Amanda Palmer Speaks

In a way. Neil Gaiman’s ex-wife’s cryptic allusions do NOT bode well for Neil Gaiman. She put out a Patreon post that mostly consisted of images.

“One of the pictures is a trash can on a city street that has a copy of “Lolita” sitting on the rim.”

Yeah, that’s not a good sign.

The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor called Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather.

Whatever could she be trying to tell us about Mr. Tubcuddle?

DISCUSS ON SG


A Distinct Lack of Support

It’s not exactly a mystery why the radical feminists never get anywhere in their endless, and futile, campaign against sexual predators. They drive off everyone who isn’t one of them, then complain that no one supports even their most reasonable efforts. They now have a rule that nothing posted on r/neilgaimanmemes can be posted on r/neilgaimanuncovered, which is ironic because r/neilgaimanuncovered was set up in response to r/neilgaiman banning all discussion of Neil Gaiman or the growing number of allegations against him.

r/neilgaimanuncovered
A sub for discussion of Neil Gaiman, post sexual misconduct allegations and for any other writers with similar allegations.
Rules
1 Be nice.
2 No spam.
3 No racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism or TERFs.
4 If they say they’re traumatized, they are.
5 No “Bitches Be Crazy.”
6 No reposts from “Neil Gaiman Memes”

What’s particularly amusing is that the rule was just adopted today because a member of r/neilgaimanuncovered requested a meme that was subsequently produced on r/neilgaimanmemes.

What’s even funnier is that they sincerely believe their side is in sole possession of all human creativity and talent. To the contrary, some of the memes are excellent and are entertaining even if you have no idea who Neil Gaiman is.

On a tangentially-related note, it appears F&SF is already dead. There can be little doubt that this is a harbinger for the converged mainstream F&SF publishing industry.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, commonly referred to as F&SF, has long been revered as one of the last century’s most important genre fiction magazines. It’s the one cultural staple that held out the longest against wokeism, actually focusing on great storytelling for much of the 2010s, but it appears as if the magazine may be in trouble or even ceasing publication entirely... Since the Winter Issue, Fantasy & Science Fiction has not published any new content, its website has not been updated, and no commentary has been made on the magazine’s status.

UPDATE: Wow, Bing has declared “Neil Gaiman” to be unsafe content.

Prompt: Neil Gaiman signs a book

Result: Unsafe image content detected Your image generations are not displayed because we detected unsafe content in the images based on our content policy. Please try creating again with another prompt.

DISCUSS ON SG


Sociopaths Play Nice Guys

My wife and I visited a winery this week where the owner gave a tour—good looking young dude, charismatic, great speaker and storyteller. Everyone in the group seemed to be fawning over him. But something in his story, and something about him, felt very off to me.

Sure enough, when I got home some quick online searching (oddly, his last name is scrubbed from any mention on on winery website) and some texting with a few friends—we are usually only 2-3 degrees of separation, it’s a small world—turned up that a number of years ago he had cheated on his wife in a different state and been involved in a massive fraud scheme in education, misappropriating public funds (he was a ”public school teacher”, he told us). He had fled the state and turned up in a new one, now running a multi-million dollar winery and presenting himself as morally superior to every other wine maker in the region.

Did you notice the tell? Con men of every stripe always present themselves as nice people. This is why I roll my eyes when obvious creeps like Neil Gaiman are unmasked and everyone somehow manages to be surprised; of course he acted super nice to everyone in public, unless you’re a rock star, you don’t get young women fawning over you if you don’t present a warm and welcoming mask to everyone. But the comparison between the art and the artist was incongruous, ergo there was a problem lurking underneath.

But there are lots of nice people and sociopaths work very hard to imitate them. The dead giveaway is the posturing at being morally superior. Normal people don’t do that; if anything, they tend to exaggerate their flaws. Always be very leery of any man or woman who is conspicuously nice, and then tells you why they are better than the average individual. And definitely keep one hand on your wallet.

DISCUSS ON SG


Indeed

Even if Vox Day rather than Rachel Johnson had 1st reported the accusations against Neil Gaiman, I hope I would have believed K and Scarlett once I read/heard their testimony & the damning statements from whomever communicated Neil‘s response. I say that as someone who owes a lot to Neil.

