Neil Gaiman: Classic Or Dud

No I am not, have never been and never intend to be a goth. Does that answer the second one.

My Modern Novel teacher (Scott Bradfield - a pretty good writer himself; check out _The History of Luminious Motion_) went on a mini- rant about Gaiman one class - pretentious bastard, no-talent hack, bla bla bla. And this was back in 1995! I'd hate to see what he'd say now.

I never thought I was a goth though I was accused of it recently on wearing dark red lipstick and elbow length black lace gloves. No one seemed to realise I was doing eighties revival. Sigh...........

x0x0

Of course Gaiman is a follow on from Moore - the latter was his mentor and I hear that they still send letters under pseudemoms to each other's columns.

David:

The History of Luminous Motion is a fine novel, probably the one I remember most fondly from 1996, but hardly gets Bradfield off the Gaiman hook. Teenagers becoming Warlocks and drawing pentangles on their hands? Neil would have been proud. Where is SB based, by the way? Is it East Coast?

His children's novel was, uh, OK. I bought the special edition for the artwork. American Gods wasn't particularly special, but not awful.

I've never read any of the Sandman/Neverwhere/graphic novels... or really, anything else he's done.

am reading smoke and mirrors right now, will get back to you.

Good Omens is brilliant, and I keep meaning to nick it back off my mate who has had it now for about 4 years.

Andrew - I only bought Kindly Ones as a whole graphic novel, I was a bit of a late starter in the Sandman books. In fact I've only read about 5 so far anyway.

As for his other work, my favourite Gaiman comics are actually Black Orchid and The High Cost of Living. The former is a clever subversion of superhero clichés (better than Frank Miller's attempts to do the same thing), and the latter just sums up perfectly what's good about Gaiman's writing (his endless humanism, mainly). The Time of Your Life wasn't quite as good as the first Death series, and Signal to Noise and Violent Cases were both interesting but somewhat artsy. Gaiman's books are entertaining, but not brilliant.

About Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore: I don't think Gaiman has ever surpassed his mentor. His work has been constantly good, unlike Moore's, but at his best Moore still beats him. Also, Moore is more visually oriented, and his comics are always innovative both on the visual and the textual level. Gaiman, on the other hand, is more of a traditional writer; his work usually has too much text, and that is always a bad thing for a comic.

Well, that and the fact that Gaiman == Gilderoy Lockhart. (truth copyright Angela Cotter)

this is arrant nonsense... well, whatever about the Kindly Ones, the Wake was a long essay in wanky tiresomeness that I only bought for the sake of completism.

no way. kim newman rules. (and you're forgetting the velvet suits and cane).

The last two issues of Sandman (the Chinese story and the Shakespeare story) were unnecessary, admittedly. But being a long time reader of the comic, I couldn't help but be moved by seeing all the series' characters gather one last time for the wake and the funeral. Call me a sentimentalist.

What's Signal to Noise like? anyone?

It's a Gaiman/McKean collaboration, and it's about a dying film-maker who tries to direct his last movie inside his head. It's actually quite good, better than Violent Cases anyway, because it isn't as artsy and pretentious as that one.

_American Gods_ was damn good, though. The best parts of the
book were the parts where the hero was going all domestic,
renting an apartment, going on dates, etc. Neil Gaiman could
write great "normal" stories, minus murder and magic.

Incidentally, according to the TV credits, Neverwhere was based on an idea by Lenny Henry; although the concept of there being a secret underground London is a very old legend, especially the bit about the giant boars. They supposedly escaped from Smithfield market into the River Fleet, and their descendants are down there somewhere still.

the whole thing has an element of Myst/Riven looks about it.

I think it's supposed to be Delirium from Sandman:

http://www.obscure.org/~domino/images/delirium.jpg

...though if I remember correctly, Gaiman denies it in some of his introductions to the Sandman books and says Tori is more like Death. Anyway, the book where that strip is taken from does feature Delirium visiting an S/M club where a Tori Amos song is playing on the background.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/thewire/pip/4uyaw/

no Listen Again link on page but it's here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio3_promo.shtml
under 'The Wire'

http://www.ojaiwan.net/cwimages/prophecy3theasce_01.jpg

wonder if this means Coraline will be decent or not.... i <3 experimental animation and the handmade everything production... but Neil Gaiman?! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coraline_(film)

Will refuse to date a Gaiman fan.

Haha, am reading a Gaiman novel at the moment. It's quite good, but basically just Terry Pratchett ripped out of Discworld and slapped onto America. Nothing outstanding, but a pleasant read.

from a place of ignorance I have always had a "ewww" feeling about this person- probably because I think that great literature is already "goth" enough, thanks.

Will refuse to date a Gaiman fan.

oooh handy filter thx

x-post would that be American Gods, Sick Mouthy? That's a pretty good book if so, the only one of his I've read.

Aye, that's what I'm reading. I've also read Anansi Boys, and the one with Pratchett from years ago.

i like Gaiman a lot but generally think his novels are a bit rub. his best work is either Sandman or his children's/YA novels - both Coraline and The Graveyard Book are aces.

Maybe I should revive my Kipling thread for this but I just started reading Puck of Pook's Hill, and the idea behind American God's is basically Puck's monologue with America substituted for England:

'But they didn't all flit at once. They dropped off, one by one,
through the centuries. Most of them were foreigners who
couldn't stand our climate. They flitted early.'

'How early?' said Dan.

'A couple of thousand years or more. The fact is they
began as Gods. The Phoenicians brought some over
when they came to buy tin; and the Gauls, and the Jutes,
and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles brought
more when they landed. They were always landing in
those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they
always brought their Gods with them. England is a bad
country for Gods.

...

They were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the Old Things. But
what was the result? Men don't like being sacrificed at the
best of times; they don't even like sacrificing their farm-
horses. After a while, men simply left the Old Things
alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the Old
Things had to scuttle out and pick up a living as they
could."

I liked "Good Omens" in my Pratchett years, and now I am twice as old I remember it more fondly than the Discworld series, and my embarrassment at former Pratchett fandom leads me to believe that maybe it was good because of Gaiman, and that I should read Gaiman's other work; but maybe I'm just a little too hasty to deny my disowned teenage canon and swap it for someone else's.

Anyway I saw a band called American Gods last year and they were v good, so perhaps I should have faith in their apparent name source.

(None of this is of any use or interest to anyone else, but what I mean to say is that I'll be lurking around the thread picking up recommendations so I can see which of my kneejerk suspicions is right)

i enjoyed american gods.

it's a lot like the thing he did with early sandman (and moore did with watchmen and top 10, and morrison did with zenith) - rescuing characters from obscurity. is fun on a 'spot the reference' level.

anansi boys has been languishing on my amazon wishlist from before it was published...

Puck of Pook's Hill is great, Clotpoll! The story with the Roman Centurion is particularly atmospheric...

Anansi Boys is pretty unmemorable. I'm quite up for the Graveyard Book, he writes well for children.

I'm looking forward Coraline, but that's really down to being a Henry Selick fan and the hopes that one day he will do something as winsome as The Nightmare Before Christmas again.

what's the current Gaiman/Russell Sandman comic like?

What's that, DV? I can't find any info on it. I love P Craig Russell (I assume that's the Russell in question).

zomg spacecadet we are in oppositeland of teenagedom:

my embarrassment at former Pratchett Gaiman fandom leads me to believe that maybe it was good because of Gaiman Pratchett, and that I should read Gaiman's Pratchett's other work; but maybe I'm just a little too hasty to deny my disowned teenage canon and swap it for someone else's.

Or maybe Good Omens is just good in its own way?

I'LL FORM THE HEAD

I hate Gaiman but I may go see Coraline.

Pratchett gets a bad rap, he's a smart guy - probably smarter than Gaiman, despite being a less gifted storyteller. Not that I'd actually bother to read one of his novels now, but I'm glad I did.

Good Omens is class, even if some of the jokes are pretty dated now. might be the best thing either of them have done.

Hooray for Youtube scrobbler, a great idea!

Oops sorry guys wrong thread I'll go back to the last.fm area...

'Anansi Boys' is a big dull dud, sadly. 'Good Omens' is still good, though.

Anansi Boys was a borderline-racist embarassment.

What's that, DV? I can't find any info on it. I love P Craig Russell (I assume that's the Russell in question).

Russell's writing and drawing an adaptation of The Dream Hunters, the old Gaiman-written Amano-illustrated Sandman prose book.

The voice casting for Coraline looks promising at least: Keith David (cat), John Hodgman, French & Saunders

I love Keith David!

I have high hopes.

Meantime, Newbery Award ahoy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/books/27newb.html?_r=1&8dpc

The film is good -- nice 3D -- even if they added a co-conspirator boy and kinda muffed the 'second climax.'

Of course, it's more American than the book (not just the setting change). I'm kinda curious about what the Stephin Merritt stage musical version will be like...

I am looking forward to this, the animation looks lovely.

Yeah, should be a treat. It will be interesting to compare it to MirrorMask since Gaiman's said that was essentially his own demi-adaptation of the book's story.

the single They Might Be Giants song kinda sticks out, though.

They Might Be Giants? o_O

Quite a bit of the score employs children's choral stuff. Nothing scarier.

ha I thought that was TMBG, other dad even looked just like John Flansberg.

Before this (Coraline I mean) I hadn't seen a 3D film since the red & blue specs days and so maybe I was just a little blown away by what technology now affords but holy shit I really enjoyed this movie. When she first opened the door to the stretchy blue tunnel I actually caught myself gasping.

Also as far as his books go I think I benefited from reading Anansi Boys first of his books, I do still like it but it's not nearly as enveloping as American Gods or The Cemetery Book.

He has a short story about, um, some kids and a weird house in a garden with a warning on it or something I read one night and found actually frightening...I have a terrible memory though and don't remember it's name or what compilation it's from.

Did anyone else see Coraline, then? Just got back from a 3D showing, since those are about to stop, I hear -- great film, echoing Morbz and Nickalicious in praise for it, another Selick slam-dunk and I was pleased to see how relatively packed the theater was for it a couple of weeks after release. Thinking of it, MirrorMask and Stardust as a sort-of group in three different ways to adapt similar variants makes for good contemplation.

mirrormask wasn't an adaptation of anything, i don't think? unless that's not what you mean.

In the promo/commentary/whatever on the MirrorMask DVD Gaiman talks about how MirrorMask and Coraline (the book) were simultaneous riffs on the same general idea -- I forget the exact details.

So, it turns out Lucien the Librarian in Sandman might've been a self-portrait.

http://blog.shelfari.com/.a/6a00d8341e478253ef0120a4e31b10970b-pi

http://blog.shelfari.com/.a/6a00d8341e478253ef0120a4e31b06970b-pi

http://blog.shelfari.com/.a/6a00d8341e478253ef0120a4e31ae8970b-pi

http://blog.shelfari.com/.a/6a00d8341e478253ef0120a4e31ae0970b-pi

That's quite a lot of books! I wonder what percentage of them he has actually read? Anyway, gotta love the jackalope head on the wall.

Gaiman reads Hiaasen? GET OUT.

Also interesting that he keeps a paperback of Carrie among his multiple editions of Coraline...

