accidentally tabbed into the explore page and the first thing trending on tumblr is good omens... kind of blows my mind how a man being a violent rapist who pretty explicitly used the social capital he gained by being a famous author to abuse women is not enough to turn you off of doing Fandom Stuff with their work. but fictional men being more real to the average tumblr user than real women is not surprising so I guess I don't have any right to act scandalized. it's just depressing man
like there's a conversation to be had for sure about what the appropriate ways are to engage with the work of a still-living creative who has been proven to use the goodwill their fame has bought them to get away with abusing people. because I don't think asking for gaiman or anyone else's entire body of work to be completely removed from any kind of public discussion is reasonable or practical. but I don't know man I am just personally of the belief that Fandomposting identically to the type of fandomposting you were doing before these facts came to light is really not it no matter how much you might talk about hating him in between those fandomposts.
How very depressing that Neil Gaiman had trended not even a tiny bit for demonstrating what a fucking horrific person he is.
As a reminder, he's suing Caroline Wallner, one of his accusers, for breaking her NDA. Not for libel. He's saying she shouldn't have told anyone about it, not that she lied.
The author says Wallner broke her NDA by sharing her story with the media, including with New York Magazine.
He doesn't need the money. He's risking the Streisand effect. He is punishing Caroline, he's trying to intimidate other victims who have signed NDAs to scare them into continued silence.
He is no friend to women, to the LGBTQIA+ community, to anyone quite frankly unless he thinks they are of value to him.
Share the story. Put it on Facebook and bluesky and whatever else you're on. Make it clear what a horrifying person he is. Tell your friends. He's paying Edendale a fortune to try and cover this up. Make this hard for him. Make it cost him money.
Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook. Gaining inspiration from other authors is great. Lifting passages and avoiding giving credit isn’t.
Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here in paperback or here on Kindle.
If you have ever been a parent or caregiver to a young child, sit the fuck down before you read the new Neil Gaiman accusations.
For anyone left trying to defend NG in the context of BDSM or “but but he’s not been convicted” this is it. This is (probably, I’m speculating) the reason the powers-that-be stepped in and started hacking up projects tied to NG. Anyone familiar with industry knows that when significant scandals break—lawyers for big companies will do their own internal investigation that (rarely) makes it to the public. These internal investigations have the advantage of mandatory cooperation from the subject thanks to solid contracts. The firms want to know what else /could/ come out so that they can weigh the risk. NG would have been forced to share with them the fuller details (Even in the absence of his cooperation they have great investigators in their Rolodex.)
Two separate women, one of whom is a mother of three in her 50s, have accused NG of openly sexual behavior in front of his own young child.
Relevant excerpts below the cut
Re: Caroline (the mother of three, former groundskeeper, NG reneged on a significant multi-year real estate deal when she refused to continue sleeping with him)
“Sometimes she would babysit. Once, Caroline and the boy, then 4, fell asleep reading stories in Gaiman and Palmer’s bed. Caroline woke up when Gaiman returned home. He got into bed with his son in the middle, then reached across the child to grab Caroline’s hand and put it on his penis. She says she jumped out of the bed. “He didn’t have boundaries,” Caroline says. “I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him.””
Re: Scarlett (the original public accuser, a woman from NZ with a troubled life turned Amanda Palmer groupie, whom NG had no business dragging into a BDSM relationship. Per Scarlett and some other sources close to Palmer, NG was “forbidden” to have relations with Scarlett by Palmer, but Palmer still brought her into NG’s orbit because Palmer used Scarlett for babysitting and other favors.)
“A week or so into Pavlovich’s time with the family, their son began to address her as “slave” and ordered Pavlovich to call him “master.” Gaiman seemed to find it amusing. Sometimes he’d say to his child, in an affable tone, “Now, now, Scarlett’s not a slave. No, you mustn’t.” One day, Pavlovich came into the living room when Gaiman and the boy were on the couch watching the children’s show Odd Squad. She joined them, sitting down next to the child. Gaiman put his arm around them both, reached into Pavlovich’s shirt, and fondled her breasts. She says he didn’t make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy. Another time, during the day, he requested oral sex in the middle of the kitchen while the boy was awake and somewhere in the house. “He would never shut a door,” she says.”
…
“Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad. The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed. Pavlovich perched on the edge of the mattress; Gaiman got onto the bed and pulled her so she was on her back. He lifted the covers up over them. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop. She mouthed, “What the fuck are you doing?” She didn’t want the child to overhear what she was saying. Gaiman ignored her. He rolled her onto her side, took off his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have sex with her from behind while continuing to speak with his son. “‘You should really get off the iPad,’” she recalls him saying. Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow.”
…
“Palmer called Gaiman that night. According to Horne, the musician, she asked Gaiman whether their son had been wearing headphones while he and Pavlovich were in the hotel room. He replied “no,” then hung up. The following day, Palmer emailed Gaiman and their couples counselor, a man named Wayne Muller, a minister and “a sort of marital companion,” as he put it to me. According to Muller, who relayed the contents of the email to me, Palmer wrote that Gaiman needed psychiatric treatment and had finally agreed to seek it. “Everyone was trying to make the best of what was clearly a difficult situation,” Muller tells me.”
Full Article
How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.
I was thinking about Good Omens the book, and what fandom was like back in the day, and it dawned on me that many recent fans probably don't know about Ship Manifesto.
Ship Manifesto was a livejournal community that hosted primers on different ships introducing the characters and the appeal of their dynamic, with background on the canon, fandom, and fanwork recs. It was a lot of fun to read someone else's take on your favourite pairing and it was a great resource for new fans or people hoping to recruit their friends to their fandom.
There was a Crowley/Aziraphale manifesto, of course. And if you're interested in fandom history, or just curious about what being a Good Omens fan was like in 2005, you can read it here.
For those who are sceptical of Tortoise's coverage, here is an account on a separate podcast from a different woman, whose encounter dates to 2012, and who has not been linked to Tortoise. This episode was released on 28 July 2024.
Episode Description
Claire (she/her) uses a pseudonym to share her story about being groomed and sexually coerced and manipulated by world-renowned author Neil Gaiman. We discuss the power of stories and fame, and she shares how journaling, therapy, and friendships have helped her find her center in her own story. We originally spoke in 2022, and at that time she decided she wasn't ready, but said that if other survivors came forward, she would join them. Several weeks ago two women came forward and shared abuse stories about Neil Gaiman. Claire reached out to me to support herself and them and all survivors by sharing her story today.
Support the podcast at patreon.com/papillondeboer
since good omens season 2 is airing, i thought i would share this horrendous sketch of what i imagined aziraphale and crowley looked like when i read the book back in high school
