Warning, this story is really horrific and will be heartbreaking for any fans of his, but Neil Gaiman is a sadistic [not in the BDSM sense] sexual predator with a predilection for very young women.
Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/dfXCj
You must log in or register to comment.
Gross. I’m glad this particular milkshake duck wasn’t one I cared about. I still won’t spend any more money on JK Rowling’s stuff ever again.
Milkshake duck?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkshake_Duck
Copy/paste- pixelatedboat @pixelatedboat Twitter logo, a stylized blue bird
The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the duck is racist
Today I learned!
The sandman audiobooks were so good. I don’t expect they’ll be finished now, if they were, I don’t expect I’d be buying them.
No one should ever be put on a pedestal. We all have our demons. Though many of them are semi innocent or only hurt ourselves. It still sad to hear another celebrity abused their celebrity.
I don’t know about you but none of my demons involve sexual assault.
But that doesn’t take away the fact that someone’s demons could be of this kind. It’s a built-in risk in every human.
I do not disagree with you, but I still think it’s heartbreaking when it turns out that a man who is lauded for his feminism turns out to be a horrific rapist, sadist and predator.
100% it wasn’t my intention to imply otherwise. Just to point out that celebrities are still just people and people have pretty dark sides oftentimes. So many people get lulled into traps thinking that someone famous or well known is safe. They’re just like any of the rest of us.
awful
I have so many of this man’s books on my shelves, a few of them signed. I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t want to throw them away (yet), because the stories are wonderful and I’m still attached to those characters and worlds. but. I don’t to see his name anymore. on anything. I’ve turned them backwards, spine inward and placed others in the gap between other books and the back of the shelf. what a tragic loss caused by a Jekyll\Hyde monster.
Good Omens is one of my most favorite and re-read books and I don’t know how many decades it’ll take before I touch it again.
Time to buy mangas
One of my friends owned a synth module and the company owner turned out to be some kind of mysogynist racist asshat (or at best an edgelord indistinguishable from that). He wanted to get rid of it, so he put it up for sale for the market price, with a clear note on it that he’d be donating all of the money to some feminist charity. It sold, someone got the product while knowingly contributing to a good cause, and he got rid of it without it feeling like a waste.
Something like that could be an option?
The stories live on their own. They left his mind and are no longer his. They live in your mind now and are yours now.
If it makes you feel better about them being there, tear out or paint over his name on them. And continue enjoying stories that are good.
I believe in death of the author. People throughout history were all sorts of awful, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have some good thoughts too. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Part of the problem in Gaiman’s case is that he absolutely does not shy away from sexual violence in his stories. The perpetrator usually gets punished, often ironically, but how can you read about one of his villainous rapist characters and not think about how he’s got experience with what that character is doing?
That’s not a problem with stuff like Good Omens, which is more family fare, or even the stuff he does specifically for kids. It’s a huge problem for stuff like Sandman and American Gods.
Solid analysis.
It also helped that he withdrew completely from public life, as opposed to doing the jkrowling thing where she repeatedly announced that anyone supporting her books support her views. Divorcing good omens from him is even easier because Terry Pratchett’s daughter stepped up and took over in his stead, but also because there is acutoff that is immediate instead of something lingeringly tainting every aspect of his stories the way the harry potter books and other media is.
This hits tumblr expecially hard because he’s a regular poster there and his comments are everywhere, but nevertheless he did inspire a lot of young writers and give good advice there, and you cannot argue that those advice did good when they were being offered, while admitting that asking him anything are not advisable now even if he didn’t go full silence.
this aged like milk lol
ty for writing this. it actually helped a bit.
I was going to say this is so beyond someone being racist or your favorite musician turning into a conservative shithead… which, it is, but… that helped. thank you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author
H. P. Lovecraft was very racist and you can even see his racism in his books, and people still read his books. You need to disconnect the author with the books, although Lovecraft was racist and not a monster like this guy. I even heard he tried to change before he died.
Consuming the media is fine; funding the bad people (or their heirs and assigns) is not. Sail the high seas, mateys.
It depends on what the person did. Lovecraft was a racist, but never hurt anyone unlike this guy, so I think it is fine to buy his books.
