Back in the day I used to love many of the fantasy novels by David Eddings (e.g. Belgariad, Mallorean) but after learning about the terrible child abuse he and his wife were prosecuted for, I can’t look at them the same way.
John Lennon was pure asshole. He abused his first wife, who he only married because his manager didn’t want one of these new starts to father and illegitimate child. And that child, he tormented and ignored. Second wife, second child, both wanted and given everything.
Not saying he’s a saint, but isn’t an alternative interpretation that he was young, inexperienced, and had a bad relationship, then grew up, learned some things, and had a better relationship later? Julian Lennon was on Bill Maher’s podcast recently and described a reconciliation between him and his dad right before he died.
Again, not trying to excuse all his bad behavior in his first marriage, but I also don’t think that a failed relationship is enough evidence to judge a whole life by, especially one that was under extraordinary pressure.
Iirc, while Beatles management did encourage Lennon and Cynthia Powell to get married, they were instructed to keep the marriage and child private for a
period of time. They were trying to lean into the “boy band” desirability, and they must have figured a married father isn’t someone young women feel comfortable pining over. Of course, Cynthia and Julian didn’t stay a secret forever though.
He himself admitted he was an abuser of people in his life. Both male and female. Sure, people see that as him atoning for those past abuses. But it is clear he wasn’t this nice person people think of when they think of his anti-war and peace stance in life.
He was certainly above that. Hell his story "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" also known as "White Ape". Is literally a book about the "one drop rule" to the point its actually funny because of how absurd it comes off as. Its so insanely racist, it fucking becomes funny based on the character's reaction. Its not a great short story but basically he find out his great great great great grandmother was a "white ape" (which is not human per say but lets read between the lines since the white apes come from the congo region), his response to this news was pouring gasoline on himself and burning himself alive. Like yes its fiction but the fact he made a fucking short story where the focal point is discovering that you are mixed race and learning that is so mind breaking, death was the only logical option is god damn hilarious.
I'm convinced that Orson Scott Card suffered a traumatic head injury at some point. I don't know how you could go from writing something as beautiful and intimate as Ender's Game to shit like Hidden Empire, which is creepy right wing Christian disaster porn (from what I can remember of that trainwreck).
Sometimes I wonder if he became pedophilic because of his sad life. Between losing family in the Holocaust and losing more family and friends in the Tate/LaBianca murders by the Manson family, he must felt like his life was out of control. But it’s easy to control teenaged girls into having sex with you. Or maybe the genocide and murders he experienced had nothing to do with his sins. But it’s something I think about occasionally. I’ve seen only a couple of his movies so far but I notice some themes from his life, like the death of babies or babies being evil, and I feel like it’s some personal allegory.
Aside from dictators (who are by definition very, very shitty people, but almost always have an art career for some reason), assuming actors don’t count as artists, I’d have to say the only example I can think of is Butch Hartman, not shitty because of his character but because he’s like the other JK Rowling.
To answer the second question, literally all the e-artists I’ve ever met, though art is relative enough I don’t feel like art can have a “negative” value. I trust they will never see this.
I love Tom Cruise. The man is an amazing, committed actor. He doesn’t need flashy CGI or visual effects and he does insane stunts for our entertainment. Too bad he’s a fucking nutjob.
This thread has already mentioned a lot of artists I was already going to mention…and I’ll add a semi-recent one for me, Scott Adams. I started reading Dilbert while I was still learning to read and my exposure to it helped me recover from my literacy anxiety (which I sometimes still have to an extent). I’ve mentioned a bit of my associations of it in previous posts but to recap, my mom worked at another “Baby Bell” company, Nynex, later Bell Atlantic then Verizon, (like Scott who worked at Pacific Bell and Dilbert and friends who worked at an unnamed company implied to be in the telecom sector) I liked the simplistic designs a lot, as well as the introduction of new vocabulary. I soon started making my own comic strips. Scott Adams’ views on race, medicine, politics and several other subjects are perplexing. If I could logically follow them, I’d be offended. My dad’s high school experience was diminished by segregation apologists during Boston bussing mandates of the 1970s when they would protest at school campuses. The fact that Adams was on board with such a stupid practice in that infamous vlog is upsetting. Then again, Adams is a contrarian so I can’t be sure if he sincerely feels that way, especially since he tweeted something afterwards saying “I’m not actually bothered by black people. I am actually just annoyed by white people who advocate for black people” (paraphrase). Maybe it’s a true clarification or maybe he’s just trying to walk back his statements. He needs help. There’s probably something traumatic in his life that made him snap. Off hand, I know his wife filed for divorce from him and his stepson died of an overdose, and he may still be mourning in a strange way. Still, if I see Dilbert merch at a secondhand shop or in the library, I’d gladly take them out. I will not subscribe to his new pay-walled comic, but if his distributors and publishers ever decide to re-sign their contracts with him and start printing new Dilbert books again, I may buy them. Anecdotally print publishers seem to do more vetting than web publishers, so I’d hope that if they ever reunite he’d be in the right headspace. Anyway, great comic, troubled person. Hope the guy gets some help.
I got in to Dilbert Young, too. I don’t know why it appealed to me exactly, but I started reading his comic strips around 8 or so, and even got some compilation books. I also read some of his non-comic books… They were largely hippy woowoo bullshit, but still good reads. Then he came out with God’s Debris which I thought was genuinely interesting.
