I wish people would understand that it is actually a good thing when allegations of sexual misconduct are thoroughly investigated, leaving no stone unturned, and that most survivors of sexual assault who've come forward are not lucky enough to have people take their story seriously enough to look into it in good faith, verify it, and post a long, exhaustively researched researched article informing everyone that they're telling the truth.

The smug "we already knew this months ago, INTERESTING how people are so hesitant to believe it about NEIL GAIMAN but not about [name another abuser]" posts kinda ignore that

Yeah, if "one of the three reporters" on anything is a TERF, that tanks the credibility of the whole thing, the same as if one of the three reporters on a story was a klansman or a nazi, even if they're not a lead. The people who said the original source was Not Credible were not simply burying their heads in the sand because they didn't want to believe it. Pretty much all of those people, as soon as there was a Real Source, immediately took up the cause on this one.

If you're telling the truth, then having members of a hate group on your team is a really bad idea, because it means you lose credibility with the public, and has the net result of burying the True Things you're saying instead of shining a light on them.

The whole point I'm making here is that there is a reason no Legitimate Sources were reporting on The Podcast for months and months and months, and that's because the podcast is not (and in fact all podcasts are not) a credible source. It's the same situation as documentaries-- they're presented as Informational but they are held to no standard of accuracy or truthfulness whatsoever. The reason they were able to report on the allegations several months earlier than all the Real Publications is because they did not have to trouble themselves with things like "journalistic integrity" or "fact-checking" or "verification."

I also reviewed those transcripts, and again, the sources were opaque and the reporting was not credible. I believed the allegations from day one-- behind closed doors basically all the Gaiman Fans who heard the podcast allegations were like "yeah man that sounds like something he'd do"-- but like hell if I was going to cite that shitty dubious podcast as a source. I, like pretty much everyone else who said "the source isn't exactly reliable," was waiting to actually be able to win the "he did it" argument instead of citing a source that could so easily be immediately dismissed.

And, crucially, they were not working with the same material we're looking at now. There are significant new bombshell allegations in the Vulture article that were not in the podcast because, again, the podcast didn't really do much of an investigation to verify their story. They didn't ask any of the right questions. They didn't get a lot of the important information. This is because they're podcasters, not journalists. Which, as was the point of the whole post, is why it was right of journalists to take the allegations seriously enough to bother investigating them properly, and why it was wrong of the podcasters to do such an unprofessional, slapshod, no-credibility job "supporting the victims."

Yes, I never disagreed with you that it was right of other journalists to take the allegations, investigate them themselves, and present them in a more neutral and widely-available setting.

My issue is that I argued with plenty of people last summer who were very clearly trying to dig for any reason to discredit the story. "One of the reporters here is a TERF (and the others are at least okay with that) and the women involved weren't identified by their real names, which means we should tread carefully" is not the same thing as "well this whole podcast is a TERF project and they clearly made up these stories in order to smear Neil Gaiman because he's kind of queer-friendly, so I don't even have to look at the actual allegations to ignore them." I'm glad you didn't run into these people! But I did and I feel like that group is being forgotten as we point out that it's understandable not to have been fully on board from the word go.

A PSA about the latest Vulture article to drop about Neil Gaiman -

Do not fucking read it if you are not in a stable state of mind.

Triggers include, but dare I say, are not limited to -

Most of these things are discussed in explicit detail multiple times.

To be very clear, the above is not a list of allegations, it is subjects that are mentioned within the article. Yes, some of them are the allegations, but not all.

It's harrowing and heartbreaking to read. Even if these are not specifically triggers of yours, I beg, take a second to really have a think about whether you're in a place to take this on.

I don't normally use trigger warnings (let alone this many trigger warnings) but yeah, it's bad. Really, really bad. Proceed with extreme caution.

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

Are there any other particularly egregious examples?