Yeah he was racist, but also a New England resident in like 1910 who married a Jewish woman.
I honestly think that Lovecraft might have suffered from some mental illness, the guy had so many phobias. His childhood wasn’t good either, he was racist because he genuinely thought they will kill him or hurt him.
I read an anecdote where Lovecraft went on some sort of antisemitic rant only to be gently reminded by his wife who he married. I guess he was an equal opportunity bigot.
I mean…yeah it seems like he hated pretty much everyone roughly equally, except the English. Idk how a person can hate the Saxons but like the Anglo Saxons.
I agree, but that’s not what Death of the Author means.
At least with Good Omens you can focus on Terry. This is grim.
Side story: I have a number of dear friends who were huge Gaiman fans, so I tried to be one too. And I just could not. I could hardly get through most of his books. I liked the concept of American Gods but didn’t care for the story and Neverwhere was ok, but I didn’t see what my friends kept going on about.
Then I read Good Omens and loved it. Finally! I was enjoying Gaiman.
Years later, my now-partner introduced me to Discworld. Then I reread Good Omens and realized that everything I enjoyed so much in it almost certainly came from Pratchett, not Gaiman. When you know some of each’s writing, some parts start to stand out as one or the other. And I have no doubt what made that book so great (to me, at least) was Sir Terry’s influence.
I’ve thought this. Maybe I just ignored the Gaiman parts because they were boring, but I’ve read it a few times and I honestly can barely think of a part that reminds me of Gaiman’s other writing…
It’s been a while but I think it was some of the individual prose that seemed more like Gaiman, mostly like scene setting/ambiance. I only noticed in on a reread I did shortly after reading one of Gaiman’s. On the other hand, all of the memorable stuff like characters, plot, and humor were all very typical Pratchett.
GNU Terry Pratchett <3
It can be hard to separate art from artist, but just keep in mind that you’ve already paid for those books. He isn’t getting more money from you just rereading them, and nothing changes if you continue to enjoy the books.
Also he doesn’t get paid if you pirate them. So feel free to pirate them.
No clue what he did (have not yet read the article). Haven’t really consumed any of his media. But I did buy a coloring book based on some TV show he did?
Anyway, I bought that book because of how fucking weird it was. I remember thinking at the time the artist behind it seemed like a pretty twisted up dude.
I’m surprised everyone else is surprised, but my perspective is fairly unique - not having experienced/enjoyed any of his art beyond some crazy coloring book without the context to understand the pictures.
This is probably one of those perspectives that’s best kept to yourself - or at least not shouted through a megaphone, as is the effect of posting your thoughts online. Please don’t take my tone as harsh or judgemental there, just friendly advice. I know you mean well, but your unique perspective really doesn’t give you the opportunity to grasp just how much Gaiman seemed to genuinely be a good person. He wrote the kind of stories that were powerful and meaningful to marginalized people in particular. He focused on voices and perspectives rarely given the spotlight at the times when he was writing, and he wrote sensitively and thoughtfully about issues facing women, queer people and people of colour despite being, to my knowledge, none of those things himself.
For a lot of people this is genuinely heart breaking. It’s easy to say that you should never put anyone on a pedestal, but Neil was one of his rare people who really seemed like he deserved the acclaim and the trust that he was given. While I absolutely get that you mean no harm by what you’re saying here, it unfortunately comes across as very smug and self-serving in a situation where a lot of people are dealing with a very real and very justified sense of abject betrayal.
I agree. I am hearing what you’re saying, and I feel the loss of finding this out about him. However I’ve had a similar experience of wanting to like Gaiman because he checked all the right boxes, and just feeling put off by something in his writing. And thinking it was a problem with me. It’s easy for the mind to see this news and say, aha, that’s why I didn’t like him. But that’s the benefit of hindsight. Who knows if things like this, the hidden part of people’s personality, are actually detectable in their writing. Anyone feeling like I do is just trying to make sense of it all the same as everybody else. And it’s important to recognize that he was a role model for so many and did good work with his fiction, and not trying to say it was obvious, because it wasn’t.
