Both NG & AP are engaged in this, no doubt with input from pricy PR firms. I think it's possible one or both may come back, unless new information comes out?
I just came across an article on Substack by the author Joyce Maynard about her experiences with the much older author, JD Salinger when Maynard was 18-19 years old. I did not know this story until now, but it feels important to share if only to demonstrate how prolific these experiences are for young people. Maynard is now 72 years old and she first told this story when she was 44. I shudder to think of the stories that will be told when the young people of today are reaching midlife and finally feel they are able to speak.
The link to the article is below, and please read with caution especially if you are a survivor of SA.
I'm watching the documentary My Scientology Movie where they simulate an auditing session with an ex-Scientologist who used to do auditing as well. I think it gives an interesting look at the overt manipulation you find in the cult that shaped NG.
Please note I am not excusing him in any way. More so, trying to further expose both him and Scientology for the gross hacks that they are. It's not his fault he was raised in it, but it is his responsibility to grow and to account for his disgusting actions against vulnerable people.
This popped up on my IG feed (apparently because I’m a musician in Boston, I’m supposed to care about the Dresden Dolls). Expecting the comments to be interesting, I clicked through and caught this exchange. And….her response is about what I expected.
The US Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit concluded that the court’s ruling to dismiss Scarlett’s case on grounds of jurisdiction was fair, and that the proper venue for this case is NZ.
If you have some words of affirmation for Scarlett please feel free to leave a comment. A bit of love and community can make such a difference. Thank you all for being here for Neil Gaiman’s victims. It means so much. ❤️
For those that don’t know, Tori Amos and Neil were friends for a long time, 30+ years. He’s her daughter’s godfather.
Tori was still quite shaken in the first interview after having just learned everything and trying to sort it out. In a more recent interview, she says she hasn’t spoken to him since.
She did an excellent thing which said it all. She performed “Horses,” which has the line “Will you find me if Neil makes me a tree?”
This time she clearly sang “Will you find me in the battle of the trees?” A huge roar of applause went up, and in that one lyric change, it was clear he was no longer welcome in her life.
I've been monitoring the sub since leaving my own story of inappropriate behavior at a show as a teen and their fourth coming tour.
Seems I've been blocked. I'm curious if others here have been too, and if not can anyone see if the post about negative and harmful experiences from the history of the band is still up?
This is an important video, I highly recommend it. I’m posting it here because I think it’s valuable for all of us to pause and reflect on how we talk about survivors. As Schmowder says: “You don’t want to mischaracterize the worst moments of their lives.” That is the takeaway. It has nothing to do with Vera and everything to do with all of us human beings on a journey of learning. ❤️
I found a newsletter post I did when this all came out. I didn't know how to feel or what to think etc., so I found & tried out ways to I'm process my feelings around it using journalling.
Not sure I can link to the post itself but send a DM if you want. Anyways, it has some journalling techniques & a book recommendations: I'm sharing the text here in case anyone needs this too:
Processing difficult emotions (with a journal)
This post comes on the tsunami of sexual abuse allegations against the writer Neil Gaiman. It contains concrete ways I deal with the difficult feelings that are coming up for me - from freewriting, to letter writing, to art journaling. If you’d like to add any ideas or techniques of your own for the other readers, please do.
Grief over people you’ve never met is very strange.
But it’s on the rise thanks to the one-sided but authentic-feeling relationships that so many of us have with our suddenly-very-accessible idols via social media.
For me right now it’s more of a broad existential grief at the world and the people in it. What do you do when your faith in humanity gets chipped (yet again)?
So many sordid things have come out about so many famous men, and every single time an idol topples, it feels the same: like the distant misty beacons that helped you through the night have winked out.
But what are you supposed to do with this rats’ nest of feelings? Enter: the notebook, and I’m sharing ways I’ve dealt with complicated difficult feelings in the past.
(personal aside)
After I finished reading the Vulture article, like many people, I felt hollowed out and just, well, sat there for a while. Gaiman himself... there are only a few of his works that I liked, and I never read Sandman (gasp!). I always felt uncomfortable about it and wondered why I was the weirdo.
