"Neil Gaiman & Queering Fantasy" Transcript

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As diversity becomes and more of a sticking point in our social landscape, discourse around representation follows closely behind. There is a precedent for developing an incorrect narrative around historical events presenting sentiments that simply don't represent a community as a whole. And struggling to actively showcase visible representation or understand what qualifies as visible representation. And of course when you get representation right, you actually have to go to the right lengths to promote it, just like you would any other properties.

But that said it's not like good representation doesn’t exist. Usually when the people who are being represented get to make their own stuff, it tends to be well received. Sometimes not, whether I agree with the response or not, but usually. If you exist within the queer community, you generally have a better understanding of how to showcase these peopleL what matters to them, what their values are, and what you can even make fun of without insulting everyone.

And believe me, the queer community has a heap of that. For instance, trans men and enbies for some reason really like rats, like pet rats. A lot of them feel this way, and nobody knows why.

Though for people who are not queer themselves, but who do want to create queer characters, there are a range of challenges that they face.

Such as Limited Perspective: straight writers by virtue of their sexual orientation, likely don’t have first-hand experience with the unique challenges, emotions, and nuances that queer individuals face.

And Cultural Sensitivity and Accuracy: Straight writers might lack this cultural sensitivity leading to misrepresentations or inaccurate depiction that fail to capture the essence of queer lives. The potential for unintentional insensitivity can arise from a lack of research or an overreliance on current mainstream media representation.

There is also the Fear of Offending: This fear may lead them to tiptoe around important issues, or sanitize the experience of queer characters, resulting in narratives that lack depth and emotional resonance.

And there’s Stereotyping and Tokenism: When queer characters are reduced to being nothing but their sexual orientation or gender identity, becoming defined solely by this one part of themselves rather than their personality, aspirations, and complexity.

And this is perhaps true of all categories of diverse characters. However, there is a recent buzz around queerness both from consumers and producers. And through this buzz, we seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Now while queer creators are finally getting a chance to tell their own stories, straight creators can struggle to deliver these same messages. So that being said, why is Neil Gaiman so good at it?

Neil Gaiman typifies a sort of literary polymorph where in spite of his cultural impact, he has written or contributed to a total of only 11 novels. However, factoring in his work in screenplays, teleplays, comics, children's books, and nonfiction, Gaiman has a considerable library of work. Including the creation of a certain dark haired magical boy with an owl familiar, which was suspiciously published through DC comics seven years prior to Harry Potter hitting the shelf. Must be magic!

Granted, only I said "only 11 novels", as if that isn’t impressive, whereas once it was not considered out of the ordinary to be invited into literary canon with far less than 11 published works, that’s usually not possible today. Unless of course one comes from money, or is the one new author of the decade that the publishing industry has decided to rally behind.

But especially for as high profile writers go, Gaiman has peppered his library of works with the broad range of diverse characters, representing a myriad of life experiences. Similar to the "forced wokeness" accusation that were hurled at The Rings of Power (which focused more on gender and race then the broad changes to the characters and mythology), the Netflix adaptation of Gaiman’s iconic Sandman series was given the same criticism from the predictable kinds of people.

The displeasure at seeing queer experiences on the screen clearly indicated that these particular critics hadn’t read the source material. Maybe they just looked at the pictures?

Gaiman’s renown as an writer truly began in 1990 when he co authored Good Omens with literary giant Terry Pratchett. According to legend, Neil pitched the idea to Pratchett off hand at a convention to which Pratchett seems agreeable. Though Neil assumed that he was just being let down gently and put it out of his mind. Sometime later, Neil got a phone call from Pratchett who wanted to know how this misplaced antichrist idea might play out.

Insofar as the authors developed this cosmos, neither angels nor demons have sex organs, nor do they actively seek out sexual intercourse. And by all accounts, gender is more or less described based on how an observer might categorize them. Regardless, even at that, this he-they angel-demon duo are so incredibly married, it was basically a joke even at the time of Good Omens’ publication.

While many fans of the show, and even of the book, were quick to describe Aziraphale (which is a fictional name approved by spell check believe or not) and Crowley as a gay couple. It was indeed exasperated by Gaiman’s description of the tale as a love story. And yet both God, the narrator of the story, and Gaiman are hesitant to use the term "gay" to describe them. But unlike your average network executive press conference, or corporate social media account, this explanation is queerer than the typical "just friends" copout.

