This isn't likely to be very insightful: I think the feels about artist/art get complicated because the art (as consumed) gets into our headspaces (to different degrees) intellectually and/or emotionally... and the art is something "as presented, as received" whereas the person behind the art is just some other fleshbag. A few of the folks mentioned offer me some internal insight, as to how I think about them.

Gaimain / JKRowling. These writers produced the work that I know best at different times in my life; Gaimain was more prevalent. I don't think either of them are gems; but NG has got physical victims, whereas JKR's "crimes" seem to be has fully formed opinions that are somewhere on a spectrum of insensitive/ugly/loathsome. People can wallow in loathsome opinions, but that's their personal intellectual choice. NG seems to have long publicly embraced opinions against cruelty and insensitivity all while privately getting off (literally) on those things. Weirdly, I've personally probably put more lucre in JKR's pocket (because of movie tickets) than I have done so for NG... because 95% of what I bought of his came via a comic publisher, everything else of his I consumed was either a public library or second-hand store... and that includes much of his TV efforts.

The Israel/Hamas violence as analyzed by musicians (Draiman/Waters) has just reminded me that musicians are not the people to look for for anything like nuanced understanding or problem solving. Sorry Bob Geldof. Personally, my own sensitivities on that topic align closer with Roger Waters' general themes of "stop the violence", but I can't ignore that he's gone overboard in his own public statements. No matter how hard some folks want something to be a binary black/white problem, this is simply not the case for human conflict.

I have finally listened to the initial four episodes from Tortoise Media. I have notes.

First: This is not a sensationalist set of reporting, but...

Second: ... it isn't until towards the end of the THIRD podcast (unless I missed it) that it is disclosed that all of Neil Gaiman's responses are directed by him through his PR firm. Up until this point I was wondering things like "how can they report that NG says these were consensual, loving relationships?"

Also: It isn't until the end of the FOURTH podcast in which the case is made WHY report at all. I do think the general case is made why this would be valid reporting, even if a different man was responsible. This isn't specifically a case being made against Neil Gaiman, even though he is obviously the focus.

Also: There is only a casual (and rather neutral) presentation of the Scientology dimension. I say 'neutral' because there is no tie to any of the practices relating to auditing, NDAs, 'contracts', continent-hopping, or use of the same PR firm as criminally convicted sex criminals as other folks with ties to Scientology. NG's father gets some explanation, but this is all pretty thin, considering what "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" is about.

I found the four episodes to be a poorly constructed narrative, but ultimately fine reporting. I can accept that the reporters chose to tell the story as it was revealed to them chronologically rather than trying to craft a narrative that would probably be more truthful but less factual.

As a podcast followup, I listened to the Season 4 Episode 2 episode of "Am I Broken" in which Claire (a different woman from the Tortoise media series) tells her story of sexual assault by Neil Gaiman. This is a very powerful podcast and only a willfully heartless bastard would side with NG after hearing it.

I've now listened to the 5th of the Tortoise Media podcasts. The fifth episode is by far the most troubling, because NG's victim was a mature, but an explicitly dependent-on-Gaiman/Palmer woman. Another woman goes on the record about very caddish behavior on NG's part when he was in his 20s... That instance would be possible to read as akin to a weird jerk turn, but the woman making that complaint does a good job of self-explaining why she thinks it is important that folks hear her experience.

The podcast references two other women who verify some of NG's sexual behaviors/kinks, but aren't going on the record as making any accusations against him. In the original four podcasts a reference was made to another woman who was contacted and was in an admitted (by her, but not NG) sexual relationship who has said there was no SA/coercion. I don't know if that woman is one of the two 'background' sources of the 5th podcast.

Final word about the Tortoise Media podcast(s): The podcast is making a case that NG's actions are criminal. The case of the woman he was going to unhouse during the pandemic (and suggested an NDA) certainly has the stink of criminal sexual coercion/assault.

