My spouse used to work at his “home base” bookstore and signed copies of things were very easy to acquire. Heck, he knew Neil and still had no problem immediately saying “well, that sucks” and no longer being a fan.
i still have a space above my monitor where a poster with a quote of his used to hang. i'm going to fill it with lists of suitable monsters for my pathfinder party to face. books tossed, even beautiful editions. movie files deleted.
I think it’s the fact he really pushed the feminist/protect women image for himself and then ended up being every bit the sex predator as the rest of them. Straight up diabolical.
It was like this for me when it became clear what Joss Whedon was, a few years ago. But then it was immediately a realization of ‘oh yeah, it makes sense why he’s constantly calling himself a feminist- he doesn’t think women are people so he applauds himself for being so gracious to them.’
I don't trust "there was this tell in their behavior / affect / public life". The idea that one can or should be able to tell is the mirror image of "this person can't be who they're rumored to be, you'd be able to tell", which is how someone like Whedon or Gaiman gets away with their shit.
Oh yes, 100%!! We want to be able to tell ourselves that we never really liked their art to begin with, but that just sets us up to be fooled again.
I was super into all things whedon and when he was outed, I could see how it fit together but I don’t delude myself that I’ll recognize the next one.
It's weird 'cause, I mean, I can see what you mean. There's a lot of... things.... in Whedon's body of work, as there is in Gaiman's. But we're living in a misogynist, racist, ultimately kyriarchist (it's a word now, believe me) society....
I feel like part of why folks were able to accept this earlier in the cycle this time is because there's so much overlap in folks who were NG fans and who were Whedon fans. (And Rowling. And Card. And MZB. Andandand.) This is not our first disillusionment rodeo.
And there’s even a whole issue of Sandman about a writer who does this, which now feels like when the bad guy from Coco puts the real murder he did into one of his movies.
This came up a lot when the Vice story about Gaiman first dropped and I'm still not really comfortable with this line of reasoning. The guy in that story was _unmistakably_ the villain. Every step of the way, he was the bad guy.
At which point, I'm not sure how to talk about that story in that context in a way that doesn't very quickly unravel into implications about anybody creating horror-themed art.
The Leftist Cooks did a, I think, pretty interesting video essay using the whole ordeal to explore things like parasocial contact theory, social capital, and power. I think fans of early Vertigo comics have much less resistance to thinking critically about such things.
Of all his works I've had to give up, I found that it was his essay from SimCity 2000 that was the hardest. What a goddamn disgrace. Could a talented person keep it in their pants just ONCE?
In the past, I'd sometimes go through a "Let me read and micro-analyze the accusations/testimony before deciding. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding." phase.
For some reason, this time it was "Oh no. I don't want to know the details. Fuuuuuu this. Come on. Damn you Neil."
Yes, exactly. At the first whiff, it was so obviously true. I don't know how I idolized the guy for so long and then was instantly convinced: yup, he's *that* scumbag.
With the state the world is in today, I think there's an element of exhaustion sapping the patience we've had with the abysmal misbehavior of wealthy, powerful white men up til now.
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I was super into all things whedon and when he was outed, I could see how it fit together but I don’t delude myself that I’ll recognize the next one.
https://youtu.be/T31HKuabyMA?si=G6T7lmlMqG1P5OhK
For some reason, this time it was "Oh no. I don't want to know the details. Fuuuuuu this. Come on. Damn you Neil."
And I'm kinda ok with that.
Literally the next day it dropped that he was a weird sex predator.