#it's not about neil gaiman

[greenfiredragonfly]

Uhhhhhh how to say this...

...Why are people making the good omens spoiler leak all about neil gaiman?

Uhhhhh idk. I liked the TV show when I watched it, and it was fun to see one of my old, longtime fandoms burst into vibrant life with so many wonderful new people! I made a lot of friends! There are so many new and beautiful fanworks in the world now! So many people were introduced to my OTP and fell in love with them just like I did!! Yay!

However. I'm not actually planning on watching season two, because GO is my favorite book and I hate sequels pretty much across the board. I love terry pratchett's work. Neil is not my favorite author. I really like some of his stuff and really dislike others.

....

*breathes deeply*

So basically:

I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT NEIL IS SAYING OR WHAT HE THINKS ABOUT STUFF BEING LEAKED!! WHO CARES?? WHO CARES IF YOU LOVE NEIL OR HATE HIM???? WHO CARES IF YOU WANT TO TAUNT HIM OR RUB THE LEAK IN HIS FACE OR WHATEVER THE HELL?? DEATH OF THE AUTHOR AND ALL THAT!!! WHATEVER!!!! BUT PLEASE TAG YOUR GOOD OMENS SPOILERS BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY TRYING TO AVOID BEING SPOILED!!!!???? HOW HARD IS THAT TO BELIEVE???? IT'S ABOUT BEING KIND TO YOUR FELLOW FANS!!!!!

People are so keen to rub the leak in Neil's face that they're being rude to everyone else who just loves good omens and wants to watch it without being spoiled. Please stop. Please. At least tag your posts "good omens season 2" or something. Please. Please.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously 🥺❤ (you can watch it here in US or with US vpn :) <3) (or just this bit on youtube here :))

Neil Gaiman: I miss him most when I get stuck. You know, I'll just be working on something and I'll go, "Oh, this isn't quite it," and all I want to do is just call Terry, tell him what's going on and have him say, "Ah, grasshopper, the answer is there in the question." And I'd go, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Terry, just tell me."

[Terry Pratchett laughing]

[hansoeii]

head empty, no thoughts. just turtleneck crowley

[asasdemorcego]

me lately once again

[churail]

i mean this in the nicest way possible but making pieces of media your whole personality is not a good idea. not just cause individual authors can turn out to be horrible people that you might want to distance yourselves from later, but also because your self deserves to not be flattened by one story (no matter how important it seems to be). you deserve to be a person who cannot be defined in a few sentences.

[arttsuka]

People need to stop blaming 'parasocial relationships' when it's revealed to the public that a famous person has done something controversial (or even a crime) and the public is upset. 'I can't believe xxx did that!' doesn't always mean that the person who said it has a parasocial relationship with xxx. Usually it's just our faith in humanity, we want to believe that everyone has some basic human decency (especially someone we might admire) and it's only natural to be disappointed when we learn they're a bad person.

[crowleyholmes]

Been working on this for a while and if I don't post it now I never will so here you go <3 enjoy the most self-indulgent thing I've ever spent time on - I just really needed them to hug...

[mumblers-lobby]

We don't know that guy.

Before anyone starts whining, go donate to the fund OUR community started for actual SA victims. Shut up and put a dollar on the jar. Thanks, Good Night.

[astrhae]

crowley used the metal tool in season 1 to start time, and we learn that he's used it first to start space. to create the stars -- he still remembers how. he still remembers all of heaven's passwords: in the book crowley is described as an optimist because he has the "utter surety... that the universe would look after him". not god, but the universe. and of course he does: he helped create it and he's looking after it, too.

think about it: aziraphale had a sword, but crowley is about to face satan who wants to destroy the world, and crowley's only weapon is a tool of creation

[goodluckdetective]

If you’re reaction to this Neil Gaiman stuff is to crow how “I always hated his work” or “I knew he had bad vibes” I want you to stop, and understand what I hear, which is “they deserved it”

“But no” you say! That wasn’t what you meant. You just wanted to-

What? Talk about how you always knew better? That you were above falling for the act? That you always knew something was off? You are good enough to know evil when you see it?

Cool. So they were too stupid to know better? That they fell for the act? That they should have known something was off like you? That they weren’t good enough to spot this coming?

“That’s not what I meant! I meant his fans!”

Some of his fans were his victims. So only they deserved it?

“Not his fans who were his victims but his annoying fans-“

That’s what you’re getting from this? That you can finally brag to those annoying fans about how stupid they were for liking his work because…. a monstrous level of abuse happened. Glad you’re enjoying putting those fans in their place with….a bunch of horrific sex crimes.

Anyway, people who are making this about Gaiman’s work or his characters have lost the plot, I agree there. But people making this about how smart they were, how they knew better?

Think about what you’re actually saying and maybe shut the fuck up.

[akajustmerry]

jk terfling makes one fucking a tweet referring to "silence" from the literary community about Neil Gaiman and suddenly there's article after article like "well, jkr is making a point actually when you think about it..." no she fucking isn't!!! first of all the literary community hasn't been silent I've seen 100s of authors sharing the vulture article. secondly, jkr doesn't actually give a fuck about women or victim's. She literally supported Johnny Depp while he was abusing Amber Heard. she's proved her propensity for misogyny, transmisogyny, racism, and gender essentialism over and over. I guarantee the only reason she's even talking about Gaiman is 1) because she never misses an opportunity to jump on a news story that proves her transphobic belief that men are naturally predatory so she can continue to frame trans women as public threats and 2) she fucking loves the attention. She's not making any kind of valid point and she won't ever again because she's a bigot and people really need to internalize that instead of champing at the bit to validate her views. The irony of her calling out Gaiman for his misogynistic violence is that she doesn't even recognise how much responsibility she herself has for increased transmisogynistic violence against trans women in the UK and across the globe, and disguising that violence using feminist rhetoric just like Gaiman did will never make it any less abhorrent. I hope they both rot.