You know it’s getting serious when SJWs are getting to the point that they would, even hypothetically, consider believing your favorite Dark Lord rather than the self-appointed social justice saint and LGBTQFP+ ally Neal Gaiman. The ironic thing is that I’m very far from the only one on the Right who knew that he was an overrrated creep all along. Consider what I wrote publicly back in 2018 when I first got into writing comics.

  • If you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman. When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road.
  • It’s pretty simple. I am a better novelist than Neil Gaiman by almost every reasonable measure. Anyone who has read a sufficient variety of both our novels will recognize that pretty easily. Gaiman writes a variant of the same book with the same sort of characters almost every time. Even his Sandman is a Gary Stu of sorts. I have much wider literary range and can write everything from haunting shorts that could almost pass for modern Maupassant to murder mysteries to epic military fantasy. I don’t write myself into my books and I can even successfully pull off the “you genuinely think he’s dead but actually he isn’t” trick without cheating or magic or medical science or anything but pure literary sleight of hand. George Martin can’t do that despite repeated attempts. Gaiman can’t do it either. And as for Murakami, I have been writing a literary novel inspired by his style for years, although since I am not Japanese, it is more likely to feature a wedding than a suicide. I have no idea when it will be finished, if ever, but I think I might be able to pull it off. And if I can’t get even reasonably close, then I won’t publish it. I admire Tanith Lee. I admire JRR Tolkien. I admire John C. Wright. I admire China Mieville. I admire Alan Moore. I admire Umberto Eco. The only thing I admire about Gaiman’s writing is his ability to give everything the flavor of a fairy tale. That’s not nothing, it’s actually pretty cool, but it’s very far from the most significant thing. Sure, he sells a lot more books, but then, Dan Brown and Katie Price sell even more and I don’t have any respect for their literary abilities either.

The reason so many people on the Right knew Gaiman was a creep while no one on the Left did is very simple. We believe the art reflects the artist. They reject the connection between the art and the artist.

And, obviously, they are wrong.

It is, however, mildly amusing to observe that the way SJWs ritually disavow a formerly beloved author is to repeat “F— Neal Gaiman” as if it is a formal anathema.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Memes Must Flow

It’s going to be a busy day on r/neilgaimanmemes today, in light of the news that two more women have come forward to accuse Neil Gaiman of sexual assault, one in 1986 and the other in 2017. That makes five alleged victims over a period of 35 years, so the chances that there will be dozens more is astronomical. It’s a good thing Gaiman is a prolific storyteller, because he’s almost certainly going to have to be coming up with an awful lot of stories explaining away his historical behavior over the next few months.

Exclusive: Two more women accuse Neil Gaiman of sexual assault and abuse

The two new accounts — published today in a new episode of ‘Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman’ — have been corroborated through documents, emails, and messages seen by Tortoise as well as through interviews with friends and family who the women confided in. Gaiman did not provide any on-the-record response to multiple detailed requests for comment on either set of allegations.

Caroline Wallner lived in a house on Gaiman’s property in Woodstock, New York between 2014 and 2021 with her three young daughters and, until 2017, her husband. Alongside her work as a ceramic artist in a studio in a barn on the property, Wallner and her husband worked for Gaiman and his then wife Amanda Palmer, including doing property maintenance, gardening, and grocery shopping. Gaiman had moved to the area to teach at Bard College.

Around the time Wallner’s marriage ended in 2017, which she said devastated her emotionally, Gaiman told her ex-husband that there was no more work for him on the property, which had provided the family’s main income. Wallner and her daughters were now dependent on Gaiman for work and housing. While she was in this situation, Wallner, then 55, said that Gaiman began pressuring her for sex.

Wallner said: “There were little hints of, ‘we’re going to need the house’. And I remember saying, let’s talk about it. Let’s figure it out. That’s when he would just come to my studio and make me give him a blowjob”. There is no suggestion of physical force, but rather of coercion in light of her housing and family situation. Wallner said: “And he can say it was consensual. But why would I do that? It was because I was scared of losing my place”, characterising Gaiman’s treatment of her as “sexual abuse.”

