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misiwrites · 1 year

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4KINGDOMS RE-READ ADVENTURE & LORE POST part 1

alrighty. i'm reading my own fic from the start for the first time. obviously i've reviewed each chapter as i've posted it but i got issues with reading my own shit so. anyway. i have baileys, i can do this

and since i'm posting about this story now anyways, and i'd wanted to make posts explaining the lore and the process of creating the universe, i thought okay, two birds with one stone, i'll do both! i can discuss relevant things one chapter at a time.

Chapter 1 (prologue):

not much to say about this. it's a tiny bit cringe but hey. a line that i like alert!

[…] with each new generation that the crowns were passed down to, the holy beasts' magic only grew stronger within the four kings. It was up to the individual nations and their flow of history, however, to define the line between humanity and divinity.

this, and the one thing i liked and even now like in this prologue is the way i ended it with "Perhaps this was all an act of ill omen befalling the four kingdoms – as the world created by the holy beasts was about to come to its end." because it's like, someone opens this 200k+ word fic, and the first chapter says that the world is ending. you just started. and it's saying that it's ending. in 200k words

Re: Chapter 1 - THE LORE! THE LEGEND! THE WORLD OF THE FOUR KINGDOMS! the prologue really breaks down the basics. it's a world with four countries. each was created by one holy beast. the countries are also shaped like the beasts, i traced the shapes from some illustration on google. the characteristics of each country are straight out of the wuxing concept and how the four symbols are connected to it. azure dragon represents wood, so the east is the greenest country. the wood element is connected to the direction of east and the spring season and so on and so forth. the basic building blocks for the world were really just handed to me by beyblade canon and i used them like legos.

Chapter 2: takao complaining about ralf & sneaking into kyouju's house to eat dem noodles

takao is so sassy towards ralf. but i guess he always is. good i nailed that from the first paragraphs

i clearly completely forgot that there are annual fencing tournaments. i went to change the month (moon) in stealth shhhh you saw nothing

the chapter is just a lot of exposition. i think i wrapped it up pretty nicely, IIRC it took considerable planning and reshaping to get an opening chapter that's somehow simultaneously concise and informative and fun. this basically lays down all the relevant information about takao in one go. he's so good at fencing he wants to learn sword fighting already, he doesn't care about formality, he misses hitoshi who left ten years ago, he likes to eat, ralf is there. and wants to go on adventures. a lot of things that will carry through the entirety of the fic. not bad

Re: Chapter 2 - THE LORE! THE MONTHS A.K.A. MOONS! these are literally just finnish translated directly into english. month in finnish is kuukausi, "moon season", but we talk about moons. "tässä kuussa" in this moon i did that, "ensi kuussa" in the next moon gonna go there. this is the reason i made sun and moon always capitalised, to make a difference. there's no such difference in reality in colloquial finnish btw

a complete guide for the good audience January: Heartmoon (tammikuu -- actually "oak moon" but, it's an etymology thing) February: Pearlmoon (helmikuu) March: Earthenmoon (maaliskuu) April: Glebemoon (huhtikuu) May: Sowmoon (toukokuu) -- this means sowing, but i afterwards realised a sow is like, a pig. so now the moon name is kinda. not what i wanted June: Summermoon (kesäkuu) July: Haymoon (heinäkuu) August: Harvestmoon (elokuu) September: Autumnmoon (syyskuu) October: Dirtmoon (lokakuu) November: Deathmoon (marraskuu) -- truthfully i'm not sure if this was deadmoon or deathmoon. i'll find out when a mention of it comes up December: Yulemoon (joulukuu)

Chapter 3: rei hangs out in a tower and finds out he's going north in two weeks. thanks for nothing olivier

i was surprised by how much good(?) exposition i put in this one too. the first sentence already establishes that rei wishes he was free but isn't. there's a pretty tight summary about him having a deity status that robs him of all agency. the first paragraph alone somehow manages to pack the information that the west is very industrialised and kind of bleak. i don't dislike this

mao hanging out there with galux at the start makes a bit of a false premise though. later on it becomes clear she's not there often at all and galux doesn't even appear ever since (note to self, it's her beloved little kittycat)

rei being snide about making olivier climb the stairs to the tower is pretty funny. also, rei saying how he would have preferred the south over the north. wow sweet summer child

Re: Chapter 3 - THE LORE! THE TIGER MAPLE PALACE! this palace causes me so much trouble like you have no idea. it probably shows a bit in the progession of the story that i don't fuckign know what it looks like. the layout is essentially copied from the forbidden city which is the old imperial palace in beijing, and the concept of it being divided into inner and outer court is IIRC from the twelve kingdoms, the series that this fic is mainly inspired by. originally i wanted tiger maple to be more of a, like, actual fantasy palace that defies the laws of physics, like in 12kingdoms the royal palaces have shit like top floors where the kings hang out somehow floating above the clouds. but i didn't think it through early enough and now it's more normal, i guess. the palace is surrounded by the gargantuan wall (which, by the way, was not mentioned in the first chapter so i guess i hadn't thought of it yet?) on three sides and by the tiger maple mountain on the fourth. it's lodged between a mountain range and in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. the good thing about it is that i've made it clear enough how the place is so big that i can keep inventing new locations inside the walls when i want.

Chapter 4: rei has a bad time travelling to the north, then has a good time being in the north, then has a bad time again

this chapter is longer than my small intestine. equally bumpy too

it's also weird to me now that i put two rei chapters in a row. i know this happens sometime later too but that would be a no-no to current me

mao having a wife moment in the beginning and rei not really appreciating it. hmm well i don't know how i feel about that. there's a very casual drop about her being his fiancee. this makes me feel like i started off writing them being closer than they ended up being later on. but. i'll take note of it

a lot just happens in here. i have no evidence but i can imagine this chapter being like a fucking trial testing readers' patience. i'd bet my left kidney that it's eliminated many.

rei and max meet for the first time and it felt very funny to me at the time of writing. well, i guess it's still pretty funny but kinda illogical in the "i wanted this to happen, so the characters are now gonna act like this" way. of course max would just fuck with rei first thing. not literally. in the prankster way.

a line that i like alert! kind of a fake alert because i went to edit it a little before copying it here. but you'll never know. you don't know what it said

I had assumed the sky to be void of all light, but as I now stood there staring at its upward depths, I saw a brilliant whirl of hues of purple blending in with the beautiful, velvety black. Against that glossy darkness shone the silvery crescent of the shy Moon, shrouded in a thin veil of clouds as if making a half-hearted attempt at concealing itself. The distant shine of thousands of stars dotted the arch of the sky and continued till the ends of the horizon, like gems embedded in fine folds of dark velvet.

really like this description of a shy moon half-heartedly hiding in clouds. that was good writing!

not doing a lore for this one because the chapter made me tired. i failed my own trial. oh but as like half-assed lore i can say that the ruins of the church that rei mistakenly calls a castle in this chapter is designed after the cathedral of my city. which is not in ruins. there's also no pool by it like in the chapter. but the environment, i based on my city. the north is meant to be a fusion of northern europe, italy, and the US, so it's easy to model resting palace (the capital) after the city i live in, because this place is old as dicks. and european.

this is part 1 of idon'tknowhowmany. depends on if i survive

#4kingdoms stuff #i read my own fic and die while at it

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spiraledt · 3 years

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beeduo watching good omens is actually something that can be so personal

#especially w ranboo saying he wants to watch the second episode!!#emotional support show #anyways perhaps i will make my first actual post me talking about a good omens au #beeduo #ranboo #tubbo

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no-psi-nan · 2 years

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@disgruntledtwig tagged me in this fanfic meme and I'm taking a break so I'll fill it out under the cut!

(Thank you for the kind comments btw 🥺🥺)

Link to my post-canon Saiki K fics: CardiacCrisis on AO3

1) Out of all your works, which story would be your favorite?

Well, if we talk Saiki K, it's going to be Extra Love Stories Volume 2 because I'm having a blast writing it, even if not much has actually gotten posted yet. 😂

For my other fandoms, it has to be "GC249 - Cross Cultural Communication", a yugioh college AU fic. It was sweet and fun to write, and I got a lot of nice feedback for it. (:

2) What’s the easiest genre to write for, in your opinion?

Romance for sure! Might just be due to having more practice though. 🤔

My stuff has always had some comedy in it, but this is the first time that I've written strictly gen comedy actually. 😂

3) What is your opinion on self-insert fics? (Reader x Character)

Not my thing. I'm not personally interested in romancing any of these fictional characters. I'm interested in how they would get along with other characters.

Also, no one would be able to write me in character lmao. Perhaps if my besties workshopped something XD XD

4) How do you get inspiration to write?

I don't go looking for writing inspo usually. If I'm not driven to tell a story, I'll find something else to do lol.

5) Do you ever suffer Writer’s Block? How often?

If I'm having trouble writing something, it's typically because I haven't thought it through yet. I usually leave it until it's ready or work on something else for a bit.

6) Which fandom is your favorite to write for?

Whatever I'm brainrotting on at the moment. So currently Saiki K!

7) How long are your chapters, usually?

Generally around 3k but often scope-creep sets in and they can end up being 7k+. 🙄

8) What is your most favorite genre to write?

Also romance and comedy.

Actually I guess I should mention supernatural as a genre. 🤔 I like the flexibility and challenges of magic (and magic-adjacent things like ESP).

9) Do you write only for one fandom, or for many?

So far I've written for Yu-Gi-Oh!, Good Omens, and Saiki K.

10) Do you take requests? Commissions?

No, and I probably never will. Who could afford me??

Well, I'd write Netflix a new season of Saiki K for free. (please please please please please)

I have done a couple of gift exchanges / writing events (ex. big bang) before though.

11) What is your most popular fanfiction?

Looks like it's also GC249 - Cross Cultural Communication.

In the Saiki K fandom, it's naturally the Moving Forward series!

12) How many stories have you written?

14 posted on AO3.

No comment about what's languishing away in my wip folder.

13) Would you consider fanfiction as your “thing,” or just like a hobby?

One of my top hobbies for sure.

14) Do you read other fanfictions?

Hmmmmm.... Yes, but it's complicated.

I've been in fandom for many years and my tastes are very specific and particular. My exclusion filter list is a mile long lmao.

In large fandoms, it's less of a problem, but for smaller fandoms, the pickings can be sparse. Not many fics in the Saiki K fandom overall, so I'm just writing my own, lol. Very few people can suit my wildly niche tastes better than I can anyways.

15) What is the best advice you can give to other fanfiction authors?

Have fun with it! At the end of the day, fanfic should bring you joy. You should want to go back and reread your own stuff most of the time. Make it for the most important audience: you!

16) Do you believe the stereotype that all fanfiction is smut?

Nah. There's all sorts out there, bless.

17) Do you write smut/mature fics?

Yeah, absolutely lol.

Though, like every other genre, there is so much variety in it. It's just another kind of character interaction that aims at different feelings in the reader, so it's really a shame that there's so much stigma around it.

I personally tend to write stuff that is very playful and indulgent and banter-y, because for me, ⓢⓔⓧ is just a fun way to explore how the characters trust and love each other. Almost like Fluff+, it's advanced and slightly messy cuddling in my book lmao (probably because I'm ace myself). I usually go for a nice balance of sweet, hot, and funny!

Also I find it really fun to figure out how to make physical intimacy work in supernatural situations like when there were more souls than bodies or when one partner has difficult-to-control powers. 😂 A sensual puzzle for a romantic soul lmao.

You'll never catch me writing fics that are mature due to violence though. Not my thing at all.

18) Is there a story you’re not exactly fond of? Have you gotten rid of it?

There's one old fic I wrote that is... Hmm... Not to my standards. I didn't migrate it to AO3 but it's still out in the web.

19) How many years have you been practicing fanfiction?

My AO3 account is from 2014, but I've been writing since a bit before then...

Also I love that the question is about "practicing" fanfiction like it's a religion or something. 😂

20) How often do you update your story(ies)?

Usually I post stories after they're already complete (Saiki K has been the exception). So then I would post them weekly. Otherwise, it's the weekend after I've finished the next chapter.

21) Does it bother you when you read another fanfic and the characters aren’t in character?

Instant back button for me unless they've made the characters way funnier lol.

22) Is it easy or hard for you to write?

Usually easy. A lot of it is just fancy roleplaying imo, and I have lots of experience there lol. Sometimes I have to go research things and it can be tricky if it's obscure or complicated stuff. More time-consuming than actually hard though.

23) Do you write original/fan characters in your stories?

Only to fulfill a role for which no canon character would fit, never as a main focus. Like, I did invent a photographer for the first Moving Forward chapter, and Aiura will mention some old homegirls, and they're given some personality of course, but that's about it.

24) Have you ever written a fic about your favorite couple/ship?

This is p much all I write usually lol.

25) Do you ever take inspiration from your life and write it into your stories?

I don't think there's anyone alive who hasn't. You can only experience the world through your own eyes, after all.

My own life rarely inspires any fic for me though lol.

26) Who is your favorite fanfiction author? Or regular author?

My bestie is also my fave fanfic author~ 💜

My favorite "regular" authors are Terry Pratchett, Tamora Pierce, Diana Wynne Jones, and my bestie again~

27) Do you have any inspirational figures?

Yes.

28) Have you made any alternative universes or headcanons for your fics?

I always have lots of headcanons, but I've only done AUs for yugioh. 🤔

I think it just depends on how long I'm in the fandom. When I run out of post-canon ideas and still have brainrot, I start coming up with AUs. My bestie still roasts me about my bonkers motorcycle AU. The result of many, many years in the yugioh fandom lol.

29) How long does it normally take you to write a story?

Ages lol. I'm usually very slow. But my Saiki K fics have actually been churning out super fast, comparatively! Not sure if I've leveled up or the brainrot is just That Bad lol.

I don't usually do these but this was fun! Thanks again for the tag, Disgruntled!

#nopsi fic #notes to nopsi

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banrionceallach · 4 years

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Reverse AU Crowley/Harry Omens Short

This will only make sense if you’ve read both my main fic and my scraps on AO3. Posting it anyway.

Raphael is still here.

He is still here and he keeps smiling at Aziraphale all the time.

Aziraphale keeps smiling back.

Crowley hates it.

He is not jealous, he tells himself, as he watches Raphael sit on a couch in the back of the bookshop. Raphael is currently pouring over an arcane text that Aziraphale thinks might solve the ‘angel from an alternate universe’ problem.

Crowley has known Aziraphale for six thousand years. He has argued and dined with and gotten drunk with the angel innumerable times. They’re best friends. Aziraphale walked into hell for him and sassed Michael into the bargain. He knows Aziraphale loves him. They are raising (another) child together, for Someone’s sake. Some alternate universe angel is not going to change that.

Even if he is basically a better version of Crowley.

Stupid angelic tosser. With his stupid round pupils and his stupid white wings and his stupid long braided hair that Aziraphale spent a whole minute complimenting after lunch.

( It is just possible that Crowley is trying to grow his hair out as quickly and discreetly as possible.)

Currently Crowley is alone with the Archangel Bloody Raphael, because the aforementioned child that Crowley and his angel are raising together had a sleepover with the former antichrist and Aziraphale has gone to Tadfield to pick him up and also consult the local witch on their Alternate Universe Angel problem. Normally picking up Harry from a friend’s house is something Crowley does in the Bentley, but today the knowledge that that would have left Aziraphale alone with Raphael for over an hour had made him strongly suggest that Aziraphale should go, and use the opportunity to consult the witch.

Crowley really hopes Book Girl has something. He doesn’t know how much more of the archangel’s presence he can take without jumping across the room and trying to claw his stupid perfect eyes out.

He notices the other red-head has put down his book and is looking at him with narrowed eyes.

“What are you looking at?” he demands.

Raphael shrugs innocently. “I was just surprised you didn’t go to Tadfield instead of Aziraphale.” He waves a hand at the piles of esoteric text cluttered around the room. “It would have been more efficient for you to bring Anathema here while we continued to research, wouldn’t it?”

“Leaving Aziraphale alone with you?” Crowley snaps, with rather more honesty than he prefers. “Not likely!”

Raphael arches a fine auburn eyebrow. “Are you always this possessive?” he asks and damn him, there is actual genuine concern in his tone. Who is he to be concerned about Aziraphale? He has his own version, yes? That he should be wanting to get back to? A tiny part of Crowley still doubts that. He can’t imagine a demon Aziraphale, can’t imagine Aziraphale Falling.

It hurts to think about.

“Possessive?” Crowley sputters, wrenching his mind away from the possibility of a horrified spiral into guilt. “I am not!”

And the thing is, he isn’t. Not usually. But of course, it occurs to him, it’s been rather easy to not be possessive when he can be safe in the knowledge that no one else on the planet has a hope of competing for Aziraphale’s affection. Not humans, not other demons, definitely not other angels.

Except now, there is another angel. An angel who never fell, still bathing in Her favour. With Crowley’s face. And, key point, without the more demonic attributes caused by the Fall.

He is polite and gentle and exudes a puppy-like bouncy enthusiasm and he keeps smiling at Aziraphale and Crowley hates everything about him.

