Rowling is proud of being a hateful cunt and invests time and money in proliferating hate.
Also I actually have less of an issue with other people buying Gaiman’s work. I have no love for the man and won’t buy anything myself again, but if you buy something of his, the money goes to him, and stops there. Rowling directly funds bigotry; the money people spend on Harry Potter is in a direct pipeline to funding the suffering of innocent people.
At the very least, before everything happened with Gaiman, he was known for having positive philanthropic ventures. Even if you gave him money, a sizable portion went to him, another portion went on to better the world. I’d presume he still supports these trusts and charities too.
Yeah its a deliberate strategy by Gaiman, while in the background he goes after his victims that settled previously for breaching NDAs. Even if he doesn’t win its money well spent to stop more accusations from coming out. He’s going to wait this out and try to rehabilitate himself in a few years.
I thought NDAs couldn’t be used to cover criminal behaviour?
Doesnt that only apply if it when to court as a criminal case? At the moment this is people talking to the press and it hasnt gone to criminal court.
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I mean, I still love American Gods, Good omens and Neverwhere. I just stopped recommending them to people.
I still enjoy his writing, but I’m not sure how to engage now. I want to separate the artist from the art and let the legal system do its thing as a separate thing and I don’t know what ‘right’ looks like as a reader
I can’t separate artist and art. I feel guilty and angry. But I also don’t want to. Money to them is money to their deeds. Paying for anything Harry Potter is paying for anti-trans movements. Paying anything Gaiman goes to the “fix your image” firm he has hired. Then I start thinking that firm is probably out there with messaging convincing people to separate art from the artist.
Heres what you can do:
Encourage people to pirate his shit
Remind people what he did. In detail.
Start with me! I know he did… Some rapey shit? Pro ably wizard flavored?
Absolutely agree with pirating. Even buying second hand will keep money from going to their pockets/estates.
Here’s the sanitized AP reporting: Woman’s lawsuits say sci-fi author Neil Gaiman repeatedly sexually assaulted her
Here’s the full account from the victim (ALL the trigger warnings): “There is no safe word” - Vulture
Wow that’s…
What strikes me is how boring the abuse was. Like, boiler plate horror. Maybe this does make me think less of him as an author, not just as a person.
Well I haven’t looked into the 8 other women. But at least one of the others was absolutely raped, and another was paid off in exchange for an NDA
Right but like ‘call me master’ DUDE
Fucking do better. Not even be less a piece of shit, but a more interesting piece of shit.
Like ‘i hired a PI to learn the song you had your first kiss to, then spent a week practicing, so just as the acid and molly kick in…’
Or, idk, a choir? Some chanting?
Buying used copies and pirating his stuff so he never sees a penny, and talking about what a pile of shit he is. I do the same with David and Leigh Eddings. Who locked children in cages in their basement and beat them, among other things.
Holy shit, what the fuck? I think I read one edding’s book and didn’t think much of it, but what the fuck?! Where’s my interrobang button!?
Yeah, their books are a decently good romp overall, but some of their ideas about how to ‘properly discipline’ a child definitely leak through from time to time.
tbh my feelings seem to be guiding things before anything like rational morality does - I feel cognitive dissonance about his art because of the association with him as a rapist, and that’s enough for me to ditch his art without having to justify it as a moral necessity that others must do as well.
Well ultimately you didn’t do anything wrong, he did. So proceed how you wish. If you read some of his work nothing changes and that’s the same if you choose not to.
bury his name, rip the story and setting out of his creepy hands and reclaim it. Write fanfiction that specifically shits on rapey shitheads.
The thing that really pisses me off re: Good Omens in particular is that it took Pratchett out with him. And we don’t get any more of the TV show because of it, either. Even though it’s only half-Gaiman, it got ruined anyway.
Season 1 covered everything from the book, anything past that is 0% Pratchett anyway.
And to be perfectly honest, a lot of Pratchett was missing from the first season.
Personally, I was pretty impressed with how closely the show tracked the book.
They’re great books, but I just can’t enjoy them anymore. American Gods was my favorite of the three.
american gods, good omens, sandman.
Am I going to get rid of his works that I own? No, probably not. I love them. Which is why it sucks so much to never recommend them again, but that’s the reality.
Shitty people can make good art. Death of the author.
Just never give them money.
My 2c tho, the Harry Potter novels legitimately suck. This has been my opinion of them since I was in 8th grade when the first one came out. At the time I described Sorcerer’s / Philosopher’s Stone as a failed attempt at ripping off Roald Dahl (British author who wrote mean-spirited children’s books that stereotyped characters with funny-sounding names based on their physical descriptions). I was frequently urged to and attempted to give the books a second chance, never got more than 20 pages back into any of them before I put them down in exasperation because to me they always felt very petty and derivative. I was not very surprised when JK started to peel off her mask to the public.
Abolitionism is literally a running gag; the idea that someone might want it.
The stories aren’t good.
Why do you think they’re so popular then?
Children have less reading comprehension, wizards and magic are cool to kids, and nostalgia appears to be my generation’s (millennials) lead poisoning.
