I actually wanted to address an earlier point you made about this entire topic understandably being repulsive and making the people who mention the problem look insane.
This actively applies to the thing I was talking about. You cannot point out that the artist in question is an unabashed pedo of a higher level of grossness than average because what happens is that the people who like the art style of the Mega Man games he worked on start feeling bad for liking them, so the whole thing gets shut down.
You can't even be oblique about it because the pedos who know and are into that part then ask for more info in a disingenuous manner. You know they know because the ones who ask tend to have a history of porn posting, as
@Brenda Holiday helpfully illustrated above.
It’s very well-worn ground by now: the question of paedophilic artists, their work, and whether appreciation of that work implicates the audience.
“Separate the art from the artist” becomes most contentious in cases involving pedos because they do not reliably present as
obvious monsters. The idea that they are always visibly grotesque or easy to spot is a media creation (I wonder why
Hollywood would do this?). In reality, they often blend in, pass as normal, and disguise themselves as friends or peers. That camouflage is part of what makes them dangerous.
Quite often, people who are not known to be paedophiles will publicly defend exposed paedophiles, or at least defend their work. When one of those defenders is later exposed, it casts their earlier defence as suspicious. This happens often enough that people who follow these cases have become reflexively wary of such defences. Roman Polanski is an obvious example, though there are plenty of smaller internet cases and lolcows where the same pattern has played out.
Pointing this out does not invalidate the original criticism of the artist. There is, however, a distinction to be made between
shielding a piece of art from backlash aimed at its creator, and allowing yourself to be
dragged down alongside that creator because you cannot bring yourself to separate the work from the person behind it.
I like Resident Evil but I wouldn't come to Capcom's defence all of a sudden, especially if it was undeniable, otherwise any attempts to defend them would basically amount to me muddying the waters.
Fetishists—paedophiles are fetishists in the broad sense that their paraphilia is directed towards children—often drift into a kind of quasi-exhibitionism sooner or later. Like other fetishists, they test boundaries, push as far as they think they can, and feign ignorance when challenged. Porn posters are effectively doing that: doing what they can expose people to their porn because that arouses them in some way.
The problem is that those who are pretending not to "know" what they are doing are often camouflaged among people who are sincerely ignorant, and those sincerely ignorant people end up forming the bulk of the defence force around the art. Statistically speaking, if every buyer and defender of the game was a pedo, that's point to things being a lot more fucked up than we can imagine.
I look at it like this:
Past behaviour (evidence of pro pedo or explicit pedo activity) + "I don't know" = feigned ignorance, look on in doubt.
Past behaviour (no evidence of pro pedo or explicitly pedo activitiy) + "I don't know" = sincere ignorance, benefit of the doubt
Scepticism is always warranted regardless but it's not something I instantly go to. The majority of people aren't pedos so that's another thing to factor. If you're especially adamant it might be worth checking post history to confirm suspicions, but
I'm a dickhead who always approaches in good faith first.
Basically, don't shield the pedo simply because you like their work. Treat the work as though it no longer belongs to them. Whatever value they managed to put into the world is greater than their value as people, and they themselves deserve to be discarded—
Damnatio memoriae.
