I read stardust today after watching the Master podcast and reading the article. He is a good writer and I was drawn into the story and I could forget who wrote it which makes it a good story. As a writer myself, I can tell you that those of us with the magic, hear the stories from somewhere else. In that it isn't just us. It's us who writes what we hear. When someone compliments my characters, showing me that I have properly conveyed their personalities, I am pleased, but not flattered, because you know, it isn't me. It comes from somewhere else, and so do Neil's characters. So it's okay to love his books and fall into them, forgetting who wrote them down, Kids. I see so many people crying that they can't love those things anymore, and that's silly to allow this to take something from you that you love. Why allow moe hurt to come of this? The books are already paid for or buy them used. It isn't as if he will benefit. And if you can't fall into the story and forget who put it down and not think about dreadful things, what's up with you, why you wanna think about nasty things that make you unhappy? It's a matter of control. those women who claim they did notknow what was happening wrote him love letters later. How big of a no is he supposed to feel it was/ Let's take a bit of accountability for them. Let's spread it around to the women too and not just the men. If they can't say no, that isn't the other person's fault entirely, they need to get over taht fear or it is handing the other person too much power. Please stop making excuses. People aren't going to see that as valid, sorry. Those people who can't, can't, can't, need to be getting therapy and be responsible for themselves because otherwise guys/perves like Gaiman are encouraged by these women writing them love letters after the fact, which did happen. It isn't girl power and as a woman I am disappointed by all the excuses made that have a woman handing her power over to someone else to know what they mean. Not wise. Bella L

I have complicated feelings about the “no heroes” thing. A recent example I’m thinking about: I love the art David Lynch made. The art is all I really have a relationship with. But… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also love David Lynch himself (as much as I can love someone I didn’t know personally). I’m an aspiring filmmaker, and the way he collaborated with people is, for my money, aspirational. His life story, the things he said and did, the things that people close to him have said about him - all of it feels very close to my own life, and it makes me feel less alone. I don’t know if that’s placing him on a pedestal or not. I try to be discerning and critical (after all, he still did sign that petition to exonerate Polanski, and there’s so much of his private life that I’m not privy to). No one is unproblematic, and loving someone you don’t know is always dangerous, but idk… if it didn’t make my life a little better, I wouldn’t do it. I hope I wouldn’t do it. Maybe I would do it anyway, because I had similar (not exact) feelings about Gaiman and his work, and now I don’t feel better for it. I feel sad and betrayed along with everyone else. Really sorry, and I hope you’re otherwise okay.

What consent is? Guys a consent is two things. If you want to enter into a marriage you say it publicly and you have people to be your witnesses to repeat to others that you have expressed a desire to do something when you were able to express yourself freely and being in your right mind. This is what consent is. A consent is if you go to any doctor to undergo any medical procedure and you get a form. Inside a form you have a list on what you agree on, a list of what make go wrong but what you accept and the info about whom to inform and about what in case something what you freely agreed to goes wrong. And this is what consent is. Never foget it. It's once or the other. Anything else than that hardly a consent. And yes, an e-mail is treated by the law like any written contract. Keep all this in mind at all times. And like I have aleady mentioned earlier most BDSM partners use written conracts for a reason. In extreme sports people take out insurance and let everyone know that nobody forced them into practising dangerous sports. Dangerous sex as a free time pursuit for consenting adults is just the same. And adults are ware of the fact that in both cases if anything goes wrong there will be a time when someone will have to speak with first aid providers and the police. And adults prepae for such things. While hot headed criminals do not. That's all the diffeence between planned and consensual and unplanned and done without previous consent.

Given that I know people in subcultres and also people who are into all this BDSM stuff. Nobody who is in all this BDSM stuff has ever mixed it with having professional relationships with someone, nobody has ever introduced this into their relationshipsis with lower status or poorer people employed in their households or as the nany of their kids. If people who are adults engage in such practices both sides have dating apps and parties and events that both sides seek out on purpose from the get go and having a clear goal regarding their sexual life in mind. And any form of coercion if is a part of such practices is used after a specific mutual agreement and after consents are given, not before. In fact such communities even use wirtten detailed contracts in case some of those practices are risky for health and any accidents happen to make sure there is evidence to be shown to any first aid providers in case of any doubt why for example someone choked far worse than they wanted to. So no, no matter how the writer goes about society being against the unconventional prefrences of adults who are into BDSM from social research into the topic and conversations with people on it I can say, it may be about many things but it is not about what BDSM is about as a social phenomenon. If anything it moe like sexual harassment case and sexual violence in a workplace and if allegations are true it's more like any other case in which a boss rapes his employee in a workplace. As simple as this. Yes, "Good omens" are still Terry, let's not forget it. No reason for him to suffer all this backlash. Just like no reason why BDSM community would have to suffer backlash of these allegations as the core of all evil. The core of all evil is an abuse of an employee. An abuse of power in an assymetrical relationship of interdependence- how legal systems see such problem.