That’s a good point. Not to be rude but most people are not good writers. Well-meaning attempts to rationalize for oneself can easily deform into reading like “smug” attempts to incorporate hindsight into somehow prophetic vibes. I try to give people a bit of grace because the consciousness to (attempt to) perceive how your text might be read by others is not a trait oft emphasized.
No clue what he did (have not yet read the article). Haven’t really consumed any of his media.
I’m surprised everyone else is surprised
This comment didn’t need to be made.
You really, really should use this as an example for yourself in the future to read the room. That means read the article before making a thoughtless comment on something you obviously didn’t fully grasp.
As if the comment section is some sacred place where only somber reflection can occur.
I genuinely liked the other person’s thoughtful response.
You just seem bitter.
sombre reflection
You apparently still haven’t read the article. Given the reactions to your comment, you may want to go see why the comments are “sombre”, as you put it.
It’s behind a paywall for me. Did you read it?
I did. It’s a culture vulture article, you just need to use an incognito tab.
As unpleasant as the content is, just read the article. And remember that lots of folks have trusted Neil Gaiman for a long time (I’m 50) to tell stories they connect with, especially in the 90s when there were fewer writers to do so.
You may have liked the thoughtful response but you clearly didn’t heed any of it.
Every comment after the first has been a response to someone else’s comment to me. You’re saying I didn’t heed any of that comment because I … responded to other comments?
Cool. This is about a rapist who enjoys inflicting pain on very young women, but I’m glad you enjoyed the coloring book of someone else’s art based on his stories.
(He’s a writer, not an artist.)
I… don’t understand why you felt the need to share this. You didn’t read the article and aren’t familiar with his work? What is it that you are contributing? What are you saying that others should hear?
Respectfully, it sounds like you are talking to hear yourself talk. Not every memory or thought I’d worth sharing, in fact, most are better left unsaid.
Especially when it’s about coloring books in a thread about systemic and repeated rape.
I found it interesting to think about his darker side hidden in plain view all along. Didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would be offensive.
It’s clearly a bad faith statement to characterize my comment as being about “coloring books” in a thread about “systemic and repeated rape”.
Read the comments. People are upset they don’t get to like one of their favorite authors anymore. That’s what the thread is about.
You evoked rape to strengthen your argument? That’s fucking gross.
You evoked rape to strengthen your argument? That’s fucking gross.
It’s literally what the article is about. Which would’ve been a faster read than you arguing with pointing at your out of place comment. Not informing yourself is a very odd thing to get defensive over.
We have to remember that Bill Cosby was praised for decades because he genuinely made the world a better place while being an utter sack of shit.
It sounds like (at best) some of Gaiman’s victims consented to some form of foreplay or sex and then rapidly found themselves on the receiving end of some brutal BDSM without consenting to it. If I were a woman reading this I would find it hard to ever trust any man, going into sex, even if I wanted to have sex with him. When the world’s most harmless-seeming man can suddenly become a punishing torturer in the sack, how can you ever know that a guy is safe until after the fact? Jesus.
This is why women choose the bear…
This explains so much. Read a book written by his very young wife. Now I get it and how fucked up he is.
I’ve never heard it articulated quite like this before, but you phrase it well.
Men like this absolutely deserve to be condemned and shunned for what they have done, but that doesn’t also erase the good that they did before – nor does it preclude them from ever doing good again.
At the same time, any good they do does not erase or counterbalance the harm. Jimmy Savile, the UK’s worst celebrity paedophile who abused hundreds of children, conspicuously did a lot for charities throughout his career. He said that he knew God would look at all the good he had done and it would make up for the bad things. There was a calculus in which he only had to do more good each time he did bad, and it would cancel it out. It’s a twisted view. Harm is harm and is not changed by any independent “good” act a person does. But apparent goodness can change its significance in the light of the harm that accompanies it.
Savile’s apparent selfless good acts were actually a calculated attempt to win license to do harm, and a psychological coping mechanism to allow him to believe in his own basic goodness before God. Plus the reputation for selfless goodness served as a smokescreen to prevent people seeing clearly what was really going on, and to win the support and protection of powerful people. Seen this way, while the charitable works may have had some helpful effects, these were not genuinely good actions but in large part self-serving and an integral part of the dynamics of this man’s abuse.
