Fantasy Books with a Female Lead

[MrDibble]

@Wendell_Wagner

MrDibble writes:

> Nope, I’m all in favour of a good social punishment too, like a shunning.

No, shunning is wrong.

No, shunning isn’t wrong.

Even if I could consistently know who performed an evil action that deserves to be prosecuted, I wouldn’t do it.

Breen was already convicted. MZB’s testimony there is already on record. No speculation required.

And, of course, neither you nor I actually know who really performed evil actions.

Once again - Breen already convicted, MZB already on record as enabling.

I refuse to play God and pretend that I can know who’s evil. I refuse to try to usurp the role of law enforcement in punishing people who do criminal acts.

For fuck’s sake - I’m not speculating or passing on a rumour about this particular case - the facts are already out there.

> Creativity trumps morality, to you?

No, read my post carefully. I said no such thing. Creativity and morality are separate realms. They should always be treated as such.

Nope.

The most brilliant writer or singer or musician or painter or whatever deserves to be treated exactly the same as any random bozo off the street in the way they are punished for their crimes. Being brilliant in their field should get them absolutely no special consideration by police, judges, and juries for their crimes.

No argument there.

The other way round is also true, I believe.

Nope.

Their being evil has nothing whatsoever to do with how brilliant I think their creative acts are

Agreed - evil people can be brilliant…

and has not effect on whether I want to experience their art.

…and this is where you lose me. Just because someone is creatively brilliant, does not mean I have to support their creative work. I take the whole person into account, and make an overall judegement based both on their work and what I know about them.

> This is news to me.

Then you’ve never done any research into the matter. Chaplin was well known for finding very young girlfriends and dumping them after a short time when they became too old for his taste. He married some of them, but the marriages didn’t last. He continued to do this till his last marriage at 54, when he married an 18-year-old. He was apparently too tired to hunt young girls after that point, so he stuck with her the rest of his life.

Chasing 16, 17, 18 girls (or boys), while completely skeevy in an adult, is not child-molesting. Fucking 10 year-olds is. It’s completely disingenuous to equate the two.

And that’s my point. I seem to know much more about what despicable people many actors, directors, screenwriters, etc. are than you do

Apparently not - I was well aware of Chaplin’s relationships, I just wasn’t disingenuous enough to call it child molestation.

, and if I boycotted every film for which I know how evil some person involved in the film is, I would have to give up watching movies at all.

Gosh, pretty ballsy of you to go right for the False Dilemma Fallacy right away.

At no point have I said all objectionable creators should be boycotted. Only MZB (and OSC, in this thread)

The same is true about fiction, although it’s a little easier there because there’s only one writer for a book, not dozens of participants as in movies. Is there any creative person other than Marion Zimmer Bradley whose works you are boycotting because of what the creator did?

I’ve already mentioned Orson Scott Card in this very thread.

Is it just too much effort for you to examine the life of more than one creator?

Actually, I do things in the opposite fashion from you - I tend to read up about authors, their biographies, and the causes they support, before I start reading their books. I generally only read the SF works of authors I already want to support for non-creative-related reasons (e.g. Pratchett, Banks, Mieville, Le Guin…). This may give me a more limited choice, but it’s the ethical approach. And also the reason I don’t read too much American SF.