Mister Tubcuddle has been released by Vibe Patrol in three different mixes. All three mixes are now available on Spotify, on YouTube, and on UATV.
Mister Tubcuddle: the Single
Tag: #GaimanGate
The Music Must Flow
It’s only a matter of days before Vibe Patrol’s MR. TUBCUDDLE is available on the various music platforms in three different mixes. You can now hear The Corinthian mix on UATV as well as on Sigma Game.
Tubcuddlee Sues Tubbcuddler
Neil Gaiman Accused of Human Trafficking, Sexual Abuse in New Lawsuit
On Monday, Scarlett Pavlovich filed a lawsuit in federal court against the author Neil Gaiman on human-trafficking charges under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a law intended to curtail the crime in the United States and abroad. It additionally accused him of sexual abuse, assault, rape, and coercion. Gaiman has previously denied all allegations of nonconsensual sexual activity, which he has been accused of by multiple women.
The complaint also named Amanda Palmer, Gaiman’s estranged wife, accusing her of procuring Pavlovich for Gaiman and failing to warn her about Gaiman’s history of alleged sexual misconduct. The allegations took place in New Zealand in 2022, but Pavlovich’s lawyers filed the case in Wisconsin, where Gaiman owns a home. Pavlovich is simultaneously filing against Palmer in New York and Massachusetts, where she has residency, and will proceed against Palmer in the district of her choosing.
Looks like it just got very, very real for Mr. Gaiman. I won’t be surprised if other plaintiffs, including some of whom we have not hitherto heard, come forward.
Forbes on The Folio Society
A gushing Forbes article on the importance and elegance of deluxe books:
When Joanna Reynolds first became CEO of The Folio Society in 2016, the London-based publishing company known for its beautifully illustrated hardcover editions of classic books had been steadily losing money for a decade and was on the verge of being sold. “It kind of lost its way,” Reynolds, a veteran of Time Life Europe and Reader’s Digest, tells me over Zoom. From its post-war inception in 1947, Folio operated as an annual book club, with members signing up to receive four titles a year. “That model everywhere had kind of died, really,” adds Reynolds. “So we [made] a complete change.”
That 21st century innovation not only required the phasing out of an obsolete business model, but also the expansion of what Folio could publish in terms of genre (i.e. moving into science fiction, fantasy, and children’s content), the number of books it could release a year (from four to between 40 and 50), and how those books were marketed to the public.
Most important, however, is maintaining a brand associated with handcrafted beauty and elegance. Every deluxe edition put out by Folio is made with the intention of having the resultant tome occupy prime real estate on a book lover’s shelf for years to come. Such commitment to visual sophistication attracts acclaimed authors, artists, and even fellow publishers like Marvel Entertainment.
Still, I couldn’t help noticing that the Forbes article left out one rather significant element that one would think would have been both timely and relevant.
Neil Gaiman has been removed from UK agent Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ client list after the Good Omens writer has faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations over the past six months. The change to Casarotto Ramsay’s client list comes amid a wave of creative partners severing ties with Gaiman and his work. Anansi Boys publisher Dark Horse Comics has dropped the once-celebrated writer, while a UK stage production of Coraline was canceled this week.
The Terry Pratchett Estate has now cut ties to Gaiman as well. Apparently pTerry’s heirs have had their fill of Gaiman attempting to trade on a close friendship that was, at the very least, greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated. A one-time co-writing experience is seldom indicative of being bestest buddies, especially when one of the co-writers a) did most of the work and b) is observably disinclined to ever repeat the experience.
Below is a screenshot of the Folio Society’s website from this very morning, only six months after the beginning of #GaimanGate. The reason all the novels by other authors are on the list of 32 (!) Gaiman-related books is because Folio asked Gaiman to provide their deluxe editions with forewords and introductions, although what a mediocrity like Gaiman could possibly have to say about Gene Wolfe defies belief. Now, doesn’t it seem a little odd that Forbes didn’t even ask Folio about this apparent contradiction between their oft-expressed social justice values and the particular authors they choose to feature?
Mailvox: A Tale of the Tubcuddler
A reader writes to share her experience of Neil Gaiman as a teenage fangirl.
I met him when I was in college at his book reading of one of his books: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and after meeting him, that was the last book of his I ever had any desire to read. It took me a month to read his American Gods book. I had to keep putting it down. At the time, I attributed it to some deficiency in my own ability to crack into his prose, but given what we know now, it was my brain’s way of informing me that I was reading shit. For comparison, I was able to read War and Peace in a week.