I have just recently found your channel and am enjoying all your video essays

Thank you for addressing this disturbing matter. The Vulture article made me feel so disappointed in and disgusted by NG. For myself personally the situation is reminiscent of how I felt when the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley first came to light nearly a decade ago. My heart goes out to the women who seem to have been very deliberately targeted by Gaiman due to being in an extremely vulnerable place and to those who worked with and were friends with him who had no idea about the allegations and feel betrayed. While also having reservations about the podcast I am glad it enabled other, much more credible and thorough journalists and media to then investigate, and the affected women to connect with and support each other. Regarding Palmer, she chose not to speak with police about Pavlovich's disclosures and instead made a song - positing herself as a victim - which reflects extremely poorly on her as does her willingness to encourage vulnerable young women to become involved with NG. Possibly she lacked the ability to understand just how vulnerable they were and genuinely didn't know just what depths NG would descend to? Until and unless she does address the allegations publicly we can't really know how much she knew and while NG drags out the divorce proceedings it's unlikely she is going to discuss them but it's made me feel so disappointed and angry with both Gaiman and Palmer. Thankfully I have always preferred Sir Terry Pratchett to Gaiman and am returning to re-read Discworld books now to help me feel somewhat better emotionally.

I wonder if the biggest victory over the bad people who create wonderful art really is to separate art from artist. Not compromising copyright - the relationship between an artist and their work is important for lots of reasons. But maybe detaching the inflated importance we give to creators and reserve it exclusively for their art. I've only 'read' one of Gaiman's books (the audible version, read by the author, of Norse Mythology) and it was excellent. But I'm so revolted by him now I just want to delete it from my library - I'll never want to listen to it again, when previously I was kind of saving it for the right mellow time to do so, because I enjoyed it so much. Anyway, I'm too tired just now to explain this more clearly. Great vid, sending you positive and comforting vibes.

I read his story "Destiny: Endless nights" as a eulogy at both my brother and my best friend's respective funerals, so Sandman had profound significance for me. Even so, I have binned my entire collection now. i am beyond disgusted and disappointed at these revelations. I will never be able to enjoy or consume his content ever again.

You flinging those books at your wall was very relatable to me. I just threw the same books in the recycling this morning (something i have never done, i always bring them to secondhand shops but i couldn't this time). Thank you for this.

I've seen a number of videos on the Gaiman situation and this one is the best. I've been taking breaks while watching it throughout the day to digest everything but I'm really glad I watched it and that it was recommended to me. I subscribed to your channel right away, seeing you throw the books against the wall was the perfect illustration of how I feel after finding out. As far as Gaiman goes, there's nothing I can say right now and you put it all better than I ever could anyway. But for you and this video, I have nothing but the highest praise. Thank you for speaking on this.

You might like to check out Tanith Lee. She wrote the Tales from the Flat Earth series that Sandman borrows from. A LOT. In a never-credited way.

Anti fatness is dumb... I want to be a prishy(pretty and squishy) trans girl!

I feel it. It really hurts when someone who created something you love, that has significant positive meaning, and effect on you, turns out to be evil, or betrays. 😢😢😢 🫂

Thank you Sara 💖

I really appreciate your insights

I think there’s an important thing to know about the Tortoise media podcast. It’s UK based. That makes it a *lot* more open to abuse of the legal system in the UK which is a lot more weighted against media than it is in the US. In the US the person suing has to prove defamation. In the UK, the person being sued is the one who had to prove they didn’t knowing libel/slander the person suing. It’s a LOT harder to do and using something like “allegedly” doesn’t always cover them. Especially when they’re putting forth new allegations and not just reporting on stories already out there. They were the first to break it as far as I am aware. Rachel Johnson is a terrible person. I don’t know about the other reporter involved, Paul Galizia, maybe he’s awful too. But it does seem like the way it was made, including the seemingly odd inclusions of “Gaiman claims” etc, is because they had cantacted him and this was his response and, if I understand it correctly, with a threat of legal action. So they had to be extremely careful. A US publication is more able to make bigger claims than a UK production.

