Hoo boy this is one of those posts where I wish I was younger and didn’t know any better. But I’m turning 40 this year.
Fuck.
For those who don’t know, I’m a pretty staunch Neil Gaiman fan. I have a bunch of his books, poured several hundo into The Absolute Sandman, bought the humble bundle, went to see him (and Kevin Smith!) at Graphic, and we follow each other on Last.FM (remember that?).
For those who somehow have been living under a rock, it turns out Neil Gaiman is -shall we say- a wee bit of a grub.
Ok fine he’s a piece of shit.
I’m no genius on the nuances of depravity and sexual assault (hint: there are none, it seems), but I’ve talked about it with people, tried to rationalize it the best way I can, read both sides of the story (well, Neil’s responses and that fairly detailed article on Vulture), and yup. No can do this time.
At first I thought maybe -just maybe- this was a once off anomaly, bad judgement of a man in his 60’s, a misread situation, another wannabe Dom who didn’t read the fucking manual (and maybe I still think that, in a way. I mean, we’ve all made mistakes, right?). But it’s hard to justify that when Gaiman is incredibly smart, incredibly well-read, worldy, a wise sage and a fantastic storyteller. One whose worlds I have been enthralled by, engaged with, and -as much as one can do with a book- lived in.
To wit; he knows what he fucking did, and he knows what he did was wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, maybe he was misguided, but real, breathing, living fucking (and seemingly vulnerable)people got hurt in the process.
Hurt enough to report it as abuse.
As someone who is a fan of his work, it’s heartbreaking, sure (I’m still not over Rik Mayall’s passing, so this is gonna take some time). But as someone with a little bit of a conscience and common sense, it’s appalling, and upsetting (I guess I know how all the trans/enby/queer folk feel about J.K. Rowling now).
But who the fuck am I? I can’t do anything about it. I’m an idiot with a blog and a noisy keyboard.
He says on his blog he’s gonna do better, do the work, and make amends, and the naïve, 39 year old idiot manchild in me still believes him a little. But now’s probably not the time for conjecture.
As far as his works that I own? He has my money, already. If I want to spend more I can buy them used or pick an author who isn’t fucking awful. Hell I never read any KA Applegate growing up and she seems like a legend.
And to Neil: You don’t know I exist outside of Twitter, but mate, do better. For yourself, at least. Might not fix the hurt you’ve caused these women, or your fans, but at least you can fix yourself so you’re not such a shitty human. The world has enough of those.