But I was a sixteen year old goth girl at the time, so I dutifully brought a copy of that goddamn awful book along for him to sign. The red flag of an unoriginal mind was that he signed every copy of AG with the tagline of “Believe,” and all copies of Sandman with something along the lines of “never stop dreaming.’
When I reached the man himself, things just got worse. I noticed too his preferential treatment of female fans. I was a big B5 nerd at the time, and wanted to discuss the screenplay he had written for it; it became evident during our very brief conversation he had NEXT TO NO IDEA what was in the script. The script he purportedly wrote. I had assumed he’d be happy to discuss a script that was the ONLY episode from seasons 3 to 5 to be written by anyone other than the showrunner. He, on the other hand, sought to change the subject as quickly as possible, and was a complete wet blanket to my projected hopes of mental stimulation with a man up until that point I had respected. He signed me quickly and I was on my way.
There is more at r/NeilGaimanMemes if you’re interested. She also added this:
By the time my cohort reached him (we were a group of four) he was complaining about his sore wrists. I had time to read his entire little shitty novella, in the auditorium he had given a self-congratulatory speech, because of the hold-up for him to rest his wrists for stretches of time. Now, my friend was an osteopath and offered Neil Gaiman full access to his services for free. He gave him his number, which Gaiman behaved as if he was extremely grateful for, and he promised he would avail my friend of his services.
You already know that my friend never heard from the pervert. I thought it was due to the vagaries of the parasocial contract, but now I know better:
He just wasn’t tubcuddly enough!!!!
I have to admit, I find it both ironic and amusing that certain people still, to this day, pine over a parasocial predator like Neil Gaiman, while simultaneously attempting to deplatform, ban, and otherwise ostracize me, an author who rejects both parasociality and social predation, disdains all public appearances, and whom even my die-hard critics in the media have admitted to be gracious, polite, and impeccably well-behaved.
Which is to say I have now been banned by X, YouTube, Blusky, r/NeilGaimanUncovered, and r/NeilGaiman. And I will wager that not one of those places have banned Neil Gaiman despite the gravity of the sex crimes he is credibly accused to have committed. Note that despite what has been publicly reported about his alleged behavior in the presence of his young son, still no one has even begun to investigate any link between that and his obvious association with his co-editor Ed Kramer, the convicted SFWA pedophile.
Contemplate the significance of that, if you will.
UPDATE: The BBC reports that Coraline: The Musical has been cancelled.
A new musical based on Neil Gaiman’s book Coraline has been scrapped following sexual misconduct allegations against the author. The show had been due to open at Leeds Playhouse in April before being staged at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Birmingham Rep and Manchester’s Home. In a joint statement, the theatres said: “After careful consideration, we feel it would be impossible to continue in the context of the allegations against its original author.” It was announced last May and had been due to be a major production for the four theatres, but its cancellation will leave a major hole in their schedules and finances. However, the theatres said they had no option after further allegations emerged in recent weeks.
Auditor 202
The extent to which the Church of Scientology supported Auditor 202’s career and perceived success is gradually coming to light, despite his very public and apparently untruthful denials.
Neil Gaiman has consistently stated that he is not a Scientologist, despite his family’s deep ties to the Church of Scientology. In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Neil addressed rumors about his involvement with the church, suggesting that he had not been a practicing member since becoming an adult.
However, some documentary evidence has surfaced which appears to directly contradict this claim, especially since he appears to have still been completing Scientology courses between the ages of 26 and 28, and to have been a donating member in good standing at the age of 49.
- Neil Gaiman’s name appears in graduate lists in The Auditor Worldwide (published by AOSH UK copyright 1986) as Auditor #202. Neil is listed as completing three courses: the Hubbard Senior Sec Checker Course #222 (1988), the 21 Dept Org Board Course #227 (1988) and the Hubbard Basic Art Course.
- Cornerstone Newsletter, November 2009: List of Members in GOOD STANDING: MARY AND NEIL GAIMAN ($35,000.00)
It would also appear The Simpsons saw through Neil Gaiman all along. While some might think that Gaiman being in on the joke would tend to exonerate him, that’s not the way imposters play the game. It’s just what the psychological operators call Revelation of the Method, or blown cover as cover.
“The Book Job” is the sixth episode of the twenty-third season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 20, 2011. In the episode, Lisa is shocked to discover that all popular young-adult novels are conceived by book publishing executives through use of market research and ghostwriters to make money. Homer decides to get rich by making a fantasy novel about trolls, with help from Bart, Principal Skinner, Patty, Moe, Professor Frink, and author Neil Gaiman. Lisa does not think writing should be about money, and decides to write her own novel.
