fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6594 ]

[ SECRET POST #6594 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6594 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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07. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]

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08. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #942.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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07. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]
https://i.imgur.com/hWr1X5S.png

After reading the Vulture article, I genuinely believe no one knew except his wife and the women involved.

I've never gotten into Pratchett's work, but I'm a huge fan of Tori Amos, who's been very close to Gaiman over the years. She references him in several songs. One reference in particular has always been gut-wrenchingly beautiful to me ("seems I keep getting the story / twisted, so where's Neil when you need him?"). I hate that it has such disgusting baggage now. I hate that I have to wonder if she knew. I hate the idea that she didn't know and is just now finding this out about her kid's godfather and going through a grieving process while having to make statements. IDK, I just... guess I want to think no one in his inner circle really knew.

I know I read a statement or interview Tori Amos made recently about the whole thing, which seemed pretty clear that she didn't know and was gutted by it. Honestly I feel bad for her, considering what she's been through herself it was probably a pretty big blow to learn that someone she considered a friend is actually a monster.

I'm sure many people didn't know at all. Abusers tend to be good at showing only the best part of themselves around people that they actually respect. Some people possibly knew some level of rumors but didn't have concrete knowledge or know how bad it actually was.

One of my best friends from when I was 13 to when I was in my 30s, a loud and proud feminist, was a serial rapist. I had zero indication. Same with a lot of other of their close friends. We were completely blindsided by it.

I know we'd like to think that there's some kind of red aura around abusers or a person smarter than all of Gaiman's victims would have been able to tell from his writing but the truth is that abusers hide it really well and that's how they're able to keep abusing people for years. I don't believe for a second Tori Amos or Pterry or anyone like that knew.

"No one knew"

*Smug mode*

No, I kid, I know no-one KNEW knew, but I'd have put money on it. I'd have put real life changing money on this having been the case. On Gaiman specifically, but in more recent years Palmer seemed like something of a user too. I admit I wouldn't have called it on palmer, but I've been on the "Gaiman is a creepy fucker with women" for eons. At LEAST the mid 2000's.

I also bullseyed Joss Whedon as well.

Cosby blindsided me, tho. Can't say I saw that one coming at all.

I didn't know know it, but I thought that it'd be a miracle if someone in Neil Gaiman's position who was idolized by a great many emotionally vulnerable, worshipping fans didn't take advantage of it somehow, because that's the way to bet re: rich men in power. I started to side-eye him more when he got with Amanda Palmer, who already struck me as a narcissist and a user of fans, because if Gaiman was such a paragon, why would he be okay with that? And (maybe) coincidentally, it brought him into contact with another large fan following of emotionally vulnerable young women with an aesthetic he seems to like.

I thought Whedon was an arrogant asshat. Didn't know enough about him to say more, but again, for the same reasons, it didn't surprise me. Mostly because he seemed to have a "type" for his female characters and it felt like someone's sexual fantasies bleeding through into their work.

Also blinded by Cosby, who I only knew as the Jello pudding pops guy and Dr. Huxtable. That was a nasty surprise.

I was gutted by Gaiman, just... like, because the EXTENT of it was so much worse than I could have guessed, and it's so, so awful for those women...

I was not entirely surprised by Cosby, because before anything else, I had heard his stand-up routine about Spanish Fly. I heard it as a kid and I didn't entirely understand what was going on in the routine until much later, but like... if you had never heard that one bit, then I absolutely understand being blindsided by Dr. Huxtable! Especially because back in the day you could sanitize your image, you know, there was no sense of an old comedy routine living forever, even if some people (like my grandparents) had it on vinyl, you could switch things up and build this fan base that didn't come from the stand-up world at all, who were there because you were doing pioneering things as a black man in television or just because you came into their homes every week as a loving husband and father... I absolutely understand the shock of that one, because if it wasn't for one old record in my grandparents house and the weird feeling one bit on it gave me, I'd have been right there with you.

I mean, lots of people knew that Gaiman slept around and had sex with fans, and that he was doing this long before he divorced his first wife. That was very well-known. Also known, though less well, was that he was a bit of a creep with fans sometimes. Amanda Palmer as a user and grifter, yes, also well known. But I was really blindsided by the abuse and rape. Like, fans threw themselves at him all the time, he had absolutely no need to do that.

Yeah. It's not like everyone assumed he lived like a monk, but they figured that whatever he got up to was consensual, including his open marriage, etc. etc. The man was a literary rock star, he could've had consensual sex until his heart gave out. Clearly that's not what he wanted, though.

Yup. I've never considered them especially good people. I liked Gaiman's work, I loved how he collaborated with artists I like, so I have a lot of his works. But I thought he is arrogant and a bit of a creep towards fans and didn't especially like him as a person. And Palmer seemed like not a person you want as a friend. (I am not into her work) But there is this and there is abuse and rape of vulnerable women.

I didn't know that about Neil Gaiman. Never once heard a rumor like that in the past.

wait what happened with josh?

Josh who?

Gesundheit.

(no subject)

arcanetrivia - 2025-01-27 20:47 (UTC) - Expand

For me Gaiman was a surprise but ia that Joss was surprisingly obvious with his hyperfetishistic waif-fu shit and putting rank misogyny in the mouths of characters who are inevitably absolved, while leaning on his ""feminist"" credentials to not get called out on it, but back in the 90s everyone around me in nerd fandoms made me feel insane for saying so. But people would go full-on attack dog back then over pointing out things (cultural appropriation, typecast minority characters, lost cause apologia) that are just common sense about his work now.

