[ SECRET POST #3068 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3068 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.
[William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy]


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02.
[Wild Kratts]


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03.
[Harry Potter/Fleur Delacour]


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04.
[Jennifer Barkley from Parks&Recreation]


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05.


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06.


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07.
[Handa-kun]


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08. [SPOILERS for Game of Thrones]



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09. [WARNING for child molestation]



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10. [WARNING for mental illness/suicide]

[It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini]


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11. [WARNING for rape]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #438.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

09. [WARNING for child molestation]
http://i.imgur.com/mPMkcJo.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

It was like a knife in my heart to hear all that about MZB. I absolutely adored The Mists of Avalon. It was brilliant. It's like Orson Scott Card, but even worse. I don't know what to say, other than the work itself is great, but I know personally I can't enjoy it anymore, and I'd never recommend it.

[(Anonymous)]

MZB's books were the first place I found out that women could love other women. Since I was a tiny baby lesbian at the time, this was hugely important to my life. I was so, so devastated to learn what a horrendous person she actually was. So sympathies to you, OP, and you're not the only one who feels that way.

[kittydesade]

If it helps, Anon, you're in a lot of company. Almost everyone I know who read fantasy and is around my age had to deal with/is dealing with the idea of the creator of some of our favorite works being a despicable person.

If you or anyone in this thread wants to talk about it, I'm up for it.

[recessional]

I've rarely been more relieved to have bounced off a writer, because I knew it would be really, really devastating for a lot of people.

[kittydesade]

It was definitely hard to have a huge chunk of my childhood thrown into a different, disgusting perspective.

And I can't really reject that entire part of me and say reading her books didn't cause me to think, and to embrace my own power and independence, but at the same time.... eeugh. Disgusting, evil woman is my first reaction, and then it just gets more complicated from there.

[recessional]

If it helps, I try to remember that "death of the author" applies to GOOD things in their work they didn't intent/didn't control/didn't line up with their actual beliefs (where "good" is in turn very much in the eye of the reader) as well as "bad" things like sexism or heterocentrism or racism.

[kittydesade]

Or deeply questionable sexual dynamics. It does help, thank you.

A point of curiosity from a non-fan

[feotakahari]

I looked up the relevant court depositions, and it appears MZB took it as a philosophical stance--these ten-year-olds are in my husband's bed because they want to be there, and in general kids have the capacity to say yes or no to relations with adults. Did she ever insert those ideas into her fiction the way some writers do, or did this really come out of nowhere in terms of what she wrote?

[kittydesade]

It's back and forth? I remember there was one book she wrote where an underage character's infatuation with marrying a man twice her age (and in love with someone else) and sort of an older brother figure to her, and having his babies, was depicted as childish and a symptom of her continuing breakdown. The Mists of Avalon series had a lot of uncomfortably sexual young-young women. I don't remember anything quite as bad as Piers' Anthony's Xanth series or, god forbid, Firefly (which includes a sexual FOUR YEAR OLD, if I remember her age right. Definitely pre-pubescent), but there were a number of psychosexual dynamics that I thought were edgy and bold then and now kind of make me uncomfortable. But they also weren't always portrayed as being good?

ETA: Also, at least as far as I read and remember, most of the weird dynamics were between adults of varying ages, not adults and children. And there was one man who explicitly abused a young boy... in his charge? If I remember right. (Dyan Ardais, for those who remember better than I do.) The messed up part is, again, if I remember, he was one of her favorites and more identifying with him characters. And he was kind of ... not a good person.

(On the other hand I'm not sure they were exactly discouraged either.)