The narrator describes that most people who encounter Aziraphale may describe him as (quote) “gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.” But does not describe Aziraphale as gay himself. Gaiman elaborated that the love story between Aziraphale and Crowley is not gay because neither of them are men. One is an angel and the other a demon. Neither of whom are beings that have sex traits. And any ambiguity in the first story is dismissed in the second.

This suggests that any element of gender expression as the result of self identification or a matter of how others may observe them. Furthermore, the celestial beings seem to refer to each other by they/them. From an authorial standpoint, this is a complex understanding of gender and sexuality that is even a little bit theoretical for many within the community itself. If there is no element of sex or gender present in a romantic pairing, how can we describe the sexual orientation of the couple?

The unfortunate thing about the term "homosexual" is that it describes not only the gender of the subject’s attraction, but the gender of the subject as well. Homo-sexual, same gender attraction. You need to have a gender to be attracted to the same gender. As the public begins to understand and accept a separation of sex and gender, many of these sexual labels fail to describe what they are meant to. An AMAB trans non-binary person who is attracted to high-feminine gender traits among gay men... we don’t have language to describe that yet.

Factor in that both Aziraphale and Crowley have a very ambiguous set of gender mannerisms and expressions. Gaiman has stated that they don’t really know what gender is about, but they do their best to emulate it to their own understanding.

Ironically, this may actually be an instance where "homosexual" actually would apply, but even that depends entirely on if "homosexual" is compatible with "asexual". Homoromantic?

But again in terms of gender nonconformity, the gender of one person is not relevant to describe the attraction to another. Out of all the psychological terminologies that have come out of the 1800s that has become archaic, why are we still holding to these terms as if our personhood depends on them? Don’t answer that, I know why; I have tried to make that video like seven times now.

However, instead of engaging in a debate about how we identify cosmic beings trying their best to humanely live their best eternities, Gaiman simply avoids the discussion altogether. Not that he excludes queerness from a reading of these characters, they are certainly not straight, but their place in queerness is not worth categorizing beyond "queer". Not even "LGBT", because they fit none of those categories.

The first season of Good Omen was a show that had a couple, our angel and demon of some renown, at the center of it. Though no confirmation came in season one, anyone with a brain can see it. In season 2, it became a queer show.

In order to deter an investigation from heaven, Crowley and Aziraphale need to stage a love story. Maggie is a lonely record saleswoman who has a strong crush on Nina, the overworked owner of a cafe. Nina however is already in a relationship. We never meet her partner, but through text messages, we have clear indication that not everything's coming up rosey there. Nina’s girlfriend is so intensely jealous it likely crosses into emotional abuse. We aren’t put on any kind of pedestal here. We have the same kind of relationship problems that straight people have.

However, as much as Maggie is love sick and Nina is stressed out over a relationship that turns into a messy breakup, neither of them are defined by their attraction to the other. Their personhood is primary over their queerness. And neither are justified by a romantic attraction. Nina smartly decides that immediately after a break up is not a good time to get emotionally invested with another woman. Which is sound psychological advice coming out of a fantastic queer fiction! Good on you!

This is secondary only to the romance between Aziraphale and Crowley, which is split up in the end because the damned angels suddenly get a hard-on for a promotion.

Gaiman has smaller roles for queerness as well. A sketchy Scotsman openly professes that he uses his phone only for Grindr. And the owner of a magic shop references an anniversary with his partner who he brings to Aziraphale’s street business association meeting. "Partner" being an apt, genderless, descriptor because his partner is visibly androgynous.

In fact throughout the season, characters typically stick to non-gendered descriptions of relations and individuals. Something I imagine most people wouldn’t even notice, unless they have it pointed out to them. And considering neither angels nor demons have gender in the first place, the romance between Beelzebub and Gabriel would be queer, in spite of their actors’ genders. As far as what I have read of Gaiman’s work, this seems to be by far his queerest. And while I'm not complaining, this level of brazen in your face queerness is a little bit out-of-character for him.

Though he does his best to quietly present visible queer identities without making a big fuss about throwing in surprise lesbians. He likes troubled lesbians, and people without genders.

One of the greatest strengths of Gaiman as a writer is his signature quiet nuance in prose. Even when he is conveying important messaging. Or perhaps in regards to queer representation, he may not have realized just how important that was.

Beginning in Sandman, there is of course Desire.

