Spark Keyper's Desk

Writer, artist, seamstress, fictional-linguistics enthusiast, nerd, and all-around Maker of Things. If I haven't made it yet, I probably will at some point. Aro/Ace, she/her.

[ingravinoveritas]

"We've all got to be fighting that fight every day."

Happy Pride, everyone...

[angelsandfelines]

[armageddidnt]

A collection of shitty GO3 memes, part 3

It’ll never be as good as “nothing legolasts forever” but im cackling anyway

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant and Michael Sheen on Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship

[ineffable-writer]

“That’s really annoying for him” is a bit that doesn’t get played up enough in fanfiction I think

[pendragony]

Yes! I think maybe it’s because it breaks down his efforts to be cool.

Just to get a tiny bit meta for a minute, there was that post earlier about the thermos of holy water representing their love, and now I’m thinking of it again. What could be any more achingly uncool than a thermos flask? A tartan thermos flask? And yet that intrusion of tartan nerdiness into the spare, monochrome world of Crowley’s flat stands for everything that is most important to him, everything that he’d give up his cool for, give up his safety for, go to the end of the earth for. It stands for Aziraphale loving him back.

It’s also potentially the end of him, and he hides it away. But he keeps it safer than anything.

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

Very much so.

You got to think, too, sometimes it goes through his head as he’s busting into the Bastille because Aziraphale was craving crepes or dancing down the aisle of a church to foil a Nazi plot — it’s gotta run through his head that it would be so much easier if he could just ignore Aziraphale.

If he could just shrug it off, say “it’s his own dumbass fault” and just catch up if he ever re-corporates.

Or even just ignore that little anxious look of “could you do this for me?” Or tell him to knock it off whenever the “I’m gonna magic trick” face comes out.

But he can’t. Because despite everything, he does love Aziraphale, and that means pulling his stupid butt out of the fire every few centuries again. It means doing really annoying favors because how can he not? And it means watching the damn coin trick every time because even though it makes him cringe with second-hand embarrassment, it also makes Aziraphale happy and that’s always worth it.

And it’s just - arg - so annoying!

[pendragony]

Yes! But! And! Aziraphale’s world is the only one in which Crowley gets to be cool. All he wants is to be suave and sophisticated and COOL, and all those things that act as an armour over the fragile, uncertain, vulnerable person only seen by God.

But the other demons just don’t get it - Crowley’s standards of Cool are entirely derived from his life on Earth and the antics of these humans he lives among. There is nary a wahoo to be found among them. On earth, the dark glasses and slick suits and up-to-the-minute haircuts mean something. They confer an antiestablishment edge of Cool to everything he does without him even needing to try hard.

And with Aziraphale, Crowley gets to play at being an action hero. He gets to waltz in and save the day. He gets to lounge insouciantly in the corner in dark glasses and take Aziraphale by surprise, then nonchalantly save his angelic arse with a click of his fingers. He gets to waltz (well, OK, hot-step) into a church full of Nazis, lay down a few one-liners and then literally bring the house down before sauntering off to his awesome, sleek car.

He can’t stand the magic show because it’s so massively cringey (thank you, Gaiman and Pratchett for the phrase ‘contact embarrassment’) that it taints him with its lack of Cool. But nobody else cares because nobody else knows who Crowley is or how cool he’s trying to be.

But Aziraphale knows. He doesn’t always get it (“Oh, bebop”) but he sees what Crowley does and what he’s trying to be. Aziraphale, the nerdiest nerd to ever nerd, sees Crowley’s Cool and adores him for it. You know it’s true because when he comes to play Crowley, he slams it like Dorothy Parker. We see Crowley in Hell a few times, but he is at his coolest when he’s played by Aziraphale.

And meanwhile, the Cool that Crowley wants to be but doesn’t feel inside is the thing that he sees in Aziraphale. As nerdy as Aziraphale is, when his back’s against the wall he’s an ice cold bastard. Crowley *wishes* he was that. His portrayal of steel-resolve, stiff-upper-lip, officer-and-a-gentleman Aziraphale facing down hellfire is what every plastic James Bond wishes they could be.

He simultaneously can’t stand what Aziraphale is like and adores him for it.

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

I can also imagine that Crowley has, in the back of his mind, an image of what the perfect partner for his aesthetic would be.