However, when Lisa opens a copy of the book, she discovers that Gaiman is listed as the author, not her. It turns out that by slipping a third flash drive with his name onto Lisa’s possession with his secret co-conspirator Moe’s help, Gaiman has heisted his way to the best-seller list “once again” despite being illiterate. During the credits, Gaiman and Moe celebrate with a toast at Shelbyville Beach, but Gaiman double-crosses Moe and poisons his drink.
Whether Gaiman is, or is no longer, a Scientologist remains an open question. The more interesting question, of course, is what percentage of those 50 million books Gaiman has reportedly sold were purchased by members of the Church of Scientology. Because Gen Xers will recall another erstwhile Scientologist who wrote science fiction novels that appeared even more often on the bestseller charts, and for much longer periods of time, an author by the name of L. Ron Hubbard.
The Shadow Can Only Mock
It’s really fascinating to see how the manufactured “creative talents” who are inevitably mediocrities falsely proclaimed as geniuses, are prone to committing shameless and easily proven acts of plagiarism. Such as, just to give one example, the 2016 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Robert Zimmerman:
Beginning with his first album, which contained “House of the Risin’ Sun,” Dylan showed a penchant for lifting other performers’ work. At the time the album was recorded, fellow performer Dave Van Ronk was preparing his own version of the song. Dylan knew this; Van Ronk had even asked him not to record the song before he got his version out, but Dylan went ahead anyway, even using Van Ronk’s arrangement.
Charges of plagiarism only started gaining traction against Dylan around 2003. Around that time, with the Internet having made it easy to directly compare music from different sources, people started to notice how much of Dylan’s work sounded like other people’s stuff.
The melody from “Blowin’ in the Wind,” for example, comes from a 19th-century spiritual called “No More Auction Block.” His 1962 song, “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” turned out to have been lifted wholesale from folk singer Len Chandler. Lyrics from the 2003 album Love and Theft were line-for-line copies from the autobiography of Japanese author Junichi Saga.
In 2006, he released Modern Times, which lifted passages from Classical poetry, 19th-century Confederate verse, and a blues song from 1940. Dylan won two Grammies for the album.
The plagiarism didn’t stop with the music. While much of what Dylan lifted from others without attribution was already in the public domain, and whatever wasn’t got reworked enough to count as Fair Use under copyright law, Dylan’s autobiography includes several passages lifted from novels and plays, and even from early-’60s issues of Time.
JRR Tolkien had these satanic frauds pegged from the start.
The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.
The Real Victim is John Scalzi
It’s truly remarkable how John Scalzi manages to take one of the most serious sexual assault scandals in the science fiction and fantasy world since the Breendoggle of 1954, and on the basis of his nodding acquaintance with a more successful and more famous colleague, make it all about himself.
If you want to know when I pretty much drew a line though my friendship with Neil Gaiman, it was when Neil acknowledged that he made moves on his early-20s nanny on her first day of employment. This meant that the absolute best case scenario of this whole situation was that he didn’t have the sense or wisdom to understand that making a move on a woman 40 years his junior, economically dependent on him, and whom he had met just literally hours before, was an extremely questionable idea. And by extremely questionable I mean dude what the fuck how do you not understand the actual consent issues involved here. The answer I came to is he probably did understand, and that when all was said and done, the “absolute best case scenario,” which is still very terrible, was not where we would end up. And indeed, that’s not where we are today.
Just what everyone wanted to know, right? Two paragraphs later, and surely he’s going to get to the point, right? Yeah, not so much.
Here are two things about me, one which you know and one which you may not…
Or not. However, he saves what is definitely the funniest part for the end.
Neil’s been a friend, and an important person to me, and someone I’ve been happy to know. But the friendship has been drawn down and done, and at this point, given everything I’ve written above, I don’t think he’ll complain much about that.
More to the point, I don’t think he’ll even notice. Here’s the thing. If you’ve got a friend, an important person to you, someone you consider a pretty good friend, don’t you have their phone number? And if they’re very publicly accused of criminal acts that you believe to be out of character, wouldn’t you, you know, give them a call and talk to them?
This is a nice illustration of the dangers of clout-chasing. Scalzi pursued his nonexistent “friendship” with Gaiman with far more vigor and ardor than he ever pursued his wife. And now that his supposed friendship puts him directly in the line of suspicion – even Gaiman only wrote rapturously and rapaciously about raping nubile young women still in their teens, unlike Scalzi, Gaiman never publicly declared himself to be a rapist(1) – that very important friendship is over, whether the very important ex-friend realizes it or not.