So I don’t think he was always this way, or maybe he hid it better. To teenage me, at least, he seemed pretty logical and fairly progressive. A bit of a hippie at times, a bit of a look at times, fairly anti-corporate and pro-little guy, overall his writing made him seem like a decent person. Maybe some vaguely problematic takes here and there, but nothing all that bad.
It was like some combination of success and wealth and Twitter access broke his mind. Or maybe it was always there and I just didn’t recognize it and I’m blinded by nostalgia. It was just a wild rollercoaster ride watching him melt down.
Behind the Bastards did an episode on him. Honestly I think from what I recall he was just drawing what got good feedback, but then he had a few issues with health, one that made him unable to speak for years and iirc ended his marriage?
So one of their takes is maybe this trauma did some damage to him mentally as well. I’m grossly oversimplfying, so I recommend checking the episode. You can also find statements and articles about his Spasmodic Aphonia and him attributing his divorce partially to it.
They do have some arguments against his anti-corporate rep though.
I searched it up a bit, and apparently Card is pretty vehemently homophobic. Which really sucks and is really strange. It sucks because i do enjoy his books, and they were honestly part of what got me into sci-fi. It’s really strange though since the moral of pretty much every single book of his is understanding, empathy, and compassion.
It’s been a while so I don’t remember anything concrete, but I remember characters being described with a strange amount of detail in racial or ethnic features, like height or nose shape. I don’t think he ever explicitly describes any race as superior to others, but some of the passages felt like it was going to devolve into some weird analysis of skull dimpling or something.
The music of Smashing Pumpkins got me through some very dark times as a teenager, but finding out he hates me because I’m gay snapped that personal connection. I’m usually able to separate the art from the artist and still enjoy good stuff made by bad people, but I’m not able to enjoy them anymore. The connection was too personal and the betrayal was too great.
Billy attempted to sell an Alesis SR-16 that was used in his band for $30k. It’s a $100 drum machine. He was selling it himself. No charity or anything; he just tried to hyper-inflate a very common drum machine that is still produced because he thought he added that value to it by owning it. That was pretty weird.
I mean, in the sense of music history it is worth more than any other random one you can find on the street. But maybe somewhere around $500 - $1000 if it was signed by the band.
My favourite book is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My edition has a foreword about how Lewis Carroll wasn’t really a pedophile. He just had so many pictures of naked kids, spent so much time with them and wanted to marry the real Alice while she was young solely because he had soooo much love for children. Not in a creepy way at all. No no, not at all creepy.
Okay, so this topic is moderately amusing to me. The truth is we still don’t actually know for sure, but it’s WEIRD.
He had a long and apparently well-documented history (letters he wrote) of multiple relationships with adult women. So much so that his family attempted to cover it all up because, by victorian standards, it was absolutely fucking scandalous. Like, wreck the surname for generations scandalous (which admittedly didn’t take much by victorian standards). This makes it look like he had NO relationships with adult women, because being an oddball that way was LESS of a freakshow publicly than sleeping around was.
The victorians also had this weird thing (by today’s standards) about nude children being the very symbol of innocence. Like, so much so that you’d wonder if they thought the mere sight of naked babies restored an adult’s innocence or something.
And these people had WEIRD hangups about sex.
We’re talking they supposedly covered the legs of tables and chairs in cloth so they would less resemble actual people’s legs, lest someone accidentally think of what’s at the TOP of legs on people. (genitalia! scary!)
The schism with Alice’s family may just have been that SOME people were POSSIBLY gossiping behind closed doors about the man and they refused to be associated with even the POSSIBILITY of scandal, especially if that scandal was that he slept with multiple women. There’s also mention that he was interested in Alice’s older sister, and something about a maid.
The whole thing is just straight up odd, but apparently most of the pedo rumors didn’t start until after his death. I’m not sure what, if anything, that means.
So, who knows. an oddball dude in a SUUUPER sexually repressed society, it honestly could go either way on coin flip odds.
I am a huge fan of black metal so often I have to filter out the ones with white supremacists members. But one I can’t help myself going back to is Burzum. What he brought to the atmospherical BM scene is huge and I hate that I love his early records so much…
Yeah I love black metal but it has some problematic people. “The Somberlain” by Dissection is a great album but I genuinely can’t enjoy it because of the person behind it…
I know what you mean. Personnally I prefer Storm of the Light’s Bane, but I feel less bad about listening to Dissection cause the guy’s dead so not like he gets any money from me lol
Oh goddamnit, are dissection fuckwads too? I absolutely love their stuff and it took me a good while to stop listening to burzum after I found out he was a shitbag u. u
Basically, Jon Nödtveidt, the lead guitarist/singer, was convicted for the killing of a gay algerian man. Two years after his release from prison he killed himself in a satanic ritual.
Tom Cruise. I don’t know what weird pathways cross in a brain to get that deep into Scientology without realizing what bullshit it is, but he is an amazing actor. He understands the craft, he is not shy about poking fun of himself, and by all accounts he is a consummate professional and treats the film crew well and has given gifts/thrown parties for them, etc.
I want to hate him so badly. But he is so good. I remember when he was cast as the vampire and I was pissed, having read the books it made no sense that Mr. Top Gun Fast Times at Ridgemont High as an undead vampire.
Saw the movie and had to eat my words, he had become a gaunt undead vampire. What the actual fuck. He was fantastic. Ever since that, I kind of trust he will be good in anything.
Oh God you are right I am just conflating all those movies I avoided so successfully. I just mean until then he played characters so straight and gung ho and active and shiny. No way I could have cast him, whoever did saw something that nobody else did and they were right.
I still want to hate him. But do think he’s a gifted actor.
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