Good thing the dude doesn't move very often.

back when i used to read his blog (sigh) i was quite in envy of the fact he had a basement library. it just seemed like the coolest thing you could have. but er that looks like daylight, so i guess he's moved?

loving this comment on the link:

LOL,

My library's about 50% larger, not to mention far more varied. Significant lack of Asian lit in NG's library, lots of pulpish stuff like King. I'm sure that his is more valuable by virtue of some of the first editions I saw in the photos, but he's thin on a lot of literature and important writers (Ellison, Lessing, Grass, Murasaki, Tasso, Calvino, etc) and essayists. FYI, I read 2-3 books a day, which over 30 years brings my personal reading total up to about 25,000 books, most of which I've retained in my personal library

thanks for that dude

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackalope

This joke was employed by Ronald Reagan to reporters in 1980 during a tour of his California ranch. Reagan had a rabbit head with antlers, which he referred to as a "jackalope", mounted on his wall. Reagan liked to claim that he had caught the animal himself.

but er that looks like daylight, so i guess he's moved?

No, the windows are clearly at ground level, on the top of fairly high walls = the shelves are all underground. On his blog today he laments that the upstairs library where all the cool reference books live isn’t shown.

I know he’s looking at moving back to Britain in the next few years, will probably have to book an entire ship if and when.

i did wonder about that. it's sort of insufficiently basementy for my liking. although i guess it's a much more ecological way of having a basement library.

Longish article on Gaiman in the New Yorker. I had no idea that he was mixed up in Scientology.

Wow, that's for sure. Very interesting.

Maybe one day Suri Cruise will become a famous author.

Great article - thanks for the link.

He's marrying Amanda Palmer, though I suppose thats old news now?

!! News to me! I just found out a couple of weeks ago that he and mary were divorced. I need to keep up.

I think they only publically admitted they were even dating about a month back.

Yeah that was the other thing I was all ORLY about. Engagement via Sharpie, hm.

So do you think amanda palmer was a gaiman fangirl as a youth and now she has grown up to fulfill her teenage fantasies (as well as those of thousands of similar girls)?

gaiman is surrogate for robert smith obv

lol

One thing's for sure: She enjoys nekkid antics on the red carpet

I tried having a crush on Neil Gaiman in high school and it never really worked.

I just wasn't goth enough to get worked up over him.

i enjoyed sandman up until i realized neil gaiman ends all of his complex multi-issue storylines with the same damn whimpering deus ex machina non-ending every time out. i'd still probably rate a couple of the short story issues. (i haven't dared approach his novels for this very reason vis a vis time-investment.)

I'm not very goth and don't care about Gaiman's writing but I would fuckin' wreck that.

I only know anything about either Gaiman or Palmer because of my friends going on and on about either/both all the time. I've only ever read one Gaiman book (the one he did with Pratchett) and I'm no Dresden Dolls fan at all.

i'm a sentimental fool and all but the neil gaiman & amanda palmer thing delights me so much-- they are such a power couple!

At Worldcon, the international science-fiction convention, where he was the guest of honor in August, people walked around wearing pins that read “Neil Gaiman! Squeeeeeee!”—an expression of hysterical enthusiasm.

Ian R-M has so much to answer for.

"Squeee" has been around a lot longer than our young mr cuddlestein. God, I hate that word.

Fair to blame Jhonen Vasquez for that one. Wonder what he's been up to, post-Invader Zim?

Have we mentioned his non-fiction biography of Douglas Adams, written in an annoying faux-Adams styleeee?

The NYer link notes the faux-Adamsness. (Americans should beware, their editions are often heavily revised by other hands.)

Wonder what he's been up to, post-Invader Zim?

Apparently he's working on a (presumably animated - fuck, I hope so) movie version of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac! I was no fan at all of Zim, but THAT as a dark, scribbly animated movie could potentially be freaking awesome.

It could also be hideous. Please don't anyone let Tim Burton touch it.

okay this is weird, i found out today that one of my close associates is his son, which was very strange as most of our other associates operate on a vastly different arts/culture platform and have no idea who NG is. son and dad are quite, quite different afaict.

you work at g00gl3?

yeah he's said that he doesn't understand half of what his son tells him about his job, and usually just smiles and says "That's brilliant."

no, not a work association. but i will say his son is really, really talented in quite a few different ways.

Don't know if I ever posted this, a 2006 interview:

http://www.citypages.com/2006-11-29/news/enter-sandman/all

http://io9.com/5628181/neil-gaimans-sandman-coming-to-tv-at-last?skyline=true&s=i

Would watch. A way better idea than a movie.

Wow. Sandman could actually make a really great series, esp if it's on HBO or something.

that nyer profile of him last year was pretty great - kinda let him hang himself with his own rope

I think this would work only if it was traditonal animation. No way do I want to see a CGI Sandman.

Who said anything about animation?

I did. I said that this would work only if it was traditional animation. If they're gonna make it in live action, it will look awful.

Well, you know best.

He pioneered the author-as-internet-celebrity trend, right? So, dud.

Doesn't have to be CG Tuomas, just a decent actor with white make-up, a wig and a big black cloak.

will watch. I saw some Supernatural and it was alright. just glad someone got in before Tim Burton.

the right wig is key

He pioneered the author-as-internet-celebrity trend, right? So, dud.

Wait, what?

He has had a blog for like ten years, and I think it's pretty popular. Not sure if he really pioneered it, or if he's totally a celebrity though.

It's not a bad blog, really.

Anyway, rumor has it he's still trying to make a movie of "Death: The High Cost of Living", and that he plans to (ulp) direct it. Oh ffs, let Del Toro do it.

"let"

Like he wouldn't.

He got married last night in Berkeley.

I'm sure goth girls are rending their garments on livejournal at this very moment.

Hob Gadling is prolley one of my favorite characters in all of comix.

I don't like Amanda Palmer and sadly it has a lot to do with me liking Neil Gaiman far too much. I'm not proud of it.

You're allowed to not like Amanda Palmer, she's very irksome.

I thought all these years it was Hob GaLDing, I can't believe it. But Drugs OTM, he is a great character.

I've been slowly and not particularly intently re-reading Sandman over the last couple of weeks, and I've been finding the quirky historical one-issue stories generally a lot more arresting than the long Important arcs so far, which is pretty much the opposite reaction to the one I had when I was first reading the series as a teenager. Just read the Augustus issue followed by the Emperor of the US one, both of which are great.

Yeah - I've noticed he works better in short form. My two fave bits of his are probably that Emperor Of The US story and the Warhol story he did in MIRACLEMAN. Probably add "Murder Mysteries" in there as well.

Actually, I think I ripped off (well, not necessarily, it is a true story, minus Gaiman's embellishments) that Emperor story for a story I submitted to my high school anthology.

New prequel miniseries announced with JH Williams on art:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=39721

^ Sandman, that is.

!

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=48465

“The room broke out into cheers again as the panel brought up the image of the name Miracleman, playing a video of writer Neil Gaiman speaking about the character.
“Miracleman #25 has been sitting in the darkness, nobody’s seen it…I love the idea that it’s finally going to be seen,” Gaiman said, calling it the “big incomplete book of my life,” and announcing Marvel’s intention to bring the material back into print.

Quesada told the cheering audience that in January 2014 they will be printing the “Miracleman” material and Gaiman’s end to the story.”

I'm thinking abt reading The Sandman and don't know whether to get the new recolored editions that are the only ones available in print, or track down the old original ones. The new ones look more "true" to the subject matter and are probably "better" but gosh they look so generic and sterile and lack all of the charm of the original ones (which are so much more true to their era)

OG on left, new recoloring on right

http://comicsalliance.com/files/2010/09/sandman1.jpg
http://comicsalliance.com/files/2010/09/sandman2.jpg
http://comicsalliance.com/files/2010/09/sandman3.jpg

it almost looks like the way that remixed/remastered version of Pearl Jam's "Ten" sounds, like do you not realize that so much of the charm is that it's a product of a specific era??

I would go with originals for the sake of nostalgia, but some of that '90s Vertigo coloring was the worst. Looked like somebody puked rust all over the page.

can't accuse Oliff or Vozzo of that though. seps got terrible around Brief Lives but solid after that.

a lot of his novels are cheap on amazon kindle today, in the UK anyway (maybe connected with new neverwhere story on the radio?)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/b/ref=s9_acsd_al_bw_clnk_r?node=4725112031

How the Marquis Got His Coat Back
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080xppt

Quesada told the cheering audience that in January 2014 they will be printing the “Miracleman” material and Gaiman’s end to the story.”

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, October 13, 2013 7:48 AM (three years ago)

lol

did that not happen?

Golden Age was released as hardback but I don't know about Silver Age.

Indirect but: Cinamon Hadley, who became the inadvertant model for Death in The Sandman, has passed:

https://www.comicmix.com/2018/01/06/cinamon-hadley-the-girl-who-was-death-has-died/

Rest in Peace, or head off to your next adventure, Cinamon Hadley. You gave Death of the Endless her face and her smile. https://t.co/lsikh0BHCW

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 6, 2018

Dud.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/19/neil-gaiman-apologises-skye-breaking-lockdown-rules-new-zealand

lol I had no idea he was married to Amanda Palmer, but other than being a thread on ILX I have no idea who she is anyway.

OMG!!!!! why did you not also post this to the Amanda Palmer thread???

He apparently has never opened that thread.

Bingo.

simple simon met a gaiman going to his third home to spread some rona..

Though I'd never opened a Neil Gaiman thread till now.

he writes those shit comics that aren't viz or beano!

lol if you can call that writing

I watched about half of season 1 of American Gods and it was some insufferable shite that even the great Ian McShane couldn't ameliorate with his fine presence.

I liked Good Omens and Neverwhere, have given up on everything I've looked at since then, including American Gods which I found not of interest from any angle.

It's easy to criticise but who among us can honestly say they wouldn't feel inclined to fly 11,000 miles to get out of being locked up with A. Palmer?

New Zealand maybe not a great place to go to patch up a rocky relationship.

xp a guy who chose to marry Amanda Palmer and have a child with her?

We actually have the answer to that and it is no.

Fun fact: the Gaelic name for the Isle of Skye is An t-Eilean Sgitheanach.

I'm sure Neil Gaiman speaks it like a native... a native of Hampstead, that is.

I bitched about this on the Amanda palmer thread. Theres no hospital for a couple hundred miles for the inhabitants of Skye and little reason for them to get covid without outsiders coming in

Who would have thought some rich entitled London wanker who 'loves Skye more than anything' could be that selfish?

Runrig are from Skye, if he could take out one or two of them with his London diseases it'll all have been worth it.

think yr more of a londoner than he is, tom -- he grew up in east grinstead (parents = scientologists) , living there on and off till 1987, then moved to wisconsin in the early 90s

Runrig also appear in the Duolingo Gaelic course pretty early on, probably before Skye.

(xp) A Sassenach incomer all the same.

that i will not deny

Reminds me, I work with a guy from the Canary Islands who told me their nickname for mainland Spaniards is 'los Godos', the Goths.

I've been listening to the Sandman audio drama on Audible and it's...not bad, I guess? I don't listen to audio-books much as my attention span with these things is pretty abysmal. But some chapters have been enjoyable, in particular the Dr Destiny storyline. The episode set in the diner was creepy was fuck.

Can't say I care much for Death's voice actress. I know the character is meant to be quirky and upbeat, but she sounds far too high-pitch squeaky (I actually thought it was Kristen Schall for a minute) and a bit one-note. It's too bad, as aside from her the "Sound of Her Wings" episode was done really well.

Creepy as fuck

Didn't know this existed. Kristen Schall might actually be a good Death!

Schall would have more range, I'd reckon. I'll give Dennings another chance when the next Death story comes up, she might improve.