In the fictional world of Sandman, in conjunction to the actual deities of our human history, there exist seven beings who represent universal aspects of human experiences. They are shape-shifters whose physical appearance changes depending upon who is observing them. (Certainly making it easy for artists... and casting directors.)

Functioning as a family of siblings, rather than a proper pantheon, they are called the “Endless”. And endless though they may be, there is an order to their births. Destiny, the eldest, predates the existence of all life and functions as a constant for all things in the universe and all cosmic realms: People, beings, deities, and celestial bodies.

Whereas the other endless, except for perhaps Death, have limitations on their authority. Death is the second, visually inspired by Cinamon Hadley, Death existed the moment the first living thing was born and will vanish when the last living thing closes its eyes. Makes sense, as Death represents the cosmic determinism of all living things. In spite of her simple gothic appearance, her manner is more akin to a death doula or palliative care nurse. And while she is a universal, her only rule is that all things end, but can be flippant about when that happens.

Dream, central figure of the Sandman series, though not always the protagonist, was born next. He represents higher thought processes that living things experience, mostly imagination. Dream’s domain seems to be where reality and imagination intersect: what from the real world is brought into his realm, and how things from his realm can become reality. And how everyone is fucked if everyone isn’t running a tight ship. Gods and other deities are suggested to have derived from Dream’s realm (or not, it's fairly vague, probably deliberately).

The Next is referred to as the prodigal, who has been wandering for sometime and almost nobody knows where he is.

Younger still are the twins, Desire being the secondary antagonist of the Netflix series, the behind-the-scene string-puller of all things shit-disturbing. Desire was and remained non-binary, though back in the day, Desire was referred to as "it" rather than "they/them" in the Netflix series.

In the mythological and literary history of depicting the personification of lust and sex as a contemporarily beautiful woman, this speaks to a masculine centric society where the only individuals for whom Desire matters is men. To make Desire either or any gender would exclude the people for whom that particular expression of physical beauty is not the object of desire. There is also an argument to be made that might suggest that Desire’s pronoun are better as "it," because desire and fetishization are dehumanizing.

But Desire, the character, is also the personification of even non-sexual desire. If you want something, or anything, no matter how badly, this is Desire’s realm.

Desire’s twin is despair, kind of a younger twin (it's complicated). Despair is the personification of exactly what she seems to be, the gateway to her realm is mirrors, and her sigil is a hook. Very fitting visual indicators.

The youngest of the Endless is Delirium, who is born Delight. (Again it’s complicated.) And everyone in the family respects both Desire’s pronoun and Delirium’s name change.

It’s difficult to say how faithful Sandman will remain to its source materials. We only have one season adapted from two story arcs, and a large number of the comics are one-off stories about humans who encountered the Endless. Though the streaming series was exceptionally true to the comics published three decades prior.

And I’m sorry to you Neil, if you are watching this, for my overuse of words and phrases like "years", "decades", "illustrious career", "long ago", "inspiration for new generations" (plural). I don’t really like thinking about how long ago Jurassic Park was released... and I saw it in theaters.

But it is important to recognize the historical context for how these queer ideas were being not only teased, but explored in intense taken for granted ways at a time before the majority of the viewer base of this video had even been born (sorry again, Neil). Whereas today, we have an almost direct adaptation of Sandmand via streaming, and it is decried as "pandering to wokeness", whereas it’s basically just the same as it was in the comics with just a bit more gay.

Though that said, I have a feeling that Gaiman was treating the Netflix adaptation as an opportunity to give Sandman a go over and bring even more of his initial vision to life. There is an expressed comfort with casting black actors for roles that had been white in the comics and with showcasing a deeper expression of the queer experience. "Sorry bro, these teeny tiny sunglasses stay on during sex." And that’s okay! I'm okay with that!

Honestly, not so ambiguous camp men wearing blackout sunglasses to conceal weird eyes seems to be a fixation for Gaiman an... Ocular facsimile in general.

It seems as if all of the base content from the first two arcs of Sandman made it into the first season. Changes made to this content were primarily a matter of streamlining the existing information: pacing was smoothed out or characters were altered or combined to fit into roles that serve the plot better. John Constantine was altered into Joanna Constantine, riffing on the fictual^[sic] 18th century character in later Sandman stories.

Hector and Lyta were repurposed so that Lyta could occupy a larger role and to allow for more connecting tissue between characters. Rose’s mother was the only character cut from the plo,t with Lyta now occupying much of that role instead. Lyta absolutely needed to be here because that dream baby is important!