I think the same applies to men like Cosby and Gaiman: the overt charity or the overt feminism changes its meaning when you see how it serves them psychologically and reputationally, amd how it may be a functional part of the whole abusive operation.
Matt Bernstein in a recent video (it’s long) discusses men who act as outspoken self-avowed feminists but then abuse their power to treat women terribly. The feminism may be genuine, but it may also be their smokescreen, or a mix of each, and when a man is very loud about being a feminist you have to look carefully to see which is the case. Some are genuine, but you have to ask. Maybe Gaiman was doing the feminist smokescreen, or maybe he’s just so messed up that these two sides of his life - the feminism and the abuse - just didn’t really encounter each other.
Well, guess I’ll never be getting around to finishing ocean at the end of the lane now, just sickening. And I like his narration so much too, and now it’s just all ruined.
Disgusting
Great book no reason not to enjoy it just because he’s a pos
For me, nah. I’d have trouble separating the artist in this instance, it’s just so fresh. Maybe in a few decades. Regardless, there’s more great media than I could consume in a lifetime, so no loss
When the initial allegations came out I was shocked. A week later I was having breakfast with a good friend of mine and his wife. The wife worked in the comic book industry and we’d talked about Gaiman before. I brought up the allegations and she told me that no one who rubbed elbowed with his circle were shocked. Apparently he already had something of a reputation.
This is what gets me every time. Once this goes public everyone starts saying, ah yeah, no wonder, they had a reputation already, I knew they were sketchy and so on. So where the fuck where you (not you Hasherm0n, the people bringing this up) all this time? This could have ended so much earlier if people would speak up and make it more public.
Speaking out against the rich and powerful often does not work out well for the person who does it. They would be fighting a very rich and very successful man with a legion of extremely devoted fans. Women who have been direct victims of powerful men have spoken out about it and been destroyed for it (see Anita Hill).
Or all the countless women and Harvey Weinstein before the 2017 NY Times piece.
Giving off bad vibes isn’t a crime.
There is a big difference between knowing a persons reputation and knowing their actions. Sometimes a person with a bad rep does small things you pick up on that reinforces the feeling. But you still don’t actually know enough to accuse them.
It’s a big deal accusing a powerful person. They are usually going to deny it and people are going to ask for proof. If all you have is rumors and a feeling it only hurts you.
It took several women coming forward with what happened to them to get the public on their side. Imagine trying to accuse him when all you had was rumors.
Its a big deal accusing a powerful person
Terry Crews is a former NFL player and all around “dude I would not want to mess with”
Even still he was hesitant to tell anyone he was abused, what does that tell you about the system
That’s the logic of a witch hunt. I mean, obviously there are behaviors so suspicious you’d feel almost complicit not to report them. But a lot of the times all we have are the subtle impressions built up by our unconscious brain and it’s not until the answer is shown that it all clicks into place and what once was hidden is now so obvious.
I met him very briefly in 1995, same San Diego comic con trip when I met Stan Lee, James Robinson, Wade Von Grawbadger, Will Eisner, and Shannon Wheeler.
I didn’t get the creepy vibe from him then, but then again it would have been 25 years before these allegations, at a convention, and I’m not a vulnerable woman.
God, barf.
I was one of those sad goth kids clinging to the dresden dolls through my turbulent adolescence. After palmer met this nutsack her whole vibe changed. I mourned the loss of an era and ultimately left it all behind. I can’t even begin to fathom what kind of… Mind-shattering nightmare that would be, someone you connected with on that level, being the intersection in your life between “the before times” and one of the most traumatic things that can happen to someone. Fuck.
Having read the whole article, I’m not entirely sure Amanda Palmer comes out smelling of roses either - the way the last few paragraphs are written make me feel she’s covering up for him, and those lyrics read like she’s got it in for her.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I have not read anything from Gaiman, but I can see that lots of People really liked his books and the Person he showed the world.
So I just want to say, I’m really sorry for all of you. Even though Gaiman can rot in Hell, I feel sad for people who just got their favorite Books and stories poisoned.