The UN defines sexual abuse as actual or threatened sexual contact by force or coercive conditions. The UN’s refugee agency, where Gaiman is a goodwill ambassador, has described the allegations against him published by Tortoise as “very serious”, adding that it is “assessing the detailed reporting”.

Gaiman settled with Wallner for $275,000 and a non-disclosure agreement less than two weeks later. The NDA “disputes and denies that Wallner has sustained any losses, damages, or injuries for which Gaiman is legally responsible.” Gaiman’s position is that he settled with her to avoid expensive and protracted litigation. The NDA prohibits Wallner from talking about Gaiman with “family members, friends, associates” and from filing, reporting, or prosecuting any action or proceeding in “any court, governmental agency, or before any tribunal whatsoever or wheresoever”. If Wallner is asked to make disclosures by a “valid legal process”, the NDA says she must give Gaiman 20 days notice and help him resist disclosure.

The 1986 woman is an OBE. It’s certainly going to be difficult for Gaiman to play his customary “who are you, you’re nobody” card.

“I’m a very wealthy man. You’re…”

“I’m an OBE. Her Majesty the Queen made me an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Who are you, Mr. Wealthy Man?”

One wonders what the Crown knew about Gaiman. Far less well-known, far less successful authors have been given honors by the Queen. I would think he must have come up at some point but then failed the vetting process.

In less than 24 hours, there are already 96 members of r/neilgaimanmemes and loads of memes with thousands of views. The media’s wall of silence will not stand!

DISCUSS ON SG


The First Rule of Fighting the Patriarchy

The first lesson of fighting the patriarchy and exposing sex predators is don’t talk about Neil Gaiman! First Reddit:

r/neilgaimanuncoveredu/voxday is permanently banned from r/neilgaimanuncovered
expand allcollapse all

[–]subreddit message via /r/neilgaimanuncovered[M] sent 14 hours ago
Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/neilgaimanuncovered because your comment violates this community’s rules. You won’t be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team by replying to this message.

Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole.

The amusing thing, of course, is that there are more comments on a single post on that subject at Sigma Game than on any post at that subreddit. And then something called Bluesky, which is apparently where all the would-be literary SJWs ran after Elon Musk bought Twitter for reasons that are still unclear to me. I’m not sure I even got around to posting anything there yet; they REALLY don’t want you talking about Neil Gaiman AT ALL. Notice that to SJWs, the mere creation of an account is “harassment”.

Hi there,

A Bluesky account you control (@voxday.bsky.social) has been taken down for harassment.

This takedown is not a temporary suspension. Please do not create additional accounts on our service. We will take action against any additional accounts as we become aware of them.

If you have any additional questions or wish to appeal this decision please email moderation@blueskyweb.xyz.

Bluesky Moderation Team

Anyhow, if you wonder why JDA and I are still talking about this, this should explain why. The evil people in this publishing industry desperately want to maintain their wall of silence. Just because he’s always been irrelevant to our community – I don’t own a single Gaiman book or comic; if I want to read magical realism, I’ll read Murakami or Borges, not a mediocre wannabe – doesn’t mean he’s not extremely important to them, if only as a symbol of success. And it’s observably making a difference; I have now heard from several people who have been strangely silent up until now who are clearly in the process of formulating their first public statements about Gaiman. But they know how it goes.

Of all the words of screen and pen

The saddest are these:

Vox was right again.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Media Won’t Talk About Gaiman

And I think we have a pretty good idea why, based on the arrest today of a top BBC news presenter:

Former BBC presenter Huw Edwards has been charged with child pornography offences after 37 indecent images were allegedly shared on a WhatsApp chat.

Scotland Yard confirmed the 62-year-old broadcaster was facing three charges of making indecent images of children between December 2020 and April 2022.

Police said Edwards was arrested on November 8 last year and charged just over a month ago on June 26 following authorisation from the Crown Prosecution Service.

Edwards – who helmed royal and political events at the BBC before resigning in April – has been bailed and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court this Wednesday.

According to the charge sheet, Edwards is accused of having six category A images, 12 category B pictures and 19 category C photographs on WhatsApp.

And yes, it’s pretty much all of them. The evil guys don’t want to talk about the wicked guys, they prefer to systematically target the kind of people who will call them out for what they are.

