I read “Misery.” Saw the movie, too. I recall Stephen King talking in an interview about his inspiration for the novel, i.e. meeting his fans, and how quickly they can turn from “I love every word you’ve ever written, including the grocery lists” to “I will kill you, you motherfucker.” Usually this happens because you’ve turned down a fan’s perfectly reasonable request, perhaps that you come to their home, lay hands on their dying grandparent, and then stand as godparent to their child.
I have listened to “Stan,” the Eminem song that gave the world “stan,” lower-case, as a word for a certain kind of superfan. I’m aware of the Swifties, the Beyhive, and probably a dozen other self-named fan groups. There was an Amazon series a year or two back about a woman who was devoted to a fictional pop star similar to Beyonce, and I watched it, or enough of it. And Kate’s partner works at a local business founded by a local celebrity, and he talks about the superfans who come in, and solemnly hand the staff pictures they’ve drawn and other stuff, begging that they pass it along to that celebrity.
So I know that today’s fandom is nothing like yesterday’s, at least in my opinion. (Yes, I know about the suicides after Rudolph Valentino’s death, ditto Elvis, but the internet changed everything, and you’ll never convince me otherwise.)
This week I read the New York magazine piece on Neil Gaiman, the fantasy novelist. It starts out being a fairly familiar piece about Gaiman being, as we say now, “problematic,” but if you stick with it, it gets darker and darker, and while I have a long-standing policy of judging art, not artists, I finished it tempted to burn every Gaiman book in my possession. (One, as it turns out, with another on the Kindle app.) He stands revealed as not just a sexual abuser, but a sexual assailant, a particularly nasty variety of same, as well as a parent who should probably never see his child again. His ex-wife, Amanda Palmer, doesn’t come off much better.
There will no doubt be plenty of commentary on Gaiman, and the claims made by the women in the story, but I want to talk about fandom, as described in two short passages from a very long article:
Women would turn up to his signings dressed in the elaborate Victorian-goth attire of his characters and beg him to sign their breasts or slip him key cards to their hotel rooms. One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011. His assistant wasn’t around, and he was late to a reading. “I can’t get to it if I walk by myself,” he told her. As they made their way through the convention side by side, “the whole floor full of people tilted and slid toward him,” she says. “They wanted to be entwined with him in ways I was not prepared to defend him against.” A woman fell to her knees and wept.
People who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,” one of Gaiman’s former friends, a fantasy writer, tells me. They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says. They want to share their souls with the creators of these works. “And if you have morality around it, you say ‘no.’”
It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Gaiman did not have morality around it, at least with some of them. But mercy! That quote about self-identity — that hits the nail on the head. I have my own fan enthusiasms, to be sure, but they begin and end with wearing a band’s T-shirt to their next show. I’ve met enough people I admire to know that “never meet your heroes” advice is sound. And yet, today’s fandoms seem to always take it too far.
It’s the larping and the cosplay — speaking of two words I had to look up, and not that long ago — and the WhateverCons and the fanfic (another one) and the cultivation of websites and Reddit groups, so you can find other people who share your enthusiasm and will talk-talk-talk about it with you forever. Until it seems perfectly reasonable to fall to your knees, weeping, when the object of your obsession passes close by. And those people become sitting ducks for the sort of abuse Gaiman dished out. (It should be noted that the worst of the abuse detailed in the article was inflicted upon babysitters, but there were ugly incidents with fans, too.)
Fans are important, of course, but if you ever wonder why your favorite actors, musicians, writers, et al have to live behind walls and fences, and rarely go out in public, and have to hold themselves aloof from the rest of humanity, well, this is one reason.
Various people have postulated over the years that the loss of religion on a wide scale led to…all sorts of stuff. Our obsession with our bodies, with food and diets, our naive belief that we are somehow perfectible. It suggests that worship — of God, of heroes — is something we need. Jesus is a pretty good role model, all around. Beats a novelist.
How’s your week going?
Little Bird said on January 14, 2025 at 11:40 am
I’m very disappointed and disgusted by Gaiman. I have SEVERAL of his books. I love those books. So this is very distressing for me. I got to meet him when his wife Amanda was emceeing an animation festival here in Santa Fe. I’ve got a picture taken with him. I’ve got a picture of her holding her baby on her head while watching the different animated shorts.
I don’t think I’ll destroy what Gaiman things I already have, but I won’t be purchasing any more. And I won’t be recommending his works to anyone.