The second part of the audio series is out. They actually went ahead and cast Schall as Delirium, so in any scene where she interacts with Death (Kat Dennings), the two are impossible to tell apart! Still, Season of Mists and A Game of You are two of my favourite extended Sandman stories, so this should be good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00120cb

^ Desert Island Discs from earlier in the month

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4JQZ297tX36CzL1JSkQHy4D/nine-things-we-learned-from-neil-gaimans-desert-island-discs

and that link seems to be the bones of the talking.

Anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWJTB6FPVaA

looks good enough

though there is a slight element of cheapness about it that seems unavoidable in every Gaiman adaptation for some reason

it's an issue with clive barker as well. something about british horror/fantasy.

akm
Posted: November 5, 2016 at 8:52:29 AM

did that not happen?

lol

(Candyman seems perfectly suited to its budget fwiw imo)

Currently being accused of sexual assault - allegations are being reported by right-wing/TERF sources but I wouldn’t be surprised if more people come forward just based on things I’ve heard.

Is that a fair description of Tortoise media? A couple people recently recommended their pod series on Amber Heard to me, it sounded like it was fighting the misogynistic narratives about her

the person who wrote the article is one of Rowling's friends or so I read

ddg'd and it's a three-hour four-part streaming audio thing, not an article, and the person who co-wrote and -hosts it is Boris Johnson's sister

someone has started a transcripion that podcast btw, for people who don't want to listen to 4 hours

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ql2bHdKtIYcu9EuLH2kakzMIAMfNnoDU/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pxWmmxfMTIbxJJ3WYFhiyVPph01UUMxx/view

Not sure if this is the whole thing yet, I only started reading the first one, where it's very explicit that the situation as presented by the accuser is complicated because she did admit consent at times.

I think it’s reasonable to debate whether a nanny can meaningfully consent to their employer on the first day of the job. I’m sympathetic to both positions. However, regardless of consent, he clearly has serious personal issues.

exactly

another thing people seem to be missing is that the accuser approached these journalists. Now, you may think poorly of boris johnson's sister (I do), but it is who she approached. she speaks in the podcast directly about the experience. I keep seeing people on social media acting like this is hearsay.

This is anecdotal obv but I heard from a friend who knows some people in his orbit and is absolutely sure the allegations are true, reports that this is a pattern of behavior towards young female fans - obtaining consent and then immediately pushing/violating boundaries to the point of assault.

i'm friends with at least two people close to him and palmer and they've been silent on this and I'm afraid to ask

idk who this person is, but here’s a summation: https://politicsdancingxyz.substack.com/p/manufacturing-consent

seems not great

here's the transcript of the third episode, which talks quite a bit about the family involvement with scientology and is less relevant to the actual subject matter of the overall podcast, though it's interesting.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EzzSc5zfwgllD_FbG16-CyYv7-QyyvL9/view

anyway, these transcripts are damning enough. Gaiman and Palmer have both gone silent on social media, I assume looking for a crisis PR firm. I don't see how either of them recover from this, it is bad.

Also, regardless of whether and when consent was obtained, a 61-year-old man should not be sleeping with a 21-year-old woman. That shit is creepy.

Out of all the summation in the Substack link above, this one infuriates me the most:

Responding to Scarlett’s allegations, Gaiman described her as “mentally ill” and said she had a condition “associated with false memories”

What an absolutely _disgusting_ argument to make. A "condition associated with false memories"? Is that what you call the result of being repeatedly lied to by someone you trust, repeatedly being betrayed by someone you trust? Mental illness, suicidality, _none_ of it justifies sexual assault, none of it makes someone's accusations of sexual assault less credible. For someone to say something like that, that suggests to me active predation. When someone is going to abuse someone else, they go for someone vulnerable. Someone who's mentally ill. Someone who's been taught to not _trust_ themselves, _believe_ themselves. Sexual assault is a confusing, disorienting experience. It galls and frustrates me how difficult it is for so many people to understand that reality.

The ones that hurt most, the ones who offend me most, are the ones who put on a show of being good allies. I'm not sure they're _lying_. The impression I get is that it never occurs to them that the rules could apply to them. That _they_ could ever be a predator. I've personally seen it over and over and over again.

I'm a trans woman. _Sandman_ was the first representation of a trans woman in media I saw that didn't treat her as a joke or a predator. Gaiman's work means a lot to me. Tortoise Media? I don't know what they'd think of someone like me. I don't know what Boris Johnson's sister would think of something like me. Based on what I know about them I don't think highly of them.

And NOTHING IN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH MATTERS. None of it. None of it excuses or ameliorates what Gaiman did. None of it invalidates the experiences of the women he did it to. I'm sad and I'm angry and I'm... not surprised. That's the worst of it. Anybody, at any time, could be accusing of sexual assault, and I wouldn't be surprised. That doesn't mean it's true. False allegations of SA exist. I've seen them happen. This, though? I know enough to be able to say that this isn't one of them.

thank you kate!

also xp, crisis management firm was engaged as of last week
https://archive.md/cyoXt

neil gaiman: monster

we do, of course, have the "rolling #metoo thread for sexual harassment in the music industry so no one misses out when artists we don't give a fuck about like Tim Westwood and Bassnectar get caught"

i don't know that we have a "rolling thread for one an artist we _do_ give a fuck about turns out to be a monster"

god, i can't think of a better synecdoche for that concept than neil gaiman

-

there's that book _monsters_ that came out, i read it and didn't agree with

what i _did_ agree with was this video essay by the Leftist Cooks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T31HKuabyMA

the video connects a lot of the things i've been thinking about lately in that way that a lot of the video essays i like do

for instance, the leftist cooks repeatedly point out that we do, in fact, live in a dystopia. weirdly enough, right now i'm able to think in post-dystopian terms. not just how do we _survive_ in a dystopia, but how do we act to end its demise?

-

my adhd has been bouncing all over the place and frankly my main focus hasn't been posting on the internet, it's been hot transgender sex. because i think hot transgender sex is way more important than internet posting. some under- or un-explained abstracts of posts i didn't bother writing:

* there are a lot of doctor who episodes where doctor who comes to a dystopia and overthrows it. i was thinking about what a doctor who episode where doctor who came to overthrow our dystopia would look like, and i decided it would probably be girldi-- sorry, "gridlock". i haven't seen it in, like, a decade or so, but the way i remember it is that everybody is on these cars cut off from each other in nuclear family units - _incredibly fucking queer_ nuclear family units, but nuclear family units - spending their whole lives subsisting and looking at screens that lie. trapped in a system that was designed for a good reason and _used_ to work, but has long since ceased to be necessary and is only serving to immiserate everyone involved. except the only way to end their collective immiseration is to act collectively, in _opposition_ to the forces that they rely on to keep them alive.

i'd say rtd's marxism isn't subtle, except i wasn't able to frame the episode in this way until, like, today. so maybe it is subtle.

* i feel like there's a categorical difference between america as a dystopia and something like north korea as a dystopia. north korea is one of those dystopias that exists because it's protected by a hegemonic state - to my mind the three hegemonic states are the united states, russia, and china. all other states don't necessarily have the same opportunity to end their dystopian conditions that people in the three hegemons do. at least, that's my half-assed idea about how north korea has become the closest thing i can think of to "a boot stamping on a human face forever" - north korea exists because china _allows_ it to exist, just like the genocide in gaza continues largely because the united states of america is acting to make sure nobody stops the israeli government from continuing to genocide the palestinian people.

-

longer tangent:

i also think a lot about the roman catholic church as a dystopian organization, particularly its systemic role in sheltering clergy who perpetrate sexual abuse against child - how and why that happens. my half-assed sleep-deprived hot take: queer liberation completely destabilized the patriarchal power structure of the roman catholic church. the clergy provided an alternative social order to people who didn't fit into secular social norms. this was an exclusively male order. it was nominally celibate, meaning that you had a class of people for whom heterosexual intimacy and homosexual intimacy were equally taboo. since homosexual intimacy was taboo _everywhere_, well, it makes sense that you'd wind up with a lot of homosexuals in the priesthood.

so once homosexuality _stops_ being a sexual taboo in secular society... who's going to join a nominally celibate group? people whose sexual desires _continue_ to be socially stigmatized. they may even see celibacy as a better alternative to their desire to commit abusive, evil acts.

however, since there's a supply problem when it comes to priests, the power structure is willing to go farther to keep those priests, values them more. in addition, the presence of past anti-catholic prejudice has helped to reinforce a culture of silence - "we take care of our own". there might be a fear that if they let the public _know_ that one of their priests has been committing CSA, people might respond by saying, for instance, "you can't trust those catholics, they're all pederasts". this belief didn't come out of nowhere - there's a long history of anti-catholic prejudice, whose proponents do tend to say fucking stupid and absurd things like that. which means that they're protecting CSA perpetrators to protect themselves of being accused of being CSA perpetrators. it's super fucked up!

and this is all extra fucked up because this is an organization that has genuinely positive beliefs and values, one that's like beneficial and helpful to so many people. like at the center of people's lives. but the organization itself has gotten sucked into this cycle of trauma, secrecy, and fear. and what's the root cause of this? patriarchy. like, the sensible fucking thing to do when you can't get enough celibate males for your leadership positions is to, like, maybe open up leadership positions to people who aren't men and/or aren't celibate? of course catholicism doesn't do that, because they're ride or die team patriarchy.

i mean, as much as catholicism has helped me personally, i gotta admit that at this point i do think institutional roman catholicism does more harm than good. i don't see a path to reform it, to create an environment that doesn't, on a systemic level, lead to the normalization of things like CSA.

-

the reason i say this is because one of the things the leftist cooks point out is, like, the reason we all have to do this, the reason we all have to do this "the creator i love is a monster" grieving thing, is because the dystopian structure we live under self-selects for it. it actually creates these outcomes. there's this quote about wanting a world where "rape is as unthinkable to men* as cannibalism". and i think that's a really good analogy, and i won't say anything more about that because it gets nsfw.

* the leftist cooks take more of an explicitly gendered line than i do, and i don't _fully_ agree with it. they also say "If we examine power as opposed to fame, the poison of patriarchy, the poison of wealth, the poison of authority, the poison of being bigger and more important than other people, we find that its evil is fundamentally tied to owning women sexually." my asterisk to that is that what matters to me is not the gender of the abuser or the victim, but whether it replicates patriarchal modes of sexual abuse. the _vast majority_ of the time this does mean men sexually abusing women, so it's a reasonable approximation.

-

what i thought was really interesting though was the bit where they talked about people postulating alternatives to patriarchal capitalist parasociality. and one of the things they talk about is this push for a "return to web 1.5". i don't know what that means. i don't think that's workable. is this web 1.5? i feel like this is web 1.5. part of the reason _why_ i stick around here is because it rejects modes of interaction which are, like, hegemonic elsewhere on the internet. the other thing they talk about, though, and i think this does work, is places like patreon and its associated discords. like the thing is that "anti-capitalist" often gets read as "free" and not necessarily. patreon is fundamentally, like, unequal, in that people who have more money have more access to these spaces, it's gatekept by money. which sounds fucking terrible!

and like i _do_ that with select creators and it actually _works_? so that's weird, wasn't expecting that. the creators i follow aren't getting rich off of their patreons. they're barely scraping by. and they still do it because, like, it serves a purpose and a function for them and for the community, a lot of whom are, like... i mean, there are people on patreons who are literally homeless. anyone who believes it's stupid for homeless people to be patreon subscribers is, i believe, fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of poverty. when you're poor, you do things you can't _afford_ all the time, because you _can't afford what you need_. people need community, and weirdly joining a patreon for a creator whose work you like is one of the better ways of doing that.

and it also, the leftist cooks argue, provides a qualitatively different mode of parasociality than the sort of fandom one has of neil gaiman. the people whose patreons i subscribe to, i don't _stan_ them. i'm not gonna say who any of them are because it doesn't matter, they're not making art for everyone. i'm not, like, being secretive about this, literally i cannot possibly see any of you caring about these people's work. i am a fan, though, in a sense that's _categorically different_ from being a "stan", and i basically feel good about being a fan.

i mean if we talk about "cancelling"... the thing is i have a voice as a fan with them, right? if they do something awful i can _literally_ cancel my patreon subscription and that will materially effect them. i don't have to fucking post about it on bsky or whatever.

