Tumgik
#this is slightly unexpected
indigovigilance · 5 months
Text
The Final Fifteen is about Terry Pratchett's Death
read on Ao3
The final fifteen is obviously a major plot point, and serves a role in a story that was written long before Terry Pratchett was ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But the scene itself wasn’t written until just a few years ago, during the writing of Season 2. In fact, the scene came about during a park bench conversation between Neil Gaiman and John Finnemore.
Others have noted that the non-romantic kiss that signals the story moving into the third act is a Neil Gaiman staple. The function of such a kiss, from Gaiman’s perspective, is to communicate.
In 2023 we are seeing a lot of stories written by men, for men, about men who are best friends and discover that their friendship can go deeper than the norms of society would usually allow; that platonic and romantic love are not so far apart, and perhaps the better word for a relationship that can be described this way is intimacy.
Neil Gaiman has made it clear in interviews that his friendship with Terry Pratchett was deeply intimate. They began collaborating on what would become Good Omens in the 1980’s, endured a tumultuous experience together through the first publication, wherein Neil offered to martyr himself on behalf of Terry if the book failed, and then spent the better part of two decades touring the world, meeting the people who loved their work. Neil would even off-handedly remark that Terry’s fans were so cheerful, and Neil’s seemed like they were ready to kill themselves; wouldn’t it be nice if they got married? From the outside, it looks very much as if Terry was Aziraphale-coded, and Neil was Crowley-coded, working together in an unexpected partnership to make the world a little bit more tolerable for the humans inhabiting it. I am not conjecturing that Neil and Terry had romantic inclinations the way their fictional characters do, but I think it is fair to say that their opposites-attract intimacy became an important part of who each of them were.
In 2007 Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s. As the disease progressed, he began to lose himself, and knew that the person he used to be was slipping away. He wanted to end his life on his own terms, and die as himself, but England did not and still does not allow for voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. He advocated for the right to die but never achieved it, and ultimately succumbed to the disease in 2015. Neil Gaiman has spoken a lot on the topic of death, and one answer of his that resonated with me reads:
Mostly it feels terrible. It even feels terrible when it’s someone who has been in a lot of pain for a long time or has not really been there for a long time and you know that Death has in some ways been a blessing: suddenly you are mourning the whole person. 
It doesn’t get easier as you age. It gets stranger. The point where you realise how many people you used to know and like who aren’t there any longer, and you cannot talk to them or see them or laugh with them is painful in a way that I had never expected. The first time that someone you had a romantic relationship with dies and you realise that there had been moments both of you shared and now you are the sole custodian of those moments and one day you will be gone and they will be lost forever is peculiarly strange and hard. 
~~~
The entire show is seeded with references to Terry Pratchett, but the most important one is the one that’s missing. Neil Gaiman cameoed as a sleeping moviegoer in S1E4, but a long time ago, he and Terry had discussed cameoing as sushi restaurant-goers, because sushi was weirdly prominent in the book. That cameo would have been in S1E1. But when it came time to do it, Neil couldn’t. Not without Terry. 
Neil: I was gonna say our location is a Chinese restaurant we’d had turned into a sushi restaurant. So Terry and I, Terry Pratchett and I, had a standing… not even a standing joke, just a standing plan, that we were going to have sushi - there was going to be a scene in Good Omens where sushi was eaten and we were gonna be extras, we were gonna sit in the background, eating sushi while it was done. And I was so looking forward to this and, so I wrote this scene with it being sushi, even though Terry was gone, with that in mind and I thought: Oh, I’ll sit and I’ll eat lots of sushi as an extra, this will be my scene as an extra, I’ll just be in the background. And then, on the day, or a couple of days before, I realized that I couldn’t do it.
Douglas: You never told me this before either. I might have pushed you into doing it, had I known. I think you were right not to tell me.
Neil: I was keeping it to me self ‘cause I was always like: Oh, maybe I’ll be… this will be my cameo. And then I couldn’t. I was just so sad, ‘cause Terry wasn’t there. And it was probably the day that I missed Terry the most of all of the filming - it was just this one scene ‘cause it was written for Terry and all of the sushi meals we’d ever had and all of the strange way that sushi ran through Good Omens.
~~~
In the Final Fifteen, it is clear that Crowley and Aziraphale want to stay together. They love each other. They each know that the other loves them. There’s nothing that needs to be said, no convincing that their bond is true and real and precious.
But Aziraphale has to go to Heaven, and Crowley cannot follow him there.
I cannot speculate what it must have been like for Neil to endure losing a friend who, though I’m sure he desperately wanted to still be in his life, he also knew that life had become a burden to him, and grieved that Terry was not able to choose the time and manner of his departure from this Earth. This sort of complex grief, we fan-ficcers know, is the kind that is often best processed through story-telling. 
I think that what we see Crowley going through in the Final Fifteen, alongside its importance to the story arc of Good Omens overall, is Neil processing his grief at losing his friend Terry Pratchett, and even the kiss, that violent, terrible, awful kiss, was the symbolic representation of Neil saying goodbye.
860 notes · View notes
undertalethingems · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Unexpected Guests Chapter 10: Page 6
First / Previous / Next
Flowey’s done his best, but Gaster continues his assault--he’s determined to see his plan through... no matter what.
Frisk’s fought tough opponents before--but how will they deal with Gaster’s trap? Find out in the next update, coming Jan. 12th!