Okay, so why specifically that series among the many other wizards and magic series? I think Rowling is a piece of shit as any sane person should, but let’s not warp reality. The books may not be your cup of tea and of course they’re not perfect, but they’re definitely good books, otherwise they wouldn’t have gained the popularity they did.
I generally finish books I start. I read about 50 pages into the first HP and the writing was so shitty I just put it down. I just figured it was something popular with the kids at the time and left it at that.
Maybe your criteria for what makes a good story is not very widespread. I know the books have issues, but once again, they wouldn’t have become as popular as they did if they weren’t good.
Because they became a cultural phenomenon and were lots of kids first novels. If youve never read anything else youre not going to see the massive flaws.
Well, you just replied to the question “why are they popular?” with “because they became popular”. Okay, so why did they become popular? Because despite the flaws they definitely have, they’re simply good stories with good world building that suck people in (not just kids btw, plenty of people got into them as adults).
Not everyone’s experience mirrors mine? 🤷
Looks like that 🤷
Older guy told me he read Dahl (Matilda?) to his grandkid & passed the lesson that you gotta be careful who you trust… are his works viewed negatively?
I don’t think universally. Similar to Rowling, his stuff is beloved and can certainly still be enjoyed but contains some totally wack bits. Even as a kid I picked up on how mean-spirited his writing was. But I think that’s also what makes it interesting to some people, it’s got this macabe Grimm’s quality to it.
Death of the author
People here keep using the term as basically a synonym of “separating art from artist” but I always thought death of the author was a different thing. Analyzing the meaning of a book while ignoring what the author says they meant.
It is the latter, kind of
It’s also (i think) separating it from the context of the author and their life/identity (so, for example, m&m using the n word being different from some other rapper doing the same).
So functions well as shorthand for the former. Or in the case of an author like rowling, as a wish.
I get what you’re saying, but why not recommend them with the caveat that the other person should pirate them?
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This is a good moral compromise in that it allows you to enjoy the art without the moral complications of commercially supporting a rapist, but I think some people might argue that it doesn’t go far enough and that we should essentially culturally boycott the art as well, that an artist’s reputation rests partially on how their art is perceived, and by continuing to enjoy that art and share it with others, you continue to support the artist in some sense.
Not sure I know how I feel about that argument, but I think it’s an intuition some folks have or an argument they make.
That’s fair. I think because in Gaiman’s case it’s still fresh for me, and really came out of nowhere, so I don’t like to talk about them much.
With JK, it’s so evident in her writing that she had some prejudice that it really didn’t surprise me much, so I internalized that quickly and moved on.
I don’t provide either with my money, and pirate them whenever I want something.
I think my cognitive dissonance was too strong, I got rid of my Gaiman. :-(
But I feel you - his works were important in my life before, I’ve just been downsizing and even though it wasn’t the best, I decided to get rid of mine (not because it’s “right” but just because I don’t like being reminded of him).
I love HP and they were a big part of my life, made me enjoy reading and helped me a lot with English (and British) vocabulary. I still enjoy the books and movies that I already own from time to time but I cannot see myself consuming anything new knowing that it will give money directly to Rowling’s pockets to fund his trans hating organizations
I’d only heard about Gaiman on tumblr, and they’re fairly socially conscious over there. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he had any staying power with the crowd that previously endorsed him.
“Sexually assault your fans” wouldn’t sit well with anyone, whereas “women aren’t real women” comes out of left field.
Agreed, Gaiman fans are not the average person, I think this partially accounts for the difference (as well as the difference between how culturally acceptable transphobia is compared to rape).
how culturally acceptable
Both are treasured institutions.
Thing is Gaiman pissed off all feminists with the SA allegations so of course he has disappeared from the online world because the cross over between Neil Gaiman readers and SA-appologists is very small.
Whereas a sect of the feminists support her gatekeeping opinion that the only thing that can describe if you’re a woman is being born with a cunt. This one very vocal audience is not unified.
On top of that Rowling is more mainstream than Gaiman is and the general public is more willing to ignore the mudslinging world of gender politics and not get involved if it means more content from a popular mediocre scribe.
yeah, agreed - Gaiman’s fans are far less willing to tolerate his SA, HP fans are more general public and transphobia is more socially acceptable than SA.
Basically this post is essentially saying, “it’s a shame transphobia is so acceptable to people”
Also, I think that the fact that Harry Potter was a big part of people’s childhoods made them more reluctant to abandon it when the creator turned out to be garbage. See: Nintendo.
Bigotry, rape, and stick drift. Yup, totally comparable.
GERM’s is a better term I’ve seen around lately, stands for Gender Exclusionary
RadicalRegressive Misogynists.Edit: thank you for the correction!
I’ve heard the R standing for Regressive since there’s nothing rad about being a bigot
You’re right, that’s what I’ve seen too, and I’ve seen ‘reactionary’ used as well.
Lmao, in my haste to share the new thing I confused the ‘R’ with the one in the original acronym.
oo, I didn’t know about this, thank you - GERM is much better than TERF, lol
I prefer the term “Genital Worrier” or more accurately because they only really worry about one type of transgender person “Penis Panickers”.