You really should. Sandman and American Gods are incredible, and he also occasionally dipped into trashy comic fare, also enjoyable. He’s one trait I guess comes from the comics he used to do, his best stories are all with other people’s characters. I don’t think he’s ever used a original character, they’re all like mythological tropes. Even supposedly original protagonists turn out to be Balder or some shit.
I think Mirrormask and Coraline were fairly original?
Not really up on his “kid” stuff, I could be completely wrong
Sandman was my teenage years. The series got me into the goth subculture which led to such great experiences in my life. Finding out Gaiman is a monstrous piece of shit has been gut punch.
This is way worse than the J.K. Rowling turned TERF bit. These are actual crimes committed against women.
I legit really enjoyed many of his works, Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett, is an all time classic, and I used to be proud of the fact that I actually met the man, as did one of my oldest friends as well as my brother in law.
Now it’s all like “What the fuck?”
Is it awful that a part of me is glad Terry Pratchett is gone and doesn’t have to face this about someone who was a friend and co-writer?
Given how progressive Pratchett’s stories were I would have a hard time believing he was a bad person or could support bad people, and I imagine this would be hard on him. Then again perhaps I’m just selfishly glad that I don’t have to know if he didn’t respond appropriately by distancing himself.
Don’t know if I’m even making sense. This is just so disheartening given how many people I know absolutely loved Gaiman.
I really hope he didn’t know anything about it. Not awful at all, my first reaction when the gf mentioned this headline to me was “oh god please tell me Terry (GNU) wasn’t involved.”
It does raise the spectre of “how much did Terry know?” I really hope he was blissfully ignorant of all of it because, frankly, it’s more than I personally ever wanted to know.
Pratchett had a deep sense of justice, and was driven by a righteous rage - as described (ironically) by Gaiman in the introduction to Pratchett’s “A Slip of the Keyboard”.
Pratchett also has multiple books with a primary focus on feminism (Equal Rights, Monstrous Regiment), and lots of his other books have feminist takes sprinkled through them.
I’ve read a bit of Gaiman (not as much as of Pratchett), and I don’t think I remember reading anything explicitly feminist. He seems much more obsessed with fantastic mythology than anything with sociopolitical relevance.
Anyway, who knows how Pratchett would have reacted, but I kind of wish he WAS here to see it, because I suspect he would have said something really good about it…
Tori Amos commented on the allegations:
And if the allegations are true, that’s not the Neil that I knew, that’s not the friend that I knew, nor a friend that I ever want to know. So in some ways it’s a heartbreaking grief. I never saw that side of Neil. Neither did my crew. And my crew has seen a lot.
Gaiman is the godfather to one of her kids and apparently she was pretty close to him. If she didn’t know, I feel like Terry Pratchett wouldn’t have known either. This isn’t like with Epstein where association implies knowledge of what was going on. After reading all that I have on the allegations, I’m comfortable believing that Pratchett wouldn’t have known anything about the alleged sexual assault and if he knew anything, it was that Gaiman was known to sleep around… consensually… with adults. (Because apparently this seems to be known among people close to him… including that he and Palmer allegedly had an open marriage)
So unless further info comes out that indicates otherwise, I will continue to enjoy Pratchett’s works.
The article seems to argue that Neil was able to pull the wool over a lot of people’s eyes, and it’s perfectly reasonable for a lot of people close to him to be in the dark about all of this.
Yeah, that’s occurred to me as well. For context I haven’t brought myself to read the specifics yet, so I don’t know all the details. I don’t like to comment when I’ve only read the title, but I’ve seen enough trigger warnings to put this one off until I’m ready.
I’ll just say this, I DID read the details and it is incredibly, deeply fucked up. Fucked up to the point I’m not ashamed to say I’d like to see Gaiman criminally charged. If you do not know, then you’re better off for not knowing.
That must be creepy³ :0
Why though? He is a sack of shit and can rot in hell for all I care… his art can still be enjoyed. Having him take that way means he has even more power.
I would suggest obtaining it in ways that do not give him new money… Like buying books second hand.
If you can do that more Power to you!
But I can understand that some People now look with diffrent eyes on his work or simply can’t make that cut between Author and his work.