“Really?”

“Really,” Crowley snaps back, baring his fangs. “I am concerned for his safety. For all I know, this could still be some trick by Above and Below to attack us. You could be in on it.”

“You really are very suspicious, aren’t you?” Raphael says, grinning like Crowley has just said something amusing.

“Demon,” Crowley snaps. “Goes with the job description. Suspicious, sly, evil demon.” He notes with satisfaction that his blunt reference to his status makes Raphael go pale and twitch slightly. Good.

“You’re not that demonic,” Raphael says softly after a moment, giving him a considering look. “I think Azirafell is worse. Better, I mean. At demoning.”

This is too much.

Crowley snarls and surges to his feet. “I,” he hisses, “am the Serpent in the Garden. The Fall of Man? Humanity exiled from Eden never to return? That was me. For six-thousand years I was Hell’s favourite demon. Don’t go thinking I am soft!”

Of course, it’s at this moment that Harry runs into the room, having just got back from Tadfield. “Dad! Dad! Is it true?”

Crowley draws his fangs back in so fast there’s an almost audible click. “Is what true?”

Harry is about to reply when he spots Raphael. Raphael stares at him, wide-eyed. Harry stares back, fascinated.

“Wow,” the nearly-thirteen-year-old breathes. “You really do look just like Dad! Weird!” Then Harry frowns. “Why don’t you have the cool eyes, though?”

Crowley flips from cursing Harry’s sense of timing to grinning widely. He and his angel have the Best Son. Objectively. It is fact.

Raphael makes a strangled noise. “Dad?” he manages to wheeze, still staring at Harry.

They had not mentioned Harry up until now as a precaution. Just in case Raphael was part of a plot against them. Watching Raphael almost choke in shock, Crowley is extra glad they’d not mentioned the young wizard.

He still has to squash the urge to snap ‘yes, this is our son’ in his most smug tone of voice. Crowley loves Harry and is not under any circumstances going to use him to score against the annoying stupid archangel who will be punted back to his own universe as soon as possible.

So instead he just waves, wiggling his fingers insouciantly at the Archangel. “That’s me.”

(It’s also Aziraphale, as well as James Potter, sadly deceased. People who start talking to Harry when he mentions his father soon learn to be alert for context clues.)

Raphael coughs, clearing his throat. “You’ve . . . adopted a child?” he says weakly.

“That’s right,” beams Aziraphale, who has just walked into the room behind Harry.

“Stole,” Crowley corrects. “We stole him. Evil, remember.”

“More like rescued,” says Harry, the little traitor. Raphael gives him a watery smile.

It turns out that (to Crowley’s great relief) Aziraphale has brought back a way to get Raphael home. Unfortunately, the ritual to do it takes hours to set up.

Raphael spends most of that time trying not to stare at Harry. He doesn’t really succeed.

Eventually, since they are now guaranteed to be archangel-free very soon, Crowley grudgingly explains how Harry came to be living with them.

Raphael is appalled.

“What do you mean, this headmaster knew and just left him with those people for ten years?” he hisses, his golden eyes narrow with outrage.

“He’d convinced himself that the blood ward was the only resort,” Aziraphale explains.

“Bullshit,” snaps Raphael and for a second Crowley almost likes him.

“Quite,” Aziraphale says. “We were less than happy with the state of affairs ourselves.”

“No kidding,” the archangel mutters. Right,” he says decisively. “Is that circle ready to get me home? I need to take a quick trip to Surrey. Just to check on something.”

It is possible, Crowley thinks, as Raphael steps into the circle and disappears in a flash, that the archangel will find that there is no alternate Harry. Or perhaps there’s no alternate Voldemort. Or Dumbledore. Who knows?

***

Harry Potter, aged almost thirteen, ran from Number 4 Privet Drive, his suitcase and his owl’s travelling cage thumping beside him. His could feel his heart jumping in his chest. He had never been so angry in his life. Why had he listened to Aunt Marge? Why hadn’t he done the smart thing and excused himself to the loo when she’d started to talk?

What was he going to do now?

A noise and sudden light, caught his attention. It was a car, approaching fast. When it reached Harry, it skidded to a stop. He backed away, fumbling for his wand.

Then the passenger’s window rolled down, and a man’s head emerged. “Hello,” the man said in a cheerful voice. “Harry, isn’t it?”

Harry gasped and backed away further.

“Look,” said the man, “I don’t normally get involved in these things, but my friend here” – he waved vaguely towards the driver, a man with long waves of red hair- “seems to think you need help.” The man squinted at Harry. “And from the looks of it, he’s right.”

An enraged roar, familiar to Harry, echoed out of the night.

Uncle Vernon, furious and getting closer.

“Alright,” said the driver, speaking for the first time, “that’s enough of that.”

Harry heard the sound of clicking fingers and suddenly found himself in the car’s back seat with Hedwig’s cage next to him. His seatbelt had already fastened itself. The big black dog, which he’d almost tripped over earlier, was sitting on the car floor and looking extremely puzzled.

“Really dear,” said the man in the passenger seat to the driver as the car sped off, Vernon Dursley’s furious shouts receding into the distance “Did you have to bring the dog too?”

“Yep. He’s a good dog.”

Harry swallowed and finally managed to speak. “People will come looking for me,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

The man in the passenger seat smiled at him. “Well I do hope so, my boy.” He nodded towards his friend. “Raf here is quite keen to give Albus Dumbledore a piece of his mind.”

#Good Omens #Harry Potter #Reverse Omens #Crossover crossover #because it makes me happy

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geraltofriviasleftbuttcheek · 4 years

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hmmm how about 24 and/or 41? :3c

24. you’re my ex but i think i still have feelings for you / 41. overhearing they have feelings for you

post-s1, geraskier, past yenralt, implied yenskier if u squint, break up & make up situation, angst with a hopeful ending

cliche prompts~!

—

there’s a tight feeling in his chest, a pressing weight on him as a rush of feeling overcomes him when he sees jaskier standing at the entrance of kaer morhen.

their eyes meet for the first time since the mountain, and geralt thinks they’re even bluer than he remembers. perhaps it’s the light of the afternoon sun dappling in beams over the keep, or just that old adage of absence making the heart grow fonder, but his breath is stolen as he looks at his bard once again.

not your bard, he reminds himself harshly, dropping his gaze but unable to look away for long, not after so much time apart. not anymore.

he watches those blue eyes go dim with a fresh wave of pain and heartache as they land on him, and then go wide when he sees geralt’s companion.

“jaskier!”

ciri rushes forward from his side, and jaskier drops to his knees, arms open to catch her in a hug. he presses his face in her hair the same way geralt had back in the forest where they found each other, holding something so indescribably precious in his arms.

the aching of his own heart intensifies.

“oh, sweet girl,” jaskier is murmuring to her, holding her tight while she buries her face in his neck. “i’m so glad you found him. it’s alright, it’s alright. you’re safe now.”

he’d forgotten jaskier spent many winters after that disastrous engagement banquet back in cintra’s court, watching their little lion cub grow up. one of us should be there for her, he’d told geralt once, a look in his blue eyes geralt hadn’t been able to place.

he thinks now it might have been something like understanding, something like resignation. always picking up the slack abandoned by geralt in matters of destiny.

he’s always done more than geralt deserves of him.

those blue eyes that always make him feel simultaneously like he’s drowning and finding air after being underwater for too long find his again as jaskier stands up, hands still on ciri’s shoulders, and then jaskier turns away without a word and leads her into the keep.

the clenching in his chest cinches tighter and geralt feels another piece of his heart crack and splinter, chipped away by his own doing.

yen’s gaze, from where she stands beside him, burns into the side of his head. “you’re a real piece of work, geralt of rivia.”

with that, she moves away and heads into kaer morhen, and he watches yet again as the two halves of his heart leave him behind, one slightly mended by necessity, the other still raw and bleeding.

he avoids jaskier for the first several weeks as winter sets in in earnest. it’s—more difficult than he expects. kaer morhen is large, but not large enough to keep geralt from being in the same space as jaskier, and he finds himself leaving rooms right after entering them when he sees his—not his—bard sitting at a table or curled in a chair, lute in hand, his voice warm and soft and gods, he’s missed it. missed jaskier.

but he messed it up on that mountain. he fucked up the one good thing life had seen fit to bless him with—how could he have ever called jaskier a curse—and he’s not sure it’s something he can fix.

so he avoids jaskier to avoid having to face the consequences of his mistakes. of this mistake in particular.

it doesn’t last.

he’s been trying to ignore the burn of jealousy in his veins when he catches yen with jaskier, both of them with their heads together and smiling and laughing together like old friends. yen had said she and jaskier had worked through their differences and come to an understanding sometime in the time between the mountain and now, but she’d never offered the details of their relationship.

the urge to put himself between them and pull jaskier away, to crowd him against a wall and hide him from her gaze and focus all of that blue-eyed attention on himself is strong, and it takes a great amount of his carefully learned and honed control to keep it in check. he hates the envy spreading in him like toxins in his blood.

he finds himself lingering outside the door to the room jaskier was given, hand poised in the air as if to knock or push his way in, wanting to, wanting to be let back in, but never going through with it. he listens instead, from the hallway, to jaskier singing softly or muttering nonsense to himself as he goes about his nightly routines. it’s familiar, calming, something he did on the road with geralt, and geralt feels something in him settle knowing jaskier hasn’t changed much at all.

occasionally, he’ll be talking to someone—ciri, usually, or yen, or eskel or lambert—and geralt burns with the desire to be the one he talks to, to be given the honor of keeping him company, even if he’s proven he’s not worthy of jaskier time and time again. he wants jaskier back, but he’s not sure jaskier wants him anymore.

it’s a night like this, geralt lingering beyond the door and listening in, that something in this self-imposed stalemate between them finally shifts.

jaskier is with yen tonight, and geralt thinks, later, wryly, that it was probably some kind of omen from destiny. their voices are low murmurs, occasionally interspersed with laughter, but it turns quiet and somber at some point over something he didn’t catch. at first.

“i used to think i knew him,” jaskier says, confesses it like a dark secret. he sounds so terribly sad it makes geralt want to run himself onto his own sword, because it’s his fault. “that i knew, no matter what words he did or didn’t say, that i knew what he was trying to say, what he was actually saying. now...now, i’m not sure i ever did.”

you did, geralt thinks, jaw clenching. you knew me better than anyone. no one else had ever bothered to know me like you did.

“for someone so smart,” yen muses, “he’s very stupid.”

it makes jaskier laugh. “he is. it’s part of his charm.”

“if you think stupidity is charming.”

“well obviously i did.”

did. but not anymore.

“obviously.”

it’s quiet between them for a moment, and geralt strains to hear anything from beyond the thick door separating him from the one who had become his everything without him even realizing it until it was too late.

“sometimes i wonder if there’s something wrong with me,” jaskier murmurs, and geralt’s heart twists. no, there’s not. you’re perfect. you were always too good for me. “something not quite right inside me. i mean,” he laughs again, but it sounds pained this time, worn out and tired, “why else, even after everything, would i still love him this deeply?”

geralt’s breath leaves him in a rush, like he’s been punch, or tossed into a wall by a beast.

“love makes fools of us all,” yen says. “it’s a curse—but also a blessing. if you’re into it. personally, i prefer a good bondage kink, but to each his own. martyrdom does it for some people, i hear.”

geralt pictures the way jaskier might try to hide a smile in her hair at the attempt at a joke. he always tried to hide his smiles when he didn’t want to admit geralt had said something funny, dry as it was.

he wants that back, wants that easy friendship, that easy love jaskier gave to him so freely.

“i want him back,” jaskier says then, as if he can hear geralt’s thoughts from the hall. “he was never mine, but i want him back anyway.”

i was always yours, geralt thinks. i just hadn’t realized how completely you had me until i forced you to let go.

he can’t listen to any more—he’s scraped raw at the confession, at the depth of jaskier’s love for him even after how he’d treated him, at his own realization. as quietly as he can, he walks away from jaskier’s room, though not without feeling a pull back to the door, back to his bard.

not your bard, he tells himself again. then amends, but maybe he would be again, if given the chance.

geralt returns to his own room, checking in on ciri as he goes, feeling some of the tension in his chest ease knowing his child surprise is sleeping safely close by. his resolve is set:

he’s got an apology to give that’s long past due.

#anxiousbard #answered #the witcher #geraskier #fics.#thank u for the prompts!#i really enjoyed stretching my prompt fill skills lol

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lilydalexf · 3 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Dreamshaper

Dreamshaper has 54 stories at Gossamer. Her stories often feature Mulder and Scully exploring their feelings in ways you really, really wish you could’ve seen on the show. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Found in Memory, Just By Existing, Purpose, and Promise. Big thanks to Dreamshaper for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I'm not at all surprised people are still reading X-Files fanfic! There's a deep catalogue of good and interesting fiction there, and the X-Files still has cultural significance. And of course there were the recent seasons to bring it back to mind. I think if you had asked me in 2000, I might not have supposed that it had this kind of staying power. So now I'm thinking of this interview as a time capsule--what will my answer be in 2040?

My own fic was not designed to have staying power. If anyone is reading it now, bless them, they are kind and patient. I would only recommend probably reading the first and last things I posted just to see what kind of growth is possible. The first time I ever posted fic, someone told me to never write again. I was a teenager. I was crushed but I went on writing anyway, and I worked hard to improve.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I think of two things. As for the show itself, I still think of Mulder/Scully as the ultimate in romance. I can still picture certain moments from the episodes, from the movie. I look for pairings with tension that reminds me of theirs--an almost-regency level of UST, but with a modern element of danger.

As for the fandom itself, I grew up in it. My entire online life and the core of how I participate in fandom was formed here. I was 17 or so when I started writing and posting MSR. I was 18 or 19 when I started meeting fans in real life. I was fortunate enough to fall in with people who were equal parts gracious and nerdy, and while my own nerdiness is innate, I remember and emulate the kindness which was shown to me.

I have an entire side post to this question about how strongly I disagree with the current age stratification in fandom--this idea of not interacting across artificial age divides is tragic to me.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

ATXC, and mailing lists. I don't actually remember the names of all the mailing lists! I can picture myself sitting in my kitchen on my computer, and what the emails looked like--the font, the signature lines--but not the names. I can even remember specific conversations we had! One of them must have been Scullyfic, because I remember the first meetup being planned. Is that right? Was it the Scullyfic meetup? [Lilydale note: Probably was Scullyfic. There was a big email flurry when the first Scullyfic mailing list meetup was being planned.] My mind was absolutely blown by the idea of a fan con. Now I've led panels at a dozen of them.

I remember some of the arguments, too. It's funny that some of them are the same arguments I still see here and there, like whether or not criticism of a fanwork is valid. Real Person Fic being this unbelievably shameful thing you had to ask to be shown, and the doyennes of the fandom would have given you the cut direct at Almack's if they'd found out, you know?

This was also the era of AIM and ICQ. mIRC too, right? I spent a lot of time in channels. I absolutely loved when people started to be more open about themselves in chats. I was always so interested in how fandom fit into people's lives. Some people I talked to were moms, college students, people who had interesting careers, and they all just found ways to make fandom work for them. They had a need and were meeting it, despite the pressures of their offline life.

I don't know how to explain the impression that made on me, but--it normalized fandom. That seems obvious, maybe, but I hadn't known this was something you could integrate into your everyday life.

It also normalized the idea of women taking their own needs as primary, in a way that went beyond what I was exposed to in my home life, or through the feminism of the 1990s. There was this wild intersection of the--the domestic and intellectual life of women, and the playful life of women, just making itself known to me in a way I'd never seen before. That was enormous. Absolutely a foundational experience for me.

My experience was that ATXC and email lists were like, these surface-level interactions where people figured out, roughly, if your mind ran on a similar track to theirs, and then you were invited to make deeper relationships in more private corners of the internet. Social media filled both functions at once, I think, for a while. But the privacy was missing. I'm not surprised that Slack and Discord are starting to fill that private corner gap--everything old becomes new, etc.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

UST and monsters. This is still an unbeatable combination for me!

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I loved romance novels--I read so many of them. Somehow, before we even had a computer at home, I started to tell myself romance novel stories with Mulder and Scully as the lead characters. This was how I talked myself to sleep--I wasn't a good sleeper. Then when I got online and did whatever search led me to ATXC, I was just shocked. Shocked! Can't do the surprise justice, in this era where fanfic is relatively mainstream. Other people had also independently invented this thing I loved! But they wrote their ideas down! I jumped on the bandwagon immediately.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

It's like my relationship to my childhood, frankly. Foundational, but I don't think about it all that much on a daily basis, right? I smile and reblog gif sets. I get nostalgic. I get embarrassed by social mistakes I made. I feel the way many of us do about memories from our teenage years. I wouldn't be who I was without it, but I'm not still in it.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I was. I've spent 20 years in fandom! I did some beta work for someone who'd started writing slash--The Sentinel. The actual Sentinel, not just an endless loop of Sentinel AUs based on Sentinel AUs based on etc. I had some idea at the time that I was queer, but this was my first real exposure to romances that weren't straight. So I tore my way through the early 2000s slash fandoms as they developed: The Sentinel, Due South, Stargate Atlantis. Popslash, where a mix of good writing and absurdity ruled. Bandom, where I met my wife. Since then, many smaller fandoms.

