grumpy-gran

[grumpy-gran]

A statement from Katherine (Kitty) Kendall, LCMHC (also known as "Claire" in the podcasts):

https://www.kkendallcounselor.com/news/tothefriendsofcalliope

In 2020, Neil Gaiman committed to making a “hefty donation” to OurVOICE, the agency where I received counseling services in 2013. It was later discovered that he had not made the donation he promised.

I am not professionally affiliated with this agency, but believe strongly in its mission: to inspire hope and healing while ending sexual violence and human trafficking through education, counseling and advocacy.

If you choose to dedicate your donation to the victims of Neil Gaiman - those who have come forward, those who will, and those who can’t - please dedicate that donation to the name “Calliope.”

I am so in awe of this beautiful statement and this powerful idea.

If every Sandman fan, or every NG fan (or former fan), makes a small donation in Calliope's name, or shares this message to others, it can add up to something incredible.

I continue to be blown away by the powerful beauty of this statement, and by the strength, courage, and resilience of all the survivors.

Kitty Kendall's full statement: https://www.kkendallcounselor.com/news/tothefriendsofcalliope

OurVOICE donation page: https://www.ourvoicenc.org/donate/

🖤

[grumpy-gran]

"Claire", from the Tortoise Media broadcast, is asking people to donate to OurVOICE, which is where Neil Gaiman said he would donate money to, and then didn't. This organization provides counseling services for abuse victims. Don't forget to dedicate your donation to "Calliope".

Those familiar with Gaimans work will recognize why.

[grumpy-gran]

It must have taken a lot of courage (of magnitude I cannot fathom) to go up against what must seem like an untouchable institution, and stand up for herself. Kudos to Scarlett!

Rooting for her. And for all of the people victimised by Gaiman.

I hope you get the justice you deserve. <3

Former fans stand with you.

OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKA

YES! GOOD!

[grumpy-gran]

I dreamed that Neil Gaiman was showing me an ornate silver teapot, with the inside divided into sections. "This is for my friends," he said, indicating one section, "and this is for the people who don't matter."

Then I woke up angry, partly from being reminded of the whole shitty situation, but also because no matter how good a metaphor it is for the idea of compartmentalizing your life and providing hospitality to some and harm to others, that guy absolutely does not deserve to be compared to anything so stylish as an Assassin's Teapot.

[grumpy-gran]

Resist. The. Urge. To. Hero. Worship. Celebrities.

"At least we still have _____ to look up to!"

DIDN'T YOU LEARN YOUR LESSON ABOUT CELEBRITY WORSHIP BY NOW!?!

STOP IT!

[grumpy-gran]

Also from Private Eye #1641

[grumpy-gran]

Neil Gaiman cancelled at Dark Horse

US publisher Dark Horse Comics is ending their relationship with Neil Gaiman, including the adaptation of Anansi Boys, which has been cancelled

US publisher Dark Horse Comics is ending their relationship with Neil Gaiman, including the adaptation of Anansi Boys, which has been cancelled. The publisher’s decision follows a number of allegations of assault against the author, which he has denied. His representatives have not yet commented on the Dark Horse decision. “Dark Horse takes seriously the allegations against Neil Gaiman, and we…

[grumpy-gran]

huge fan of david tennant does a podcast with: neil gaiman being removed from spotify by the way

[grumpy-gran]

i don't really want to see this retconning of neil gaiman's writing where people are re-analyzing stories like "look...you can see the message under the surface...showing how he was actually abusive IRL...it's all there..."

idk maybe we should just listen to people when they speak up and say they were abused and try to foster a culture of respecting victims and actually enforcing justice against perpetrators instead of doing this weird fucking da vinci code-esque picking apart of his stories. stories which everyone was fine with for decades!! because we understand that the content that people write and produce does not have a 1 to 1 correlation with their real world actions!!!

i fully support people who cannot engage with his work anymore and i do think that because he's a still-living person it's imperative to not give this guy another cent, but we cannot pretend that everyone was just "too dumb" to see the secret clues and turn this into another case of "what you write is what you endorse." plenty of dogshit people write good stories. plenty of good people write dark stories. that's all.

[grumpy-gran]

OH.