Yeah I can imagine for some people his work is tainted…
That’s the case for me. Same as watching anything with Kevin Spacey in it now. I just can’t separate the man from from his reported actions.
In this specific case, it’s really difficult because, as the article talks about in the beginning, his stories were often viewed as being feminist (and progressive in other ways), but when you re-read them, you can start getting a sense of the monster that was hiding.
if you want to spend time re-reading those books, might I suggest spending that time finding new authors that are more deserving of your time and attention? Yes the books were pretty great; yes this situation is awful.
Just, find new good books.
I’ve been a fan of his for a very long time - decades. I enjoyed the dark part of the dark humour and the commentaey on humanity.
He has an excellent book called the sleeper and the spindle. It is a beautifully crafted and illustrated book clearly targeted at young women. It feels like art, and I genuinely celebrate it for what it is, a feminist retelling of Cinderella, where the celebrated main character is…how do I put it - both good, and effective. Not empowered, or brave, or glossy, but competent and certain. It is a version of feminism I see in those pragmatic, excellent women who do valuable, notable and productive things.
I don’t see any echoes of a monster any moreso than any fantasy writer who holds up a chipped and scratched mirror to the human condition. And that is the profoundly sad thing here. I believe you can be two things at once and that as a story, without his name attached to it, sleeper and the spindle should be something young people can read and enjoy and make them think a bit differently.
This isn’t a shoulder shrug and wave off of his actions. I can’t forgive him his cruel treatment of vulnerable people who cared for him, trusted him and wanted to please him. It is abhorrent.
What I’m trying to say is mud and gold come from the same hole.
Well for example, all of the sexual (and other) violence in the 24-Hour Diner part of The Sandman takes on a very different connotation now. Because now I know he’s responsible for such things. He was writing from experience.
I dunno, I thought it was pretty fucked up first time around too.
It was fucked up, but within the context of the comic, it was fucked up because a horrific and insane person was doing it.
Now it turns out, Gaiman was also doing it. But he didn’t need magic powers because he had real power.
He did have a Sandman story where a a writer who claimed to be a male feminist is raping a muse to be a good writer. Even the first time I read that years ago seemed a little on the nose, but I thought Gaiman was just making fun of himself in a dark way, and yeah I guess I wasn’t wrong.
I don’t see any echoes of a monster
I think it’s not possible to see that far. Ability to write good stories and ability to maintain ethical behaviour, they’re probably unrelated abilities.
For example, Yevgeni Prigozhin actually wrote decent children’s stories, but alas, his personal ethics didn’t prevent becoming Putin’s accomplice with a private military company.
I have no evidence, but I believe Orson Scott Card has a thing for little boys. I devoured his books when I was a tween, but began to feel uneasy over time. There was a reoccurring theme of young boys being put in graphic situations that just, I don’t know, but I’ve never been able to shake that feeling. Song Master pushed me over the edge. A ‘beautiful young boy’ being castrated so he doesn’t go through puberty was when I stopped reading. My Spidey sense had never stopped going off about him since then.
Aaaand I just googled. I’m not the only one who picked up on that. Ew
yeah some of those authors…Like Heinlein’s later novels, what was with the fucking incest?
Felt that way about luc besson films, Leon is great but has deep pedo vibes, then I find out besson wanted a sex scene between Leon and the kid. Also the fifth element, liloo is essentially a baby, but she’s the one everyone wants.
Huh. I never noticed, but that actually explains Ender’s Game.
Card is also a giant piece of shit in other ways, which is unfortunate because he is a good writer and his essays on the methodology of writing are excellent.
I find it difficult to reconcile how the writer of Speaker for the Dead is such a bigot. Dude took a hard swerve at some point.
You’re not alone in your confusion there, friend. Reading Speaker for the Dead and finding out about who the author was as a person blows my mind as to how such a bigot could even conceive of the ideas in that book.
This is certainly going to have an effect on Tumblr.
It’s not new information but mostly new details - tumblr has been dealing (or really, trying to deal) with this since July.
There’s a lot of good books written by awful people. I guess Gaiman might be one of those awful people
