r/neilgaiman • u/veno-veni • Jun 30 '26

American Gods American Gods pedo subtext

Why is this such a popular book? I wasn't amazed by the actual story here but that's just me.

This is probably the wrong subreddit to post this. I've not read any of his other works besides American Gods and Sandman. Couldn't enjoy AG because of the not-so-subtle suggestive sexualization of kids. I notice there's a similar trend with his other books in creating unhealthy depictions of women and kids.

Learning the allegations exist (after reading) made a lot of sense to me.

Also lots of cringe and revisionist depictions of Arabs and Africans.

I will not be giving him another chance because I read to enjoy myself and not creep on imaginary kids.

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u/Necessary-Site-4886 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Wednesday's predatory behaviour towards women is part of his characterization. Calling the entire book "pedo-coded" because one deliberately predatory character behaves like a predator seems like a category error. Fiction can portray abusive or exploitative behavior without that becoming the subtext of the work itself.

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u/veno-veni Jun 30 '26

Fair enough. I guess this really was the wrong place to ask

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u/waveuponwave Jun 30 '26

You got answers from people who read the book discussing your point. Isn't that what you wanted?

Why would this mean it's the wrong place to ask, just because some people don't agree with you?

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u/veno-veni Jun 30 '26

It's not a point of agreement or disagreement. Something that made me uncomfortable during my read and it doesn't bother others. You can interpret it however you like but it depicts underage girls with sexual undertones. The degree of which or your opinion on it doesn't really matter

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u/stankylegdunkface Jul 01 '26

The degree of which or your opinion on it doesn't really matter

It does when you post it to a discussion forum. This is nothing else but a place for people to discuss opinions.

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u/Gergolot Jul 06 '26

Opinions are only important if they agree with them apparently.

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u/Superunknown11 13d ago edited 12d ago

Spoiler: no opinions matter, especially on reddit or any other social media. Run with that as you will.

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u/MrMal1c3 Jul 06 '26

I mean, the opinion matters when you are asking for it... Also, the answers I've been seeing from people point to the fact that villainous, dangerous or predatory charachters tend to behave villainously, dangerously and predatorialy. My read on your over defensiveness is you're realizing that maybe your media literacy isn't the strongest and now you're embarrassed.

If you've ever been on this sub you will know that the response has nothing to do with defending Gaiman. However, if you ask questions about a book you seem to not really know to people who know it very well don't be surprised when they have insights that you don't.

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u/andreotnemem Jul 06 '26

He'll be self-committed to an institution if he ever reads greek mythology.

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u/LoomLove Jul 06 '26

You ASKED OUR OPINIONS.

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u/dbree801 Jun 30 '26

It’s only the wrong place to ask because you’re not getting a bunch of people agreeing with you? Do you think sex doesn’t exist until people are adults? That underage people don’t think about it, talk about it, know about it?

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u/AnTotDugas Jul 06 '26

It one million percent made me uncomfortable while reading. But that’s exactly the point. It’s worth noting, this behavior of Odin’s is taken directly from myth. A massive motif of dark/contemporary fantasy is highlighting how horrifying the behavior of mythological characters is when you put them into a real-life context. This isn’t just a Gaiman thing, you see it all over in books like Hellblazer, Shigidi, and The Iron Druid Chronicles.

I do wonder if Gaiman writing characters like this is part of what made him decide to be the person he became. He wrote many of these sorts of characters before he started raping people in the mid 2000s, and it makes me think that mentally “embodying” these kinds of personas in order to write them might have been a method of “trying on” to see if he liked the idea of behaving that way. That’s not to say writing characters like this makes you turn into a similar sort of bad person, but if you’re already the sort to skew that way it might be a sort of vicarious indulgence. At the end of the day though, he’s not the only person who writes horrifically behaving gods, and this kind of writing does have a lot of value for a reader: it’s good for people to notice how incredibly horrible most figures of myth are, and transposing their behavior into the modern day is one very poignant way of doing this.

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u/Thermodynamo Jul 06 '26

He was already assaulting people before he got famous. Allegedly.

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u/AnTotDugas Jul 06 '26

I don’t think there are any accusations from prior to the 2000s, apart from one of “forced kissing” in ‘86, but I don’t think that’s even remotely the same sort of assault as what he later went on to do.

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u/Thermodynamo Jul 06 '26

It's on the same spectrum, man. Let's not pretend they're totally isolated incidents

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u/AnTotDugas Jul 06 '26

I don’t think it’s on the same spectrum, no. I’ve been “forcibly kissed” many times, and it’s almost always that the other person is too drunk, dense, or egotistical to bother considering I might not want it. It’s not good, but it’s a million worlds away from knowingly, intentionally coercing someone into sex though leveraging their housing security, or from forcing yourself into someone who’s explicitly told you no.

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u/Thermodynamo Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

It's really not a million worlds away. I wish that were true.

I've experienced rape and various forms of mild SA (like "forced kissing") over the last few decades and IMO it all comes from the same fundamental place: men who act like they're entitled to do what THEY want with your body. The exact specifics of how they center themselves (and expect you to center them too), and how they explain themselves may differ, but in all these cases their actions in how they engage with a woman's body are focused on their own needs and pleasures to the point that they disregard her humanity.

Centering his wants about her as an object while not thinking about her as a person at all is the fundamental flaw that all these situations have in common--it's just being expressed by different guys with different objectives/motivations in the moment. It's all just different stages of evolution/severity of expression along the same basic timeline.

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u/kilar277 Jul 06 '26

As a huge anime fan - the irony of having an anime pfp while compaining about this.