-

and that's a long ramble and maybe it's shit, but you know what, fuck it. the worst thing i can think to say about this post is that i'm shitting up a thread about neil gaiman. fuck neil gaiman.

I just read this after seeing it linked elsewhere and was hoping this wasn't the thread it got posted on tbh, even if her behaviour was, predictably, grossly irresponsible and predatory.

― rob

i agree, idk if it'll take but i'll revive this thread.

topic under discussion:

https://archive.ph/8SuMI

the preceding is an archive link to a detailed, graphic account just published of the sexual abuse neil gaiman committed. initial discussion was on the amanda palmer thread. the article makes a good case that palmer enabled the abuse. gaiman committed the sexual abuse.

here's the amanda palmer thread for reference

amanda palmer's open poem to jonathan chait (and other crimes)

Monster seems a pretty good description of this horrible human being.

continuing from amanda palmer thread

i think i just described grooming as complicatedly as possible

― ivy.

it's kind of a "use other words please" situation... for me, since people do use the word "grooming" against me simply for, like, existing, it's not a word i want to use. i mean that's the problem, a lot of times the people who are doing the bad behavior do the "darvo" thing and absolutely it has a chilling effect. it takes real, concerted effort for me to talk about what happened to me because, you know, all abusers claim to be the victims, so if i claim to be a victim, doesn't that make me actually an abuser?

it's that kind of weird fucked up logic that abuse snares a person in. i'm not stupid but my brain does get sucked into these weird illogical circular thoughts, even though i _know_ they're wrong, it still _feels_ right, because someone i _trusted_ said it. because abusers do go after people who have low self-esteem, who don't trust themselves. we're really easy to take advantage of. at the same time...

this seems like one of those things that's difficult to express without seeming like you're minimizing the actual crimes/abuse, justifying or forgiving it, which i am absolutely not, but this is a discussion board: one of the tragedies of the way abuse plays out is the way it seems to wire-in its repetition; a lot has been written about the way survivors feel the need to rationalize what happened and so reach out to abusers afterward, with seeming enthusiasm. this article left me thinking as well about the way this self-protection mechanism must be confusing for certain (non-psychotic/sociopathic) abusers, as well: if someone commits abuse, but then later is sent messages suggesting "i love you/loved the abuse," they too will be wired into rationalizing their own abusive behaviours. it's part of the awful cycle.

again, i am not trying to forgive or minimize the violence and trauma inflicted by gaiman here. i just find myself thinking about the education side of things, how maybe we don't do an adequate job of teaching people how crucial it is about evaluating consent in the moment, rather than trusting retrospective conversations? or maybe that's not the right way to formulate it - curious what others think.

― sean gramophone

sean i do agree with what you're saying.... i'm not here to excuse or minimize what gaiman did, but there's a reason it's so important to me that he could have stopped at any time.

because people make mistakes. because people learn what they're taught. because Kink Is Not Therapy. one of the things someone i know used to say a lot was "hurt people hurt people", and she said it like it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it isn't. breaking that cycle, though, does mean acknowledging it as a _cycle_. there's an old saying that "you can't con an honest man", and maybe, you know, you can't abuse an innocent woman. the problem is that none of us are _innocent_, that talking about the stuff i've seen and been through...

well, it makes me look like a "whore", doesn't it? use other words please, right? a sex worker. sex work is work. i haven't ever done that work, but the work conditions are honestly better than the job i recently left. and if i frame it in those terms, it's easier for me to talk about, even though I'm still ashamed about being kinky, about being a "slut".

-

am i rambling? maybe. the thing is this: i don't do kink right now, there's nobody i trust to do kink with, and that's _very difficult_ because kink is _very important_ to me and... i go to munches, i get out, and the first thing everyone says is "don't go to asylum underground" - it's not relevant to people who aren't local to where i am, but i do want to name it because, well. everyone i know will tell you that, for good reason, but a couple years ago i didn't know anyone. and i went to a munch and there was a lady there who was in charge of safety for the club that became asylum underground, and she had decades of experience, and she seemed to know what she was talking about - hell, in a lot of ways she _did_ know what she was talking about. and i trusted her. the people who trusted neil gaiman, he _seemed_ trustworthy, right? and i wound up not getting hurt directly, because i am avoidant, because i don't do things that i really _want_ to do. so i wound up _watching_, which... wasn't great either. i won't get into details here.

but to me, he's not a wolf in sheep's clothing. the world isn't made up of wolves and sheep. the fact that he was a rich and famous cis white man, that he had this structural advantage... nobody was in a position to hold him _responsible_. amanda palmer gets held more responsible than neil gaiman does, that's _not_ something specific to ILX, i'm not saying that as a _judgement_ on ILX. that's a reflection of a larger societal phenomenon. when something bad happens, women get held responsible in ways that men aren't. the problem _isn't_ that amanda palmer is being held responsible. i'm in no way saying that palmer _shouldn't_ be held responsible for what she did. there's just... a larger context.

which is this: how do we hold each other accountable _without_ saying "this person is a Bad Person"? that's why i like what ll did on the gisele pelicot thread... it was hard and it was fraught and the person she gave the advice to did take it personally, but that's how culture changes, that's how things get _better_. and ilx _has_ gotten better about these things. we have a record of it. i haven't even been here for 15 years. some people have been here from the beginning, and people here have... changed and grown, or they've left, willingly or no. it's not perfect but there's more to looking at what gaiman did in horror. none of us are qualitatively different from him, i don't think.

my experience is that a label like "abuser" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. because when i asked my abuser to stop doing that, please, the _second thing they said, after "i can't help it, you're too pretty", was "i'm not a good person". and when i've done bad things - nothing on the level of what gaiman did, and yes, i have done bad things, i'm not a Perfect Victim - the idea that i'm a "bad person" has given it an air of inevitability. of course i do bad things because i'm a bad person. if i'm _not_ a bad person, though... i take responsibility for the consequences of what i've done and then i can stop.

and i hate making it about me personally but it's, maybe paradoxically, the only way i know to address it on a systemic level. i don't know neil gaiman. i saw him speak once and he was witty and charming and sensitive and of course i don't know him and never did. and the things i've seen, they're not my stories to tell, not here. it's not "bad people", though. it doesn't help, i don't think, to divide the world into Good People and Bad People. actions and consequences. and right now, there are a lot of actions, and those of us here, we have limited ability to enforce consequences, and... it's possible. i believe that, i believe it's possible, _before_ people do the kinds of things neil gaiman did. before we make excuses and start justifying awful things because the people who did it aren't Bad People, because the people who did it are people we love. before we have no choice but to walk away, again.

amanda palmer gets held more responsible than neil gaiman does, that's _not_ something specific to ILX, i'm not saying that as a _judgement_ on ILX.

I haven't seen this happening. On ilx or elsewhere. I see people on the Amanda Palmer thread saying they DON'T want to hold her responsible. Though she has obviously been a target of ridicule here for years in a way that Gaiman hasn't been. But that was about drama kid/crowdfunding reasons.

idk i’m pretty sure she preyed on her own way on a young vulnerable woman , put her in the orbit of a chronic abuser, and did very little to help her when told about it. i don’t blame her directly for gaiman’s actions but she’s absolutely got some kind of responsibility here

god one of the worst things in that piece is palmer telling her “you’re like the 11th woman to come to me about this”. and????? you just kept letting happen to the point where there are eleven now?????

i was shocked that they were palling around with Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, who famously declared that she was more in love with her husband than she was with their children. Those people always seemed weird to me. They were!

michael stipe a real one for letting them have their bonfire tho

No lie about that.

journalistically a great article -as noted elsewhere they also published the Joss Whedon piece - hell of beat they’ve got :/

that these women are breaking NDA’s to speak publicly is profoundly moving

i had a hard time, like everyone, with the details. had to shut myself in my room & sob for a bit afterwards

his playbook, the fucked-up Scientology shit (that was wholly new to me), his complete lack of any boundaries at all, and the disturbing relationship between him & Palmer (the kid & the headphones broke my brain, like wtf)

all of it just makes me want to scream for like a year

i dont have anything to add except that it is weird & dumb to think about how much something like Sandman meant (means?) to me, and how when I was younger i was happy to attach that meaning by default onto him and just ascribe that gross god status onto him
that he already had ascribed himself even at a young age … just idk…
god help me for ever having heroes, what a wasted exercise

Yeah his work means a lot to a lot of people and this is grotesque.

I was vaguely interested in the Scientology background - I had some memory this but I didn’t realise because I haven’t read much of his work that he’d tapped into that experience for it. Ultimately the cycle of abuse is real, but…This is an extremely wealthy man who had all the time, money and space in the world to deal with these issues if they constituted a part of his fucked ip behaviour. Or…He’s just a predator.

One of the most haunting parts of that article was how young those women looked.

re the Scientology background, the quote at end of that section has really sat with me like a stone
… “When I was young, I had unbelievable chutzpah,” Gaiman says in the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously. “The kind of monstrous self-certainty that you only get normally in people who then go on to conquer half the civilized world.”

idk i’m pretty sure she preyed on her own way on a young vulnerable woman , put her in the orbit of a chronic abuser, and did very little to help her when told about it. i don’t blame her directly for gaiman’s actions but she’s absolutely got some kind of responsibility here

― ivy.

yeah if anybody is saying that they don't want to hold palmer responsible, it's not me, i _absolutely_ think palmer _should_ be held responsible for the things she did. i don't think anything justifies or excuses that. to me that _needs to be_ the core consideration, palmer's complete and total personal responsibility for what she did, gaiman's complete and total personal responsibility for what he did. that's not something i can enforce individually in any meaningful sense, but if i do have any small contribution to a collective culture of accountability, i want it to be that.

I agree

They're both scumbags who see everyone around them as things to be used, either sexually or financially.

Been texting w my friend who was an old school Sandman fan and she is upset :( my advice to her was gird yourself bc that’s all one can do)

She hadn’t seen it yet :(

one thing i will say (that someone else said better on bluesky) is that personally speaking i didn’t love the way his writing is being offered up in the article as a suggestion of “proof” or some kind of fingerprint trail of intent. To me his actions are the proof. His victims were fans! to imply that it was all there in the text all along also sub-implies, if you take that reading to its full extent, that they somehow should have known & were foolishly duped. That all the smarties who thought his writing was dumb or bad were right to do so BECAUSE IT WAS ALL RIGHT THERE.
I know that maybe that’s not the intent but even suggesting that math is a slippery slope. There’s tons of writers who have written similar or worse who don’t do what he has done to women. The retroactive magnifying glass never sits well with me.

idk i thought the article did something pretty nimble by bringing up the calliope story in sandman. like rereading it a few years ago i was like “wow what a story about how women’s minds and bodies and their sense of self-possession are just fodder for the self-stylized Great Male Artist to achieve his greatness”. i don’t think it’s presented as “proof” per se, just as a story that is now fundamentally changed by this information

then again i was reading the story simultaneously quickly (so much harrowing detail) and slowly (lots of breaks) so i could be giving it too much credit

i’m pretty mad bc before my reread the other year i hadn’t realized that wanda was the first trans woman i ever encountered in fiction who wasn’t a total caricature. anyway

God what a piece of shit Gaiman is. Palmer comes off badly too — self-involved as always and seemingly exasperated but not horrified by what she has learned about him. (Also it’s clear she had various people speak to the reporter on her behalf, provide text messages etc. to try to present her in a better light.)