It's hard to compare any of these things to each other, let alone to the X-Files. In each one, I was lucky enough to find a circle of women who were strong beta readers and good friends. I never wrote as much or for as long as I did in the X-Files.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I watched the new episodes. I've shown friends important episodes--I remember that a few years ago, another friend and I tried to hook a third friend on the show by binging some favorites--mostly shippy MOTW, so it was like, Arcadia, Triangle, Bad Blood. Fun stuff!

We finish watching and I'm like, well? And? And she says, that was fine, but I'm more of a man-pain, secret babies kind of person? I'll never forget it. She had no idea but she'd hit the nail on the head! We were wheezing with laughter. We went back and watched mytharc episodes, which was much less fun for me, but much more interesting to her.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I don't read X-Files fic often. I look at new things sometimes, and I've reread a few old classics, but my reading taste has changed so much. I still love straight romance, but it needs to be fast and sharp in a way that is hard to find.

I read fic in other fandoms when I have time. In the past few years, I've finished a degree, had a daughter, renovated a small Victorian and then sold it and bought another one during this pandemic--so time has been short. Currently I read some Untamed fic, some Good Omens fic, Magicians, Schitt's Creek...a sampler. Whatever friends are writing, whatever they recommend.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I never have a favorite of my own fics. I'm never satisfied. The second I post something, I'm always full of regrets. I've written fics that did very well and still hated them a month later. People have asked me over the years to move more of my stuff off Livejournal and onto ao3, but I do it really reluctantly and only by specific request. Everything's ephemeral! Let the old works diminish, and go into the West!

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I have no oldies to dust off. I do periodically think of X-Files stories I would tell, but I don't have enough time for current interests--and so it goes.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I do. I was most recently writing in The Magicians fandom. I posted a couple new stories in an old fandom last year--I'd written Good Omens fic fifteen years ago, and then again for the Amazon adaptation. I have a pile of original novels in various stages of completion, but I'm never happy with them. One day I'll figure myself out, perhaps, or I'll just keep writing myself this and that and leaving it all in a drawer.

What's the story behind your pen name?

So AOL had a character limit for user names--I think it was 10. I was a teenager at the time I was coming up with the one I'd use for fandom, so I went with Dreamshaper. It was kind of literal, in the sense that I was going to share the stories I'd been telling myself to help me sleep. But the character limit meant I went with Dreamshpr, which I later liked because of the alternate reading of Dream*shipper*. A reminder to the younger fans that we were the original shippers!

I would also come up with new pen names when I wanted to experiment with a fic that didn't fit my usual style. I don't remember any of them. I probably did that a dozen times, so, sorry to those poor completely abandoned stories.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Giddygeek on tumblr and ao3. I'm most active on twitter, but largely about my domestic life with dips into fandoms or original writing; message me on tumblr if you're an old friend who'd like to reconnect elsewhere.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Just gratitude--I'm so glad that I found people to share an obsession with, and that they were good people, at a time in my life where that made a significant difference to me. I don't know where I'd be now without my time and my growth in this fandom!

(Posted by Lilydale on December 22, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #dreamshaper

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nyctolovian · 3 years

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Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens) Additional Tags: Religious Discussion, Forgiveness, Guilt, Religious Guilt, Fallen Angels, Fallen Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), (sort of?), Self-Hatred, Self-Esteem Issues, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Post-Canon, Post not-pocalypse, Canon Compliant, Coping, Warning: somewhat critical of god

Summary: When Aziraphale and Crowley's wings turn the same grey, Aziraphale does not take it well and begins to fear that he might be Falling with a capital F. Crowley finds his angel in a crushing spiral into immense self-blame and guilt, desperately seeking God's forgiveness.

"Heya, angel!” Crowley announced as he swung the door to the bookshop open. “I’ve got some really important stuff to discuss. Urgently. So could you maybe, um, close shop early today?”

Aziraphale, who was shelving some books, twirled round to face Crowley, already lighting up with glee at the sound of his voice. “Well, of course!” he said, placing the books down on the stool beside himself. He’d always liked having an excuse for closing early so it was lovely to have his favourite one walking right through the doors on a Monday afternoon. “What exactly would you like to discuss?”

With a snap of Crowley’s fingers, the door was miraculously locked and the open/close card was flipped. “Here’s not good,” he replied, extra fidgety today as he eased his weight on one leg and then the other. “Upstairs maybe?”

The smile on Aziraphale’s face slowly slipped as he was ushered up the stairs to his living quarters. “Oh dear… Is something the matter?”

Crowley audibly winced. “Upstairs first, alright?”

Aziraphale let out a noise of confusion but allowed himself to be guided upstairs. Crowley pushed him to sit on the bed that miraculously appeared just a couple weeks after the Almost-pocalypse. He set his fists atop his knees and looked up at Crowley, who removed his sunglasses.

“I need you to take out your wings,” he said.

“Pardon?”

Of course, Crowley caught the tension in the angel’s voice and said calmly, “Your wings. I’d like to check something.”

Aziraphale nodded. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Slowly, he drew his wings out into their dimensional plane. He felt his back grow heavy with a comfortable weight and his wings, slightly stiff from disuse, stretched the aches out of itself.

When he opened his eyes again, Crowley was looking at his wings. His eyebrows raised as he muttered, “Yup. I figured.”

Aziraphale frowned as he curled his wings forward. His jaw fell when instead of the pure white wings he was used to, mottled grey wings came into view. “Wh-What is this?” he cried. Then, his mind did a twist and he looked at Crowley anxiously. “What about yours?” he said, standing up and holding Crowley’s arms.

“Calm down,” he said, gently pulling Aziraphale’s hands away. Then, he took his own wings out as well, and they were no longer pitch black either, and were instead the same mottled grey as Aziraphale’s. “A bit of a shame, honestly. I’ve always liked black,” Crowley joked. “We’re really on our own side, aren’t we?” Like a gentleman asking for a dance, he held a hand out towards Aziraphale.

Aziraphale, however, flinched away. “I’ve clearly done something wrong.”

Crowley frowned. “What could you have possibly done wrong, angel?”

“I-I don’t know,” Aziraphale admitted as he paced around the bedroom. “But I must have done something that warranted this change.”

“I changed too, didn’t I?” Crowley said, stretching his own grey wing out. “We have the same wings.”

“Yes, but it’s different, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, frustration building. “If my wings are turning grey, then it must mean I’m…” A shiver ran down his spine as he looked up at Crowley with imploring blue eyes. “Could it be… that I am Falling?”

“What?!”

Aziraphale wrung his hands and his gaze fell to the wooden flooring. “That’s the only reasonable explanation, isn’t it? This is… a sign that I’m Falling. F-For going against one of God’s plans, perhaps.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. “And I’m getting back in heaven’s favour. I’m being forgiven. Lovely.” He sighed. "Listen, you're not Falling. I know what that's like and this isn't it. God's a lot crueler than this."

"M-maybe She's giving me a second chance."

Crowley pulled a face of doubt. "Are we really talking about the same God?" He sighed. "Besides, even if you really are falling—which you aren't—it ain't that bad honestly. I quite like being a demon sometimes. For one, black wings are much cooler than white ones."

"But I don't want to fall! I like being an angel!" Aziraphale exclaimed. He took a deep breath as he clenched and unclenched his hands. “I… I need to do something. Seek forgiveness. Make up for my mistake. My wings are only turning grey so I’m clearly being given a chance to redeem myself, right?”

Worry set into Crowley’s features firmly now. “Since when do we care about what heaven thinks anyway? They tried to murder you with hellfire!”

“That was just Gabriel and those angels,” Aziraphale argued. “I just… I want to do right by the Lord.”

“You saw how She didn’t care about Earth, didn’t you? Whole bloody apocalypse just for the stupid war.”

“It probably was within God’s ineffable plan for the apocalypse to be stopped.”

Crowley threw his hands up. “God,” he said, “didn’t stop anything. We did!” He sighed, trying to reign in the rage that he knew was trickling into his voice. He lowered his voice into something gentle again as he reached for Aziraphale. “Angel–”

“Don’t!” Aziraphale said, snatching his hand back. “Don’t call me that!” His anger instantaneously melted, however, upon seeing hurt flashing across Crowley’s golden eyes. “I need some time by myself,” he said. “Can you give me that?”

Crowley’s eyes wobbled with hesitation. Finally, he said, “Sure, angel.”

***

Crowley gave Aziraphale a full day before popping by again to check on him. The first worrying sign had been how the shop was closed, despite it being only barely noon. As much as Aziraphale liked closing early, he usually stayed open till at least 2pm just so he could say that the shop had been open.

Crowley had also noticed that the books Aziraphale had left on the stool were still sitting there, untouched. He cursed under his breath and dashed up the stairs to the living quarters. He was somewhat relieved to see the angel at his worktable. Too busy muttering to himself, he hadn’t noticed Crowley enter at all.

Cautiously, Crowley walked to his side. Atop the table were copious amounts of notes and several different volumes of the Bible. Concerned, Crowley placed a hand on his shoulder, and Aziraphale jerked back.

“Ah,” he exhaled. He flusteredly smiled at Crowley as he adjusted his reading glasses. “You’ve come just in time, my dear. It seems that I need your opinion on this matter.” He picked up a notebook from under a pile of papers, flipped to a bookmarked page and continued, “Do you think it’s that time I used that miracle to reserve that last remaining pancake two days ago? It was really quite a frivolous miracle, and perhaps that was the last straw.”

“Wait,” Crowley said, his hand returning to Aziraphale’s shoulder, this time firm. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Why my wings turned grey of course!”

Crowley gestured to the mess of a table. “And what does all this have anything to do with it?”

“I’m trying to figure out what exactly I did wrong that upset God and turned my wings grey.” Aziraphale sighed and dug up another notebook, which he opened to a dog-eared page. “I was also thinking perhaps… Well, maybe the punishment was only just issued yesterday and it wasn’t actually for something recent. I’m also thinking maybe it was about that time in 1367 when I poured–”

“1367?!” Crowley exclaimed. He grabbed one of the papers off the table and read it. “578 AD?! Wh-” He looked at Aziraphale, brimming with concern. “Why are you going so far back?”

“Because I’ve been doing so much wrong!” Aziraphale cried, twisting the ring on his pinky. “They… My indiscretions. They began since God knows when. I’ve been doing so much wrong since… since the beginning of time, I believe. I don’t even know if giving away that flaming sword had actually been the right thing.” His hands were shaking with torment. "I'm such a terrible angel."

The demon's heart damn near broke in two at the sight of his angel in this state. He looked at the mess of paper and books in disbelief. He shook his head. "This is just too much, angel," he pleaded. "You shouldn't be made to list down every single thing you did in the past six thousand years and made to… to analyse it all."

"I didn't want to entertain the possibility but…" Aziraphale's voice was soft, distraught, vulnerable, like a child asking their parents to check under the bed for monsters. "But… what if it's everything, Crowley? How could I seek forgiveness from God if it's just… everything?" He squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't know how I…"

Crowley leaned in closer. There was a vice around his chest, clamping down and hurting him. Why must his angel suffer like this? What has he ever done to deserve this pain? This crushing guilt? “They’re mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, all sorts of them. We just do better next time, right?”

"But I shouldn't be making mistakes! I'm an angel. I'm meant to do good." Aziraphale pushed Crowley away and picked up his pen and notebook again. "I need to find out what it was that I've done wrong. Otherwise, it'd be terribly insincere to apologise without even knowing what I'm apologising for, isn't it?"

Crowley ripped the pen and notebook out of Aziraphale's hand. "If the Almighty wants an apology, She'd better get down here and explain what She's so bloody upset about!"

Aziraphale slammed the table. "She shouldn't have to! I'm an angel. I ought to know."

"No! It's just unfair. God and Her ineffable plans, moving in mysterious ways and playing ridiculous card games we don't know the rules to in the dark.” He walked in a tight circle, running a hand through his hair, before turning to face Aziraphale again. “How could we be expected to know? Even now, I still don't even know why I got tossed down into a pool of hot boiling sulfur because She never bothered to explain anything! Six thousand years and still no explanation whatsoever!"

Aziraphale flinched, and Crowley felt a pang of guilt.

Lowering his voice, he said, “Look, God hasn’t explained anything then, and She isn’t starting anytime soon. Okay?”

Plucking his reading glasses from his face and closing his eyes to massage his nose bridge, Aziraphale said, “I want to do right by Her. Why is that so hard?”

Crowley sagged. It hurt him terribly to see his angel so distraught, so frantic, so helpless.

“Perhaps…” Aziraphale breathed. “Perhaps, I’m not worthy of it.”

A beat.

"I forgive you," the demon whispered.

Aziraphale's eyes flew open and he stared at Crowley, eyebrows tightly knitted. "You forgive me?" he bit out. At the silence, his brow furrowed further with fury. "You can't do that. Take that back."

"I forgive you," he repeated.

"What are you forgiving me for?" Aziraphale yelled.

"All the wrongs you did. Everything. I forgive you."

"You can’t!" he insisted.

“Why not?”

Aziraphale glared in silence.

"You're not made to carry six thousand years worth of self-blame and guilt. You're a good angel, even if God doesn't recognise that."

"But I want to do right by Her," Aziraphale said, tears welling up in his eyes. "I just… I want Her to forgive me. If I knew what exactly I did wrong, maybe…" His breath hitched, words stuck upon his throat.

Crowley knelt down and held his angel's face. He was trembling so hard Crowley feared that if he let go, he'd simply shatter and crumble apart.

"I just want to do the right thing," Aziraphale said. "It used to be so straightforward. If it was as God intended, what I was doing couldn’t possibly be wrong. But now…" He looked up at the ceiling, as though willing the wetness of his eyes to disappear, but a tear had already spilled out and rolled down his cheek, damping Crowley's fingers. Then, a couple more followed, like beads of a snapped bracelet. He relented and sagged in his seat. “I don’t know.”

Crowley used his thumb to wipe the tears away but they continued to fall uncontrollably and he couldn't catch them all.

Aziraphale's voice was thick with tears when he spoke and his bottom lip wobbled with grief. "I don't know what's the right thing anymore. I don't know if I've ever done anything right," he said, placing his hands over Crowley’s and pulling them away from his face. “I feel like I've done everything wrong but I don't know who to seek forgiveness from.”

Crowley turned his hands slowly to grasp Aziraphale’s. “You haven’t done everything wrong, I promise. Maybe some things. But we all mess up sometimes. We don't have it all figured out most of the time and that's okay," he said. "We're trying our best to correct what we can, and that's enough."

Aziraphale looked at Crowley, clinging to his words like a lifeline. Gently, Crowley squeezed his hands.

"Forgive yourself, angel. You don’t need to carry this six-thousand-year weight. And I can't bear to see you hating and hurting yourself like this, please."

When Aziraphale leaned forward, Crowley let go and allowed him to fall slowly into his arms. Aziraphale pressed his face to Crowley's shoulder, just as silent sobs began to shake his being. He pulled their hands close to his chest and squeezed. Crowley squeezed back.

Pressing closer still, Aziraphale muttered into Crowley's shirt, "I’m never going to get anything else from upstairs anymore, am I? We only have what we give ourselves now. We’ll have to figure things out by ourselves."

Crowley hummed.

“We really are on our own, aren't we? Just the two of us.”

"Yeah. Us two, on the same side. Grey wings on both our backs. Could be fun.”

That got a short laugh from Aziraphale, and tension trickled out of him. "If you say so, my dear."

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable partners #good omens fic #fanfic #aziracrow #my writing

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f-117-nighthawk · 3 years

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Playlist Update? From MY Brain? More Likely Than You Think

can't remember the last time I posted these all together but I just put a few new songs in. I've been playing Arknights bc STARSET songs keep being used in the trailers, and then I was listening to Transmissions while making dinner, and uhhhhh there's two new Transmissions songs on the playlists, plus whatever else the spotify links needed to update to my ever-changing apple versions.

This is just the main playlist, because this one is now 3h 40m, and the other three playlists are about an hour each. I’ll give them their own post tomorrow. Under the cut, because it's also Write Random Snippits and Include Important Lyrics time

Dark Matter

Surprise surprise, this one’s got probably the most work done on it. A lot of that is moving things around, a few deletions, and the additions.

DM now starts with Your World Will Fail, Dark Matter, and Eater of Worlds. Turn the Lights Out still kinda applies, but I stopped vibing with it starting everything, and wasn’t really sure where else it should go so it got dropped. It’s role is sort of picked up by a UtA song later? Anyway, the opening three are still very much about not only the birth of [REDACTED], but the birth of the universe itself. And that’s why it feels better to start out with YWWF. Because it is the start.

