Tag: freakshow

Hear For Yourself

The wall of silence surrounding Neil Gaiman is cracking and beginning to crumble, as both The Bookseller and Publishers Weekly have now publicly referenced the latest Tortoise Media episode, and, as previously mentioned, The Bookseller has been actively reaching out to Gaiman’s publishers for comments on the growing number of accusations of sexual assault, to absolutely no avail.

I suspect the reason further cracks are appearing is that hearing Neil Gaiman’s words in his own voice is more convincing to a skeptic than any amount of documentary and testimonial evidence would be. Any hope of simply blaming the podcast series on an anti-trans agenda or that it’s a whole lot of nothing is rapidly disappearing. The transcript of the sixth episode is now available, and it is extremely damning. Though again, not as damning as actually hearing Gaiman’s whiny, self-pitying voice.

NEIL GAIMAN: Hello!
CLAIRE: Hey!
NEIL GAIMAN: How are you? Apart from probably very nervous about this call.
CLAIRE: (brief chuckle) Um… I’m doing well, I – (inaudible, trails off in background) …my letter…
NEIL GAIMAN: …reading your letter, I – if I’d known that – I’d took up that headspace…
CLAIRE: (audible breath) Heh…
NEIL GAIMAN: for you… I would’ve… I don’t know! I would’ve – I definitely would’ve been reaching out a long – time ago! I… I… you know… I’ve never thought of you with anything other than fondness, and…
CLAIRE: Mm.
NEIL GAIMAN: – a little awkwardness, and… um… you know… have me feeling like I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but I thought you were – terrific! And I – was heartbroken, seeing that I was giving you nightmares, and… (heavy sighs) So I’m really sorry!
NEIL GAIMAN: I … don’t think anything is gonna unwrite the bits that I’ve obviously fucked up on all this. And – and I’m trying to make up some of the damage.

PAUL CARUANA GALIZIA: Claire tells him that she’s had a long stretch of therapy, one that’s put financial strain on her family, and she expresses concern about how expensive the baby she’s expecting is going to be. Neil Gaiman is quick to offer a solution.

NEIL GAIMAN: Would you like me to send you some money?
CLAIRE: I – again, the whole – like, putting a price tag on –
NEIL GAIMAN: I mean, I’m not – I’m not trying to put a price tag, I’m –
CLAIRE: (nervous laugh) …yeah…
NEIL GAIMAN: like – just trying to – I’m – I’m not sure that I’m – reading you – I’m, I, I said that very bluntly, ‘cause, uh – (CLAIRE laughs) Like – listen – you’ve got a baby on the way and I appreciate that five hundred – dollars a month…
CLAIRE: (laugh) Yeah.
NEIL GAIMAN: …is, over a decade, is gonna stack up, and … a lot of that must have been my fault.

PAUL CARUANA GALIZIA: The two end the call slightly awkwardly. Five days later, Neil Gaiman calls Claire again.

NEIL GAIMAN: So, I have a plan.
CLAIRE: Okay?
NEIL GAIMAN: And I wanted to run it by you… and see if it’s acceptable for you. Um… and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. A lot of – a lot of listening to what you were saying on the last call. Um… so… what you said about paying for your… therapy. (CLAIRE murmurs) I did the numbers and I went, “Well, that’s 10 years… at $500 a month,” which I make comes out to about $60,000.
Um… so what I would propose… is that I will give you 15 thousand dollars a year for four years. Which… is the – the top level of a tax-free gift.
CLAIRE: Mm.
NEIL GAIMAN: So I can gift it – I can gift you $15,000 each year. And you do not have to pay that, pay any tax or anything on that. That is just a gift. Um… and then, I’m gonna make a hefty donation, to… to the place you sent me the link to.
CLAIRE: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
NEIL GAIMAN: …And that is my plan, if that is acceptable to you.
CLAIRE: That – is really generous! Um, and I appreciate your – um – your appreciation for the –
NEIL GAIMAN: …You know, I did something so much shittier than I ever dreamed, that I – I didn’t even realize I was doing something shitty. I did something really shitty.

PAUL CARUANA GALIZIA: On the 2nd of August 2022, Neil Gaiman sends Claire $60,000 to cover the cost of her therapy. It’s not the first time Neil Gaiman has paid women he was involved with money. Two months earlier, he had sent some NZ$13,000 (which is nearly US$8,000) and a non-disclosure agreement to Scarlett after an allegedly abusive sexual relationship that lasted three weeks. And around 8 months before paying Claire, he had paid US$275,000 and an NDA to Caroline Wallner after he allegedly coerced her into providing him with sex under the threat of evicting her and her three daughters from his property.