The nightmares Brute and Glob were replaced by another nightmare entirely, Gault. This is the most significant change as it portends directly towards character development for Dream that was not present in the comics at all. Or at least development that takes much longer in the comics.

It’s worth noting however, that there is simply much more Sandman content in the Netflix series than the corresponding comics. The existing narrative was beefed up to flush[^sic] out a whole season (unlike the Final Fantasy 7 remake). However, the padding here doesn’t seem as apparent, in fact if you’re reading the comics after watching this series you may find that some of the most outstanding moments are missing altogether.

The paddings in this series, outside of the adjustments I mentioned earlier, mesh so well into the Netflix adaptation because they seem to be flushing out^{[sic: fleshing out]} side-plots that simply were never explored in the comics, though strongly indicated. And it may shock you to know that these expanded indicated plots... were about queer people.

Yes, Desire slays, and the Corinthian was always gay leaning, but offhand inferences and innuendos in the comics received a strong followup in the series. Not to say that they weren’t there, but Rose’s foray to a drag club was only really suggested in the comics. Whereas Netflix gave it an entire musical number in drag. (I mean if you're going to cast John Cameron Mitchell why not.)

And not all the praise goes to Gaiman. Alan Heinberg was brought on as a co-writer for the series (you can learn more about him in the power couples video from February of forever ago).

Heinberg himself is an openly gay writer with a strong pedigree in both comics and screenwriting. Gaiman has always expressed an openness to queer depictions, but the Netflix series, likely with the help of Heinberg, expanded them a little... or a lot. Additionally the gender swap of Joanna Constantine which was likely done to sever this from any variant of DC adapted interconnected universes (smart move to avoid them at all costs at this point) also made her a lesbian. A very messy lesbian (my favorite kind of lesbian).

Granted nothing about the story was changed except the magical person’s gender. Yes, there are some human elements that are true to both straight and queer relationships and that truth is "people are assholes".

The diner sequence was also expanded in general, but primarily featuring additional queer people (very messy queer people). Though certainly, even if we're depicted making mistakes, we ought to recognize that these are the kinds of mistakes that straight people also make.

Rose has a gay friend, whose sex is the concept of inhuman masquerade and consumption of identity. In the comics, the Corinthian liked to stick to murdering gay men and while there were a lot of gays to unbury, making the Conrinthian more indiscriminate about his victims (and adding another gay side character who just gets to be a person) was a comfortable correction.

Though as for the Conrinthian in general, we have a serial killing monster who appears as a gay man. Oughtn't that have caused a stir in the queer community? I mean, for all the real life serial killers and mass shooters who are straight white men, our cultural consciousness certainly likes to hold on to the gay ones... and the women.

This seems rife for the kind of content that would trigger our delicate snowflake sensibilities. Especially in a cultural echo chamber for which the choir sing “you just can’t say anything anymore” with increasingly vivacious intensity, pitching a plot where the primary antagonist is a serial killing gay- and/or bisexual-presenting man really ought to have made the woke police put a stop to this, you know!? (I guess that’s the only underfunded police force.)

If this wave of apparent leftwing censorship was as strong as critics decried, then Sandman would have been purged from DC archive. And yet instead, Neil Gaiman is held up by a substantial queer fanbase, many of whom celebrate him for exposing them to certain areas of queerness in the first place. Perhaps you can say anything actually. And turns out that how you say something, and who you are to say it, is more important than what is said.

In the 1990s the Corinthian targeted gays because police were almost certainly never going to involve themselves in a rash of murdered vagrant gay men. It was playing on the reality of the situation in a very real way. However, cultural sensibilities have since shifted.

But still he himself is an instance of a very, very bad piece of queer representation, regardless of how we human people can identify nightmares as queer, which may be Gaiman’s saving nuance here. He is a monster taking the form of a gay man to hunt them. And even though there are a few benign queer characters in Sandman, the deck is stacked with morally gray or messy queer characters, not to mention Desire’s role as the primordial demon twink. (My apologies if twink is an unsuitable descriptor for non-binary people but I... look at them, I couldn’t exist [sic]).

And quite frankly to the anti-woke folks, they are right: if this was your average high budget built by committee TV spectacle series, these plot elements would absolutely get shot down by the producers. On paper, these beats are way too zesty, media that explicitly villainizes queer people is held to be another component of language from the 1990s. Executives aren’t exactly known for nuance so they tend to build blanket rules for dos and don’ts.