Tangentially, I heard tell that Palmer once encouraged someone to kill themselves and then put voice recordings of the person into a song. So a messed up couple.

A supervillain couple?
They are like something from the nightmares of Morpheus.

I paid almost no attention to Palmer/Gaiman as a couple, except when they popped up on my culture radar. When I'd heard they were married (and the details of their pre-child marriage forced themselves onto my consciousness) my hot take was:

1. NG finally 'accquired' the female musical star he's been hunting for,
2. AP found her way into some sort of celebrity couple that increased her edgelord/edgelady status and increased her fanbase.

From the current-day perspective, I still think the as-then AP (punk, edgelady) got something for herself out of their relationship (beyond their son), but she has unquestionably matured in some ways (because of the child) enough to realize that he was using her to get more out of the relationship, and that he almost certain gave no Fs the entire time.

The only two of the five on-the-record victims that had any contact with AP was the older woman in NY and the 20-y-o nanny in NZ. The older woman's story made it sound like AP was out of the picture entirely (the NY estate was for NG's Bard college tenure) and the latter makes it sound like she was an AP fangirl who got lured into the circumstances and that AP wanted nothing to do with her or her involvement with NG. They weren't a throuple, the circumstances sound dangerously close to AP explicitly procuring one of her young fans for NG.

I've edited the first post with a link to a sight where someone is tracking public accusations and responses.


https://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1678972.html

We've got some third-hand (second-hand?) information on what NG has been doing since the initial wave of public accusations: Testing/Peddling his version of the narrative to a close circle of people (i.e. attacking the accusers). This comes by was of Tess Fowler (the comic artist) as seen here. *link to reddit, for those that don't use bluesky.

She packs a tremendous amount of nuanced fury into a relatively small number of words. In a short number of posts, she basically confirms she's been previously told of his past proclivities/specific behaviors (in confidence), that NG is circulating his own version of screencaps from the accused(*1), how she's lost a friend to NG's spell-binding (my words, not hers) over the accusation narrative, and...

..she makes a plea to NOT take it out on NG's collaborators. (Especially Colleen Doran, at least that is who I am assuming the "CD" is.)

This last request by Tess Fowler is a hard one... not because of Colleen Doran(*2)... but because I feel conflicted about folks who have some amount of income tied up with NG. I can understand comic artists not wanting to encourage (directly or indirectly) people to (a) boycott or (b) publicly destroy works that were partially created by others than NG. I think this is the point TF is making. However...

The longer collaborators stay quiet, the more likely I (points to self) am going to think of his collaborators as enablers-in-silence who literally value their own income over the trauma suffered by the accusers (and likely others). Collaborators who have works in the pipeline with significant investment should IMO meet their obligations and move away as fast as possible if they don't want the stink of NG on them. I'm not a fair arbiter, but I'd put Colleen Doran's Good Omens project, the Sandman Audios, Sandman season 2 in the catgeory of so much has been invested by so many that these should be finished. Things like Good Omens 3? Say something NOW of GTFO, David Tennant and Michael Sheen I am looking at you.. It's not like those two guys won't get work, and it's not like you are on-set making magic for the film crews. Tennant was leveraged (likely unknown to him) into one of the accuser's stories (by NG). Fiona Shaw should also really have said something, considering NG leveraged her into sending a personal message to the NZ nanny... would it kill these people (or their careers) to publicly say they didn't know what was going on?

(*1) I can understand an instinct to share what he believes would be exculpatory evidence... however, this sharing of screencaps/videos/emails with "friends" sits very wrong with me.[/size]

1) This is an animalistic, instinctive fight-response that a mature individual (especially someone who considers themselves to be valid sexual partner with anyone) ought to be able to resist. Minimally, a mature storyteller would be able to put into words their conflicted feelings over relationships and their own part in them without having to betray confidences... even if those "past lovers" suffenly become antagonistic.

