The Sandman creator Neil Gaiman is hitting back at self-purported "fans" who have taken issue with his decision to cast nonbinary and Black actors in Netflix's upcoming series adaptation of his celebrated masterwork.

Last week, Collider reported that Kirby Howell-Baptiste had been cast as Death, who is visually depicted as white in the comics, and that nonbinary performer Mason Alexander Park would play Desire -- a character who is explicitly depicted as nonbinary in Gaiman's original text. In true Twitter fashion, naturally, Sandman "fans" came out of the woodwork to criticize the two castings, and thankfully, Gaiman let them have it.

"I give all the fucks about the work. I spent 30 years successfully battling bad movies of Sandman. I give zero fucks 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," the author tweeted.

Gaiman added that he doubted the unseen show's critics had even read Sandman after an actual fan noted that Desire was always nonbinary. "You'd have to have read the comics to know that. And the shouty people appear to have skipped that step," he wrote.

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Indeed, when Desire is first introduced in The Sandman No. 10, the narration describes the character as "him-, her-, or itself" before adding that "Desire has never been satisfied with just one sex, or just one of anything." Noted sci-fi author John Scalzi recently tweeted that Desire "was really the first time I encountered in fiction the idea of a person being non-binary. It helped me when reality presented me without non-binary people, some of whom I now know and love. I can't imagine reading Sandman and desiring Desire as anything other."

As for Howell-Baptiste's casting as Death, the character is never explicitly written as Caucasian but is merely drawn with pale white skin to evoke the ghostly concept of death. Death even appears as a young Chinese girl in one Sandman story, just as the main character, Dream -- to be played by white actor Tom Sturridge on the show -- appears as a Black man in one of the early comics set in ancient Africa. The idea being that death, dream and desire are timeless concepts that are universal, even if they may appear differently to different people.

Though I've never read The Sandman myself, I eagerly await this Netflix series and find these casting complaints to be utterly ridiculous. It is high time that audiences accept nonbinary actors in all kinds of roles, and the same goes for transgender performers as well. They've put in the same amount of work for far fewer opportunities, and though it took far too long, it's great to see Hollywood finally becoming more inclusive when it comes to casting, and I'm glad that Gaiman stood up to the toxic negativity that permeates Twitter whenever the issue arises. June is Pride Month, and sure, it has been commoditized by brands that make their logos rainbow-colored for a few weeks, but it's nice to see an artist actually take pride in both their creations and their collaborators, and speak up for what is right.

The Sandman is, of course, an adaptation of an epic comic, and though Gaiman is writing and producing the series alongside David S. Goyer and showrunner Allan Heinberg, he must have the creative freedom to take artistic license in transferring the story from one medium to another that couldn't be more different. All the author has asked is for us to "watch the show [and] make up our minds" and that seems fair to me. If Howell-Baptiste doesn't bring Death to life the way you've always imagined in your own head, go to town, I suppose, but let's give Gaiman and his cast the benefit of the doubt until then, shall we? I think Netflix could have something very special on its hands here. Stay tuned.

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