And they tell you what they are. You just have to believe what you read. Consider the following, written by the accused himself, Mr. Tubcuddle:

Today I had my photo taken, for an American Library Association Series of author photo posters. (The poster won’t be out for months. You’ll need to get something else in the meantime, like their Sherman Alexie poster. Or their Orlando Bloom READ poster. Or their P. Craig Russell Sandman poster.) The photographer explained that she was going to do a straightforward photo (which she took), and that later she wants take some more imaginative ones — me looming from the darkness, me with paint or ink dripping from my hand, that kind of thing. And then she mentioned that she wanted to also take a photo of me as the mythological or literary character of my choice, and wondered who I’d like to be.

Red Riding Hood’s Wolf,” I said, because I went perfectly blank, and that was the first thing that popped into my completely blank head. So I’m going to be Red Riding Hood’s Wolf in a photo, although this may not be obvious to anyone except the photographer and me.

Afterwards, she asked why…

I honestly didn’t know, so I started writing, to try and figure it out.

I think part of the idea of Red Riding Hood’s Wolf (why her wolf? Possibly because I was given a Ladybird book containing the story of Little Red Riding Hood, when I was an infant, and that was the first time I’d encountered the image of a wolf standing on his hind legs. He wore a jacket, at least in memory he did, in the paintings, and was talking comfortably to Red Riding Hood, who was chubby and pretty, and much older than I was, and I could absolutely understand what he saw in her, and for me Sondheim’s song “Hello Little Girl” was already beginning to come into existence, as text not subtext: obviously, this meeting was to be the start of a beautiful friendship, one that would last — girl and wolf — forever). The wolf in the story represents an awful lot of stuff — the danger and truth of stories, for a start, and the way they change; he symbolises — not predation, for some reason — but transformation: the meeting in the wild wood that changes everything forever. Angela Carter’s statement that “some men are hairy on the inside” comes to mind: as an image, in my head, it’s the wolf’s shadow that has ears and a tail, while the man in wolf form stands in his forest (and cities are forests too) and waits for the girl in the red cloak , picking flowers, to come along, or, hungrily, watches her leave…

There’s a woodcutter, and an axe, but at the start of the story, the wolf is waiting again, and he’s just fine.

When I was a boy, when I grew up I wanted to be a wolf. I never wanted to be a wolfman. I didn’t really want to be a werewolf, except for a few years in my early teens. I wanted to be a wolf, in a forest or in the world.

Later, as an adult, I remember encountering the story of Red Riding Hood in its original form, a French version that predated the cleaned-up ways of telling the tale I’d already encountered, and the bleak sexuality of the story came through: when she encounters the wolf in her grandmother’s bed, he eats and drinks her grandmother with her, then tells her to take off all her clothes and throw them on the fire — she wouldn’t be needing them any more, — and, finally, she joins him in the bed naked. And then, with no more ado, he eats her. And there the story stops, sometimes with a direct moral — not to talk to strangers — and sometimes without it. The story disturbed me, and I put it into Sandman, in the Serial Killers’ Convention story, where it represents a number of things at once, and is also itself.

The wolf defines Red Riding Hood. He makes the story happen. Without him, she’d just be another girl on her way to her grandmother’s house. And she’d leave her goodies behind, and come home, and no-one would ever have heard of her. But he’s not just her wolf: he’s all the wolves on the edge of the world, all the wolves in all the stories, all the wolves in all the dreams of wolves; flashing green eyes in the darkness, dangerously honest about what he wants: food, company, an appetite.

And if I could be any literary figure, I think, today, I’d be strangely happy to be him.

TRANSLATION: if they get him for breaking the law, it’s going to because the girl was underage.

UPDATE: Oh, the irony. I was banned from commenting at /r neilgaimanuncovered because the moderator read my biography on Wikipedia. La, whatever shall I do? Anyhow, I’ll continue to mine the subreddit for information, but now they won’t get what we dig up without reading VP and Fandom Pulse.

Feminists are such retards.

FEMINIST: Why won’t men speak out against rich, famous men attacking young women?

EVERY FEMINIST ALLY: -total silence-

VD and JDA: Rape and sexual assault are bad. Neil Gaiman is also bad.