This book already exists, sort of! Or at least, it’s a biology textbook but I bought it for writing purposes:

It starts with a chapter about freezing to death, and it is without a doubt the scariest thing I’ve read in years (and I read a lot of horror fiction).

This book can be downloaded for free on Researchgate, posted there by the author himself:

The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments

When you write a book like American Gods you make friends with your doctor and ask him lots of questions about surviving Wisconsin Winters, plunges into cold water and the like.

There can be more than one neil. This is not Highlander.

A note from Neil on Maggie's record shop: The record shop was opened by Maggie's great-grandmother in the 1920s in a corner of Aziraphale's bookshop. (l think she was demorstrating the new-fangled gramophones, and he fell in love with the musical reproduction and realised he could listen to music without leaving his bookshop.) By the 1930s Aziraphale (who owns the buildings that his bookshop is above) offered her the shop next door because (a) it had come free and (b) too many people were corning into his bookshop to buy records. (The original 'Small Back Room' was in Aziraphale's shop.) The shop stayed in the family, and Maggie took it over when her father retired.

From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously :) (you can watch here in US or with US vpn :) <3)

Terry Pratchett: Neil once said, 'Your fans all look jolly. And my fans all look as if they're about to commit suicide. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get them to marry?'

Well that's a splendid reason to collaborate on a novel!

Exhibit A :):

We need the pattern for Crowley's sweater, stat.

When Terry Pratchett and I wrote Good Omens, we put a lot of Christianity into it, with me being the one that had actually read the Revelation of St John of Patmos, and made notes on what we needed to include. Good Omens began as humorous look at The Omen, which was itself a mass market film about the coming of the Christian End Times, so we felt one of us needed to have read it for research. Good Omens was also inspired by a particularly antisemitic moment in The Jew of Malta, John le Carre's spy novels and most of all by Richmal Crompton's William books.

Oh, I don't think I've heard the bit anout John le Carré's spy novels before! :)❤

(grin)

Neil posted this today (18.11.2021) :).

I looked at the photo of the poster I have from the first season:

It seems that it’s in a different place.

Hell in S2? :)

he was in arthur.

you're thinking of Jill Eikenberry; I think this guy was an astronaut of some kind

that's Neil Armstrong, I thought this guy was in How I Met Your Mother

That's Neil Patrick Harris. I think this might have been the playwright who wrote The Odd Couple.

That’s Neil Simon. I think this is the musician who wrote Sweet Caroline.

That’s Neil Diamond. I think this is an astrophysicist

That’s Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think this is a river in Egypt.

That's the Nile; I think this is the Irish guy who made the movies "The Crying Game" and "Interview with the Vampire".

No no no, that’s Neil Jordan. I think this is the English author who helped write Good Omens.

You’re right! This is Terry Prachet’s tumblr. Good job everyone

ok I love this meme but like

Neil Gaiman actually was in Arthur.

This is true.

world heritage post

I guess you could say....rhyme doesn't pay.

That is the edition that my public library had when I first read Good Omens. My very young self was under the impression that the authors on the jacket photo (before I saw any other pictures of said authors, and their usual attire) were cosplaying as their very own theurgical protagonists.

We kind of were. Well, I wasn't. But Terry borrowed a white jacket from our editor, Malcolm Edwards, in order to make it clear to the world that He Was The Good One. Just in case offended people started lobbing bricks through our windows.

NEIL’S BLOG ENTRY ABOUT GOOD OMENS SEASON 2

Many, many years ago (it was Hallowe'en 1989, for the curious, the year before Good Omens was published) Terry Pratchett and I were sharing a room at the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle, to keep the costs down, because we were both young authors, and taking ourselves to America and conventions were expensive. It was a wonderful convention. I remember a huge Seattle second-hand bookstore in which I found a dozen or so green-bound Storisende Edition James Branch Cabell books, each signed so neatly by the author that the bookshop people assured me that the signatures were printed, and really ten dollars a book was the correct price.

