#@neil-gaiman sir

[probabludaistkf]

Sir to find you in my reblogs is an honour

care to do the picrew?

glad that im not popular enough to have an evil shadow version of my blog that exists just to make contradictions on my posts

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

for whom good omens is being written

Hey maggots and the rest of the fandom, it's the Good Omens Mascot here. Today I read a post about this tweet:

The accompanying video genuinely made me cry. And I've been thinking about this for a long while, as far back as February, when I saw a lot of conflicting opinions on what people wanted from the third season. It really is true that no matter what you do, some people will be dissatisfied. But what matters is that Neil is writing this for Terry.

And I was reminded of some paragraphs from the Good Omens TV Companion, which I'd read in Amazon's sample excerpt of the book. I know this is a long post, but I really truly do think you all need to read these, I've done my best to select only the most important parts. Here you go:

'His Alzheimer's started progressing harder and faster than either of us had expected,' says Neil, referring to a period in which Terry recognized that despite everything he could no longer write. 'We had been friends for over thirty years, and during that time he had never asked me for anything. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from him with a special request. It read: “Listen, I know how busy you are. I know you don't have time to do this, but I want you to write the script for Good Omens. You are the only human being on this planet who has the passion, love and understanding for the old girl that I do. You have to do this for me so that I can see it." And I thought, “OK, if you put it like that then I'll do it."

'I had adapted my own work in the past, writing scripts for Death: The High Cost of Living and Sandman, but not a lot else was seen. I'd also written two episodes of Doctor Who, and so I felt like I knew what I was doing. Usually, having written something once I'd rather start something new, but having a very sick co-author saying I had to do this?' Neil spreads his hands as if the answer is clear to see. 'I had to step up to the plate.' A pause, then: 'All this took place in autumn 2014, around the time that the BBC radio adaptation of Good Omens was happening,' he continues, referring to the production scripted and co-directed by Dirk Maggs and starring Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap. ‘Terry had talked me into writing the TV adaptation, and I thought OK, I have a few years. Only I didn't have a few years,' he says. 'Terry was unconscious by December and dead by March.'

He pauses again. 'His passing took all of us by surprise,' Neil remembers. 'About a week later, I started writing, and it was very sad. The moments Terry felt closest to me were the moments I would get stuck during the writing process. In the old days, when we wrote the novel, I would send him what I'd done or phone him up. And he would say, "Aahh, the problem, Grasshopper, is in the way you phrase the question," and I would reply, "Just tell me what to do!" which somehow always started a conversation. 'In writing the script, there were times I'd really want to talk to Terry, and also places where I'd figure something out and do something really clever, and I would want to share it with him. So, instead, I would text Terry's former personal assistant, Rob Wilkins, now his representative on Earth. It was the nearest thing I had.'

(...) As Neil himself recognizes, this is an adaptation built upon the confidence that comes from three decades of writing for page and screen. But for all the wisdom of experience, he found that above all one factor guided him throughout the process. 'Terry isn't here, which leaves me as the guardian of the soul of the story,' he explains. 'It's funny because sometimes I found myself defending Terry's bits harder or more passionately than I would defend my own bits. Take Agnes Nutter,' he says, referring to what has become a key scene in the adaptation in which the seventeenth-century author of the book of prophecies foretelling the coming of the Antichrist is burned at the stake. ‘It was a huge, complicated and incredibly expensive shoot, with bonfires built and primed to explode as well as huge crowds in costume. It had to feel just like an English village in the 1640s, and of course everyone asked if there was a cheap way of doing it. 'One suggestion was that we could tell the story using old-fashioned woodcuts and have the narrator take us through what happened, but I just thought, “No”. Because I had brought aspects of the story like Crowley and the baby swap along to the mix, and Terry created Agnes Nutter. So, if I had cut out Agnes then I wouldn't be doing right by the person who gave me this job. Terry would've rolled over in his grave.'

And, finally, this paragraph:

"Once again, Neil cites the absence of his co-writer as his drive to ensure that Good Omens translated to the screen and remained true to the original vision. 'Terry's last request to me was to make this something he would be proud of. And so that has been my job.'"

I think that's so heartwrenchingly beautiful, and so I wanted you all to read this, too, just in case you (like me) don't have the Good Omens TV Companion. It adds another layer of depth and emotion to this already complex and amazing story that we all know and love.

Share this post, if you can, please, so that more people can read these excerpts :")

Tagging @neil-gaiman, @fuckyeahgoodomens and @orpiknight, even if you've definitely read these before :)

[innefableidiot]

In honour of these two I tried to duckify Sir Terry Pratchett and Mr Neil Gaiman

[captainfantasticalright]

Today is Sir Terry Pratchett's birthday. So, why not celebrate with some of the easter eggs we have in Good Omens that are all about him.

Mind how you go.

[colleendoran]

No, Sir Galahad is not in the Bible, and I never said he was.

