THAT WE KNOW OF!
(that being the joke of course–I’m sickened by Gaiman, and would only have been more sickened if it had been Le Guin)
You had me going for a minute there.
Me, too. And i found it an upsetting thought. Le Guin always seemed so morally grounded.
Thanks. 
And when he writes the fantasy from the perspective of the victim, it means he fully understands what he’s doing. I enjoyed the Buffy shows. But when he got to Doll House i realized there was something wrong with him. I hadn’t seen a lot of Gaiman’s work before all of this came out, but it sure makes it less attractive.
Sorry, y’all! I was trying to think of a crime that was over-the-top moustache-twirling villainous but not rapey–something that would be obvious Le Guin wouldn’t do but also not freak people out. My joke didn’t work.
(I, too, have heard that she was a stellar person in real life. One of my friends attended a fiction-writing workshop she led, in Portland I think, and I have never been so jealous of a friend in my life.)
Sandman was a formative literary experience for me as a teen, and I’ve read almost everything he’s published, and I read Graveyard Book and Coraline to both my daughters as bedtime stories, and I once attended a story reading by him. Gaiman was a big part of my life. It really sucks that he’s such an awful person.
I got it.
No, it worked for me.
Y’all may be more on top of literary news than i am. This site is the only reason i know about Gaiman’s issues.
In related news: Poor Amanda Palmer:
Singer Amanda Palmer struggles for gig venue amid abuse allegations fall-out
It’s like one can’t return to the scene of the crime anymore without a fuss!
It’s been covered by newspapers like The Guardian and the NYT, never mind lit and geek spaces.
I didn’t say it’s obscure. But i don’t follow those parts of the NYT or the Guardian. 
So i might well have missed news about some other author.
I have some friends who are really big fans of Palmer and we had some disagreements a few years back when Palmer decided to go on tour. Usually when you go on tour you pay musicians to accompany you if that’s what’s required for the show. Nope. Palmer decided to ask for volunteers instead of paying musicians as one would normally do. I thought this was a bit exploitive but my Palmer friends were fine with it. It’s voluntary after all.
Hopefully not in the US. Labor laws cover this situation too, otherwise exploitative employers could find people to “volunteer” to do underpaid or unpaid labor, which seems to be what Palmer has a history of doing. Not that this sort of thing is heavily policed or prosecuted in small, edge cases like this but still not legal at least in the US and certainly exploitative even in countries it is not.
And that’s kind of the crux of this recent thread bump. If somebody chooses to enjoy the works of a problematic creator, that’s on them. But if they also want not to be judged or made to feel guilty about it by other people and try to create BS rationales why not, well, that’s not up to them.
My daughter works at a theater that had Palmer as a featured act. The entire staff complained about her being one of the rudest and unreasonably demanding performers they’d ever worked with. The venue had already refused any more of her shows well in advance of the current revelations.
I’m a huge fan of The Sandman and I was quite shocked and disgusted to hear about these allegations. I’ll still read his books though. I try to separate the art form the artist. Though it irks me when people try to make others feel bad for consuming the work of a problematic artists.
I’ve also noticed a strange phenomenon where,as soon as a great artist is outed as problematic, people (even former fans) suddenly act as if the artists work was always garbage form day one. The morality of an artist has no bearing on the quality of the work. Bad people can create good art. An artist becoming a bad person doesn’t make their previous work retroactively bad.
Agree. Agree totally 100%
And yet, nobody here is stopping anybody else from consuming that work. Nor have they said the quality of that work is compromised.
Has anybody in this thread actually done that? (Hint: no).
It’s a strawman made up of things that did not happen
If anything, it’s the other way around. This recent thread bump is an attempt to argue people whose own enjoyment (emphasis - enjoyment, not evaluation of quality) of that work has been compromised that they somehow have ‘wrong’ opinions and should not only accept but approve of people whose opinions on Gaiman or his work have not changed, despite the problematic or potentially illegal behavior.
I have, in this case, and stand by it, specifically given the episode that @Spice_Weasel brought up. Knowing what we now know about him that story is a very different thing.
And I stand by it in a more generalizable form to a lesser degree.
Art is not typically an objective thing like how fast you run or the weight of an object. It is even more than decoration. Again it is a communication process begun by the artist and completed by the viewer; a discontinuous relationship perhaps, but still a relationship.
If a storyteller is communicating about love, desire, justice, the human condition (even if they tell those stories using gods as characters) and I know they themselves have lived realities which are abusive of others then how I complete that communication process is altered, not for the better. It is not a relationship I desire. Better to have the artist a blank slate I can project on to.
Yeah for the generalizable case specifics of the art and the nature of the artist’s personal flaws, even the historical context, matters and mileage varies.
I fully get the logic behind evaluating a work of art on its own merits, and not letting your opinion of the artist influence it. But reactions to art are primarily emotional, not logical. There are some artists where I can enjoy their stuff despite them being shitty people, and there are some that I can’t, and there’s not really a consistent axiom that determines which way I’ll react.
For example, Joss Whedon turned out to be an asshole. But, like, a garden variety asshole, not a sex offender or a racist or anything. He’s just a jerk to his coworkers. Nothing he does really even rises to the level of “canceling” him. I don’t think he deserves to necessarily lose work because he’s an asshole, although I certainly can’t blame anyone for not wanting to work with him. But I’ve got zero interest in watching any of his stuff anymore. I used to be a big fan, but now, the interest just isn’t there any more, even for stuff I used to adore.
Roman Polanski, on the other hand, belongs in jail. I won’t do anything that ends up putting money in that guys pocket, and am basically boycotting his works until he’s dead. But I could still watch Chinatown, and probably will at some point, assuming I outlive the sonuvabitch. Polanski being a rapist, for whatever reason, doesn’t impact my ability to enjoy his works, the way Whedon simply being an unpleasant person has apparently ruined my taste for his stuff.
I feel the same about Polanski: hate the guy, love his work, while I’m still avoiding Gaiman’s books since I’ve heard of this mess, although Polanski’s deeds were much worse. It’s not rational, that’s why I also still can enjoy the Rolling Stones in spite of all their misogynistic songs, and worst of all the song “Stray Cat Blues”, which is about sex with a 15 year old groupie, 13 years old on the live version on “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out”.
I’ve heard of King and Lucas. I’ve never heard of Gaiman.