One Half Of A Whole Idiot @onehalfofawholeidiot - Tumblr Blog

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Quarterfinals

James T. Kirk/Spock (Star Trek) vs Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

Kirk/Spock

Aziraphale/Crowley

Voting ended onOct 9, 2023

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

biglawbear

So I went to read the Kids Online Safety Act, thinking that it couldn't possibly be as bad as what people are making it out to be, I mean I'm a lawyer and expert in statutory interpretation, it can't be that bad, right?

Oh no. KOSA IS that bad. It will literally eradicate queer people online.

The bill says that a "covered platform" - broadly defined as "anything on the internet a minor might use" which is literally the entire fucking internet- has a "duty" to protect minors from anything that might harm them, including "sexual exploitation" and other undefined terms

It also gives state attorneys general the ability to sue to enforce it.

So here's exactly what's gonna happen:

Wacko republicans, as they've been doing with increasing force this year and last, are going to sue any and every website in existence, saying that the mere existence of LGBT people online constitutes sexual abuse of minors. And websites are gonna be so afraid of not doing the most that they'll just axe all LGBT everything.

Like. Republicans have been calling all LGBT people groomers and child molesters for years. The lead Republican literally admitted this bill will be used to attack trans people.

This bill is BAD bad. I'm appalled that democrats are lining up behind what is clearly a republican Trojan horse to eradicate LGBT people from the entire internet.

Call your senator

obstinaterixatrix

Cosponsors of S.1409 - 118th Congress (2023-2024): Kids Online Safety Act

this is a list of senators who have cosponsored KOSA; under 'Give Feedback on This Bill' there's a link that lets you get the contact of your senators and representatives pretty easily. if your senator's a cosponsor, tell them to cut that shit out. if your senator's not a cosponsor, tell them to keep not being a cosponsor.

catbirdseat4u

➢ Traction please.

jocorvus

I'd like to talk about "A Companion to Owls" aka the Job minisode flashback.

In the episode, we see Crawly repeatedly saying "I'm a Demon, I lied." YET every instance of this utterance is him appearing to do bad but secretly doing good.

Much like his VERY fae/elven-like double speak where he appears to say he wants to destroy Job's children, BUT when he adds that it's like how he destroyed Job's goats it switches the meaning entirely. Because he DIDN’T destroy the goats. So, he wants to APPEAR to do it, but not actually do it.

Back to the Demon lying thing.

We see him start this off with, "I am a Demon, I could be lying." But he hadn't been. He really did have the permit. But he didn't actually destroy the goats.

Next it's the children. He starts the fires and Aziraphale protests, "But you said you wouldn't!" And indeed, he didn't. He wasn't planning on it. But he made it appear that way.

Then we have a moment where Aziraphale says being on his own side sounds lonely and Crawly says it isn't.

Now... at the end when Aziraphale says being an Angel that goes along with heaven as far as he can sounds... and Crawly answers, "Lonely?.... Yeah." And Aziraphale sounds affronted, "But you said it wasn't!". We get one last, "I'm a Demon, I lied."

But did he? He then spent the rest of his time on Earth continuously bumping into Aziraphale. Becoming more and more his friend and companion and partner. He didn't let Aziraphale become lonely.

And in doing so, Crowley made himself not lonely either.

jocorvus

Can we talk about how telling it is that Crowley didn't remember Furfur (who said they did "loads together") or Saraquel (who worked with him on the Horsehead Nebula)... but he DID remember Metatron and noticed Beelzebub's new face... and he remembered Mister Dalrymple and Wee Morag and Jane Austin?

To me, this feels like he only remembers what he must by necessity, or what he feels in his heart is important.

Let me expand.

Forget:

The Angel Saraquel that, like nearly all Angels (we know Aziraphale is excused from this list) only saw him as Fallen, as unimportant, as unworthy of their care or sympathy, would definitely be cut. Yes, I know she remembered him so she at least cared to do that, but Crowley has the trauma of the Fall that he'd reasonably like to Forget, including those involved.

Furfur, a Demon that seems to have enthusiastically fought on the plains of Heaven, and is openly petty and vindictive when trying to get Crowley punished in 1941 to further his own climb up the greasy pole (please don't hate me. I love Furfur so much and I want so much more of him in part 3) would also make the list of being cut.

