rotting pears

I debated posting publicly about this, but in the end, I felt it would be good to do so. Thoughts about having someone you used to admire turning out to be horrible.

So the author Neil Gaiman is a serial sexual assaulter. Apparently, these actions are coherent with a pattern of behaviour spanning decades - it's only now that everything has finally exited the whisper network into the public domain. The news came as a shock; for awhile a lot of people were cautious about (though not completely rejecting, due to the aforementioned whisper network) the first allegations, partly because they were posted via transphobic minor outlets. Then more substantial evidence of later allegations emerged, and now people are left to contend the fall of this person who for the entirety of his career, maintained such a well-crafted, solid, intergenerational facade of geniality and progressiveness.

This is the first time I ever had to deal with a living major artistic influence / favourite artist turning out to be a Not Good Person. I have seen it experienced by other people, most notably the Harry Potter fandom, but personally I was very fortunate. Because I am extremely detached to fandom participation AND very rarely follow an artist's career so closely that I would consider them a major influence or a favourite, I was able to evade having to deal with the emotional conundrum experienced by my peers, friends and colleague, who owe a major part of their lives, communities, personalities or creative output to artists who turned out to be awful people.

I haven't actively followed Neil's output for a decade now. I lost interest in his most recent bibliography, having grown out of his work and moved on to other literary interests. But I had a great amount of respect and gratitude for how he influenced my writing when I was 13 and learning the ropes. For 7 years, until I was 20, he was my favourite author. My first book of his, The Graveyard Book unlocked something in my teenage head and gave me the validation to pursue making fiction in the topics and genres I was interested in: The World in Deeper Inspection owes its existence to The Graveyard Book. The same can be said of a lot of my writing style and spooky whimsical creative voice, which came from having studied his short story collections, one-off comics, Coraline and Mirrormask, as well as his essays, blog posts and interviews. Basically, he was and is an undeniable foundation of my artistic identity even though I no longer vibe with his current work. Still, I held that gratitude, so I passively followed his Twitter and Tumblr to keep up with whatever he was doing - as if he was an old cherished relative from a town I moved out long ago. Sometimes I reread some of my favourite books of his just to remember my roots.

When the news dropped, I felt two things:

• Pretty much what I described above: surprise, caution and "urgh, really, him too?" disappointment all at once. His media image was really well-crafted.
• ...his influence is a part of my art forever, huh?

Having seen other people do it, I don't think it's constructive to twist into dramatic pretzels to exonerate myself from his foundational impact on my work. Neither is attempting to investigate foreshadowings of his gross behaviour in past books or beating myself for not catching on. Or worse, the Very Online attitude of moralising one's interest or disinterest in him as a personality.

The situation just simply is. Someone who used to be my favourite artist turned out to be like this. There's no way to expunge his presence from my life a decade ago. All that's left to do is to acknowledge the situation, accept the awkward messiness of it all, and then move on and rise up, and learn our lessons so we can look out for the most vulnerable and youngest of our cohort to protect them.

January 14, 2025,
An entire investigative expose came out today and 100% it has convinced me to do a total and final purge of the remaining books of his I still have.

I will keep only ONE (my early edition copy of The Graveyard Book) because it's such a historical document to the development of my early art, but otherwise. Bye.