Irk? Keeps them nicely sectioned off from being associated with feminism too.
I’ve also seen FART being used. Feminism Appropriating Ridiculous Transphobes
I believe it was coined by Kate Nash for her song - https://youtu.be/q2MoQJP-PhA
Supporting Gaiman is supporting a rapist; it will negatively impact a couple people directly.
Supporting Rowling is much worse.
such incredible insight, Rowling as an anti-trans activist is engaged in a genocidal movement which has of course a much larger scale of both number of people harmed and the severity of that harm
I hate Rowlings and her stupid and dangerous ideas, but I don’t think it is genocide? Or is it some pro iseaeli stance that makes you say that?
I’m asking because I think it’s important to not use genocide for eveything bad because it just waters down the words meaning, and in the end when there is a “real” genocide people will compare it to lesser evils.
Not saying you’re wrong, but I would like to know the reason behind you saying it!
Genocide is technically a process and a sliding scale. It exists by degrees. It may seem hyperbolic to classify some actions as genocidal particularly when they are slow or the number of deaths do not seem absolute but it is still genocide.
What defines a genocide via international Convention is any of five acts intended to diminish the population of a cultural community. None of these have to be a totality of the group it can be only in part. The important thing is victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly. The five acts of genocide are :
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Killing members of the group
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Causing them serious bodily or mental harm
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Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group
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Preventing births
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Forcibly transferring children out of the group
While a number of countries are full five for five in regards to trans people you only really need one to qualify. Things like the lack of reporting of Trans deaths, the removal of services needed by the group including medical care or critical mental health resources as is happening with the closure of LGBTQIA+ specific crisis support in the US, the labelling of Trans people as pedophiles or removal of children from the custody of supportive parents into state custody by labelling gender affirming attitudes as “child abuse”, the forcing of trans people to endure security risks because of laws that often get them arrested for following them such as bathroom bills… All of these are genocidal measures they just aren’t fast acting.
While it may seem like the point of the word is to be splashy and attention grabbing that need not be the point of it. The cultural expectations that genocide need only be wartime type measures of systematic elimination is a disservice to a lot of other genocides that are happening globally.
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First of all, yes, I think some people find it controversial to use the term “genocide” to refer to what’s happening to trans people. Part of the debate about the term “genocide” is whether it can apply to non-ethnic groups, for example. I would argue the spirit of the term does apply to any group, but some people disagree. I’m not sure why it’s so important for the term to be limited to ethnicity, I tend to think these arguments are not in the spirit of validating or recognizing very real oppression and violence intended to completely eliminate a certain group.
The motivation to use the term “genocide” is that the anti-trans movement has explicitly stated as their goal the total erasure of trans people:
During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”
Knowles subsequently claimed that “eradicating” “transgenderism” is not a call for eradicating transgender people and demanded retractions from numerous publications, including Rolling Stone.
Erin Reed, a transgender rights activist and writer, tells Rolling Stone that it’s an absurd distinction. There is no difference between a ban on “transgenderism” and an attack on transgender people, she says: “They are one and the same, and there’s no separation between them.”
“We are not gonna rest until every child is protected, until trans ideology is entirely erased from the earth. That’s what we’re fighting for, and we will not stop until we achieve it,” he said.
Specifically, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has described the anti-trans movement as genocidal:
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security condemns the anti-trans agenda of the second Trump Administration and warns Americans that the recent spate of executive orders, which are in line with a genocidal process against the transgender community that has been emerging in the United States for over a decade, are meant to pave the way for greater state repression against all individuals and other groups in the future.
…
The Lemkin Institute believes that current anti-trans hysteria within the government is meant to serve three purposes within a wider genocidal process. First, the Executive Orders constitute the paper marginalization and ‘paper persecution’ of an identity group that has recently gained rights and greater acceptance in order to lock in evangelical support for the Trump administration. Second, the executive orders create a fictitious ‘cosmic enemy’ that will justify radicalization of government in general, leading to ever-more power for the executive branch; and third, the executive orders, over time, aim to normalize the destruction of identity groups by desensitizing the public to state-sponsored persecution of people based solely on their identities.
Taken together, the Trump Administration’s executive orders related to trans people would effectively destroy, if fully implemented, trans people as a group, in whole, to summarize the text of the Genocide Convention. The orders begin the process of removing a trans presence from collective life and preventing trans people from existing as themselves, forcing them back into invisibility and isolation. This attack on trans identity is reminiscent in the US context of the Native American Boarding Schools, where the goal was to “kill the Indian … and save the man.” Not only would the effort to deprive trans Americans of gender affirming care constitute a form of torture (and medical malpractice) with terrible mental health repercussions, but also such measures are a common phase in genocidal processes and generally lead to ever greater persecution.
Trans people in Florida prisons are being forcefully detransitioned and forced into pseudo-science conversion “therapy”, I don’t think it’s hyperbolic at this point in time to say the intentions of the anti-trans movement are genocidal, and I think the movement is largely succeeding in their goals.
