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What did Gaiman do?
overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman#Sexual_assault_and_misconduct_allegations
some reporting: https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html
note: content warning, NSFL
sexualized assault
Iām sorry, I know itās a simple mistake and english might not be your first language (itās not mine either), but sexualized assault really made me laugh for some reason
Publishing opinions you disagree with - no matter how bad these opinions are - is categorically different from committing an actual crime.
Sheās the reason why the UK has ruled that transgender people are not equal in protection to the law.
So she hasnāt committed a crime, she just enabled peopleās existence a crime. So sheās totally absolved now!
she was also cited in multiple court rulings against trans rights in the us too.
Sheās also spending money on hate movements so itās not just opinions. What sheās doing is not a crime, but honestly it should be. She ends up influencing policy which hurts an entire class of people.
This is called plutocrcacy. When the wealthy elites determine how policy should govern the people without the people in question actually getting a say.
Before trans rights became a āculture warā issue, most people didnāt give a shit what your identity was or what you wanted to do in private - that was just between you and your doctor.
Iām so disappointed in Rowling. I loved Harry Potter and wouldāve loved that videogame.
From what Iāve read, the game was a barebones RPG with a suspiciously racialized plot, anyway.
i told my kids they are free to enjoy it, not were never buying official merch, want merch but from artists. or when they wanted wands, i gave them a stick, a sharp knife and supervision and they made their own.
rowling is a transphobe, but gaiman is like weinstein a sex pest. she played it carefully for decades before coming out, when she had built a large amount of fans and support, much like lewis CK, the cancelling dint end his career so to speak, he moved all online before it got worst.
also transphobia has massive support from right wingers.
āRowling is a transphobe AND Gaiman is like a Weinstein sex pestā Fixed it for you.
Sheās actively pushing hard, with a large platform, against trans people and her product is not some necessary thing but rather just a book series. It is so easy to just drop her, especially if youāre now an adult/young adult with a higher reading level and can take in better content from better people.
People need to drop her, sheās a horrid lady with incredibly mid-to-decent books and there is no excuse for hanging onto her.
ok.
no need to play villain Olympics, they are both horrid in different ways.
but I think the differences is that more people will be grossed out by rapy acts, than being a bigot, because there are more bigots than rapists in the public
Except Iām the one saying āandā. They both suck, and it doesnāt matter who sucks worse since theyāve both crossed the threshold and people shouldnāt be giving either of them money. Where on earth did you get anything else from out of my comment?
sorry if I read it wrong. my bad.
Fair enough.
Rightwingers donāt like Rowling because she still considers herself a feminist and uses feminism as the basis of her transphobia.
Doesnāt season 2 of the sandman come out in a couple weeks? Doesnt really seem like heās being boycotted.
The 2nd season was already in production when the allegations/proof came out, and I guess Netflix did not want to just burn all that money for nothing. But they did cancel the 3rd season
Not defending him in any way, but has there been more proof released? Last I saw he was investigated by authorities and there wasnāt enough evidence to prove a criminal case. And I get not enough to prove a criminal case doesnāt mean he didnāt do it, but it also means there isnāt much evidence. Again, not defending him. This kind of behavior is gross and unacceptable.
Yeah, thatās just what Netflix does. They cancel shows. Iām skeptical that the cancelation decision was made because of gaimanās allegations. If it was I donāt see how continuing production on season 2 after the fact makes any sense.
From what Iāve read, they did cancel the 3rd season - maybe not directly because of what Gaiman did, but for sure because itās not very cash money to do productions with him right now
I canāt tell if Iām allowed to be excited about it because I love Sandman but Gaiman is a creep.
I love the sandman. I have yearned for an adaptation for years. Then we get one and itās actually good. Not good for comic book TV. Actually GOOD good.
And then the show goes and gets himself and the show cancelled because heād a fucking sex creep. Fuck you Neil.
Also, fuck you Amanda fucking Palmer. It took a while before we found out, but youāve been complicit in this fucking stuff for ages.
