@dunkthebiscuit so we could be ok.. I'm reading A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett and he talks about Neil Gaiman in one of his little bits in there (actually he mentions him more than once but there's a particular bit I'm talking about) and he mentions that Neil is a magician. I'll add photos of it in a sec.
Ok there we go.
What id like to particularly point out is the bit on page 128 where he says
And they take centre stage and amaze you with flags of all nations and smoke and mirrors, and you cry "Amazing! How does he do it? What happened to the elephant? Where's the rabbit? Did he really smash my watch?"
And in the back now we, the other conjurors, say quietly: "Well done. Isn't that a variant of the Prague Levitating Sock? Wasn't that Pasqual's Spirit Mirror, where the girl isn't really there? But where the hell did that flaming sword come from?
It's a very good look into how Neil writes, how he thinks about things in advance, how he can divert your attention.
So maybe, just maybe, his misdirecting our attention. He doesn't answer asks unless he wants to, he's already said that very clearly. Maybe there IS some truth in what we've been theorising. After all, he knows the fandom. He knows how hard people work and think and analyse about it all.
You're right, @dunkthebiscuit that there's probably more than one path that's been laid out. It's just a case of finding which one leads us to the pot of gold at the end.
After all, we're "in the hands of a master conjuror. Or, quite possibly, a wizard."
