I’ve been creating art, I can’t seem to stop, and people have seen it for once. Shocking.
Seriously though, 2024 was notable because I started actually interacting with fandom for the first time in my life. It was also the first time I tried creating fan art instead of thinking of ideas that would come to nothing, as well as the first time I shared it with anyone. I’m really happy here.
#Missy paints … For my scribbles
#Missy thinks out loud … For the weird things I think about right before I sleep
FIC RECS!!!!!!!!
Links to fics where I provided art:
Mr. & Mx. Fell by shaggydogstail Rated M
Chocolat by MM2022 Rated T
The Thief of Tausret by MimiRay WIP Rated E
Angel of Music by itsscottiesstark Rated E
Just Follow The Signs by DrConstellation WIP Rated M
The Finest Eyes by MeinirRhos Rated E
Demonic Possession? by Florianniss, LLflorence Rated E
And umm mine! I wrote something and more is coming!
The One Without Anathema by Mama_Missy WIP Rated T
Links to fics I’ve cheer read or been included in, even in the most minuscule way:
Picture Perfect by ineffableword Rated GA otherwise known as the best holiday present ever.
How Everyday Begins by IvoryRaven Rated T
DMTTM by CaptainBlou Rated E
A Season of Whale Song by DrConstellation Rated E
You can also find my art on AO3, I’m working on sorting my stuff into a sketchbook over there. It’s gifted art and there’s and advent Calendar.
Ko-fi ok I have one but that doesn’t mean I’ve figured my shit out yet. You can buy me a coffee but I’d prefer to offer you a service first love. I’m feeling like stickers and bookmarks are on the horizon. Open to suggestions.
And more to come! 💛 Love you for reading this far.
I was recently challenged by the Meat-Cutes (members of my Discord server, Two Canned Meats) to draw ALL of the AU characters I've written for. Turns out it's a lot 🤣
Anthony and Avery are from Every Damn Day (38k, rated M, pianist and lawyer-turned-bookseller)
AJ and Fell are from Find the Light (97.5k, rated M, rockstar and school headmaster)
Crowley and Az are from Sky Clear Blue (288k, rated E, time travel and queer joy)
Baraqiel and Azazel are from When You Go (102.7k, rated E, Reverse Omens) (will be getting its proper sequel in 2027!)
Crowley and Aziraphale are from Naked and Afraid: Jingle Hell (24k, rated T, transcript of an episode of a reality show)
Ant and Azlan are from In His Hand a Burning Coal (516k, rated E, college marching band)
Tonio and Ash are from What I Never Said (96k, rated M, "Don't Ask Don't Tell")
Crowley and Fell are from Abide With Me (56.5k, rated M, 1949 boarding house in Kansas)
Tony and Azariah are from The Mayfair Library Cop (16.7k, rated E, book thievery and smutty art)
Crow and Angel are from Because We Can! (link is to the teaser; this fic debuts in THREE DAYS!! 23 chapters, rated T, will update on Tuesdays) (time travel, shenanigans, literally saving the world)
Antón and Alonzo are from The World's Worst Playlist, which debuts August 28! (18 chapters, rated E, will update on Fridays)
Tony and Andy are from My Prince of Silver Snow, which will be my contribution this year to the Scribbling Vaguely Downwards advent calendar! It's the plot of a Hallmark movie, but klikandtuna-fied and with our ineffable idiots. Will post in December.
Toni and Azlo are from Celestia, which will debut in 2027! Cirque du Soleil as a vehicle for red-hot smut.
And EVERY LAST ONE of these twenty-eight characters will be appearing in a massive crossover fic, which I hope to debut in 2027 😄 So much to enjoy...and so much to look forward to, too. 💛💛💛
piggybacking off this post by @aduckwithears: what if the bookshop was noah's ark 2.0, but for everything?
what if they end up in the shop after everything has been erased, only this time crowley thinks: was the place always this big? it’s more of a maze than he remembers, now that he’s properly looking. rows and rows of shelves twisting and turning in a dozen labyrinthine directions. staircases spiraling up to nowhere. hallways branching off the foyer like tree roots, that’s new.
aziraphale emerges from the bowels of the shop, successful in his quest for cocoa. a warm drink at the end of all things, how painfully british. as far as crowley can tell, nothing has survived; not the earth, or alpha centauri, or any distant stars and nebulas clinging to the skin of the universe. not even light, the fastest, most fundamental thing in all of creation. but somehow, fortnum & mason has. somehow, aziraphale’s chintzy mug embossed with the words HOT STUFF in blazing cherry red above a little cartoon devil has.