But the abuse is him, and it seems pathological. The need to dominate, the patina of BDSM role play that seems like just a cover for abuse, the constant mindfuckery. The bit about the kid calling her a slave and Gaiman kind of tut-tutting about it, just so wtf.

Also the way he used his power and money in two different cases, basically holding the threat of homelessness over them to make them compliant and then buying their silence afterward. Repulsive.

Yeah his work means a lot to a lot of people and this is grotesque.

That’s especially sad, yeah. I know he has been kind of a beacon for a few generations of kids, especially the weird ones and sad ones and outsiders of all kinds.

I'm not any fan of his work (not read it, not sure I would bother now?) but I'm surprised the Scientology stuff isn't more well-known - I was aware of it (possibly only after the podcasts though - lots of discussion after those), and it seems pretty key, tbh.

Opposite, I didn't know about the Scientology aspect at all nor that his father was such a leading figure in it in the UK - pretty much the public face of it.

Never heard of it either and I've read a fair bit about scientology. I wouldn't use the word evil lightly but a truly evil organisation in so many cruel and unusual ways.

I knew Gaiman in the mid 1980s and he never ever mentioned the Scientology back then. I think this New Yorker profile from 2010 was the first time it was made public knowledge:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/01/25/kid-goth

I liked his work, but when I was in college many of my housemates loved his work, like dressed up as Sandman characters for Halloween. So this is demoralizing to read. It did make me wonder if he was doing these things for longer than the time depicted in the article, or if at some point in middle age a switch flipped… was it related to becoming more famous so he felt more powerful? Not that it’s only powerful men that do this… power is relative.

The thing that got me was when the girl talked about her self-hatred and how his behavior was reassuring to affirm that … the bf who assaulted me when I was 20 … I had the same reaction. I am a horrible person and he sees it and this is what I deserve … I sometimes forget what I was like at approximately her age.

Disclaimer since I've possibly not said it yet: Fuck Neil Gaiman

He always seemed to have not just fandom but super-fandom - from that New Yorker piece:

After he becomes rich and famous for his new work, Dream punishes him with a never-ending stream of ideas: “A man who falls in love with a paper doll. . . . An old man in Sunderland who owned the universe, and who kept it in a jam-jar in the dusty cupboard under his stairs. . . . A sestina about silence using the key words dark, ragged, never, screaming, fire, kiss.” A group of writers who are fans of Gaiman’s work have discussed writing their own versions of Madoc’s premises and assembling them in an anthology.

I mean that last bit is eye-rolling but also - Dan Brown doesn't get that. Gaiman seemed to be both a writer's writer and a best selling writer, and he came to Twitter at the right time to be very connected to both an artistic community around him and also hundreds of thousands of regular fans.

I used to think that was neat, now it just looks like more jaws of a trap, a shark's mouth of a trap.

The bit about his memory for things he’s read and manipulative behavior reminded me of “Noah Argentina” from that 77 thread.

The impression I've always gotten is that he considered himself over Scientology - the Vulture article suggests otherwise, but it's also worth noting that one of the red flags for Scientology's evil is a total opposition to psychiatry and psychology.

xp Switch flips into becoming a child sex offender in middle age do happen, so it's not too much of a stretch to see it happening with other types of sexual offenders.

think this New Yorker profile from 2010 was the first time it was made public knowledge:

It was made public knowledge in the ‘90s, because Scientology published lists of SPs online.

It seems unlikely that journalists in the UK, at least, didn't know about his background given that his father was the head of the Church of Scientology in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gaiman

Switch flips into becoming a child sex offender in middle age do happen, so it's not too much of a stretch to see it happening with other types of sexual offenders.

In Gaiman’s case there’s also the factor of growing celebrity and wealth as he has gotten older, which has put him in positions of power that he wasn’t in in his 20s. He may not be more inclined to abuse now, just more able to do it. The cases of the two different women who were essentially dependent on him for housing, that only happens if you have sufficient wealth and resources to provide the housing (and/or to threaten to take it away).

I can’t stop thinking about the kid and his headphones. I hope he gets a whole new family. I bet he’s dreaming of that too since his parents toss him from sitter to sitter like a potato.

I felt terrible for the kid and my first thought was that it'd be nice if divorce courts had the ability to flag the fact neither parents deserves custody

I think part of why the scientologist past wasn't flagged is that there's a general sympathy for people who get out of cults, combined with scientology's famously litigious past. You're primed to feel sorry for people who escaped, not suspect them of being a ticking time bomb of propagated abuse. It does seem like the strong anti-psychology propaganda stuck with him. The thing with scientology is that they're notionally anti-therapy because it's evil, but many of their practices are just discredited relics of psychology's past

neil's sister.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYDX-ACP2Kc

i'm dismayed that this didn't get more traction until now given this broke almost a year ago at this point, but I guess I should be glad it's getting attention at all

watching his sister's propaganda video makes it clear that the hero worship kool-aid was very very strong in the gaiman household.

I wouldn't exactly say the allegations hadn't gotten traction — reported widely last year, and discussed right here in this thread — but that the NY magazine story (like Rachel Aviv's Alice Munro story) takes the time and attention to detail and talking to the people involved to really present a broad, deep investigation. Makes it much harder to ignore, if any Gaiman fans have been so inclined.

i guess I mean I'm still running across people on social media who are learning about this for the first time.

This appeared in Private Eye a little while ago:

https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4D22AQG-w181yIzG1Q/feedshare-shrink_800/feedshare-shrink_800/0/1723737062776?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=BOcLwiGAP4dV_336anEhVitfQupSK9RctLDPbEF3OiU

ouch

but yeah I was surprised to learn there's another season of Sandman coming

though I shouldn't have been. we are clearly in the midst of a massive backlash on a number of fronts

They did scrap the 3rd season of Good Omens and replace it with a single "special" with no Gaiman involvement. Not exactly a proportionate response, granted.

it seems like a police investigation was dropped in 2023. hopefully a new one is opened. what was described in the article was not just cancellable but clearly criminal.

tbf I'm ambivalent about cancelling a project like a TV series that employs lots of people who are not NG and don't deserve to be punished for his actions. But Sandman is so identified with him it feels like reputation-washing even if that's not what's intended

xp I'm not going to reread that article, but I thought it was explicit that Pavlovich filed charges?

Six months plus eight days isn’t nearly a year, and in that time there have been multiple other people that have come forward, projects that have been cancelled or had Gaiman removed/stand down from them, and the time involved in legalling the NY story will have been substantial, let alone the reporting.

Tortoise may have gotten to buy a 230 year old newspaper off the back of their audio piece, but it was hardly a professional or coherent piece of journalism.

xp

I haven't heard anything about a third season of The Sandman - the second season was confirmed in 2022, and filmed between June 2023 and September 2024, with a gap for the strike. So there's a lot of momentum behind it, I wouldn't necessarily expect that it being canned or not is a referendum on him. Also of course there'll be a big hole in a lot of people's CVs if it disappears.

Good Omens Season 3 has been shortened to one 90-minute episode but that's only starting filming now (and he's not apparently involved)

Xpost to a lot of people!

yes, all of the existing tv deals, to my knowledge, either wrapped production and have no plans to continue or are dead in the water, at least in terms of further development

I'm assuming all the checks have been cut but I was pondering yesterday how it'd be nice if Amazon, Netflix, or whoever just dumped whatever payment was due in a fund earmarked for victims and told Gaiman's people to pound sand. It likely wouldn't be a good precedent for large corps to withhold payment for creative/production work, but tipping the scales in civil legal battles would be nice

terrifying. what a horrific man. alarming how among some he seemed to have had a reputation for being this hapless gentle soul.

AP's reaction in the article really speaks to her absolute narcissism and as ever she reminds me of the most committed narcissist i know IRL, who is vv "fabulous" and "generous" but is sure to surround herself with those who are vulnerable, and she exploits them and keeps them around as mascots and a supporting cast for her ongoing star performance.

there was even an incident where one of this group was assaulted by a male friend of hers and her reaction was more exasperation at being roped into an annoying bit of social drama than real horror.

Thread is moving fast - he's now posted something publicly.

https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2025/01/breaking-silence.html

He's learning, everyone, so let's go easy on him, yeah???

Every sentence of that seems designed to enrage

I am not reading that

I’ve spent some months now taking a long, hard look at who I have been and how I have made people feel.

Like most of us, I’m learning, and I'm trying to do the work needed, and I know that that's not an overnight process.

LOOOL not only is he learning, it has taken him "some months"
the audacity of a person to claim that "he's learning"

it was hardly a professional or coherent piece of journalism

it was three or four podcasts and they were coherent and professional, I'm not sure what your issue was with them.

"This didn't happen, and if it did, it was a misstep, and if it was a 'misstep', then I promise I will definitely take responsibility"

I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation.

Every sentence is like an apple with a snake inside it.

abusive people always write shit like this
it's infuriating

The two most prominent anti-$cieno journalists have both written about the real details of the Ocean At The End Of The Lane case - Tony Ortega on publication in 2013, and the recently-late, ex-high-level-clam Mike Rinder more extensively in 2023.

abusive people always write shit like this
it's infuriating

I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings, and that's something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's.

does he think he is being accused of not being "thoughtful"? this response has nothing to do with the accusations.

His reply was fine but I recognize that I’m exactly the type of person targeted by a Nigerian prince scam so there’s more than likely some manipulation I’m missing. For better or worse, I’m rarely disturbed by articles about sex pests but I found the Vulture article horrifying. I’m not smart enough to know whether this is criminal or a major societal problem but, in isolation, it felt very bleak but maybe I’m being manipulated with that too.

xp

right, I get that he's totally denying doing anything non-consensual, but it's still a jarring thing to suggest in response to graphic accounts of forcibly raping people

well he is saying that those graphic accounts were made because he wasn't "thoughtful" about the feelings of the accusers. which is bizarre. like in what sense? what is he talking about? how is "emotional availability" related to any of this at all?

if his argument is that these are vindictive exes trying to ruin him because they are bitter, he should say that.

it's certainly not true, but it would be consistent. it's weaselly to be like, "they are accusing me of horrendous crimes i didn't commit. but it's my fault for not being caring enough." what?

well he is saying that those graphic accounts were made because he wasn't "thoughtful" about the feelings of the accusers. which is bizarre. like in what sense? what is he talking about? how is "emotional availability" related to any of this at all?

I interpreted this as some kink-related boundary pushing. However, I don’t know anything about FetLife stuff so maybe it’s nonsense.

oh, i get it

It is probably along the lines of what his LAWYERS are planning his defense will be as he is accused of multiple CRIMES

I mean, if he had been accused of murder, he would likely post something like “I am sorry for your loss.”

i guess. this is more like he was accused of murdering someone and he says, "look, i realize i wasn't the best friend to the victim. i wouldn't call him when i came to town. sometimes i would make snide remarks about his appearance -- really out of jealousy. so i get why people think i killed him but i didn't."

non-sequitir sort of. but etaeoe is probably right about what he is alluding to.