Mr. Galizia and others who are actively investigating the allegations have assured us there is more to come. A lot more, I would imagine, considering some of the unpleasant things that are being uncovered and some of the unexpected connections that are now being made. At this point, given that we now have reason to suspect Gaiman of being another manufactured success, I don’t think it’s even entirely safe to assume that the actor playing the role of the writer necessarily wrote everything that “Neil Gaiman” is presently credited with having written; the larger question is how deep this particular rabbit hole is going to go.

#GaimanGate quote of the day: “Neil Gaiman’s work is for immature goths at an 8th grade reading level.”

Indeed.

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The Gaiman Defense Team in Action

Behind the scenes, Neil Gaiman and his coterie of freakshows and followers and PR firms have been actively engaged in gaslighting his growing number of accusers for the last two months. This is probably the primary reason for the wall of silence from everyone who has worshipped at the feet of the modestly-talented charlatan, which is nearly everyone in science fiction and fantasy today. One target of this gaslighting has apparently had enough of the nonsense and was gracious enough to expose it publicly:

A summary of the SIXTH episode about Neil Gaiman’s decades long web of abuse. He can be heard in recorded calls. This is Neil. Listen to it for yourself.

Also of note, my former friend who is deep in his cultish inner circle sent me private emails from this woman speaking in this episode. Private emails sent to me in the hopes I wouldn’t believe her story (first aired on a different podcast). Emails from when she was 21/22 and was in the midst of her situation with Neil.

Neil sent this woman’s emails out to one of his lovers and god knows who else, along with lies about her claims…long AFTER these phone calls you’ll hear in this episode. He admits it. And later lies. Lies that arrived on my phone randomly from someone I considered my friend. Because apparently he really enjoys brain washing people.

I am livid. These women have been brave to come forward this way! Guess he’s not so far removed from his Scientology upbringing after all, eh? If you want to come forward about Neil in any way I hope you will feel empowered by the women who have spoken out. You don’t have to protect him any longer.

I won’t share screencaps of Claire’s emails themselves because those shouldn’t have been shared with me in the first place but this is from my former friend, the day after we fought by phone. Neil forwarded my friend these emails which she sent to me and at least one other person TO DISCREDIT CLAIRE.

The exact date was the day after Claire’s story first dropped. July 28th i believe? He was working overtime texting and calling people to get them in line. Also his lawyers apparently asked him for a list of names of all his “girlfriends” who might be “unhappy”.

It’s somewhat amusing how the Gaiman Defense Team tries to hit any angle that they think might work. But denigrating journalists who are literally doing their job as “sociopaths who just wanted a story” is never going to work with anyone. I’ve been the subject of more stupid, pointless, and unmerited hit pieces than Neil Gaiman ever will be, and it never even occurred to me to blame the journalists or call them psychopaths for trying to score a few points with the SJW crowd.

I mean, when a Tor Books author publishes a piece in a major UK newspaper quoting numerous Tor editors and authors about how evil you are for stealing nominations that should have gone to Tor editors and authors like they always do, it’s hard to take it personally. The motivation underlying the hit piece isn’t exactly opaque.

Anyhow, I really don’t think the defense team’s “get to know the real Gaiman behind the allegations” is a tactic that is likely to prove successful. Because the real Gaiman, the one you can hear on the podcast, is a creepy, self-pitying little Gamma male, whose success has obviously been mostly manufactured for him. Forget autism and narcissism, I’ll bet he’s got one whopper of a case of Imposter Syndrome, because he’s an even bigger literary imposter than John Scalzi. What Gaiman’s fans like about him is not the actual individual, it is the Wizard of Goth construction that conceals the wretched little man.

I just finished reading Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s not terrible. It has its elements and its moments. I’ll review it on the Darkstream sometime. But for me, the most noteworthy aspect of the little novel was not its whitewashing of a historical Scientology-related suicide that may or may not have actually been a suicide, but rather, its relentless and imitative mediocrity.

Jeff Vandermeer saw it too. Any halfway-decent author who actually reads a Gaiman book can’t help but see that it’s always been fraudulent. Given what we now know of his Scientology background, his success in bookselling shouldn’t be taken any more indicative of his literary talents than L. Ron Hubbard’s was.

Just stop quoting stupid ass Neil Gaiman writing advice. It’s always like “trust in your dreams” or other shit you see on a bumpersticker or on a sign in a Hobby Lobby. “Trust your dreams and pixie dust will shoot out of your ass.”