Like it varies a bit over time. But you know. He’s theoretically bringing the suave, cool, confident hero. So he needs a clever and quick-witted side kick, or a firy sexy “Bond chick” (though he is gender non-specific, I just couldn’t think of a male version), or a partner who is as cool as him with a perfectly timed back-and-forth dialogue that stuns and amazes their enemies.

And Aziraphale just…consistently fails to be any of these. He’s just a nerd, and not even like a cool nerd who can bring the latest tech, no he’s this cuddly bookshop owner in an outdated suit who takes biscuits on secret missions. Like what?!

But Aziraphale is also — beyond any shadow of a doubt — the best partner he could ask for. He’s smart, he can follow Crowley’s lead or come up with plans of his own, he knows what Crowley wants when he needs it, he is an absolutely terrifying bastard when they’re under pressure, and he does not ever give up.

And he happily embraces whatever weird schtick Crowley has going on this century. Oh now you’re a cool brooding hero? Ok. Suave badass? If you say so. Are we going Byronic again? Yes dear I’ll get your fainting couch. Crowley could declare he was Batman and Aziraphale would roll with it. Complete acceptance, no strings attached.

Like, how is Crowley NOT supposed to fall in love with that?

[charlottemadison42]

#omg i love where this meta has gone lately

[krakensdottir]

For my money, it’s not just the image. I mean yeah, on the petty annoyance side of things, that’s definitely a factor. But love is a terrifying thing, Crowley’s on a tightrope above a panic attack at all times as it is, and - in the show particularly - one of the most common ways he copes with fear is anger or annoyance. These feelings he can’t help but feel, that are bad for his job and terrible for his life expectancy and yet have shaped much of the course of his life, are very scary. So he’s annoyed at them. Even while not actually trying to fight them (he might have, at some point, but by the time we really get to know them it’s clear he’s pretty much all in), he can’t help resenting them a bit. Why? Why are hearts like this? Why does he even still HAVE one? Why’d he have to fall for such a bastard? Why does he feel more in love every time Aziraphale does something utterly infuriating? What sort of sense does THAT make?

I love it because it’s wonderful how soft they are, but also hilarious what little shits they are, and in Crowley’s case it manifests as him wanting to yeet his heart off a bridge whenever it stutters in response to one of Aziraphale’s smiles. Stop that, you. And Aziraphale just keeps smiling. Does he know? Maybe.

[notesoflore]

I like to imagine that Aziraphale knows how much Crowley’s love for him annoys him and, because Aziraphale is a bit of a bastard, he goes out of his way to be nerd-ly loveable just to watch Crowley squirm with love/annoyance. 

[legendary-lunatic]

The ending was complete shit- but even if you liked it, here’s the facts:

They had 90 minutes. NINETY. MINUTES.

Wasted 2/3rds of it playing the most obvious whodunnit of all time, watching Jesus meander around uselessly, and bringing in some mafia group. And Aziraphale and Crowley, who should be at the center, hardly get to actually communicate, and pretty much never actually talk about their relationship. It was an agregious waste of time.

If they wanted to pull some meta shit, they should have given us a season to do it well. They had the option of doing a full season and chose not to, and the consequence of that is that you don’t get to write all of the convoluted crap you want. 10 minutes before the end of an hour and a half movie that had essentially zero constructive narrative is not the time to be pulling out world upending, genre changing, fandom rending controversial choices out of your ass.

(Especially when a quick google search could have informed anyone that 98% of the fandom agreed beforehand that getting some Human AU when you signed up for immortal shenanigans SUCKS. And on top of that they actually destroyed the entire universe and the main couple.)

The point being- if you are going to just have 90 minutes then you don’t waste that time and then pull twists out of nowhere so you can pretend to be ‘profound’ when neither the fans nor narrative demanded it up until they wrote some impulsive disaster at the very end.

You don’t start yanking on threads for fun, you wrap up the loose ends to make the fans happy and call it a day. 90 wasted minutes of answering none of the questions anyone had, not communicating, being overall rather out of character, and splitting screen time like they had time to give. You lost the chance to write story warping crap when you exchanged 6 hours for and a half.

All they had to do was sit them down at the ritz for dinner and everyone would’ve walked away fine- especially since they didn’t even bother to answer the questions we had beforehand like why the hell Crowley is so goddamned overpowered and what happened in the fall.