(Your world will fail my love/It’s far beyond repair/Your world will fail my love/It is already there)

(Bring me your soul/Bring me your hate/In my name you will create/Bring me your fear/Bring me your pain/You will destroy in my name)

(Can’t imagine the violence/The rage and the love in my madness/I am the eater of worlds and I’m looking for someone to feed me)

Remnants of Stars is a hook to Filaments at this point, but stays way up here because the thing it’s about connects back up to those three ^ and is something slowly realized by the Paladins throughout the series. There’s kinda three different points that they realize something new about this (at the moment, I Am the One, Cosmic Vertigo, and Centigrade).

(Shed all you know and make way for a galaxy of light/Answers found hidden inside the smallest stone/Bringing forth a new way of life/Open your heart to the sky)

Apocalypse 1992 hasn’t changed. Still about The Fall, still the turning point for the entire damn war. Still about poor Krolia. Still the Rogue One of DM. It happens between parts of Awakenings, detailing the rise of [REDACTED] and the final hours before the destruction of everything sentient species knew beforehand.

(Fly high through apocalypse skies/Fight for the world we must save/Like tears of a unicorn lost in the rain/Chaos will triumph this day)

Apex is the final moments of Apocalypse 1992 from the Red Lion’s perspective, and connects nicely (just as in the albums lol) to the next UtA songs. Which we’ll get to in a bit.

(Brother mountain/Now we sleep/For a thousand years/I will see you again/Something is coming/Coming for me)

You Keep What You Kill covers the slow degeneration of the Empire between The Fall and the Battle of Arus. The knowledge harshly taught by the Thuanial War is forgotten under the influence of Zarkon, Haggar, and [REDACTED]. Marzin and Galraasa quickly rise the ranks as the Empire’s left and right hands, like omens of destruction before them. The four are the ‘holy half-dead,’ the ones who shape the devouring of the universe before them.

(Defying dimensions/These ruthless creatures will steal your soul/Breaking away from the chains of mortality/They won’t be taken down/Bow now to the holy half dead/The master to death mongers calls)

The Glory and the Scum is partially here bc I missed having Delain, I’ll freely admit that. (Delain split up! Like six months ago! I’m still sad!) Here, it’s (most) of the reason why Krolia isn’t around until MGHM. Think Winter Soldier-ish. It’s also from Krolia’s perspective as she’s talking to Kolivan in a conversation I implied in Shatterpoint. Perhaps it shall see the light of day.

(Look at what we've done/Take a step back/Shake your head at what we have become/We're the glory and the scum)

The Seven Sisters is about Keith, mostly, and connected to Closure via its influence on Child From the Stars (Lost in the Dark) and also to Memories of a Girl I Haven’t Met. Also the thing about the Pleiades has kinda become A Thing associated with my two favorite halfbloods.

(I cast my hope upon The Pleiades/The Seven Sisters who would come for me/They’d fall to Earth to grant a child’s dream/But I’m still waiting)

Starlight is the Adashi song. Here, it’s the sad part, based around the time that the SFSS Genesis launches for Kerberos. It also is sort of about Shiro’s thoughts throughout the war as he watches ‘from distant skies’ (and influences String Theory kinda)

(At night the earth will rise/And I’ll think of you each time I watch from distant skies/Whenever stars go down and galaxies ignite/I’ll think of you each time they wash me in their light/And I’ll fall in love with you again)

Waking Dream and Abyss are Awakenings. They’re specifically the Red Lion waking up on Sendak’s ship to her new Paladin, but also sort of the rest of the Lions as they find new Paladins for the first time since The Fall (and, also, an accidental hook to the end of Filaments just by virtue of being on the same UtA album…)

(Centuries like flowing streams as years go rushing by/Waiting in the dark for afterlife)

(Open my eyes in a daze/How long has it been? Am I so out of place?/Warmth I can no longer feel/My mountain is gone, I’m surrounded by steel/The strangest of structures arises ahead/Seems to be held up by nothing/Where have I gone, do I dream?/How can the stars be all I can see?)

Who Will Save You Now is about the Paladins in First Contact. It’s the video messages they send to their families, the warning that Something Is Out Here that they need to prepare for. It’s a declaration of protection for Earth, but a recognition that the Paladins may not be able to do what they say.

(I will not take from you and you will not owe/I will protect you from the fire below/It’s not in my mind/It’s here at my side/Go tell the world that I’m still alive)

Then there’s The End of the Beginning. Which is, well, the eponymous fic. And don’t forget the String Theory connection! Fun fact: part of the last chapter leads directly into part of String Theory at the moment.

(Every night I die just a little/All this time, I’m caught in the middle/All your life, you fought with no winning/This is just the end of the beginning)

A Simple Plan is about anything but a simple plan. Lotor is making his secret bid for the construction of the Sinkline ships, but there’s one more thing he needs before it can come to fruition. Haggar has suspicions, and knows one thing that she needs to keep from both him and Voltron. Team Voltron is still struggling to fit into their new roles, especially with a Black Paladin who adamantly does not want to be Black Paladin, and is in desperate need of one thing to fix the last of the damage done during the Battle of the Sarnan Nebula.

(How long can we hold off ending?/How long can we pretend we’re ok?/No one goes on fighting it forever/I know I’m better this way)

Memories of a Girl I Haven’t Met. Such a short song for such an important fic. It skips all the way over Naxzela to the Mission to the Baaria Shipyards, the first major offensive that isn’t somehow connected to canon (even if only a very very small part of it is actually at the shipyards lol). This is also the song that solidified Keith’s very queer identity in Dark Matter. And more Pleiades stuff!

(In this lonely place, bathed in silence and thoughts of you/I can’t see your face but I’m trying to envision you/So are you really out there? Are you awake with memories/Of a boy you haven’t met yet who’s wished upon the Pleiades?)

There’s another fic in here that I’m still waiting for a song to catch my ear, but it’s pretty big so I’m putting it in here. For the moment, it’s called MGHM 2.0: Electric Paladinloo. Featuring the Whispers, Voltron, and a few mullets.

And then. Hoh boy. The beast of beats. TRIALS (reimagine), Dark On Me, String Theory, and I Am the One. We’ve got [REDACTED], we’ve got [spoiler], we’ve got the first major turning point in the entire war, and the first revelation of the true nature of [REDACTED]. Hence the honor of being the separation point of my two main DM folders. TRIALS is the first part, the horrifying realization. Dark On Me and String Theory itself are from Shiro’s perspective. I Am the One is… an image song? I guess? That’s all I’ll say on that. (I would like to note that the STARSET songs bar OWtT tend to be about the Shiroganes…)

(Hear me from the bottom/Forged in regret, I'm the silversmith/Doomsday, you we had it coming/Marching the streets with an iron fist/Obey no more in silence/The steel in our hearts will be monuments/Today, they'll hear the violence/We'll rise from the dark like Lazarus)

(You're the cause/The antidote/The sinking ship that I could not let go/You led my way, then disappeared/How could you just walk away and leave me here?/Light the night up, you're my dark star/And now you're falling away)

(You don’t believe in space/You don’t believe in light/You don’t believe that anything is well beyond your might/We walk across the sky and beneath the ocean floor/We’re never going anywhere we’ve never been before)

(I am the one/I am the architect to rule your fate)

House on Fire is the aftermath of String Theory, and a large vibe of We ARE Struggling Together! It’s about family, never letting go of something you care about, and the slow act of trusting.

(So I’ll just hold you like a hand grenade/You touch me like a razor blade/I wish there was some other way right now/Like a house on fire we’re up in flames/I’d burn here if that’s what it takes/To let you know I won’t let go of you)

Belgrade is The klance song! It is a) a bop b) always stuck in my head because it is That Good. The line in the chorus about ‘sweet songs of seduction’ is eternally funny to me bc a)they’re both ace and b)QPR’s don’t usually involve seduction. Belgrade also leads almost directly into…

(We pretend in the darkness/We pretend the night won’t steal our youth/Singing me the sweet songs of seduction/Let me be the fool, fool, fool/Who will live and die for you)

Here to Save You is about Sam. Mostly. It’s also about Pidge. And Zaivorge cannons.

(A slave for humankind/I made sure I would survive/To stay alive/Now it’s time to move on/When there’s nothing left to prove/I’m coming to get you)

Iron is the third Closure fic (the second is End of the Beginning, forgot to mention that. They’ve slowly moved away from actually being related to it in anything but name and general idea). It’s about Keith coming to terms with parts of himself, and learning how to use them to great effect. Also has a huge info dump about the Blade.

(You can’t live without the fire/It’s the heat that makes you strong/‘Cause you’re born to live/And fight it all the way/You can’t hide what lies inside you/It’s the only thing you know/You’re embracing that, never walk away)

The second major turning point in the war is Monarch, Birthright, and Firewall. I really recommend reading the whole lyrics for Monarch, because the entire thing is very much a Lotor song. I had a bit of trouble picking a lyric to use here. Monarch is here because Lotor is also the ‘singer’ of Birthright, and both songs are to a very specific high-level target of the Coalition. Firewall is a little different as it’s a Team Voltron song not a Lotor song, but happens because of the same thing the other two do. They’re all not exactly a direct result of Iron, but they wouldn’t happen how they do without it, and then [REDACTED] swings back into the fray and things learned in String Theory/the framing story for Through Apocalypse Skies hit in full force.

(I am not the person you remember from before/The one you patronized and stepped on, the one you hurt/And I have pulled the arrows, now my skin has become stone/No longer am I prisoner to your empty fucking words)

(The voices in my head have all begun to sing/(The voices in your head have all begun to sing)/And they sure as hell hope I am listening/(I sure as hell hope you are listening!))

(They come to your dreams with illusion/They come to bring shape to your mind/You know how to stop the intrusion/We all have to fight for our lives)

and then, The Day the Earth Collapsed

(How much time has been elapsed/Since the day the earth collapsed?)

Here Comes the Reign doesn’t come into full effect until several months after Birthright/Firewall, but starts with The Day the Earth Collapsed. It’s largely about Haggar and [REDACTED]

(You made something they can’t take away/Now bring the fire of the burning sun on everyone)

Supersonic is here… kinda as a placeholder? Things have shifted around since its original purpose, and frankly it’s here still as a framework for what I like to call The Meme Battle. It’s generally about the increase in Coalition support and general winning as they go after warlords in the aftermath of Feyiv, culminating in I Need a Hero which is, of course, The Meme Battle.

Yes, it’s the Shrek version. It’s the Meme Battle.

(Supersonic, polyphonic, this is our war/Mustering the armies, marching faster than before)

(I need a hero/I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night/He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast/And he's gotta be fresh from the fight)

But Tonight We Dance isn’t exactly a klance song, but it’s here for them. On a diplomatic mission gone wrong, the Red and Blue Paladins of Voltron uncover a literally-buried government conspiracy, a rebel cell, and nearly die. A normal days work for the two of them. But they’ve really gotta stop having relationship milestones in the middle of a warzone.

Another reason it’s here is Tonight We Dance is a very aro song to me. “A language universal, but I speak not its tongue” hits hard. I felt like I needed a bit in here to remind listeners/readers that romance isn’t a language Keith speaks. And it becomes very explicit in this fic, just like Belgrade.

(Tomorrow we might wake in servitude and silence/I will give you everything if only you would have me/Tomorrow we will sweat and toil/Our hands will quiver, caked with soil/Tomorrow we'll give it one last chance/But tonight we dance/But tonight we dance!)

But Tonight We Dance is the last of the Closure fics, which is why it’s here. Closure in general is a lot of Keith’s character development and some of the struggles he goes through to accept his place in the universe and the fact that yes, he does have people that care about him. The last fic is me shining a brighter light on Closure’s chorus and taking a ‘last goodbye’ as never needing to say it again

(I am the child from the stars/That got lost in the dark/Between heaven and hell/I am forced to live on/I am the cause when you sin/I am the demon you skin/But there is no more tears to beautify/This is my last goodbye)

Then we step back into the universe-level action with Soulbound. Revelations from String Theory and Firewall swing back in with a vengeance on a joint Whispers-Voltron mission, leaving them reeling and Krolia questioning her very identity.

(Soulbound, endlessly forever/Locked between the darkness and the light/Don’t drown in the swarming, blackened rising/Hold on to humanity and fight)

About three months after that is My Darkest Hour and Faster Than Light. Haggar realizes something and goes searching for her fifth [spoiler], sending the Blade and the rest of the Coalition scrambling. These also lead directly, and I mean directly, into…

(When the sun comes crashing down/When the world is spinning round and round/I will face what must be my darkest hour)

(Once more we’re flying fast as light/Dark matter passing in the night/Pursued by a force we can’t outrun/As we hurtle towards a dying sun/We maneuver through the remnants of a moon/On the solar winds of supernovas/There is not a place to hide, the Matriarch is close behind/It’s plain to see she’s coming for us all)

Cosmic Vertigo and Other Worlds Than These. Together they are the second of two revelations in what, exactly, is [REDACTED]

(Banish me like burned down planets/Write my fate with sparkling lies/I am the universe; you're just one sky)

(Pull the wool out from your eyes/It won’t shade your frail belief/In the end we cannot hide/There are other worlds than these)

Godhunter is Team Voltron, well, hunting for gods, even as one of them disappears.

(She’s been watching for a century/With hatred, and with scorn/If you know the hunter’s coming/Then you hide or keep on running/'Cause she’s slain the gods before)

Trophy Hunter, Ember, and Redemption are the culmination of Godhunter. I’ve been thinking of them as akin to the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2, if that gives you an idea of what the hell they run into. Also I switched which specific Redemption is on the playlist, because I was listening to Red Handed Denial again and their Redemption was vibing way more than the Hammerfall one. They link up to Godhunter and Soulbound in subject matter, and lead directly into…

(You, you won’t escape me, I’ll rise from the deep/In this final moment, no words left to say/I can’t let you be when a life fades away/You, you won’t escape me ‘cause I’ll set you free)

(Dark matter falling from the sky/Dancing flames reflecting in your eyes as you watch them burn/Watching all your riches witches burn)

(Remember me not for the mess I’ve made/But who I could have been/Finally I’m going home)

World On Fire, This is a Call, The Reckoning, The Wind That Shapes the Land, and Louder Than Words. Switched the order up a bit so it makes more sense chronologically, because the message ‘sent by forces beyond salvation’ has to get there before the reckoning can begin.

(World on fire with a smoking sun/Stops everything and everyone/Brace yourself for all will pay/Help is on the way)

(This is a call to action/This is a call to arms/All lives for one, together/There are no false alarms)

(I see your face, find peace of mind/Between the madness and the sadness and the fire burning/The end of war, the great divine/We’ll see the day of reckoning)

(Search within/Uncover the will to win/Turn against the tide that washes o'er/Find the strength to fall and rise again/Open up the gates, unleash the force/I am the wind that shapes the land/Old as time and twice as strong/Oceans arise at my command/I alone can carry on)

(We have the force to fight/We have the blinding light/A war is more than heard/Coming in louder than words)

#i am dark matter; your road to ruin #dm playlists #guess who spent two hours on this! again!#as usual!#long post #i'm teaching in the morning and it's one am #oops

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gottagobuycheese · 3 years

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4, 5, 7 for the writing meme. Thanks!

(Writing meme)

Thank YOU for indulging me with these questions, and sorry for taking so long to answer! What is possibly my final finals season just about wrapped up, and I couldn’t think about anything else until it did (so fingers crossed it really has wrapped up lmao). So without further ado, here are some unnecessarily long answers!

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Ideas as in “I am actively working on this/making notes about it” or ideas as in “I have daydreamed about it at least once”? Because there’s…definitely way more of the second than the first lol.

But if we’re talking the former, then the thing that’s currently gripping my mind is a (hopefully) short post-true ending Undertale fic in which Undyne and Asgore catch up over tea and somehow get around to talking about the nature of human souls and what it what it takes to actually collect one (i.e. what it took to really, truly perma-kill a human). The problem is I don’t remember how much each character actually knows about the subject, so I’m rewatching a pacifist playthrough as “research” — and also falling back headfirst into the vast plethora of content that exists for the source material, predictably. It’s been a good few years since I was this fixated on it, which is great news for me because there is SO MUCH stuff to catch up on! (Tangentially, I guess it was kind of predictable, since I always seem to fall back into some kind of comfort video game around finals season, but usually it’s Ace Attorney, so this is new.)

In terms of the second, an idea that has been pretty solidly in daydream territory for a while is some kind of Stranger x Nobody Knows crossover fic in which (Senior) Inspector Han and (possibly former) Detective Cha cross paths for some reason. I have no idea what I’d want from it plot/content-wise, so I doubt it’ll ever be much more than a vaguely entertaining impression in my head, but I just think it’d be cool to see those two interact XD

Sadly neither of these things are the things I’m ACTUALLY supposed to be working on, so they probably (hopefully) won’t be done for a while.

5. Share one of your strengths.

 Ah, one of my least favorite interview questions. Uh, I guess I have fun writing dialogue, and it definitely tends to come easier than other aspects of writing (like DESCRIPTION, blegh). Plus I have been told that it makes people laugh sometimes, which is usually my goal — or makes them feel Painful Feelings, which is my other goal that unfortunately rarely makes it to the publishing phase — so I will count that as a success! And therefore a strength of some sort.

