[CW: Sexual Assault, CSA] There Is No Safe Word: How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.
[CW: Sexual Assault, CSA] There Is No Safe Word: How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.
You know what, I've decided to become angry at this. I am going to turn the few shitty paperbacks I have by this guy to our sauna kindling.
When the Sandman series was a thing I ended up in a stuggle session with Gaiman stans on Twitter because I thought the depiction of Despair in the series was utterly violent towards fat people. I was told I just don't get it.
I have always felt that I am missing something about the books of this literature genius because to me the books are mediocre at best. And I kind of felt like an outsider for it.
Turns out this guy is the monster that is hidden in plain sight in between the lines. And while I am against book burnings, I will burn these books. For all SA victims like myself.
I am so tired of how the world we live in keeps making stars and celebrities of the worst of us. Imagine the stories we could have if they were written by good people. I don't mean some goody two shoes type of good, but people who are kind, have solidarity towards others and do not glorify the darkest impulses of humanity only.
A lot of his books include longish boring peregrinations over the rural USA and apropriation of native cultures, which is concerning even for US author, let alone a Brit. I just knew he had some skeletons in his closet.
To be fair though up to now i didn't like him mostly because his books are incredibly overrated, and he basically plagiarised R. L. Green version of norse myths, except his version is worse.
I was vaguely aware that he was a piece of shit from the allegations that were already public knowledge, but reading these details made me queezy - Gaiman is a monster.
EDIT: I almost feel the CW is insufficient. At minimum it should noteremoved and child abuse.
good catch actually, idk what's censored but i should have added CSA. my bad.
No worries the whole thing is so shocking. I don't want to try to get around the word filter but, it's the word for a specific and severe form of SA.
I'm assuming if it's filtered here it would be in the subject line as well, and that if its filtered someone felt uncomfortable having to even read it so the SA CW is probably the right call anyways?
Holy shit Gaiman and Palmer should both be in prison.
Also can I kink shame for a minute? It's messed up to feel the need to "possess" or "own" someone else. If that's your kink, maybe you should work on that, and view ppl as autonomous and worthy of respect, not as objects that exist solely in relation to how much control you have over them.
I think it's more the tendency of abusers to find language and culture to hide in, from religion to (pseudo) science, liberal Feminism, therapy speak etc.
There's actually a dom gap because of the amount of effort that goes into being a good active partner in bdsm. It's like being a DM playing out a scenario or situation.
But I'm also happy if we shut down all cishet maledoms until we fix this patriarchy situation.
There's actually a dom gap because of the amount of effort that goes into being a good active partner in bdsm. It's like being a DM playing out a scenario or situation.
My wife was a professional dom in another life before we met, and she talks about this a lot. People think it's just easy because all you have to do is treat the sub like a servant, but it's (according to her) really hard to do well. Coming up with a scene that's safe, respectful, and fun for everyone involved is work, and people who don't know what they're doing (or don't care about anything beyond their own satisfaction) can really fuck things up.
There's actually a dom gap because of the amount of effort that goes into being a good active partner in bdsm.
Absolutely right. It's one of the reasons I have to vet potential sub partners carefully. I'm very tired of doing all the planning work only to have someone flake at the last minute. I'm long done with casual hookups. Especially the "discreet" crowd.
It's like being a DM playing out a scenario or situation.
Oh my god it totally is, I never thought about it that way.
Being into the appearance or roleplay of someone being owned by you is not the same as actually wanting the thing itself. Unfortunately I bet a lot of people with the latter pretends it's the former, mostly men
It's messed up to feel the need to "possess" or "own" someone else.
Speaking as an experienced dom, I fully agree. I never understood the 24/7 thing. I want my play partners to be FWBs with a heavy emphasis on the F part. Outside of sessions (with all the proper safe/sane/consensual aspects) I prefer to treat them as equals. Criteria #1 on my mental checklist of a potential partner is "Are they an independent adult who has experience being an independent adult?"
roles can be fun to try on, like costume parties they can let us express parts of ourselves or try being someone else in a safe and fun environment. I'd run screaming from someone who thought that play relationships should exist outside of that.