OK, so in my series of posts and lectures about my work on Neil Gaiman's Chivalry, I pointed out that Sir Galahad's first appearance in Arthurian fiction was in the Vulgate, and that his name was originally spelled Galaad. Therefore the spelling in Neil Gaiman's Chivalry is correct, and Galahad is a later variant spelling.

Someone recently took me to task for saying this meant that I claimed Sir Galahad was in the Bible, and yet Sir Galahad appears nowhere in the Bible.

I never said Sir Galahad was in the Bible.

I said he was in the Vulgate.

Vulgate means "common version" in Latin.

The confusion here stems from the word "vulgate" which often refers to the 4th century Latin translation of the Bible commonly known as the Vulgate Bible.

But "vulgate" is also a term used to refer to The Lancelot-Grail Cycle, a 13th century French Arthurian cycle which is also known as the Vulgate or Vulgate Cycle -i.e. common version. Later translations of this work are known as Post-Vulgate.

Specifically, Galahad or Galaad appears in the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal.

Happy to help.

Chivalry is available wherever fine books are sold, and you can come see me at the San Diego Comic Con Museum on October 4 where I will be signing and lecturing and showing art. Thanks.

[oldmovieslover]

ok, I need to say it. It's probably not gonna make any difference, but, i'm angry and kinda sick, so, allow me. let me vent. you may disagree, that's your right. it's ok.

for the past months, I was here; I sit here and watch a ton of this fandom trying to find excuses for neil gaiman's behaviour, trying to find ways to keep watching good omens; threatning to end their lifes if it actually got cancelled.

NOW, I went on twitter and someone from the crew apparently posted something hopeful and the fandom raised the hashtag FORTERRY. THAT makes me really pissed. Because from where I'm standing, this is not about sir terry's legacy. For the past months, it never was! From where I'm stading, fans don't give a damn about sir terry's legacy.

It's about the shipping. It's about this relationship you've created with the show and, BELIEVE ME, I FUCKING GET IT! You want for this ship to get as canon as it can be. NO subtext. NO in between the lines. A BIG REUNION SCENE, WITH A KISS AND AN APOLOGIE, OR WHATEVER. You want to see david and michael one last time playing this characters. The alleged final scene on a cottage with a nightingale singing on an apple tree. THIS IS ABOUT YOUR NEED FOR CATHARSIS. It's not #forterry. It's for you! Admit it, don't be hypocritical about this.

Prachett and Gaiman discussed about an ending, but everything in the way Sir Terry aproached his work demonstrates he almost never claimed for a sequel. The ending is wonderful as it is! It was us and our need for more conclusive methods for canonizing a couple as a couple that kept bringing this up. And now those same desires are putting this show above everything else. Above accountabilty and those victims trauma.

If Neil Gaiman agreed to step away, it won't be because he's such a great guy and care for sir terry's wishes of seeing the show come to life or because he wants us to get the promissed ending. It's a PR stunt. A way to keep his ass a little covered. If the scripts are still his, he'll get payed. He'll keep profiting from this.

So, PLEASE, stop. Stop pretending it's about Sir Terry Prachett. It very much is not.

[milfzatannaz]

O SHIT LESBIAN VISIBILITY WEEK??

[bluberryfields]

Had a silly idea of combining Crowley gifs with Zaphod Beeblebrox quotes because they're my two favorite characters and I'm very weird. I think it weirdly works, though

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

a comic I made of the good omens writing process...

This is a reference to something Neil said Terry would call (fax?) and yell at him while they were writing the book, and idk, it stuck in my head for reasons. Since all of you maggots are causing chaos on my cursed post, I was left with free time and I spent it drawing this.

Besides, I like to imagine both of them are creating the story in a way, even now. @neil-gaiman If you see this, Neil, I hope you like it :")

[babygirldilf]

Their first kiss was a desperate cry from Crowley to Azirphale to see him and what he's casting away, to say yes to him instead of everything else, to make him get it, while Azirphale wanted to kiss back, wanted to kiss Crowley for so long, but, not like this. Not this desperate howling cry for something they never truly let themselves have in the first place. Never said in words. Never admitted to themselves or to each other.

They second kiss will be tender. It will be a homecoming. They will crush into each other and melt and it will be joyful and soft and sweet and romantic.

Their first kiss was born out of pure chaos and the desire for things to stay the same.

Their second kiss will be the promise of something new.

Their love won't change, only grow.

[captainfantasticalright]

Another Sir Terry Pratchett interview on the details of writing Good Omens with Neil Gaiman. (More about this process x).

Question about how he goes about collaborating with someone else .

Terry: “You make them do what you want”.

Gary Cornell came up with something very apposite talking about working together, he says : It’s not that (each) of you does 50% of the work, each of you does 90% of the work.