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it. 

Oof, this is a hard one, haha. There is a subtle yet important difference between saying why you like something versus saying why you’re proud of something, but I shall try to veer more toward the latter since that’s the actual question.

As it turns out, being more comfortable with dialogue means that most of my stories end up being pretty dialogue-heavy, which I just discovered when flicking through fics to borrow a snippet from, but if we’re going with strictly prose, then this bit from a long-ish comedic Good Omens fic I still haven’t figured out all the plot points to was fun to write:  

In literature, funerals are often held in the pouring rain. This is because, in literature, authors can carefully describe how grief-stricken the attendees are, how their water-logged clothes, heavy and cold, cannot begin to compare to the weight of the sorrow that drags them down, how it pulls at their body, hangs from their shoulders and backs and legs and soul, begging them to join their loved ones in the ground. They can describe how the heavens themselves weep for the dead, that the earth, for once, pauses in its frantic flurry of activity, takes a moment to mourn what it has lost, and grieve for those who are left behind.

Of course, grief is complicated. Authors understand this. Sometimes the attendees are angry, and so the funerals are sunny, and the attendees are angry because the world dares to keep spinning on its axis even when theirs has ground to a halt. They are angry because the heavens won’t hide their tears for them, won’t admit they did something wrong, taking away someone who was so loved, so cherished, so good. They are angry because their heartache isn’t enough, doesn’t nearly encompass the gaping void torn in their reality, doesn’t do the dead justice. The earth and the skies and the seas ought to be mad with grief as well. Thunderstorms, gale-force winds, surging tides and shaking stone. How dare the world imply it’s no great loss?

Or maybe the funerals are held in the snow, because grief is cold and numbing and relentless, and no amount of warm soup or thick blankets or knitted mittens will make it better, fill the hollow misery the way one can fill a grave with soil and ice crystals. No one really wants to be there, socks soaked through and half-asleep from the chill, but sometimes you need to slog your way through those waist-deep banks of grief anyway, that frigid, dull, powder-white pain, focus only on how your teeth chatter and your fingertips turn blue and put all the rest of it aside for later, when it’s warm again. If it will ever be warm again.

Or perhaps the author just likes snow.

I get to ramble about some of my favorite kinds of weather for three paragraphs?? Count me IN

Anyways, I think it did a good job of keeping with the vaguely whimsical tone of the rest of the story, despite this being the opening to a (fake) funeral scene. And yeah, maybe it’s a bit excessive and heavy-handed, but it fits the context well enough and has some actual Imagery™, not to mention that it actually segues somewhat neatly into the next bit, so I think it did its job — which is all I can really ask for, so I’ll be proud of that! It’s a bit of a narrative reprieve from the dialogue-and-emotions heavy previous scene and the comedic shenanigans of the subsequent scene. Which would probably also be quite dialogue heavy, except for the part where I haven’t written it yet sjkdhfskf

#ask #Cheese talks #I tried to type this out twice and accidentally tabbed out of the page and had to start over #so I kept putting off actually starting again #but THIS TIME I made sure to copy and paste as I went #and also just type out everything on a separate note and then just copy/paste it here #thank you again for this!#it was fun to look through old writing #but gosh I sure would like to finish some of those some day #lots of ideas but very few actual Stories #and now that I have all the time I could possibly want I don't want to do anything #writing ask meme #my brain is still very much in drawing mode and not writing mode #but hopefully it'll shift into more writing mode soon #because there's a lot of stuff I need to finish writing before getting back into Obligations #ANYWAYS FEEL FREE TO ASK MORE #SO I CAN START THINKING IN WORDS AGAIN INSTEAD OF JUST PICTURES #drivingsideways

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of-wrens-and-whirlwinds-blog · 4 years

Text

Tea, Books, and Mutations

Commission for the great @lindstrom2020 !! A crossover of Good Omens and X-Men (I chose post-Dark Phoenix). Bonding duos! I hope you like it! Commission info is here!

Erik was just trying to order some pizza, and Charles had already struck up a conversation with a man at the table next to them. The man kept glancing pointedly at Charles’ book, but Charles ignored him, though the slight, bastardly curl at the corner of his mouth told Erik that he knew exactly what was bothering the man.

“Charles, what do you want on your pizza?” Erik finally snapped, making the server jump.

Charles looked at him and gave him a sunny smile. “The usual,” he replied.

Erik rolled his eyes, thought back to the pizza they’d had a month ago, and gave the server that order. The boy nodded and scurried away.

“Surely you shouldn’t eat with a book open,” huffed the man Charles had been talking to, finally coming to the reason for his glares and snide comments.

“Oh, I won’t be,” Charles replied cheerfully. “It’s just that this one takes too long ordering.”

“Bullshit,” Erik snorted, making the man jump and look at him in alarm. “You’re the one with rotating favorites.”

“And you’re the one who can never decide what cheese to order,” Charles teased gently. “Mr. Fell, my husband, Erik. Erik, this charming man is Mr. Fell. He runs a bookshop!”

Ah. That would be why Charles had been drawn into conversation. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fell,” he said, remembering his manners but only because Charles would be annoyed if he didn’t. Mr. Fell looked like if someone had taken Charles and slid him all the way to the “professor” end of Charles’ aesthetic scale: short, round, white hair, impish blue eyes, and clothes that were more fit for a hundred years ago. He certainly looked like someone with a job involving books, although Erik would’ve thought more librarian than bookshop.

“The pleasure is mine, I’m sure,” Mr. Fell replied.

Mr. Fell’s food arrived; some sort of fancy one with green bits and tiny sliced tomatoes. All three of them said polite things to end the conversation, and Mr. Fell began eating while Erik asked Charles wearily, “Where to after this?”

“I’m not sure,” Charles answered thoughtfully, tracing the title on the cover of his book with his fingertip. “Maybe wander Soho? It’s been decades and I’d like to see how it’s changed.”

Erik’s mouth twisted. He knew it was a terrible idea to be confined to “tourist” areas when Charles had visited London twice a year during most of his school career, but he didn’t like these neighborhoods with tiny streets, tiny sidewalks, and people who didn’t like moving out of Charles’ way. He’d already threatened a man who kicked Charles’ chair and yelled at Charles for running over his foot.

“It will be fine, Erik,” Charles told him, smiling again, but softer.

Erik grunted, but allowed himself to be swayed.

The food was actually very good, and they finished their meal in relative silence. Well. Audibly silent.

Why was that man so angry at you?

He noticed how my book is a first edition and I had it out at a restaurant. He seems the fussy type. I wonder what his bookshop looks like.

Judging by his appearance, I’d say absolutely spotless and annoyingly alphabetical.

Looks can be deceiving, my love. The mental sense of Charles laughing, of gentle fingers running over his mind and leaving warmth in their wake. Maybe it’s charmingly cluttered.

Your idea of charming is “absolute chaos”.

You still love me, though.

Erik sent Charles a bit of his own warmth and the sense of laughter.

They finished eating quickly and left with a final polite goodbye to Mr. Fell, who was blandly polite back—until he noticed Charles’ chair, and he went from polite to surprised. Thankfully, he said nothing, and they left without awkwardness.

“How did he not notice?” Erik grumbled, holding the door for Charles.

Charles shrugged. “He was upset about the book. At least he didn’t say anything.”

“True.” Erik ran the backs of his fingers gently down Charles’ cheek, and Charles smiled up at him.

Soho wasn’t as crowded as Erik feared, although there were a few moments where Erik had to glare at people to make them move. Charles looked around in excitement, pointing out places he remembered from his school years, and complaining about how they couldn’t go in his favorite antiques shop because the aisles were so narrow.

“Some day,” Erik promised him, and Charles just gave him a sad half-smile and said nothing.

They reached a corner, and Charles exclaimed in delight. “A.Z. Fell! Oh, this place is a delight! Hardly ever open, but I’ve memorized the hours—it should be open right now!”

“How the fuck did you memorize that?” Erik asked, baffled as he stared at the sign. Charles laughed.

“It was an interesting puzzle. I had to, this shop is a landmark and also so wonderful. Help me up the steps?”

Erik nodded, opening the unlocked door and floating Charles’ chair up the steps with a single slight wave of his hand. Then he followed Charles in.

“He has new books in!” Charles exclaimed, and immediately went to an overflowing table and picked up what looked like a first edition of something strange and obscure that Charles would definitely covet and read until it fell apart. Erik looked around, frowning. This place was a disaster, and there was no way Charles could maneuver through these dangerous stacks. Still, Erik could try. The sight of books on the floor made him twitch, but he grit his teeth and only moved things when Charles needed him to.

“Oh. You again.”

Erik and Charles looked over in surprise, to see Mr. Fell standing in a doorway further into the shop, looking both resigned and annoyed. His tone had been the same.

“Hello Mr. Fell,” Charles said cheerfully. “This is a lovely shop, I must say.”

Mr. Fell blinked, apparently surprised. “Ah, thank you,” he said. Then he frowned at the book Charles had just picked up to look over.

“I’m not looking to buy,” Charles told him quickly, startling Erik. He knew that hungry look in Charles’ eye; he wanted these books. “I just missed this place.”

Mr. Fell smiled and said nothing else, but he did hover possessively as Charles and Erik went around, picking up books to look at and talk about, softly. Charles always put books back exactly where he found them, and never lifted more than three off a stack; Erik copied him, baffled. Charles was the type to search through entire cases and pull out one book on each shelf to read or buy. It came with being rich. But, well… there wasn’t really room for a library on Genosha yet.

One day.

“Hey, angel!” said a loud voice, making Erik jump and spin; a person with half their head buzzed to perhaps two inches and the rest of their red hair long and curly, huge dark sunglasses, and a black dress with black heeled boots, had just walked through the door, and was staring back with a tight mouth and eyebrows drawn down. “Who’re you?” the person demanded bluntly.

“Customers,” Erik replied shortly, and turned away.

“Oh!” Charles gasped softly, and reached out to gently wiggle a copy of Once and Future King free of a shelf, holding it reverently in his hands. It looked very old and like it was going to fall apart any second. Charles held it very gently. “A real third printing,” he murmured in awe. “I’ve been looking for one of these for years.”

“Charles, it’s almost destroyed,” Erik sighed. “You can’t take it on a plane.”

“Of course not!” Charles said, appalled, as he looked up at Erik. “This is far too precious to bring back to Genosha, at least until there’s proper moisture control. But isn’t it beautiful?”

Erik looked at the book. It really probably should’ve been recycled a few decades ago. “Uh. Yes.”

“You just don’t appreciate old books.” Charles stroked the cover, sighed, and carefully put it back. “It’s safe here, that’s what matters.”

Erik glanced over at Mr. Fell and the newcomer, warily; Mr. Fell looked pleased, and the newcomer exasperated. “How long are we staying here?” he muttered to Charles. He didn’t like how those two were staring.

“I don’t know,” Charles murmured back, eyes wandering among the shelves. “Can’t you feel the history?”

“I can feel that the nails in these shelves are rusted to almost nothing,” Erik replied, eyeing a shelf warily. It should be cracking, or at least sagging badly; but it was straight and perfect and pristine. In fact… the whole shop was perfect. He looked around again, frowning. Yes… under the dust and books, every inch of this place looked in good repair. But there was rust everywhere, and that chair’s springs were almost gone and yet it still looked plump and comfortable, and honestly what the fuck was with the infuriating layout of these books? It was almost like Mr. Fell wanted customers to trip and break things.

“Erik.”

There was a warning note in Charles’ tone. Erik’s mouth tightened, but instead of bothering with moving books, he just lifted Charles’ chair and moved him over to the next clear space.

A gasp from behind them. “Oh!” Mr. Fell said, “You’re a mutant!”

Erik couldn’t help a smirk. “Yes,” he said bluntly.

“No wonder you got in, those steps haven’t changed in—a while,” the other person said. Mr. Fell hissed something and the other person scowled. Erik looked at Charles, who had his politest smile on, but Erik could tell immediately that he had heard something unflattering if not downright rude and it had soured his mood.

“Shall we just go?” Erik asked Charles softly.

“No, it’s fine,” Charles replied, and turned back to the books.

“What’s your mutation, anyway?” the other person asked, sidling towards Erik. Mr. Fell wrung his hands and scowled, but Erik didn’t really care, so he answered.

“Magnetic field manipulation.”

“Huh.” The person cocked their head and shoved their hands in previously-unnoticed pockets in their skirt. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a telekinetic.”

“It’s not telekinesis,” Erik replied, exasperated already. Honestly, you’d think people would realize by now. “Magnetism isn’t just moving things. I could snap every bone in your—”

“Erik!” Charles barked. “Enough!”

But while Mr. Fell looked alarmed, the other person was beginning to grin. “Oh, I like you,” they declared, and stuck out their hand to shake. “Crowley.”

Erik frowned, but shook the offered hand. “Lehnsherr,” he replied.

“Oh dear,” Mr. Fell muttered.

“Indeed,” Charles said wearily.

Erik had no idea how it happened, but somehow he ended up discussing the differences between different mutations with Crowley, while Mr. Fell swooped in to make sure Charles didn’t knock over his precious books. Erik was dimly aware of them making small talk, but he was caught up in explaining the less-obvious applications of complete control over magnetism, versus the limitations of plain telekinesis. Crowley was very intrigued, and told Erik that they, themselves were not a mutant, but they had had cause to work with a few, and they had once been nanny to a boy with the power to make illusions and hallucinations. It had been fun raising the little hellspawn, they said fondly, but it had been hard to figure out what, exactly, the limits of his power were. Nowadays he was about twenty and probably still giving his parents nightmares, though of less insubstantial means.

“Good for him,” Erik said firmly. He had the suspicion from the way Crowley talked that the parents had been rather distant. Well, if they were upset over their son’s choices, they should’ve tried to be better parents and learn about him as he grew.

Crowley’s grin was delighted.

“Buy?” Mr. Fell’s incredulous voice said, catching Erik and Crowley’s attention. They turned, surprised.

“Yes,” Charles replied calmly with a smile. “I have some very well-preserved books, but no one is reading them and I hate letting them get dusty. I can have my associate back in New York bring them over next week. And you take such good care of your collection, I’m sure they’ll be safe with you.”

Mr. Fell’s surprise became something like glee. “I would be delighted to help,” he said. “If you would like, I can bring out my list of inventory, and we’ll see if I already have duplicates.”

“That would be wonderful, thank you!”

And so they went to the back, chatting about the merits and pitfalls of collecting only old books. Erik distinctly heard a wistful tone as Charles spoke of missing his own library back home, and felt a stab of sadness. He knew Charles liked Genosha, he often said so, and they were growing all the time; but he also knew that Charles missed his old home, and teaching.

One day.

“Well, that’s a first,” Crowley said, shaking Erik out of his thoughts. He looked at Crowley, and saw a tiny, pleased smile on their face. “Your husband must’ve offered something good for Az—Fell to show him the inventory.”

“How did you know he’s my husband?” Erik asked, surprised.

Crowley raised one eyebrow and their smile grew. “It’s obvious, innit? And your necklaces match.”

That was hardly an obvious sign of marriage, but… it was true. Erik had made two tiny chess piece pendants, a knight and a king, and painted them both white. He wore the knight, and Charles wore the king. Charles had also scrounged up his parents’ wedding bands, and those were on their necklaces, too. Weddings in Genosha were more “moving in together and saying you’re married” than official registries and ceremonies. At the moment, at least.

“What’s your relationship with Mr. Fell?” Erik asked, feeling a little homesick. “You seem to know each other well.”

Crowley shrugged, smile softening. “We’re still figuring it out. Feels like we’ve been together over a thousand years, but our… families are all assholes. So it’s only been about nine years since we started something for real.”

Erik nodded, a little confused but not willing to admit it. Ah, well. “Does he actually sell any books? Charles was very excited to see that literally nothing’s changed.”

Crowley laughed. “Oh, he doesn’t sell anything. He’s run people off with broken tea pots when they’ve been insistent. Browsing is fine, as long as you don’t damage anything, but buying? Out of the question.”

Erik snorted, thinking of Charles and his coveted collection of teacups that no one was allowed to use. “Bet on how many cups of tea they’ll have before I can drag Charles back to the hotel.”

“Fifty quid. But if Fell breaks out the wine, neither of you are leaving for the night.”

Aziraphale was so delighted that this “customer” was actually prepared to give him books that he allowed himself to be drawn into conversation about favorite authors, judging by the amount of queer erotica on his shelves. And then he was even more delighted when Charles revealed himself to be remarkably well-read, and to have similar taste in fiction, and to prefer his tea without sugar or milk.

“So how long have you been married?” he asked curiously, when Charles made a fondly exasperated comment on his husband not understanding the importance of old literature.

Charles smiled. “Oh, about five years,” he said cheerfully. “It wasn’t really official until then. We’ve been off and on since the sixties, though.”

“The sixties!” Aziraphale exclaimed, then realized how rude he must have sounded. “I—I am very sorry, it’s just that...”