I read it much more in the sense that treeship suggests, that he's hinting at some kind of bitterness or vindictiveness on the part of his victims, and not that he's saying it was kink play that went too far, the reason being that the former scenario is the only way to completely deny the charges, while admitting to not being respectful of boundaries is a very short step from just saying you did it.

i guess. this is more like he was accused of murdering someone and he says, "look, i realize i wasn't the best friend to the victim. i wouldn't call him when i came to town. sometimes i would make snide remarks about his appearance -- really out of jealousy. so i get why people think i killed him but i didn't."

“i’m sorry you incorrectly categorized our friendly exchanges as rape”

there's nothing to analyze in his post. it is the same script i've seen over and over again

I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available

“They wanted more from me than my dick and I should have realised that 😔”
“Actually Neil they wanted you to stop being a rapist”

i know a number of huge Gaiman fans, including my kid (big fan of his books, a couple of the films, and Good Omens.) He was already "over" Harry Potter, partially because he's well aware JK Rowling is a real jerk, partially because he's into Tolkien more now. I think I'm going let him know without getting into details that NG is also a real jerk and steer him more towards Terry Pratchett (he's a big Discworld fan already.)

also re: why there's been some people focusing on AP more than NG, i think the entire aspect of trust being placed in her by this young woman who was in a very vulnerable place, AP knowing about Neil's proclivities, and yet basically handing her over to him...the levels of betrayal cloaked within a very theatrical guise, open sharing of self, falsely heartfelt proclamations, love-bombing, drawing her into the web...it's just actively creepy and insidious. it doesn't make her worse than Gaiman, it does make her pretty bad though and when I've seen her IG comments it's almost all from women who are expressing this sense of deep betrayal and shame at having been duped by her. the biggest stan for AP on her IG was a male author (of enough note to have 25k followers himself) who was calling female commenters pathetic and stupid.

There's a definite implication that this all about women scorned.

... you know, nutso unbalanced women.

If he thinks that he should say it. Feigning sympathy and accountability is slimy.

You can like see the manipulation in action.

there's lots of things he should have done (or not done), it's a bit too late to make things right through a carefully lawyered statement

I'm not going to take this discussion way into the weeds of what the rules of kink are, but I know for certain it's not "I did whatever I wanted to someone despite them repeatedly telling me not to, and they didn't disappear from my sight or immediately call the police so it must have been fine"

I have a friend who works for a local program that helps local at-risk youth (homeless or very unstable family conditions, run-ins with the law, etc) who are in their late teens/early 20s. The idea of any of them being approached by an AP/NG combo with a babysitting job that ends up with them precariously trying to figure out if they can find somewhere else to live or can just deal with abuse to keep a roof over their heads makes me sick. Many of them are trying to escape situations like that already.

yeah, the whole arrangement was such a scam. “we cant pay you but instead we’ll exploit all of your weaknesses by degrees over time and just straight up ruin your life”

Then I realised, this is fair.

I randomly started reading Guards Guards last week and NG gets mentioned in the dedication. I’ve never been a fan but there a still a fair few NG books and comics in the house, including signed stuff (you could not follow comics in the early 90s without attending a NG signing somewhere) and a (very good) kid’s picture book I read to my daughter. I’ll keep the Pratchett, but I don’t want the rest in the house anymore.

I only had his two Miracle Man books and I tossed them in the trash today.

I feel bad for all of his collaborators. He has tendrils everywhere, it’s hard to avoid him.

It seems almost like Cosby in that he had such a gentle, affable public image. I used to work at a bookstore and he was revered by a bunch of people there —- people who definitely would not have been into a macho or chauvinistic author. His fanbase seems to have been very progressive

the non-apology statement is also grimly funny given that according to the article he was CLEARLY already shitting himself that he’d be MeToo’d all the way back in 2018
if this was all fabulist bullshit or whateverthefuck then what’s up with that fat stack of trusty NDA’s you’ve been dishing out for over a decade SIR

^^^

It seems almost like Cosby in that he had such a gentle, affable public image.

Like Ghomeshi as well. That's who the story kept reminding me of.

You could do this all day. It’s ALL of them. Pick one. Anyone. The playbook is identical.

"he was CLEARLY already shitting himself that he’d be MeToo’d all the way back in 2018"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GhNzIs1XIAAdaEf?format=jpg&name=900x900

🤮

barf

she’s so insincere that she could claim now that was sarcasm and I’d think.. sure, but you can’t do that. just stop. please stop

Finding out about this news late (with this vulture article) and pretty crushed.

Like it's almost as if his entire creative output was a front for his real motive: predation. With clear tells in the material similar to a serial killer leaving intentional clues behind at a crime scene. Gross beyond gross.

It's gonna take a bit to process as Sandman was one of my all time favorite fictional works.

some separate but also important Fuck Neil Gaiman content for you all

https://i.postimg.cc/2SpVcPG3/67908470-7b41-4023-a153-13071aadb819.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/jSsLYzVr/c00e5000-c2b5-481d-88f8-90c0ea4614e9.jpg

Thanks for this. I absolutely will check out those books.

God I love Tanith Lee but I’ve never read that. I will absolutely be doing that.

With clear tells in the material similar to a serial killer leaving intentional clues behind at a crime scene. Gross beyond gross.

Very good points. A part of me feels that yes some of this is due to the corruption of wealth and power and success, but there's signs in that article of sociopathic or extreme narcissistic behavior from the start. There are complaints around consent going back to the 80's. Before Sandman.

The ability to put on a face/mask to cover for abusive and predatory urges is a core feature, one that is instinctive at the lizard brain level of consciousness for these people as it's a survival mechanism.

But yeah it's unfair to pick apart his work to seek tells. Perhaps the Calliope reference got to me a bit. It's a very repugnantly memorable story in the series.

There’s also the fact that predators know exactly who they can target. There’s a reason that fucked up household kept outsourcing childcare to young vulnerable women with a high degree of dependency on them. And Gaiman’s fans too, I would be completely unshocked if some of his fans are now thinking about stuff they pushed aside or encounters they had with him that they don’t like to think about. Being a person who is well regarded and thought of glosses over an awful lot of behaviour. There’ll be women today who’ve read that piece and who are thinking about things they brushed off as, idk, drunkenness or “he didn’t mean it” or “I must have been wrong” at the time.

And Gaiman’s fans too, I would be completely unshocked if some of his fans are now thinking about stuff they pushed aside or encounters they had with him that they don’t like to think about.

Friend of a friend so 100% not my story to tell but I'll just leave it at: can confirm.

Apparently a well-known SFF writer's workshop he tutored at had to instigate the "Gaiman Rule" afterwards, i.e. don't sleep with the students. So seems his behaviour was hardly a secret.

Love hearing this stuff emerge like it seems like the lesson could be learned at some point, idk like maybe fucking saying something instead of looking the other way might have saved someone some pain

The Gaiman Rule, the Warren Ellis rule, the Cameron Stewart rule...

the non-apology statement is also grimly funny given that according to the article he was CLEARLY already shitting himself that he’d be MeToo’d all the way back in 2018
if this was all fabulist bullshit or whateverthefuck then what’s up with that fat stack of trusty NDA’s you’ve been dishing out for over a decade SIR

and gyac re looking for "evidence" in his work

I don’t think you can understate how much cognitive dissonance people have, either. Having wealth, resources, and influence go a long way in dissuading self-reflection.

I mentioned upthread about 15 years ago that I was then associates with his son and how his son NEVER ONCE mentioned his dad, the connection was only discovered via another gossip-y associate.

It seemed his son was very keen to keep a distance from his father's legacy while in good standing and now probably even more once all this was revealed.

asking for a friend who's 13 and a former Neil Gaiman fan, are the Tanith Lee books appropriate for his age?

I read them about that age. I don’t remember anything about them, though.

his son and how his son NEVER ONCE mentioned his dad

this doesn't seem so weird to me, considering that being the child of a very famous person is a burden for some.

Tanith fan here but she wrote so much -- and I mean this with approval -- that I don't think I've ever read that series in particular! A fair amount of her work is very specifically explicit in various senses so I can't say for sure re said series.

I see some people claiming that that Facebook post about the Tanith Lee series is a bit of a reach.

maybe i'll give those books a quick pass first..

I would have read and loved Red as Blood when I was 13 but that’s a terrible way to judge anything. Why not the kid into Ursula Le Guin?

Le Guin and Diane Wynne Jones, for sure, although both have Gaiman blurbs on the covers.

IIRC "Archer's Goon" (which rules) was another inspiration/"inspiration" for The Endless.

archer's goon rules so hard

Tanith Lee is great and also a lot of her stuff is very dirty, def have a read of the flat earth first before showing it to junior

Is it normal person dirty of Piers Anthony dirty? I literally have no recollection.

I was reading Lois Duncan books about sex and death when I was 10, worked out... uh, OK, maybe not.

Per a friend just now...and yeah, OF COURSE that would happen:

On the comment thread of an acquaintance's post, Ken Stringfellow defended Neil Gaiman. It was basically a "he's innocent until proven guilty" comment, but I feel all icky just having read it.

ugh

I might suggest that people try to resist the apparently unavoidable urge to let us know that Gaiman and/or Palmer's art is bad and if you like it you should feel bad - both in general, for the sake of their soul - but also specifically here, in light of the fact that most of the victims appear to be in reach because they're fans of one or the other.

xps comment on that Facebook post from Liz Williams:

Thank you, very much, Matthew. Tanith was my friend, as many writers in the UK will attest, especially on the south coast. I did know this, because she told me. We were at a convention - IIRC Orbital 8, in 2008 - at which both Neil and Tanith were guests. She told me that she was trying to avoid him because he'd plagiarised a large chunk of her work: not just a bit, but entire paragraphs. She didn't say which book it was from. And she had considerable disdain for him.

xp I think Amanda Palmer's art is bad but it has nothing to do with this breaking scandal

more as a therapeutic exercise than anything performative i just took all my Gaiman books off my bookshelf & put them in a box in the garage

mostly because even just glimpsing his name right now makes me want to scream

there were more books than i remembered :(

Just saw 'Coraline' canned iced coffee in the market (made by Stumptown).. seems a poorly timed promotion lol

https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/products/coraline-super-fan-bundle?variant=50444346884264

That iced coffee is extremely bad by the way. Also someone at Stumptown must’ve been asleep at the switch to have approved that promotion in the wake of what was already out there, even without what just came out the other day (honestly, I didn’t know the severity of the allegations that were already out there, but I don’t really pay attention to Neil Gaiman.)

To add context: That promotion was last summer and more aligned with Laika studio.

The first allegations came out around July. I do agree that they probably should have walked it back at that point but stumptown is owned by Peet’s.

yeah, I've no doubt it was the best of intentions and had more to do with the film's anniversary, just funny to see it still on a store shelf today

(I bought the Triumph of the Will commemorative cappuccino instead)

more as a therapeutic exercise than anything performative i just took all my Gaiman books off my bookshelf & put them in a box in the garage

I sold all my Sandman single issues a while ago but I have been steeling myself to ditch the collected editions - such a big part of my teenage years, but I don't see myself being able to read them again

i saw a few photos of ppl ripping up books or whatever and if thats what you need to do, go off, but yeah reading him for enjoyment again, at least for now def feels like its off the table for me

i just can’t stop thinking about the ways he poisoned that fandom-well, turning a very pure situation in on itself and using it against these women. it just adds an extra awful, insidious layer to all the brutal transgressions

I guess it taps into the age-old artist vs. the art debate

It's one thing to listen to Wagner (or any number of similar old-timey assholes) who died along time ago, it's quite another when the allegations are fresh and possibly quite surprising to some of his fans

if you return audiobooks on Amazon it works out as a net loss to the writer, and you can do it years after purchase.