FEMINIST: Shut up shut up shut up! Not you, you’re too evil! Now, why won’t men speak out against rich, famous men attacking young women?

UPDATE: The poster and photo referenced in Gaiman’s blog post. He’s just one fedora short of euphoria. Now you know why only losers and overweight, insecure goth girls ever thought he was cool.

DISCUSS ON SG


Birds of a Feather

Wowzers, they made quite the creative pair… the publisher disappeared Kramer’s name at some point, just as SFWA tried to claim that the convicted pedophile wasn’t still an active member of the organization when he was still in their member’s address book, both print and online. Birds of a feather and all that…

EDITORS

Neil Gaiman has been awarded more Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards than any other creator, took the World Fantasy Award for The Sandman #19 (making it the first comic ever to win a prose literary award), and has awards for his comics from England, Finland, Canada, Austria, Spain, and Brazil. His miscellany, Angels and Visitations, was nominated for two World Fantasy Awards, and was awarded the International Horror Critics Guild for Best Collection. In addition to The Sandman he is the author of such graphic novels as Signal to Noise, Mr. Punch, and Violent Cases. He cowrote, with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, a funny novel about how the world is going to end and we’re all going to die. He just made a six-part TV series for the BBC called Neverwhere, and is working on a Neverwhere novel. He has just finished his first book for children, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, and was surprised to find himself acting in the BBC Radio adaptation of Signal to Noise. The Sandman collection Dream Country was picked by Waterstones and The Observer as one of the ten coolest books of the 1990s. He is 35 years old, and is intimately familiar with jet lag in all its forms.

On July 3, 2024, Neil Gaiman was accused of sexual assault by two women in a four-part podcast series by Tortoise Media. Neil Gaiman is reported to have denied the charges, but has yet to make any public statement about them.

Edward E. Kramer is a writer and coeditor of Grails (nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology of 1992), Confederacy of the Dead, Phobias, Dark Destiny, Elric: Tales of the White Wolf, Excalibur, Tombs, Dark Love, Forbidden Acts, and many additional works in progress. Ed’s original fiction appears in a number of anthologies as well; his first novel, Killing Time, is forthcoming from White Wolf. His credits also include over a decade of work as a music critic and photojournalist. A graduate of the Emory University School of Medicine, Ed is a clinical and educational consultant in Atlanta. He is fond of human skulls, exotic snakes, and underground caves.

Kramer was arrested on August 25, 2000 and charged with molesting three teenage boys. The ensuing investigation revealed that Kramer had previously been accused of molestation in 1997 before the alleged victim recanted. On December 2, 2013 Kramer pleaded guilty to one charge for each of the three victims. On February 27, 2019, Kramer was arrested by officers from the Lawrenceville Police Department for allegedly taking photos of a young boy at a doctor’s office. Kramer was later charged with possession of child pornography.

UPDATE: Neil Gaiman has reportedly hired the same US lawyer who has represented Prince Andrew and Danny Masterson. The same Danny Masterson who got 30 years in prison. Since he’s not currently facing any charges this strongly suggests that he’s expecting to be arrested and charged for crimes committed in the USA.

UPDATE: A third accuser has now come forward about her experience with Gaiman after meeting him at a book signing in 2014.

Claire 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.

There will be more. There will very likely be dozens more.

DISCUSS ON SG


Neil Gaiman: “The Tip of a Very Large Iceberg”

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.

  1. The mediocre parenthetical dialogue is very indicative of his writing.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

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A Tribute to Mr. Tubcuddle

This is, almost certainly, the greatest song ever written about a dedicated bathtub enthusiast. Booster Patrol was inspired by the intrepid saga of the man known as Mister Tubcuddle even before the peculiar revelations of the BathBookNeil blog. The full lyrics are at Sigma Game, for those who are interested. But click on the image below to hear the unforgettable audio experience that is Mr. Tubcuddle.

In other, and obviously completely unrelated news, a professional comics illustrator sent me this last night, which appears may have been loosely based upon an incident at a certain writers’ workshop.

UPDATE: Fandom Pulse has a piece that discusses the song and reveals a new observation that may render the whole situation even more absurd.

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