And yet the Corinthian and Desire are still here. And people may be thirsty for them regardless. The diner lesbian with a temper is here, all of John Constantine’s male messiness is now Joanna’s sapphic messiness, and still Gaiman maintains his staunch Bowie-esque queer following. So if the woke police did come for Gaiman, what was his get out of jail free card? It’s conceptually simple, though actually quite complicated.

The simple explanation is... you have to care a lot. And care is demonstrated, not something that you can just declare. Politicians say they care about lots of things, but demonstrate very little. When it comes to problematic queer characters, and for those of us who are queer, we know many problematic queer people, this is not explicitly forbidden, but it is kind of taboo.

While Gaiman made a bold start with Sandman, he still had an affectionate portrayal of an indescribably queer romance in Good Omens. Generally speaking, demonstrating positive queer folks in one work will implore your audience to read nuance into the messy queers in another. Regardless of just those two, Gaiman has been incorporating not only queer characters, but even queer adjacent themes into his body of work ever since.

The most infamous (outside of Aziraphale-Crowley anyway) was the notorious deified gay sex scene in American Gods. A burnt out salesman from the Middle East struggles with his time in America while trying to pedal goods for an ungrateful family. While in a taxi he relates to the driver how hard it is to keep up a smile in the land of opportunity. The pair becomes quite close through the ride, the cab driver it turns out is a djinn who immigrated to America. (Well, provided the lore of American Gods, it was the idea of a djinn who made the migration, a different version of the same ifrit still exists in his homeland, it’s complicated.)

Anyway, they smash. Turns out they’re both kind of equally dissatisfied with how things are going. The djinn is nowhere to be found the morning after, but has left his taxi driver’s identification on the nightstand, only now with the salesman’s face for the picture. An opportunity for a new life, away from his oppressive family.

Even though it’s just a disconnected vignette in a story, it’s still a heartfelt standout moment. You may be deceived into thinking this about being gay, but it’s actually about being different and alone in a place with too many people. Especially in our post 9/11 Western cultural stereotype of the Arabian Peninsula, it’s significant to make this the spot for graphic gay sex in this great American novel. (Don’t read anything into it, most of the great American novels are written by Brits.)

It’s important to remember that at a period of time when Europe was tying up women and gay men and throwing them into reasonably sized ponds to see if they floated to surface (thereby indicating their connection to witchcraft for which they would then be removed from the water, thoroughly dried and then burnt at the stake) that Constantinople at the same time was the cultural, progressive hub of the world. Scientifically, culturally, philosophically, artistically. It also possessed a massive swath of Europeans who had fled as refugees from whatever Inquisition, Crusade or ethnic cleansing was going on in Continental Europe at the time.

The reason why I would say that this and other instances of Gaiman’s queer library performs so strongly is that there’s very little sensationalism regarding these characters. That is, he doesn’t really make a fuss about queer characters where we appear. We’re just there. There is nothing about the exchange that says "Oh, look, gay characters!" They’re just characters, and then gay stuff happens sometimes, but mostly they’re just characters who contribute to what he’s trying to say. The same purpose he has for straight characters.

Granted Gaiman also includes alluded queer characters in his books, and generally I’m annoyed by alluded characters. However, when Coraline is told from the perspective of a 9-year-old, the protagonist isn’t really going to read into why the two bickering elderly actresses in the basement flat are living together. Again I’m only opposed to the illusion of queerness if it’s a crutch used to present the illusion to impressionable baby queers that they’re being seen.

As Gaiman has demonstrated a comfort level with queer characters, the decision to imply that these two characters are lesbians is based off of artistic vision rather than an uncertainty about the audience. Like with Yuri on Ice, taking a moment away from the narrative flow to specify that these characters fall under the queer umbrella would interrupt the underlying themes. If there ought to be a definition of forced inclusion, then that would be it.

Coraline is about a child developing the ability to recognize identity in other people. This woman is my mother because of X. This other woman who only looks like my mother is not actually mother. And as it is a children’s book having more themes presented will detract from what young readers are meant to take away from it.

