You Have a Neil Gaiman Tattoo. Now What? – Rolling Stone

By

Miles Klee

Whispers about English author Neil Gaiman‘s behavior with women have circulated in the publishing world for some time, but a bombshell article published in New York magazine this week laid out a horrifying series of allegations that left readers sickened and stunned. Multiple women interviewed for the piece accused him of rape, assault, sexual abuse, and degradation, and a woman who worked as a nanny for Gaiman and his ex-wife, the musician Amanda Palmer, claimed he pressured her into sexual acts, sometimes even in the presence of his young son.
Gaiman, who was also the subject of a 2024 podcast that delved into such accounts of sexual abuse, has denied the allegations, writing in a statement, “I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.” He added that some of the incidents described in the piece were “distorted,” while others, he said, had simply never happened. But for millions of fans, it will be impossible to see Gaiman as they once did, and this is perhaps hardest for the people who expressed their admiration in the indelible form of a tattoo.

As one reader with a tattoo inspired by Gaiman’s dark fantasy novella Coraline put it on X, formerly Twitter: “The continuous neil gaiman news is devastating to me and genuinely makes me want to cut my skin off. i got this tattoo months and months before his allegations and as a lesbian sexual assault victim having something he created on me makes me ill. why are people so evil???” The post includes a photo of the large ink work, which covers their entire forearm. In a 2023 post on the platform, another fan, showing off an arm tat of a character from Gaiman’s comic The Sandman, wrote, “First thing I did when I got it was text my friend ‘Neil Gaiman better not ever turn out to be a creep,’ lol” — as if to predict the very fallout the writer’s most devoted readers are now facing.
A tattoo artist, meanwhile, wrote on X, “I personally never got into Gaiman’s work, but I have tattooed a LOT of things based on it for clients. It feels like a good reminder that ANY fandom tattoo you get runs the risk of being spoiled by the creators doing heinous things, even if you think ‘it could never be them.’” (Indeed, the allegations against Gaiman have been devastating for his community in part because of the perceived feminist themes of his books.)

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“Tattooing has always kind of had a bit of a fandom element,” says Thomas O’Mahony, the London-based co-host of the podcast Beneath the Skin, which explores history through the art of tattoos, along with Dr. Matt Lodder, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex who specializes in the field. O’Mahony mentions how 17th-century pilgrims would get tattoos of “the Coptic cross in Jerusalem, as a proof of pilgrimage, and what is the biggest fandom if not the fandom of Jesus?” Pop culture has always been well-represented in the tattoo medium. In the 1920s, O’Mahony says, artists were “taking designs from Disney cartoons, stuff like Steamboat Willie, very early cartoons. Tattooing, a lot of it is directed by what consumers want.”
But Gaiman is one of those figures who seems to particularly lend himself to tattoo culture, O’Mahony says. “I think there’s a level of parasociality that has been engendered through his work,” he says. “Like, if you look at traditional authors, no one’s really getting a tattoo of Stephen King. They might be getting a tattoo of the works that he’s created, but there’s a primacy of the author in Gaiman’s works — he’s so present in them.” O’Mahony feels Gaiman, as a bestselling and highly recognizable author, might be more comparable to a rock star (and musicians have certainly inspired many regrettable tattoos in their own right). A more literary precedent for the Gaiman situation might be J.K. Rowling, whose ceaseless transphobia in recent years has led countless fans to remove or cover up their once meaningful Harry Potter tattoos.
“There’s a deep sense of betrayal,” says O’Mahony, when a public figure’s actions seem to demolish the values we associate with them. “The feeling of waking up, seeing this [article], and then having to look down at a body part that is marked permanently — a reminder of that betrayal — is both deeply upsetting and deeply unsettling. I can see a lot of people getting this stuff covered up or removed through laser removal process.” He notes that many turn to tattooing as “a form of self-actualization, marking a recovery from trauma, or overcoming difficult parts of their life.” Which means that some who have Gaiman-inspired tattoos will find that the the harrowing details of New York piece directly and painfully contradict their reasons for getting inked in the first place.

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Even so, O’Mahony says, and despite the supposed atmosphere of “cancel culture,” such cover-ups aren’t a huge part of the tattoo business. They can be extremely difficult from a technical standpoint, and it’s more common that individuals are trying to modify an passé or badly done piece. Tattoo regret in general is “overplayed,” he believes, but he acknowledges the “age-old saying” among tattooists about a familiar curse: “As soon as you tattoo someone’s name on someone else, they’re inevitably going to break up,” O’Mahony explains. “So the best follow-up business to tattooing someone’s name is to cover it up.” Alas, a few unwanted letters are easier to deal with than a larger or elaborate illustration, particularly if it was done in dark ink.

In some cases, fans will just have to tell themselves a different story about the art on their bodies. “No joke I have a pretty large tattoo from a page of Sandman and before I made sure I wanted it I went ‘well Gaiman will probably be fine…… but just in case I’m picking something that is not clearly a Gaiman thing,’” wrote one disappointed person on X, adding, “so maybe I’ll just pretend like I made it up lol.” Another reader who had gotten a tattoo of a crow based on a Gaiman tale joked that “the backup plan is that I’m a really big fan of edgar allan poe.” Previously, after the 2024 podcast covered some of the allegations against Gaiman, a number of redditors discussed the tattoo problem, with a few deciding that the Gaiman lines they had selected to inscribe on their skin were personally important enough that it didn’t matter who had written them.

None of this will stop tattoo enthusiasts from continuing to request designs explicitly tied to fallible artists and celebrities, O’Mahony says. “You look at a lot of public figures that are adored from like the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, a vast majority of them have done objectionable things,” he points out. “People aren’t [necessarily] attached to the person. They’re attached to the idea the person represents.” Perhaps you could say that even while Gaiman is seeing his TV and movie adaptation deals canceled, and bookstores are weighing the idea of pulling his titles off the shelves, the fans most passionate about his fantasy worlds can’t erase him from existence in quite the same way. After all, he changed their lives — and the proof is right there for anyone to see.
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Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/neil-gaiman-fans-regret-tattoo-1235236863/