“don’t ask,” he says, pushing it into crowley’s hands.
crowley opens his mouth, several questions and a taunt or two already lined up in the wings— and that's when he sees it.
oh.
that’s definitely new.
“angel.”
“it was a gift, if you must know, white elephant gone horribly, horribly wrong, and then i couldn’t bring myself to donate it, one can never have too much drinkware—”
“aziraphale, shut up a moment, would you, and look.”
to the angel’s credit, he shuts up and looks.
memory is a funny thing, unreliable, easily eroded. crowley would have sworn, cross his char-blackened heart, that the tree was taller. in his mind, the branches extend like reverent hands towards the heavens, heavy with fruit, wide and green and swallowing up the whole sky. he is very small, beneath it.
aziraphale’s hand finds his shoulder. “oh.”
“yeah.”
“well, that’s…certainly a design choice. did we…?”
“who else? we’re all that’s left.” but no, that’s not quite right. the dickens. crowley scoops it up, flips it open, then keeps flipping, eyes dancing over pages that are no longer empty.
next to him, aziraphale frowns into his mug. “but how? if this is some sort of, of…cosmic leg-pull, i confess i’m failing to see the—” his face goes blank, then lights up like a christmas tree, a study in giddy. “oh! oh, of course. even the dickens.”
“it was you.” crowley takes his time with the words, feeling each one rush through him. an equal yet opposite kind of flood. “you named him, and it brought him back.”
they gaze at each other, stunned.
“we need more books,” says crowley, at the same time that aziraphale declares, “we need more cocoa.”
and so it goes. they start with the classics, squabbling over semantics (“for the last time, crowley, twilight does not count. i don’t care how many copies were sold worldwide.”) they brave the jeffrey archers. they pore over encyclopedias, scraping their teeth on words like lithospheric mantle, reveling in the euphony of sonoluminescence. and something peculiar starts to happen, a sort of field of dreams situation.
people start happening.
they’re the only thing that could, really. if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it matter? the tree was there; the knowledge was there. it was real. it existed, in spite of. because of. what use does humanity have for a book that tells them, yes, you can be, i will allow it, i will permit it. we create our own mythos, simply by living, by looking at the rorschach blob and finding joy in the mess, beauty in the mundane. you’ve seen the post: forty-thousand years ago, humans stenciled their handprints on the wall of a cave, and this morning, my niece learned to fingerpaint.
so yes, people start happening. friends curl up in the shop’s back room, trashing oprah’s book club pick of the month. lovers spin in a slow circle beneath the oculus as fred astaire croons from the gramophone. someone brings up the duct-taped banana (“how fucking pretentious. anyone could do that shit.” “yeah, but they didn’t. this dude did. in this essay, i will—”), and someone else says, have some art nouveau, maybe you’ll calm down, and the far atrium is suddenly a tribute to klimt, bursting with geometric golds and ornamental greens. in the foyer, a young man teaches amateur card tricks from a folding table that aziraphale will swear up and down isn’t his; the tag on his jumper reads, hi, my name is josh. here, a neolithic wheel. there, a 7th-century chaturanga board. paul blart: mall cop, wedged between the self-helps and memoirs. people begetting creation begetting people, an ouroboros of abracadabra, creating as they speak, until the bookshop is overflowing with it. bursting at the seams with humanity. the world is remade here, in the gaps between stanzas of that shitty poem you wrote when you were twelve, in the canned laughter on your best friend’s favorite sitcom. i am trying to get the seas back on the maps, where they belong. i am trying to love the world back to normal. we survive through storytelling, that ineffable collision of necessity and ingenuity, anchoring the world like the roots of a great tree. we tell stories to remind ourselves that we are alive. we are here.
slowly but surely, the void beyond the bookshop’s windows begins to brighten. human hands stitch the universe back together. and a small eternity later, crowley and aziraphale pull the stream of time around themselves like a cocoon, and rest.