And this is part of the consequences of being part of a community that has been so gaslit into believing that half-assed inclusion can qualify as representation. Any instance of representation needs to feature that rough gay sex scene or just doesn’t count. There needs to be that soapbox moment where the gay characters stand up and make a Love-is-Love speech. There needs to be that gratuitously horny gay character who is either desperate for a long-term relationship or hits on everything incessantly to let the audience know that he is gay.

Do any of you realize how many comments I still get on the Yuri on Ice video to this day aggressively arguing that the anime is bad representation because you don’t see lips touching during the kiss. Then again that video still gets comments from -- usually straight women... no... hating, but still -- who incessantly deny that there’s any queerness coded or otherwise present in that series.

The pressure to exist as openly gay as possible in fiction has a toxic translation to real life. Most gay people don’t think about their gayness and ways to perpetuate it. Especially because these methods of self-promotion, as established in fiction, focus around either having or trying to get a committed boyfriend, or persevering over social pressures and persecution. According to fiction the only two gay milestones that matter are coming out and boyfriend. And I have concerns for this community if we are internalizing these messages.

Doubling back to Good Omens for a minute: how is it possible, in this circumstance, for these characters to fit into clearly defined visible representation. They can’t / don't have sex, their genders are complete anachronistic chaos, and they don’t appear to experience physical pleasure. Kissing is a gesture?

Neil, do angels and demons have a concentration of nerve endings in their lips which result in a pleasant sensation upon physical stimulation. You make up the rules about this, so I’m just wondering.

What would it take for these two to properly depict gay or queer attitudes? I highly doubt a cosmic entity would go on about love being love, especially when their relationship revolves around the world ending or not. Especially when the majority of anti-gay discrimination revolves around persecuting sexual acts.

However, I would prefer we don’t say that this is bad representation because these are two very queer characters involved in a non-sexual romance, and since asexual people do exist, believe it or not, I think that’s pretty valid. And so no, not all representation needs to be about queer acceptance or normalization. Sometimes it’s nice to just see yourself in a quirky character. That isn’t to say that’s all we need to be. Sometimes we really do need messaging directed at us, and messaging that normalizes us. Gaiman also happens to have some of that too though, in Sandman no less.

Granted, this is regarding a trans character, and as per contemporary discussions about appropriate trans representation, there are some pitfalls. I wouldn’t want to try and tell trans people what is or is not good representation for them. Though from what I’ve read, people seem to feel generally positive about this one.

Possible season 2 spoilers ahead.

The "game of you" arc of Sandman follows Barbara, Barbie from season 1, who journeyed with Martin Tenbones to bring the porpentine to the hierogram, and who has since broken up with Ken. She is best friends with Wanda, who is helping her figure out how to navigate New York City. Wanda is trans, and though she never specifies to anyone "I am trans", this becomes apparent throughout dialogue cues.

Wanda is talkative and we get a small glimpse into her trans experience, though she remains externally positive. She trusts Barbara enough to let her deadname slip, though warns Barbara never to use it. An antagonist doesn’t seem to approve of her, though she can ignore him. Though Gaiman is subtle enough to indicate that these bigoted remarks and encounters have an effect on her.

And by "subtle" I mean that she has a dream where Bizarro aliens are forcing her to choose to be a man or a woman, decisions around gender-affirming surgeries are ultimately at the decision of the individual to undertake or not. Her dream indicates that she is struggling internally with the pressure to make a commitment.

Through the progression of this story, Wanda’s womanhood is routinely challenged because she is uncomfortable with the idea of surgery, at least at this point in her life. Wanda does die in the story, and while this may fit into a "buried queer" trope, it’s worth noting that Wanda does not die because of bigotry. She dies when her building collapses in a freak hurricane which may or may not have been caused by witchcraft. It’s also worth noting that Wanda’s death is not there to make the cis characters react, or to make the audience sad. Barbara has already undergone an emotional arc, and her appearance at Wanda’s southern funeral (her only New York friend to appear) is to pay respects. And cross out Wanda’s dead name on her tombstone and write her name over it in flamingo pink lipstick.

However, death has a different function in the Sandman series where Death is a character herself, and one may argue that death functions differently in all of Gaiman’s works. Gaiman in general is very nonchalant about death, even when a character dies to propel the plot. There’s very little sensation derived from it. Sometimes people die. In fact, in The Graveyard Book, most of the characters are dead. Gaiman treats death in fiction as if it is not the end of a character.

