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shadowkat1. Ah, found it...I read on londonkds's post about Neil Gaiman losing his temper over a bunch of alt-right nitwits whining about the Sandman casting. (Which I personally find interesting. But I've also read the Sandman comics. And have read Gaiman. And understand that art in a comic is a free-flowing sort of thing, and open to interpretation. It's kind of like novels, most novels, the good ones, are open to interpretation regarding how a character "looks". So..)
Anyhow..here's the article explaining what happened...on Twitter. (Of course it was on Twitter - all the fights happen on Twitter. Honestly, I think all the fan trolls flocked en mass to Twitter.)
Some “Sandman” fans took issue with Gaiman for casting Howell-Baptiste, a Black actress, in a role that is visually depicted as a white character in the source material. One fan noted on Twitter that Howell-Baptiste’s casting was irksome because Gaiman doesn’t “give a fuck” about standing by his original work. Other “Sandman” fans criticized the casting of non-binary actor Park as Desire, even though Gaiman wrote the character of Desire as non-binary in the comic books.
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“I give all the fucks about the work,” Gaiman wrote on social media. “I spent 30 years successfully battling bad movies of ‘Sandman.’ I give zero fucks about people who don’t understand/haven’t read ‘Sandman’ whining about a nonbinary Desire or that Death isn’t white enough. Watch the show, make up your minds.”
Responding to one fan who asked about Desire always being a non-binary character, Gaiman wrote, “Well, yes. But you’d have to have read the comics to know that. And the shouty people appear to have skipped that step.”
Gaiman also shared one fan’s response to Park’s casting that reads: “Desire in ‘Sandman’ was really the first time I encountered in fiction the idea of a person being non-binary. It helped me when reality presented me with out non-binary people, some of whom I now know and love. I can’t imagine reading ‘Sandman’ and desiring Desire as anything other.”
“We had barely started looking when (they/them) reached out on Twitter, and threw their hat into the ring,” Gaiman wrote in a blog post about the casting May 2 (via The Wrap). “We were thrilled when they got the part…[Death was] significantly harder to cast than you might imagine. Hundreds of talented women from all around the planet auditioned, and they were brilliant, and none of them were right. Someone who could speak the truth to Dream, on the one hand, but also be the person you’d want to meet when your life was done on the other. And then we saw Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s (she/her) audition and we knew we had our Death.”
Gaiman later told one fan that he doesn’t think anyone complaining about a non-binary actor playing Desire has actually read “The Sandman” comic books. Netflix’s official synopsis for “The Sandman” reads: “A rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama, and legend are seamlessly interwoven, ‘The Sandman’ follows the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he mends the cosmic — and human — mistakes he’s made during his vast existence.”
Gaiman says in a separate post that the actress playing Death - fit the role perfectly in his head, after he saw her on The Good Place.
Oh...this is amusing.. Neil comments on it on Tumblr
And I found the tweet Neil Gaiman's response to nitwit
I find Neil Gaiman interesting - he's very charming and rarely gets railed up about anything. But every once and a while, he will lose his temper.
Because it's so rare - it's interesting. He lost his temper once in regards to fans of GRR Martin driving everyone nuts about their whining for another book. "The author is not your bitch," said Gaiman succinctly.
Fans are weird about adaptations of things they happen to love. IF the adaptation is not exactly as it appears in their heads - they get nasty about it. Truth is - it's unlikely to be, because the individual making the adaptation isn't the fan. I personally find adaptations interesting, because its a different take on the source work. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn't.
It's been so long since I've read the Sandman comics - that I don't remember what the characters look like, I barely remember them at all. I know I read a lot of them - but I've no memory of it. I do know the characters were quirky and different, and from my memory of it - the casting works very very well. There's no one better to cast an adaptation of their own work than the writer or author of it - because you get to see how they envisioned it.
ETA: I'm still entertained by this..
"Peter Sagal
petersagal
Replying to
neilhimself
I'd be very interested in how you managed to win those battles, given the existence of the movie "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
I restrained myself from responding..."Uhm, hello? Alan Moore??"
Oh look someone else said it - but differently: "Sense Fracture
sense_fracture -
Alan Moore was never really interested in the movies, so he never actually battled. It was almost always DC who sold the rights."
ME: Eh, no. Because it's Alan Moore - and no one is going to help Alan Moore. Because hello? Alan Moore.
Gaiman's reaction? "I cared. I had allies. And it's always easier not to make a movie than to make it."
ME: You're also not an asshole like Alan Moore. Seriously Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Warren Ellis are the assholes of the comic book industry. So is Scott Allie. ]
IT is a hilarious thread. Honestly, fans fighting with writers about what they should write, who they should cast, and that they don't understand their own work is ....LOL.
Also proof that art is like a child, it grows, and leaves you...and becomes something else after interacting with the world - when it returns to you, it's not quite yours any longer, no matter how much you wish it were.
2. Also found THIS on Twitter. It's a disclaimer for well any post you could possibly come up with.... I got distracted by it while looking for the Neil Gaiman post.