[(Anonymous)]

She had a pedophile in her Darkover series, described and depicted as such. Dyan Ardais. He was sometimes portrayed as a villain, but other times as 'redeemed' despite his violent pedophilia. That always bugged me some, even more so now that I know the truth about her. I wonder if he was a sort of self insert for her husband.

op

[(Anonymous)]

That was the thing that horrified me the most! Danilo (the teenage character that gets telepathically molested for those who aren't familiar) was incredibly miserable about it and the book goes into great detail about how much he hated it and suffered under it. And then at the end Dyan apparently realizes the enormity of what he's done and publicly humbles himself to Danilo, apologizes and offers amends in a manner that hold a huge amount of importance in their society. And it's made clear that the fact he doesn't face any serious consequences is because of the unfair amount of privilege that his social class has, which is portrayed as a bad thing. So MZB WAS FULLY AWARE OF HOW TERRIBLE A THING SUCH BEHAVIOR IS AND THAT IT DESERVES CONSEQUENCES. In a lot of detail, which makes me sick to think about how she might have gotten knowledge of the thought process of a sexual assault victim. She KNEW how awful it was and she DIDN'T CARE.

[kittydesade]

Yeah, I remembered that after I posted and edited to add it in. And he was my favorite villain and now everything about him is just... gross.

tw: rape mention

[(Anonymous)]

Aside from repeatedly raping her daughter over and over... she mentally abused her, saying things like 'you're not real, only my stories are.'

After I read all that I threw out every single one of her books. This lady was my favorite author, but no story is better than any person or their suffering. Marion was a terrible excuse for a human being and I will never have a word of her stuff in my house again.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, hate to break it to you, OP, but it gets worse. Her children have come out on the record to say MZB abused them sexually, emotionally and physically as well.

[(Anonymous)]

Fuuuuuuuuck. Man, I thought I knew the worst of it.

I have an honest question

[anarchicq]

The only MZB anything I've ever read was parts of Lythande, so I have no horse in this race. However, I have dropped my support of famous people for "less". For being Scientologists for example. Or going on anti-women screeds. Or smacking their lovers around. Or being Mel Gibson.

I understand this book opened up the eyes of a lot of young fantasy-reading lesbians and helped them discover themselves. Was this book published before she had her daughter or met her husband? Were they published before the horrific events? If she was not engaging in or facilitating the abuse when published, couldn't they theoretically remain untainted and just everything after a certain year be thrown out in disgust?

I am NOT defending or excusing it. It's horrible, she's horrible, her husband is horrible, and I would never consciously give her my money, I'm just curious.

Re: I have an honest question

[(Anonymous)]

She's dead, so I assume any money her books earned would go to her estate... which means the daughter she abused (I don't know if she has other kids). Her husband is dead. So buying her books would not be all that immoral, in my mind.

[elialshadowpine]

It's worse than that, OP. It came out last summer from her daughter that MZB herself was a pedophile, raped her own daughter, and multiple other children as well. :-\

I'm in the same shoes you are. MZB's work was huge to me, as a sheltered homeschooled girl with a dad who constantly ranted on how the man in the family was the MAN, and everyone should do what he wanted just based on his gender. I'd always been uncomfortable with a lot of the shit he spouted, but MZB's work helped me put it into words (and I decided then and there to change my entire name, not just my first and middle, because I loathed the patriarchal nature of surnames; taking my mother's wouldn't work, because that would just be a different male surname... so I eventually found my own). I really can't put into words how important her work was to me, specifically the Darkover books, which I have a nearly complete collection of (I think I'm missing one or two of the anthologies), so finding that out has left me in a very difficult place.

I was ready to toss my collection until Moira (her daughter) made a comment that she hoped people wouldn't do that, because for all the hurt her mother caused her, it helped her to deal with her own trauma knowing that her mother's work was powerful enough to help others. I'm still not sure if I'll ever be able to read anything more than the anthologies (which are work primarily not by her) again.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, someone doesn't have to be a good person to be a great writer. It's okay to mentally divorce a book from its author. Which is not to say that good writing could ever balance out atrocious acts--but likewise, MZB being a terrible person doesn't take away the positive experiences you had with her books. Books aren't a one-way street, just the author transmitting something to you. They're a collaboration between text and reader as well.

But yeah, I'm sure it feels awful to feel betrayed like that. My advice is to cherish your good experiences anyway while mourning the loss of a role model you thought you had. <3