Necessity:

Metatron, this one sort of speaks for itself. The Voice of God. What Demon would NOT make it a necessity to remember the Face that speaks for God and for all of Heaven (that is, IF they've seen it)? This one is for Survival.

Beelzebub, his boss/former boss. Like the other top players in Hell, he needs to recognize them on sight. So he remembers.

Choice:

Mister Dalrymple and Wee Morag. These two humans are BLIPS in his very long life. A few days at most. But all Aziraphale had to ask was if he remembered "Doctor Dalrymple who bought–" and he instantly remembered and cut in with Wee Morag and "Mister, not a Doctor" (an important distinction for surgeons I was previously unaware of in that area, Neil posted an explanation on one of his asks). He remembered them. These humans that would be as a grain of sand in the desert of all he's ever met, he remembered them. And I have a feeling he would recognize them, and Elspeth, on sight if they walked by him on the street.

Jane Austin, to us, is a major person in History. She is an author that needs no introduction to most of us. But for Crowley, she was known for things that would have slipped by the vast majority of us unless we were into that specific topic. But he does remember her for those things. We know that if Jane had not been an author famous the world over, HE would still have remembered her, because he DID.

**Editing to add a link to the Mister vs Doctor article that had been shared because I went to find it on Neil's page and couldn't, but a quick search provided it so I'm sharing for those interested.

bigmamag

Ok sorry but why is no one talking about Aziraphale’s most bad ass scene in the entire fucking show? Like yes I know it was hot when he corrected his name when Furfur was butchering it and yes it’s amazing, but how are we all sleeping on the utter majesty of

My brothers and sister in Christ. The growl. The stance. Did he swap again with Crowley? No, that is pure, raw bastard angel, serving up fresh cunt. If he had been holding his flaming sword in this scene, I would be posting this from the grave. Crowley would have instantly jizzed his pants and fell to the floor useless if he had seen this. This bitch ain’t soft, he’s rock hard and ready to FUCK. YOU. UP.

cuties-in-codices

armour and intimacy

illustrations in a "gladiatoria" manuscript, bavaria/austria, ca. 1450

source: Krakow, Bibl. Jagiellońska, Berol. mgq 16, fol. 46v, 16r, 47r, and 57v

grimmchild28

Good Omens, 537AD

entertainmentindustryupdates

Update from the WGA on negotiations

neil-gaiman

i think it’s cool that you use tumblr. you dont see a lot of celebrities or writers/producers/actors on here anymore. i appreciate what you’re doing.

also you’re going to jail and then to hell for that new season

I'm still processing that people are saying this because they cared more than they expected to about what happened. And they aren't saying it because they thought the acting or the way it was shot or the direction or the VFX were bad, or that the dialogue was clumsy or out of character. They say it because it made them feel things they weren't expecting to feel.

onehalfofawholeidiot

Everyone attacking Neil with the most affectionate "I hate you" comments is one of my favorite things about this Fandom. We obviously love him.

But we are all also "How very dare you lead our hearts gently to a beautiful moment and then rip it out and beat us with it in the last fifteen minutes! You better fix this.... we trust you to fix this. We hate you. We love you. Thank you. Please continue."

fuckyeahgoodomens

hoarder-of-dragons

Crowley's love for Aziraphale is like a well kept garden. Always needs to be controlled and trimmed so it does not over grow and tamper any emotion. It's tended to carefully with small steps, a miracle here, a compliment there. It slowly grew into him and became a part of who he is. Loving Aziraphale. He knows his feeling will never be reciprocated, he has accepted it too (not really). But he has to keep himself in check. He does things for his angel because really, his love for Aziraphale is now in written in his bones. Yet rarely does he spend too long with him. Yes, a lunch here and a night cap there, but he never spends more than he help himself to spend time with his angel.

He doesn't want to overwhelm the Angel after all.

