(Content warning) So it turns out that David Eddings was a convicted and jailed child abuser

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

So, I didn't know about this. And I came across an interview where he explains that the book discusses economics and critiques neoliberalism, and I'm a sucker for any book that actively discussed economics, no matter how dry it might be. But the terf-y thing is way icky. Will likely have to make this one a library request.

I really wouldn't bother. It's a hugely lesser work than his earlier books, and feels like a low-effort retread of Black Man. I do feel like maybe Morgan's earlier work has not aged very well, but Thin Air feels particularly dated.

[Darth Richard II]

I think transphobic is probably a better term but TERF is just so fun to say.

[IlyaP]

10 hours ago, Werthead said:

I really wouldn't bother. It's a hugely lesser work than his earlier books, and feels like a low-effort retread of Black Man. I do feel like maybe Morgan's earlier work has not aged very well, but Thin Air feels particularly dated.

Noted! Will give this a pass then! Thanks Adam! 

[Darth Richard II]

I do wonder how much of the JKR/RKM stuff is just ignorance and a refusal by white people to admit they may have been wrong.

Also yeah as bad as that is as someone up thread said its not keeping a child locked in a cage in your basement.

[karaddin]

It's not ignorance from JKR - it's probably heavily influenced by the social circles she moves in, but that is definitely not the same thing as ignorance. That social component is exactly why I think the TERF label is actually the right one in that case, because that's the vector for her exposure to and reinforcement of those beliefs.

[Darth Richard II]

[Darth Richard II]

Also Feist still seems to not be scum. Yay!

[ants]

On 5/3/2020 at 12:03 PM, Darth Richard II said:

God just about everyone I read up til about 10th grade is a child abuser/Nazi/Homophobe at this point. Like I’m just waiting to find out Terry Brooks eats puppies or something. 

I hope the female authors (Susan Cooper, Enyd Blyton., Margaret Weis, Wurts, Anne McCaffrey) weren't at least.  

And Tolken seems fine. But way too many have not been.  

Edit: and of course its now been pointed out about JRRT and Franco.  That said, I can't help thinking that he probably wasn't alone there, the British after all did support Franco in the civil war.  I think I can live with that as an opinion .......

[karaddin]

8 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Also Feist still seems to not be scum. Yay!

I'll take my scant comforts where I can find them

[Wall Flower]

31 minutes ago, ants said:

I hope the female authors (Susan Cooper, Enyd Blyton., Margaret Weis, Wurts, Anne McCaffrey) weren't at least.  

And Tolken seems fine. But way too many have not been.  

Edit: and of course its now been pointed out about JRRT and Franco.  That said, I can't help thinking that he probably wasn't alone there, the British after all did support Franco in the civil war.  I think I can live with that as an opinion .......

Wasn't Enid Blyton racist? I didn't read her as a child so can't comment with any authority but I think people have pointed out that there's a reason Gollywogs are the bad guys in a lot of her books.

[Darth Richard II]

49 minutes ago, ants said:

I hope the female authors (Susan Cooper, Enyd Blyton., Margaret Weis, Wurts, Anne McCaffrey) weren't at least.  

And Tolken seems fine. But way too many have not been.  

Edit: and of course its now been pointed out about JRRT and Franco.  That said, I can't help thinking that he probably wasn't alone there, the British after all did support Franco in the civil war.  I think I can live with that as an opinion .......

Weiss is a grumpy person in RL but AFAIK not on the holy shit wtf list. 
 

Also I picked 10th grade because that’s when Robin Hobbs first book came out. :p

Interestingly I discovered most of the authors that I still read from the way back when my freshmen year in college. Kate Elliot, Kerr, that GRRM fella...

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, ants said:

And Tolken seems fine. But way too many have not been.  

Oh, Tolkien's not totally fine either. But that's not exactly breaking news.  

[Darth Richard II]

20 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Oh, Tolkien's not totally fine either. But that's not exactly breaking news.  

Yeah but Tolkien is more troublesome political views then, you know say, child rape.

[IlyaP]

35 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah but Tolkien is more troublesome political views then, you know say, child rape.

I didn't think my comments indicated that I was attempting to compare the two. I hope it didn't come across that way, when the intended goal was to identify that Tolkien was by no means himself a paragon of virtue. 

[Darth Richard II]

12 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

I didn't think my comments indicated that I was attempting to compare the two. I hope it didn't come across that way, when the intended goal was to identify that Tolkien was by no means himself a paragon of virtue. 

Oh I know I’m just half awake :p

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah but Tolkien is more troublesome political views then, you know say, child rape.

There remains, of course, the allegations against Tolkien's eldest son (a Priest), which also shed some light on Oxford academia in the 1920s:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/28/jrr-tolkiens-son-claims-sexually-abuse-fathers-friend

(That is not to say that Tolkien himself knew about anything... but it makes disturbing reading).

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Also Feist still seems to not be scum. Yay!

A few years ago, when he was in his late sixties, Feist was dating a woman in her late twenties and later had a public meltdown about her hoodwinking some of his money out of him. He also, loudly, consistently and volubly, complained about his divorce from novelist Kathleen Starbuck in the late 1990s and how he was being forced to pay crippling amounts of alimony for years (hence why he started shovelling books out like there was no tomorrow after the Serpentwar series, includings ones barely related to the main thrust of his series).

He doesn't seem to have the best judgement, but it's not on the Eddings level, no. Clearly he's also a bit of an oversharer.

[Heartofice]

I’m always amused at how hated JK is by people these days, given how outspoken she has been in the past on a number of issues that put her firmly in the left leaning category. Now she is evil of course and her books should be burnt.

[Darth Richard II]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’m always amused at how hated JK is by people these days, given how outspoken she has been in the past on a number of issues that put her firmly in the left leaning category. Now she is evil of course and her books should be burnt.

...

I’m going to let @karaddinhandle this one 

[karaddin]

58 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

...

I’m going to let @karaddinhandle this one 

Nah, I've got more productive things to do with my time than waste effort pretending he's going to be discussing anything in good faith. That ground has been well and truly covered before. If you don't accept certain minorities as equally human and equally deserving of rights then others doing the same thing hardly looks noteworthy to you.

@Werthead yeah that's the sort of thing I'm not surprised by. Would probably give me pause if I was considering reading anything new from him, but the drastic plunge in quality after Serpentwar took care of that on its own. My 30-40 year old copy that I read probably 20 times as a kid can stick around though. 

Wurts would have upset me more as well, those Empire books were satisfying parts of me I wasn't aware of at the time.