The art always betrays the author. I knew John C. Wright was a science fiction grand master from the first time I read The Golden Age. I knew Cornelius Claudio Kreutsch was a genuine magician at the keyboard the first time I saw him play in Barcelona. And I knew Neil Gaiman was a literary fraud by the time I finished reading the sixth issue of Sandman back in 2018; I’d previously read Good Omens, which aside from a few typical Terry Pratchett gems, I found to be a disappointing and not-very-funny Douglas Adams pastiche.

Neil Gaiman is Jordan Peterson for the Drama Club. He mirrors back to them what they want to see in themselves He was always John Dee, never Dream.

UPDATE: The Wall of Silence just developed a pretty big crack. The Bookseller is an important industry site in the UK:

The Bookseller reached out to Gaiman’s representatives, who did not respond, and his publishers, with Headline declining to comment, and Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House (PRH) and HarperCollins US not responding to requests to comment. The Bookseller also reached out to the Royal Society of Literature, of which Gaiman is a patron, which declined to comment, as did the Publishers Association. The Bookseller also contacted the Society of Authors (SoA) for a comment but it did not respond.

Just wait until the publishing industry realizes that a significant percentage of Gaiman’s alleged 50 million book sales went to Scientology, as with L. Ron Hubbard’s “bestsellers”.

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The Fifth Woman

The fifth Tortoise Media podcast features a young woman who had already come forward in another venue with more allegations of being sexually assaulted by Neil Gaiman, but the Tortoise Media investigation and podcast go into considerably more detail, and, for the first time, feature Gaiman’s voice directly discussing the alleged victim’s accusations in a telephone call.

A fifth woman has accused Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting her. Claire – not her real name – says that while the author was on a book tour in the United States in July 2013 he took her to a room with a bed at the back of a bus, closed the door, then got on top of her and started kissing her and groping her under her dress and over her breasts.

Accounts by other women who have come forward with complaints about Gaiman’s behaviour have raised questions about consent within highly asymmetric relationships.

Gaiman’s account is that he invited Claire onto his tour bus because their previous interactions and correspondence suggested to him that she wanted intimate contact. His account is that he attempted to initiate a kiss with her, while they were lying on a bed at the back of the bus, but he stopped when it became quickly apparent that she didn’t want one.

Nearly ten years later Gaiman and Claire had two phone calls, in response to a letter she sent him detailing her ongoing trauma from the incident. Tortoise has heard recordings of these calls. Neil Gaiman admits that he “fucked up”, calls his behaviour “shitty,” and offers to pay Claire $60,000 to cover the cost of her therapy, and promises to make a “hefty donation” to a rape crisis centre where she once worked.

I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Gaiman does not appear to have kept his promise to make that “hefty donation” to the rape crisis center. And Tortoise Media journalist Paul Caruana Galiz notes:

Gaiman claims she made the first move on him because “I’d have never made the first move on anybody. I’d be terrified of that.” Even by his own account he made the first move on Scarlett (jumping into a bath with her in Feb 22) and on Julia Hobsbawm (sudden, unwanted kiss in 1986)... Makes her the third woman he sent money to in the space of eight months.

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LEAVE NEIL ALONE!

Given what is already known and confirmed by Neil Gaiman himself, you wouldn’t think anyone would be dumb enough to step forward, at this point, and seriously try to argue that he never did nothing wrong to nobody. Apparently he just writes six-figure checks to middle-aged women out of the goodness of his heart or something. In any event, a publicist – seriously, a publicist – tries to argue that Neil Gaiman simply could not have done what seven-and-counting women have alleged that he did to them.

Of this I assure you with all certainty: as night follows day and day follows night, Neil Gaiman respects women. He loves women to which his daughters can attest and has supported women his entire life.

Now I’m not saying that this demonstrated respect discredits the standing allegations. What I am saying is that knowing Neil, having been around Neil, I find it highly suspect that he would commit acts of aggression, sexual or otherwise to women, regardless the circumstance.

Neil just isn’t made that way…

Most if not all the women accusing Neil of improprieties concede that their relationship were not just consensual but mutually initiated… He’s no saint, but he’s no demon either and his demonization is not only injust and unfair but does nothing to help the lives of his accusers.

What I am saying is that personally, I am skeptical because I am a very good judge of character and I find it highly unlikely that Neil would be capable of the letter of these allegations.

Yeah, I suspect one of the many lessons to be learned from this comedy of misdeeds is that Igor Goldkind is not, in the end, a very good judge of character. And to say that people are unimpressed with this inept attempt at restoring Neil Gaiman’s shredded reputation would be to put it mildly.

