#SIR TERRY

[queer-reader-07]

one of my goals for 2024 is to read more of discworld

so if you’re a discworld fan plz drop your favorites in the notes i’d love recommendations on where to start

[ohmysatan42]

And here it is.

It's been over three years since I read good omens through the local libraries ebook site during lockdown. And then Mort and then going postal and monstrous Regiment and small Gods and then all of them in order from the begining.

This is an author that has changed my life and shaped my being, that has shown me how to become myself and inspired me to do things I once wouldn't of.

I have made lifelong friends performing in theatrical adaptions of his work, by randomly saying pratchett is my favorite author on a zoom meeting and watching someone else grin.

He's taken me through the bad times and the good times.

And I have cried so many times because a man I never met died before I could read a word he wrote. I have felt the loss of such a writer from the world because of the way he showed me the power of words.

And this is it. The Last discworld I will read for the first time.

Thank you, Terry, for everything and every word.

Mind how you go.

[billpottsismygf]

Re-reading Truckers (1989). I wonder if Terry Pratchett ever saw the vine?

[ineffably-good]

This is lovely, and brilliant, and true.

[thefandomentals]

New games set in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series are on the way courtesy of @modiphius , and they're taking input directly from the Discworld fanbase! We've got all the details here:

[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 :)

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Fuck, 9 years today since Terry left us 😢.

[paladin-panoply-of-pax]

“Use your gifts and your talents to greatest possible effect while you can. Spread joy wherever possible. Laugh at jokes. Tell jokes. Make puns and bugger the embuggerances. Read books. Read my books. You might like them. You might find something else you like even more than them. Look for these things in life.

Question authority. Champion good causes. Speak out against injustice. Do not tolerate bullies or bigots or racists or anti-intellectuals or the narrow-minded. Use your education to challenge them. Broaden their perspectives. Make the world you interface with a happier place.

These are your choices. Choices you have been fortunate to have been given, so don’t waste them while you have them. Don’t look back in years to come and wish you had grasped a fleeting opportunity. Grasp it now with both hands, Live. Strive. Love.”

from A Little Advice for Life taken from ‘Terry Pratchett: from birth to death, a writer.’

—Sir Terry Pratchett; April 28, 1948 – March 12, 2015

One of the greatest compliments I've ever received is that I resemble Sam Vimes.

Mind how you go.

[oftenoffler]

NO NO NO NO NOT MY PATIENT NOT MY PATIENT

[solomonara]

[vysogotaofcorvo]

IN A DISTANT and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part . . .

See . . .

"GNU Sir Terry Pratchett" - L-Space Wiki / Ursula K. LeGuin / "Terry Pratchett" - Wikipedia / "GNU" - Urban Dictionary / Going Postal by Terry Pratchett / Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett / Brandon Sanderson / Paul Kidby / The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

[mildlybizarrecorvid]

I like to imagine that Sam Vimes, instead of dying properly, instead got minor godhood. All watchmen at some point thank him for his actions, his actions a ripple across the Disc. There's precedent in the Duchess of Borogravia, and in his arc. He keeps getting promotions, and hates each one. What higher status could he be unwillingly raised to than divinity, eternally watching the watchman?

Anyways, that's just a headcanon i've got

[billpottsismygf]

Guaranteed by C.M.O.T Dibbler

[haltraveler]

I can't remember if I've posted this before but my headcanon for a lot of why Vetinari shifts in his characterization as the Discworld series goes on is that he accidentally made himself the Anthropomorphic Personification of Ankh-Morpork itself. He's painted himself as synonymous with the city for so long that people have actually started to believe it, and that's fundamentally changed him as a result.

He starts out as a greedy, selfish bastard in TCoM because AM is entirely greedy and selfish at the time. There are no characters in that version of the city who actually care about anyone. Criminals go unchecked, the Watch is a corrupt and apathetic wreck, and the University is filled with backstabbing bastards. Then as the series goes on he solidifies into a cynical but selfless man who watches over a flawed city, but one that is improving as people like Carrot, William, and Ridcully start to inject some optimism and genuine moral principles into the mix. He becomes much more energetic and cheerful near the end of the series and I think it's because AM is becoming a more hospitable place with better infrastructure and a lot of good people working to make it better, partly due to Vetinari's own design.

With this in mind, the Havelock that we meet in Night Watch would be the "true" Havelock, uninfluenced by this self-made status as the voice of the city, and his progression through the series becomes a path of returning to that identity by shaping the city to reflect a measure of the idealism he once possessed.

[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.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Today (18.2.2024) it's been 15 years since Sir Terry has been knighed! :)

Fun fact: He made his own sword from a meteorite ore :) <3