Ok you know how everyone was (rightly!) like “WTAF” about the Tortoise podcast never quoting Gaiman’s responses to them or saying where they came from in the podcast, just saying “Neil Gaiman’s position is…”?

And how it only became clear that the source was “through lawyers” because Paul Caruana Galizia posted about it only after the podcast was finished?

There’s a reason!

It’s Gaiman et al manipulating the fucking British libel laws again!

Neil Gaiman says he’s breaking his silence. But the silence was his doing. He responded to the allegations we put to him last year - in lengthy legal letters… each one carrying a threat of defamation and privacy claims, each one demanding that we don’t quote the letters or give any indication where the material they contained came from. Because aside from being a feminist, Gaiman is a free speech champion.

So. They sent letters and then threatened to sue them if they quoted them.

To be fair to… literally everyone there’s no way anyone could’ve guessed that there was a legal threat causing bad citation and “Where the fuck did you get this quote” is entirely reasonable to ask a team of multiple seasoned journalists especially when it happens repeatedly but only on one topic.

Well. Now we know! Fuck!

[grumpy-gran]

Comparing Neil Gaiman to JK Rowling is so inane. They are both horrible people for completely different reasons. The only take I appreciated came from a former potterhead on Bluesky who drew a roadmap for people in the GO fandom on how to cope. HP fans grieved the community they lost, the beloved works that were formative to them, an escape from the horrors of the world and a sense of belonging, as it is happening with lots of GO fans, especially the younger ones.

And no, acknowledging one's emotions does not take away from Gaiman's victims. We cannot give back what Gaiman took from them, unfortunately. We can honour them , though. The GO fandom raised more than 6k US dollars for Take Back the Night, Rainn and other organizations who care for SA and DV survivors. Raising awareness, volunteering, and amplifying their voices are other things that can be done. I personally do not think that keeping GO in evidence is a good thing. But this is my own opinion and I am not going to berate people or tell them what to do. People may have different opinions and timelines to cope. Disclaimer bc sometimes people misinterpret what they read: DEFENDING GAIMAN IS NOT A COPING MECHANISM. BLOCK ANYBODY WHO DOES THIS, DEPLATFORM THEM IF POSSIBLE.

[grumpy-gran]

death threats are not activism btw

[grumpy-gran]

The system protects abusers. Exhibit no. 32818121 ffs!

goodreads has now restricted people from reviewing or rating any of neil gaimans books at all, so that his glorious four to five star ratings aren't instantly destroyed. it's so wonderful how goodreads would work to prevent reviewing-bombing for neil gaiman but not for all the other POC or queer authors that were also review-bombed due to racism and homophobia. great stuff

[grumpy-gran]

hey, sorry for any distress my post caused you first of all. and thank you for everything you said much more eloquently and kinder than i did.

i was gonna ask if i could quote one of your replies in a reblog but honestly, i might just delete the post. it seems to have found a majority of bad actors and I'm realising i didn't tailor it to the people i intended to comfort.

So kind of you to reach out, @threezoz. Didn’t cause distress but I appreciate you checking in. <3

Apologies for writing awkward text blocks under your post: new-at-Tumblr-old-person things, I think! (And i apologise if this is not how these “asks” are meant to be addressed! Gosh this is embarrassing how bad I am at it.)

Sorry to hear that you’re finding it necessary to censor your posts. Reiterating to everyone that while emotions are running high, please remember there’s a real person behind people you address online. Engage in difficult conversations, but try to do so with grace and empathy.

Brigading comments aggressively until they don’t engage altogether is neither here nor there.

[grumpy-gran]

Neil Gaiman thought: I think right now, and whenever anything like this happens, people are focusing too much on deciding what shows/books are cancelled, what movies they’re not allowed to watch anymore, there’s that post going back over Gaiman’s whole career attempting to find evidence of plagiarism for every single thing he’s ever written….

X person has been revealed to be awful, what’s most important now is to expunge the contamination and prove myself virtuous.

But I think what’s more important is to think about what breaks in our society that allows this to happen, the classism and misogyny and cycles of abuse that cause it, the lack of supports that allows it to continue, what the victims need to help them recover, how to speak out when you see something like this happening, etc etc etc, these kind of things. And I usually see much less of this discussion happening.