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Heather said on January 14, 2025 at 11:56 am
I commented about Gaiman on the other thread, but yeah, his ex-wife (Amanda, not Miranda, just FYI, Nancy) is a piece of work. She’s well-known for exploiting fans by getting them to work for her for free, as happened with the babysitter in this story, while pulling in thousands and thousands of dollars every month on Patreon.
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nancy said on January 14, 2025 at 12:23 pm
Thanks for the fix. I looked at that and thought, that isn’t right, is it? Should have listened to my gut.
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Jeff Borden said on January 14, 2025 at 12:00 pm
People who immerse themselves in fantasy are often sad and lonely. There’s an episode of one of my favorite shows, ‘What We Do in the Shadows,” where the vampires need a virgin to feed on. They demand their “faniliar” go out and find one, so he visits a gathering of “Dungeons & Dragons.” There is no shortage of sad, lonely virgins living vicariously through role playing.
As a one time TV critic, I met scores of famous people. The job demanded not being a fan, but honestly, I never would have anyways. They’re generally not very interesting. Two exceptions: Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. They told wonderful stories, had a sense of history and spoke in quotes. Now, that was cool.
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Dexter Friend said on January 14, 2025 at 12:13 pm
Kerouac died in Florida in 1969 before I had read “On the Road”. Now I have read everything he ever wrote and would not be timid to speak to him if he was alive and I saw him somewhere. Bukowski , I would leave alone. He would be intimidating.
Most of the celebrities I have encountered are sports folks, naturally, as I am a sports fan.
John Madden on an Amtrak, Tony Kubek exiting a cab in Chicago, John Wooden at a urinal in Atlanta at the finals. Gil Hodges signed a baseball for me when I was 14 and he was managing the old Senators. I had a brief conversation with Don Sutton in Wrigley Field 59 years ago. I got a real kick out of serving 2 Frescas to Senator Birch Bayh when I was in The Young Democrats while in high school.
I didn’t speak with Agnew, but yelled at him in Fort Wayne in 1972 over the bombings, which made page 1 , NYTimes, which I only found about last year in the archives.
Many of my compatriots told me I should have been a sportswriter or broadcaster of sports.
When you are on your own and are living one day at a time, you do what it takes to get to the next day. The fact that I got through military conscription and 30 years on a factory floor is a feather in my cap. Or is it?
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Suzanne said on January 14, 2025 at 12:40 pm
Regarding Gaiman, I repeat what I commented on the last post:
I read one Neil Gaiman book, American Gods, and thought it perfectly awful. There was so much disgusting behavior and gratuitous violence and sex that I couldn’t grasp why it’s so well regarded. It’s tone leaves me able to realistically believe that he’s been up to some creepy behavior.
I don’t really understand the whole cosplay thing. I attended a “Renaissance Faire” somewhere in Ohio a few years ago with a club that I was a part of at the time. It was strange to say the least. I thought it would be more like a re-enactment kind of thing (think Williamsburg, VA) but it was not. Grown people wearing elf ears, dragon wings, jodhpurs, Crusader tunics, peasant dresses, masks, etc. There was a comedy show that was not funny, the food was standard fast food type stuff. I couldn’t understand what people get out of it.
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Bitter Scribe said on January 14, 2025 at 12:41 pm
I’m not into sci-fi and never heard of Gaiman, but this is calling to mind an appalling article I read in the New Yorker recently about Alice Munro, one of my favorite fiction writers (it’s a short list) and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. She didn’t abuse anyone directly, but she enabled the abuse of her youngest daughter by her second husband, pooh-poohing the clear signs and sticking with the guy for years and years after he ADMITTED the abuse.
Lest anyone think I am picking on the woman here, let me add that her first husband, the victim’s father, sure doesn’t come off any better. As depicted in the article, he’s a dolt who willingly returned his daughter to a household where she complained of being abused.
As for the actual abuser, he was a blowhard who talked and talked about Lolitas and vulnerable older men until you were ready to take him out and shoot him. (The victim was NINE YEARS OLD when the abuse started.) He was unfortunately allowed to die of natural causes, in his own bed.
How can people be so smart in their work and such idiots in their actual lives?
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Deborah said on January 14, 2025 at 2:11 pm
I read that Alice Munro piece in the New Yorker and I thought it was a sad, sad situation. I love Munro’s work and have read much of it over the years. Munro must have been a conflicted person, she herself had a complicated upbringing, mentioned briefly in the piece. Her father beat her, she had a complicit, cold, mother and was raped as a young adult (not by her father but on a date with someone). So who knows what was going on within her own mind. Looking back through her work knowing what we know now about her life you can get a sense of where some of it came from.
I came away from the piece feeling sorry for the daughter, not excusing Munro herself but feeling sorry for her too. Her second husband was a royal creep.