So far necessary medical care has been denied to trans youth in many states, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that discrimination against people on the basis of “gender dysphoria” is legal. We already have data that the ban of gender affirming care (and in some cases, forcing physicians to detransition trans youth) has significantly increased the rate of suicide attempts among those trans youth.
We are also seeing tools used in previous genocides, such as “social death” where the concept of being trans is eliminated from the law and thus on a social and legal level trans people cannot “exist”. Laws in some states have already achieved this (which results in trans people never being able to fix their birth certificates or update their legal documents, for example), and now the federal government is operating under executive orders that establish the same (making it impossible for trans people to have accurate passports or federal documents, for example - but the policies impact much more, including forcing male TSA agents to pat down trans women and vice versa).
So the methods and goals are all genocidal, the only problem is that trans people as a group are not a national or ethnic group, so this would fail a narrow definition of genocide that way.
It’s just utilitarianism. Utilitarian generally seems to piss off a lot of lemmites though; I thought people would have a more negative reaction to it here.
(Btw I agree the number of people harmed is larger but I think it’s debatable whether or not the (per-person) severity of the harm is larger.)
the anti-trans movement’s achievements like taking away gender-affirming care have directly been shown to result in increased suicides, as far as I know Gaiman’s actions have not directly killed anyone, while Rowling’s advocacy does directly support a movement that results in deaths - I think the per-person severity of harm when a trans person self harms, attempts suicide, or succeeds in suicide (not to mention when anti-trans bigots rape, torture, and murder trans people) are all worse AFAIK
It’s true that Gaiman’s actions haven’t directly killed anyone, but I’m not sure there are enough victims to definitively say that getting raped by Gaiman would cause less propensity for suicide than Rowling’s advocacy against trans people. But… I suspect you are right.
yeah, I agree with you - the harm is severe, it’s just with such a small population we can’t show the concrete harm the way we can with a trans population where deaths are already happening (but that doesn’t diminish the actual harm to Gaiman’s victims, which I would say is extreme).
Does buying Gaiman’s work after he’s dead still benefit him or can I separate him from the art at that point? I don’t wanna support him, but I do wanna read his work someday
I would say so, yes. The only issue then being, can you enjoy reading their work knowing what you know ?
Anecdotal, but I read the Mists of Avalon years ago and enjoyed it enough to want to read more. Then I found out about the author (and her husband) sexually abusing children, including her own daughter, and I absolutely cannot bring myself to read any more of her books.
Fuck abusers. I’m glad she’s dead and I don’t give two shits what she had to say about anything when she was alive.
It, uh, certainly puts a lot of his work into a new light.
I wonder if I am unusual in that I am able to read good books by bad people without feeling gross. (I’m not claiming that I would support a bad person, just that reading their books doesn’t generally cause me particular anguish.) Is this something that is unusual about me, or do people just assume that it should be difficult to read books like that, but most people aren’t bothered? Same with movies and music. Listening to Michael Jackson or David Bowie from my personal archives, I don’t feel any particular difficulty despite the allegations against them.
Sailing the seas is my typical go-to when I want to read work by people I hate 👍 or like second hand hardcopies he wouldn’t benefit from
There are certainly reasons other than enjoyment to consume someone’s work, but does knowing someone did or continues to do harmful things in part because of people enjoying their work not affect your enjoyment of it? It certainly affects mine.
You’re not wrong. For instance, I can’t listen to McCafferty anymore because that guy is a scumbag. But I’m also an HP Lovecraft head; that was a man who was incredibly racist and xenophobic, utterly filled to the brim with hate. In some of his stories, the bad guy is “race mixing”. I still watch Andor even though Disney is horrifically unethical.
Anyway I’m not trying to enable rapists and scumbags, just trying to promote ethical piracy.
Just pirate the books and read them now if you want to read them but don’t want to give him money. Don’t feel like you need to pass a purity test when it comes to your reading list, even more so when it comes to books he only co wrote like Good Omens.
Just dont buy it… his work is great but why give any more money to him OR his estate when there are way simoler options.
pay someone to print you an “illegal” copy, or to get you a DRM-free e-book copy.
Or just buy his books used, he sees no money from that
Sail the high seas.
Buying Gaiman’s work after he’s dead won’t benefit him, but it could have the second-order effect of giving the impression to people that people broadly don’t care about boycotting rapists. It’s a lesser sin than supporting him now.
“Being a rapist is better than being a transphobe”
lemmy.ml everyone
You have scope insensitivity. What’s worse, one person being raped or one million transgender people being denied civil rights? A typical bigot is less harmful than a typical rapist, but JK Rowling is not a typical transphobe; she’s many orders of magnitude worse.
Or maybe I just don’t agree with you
you seem like the kind of person who would let the trolley run over five people.
So you just take it as a given that there are obvious solutions to complicated moral issues?
If you’re going to be deontologist about it, I can understand why you’d think you don’t need to multiply the scope of JK Rowling’s impact. And I can understand why you’re ok with letting the trolley kill 4 more people than it needs to. Your morality is self-consistent, merely anathema to me. So, yeah, “I just don’t agree with you.”
