All posts by Mask131

Dans la même façon que dans notre monde des religions préhistoriques se sont développées alors que le concept de "dieu" n'avait pas été codifié ou inventé.

Tout débute par la croyance en quelque chose - une force supérieure, une entité surnaturelle, une puissance qui contrôle notre vie... Puis au fur et à mesure du temps la société, les croyances, les légendes codifient ça en un "dieu" ou autre chose. Il n'y a pas besoin de savoir ce qu'est un dieu pour avoir de la foi ou de la croyance - et les Nouveaux Dieux en sont l'exemple même.

I notice you wrote "Ombre Moon" which is the French name of the character. Given you use a translator, I wonder if you are French, because if you do I am French too and maybe we could talk in this language. I have to admit I have a hard time understanding your translated messages

I am sorry but this message makes no sense

I think she was in season 3? I need to check it back

Might I ask how much of the television series have you seen? (or of the book have you read) Because from your description you didn't go far into it - and I want to avoid giving you spoilers

Are you asking this for the television series or for the book?

It isn't just a question of faith. It is also a question of worship.

Yes there are entities that embody those concepts you speak of, but they are not abstract, because people don't just believe in "death" or "life". They know death and life exist. But they believe that they have a name, they have a personality, or that concepts such as "chaos" or "creation" are ruled by entities, persons, beasts. And it is this belief that manifests the gods.

People don't "believe" in destruction or order generally speaking. They know it exists, but this has nothing to do with any religion.

Again : the Old Gods are born from religion, mythologies and folklore. They don't just randomly exist like that.

Monotheistic gods do exist in the American Gods universe.

Christian figures such as Jesus and saints appear in both the novel and the television series. Figures from the Jewish lore appear in the novel, and Neil Gaiman confirmed on his blog that the Abrahamic God does exist - but since he is an omniprescent being unreacheable and unvisible to the regular human, he does not "appear" per se in the story, while still being there all the time. Allah is supposed to exist too, and Mithra is talked about in the novel

Nope, not going to do that.

Demigods are treated the same as gods. If you look at the list you'll notice people such as legendary heroes or real-life figures that were deified (Antinous or Gwydion for example).

Either they are completely fictional figures whose belief in and/or worship made real ; either - in the case of Antinous - they were real, existing people, but due to post-mortem worship or their divinization, they became god-like entities after their death.

A similar case seems to happen with the New Gods, as in the novel it is noted that they have in their ranks people looking a lot like famous movie stars and such, implying that if you become famous enough in culture you can get a "worship" equating you to a modern form of a god

Actually he did film the first few scenes as Mad Sweeney! The scenes were never released, but we got behind-the-scenes pictures of him acting with Ian McShane and Ricky Whittle in a scene, in his Mad Sweeney outfit.

I'll try to find you back the pictures

I know that, very clearly - hence why I had to explain to you about Tiger. In fact the whole difficulty of our conservation is that you haven't read the book, while most of your questions can be answered by reading it X)

Well there are several antagonists in this story... One of the most basic one, and talking about him is not much of a spoiler, is Grahame Coats, the owner of the talent agency for which Fat Charlie works, and Charlie's mean boss. The second I can't reveal because it is a minor spoiler. The third one is actually not so much of a surprise if you have read American Gods because he is already mentioned in the novel (in fact the very reason this villain is a villain is explained in American Gods).

It is Tiger. (The same way Anansi is Spider, he is Tiger). You see, in the novel, during the meeting of the gods at the House on the Rock, Mr. Nancy tells one of his tales to lighten up the mood. He tells the tale of "How Anansi stole Tiger's balls". It is one of the memorable moments of the novel, but it was cut from the television show.

Where did this happen?

Well you must have looked quite a lot of episodes given Wednesday dies in the last ones.

I honestly don't know either. All I know is that Fuller and Green burst the budget for season 1, hence why they had to cut several episodes ; and then the budget they were given for season 2 was not enough for them and despite all their asks it was not rised up, so they quit.

I don't know much about the Orlando Jones drama but one thing I do know and recall happening was that when the whole affair burst out, Neil Gaiman explained that he thought Orlando was not fired, it was probably that they just did not need his character this season, due to the Lakeside arc they covered not involving Anansi in the novel ; yes I think I do recall Neil Gaiman explained that it was probably not Jones being fired as much as him not being asked to return for season 3, and the character of Anansi not being planned to appear. Neil Gaiman also added that he was sure (or hoped, I can't remember well) he would agree to return for future AG seasons.

