Wanda died because I was angry, in 1991, to learn about friends being buried misgendered and deadnamed, and I wanted to tell people that was happening and it was wrong. And because her death made the story a tragedy. (She wasn't too pure for this world. Thessaly's meddling killed her.) - ThreadSky

neilhimself.neilgaiman.com • 354 days ago

Wanda died because I was angry, in 1991, to learn about friends being buried misgendered and deadnamed, and I wanted to tell people that was happening and it was wrong. And because her death made the story a tragedy. (She wasn't too pure for this world. Thessaly's meddling killed her.)

Comments

bojanglespaladin.bsky.social•353 days ago

What must it be like to be called to answer decades later for creative decisions informed by responses to entirely different circumstances? To be harshly judged without regard for intent or motive in an utterly different context?
I know it's not new, but do you ever notice how bizarre that is?

shredders.bsky.social•352 days ago

I never really thought of Thessaly as a villain, but i can see that now. She can't control who the moon lets in but she does say "Wanda's a man" earlier when she didn't need to say that.

ghostingdani.bsky.social•352 days ago

Her entire work makes no sense tbh. Only people who can menstruate are women and can take the moon's road--but she's menopausal and Hazel is pregnant. It's TERFism before TERFs, and it's nonsense.

duncanbatey.bsky.social•353 days ago

This happened to my friend Alexis end of last year. I was in disbelief it could still be going on, over 30 years after I read Wanda's story in A Game Of You. Back then it all seemed so distant, but here it was in our faces. And I feel the anger. Make a Will, trans-friends, make a Will.

southernviolet.bsky.social•353 days ago

Also, get your medical wishes down in writing! Some states, like PA, make it easy to do. I got the paperwork at the doctor office, filled it out, and filed a copy with the local hospital. But even if it's complicated, it's worth it to be sure you will get the care you need when you are incapacitated

sophie1lynne.bsky.social•353 days ago

Wanda's parents are so startlingly real. they care more about appearances than their daughter. They make me angry whenever I read that story. I'm transgender and live that hate every day.
Thank you for shining a light.

sevensulivin.bsky.social•353 days ago

A while ago I figured my own read of Game of You being fundamentally about making the best of a bad hand. It’s something that ties the whole human cast together. Wanda might be dead but at the very least in death she is very definitely a woman. It’s too late for me to articulate it well but still.

sevensulivin.bsky.social•353 days ago

If not for my tiredness I could ramble for while on this, but the long and short is that Wanda, in death, received possibly the most absolute affirmation she was a woman. It’s a tragic end, but that’s it, isn’t it? It’s making the best of the hand you’re dealt.

ghostingdani.bsky.social•353 days ago

George said that the gods didn't think she was a woman; her own parents didn't bury her with her real name; but the universe? The universe said her name.

trothplighted.bsky.social•353 days ago

I think there’s a tendency in a lot of circles to insist that no good queer art should include or engage with death - but that leaves no space for either us queer tragedy enjoyers OR cathartic, meaningful art about death. Bigotry exists, wrongful death exists, and we have to cope with it somewhere.

babayaga25.bsky.social•353 days ago

Hard to do in the dead center of the AIDS epidemic, during the 80s/90s.

ghostingdani.bsky.social•353 days ago

I need you to do a bit of work researching what the AIDS genocide was.

trothplighted.bsky.social•353 days ago

1. There’s room for “I can’t deal with any more death and I just need someone to live for once” and “I can’t help wanting to write about and process death and tragedy” even in the darkest and most oppressive times. One doesn’t negate the other.
2. I’m loving all the assumptions that I’m under 25

southernviolet.bsky.social•353 days ago

Absolutely agreed! I NEED to see the darkness and the pain and, at the end, the hope that the universe gets me even when others don't. It's totally okay for someone to not like that story. But it crosses a line when people say those stories shouldn't exist or that someone is wrong for writing them.

feste.bsky.social•353 days ago

See also: AIDS quilt

teawhilewriting.bsky.social•353 days ago

This! While I love queernormative worlds, I also love sad queer stories that expose the injustice that's happening in the real world every day against queer people, lest we forget the pain because it is too hard to bear.

ghostingdani.bsky.social•353 days ago

We are allowed to be sad and to wallow in our sadness. It's how we get to camp.

estrusflask.bsky.social•353 days ago

I don't think no good queer art should end in death. But when it's the queers who always die whenever they show up, that's kind of really fucking annoying. And definitely in the 80s and 90s that was absolutely the truth. If we existed, we died.

ghostingdani.bsky.social•353 days ago

The queers were not the only people who die in Sandman--and in fact that same issue contains Hazel and Foxglove, a lesbian pair who appear multiple times at other points.

estrusflask.bsky.social•353 days ago

And if I were talking solely about Sandman that would be a good point to make, and if I were using 100% literal language, that would be a good point.

