Love in the Time of Coronavirus is a helluva thing, and, unfortunately, it’s already pushed more than a few couples to the breaking point. Just ask iconic fantasy author Neil Gaiman, who is seeing news of his separation spread to the populace without his consent.
Gaiman’s longtime partner, Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls and a multitude of other musical projects, announced their breakup on Twitter and Patreon on Monday. In a post entitled, “where’s neil? a note about what’s happening,” she revealed that she’s currently under COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand with her and Gaiman’s 4-year-old son, Ash, while he’s moved back to the U.K.
“Since people are getting confused and asking and my phone and inbox is blowing up with ‘where‘s Neil’? a few times a minute….I can only gather that he’s finally told the internet that he’s left New Zealand, and I thought I would come here with a short note,” wrote Palmer, who probably could’ve checked his social media accounts to see if this were true before posting, but we digress.
“So you all know: this did not happen because of COVID or lockdown, though the timing is comically bad; other things came to light after we got here to New Zealand,” wrote Palmer, “…in fairness to all, and to keep little Ash (who will not always be little) protected, the details aren’t for the public.”
“It appears that I was was on tour for a year talking about the extreme dark and light for a reason. I was in training for this week…it seems that my life was not rehearsal for my show…the show was a rehearsal for my life,” she added, which, hoo boy.
Anyway, all this apparently was news to Neil, who responded on Twitter with some (very thinly veiled) dramatic snark of his own.
“I see @amandapalmer has told people that we (like much of the world) are going through rocky times right now,” he tweeted, further confirming that no one starting a sentence with “I see” is in the best of moods.
Palmer and Gaiman, who married in 2011, have long been a power couple in the “Theater Kid-Turned-Steampunk Cosplayer” scene, so we can only imagine the devastation currently being experienced by who use words like “haberdashery” and “palimpsest.” Still, our genuine condolences to the Palmer-Gaiman clan, with hopes that they reach a respectful outcome for everyone involved.
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66 Comments
I don’t wish her ill but can’t fucking stand her, hopefully Gaiman will start producing things of quality again.
I don’t know, that whole deal where she didn’t want to pay musicians to guest on her album even though she’s made better money than a lot of musicians (thanks to Dresden Dolls) still sticks in my craw a bit
That was only one of several times she’s done stuff like that. She often manages to be holier-than-thou while simultaneously having bad takes like that, and then as you can see her self-regard causes her to give that bloviative description of her suffering. Hoo boy is right.
I REALLY liked her DD work, and it sucks that she’s just plunged deeper up her own asshole
Name/comment check out.Carry on good sir.
Her fans eat it up. I’ve run into some online who swear that her million-dollar Kickstarter campaign owed no part of its success to Gaiman’s Tweets about it even though at the time, Gaiman had far, far more followers than she did. It was all her!
Let’s not forget her beloved and oft-repeated use of the n-word.
I know it happened once and she disavowed it (though seemingly didn’t apologize…); has it happened more than once?
You sound like one of them dirty Norwegians!
…you mean that “we’ll pay you in hugs” bullshit? Yeah, that was something.
Bingo. What a bizarrely unselfaware thing to say, which I guess is her whole thing
She also wrote a whole book on the topic of “you just need to ask for stuff” so I guess those people should have asked her for a decent wage I suppose.
I REALLY hate to say this, but . . . I’m kind of . . . in favor of that mindset? I learned this from my dad, but the amount of shit you can get just by asking is staggering. And if they say no, you say oh ok no problem, blah blah blah
Honestly I thought it was an interesting article or tedtalk or something at the time (haven’t read the book). I’m sure it hasn’t aged well what with her essentially leveraging her twitter/fanbase to get them to do things for her and using that as her basis for “you just have to ask for things and people will give them to you” without acknowledging the power differential. But I think the point is valid that we attach shame to “asking” people for things when we need something. And we need to get over that fear of annoying people. People are allowed to say no but you’ll never know what’s possible if you don’t ask.