2K notes · View notes
caluupin · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media
Justice trio I never knew I wanted until now
527 notes · View notes
silksongeveryday · 7 months
Text
Drawing Hornet everyday until Silksong comes out - Day 198
Tumblr media
Request by @/the-lorekeeper69 !
Tumblr media
319 notes · View notes
quatregats · 6 days
Text
Also I realize that the answer is probably just reading enough period sources but as a linguist I really do need to pick Patrick O'Brian's brain about where in the world he got his different speech patterns from
48 notes · View notes
foxglovecove · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media
What if Mobius is making his eggs one morning and someone unexpected shows up
70 notes · View notes
falderaletcetera · 7 months
Text
listen. I don't just love father brown because I first saw it while ill with the flu or because it's consistently kind to the outcast in a way that has reviewers calling it Too Woke, obviously a vote in its favour. or because the recurring thief character is very pretty to watch. though those are significant parts of it.
I love it because after eight seasons father brown sits down with the village drunk (a munitions expert in the war, has a soft spot for the parish secretary, name of harold or blind harry) to find out why he gave a murder suspect a false alibi and harry explains to him, calm as you like, that seeing the life leave someone's eyes changes a person, that it's what he reckons brought father brown to his faith, that it's what drove him to drink, and he didn't see that shadow in the guy the police are chasing this time. and father brown, rather than justifying or correcting or dodging or doubting him, says he knows how unjust the situation is. that he got something good out of the horrors of the war. that harry really didn't.
it is not a perfect show and yes I have problems with it but gosh, this is a character who's largely used for comedic beats, albeit kindly, and a scene like this isn't out of place at all but it still takes my breath away. we could've been left with this as subtext, y'know? I hadn't even put together that his alcoholism must have been trauma. but instead harry tells us this directly, tells us it's about guilt, that that's something he shares with father brown, who is competent and so often cheerful and I can't even imagine when he was younger, and it's a moment of such unexpected humanity and respect. and it's such a strange thing to see these characters side by side like that.
the scene ends with father brown calling harry a good man, and harry denying it ("they was only young lads" "so were we, harold. so were we.") and the two them sharing a drink as father brown gets a bit watery-eyed and I'm crying too over my nice cosy 'this is a concerning number of murders for a sleepy english village' show and just. hi. what. ow.
I also haven't recovered from the episode that turned into a heist halfway through but frankly I'm only mentioning that because I don't know how to wrap up a post like this. (it was good though. there were two separate honeypots, three if you count the impromptu replacement, one character terrible at grifting and one unexpectedly great at it, and, somehow, a con within a con. it was really very fun. get a show that can do both, I guess?)
56 notes · View notes
sorry-i-panicked · 2 years
Text
bisexual couples
Tumblr media Tumblr media
422 notes · View notes
Note
Search hamburburger
Tumblr media
11 notes · View notes
fanficmemes · 1 year
Text
Okay so I watched cocain bear tonight and I’ve gotta say it fucjin delivered on the cocain AND the bear. There was no point when I was bored, the bear was fuckin cool, the characters were fun, and (so importantly) the gore went off I had so much fun
62 notes · View notes
avianii · 5 months
Text
TUMBLR WHAT R U DOING
Tumblr media
16 notes · View notes
liapher · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Kommt Mausi raus?! (1995)
„Du bist draußen, du bist auch nie wirklich drinnen gewesen!“
14 notes · View notes
undertalethingems · 8 months
Note
How long ago did you finish writing the story? I doubt it was all planned out once the first page was drawn, after all
Hmmm..... I don't remember exactly, but I believe the main plot was finished in 2018! I've written little extra bits and pieces since then, so it wasn't finished finished (and technically still isn't lol), but enough to more or less end the story even if it left a few small threads hanging.
So, needless to say everything's been planned for a long time, and now it's just a matter of drawing it :>
91 notes · View notes
unexpectedstormy · 4 months
Note
Heya ! I just been wandering who's your favorite (if you have one) Link in the chain ?
Wild
Hyrule
Sky
Those are my three best boys. Hyrule & Wild is my favorite duo and Sky and Wild is my second favorite duo. (I've never read or written Hyrule and Sky together but they'd probably be cool too.) All three together is my favorite trio, but I've only ever read one fic that has them as a trio.
7 notes · View notes
amygdalae · 1 year
Text
oh this is a weird edible
140 notes · View notes
Text
you know, a little while ago a... aquaintance? almost-friend-but-we're-not-that-close? invited me to their birthday and i was in a very sleep-deprivation zero-social-battery low-spoons caffeine-zombie kinda mood (tho it was fun in the end) and i excused myself to the bathroom. like, mostly to get away for a few minutes. get my shit together. ended up scrolling through one (1) page of my dash bc tumblr seems to be good for Brain Soup and i calmed down enough to like. be able to talk to a human.
but apparently i was gone long enough that said aquaintance and their friend made a bet whether i was doing drugs. and me, eyes slightly too wide bc i need to appear awake and if i close them ill just fall asleep immediately, slouching about like a zombie, running on one glass of coke, apparently did not solve that question by coming back. like, they looked at me and couldn't tell if i was totally zonked out.
which, i wasn't. idek where to get drugs (tho they're apparently kinda wide-spread in my town, yikes) if i wanted to, and i am purposely keeping faaar away from anything addictive. but. yeah okay sleep-deprivation is one hell of a drug. it was kinda funny especially in hindsight. but also. damn. do i really look that bad. do i look like that every other day in school, like i'm on a trip? damn.
6 notes · View notes