#and i love it !

[astridhobbit]

I fully agree with all of this. It is totally okay and normal and common if you loved Gaiman's work and never saw any hint of the asshole he apparently was. Very okay. I never got into Sandman, but I loved some of his other stuff, and I probably won't go back to it, and that's a bummer!

It is also true that a person is not what they write. It is okay to write dark shit, for whatever reason you want. The flavor of art you create is not the same as the kind of person you are.

And. Also.

Years ago I read a wonderful analysis of Orson Scott Card's most famous work, Ender's Game. The analysis pointed out that Card's raging homophobia was always in the book, with a veneer of story over it giving plausible deniability, but yeah, definitely there if you looked. And it's true! The shower scene, where Ender fights for his life? That's a gay panic moment. Card's weird homophobia is the root that that scene draws upon. It's like a clever sculpture, where it looks like one thing from one angle, but something totally different from another angle.

Fewer years ago, I saw someone point out how Rowling's character Rita Skeeter, the creepy one who snuck into places she shouldn't be on the hunt for a news story, could very easily be read as rooted in Rowling's weird transphobia. Something about the way Skeeter is described in the books. Like Card, Rowling never names the root directly, but it makes sense, once you look at it from a slightly different angle.

I'm going somewhere with this, but I want to pause a moment and reiterate: if you did not do the critical analysis on Card's or Rowling's or Gaiman's work to find the places where their weird bigotries came closer to the surface, you are not a bad person! You have not failed! These aspects were disguised because the authors knew that to say it directly out loud would be career suicide. They hid it and it's not your fault if you didn't find it. You're okay.

I enjoy critical analyses of works that take into account the author's known history and stated beliefs. I like seeing the ways that the author's beliefs surface in their work, sometimes in ways they planned, sometimes in ways they didn't. And it's not all bad! Scalzi's Old Man's War hits different when you understand how deeply he loves his wife, in a good way. My favorite genre of this is when an author realizes they are neurodivergent due to all the fans writing in telling them the character they wrote drawing on their normal life experiences is such a good example of [insert neurodivergence here]. I've seen that one happen twice.

I think that when people do a critical analysis of Gaiman's work, using the information we have now, they will likely find some places where the root of the thing is Gaiman's weird misogyny. And like those cool sculptures, like the other authors, it'll be one of those things that looks one way from one angle, but very different from another angle. And if most people didn't see the other angle, well, he hid it very well indeed.

It is also entirely possible that none of it came through in his writing! He hid his sins well, kept them tucked deep in a corner, and only let them out when he was pretty damn sure no one who he considered important was watching. Maybe he managed to keep them out of his writing. I personally don't think that's likely, but it is a possibility. Maybe any critical analysis of his work will only bring out very tenuous hints and connections.

But I think the analysis is worth doing and I will find it fascinating. Not in a "everyone should have known" kind of way, because that's nonsense. No one should have known anything about Gaiman, not even his name. But more in a "we know who he is now, and here is how who he is manifests in his art" kind of way. I love that kind of stuff! I think it's neat! I love seeing how people reveal themselves in ways they don't realize. In a situation like this, it's not FUN, but it's still fascinating. And like I said above, these kinds of analyses aren't always bad.

To reiterate once more, if you never saw a thing wrong with his stories, you didn't miss anything, not really. If I invite you to my home and show you around but I don't open every single closet, you can rightfully say you saw my house and that there was nothing strange about it, even if it later comes out I had a live swarm of bees hiding in one of the closets I didn't show you. And someone else might say well didn't you hear the bees buzzing? They must have been loud! And you might answer, I was so taken by the art on the walls, by the impeccable decor, by the delectable snacks. That does not make you a bad person for not noticing. Nor does it need to make you feel guilty when the bees are revealed. It is okay to not know things.

And, as always, believe victims.

i don't really want to see this retconning of neil gaiman's writing where people are re-analyzing stories like "look...you can see the message under the surface...showing how he was actually abusive IRL...it's all there..."

idk maybe we should just listen to people when they speak up and say they were abused and try to foster a culture of respecting victims and actually enforcing justice against perpetrators instead of doing this weird fucking da vinci code-esque picking apart of his stories. stories which everyone was fine with for decades!! because we understand that the content that people write and produce does not have a 1 to 1 correlation with their real world actions!!!

i fully support people who cannot engage with his work anymore and i do think that because he's a still-living person it's imperative to not give this guy another cent, but we cannot pretend that everyone was just "too dumb" to see the secret clues and turn this into another case of "what you write is what you endorse." plenty of dogshit people write good stories. plenty of good people write dark stories. that's all.

[lorelaiislatte]

havana in one arm julien in the other… type of greed they talk about in the bible

[very-tired-rat]

my favorite animal is Jason at bows whenever someone is debuting a role

[lucy-verse]

Javert being completely head over heels in love with Madeleine, to the point where he’s experiencing genuine happiness for the first time in his life, has got to be the most beautiful yet heartbreaking fanfiction trope in history.

[thedeerman]

@pipsqueakparker this is that sad owl man fic with the glow in the dark stars 🥺

Redecorating the apartment! :)

[fascinationstreetmp3]

this is how every saw movie looks

[mylifeingotham]

[livfordoodles]

Chaotic funger doodles ✨

[vargdottern]

ohhhh my god these victorian husbands are really doing something to me

THE FINAL PROBLEM - part 6 of many - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5.

A short update, however it is CHRISTMAS and you have all been nice this year and deserve homoerotic cigarette activity some art :)

There's a reference to this conversation from earlier.

also I would be remiss not to credit @haedraulics for inspiring a specific visual in this, check out his Holmes art!

This is in the Watson's Sketchbook series!

[zoe-oneesama]

If you haven't been keeping up with the Dad Villain/Viceroy AU by @bigfatbreak then you are asleep at the wheel because it is everything U_U. Someday I'll draw Tom/Viceroy, he's just so haaaaard! (Chloe over here trying to just get on with her dead mom jokes but Kim just won't let That Day go and she's about to have to make it a double body count just so he SHUTS UP-!)

Ko-fi | Patreon

[thebibliosphere]

Video via @/thepandaredd on TikTok

Hi, temporarily breaking my radio silence so you can all find out the way I did via a pandered TikTok but DICK GRAYSON JASON TODD ANIMATED ORIGIN MOVIE!!!! DICK GRAYSON JASON TODD ANIMATED ORIGIN MOVIE!!!!

ROBIN FANS GET FUCKING HYPED

[megaceros]

All the felines, minus a few extra lynxes

[theunoffical501stblog]

One big goober, one angy goober one dead goober and one "stares into your soul" goober.

bugs when you lift up a rock

designs from @transformers-synergize (read the fancomic :])

[sophieeee0105]

one thing that has stuck throughout the life series is that Etho is still terrified of Cleo. He went over to their base to go and be a tough guy and threaten Impulse and Pearl but literally the second Cleo looked at him and opened their mouth to say something he was out of there. Despite teaming with her last season he’s still terrified of her.

[sorcerersandskillusers]

Remember that in this scene Dazai "lives on canned crab and whiskey" Osamu has a three gunshot wounds and a broken leg while Chuuya "the strongest ability user" Nakahara is just sitting there watching

And the funniest part is every single one of those injuries was inflicted by Chuuya and most of them weren't even part of the plan