Regarding Gaiman, I only listened to a CD of Neverland (I think that’s the title) during a roadtrip LB and I took. It was OK, it was more entertaining than I expected. LB is (was) a fan but not an over the top one.
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Sherri said on January 14, 2025 at 2:38 pm
I’ve tried a couple of times to read American Gods, but couldn’t get into it. The only Gaiman I’ve read is Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, and which I liked.
I read elsewhere that Gaiman was raised by a pair of high-ranking Scientologists in L. Ron Hubbard’s inner circle, not that that excuses anything, but it would screw you up.
The Internet may have expanded the ability to exploit fans in this way, but groupies go back a long way. They just used to be limited mostly to rock stars and sports.
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alex said on January 14, 2025 at 4:11 pm
I remember many of us here being perplexed at the massive wailing crowds when Michael Jackson
got his just desertsOD’d. I couldn’t imagine being so bereft over his passing even if he’d been a perfect saint in life. But there’s fandom for ya.249 chars
Jeff Borden said on January 14, 2025 at 4:40 pm
Off topic:
We truly are a confederacy of dunces with the QOP in charge. The geniuses misspelled military as miltary on their visual aids today for the hearings on the utterly unqualified alcoholic adulterer and christian nationalist Pete Hegseth. He’s a fucking mess and he’ll soon be running the DOD.
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Julie Robinson said on January 14, 2025 at 5:10 pm
Fort Wayne’s Don Willis has died, much to my surprise since I thought it had already happened. Remember when he thought he could buy himself a mayor just like he bought a Philharmonic board seat? And then declared bankruptcy, having to sell his Forest Park Blvd home, complete with ridiculous lion statues?
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/fortwayne/name/donald-willis-obituary?id=57255890
The urgent care center we were at last week had a playlist with every other song by MJ. By hour three, it was getting really old.
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Icarus said on January 14, 2025 at 5:28 pm
Suzanne @5: Have you ever dressed up as your favorite superhero for Halloween? Cosplay lets you do that whenever you want.
It boosts self-esteem and confidence while also providing a safe place (theoretically) to promote creativity. It’s also cheaper than therapy.
Cosplay wasn’t a thing during my formative years but I did reuse a Halloween costume once during the Bay to Breakers “race” in San Francisco.
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nancy said on January 14, 2025 at 5:55 pm
Julie, who was Don Willis promoting to be mayor? I remember his Forest Park Boulevard renovation fiasco, although it was after my time.
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Suzanne said on January 14, 2025 at 5:56 pm
Icarus, no, I can honestly say I have never dressed up as my favorite superhero, even when I was much younger, for Halloween or anything else. I had to dress up as Ronald McDonald (face paint, wig, all of it) for some sort of recruitment skit in college and I found it rather unsettling to be talking to people who I knew had no clue what I really looked like.
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Sherri said on January 14, 2025 at 6:00 pm
Neil Gaiman has responded, breaking a several months silence since the stories first started appearing. It’s the usual worthless response: I’m not a perfect person, I was careless with other people’s feelings, everything was consensual, there was no abuse. The most ridiculous statement might be that he’s “always tried to be a private person.” This is a person who’s gone to conventions and gone on tours all over the world, and has been prolific and interactive with fans on many social media sites.
https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2025/01/breaking-silence.html
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alex said on January 14, 2025 at 6:18 pm
Nancy, that was Matt Kelty. Remember? The limp-wristed moral crusader (and screwy architect who bought the Snyderman house before it burned to the ground) who claimed that the $100K+ that he spent on his campaign was his own when it had come from Willis. He’s the reason the Republicans drafted Tom Henry to run against him as a Democrat; Kelty won the GOP primary in a fluke and was unopposed in the general election. And it wasn’t the first race with Republicans for Henry signs all over town. Nutters started winning every GOP mayoral primary after that one.
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Andrea said on January 14, 2025 at 6:25 pm
FWIW, I don’t think it is useful to try to separate art from artists, especially if those artists are still living. We do have a relationship, however tenuous, when I exchange money to access your movie, book, music, whatever. You artist are not entitled to my money, and I consumer am not entitled to your art. I don’t have to have any more valid reason to reject your art than that, and I certainly can say that I don’t want to support you or contribute to your platform with my limited funds if I think you are an abusive person who uses your power to hurt people. I can direct my limited funds to someone else’s art and hope that they are not the same. How many artists are there? No shortage of voices and perspectives we can lift up, I am sure. Passing over a Neil Gaiman gives an opportunity to shine a light on someone else.
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