This is fucking horrifying, the worst part is knowing that people like this exist and are out there. Having to go through stuff like that, with self-righteous abusers, it really fucks you up.
Jesus fucking Mary I can't read the rest of that.
What a horrible, horrible person.
One sad question has been going through my head since hearing the details, and I really hope the answer is genuinely "nothing at all", but given how close they were, it's one that needs to be asked:
How much did Terry Pratchett know about this?
I always got a creep vibe with Gaiman that I don't with Pratchett, so hopefully that isn't coloring my thinking about this, but...it seems like what I've read about their collaboration was mostly email and sending each other floppy disks in the 90s, and at that point NG hadn't won all these awards and TP was well established, I wouldn't be surprised if NG presented a version of himself to TP that he thought would be most endearing. By the time NG's assaults seemed to ramp up in the late aughts and tens, TP already was dealing with Alzheimers. It seems possible that Sir Terry didn't know what a shitbird Gaiman was capable of being.
But then again what the hell do I know, just some thoughts.
- Also, learned today NG is a Zionist as well as aremoved, what a pos
I dearly hope so.
Same. I get the same unease with Pratchetts apparent love of violence that is very similar to Gaimans, he kind of revels in the meanness in a similar fashion. It's like the author makes these types almost into heroes of a sort (teatime is an example).
And, his treatment of womens bodies tends to always be very pathriarchal. I despise the way he makes points of women being only of interest to men if they are thin and conventionally hot (young). I get it was different times, but once you start noticing it, it's everywhere. I still listen to the stories every night as my audhd sleep aid, but certain books I will not touch anymore and almost all have parts that make me feel very uneasy.
Another one I've been concerned about is Haruki Murakami. One can fairly argue that some nuances are lost in translation from Japanese to English. But his later books have a lot of red flags to me. "Killing Commendatore" is particularly worrying.
Plot points I consider red flags, frank talk about sexual violence and other concerning things
The protagonist is a middle-aged man in an artistic line of work (portrait painting) who recently went through a divorce. The very first thing he does is go on a post-divorce finding-himself road trip where he:
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Has a one-night-stand in a hotel with a woman who wants very rough sex. complete with hard choking.
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Has lengthy discussions on physical and psychological changes during puberty with a middle school girl who is modeling for him.
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Has lengthy discussions about said girl with a middle-aged wealthy man who believes - but has no evidence - that he is the girl's father. There's subtext about this man basically trying to groom her.
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Several chapters with graphic depictions of the conduct of Japanese soldiers in China in WW2. To Murakami's credit he is not remotely a nationalist and he claims that this is about forcing his fellow citizens to confront the reality of Imperial Japan's actions. But it's still disturbing.
I used to love his work, it's my kind of weird. But now I wonder.
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I always felt this guy was sus af because when I tried to read his stuff he revels in mean violence in a way that made my skin crawl. Not to mention the way he treated fat bodies, it's always a red flag. The objectification and dehumanizing is right there.
The really disgusting bit to me was the way he hid behind neurodiversity as an explainer for being a monster, like this guy threw an entire minority under the bus to justify his actions. It is similar to the way celebrities have tried to hide behind behavioral addiction (not real) as a justification for horrible behaviour.
Also isn't it just nice how the society we live in keeps raising people like this? How many does it take before people realize that there is something wrong with both these people and the system.
How many does it before people realize that there is something wrong with both these people and the system.
always just one more
A tough article to read. People can be so evil.
Consensual BDSM is a thing, so do people like this not understand that or do you think the true harm and non-consent is part of the “turn-on”? I always wonder this when I hear about these things.
It also sucks because I used to be a big Gaiman fan. 😫 Why do people have to be creeps?