Um. The way we did it then, and I can’t really speak as an expert because it's the only time I’ve ever done it and other people do it in different ways, it wasn’t a case of, the way the Americans tend to do it, um, is one person writes a draft and the other person goes in and noodles with that draft. We did the whole thing from the ground up; each was doing bits. The ad hoc way we had of working, it’s simple: I’ve got a track record writing novels, Neil hadn’t. So I became like the editor, the taskmaster. Because the other thing is the practical problem about two people 120 miles apart doing something, is that, um, it would be different now, but in those days we had no reliable means of electronic communication. We could connect computers together with modems and then spend the whole evening at cross purpose and ringing each other up and saying “I’m getting lots of little faces and shit like that all over..”

Three quarters of an hour and about eight phone calls, you actually managed to transmit about 2000 words you could have actually phoned and sneezed in a morse code.

[w]hen we were doing the first draft of the film script, we were both members of CompuServe so crappy our BT rural lines that the quick efficient way was for me to go into CompuServe and leave the work I’d done in Neil’s mailbox on the computer in Ohio or someplace and later that evening he would dial CompuServe in America and download it from Ohio or wherever it was.

So in order to get the script 120 miles, electronically it was doing about 10000. This is from the global village.

What we would do is I would hold the master copy and sometimes work would have to stop for 24 hours because stuff was in the post, because the nightmare, the absolute nightmare which I knew would happen if we let it, was that somehow we’d end up with two master copies in existence with little, minute changes, and we’d never be able to spot which was which.

So the last thing we wanted was two master copies, and we worked on the phone who did what. I did a bit more than Neil, of that anyway. But, it also felt to me to be an awful lot of the glue that no one wanted to do because it was easy to do set piece scenes and written on a kind of, on the kind of plot somewhere you get A and B to F and X and Y across to C T. And that really is like 3000 words where you have to move people around and then,you know, shove extra bits in; so I ended up probably doing near 75% of the book.

I would probably say because it’s, because had we’ve done it any other way it would’ve been like three months longer to do.

Also part of the process from another interview with Terry Pratchett:

Q: Let's talk a bit about the book you collaborated with Neil Gaiman on: Good Omens. That was before email, so how did it work on a practical basis? What was the most challenging aspect of writing with someone else?

I'm sure what I have to say will echo what Neil has said. When two people work on a book, it isn't a case where each one does 50% of the work. Each one does 100% of the work. There are some bits in Good Omens which I know are mine. There are some bits in Good Omens which I know are Neil's. There are some bits which were Neil's idea which I wrote, and there are some bits which were my idea which Neil wrote. Some bits we no longer know exactly whose ideas they were, or who wrote them. By the time we'd gone through all the drafts, it had been written by some sort of composite entity. We wrote it in the 14th century. We each had one phone line and a 1200 baud modem. We'd work it out: "OK, you send, I'll receive." Sometimes it would take 20 minutes to half an hour before we could send the stuff. It would have been cheaper and easier to have rung each other up and sneezed out the text in Morse Code. I was the Keeper of the Disks. I insisted that there should only be one official version in existence at any time. The moment it split into two, we would be in dead trouble. But Neil would sometimes send me a disk with 2000 words, saying " This is the scene with so and so -- insert it here." It more or less worked. It took us about six weeks to do the first draft. I think it worked because, at the time, we were each making a name for ourselves in our respective fields. It's not that we didn't take it seriously. But we were relaxed. We thought we would earn some holiday money by doing it. The nice thing about collaborating is that there is one other person in the world who is thinking about the exact same thing that you are thinking about. We both have a similar reading background, I suppose. It was quite rare when one of us came up with something that the other guy didn't know about. So we could bounce ideas off one another quite easily.

[colleendoran]

NEIL GAIMAN'S CHIVALRY WINS THE EISNER AWARD

Very happy to announce that NEIL GAIMAN'S CHIVALRY won the Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium at last night's ceremony at San Diego Comic Con. Presenter was Batman producer Michael Uslan.

We're incredibly grateful and pleased, and no one is more surprised than I am.

This book is for all ages, it is gentle, it is a fairy story, it is about an old lady and a knight in shining armor, and the kind of King Arthur who lives in my dreams and not in blockbuster movies, and I am so grateful it has been so well-received.

I waited decades for this.

I cannot thank you all enough.

Neil Gaiman's Chivalry is based on an original short story by Neil Gaiman. Adapted and illustrated by me. Lettering by Todd Klein and me. Published by Dark Horse Comics. Editor Daniel Chabon.

Photo courtesy Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award winner Scott Dunbier.

[the-bi-fangirl-biatch]

@neil-gaiman regarding that last episode

i think i speak for the entirety of the fandom when i say:

[gothiccharmschool]

Something to astonish the Good Omens fans: my first edition hardback, signed by Sir Terry and Neil Gaiman.

[azeutreciathewicked]

[luckkythirt33n]

a ✨clue✨