But – maybe you don’t need to mock me as though my common and standard understanding of the trolley problem is somehow idiotic. “Lemmy.ml everyone! A place where they’d willingly choose to kill 1 person to save 5 others.”
I don’t mock your ethics, I mock your self righteousness
Harry Potter is so ubiquitous that most people who consume it do so without really knowing much about the author beyond their name and then there’s a decent chunk that don’t care because it doesn’t affect them and they think it’s culture war stuff that doesn’t matter.
Making people care about things that don’t directly affect them is always the hardest task.
some googling later
Well, shit. Glad I buy secondhand books at every opportunity, otherwise I would have given money to a human sized pile of shit.
rowling is a transphobe, but gaiman is like weinstein a sex pest. she played it carefully for decades before coming out, when she had built a large amount of fans and support, much like lewis CK, the cancelling dint end his career so to speak, he moved all online before it got worst.
also transphobia has massive support from right wingers.
“Rowling is a transphobe AND Gaiman is like a Weinstein sex pest” Fixed it for you.
She’s actively pushing hard, with a large platform, against trans people and her product is not some necessary thing but rather just a book series. It is so easy to just drop her, especially if you’re now an adult/young adult with a higher reading level and can take in better content from better people.
People need to drop her, she’s a horrid lady with incredibly mid-to-decent books and there is no excuse for hanging onto her.
ok.
no need to play villain Olympics, they are both horrid in different ways.
but I think the differences is that more people will be grossed out by rapy acts, than being a bigot, because there are more bigots than rapists in the public
Except I’m the one saying “and”. They both suck, and it doesn’t matter who sucks worse since they’ve both crossed the threshold and people shouldn’t be giving either of them money. Where on earth did you get anything else from out of my comment?
sorry if I read it wrong. my bad.
Fair enough.
just a book series
The Google generation at it again. Everything can be replaced, except for what’s the most oppressive in things around. That’s an /s.
Those are very smart book series. They’ve taught me to think correctly about the real world and how it works. They are not ordinary at all in describing how people think. And also how the world looks where every person has tremendous power at the tips of their fingers, yet almost nobody uses it.
JKR also knows her classics. The books might seem nonsense for people who don’t, because they have many-many classical references, embedded in few layers sometimes.
I thought that HP and HP parodies are stupid once, now, remembering one Russian one I’ve read a lot, and one my sister advised me, I think that not only HP itself is very deep, but also most of the parodies are no less deep and their authors were intelligent enough to understand the references and subvert them and improve on them. When I was reading both HP and that parody, I saw nothing of the sort. It took some additional knowledge of Greek classics over many years.
Stupid kid I was thought they are fun to read, but not deep and even stupid compared to me. I’m still ashamed remembering that.
Just to repeat it again - this can’t be random interpretations Rowling didn’t intend, people claiming that don’t know what they are talking about.
How being against trans-people combines with those books I’m not sure too. Maybe association with some personal trauma. Maybe the fact that a man that changes their gender to a woman is still, in the sense of oppression, treated like a man a lot, and a woman changing their gender to a man is treated like a woman a lot. I would prefer to see the “actual discussion” part of the controversy about Rowling, yet many people take this alone as an insult - if I don’t believe what “everyone says”, then apparently it’s an offense.
I just know that JKR is a very intelligent person, much more than the average commenter.
Buddy, for starters I’m nearly 30 and I have read all the books(when I was young, before JKR showed us how fucked she is). Secondly, she ripped off so many people’s works and that wouldn’t even be a huge deal except she refuses to admit that she had any real inspiration and acts like she was the first person to come up with the theme or pretty much any of the details, either.
Here’s a video where even the first couple minutes proves that point in spades.
If you can’t figure out how transphobia works into it then you really are ignorant because it’s her as a person mostly, as she tweets incessently about just how much she hates trans folk. She’s a bad person, absolutely rotten to the core.
JKR is fucking thief and dumb as bricks, and you would do well to sit the fuck down and stop supporting her. There are so many better things to be doing with your time, including reading books from authors that are more creative, more original, and not gigantic pieces of shit on the side.
Bonus: Most of her characters are obvious racial steretypes. She literally couldn’t even be bothered to look up a Chinese name for one of them and just named them “Cho Chang” which isn’t even a possible name in the culture.
Bonus: Most of her characters are obvious racial steretypes. She literally couldn’t even be bothered to look up a Chinese name for one of them and just named them “Cho Chang” which isn’t even a possible name in the culture.
That could mean a few different things. Not only being racist.
And not just racist stereotypes, also regional, social layer, other stereotypes. That’s intentional.
Magic -> fairy tales -> romanticist stereotypes. Seems a natural path of association for me, but you do you.
Here’s a video
Would be better to link a text, to be honest. But I’ll watch it later.
JKR is fucking thief and dumb as bricks
I can’t agree. Since those references also combine into systems making sense inside her own worldbuilding, I can’t agree that they are “just a result of plagiarism”, or if they are, then at least she’s not dumb as bricks.
