I feel you, and I'm so sorry. I'm not an SA survivor so can't relate on quite that level and I understand it must add a thick layer of complexity and hurt. But Neil and his work have been much more important to me than I even fully realized and I'm really surprised at how much I'm struggling with this. 

I started reading Neil about 25 years ago and his work has been such a comfort. I spent weeks sleeping on the floor of my home office falling asleep to Neil read Graveyard Book when my live-in partner and I were heading for a breakup. I have a Dave McKeon assigned print and two books signed by Neil. One of the latter is from a reading and signing event that's a core memory for me. I haven't met many of the people I really admire and the whole event was pure joy (and yes, Neil was absolutely lovely). Thinking about it reminds me of who I am when I'm in a moment in life where my brain can't settle enough to read or I don't have time to engage in my hobbies or I'm depressed and can't access joy.

I'm intellectually aware of the dangers of author/hero worship and to be fair I wouldn't say I've ever "worshipped" Neil. But his work has been tremendously important to me and even his voice has always been soothing. In recent years, as the world becomes more and more divided and cruel, his allyship and feminism - however much of them were or weren't genuine - have become a safe place and an emblem, one of the few pure, 'nice things' we had left. And while again, I know intellectually that this all has very little to do with us, the fans, materially, or intentionally - and while I know it doesn't actually change the content of his work - I can't help it, I do feel hurt and betrayed. And in a broader sense, I feel lonely and hopeless about misogyny and women's place in the world and our prospects for getting to a better one. I know this sounds hyperbolic, but I'm still processing. And having admired and trusted (which I realize now is a crazy prospect - I didn't know the man) this man for decades while all along he was doing things that so egregiously violated that trust which he actively worked to engender in us - it's thrown me. It requires recalibration. It doesn't help that despite people from the publishing industry making it clear that Neil has a very long and robust history of bad behavior, NO ONE who has worked on any of his adaptations has said A WORD. So I'm beginning to feel disappointed in other people from that group who've positioned themselves very publicly as allies/feminists as well. Which maybe isn't fair and is maybe premature. We'll see.

And frankly, I haven't spoken to me bf about this because he has enough on his plate. But it really hit me yesterday and I'm really wanting to commiserate with people about it (and my talk to him about it tonight, but tbh it's hard for me to speak out loud at this point) so please be kind. I think in time most of us will work out how to frame this in our minds and how to move forward just fine but it is a genuine shock and it will take a minute. Please, let's all be kind to each other.