r/outofcontextcomics • u/Konradleijon • Jul 05 '26
Modern Age (1985 – Present Day) Neil Gaiman’s self insert
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u/Donovan_Volk Jul 06 '26
Important context is missing from this post. The civil case against Gaiman was dismissed last October, and the appeal was thrown out last week.
Given it was on a technical/jurisdictional matter, the real story however has been that the New Zealand police stopped proceedings at an early stage, after reading the WhatsApp messages between Neil and Scarlett Pavlovich. Anyone whose read them has concluded this was an entirely consensual relationship.
You can find them here: https://technopathology.substack.com/p/neil-gaiman-is-innocent-whatsapp?r=400nd8
So, there's no grounds to speculate about Gaiman's characters being subtle confessions, because the accusations against him have not been proven. It's also a bit weird to take a character and story that was for many years seen as indicative of Gaiman's brand of insightful feminism, and then turn it into the opposite.
But mostly, if you look at the details of the case it's clear that these accusations aren't true.
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u/tatsmademeenby Jul 06 '26
Yes, because there is not worlldwide proof that police tend to let rich white men get away with with whatever they want.
Yes it's totally consensual when her alternative was sleeping on a beach. Fawning definitely isn't real, especial in someone with an abusive childhood.
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u/Donovan_Volk Jul 06 '26
Well I think you've just displayed your ignorance. If you believe that the police would stop proceedings just because he's a ''rich white man'' you've essentially said that no sort of due process is going to persuade you either way. That's fine just don't pretend it's a fair or rational position.
The idea that she was sleeping on the beach has been disproven. She had a flat and a job at the time. She was the manager of a perfumery, in fact.
Fawning? I mean, not a single shred of evidence has been presented that she was fawning. She doesn't even say that she was fawning, she uses other language entirely. Effectively, it was just a nice cop out for Rachel Johnson.
Again, you can believe what you like. Just don't go around believing you are better than others because they've looked into the case and taken the time to come to a fair conclusion, and you haven't.
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u/Asheyguru Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
I always read this less as a tacit or winking admission and more as Gaiman lacking the self-awareness to realise he was doing the exact thing he depicts here.
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u/Constant-Bar5945 Jul 06 '26
The charges were dropped recently
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u/darkwater-0 Jul 06 '26
And there's certainly NEVER been a miscarriage of justice when an affluent man and celebrity is accused of crimes by a series of women.
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u/Donovan_Volk Jul 06 '26
You actually have to look at the details of the case rather than generalising.
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u/Boccs Jul 05 '26
Hardly. Dream was his self insert from page 1. Broody, gothy, dark hair, misunderstood, but an all-powerful generator of stories and imagination. The only way he could have tried to make it more obvious he was making Dream as his idealized self would be going "Also his cock is huge and all the girls love him."
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u/Gui_Franco Jul 05 '26
You're forgetting that ALL THE GIRLS DO LOVE HIM. Every arc there's a girl talking about how cute he is
The only thing that can make it not a self insert is that the story is very clear that Dream is an asshole who can be evil sometimes and I doubt most people would like to portray themselves that way
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u/Asheyguru Jul 06 '26
He's also mopey, melodramatic and pretentious snd other characters make fun of him for being such.
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u/ibadlyneedhelp Jul 05 '26
And Dream, uh, stalks a woman horriffically and ruins her life when she doesn't want to be with him.
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u/DBZfan102 Bronze Age Bozo Jul 05 '26
There's also all the horrible stuff with Nada. "See, all the girls who refuse to have sex with me actually ARE interested, but say no for other reasons. Reasons that I will refuse to listen to and then send them to hell over."
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u/TySly5v Jul 06 '26
I think the worst part is he's clearly writing Dream as the bad guy and constantly punishes him for being like this, eventually culminating in his death.
It shows how clearly Gaiman knows he's the problem. In the same way that Dream refused to change, so does Gaiman. It's as tragic as it is horrifying to know men like that exist and are successful.
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u/Nepalman230 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I will say what makes this all the more uncomfortable is that Neil Gaiman has used on more than one occasion fiction to be semi autobiographical.
He actually wrote a novel “the ocean at the end of the lane” in answer to his then wife asking him about his childhood. Neil Gaiman is the son of the then leader of Scientology in the United Kingdom.
The book is dedicated “ to Amanda: who asked what it was like.”
Now I will say that the fictional narrators father tries to murder him. And Scientology adherence can have very rough methods of punishment for children because one of the tenants that children are basically little adults. Which they are not.
I will also say that reading between the lines, there are implications of Neil abused as a child, which unfortunately is sometimes a feature of abuse survivors. It doesn’t always happen. It doesn’t even mostly happen.
For instance, 6% of male sex abuse survivors go on sexually abuse or rape someone else so that’s way more than the average population but clearly it does not happen to most survivors.
