If you’re going to make good art, it’s likely that you’re going to go to the place where things are dark, and use that to shine light into your life and, if you’re doing it right, into other people’s lives as well.
I'm watching "Once Upon a Time" on #Lucifer. Your Voice is on the Screen.Will We Ever Have Your Voice or Appearance on the show?
I’ve told the Lucifer team that
a) I’m very willing and happy to repeat the role
but that
b) if they either need to cast a real actor who can act, or
c) they want me to repeat it but I’m not actually available then I will not be in the slightest degree hurt or offended if they recast the role, and they should do whatever’s best for the show.
Hello, Mr. Gaiman. My mother and I have been rereading Good Omens in preparation for the release of the miniseries on May 31, and she and I have a question about Dog. What breed is he supposed to be? He sounds a lot like a dachshund to us (one ear that always going backwards, looks like he could burrow into rabbit holes, angry small-dog temperament, etc), but in the pictures I have seen from the series, he looks to be a different breed entirely. What was he meant to be when the book was written?
He’s supposed, in the book, to be a mongrel. That’s what Adam wants him to be. Even, as Adam explains, a pedigree mongrel.
Alright: I have a novel about how most heterosexual relationships are fairly awful and how toxic masculinity is the root cause of this. How would you go about selling this book? I have tried several publishers, and I'm wondering if an agent is the way to go. Basically I don't know how to tell a publisher they should market a book that alienates straight white males, but I don't know if an agent can get my idea across without compromising my vision. Any insight would be help.
As a general rule, few publishers will respond to a novel that has a thesis, unless they also respond to the story and the characters. Which is not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t have themes or messages in your book, but that’s normally not what a person buying it in order to resell it (which is what a publisher is) wants to buy it for.
What a book is about can go more than one way. Coraline is about bravery, and it’s about the way that people who have your best interests at heart do not always give you the attention you need while people who don’t have your bets interests at heart can sometimes give you all the attention you desire… but that’s not how I’d describe it to a publisher, or a potential reader. To them I’d talk about the plot: Coraline is about a small girl who finds a door in her flat that leads her to a flat where her Other Mother and her Other Father, who have big black buttons for eyes, are waiting, in a world that’s more interesting and fun than the one she left. They want her to stay with them for ever. And to sew buttons into her eyes…
Publishers, like readers, like agents, respond to story, not to theme. So lean on that.
my favorite part in attack of the clones is when obi-wan just fucks off to play space nancy drew on Clone Rain Planet with the alarming giraffe-necked aliens and swans in like “HELLO IT’S ME, the jedi who definitely… … was here before and probably, uh, spoke to you, and stuff” and theyre like “ah you are here for the order” and hes like “beg pardon” and theyre like “the order of millions of identical human men?” and hes like “RIGHT YES. ABSOLUTELY I AM HERE FOR THE ORDER OF MILLIONS OF IDENTICAL HUMAN MEN”
and then later when he SNEAKS INTO A CORNER TO FUCKING… facetime yoda… like “ok so we have these millions of identical human men who were apparently suspiciously ordered for us by someone???” and yodas fucking response is just “when countless sapient lemons life gives you…….. send those lemons into intergalactic battle you must”
The official government institution for preserving the French language is the Académie française and one of my hobbies is actually reading the updates on their website, it’s always so funny. Just lambasting new English loanwords and trying to shame people into using French terms instead. Some examples of their grumpily anglophobic entries:
“There is absolutely no reason to borrow the word backstage when we already have the perfectly suitable coulisses, although we understand your natural affection for the word stage which the British stole from us in the first place.”
“Why use rooftop instead of toit en terrasse? And if we absolutely must use a foreign word for this concept, let us at least borrow a term from a sunny Mediterranean country. Borrowing ‘rooftop bar’ from a nation famous for its abominable weather is absurd.”
their absolute outrage at any wine vocabulary being borrowed and distorted by wine barbarians (“please only use vintage to refer to porto”)
an entry explains that turning “to feel” into the ridiculous anglo-French verb “feeler” is tragic, “especially since ‘feeler’ is already an English noun that could refer to a snail’s ocular tentacles” and if we French don’t show respect for snail vocabulary who will??
My favourite entry:
“ASAP: This abbreviation, which is far from transparent, seems to accrue most of the vices of a language that conceals its contemptuous and comminatory character under the rags of a spurious modernity”
Update: while France continues its rather inept but righteous fight against any and all encroachments by the English language, I discovered today that Germany just went and sold the German language on eBay:
Meanwhile the swedish academy, based on the french concept and founded in the late 18th century:
Translation, Kristina Lugn: “you [journalists] are being crazy. i am taking a smoke, and one day, you are all going to be dead!”
(actual scene that happened, said by actual swedish academy member Kristina Lugn during the ever ongoing crisis in the swedish academy)
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