Honestly, Iām developing massive trust issues, Iām starting to reflexively fear liking stuff because Iām pretty sure one of the people involved with it is going to turn out to be a massive predator any minute now.
itās easy to complain about death of the author when you donāt care about their work.
but even you do, even just enjoying it a bit, itās a bit harder.
you can pirate it, you get to enjoy it and they get no revenue from it. but then engaging with the content is free advertising, so just watch it and keep it to yourself.
While still a bad person, what Gaiman did limited to a number of people, not a number of countries, also his work is actually good, not half-baked garbage only held up by nostalgia.
Maybe not the most popular idea here, but I think there are a lot less Rowling fans, and a lot more Harry Potter fans. After all she didnāt really write anything noteworthy after the Harry Potter books. And the HP themed stuff like Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts she did after the main series is letās call it controversial, sheās a one hit wonder. Gaiman wrote a lot more and had a lot more different main characters in different settings, as far as I know, I didnāt read anything of his stuff.
Iāve read a bunch from both authors and think your point checks out. Gainan has much more variety. Iām not sure it matters though.
My guess, worthless as it is, is that Gaimanās best works celebrated the marginalized. Loved them and taught you to love them. Respected them. His work taught people that his actions are terrible.
On the other hand, Stardust. Maybe my guess is totally wrong. Shrug
If anyone is looking for some
goodfucking amazing books by an awesome and genuinely fun and good natured dude, check out Jason Pargin, he is awesome and not problematic and his books are all bangers, and he also enabled and actively supports the careers of many other super awesome and creative people. Also, listen to Bigfeets.Iāve been wanting to read his books for a while. I have quite a few that I own and still need to read, though. Any particular book recommendations from him? John Dies at the End? Zoey Ashe series?
There really are no wrong answers. The JDATE books are cosmic reality bending lovecraftian horror, and the Zoey books are a Bladerunner-esque sci-fi about a future you can see from here. The first thing i read of his was John Dies At The End, and I think that is a really good place to start.
The tiktok guy?
The very same
If weāre recommending authors, my favorite is Jasper Fforde. He wrote this book called Shades of Grey (which unfortunately came out around the same time as that book) thatās about people who can only see one color (sorry, colour), and the hue that they can see determines their social standing. I have been waiting over a decade for the sequel and he just released it (Red Side Story) last year. My brain has been bad at letting me read books, so it sits on the shelf but I loved the first one.
I really hope thereās no problematicism around him (as thatās the subject of the thread), but reading his books itās hard to imagine there could be.
Thats a really cool concept, thanks for the rec, Iāll check them out.
I also love Jasper Fforde, and it is because he was guest of honour at a Jodi Taylor event that I also got into her books. She writes a series about time-travelling historians which I would recommend.
She also writes at a much faster pace than Fforde does these days, so thatās a plus. I was never half as annoyed waiting for GRR Martin to write A Dance With Dragons as I was waiting for Red Side Story!
ooo, thank you for the recommendation. I look forward to it. i was recently gifted Grady Hendrixās The Southern Book Clubās Guide to Slaying Vampires. I know they say donāt judge a book by its cover, but i judged this one by its title and d(-_ā).
The last three books that werenāt technical manuals i tried to read, i got 100 pages in and realized i hadnāt retained anything. working on it, but iām not exactly excited about reading so much. goddamn grad school broke my brain.
not problematic
I love the guy but Iām sure you could find an instance of him being problematic. Like his pen name, David Wong, is questionable given heās not asian.
Stephen King is Scots-Irish and he used the pen name Richard Bachman despite not being German.
there is a long and respected history of mocking germans.
He stopped using it for that very reason, and took accountability. People are allowed to self correct, if he understands the problem with what he did and course corrected without being called out for it what would throwing more stones accomplish?
Edit: Also, not a big enough deal to say you shouldnāt read his books. Especially considering the narrative reason as to why he was using it.
