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fuckyeahgoodomens · 2 days

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Neil Gaiman, co-author of Good Omens:

My first encounter with Terry Pratchett was The Colour of Magic, as read on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. I was a young journalist and I reached out to his publisher for an interview, and thus became the first journalist to interview Terry Pratchett, in Bertorelli's Italian restaurant, in Gower Street. (We remembered it as a Chinese Restaurant in Goodge Street, demonstrating either the fallibility of memory or our fondness for Chinese food.) We became friends.

I was lucky enough to read Terry's books as he wrote them, to become one of his beta readers, and then to collaborate with him. Terry had a brilliant eye for the places where reality and narrative tradition intersect: he had a science fiction writer's mind, let loose on a fantasy world, and he loved to explain and show how things came to be. The last time we saw each other he told me I had to read a book about feeding Nelson's navy – and I still wonder, had he lived, about the Discworld novel he would have written, about ships, and naval battles and all, and the lessons he would have taught us. Because at his best, Terry was a teacher. The kind who makes you laugh while simultaneously realising that everything you have taken for granted so far is utterly wrong. I miss him.

#good omens #terry pratchett #terry pratchett day #happy birthday terry #gnu terry pratchett #speak his name #terry and neil #btb #fun fact #interview #neil interview #neil about terry

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daily-crowley · 4 months

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Crowley Of The Day: Let’s start the year with me finally posting this scene 🙂 let’s hope this year brings more angst for them, I would like that.

#if there’s one thing you should know about me is that I love angst #I’m team angst baby #Crowley #Aziraphale #Good Omens #David Tennant #Michael Sheen #Good Omens Prime #Neil Gaiman #Terry Pratchett #Ineffable Husbands #Crowley Of The Day #COTD #COTD New Post #New Crowley Of The Day #Daily Crowley Content #Daily Crowley #Good Omens Season 2 #GOS2

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mx-anthony-janthony-crowley · 8 months

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aziraphale's relationship with heaven vs crowley's relationship with hell in S2 serves as this beautiful, heartbreaking metaphor for the choice that so many queer people with unaccepting - and in many cases abusive - families find themselves forced to make. crowley has made the leap. he's cut himself off, and when they've tried to stay in touch or even bring him back, he's always resisted. "we're better than that, you're better than that!". in a way he's been through it before - he was rejected by heaven, and so it makes sense to him to take the opportunity to reject hell on his own terms. it doesn't come without consequence, of course. so many queer people find themselves having to suppress their identities until they're financially independent - cut to crowley living in his car. but he's made the choice, and he's free to do his own thing now. aziraphale, at the start of the season, is also more or less completely separate from heaven; we know from crowley "they don't talk to him anymore", and he's not making any effort to get in touch with them. but then when they ask him to come back, they manipulate him again. the metatron offers him coffee and then tells him "i've ingested things in my time, you know" - a world away from gabriel's "why do you consume... that?". he's assured that the things which he thought made him too... different, too not-good for heaven, are in fact okay. aziraphale was finally living his own life, far away from them, and doing the things he enjoyed, the things that they always shamed him for. but now he thinks, maybe he can go back and this time they'll accept him - it doesn't have to be like it was before! he's changed and maybe they have too, and if they haven't then maybe they'll listen to him! he can show them how to be better, he can make a difference. he isn't yet ready to face the reality that he can never be the person (well, angel) that they want him to be, not without losing sight of what makes him him. he might wish he could bring himself to say no, to cut them off, but he can't do it. because despite it all, he still has hope that they can change. and of course he does - years of trauma have told him time and time again that they're the good guys, after all. so he thinks, if they can't change, then who can? if they can't accept him, who will?

#good omens #meta #i guess??#aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #queer #queer stuff #transgender #the more i think about it the more queer coded stuff i find in GO and it's incredible #crowley's choice is the one i wish i could make but here i am aziraphale-ing my way through #good omens meta #good omens analysis #good omens s2 #neil gaiman #terry pratchett

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indigovigilance · 6 months

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The Final Fifteen is about Terry Pratchett's Death

read on Ao3

The final fifteen is obviously a major plot point, and serves a role in a story that was written long before Terry Pratchett was ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But the scene itself wasn’t written until just a few years ago, during the writing of Season 2. In fact, the scene came about during a park bench conversation between Neil Gaiman and John Finnemore.

Others have noted that the non-romantic kiss that signals the story moving into the third act is a Neil Gaiman staple. The function of such a kiss, from Gaiman’s perspective, is to communicate.

In 2023 we are seeing a lot of stories written by men, for men, about men who are best friends and discover that their friendship can go deeper than the norms of society would usually allow; that platonic and romantic love are not so far apart, and perhaps the better word for a relationship that can be described this way is intimacy.