It was just generally poorly written. They set the Metatron up as someone who seemed malicious and then killed him ten seconds in. They started the concept of the second coming and then ditched it halfway through to start tearing chunks out of the universe. We sat and watched Jesus dawdle around the entire time to culminate in handing out pizza, and the mafia come out of nowhere to swallow up the first half and then leave. They had Aziraphale show up and get reprimanded for leaving by Mrs.Sandwhich and Crowley, only for them to pretty much passively avoid talking about anything by demanding forgiveness and then brushing off all the emotional baggage they had up until there was no time left to deal with it. All those talks of ‘Us’ and ‘to the World’ in previous seasons, and there’s essentially Zero closure from the characters who have been slow burning since the dawn of creation.

Say all you want about their long life together being fun, and ‘what ifs’, and ‘they find each other in every lifetime’ and blah blah- but sometimes people deserve to have the script actually address things and say them directly to each other and for the audience. It also sure as hell doesn’t help the transition that they had no clue they were gonna be reincarnated so they didn’t even get to toss out an ‘I’ll find you’ or something to soften the blow- they just DIED with zero resolution and we are expected to hinge our hopes and dreams on two strangers with bad haircuts that the audience has zero attachment to in a completely different universe. They didn’t consider how to even make this an effectively impactful ending, emotionally or logistically.

The first half reads like they were trying to obligatorily continue season 2, but the second half is disjointed and feels aimed at picking a new direction 180, and shutting everything down. HARD.

What I personally think the actual truth is, is that they intentionally wrote a way to end the universe (despite the fact that doing so contradicts pretty much every afore established ethical discussion driven by the series regarding the loss of life, replacing people, humans defying destiny, and free will, and is generally all around pretty out of character ), because they didn’t want to be bothered again. If you leave no open end, and a divisive fanbase, they don’t ask you for more. And that’s what I think this disaster really was: the response for having the audacity to ask for an answer to the cliff hanger they left us on in season 2, when all Amazon wants is to stop associating with Neil Gaimon.

I think it’s a hack job, and it’s a slap in the face to fans.

Most will actively hate it for upending all the world building and forcing them to suddenly grieve characters they’ve followed for decades at the last minute with absolutely Zero tact- but those that do enjoy the ending should be upset that it wasn’t written better. The set up could have been better, they didn’t make a choice to find each other, and They didn’t even do a montage of them finding each other in various lifetimes through history, people are just hinging their hopes and dreams on the song ‘time after time.’ And the reasoning behind the whole thing was beyond contrived.

Also, why does starting a new universe without heaven and hell mean they can’t exist as themselves as the sole immortals or just have their memories up until that point- she’s GOD, she can do whatever the fuck she wants and the story uses that to make a ridiculous contingency instead. They also literally had the ability to rewrite life in their hands and didn’t make any use of it. Why not have God just show up if you aren’t gonna do anything with the books? She’s God, she’s been watching, you didn’t need to manifest her, and I don’t know why you would want to.

So yeah, the ending was crap, objectively, simply because it was handled with all the grace and care of a bull in a china shop.

The fact they blatantly disregarded what the obvious emotional outcome of its massive die hard queer fanbase would be is just the cherry on top. The fans are loud and post constant content, it’s not hard to figure out most people just wanted them to wear silly outfits through time, TALK about their feelings, and play ‘a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’ the end. There were six dozen ways they could’ve handled Heaven and Hell and leave the two alone on Earth, and they went with ‘let’s not handle it at all, the only way to solve things is extinction.’ Nobody in their right mind would have wanted them to forget a millennia and over six thousand years of love for each other, that was on no one’s bucket list or radar going into this.

I think it’s fucking intentional, and I think they were sneaky enough about it that instead of being collectively pissed they gave us half written slop we are arguing over whether or not the ending is satisfying- and the answer should be “NO!” either way, because there was about 10% consideration put into it from the second they said they were giving us a pathetic 90 minutes instead of a whole season, and then they wasted the majority of that time doing nothing constructive.

It’s just so disrespectful to the fans, who supposedly this was supposed to be for, and the legacy of this series. And it sucks doubly because I know David Tennant and Michael Sheen really put their all into it- and really, I think they deserved better to work with and a resolution to the characters they brought to life. Love everything they did, but I just can’t be happy with the movie at all.

[ngkiscool]

Nightingale still Singing

Would you like to go back to the roots of your love for Good Omens? Are you tired of the fandom spaces being dominated by the S3 discussion?