Iām not throwing any stones, yo. Iām just pointing out you canāt exactly say heās not problematic. I have a tolerance for problematicity so itās of no bother to me.
The word problematic is kind of weasely used this way. The pen name had an in-universe rationale that made sense and was funny because of the incongruity. Merely alluding to the existence of ethnicity isnāt āproblematicā in itself.
Iām not the on who brought the word problematic into this conversation. But I bet you if I put a poll on, say, tumblr, asking about different potentially problematic things, āpretending to be asianā would score highly on the problematic scale.
He wasnāt pretending to be asian, though, the book John Dies at The End makes that very clear and gives a silly in universe reason for the now dead pseudonym. It really was not problematic, even at the time of it being used.
Then I will rephrase ā asking tumblr āis it problematic for a white person to go by an obviously Asian name as a pseudonym,ā I feel that even phrased that way they would still say āyes.ā
I donāt really use the word āproblematicā in the social justice sense myself because itās incredibly vague, but if youāre going to specifically use the word problematic and claim that Jason Pargin isnāt, then I feel that itās a pretty cut-and-dry āyes that was āproblematicāā scenario.
If he was still using the pseudonym and making excuses to keep using it, sure, but Iām of the opinion that once someone understands what they have done wrong and took the opportunity to learn from it and do better there is no more wrong doing. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but a pseudonym that someone came up with in their 20ās and had the wherewithal later to say, āThatās not ok, I need to stop doing thatā and stopped doing that for the right reasons is pretty far from a reason to call them problematic, especially when it wasnāt a decision made under any form of duress and he has made no attempt at defending his choice to have used that pseudonym and stated it was not ok for him to have used that pseudonym.
Edit: Also, it was used in a narrative context of the main character trying to throw off his identity, if Theyāre looking for David Wong then they wouldnāt assume itās the burnt out white dude.
Why is that questionable?
Stolen Valor
Stolen valor refers to the act of falsely claiming military service or awards that one did not earn, often to gain respect, money, or other benefits.
?
How does being or not being Asian plays into this?
āStolen valorā can be used in a humorous way beyond its original meaning as someone pretending to be a veteran. For example, thereās a funny Youtube video about a tradesperson encountering a hipster wearing Carhartt workwear and using the phrase āstolen valorā to describe him.
Ok, so it was a joke?
English is not my first language so Iām asking for clarification not trying to be snarky.
I like to think my comment qualifies as clarification. Iām not trying to be snarky either.
OK, maybe a little snarky.
Oh John dies at the end is in my top ten all time favorites possibly even #1 and I donāt even like horror.
That whole series is as good as it gets for me, hands down. John, Dave, and Amy are the mother fuckinā GOATS.
Edit: The Zoey Ashe and The Suits series is every bit as good if youāre into sci-fi, and Black Box of Doom is a fantastic stand alone story set in the modern world. Neither are connected to the reality or events of [UNDISCLOSED]. Heās also currently working on the next book in the JDATE series which will release next year.
Thereās just so much entertainment and incredible creativity out there. I genuinely donāt understand allegiances like this.
I love Sandman but tbh fuck that dude and Iāll go read one of other million alternative stories that often are just as good if not better.
The competition in creative industry is just insane and switching is basically free compared to any other industry. Like, good luck switching from John Deere if youāre a farmer but Harry Potter fans have zero barriers and still canāt do it. Spineless, weak people.
My friend has a significant portion of his sleeve tattoo dedicated to sandman so in his case O really get it
yeah, that would put me in full cope mode too, lol
People got into Gaiman at an older age than they got into HP. So HP is more deeply ingrained
At 13, I read Enderās Game and was absolutely obsessed. Read a ton of other OSC books at that age and it took me decades to rid myself of all the veiled mormon morality in his books.
As an adult, I never had one hesitation about disavowing him. I re-read the Ender saga a few years back to see how it held up (it didnāt hold a candle to my teen-selfās impression), but I had no problem not paying for new copies of anything that would pay OSC.
