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
There’s a lot of good books written by awful people. I guess Gaiman might be one of those awful people
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!
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
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.
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.
Welp, I guess if I still want to read any of his books, there will probably be a ton of them at the thrift store
Libraries are free.
There’s also the Libby app
Annual vpn subscription: $75
20 TB home server: $450
Enjoying the art while the shitheel artist doesn’t profit: Priceless
When you want an artist to benefit from their creative works, support them directly. For everything else, there’s piracy
I dunno. Pirating it is still giving them attention. Talking about it, bringing them up, giving them relevance. You’re paying for it with mental space. But when you straight up shun them, they wither away.
Like the great Terry Pratchett (rip), I see them like Small Gods: you give them power when you believe they exist.
GNU Terry Pratchett
I don’t think I would introduce someone to NG’s work if they were unfamiliar with him. So in that sense, yes, talking about them gives them relevance. However, i disagree that pirating in some way benefits the artist. Promotion does.
Where I do see an alignment with Sir Terry is from Reaper Man. Until the person’s works come to a finish, they continue to live. The thing is, will they live on loved, like Terry Pratchett, or hated, like Jimmy Saville. I didn’t believe in hell. But I think, particularly for an artist or entertainer, the knowledge that after you die your memory will be hated, well, that’s a living hell of it’s own for a certain type of person. I genuinely hope Harvey Weinstein the rapist is one of those people.
But back to the point. I’m not paying anything in mental energy if I watch Sandman again. If NG is a cunt, it doesn’t change the fact that Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, is a BAMF and I’ll watch the shit out of his show
You people cry shitheel with so little substantiating evidence.
15 accusations, voicemails of him setting up hush money payments, NDAs, none of this points to lacking merit. 1 woman, yeah it could be false or misleading. 15? Either this is very very likely to be true, or someone with tons of money has convinced a huge swath of real people in his life and not total strangers to publicly destroy him in a conspiracy that would be on the scale of a military operation. How much money would it take for you to knowingly lie about an innocent person you babysat for, who, if this isn’t true, is lovely to know by all professional accounts. What kind of dollar figure would that take? Would you be willing to do this without possessing the money already? Would you demand that in advance? Who would contact you to get you into this conspiracy? Certainly not the benefactor. How would they know you wouldn’t flip on them in a heartbeat? Or simply out them to begin because you’re not a horrible person. 15 times. Successfully. That’s what this requires. People who are known to have worked for him. That’s you’re pool. That’s a very shallow pool. 15 successful payoffs with no deserters or whistleblowers? Accusing someone of a crime isn’t fruitful. You don’t get fame or money out of this, particularly if you have 15 victims on your side sharing the supposed limelight and potential pay day. And why if that’s all they wanted, why would they go further than blackmail? They were already getting paid off. More women came out after the first 5? More? 10 people were like oh, they are getting 1/5th of the spotlight. I want that. I’ll get 1/15th of a spotlight! All I have to do is ruin the life of the rich guy paying me off right now. It makes NO sense.
I actually never met Neil Gaiman, or the people making the accusations, or the person who wrote the article. How about you?
Do you have to meet the meteorologist and check his data and model to believe their weather forecast? Do you have to meet every single politician, scientist, news reporter, just everyone, to believe any news at all?
If I’m going to revile somebody, yes.
You’re THIS ridiculous? OK. Utterly pointless. Next time lead with ‘‘I’m insane and don’t believe anything or anyone unless I’ve personally met them myself’’ save everyone some time.
Is your bar that you have to meet the victim to believe them?
Actually yes. Before I condemn somebody I insist upon meeting the fellow, interviewing the witnesses and seeing the evidence.
With what expertise and training? Do we all have to wait until big_fat_fluffy has concluded his investigations before we can trust that any criminal activity has occurred?
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is this you? What is your evidence that everyone does what you claim they do?
What?
You are arguing that you can’t know things other people tell you. So how do you know that everyone fakes it? Did everyone tell you? Every single person? Are they all telling the truth?
It’s just weak evidence. Hearsay.
That’s literally what you’re arguing against believing in this thread.
I guess it’s different when you do it.
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
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.
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.
I mentioned this above, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed anything feminist (or even particularly progressive or political at all) in Gaiman’s writing. But maybe there’s things I missed… Do you know of any examples of him presenting something clearly feminist?
Edit: I see someone post an example below, it’s not something I’ve read.
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.
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.
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?”
That must be creepy³ :0
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.
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.
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…
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.
will be heartbreaking for any fans of his
ISHYGDDT
YAAS.
Your Acronyms Are Shit.
Sounds like someone who suffered from serious abuse, never went to actual therapy in a meaningful way but instead got into a position of power where he could feel good by being the abuser instead of the abused. Which does not excuse any of it. On the contrary, his writing shows very clearly that he understands that what he did was wrong, but he did it regardless.