[ravenkings]

this is not the most important takeaway from that article, but we really, really need to talk more about scientology as an organization and how deeply evil, abusive, and exploitative it is. like truly any public figure associated with it on any level who doesn't publicly disavow it or speak out about it deserves an extremely high level of scrutiny.

[iceinherheart-kissonherlips]

for years we'd thought that Gaiman is just a cool good guy who's on tumblr to keep in touch with his fans and help them, while in fact he very well could've used this place to look for new victims

[sherlock-is-ace]

ok hear me out

[userirvingb]

go off!!!!!!

[diamondcitydarlin]

Just fair warning- I said on my personal post about this that I wasn't going to talk about Neil Gaiman anymore, but as it's becoming clear that him and his publishers and anyone else who makes money off of him is circling the wagons and trying to bury these allegations, as well as some fans still defending and trying to 'rationalize' this information, I feel like, actually, we need to keep talking about him (as much as I cannot stand him and feel physically disgusted now when I so much as see his face somewhere). Specifically, the fact that he's a liar, master manipulator and should not, under any circumstances, be given access to his fans like he has in the past. At the very least. (And if you need to blacklist his name or even unfollow me so as to not be triggered, I completely understand, but I will always try to tag these posts accordingly and I think it's crucial right now that the truth be put where people can see)

This post specifically is in response to those 'rationalizations' I've seen, some that have gone as far as to blame the young fans/groupies that hooked up with him for being 'golddiggers' or just making a mountain out of a molehill for something they now regret. It's not that simple, yall. (And, again, this requires some amount of completely ignoring the story about him extorting his tenant for sex under threat of eviction of her and her three young children, I'm not sure how you 'rationalize' that under the best of circumstances)

So let's be clear here. What we know is that NG has routinely, for possibly an upwards of 30 years, pulled sexual 'partners' from his fan groups, most of whom are 18-22 year old young women (though possibly younger, accounts are coming forward of 16 year olds having allegedly been inappropriately touched/flirted/propositioned by him, which ig is the age of consent in the UK but still?? 16 year olds!!). This wasn't one or two times in the course of three decades, this was a constant pattern of behavior for him and for a very insidious reason.

This isn't to try to infantilize those fans or young women/young people in general or try to suggest that they couldn't have consented to sex with an older person or famous person. In fact, the onus isn't on them at all. This is about an older guy with a lot of fame, power and wealth choosing to sleep with people that he had already conditioned to idolize him and using that power imbalance to coerce them into doing things they didn't want to.

Regardless of one's age or gender identity, it can be difficult to impossible to say 'no' to someone like that. After all, you've been 'chosen' by the chosen one, you're special and not like everyone else, and if you don't do what the popular person everyone trusts is telling you to do you could end up ostracized. Alienated. Or worse. And you know what? Gaiman knew that! He knew it when he was crafting his 'approachable dad' persona on tumblr. He knew it when he was cultivating a fandom of personality. He knew it when he was having huge meetups to try to ensnare more victims. I hate to even think it, but I'm starting to believe he knew it when he was writing children's books too.

It's been talked about again and again in separate issues, but needless to say something not being strictly illegal does not make it inherently, morally okay. It does not erase the fact that this man has been essentially grooming his fandom to feel safe meeting/speaking with him so he can coerce those he can snare into sexual acts they're not comfortable with. That is predator behavior, whether strictly 'illegal' in the eyes of a court or not (but ofc I think he should be criminally punished even if I'm not naive enough to think he actually will be, because this IS rape and rape should be criminally punished)

I'm not personally advocating for anyone to give up being in his related fandoms, but what I am personally advocating for is that people don't forget who he is and what he's capable of, especially when he tries to crawl back to where he was (I'm almost certain he will eventually, as I've said).

Again, at the very least, we need to use what little influence we do have to keep him from infiltrating fan spaces again. He should not be on tumblr yukking it up with young people, he should not be at public appearances hitting on teenagers, he should not be given the unrestricted access to fans that he's 'enjoyed' for the past 30+ years because he is not a safe person. While I wish there was more in the way of restorative justice that could be done, I think at very, very least we should do what we can to limit his proximity to people he could hurt in the future. Make sure no one forgets, because sweeping this under the rug means Gaiman gets to hurt more people.

Lastly, no one is the wrong for having been manipulated by him. Let's make that very clear. What we're NOT gonna do is blame ourselves, each other, the victims, etc, for evil acts that Gaiman chose to do himself, time and time and time again. It doesn't help the situation and it certainly doesn't protect future potential victims. We were all duped because we're human and we attach and a lot of us want to believe there are good people out there, particularly those who make art that means so much to us.

And there are. But let's also use this a teaching/learning tool about how much faith we place in famous people in the future, regardless of how 'approachable' and 'safe' they might seem. Let's remember to have a healthy suspicion of creators/famous people that are oddly immersed in fandom spaces- yes, even the ones you still currently like that seem fine, as difficult as that may seem.

At the end of the day, we don't know them or what they're capable of doing or what they might be plotting to do to us. Support victims. Amplify their voices. Don't forget.