The Neil Gaiman situation...

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[midlifebookcrisis]

"Life is short and there is so much great art in the world." ❤ Lovely. Thank you.

[joanhoffman]

Remember what Daniel Radcliffe told one reader: what’s between you and the books is sacred. Don’t allow the creator’s actions to taint your love of the creation. Great works have been created by not so great people. If something helped you through a hard time, that’s still valid. If it helped change your life for the better, that’s still good. It’s still sacred. 💞

[wiebkeh.]

Dear fellow readers, please know: You supported someone for being an author who wrote stuff you loved to read. That's why you bought their books, and not because of stuff you did not and could not know. Much love and hugs to you all.

[malmnn]

I'm a 56 year old woman who grew up listening to her mom's Bill Cosby comedy albums constantly. They got me through a lot of hard times. So I understand feeling horrified when you find out someone you admired is not the good guy you thought they were.

[MaryannCn]

While I understand they are currently allegations, the details are very damning. Either one or both of the women (I can’t recall) went to the police within 24 hours. His wife posted on social media that she and Gaiman separated around the same time as the NZ incident. They later divorced. The sickening part is how he projected in public that he was an ally for women’s rights, including to “believe women” about SA. That did not age well to say the least.💔

[drinkbooks]

Dead people are dead, there is no one to hold accountable and I won't give up their books because I found out something about them post mortem. I didn't know them, I didn't know when I read the book, I can't seek their perspective, so I have no reason to boycott a dead person's work.

A person who is alive can be held accountable. I will always love the stories, nothing will change that but I always thought Neil himself was a little... off. I never wanted to meet him but his books got me through some really tough times. Controversial as the sentiment is, no one is just the horrible things they do. Every horrible person is still a person and all the weird mixed up crap that comes with that title. A horrible person can still write a wonderful story.

I own the books and I won't get rid of them. The stories are written and out in the world and have been for decades. They have nothing to do with Neil now and everything to do with MY relationship with them. However, I will no longer support him going forward. I will form no new relationships with his work because those would be colored by the new knowledge I have that he is, at the very least extremely skeezey, if not exactly a predator. I don't have enough information to judge him beyond that. I don't feel guilty for still loving the stories that helped me till now, though. Those were never relationships with the author, anyway, but with the stories and how I felt reading them. Continued support of his work, however, is a choice I choose not to make. If you use your fame as leverage for intimate favors... yeah, you don't get to have it.

[ladyrosenrot]

the fact that he tried to blame his autism for his monstrous acts, really makes me disgusted as an autistic woman. It gross me out so much. how dare he blame it on that as if neurodivergent community isn't already facing horrible sh!ts.

[donna]

The danger of putting someone on a pedestal is that they will invariably let you down.

[rookbirdblues]

It's so disappointing considering how much he seemingly talked about and respected Ursula K le Guin for her writing, and talked about how she'd 'taught him that women were people too' when he read her books as a child. Maybe he didn't learn enough. But really I think he's just got very good at paying lip service while behind the scenes he's doing the opposite.

[marocat]

I mean whenever that is called assault or not, from comments its clear he is a major creep abusing his power and, reportds seem to confirm he very creepy does take adventage, even young women at a con were warned to not be alone with him ominous. So he definitly did wrong things whatever aou call it.

[Rozilla]

I was so fucking angry about this. I've been a Gaiman fan for years, two decades at least, and his association with Pratchett gave me a lot of comfort because of his lovely stories about him and memories of him. All those tributes to him, with Neil on them, is soul destroying.
But we need to believe victims, we need to believe those women. I hope they can heal now.

[Sharkuterie]

I’m not sure why people think that just because they enjoyed an artist’s work, that makes the artist a saint who could do no wrong. You don’t know them or their life. Only their work. Celebrity idolizing makes little sense to me.

[dchick]

For me this exact feeling was Marion Zimmer Bradley. I read everything she ever wrote through high school and my twenties, and recommended her for twenty years. Ten years or so ago, allegations of her collusion in SA of her children and maybe some foster children? by her husband came out. The most disturbing part for me personally, after reading her daughter's statements, was looking back at some of her works, I could actually see it in the stories. I can't have her books in my house and some of them were my all time favorites.

[johnsmith]

Rumours have been around for a while.
The guys in Forbidden Planet in Newcastle used to say that if Neil was doing a signing you never left him alone with any female staff members as he was a little...over familiar.

When if comes to problematic artists I'm of the opinion that if they are long dead it's ok, that's why I can still read H.P Lovecraft.

[allisarcadia]

Neil Gaiman's work has been the singularly most influential art in my life as an illustrator and author. I had, until now, fully intended on building an illustrative art portfolio around the Stardust novel. I've spent most of my adult life emulating him, idolizing him, and striving to create worlds and stories as rich and beautiful as his.

Now, in the aftermath of my grief, I no longer wish to emulate him. I will eclipse him.

Now instead of following in his footsteps I'm determined to forge my own way and provide everyone stories with just as high of quality but with none of the abusive, disgusting, and phobic behavior exemplified by the authors I've loved.

[elizabethgriffith]

Hi WIllow, thanks for this video. I think what feels so heartbreaking about Neil Gaiman is the way he portrayed himself as a champion for women's rights and he always made himself very availble to fans, in person, on tumblr, etc. These traits that made him seem safe and relatable were actually fake and very predatory.
I love your message that there is a practically infinate amount of brilliant literature out there to discover and makes me excited to go out there and find new favs instead.

[nadiazayman]

I recently found out, from a client (I'm a therapist) that Alice Miller, the deceased psychoanalyst that wrote the revered classic "Drama of the Gifted Child", was a sh*t mother as reported by her son. Her book is about the devastation caused by narcissistic mothers. It's a wonderfully empathic book that has helped thousands, so I don't know what to do about this hypocrisy. People are so compartmentalized!

[alisontheanimal]

J.K Rowling once said ‘Hogwarts will always be there waiting to welcome you home.’ Or something like that I can’t be bothered looking it up, but the point is that she never added unless you’re trans, or Jewish or part or any other group I don’t like. Authors don’t get to ruin books for us. I say buy books second hand so that the author doesn’t see any money from the transaction, but I’m not about to limit my reading because another author did a dumb. I read a lot of ‘controversial’ authors. I hate the idea that we shouldn’t read a book. It’s okay to move on if you’re just too hurt, but don’t let an author steal a work from you you love, just because they’re an idiot.

[louh]

Have you read Monsters: A fan's dilemma by Claire Dederer? It discusses the issue we have with enjoying art by problematic figures

[Androsynth]

There's something I always find myself saying whenever a beloved writer/actor/whatever turns out to be a shit stain:

All of the memories we have of their works, the personal meanings, the representation, and inspiration they awoke in us, and all the other stuff: that's not the author, that's what WE brought TO the authors work. Books are experienced, and we bring our experiences to them. Things resonate because of who WE are. And regardless of how shitty the author is, all that good stuff comes from us, not them, and it's not tainted by the fact that they unambiguously suck. Sandman, for example, was very inspiring for me as a non binary person. One of the first times ever that I'd seen a gender ambiguous character like Desire in media, and then Mason Alexander Park just killed it in the Netflix show. Gaiman can't take that away. I brought that shit.

Even if we never support that author again, nobody can take the good stuff we brought to the work in the past away from us, because WE brought it. I find it helps me to separate that in my head. I hold on to the good experiences I had/brought, and then find someone who isn't a shit stain to read in the future.