For a few years now I've been increasingly suspicious of the way Neil Gaiman seems to be attempting to position himself as the inheritor of Terry Pratchett's legacy, so I wanted to write a little about that & why speculation about whether PTerry knew he was a creep kind of misses the point (small 🧵) - ThreadSky

niamhvh-l.bsky.social • 82 days ago

For a few years now I've been increasingly suspicious of the way Neil Gaiman seems to be attempting to position himself as the inheritor of Terry Pratchett's legacy, so I wanted to write a little about that & why speculation about whether PTerry knew he was a creep kind of misses the point (small 🧵)

Comments

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

Something that really bugged me about this -- Pratchett had LOTS of collaborators, from the beginning of his career. He said Kirby and Kidby were basically collaborators. He had a collaborator for DECADES who is his legal executor and who wrote his biography.

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

I've always thought Gaiman began really embroidering and hyping up how close he and Pratchett were when the TV show started, and he and everyone else said it would be one season, just the book. Then surprise! It's a giant hit and suddenly we hear how they spent all night once planning a sequel.

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

But then wait, there has to be a second season, to get them from where they were at the end of the first season to the start of the supposed planned sequel? It felt really dodgy. Even before taking into account how Pratchett felt about his unfinished work.

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

Urgh, yes. You're so right

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

I just remember looking at Pratchett's actual list of collaborations and thinking, wow, that was not that unusual for him to do. And Rob is right there!

mockwooloo.bsky.social•82 days ago

Certainly the impression I'd always got when Pratchett was alive was that any work on a Good Omens sequel was pretty much exclusively limited to coming up with the "668 - The Neighbour of the Beast" title and nothing else at all.

windrake.bsky.social•81 days ago

That would have been satire, like the original story. What Gaiman wrote was his own style of drama set in a dark world.

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

Me, too!

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

"The Neighbour of the Beast" why did he have to die, this is so funny

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

I keep finding his wordplay. After YEARS AND YEARS of rereading Witches Abroad I got this one out of the blue

'I used to come over here quite often to look at her books,' Magrat confessed. 'And . . . and she liked to cook foreign food

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

and no-one else round here would eat it, so I'd come up to keep her company.'

'Ah-ha! Curryin' favour!' snapped Granny.

rachellazerus.bsky.social•80 days ago

That is what NG had said repeatedly, up until he got the TV adaptation, and then it was "deathbed letter!"

I've personally believed that NG made up the letter after the show was optioned for years now, but I never wanted to burst the bubble of friends who enjoyed it with no evidence beyond that.

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

I read his biography when it first came out - not sure where my copy is right now but I seem to remember being struck by how few mentions of Gaiman there were. Think that really made me start to actively look twice at the ways he was positioning himself rather than just feeling vaguely unconvinced

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

Yes! And I was also surprised at how closely he and Rob collaborated. It's "robandterry," literally, on socmed.

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

It is isn't it. Oh man. I thought Rob did a great job with the biography, didn't centre himself too much while still managing to get across his experiences and memories of Pratchett, one of the best biogs I've read in ages

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

I also loved how he didn't soft pedal stuff like Pratchett's temper, but there was also obviously so much love and care. Really just so well done.

theredshoes.bsky.social•82 days ago

It was really really good (I cried).

tarasque.bsky.social•80 days ago

Following you both because od this lovely window of Pratchett adoration and lore, tha k you so much for it

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•80 days ago

This has gone baby-viral so uh, I also write (poetry, creative non-fic, and sometimes some fiction) - read my latest? Perhaps? (the grind is ceaseless I'm so sorry, self-promo feels like arse ) https://bsky.app/profile/niamhvh-l.bsky.social/post/3lfvu77m3i22w

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

Since PTerry died, Gaiman has become increasingly vocal about how close he and Pratchett were, even though they didn't often seem to have very much to do with each other after writing and promoting Good Omens in the 90s. There's even a few clips from old con panels from the 2000s 2/?

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

where PTerry implies he doesn't really talk to Gaiman anymore
- it's interesting that Gaiman got more vocal about how close they were after Terry's death, and has always struck me as a little odd. 3/?

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

Gaiman's also said that finishing Good Omens was Terry's dying request of him, even though PTerry made sure his harddrives would get steamrolled (literally) after his death so no one could continue or finish his stuff. He's published parts of a letter PTerry apparently sent him in 2014 4/?

