The mainstream and SF/F medias remain eerily silent about Neil Gaiman and the accusations against him. Virtually no one of any note in the SF/F community besides me, Larry Correia, Jon Del Arroz, and John Scalzi have addressed the matter at all, and Scalzi, who purports to be close friends with Gaiman, is refusing to say anything beyond noting the accusations, even though Gaiman has hired the same crisis management team, Edendale Strategies, that worked for Ezra Miller and Marilyn Manson, and has also cancelled his only public event since the accusations were made public.
But social media is certainly paying attention:
- Just here to tell my own personal experience: I was friends with one of his former personal assistants, and I remember her telling stories back in the early aughts about having to “pull Neil off of a 15 year old fan.” She said this with kind of an eye-roll like it wasn’t uncommon, simply a part of the job. Given that, I think we’re about to hear much worse stories than the ones in this podcast.
- Yeah, I keep hearing (what are so far) rumors of this kind and it’s unsettling to say the least. I’m waiting for more information but at the same time I feel like I know what’s coming.
- Neil was very important to me at various times in my career. He was my teacher at Clarion. He blurbed my first novel. He invited me to perform at TED. We’ve always been friendly. My impression was that he’d dated fans in the past, during headier younger days, but now knew better. But now that survivors have gone on record? I have zero problem cutting all ties. I want to say that publicly and explicitly. No personal favors—and no creative works, frankly—are worth more than the safety and well-being of these two young women. And who knows how many others. I also say this because you better be sure I’ll be paying attention to whoever stays silent.
- Thank you so much for saying Neil Gaiman. His silence and the silence of everyone in his orbit in the wake of this is making me feel like I have lost contact with reality.
- it really is bananas how much more heat the sff community has for, like, guys accused of being social-climbing jerks than for the neil gaiman allegations
- Me: I wonder what Neil Gaiman is saying about this. Me 30 seconds later: oh look, he hasn’t posted anything in over two weeks, what a freaking coincidence! At this point in the process, that’s nearly an admission of guilt.
- First Neil Gaiman disappeared for obvious reasons. Then Ken White disappeared because (I assume) he just chose to do so. If John Scalzi disappears then my feed will basically be empty.
- Whatever does or doesn’t come of the Neil Gaiman allegations, the fact remains that many many people (myself included, to an extent) have spent years extolling The Sandman, whose beloved protagonist condemned a woman to eternal torture for checks notes rejecting his advances
- Absolutely WILD for Amanda Palmer’s first tweet since June 19 to be scolding Joyce Carol Oates for not reading the Alice Munro article before speculating on it considering she’s actively avoided addressing her part in the Neil Gaiman allegations. Particularly wild seeing as Amanda Palmer deleted comments from her Instagram on Saturday asking her about the Neil Gaiman allegations (including the allegation that 13 young women came to Amanda about Neil’s behaviour and that she personally hired the 14th to be their nanny)
- LOL Reddit’s Neil Gaiman board is banning all discussion of him allegedly liking rough, non-consensual sex and instead only allowing discussion of his work. I guess we’ll soon be seeing the r/hitler subreddit shifting its focus to an art appreciation thread?
- Ngl, I’m kinda disappointed at the fact that the comic community isn’t talking about the Neil Gaiman sexual assault allegations. I find it very hypocritical that they will so swiftly condemn others for racism and bigotry, but when a big name like Gaiman is accused, pure silence.
- I’ve known this about Neil for years. A close friend of mine is a local artist who has worked for Neil and Amanda off and on for years and had to deal with Neil’s advances. They knew of others as well. I have posted about Neil’s behavior on occasion on social media and sometimes women reach out privately to thank me for saying something, they have long feared coming forward due to the harassment they will likely face. I’m not going to debate anyone here, but yes I spoke to the reporter behind this, who happens to be well known and award winning. He was looking for information, not a story, and the information is what informed the story he wrote, from people I know and a lot of others. What is presented in this podcast is a tiny fraction of what I and others are aware of. This is what can be demonstrated right now with the permission of the victims willing to come forward and face the inevitable abuse Neil’s fans will heap upon them, but there are others, a lot of others. This is the tip of a very large iceberg.
The publishing industry knows. The publishing industry absolutely knows about Gaiman, has known about him for decades, and is now preparing for sufficient information to come out that will sink him entirely. Hollywood will probably fight harder and try longer to protect him, but the publishers don’t want to be caught with large stocks of books they can’t sell.
- I can tell you that the female junior staff at Harper used to warn each other about him.
- They are really pushing them Neil Gaiman books REAL HARD. The sales prices are ridiculous. Like, “We gotta get in there before the whole public gets in the know” levels of hard.
- I’m pretty sure the example in
the cited Girls scene about “Chuck Palmer”is supposed to be a plausibly deniable reference to both Chuck Wendig and Neil Gaiman, which sure tells me the writer had heard the same convos as me in 2016.
There is also at least one confirmed report that Random House is removing Gaiman blurbs from forthcoming books.
There are even some very old posts referring to Gaiman’s alleged past behavior on Tumblr.
UPDATE: Less than eight hours after this was posted, presumably as a result of this post, the linked article about a negative reference to “Chuck Palmer” was disappeared. However, it was archived and can be seen here. The reason the “Palmer” is believed to be a reference to Neil Gaiman is because at the time, he was married to his second wife, Amanda PALMER.
UPDATE: Posted on Reddit. There is a moderate probability that PrudishChild is either a) a sockpuppet of Neil Gaiman’s or b) an employee at Edendale Strategies.
PrudishChild: Any reason to think he set up the gmail, or had access to it? I thought someone else set it up and he just commented on it.
voxday: Yes, there are very good reasons to think Mr. Gaiman set up the Gmail, as well as the BathBookNeil Tumblr site.
- The mediocre parenthetical dialogue is very indicative of his writing.
- There is no “Jolene Parton” who is a bored college student. JOLENE is a song by Dolly PARTON released in 1973. As a music journalist, Mr. Gaiman would be familiar with it, whereas few, if any, college students would be. Also, the only Jolene Parton in the USA is in her 60s now, far too old to be the bored college student.
- The fake surprise. Mr. Gaiman knows Rule 34, so he’s not going to be surprised at a naked bath site. The whole dialogue between Gaiman and “Parton” is fiction written by the same person, presumably Mr. Gaiman.
- Mr. Gaiman appears to have a bath fetish. He writes about bathtubs more than any author outside of the plumbing industry. He writes nearly as often about baths as George RR Martin writes about rape.
- The BathBookNeil site hasn’t been taken down yet, while other damning articles such as the Splinter article about the coded “Chuck Palmer” reference believed to be about him and Chuck Wendig on the show GIRLS were vanished within eight hours of being cited.
Googlers already know if he set the Gmail account up or not. The truth will come out eventually.