Thank you for making it so clear that Gaiman having done horrible things has nothing to do with the quality of his writing (too many people pretend that it does, and that his writing has to, therefore, always have been bad). And that it's of course nonetheless understandable to not want to read him anymore. "No heroes" is what we need!

I'm sorry. 🥺

💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

With regards to the power imbalance and the idea that if someone can't say no then they can't say yes either.. there's a line in Romeo and Juliet where Romeo is procuring the poison to take his life The apothecary states "my poverty but not my will accepts" To which Romeo replies "then I pay thy poverty and not thy will" snatches his poison and goes I think that exchange lodged in my brain somewhere around 13 and never left.. because it made SO much sense to me.. I understand working at a job you hate to make ends meet and I understand going without and how desperate you could become to get your hands on something.. we were lower middle class(always teetering on the verge of dropping out the bottom) and we went without A LOT

You shouldn't be like that , as these texts are primarily texts that are not necessarily reflective of the author. As Umberto Eco (1932-2016) stated, the author is but coincidental, the reader creates the text by means of reading its words and sentences. Therefore, whether or not the author is despicable or abhorrent should not matter. For example, I have always loved Céline (1894-1961) as a writer and particularly his first two books written in the Thirties, the fact that he became Nazi sympathiser later on (in the 1940s) does not render his earlier masterpieces suspect or bad. You should apply the same logic to Gaiman and his work.

Hear hear. Not just a predator hiding as a feminist, but a real sadist. I'm disgusted and ashamed but i know i have to take a closer look at myself. You don't have to be a psychopath to use and hurt people. It is definitely sometimes about nature but it's almost certainly also nurtured in our society, and systemic, to both subjugate people when we have advantage, and to hate women. Basically we don't have to hate women even to justify hurting them. We men are good at being self-righteous and parading a heroic view of ourselves, right up until nobody's looking. It's there where that same old notorious sense of entitlement sets in and we'll qualify to ourselves that we deserve- i honestly don't know what to call it- a reward? It doesn't matter because it's not real, it's a token, whatever it is. It's like we convince ourselves and everybody else that we're the good guys protecting people from bad guys, only to reveal ourselves as simply bad guys protecting property from other bad guys. So it's pretty much impossible to tell who's honest and who's not when even those of us who are dishonest are kidding themselves. I see how women walk a minefield trying to trust their friends, husbands, and boyfriends.. their fathers, uncles, brothers, and sons. And you both can't go forward, nor back. You're stuck playing the game you can't escape. It's just not fair, and I'm so sorry I just did a lot of talking there, but I swear I'm trying to figure it out. And though this means nothing to say, I promise I am not silent with other men. I promise. Thanks, Sara. All the videos I've seen about this have been thoughtful, but yours has been the most thorough and meaningful so far. I see how hurt you are and it's a wonder you're so lucid. I'm sorry you lost a hero.

Male Feminist Moment

That bitter chuckle at "feelings" in the beginning sums my feelings up quite nicely.

To add to my previous comment, I also feel very bad for his victims. To me that goes without saying but I now realise I should have included it. Because after reading through the comment section here there are those who have no empathy for the victims, but for the predator. And that is why this sort of thing happens in our societies. The predators have support and protection from enablers.

Cool video you're right. Rich people lose any empathy over time

Now I know firsthand what trans and trans-allied Harry Potter fans went through. It's just. Ugh. Even though I was a bigger fan of adaptations than of his writing. The Coraline and Stardust films meant so much to me growing up.

❤❤

Yes, these crimes took place in the context of our rape culture. It's sick how fame enables unchecked abuse + boundary violations, and sick how this can often be gendered in our fucked society. And yes, this is about how these people never seek healing for their trauma as their responsibility. (Prior to any knowledge I had of his crimes) I noticed he would never speak for the children of Gaza, despite his supposed advocacy for refugee children, and this refusal of empathy stuck with me as confirmation that something was truly wrong....and now so, so much has been revealed. I was also previously a fan; he's disgraced every project he's been part of. I also don't know what to do with my books, the art in the graphic novels is deeply meaningful & instructional for me...

Re: radiation. The analogy that's used to teach about radioactive contamination is "the shit and the stink." Shit being contamination, and stink being radiation. But also, everyone is slightly, literally, radioactive. Foods like potatoes and bananas and brazil nuts are radioactive; it' just low level, it's just background. The analogy is a good one.

His response may look okay out of context, but once you take into account how gross and specific the accounts are, saying "some happened, some didn't, I thought it was consential" practically becomes an admission of guilt.