Anyhow..here's the article explaining what happened...on Twitter. (Of course it was on Twitter - all the fights happen on Twitter. Honestly, I think all the fan trolls flocked en mass to Twitter.)
Some “Sandman” fans took issue with Gaiman for casting Howell-Baptiste, a Black actress, in a role that is visually depicted as a white character in the source material. One fan noted on Twitter that Howell-Baptiste’s casting was irksome because Gaiman doesn’t “give a fuck” about standing by his original work. Other “Sandman” fans criticized the casting of non-binary actor Park as Desire, even though Gaiman wrote the character of Desire as non-binary in the comic books.
Related
'Sweet Tooth' Review: Netflix's Fantasy-Adventure Series Crafts a Spielbergian Fairy Tale
New Movies: Release Calendar for June 4, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films
“I give all the fucks about the work,” Gaiman wrote on social media. “I spent 30 years successfully battling bad movies of ‘Sandman.’ I give zero fucks about people who don’t understand/haven’t read ‘Sandman’ whining about a nonbinary Desire or that Death isn’t white enough. Watch the show, make up your minds.”
Responding to one fan who asked about Desire always being a non-binary character, Gaiman wrote, “Well, yes. But you’d have to have read the comics to know that. And the shouty people appear to have skipped that step.”
Gaiman also shared one fan’s response to Park’s casting that reads: “Desire in ‘Sandman’ was really the first time I encountered in fiction the idea of a person being non-binary. It helped me when reality presented me with out non-binary people, some of whom I now know and love. I can’t imagine reading ‘Sandman’ and desiring Desire as anything other.”
“We had barely started looking when (they/them) reached out on Twitter, and threw their hat into the ring,” Gaiman wrote in a blog post about the casting May 2 (via The Wrap). “We were thrilled when they got the part…[Death was] significantly harder to cast than you might imagine. Hundreds of talented women from all around the planet auditioned, and they were brilliant, and none of them were right. Someone who could speak the truth to Dream, on the one hand, but also be the person you’d want to meet when your life was done on the other. And then we saw Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s (she/her) audition and we knew we had our Death.”
Gaiman later told one fan that he doesn’t think anyone complaining about a non-binary actor playing Desire has actually read “The Sandman” comic books. Netflix’s official synopsis for “The Sandman” reads: “A rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama, and legend are seamlessly interwoven, ‘The Sandman’ follows the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he mends the cosmic — and human — mistakes he’s made during his vast existence.”
Gaiman says in a separate post that the actress playing Death - fit the role perfectly in his head, after he saw her on The Good Place.
Oh...this is amusing.. Neil comments on it on Tumblr
And I found the tweet Neil Gaiman's response to nitwit
I find Neil Gaiman interesting - he's very charming and rarely gets railed up about anything. But every once and a while, he will lose his temper.
Because it's so rare - it's interesting. He lost his temper once in regards to fans of GRR Martin driving everyone nuts about their whining for another book. "The author is not your bitch," said Gaiman succinctly.
Fans are weird about adaptations of things they happen to love. IF the adaptation is not exactly as it appears in their heads - they get nasty about it. Truth is - it's unlikely to be, because the individual making the adaptation isn't the fan. I personally find adaptations interesting, because its a different take on the source work. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn't.
It's been so long since I've read the Sandman comics - that I don't remember what the characters look like, I barely remember them at all. I know I read a lot of them - but I've no memory of it. I do know the characters were quirky and different, and from my memory of it - the casting works very very well. There's no one better to cast an adaptation of their own work than the writer or author of it - because you get to see how they envisioned it.
ETA: I'm still entertained by this..
"Peter Sagal
petersagalReplying to
neilhimselfI'd be very interested in how you managed to win those battles, given the existence of the movie "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
I restrained myself from responding..."Uhm, hello? Alan Moore??"
Oh look someone else said it - but differently: "Sense Fracture
sense_fracture - Alan Moore was never really interested in the movies, so he never actually battled. It was almost always DC who sold the rights."
ME: Eh, no. Because it's Alan Moore - and no one is going to help Alan Moore. Because hello? Alan Moore.
Gaiman's reaction? "I cared. I had allies. And it's always easier not to make a movie than to make it."
ME: You're also not an asshole like Alan Moore. Seriously Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Warren Ellis are the assholes of the comic book industry. So is Scott Allie. ]
IT is a hilarious thread. Honestly, fans fighting with writers about what they should write, who they should cast, and that they don't understand their own work is ....LOL.
Also proof that art is like a child, it grows, and leaves you...and becomes something else after interacting with the world - when it returns to you, it's not quite yours any longer, no matter how much you wish it were.
2. Also found THIS on Twitter. It's a disclaimer for well any post you could possibly come up with.... I got distracted by it while looking for the Neil Gaiman post.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-08 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-08 01:30 pm (UTC)I think some of the fans had casting ideas in their heads and got annoyed they didn't get what they wanted. Desire should be non-binary, if they weren't - it would be either slanted to just one or two views of it. It's common sense. Also, Death - can be any color.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-08 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-08 01:26 pm (UTC)