As unfun as real piracy is, especially for struggling authors, I do enjoy our town’s annual pirate festival in the summer and the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies. My family concluded our summer movie nights with one of my favorite movies, Stardust, which features lightning pirates – a cool concept relegated to a single paragraph of deus ex machina halfway through the book by Neil Gaiman. It’s the rare case of a movie improving upon the source material. Coraline and The Graveyard Book are two of my favorite children’s novels, and American Gods and especially Anansi Boys are two of my favorite adult novels, but Stardust frustrated me.
Recently it’s the person, not his writing, that has become a disappointment to many fans who used to put him on a pedestal, as allegations of sexual abuse from five women came out. Some readers insist there were clues in his writing all along, which has led to bad takes and assumptions about other writers (even readers). You can glean someone’s values from their writing, but it’s not an exact science. Only hindsight is 20/20.
While I was disappointed but not surprised by J.K. Rowling’s fall from grace, I’m not going to pretend I saw it coming. Speaking of J.K. Rowling, she most recently abused her fame by attacking a woman athlete under the guise of protecting women. Nobody questioned the woman’s gender until she beat a Russian boxer. Russia has a history of cheating and spreading misinformation, but people accepted their contradictory claims without question to push a political agenda. Other women athletes have had their identity challenged throughout history. One even gave birth but never received an apology.
And all the people who used to say “at least we still have Gaiman” about Rowling have begun saying “at least we still have [insert another fantasy author here].” Can we not?
(Please don’t jinx my personal favorite.)
The takeaway from all this chaos is that none of us are omniscient. Don’t put people on pedestals. Don’t assume you know anyone from their art (or appearance). Authors have biases that inform our work, but readers have biases that inform our interpretations. And don’t latch on to every internet rumor as soon as it appears because you’ll either show your metaphorical behind or end up rightfully sued for defamation when the dust settles.
Last month I criticized people using disabled or impoverished people as human shields to defend actions like piracy and plagiarism. This month nonprofit NaMoWriMo released a statement supporting the use of generative AI, and accusing critics of ableism and classism – even though their critics include disabled people and people who have experienced poverty but do not use generative AI. There’s a big difference between using assistive devices to do the work yourself, such as Terry Pratchett dictating his novels in his own words as his illness progressed, and typing a few keywords into a program that generates a novel for you. Needless to say, critics only grew louder. The organization tried to clarify in multiple revisions. Total disaster.
School’s back in session, and the US has already had its first school shooting. If only people spent half as much time protecting kids from guns as they did from the written word.
Minnesota governor/vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a former teacher, often addresses these issues, but neither book bans nor school shootings came up during tonight’s presidential debate. Harris did address other issues like women being denied medical care when miscarrying wanted pregnancies while Trump made up stories about doctors or governors executing babies after delivery and immigrants stealing people’s housepets for food.
I’m a writer, and I couldn’t make this up. As laughable as his outrageous claims were to most people, they may still incite those who believe him to harm others as we’ve seen so often in the past – even before he entered politics and escalated existing division and discord. I feel very uneasy about the next few months – but what else is new?