Whedon's waif fetish was right in your face, and his foot fetish almost as obvious-but never quite as blatant-as Tarantino's. Looking back on his work, he has a big thing for shilling the sadsack borderline incel male characters too.

Gaiman was just a sleezy pseudo-goth. You saw a lot of them in the press industry in the eighties and early nineties in the UK. They were pretty common, so he didn't stand out that much.

There's a post going around bluesky/tumblr about how STP wrote most of Good Omens* and didn't really speak about Gaiman unprompted while Gaiman has been talking about STP since his death like they were long time collaborators and best friends. This probably relates to the Good Omens show and smoothing discoworld fans' feathers over another adaptation (still bitter about the Gaurds) about how He Would Have Wanted This. But also, that's a lot of social/literary clout just laying on the table. Is no one else going to pick this up? I mean someone could use be using it to dunk on terfs on twitter (and make lots of money) so.....

*as opposed to a Kelly/Lanzing or James S. A. Corey type collaboration. (Kelly and Lanzing literally call themselves the Hivemind, if one of them is smuggling endangered animals (or some other crime) I'd be shocked if the other didn't know.)

So if you think of them as one-time collaborators and occasional conbuddies rather than platonic soulmates it makes sense that he might not have picked up on the *crime* underneath the friendly sleeze.

But also, as much as I want to believe the man who gave me the words "Sin is treating people like things" would behave/believe/react a certain way, I didn't know this man or his heart. If he had a suspicion and buried it, or if he picked up a bad vibe and distanced himself, or if he was completely oblivious, or if he had an idea but kept quiet to not rock the boat, it doesn't matter. I'll never know, and I have to be ok with that. I still have the words.

Is the post you mention credible, or is it just someone trying to cope? As much as I always considered Good Omens to have a very Pratchettian style, I've been under the impression that Pterry himself never claimed to have written most of it.

I mean, I'm almost certain that the reason the first season of the TV show jumped through so many hoops to include certain non-dialogue turns of phrase verbatim is that Gaiman at considered them to be Pterry's writing, but that's not definitive proof of anything.

Pratchett had a big blindspot when it came to other people and their sexual attractions. He married young, and he and Lyn were married married. If you see what I mean. It wasn't something he paid much attention to in others. He'd been burned a little in the Craig Charles thing earlier too, he used to be a friend of Charles and when the rape allegations (which turned out to be actually and genuinely false and malicious) came out, he let that friendship cool, and regretted rushing to judgement. I don't know if he knew about Gaiman, I suspect not. I suspect he didn't notice, because that was the sort of man he was, but if he did then I believe he would have probably kept his suspicions to himself because of his history with Craig Charles.

Disclaimer: I was never a close friend with Pratchett, just a nodding acquaintance, but I did meet him in social settings at conventions and other events outwith the stagemanaged portions of it. I visited him at his home twice, but always in the company of others and for developing projects. I wasn't just another fan in the crowd, but I wasn't a close part of his circle either. This is my impression of him.

I would back up the part of the opinion of the other Pratchett secret that Terry was definitely on the spectrum somewhere. You couldn't meet him and not know. His hyperfocuses, his oddball and occasionally rigid behaviours, and of course his outsiders view of humanity at large, all of which fascinated him and made him love it all the more, all spoke to that. I think he had quite a temper, or at least potential to have a temper, too, but that was one he turned inwards on himself rather than take out on those around him. He was a generous man, an intelligent man, but he had his faults and blindspots too. If he had his suspicions about Neil, I think based on the man I knew, he would be more likely to have been angry with himself for potentially seeing something he probably thought wasn't there.

So I saw this this morning, and I’ve been out all day, so have been unable to fact check this yet, but in the comments of a tumblr post about NG plagiarising Tanith Lee, someone linked to a blog post quoting STP saying that NG was either a really lovely man or the most consummate actor. It also quoted Rob Rankin saying that STP told him he would never work with NG again, but refused to tell him why.

Off topic, but where did the Pterry thing come from? I always see it but never see an explanation. (Afraid to google in case it's a NSFW thing.) It just makes me think of pterodactyl, which I'm guessing is probably wrong (unless he was a huge fan of them or something I guess).

I don't know the original source, so it's possible there's more to it than this, but I've always assumed that somebody somewhere noticed that co-authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman had "given name" + "first letter of surname" combinations that would result in the same pronunciation if combined. i.e. Pterry is pronounced the same as Terry and Gneil is pronounced the same is Neil.

Then it became a widespread fannish in-joke because it's easier to type Pterry or Gneil than to type out their full names. And for Terry Pratchett in particular, it was really useful to have this shorthand in order to distinguish him from fellow famous fantasy authors Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind.

It came from Alt.Fan.Pratchett after publication of the Discworld book Pyramids, and its hero-protagonist Pteppic. The P being sorta/notsorta silent as a running gag in the novel, and AFP just ran with it.

Given what Robert Rankin said ("Terry told me he wished he'd never worked with him, but I never found out why") it seems likely he got a creeper feeling during the process, or after the fact, but likely didn't know the full details.

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