“there’s nothing to forgive, you know,” crowley says. “i know i was flippant about it before, but the truth is— we were both a little bit right, in the end. weren’t we?”
“and a little bit wrong,” aziraphale agrees.
there is sunlight, their time-adjacent bubble. it catches in aziraphale’s cloud of curls, limning him in gold. not a halo, but a frame. the contour of a face and form freely chosen. every day for the rest of our lives, we’ll get to choose, crowley will think, the realization settling just behind his ribs. how about that.
he sees it, the moment aziraphale realizes it too.
“actually i take it back.” crowley grins, and the space between them contracts, then shrinks, a star collapsing. “yeah, i’d like an apology for the pointy teeth. my culture’s not your costume, angel.”
aziraphale’s smile is luminous. “crowley. beloved.”
“hm?”
“shut up a moment, would you, and kiss me. properly, this time.”
“such hard work,” says crowley, and he does. there might be supernovas. maybe another big bang. nobody is around to see it, celestial, infernal, or otherwise, but that’s alright. it exists, it has always existed. here, in the kitchen, loving the world. steadfastly loving.
(this came out of a conversation in the comments on a previous post about an author threatening to stop updating a fic because of lack of engagement)
So there’s this idea that fic writers should write for themselves and not care too much about stats or engagement,
and i totally get the sentiment behind that. if writing becomes entirely about stats and external validation, something important does get lost - creative freedom and joy, conviction in your own writing
but i also think:
“i write for myself, but i post for others.”
because posting fic is not only self-expression. it’s social. ao3 is called an archive, but emotionally it often functions as a community space.
people post for connection, for participation, for others to bear witness to their pain and trauma and grief,
and i don’t think most people are asking to be admired so much as acknowledged. there’s something deeply human about wanting another person to encounter something that mattered to you and go:
“ok, yeah, I see what you were trying to say. I see you.”
especially because fanfic is often people processing very real feelings through fictional characters at a safe distance, one step removed,
and then uploading that deeply personal thing into a shared archive and hoping somebody else might connect with it.
And i think that’s why it hurts so much when you summon up the courage and post a fic into the void and you get nothing back,
Since Slow Show is a human AU I wasn't sure if it fit; all the others seem to involve Aziraphale and Crowley as an angel and a demon.
If we can slide in AUs, in the house we remain, Old Vines, What We Make of It (Shotgun Wedding), and The Curve of Old Bones are all worth a read.
Or Be Nice, which I've read about 5 times. South Downs is my favorite actor AU. And if you want to see Aziraphale in Hell again, check out A Special Place in Hell, in which Aziraphale becomes the new king of Hell (as an angel).
This is so beautiful, but I HAVE to recommend my all time favourites.
Against Expectations is the first human AU that I read (and the first Ao3 fanfic that I read), and it's so perfect. Arrange marriage, genderfluid Crowley, Anathema bestie of Crowley... I've read it 5 times (that I can count...)
But then, I really had to mention May You Be Forgiven . This masterpiece, this beast, has helped me with my own issues after reading it. There's part 1 and 2, but OH it's so good.
Two Shall Be One Flesh: Aziraphale takes a brief detour from Constantinople in the 13th century to check in on his eternal adversary. Accidents happen. Mistakes are made.
They learn a thing or two about the dangers of attempting to cohabitate in a single corporation. (13th century, rated T)
it's the light (it's the obstacle that casts it): The Patron Saint of London's LGBT Community is real, and he lives in Soho. (WW2, rated T)
Love Poems: talking dirty was invented by angels, it is the language of love. (S1, rated M)
Better Than Chocolate: After trying out something new together for the first time, Crowley has concerns. Aziraphale doesn't necessarily make them better. (Post S1, rated G)
Love Hath Made Thee a Tame Snake: He was the bloody Serpent of Eden, and he wasn’t going to stand for this kind of flagrant trespassing. (Post S1, rates M)
I am aghast that, among all these gems, no one has recommended my all time favourite fic yet, so here goes: Please read Anatomy 101 by Fyre (rated E) and have your life changed forever.