Aziraphale's love for Crowley is like an overgrown and forgotten wild grove. He had kept it subdued for so long it begun to grow wild and freely. It was only after the church incident did he realize how much it had grown, how much it creeps everywhere, how much it overwhelms him. To see how much he loves Crowley is an open wild garden with millions of emotions overlapping each other, no outlet to let out. So he gives in. He yearns for every touch, every moment shared between them. Crowley seems neutral, not lingering too long but not staying away, but he can't be too sure. He tries not to indulge too much.

After all he doesn't want to overwhelm Crowley.

bees-of-passage

"Constitution of an ox", says Crowley, the demon who has personally witnessed Aziraphale eat a whole ox in a single night and has never been the same after that

grimmchild28

“Eat me like one of your roast oxen.”

neil-gaiman

I'm sorry Neil, although I love your writing and agree with your opinions on most subjects I have to disagree with you on the writers' strike. No-one should have a more privileged life as a result of being clever and creative. I worked from the age of 15 to the age of 65 in low-paid jobs, taking 1 year off to go to drama school and 3 years off to get a fine art degree. I worked in terrible but necessary jobs, labouring, stacking boxes, unloading trucks, running errands, filing, going to work on a bicycle at all hours of the day and night on shift work in all kinds of weather. Even when I was a student I was still working in part-time cleani8ng jobs and even during periods of unemployment I worked in volunteer jobs for charities and social services.

According to Mensa I have an IQ of 160 and according to Plymouth University I have a BA hons in Fine Art but I cannot accept the idea that writers and other creative people should avoid normal jobs like driving an "Uber" or working in an office/shop/factory/construction site. To accept that idea would be to create a new aristocratic class when we should abolishing the old princes and aristocrats.

What we need, I feel sure, is a redistribution of labour so that everybody who can do so would spend some time each year in blue collar work and everybody who can would get higher education and a chance to make art of one sort or another.

The idea of doing other jobs to supplement writing or drawing shouldn't be seen as a terrible thing, a punishment or a suffering. Sharing the jobs around should be seen as normal.

I mean, I've done my half century of sweat labour and it didn't hurt me too much. I'm retired now and still making art of various kinds and I've never asked anyone to pay me for any art piece I've made. making art, writing, drawing etc. is the fun stuff which we get to do in exchange for the blue collar stuff which puts food on the table.

The worst pop song ever written was Sting/Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" which ridicules the working class from a position of educational privilege.

So what's my question? My question is: What's wrong with a writer doing other jobs to make ends meet? Sounds perfectly fine to me.

Nothing's wrong with a writer doing other jobs to make ends meet. Writers and artists have been doing that since the dawn of time. Actors too.

But by the same token, there's nothing right about assuming that writing isn't a blue-collar job, or that writers and other people who make art can only make it for love and that thus they need other jobs to subsidise their craft.

I like living in a world in which the people who make the things that make the world worth living in get paid for their work. For me, that includes the people who make films and TV, books, art and music and comics.

Having spent a lot of time on film and TV sets, it's a blue-collar world on set, and everyone is working long and hard to make the shows you love. I'm never going to suggest that the riggers or the gaffers or the make-up team or the focus-pullers should drive ubers in order to have the privilege of being on the set and working there.

Or to put it another way, from the most blue-collar writer I ever knew...

dduane

The issue about the strike isn't about having a more privileged life than blue-collar people. It's about having sort of, please gods, as privileged a life as blue-collar people... while doing both that work (to support ourselves) and another kind of work from which those who do it never get a day off, from the moment we start it until the day we die.

Not one.

Because Story will wake you up for attention on your days off, on your weekends, on your holidays (as if 95% of writers ever have any!). And as for the waking hours, they're already toast. Story will interrupt you over your coffee while you're hardly even conscious, in the middle of your normal day's paperwork, at lunch (if you can afford or are allowed time for any), in the throes of orgasm with your spouse. It will haunt you while you're changing out people's catheter bags, and come up to surprise you in the middle of an average workday (per a discussion about the Battle of Salamis that I had with a specialist while resecting someone's colon). It will leave you in tears, once again, while wrapping yet another patient's dead body.

Plainly the side of the arts in which you've been working isn't Story. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

If you haven't been paying attention to the increasing levels of crap that US-based writers (and, also, others elsewhere) have been dealing with... you need to seek out some education at best speed.