And this is very literal in Sandman. In this world, most people who die are taken by death to her realm, s place the panels do not take us. We understand that just like any other character, Wanda woke after her death and was greeted by a compassionate woman to take her away. But Death is comfortable bending the rules just a little bit, very case by case basis. Barbara has a dream and she remembers from this dream seeing Wanda, Wanda (here in death) is fully feminized.

And no this isn’t telling us that death will make everything better; this is visual language to indicate that the cosmic forces of the universe recognize your identity for who you are. It’s the same message of the entire Sandman series. Emotional reality is more significant than physical reality.

Which is a hell of a debate to include in a comic book written by a cis man, like holy shit, can you imagine any of that happening today?! Mark the calendar and count the days until Wanda appears in a trailer for an upcoming season of Sandman and people immediately decry: “everything’s being about trans stuff these days.”

However, I did say that this is a complicated process, and Gaiman especially in the long long ago before Reddit, would have had to have had some real conversations with trans people to really understand how to convey these themes. The best of intentions is not enough. And in spite of good intentions, things can go awry.

A category that contains Thomas Harris in his novel Silence of the Lambs. The trans representation is... lacking. The movie especially because it offers no insight into trans attitudes at all, in spite of depicting the villain... the way they did.

The book actually goes to great length to describe trans women, and in fact, exonerate them. Hannibal Lecter goes so far as to suggest that Jame Gumb cannot be trans because they are violent. Harris describes trans women as people who transition to being women to live as women and for no other reason. But regardless of the fact that Harris does go out of his way to try and say that trans people are okay, what is depicted in the book sends a very harmful message.

I would claim that Thomas Harris is someone who is trying to do a good thing, because the novel contains unambiguous language which declares that trans women are not violent or antisocial without exception. Even if he kind of failed at presenting that, this is what he wrote.

I would contrast that with something like Ace Ventura, which is actively malicious, belittling, and hateful. Forgive the archaic phrasing, but Hannibal says that:

Gumb was described as a disqualified outlier who fetishized womanhood rather than someone who felt that they actually were woman -- if that makes sense.

It doesn’t really. It’s an E for effort situation, really because there is a lot wrong with this. Yes, Harris seems to want to implore his audience to observe trans people with more empathy while presenting a villain who is trans-identifying and without incorporating any other trans characters into the story whatsoever, not even to counterbalance Buffalo Bill. This is all we got. And what pro trans rhetoric there was in the novel was not so present in the film.

In conjunction, Harris incorporates a deeply triggering element of the trans experience in the book, a cis doctor making claims about what does or does not qualify as "womanhood". There is a precedent for built-tough trans women who have to pretend to be deeply invested in pretty flowery dresses to get past their doctors. Contemporary queer theory (and this is even present in Gaiman’s discourse around Wanda) holds that gender is self-defined. The only qualification to be a man, woman, or other is for you to feel that way. Trying to justify your gender to a medical professional has been historically one of the most arduous parts of the trans experience.

Even though I would not recommend DIYing your endocrine system without a medical professional, I feel the onus needs to be put on the medical community to establish more trust. Many physicians are working hard to mend this gap, yes, but there’s still progress to be made, a lot. Harris, however, is a notorious shut-in. It’s clear that he garnished his information from academic sources rather than the living breathing component of a culture. If you’re trying to represent people, then the people you want to represent needs to be where you start. However good intentions alone cannot, and should not, exonerate harm that was brought into the world. So if just caring isn’t enough, how much more complicated does it need to be?

The more complicated reality of good representation is that it’s very difficult cocktail of empathy, as it intersects with the willingness to listen; a compulsion to profess; the ability to reflect on certain people and situations. There lies an ability to isolate what elements of those experiences are endearing to reflect back upon those people, while having an understanding of what is or can be a universal experience and what is or can be fictionalized.

For instance, when it comes to men writing women, there was either not a whole lot of attention given to female characters in the first place, or failed attempts to understand them. Helen of Troy was attributed to having spurred Menelaus and sparked the Trojan War because Paris of Troy was just so darn pretty. That motivation was so weak even 2004’s Troy had to develop an entire subplot about how Menelaus was so toxic that Helen’s only recourse was to leave with the first man who could smuggle her out of Sparta.

Men literally have fictionalized women as accessories to men because historically patriarchal values in society would define that as the role of a woman. It was only in the last century or so that a woman could open a bank account without a man signing for it, be it her father, her brother, husband, or gay best friend. For which he would still have unbridled access to it.