OSC was the first author I read who conveyed OCD on the page (the wood grain lines in Xenocide). Hard to completely disavow that.
The saddest thing about this story youāve told (which is very familiar to me) is that OSC, while heavily influenced by his Mormonism, didnāt need to be the homophobe he is.
Brandon Sanderson, who is also a Mormon, has multiple LGBT characters. They are mostly supporting roles so far, but theyāre there. He even has an ace character (though mentioning who might be a spoiler for some). Then there are the Kandra, who change gender at whim. And thereās the Reshi king who was born female, always identified as a king and not a queen, and when he gained Radiant powers his body naturally reformed male to reflect his self-image (Investiture naturally reshaping a highly Invested physical form to fit the personās self-image was well-established already, I think most clearly spelled out in Warbreaker but has had a few examples in Stormlight Archive).
Anyway my point is we can act like Orson Scott Card is a homophobe because of his religion, and certainly that probably helped inform his views, but anyone as traveled and informed as he is should have had those views challenged enough to rethink them by now.
I havenāt read a lot of Sanderson, but Iāve read enough to sense that this difference is in true personal disposition.
Sandersonās drive seems to be more of wonder, curiosity and adventure, and the stories delve into morality and justice as a source of plot tension.
In contrast, I think OSC has always been more of a black-and-white thinker. I think his best stories have been ones where he is exploring a moral struggle or thought experiment. But at the end of the story, you can pull out what OSC has concluded morally about those characters - who is good, who is bad (and always has been), and maybe who is a necessary evil.
All of OSCās stories are about categorizing people, behaviors and decisions into āshould/should notā buckets. And Iāve just never gotten that sense from Sandersonās books.
This is a really good analysis. Thank you!
To the kinds of people who never moved beyond childrenās books maybe
even as a kid i recognized HP as slop and it feels vindicating that society is finally catching up
Itās beyond satisfying for me to as a child to see the books were badly made, and increasingly less edited, and now other people have had blinders removed with improved media analysis and just growing up.
Notice how a lot of folks arenāt aware of the disgusting things Gaiman did, specifically BECAUSE he went quiet. Rowling doesnāt want to go quiet because sheās a crusader: discriminating against trans people is a goal for her.
Yeah its a deliberate strategy by Gaiman, while in the background he goes after his victims that settled previously for breaching NDAs. Even if he doesnāt win its money well spent to stop more accusations from coming out. Heās going to wait this out and try to rehabilitate himself in a few years.
Yeah, Gaiman keeps a low profile because he wants people to forget what he did. Rowling is proud of being a hateful cunt and invests time and money in proliferating hate.
Also I actually have less of an issue with other people buying Gaimanās work. I have no love for the man and wonāt buy anything myself again, but if you buy something of his, the money goes to him, and stops there. Rowling directly funds bigotry; the money people spend on Harry Potter is in a direct pipeline to funding the suffering of innocent people.
At the very least, before everything happened with Gaiman, he was known for having positive philanthropic ventures. Even if you gave him money, a sizable portion went to him, another portion went on to better the world. Iād presume he still supports these trusts and charities too.
deleted by creator
yes, she sees herself as a kind of martyr and victim of a witch-hunt, which does change how she responds to the cultural backlash she receives for her behavior.
didnāt i just see any new sandman season announced though?
I feel like we have to be able to separate artistsā bad behavior from our evaluation of the quality of their work.
Maybe thereās a time limit? Maybe they have to be dead so they canāt benefit from their work being sold.
Are there any non problematic artists/creators from 500 years ago who we nevertheless find their work product valuable to society today? What about science? Especially medicine with all the body snatching.
Neil Gaiman is almost certainly a sex pest based on all the women reporting. So I get not wanting to give him money. He hopefully gets it, too.
