The TV adaptation of author Neil Gaiman's The Sandman has been hit with repeated attacks by mostly White, male, cisgender heteronormative trolls for the supposed "wokeness" of the casting.
Gaiman has definitely had enough.
The legendary bestselling author fired back at those angry at the casting of the series and fans are loving it.
Gaiman addressed the uproar at San Diego ComicCon this past weekend, explaining why he's choosing to engage with the trolls instead of ignoring them.
See his comments below.
Many fans have been outraged over Gaiman's choice to cast Black actress Kirby Howell-Baptiste to play the role of Death, non-binary actor Mason Alexander-Park to play Desire and a woman, Gwendoline Christie, to play Lucifer.
Speaking about the furor at ComicCon, Gaiman said it's mostly people who aren't even fans of the series who are kicking up a fuss.
“I know the rule is you’re meant to ignore the trolls and not feed the trolls, but I would look at people sounding off on Sandman who were obviously not Sandman fans."
"What I would watch would be 60,000 Sandman fans going, ‘Of course you’re doing it this way. Of course you have a non-binary Desire, Desire was always non-binary, that’s brilliant casting.’ Or ‘Gwendoline as Lucifer, what amazing casting.’"
"And then you’d get five or six people trying to make a lot of fuss who never read Sandman in the first place. And I mostly decided I was done with it."
"Done with it" seems to mostly be an understatement.
On Twitter, Gaiman has become well known for taking on his trolls with pointed clapbacks.
One of his viral responses from last year reads:
"I give all the fu*ks about the work. I spent 30 years successfully battling bad movies of Sandman."
"I give zero fu*ks about people who don't understand/ haven't read Sandman whining about a non-binary Desire or that Death isn't white enough. Watch the show, make up your minds."
Gaiman's fans are applauding his hits back at the trolls and joined him in criticizing them.
The Sandman premiers on Netflix next week on August 5.
