Eve Rickert

For the question of "what do I do when I find out that a work that was transformative to me was written by an abuser?" you have to realize that having loved their work is not a reflection on you– abusers can and very often do make art that speaks to us. They are also exceptionally good at having a charming public face, knowing the right words to say, and knowing how to present themselves to endear themselves to a specific audience. Parasocial relationship or not (and I think there's something interesting to be noted that Gaiman was extremely online and Mieville (afaik) had no social media presence), it's not the fault of the fan that they didn't know that their favorite is an abuser.

That said, if you continue to support their work knowing what we know now, I'm giving you a hard fucking side eye.

Here's the depressing part: you can't know if an author is an abuser based on their works or their public persona. My advice to you as someone with goddamned too many years in books?

Read midlist authors. Stop reading bestselling authors and authors who are the darling of their particular genre. Read authors who likely will not sell their work for adaptations or have celebrity coauthors or are invited to teach a semester of literature at [expensive private college full of kids from Long Island].

Read widely, even within your preferred genre. Not only will you expose yourself to so much brilliance, but if a fav is outed as a gross abuser, it's far less difficult to move on.

As a subset of 2: Try try try to develop more than one favorite. Find authors whose works you will read sight-unseen (as I'm sure many of you did with Gaiman), but have a stable of them. (I, for instance, have five authors I will pick up whatever they write, no questions asked.)

Stop relying on cis/het white authors. Read queer authors. Read books by people of color. Fall in love with those books!

"Well perhaps you could tell me...while we dance."

701 frames, 542 artists, 3 months, all collaborating on 1 animation. Here is the result.

i want to stop and pick up milk for another friend because i know their spouse hates the grocery store

i want to buy fruit that i dont like because it’s on special and i know people who do

i want to pass lemons over the fence and to take my neighbours bins out when the forget

i want group chats instead of rideshare apps, calls in the middle of the night because someone’s at the hospital, lonely or hungry or both

i want to do the dishes in other people’s houses, extra servings wrapped in tinfoil and tea towels so it’s still warm when you drop it off, a basket of other people’s mending by my couch

You have a thing to do planned on a certain day do you:

A) Plan/do something before and after the thing because if you don’t you’ll be to impatient waiting to go to the thing and then you’ll be sad when its over and you need to distract yourself.

B) Have complete executive function failure and do absolutely NOTHING but what you had planned.

C) You have an entire schedule either physically or in your head that will guarantee you enough time to get everything you want into your day because you allotted for everything including your everyday routines/rituals plus extra time incase something goes wrong

D) You don’t do anything before the thing because you’re afraid of being late even if you have HOURS and you most definitely practiced getting ready and going to the thing to know how long you absolutely NEED or you calculated it somehow