Also you have too high standards for a human. A human is that creature which is not in any way rational, rational thought is something humans stumbled upon on their free fall trajectory of history, driven by herd instincts, will to procreate and to survive. Sometimes rational thought was the best solution for those goals. Or maybe they served the wind for the appropriately formed proverbial sails.
I guarantee you that every human has an aspect in which they are disgusting and dumb as bricks, and also inconsistent. If you don’t know yours, then - better get busy with finding it and understanding that some things you can’t fix ever.
She’s a writer, as far as I’m interested. Not a politician or a public activist.
Buddy, for starters I’m nearly 30 and I have read all the books(when I was young, before JKR showed us how fucked she is).
Same here.
Secondly, she ripped off so many people’s works and that wouldn’t even be a huge deal except she refuses to admit that she had any real inspiration and acts like she was the first person to come up with the theme or pretty much any of the details, either.
That’s because nothing is truly original. She’s right to act this way about her own books.
OK, I’ll watch the linked video and then maybe write something else.
None of this is anything but increasing levels of proof that your capability of understanding nuance or simple context is incredibly limited. Either that or there is some other reason you are desperate to cling to this series and you should probably address that through therapy.
For the video, when you can get to it, really you only need the first couple minutes. It’s a well done list of all of the works she ripped off. Yes, “nothing is original” but she actively claims that is and her thefts are straight-up copy-pastes.
Sorry, this comment of yours is full of what I’d consider worth addressing through therapy.
Yes, “nothing is original” but she actively claims that is and her thefts are straight-up copy-pastes.
That’s not unprecedented.
“Not unprecedented” is not an excuse you absolute ghoul. Murder is not unprecedented you don’t see a lawyer busting that one out in the courtroom.
I feel sorry for anyone who has the displeasure of having to talk to you in places where they cannot easily leave and forget about you as I am about to do. Well, that’s not wholy true, you certainly left a mark by being such an extreme example of someone with no media literacy going all-in to poorly defend a viscious transphobe because you have a problematic attachment to her mediocre children’s books.
Rightwingers don’t like Rowling because she still considers herself a feminist and uses feminism as the basis of her transphobia.
hp was a big part of my pre transition life when i was in the closet. i hate jk so i dont buy new things but i still do reread my existing books. leaky, pottercast, and starkid were the first places i fit in.
but i dont actively seek out pro rowling hp fandom tho. fuck rowling.
I think a lot of us trans girls are in the same situation. I learned to read on HP books, and Hermoine was a deeply important character to me growing up 😅 It’s hard for me, but I have gradually moved away from the series as it increasingly becomes associated with Britain’s Top Transphobe.
Dunno if you know dimension 20 and their Misfits & Magic mini-series, but it was basically a satire of Harry Potter, really attacking some of the unquestioned tropes in that series.
Anyway, this is a beautiful clip of Erika Ishii, who is NB, at the start of the series, saying what they think of TERFs:
i LOVE d20 and erika! they’re amazing <3
evan kelmp
same! i also got into chris colfers land of stories which is infinitely better too (and he’s a better person too!)
People got into Gaiman at an older age than they got into HP. So HP is more deeply ingrained
At 13, I read Ender’s Game and was absolutely obsessed. Read a ton of other OSC books at that age and it took me decades to rid myself of all the veiled mormon morality in his books.
As an adult, I never had one hesitation about disavowing him. I re-read the Ender saga a few years back to see how it held up (it didn’t hold a candle to my teen-self’s impression), but I had no problem not paying for new copies of anything that would pay OSC.
The saddest thing about this story you’ve told (which is very familiar to me) is that OSC, while heavily influenced by his Mormonism, didn’t need to be the homophobe he is.
Brandon Sanderson, who is also a Mormon, has multiple LGBT characters. They are mostly supporting roles so far, but they’re there. He even has an ace character (though mentioning who might be a spoiler for some). Then there are the Kandra, who change gender at whim. And there’s the Reshi king who was born female, always identified as a king and not a queen, and when he gained Radiant powers his body naturally reformed male to reflect his self-image (Investiture naturally reshaping a highly Invested physical form to fit the person’s self-image was well-established already, I think most clearly spelled out in Warbreaker but has had a few examples in Stormlight Archive).
Anyway my point is we can act like Orson Scott Card is a homophobe because of his religion, and certainly that probably helped inform his views, but anyone as traveled and informed as he is should have had those views challenged enough to rethink them by now.
I haven’t read a lot of Sanderson, but I’ve read enough to sense that this difference is in true personal disposition.
Sanderson’s drive seems to be more of wonder, curiosity and adventure, and the stories delve into morality and justice as a source of plot tension.
In contrast, I think OSC has always been more of a black-and-white thinker. I think his best stories have been ones where he is exploring a moral struggle or thought experiment. But at the end of the story, you can pull out what OSC has concluded morally about those characters - who is good, who is bad (and always has been), and maybe who is a necessary evil.
All of OSC’s stories are about categorizing people, behaviors and decisions into ‘should/should not’ buckets. And I’ve just never gotten that sense from Sanderson’s books.
This is a really good analysis. Thank you!