If a twitter fight happened, it must have been about this. Neil Gaiman saying Orlando was not fired but just asked to not return for season 3 - with him planned to return in later seasons VS Orlando Jones claiming he was fired.

Now mind you, this whole business doesn't show so much the supposed "power" of Gaiman because he had little - but it actually does show the relationship Gaiman had with the actors, because we know from a lot of interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff that Gaiman took time to talk and chat with most of the main actors in season 1. Notably Orlando Jones. Orlando Jones notably wrote a character bible for Mr. Nancy that he shared with Neil Gaiman, and that Gaiman entirely approved and encouraged to put forward as the backstory of this version of Mr. Nancy. So we know Gaiman and Jones worked together to create the character (and Jones repeated he admired Gaiman's work and the man).

After that, about this dispute of claims, who is wrong who is right? We don't know. If we believe Gaiman's words, Charles Eglee did not meant wrong, just wanted season 3 to let go of Mr. Nancy for a time before returning to him later, and Orlando Jones was over-reacting. If we believe Orlando Jones, Charles Eglee refused to have Orlando Jones return because he thought Mr. Nancy as a character sent the "wrong message" to the Afro-Americans. Of course, things get complicated when you know that on one side Neil Gaiman is not aware of everything going in the show so he is not an absolute and definitive source (again, he didn't know that Iktomi in season 2 was played by a non-Native American person). And on the other side, the other Black actors of season 3 (notably Yetide Badaki and Ricky Whittle) had no particular trouble or problem with season 3's team or Charles Eglee, so it doesn't seem to actually be any kind of racism problem.

But it is true that when you look at season 3, it is painfully clear that Charles Eglee and his writing team wanted to pass a message - with the prominent character of Bilquis (plus the Orishas) sending a message of fight not through anger or violence, but through love, help, compassion, etc... When you look at the Orishas and Bilquis scenes, and have in mind what Orlando Jones said, it is pretty clear that it is highly possible Charles Eglee disliked the character and the message it sent, and thus decided to skip it for a season. On that Orlando seems to be right.

But again, the firing stuff also seem a bit exaggerated - because if I recall well, at one point there were several articles and people that mentioned how Mr. Nancy was actually planned to appear in one episode or one scene, in the very beginning of the season, but that was it, and Jones would have gotten angry at that. But I am not sure, my memory might be playing trick, it has been a long time now, so I am definitively not sure.

But yeah, this is all a muddled, complicated, entangled story that was probably taken out of proportions. (It also doesn't help that a part of the fanbase that supports Orlando Jones also showed discriminatory behavior, notably towards Ricky Whittle for not being "entirely Black" and being "half-White", so...)

Really? Well I am quite surprised... I mean I know season 3 has some fans but I didn't knew them vehement like that. Personally I greatly disliked season 3 due to not being a good adaptation of the novel AND not being a good sequel to the previous seasons. They invented a lot of stuff that wasn't in the novel, wasn't in the previous seasons, and ultimately had no consequence or pay-off and so felt like very heavy and useless padding. And what they adapted from the novel was hastily and too briefly adapted (the Center of America scene was brilliant and chilling in the original novel. Season 3 messed it up big time).

Plus season 3 was somehow the opposite of the previous seasons: while season 1 and 2 slowly built up, expanded and developped small parts of the book (season 1 covered the first part of the novel ; season 2 covered maybe one or two quarters of the second part), season 3 rushed through a lot of stuff from the novel and jumped of a ton of stuff. You feel they wanted to reach the end as soon as possible and so threw in all the novel stuff they could - but they also added all sorts of unecessary plots and elements (Demeter, Tyr, Manson's characters, none of this is in the book and you just wonder... why are they are? What's the point? There isn't any). So they tried to sprint while tying stones to their ankles.

So you did watch season 3! I had understood from your words that you hadn't

No, you seem to have misinterpret my work. Starz can't say anything to Fuller or Green because they left the show after season 1. This is what kickstarted the disaster.

Fuller and Green created the show, and created season 1, they were its showrunners. But already their initial project had to be cut short, due to budget and time constraints (on the ten episodes they planned, there were only eight episodes shot, and their grand finale at the House on the Rock was pushed to be the opening episode of season 2). Then, when it came time to renew the show, Fuller and Green got into a big fight with the Starz people - because they wanted too much money, or rather Starz refused to give them as much money as they asked for the show. So they left/got fired (can't exactly remember) but yeah, they disappeared.

This is why Starz had to find a new showrunner to continue the series in season 2. Because the original creators and runners of it were gone.