“I’m a rapist. I’m one of those men who likes to force myself on women without their consent or desire and then batter them sexually. The details of how I do this are not particularly important at the moment — although I love when you try to make distinctions about “forcible rape” or “legitimate rape” because that gives me all sorts of wiggle room — but I will tell you one of the details about why I do it: I like to control women and, also and independently, I like to remind them how little control they have.”
– John Scalzi, 25 October 2012
(1) Scalzi and his defenders are quick to point out that when Scalzi was declaring that he was a rapist, that he was only doing so satirically. Which not only misses the first point, it misses the second one as well. Because, first, the correct response to satire is more satire. He says something reprehensibly stupid, we pretend to take it seriously. Second, precisely what planet was Scalzi orbiting when he decided that writing rape satire as political commentary was either a) amusing or b) appropriate? What he and his fans believe to be a defense of one offense strikes most normal people as a public confession of guilt concerning a lesser one.
“Considerable Disdain for Him”
I am, and have been for decades, a fan of Tanith Lee. I absolutely adore Tanith Lee. Her tales of Paradys and the Flat Earth are solidly entrenched in my top ten fantasy series, and while I wasn’t unaware that her work was a major stylistic influence on Neil Gaiman, due to what I observed to be his unoriginal mediocrity, I simply wasn’t well-read enough in Gaiman’s work to realize that Gaiman wasn’t just heavily influenced by Tanith Lee, he appears to have done little more than steal her characters and world-building without attribution in lieu of creating anything himself, as one fan of Lee’s noted:
Neil Gaiman’s THE SANDMAN is a great comic book series. Gaiman modeled his series on Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH. But you wouldn’t know this, because Gaiman has never given her any credit. Despite the fact that the main character — a byronic, pale, otherworldly, deity-like character — is the prince of night and dreams. Despite the fact that every time people see art depicting Tanith Lee’s main character Azhrarn, they think it’s Morpheus from the Sandman. (How bad is this? When people see depictions of her character, they say SHE must have ripped HIM off.)
Despite the fact that the dream lord’s younger sibling is Death.
Despite the fact that other members of his family include Delusion, Delirium…. They are not gods but beings older than gods, and when the gods die, Dream, Death, Delusion, and Delirium will remain. This family of immortal, eternal, unchanging beings, who each embody an eternal abstraction starting with the letter D.
Someone else on the internet, noticing the similarities, flipped open the third book in Tanith Lee’s series to a random page, and lo and behold, there’s a description of a character who was clearly the inspiration for Gaiman’s Mazikeen. The prose, the characters, the narrative strategies, the mythology, the story structure, all of it: Gaiman found it all in Tanith Lee‘s writing and never gave her any credit.
He became rich and famous profiting from her ideas. People effused over his amazing imagination, when the ideas they praised him for were actually created by Tanith Lee. And, while he was building his name and fame, she was struggling. In the 1990s, toward the end of her life, she complained in an interview that magazines weren’t buying her stories anymore.
A simple “If you like The Sandman, you should really read Tanith Lee’s books!” from Neil Gaiman would have meant so much to her career. To the livelihood of a struggling, less-privileged writer, whose amazing imagination Gaiman was actively ripping off. People praised The Sandman comics for their depiction of gay and trans identities. But in the original material, Tanith Lee was far more progressive about lgbtq+ identities, and that was twenty years earlier.
I first read Tanith Lee’s book NIGHT’S MASTER (the first in the FLAT EARTH series) in maybe 2005, about 10 years after first reading The Sandman. I looked to see if Gaiman had credited her for “his” ideas; as far as I could tell, he never had. And for the subsequent 19 years, whenever I see a new Neil Gaiman interview, the first thing I do is ctrl-F to search to see if he mentioned Tanith Lee. And he never has, that I’ve seen.
I have no difficulty believing the accusations against him.
Because I know — KNOW — that he has felt entitled to take what he wants from a woman, without her permission, and without any acknowledgement of her contributions.
And, finally: If you loved Neil Gaiman’s stories, if you are heartbroken to learn the storyteller you loved is apparently an abuser, here is my suggestion: track down Tanith Lee’s TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH books. Her prose is more exquisite and imaginative, her ideas more original, her empathy real.
Not only that, but a personal acquaintance of Lee, Liz Williams, points out that Lee herself believed Gaiman plagiarised her work and had “considerable disdain for him.”