I could afford books. Good Omens had just been sold to UK publishers and then to US publishers for more money than Terry or I had ever received for anything. (Terry had been incredibly worried about this, certain that receiving a healthy advance would mean the end of his career. When his career didn’t end, Terry suggested to his agent that perhaps he ought to be getting that kind of advance for every book from now on, and his life changed, and he stopped having to share a hotel room to save money. But I digress.) Advance reading copies of Good Omens had not yet gone out, but a few editors had read it (ones who had bid for it but failed to buy it) and they all seemed very excited about it, and thrilled for us.

On the Saturday evening Terry left the bar quite early and headed off to bed. I stayed up talking to people and having a marvelous time, hung in there until the small hours of the morning when they closed the hotel bar and all the people went away, and then headed up to the hotel room room.

I opened the door as quietly as I could and tiptoed in the dark across the room to where my bed was located.

I’d just reached the bed when, from the far side of the room, a voice said, “What time of the night do you call this then? Your mother and I have been worried sick about you.”

Terry was wide awake. Jet lag had taken its toll.

And I was wide awake too. So we lay in our respective beds and having nothing else to do, we plotted the sequel to Good Omens. It was a good one, too. We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD™ and there wasn’t ever a good time.

But we never forgot it.

It’s been thirty-one years since Good Omens was published, which means it’s thirty-two years since Terry Pratchett and I lay in our respective beds in a Seattle hotel room at a World Fantasy Convention, and plotted the sequel. (I got to use bits of the sequel in the TV series version of Good Omens – that’s where our angels came from.)

[Terry and I, in Cardiff in 2010, on the night we decided that Good Omens should become a television series.]

Terry was clear on what he wanted from Good Omens on the telly. He wanted the story told, and if that worked, he wanted the rest of the story told.

So in September 2017 I sat down in St James’ Park, beside the director, Douglas Mackinnon, on a chair with my name on it, as Showrunner of Good Omens. The chair slowly and elegantly lowered itself to the ground underneath me and fell apart, and I thought, that’s not really a good omen. Fortunately, under Douglas’s leadership, that chair was the only thing that collapsed.

So, once Good Omens the TV series had been released by Amazon and the BBC, to global acclaim, many awards and joy,  Rob Wilkins (Terry’s representative on Earth) and I had the conversation with the BBC and Amazon about doing some more. And they got very excited. We talked to Michael Sheen and David Tennant about doing some more. They also got very excited. We told them a little about the plot. They got even more excited.

[Rob Wilkins and David Tennant on the second day of shooting.]

I’d been a fan of John Finnemore’s for years, and had had the joy of working with him on a radio show called With Great Pleasure, where I picked passages I loved, had amazing readers read them aloud and talked about them.

(Here’s a clip from that show of me talking about working with Terry Pratchett, and reading a poem by Terry: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06x3syv. Here’s the whole show from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OsS_JWbzQ with John Finnemore’s bits too.)

I asked John if he’d be willing to work with me on writing the next round of Good Omens, and was overjoyed when he said yes. We have some surprise guest collaborators too. And Douglas Mackinnon is returning to oversee the whole thing with me.

So that’s the plan. We’ve been keeping it secret for a long time (mostly because otherwise my mail and Twitter feeds would have turned into gushing torrents of What Can You Tell Us About It? long ago) but we are now at the point where sets are being built in Scotland (which is where we’re shooting, and more about filming things in Scotland soon), and we can’t really keep it secret any longer.

There are so many questions people have asked about what happened next (and also, what happened before) to our favourite Angel and Demon. Here are, perhaps, some of the answers you’ve been hoping for.

As Good Omens continues, we will be back in Soho, and all through time and space, solving a mystery which starts with one of the angels wandering through a Soho street market with no memory of who they might be, on their way to Aziraphale’s bookshop.

(Although our story actually begins about five minutes before anyone had got around to saying “Let there be Light”.)

👀 GOOD OMENS SEASON 2 IS COMING! ❤