Apparently MZB was evil (*trigger warnings* on this post)

[katekat]

I was a fan not of her writing, but of the Sword & Sorceress series that she edited because it did something so few fantasy writings I'd picked up did: required that the main characters be women. I think at one point I had actually purchased a good chunk of them (into the 20s). Apparently she was also one of the founders of SCA, an organization I enjoy hearing about, even if I've never joined.

But I did not know that Marion Zimmer Bradley was evil.

Her daughter has opened up to discuss how her mother abused her. [again, trigger warnings - there's not graphic stuff here (except in comments), but there is emotional stuff that is pretty bad]

I'm sickened. I'm glad that there is a different kind of conversation in fandom now than there seems to have been in the 1960s around the "Breendoggle" that was her husband's pedophilia.

I know it doesn't stop violent people (and that's what it is, it's violence), but I also know without language, without language making clear that this is not acceptable, without voicing, putting into words, discussing, reading, sharing, and describing these things, no one is helped. At least with language changing, with the conversation changing, with words like abuse, and violence, rape, pedophilia, power and powerlessness, we have different definitions, we have names for these acts - names that help define them and conversations that help defined them as evil.

Comments

[wesleysgirl]

I actually loved a few of her books when I was growing up (and still have very battered copies of them on my bookshelf) but I only heard about all of this horrific stuff very recently. It's so terrible. :-(

[katekat]

it absolutely is. i'm seriously sick to my stomach. but glad the conversation is happening despite that, you know?

[scarimonious]

Ugh this is awful. I'd heard about her husband's abuse but had no idea about hers too. I know I bemoan the loss of the fourth wall every once in a while, but it's things like this that make me glad it's being broken down so that we can have these discussions.

[katekat]

Agreed, totally agreed! though I'm also surprised that there isn't more discussion of it in the fan spaces i'm in - i don't know if it's just that people aren't posting because it's LJ/DW or if it's that they don't know. it seems to have had limited (but at least some) reach on tumblr.

and i just cannot over-agree with you about the whole conversation thing. it has to happen. especially in cases like these.

[biodamped]

I... loved her books as a child. :/ This is the first I've even heard of this, and it kind of makes me want to get out of bed and take them all off my shelves immediately.