In much of fiction, women spend their time fussing over a man or dramatically falling into his arms without any personal goals or motivations except to be with a particular man. Even perceptively strong female characters like Scarlet O’hara in the end... are solely focused on a man.

That isn’t to say that you can't have men who develop excellent fictional women in history. But at the same time there is no guarantee that women are going to write excellent female characters either. Woman is not a monolithic experience for which every aspect of Womanhood is accessible to every woman. No one woman can embody all the experiences within their gender.

But when you belong to one particular experience, you may have an easier time extrapolating on different manifestations of that experience. I can imagine myself as a different man because those experiences are tangentially related to my experiences. It’s not that it’s more difficult per se for a cis man to write a female character. However, it does require a great deal more research, empathy and observation.

Stephen King is pretty good at this, there’s a reason why his first novel, Carrie, has become a regular in feminist theory classes, and queer theory. Watch my video on Deep Cuts to find out why.

He’s also great at writing female villains like with Misery. But when it usually comes to villains, well that’s rough, especially in America. Audiences tend to lean towards the idea that the protagonist is the character whose values are meant to be emulated. The antagonist, by contrast, is demonized, which typically holds that everything about the antagonist is a problem and ought to be shunned.

Back to Gaiman, how is it that the weird queer kids flock to him in spite of Desire and the Corinthian or other less than flattering queer characters? Especially when he does not have a great deal of openly queer heroes? The key there is that these characters are villains because of their objectives and motivations, but they are not villains because they’re queer. And they are not villains because of their queerness.

And it’s true of most queer villains lately too. We’re beginning to make a comeback as villains because of this not so simple trick, and truly being able to have a character's motivations separated from their identity isn’t a talent every writer has. Though it’s far from the only important talent out there. But for those who can deliver, it generally makes for a better character to have intersectional compartments of their personhood.

The secret to representation at its core is not to represent. If representation is the goal, it’s going to suck. The objective needs to be life. The author is not to look at themselves as a Creator, but a gatekeeper. Their role is to allow identities to be found where they are in real life, to show the hypothetical lives these people may lead, to create an imagined version of this person based on the kinds of people who live like this. And it can’t come from nothing, the best fiction is plagiarism of life.

Even if it’s fantasy (especially if it’s fantasy) because if your protagonists are jousting on griffins, or discovering ancient aliens under the ice caps, the reader needs something human to grab onto. They really can only truly imagine something incredible the more they can imagine a real person doing it.

I highlighted the queer element of American Gods very deliberately. It was a queer reference to a matter of a pansexual deity that is very heavily supported by documented historical reality. Given the current day cultural climate of this world, that reality is selectively forgotten. We are disinclined to portray, or even remember, that because it does not align with our present day perspective of the world. Gaiman’s positive portrayal of queer people begins with this, he forces others to remember what they willfully forget.

It seems to be part of the quintessential queer experience: if others like me had existed then, others like me must exist now. Gaiman works to spell out a fantastical realm of dreams where reality waffles and imagination runs wild. All things are possible because the only rules that exist in this place are the rules you bring to it. We spend one-third of our lives in this world of dreams. Why wouldn’t we want to spend it all there?

Surely we can imagine a world where all the dour, grand challenges of our lives and society become petty grievances that can be ignored. We can be anything, do anything, so much more than the limitations of our own world, where we must share the dream of a sleeping God. Our realities are at odds with others and an absolute truth for one is not an absolute truth for all.

However, there is a pivotal weakness to the dreaming and a pivotal limitation to Dream’s powers, though vast they may seem. Dreams are lonely places. When we sleep we are solitary, save for the odd ghost drifting through. Through our dreams we confront the possibility of what the world could be, the world as we would make it, if we could, the world as we would most fear it to become.Dreams cannot be our reality because dreams are meant to reflect reality, and we can look at them as idle entertainment, or we could think of it like slipping into a different existence in a change room just to see how it looks.

Though the advantage of dreams is that we can make them real... in a fashion. We can take what we like, and work to make it true. We can ward off what we fear, we can explore the fringes of our imagination in a way our waking minds would dismiss as idle fantasy. The extent of the world we want to create doesn’t need to end in dreams, dreams are a mirror that can reflect the future.

For all that we create our dreams without thinking, it’s still possible, though challenging, to create our reality. Though it is easier to create a world we all dream of together. Having a dream is not teasing a reality that could never be; it becomes an obligation to make it come true.