So they picked up Jesse Alexander to be the new showrunner of season 2. He was chosen in February, and shooting started in April - Jesse created season 2 based on the scripts left by Fuller and Green (the two had written half of the second seasons), while also trying to work around the disappearence the actresses of characters like Easter and Media... But in the middle of shooting Jesse Alexander was removed from the project (in September, probably because of all the BTS drama of season 2), and to finish the season, which was in the middle of being done, he was hastily replaced by Christopher Byrne the producing director and Lisa Kussner the line producer. They were the one who had to finish creating season 2 on their own.

So Starz decided to pick up a third showrunner for the third season (and the fourth): they hired Charles Eglee as the new showrunner. They got him to work on season 3 and 4 to close the series, season 4 acting as a finale, and they hoped that like that they could stop having to constantly change the persons in charge... But due to the low ratings they cut short the show by cancelling the planned season 4.

Well to answer you about why the show was praised - it was only season 1 that was praised. And I understand the people who praised it, because myself when I saw season 1 I adored it as a fan of the novel.

Fuller and Green are known to have an excellent style, a great creativity and to have the ability to cast wonderful actors and they did just that for season 1. Season 1 was not a copy-paste of the original novel (but that would have been boring and unpractical), but it was faithful in that they managed to update the characters to the screen and to modern times in fascinating ways, and they also perfectly got the tone, feeling and magic that was supposed to be carried on. It was something fresh, new, updated, but faithful to the novel.

Problem is: adapting AG in such a unique way was something only Fuller and Green could do. Once they left, I kind of knew personaly the show was done for. I still looked at season 2 because there were elements left from Fuller/Green and not everything was to throw out - but in season 2 the new showrunner was not so much trying to adapt Gaiman's novel than to develop and expand on what season 1 had created. Season 3 promoted itself as "much faithful to the book" and "returning to the novel" after season 2's complaints, but I watched it and I can tell you, only a quarter of season 3 actually adapted the novel, so I honestly don't know if the people who made season 3 even read the novel...

My opinion: if Fuller and Green had stayed, the show would have been badass and great. Problem is, they only did season 1. So only season 1 is badass and great, and all their plans for future seasons were thrown in the water. (For example, one of the things they added in season 1 was the greater presence of Audrey. In the novel she appeared two times in the story, but these two times are key events in Shadow's life, so Fuller and Green decided to flesh out a bit Audrey's character by giving her more scenes, and they wanted season 2 to have a lot more Audrey scenes, they told us so. But none of the other showrunners have picked up on that, and Audrey was entirely dropped.)

(Same thing with the aliens. Fuller and Green wanted to introduce aliens among the New Gods, and they prepared it with the "there are starmen in the sky" line by Media. In fact, in the first episode of season 2, Shadow is kidnapped by an UFO-style thing, and given this episode was actually a Fuller and Green script being recycled, it is clear this was part of their plan to introduce aliens. But since the other showrunners had other plans and ideas, the aliens never appeared).

But yeah, this is the major trouble of this show. Each season's showrunner had a different view of the novel, and wanted to move the story in a different direction, but as a result this leads to them constantly abandoning or changing what had been established by the previous showrunners in previous seasons ; and it also lead them to go further and further away from the novel.

But yes, honestly what most people praised was season 1. It was the start of a great adventure, but it was cut short, much too short. Already season 2 was very divisive, and then season 3 was completely abandoned.

Well from the way you phrased several of your messages, this is the feeling I got - that you judged the novel based on your dislike of the television show. I mean this is how the discussion started for me - with you saying you wanted to give Neil Gaiman a second chance and all that.

But you know, we talked about LOTs of thing with each post in this conversation so I might have lost myself in all the different points of the talk.

I didn't knew about this DVD release, thanks for bringing it up!

Because again you seem to forget that AG was literaly made by a new team each season. Of course there was a lack of a great plan because the writers and showrunners kept changing each season, and each one had their own version, and none truly agreed with anyone else. Everybody has been complaining about that for a very long time, so you're quite late to the party.

Neil has not said that Starz was lying (I know I follow him on social media). He explained simply that while Starz abandoned the show and stopped it (and so yes season 3 is the last season because the show is stopped and the planned season 4 finale will never happen), there was still the hope of making a tv-movie sequel to the show to act as the intended finale and close the series.

You made it pretty clear that you never read the novel, and this is why it is so complicated to actually explain to you things - you can't judge the television show and the novel equally because those two are extremely different (after all there's a good reason why on the Wiki we are forced to split all the pages between their show and novel versions, it is not just for fun, the characters and events often end up fundamentaly different from one another). And there is no way one can judge a book without reading it. There is just no other way to express one's opinion about a novel than reading it. Even with the most faithful adaptations (which is not something AG the show is) the experience of watching a show or movie and reading a book will be vastly different.