I get that it’s much more satisfying to have an argument about all the secret clues we as fans could and should have noticed, debating about whether we’re allowed to watch Coraline anymore, arguing about if general themes in common with classic stories or fairytales counts as plagiarism, but like, this really doesn’t help anything, and it’s very self-serving.

What is the actual important issue here, is it the bad things that happened and what needs to change to make this not happen again? Or is the issue making sure the content we consume is pure?

Just something to think about.

EDIT: woah I am starting to get some really weird notifs on this post. I get that this is a highly upsetting and highly charged issue and people’s tempers are flaring. I guess I want to clarify, this post is not meant to “shame” anyone. Pointing out something you might not have thought of before, or even pointing out something you might be wrong about, that is not shaming. I literally just wanted to bring up a point I literally just thought of last night. I realized this focus on making sure our consumption of media is “pure” really doesn’t help anyone in the end except ourselves, and I realized I wished I was seeing more discussion about the social issues around this instead of these tangential arguments. And I wanted to share that. This is giving some folks a really strong knee jerk reaction that I’m calling them out and shaming them. I’m not, I just wanted to point out a thought I thunk and maybe give people something to think about as well. Tone is hard to communicate via only written words and maybe I didn’t do a good job at it but yikes guys. “We need to make sure we don’t continue to support an awful person in any way” and “we need to make sure we are thinking about what we need to change that will help this not happen, and not just make sure we are updating our virtue signalling” are statements that can both be correct.

[grumpy-gran]

if you're aware of the Vulture article on Neil Gaiman, there's not much i can add; if you aren't and you go looking, my only advice is that if you hit a point where you're wondering if you should bail, do so, because the details of his behavior only get more vile as it goes along.

however, one thing i WILL say is to be on the lookout for smear campaigns against the sources and/or the journalist, Lila Shapiro, in the coming weeks and months. i cannot stress enough how brave this article is. if there's one thing more hazardous to your reputation than blowing up a rich and influential serial predator in the entertainment industry, it's making the church of scientology look bad, and she's managed to do both in one stroke. remember Lila Shapiro's name, and be extremely skeptical if it suddenly turns up later this year as the target of some slimy allegation.

-

(reblogs are enabled again for the time being; please try to behave yourselves. this post is a heads-up, not an open mic night for your tangential hot takes or your personal feelings about gaiman's work. furthermore, tumblr's resident TERF circle-jerk is disrespectfully invited to piss off and take a long walk off a short fucking dock.)

[grumpy-gran]

The conversation around NG and the allegations seem to me to have devolved into pandemonium much quicker this time than the last, when the allegations initially came out. Idk why that is. There’s so much vitriolic, combative, moral grandstanding, that any balanced discourse has lost all meaning.

It’s weird. It’s all “fandom this, rape apologia that.” Or “how dare you moral police what I can or cannot enjoy.”

TW: SA, CSA, self harm mentions below

There is a man who has for decades allegedly physically and mentally harmed vulnerable people, fans included. For decades apparently. In front of a child, apparently. He’s misused mental health resources available to him to manipulate a survivor. He’s threatened self harm when called out for his behaviour. He’s used his celebrity to override rules of basic human decency. He’s caused DEEP fucking trauma. And so, I get the sense that a lot of us are super-triggered by it when we type our responses on here.

Meanwhile, This spineless coward has sat in his ivory tower in complete fucking silence and watched as keyboard wars are waged over his legacy. As far as I can tell, he’s not being held accountable in any court of law. He’s maybe lost a few sources of income, and that’s a maybe. The survivors? I don’t know how they’re doing, and I hope they’re doing well, but I don’t know if they’ve seen any substantial justice. I don’t know if they ever will.

There was a general sense of massive grief combined with rallying behind survivors six months ago. I’ve read about some fundraisers… some people had helpfully put long posts last time about how to help, how to do better.

Right now it’s just angry words everywhere, and I genuinely don’t know who it is meant to benefit.

Let’s just take a beat. Let’s think about who we are yelling at, really. Stay hydrated, get some sleep and get some distance.