Amazon = Audible

i had been feeling pretty alienated from his writing & the idea of myself as a fan for a while at least since the Tortoise stuff … but now it is very visceral

maybe thats just selfcentered bullshit or whatever idk

it's also like how the art resonates different with the shitty behaviour in the back of your mind - like, I don't find it that hard to appreciate a building even if the architect was an asshole (maybe that is a failing in me)

but with Sandman in particular the project was so broad and all-encompassing that it felt like it constituted a particular way of looking at the world - esp to a callow, not-that-widely-read teen - and the whole enterprise did feel infused with the perceived gentle, smart, progressive nature of the author

so it's not just the calliope stuff, as gross as it is, it's just that the whole thing feels kinda off when you don't feel comfortable with the sensibility behind it any more

kinda like Swans were just an instant nope for me after the Gira SA allegations - just impossible to listen to music that was inherently about power and masculinity anymore

anyway just thinking out loud sorry, and not meaning to pull focus from the actual reporting and consideration of the victims

yeah otm you’ve articulated something that’s been gnawing at me

the emotion that his work generated in me, the way i feel when i think about idk, Sandman is the best example, like that in my mind now feels like a ~trick~ he pulled

like now i look at it & my brain just automatically thinks that he wrote like that not to serve a muse but to get a certain kind of response … and that COMPLETELY tanks any love i have ever had for them

and i’ve never been a throw the baby out with the bathwater art/artist person but i feel this transgression so so much

like, i know in my heart that any art has a life beyond the author & once it’s in the world it’s sort of not theirs…and man i want so much to keep Sandman with me and have it be my own to enjoy but there’s so much HIM in it …. and so much beauty that is just corroded to my eyes now

it’s like some hideous new optimetrist lens like
“better or worse?”
“AGH WORSE”
“ok cool here is yr new prescription”
._.

and i am sorry to be shitting up the thread w my feels, esp knowing lots of ppl reading this already thought he was lame & corny & bad or whatever

but i don’t know how else to get this out of me

so yr stuck with my emo nerd ass

<3

I understand what you mean completely — it’s like finding out that all those nice things someone (someone you liked!) said about you/to you were merely an effort to extract sex. It’s super demoralizing.

exactly that … it just skews everything so completely from then on

That sinking feeling of “I thought you cared about/liked me…” is devastating.

i’m pretty mad bc before my reread the other year i hadn’t realized that wanda was the first trans woman i ever encountered in fiction who wasn’t a total caricature. anyway

― ivy.

ME FUCKING TOO, i mean legit this guy _was_ a positive influence on me and that does not in the SLIGHTEST excuse or justify any of this awful fucking shit he did. it just makes me even fucking madder at him. he did _not have to do this shit_.

God I love Tanith Lee but I’ve never read that. I will absolutely be doing that.

― gyac

i'm, uh... i think i'm gonna watch one of her Blake's 7 episodes. because they're probably better than either of Gaiman's Doctor Who episodes.

Just saw 'Coraline' canned iced coffee in the market (made by Stumptown).. seems a poorly timed promotion lol

https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/products/coraline-super-fan-bundle?variant=50444346884264

― Andy the Grasshopper

fuck, i think we need a new season of Portlandia for that alone lol

the Coraline film anniversary re-release grossed over $50 million this year, and extended from one week to three months. Nostalgia for it is based far more on appreciation the artistry and craft of Selick and Laika’s workers than the name value of the book’s author, and the 3-D remaster was completed a year or more before the Tortoise report was published.

"exactly that … it just skews everything so completely from then on"

this is how i felt about the alice munro thing. one of my lit heroes. i realized how many of her stories were about buried family secrets.

coraline really scared the hell out of my kid rufus when he saw it years ago. he got freaked out pretty bad nightmare-wise and i don't recall any other movie doing that to him. i think i forgot that was even NG-related. i tried to get into Sandman when they were coming out in the 90s because everyone was raving about them but they just weren't for me. i was more of a Lobo person. i felt the same way about Watchmen back then. though that was earlier. just couldn't do it. didn't get the universal praise. but, you know, not everything is for me.

oddly enough all the gaiman novels we had in the house were sold off at various bookstores this past weekend; I'll be putting my graphic novels on ebay later this week, and use the money I get for them to buy weed.

I'm surprised the film Coraline ended up having that kind of longevity. It seemed destined to just come and go after a pretty lukewarm run during its first release - compared to something like Up from the same year, it didn't feel like many people were paying attention - but the re-releases have done amazingly well. Also, didn't realize Motown artist Carolyn Crawford was one of the voices! Wonder what inspired her casting?

Coraline I think did well on streaming and retail-it was prominently displayed on the shelves at Walmart for years and years.

Should add, I also think of it more as a Selick movie than something by Gaiman, especially given Selick's past films. Similarly when I see James and the Giant Peach, I think of it as a Selick adaptation, not a Roald Dahl film. (Dahl turned out to be a shit too, if not as bad.)

I am grateful and angry that while I have some reasonably fond memories of some parts of the comics this guy wrote, the things that appear unwanted in my mind are the absolute clunkers he wrote, the lines that are so insanely twee or terrible. It's probably why I didn't read more stuff. Hopefully this, too, evaporates with time

kinda crazy to think that pre-internet i never really knew anything about anybody. i might read an interview. a profile article. if they were famous enough a biography or autobio. i mean there were dirt-dishing magazine articles i guess. books like Hollywood Babylon. stuff like Spy Magazine. Vanity Fair. but they were read by so few people. the average person didn't know about Errol Flynn's partying. unless the law was involved it didn't make the papers. nobody really believed the National Enquirer except for UFO fanciers. (and yes i know there were scandal sheets going back to the olden days but again it wasn't common knowledge info for the most part. you could be a horrendous person for decades and still have a decent public image. then again, NG was also apparently a horrendous person for decades and still had a decent public image...it really is about people coming forward. victims. the enablers are still there. the people who won't say anything because they make money off of the horrible person or who are afraid of their power.)

I think 2016 was pivotal beyond the internet itself. Hearing a presidential candidate brag about SA has done a number on people’s willingness to speak up about their experiences. Followed by #metoo etc.

kinda like Swans were just an instant nope for me after the Gira SA allegations - just impossible to listen to music that was inherently about power and masculinity anymore

It was, I found, incredibly easy to let him and his work go.

aww, i loved Swans. not nu-Swans. Swans from old days. i still don't really know what happened there. i read conflicting things. but i had already kinda stopped listening to them anyway. they were perfect for a certain time and place in my life. and jarboe was just as big a part of that time for me as he was. WoS and all the 90s stuff. i loved it to death. but they promised me death! i went and saw them one last time and they swore that they were dead but then they had to come back. or he had to come back anyway. nobody buying all that solo stuff i guess. the brand was strong.

with all due respect: wut

i still don't really know what happened there. i read conflicting things.

Ken Stringfellow agrees

https://www.reddit.com/r/swans/comments/xhu6i5/should_we_talk_about_the_rape_allegations_on_the/

I really don't know but I don't want to pick a side either

I think 2016 was pivotal beyond the internet itself. Hearing a presidential candidate brag about SA has done a number on people’s willingness to speak up about their experiences. Followed by #metoo etc.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera)

i agree! when people started saying the quiet part out loud, it made it a lot harder for me to acquiesce to the stuff that they were always doing, that was always treated as _normal_.

I really don't know but I don't want to pick a side either

― StanM

do you know the word "agnotology"?

"with all due respect: wut"

that was lazy of me. i didn't really READ about it much. i just heard different things from different people. including from people who knew the people involved. it was all 3rd and 4th hand. it sounded confusing to me and i never read a comprehensive re-telling of what happened. my apologies. i mean he always seemed like a scary person to me. i'm sure you guys know more about the specifics. i kinda forgot about it and then all i knew was that Swans kept touring and coming out with albums and being interviewed, etc. i always feel weird when i see a picture of dustin hoffman now all smiling and i think *did i dream that i read some horrible article about him being gross*? its like nothing ever happened.
(i don't really spend any time thinking of swans. i still like jarboe though. i have an old tape that i made of her tracks from those albums that i still keep. but i don't own any of their music anymore.)

i really am a broken record on this board. sorry. i'll track down a news story. i really only ever hear about this stuff here! i don't read about music/musicians elsewhere. or i get a Raggett alert on Facebook. i still don't know what happened with the red house painters guy. another band i adored in the 90s. i will track that down too. i should stay informed. but it also disturbs me a lot and i don't really like reading about it for personal reasons. part of me wishes i had never read any of that Gaiman article. its brutal. not because i want to stick my head in my sand about this stuff. i just have to watch my mentals.

i still don't know the whole story about gira but it did make me not want to listen to swans. i don't really listen to them much anymore anyway.

― scott seward, Monday, November 13, 2017 8:42 PM (seven years ago)

(swans threads seem like they are business as usual from my brief search just now...no mention anymore.)

I've built up quite a collection of Gaiman books over the years, not sure what to do with it all now. I've never really been much of a hero-worship/idolising type I guess, and I was never much a fan of Gaiman's public persona, all that "each of us is made of story" stuff. But I love Sandman and Coraline, and have good memories of watching the latter with my niece a few times (her favourite movie at 11/12) and I don't think I've ever faced the art/artist dilemma to this extent, not by a long shot actually.

I did decide the read the first Death miniseries w/Chris Bachalo, which has long been a sentimental favourite; I think I had some half-assed idea of a final read before bidding his books farewell. I got to a scene I had completely forgotten, where a teenage girl indirectly recounts her experience of abuse in the hands of her father. And I guess I'm naive, but the fact that the man who wrote that scene is the same man whose behaviour is described in that Vulture article.... it genuinely staggers me, completely and utterly.

I guess I assume that he feels guilt and shame and probably the comix might be where his “better self” wins … the fact that he kept acting on the monstrous impulses is not absolved by this in any way. But, I guess being old and having known my share of people who did awful things makes me think of him and others in a less dichotomous way?

somehow managed to make the Sandman Calliope story even grosser, didn't think that was possible

It's definitely possible, but expressing guilt or shame in one's art, and then continuing to do those things, all while presenting as a safe, progressive figure...FFS! I'd say that does the opposite of absolving him! Of course regarding a specific piece of art or fiction as "evidence" for something is always speculation anyway, unless the artist explicitly states otherwise

the emotion that his work generated in me, the way i feel when i think about idk, Sandman is the best example, like that in my mind now feels like a ~trick~ he pulled

like now i look at it & my brain just automatically thinks that he wrote like that not to serve a muse but to get a certain kind of response … and that COMPLETELY tanks any love i have ever had for them

I think this is precisely what has made it impossible for me to continue engaging with any of the stuff Cosby did. In hindsight, it all feels like it was in the service of constructing an avuncular public persona that was directly counter to the person he actually is.