Charles smiled wider, rueful now. “It’s the face, isn’t it? I have a theory it’s the strength of our mutations; certainly my sister never aged because of hers, and a few of my students were the same.” His smile faltered, his eyes becoming shadowed—and then he brightened again. “I apologize. But yes, I’ve been speaking to my friend, who is a biological chemist, and we’re discussing how to best research the effects of mutations on aging.”

“That would be a quite interesting study,” Aziraphale commented, hoping to draw Charles away from whatever sad thoughts had taken him. “I would love to read it. Ah… may I ask, what is your mutation?”

“Telepathy,” Charles replied.

Aziraphale gasped in unfeigned delight. “Oh! I’ve always wanted to meet a telepath! Please, how does that work? Oh, bother, I’m sorry, I’m not myself today, I don’t mean to be rude.”

Charles laughed. “It’s alright. It’s been a while since I’ve met someone who’s wanted to know. I’m a geneticist with a psychology degree, so I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I know what it does.”

It was a merry time, talking about mutations and science and books and the strange power-surge in mutations around the globe around nine years ago that everyone mysteriously forgot after the ruckus at Tadfield (if Charles noticed Aziraphale’s nervous sweating, he was certainly kind enough to ignore it). They finished two pots of tea, and it was only when Charles turned to ask Erik his opinion on something that Aziraphale noticed that Erik and Crowley were in the doorway, leaning on opposite sides in the exact same position. It was quite funny, especially since they were both wearing sunglasses and had rather soft expressions on their faces.

“Come sit, both of you,” Aziraphale offered.

Erik shook his head. “We have dinner reservations,” he said.

“It’s a fresh pot of tea, though,” Charles objected.

“You’re going to hurt yourself with all that caffeine,” Erik retorted.

“Did you forget we’ve got a table at the Ritz tonight, angel?” Crowley drawled, with a bit of a smirk. Aziraphale glared at them. They did not have a table, but knowing Crowley, one probably just conveniently opened up. “It’s been a while since you’ve stayed open this long, too.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips and frowned. His automatic response was to refuse to go anywhere when he had a good conversationalist trapped here, but he had the feeling Charles would not appreciate being held up. So he sighed regretfully and told Crowley, “Not until we finish our tea.”

Charles smiled, Crowley stuck their tongue out at Aziraphale, and Erik scowled.

It was dinnertime by the time the tea was gone, and Aziraphale and Crowley saw Charles and Erik out, with much more pleasant goodbyes than at the pizzeria.

“What nice young men,” Aziraphale commented when the door was closed.

“I dunno, the tall one’s a bit of an ass,” Crowley replied, smirking.

“Ah yes, like you?” Aziraphale retorted snidely.

“Actually, yes. And according to him, his husband is a bastard under all the sweet.” Crowley outright grinned at Aziraphale’s confusion. “You’re a tamer of assholes, angel.”

“Well, according to Charles, Erik has a good heart under his bitterness and bastardy, so that’s you in a nutshell,” Aziraphale said, and smiled smugly as Crowley immediately began to bluster and splutter. “Oh, do be quiet, dear. You’ll scare the children.”

“What children?!”

#Good Omens #X-Men #Cherik #Ineffable spouses #crossover #this got... very long #commission

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inconvenient-sneezes · 4 years

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hi @caramelfuzz! i’m your secret santa! i can only hope that i did crowley justice in this oneshot. good omens is a very popular fandom so fingers crossed you like this. it’s actually my first good omens fic i think, just because i’ve always been too nervous to post one, haha. anyway, i hope you enjoy and have a good new year!

Lunch Date

The tiny bell above the doorframe jingled as the door swung open. Without looking up from his book, Aziraphale knew who it was.

“Hello,” he began to say, but hesitated slightly when he saw the figure in the entrance.

He peered through his glasses and smiled warmly. “Why, Crowley, you look… well.”

Crowley did not look at all well, actually. His hair — which was usually a bit tussled — was truly wild on this day and stuck up in nearly all directions. He was also noticeably flushed and the tip of his nose was pink, as if he’d been walking around in the frigid London air all morning. Although he did have a scarf loosely wrapped around his neck and haphazardly thrown behind his shoulder, he wasn’t wearing a coat. Even his designer sunglasses looked crooked.

“Yes, well,” Crowley started, a shivering going through him. “It is a bit nippy out there.”

“Perhaps you should’ve worn a coat?”

Crowley grunted. The door closed behind him and he brushed some flurries out of his hair. “You ready for lunch?” he asked, the question punctuated with a sniffle.

Aziraphale beamed. He’d been looking forward to this all morning. “Certainly. Let me grab my coat. Can I get you one?”

“One what?”

“An overcoat, of course! It’s freezing.”

Crowley rolled his eyes but felt an unfortunately-timed prickle in his sinuses. “H-heh’TSSSSCHH!”

Aziraphale jumped at the loud sound. “Goodness! Are you catching something? Bl—”

“Don’t you dare,” Crowley snapped, tugging at Aziraphale’s coat sleeve. “Let’s be off.”

***

As the two walked briskly down the street, Crowley sniffled again. “Blessed cold weather,” he muttered, folding his arms over his chest. “London is much too chilly this time of year, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I just love it,” Aziraphale said, beaming. “Cold weather reminds me of Christmas and Christmas reminds me of—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The big man upstairs.”

“And also, you know, the spirit of giving,” he continued, still smiling fondly. “It seems even in London, people are kinder, more understanding. I was on the Tube the other day — and you know how wary I am of that underground place — and even though I took the wrong line, the woman next to me was kind enough to help me find my way.”

Aziraphale sighed happily as they turned a corner. “The holiday season just brings out the best in people.”

“B-blessed Mother,” Crowley spat out before turning away from Aziraphale to sneeze. “Hh’DTTTTSSHHH!”

Despite himself, Aziraphale jumped again, chuckling nervously. “Gracious! Are you quite alright?”

Crowley pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose, sniffling. “Ugh, angel, you’re much too fussy. Where is this damn place anyway?”

Aziraphale gestured to a small café, just up the street. Crowley nodded, swiping under his nose again. This cold was going to be the death of him, that was for sure. But he couldn’t ruin their lunch date. He knew Aziraphale loved their lunch dates.

As the two entered, a large man swept Aziraphale into his arms for a giant (and what Crowley presumed to be spine-crushing) hug.

Leave it to Aziraphale to make a friend in every shop in London.

As the angel and the café’s owner chatted, a waiter led Crowley to a comfy table toward the back. He cleared his throat as the demon scanned the menu.

“Can I get you a glass of water? Perhaps—”

Crowley’s breath caught and he barely turned away from the waiter in time, sneezing into a cupped hand. “Hih’TZSSCHHHH!”

“Perhaps a cup of hot tea?”

He cleared his throat when he saw Aziraphale begin to walk over. “Water is fine.”

“My apologies,” Aziraphale said rather breathlessly as he sat down across from Crowley. “Mohamed was telling me about a truly misguided customer he had a few days ago and…”

As he was talking, it was evident Crowley was going to sneeze again. He sniffled, willing the tickle in his sinuses to leave him be. His head tilted back, his expression lax, eyes watering beneath his sunglasses… but it soon dissipated.

“Crowley?”

“Sorry, sorry,” the demon said dismissively, rubbing the underside of his nose discreetly. “You were saying?”

“I was just saying—”

Jesus Christ. “Hh’TSSSZSCHH!”

“Oh, my. You’re ill, aren’t you?”

Although Arizaphale did not mean his question in any ways accusatory, Crowley crossed his arms defensively.

“Am not.”

Before he could protest or even notice, Aziraphale gently reached out and removed Crowley’s designer sunglasses. It seemed he was on the brink of a sneeze again, his lower lip quivering in anticipation.

“H-hahh… ahHH! Hoo. Went away,” Crowley said, punctuated with a sniff.

Aziraphale stared at him, worried.

“Angel, it’s allergies for God’s sake.”

“Allergies? Crowley, I’ve known you for thousands of years. I know what you’re allergic to.”

Aziraphale continued to stare at him as Crowley fake-browsed the menu.

“Wow, that fatayel ghanam looks absolutely divine. What are you getting?”

“Oh, stop playing games,” Aziraphale said, rolling his eyes. “I know you’re ill. What’s the harm in admitting it?”

“I’m not sick, let it b-be,” Crowley said, swallowing back the tickle in his throat.

The waiter returned a few moments later, expectant with a small pad of paper and a pen. “What will it be, gentlemen?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to order but Crowley beat him to it with a desperate gasp of breath. He blindly groped for his napkin and sneezed into it forcibly.

“H-hahH! Hh’TSCCHSH! HihhH! TSSSZSCHH!”

“On second thought, we’d prefer takeaway,” Aziraphale said defiantly, ignoring Crowley’s groan of frustration.

***

“Isn’t this nicer?”

The two were sitting together on the small couch in Aziraphale’s bookshop, the closed sign hung up outside. There was a steaming tray of tea in front of them, along with the takeaway lentil soup and bamia that the angel had ordered.

Crowley felt a shiver go through him, despite Aziraphale’s coat draped over his shoulders.

“Sure, sure,” he said, sniffling. “It’s not like we could’ve eaten at the café.”

Aziraphale shook his head, exasperated. “You’re fevered and you keep—”

“Hih’TSSCHSSHH!” Crowley pitched forward with a miserable sneeze and desperately patted his pocket for a handkerchief, his nostrils still flaring.

“H-hahhh… where is that blessed h-hihhh… h-handerchief?”

Arizaphale seemed to conjure one up out of thin air (perhaps he did?) and gently pressed it into Crowley’s shaking hands. The demon’s lips began to curl, as if he was about to snarl, but took in a sharp inhale instead.

“Hh’DTSZCHISSHH!”

“Goodness,” Aziraphale clucked, patting his arm gently. “Let me see if I can find another blanket.”

As he searched through a back closet, he heard the telltale signs of another sneeze. Two quick, desperate breaths of air and…

“TSSCH! Hah’TSSCHHUH!”

“Bless you!” Aziraphale called out, without thinking.

He heard Crowley hiss, a visceral reaction to Aziraphale’s words.

“Oh! I mean, ah… damn you!”

Though truth be told, Crowley was just glad to be in the company of Aziraphale, ill or not.

#ok yes i love sneezy crowley #esp when he has a cold tbh #snz #snez #snzfic #snezfic #sneezefic #fic #goodsnz

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go-events · 4 years

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GO Rom Com Spotlight: @micky-r-c

The compelling @micky-r-c (also MickyRC on AO3) has claimed The Princess Bride to adapt for Good Omens in the Good Omens Rom Com Event.

For reference, here’s a little background about the source material!

About The Princess Bride: A kindly grandfather sits down with his ill grandson and reads him a story. The story is one that has been passed down from father to son for generations. As the grandfather reads the story, the action comes alive. The story is a classic tale of love and adventure as the beautiful Buttercup, engaged to the odious Prince Humperdinck, is kidnapped and held against her will in order to start a war, It is up to Westley (her childhood beau, now returned as the Dread Pirate Roberts) to save her. On the way he meets a thief and his hired helpers, an accomplished swordsman and a huge, super strong giant, both of whom become Westley's companions in his quest.

We spent some time chatting about how the adaptation is coming so far, as well as future plans for it! Now, get to know @micky-r-c a little better!

* * *

goromcom: You know how if you open a Tumblr chat with someone you haven't chatted to before, Tumblr tells you two things they post about? I wanted to tell you that yours reports that you post "about #good omens fanart and #holiday fic". Do especially enjoy holiday-themed fics?

micky-r-c: Wow, no I would not have expected that. I mean I love a good huddling for warmth or holiday decorating fic, but I don't go out of my way for them. But I did get really settled into writing Good Omens fic right around the end of November, and I thought, for some reason, that it would be a good idea to do not one, but two advent calendar series. Didn't finish either of them, but there was a solid two weeks in there where I had two posts a day tagged holiday fic, so I guess that's where that came from.

goromcom: Hey, anything that gets the creativity moving, right? So it’s great that the advent projects inspired you to put out that much content! But let’s look forward to some new content: your rom com! You chose to adapt The Princess Bride. Has this movie been a favorite of yours, or is there some other reason you chose it?

micky-r-c: Full disclosure here, I'm not a big romcom watcher. Romcom fic reader, absolutely, but I didn't know most of the movies on the list. So when I saw Princess Bride on there it was kind of a combination of "Oh! I know one!" and "Gasp, I could write a sword fight." And now here we are.

goromcom: What's your favorite moment of the movie, and are you looking forward to presenting it in your adaptation? Any loose plans for that scene that you can share?

micky-r-c: There most definitely is. I bounced between a few concepts for this adaptation, but the scene right at the beginning of Princess Bride when Buttercup realizes the meaning of "as you wish" has me by the heartstrings, and I am very excited to write my Good Omens version (spoiler alert: it happens in 1967).

goromcom: 1967 is such a gift for the GO fandom, how amazing of Neil to give that to us as new content for the mini-series. :) Other than adapting the “as you wish” realization, do you plan to stick very closely to the beats of the original story, or make bigger changes?

micky-r-c: Yeah, pretty close. I'm not doing an AU, so in weaving the two plots together I'm trying really hard not to lose too much of The Princess Bride, especially since it's such a classic. I want it to have that specific silly-yet-heartfelt feeling the movie has, which, to be fair, Good Omens lines up with pretty nicely.

goromcom: This movie definitely has a unique feel to it, and I can absolutely see not wanting to poke an alchemy like that too strongly! Given your resolution to preserve that silly/heartfelt tone of the movie, I’m sure you’ve had to make a lot of careful decisions thus far. Perhaps there’s a particularly interesting decision you've made in your planning so far--a notable casting decision, a changing of venue, that you can share with us?

micky-r-c: So I've actually changed the timeline maybe... 6 times so far? Yeah. It's been everywhere. But I finally landed on just overlapping with canon in the immediate lead up to the apocadon't, which I'm super happy with. It means I can have some serious fun with how things could have gone differently. Plus, I'll be honest, I am very excited to write the Princess Bride version of the wall slam. That one's gonna be A Lot.

goromcom: You can’t see me, but I’m gleefully rubbing my hands together thinking about it. However, I feel like we’re verging on giving too much away, so let’s move on to the wrap-up. I am blatantly stealing this last question from The Good Place: The Podcast, but here goes: Tell me something "good". It can be something big or small. It can be a charity you think is doing good work, or you can talk about how great your pet is.

micky-r-c: Ya know, every time I've seen a spotlight I've thought to myself, wow, I should really start thinking about my answer to that. Plot twist, I forgot to. But anyway, one thing that's been really unbelievably good for me recently has been the community I've found through Good Omens. I've been hanging around the edges of fandom for years, but within maybe a month of posting my first Good Omens fic I was talking to people, getting to beta read things, working up the nerve to leave long rambly comments on ao3... all the stuff I'd always wanted to be doing but never had the community support to build on. So that's been a literal dream come true, and things like this event have all been a big part of it, so thank you for running it and giving us all this wonderful gift!!!

goromcom: Aww, well, I agree about the GO fandom being amazing. It’s been so much fun so far and I hope we keep on with it for a long time to come. :)

And while we’re all basking in the amazingness that is the Good Omens fandom, don’t forget to keep an eye out for the GO adaptation of The Princess Bride, coming soon!

#goromcom #goromcom spotlight #good omens #micky-r-c #the princess bride

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amplesalty · 4 years

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Halloween 2020 - Day 1 - The Stand (1994) - Episode 1 The Plague

Gee, an epic post-apocalyptic story about an out of control pandemic. Never heard that one before.

Much as we like to tie the Halloween season to the Christmas one by opening up with a festive horror movie, why not link back to the TV binging that provided some content to this blog earlier in the year by partaking in this mini series? We’re only covering part one here today as this is like four feature length episodes. In a worst case scenario, the rest will serve as backups that I can plug in if I’m having an off day so to help me from falling behind. But ideally they’ll go up once a week on the same day as a standard movie post. You manage to go back to actually doing 31 entries for the first time in donkeys years and it all goes to your head and you suddenly think you can do 34!

This has actually been on my list for quite a while now, we do love a good (or bad) Stephen King adaptation around here and I have a distinct memory of seeing this on TV when I was a kid. I’m guessing it must have played over a few nights over here at some point or maybe over a bank holiday or something? Not that I really remember much in the way of details, just the cornfields and a creepy face which we’ll get on to.

It’s something that’s stuck with me over all these years, I actually got a copy of the book at one point in what must have been the early to mid 2000’s. Still have it actually, I dug it out for the sake of this entry. Seems it’s a version from 1980 from it’s first run as a paperback in the UK. Seems to have a page or two missing near the start in amongst all the copywright business but otherwise it’s in okay shape.

Even has some writing on the first page that I can only make out in parts, one section seems to read ‘an old man beats a mule’. Or perhaps, more pertinently to this story, a mute...