Nightingale Still Singing server is planning a book club-experience for everyone who wants to shout and debate about the original novel. We are planning to discuss the book in parts to be able to focus on all the small details that might have faded from the collective memory over the years. Come read and discuss Good Omens: the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch, with us.

We try to avoid the company of bots, so please ask for a server invitation by commenting on this post, or by sending DM to me (ngk) or @luinlothana.

Source

[colourlifesmile]

~ you're more than enough. you're everything ~

[vroomvroombrrr]

I'm not sure the writers bothered to watch their own show because how are you gonna make a whole episode focusing on Job and Sitis, the most devoted followers, cursing God for killing their children and trying to replace them with new ones as a "reward." Crowley and Aziraphale spend 20 minutes trying to stop that from happening because they know it's wrong and nearly dying in the process. The circumstances frame the angels as blind to human emotions and centered around quantity rather than quality and love. It doesn't matter if they'll have more children. They're not THEIR children, they're not the same people Job and Sitis have loved so much for so many years.

Then the finale drops. Crowley and Aziraphale are erased because... the fans were too loyal and we deserved this? and they're replaced with Anthony and Asa. And we're supposed to... be gaslighted that this is the happy ending?

[twilightofthesandwiches]

Today's vent:

[thedeepmiracleperfection]

Isn't one of the major thematic points of the book and season 1 and 2 that Crowley and Aziracrow actually do have free will? That they have the power to make choices and be affected or affect others by the consequences of those choices? They believe they can't choose to be good or evil, that they're stuck in their natures, but then they go and do each other's miracles, and interfere with human affairs, sometimes messing up (graveyard) sometimes making better (Job) sometimes having no effect at all (first apocalypse). Aziraphale chose to go to heaven to save everything. Crowley chose to stay. Just because they're oppressed by the system doesn't mean they lack free will. Their creativity, imagination, and refusal to only do what is allowed were their greatest assets.

Wasn't one of the major thematic points the fact that no one is completely good or bad, we simply make choices, therefore the dichotomy between heaven and hell and angels and demons is an illusion? Both demons and angels suffer and are lonely under the system. Wouldn't it have made more sense to create a world where angels and demons can have the opportunity to learn and grow with humanity the way Aziraphale and Crowley did?

The finale doesn't actually address these points because they remove the problems by just starting everything over, which is in direct contradiction to everything they fought for in season 1 and with the Job minisode.

I agree that the ending should have always involved dismantling the system and creating an entirely new one. But it should have been a new system in the world they knew with the humans they'd come to love, and allowed everyone a chance at redemption. Or at least the autonomy to choose for themselves.

Crowley making one choice for the whole universe and undoing all of their work isn't thematically consistent and doesn't actually address anything that's been introduced this far. Why go through the trouble of establishing all this world building just to erase it?

How is the new human world better? What is the consequence of no heaven and hell other than Crowley and Aziraphale can be openly together (in the time period they occupy. I'm pretty certain homophobia would still exist)? Is the human experience fundamentally altered? Wasn't the whole point that humans actually do what they want regardless of heaven and hell's agenda because they're unpredictable and have imagination?

Isn't one of the themes from season 1 that the four horsemen, war famine pollution death, are actually man made concepts (well except for death)? And that one of the reasons Adam left the world as it was was because he felt humans needed to take responsibility for the earth and have the opportunity to fix their own mistakes? Isn't that why he didn't rebuild the whale population? Doesn't killing off all the humans and not letting them have a choice in making the new world really undermine that?

Isn't one of the themes that humanity is worth saving, and one of the major points demonstrating that theme being there are two nonhuman beings who still love humans despite witnessing them commit the same mistakes over and over? Isn't that nuance kind of lost when they become human themselves? Then their love for humanity is more self preservation and without the benefit of a long term view. DO they even love humanity as much when they're humans? I didn't exactly see a lot of general human love, mostly interpersonal romantic connection between them two.

Am I crazy? Am I going crazy? Did anyone in that writer's room watch more than 5 minutes of the same series I did?

[ifisay]

Yeah, OP really captured my issues with the finale here.

I think it is very poetic for Aziraphael and Crowley to sacrifice themselves for humanity; but I feel like that sacrifice was completely unneccessary. There were other ways to dismantle the system that wouldn't require their entire reality to be rewritten!

