My Problem With Neil Gaiman (Besides the Leather Jackets)

Art, Stockholm Syndrome, Controlled Opposition and Why I'm Still Mad He Blocked Me

May 22, 2025

💥 Confession: This Might Get Me Cancelled

Okay, so there is something I have been carrying around for years.

I’ve never been able to talk about it with any of my friends and family because I knew they wouldn’t understand. They’d judge me, probably get mad, wanna cancel me or something.

And you know, I’ve struggled with it.
What if I’m the one that’s wrong? What if I’m the bad guy?

🧼 Purity Culture and the Performance of Politics

People are unforgiving these days. We demand idealistic purity from our associates. If you don’t agree with me about everything, we can’t be friends.

Politics? It’s not just what you believe. It’s why you believe it, how you say it, and whether you bought the right merch to believe it in.

Even pop stars get dragged into the narrative.
When did Taylor Swift become relevant to the national discourse and the struggle for economic parity?

Taste becomes identity. Identity becomes ideology. And some of us never quite grow out of that high school brain.

🎉 A Small Window of Relevance

However bleak 2025 has been, there have been a few high points.

Leonard Peltier is kinda free-ish. Rage Against the Machine fans everywhere gave Biden a slow clap. The world is finally catching up to me on this other idea I’ve had for years…

And being, by all appearances, a cisgendered white American male—yee-haw—I have the privilege of ignoring politics.

So while families are being ripped apart and the guy running the guy running the country is throwing Nazi salutes on TV, I get to argue about... art.

🎨 Art with a Capital F

Art should challenge. Challenge the reader, the observer, the power structures—internal and external.
Fan service is for when you’re out of ideas.

If all you're doing is telling people that everyone they hate is an asshole, that’s not art.
It’s pandering. It’s a bunch of mice complaining about the cat.

Nobody’s tying the bell on that cat’s neck.

So yeah, I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings…
But that’s just one of the problems I have with Neil Gaiman.

🧥 Leather Jackets and Literary Turduckens

This isn’t about the allegations—other people are covering that.
I’m here to talk about his work. Or rather, his reheated aesthetic plagiarism in a leather jacket.

“Neil Gaiman has never met a trope he wouldn’t stuff in somebody else’s idea and wrap in a leather jacket like some kind of literary Turducken.”

Let’s go down the list:

Sandman (1989–96): Tanith Lee’s Tales from the Flat Earth (1978–87)… in a leather jacket.
American Gods (2001): Douglas Adams’ Long Dark Teatime of the Soul + Pratchett’s Small Gods… buddy film, in a leather jacket… in America.
Neverwhere: Alice in Wonderland… in a leather jacket.
Good Omens: Co-written with Pratchett. Guess which parts are Gaiman’s? Yep.

He’s the Carlos Mencia of fiction. In a leather jacket.

Even the scandals feel derivative. Like his alleged assault style is some kind of pervert fanfic mash-up. Just tropes, hot tubs, and a leather jacket.

“The motherfucker is MADE of HACK, even his scandals feel like bad imitations.”

📛 Blocked by Neil Gaiman

Back in 2010, I followed Neil on Twitter.

It took 48 hours before I snapped and tweeted:
“Oh will you just shut UP you pretentious nonce #leatherjacket.”

He blocked me. I didn’t know you could do that.

Seems like he’s real into consent when it’s about his ego.

But then Yoko Ono followed me the next day.
Classy lady. Even when I joked that I’d never forgive her for what she did to Chuck Berry.

😤 Jealousy, Projection, and Shadow Work

Am I jealous?

Probably.

I hold myself to a higher standard. I work harder for less and don’t have a bunch of misconduct allegations floating around.

But I’ve got to admit it:
He showed up. I didn’t.

I want success. Sort of. But I haven’t done the work to get it.
Shame spiral, AAAAHAHAHA. Yes I’m jealous. At least I do my shadow work.

🔌 It’s Not About Gaiman. It’s About Power.

Zooming out: this isn’t just about one leather-jacketed predator.

It’s about how power replicates and recycles itself across every arena—from fiction to foreign policy.

“The more powerful someone is, the less it’s about consent and the more it’s about sales pressure.”

Consent becomes performance. Coercion becomes currency.

When the turtle on the top is a narcissist, it’s narcissists all the way down the stack, because they all want to replace him.

🐝 Welcome to the Honeypot

Remember 1984? Most people fixate on the surveillance.
But the part that stuck with me was O’Brien.

O’Brien didn’t just interrogate Winston. He recruited him to the fake resistance. He created the opposition.

“They give you just enough rope to hang yourself and call it rebellion.”

That’s not fiction. That’s a strategy.

🎩 Manufactured Consent and the Dashboard Gaslight

Power doesn’t need to lie.
It just needs to sell a version of the truth that makes resistance feel futile, uncool, or dangerous.

“Is it consensual when the cost of saying no is too high to afford?”

Our consent is synthetic. Manufactured.
Bread and circuses. Likes and retweets. Dashboard gaslights and Stockholm Syndrome.

🥩 Eat the Rich (They Have Better Meat)

You can’t fight power when you’re fighting each other.

If someone throws a rock and hides their hand, and you end up punching your neighbor—who won?

Trust no one. Not even yourself.
You’re lying about the gym. You’re lying about the DMs. You’re lying about the system working.

“We all want the same things—some of us just have stupid ideas about how to get them.”

📚 The Future Wears a Boot—and a Leather Jacket

The battleground today is attention and opinion. The stakes are complicity in genocide.

As O’Brien said:

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

And if Neil Gaiman had written it?

The person wearing the boot would also be wearing a leather jacket.

💬 CTA: Let’s Talk About It

If this piece made you angry, made you laugh, or made you think—good. That’s what art is supposed to do.

So tell me:
Who’s wearing the leather jacket in your life?
Where have you seen consent twisted into coercion?

Hit reply. Leave a comment.
Better yet—share it with someone who still thinks Neverwhere was original.