Cover seems a bit dull and non descript compared to the various other ones that have come out over the years. There’s something interesting to this original version with the two figures fighting, very much a literal take on the good versus evil nature of the story with one figure dressed in light colours and the other dark. The dark figure is wielding a scythe which is obviously closely associated with the Grim Reaper. Seems to have some form of beak sticking out of its hood too and the robes and shoes seem to be almost harlequin or jester type clothes?

I wasn’t really expecting much going into it, especially based on the 1990 mini-series of It. I think because of the nature of It being partly set in the 60’s, as well the contemporary portion which just looks very 80’s, gives it this image in my head of being very dated. Outside of a few actors like Tim Curry, John Ritter and Seth Green, there’s not really any notable stars in it either and even though, Green’s notably arguably came much later on. The Stand though? This thing has some names, even if the bigger ones are just small cameos. Amongst the main cast you’ve got Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe. Obviously Ringwald isn’t a massive star or anything and is only really known for that string of John Hughes movies in the 80’s but around this time was peak Sinise. He’s not long removed from starring in Of Mice and Men (...and men....and men...) and would have roles in Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Ransom in the following years. Plus that big stretch in CSI:NY in the 00’s. But then you’ve got people like Ed Harris and Kathy Bates showing up, albeit briefly but these guys have some clout. I mean, Bates had just won the Academy Award a few years prior for her role in Misery so maybe she felt compelled to do more work under the King umbrella. Even the more minor roles seem like a roll call of ‘hey, it’s you!’ with Ken Jenkins (AKA Bob Kelso from Scrubs), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the proprietor of Joe Bob’s Drive In, Joe Bob Briggs.

The landscape of TV feels very different today with actors much more willing to work in the field as it’s taken on much more artistic integrity. The greater availability of shows after they’ve aired, be it through DVR, home media or streaming, has enabled people to watch in far greater numbers. There was a time when the big break was deemed to be making it to Hollywood and starring in motion picture epics but it seems more and more that story tellers are moving away from the relatively cramped 2 hour-ish format of the silver screen to having their vision play out over a long form story and the big name actors are following suit. I feel like things would have been very different back in the early 90’s so to have these names attached.

Seems for a long time there were plans to turn this into a movie, it’s even referred to during a ‘making of’ feature on the blu-ray (pretty much the only feature on there I might add) as a ‘motion picture epic’ but this must have been done way into production so either they were confused or trying to mislead viewers for some reason? Apparently in the early 80’s the idea was for the success of Creepshow to finance production of The Stand but took until the early 90’s for everyone to finally settle on the miniseries.

Very much a big budget affair too for a TV Show, $6m per episode. And it’s needed given the scale of the story, taking place in all these different locations, the special effetcs and with so many characters involved with over 125 speaking roles across the series. It’s definitely a jump up from It, even though that had the two different time periods, it only had a budget of $12m across its two parts compared to the $24m here across four parts.

But to finally address the massive elephant in the room, this story centers around an outbreak of a strain of influenza seemingly created in some shadowy government facility. After something goes awry in the lab, a doomed insider pleads with the guy watching the main gate to seal the facility but he instead piss bolts for his nearby house and hurriedly bundles his wife and child into their car as they make their escape. Everyone else is not nearly as fortunate though as the camera pans the facility, lifeless corpses strewn throughout that have seemingly dropped dead in the middle of their everyday activities, there’s even one guy doubled over on a ping pong table. All of this is set to the sounds of BOC’s Don’t Fear the Reaper and culminates with the image of a crow picking at a doll dropped by the child in the rush out of the front gate. The crow features prominently on the front cover of the blu-ray I have, perched atop of a skull. Though, I know they’re going for the whole post-apocalyptic vibe but what about the superflu is causing the road to burn up and crack like that? The bird also shows up a fair bit throughout the episode, I was going to talk about it being a raven and how such birds are linked with ill omen and death but it’s a crow apparently. Who knew? Not me, I’m no ornithologist. It also seems to be very closely linked with a mysterious figure that is alluded to throughout, a ‘dark man’ or monster.

When the original carrier of the disease makes his way into Arnette, Texas, and crashes into the gas station that Sinise’s character Stu Redman is working at, his dying words are of his efforts to escape from a dark man that was chasing him and that no one can out run him. Maybe in that moment you’d think this is just a state of delirium and he’s speaking oddly poetically about trying to outrun Death himself but as the show goes on, more and more people speak of this dark man, almost as if everyone in the grip of this disease comes to share this vision.

And speaking of visions, we can’t forget Mother Abigail and her cornfields. Both Lowe and Sinise’s characters are whisked away in their dreams to the middle of nowhere where a centurion on her porch warns of them of an ominous future. Think Mama Murphy from Fallout 4 only with much less chem addiction. The only thing Mama Abigail needs is her bread. What is it with King and fields anyway? You’ve got In the Tall Grass, plus the corn fields here and in Children of the Corn. There’s probably more I’m forgetting too. It’s either cornfields, writers in distress or killer ‘whatever I can see in front of me whilst I’m pitching this story’ with this guy.

In a way though it’s good that the show takes this supernatural turn because otherwise this would be a little too on the nose to be watching in this current climate. It’s very eerie to see such similar events play out on screen, starting with the widespread rumours and misinformation. It starts out innocently enough with talk of this so called superflu being downplayed, covered up by the government as an anthrax attack or outbreak of swineflu. I remember back to those more innocent times at the start of the year when COVID was naively dismissed as little more than another flavour of the month disease like the swineflu, sars or ebola that would be here today and gone tomorrow. But then you’ve got things like the sense of paranoia suddenly surrounding a simple cough or sneeze, talks of quarantines, social distancing, the implementation of masks (which one reporter describes as not being able to stop a flu germ with a hangover) to the more disturbing scene of lethal force being used against a TV news crew who refuse to surrender footage they’ve shot of army troops disposing of bodies. Granted, we never got anywhere near that level, I think the worst we had was that guy from CNN getting arrested or that Aussie reporter being pushed over.

They even managed to mirror how universal a pandemic like this is, from the common man to the height of celebrity. One of the characters we’re introduced to is a singer who, whilst he seems to be one of the few lucky to have some immunity, still sees his mother succumb to the virus. Just like we saw with the likes of BoJo or Tom Hanks, it really is a great leveller and, as a wise man once said, ‘You might be a King or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper!’. I guess we can take solice that we haven’t quite had the societal collapse that this show manages to pull off in less than a week, with Times Square on fire and a guy running around shooting people like he’s in Falling Down. That’s not to say we wont get there, we seem to be hovering more around general civil disobedience right now with the growing frustration of lockdown and PPE spilling out into protests.

It makes for compelling viewing to see how quickly things break down from simply a man having the sniffles to people being rounded up from their homes and ushered into army vehicles. There’s a lot to take in as the show has to establish the events taking place and introducing it’s multitude of characters so there’s not really much room to breathe. Hopefully episode 2 can relax a little now and give the cast some time to grow. There’s still some standout performances though such as Redman’s growing frustration at being cooped up in a test facility, lashing out at the doctors and nurses coming in in their hazmat suits, prodding and poking him. It would have been nice to see more scenes with him and Dr. Dietz. They have one argument where they nearly come to blows before having a big showdown by the end, with the Doc being one of the last staff members left alive, seemingly crazed by their inability to find any answers in Redman’s tests and he threatens to take his frustrations out on Redman by shooting him. He might be immune to the virus but I bet he’s not immune to a bullet. Dietz starts out with this complete lack of empathy, almost to the point of having a rather cheery deposition considering the circumstances, as he finds some fascination in the speed at which the virus causes death. But he becomes more and more short tempered and threatening as the days wear on and it would have been good to see a more gradual descent.

The aforementioned Ed Harris plays General Starkey overseeing the initial bioweapon project and the fallout of it’s outbreak, perhaps overseeing to a fault as it becomes pretty clear from his ever increasing five o’clock shadow, dishevelled clothing and massive bags under his eyes that he’s slept very sparingly since the initial breach in containment. I think for the entire time we see him, his screen never changes from a shot of one of the cooks at the base of the initial outbreak slumped over, face down in the meal he was preparing. It makes a bit of a change to go from the quite verbal exchanges of Redman and Dietz to Starkey’s physical appearance and facial expressions putting across his mood.

#Halloween 2020 #Stephen King #The Stand

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sesquipedalian-aficionado · 5 years

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Good Omens

Warnings: none

My first actual posted fanfic? I think? Based on this lovely post. Anyways there’s some angst but it resolves well and lovingly, I promise!

It didn’t happen all at once.

Crowley would be hard-pressed to say when the issue had actually started, mostly because - being an absolute moron - he had misinterpreted it at first. Because what didn’t he misinterpret, when it came to Aziraphale? He always thought he knew what the angel was about, and then something like this happened. After 6000 years, Crowley was always blindsided by his own stupidity.

The expected End of Days had in fact turned out to instead be the beginning of rather a lot of things. One of said things was a...well, a...well, something between himself and Aziraphale. He’d be damned (well, likely not, but he’d always been fond of the turn of phrase) if he tried to define this whatever-it-was and scared his angel off. Having been some degree of mortal enemies for several centuries, he felt qualified to decide that anything at all was better than no Aziraphale.

Nevertheless, what they’d had was something. Had been something. Or…something.

He groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes. He was flopped dramatically over his sofa, one leg on the floor, one over the back. He groaned loudly again into the empty room, just for effect. It was, he noted peevishly, much less enjoyable to sulk in his own flat, with no angel to bother into fussing over him.

He shifted restlessly and considered the facts again.

When things had...well, ‘begun’ seemed the wrong word, since for him they had ‘begun’ over six thousand years ago; perhaps ‘sped up’ was better, loathe as he was to use that terminology - anyway, when things had started to move in this direction, Crowley had begun to notice something. He wasn’t sure what was happening at first, but eventually he realized that Aziraphale’s bookshop (a stretch of the term, since Crowley had only heard rumors of his angel ever actually selling a book) was changing.

This was entirely unprecedented, and at first Crowley had been thrilled - a reaction he was now deeply ashamed of. To think he’d thought it was for him!

It had been a couple of weeks or so after the kingdom didn’t come, and he’d been slouched on Aziraphale’s sofa, glass of wine in hand. He’d tried to put the glass down, only to have his angel snatch it while scolding about how he was about to ‘ruin the cover on that book’ and ‘coasters are a phenomenal invention, Crowley, so stop glaring at me’.

Crowley had groaned and made a face.

“Honestly, angel, do you like not having any flat surfaces free? Or floor space?”

He hadn’t thought anything of the comment. He’d said similar before, affectionately of course, and Aziraphale well knew how different their apartments were, which Crowley did notice but did not mind in the slightest.

So he had therefore been touched - more than touched, honestly every time he thought he was as deep as he could go into love with this bloody angel it just got worse - when the next time he’d come over to find an end table entirely free of books, and with one plain brown square coaster on it.

He hadn’t commented, showing his gratitude by using said coaster and trying to keep his feet away from the books more than usual.

And then that second had, worryingly, become much less of a problem when those books, too, began to disappear. It wasn’t all at once, but after a couple of weeks Crowley sauntered in and found he suddenly had room to saunter. Because half of the books were gone.

Oh, it still looked like a bookstore, with the shelves all still full and in place, but the odd tables covered in first editions? The strange lamps? The knick knacks falling over each other? Gone. Or, if not gone, then organized and straightened and much more orderly than Crowley had ever seen them. And it was all very slightly wrong. At least, it had been very slightly wrong at first. Now, it was bordering on the beginning-of-a-horror-movie, nothing-was-as-it-should-be wrong. And the worst part was, Crowley didn’t know how to bloody mention it to his bloody angel! He’d thought it was sweet - had thought it was adorable, how his angel was making space for him.

He gritted his teeth in his flat and growled in frustration. His plants all shuddered.

This was what he got, thinking Aziraphale was making space for him. Honestly. Aziraphale had never needed to do that, and he certainly wasn’t starting now. This was something else, then. But what? Crowley was, underneath the frustration and self-loathing, utterly mystified.

And worst of all, Aziraphale wasn’t talking about it! When Crowley had gone very still one day, surveying the suspiciously spacious shop, he caught a glimpse of the most peculiar expression crossing his angel’s face. Something like desperation mixed with forced indifference. Clearly he was hoping Crowley wouldn’t notice it, or at least would have the decency not to mention it.

If he hadn’t known Aziraphale for so long, he’d have let it go. And that really was the problem. He did know Aziraphale. Had known him for 6000 years, as confusing as those years had been. And he knew, he knew how his angel felt about his books. He often wished Aziraphale felt about him the way he felt about books. The look Crowley’d gotten when he’d saved those prophecy tomes for his angel during the Second World War...well, that was a look he wouldn’t forget. Ever.

And now his infuriatingly confusing angel was just getting rid of books left and right? It made no sense. Well. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it. Aziraphale wanted him to ignore it, and his angel always got what he wanted.

Aziraphale had wanted Crowley to notice. He was trying to nest, for goodness’ sake! What was the point of it all if Crowley didn’t even notice? He’d been trying so hard! He’d spent nearly two and a half centuries on this nest! Admittedly most of that time was spent trying to convince himself that he was not nesting, and even if he was it certainly wasn’t for the charming demon he wasn’t even supposed to like, but all the same!

He was wandering around his shop, waving his hands in a flustered sort of way. He’d been faced with a rather overwhelming realization during the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, finally accepting that he’d been nesting for his demon ever since he purchased a nice little bookstore during the French Revolution. This realization had felt right, like something finally settled into place in his life. He could finally relax, finally let Crowley into this nest that was absolutely for him. Why had he even tried to lie to himself?

And then everything had gone wrong. They’d switched places, and Aziraphale had been dragged down into Hell to face Crowley’s trial. And Hell had been awful.

That seemed naive, and an understatement to boot, but it was true all the same. He’d never realized...he’d thought it was bad, of course it was bad, it was Hell, but it was...he was shuddering even at the memory. The trial was, comparatively, not even that terrible compared to being dragged through the crowd of demons, filthy and horrifically angry darkness crushing in on every side. It was everything Heaven wasn’t, dark and crowded and angry and loud and filthy, everything coming at one from all sides.

When he’d gotten out, he’d been relieved to roll his shoulders and stretch out his arms in the park, in the open sunlight, with space all around.

Even then, the other shoe hadn’t yet dropped. Everything was fine - he and Crowley had their own side at last. Aziraphale was almost giddy off the euphoric rush he got every time he was able to dismiss the reflexive obligation to distance himself from the demon. He didn’t have to do that any more!

And then Crowley had made a comment about the clutter in his shop.

It was a comment he made lightly, and a comment he’d made many times before. Which was actually quite a bit worse, because oh, no. And Aziraphale was abruptly thrust into memories of Hell, of the crushing and the claustrophobia and the feeling of having absolutely no escape from the dark.

Aziraphale was an angel. He knew that everything within his physical form was exactly where it was supposed to be, because he’d know if it wasn’t. But at that moment, Aziraphale perfectly understood the human phrase of having your heart ‘sink’.

What had he done? He’d tried to make something nice for Crowley, and look what had happened! His nest reminded Crowley of Hell, of course! Of course he hated it! Aziraphale had always assumed that Crowley’s barren flat was some sort of side effect of the demon’s apparently lack of materialism as well as the fact that the demon didn’t really spend much time on himself or his things (besides the Bentley, of course). But of course. He was trying, in his own way, to distance himself from that awful, awful place he had to report to. And Aziraphale was just dragging him back to it every time he came into the shop!

Aziraphale had immediately tried to clear off a surface or two around the sofa Crowley liked to throw himself over. And the demon had reacted. Okay, he hadn’t said anything, but Crowley never really did say anything in situations like this. And the little smile flickering over the corners of his mouth, like he was trying to repress it but couldn’t quite manage, made Aziraphale’s heart stutter in a wonderfully pleasant way.

So, the books had to go somewhere. The lamps, the tables, the odds and ends...he loved his bookstore dearly, but between books and his dear Crowley, he knew easily which he cared about more - and now that he was allowed to care in the way he did, nothing would stop him from giving Crowley anything he wanted. Goodness knew Crowley had been doing that sort of thing for him for ages.

And Crowley seemed to respond. Aziraphale had guessed correctly. Crowley was spending more time than ever at his bookstore.

Crowley was at the bookstore almost all the time now, increasingly worried about his angel. What was happening? This should have been excellent! Aziraphale was able to let him stay, and Crowley felt keenly that now, he was able to find a place in Aziraphale’s life without getting him into trouble.

He still shuddered at how flippant he’d been with Aziraphale’s life before. Well, not flippant, he’d never be that careless with the most precious thing in his life, but...They hadn’t even given Aziraphale a trial. That still made his every muscle seize with fury, still gave him screaming nightmares -

But that wasn’t the problem right now, he reminded himself. He had years unto infinity to kill Gabriel, slowly, for what that piece of muck had tried to do to his angel.

The problem right now was that Aziraphale was not acting like himself, and Crowley had six thousand years of experience to back that analysis up.

Aziraphale and Crowley were sitting in one of the shop’s back rooms, drinking. It was late, and Aziraphale was enjoying the feeling he got when he instinctively opened his mouth to suggest Crowley leave and then remembered he didn’t have to do that any more.