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
Note: I wrote this and then sat with it in my drafts. I’ve been slightly terrified of the climate of our fandom right now. I was afraid of inviting chaos directly to me, and honestly I’m not any less afraid now but if you made it this far then I hope we can remain kind to each other. I’ve since read other takes by people far more articulate and perceptive than I am, and then there was the post that prime made that felt like a betrayal. Today we got the soundtracks released and I am about to immerse myself in 40 minutes of a musical version of pressing on a bruise. I am not sure that my point below is relevant exactly.. but I still wanted to bring my 2 cents into the mix.
There were four of them in that bookshop and the discussion of lying shouldn’t be overlooked.
“Everything ends. A story doesn’t have to go beyond the last page of its book Crowley. And that story is over.”
Yeah, but it’s not. The existence of the new universe, them finding each other, time after time, proves that their story not only is being retold rewritten replayed over and over and over again (and over and over) but that it was woven into the fabric of that God/Satan/Angel/Demon free existence - after she explicitly states to them that they cannot exist within it.
She lied.
“Neither of you could ever exist in such a universe, you understand? You two fully comprehend the cost? I’ll make it. I’ll make the universe your way. I’ll even let an Earth happen. Eventually there will be humans, and life, in all its mundane glory. Something that both of you will neither know or experience though.”
But they do exist there. We get to see Anthony and Asa ourselves. Why bother showing the universe, and Earth, and everything that was to come, only to then show us their meet cute, the South Downs stargazing, and that so many of her creations are also there?
“So then he says I have a better idea, let’s not and say we did and I thought, well there you go.”
God laughed in delight when Satan told her that. I think she said what she said to Aziraphale and Crowley, that she would let their existence end, and then did the opposite anyway. It’s a funny old world, innit?
TLDR: I am an optimist and I think the discussion of lying needs to keep happening.
I am not here to invalidate any feelings that differ from mine. I love this fandom because we love each other fiercely and in such a high emotionally charged moment for all of us I am gently reminding us all to please be respectful.
The finger kiss has my heart aching and inspiring me to redraw my old art with a new setting.
Background pic courtesy of the GO Reference Library. Inspiration and original art below the cut.
If you want to be tagged in future art posts let me know! @itsscottiesstark @eybefioro @sad-grandfather-clock @yokohamama @muse-of-whimsy @ineffableword
You know, since time sort of no longer existed at that point, we have no idea how long Crowley and Aziraphale spent together in the bookshop garden. You think it would phase God if they left her to yap with Satan for another hundred years? A thousand? Several, even?
I'm choosing to headcanon that the Ineffable Husbands got a Husbands of River Song ending offscreen before sacrificing themselves. They took their sweet time with the time they had left, and made their case with no unfinished business. 💕
This was my thought as well, we aren’t shown what happens after they come to their decision and are given no restrictions on how long they were there. It think it was a grace given to us specifically so we could create more ourselves.
sometimes like or disliking something are not black and white. not always there is a hard edged diving those two feelings.
something may be a bad piece of media and ypu might still like it, and the opposite is also true. sometimes something can be good and one still dislikes it. and, most of the times, media is not easily categoriesed as good or bad and people will still love and hate it.
Good omens has an extremely emotionally taxing ending. there's a lot to digest and to process and think about, both in screen and surrounding the process of it's creation.
A lot of people has been taking their first emotional reaction as negative. putting feelings like grief, sadness and anger under the umbrella of "bad", and so tagging the finale like that too. I don't agree with that.
these 90 minutes are being extremely hard on me. I still can't put it to proper words, and I probably won't for a long while. But what I can say for now is that it's a good ending. Not a perfect one, not what we would've choosen, but a good one. there's a lot LOT of things in it that are flawed, and most of them go back to the season being compressed into a movie. but there's also a lot of well done things.
I hope that the fandom in general will be able to discuss this without antagonising each other. even if you think the end was not good (and there's things that back up that thought) this discussion is good. the back and forth of theories and analysis and discussion about character arcs.
I fell in love with good omens, the story, the characters, the world building, but most of all I fell in love with the fandom. and this moment of conflicting emotions and thoughts right here is very good. I hope we all can enjoy and make it the best it can be.