OSC was the first author I read who conveyed OCD on the page (the wood grain lines in Xenocide). Hard to completely disavow that.
Classic must read:
To the kinds of people who never moved beyond children’s books maybe
Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.
Yeah, I don’t know, I read a lot of good books as a kid/teenager, and I didn’t become obsessed with any of them as an adult.
I’m out of the loop. What happened with Neil Gaiman?
Credibly accused of being a rapist, iirc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman
Check out the Sexual assault and misconduct allegations section for an overview. With how hard it is to get convictions, believing multiple accusers who have allegations across a long period of time has to be good enough. Especially when they are willing to be identified, knowing they will get punished for speaking up.
You can read about it here: https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html
Massive content warning, very disturbing.
He’s a predator
Just Google “Neil Gaiman” and “scandal” for more context, but basically he used his position as a popular artist to do some gross, sex pest stuff.
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I am going to need you to clarify your point here. Quickly.
I cannot reply to the original comment anymore, so I will say this here: having intrusive thoughts about SA’ing people is not normal, and you can get help for such things. If you experience anything like that, please please please get therapy.
[Personal Note] I removed the comment primarily because this isn’t the proper venue for that debate. Maybe we all misunderstood and maybe we didn’t. Irrelevant. Please remember that this is meant to be a safe space to goof around in. Such matters of mental health are important and should be discussed honestly and openly, just not here. Debate about forgiveness for past SA transgressions is also DEFINITELY not a subject matter for this space.
“Sir…this is a Wendy’s.”
Noted, that makes sense. I will not continue talking about this here then.
It’s almost like I said “some level of intrusive thoughts” and you immediately jumped to me condoning sexual assault.
Like there’s an inability to process degrees of trouble, and a desire to run everything as hard as possible to the worst conclusion when you hear something you don’t like.
But I’m sure I’ve already been banned.
all you had to do was not be vague, and you’re still doing it.
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wait, what point are you actually trying to make about the subject at hand here?
It seems pretty clear that they have a significant amount of intrusive thoughts about sexual assault and think that abusing people from a position of power isn’t bad enough to merit removing Neil Gaiman from “nerd canon.”
Honestly, it’s stomach-turning enough to make me think they’re just trolling.
that was my first impression, and my immediate reaction was “that can’t possibly be it”. i’m going to hope against hope that an explanation is forthcoming.
im going to need you to clarify what the fuck your trying to say? rumors are very different from accusations, and we need to take those seriously. if your suggesting that rapists should get less severe punishments, you will be banned.
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The Sandman books were a massive part of my teenage years, one thing my sister and I agreed on back then and a source of endless conversation with my crush. Really gutted that I can’t look forward to introducing my teenagers to them.
this is actually the main sadness I have re Gaiman, I never finished the Sandman series and I just never will now.
I know there’s plenty to be said about separating the work of art from the moral judgement of the artist, but tbh it’s just like a taboo, psychologically the association turns me off whether there is a rational justification for it or not.
check out Night’s Master by Tanith Lee
I’ve heard Gaiman lifted a lot of Sandman directly from it
i still love stardust and own the movie/still watch it but i wouldnt buy it now </3
If anyone is looking for some
goodfucking amazing books by an awesome and genuinely fun and good natured dude, check out Jason Pargin, he is awesome and not problematic and his books are all bangers, and he also enabled and actively supports the careers of many other super awesome and creative people. Also, listen to Bigfeets.If we’re recommending authors, my favorite is Jasper Fforde. He wrote this book called Shades of Grey (which unfortunately came out around the same time as that book) that’s about people who can only see one color (sorry, colour), and the hue that they can see determines their social standing. I have been waiting over a decade for the sequel and he just released it (Red Side Story) last year. My brain has been bad at letting me read books, so it sits on the shelf but I loved the first one.
I really hope there’s no problematicism around him (as that’s the subject of the thread), but reading his books it’s hard to imagine there could be.
I also love Jasper Fforde, and it is because he was guest of honour at a Jodi Taylor event that I also got into her books. She writes a series about time-travelling historians which I would recommend.
She also writes at a much faster pace than Fforde does these days, so that’s a plus. I was never half as annoyed waiting for GRR Martin to write A Dance With Dragons as I was waiting for Red Side Story!
ooo, thank you for the recommendation. I look forward to it. i was recently gifted Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I know they say don’t judge a book by its cover, but i judged this one by its title and d(-_☆).
The last three books that weren’t technical manuals i tried to read, i got 100 pages in and realized i hadn’t retained anything. working on it, but i’m not exactly excited about reading so much. goddamn grad school broke my brain.
Thats a really cool concept, thanks for the rec, I’ll check them out.
not problematic
I love the guy but I’m sure you could find an instance of him being problematic. Like his pen name, David Wong, is questionable given he’s not asian.
He stopped using it for that very reason, and took accountability. People are allowed to self correct, if he understands the problem with what he did and course corrected without being called out for it what would throwing more stones accomplish?
Edit: Also, not a big enough deal to say you shouldn’t read his books. Especially considering the narrative reason as to why he was using it.