  • Your blog post and comments are a masterclass in how to do rape apologia. You should worry about that instead of speculating about hypotheticals.
  • Someone should ask him how many times he’s had sex with Gaiman since he’s so sure about what Gaiman would or wouldn’t do sexually.
  • “I respect women so much that I’m going to listen to my buddy instead of them.”
  • That’s gonna reflect so badly on him when the storm will reach the mainstream. Which it will. Buckle up, Igor and Co.
  • Neil’s lawyers aren’t sending their best cause they can’t find the best.
  • I read this yesterday, and didn’t have words for how fucking irritating and disgusting it was.

Anyhow, there’s no need to read it. This pretty much sums up the entire wall of text.

UPDATE: Oh… my… days. This guy is about enough to convict Gaimain via guilt by association. Consider the source.

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He Knew It Was Coming

Neil Gaiman appears to have engaged a damage-control firm and begun an extensive social media campaign TWO MONTHS BEFORE the podcast that broke the news of the alleged sexual assaults, based on what the members of the Neil Gaiman Facebook group have observed.

In the past few weeks, there have been reports that a reputation management firm has been hired by Neil or on his behalf, and their activities may include astroturfing X with positive comments about his work. Messages take the form of paragraph of Chat-GPT-style text praising a Gaiman project, or describing it as if readers will never have heard of it before (which is not appropriate for the intended audience, who have already been discussing it for years). There is then a bunch of replies to the post expressing delight about the work. I assumed that couldn’t happen on Facebook.

A few days ago I was concerned by a post that was shared to this group from the Neil Gaiman group. Now, we’re all positive folks and we’re here because we like Neil’s stuff (or did until recently), so it’s not unusual for the mood to be on the enthusiastic side. It’s possible I’m seeing more than is there. But…
You can check how long somebody has been a member of a group, so I had a quick look for each of the posters. Tortoise Media’s podcast was published on 3rd July so there would have been an awareness of their initial investigations in the months running up to then. A remarkable number of commenters only joined the Neil Gaiman group in May, June, and July.

A Reddit commenter points out that Gaiman’s claims to have been diagnosed with autism – at the age of 62 – appear to be rather dubious. He first made the claims on March 8, 2023. That would appear to have been before the podcast production was underway, but well after Gaiman was aware that he was going to be facing public accusations of sexual assault.

If I remember correctly, didn’t he also talk about having autism for the first time a few months before the podcast was released? I think he confirmed it for the first time on Tumblr earlier this year, (and surprise, that was one of the defenses used by a friend of his who talked to Tortoise). Seems like he and his team were already long prepared for the podcast episodes to drop and had a plan in place.

It’s certainly interesting that while Gaiman is more than willing to tell people that he’s autistic – which apparently has not impressed anyone as an even remotely legitimate diagnosis – while continuing to conceal what appears to be his continued involvement with Scientology. Personally, I think he should have gone with sociopathy, although perhaps that would have struck just a little bit too close to home.

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Into the Gammas’ Den

I’ll be doing an AMA – with the exception of anything related to my family – in the r/gammasecretkings subreddit on Friday at 7 PM EST. Feel free to come and enjoy the repertoire, and if you’ve got a Reddit account, join in the fun.

Same as the Kurgan AMA, Marquess of Queensbury rules will apply. I expect a clean fight and for all parties to be good sports. I’m not saying anybody should pull any punches, just that none will be allowed to fight dirty. u/voxday, whether he intends it or not, is a man that can bring out the worst in both his supporters and detractors.

Of course, it being Thursday, that means tonight at 7 PM EST is Arkhaven Nights. Turn on the lights!

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SJW Reason

We all know better than to expect logic or consistency out of SJWs. But sometimes, their contorted reasoning is so incredible that simply it has to be appreciated for the gymnastic accomplishment that it is.

Now, keeping in mind that one of my great offenses in the minds of the r/nealgaimanuncovered crowd is that I don’t believe in the concept of “marital rape” – and to be clear, I am in absolute accord with the centuries-long history of legal jurisprudence in rejecting the concept as an intrinsic contradiction in terms – it is somewhat astonishing to see the same people who genuinely believe that a man can rape his legally-married, fully-consenting wife also believe that Neil Gaiman cannot have raped any of his various accusers because he was reportedly in some sort of sexual relationship with them after the fact.

I’m quite willing to listen to the arguments of those who insist that the act of signing a marital contract and undergoing a wedding ceremony is not tantamount to giving permanent and ongoing sexual consent. Those arguments are obviously wrong – try telling the US Army that even though you enlisted and signed the papers, you are refusing to provide active consent to deployment in the Middle East – but they’re not entirely self-contradictory.

But how you can argue that rape exists in marriage despite the obvious evidence of consent having been previously provided, but that having sex with a woman proves you didn’t previously rape her, is simply incoherent nonsense.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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