Tanith was my friend, as many writers in the UK will attest, especially on the south coast. I did know this, because she told me. We were at a convention – IIRC Orbital 8, in 2008 – at which both Neil and Tanith were guests. She told me that she was trying to avoid him because he’d plagiarised a large chunk of her work: not just a bit, but entire paragraphs. She didn’t say which book it was from. And she had considerable disdain for him.
A well-read reader on r/neilgaimanuncovered confirmed the charge.
He basically stole Sandman from Tanith Lee’s “Tales of the Flat Earth“ and his “Snow, Glass, Apples” from her “Red as Blood” with zero credit whatsoever, never even a recommendation that others read her work (a major sign of insecurity and guilt, right there). He also stole Coraline from Clive Barker’s ”The Thief of Always.” He’s a fraud as well as a monster.
I never read Snow, Glass Apples but I do recall thinking its description sounded an awful lot like Red as Blood. All of his revised fairy tale stories struck me as very similar to Lee’s White as Snow, but again, I never bothered reading any of Gaiman’s short stories until very recently. And since I’ve never read Coraline or anything by Clive Barker, I wasn’t aware of the relationship between those two works either.
But it is very satisfying to see the literary world finally coming out and telling the public the obvious truth about Neil Gaiman’s mediocrity and total lack of creativity. He’s never been a great writer, he’s never been a great storyteller, he is instead, as Terry Pratchett suggested, “an incredible actor” playing the role of a great storyteller. In my opinion, these charges of stealing without attribution and plagiarism tend to further support my hypothesis that “Neil Gaiman, Bestselling Author” was a literary fraud manufactured by the much the same people who made L. Ron Hubbard a bestselling author.
The conclusion appears to be as apt as it is succinct. “He’s a fraud as well as a monster.”
So finally, we have the answer that we’ve suspected for months. Robert Rankin indicates that Terry Pratchett had more than an inkling that his Good Omens co-writer and supposed good friend was not “a very nice, approachable guy” but an actor hiding his true self.
“Terry told me he wished he’d never worked with him, but I never found out why.”
Calling Out the Publishers
A New York Times article about Neil Gaiman’s first public response to his accusers draws some much-needed attention to the non-response from his various publishers:
HarperCollins, which has published many of his most notable works, and Marvel, the comic book publisher, have no new books forthcoming with Gaiman, according to representatives from the companies.
His literary agent at Writers House, which represents blockbuster authors like Dav Pilkey, Nora Roberts and Ally Condie, did not respond to requests for comment about whether the agency would continue to represent him. Norton, which published an illustrated edition of Gaiman’s “Norse Mythology” last November, did not respond when asked whether the company would publish Gaiman’s works in the future. DC Comics, which published his blockbuster comic book “The Sandman,” along with other works, declined to comment when asked whether DC would continue to publish him.
For some of the women who have accused Gaiman of misconduct, the muted responses from his publishers and collaborators are a bitter disappointment…
In an interview with The Times, Kendall described the “culture of secrecy” around Gaiman. “Neil’s works were his bait, and promotional events were his hunting ground,” she said. “As long as his publishers and professional collaborators remain silent, Neil will continue to have unrestricted access to vulnerable women.”
“The silence of the community around him — his fandom, his publishers — is loud and disturbing,” Stout said in an interview with The Times. “I’ve heard that it was an open secret that he was a predator, but that whisper network did not reach me.”
I think it is unfair, unreasonable, and wrong for anyone to fault the bookshops for ordering books that their customers come in and request. The books are published, they are in the system, and the whole purpose of the bookstore is to satisfy their customer’s preferences. And as one executive at a very large book distributor once told an SJW employee who was complaining that they were distributing Milo Yiannopoulos’s books: “seeing how we carry 50 different editions of Mein Kampf, where do you propose we draw the line? We’re a distributor, we’re not the Book Police.”
However, it is absolutely fair, reasonable, and correct for people to be holding the book publishers accountable. The publishers make it very clear that they stand for certain principles and oppose other principles; unlike Castalia, most of them even have mission statements that they claim defines their very purpose. And precisely none of those statements are in line with publishing an author who is quite credibly accused of having committed a series of rapes and sexual assaults over a period of more than 25 years.
When publishers are deplatforming and refusing to publish authors whose politics they don’t like, they really have absolutely no room for continuing to publish serial sexual assailants and sexual harassers simply because they approve of their politics. This isn’t something that is simply going to blow over and go away because the alleged crimes are too serious and the hypocrisy is too blatant.
We’ll be holding an early Arkhaven Nights tonight to discuss both the latest developments in #GaimanGate and the bankruptcy of Diamond, the comics distributor.