Neil Gaiman has made it clear in interviews that his friendship with Terry Pratchett was deeply intimate. They began collaborating on what would become Good Omens in the 1980’s, endured a tumultuous experience together through the first publication, wherein Neil offered to martyr himself on behalf of Terry if the book failed, and then spent the better part of two decades touring the world, meeting the people who loved their work. Neil would even off-handedly remark that Terry’s fans were so cheerful, and Neil’s seemed like they were ready to kill themselves; wouldn’t it be nice if they got married? From the outside, it looks very much as if Terry was Aziraphale-coded, and Neil was Crowley-coded, working together in an unexpected partnership to make the world a little bit more tolerable for the humans inhabiting it. I am not conjecturing that Neil and Terry had romantic inclinations the way their fictional characters do, but I think it is fair to say that their opposites-attract intimacy became an important part of who each of them were.

In 2007 Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s. As the disease progressed, he began to lose himself, and knew that the person he used to be was slipping away. He wanted to end his life on his own terms, and die as himself, but England did not and still does not allow for voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. He advocated for the right to die but never achieved it, and ultimately succumbed to the disease in 2015. Neil Gaiman has spoken a lot on the topic of death, and one answer of his that resonated with me reads:

Mostly it feels terrible. It even feels terrible when it’s someone who has been in a lot of pain for a long time or has not really been there for a long time and you know that Death has in some ways been a blessing: suddenly you are mourning the whole person.

It doesn’t get easier as you age. It gets stranger. The point where you realise how many people you used to know and like who aren’t there any longer, and you cannot talk to them or see them or laugh with them is painful in a way that I had never expected. The first time that someone you had a romantic relationship with dies and you realise that there had been moments both of you shared and now you are the sole custodian of those moments and one day you will be gone and they will be lost forever is peculiarly strange and hard.

~~~

The entire show is seeded with references to Terry Pratchett, but the most important one is the one that’s missing. Neil Gaiman cameoed as a sleeping moviegoer in S1E4, but a long time ago, he and Terry had discussed cameoing as sushi restaurant-goers, because sushi was weirdly prominent in the book. That cameo would have been in S1E1. But when it came time to do it, Neil couldn’t. Not without Terry.

Neil: I was gonna say our location is a Chinese restaurant we’d had turned into a sushi restaurant. So Terry and I, Terry Pratchett and I, had a standing… not even a standing joke, just a standing plan, that we were going to have sushi - there was going to be a scene in Good Omens where sushi was eaten and we were gonna be extras, we were gonna sit in the background, eating sushi while it was done. And I was so looking forward to this and, so I wrote this scene with it being sushi, even though Terry was gone, with that in mind and I thought: Oh, I’ll sit and I’ll eat lots of sushi as an extra, this will be my scene as an extra, I’ll just be in the background. And then, on the day, or a couple of days before, I realized that I couldn’t do it.

Douglas: You never told me this before either. I might have pushed you into doing it, had I known. I think you were right not to tell me.

Neil: I was keeping it to me self ‘cause I was always like: Oh, maybe I’ll be… this will be my cameo. And then I couldn’t. I was just so sad, ‘cause Terry wasn’t there. And it was probably the day that I missed Terry the most of all of the filming - it was just this one scene ‘cause it was written for Terry and all of the sushi meals we’d ever had and all of the strange way that sushi ran through Good Omens.

~~~

In the Final Fifteen, it is clear that Crowley and Aziraphale want to stay together. They love each other. They each know that the other loves them. There’s nothing that needs to be said, no convincing that their bond is true and real and precious.

But Aziraphale has to go to Heaven, and Crowley cannot follow him there.

I cannot speculate what it must have been like for Neil to endure losing a friend who, though I’m sure he desperately wanted to still be in his life, he also knew that life had become a burden to him, and grieved that Terry was not able to choose the time and manner of his departure from this Earth. This sort of complex grief, we fan-ficcers know, is the kind that is often best processed through story-telling.

I think that what we see Crowley going through in the Final Fifteen, alongside its importance to the story arc of Good Omens overall, is Neil processing his grief at losing his friend Terry Pratchett, and even the kiss, that violent, terrible, awful kiss, was the symbolic representation of Neil saying goodbye.

