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.
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will be heartbreaking for any fans of his
ISHYGDDT
This article from 2017 is worth a read for anyone trying to figure out whether/how to separate the art from the artist.
What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? By Claire Dederer, Paris Review, November 20, 2017 https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/20/art-monstrous-men/
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?
I’m just going to assume all authors are creeps from outset from now on.
That’s some sad reading. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, from the point where the train crashes back to where the company forces an engineer to cut corners on the design.
Legal classification: probably rape, definitely sexual assault.
An enabling factor: wealth (he was in a position to influence other’s well-being economically, offer hush money and sign non-disclosure agreements).
“‘I’m a very wealthy man,’” she remembers him saying, “‘and I’m used to getting what I want.’”
An excuse: BDSM. The author of the article is correct to note:
BDSM is a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent
As for the search for the origin of his behaviour… I think they’re on the right track. Like a former child soldier who carries a war inside them, Gaiman has probably been carrying a lot inside.
In 1965, when Neil was 5 years old, his parents, David and Sheila, left their jobs as a business executive and a pharmacist and bought a house in East Grinstead, a mile away from what was at that time the worldwide headquarters for the Church of Scientology. Its founder, the former science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, lived down the road from them from 1965 until 1967, when he fled the country and began directing the church from international waters, pursued by the CIA, FBI, and a handful of foreign governments and maritime agencies. David and Sheila were among England’s earliest adherents to Scientology.
/…/
Palmer began asking Gaiman to tell her more about his childhood in Scientology. But he seemed unable to string more than a few sentences together. When she encouraged him to continue, he would curl up on the bed into a fetal position and cry. He refused to see a therapist.
Reading this, it seems obvious that Gaiman developed his behaviour due to trauma during childhood and youth - and has been exhibiting behaviour patterns that became normalized for him during time in the cult.
As for people whom he assaulted, it seems that they too carry a pattern - they were vulnerable at the time. Some had already experienced violence on themselves. Which, it seems - often hadn’t been resolved, but had become normalized. They were not the kind of people whose “no” is followed by physical self-defense or the full weight of legal options - and Gaiman understood enough to recognize: with them, he could get away with doing things.
She didn’t consider reaching out to her own family. Her parents had divorced when she was 3, and Pavlovich had grown up splitting time between their households. Violence, Pavlovich tells me, “was normalized in the household.”
Well, what can I say about it…
…it is customary that accusations be investigated by cops (who hopefully cannot be bought) and presented as charges to a court of law. The defendant should have a chance to deny or excuse their actions, but if deemed guilty, is required to give up time or resources either as compensation or punishment. A court could make lesser or greater punishment dependent on taking action to fix one’s behaviour traits - seeking assistance and not offending again. Those harmed should be offered assistance by their societies.
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?
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.
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
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
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
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?
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.
FUCK OFF TROLL
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?
You’re a moron.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
I never liked her. She always struck me as the worst kind of drama club narcissist.
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.
That’s really sad and disappointing
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.
She was married to him and enabled him.
Welp, that’s yet another maker of incredible art that turned out to be an absolute monster. Fucking hell.
If what he says about The Ocean at the End of the Lane about the kid representing him is true, then he’s just another case of keeping a vicious cycle of abuse going. He should’ve sought psychological help. Hell, he should seek psychological help now, the media would love to write about his RL redemption.
Serving for his rape crimes would also be nice.
I was just thinking about how people that are idolized like David Bowie and Bob Dylan are going to have their legacies ruined when all their crimes come to light
I have enjoyed Gaiman’s writing, also the Sandman show was excellent, but I am glad that in this era that I’m not the type of person to be a fan of anybody. I guess it is natural to ascribe virtue and look up to people who create thing you resonate with, but there’s no reason to think someone who wrote a book is worth praising or emulating other than in the book you liked.
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.
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
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.
yeah some of those authors…Like Heinlein’s later novels, what was with the fucking incest?
I’m wondering if the editor doesn’t want the article to be read. It starts off so lengthy and boring, I was ready to give up after the first 3 or 4 paragraphs, and just didn’t manage to finish thanks to the prosaic writing style. Hope some actual news outlet picks it up and sticks to the facts.
It’s a “long form” story. Sometimes you need that to provide context. Also it helps treat people like people, not just like statistics.
Thank you, I thought it was just me. I got through a bit more than you it seems but I still started skipping paragraphs at a time before giving up.
Yeah that article is a slog. It’s 5-10x longer than it needs to be. I get they’re trying to set the tone, but holy shit.
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.
This was a very disturbing read. I’m glad some of the survivors found each and other and are coming out with story, and I hope wierdo gets prison time so he won’t be able to do this to anyone else