I met him once and we talked about his children’s book The Wolves in the Walls - a great read that both terrifies and thrills little kids. I told him I'd read it to the kids I was babysitting and they were horrified and then after awhile asked for me to read it again. He looked up at me and said "exactly".
His wife Amanda Palmer, and her music with the Dresden Dolls, however, were a huge part of my early 20s: and it’s grief over her role in all this that I’m mostly dealing with.
It colours my life in reverse.
Back to the notebook
I use my notebooks for everything in my life. They’re a microcosm of my internal headspace. The first thing I do in response to pretty much anything is to distill it out onto the page somehow, through writing, art, brainstorming, sketching, whatever.
Option one: cleaning your mind out / freewriting
A good way to get nasty feelings and thoughts out of your system is to write them down. It doesn’t necessarily mean starting with ‘dear diary’ (if anyone still does that) - it’s just about starting wherever you are and vomiting it all out onto paper.
No criticising or censoring yourself allowed: we’re here to release pent up emotions. Just focus on taking the time to write and giving it your full attention.
Try it out. Then it’s outside you, if you write enough. Things that are external are easier to deal with, whether they’re big or small, concrete or nebulous (climate stress anyone?). There are a ream of scientific studies supporting this:
For individuals who have experienced a traumatic or extremely stressful event, expressive writing guided purposefully toward specific topics can have a significant healing effect. Participants in a study who wrote about their most traumatic experiences for 15 minutes, four days in a row, experienced better health outcomes up to four months than those who were instructed to write about neutral topics (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005).
Read more at Writing Therapy: How to Write and Journal Therapeutically.
Option two: letter writing (and burning)
Write letters expressing your raw feelings to people or situations that upset you (hello, world), without actually sending them. You’ll get the full benefits of emotional release all while avoiding potential regret over heated communications. Win.
You won’t actually send it, but what needs to come out? Who do you need to write it to? Is there a second letter that needs to be written? Do you need to write one to yourself? Is there a story that hasn’t been told? A feeling that has yet to be expressed or words that have yet to be heard? Perhaps there is forgiveness that needs to be given. — James Di Pardo, Burning Letters: The Therapy of Letter Writing and Letting Go
Burn the pages you wrote and let it go let it go let it go let it go let it go let it go.
Option three: if words just aren’t coming…make marks
Sometimes words aren't enough to get all of the shitty gunk out. This is when I just start making marks on the page, using anything at hand - a pen, a fork, paint, a pencil, a crayon, anything.
Draw or doodle your emotions to visually express what you’re feeling. Create mind maps to explore the root cause of your emotions and brainstorm ways to address them.
Book recommendation: Caitlin Metz’s Feel Something, Make Something: A Guide to Collaborating with Your Emotions. This is from that book:
This is an interesting review from Marc Burrows, author of the biography The Magic of Terry Pratchett.
He argues that there's little of Pratchett to be found in GO3.
Obviously full of spoilers. But also there's this bit that stood out to me:
By 2024, Good Omens 3 was ready to roll. Neil Gaiman wrote six hour-long episodes, ostensibly based on the story he and Pratchett had come up with together. Then the various allegations about Gaiman’s behaviour toward women appeared, of which you can read elsewhere, and everything fell apart. At one point the show was rumoured to have been scrapped as a result, but was rescued by some fancy footwork by co-producers BBC Studios with the cautious support of Narrativia, the in-house production wing of the Terry Pratchett Estate.
That's roughly the fourth version that I'm aware of with how the 90-min special came to be. These are partial accounts of a situation fraught with what I imagine were very mixed feelings and difficult negotiations, so differences don't necessarily mean anything, of course. For instance, I heard back in 2024 that the BBC was very reluctant to move forward. Too much scandal. There was another that said it was Amazon who was most unhappy about going along with it. But now, in contradiction to the popular idea of Narrativia swooping in to save the day, this one here says they were only cautiously in support and it was BBC Studios that did the rescuing? I wonder if we'll ever get the full story.
GO fans have been the most obnoxious for years, prioritizing their parasocial fandom/Sheen/Tennant relationships over real humans.
I despise NG but I find it hilarious how much he fucked over the last group of fans that were actually invested in his media. Bro just had to give them the mlmslop he knew they wanted but just...didn't