2) These were communications from women decades younger than him... I can only imagine how immature (and likely inappropriate) the communications between NG and the accusers are! Does this sixty-year-old man really think that there is sympathy to be had by sharing the text messages of a 20-y-o nanny he put in a bathtub?

3) If *he* thought these were private (at one point) and suddenly discovers they are not, who does he turn on a dime to try to use them as sources of attacks... that sounds as if it is right out of teh Scientology auditing playbook.


(*2) Colleen Doran was working in comics long before Neil Gaimain. Personal note: I just bundled up something like 50+ issues of A Distant Soil, check for gaps in my collection that I *still* want to fill. I *know* CD has bills to pay, and I *know* she's tied up with a to-be-produced Good Omens graphic novel... but I gotta say: she can BOTH fulfill her obligation to that project AND say something... even if it along the lines of "please understand I have a collaborarative project 99% completed, and I have both a personal artistic obligation to the backers and a contractual obligation to the production house, both of which are preventing me from saying more at this time. I am not unaware of the news."

EDIT: I was informed that the Pratchett estate is refunding any of the Good Omens graphic novel's Kickstarter backers who want to pull out. According to Wkipedia, this $3.1M kickstarter is what Colleen Doran is currently working on... and it appears she is also writing the adaptation, which is a pretty big deal.

Tortoise Media released a 6th podcast on Neil Gaiman's sexual misconduct allegations. This is their reporting of the accusations made in the "Am I Broken?" podcast. The AIB podcast emphasized the survivor's side: her perspective of the pattern, her own mixed feelings about her participation in her trauma, and her own path towards healing.

The Tortoise Media podcast is more interrogative, and it contains voice recordings of NG's response to this victim's reaching out to him (several years ago). I think it is important for anyone wanting to disbelieve the woman who have come forward to listen to NG's verbal response to her narrative, and then to also pay attention to the non-verbal ways he's responded to the victims (cash payments, NDAs, among others), his inner circle (see the Tess Fowler reaction) and not responded (publicly). To my ears: hearing him offer his PoV to this one woman (years ago) and knowing the response he had his PR firm give for other women makes it pretty clear that whatever he may be starts with insincerity.

The 6th TM podcast gives the victim a chance to spin herself a LOT of rope, and doesn't (IMO) offer much in the way of explanation of how did she let herself get into an escalating series of traumatic events. For better understanding of that, I suggest listening to the AIB podcast.

One other piece of new information: The other news outlets that the victim contacted (starting in 2017) that ignored her were named: Jezebel, BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Slate, the New Yorker, and an unnamed "prominent freelance journalist" (Maybe Ronan Farrow?)

Somewhat predictably, Good Omens Season 3 has been pared back. More surprisingly, the reason is somewhat explicitly linked to NG. I enjoyed the two seasons, but I never found NG to be very good about adapting his own work, or writing for television. I want to believe that David Tennant had to be dragged kicking-and-screaming into S3 after being used in the peculiar way he was during the first wave of SA accusations/responses... but I have no expectations we'll ever hear him say anything publicly. Michael Sheen has come across as more tone-deaf, so if either of the two series stars offer any publicity, I'd wager on him being the more likely candidate. I'm nowhere close to being a Good Omens stan, so this conclusion was not something I needed.

I'm much more of a stan for Dirk Magg's audio adaptations of the Sandman. according to Maggs, Amazon has been sitting on the completed but unreleased volumes since before the accusations went public... so the optics of releasing them in the future are even more doubtful. I had been assuming that Amazon was going to release them whenever Netflix drops S2 of the Sandman... but I half wonder how seriously Netflix is going to treat that. AFAIK it is vaguely in post-production. I feel no strong desire to watch that second season: I liked (most of) the cast but found parts of it to be weirdly clumsy. If I never see any more TV Sandman I won't be bothered. I'm not sure I feel the same way about the audio adaptation, but I'm complicated!