And the "chick who was Easter" has a name, Kristin Chenoweth (and it is one pretty big name).

1) Did AG the show followed closely the book? Oh absolutely not my friend, absolutely not. Season two for example has nearly nothing from the book except character names. Even season 1 is only half the book, the rest was changed or invented. So not at all. I would say that AG the show is a "faithful" adaptation in the sense that the first season at least recreated perfectly the feeling and the tone and the ideas of the story, while presenting fresh characters, new scenes, unseen twists and the like. But it was not a "faithful" adaptation in the sense of book-to-screen-copy. Trust me, reading the novel and watching the show are two VERY different experiences.

2) No he was not a co-writer per se. Neil Gaiman's official role was that he was one of the "executive producer" which in facts meant exactly what he said on the Tumblr ask I linked previously. He had a chat and talks with each season's showrunner, to explain to them his work, to clarify if they had question or doubts, to share his reactions about their ideas and decisions. He gave advices about some stuff he saw sometimes, but overall that was it. He was never a writer of the show, he was never the showrunner of the show (though some media articles hyped him as the "new co-showrunner" for season 3 though in fact he kept an executive producer role, the real showrunner was Charles Eglee), and while Fuller and Green (showrunners of season 1) were keen on having his opinion, we know for example that he was almost entirely absent from season 2 due to working on the "Good Omens" television series at the time (where he was actually a driving power, writer and showrunner, unlike for American Gods).

So yes, Neil Gaiman did gave his creative power to the showrunners. He made it pretty clear in all of his interviews. All he could do was give advice and make suggestions (or a stern talking to - for example when he discovered that Iktomi was not played by a Native American actor, he promised to have a chat with the next showrunner to make sure such an incident wouldn't happen). Another example is the decision to have Easter appear in season 1. Neil Gaiman was asked about it - because it completely messes up the chronology of the novel, that starts somewhere in late autumn/early winter, and where Easter appears later in the novel, after Lakeside (here adapted into season 3 of the show). All Neil Gaiman could answer was: he was just as weirded out as the fan asking, because he did not understand why Fuller and Green decided to move the seasonal order, but they did it and probably had their own plans Neil Gaiman was not aware of.

As if the showrunners screwed him over... He was really faithful and admirative of Fuller and Green's work on season 1, in fact he actually agreed to have his novel adapted because it was them. But then the other showrunners that came along, he did not choose them, and he was kind of forced to work with them. While he never said anything bad about them, you could feel he did not had the same enthusiasm - and he admitted himself tired to have to constantly re-explain his story and world with a new person every time (he explained that in a season 3 interview, when mentioning Eglee was planned to take care of season 3 and 4 and how 4 was supposed to be the last season closing the show).

3) The Orlando Jones thing is really simple. I agree he shouldn't reprise the Anansi role in "Anansi Boys" because this would link it to American Gods (the show) and they are precisely trying to avoid that. The Mr. Nancy from American Gods (the show) was designed for and by Orlando Jones. It is the heavy reimagining of Mr. Nancy from AG (the novel) and it is certainly not the character that appears in Anansi Boys (the novel). They are trying to go for the original Mr. Nancy, which is not a tall, well-dressed and imposing man, but a small old guy not an ounce of anger but a lot of laughter, merriment, humor and jokes.

What they are trying to do with "Anansi Boys" here is to adapt the original novel, not create a sequel to American Gods (the show). That being said I do remember there were big talks of Orlando Jones going into Anansi Boys (the show) back in season 2, when the project was talked about and announced - but given all that happened... well you know, plans seem to change.

(Plus, also Anansi Boys is definitively a British story. The main setting of the story - well one of the main settings - is London. Anansi Boys, the novel, is not much American, it is very in the vibes of British fantasy. To give you an idea, the starting point of the story is London, which is then coupled with Florida, and the story alternates between the two before heading for the Caribbean where there's the final act and conclusion. And that's without counting otherwordly places where legends dwell.)

4) Overall, if you disliked American Gods (the novel) there's a good chance you'll like better Anansi Boys. As I have read the two I can tell you that Anansi Boys is pretty much the opposite of American Gods in terms of story-telling. Lot of absurd and comical situations, a much faster pace, the story is very focused... So yeah, while they share characters and ideas, the two are truly "companions" in that the novels work as an antithesis to each other, one doing what the other misses and the reverse. That's why in general people not satisfied by AG find much pleasant AB.