Like, in season 1 the "ineffable plan" was the punchline: nobody knows what the plan is, so can we really be sure that god wants the apocalypse? Those who wanted free will took it for themselves by sowing doubts in the minds of the extra-faithful.

Crowley and Aziraphael were living proof that angels and demons are not ontologically good or evil, and they lived their lives as something in between. Why weren't the other angels and demons given the same option? Take Heaven and Hell out of the picture, remove the Plan, and let them figure it out on their own.

(It's also not Crowley's decision to make, actually: he doomed a whole universe, regardless of what the show is trying to tell us when it shows all the faces that we know)

[child-of-ineffable-divorce]

And the worst part is that hating the finale makes me seem ungrateful for all the people who poured their time and love into it. I know this finale was fought for, and I love that they did that for us, but I am still devastated about the ending and I will probably never truly get over it

[malvoliowithin]

"problem plays" this "romances" that I'm proposing new and exciting Shakespearean Play Groupings for your amusement!

The Bad Dad Triad: King Lear, Henry IV Part 1, Romeo and Juliet

The "My Wife's A Floozy" Trifecta: Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, the Winter's Tale

The "Me And My Shitty Little Minion Are About To Fuck Up Your Shit Hardcore" Trilogy: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, the Tempest

The Falstaffiad: Henry IV part 1, Henry IV part 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor

The "Holy Fuck There's Two of 'Em" Saga: Twelfth Night, the Comedy of Errors

The "Dear Diary My Homoerotic Bullshit Has A Body Count Now" Series: Richard II, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus

The "Why Are The Fucking Trees Trying To Kill Me. Hate This Shit" Trilogy: Macbeth, the Winter's Tale, As You Like It

[malvoliowithin]

A few more for the road. Why not

"Somebody Call Ghostbusters!": Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Julius Caesar

"This Protagonist Sucks So Much Not Even In A Funny Way I Hate This Guy For Real": The Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew

"Kill Claudio. Many Such Cases": Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, Hamlet*

"Is It Really Shakespeare Unless The Protagonist Is Drenched In Blood 25/8? I Put It To You": Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Coriolanus

"And Then Some Fucker Named Sebastian Got Shipwrecked And Caused Problems": Twelfth Night, The Tempest

*Close enough

[gretchensinister]

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them. -The opening paragraph to My Immortal, posted 20 years ago today

[spockvarietyhour]

Gets funnier every time.

[maelace]

This episode aired in the ‘90′s. This joke has aged like fine wine. Depressing, depressing wine.

[sparkkeyper]

Even better since (in the movie tie-in books, at least) O'Neill canonically fought in Afghanistan in the 80s.

[anais-ninja-bitch]

how write book?

[cargopantsman]

like that but more

[anais-ninja-bitch]

oh noooooo

[ectoimp]

that muppet post reminded me, most if not all of the main muppets have twitter pages. Fav has gotta be Miss Piggys, which is filled with selfies and vaguely uplifting text thats also egocentric. all the comments are people complimenting her and being like “YAS QUEEN”

Close second is Gonzos. Which is just…unhinged

[trupie]

[endiness]

Season 4, Episode 6 “Window of Opportunity” STARGATE SG-1 (1997–2007)

[senatortedcruz]

The side of her the media won’t show you

[poughkeepsietapes]

Glasgow’s Sad Oompa Loompa Isn’t Gonna Sugarcoat This

“I don’t know how else you can put sprinkles on shit, but we were trying to be the sprinkles on shit.”

[naidje]

[bigbigbigtruck]

An artist I admire has already begun using "Glasgow Oompa Loompa" to sum up their long term state of "doing the best they can with the limited resources they have and trying their best to be kind to others even though the world is grinding them down and it's entirely the fault of SCAMMING ASSHOLES IN CHARGE" and I feel that so deeply

[roach-works]

SHE HASNT EVEN BEEN PAID FOR IT YET

[sparkkeyper]

I saw this fiasco while I was out in public, on a distant muted TV showing a news network, and my first automatic thought was "That looks like Dashcon all over again." Then I thought "nah, few things are as terrible as Dashcon." Then I watched the muted, captioned news broadcast for another minute and realized "oh my god, is IS Dashcon again."

I hope this girl gets positive publicity out of this horseshit and that everyone involved gets refunded/paid like they're supposed to, holy cow.