What the Sandman Dreams Of
WARNING THE FOLLOWING IS GRAPHIC
I really didn’t want to write this article but it’s clear that the media has been given orders to protect Neil Gaiman.
It’s been so long since I first picked up a Sandman comic book that I honestly don’t remember which story I came in on. Preludes and Nocturnes had wrapped, which I remember because I had to buy the graphic novel. In my youth, I tended to think too highly of artists. I honestly, believed that what they wrote about was separate from the life they themselves lived or fantasized about. I made excuses for the later works of Robert Heinlein and some others.
Mind you there were writers who definitely put me off my feed. Marion Zimmer Bradley and Piers Anthony come irresistibly to mind. I remember how surprised I was when I found out that S.M. Stirling was actually a man and not a lesbian.
When I became a writer I eventually had to face the truth of the matter. You don’t write about something unless your head spends a lot of time in that place. I was embarrassingly old when I finally worked that one out.
The penny finally dropped when I was hanging out in the Baen Bar and John Ringo was talking about an absolutely hideous book that he had written that was nothing but a product of his darkest id, he had only pounded it out to get the story out of his head, and that there was no way in hell it was ever going to be published. Jim Baen disagreed and that book became Ghost. That was when I worked out that while Ringo was honest about his worst inner-self, most of the revered scribblers on the NYT bestsellers list were not.
It had been years since Gaiman had wrapped on Sandman when I ran into that paradigm shift, so I never really thought about it.
Now that I am, the overtones of sexual violence in his magnum opus are as pervasive as they are repulsive.
And those who committed those acts were never really punished for them. In the short story Murder Mysteries, the first narrator raped and murdered an ex-girlfriend and her young child. The second narrator, the archangel Raguel who is the literal Vengence of God just erases his memory of the event and lets him go on his way. In Sandman, a convention of serial killers gets a talking to by Morpheus, and the closest thing to a punishment they face is having to face some unpleasant truths about themselves.
Since everyone thought that leaving the audience’s expectations subverted and unsatisfied was some kind of genius statement, I went along with it. It took me decades to work it out but subverting expectations for stories isn’t any kind of genius at all. It’s almost always a gamma male writer trying to pretend that he’s a brilliant gift to the ages. The appeal to the fans of this work is that they are the only ones special enough to understand how great the work truly is.
Tortoise Media, a podcast I know almost nothing about was the only outfit that pursued this story so hats off to them for doing so.
“One of the women, a 23-year-old named Scarlett, worked as a nanny to his child. She claimed Gaiman assaulted her in February 2022, just hours after they had first met, while in a bath at his New Zealand home. Gaiman told the outlet that he and Scarlett “cuddled” and “made out” in the bath and that it was consensual; he added that in the three-week sexual relationship they were in, they only engaged in digital penetration.”
“Scarlett claims that while they were in a consensual relationship, Gaiman also sexually assaulted her with nonconsensual “rough and degrading penetrative sexual acts” per the outlet’s description in its investigation. In one incident, the pain “was so painful and so violent” that she lost consciousness. “The pain was celestial,” she said. When she asked him to stop, “he laughed and said I needed to be punished and used his belt on me,” she said on the podcast, via The Telegraph. Gaiman denied the allegation to Tortoise.”
“The second woman, who went by K, was 18 when she first met him in 2003 at a book-signing event in Florida. She claims they began a romantic relationship when she was 20 and he was in his mid-forties. While they were in a relationship, she alleges she was subjected to rough and painful sex “she neither wanted or enjoyed.” At one point, she alleged that he penetrated her despite her objecting because she was in the midst of a urinary tract infection; the incident left her “screaming” in pain.”
I don’t automatically believe all women and some parts of their stories are clearly a reinterpretation of events that wrap them in the warm blanket of victimhood.
World-famous author Neil Gaiman and Morpheus the goth girl’s dream king are inextricably tied to each other. This is the pinnacle of Tumblrina Mountain. In brutal truth, had Gaiman been strong and demanding they would likely still be dreaming about him, like the women who have a one-nighter with Drake and tell their friends they were “dating.” They thought they were having an affair with the Sandman himself but instead of a Double Alpha, they woke up in bed with a Gamma Male. He was undoubtedly weak, gross, and apologetic. Although, I am certain he got affirmative consent before doing anything with them.
Which is why I hate affirmative consent so much. Once you get someone saying ‘yes’ to some things it’s very easy to get them to say ‘yes’ to things they didn’t want to do.
The girl agrees to everything and feels completely violated afterward.
You’ve probably heard the adage; “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s not really true. Power does not corrupt. Power reveals. When you gain power, you will do the kind of things you always wanted to.
UPDATE:
I was way too light on him.
His history of sexual abuse is much more extensive than I thought.
This summation is from one of Gaiman’s fans that Vox found:
I LOVED Neil Gaiman, I’ve read his books since I was a teenager in high school, I became an illustrator because of Chris Riddell’s work in his books, I was a huge fan of Amanda. He’s the last person I want to believe this about. I wish it wasn’t true.
But according to his recounting of events, in the early 2000s he met an 18 year old girl and was overly friendly to her. Then 2 years later he started dating her while married & kept her existance secret, made her so upset she followed him onto an aeroplane and he had her forcibly removed. Then in response he tried to make it seem like she was thirsting after him years later when she was thirsting after David Tennant. (Aren’t we all.)
Then, in 2022, he met his son’s 21 year old Nanny who came to stay with them during a pandemic. The first time he ever met her, he got fully naked and asked to have a bath with her, then “kissed and cuddled.”
Then continued to have an ongoing BDSM & sexual relationship with someone 1/3 of his age while he was her employer.
She spoke to her friends at the time and called it abuse, her friend confronted Neil’s wife Amanda Palmer, and then she responded by saying it’s a “very bad situation” (not defending him) and breaking up with him.
Then when Scarlett spoke out about what happened he said he was suicidal and manipulated her into comforting him, and in doing so got her to say it was “eventually” consensual. IN RESPONSE TO HIM SAYING HE WAS SUICIDAL.
And then he said she has a false memory disorder when she doesn’t.
Yeah that makes him a sexual abuser, emotional abuser & liar. When you add on their accounts it makes him a sadist & rapist too.
But it looks like because Scarlett went into a fawn response & spoke to Neil’s therapist (also weird, manipulative, unethical behaviour,) this is going to pass him by and he’ll be back to his usual tricks soon enough.
Neil Gaiman is a monster. A product of his own unbridled darkest id. He is not someone who struggles with a desire to do evil, he revels in it. An utterly corrupt prince of the world, who uses his position to get women into debased, abusive relationships. A predator is drawn to wounded prey, and women who are fans of Sandman are going to be wounded. This is someone who draws people away from the light, into a deepest night of pain and degradation. I will not be surprised at all if stories of suicides begin emerging soon.
A writer who turns Satan the enemy of God into the romanticized, Byronic hero Lucifer is simply, purely evil.