Most of us are lower-paid and (to judge by our income) lower- or middle-class. For the last half-century or so, thousands of writers whose labors you've enjoyed have worked in a storytelling ecology that's supported the vast majority of independent/freelance screen storytellers in making a modest or supplemental living. (For example: my only Star Trek: The Next Generation script earned me about $14,000 [my split of $28K with my co-writer]. After that, low-and-dwindling yearly residuals in the low 4 figures continued for some years after. That's long done, now... but it bought a lot of groceries and cat food while it lasted, while I was also working other jobs.)

That ecology, though, has steadily had the blood sucked out of it with the shift to streaming—when the streamers told us, at the last Guild negotiations, "Nobody knows if this'll work. We'll make it up to you later if it does...!").

...Guess what? It worked. And now they don't want to make it up to us. (And somehow it's hard to be surprised.)

The old writer-payment ecology, as a result, is gone. It's not as if our stories are worth less than they were. (Indeed, evidence suggests far otherwise.) It's not as if the Earth's orbit's changed, or something's occurred that's had nothing to do with human actions. It's because rich people at the top of rich studios and streaming companies have decided they've got better use for the companies' billions of [insert favorite currency, it doesn't matter which one] than fairly paying their writers.

Some of us actually remember how things were before a workable system was broken, and can compare them to how they are now... bearing in mind what we were promised. As a result, better-known storytellers like Neil (and others: it's too late in the evening for me to do your homework for you...) are on strike now to assist those of us who're not so well known. People like me, for whom $14,000, spread over a whole year (or two, or three, or five...) made a big difference in our lives... not like the few hundred dollars now being offered to writers who've done a whole lot more work over a far shorter term.

In the larger sense: it'd be just lovely if the world were so arranged that all of us who prefer to mostly do creative work—because it's what we know best, and do best—were easily able to share (perceived) middle-class labor time around with those who don't do it (like something out of Le Guin's The Dispossessed). …Though most of us have also been doing second or third jobs as well. I don't know any writer who's grudged that if it meant also being able to do the work we love best.

It'd also be lovely if those whose privilege (as per your description) allows them access to higher education could understand the challenges of those whose situation didn't allow them anything of the kind. For example: I was lucky enough to pull down a Science and Nursing scholarship at the end of high school... otherwise my lower-middle-class family's finances couldn't have afforded me any other higher education at all. I happily worked to support myself all during my nursing training, and special-duty nursing kept me alive until my first few novels sold and made enough to kept me afloat.

That was just fine...for me. But I don't see why writers more talented than I (and who can tell who they are?), who've got more than I have to give to the world, should have to work two or three jobs to support their writing.

And I don't see why, having lived through the multiple-job bullshit, your vision should supersede other, less onerous ones. I mean, I’m sorry for the stuff you went through… but don’t see any reason why others should need to go through the same. (“I suffered for my art. Now it’s your turn…” is so 1970s.)

Anyway. For the time being, everyday working writers are fighting that corner right now, the only way we can: by withdrawing our middle-class [by definition of middle-or-low-five-figure-USD$] labor from the people making themselves rich off it. And isn't it funny that the people from whom we've withdrawn it are so desperately trying—via AI, etc.—to find a way to do without our labor entirely? (As if what would pass for daily donut money for most series is somehow too expensive...?) It kinda indicates that (color-of-collar) class isn't at all the issue here.

Understandable, then, that you might be glad you're retired... and not down in the trenches with the rest of us. Those of us still working hard to survive (including me, still writing at 71 despite theoretical "retirement ages"—impossible for us to consider in this "new world" economy…) hope to survive long enough, if we're as lucky as you, to eventually, have something similar.

Meanwhile, those of us who weave stories for the entertainment of those around us would just like to make enough from this work to buy groceries and pay our electric bills and feed our spouses (for those of us who have spouses), or kids (those of us who have kids). ...Or cats. (etc) You know: the kind of things that ordinary blue-collar people have.

And for their sake: just as the writers before us (in the 1960s) fought for the right to the then-revolutionary concept of residuals, we fight. Not just for ourselves, but for the writers to come after us, who also have spouses and kids*... and tales worth telling.

*And cats.