Why do people get so concerned about what artists do in their personal lives? Authors are fucking weirdos, I don’t let it affect my reading choices. I’m sure Chaucer was a dickhole, but whatever
I mean I keep hearing that Roman Polanski is a good director but I’ll never know, cause I refuse to watch anything made by a convicted pedo. It’s easy to live without a book or movie
First, people love to burn witches. Screw any moral, logical or aesthetic implications. They can’t even spell it. They just want a witch to burn.
Second, people love to cut down anybody taller then them. And Neil Gaiman is a very tall fellow.
All that love, it’s inevitable.
Is this some shit-tier trolling or do you really think it’s OK to financial support someone who anally rapes women and fucks in front of his kids?
Ask any living successful creative of any kind. They will all tell you the same thing ‘‘I am truly sorry this is so, but the biggest factor in your success is going to be how well you manage social media accounts’’
That’s depressing.
I have a giant flatulant zombie alligator in my living room. Of course I’m going to feed it regularly.
If you need to be blocked this badly, OK.
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.
I’m just going to assume all authors are creeps from outset from now on.
Yup, big fan of his work, really pissed off to find out he’s such an asshole. But I’m glad we live in an era where creeps can get their due. Fuck this guy.
But it’s mere hearsay. Is your judgment so casual?
Hearsay, eh?
9 women, the youngest being 18, are all saying the same thing, and he also made them sign NDA’s. [Content Warning]
You literally only know that because you heard somebody say it
And yet here you are sticking up for Gaiman because of what he said over what 9 women said.
I am only criticizing you people actually. There’s a lot of room for criticism. Your whole process is retarded.
And yes, you are going after Neil like a mob of 12th century potato farmers.
Statistically speaking, the likelihood of someone lying about sexual assault is low, a reasonable estimate being around 3-4%. When you have 9 separate people making the same claim, it gives credance to the idea that the odds of their claims being false is very low.
What people? All I have is a story, same as you.
Unless it’s an AI or an automated response, that’s how everyone knows everything. They either heard it or read it from someone else.
I see stuff and meet people in real life, actually.
And then they tell you things that you were not there to witness. That is literally how communication works.
You just seem to think that people you meet in real life are less likely to lie to you than people in an article that shows that a huge amount of research was done and I’m not sure why.
In real life you can talk to people that you know and see things with your own eyes. This is better than essays written by anonymous people on the internet.
9 women, the youngest being 18
In this world of fucked up authors, it’s sad that I’m impressed that he didn’t go below 18.
That we know about.
I’m already turning down any party invitations from him, i’ll wait to hear underage before I worry about that one :P
Go back to Reddit, douchebag.
You get angry at people you never met, based on stories written by people you never met.
Your anger is very cheap.
Your mother is cheap, too.
Just block him he’s a teenage troll trying to piss people off
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
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.
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.
This explains so much. Read a book written by his very young wife. Now I get it and how fucked up he is.
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…
burn the witch!
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.
I didn’t heed the warning and regretted reading the whole thing - there are very detailed and gruesome first hand accounts of his alleged assaults on multiple women. Excellent reporting throughout, which only makes it more sickening.
Also, as a former Amanda Palmer fan, fuck her, too. It’s clear she enabled this and committed, at minimum, wage theft crimes. Both of them deserve to do jail time with even the most generous best-case-scenarios. I’m sure she was also abused by him, but that is not an excuse to abuse other women. Some feminist.
Wait what happen with Amanda Palmer? I’ve looked her stuff for a while what did she do?
Idk how to format, but I want to save you from reading if you need that. So here’s a brief list of claims in the article:
- she frequently and repeatedly recruited homeless, impoverished female fans to provide childcare without any payment
- she repeatedly left these women alone with Gaiman, without the child present
- she warned Gaiman to “keep his hands off” at least one woman
- she said that at least 14 women had come to her for help with Gaiman
- she subsequently wrote a song about how much of a chore it was for her to deal with the multiple “suicidal mess”es Gaiman created
- she routinely controlled employment/housing of these women and knew Gaiman was, at best, sleeping with them (this cannot be consensual when housing/employment are in the mix)
- when notified of an assault that happened with her child present, only questioned whether the child was “wearing headphones”
- refused to cooperate with at least one police investigation
- refused any material help to assaulted women after repeatedly assuring them she would “take care of” them, get different housing/employment set up, etc.
Just…awful stuff, and this is best case scenario, FFS. She is fucking trash.
God, she was one of my favorite artists. This is really crushing to learn. It’s so counter to everything she seemed to stand for.
And fuck, Ampersand no longer feels like an empowering song about marriage.
Amanda Palmer also routinely didn’t pay musicians and other people who worked for her, and defended Jian Ghomeshi the sex predator and abuser. She also faked her own suicide to record her then boyfriend’s reaction, who them died of suicide six months later.
That’s awful. I had no idea :(
Right there with you. I believe Gaiman was using her as a smokescreen for exactly that reason. (I’m being generous and assuming she wasn’t actively and deliberately trafficking women for him.)
And yes, there are a lot of song lyrics / tweets / media that aged like milk for both of them.
That’s really sad and disappointing
She was married to him and enabled him.
I never liked her. She always struck me as the worst kind of drama club narcissist.
