And the author of this article is tying himself into a pretzel trying to absolve Tolkien of this great shame.

  • eurodyne@piefed.world
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    8 days ago

    The day comes for all of us when we find out our literary heroes were actually tremendous pieces of fucking shit

      • eurodyne@piefed.world
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        8 days ago

        Well… They’re not all terrible

        And Stephen King is a personal hero simply because he survived so much cocaine. But I’m still pretty pissed that I had to read the entirety of both It and Pet Cemetery. What the absolute fuck… there is 1000 pages between both of those books that just did not need to be.

        Don’t even fucking get me started on Misery.

        • JoshCodes@programming.dev
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          7 days ago

          Debated replying to this because its speculation but Stephen King has exactly two tweets that I’m aware of telling people the Epstein client list is fake like the tooth fairy, Santa and UFOs…

          • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            The one I saw it seemed like he meant he didn’t think the government bothered to create one and was trying to bury evidence. Could be wrong, though.

          • eurodyne@piefed.world
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            7 days ago

            and when I’m drunk and jacked, I also say olympic-level dumb shit.

            I don’t, however, also publish an epic series of trend-setting horror novels.

            ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

            take it with grain of Misty salt that all floats down here

          • eurodyne@piefed.world
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            7 days ago

            don’t even start/end timeloop with me, motherfucker. im a Star Trek nerd. I know more about temporal paradoxes than most anyone here! (Lemmy is a boiling stew of Star Trek nerdery, so at least I’m a good company)

            d6mVztoRfuXP2MQ.jpeg

        • Starya67@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          I’m reading The Stand (OG version). The animal abuse and the way he writes about women really pisses me off.

          His later books are much better in that respect.

        • Poloniousmonk@autistics.life
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          8 days ago

          @eurodyne

          Man, we could spiral on this. Misery was the last of his that I read. I tried “The Girl Who Loved tom Gordon” but threw it across the room.

          Everybody with arts money did coke balls to the wall back then. The smart ones grew out of it.

          • eurodyne@piefed.world
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            7 days ago

            I’m not here to debate the virtues of mountains of coke-- just how pissed I am at wasting the time of burning through 1000 pages of bullshit. perhaps I should be blaming his editors. whatever.

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        The only somewhat potentially sus thing I know about Terry Pratchett is having written Good Omens with Neil Gaiman, combined with the idea that the stuff the latter got up to was an open secret to insiders. Have not actually seriously looked into this though.

        • Poloniousmonk@autistics.life
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          7 days ago

          @chicken

          Terry was autistic as fuck and I can forgive him a failure to spot a monster (who had already snowed, apparently, the entire British intelligentsia). It was one book and he never defended Gaiman again, so I’m willing to look past this one.

          • Starya67@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            I know a murderer. Nobody in our friend group clocked him, and most of us aren’t autistic. This guy was smart and funny, we really liked him. We only found out what he was like when his wife told us about his odd behaviour.

            Anyway, I won’t go into detail, it’s quite a distinct case and he’s dead now.

            • Poloniousmonk@autistics.life
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              7 days ago

              @WorldsDumbestMan

              autistic people (I am one) suck at social cues. We’re very weak on that level of thinking. It’s kinda what autism is. So I cut autistic people a lot of slack for fucking up social awareness. Neurotypicals should have been able to spot him as a predator long before autistic people would catch it. Hence the extra slack I cut Terry. He did his best.

              • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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                7 days ago

                As an ND person, I know very well how harsh being ND is, and what the very real consequences of that are. And it might ultimately cost me my life.

                But we are still ultimately always responsible for our actions. And we must always be aware of this.

                • Starya67@lemmy.world
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                  7 days ago

                  Gaiman behaves a certain way with certain women. How is a man going to know this unless he is there when it happens, Gaiman explicity talks about it or if a woman tells him?

                • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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                  7 days ago

                  This is true, but I don’t think it really makes sense here. He didn’t have a choice if he didn’t know anything was wrong with Gaiman.

    • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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      7 days ago

      Dig deep enough, and everyone is kind of a piece if shit.

      It’s hard not to look at Pandora’s box (AI) and think…

      …maybe this is better?

      • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Giving up and saying everyone sucks is a symptom of someone who does not want to believe that it is possible to try and succeed to be good. Because if nobody can be good, then it is easy to feel okay being bad. Don’t let yourself make this excuse.

        • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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          7 days ago

          I have plans to prevent even the possibility of doing something bad. But something slips catastrophicaly every now and then. It’s always some unexpected angle that I fuckup in, which is why instead of ever assuming I’m good, I will always assume I’m a piece of shit, and “Airgap” myself from others. This is also why I will never date.

          As for others, well seeing the polls sometimes, the landlords, and the state of the world. Having people tell me “we all have ADHD”, and that it is propaganda. I just stopped expecting them to be reasonable. Many people have entire groups they would like to watch suffer, and love to see exterminated.

          If the world was back to what it was, we would destroy it again.

          • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Don’t lose faith. The media, and your brain, have a very strong incentive to focus on the negative things in the world. Are there horrible, disgusting things happening every day? Yes. But you’re looking at billions of people, and filtering to see only those things. If you walk around and take a look at what your average person does every day, it’s generally pretty neutral. Maybe some good things. They stop and let another car go ahead of them. They say thank you to the barista. They hold the door for someone at work. Maybe some bad things. They send someone an undeservedly snippy email. They make a joke in poor taste. They take too much grilled chicken from the salad bar.

            Some people are worse than others, definitely, but most people are not evil; it is just much easier to notice when someone’s bad actions affect you. Similarly, it is easy to see when your bad actions affect others. But do you think the few truly evil people in this world are walking around wondering if they’re good inside and trying to be better? This effort to improve and act well towards others which holds value. I posit that there is no such thing as a good person. There are good actions, and trying to do the best ones you can, when you can, is the best you can do. You will make mistakes, but it is always better to continue trying. I wish you luck, and the chance to see yourself and appreciate what you see.

            • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
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              7 days ago

              I can’t explain to you. There is just some crucial lack with humans, a screw loose, that makes them non-viable as they are.

              I’m convinced our primitive hardware can’t keep up with the responsibilities of this new world, and we would need to geneticaly modify ourselves just to survive.

              Even a small flaw tends to snowball when there are so many of us.