I'd been wondering about Tori Amos's response to the allegations, and I guess she already addressed them at the end of last year. Just devastating: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/dec/03/tori-amos-on-trauma-trump-and-neil-gaiman-a-heartbreaking-grief

from the tori amos article:

One of the women who has made allegations against Gaiman says he mentioned Amos to her, and said he could get her full-time work on the singer’s rape helpline – a reference to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the largest anti-sexual violence organisation in the US.

beyond vile

NG must be relieved that Lynch passed when he did. I keep coming back to how pathetic and risible his “call me master” schtick sounds, the skeezy, sad little fuck.

AP fans may be taking this hard. A casual friend who's closer friends with my wife than with me sent my wife a series of vituperative texts, apparently mad because I called AP "self-absorbed" on Facebook and said she didn't come off well in the article — in a post where I led with calling Gaiman monstrous. I'm sure the AP collective is going through some things.

Wife needs better friends, absolutely pathetic for them to message her like that

the AP collective doesn't believe she is narcissistic and self-absorbed let alone capable of being party to this type of passive, callous disregard for the safety of vulnerable women, and wouldn't ever entertain the idea of her possibly being an active participant in using vulnerable women/exposing her child to inappropriate activity.

one thing i'll say about those who have NPD is they certainly tend to reel in people who will defend them to the bitter end even while receiving nothing in return except the feeling that they're allowed in the orbit of someone special.

Amanda Palmer cannot fail, she can only be failed

That sounds like a Chuck Norris joke.

I never enjoyed NG's work aside <i>Dream Hunters</i> and maybe the film version of <i>How to talk to girls</i> so I don't feel conflicted about this news, but in terms of the art/artist question, Lindsay Ellis has a sadly evergreen video that is basically, "the art enabled the artist, because would he have been able to do what he did, at the scale he managed, without his art?"

Gaiman's primary publisher, W.W. Norton, appears to have cut ties with him.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/96857-how-neil-gaiman-s-publishers-have-responded-to-the-sexual-misconduct-allegations.html

A spokesperson for Norton, which released Gaiman’s 2018 book on Norse mythology as well as an illustrated version last year, confirmed to PW that “Norton will not have projects with the author going forward.” (Notably, in 2021, after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct were leveled at author Blake Bailey, the publisher ceased publication of Bailey’s Philip Roth: The Biography and took that book, and one other by Bailey, out of print.)

Norton licensed one book from Bloomsbury in 2017, afaik, and have had no other titles / would not have had future projects with him. HarperCollins has been his primary publisher in prose for 24 years.

the AP collective doesn't believe she is narcissistic and self-absorbed let alone capable of being party to this type of passive, callous disregard for the safety of vulnerable women

I'm not sure I agree except definitionally, like if the AP collective is "who she has left now" - when I looked at the comments for one of her Instagram posts, it was half "I loved you and trusted you and believed in you and what the fuck" and half "you suck and you always have" - there were like two people out of 400 flying the flag of "the interviewer was clearly biased against AP."

Since then she's closed the comments on that one and so they've moved to older ones - some of the first half have followed but naturally not all.

right i suppose i meant those who would remain loyal to her, with the AP collective perhaps being (at some point soon?) a minority of those who were her fans before this.

(wait, no: Bloomsbury acquired C’wealth from Norton but beat them to print — I was going off remembering the SOH preview as being the world premiere.)

I have Norton's v nice New Annotated Dracula, edited with a foreword and notes by Leslie Klinger, that has an introduction by Gaiman. I have lots of other books or graphic novels or whatnot with introductions by him, or blurbs from him, I'm sure lots of us do. He's everywhere. A part of the sorrow and sympathy I'm feeling about this is given to his many collaborators in comics, good dedicated artists who have benefitted from the association or his endorsement and who must now be facing a significant reduction in royalties or ongoing series work. And his patronage brought many excellent things back into print, or into focus. All ruined now.

And at the same time, I saw more than one comics professional utterly lose it on the social media over their proximity to such a hip glam Goth power couple as NG/AP.

The day the Gaiman article came out, an Alan Moore book I had ordered arrived in the post - I guess him and NG were the two really big fish of my 1980s/1990s comics reading - Moore clearly the bigger talent but Gaiman was a little more warm/approachable/relatable (sigh) - anyway had a very strong precarious feeling of “oh hey Alan pls don’t also reveal yourself to be a fuckin pathetic abuser”

I don't think you should think less of any author for having a blurb from someone, those are solicited by the publisher and they often don't have a choice about them, have never met the person, etc.

those are solicited by the publisher and they often don't have a choice about them, have never met the person, etc.

Not in my experience. Granted, all my books have been published by tiny independent outfits, but any blurb that has appeared on any of my books is one that I personally solicited from the writer. The publisher didn't do shit.

Just based this on my friends' anecdotes about blurbs for their books (which were for sizeable publishers, I'm sure it's different for small presses)

it really depends on the situation aiui -- someone like NG probably blorps out blurbs like yesterday's breakfast

I read a comment from a fellow widower this week saying he was glad his wife didn't live to see this. on balance I'm sure mine would probably have preferred to be alive and see this than not be and miss it. but the point has been on my mind a lot this week. she was a big fan, and while I wasn't really, I had half a shelf full of his books that I would sometimes read sort of as a reminder of her and what she liked. it's taken me a while to even think about posting about this and I'm not really sure it's a good idea now. the books are going in the bin or to a charity shop, probably in the bin. when I first met B she had "delirium" in her email address. maybe I should buy some Tanith Lee books instead and pretend that's what it was all about to begin with

ouch, that's a tough one CP - I get wanting to bin them, but those books & stories obviously meant something to her, and she was able to enjoy them free of the knowledge that he was/is a wretched human being

oh I'm not worried about the books really in that sense. they're just things. I have other things she liked that don't make me feel sick

it really depends on the situation aiui -- someone like NG probably blorps out blurbs like yesterday's breakfast

1995:

https://i.ibb.co/nnRrTbY/blurbs.jpg

Sadly the author of that comic has a daughter who wrote a hagiography of Gaiman.

The day the Gaiman article came out, an Alan Moore book I had ordered arrived in the post - I guess him and NG were the two really big fish of my 1980s/1990s comics reading - Moore clearly the bigger talent but Gaiman was a little more warm/approachable/relatable (sigh) - anyway had a very strong precarious feeling of “oh hey Alan pls don’t also reveal yourself to be a fuckin pathetic abuser”

― Cognosc in Tyrol (emsworth)

well anybody could, of course, and... i know the feeling of just... the anxiety of being a fan of a cis white man haha.

of course most of the people i was a fan of were cis white men, for a lot of my life. and most of them did turn out to have done terrible things. not always abuse, but sometimes, i mean.... it's not exactly a secret that jimmy page committed a lot of SA. idk, nobody really ever acted like that was a problem, so for a long time it didn't occur to me that it might be a problem.

what you say about gaiman being more approachable/relatable, that's something i was thinking about last night. for a while i kinda didn't trust moore simply because i didn't really _like_ him, personally. he seems like kind of an asshole in a lot of ways, someone who's hard to get along with. i mean, maybe. i don't actually know the man. "not being approachable" maybe is just the way he enforces appropriate boundaries.

the whole idea of, like, parasociality... one of the things that struck me about the tori amos guardian interview linked up thread is her talking about is why she started working on RAINN. she talks about after a concert, a girl coming up to her and talking about the adverse experiences she was having and Amos, said "oh my God, look, come with me, I'll get you somewhere safe". and she wanted to do that, except that her record company took her aside and said "Tori, that's legally kidnapping, you can't do that." that's a hard lesson to learn. i think it's an important lesson to learn.

i think a lot of cis guys don't necessarily learn that lesson. a song like "motel blues", i think that kind of expresses an attitude a lot of guys have. even if we leave aside the fact that the song's protag is obviously sleeping with an underage girl, even if she actually _was_ 19, it's not a good habit to get into. it's not just that he's expecting this girl to save his life. _trying to save the life_ of people who are, in a personal sense, strangers... sooner or later that's gonna cause problems. that's not just a celebrity thing, that's a lesson that i've had to learn myself. people aren't gonna shrug and look the other way if i behave inappropriately - and no matter what someone else says or does, that behavior is _my_ responsibility. that wasn't something i was really taught as a "cis man". when i transitioned, that was one of the things i had to figure out pretty fucking quick. my life would be significantly less difficult if i'd figured it out sooner than i did.

Sadly the author of that comic has a daughter who wrote a hagiography of Gaiman.

Why is it not sad that the author of the comic was a friendly collaborator of Gaiman on 3 or so occasions 14-25 years before the recent reporting, and received a book blurb 34 years before

Because being a young writer who did a big book all about Gaiman and his wonderfulness with his cooperation would leave you feeling pretty betrayed and awful in retrospect, surely. Campbell Sr has a much broader range of collaborations.

Thanks, that does seem a reasonable inference. It was hard to parse, given your immediately bringing in the topic of someone who was a child at the time, identifying a woman solely via their paternal lineage rather than as a professional writer, describing the fulfillment of a commissioned brief to deliver a pop 'rough guide to the work of' as a hagiography, and your post the other day about the (imaginary) "near complete silence" of "people who made their careers writing with or about Gaiman" (not sure who is on this list) being "pretty telling" (of what?).

Not sure I can cosign that anyone who has had notable career and personal associations with Gaiman, and has publicly spoken about feeling betrayed and awful - before urging focus instead on the women who have come forward – probably doesn't really if they have collaborated more extensively with other people, though.

I don't agree with that last parsing (to the extent I can follow it) - it seemed clear to me that James meant that the silence was damning where there was silence, nothing more.

But contrariwise I did get the same read as sic off the 'Sadly the author...' - it read more as a criticism than sympathy - but I take your explanation!

Sorry, I can absolutely see that, but what I meant was that it seems like another bit of Gaiman nastiness--using someone yet again to promote yourself and add to myth of this kindly magical nice guy so you can just be more of a predator.

And as for the "imaginary" silence of Gaiman collaborators, what I meant is that I haven't seen much from anyone who's worked with him or known him well in comics talking about it, Scott McCloud aside. Perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places--I'm not as across comics journalism as I used to be. I suppose I could spend the rest of the day googling the names of various people to see if/what they've said, but I frankly have better and less depressing things to do. That's why is didn't provide a list, though--I'm not going to falsely accuse anyone. Would be happy to see anything posted here that proves me wrong! It would make this whole thing a little less grim.

I only spoke to four people in July who had significant professional histories with Gaiman (two in person, one by phone, one by text), but all four of them brought the subject up themselves. One I haven't happened to speak to since, one has frequently reskeeted posts or reporting by women denouncing or expressing disgust, and the other two have continued to discuss it periodically, both before and after the NY Mag piece.

Who are they?

Yeah I'm not 100% sure of the salience of "I haven't spoken to them since" - are they talking about it publicly?

The one person I know who had NG as a significant mentor has acknowledged the situation but has asked for space to process their own shock and disgust.

Yeah I'm not 100% sure of the salience of "I haven't spoken to them since" - are they talking about it publicly?

I just interpreted this as either the person doesn't do social media (the "publicly" I guess you mean, since not every Gaiman collaborator is, like, a public figure that gives interviews) or sic doesn't check their social media.

This is a weird line of questioning, I’ll be honest.

I'm reading sic's first post today in the context of the previous discussion - apologies if that's a mistake.

Unsure about how it matters how unnamed people who wrote about Gaiman are choosing to deal with this when the man himself is the predator but go off

I mean go off and google people if you’re that interested. Sometimes it takes people time to process and come up with a public response to shit especially if they were remotely linked. How is that hard?

^^^^