The other confusing adpect is that he was enabled to be viewed as a ' feminist' ally. It appears he knew how to use the right language to manipulate many people. That must have been an additional aspect to the gaslighting.

Instead of feminism, might I ask women and girls just carry guns?

I liked hearing your take on this. I don’t think I’ll be able to read Sandman or any of his books again, because the content matter of his stories and his transgressions overlap too much. There are strong women in his stories, but there are also too many fridged women and abused women. His books were always on the edge of what I can tolerate of these kinds of things (because the abuse was so unpleasant and awful often), and now I know that he may have been describing things he wanted to do or had done.

Yepseyfreakingdoodle, it is messy af but also so simple (ALL means all). Thank you for always including feelings as a way of knowing.

Thank you for this very intelligent analysis of this particular situation and the concept of consent generally.

I just wanted to say thank you for adding your voice to this. You've said things I haven't heard yet.

The author’s personal conduct has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of the work. There’s a difference between aesthetics and ethics.

Unfortunately neil gaiman is also a hush scientologist and like l ron hubbard he inflated the sales thru them and which is why majority of his adaptations failed. If you cant separate the art from the artist kudos and im not trying to take that away and i used to enjoy his works but knowledge is power. Unfortunately as well this is why you dont meet your heroes and him having "the correct politics" allowed him to get away with he has and is a industry known secret. Amanda Palmer informing the 15th victim there was 14 before her is what got me and stockholm syndrome is a thing. You cant reject repeated patterns and im sorry if this upset you but i was here july 2024 when the story broke. Thank you for spreading awareness on this.

Neil Gaiman wasn’t just a celebrity author, he was approachable on Tumblr. We asked him questions about shows and his books. He seemed to be "team gay women". Team vulnerable queers. And he asserted himself into our spaces. Neil Gaiman in particular is the author I felt was "most around" as a person. And that is why I am shocked and appalled by him in particular.

A liberal did liberal things and finally got caught out. Hope you dont find out about his friends like warren ellis and alan moore

I am very much in the same situation: I loved Gaiman's work, he was my second or third favorite author, after Pratchett and Le Guin. I thought long and hard about sir Terry's friendship with the creep, and I talked to people in the comments of other KZbin videos about it. And I think I'm not delusional when I come to the conclusion that Pratchett didn't know. Creeps are very good at hiding their behavior in front of more powerful men, and Pratchett was one of those men who could make or break Gaiman. Thank you so much for mentioning their friendship and sharing your opinion. And in general: great video, as always.

Buffy is a collectively produced work of art. Its the brainchild and was mainly created by one problematic invidual but there a lot of other writers, Mark Field says there are three incredible actors (I'd argue for four) and other creatives. It's a big difference. Its gonna happen that someone who produced something you love with be deeply problematic. A friend of mine who in a community harmed by Rowling was a big HP fan and that hurt them.

I rewatched the whole series during the Pandemic, and oh my god, it is so good. I remember watching it when I was a kid in Russia and was so proud that there is finally a positive Russian female character, who is not portrayed as a spy or using the stereotypical Hollywood trope, plus she also had a Russian surname with a correctly gendered ending -ova, which still rarely happens despite the existence of cultural sensitivity experts.

Rebecca Watson raised an interesting aspect to this that there's an element of religious abuse here that Gaimen was raised in Sciencetolgy and may have become abusive due to experiences there. Often again it's education in breaking the cycle so the abused don't go on to become abusers. I know that not all of the abused continue that cycle but enough do that it's a failure of education. One factor amongst many others.

Accusation does not equal conviction. Has Gaiman been arrested? Charged? Personally I’m withholding judgment at this time.

For those into recycling, consider E.P.P (English Paper Piecing) as a hobby?

Off-topic: I am glad the algorithm suggested this channel to me, going to watch all your Babylon 5 videos!

As always, I appreciate your thoughts and the nuance you bring to the table. I’m sorry for the hurt Gaiman’s caused, both to the people he has so horrendously and directly hurt, and the people he’s indirectly hurt, and I wish so much there were no people in either category. I was a casual fan, but a few friends were much more invested and I hate that they’ve been cast adrift like this, even tho I understand how the systems work to keep producing predators, it still sucks. Not entirely sure what to say, just that I see you feeling a whole brace of feelings, and I feel *for* you and everybody else </3

what about JK Rowling? she's like Galadriel to me.. one who has seen... THE EYE. 🧿⚡