I think it's because the people like this are doing it for more than just sexual reasons, or if they aren't, they just don't care about other people at all. Or it's because there's some sort of weird "kink" (I hesitate to even call it that) going around in people with power for genuinely hurting and controlling people, like you said. Like the point isn't the appearance of the thing or even the actions, but the result of hurting someone else.
It must be that because, especially with someone as famous as Gaiman, I would be surprised if there wasn’t girls would would consensually submit to him (though, imo safe words are non-negotiable). I’m well-versed in the power dynamic he seemed to be looking for (Master/slave), but in a real power exchange* like this, trust and time are needed to establish it (*in reality, the slave must give the power over to the Master). Even things like sadism and consensual non-consent, which he also seemed to be into (though maybe not the consensual part), are sought after by many subs, but the trust• has to be established first (•that, though it may hurt, no true harm will befall the sub, and also that, if it becomes too much, the sub can stop it at any time). It doesn’t seem like Gaiman was willing to establish that kind of dynamic and, even if he were, it doesn’t seem like he would keep the bond of trust that a true Dom would - it seems like he would want no limits (and no safe word), ultimate power which, in the end, is just rape.
Liberal, artsy guy constantly going for significantly younger women is always a huge, red flag, so I’ve been wary of him for a while. But holy, fucking shit did I not anticipate just how extreme the stuff was that he forced upon these poor women. Just utterly depraved.
And he’s been doing that for decades without any real consequences (except for all the hush money he gave his victims). Really makes me mad.
Literally what is there even to say, fifteen women. And that's just the number who spoke to his wife personally!
Also the most horrific shit he was doing literally like 2022, 2023, 2024.
Neil Gaiman is going to need to hire a private military for life to be able to walk the streets without getting three Luigis in the back.
Yeah, until this the general vibe was that he'd just acted moderately sex pesty in a way that was more "Not cool, you need to go away and fucking fix yourself, bro." than "cancelled forever" but this is fucking damning, and happened after the allegations began to spread! He's evil and stupid and he deserves what he gets!
The only imaginable bright spot is that the obvious attempt to groom his young son into a predator too happened so recently that there's some hope that he might receive effective therapy for it before he becomes an adult.
I just read this. Obviously the perpetrator is scum. I assume that his scientologist upbringing fucked him up. Not that it's any justification.
Not that his ex wife deserves as much blame as the perpetrator, but the whole thing had me thinking. Geez, posh people like to pretend they're nice and good friends to poor people, who they end up exploiting. The victim had to do free babysitting just for a place to crash with a sex pest.
To all women, I'm so sorry that men exist. Really.
ex wife
This meme really nails her
I wonder if she was, at one point, even more involved? The main testimony says that Gaiman said something along the lines of "I wish we were back to where Amanda could fuck you too". I really hope he didn't mean she SA'd women and girls with him.
Being in the music world, I had always heard Amanda Palmer was super shitty. I don't really know what else to say here.
Yeah. There's a clear path there from a weird upbringing to a misapprehension of consent, which combined with kink of any kind can go bad, fast.
Of course there are likely a thousand ex-scientologist kids who got into bdsm et al and are if anything the opposite of this. Fuck him, what an asshole.
Of course there are likely a thousand ex-scientologist kids who got into bdsm et al and are if anything the opposite of this.
One bajjillion not defending the perpetrator. But the article makes it seem like Gaiman had it a bit worse than others. I'm assuming that he grew up in the bad old days, in the middle of it, and his parents were quite devoted. If I had a point, I'd say that scientology's leaders need to go to prison as well.
It seems like his ex pushed him to do therapy, but he didn't do it as his issues didn't bother him, but rather everyone else around him.
____, ____, ___'_ ____ ___, ___'_ ____ ____ ___, ___'_ ____ ___ __ _____ ____ _______.there is so much more I want to say but I just as well find myself speechless, holy shit, this is utterly appalling
i think what stands out the worst personally is just gaiman's recurring disposition of being all 'uwu sowwy for sexually assaulting you can we talk 🥺'