In fact, he decided to go and fetch another bottle, feeling rebellious and warm and excited. Probably that was partially the alcohol.

When he got back…

Crowley was holding a book, open, and frowning at it. He looked up when Aziraphale reentered the room, and, to Aziraphale’s mortification, held up a soft, downy white feather.

“Are you bookmarking your novels with your feathers?” Crowley demanded in amused bafflement.

Aziraphale blushed.

They were his feathers. They kept coming out, ready for him to line his nest with - some sort of physical-emotional response to the process, he supposed - so he’d been tucking them into his books as a sort of compromise. And now Crowley was holding one up.

For a moment, Aziraphale panicked - this meant Crowley would know, would guess, that this was for him, he’d just be leading the demon on, they wouldn’t ever be able to -

And then he remembered that they were able to, and the flush of joy gave him the confidence to admit the truth.

“I’ve been...or, rather, I am, nesting.”

“...nesting?” Crowley repeated faintly.

Aziraphale winced. Had he truly been so very bad at it that Crowley had noticed nothing at all?

“Yes, dear. I’m nesting. I’m...I’m really so very sorry,” he added suddenly, deciding to blame the alcohol for swaying him towards honesty, “that it took me so long. I’m sorry it was so awful at first. I didn’t mean to remind you of Hell, really I didn’t, I meant it to be nice and I was so awful, and I’m so sorry, my dear, really -“

Something in Crowley’s face stopped him. Or rather, a lack of something in Crowley’s face. Crowley had frozen, hand still holding the feather aloft.

Crowley himself was desperately trying to land a mental foothold in this information, but could find none. He was utterly confused and now slightly panicking.

Aziraphale was nesting? For him? And what on Earth did he mean, ‘remind you of Hell’?! And Aziraphale was calling himself awful!

That, more than anything else, popped Crowley’s mouth open again, but he only barely managed to croak, “Hell?” through his reeling thoughts.

Aziraphale flushed, sitting down on the sofa but not looking at Crowley. “I...I didn’t realize,” he began haltingly, “that it was like that. So...crowded, everything so dirty and dark and pushing in on you all the time, and...no wonder you didn’t like it here.”

Crowley thought he had found a handle on the conversation, but his handle made no sense. Was Aziraphale comparing his bookshop...to Hell? No. No, he couldn’t be. But then something else clunked into place.

“Is that why you’ve been getting rid of your books?”

Aziraphale hesitated, and then, in a very small voice, he admitted, “They’re not gone. They’re in boxes, in a closet in the back, I couldn’t bear to - but of course, of course I could,” he immediately back-tracked, “of course, if that’s what you wanted, they’re just things, and you’re…” he paused for a long moment before huffing frustratedly at the lack of an appropriate word.

“An idiot?” Crowley supplied without thinking, still trying to catch up in the conversation.

Aziraphale turned to him in shock. “No! Crowley, you’re...you’re…” his earnest expression spoke volumes, even before he finally picked a word: “everything.”

Crowley’s struggling thoughts screeched to a halt in astonishment.

Aziraphale continued undeterred. “You’re everything, Crowley! Everything! You’re here, and we’re us, and that’s everything!”

Crowley started to cry.

Not his best moment, not his smoothest, and certainly not his most charming. But he couldn’t help it, and before he knew it tears were streaming down his cheeks as he stared at his angel in awe.

Aziraphale, for his part, looked mildly panicked, but understanding. “I’m so sorry...for so long…”

“You...you chose...me? Over...over your books?”

Aziraphale smiled, a bit confused. “Yes, of course I did, dear. And it’s okay, I know better now-“

“It’s not okay!”

Aziraphale stopped talking, mouth snapping shut, red flooding his cheeks.

“Put them back!”

The expression on Aziraphale’s face was all that stopped him from his panicked and confusing shouts, as he realized that without some major rephrasing he was seconds from making his angel flinch into the sofa to get away from him.

“Angel.” This was softer in volume, but no less emphatic in tone. “I’m never...I wouldn’t…this is nothing like Hell!” He finally exclaimed, leaping from the sofa in an abrupt, adrenaline-fueled motion to wave one long arm wildly around at the shop.

Then his words caught up to him, and he winced. “I mean...for Satan’s - God’s - someone’s sake! Angel.” He sank back down onto the sofa, needing to explain, needing to make that pained and ashamed look on his beautiful angel’s face go away forever and never come back.

“Angel, this is nothing like Hell. This has never been anything like Hell.”

Suddenly, in a fit of helpfulness, his mind processed a lot of things all at once, and graciously provided him a reminder of what Heaven was like. A reminder of how Aziraphale must have felt, all up there and alone, treated as lesser in that frigid, empty place. No touch, no interaction. Nothing but cold white light and and colder orders.

Oh, hell. No wonder Aziraphale surrounded himself with small odds and ends, with light and words and fiction. There had been none of that in Heaven.

Crowley suddenly breathed out quickly, feeling like he’d been punched.

Aziraphale was watching him in complete, agonized confusion. “But...you said...crowded.”

Crowley paled. “Angel, angel, no! I never meant...no!” In a sudden fit of recklessness, he grabbed one of Aziraphale’s hands. Aziraphale didn’t pull away and oh I’m holding his hand oh no what do I - FOCUS!

“Aziraphale. I didn’t mean it. I mean, sure, I wanted to put my glass down, but I didn’t…” He trailed off. He could reassure Aziraphale of his real reasoning, but...that was definitely too fast. Much, much too fast for his angel.

Aziraphale was looking at him desperately. “Crowley, please. Please explain it to me. I don't understand!” That look - like he would just melt if only Crowley would say yes.

Crowley had never been able to say no to his angel. ‘Wait’ at times. ‘Not right now’ at times. But never ‘no’. And...Aziraphale had chosen him over his books. That one was still working its way through his head, but he’d heard the angel say it.

Crowley sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Angel, this has never reminded me of Hell. Not even a little.”

He felt Aziraphale shift and continued, afraid he would lose courage to do so if he waited.

“Hell is...tight. You’re right. Crowded - everything pressing in on you, all the time. It’s loud and hot and dirty and angry, and it’s determined to force all of that through your skin and right down to your bones.”

He shook his head, eyes still closed. “Your bookshop isn’t like that.” He inhaled quickly. “Your bookshop is crowded. I do feel surrounded. But-“ he added quickly, opening his eyes despite himself to stare at his angel, “I feel surrounded with you.”

Aziraphale didn’t appear to understand, though he didn’t interrupt.

“You’re in every corner of this store, angel. In every book, every floorboard, every shelf, every ray of sun and mite of dust. I feel surrounded by you when I’m here. That’s why I love it. Why I’ve always loved it. It might not be my style, no, but it’s yours and that’s the best part about it.”

Aziraphale was quiet for a long moment, before he reached out and crushed Crowley into his waistcoat.

The angel chuckled. It sounded a little thick.

“I’ve been rather an idiot, it appears.”

Crowley huffed a quick chuckle, relieved but disbelieving that Aziraphale hadn’t pushed him away at his declaration, had instead pulled him closer. “Possibly, angel.”

“So...I can put the books back?”

At this, Crowley really did laugh, as he sat back up. “Yes, angel! You can put the books back.”

Aziraphale looked delighted, clapping his hands. “Lovely!” Then he got a strange look on his face, a sort of hesitant smile. He reached out for Crowley. “Come back?”

Crowley very nearly tackled him, but resisted and instead leaned down reasonably into his angel’s shoulder once more, pressing his grin into Aziraphale’s collar.

They stayed that way for a long moment.

Then Crowley sat bolt upright.

“Hold on! If this is your nest, this bookshop…”

Aziraphale suddenly started to look edgy. Crowley’s eyes widened.

“Hold on! You said I was going too fast! How long have you been nesting for me?!”

The angel went bright red from the tips of his ears all the way down to his collarbone, and Crowley grinned. Oh, Aziraphale was never going to live this down.

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #aziraphale/crowley #a/c #ineffable husbands #nesting #good omens fanfiction #fanfiction #enjoy y’all this is over 3.3k words #that just kinda happened

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itsclydebitches · 5 years

Text

Lovely Good Omens fandom! Many of you have asked for/mentioned having a text version of the Yelp reviews, which if I were a better person I would have remembered to include in the first place. Better late than never? So here’s a version below and I also threw this up on AO3 so there are options. For the record, I’m not at all trained in transcribing visual media, so if anyone wants to add to/edit/do whatever to this post, especially to make it more accessible, you have carte blanche to do so 👍

Also I typed this up in a hurry so, as always, apologies for any typos.

Tagging: @lethargicdolphin, @marithlizard, @pearwaldorf

A.Z. Fell and Co. Antiquarian and Unusual Books

Recommended Reviews

Lindsay F.

London, United Kingdom

71 friends

3000 reviews

9874 photos

So I slipped into this place because I spotted my ex across the street and would have rather chugged a cocktail of bleach, lighter fluid, and a condensed solution of all my middle school years then talk to that asshole. Owner was on me the second I walked through the door and I thought he was gonna be one of those ‘Either buy something or get out’ types. Nah. I spilled the story, said I really wasn’t looking to purchase anything, and he LIT UP like nobody’s business. He gave me tea and promised I’d never run into my ex again. Which is a super sketchy promise on its own and also should have been hilarious coming from a guy a century behind in style.

...Kinda believed him though.

Marina G.

London, United Kingdom

0 friends

33 reviews

48 photos

Pretty sure this guy wants a library, not a bookshop. I mean, he’s nice and all when you first come in, but trying to actually buy a book? Good fucking luck. He’s too busy to see you right now (for the record he’s super bad at pretending to be busy). Or claims that this book has already been put on reserve (then why wasn’t it in the reserve pile...?). Or the price suddenly jumped an obscene amount. Or he just straight up hems and haws until you get fed up and leave. I watched him pull a novel straight out of a woman’s hands once when she claimed that price was no object and she wouldn’t be leaving the store until she’d purchased it. You’d think she was trying to kidnap one of the guy’s kids!

So yeah. Feel like popping in to browse, maybe take pictures for your research, all while making quiet conversation with someone who quite frankly knows his stuff? This is the place for you. Want to actually buy something? Go elsewhere. Pretty sure Fell doesn’t even own a cash register. At least I’ve never seen one.

He wants a library and I’d honestly tell him as much if he didn’t scare me just a little bit...

Aaron S.

New York, NY

68 friends

212 reviews

337 photos

I stayed here for three days once. Found a bathroom off the romance section and a chair hidden away in the back. Way comfier than my mattress at home. Mostly played iPhone games and kept real quiet at night. Experiment ended when I popped out for breakfast and didn’t make it back before a random 10:00am closing. Don’t think the owner ever realized what was up.

Hana S.

London, United Kingdom

112 friends

115 reviews

208 photos

I really love this place. I’ve been coming here since I moved to London, about twelve years ago, and it’s one of the most soothing bookstores I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. Yeah, you hear talk of weird things going on at Fell’s, but really? We could all do with a bit more quirky in our lives. And Fell provides that in spades: Annual plants that never seem to wither, let alone die. The smell of incense mixing with cocoa. Strange books tucked horizontally into the shelves, feeling like they have a touch of magic to them. Nonsensical conversations taking place in dark corners (I’m talking candid chats about the apocalypse and whether angels could actually bless all the rains down in Africa. I swear Fell and his boyfriend are the religion Mythbusters or something.) I’m going to sound like a total nerd here for a moment, but it feels like some sort of liminal space. You know when you were a kid and you were just desperate to receive your Hogwarts letter? Or find your own wardrobe to Narnia? That’s what walking into Fell’s feels like. Like you’ve finally found that portal and can stay as long as you like, provided you don’t try to take anything back with you into the ‘real’ world. Hell, maybe that’s why he won’t let anyone buy his books.

Robert T.

Union City, CA

4 friends

26 reviews

3 photos

There’s a snake?? In this shop?? A reALLY MASSIVE SNAKE????? What are y’all doing talkin’ about your meet cutes and shit someone call pest control!

Malini D.

London, United Kingdom

0 friends

48 reviews

99 photos

I’m not gonna pretend I have anything to say about whether this is a good bookstore or not, but if you ever want knitting help you should definitely stop by. Mr. Fell knows an absurd amount about crafts for a guy who looks like my grandpa and he’s now replaced Youtube as my go-to for alleviating “Omg please fix this how the hell did I manage to reverse the pattern??” panic. For the record, I didn’t just wander up to a random bookseller one day and demand that he help me salvage the ruins of my first sweater. I’d taken a seat inside to wait out a storm, had my messy sleeve stuffed into my purse, and he’d offered the help. Bit of a bastard about things like gauge and color--not everyone wants to wear tartan, dude--but you get used to that. He means well. Said I should come back to show him the finished piece, which I did. Things just kind of spiraled from there. He’s an absolute treasure trove of knowledge once you get him talking and a muffin to boot. If he were twenty years younger and in any way straight I would have asked him out in a heartbeat. As it is I’m considering setting him up with Grandpa.

Tiffany L.

London, United Kingdom

132 friends

312 reviews

34 photos

I’m not really a book person myself but I followed my wife in with our seventh-month old and was kinda embarrassed when he started making a fuss. Normally I’m full Badass Mom mode while in public--I’ve got a kid to feed, change, sooth, and you all can damn well deal with it--but this place was so quiet Liam seemed extra loud in comparison. I was about to take him back out when a man appeared out of nowhere. The owner I guess, based on how some of these other reviews describe him. Older gentleman with clothes out of some period piece. Anyway, he scoops Liam into his arms like he was born for it and started bouncing. Our fussy, temperamental, drama queen Liam settled in an instant and my wife got to browse to her heart’s content. I don’t know how he did it, but that man is an absolute angel. Full stars for that moment alone.

Gillian L.

The Hague, The Netherlands

283 friends

256 reviews

60 photos

Anyone know if the old Bentley parked out front is for sale?

Update: It’s really, really, really not

Billy H.

Austen, TX

40 friends

2073 reviews

774 photos

QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS SO MANY QUEER BOOKS!!!

Gabriela G.

London, United Kingdom

3 friends

22 reviews

1 photos

Run by this delightfully frumpy guy who sometimes hands out biscuits from a sewing tin like my gran used to. He asked me if I was looking for anything in particular and I told him my name was Jared, I was 19, but sadly I’d never learned how to read. I have NEVER seen a man more confused in my life. 10/10 would meme him again.

Colie A.

Enola, PA

201 friends

2778 reviews

10382 photos

I’m setting the record straight here since there are a bunch of reviews claiming it’s just London folklore: there is a snake at A.Z. Fell’s. Must be an exotic pet he usually keeps upstairs because I’ve only ever seen it twice. Is it big? Yes. Scary? Fuck yes, but I’ve never seen it do anything more than give a warning hiss at this drunk who wandered in and started yelling. (Are snakes good guard dogs? This one is.) The other time he was just chilling on top of one of the shelves. Snoozing, I guess. I asked Mr. Fell if I could pet him and he said maybe after he woke up, but then I had to get to class and all.

Afraid of snakes? Steer clear. Otherwise I’d really recommend popping in and seeing if he’s around. Idk, maybe I’m just a snake fan but he looks super sweet and chill. Life is short. Boop the snake snoot.

Jeremy W.

London, United Kingdom

86 friends

409 reviews

12 photos

I live down the street from A.Z. Fell’s and let me tell you, this place is spooky as fuck. All sorts of weird lights and noises coming from it. At all times of the day and night too. Either this bowtie wearing bookworm has one crazy sex life or the place is haunted. Jury’s out on which.

Heather Ki.

London, United Kingdom

0 friends

3852 reviews

1 photos

This shop smells. Not that old book smell either, oh no, but like something is molding. I took my little Johnny in here to try and get him interested in something other than those damned video games and I walk into what smells like a whole cloud of toxic mold! My boy has a weak constitution as it is and if he comes down with anything I will be pressing charges, you mark my words.

Jo. W.

London, United Kingdom

32 friends

410 reviews

61 photos

Hey, does anyone want to talk about the fact that this place burned down last month? As in, completely up in flames, I saw it happen, nothing but a smoking husk afterwards? Does no one else remember this??

Tiggi N.

London, United Kingdom

32 friends

33 reviews

24 photos

Has anyone read this guy’s opening hours? I included a photo above: “I open the shop on most days about 9:30AM perhaps 10:AM. While occasionally I have opened the shop as early as 8, I have been known not to open until 1.” Absolutely insane. This guy’s a madman and I love him. If anyone actually manages to get into this place please let me know because I need to shake Fell’s hand.

Mackenzie J.

City Centre, Manchester, United Kingdom

807 friends

2592 reviews

13218 photos

I told my girlfriend this shop’s got a snake named Anthony and she didn’t believe me. Going back for proof next week.

Update: got the snake selfie!!!!!!!!

Penny O.

Chicago, IL

87 friends

557 reviews

16 photos

Caught the owner snogging some hot twink behind the cookbooks. Well done, my dude.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #air conditioning #good omens fic

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