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I'm surprised no one's mentioned the very recent allegations against fantasy book YouTuber Daniel Greene, who ironically covered the Neil Gaiman story on his channel. It's a great case study, in my opinion.
Unlike Gaiman, Daniel had a wholesome, "shucks," good-boy image. Ostensibly, he cares hugely about his appearance but gives himself the title “disheveled goblin host” in his videos.
More on the man himself:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6BhPv-NDcPI
He claims to be a strong #ally, but definitely more in the Disney-safe way. He was never aggressive or went on a moral crusade, just signaled frequently that he's aware of the shibboleths and in touch with the Gen Z LGBTQ zeitgeist. He makes the right noises in response to controversies but never starts one himself. His whole brand is non-toxic but woke enough that the online fantasy fandom won't tear into him, which is a high bar.
He came out as bisexual while engaged to his fiancée, now wife (more on that later).
In a review, he would say: “The protagonist is an interracial trans man. That's really neat. We need more perspectives from non-cis voices.”
But never: “This book was too white and male.”
And I think he actually believes what he says! I think he's sincerely trying to avoid the disapproval of his peer group because he thinks they're right.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ASgwqjjmkOQ
It turns out he cheated on his fiancée with an affair in a cringe way. He allegedly also sexually assaulted the affair partner, also in a pathetic way (SA is always pathetic, of course).
I have so much to say about that woman who made the video in the link. Judge her exactly by what you think she is purely based on her other recent video thumbnails and titles (cluster B attention seeker, man-eater).
Daniel Greene has denied the sexual assault but not the affair and will respond in depth soon.
I have so much more to say.
Ultimately, what I'm trying to get at is this: Since mental health issues are accepted in communities like these, both the victims and the perpetrators are not stigmatized. A sane community would be extremely wary of a woman like Naomi and a man like Daniel.
It would recognize the vulnerability of the BPD girl and the danger a smooth-talking, insecure, and unmanly boy poses to her and she to him.
Instead, she's bravely rediscovering herself every week, and he's battling his depression and mental health struggles.
And this is how i think it went down and how sexual assault in cases like these go down 90% of the time.
He talks and begs her into unenjoyable/painful sex she's unsure if she wants, with false promises which she will regret later. The rest is history.
I still think, despite verbal consent, and even if they had sex before and sex after and still hung out for a few days, that this is rape and the woman is not at fault. But I have a feeling people here will disagree.
I’ve been following this situation closely because while I wasn’t a fan of his, he was a big source of my reading recommendations since the pandemic and I hope to be a published writer myself someday. Is there any interest in a breakdown of the situation? On the one hand I’m one of a handful of people on the internet who is actually seeing the big picture here (mainly because every major platform including his discord is banning anything mildly skeptical of the girl who accused him) and it does have some culture war implications, on the other hand it’s very niche drama from a particular subculture.
EDIT: Message heard, breakdown coming tomorrow morning
EDIT2: Naomi posted a second video where she contradicts herself and adds new context to the first (all of which actually makes her look worse) so I'll need more time for this writeup.
I would like a breakdown too. Like you, I followed him briefly for book recommendations, but stopped due to the constant LGBT stuff.
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I would also like a breakdown. I followed him back in covid before I started to divest myself from the whole youtube ecosystem.
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Do it. We both remain those handful of people. This is a first hand, reading between the lines, account from me. I did find some small skeptiscism towards noami in the reddit post of his response video. I wanted to do a proper breakdown but I had to go to bed. My post is already 50% tired brain garbage.
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Absolutely do a breakdown! Very niche drama from a particular subculture is the best kind.
Did you mean to write that you weren't a fan of his and I'm just parsing it poorly or did you succumb to fat finger syndrome like a lot of people today (I know I have, but I also noticed the insulting tax breaks and some other minor flubs)
I've been watching Fantasy News weekly for a while, he does have an annoying political skew (the one time he made a video on a non-fantasy book recently was to praise gay erotica writer Chuck Tingle, and supported the needless race-swapping of The Wheel of Time show) but it was the best summary of the state of the genre and publishing ecosystem on YouTube. Admittedly, he's also responsible for me and many other Zoomers reading the Wheel of Time, which is one of my biggest inspirations as a writer.
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I’d like a breakdown. The only thing I’d seen is his 1 minute prepared statement on his YouTube channel.
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Holy crap thank you. I'd never heard of any of these people, but it's the perfect example of what I was trying to say about the intersecting communities of pop-feminism and weird fetish shit that hides under X layers of irony, where X= ("ick factor"^"peer pressure"/"how jealous all my friends would be")
/images/17394973257445385.webp
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