I’m not throwing any stones, yo. I’m just pointing out you can’t exactly say he’s not problematic. I have a tolerance for problematicity so it’s of no bother to me.
If he was still using the pseudonym and making excuses to keep using it, sure, but I’m of the opinion that once someone understands what they have done wrong and took the opportunity to learn from it and do better there is no more wrong doing. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but a pseudonym that someone came up with in their 20’s and had the wherewithal later to say, “That’s not ok, I need to stop doing that” and stopped doing that for the right reasons is pretty far from a reason to call them problematic, especially when it wasn’t a decision made under any form of duress and he has made no attempt at defending his choice to have used that pseudonym and stated it was not ok for him to have used that pseudonym.
Edit: Also, it was used in a narrative context of the main character trying to throw off his identity, if They’re looking for David Wong then they wouldn’t assume it’s the burnt out white dude.
I’ve heard him on a bunch of podcasts and keep meaning to try his books. I’ve got a copy of this book is full of spiders, I’ll have to give it a go.
Where’s a good place to start with his stuff?
John Dies At The End was his first book and where I started. It’s also neat to watch his writing style evolve. I’d say John Dies or Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, those are the first books for his two ongoing series, if you’re feeling more into horror or sci-fi.
What podcasts? Are you a Dog Zone 9000 fan by chance?
Great, cheers I’ll try John dies at the end.
I’ve heard him as a frequent guest on gamefully unemployed and small beans podcasts. They’re focused on movies, he’s full of interesting takes.
The word problematic is kind of weasely used this way. The pen name had an in-universe rationale that made sense and was funny because of the incongruity. Merely alluding to the existence of ethnicity isn’t “problematic” in itself.
I’m not the on who brought the word problematic into this conversation. But I bet you if I put a poll on, say, tumblr, asking about different potentially problematic things, “pretending to be asian” would score highly on the problematic scale.
He wasn’t pretending to be asian, though, the book John Dies at The End makes that very clear and gives a silly in universe reason for the now dead pseudonym. It really was not problematic, even at the time of it being used.
Just a few comments up you said
He stopped using it for that very reason, and took accountability. People are allowed to self correct, if he understands the problem with what he did and course corrected
Now that you were pushed on it a bit you’re saying
It really was not problematic, even at the time of it being used.
Something about this interaction feels really dishonest.
Was there a problem he needed to take accountability for or not?
Then I will rephrase – asking tumblr “is it problematic for a white person to go by an obviously Asian name as a pseudonym,” I feel that even phrased that way they would still say “yes.”
I don’t really use the word ‘problematic’ in the social justice sense myself because it’s incredibly vague, but if you’re going to specifically use the word problematic and claim that Jason Pargin isn’t, then I feel that it’s a pretty cut-and-dry “yes that was ‘problematic’” scenario.
Stephen King is Scots-Irish and he used the pen name Richard Bachman despite not being German.
there is a long and respected history of mocking germans.
Mocking Germans is okay but using a traditionally Chinese name isn’t?
Yes, that aligns with my understanding of the word problematic.
Why is that questionable?
Stolen Valor
Stolen valor refers to the act of falsely claiming military service or awards that one did not earn, often to gain respect, money, or other benefits.
?
How does being or not being Asian plays into this?
“Stolen valor” can be used in a humorous way beyond its original meaning as someone pretending to be a veteran. For example, there’s a funny Youtube video about a tradesperson encountering a hipster wearing Carhartt workwear and using the phrase “stolen valor” to describe him.
Ok, so it was a joke?
English is not my first language so I’m asking for clarification not trying to be snarky.
I like to think my comment qualifies as clarification. I’m not trying to be snarky either.
OK, maybe a little snarky.
The tiktok guy?
The very same
I’ve been wanting to read his books for a while. I have quite a few that I own and still need to read, though. Any particular book recommendations from him? John Dies at the End? Zoey Ashe series?
There really are no wrong answers. The JDATE books are cosmic reality bending lovecraftian horror, and the Zoey books are a Bladerunner-esque sci-fi about a future you can see from here. The first thing i read of his was John Dies At The End, and I think that is a really good place to start.
Oh John dies at the end is in my top ten all time favorites possibly even #1 and I don’t even like horror.
That whole series is as good as it gets for me, hands down. John, Dave, and Amy are the mother fuckin’ GOATS.
Edit: The Zoey Ashe and The Suits series is every bit as good if you’re into sci-fi, and Black Box of Doom is a fantastic stand alone story set in the modern world. Neither are connected to the reality or events of [UNDISCLOSED]. He’s also currently working on the next book in the JDATE series which will release next year.
Sort of off topic. I think learning new things about an author can make re-reading their works interesting.
Oh look, another barely concealed fetish!
I misread this as accusatory to the commenter lol
same, lol - I was like daaaaaamn
I love your username btw. One of my favorite wild flowers. They’re so whimsical!
aw, thank you! I’m a big fan of dandelions and other flowers.
“oh yeah look at those undertones, that’s the good shit, OH YES THAT’S THINLY VEILED SLAVERY OOOO”