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

Oh, and this screenshot is from this 2019 article from the Independant. Sorry, just realised I forgot to cite and add alt-text, here's the link - Gaiman's claim is about half way through
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/good-omens-neil-gaiman-terry-pratchett-dying-wish-amazon-prime-american-gods-a8910151.html

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

but as far as I can tell has never made the actual letter public, so we have no way of knowing how reliable this information is. A deathbed request like that from someone who was so adamant about his wish that his work not be continued/finished after his death seems a bit strange to me. 5/?

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

I'm also generally suspicious of the way Gaiman often seems to imply that the GO writing process was a 50/50 collab, while Pratchett is on record saying he ended up doing more like 70% of the actual writing because there were many essential linking bits that Gaiman didn't want to do - 6/?

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

This is supported by algorhythmic style analyses of the book, but honestly if you've read all of Discworld and enough of Gaiman's stuff you can probably reach that conclusion yourself 7/?

loth-catgirl.bsky.social•80 days ago

ah so GO is still 70% readable, good to know

rachellazerus.bsky.social•80 days ago

I've thought this for years about the letter. At the very least, why would PTerry's wishes have wanted a continuation of GO to be told on a TV show, especially since close-to-the-book adaptations weren't in style by the time of his death and he was known to be sick of Hollywood treatments?

ktheexplorer.bsky.social•81 days ago

also didn't Pratchett die of alzheimer's? so any deathbed requests would be extra suspicious

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•81 days ago

From memory (pun not intended) he had posterior cortical atrophy, which is a rarer type of Alzheimers that goes after the bits of the brain responsible for things like vision and motor-skills first, but does impact memory/personality etc. like more typical dementia as it progresses

vaguebiscuit.bsky.social•81 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/robertgalbraith.bsky.social/post/3lfv37uzrhs2z

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•81 days ago

Yes I spotted this last night. Raises more than a few questions for sure...

tessfowler.bsky.social•82 days ago

This has bothered me for so long. I swore I'd always heard he didn't want his work touched so I was surprised when Neil was behaving like he was TP's voice beyond the grave. Thank you for posting this.

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•82 days ago

His work basically saved my life as a teen (not to mention was a huge part of why I wanted to write my own stuff), and I've just found myself getting increasingly uneasy about the way Gaiman's been behaving around it, particularly in the last few years. Glad I'm not the only one feeling this way 💌

greebos-eyepatch.bsky.social•81 days ago

That really doesn't read like Pratchett's writing to me, and I've been saying similar for ages. I agree, I think NG has been massively overexaggerating any connection they had for years.

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•81 days ago

Have a read of this blog post of Gaiman's from 2004 - the voice seems... similar (allegedly). Also note he implies much less connection than when talking about his relationship with Pratchett more recently, feels like an excuse to remind us he wrote a book with him https://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/Terry_Pratchett:_An_Appreciation

greebos-eyepatch.bsky.social•81 days ago

Yeah, same vibe. Ugh.

polyparadigm.bsky.social•71 days ago

That’s the reason that Gaiman gave for destroying the hard drive

I don’t trust him anymore, though

divinejasper.bsky.social•81 days ago

Thank you for this thread. PTerry's work has been close to my heart since I first picked it up, and this whole Gaiman mess has been really distressing BECAUSE of Sir Terry 😭

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•80 days ago

Same here - it's been such a blow honestly even though I was never super keen on Gaiman's stuff

nairnmcnuel.bsky.social•81 days ago

📌

ab-ron.bsky.social•74 days ago

Your analysis into their public history provides helpful context and consideration for interpreting a lot of Gaiman's behavior. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
📌

margaretadelle.bsky.social•81 days ago

Gaiman Evan Hansoning Pratchett makes a lot of sense, tbh.

spunquee.bsky.social•41 days ago

underrated comment

martin-english.com•80 days ago

📌

hesster56.bsky.social•81 days ago

Thank you for this.

niamhvh-l.bsky.social•81 days ago

Not a problem 🙏 Love Pratchett's work so always fun to do some research. I'm planning on converting it + the thread I've done on rolling stylometry analyses of the authorship of Good Omens in to an essay/substack post, so it's in a more tidy/coherant & shareable form, at some point in the next week

bellinghwoman.bsky.social•81 days ago

📌

pyjamawacket.bsky.social•77 days ago

Hi, I wanted to congratulate you for your wonderful work. When Gaiman announced GO S2, I thought it was very strange, and I even wondered if it was a strategy of him and the two main actors to make more money. His thing is obvious. I don't know about the actors, it's just a theory.

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