I like the suggestion of piracy as an approachā¦
I would say itās only possible, at least to the degree of Rowling, when the artist is dead. Someone can be a shitty person and not a monster, this is my regard for most actors, authors, and artists. cheat on your wife, have a drug abuse disorder, theyāre a pretentious asshole thatās hard to work with, or something like that and I can still appreciate their work, theyāre not running some weird political agenda funded by their proceeds (Rowling), a cult (Jared Leto), or gross predatory sexual abuse and tape (Kevin Spacey, Diddy.) Anyone purposefully, knowingly, and actively doing harm to others is not something Iām willing to financially or artistically support. When they die and cannot benefit from the proceeds, the art can stand as an independent entity, but as long as itās under their wing it will be problematic. Gwyneth Paltrow is a weird fucked up person, but I can still enjoy a performance from her, for example, but Cuba Gooding Jr. being involved with Diddy shit is a no go for me.
When it comes to J.K. Rowling, as far as Iām concerned, Death of The Author requires the actual death of the author, otherwise there is no negotiating that you are financially supporting her agenda outside of her art.
Edit: Another good example would be Orson Scott Card, as a human I despise him and his views, but he is simply outspoken about his views and never started a whole god damned foundation with the intent to try to codify his views into law, and I can still enjoy the works of his I enjoy with nothing more than āman, that guy is a bigoted asshole, how the hell did he manage to write such hard Sci-Fi?ā If Rowling were simply outspoken about her views then that would be one thing, but she is actively trying to ruin peopleās lives and cause social and political erasure of people she refuses to understand via the profits of her works.
I like the suggestion of piracy as an approachā¦
I hear Anna has an archive of said workā¦
Whether or not their work is good, do you really want to enable them to keep being rich pieces of shit by buying their works? The ultimate cutoff point is when their work becomes public domain, death only works if their heirs arenāt also horrible people. Though some artists do reform in their later years, e.g. HP Lovecraft.
I think the moral arguments aside, there is just the practical matter that having read what he did, I cannot stomach to consume content made by him. The association is naturally aversive, I donāt need a rational argument about how itās immoral to support a rapist - I just donāt like it.
iāll call it death of the author when theyāre actually dead, until then itās self-excused support.
Sort of off topic. I think learning new things about an author can make re-reading their works interesting.
Oh look, another barely concealed fetish!
I misread this as accusatory to the commenter lol
same, lol - I was like daaaaaamn
I love your username btw. One of my favorite wild flowers. Theyāre so whimsical!
yeah people love to bang the ādeath of the authorā drum and i think itās because theyāre just lazy and hate thinking about stuff. itās a valid way of reading but itās also the most low-effort and least insightful imo.
Iāve always felt that if you really subscribe to the ethos of death of the author then you should just consume all your media without learning anything about anyone who made it. And that is unbelievably dumb imo
Is it? Iāve read hundreds of novels that I couldnāt name the author even if I tried. I would go to the library, pick a book, read it, and go to the next one. A lot of people do the same thing with all of their entertainment.
hp was a big part of my pre transition life when i was in the closet. i hate jk so i dont buy new things but i still do reread my existing books. leaky, pottercast, and starkid were the first places i fit in.
but i dont actively seek out pro rowling hp fandom tho. fuck rowling.
I think a lot of us trans girls are in the same situation. I learned to read on HP books, and Hermoine was a deeply important character to me growing up š Itās hard for me, but I have gradually moved away from the series as it increasingly becomes associated with Britainās Top Transphobe.
Dunno if you know dimension 20 and their Misfits & Magic mini-series, but it was basically a satire of Harry Potter, really attacking some of the unquestioned tropes in that series.
Anyway, this is a beautiful clip of Erika Ishii, who is NB, at the start of the series, saying what they think of TERFs:
i LOVE d20 and erika! theyāre amazing <3
evan kelmp
Yayyyyyy Erika my beloved š„°
same! i also got into chris colfers land of stories which is infinitely better too (and heās a better person too!)
Supporting Gaiman is supporting a rapist; it will negatively impact a couple people directly.