Found it, it definitely comes off as a little priviledged and tone-deaf, but it’s an interesting perspective: https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking?language=en
Did you see her tweet a few days ago, begging people on Patreon to not let their credit cards expire? People have more important shit to worry about, Amanda. Fucks sake
Ugh, yeah. Every time I hear her name, I just immediately think of “You’ll be paid in exposure!”, which has to be the most infuriating sentence ever. “Don’t worry, being associated with me is so much better than a paycheck! I’m so amazing that you being on my album basically guarantees your future career!”“Okay, but the grocery store doesn’t accept exposure and my shelves are empty from doing shit ‘for exposure’.”“Pah! Money is a human construct. Now music me, dammit.”
she only promised beer and hugs, which are at least more tangible than just “exposure,: and one of which actually does cost money. and not for the album, for her tour.
Yeah, it’s “paid in exposure” as in “you probably won’t have shelter from the elements, because people usually have to pay to keep a roof over their head.”
I know it’s rather petty but I immediately had my “ummm” sensors tingle when I saw her make a parody of Lady Gaga during a 2009 show. Basically putting on a blonde wig and making fun of her, ending the show with “Gaga” getting literally dragged off stage iirc. She later actually went to one of her concerts and gave a grandiose holier-than-thou speech on Pop Music Bad and Artificial, but “at least Gaga could sing, her disco pop might be forgotten but her message is solid”. Whew did that statement age terribly.
I’m not even here to stan Gaga, but to a baby teen at the time who loved both artists, I remember thinking how petty and unnecessary she was being. Since then I’ve always had a bad taste in my mouth about her, despite really loving her music.
The grand irony there being that frankly Palmer and Gaga are more similar than different: talented but limited artists who bootstrapped themselves into early fame by sheer force of will.The main difference seems to be that Gaga quickly got professional representation and enough decent advice that she kept her personal life out of the spotlight once the albums started selling, whereas Palmer never figured out a way to effectively separate her personal brand from her actual person.
It was more than an album, it was a tour – where musicians really make their money. She wanted to stiff the local working musicians at every tour stop.
not for her album- for the tour to support the album.
I don’t think that’s the story. She ran a contest/promotion where she got local fans to play with her at various gigs on the road. Lots of bands do stuff like this. There’s tons of videos of Foo Fighters etc calling people up from the crowd and if they can play guitar letting them riff.
What happened to her, was a local Orchestra wrote a shit post about how the musicians weren’t Union and then gawker and a bunch of other people piled on. Everyone knew the terms well before. It wasn’t like she stiffed them. The uproar also happened before it was executed… so I don’t know if it actually happened.
Here is a negative hottake on the situation:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/amanda-palmers-accidental-experiment-with-real-communism
But even in that one, they don’t say she was putting people on the album and not paying them royaltees.
It seems monumentally different to me.
That article nails it, and also clarifies some of the stuff I was hazy on (I blame that it’s been 8 years, CERTAINLY not my sieve-like memory). She basically wanted free opening acts; that’s different from Foo Fighters soliciting fans to come on stage and jam for a song or two. It’s less shitty than I remember, but it’s still pretty shitty
I’m going to add, even if you think it’s a shitty thing. It’s a shitty thing she didn’t actually end up doing. She did figure out how to pay people. How mad are we going to be over a thought crime? 8 years mad! (In all fairness, I’m going to be mad about many of our current president’s failed to enact policies for way more than 8 years, so I get it. We all get riled up over some BS sometime.)
As a mutual peace offering by way of indie rock…
Here is a funny song about not getting paid fairly to make music:
Yeah the absurd thing about people still harping on Amanda Palmer not paying musicians is that… she did pay them in the end. She was criticised for the idea before the tour even started, and then she paid them. People should just be honest and admit that they find her annoying, there doesn’t need to be a virtuous moral ground in it.
This is basically the “But the Ukraine got their money!” defense. If you get busted trying to do something illegal, and then get forced to do the right thing because you were caught, that’s not a “thought crime,” that’s an attempted crime. It’s perfectly fine for people to get penalized for trying to do something that’s illegal or unethical. (And in this case, since her conduct was just crappy and not illegal, the “penalty” is just that people think she’s kind of a douchebag, which through the years has always seemed to check out.)
Now now. She did give them hugs.
He never stopped. I’m not a fan of hers; find her insufferable, actually, but don’t try to Yoko her in this one. It’s lame and inaccurate.
Season 2 of American Gods and eat a cock dipshit.
What the hell
nobody expects the spanish inquisition 😉
I don’t believe he was especially involved in that. Certainly not at anything like the showrunner level.