I am not talking about Sandman alone and I am not saying that literally every queer character dies.
I'm talking about all of fiction in the 80s/90s.

southernviolet.bsky.social•353 days ago

cmon. Not all dead queer scenes = bury your gays.

estrusflask.bsky.social•353 days ago

Okay, but this is clearly an instance of that. A gay is buried. She is one of the few gays, and her story is about how sad it is to be a gay in this world.
That's a textbook example.

estrusflask.bsky.social•353 days ago

"Bury your gays" is a notable trope for a reason. Because queer people in fiction from a long period of time notably died, often in ways that felt contrived simply because it was mandated that they not live to the end of the movie. It was an actual guideline of the Hays Code.

trothplighted.bsky.social•353 days ago

I mentioned queer tragedy fans originally because I’m one. My first novella (written at thirteen) ends with half of a lesbian couple dying. I’m aware of the Code and of the history; the point I’m making is that even in that context we should be allowed to talk about and value stories about death.

ghostingdani.bsky.social•353 days ago

You're allowed to just...not like things. Other trans people have had the opposite reaction that you did, and you've already acknowledged that you don't care for the arc anyway.

estrusflask.bsky.social•353 days ago

I think that the way she died is part of the issue a lot of trans people have with it. It's not even a direct consequence, it's a down the line chain reaction of causing a hurricane. It just feels random.
But I'll be honest, I don't like Game of You in general, and the whole thing feels that way.

neilhimself.neilgaiman.com•353 days ago

You're absolutely allowed not to like it.

davidgoldfarb.bsky.social•354 days ago

IMO you did a superb job of making it, "Wanda is a person. Sometimes bad things happen to people." and not an example of Bury Your Gays.

doddpool.bsky.social•353 days ago

And Varbie'ss reaction at her funeral/gravesite is powerful.

When I first read it, I thought it was cool there was representation and showing Wanda being an amazing person. Now that I am the parent of a trans teen, I will go to war for people like Wanda and Barbie and make sure family like Wanda's

doddpool.bsky.social•353 days ago

fuck all the way off.

neilhimself.neilgaiman.com•353 days ago

In Sandman you bury your everyone.

theshannlee.bsky.social•353 days ago

My husband hasn't read the comics and hasn't listened to the audio, so he only knows that Wanda dies because I sat sobbing reading the scene with Barbie and Wanda's tombstone. Seeing it all play out on the screen is going to be rough. For us both.

hgchuck.bsky.social•353 days ago

"You got a lifetime."

pyrholidon.bsky.social•353 days ago

Well almost.

avramg.bsky.social•353 days ago

I wonder what'll happen to Hob Gadling if he hasn't gotten tired of life by the time the universe ends.

thepmann.bsky.social•353 days ago

Hang around and look after the place, like a caretaker of an old mansion.

2ndlevelbard.bsky.social•353 days ago

Well, we don't see him when Death is putting the chairs on the tables in Books of Magic, so I assume we arrive there after she tells him that he doesn't have to go home but he can't stay here.

omfproductions.bsky.social•353 days ago

Unless you dont because you go with one of the other death rites... ;)

Still think about Sky Funerals... that was such a great story in Worlds End and setup/callback for the Wake.

Thanks again Neil.

ashenley.bsky.social•353 days ago

Wanda's funeral touched on such an underrepresented yet sooo important struggle of trans people with unsupported families, it was a very good thing to include imo

estrusflask.bsky.social•353 days ago

It would be better to include if Wanda were not the only trans woman we see other than a dead victim of the Connoisseur (and that one is removed from the audiodrama)

ashenley.bsky.social•353 days ago

(Granted I havent read the original, only listened to the audiobook, because im dyslexic. And so greatfull for those incredibly executed audiobooks)

ghostingdani.bsky.social•353 days ago

The Audiobook and the OG are the same, except that you don't see Wanda being iconic (above).

squick.me.uk•353 days ago

As a repressed trans girl aged 11, I'd lay awake at night worrying about how I'd be remembered when I died. The only person who'd ever genuinely seen me was the supply teacher who called me "the girl at the back". Who we are can be given or taken in death.

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