Supporting Rowling is much worse.
such incredible insight, Rowling as an anti-trans activist is engaged in a genocidal movement which has of course a much larger scale of both number of people harmed and the severity of that harm
I hate Rowlings and her stupid and dangerous ideas, but I donāt think it is genocide? Or is it some pro iseaeli stance that makes you say that?
Iām asking because I think itās important to not use genocide for eveything bad because it just waters down the words meaning, and in the end when there is a ārealā genocide people will compare it to lesser evils.
Not saying youāre wrong, but I would like to know the reason behind you saying it!
Itās just utilitarianism. Utilitarian generally seems to piss off a lot of lemmites though; I thought people would have a more negative reaction to it here.
(Btw I agree the number of people harmed is larger but I think itās debatable whether or not the (per-person) severity of the harm is larger.)
the anti-trans movementās achievements like taking away gender-affirming care have directly been shown to result in increased suicides, as far as I know Gaimanās actions have not directly killed anyone, while Rowlingās advocacy does directly support a movement that results in deaths - I think the per-person severity of harm when a trans person self harms, attempts suicide, or succeeds in suicide (not to mention when anti-trans bigots rape, torture, and murder trans people) are all worse AFAIK
Itās true that Gaimanās actions havenāt directly killed anyone, but Iām not sure there are enough victims to definitively say that getting raped by Gaiman would cause less propensity for suicide than Rowlingās advocacy against trans people. Butā¦ I suspect you are right.
utilitarianism: for when you need the worst possible take delivered in the most insufferable manner using the least amount of critical faculty to answer the questions nobody asked.
All that true and it works ā¢
Now we just need people to listen to our hot takes and weāre set.
funny thing is the last time i bothered thinking about utilitarianism was when i was reading about the zizians using it to justify murdering just whoever they pleased. iām not convinced it works, itās a school of philosophy for stupid pedants who want to feel smart and justified in whatever they already think.
well the zizians were obviously insane, nobody likes them. The rationalists disowned them, just like they disowned FTX.
As a moral philosophy, I am not certain about utilitarianism. But outside of morality, if youāre going to have preferences, you might as well do the math.
Does buying Gaimanās work after heās dead still benefit him or can I separate him from the art at that point? I donāt wanna support him, but I do wanna read his work someday
Just pirate the books and read them now if you want to read them but donāt want to give him money. Donāt feel like you need to pass a purity test when it comes to your reading list, even more so when it comes to books he only co wrote like Good Omens.
I would say so, yes. The only issue then being, can you enjoy reading their work knowing what you know ?
Anecdotal, but I read the Mists of Avalon years ago and enjoyed it enough to want to read more. Then I found out about the author (and her husband) sexually abusing children, including her own daughter, and I absolutely cannot bring myself to read any more of her books.
Fuck abusers. Iām glad sheās dead and I donāt give two shits what she had to say about anything when she was alive.
i was unaware of any actual incidents with her until now. i read fall of atlantis as a kid and literally cried when it was over because i loved it so much. re-read it as an adult and the pedophile apologia is so blatant that i immediately stopped reading it and stopped mentioning her name at all.
I wonder if I am unusual in that I am able to read good books by bad people without feeling gross. (Iām not claiming that I would support a bad person, just that reading their books doesnāt generally cause me particular anguish.) Is this something that is unusual about me, or do people just assume that it should be difficult to read books like that, but most people arenāt bothered? Same with movies and music. Listening to Michael Jackson or David Bowie from my personal archives, I donāt feel any particular difficulty despite the allegations against them.
Just dont buy itā¦ his work is great but why give any more money to him OR his estate when there are way simoler options.
Sail the high seas.
Buying Gaimanās work after heās dead wonāt benefit him, but it could have the second-order effect of giving the impression to people that people broadly donāt care about boycotting rapists. Itās a lesser sin than supporting him now.
Harry Potter is so ubiquitous that most people who consume it do so without really knowing much about the author beyond their name and then thereās a decent chunk that donāt care because it doesnāt affect them and they think itās culture war stuff that doesnāt matter.
Making people care about things that donāt directly affect them is always the hardest task.