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/neil-gaiman-american-gods-season-2-interview-1202049623/He was especially involved in that, not at the showrunner level, but he’s wrong: they didn’t taste like the sausages I like, they were poop sausages
Yeah, not sure what that’s about – she had absolutely nothing to do with him making a promise to Terry Pratchett to see a Good Omens show made, after all. `
1. You don’t know shit about Yoko Ono, she’s an immensely important artist in her own right. Lazy reporting and casual racism are a hell of a drug.2. Amanda Palmer is a joke.
Whoever said Yoko wasn’t an important artist? That has nothing to do with the situation at hand.
The person I replied to who said “don’t try to Yoko her in this one.”
That’s not what that means.
Go on, try and come up with a way where using “Yoko” as a pejorative isn’t a slam on Yoko.
a) It wasn’t being used as a pejorative. It was being used as an analogy to how Yoko was falsely blamed for breaking up the Beatles; similarly, Palmer was being falsely blamed for Gaiman’s recent output.
b) Even if it had been used as a pejorative, said pejorative would’ve had crap-all to do with whether or not she’s an important artist, & everything to do with the Beatles breaking up.
Seconded! I haven’t found anything he’s produced since 2011 to be below par. He’s still a great talent.
He spent a lot of time recently on Good Omens, which was very well done. Unless he gets sucked back into being hands on with another TV adaption, we should see some writing from him again.
How is it she will never ever have enough attention? It must be fucking exhausting to be around. Remember when she would get naked and have fans sign her body? How fucking thirsty can you be? Damn.
Yeah, that’s what I’ve always thought of her. I have great respect for Gaiman as a writer and as a person. His work with, for example, paying it forward with the CBLDF to help protect comic writers in legal trouble suggests that he’s generally a pretty decent dude (not to mention the iconic “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch” thread). But Amanda Palmer has always seemed to be too juvenile to be taken seriously. My reaction when I heard they were together was:
I actually met Neil (and another big SF writer that wet brain prevents me from recalling right now) at an AP show in LA the wife dragged me to. It was before they were public so I was a little surprised to find myself standing at the bar with him.
Is she funny or something?
Most talent-imbalanced couple since… Katy Perry and Russell Brand?
(And I say this as someone who actually likes a fair bit of Palmer’s music.)
Was that a thing? What the actual fuck?
Feel free to google.
Same. I feel bad for the guy because divorces are rough, but he can do a lot better.
Considering that Gaiman is 15 years her senior, I’d suggest that Gaiman likes to trade in the old models for the newer hot models ala Tim Burton. Still a good writer though.
Yeah, it’s definitely the woman’s fault he stopped writing anything worthwhile.
If you want me to be mean: it’s hanging around the inferior artist who is radioactively annoying’s fault. Cute story, bro.
I didn’t know much by him before I knew they were married, and while I have been interested and have seen a few things I enjoy, I haven’t really made an effort to try his things more because she is so awful that I kind of figured he must be awful too if he could marry her
Yeah, don’t know the woman, but those tweets seems a bit theatrical. And unnecessary. Keep it within your home’s four walls, people. We really don’t care, that you’ve broken up.
She’s an arse. She played at the Larmer Tree Festival in the UK, a unique, really relaxed festival, and demanded that other stages were shut down while she was playing, because she’s so important and her music is so special. She was really, really shite.
It just shows the power of belief (that I am not susceptible to) except the empress won’t stop taking off her clothes. Some people are so solipsistic they create their own gravity for those in thrall. I once knew this girl who was REALLY into Citizen Cope. like…REALLY. I knew another girl who was really into this band called The Format. Like…stalked them. It’s pretty baffling to those on the outside. I’m just surprised they agreed to her terms…despite my love of artists, independence, and that I understand Sun kil Moon telling War on Drugs to suck his cock for the same reason (their music on another stage drowning out his)…sometimes I’m glad when they’re told no. Particularly here because those other stages likely would have had artists who needed the exposure instead of just a really annoying person obsessed with exposing themselves.
How the fuck is a couple splitting up – especially wth a four year old child caught in the middle – a ‘Great, Job, Internet!’?
Because they announced it on Patreon.
Yeah, that’s tasteless. It can go in a standard “Newswire” story like most other things.
It should go under “When Romance Met Comedy.”
Type 1 “Great Job, Internet”s are jobs are not so great. They’re the kind that earn a slow clap.