#neil gaiman #terry pratchett #aziraphale #crowley #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #ivoc #this meta ended up being only about 2/3 the length of my usual metas and somehow that feels appropriate because Terry's life ended too soon #and the jarring brevity of this piece parallels that feeling of sudden unexpected loss #for me anyways I don't know about you guys #if this made your eyes even slightly moist you are obligated to reblog to help someone else feel their feels #I don’t make the rules #but them is the rules #blessed by Beelzebub

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natnuszsstuff · 9 months

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I'm almost 100% sure Neil Gaiman is allergic to cis hetero people. Can't blame him tbh

#good omens 2 #good omens #go2 #nonbinary #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #We're forgetting about our boy Terry #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #ineffable bureaucracy #gabriel #belzebubs #maggie and nina #All angels and demons are uder nonbinary umbrella and I think it's beautiful #also is it just me #But Nail Gaiman is giving Remus Lupin vibes #is neil gaiman not neil straightman #lgbtq

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raggedy-spaceman · 9 months

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Listen, I love that Neil is here and I don’t want him to ever stop answering even the most silliest of questions because I love when there’s an ask that goes like “hey why are Crowley’s glasses round” and he would answer “because why not” and then in the reblogs you can find an earth shattering, life changing, moving to tears tale of someone who met Neil and/or Terry 10 years ago and they spoke for hours about the significance of round glasses in life and you can do nothing but reblog while weeping like a baby.

#good omens #good omens 2 #the sandman #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #neil gaiman asks #gomens #coraline #american gods #etc etc #The asks can be about any of their works it always happens anyway #and i love it #and i cry #thank you neil #please never leave #mine

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p4nishers · 5 months

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every time i read a discworld book i start twitching and foaming at the mouth bc i remember terry once said "do not underestimate this anger" and like. that anger is the literal driving force of the book. every time. every single sentence is built on a foundation of righteous rage and that has me so feral i feel like i need to put my head through a wall

#i remember reading that article neil wrote abt terrys rage WAAAAYYYY before i even knew who terry was and i still think about it every day #'but beneath jollity there's a foundation of fury. terry pratchett is not one to go gentle into any night good or otherwise'#like jesus dude #gnu terry pratchett #discworld #terry pratchett

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and-his-hands-were-24-crows · 7 months

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So... listen. I'm almost out of my 30s. Really, genuinely almost out of my 30s. I am standing at the threshold of middle age, getting ready to knock on the fucking door. I self-label as queer. I'm masculine-leaning nonbinary of some variety or another. I am, as I generally put it, Extremely Divorced.

(I might have also said "MEGA-Divorced" at one point or another. Probably multiple points. Including last Friday.)

Shows like GO and OFMD feel so resonant and important for me because I'm objectively and unavoidably getting older and I need to see older queer folks developing relationships that are actually deep and good for them, even if they're also messy and imperfect and interrupted. You've got middle-aged men and man-shaped people(?) trying to figure their shit out and be together, and absolutely fucking it up along the way but in a way that's beautiful and genuine and ultimately survivable.

It makes people like me think that maybe we've still got time to get it right, actually. And I have to imagine that there are other people in the "older set" of the fandom(s) who feel like this as well.

#once again getting way too personal on a platform I've been on for about three whole weeks #good omens #our flag means death #terry pratchett #neil gaiman #text post #I have way too many feelings about this actually #be glad that this post managed to not be a 5 paragraph essay #queer rep

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fuckyeahgoodomens · 2 months

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From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously 🥺❤ (you can watch it here in US or with US vpn :) <3) (or just this bit on youtube here :))

Neil Gaiman: I miss him most when I get stuck. You know, I'll just be working on something and I'll go, "Oh, this isn't quite it," and all I want to do is just call Terry, tell him what's going on and have him say, "Ah, grasshopper, the answer is there in the question." And I'd go, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Terry, just tell me."

[Terry Pratchett laughing]

#good omens #gointerviewedit #terry pratchett #neil gaiman #terry and neil #terry interview #interview #neil interview #gnu terry pratchett #neil gaiman dream dangerously #fun fact #btb #dream dangerously #❤#neil about terry #grasshopper the answer is there in the question #ixi says ngk

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belpheg0r-luna · 2 days

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I wonder what shax thinks Crowley's type is if not aziraphale.

#lets think about this #crowley #aziraphale #shax #good omens #good omens season 2 #good omens s2 #david tennant #micheal sheen #terry pratchett #neil gaiman #innefable husbands #innefable idiots #innefable divorce #innefable wives #innefable spouses #aziracrow #belphegor luna

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daily-crowley · 8 months

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Crowley Of The Day: maybe next season he’ll be yelling and making incoherent noises less. You know…. Because he won’t feel much 🙂

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mister-a-z-fell · 7 months

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You might already have seen this videograph elsewhere, but I was rather excited to add this particular book to my collection! One of only twenty-four copies, I feel deeply privileged to be able to share it with you all.

Not only is the story itself very special to me (and worryingly accurate in many respects), it is most gloriously and skilfully bound, and contained in a burr oak box with brass fittings, lined with hand-marbled paper of celestial blue, and illustrated by that marvel of portraiture, Mister Paul Kidby.

Within the box are an assortment of ephemera, some of which are pictured below.

(And yes, I can read the alien ‘penalty notice’.)