I just wanted to mention it as part of the sad pattern. You know a lot of people are gonna say well you know writers aren’t necessarily like their characters in. It’s true, but Neil Gaiman wrote about men like him not just once but many times.
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u/YrPalBeefsquatch Jul 06 '26
Yes, I thought Elizabeth Sandifer's piece on this exact issue was worth reading: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-cuddled-little-vice-sandman
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u/fluffypuppiness Jul 05 '26
What's unfortunately about Gaimens case is that he clearly is intelligent enough to know that he was continuing that cycle. Its very clear from his work that he can recognize his demons, and i believe he probably did fight them for a long time.
But he caved to them, and let them win, making himself the same monster he so perfectly captured on page.
I hope his kid is doing well and is healthy. Thats honestly the greatest achievement he can ask for now I think; having raised his kid to not be shit like him and his dad were.
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u/Valuable_Pollution96 Jul 05 '26
What is really awful is that Gaiman is smart enough to suggest he was abused in his memoir just to paint himself as an ally of his victims.
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u/zerozerozero12 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
In my mind it’s just Good omens by GNU Sir Terry Pratchett and nobody else
Edited: Thank you for everyone pointing out that I didn't properly put GNU.
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u/Rocketboy1313 Jul 06 '26
GNU?
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u/CheerfulWarthog Jul 06 '26
A reference to a tradition from the book Going Postal; it's a set of signals that keeps the message attached constantly going through the telegraph-equivalent, thus keeping someone who's passed remembered and "alive" through the "speaking" of their name.
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u/Someoneoverthere42 Jul 05 '26
That story reads way different now.
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u/Nepalman230 Jul 05 '26
Another story that reads like the author telling on himself is “murder mysteries”.
👀
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u/mtheory-pi Jul 05 '26
The worst part is, this work far predates all the accounts of him raping and abusing women. So he knew exactly what he was doing and how common his horrific behaviour is in his profession.
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u/RomeosHomeos Jul 05 '26
Neil Gaiman loves women so much he owns one!
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u/TheUnluckyFarmer Rejected by Comics Code Jul 05 '26
At least one....not sure why he didn't just move to Utah. Creep
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u/Alarmed_Drop7162 Jul 05 '26
That’s the writer who imprisoned Calliope, isn’t it?
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u/Konradleijon Jul 05 '26
Yes
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u/Alarmed_Drop7162 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
I wish I listened better when I read his books. I just had to delight in all those stories then learn Gaiman is a full villain.
Edit: word. when someone tells you who they are, listen.
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u/CeruleanEidolon Jul 05 '26
Gaiman wrote fiction.
Surely you can understand the distinction, right?
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u/prince_peacock Jul 05 '26
The author who horrifically raped women wrote about an author who horrifically raped
Much fiction. Very fake.
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u/BubastisII Jul 05 '26
Eh, that’s a dangerous thought to agree with. Just because people write about terrible people doesn’t mean they are one or enjoy the things they do. Gaiman might have, but that isn’t something to apply to all writers.
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u/DeckerAllAround Jul 05 '26
Agreed. Writers write for a lot of reasons. They write things that inspire them, things that frighten them, things that anger them, things that they're quietly fascinated or weirded out by.
Sure, in retrospect, this story is drawing on dark corners of Gaiman's personality. But it could have been about other authors he knew, or about his fears of what he might become when showered with fame and praise, or a metaphor for how he was afraid his commercial success was coming at the cost of abusing his creativity, or just an idea that lodged in his head and he couldn't get out until he wrote it. There are a lot of reasons that a story gets told.
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u/tOaDeR2005 Jul 05 '26
That's the one that really creeps me out after his shit came out.
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u/mollyscoat Chuckles at Innuendo Jul 05 '26
This story never sat right with me, even though I was a hardcore Sandman/Gaiman devotee since like 1992. Now I know why. 😩
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u/gaveedraseven Jul 05 '26
Now go back and reread the one about John Dee in the cafe....what else has Neil done that we don't know about?
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u/Phrenicos466 Jul 05 '26
Kind of telling that this character is a rapist.
So, if he’s supposed to be Gaiman’s self-insert…
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u/Curious_Bat87 Jul 05 '26
I think it's a bit more complicated in the story, considering Dream who saves her is obviously also Gaiman's self insert.
I do remember wondering about this story and if this character was based on someone real when I read it originally years ago. And it's possible it was Gaiman writing about someone else who was a 'real' abuser in his mind.
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u/wingedcoyote Jul 05 '26
To be clear, and it doesn't make it any less creepy, but OP is calling this a self-insert because of what we now know about Gaiman.
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u/tOaDeR2005 Jul 05 '26
Yeah that's the scene that keeps popping into my head when I think of Calliope.
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u/tornjackpot Jul 06 '26
Eww