Before you groan and say, "oh great, he's going to try and defend what he did in some kind of perverse way where the rest of us just don't get it and are rushing to judge someone," that's not what this is. But, what it isn't is a damning piece written about him and taking him down for what he did. It's none of these things because, frankly, I'm not any kind of writer with journalistic integrity nor do I have anything to add to the topic that hasn't already been said. I'm just here to say to Neil, what the fuck man?
If you are unfamiliar with Neil Gaiman or the swirl of controversy surrounding him you can get caught up by reading the Variety article, which has a pretty succinct recap of the situation. I won't waste your time writing about who he is, was, did, didn't do, what made him famous or any of that. The only thing I'm going to say, in a variety of ways, is what the fuck?
I'm going to do a lot of speculation here but I'm pretty fucking confident in that speculation based on the small bit of what I've read (yes I did just admit to being uniformed AND that I'm going to be spouting my opinion on it while being uniformed. Isn't that what we do nowadays?).
Neil, what are you doing? Someone who seems like an intelligent man really took advantage of his whole situation of fame and being one of the good ones. Call me Master? Jesus. You sound like one of those generic Dom's in the kink/fetish world who think all women should bow to them. You don't just go up to normie's in the real world and run that shit out for show and tell. There is a time and a place.
I am guessing Mr Gaiman's act worked before. If he were able to get on the stand and plead his case without any lawyer prep work to guide the narrative I am sure we will hear that he's tried these same moves on women before and it worked. I would wager that he's tried these moves on multiple women before and it worked. He just go a little too bold with his god complex. Master Dom'd too close to the sun.
You can't be serious if you don't believe that this Master act worked before on a variety of women. Fifty Shades of Grey being one of the most popular book series of all time is proof of it. There is a certain set of women who fucking love this shit. There is an entire culture surrounding it. So to say that this man, who is adored by his fans by creating mostly dark and mysterious pop culture content wouldn't be into him playing Master to them is completely disingenuous. You can be disgusted by his actions again the women who didn't want to play his game, but to say he's a freak for playing it with those who did want it is not cool.
But, man, to jump in the bathtub unannounced with a lesbian while completely naked is certainly a vibe. To then carry on a casual conversation with her as she looks terrified while asking her to call you Master as well? He was either really high on something, got some bad advice from his ex wife, or just fucking went off the deep end on the reaches of his powers of persuasion.
I say "got some bad advice from his ex wife" because he mentioned something about asking if she'd enjoyed her yet, and how back in the day they could have had some fun together. I'm not insinuating that his ex wife did any of that, but I can understand how he would have thought that was a move that would work. It's like pulling the naked man. That's a hail mary that you be really fucking sure is going to get caught.
So this awkward looking puppy dog writes a bunch of shit and becomes famous. I don't know his personality or anything so I can't say if his entire life he's hit it off with women because he's charming or if he was a recluse because he kind of looks like an ugly Bob Dylan. I'm going to lean towards the latter.
So, ugly Bob Dylan gets famous and has scads of money and is super successful with his writing. Chicks love books, right? Okay, some of his stuff is comic books and maybe they aren't AS popular, but I'm sure the dark themes still resonated and that gothic stuff goes over really well with those with boobies. So now he's rich, popular and women (who are able to look past physical aspects to find the inner horniness much easier than men) adore him.
It's really not that hard to see him hitting it off with random women, standing naked and having them on their knees looking up at him with their pale skin and BTGGF vibes while calling him Master and asking him to do all kinds of kinked up thing to them. Ball gags. Nipple clamps. Spankings. Threesomes. The whole gamut. Which is the thing, they would be asking him to do it. He probably had a many number of women asking for these types of things. I'm sure he had them in person as well as online or through other correspondence. It probably got so common that it was almost on the side of normal that he would just smile and disregard (or partake) on most occasions.
And I've seen a couple of comments about, and here is where I'm going to get myself in trouble, them being in their early twenties. I'm sorry to inform you, women in their early twenties are fucking hot.
Women in their late twenties are fucking hot.
Women 29, 33, 35, 39, 42, 45 are fucking hot.
Basically, women are fucking hot. If an extremely attractive women wants to fuck me and she's only 21? I'm going to need superpower levels of willpower to not give in. The problem is that you need to make sure she ACTUALLY wants to fuck you, Neil. And you need to make sure she's actually fucking 21, Cormac (although he probably knew she wasn't).
But, I, an admitted man, don't fault him for being attracted to women in their early twenties. If you think its perverted or gross or whatever, that's fine for you. I don't and those women didn't, the ones that wanted to anyways.
So there is a lot of "this is probably why" he did it and not a lot of "he's a monster!" Well, that's because that's exactly what this is being written as. I'm not convinced he's a monster. I think he fucked up really bad and probably read the room really fucking wrong. And if thats not the case and he let his god complex take him too far then that's fucked up, but still he's no monster. I save that term for Epstein and the guys who keep their wives in the basement for twenty years. A guy who wants to kinky-fuck a bunch of women and made a really poor call isn't a monster. He's a fucking dumbass. He needs to rethink how he views women in society and not just assume every girl he comes across wants to play Master/slave. Maybe we need to treat the male libido like having a driver's license and after you get to a certain age you get restrictions on it.
That's my point of view that nobody asked for and nobody wants. It's my "another man defending men" without actually defending him opinion. Like I said, he was a fucking dumbass and deserves the consequences of his actions. In today's climate doing something like that is going to blow the fuck up in your face so, use your brain or you're gonna have a lot of fallout. The thing is, he's rich enough that he's not going to jail. He's not going to be hurting for money from all of his sales. I'm sure a number of women will still support him and a huge number of men will because men are just fucking awful would do it just to piss women off. In the end, I hope he reflects and doesn't treat women as his personal playthings unless they want to be. And, most of all, I hope he realizes how fucking stupid asking someone to call him Master is. Ugh, just fucking don't do that. Anyone. Ever.
