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Any good thoschei fic recs for us?
Oh I wish! I still haven't really branched out into reading doctor who fics by people I don't know because I haven't had the time but as usual I reccomend @not-jodie-yet and @fatalcookies they both have great thoschei fics on ao3
fatalcookies
the-omega-jojo me: man i...
If you stop in Portland come say hi to me? :D
of course!! (you’ve discovered my secret ulterior motive to this roadtrip, which is surprise all my american mutuals in person and speak at you in british)
fatalcookies
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Does anyone actually wanna know about the...
Uuuuh please
*deep breath*
*steeples fingers*
@fatalcookies
ok so LIKE
In a deviation from canon, Shade’s only on earth because armageddon is coming someday, and she’s the Almighty’s most trusted strategist. I know this is also veering way off all conventional understanding of the hierarchy of angels, but I think our girl’s a seraph. I mean come on--little miss “think nothing but devotion”? The character who was so over the top in her praise of her boss that a complete third party called the relationship “an altar” to be “sacrificed on”? Seraphim is translated as “the burning ones” and Shade is burning inside and out in any version of her you want to construct. She’s way beyond goodness, she’s about PURITY. She is a slave to the theoretical ultimate perfection of the divine plan. Holy holy holy, bitch!
But...she has a secret.
It’s the same secret she has in canon.
She loves life.
She doesn’t know why and it kind of scares her. She has eternal bliss at her fingertips if she just keeps following all the rules, and she’s great at following all the rules. But at the same time, perfection is simultaneously incredibly hectic and kind of boring. After an eternity of serving at the height of passion, unchanging, unerring, a body gets a bit worn out, and starts to think it might be nice to just, curl up with some brief ephemeral story. Something a bit less than perfect, a bit less than eternal--just to see what it was like. And fortunately the divine, in her unerring wisdom, was just on time to tell one, which started, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
And so she goes to earth, and she’s just barely constrained in a quite handsome--entirely bespoke!--human body, whose eyes she only occasionally lights up with white flame, and promptly occupies herself with performing understated miracles of toy repair for random children, dressing like the pits of fashion, sipping espresso in cafes, skulking around the edges of literary society Orlando-style but in a theoretically specifically benevolent fashion, and justifying everything to herself one way or another.
And yes like...Shade is pretty sensible, she’s not going to get into the exact same nonsense on earth that Aziraphale did, but if you really think she’s not going to get into any nonsense at all then I feel really bad for you because clearly you’ve never met...wlw in general
She’s kind--never indulgent, but kind--and polite, and nobody really minds her above or below, because she’s very careful to maintain her Purity by never questioning anything or really putting anything in place besides that which she’s been told to. One of her main justifications for everything she’s been getting up to is to assume that if the Almighty didn’t want her to do it, she wouldn’t be able to, because she certainly doesn’t have free will...does she?
Shade is a pseudonym she took on to represent the humility of her human side, by the way, signifying its total inferiority to the radiance of God. I don’t know what God calls her when she’s a blinding, burning figure at the side of the great throne. Perhaps it’s Lux.
Now. Bolt. You may have been asking yourself, “How are you gonna cast the sweet, soft, motherly team healer as the demon in this? Even Crowley has it in him to be a bit of a curmudgeon sometimes and Bolt just doesn’t” and that is true.
But I have this to say:
Hell hath no fury like a tenderhearted gay disaster scorned.
Okay, it’s not all, like, completely personal. The majority of the soul reaping that Bolt accomplishes doesn’t require her to do anything besides exist. Because she’s a sweet, pretty, competent woman who listens, and she’s also the biggest lesbian in the world, and her numbers look fine back at home office because men are just like that. She doesn’t have to tempt anybody she’s literally just There
But sometimes, with the ladies, it’s more, and sometimes she is there for an extended period, and sometimes she feels something beyond pragmatic compassion and that something quickly turns to heartbreak. Because she will never not be a demon, and humans will never lack the ability to redeem themselves. With them she’s never more than a temptation, a distraction, a stumble on the straight and narrow--never chased, never cherished, never allowed to grow old beside. They abandon her, they hurt her, just like God did, and they never regret it, because it was the right thing to do. So, you know, every once in a while, when it’s really too much to take, when she really has to do something for once, to hell with them.
The thing is that in vol. 1 Bolt certainly feels enormous degrees of love, but she doesn’t really have a moral code beyond “make the people around me happy so that they’ll like me and pay attention to me.” If she felt underappreciated in heaven, would she run to Lucifer’s side knowing she would be praised and made to feel special there? Abso-HECKING-lutely.
Of course, it takes more than just her feelings to make her fall. As with canon Bolt, she falls FOR someone.
Who does she fall for, in this universe?
Ready for this?
Eve.
Oh, it wasn’t entirely selfish. She certainly THOUGHT about the unfairness, the way God set them up for the Fall. And yes hell sent her to make it happen, so she can certainly claim to have just been doing her job. BUT…
She honestly might not have done it the way she did it, if she hadn’t thought, just a tiny bit, just way down deep where she could almost ignore it, “Maybe, if they could choose, one of them might choose me.”
Down the road, one of her few real resume builders downstairs is inventing the spinal block epidural--which REDUCES human suffering, but how are they scoring this thing anyhow?--as a middle finger to heaven and an apology to her first crush
+Bolt grumbling+ “‘In pain you will bring forth children’ ASSHOLE it wasn’t her fault!”
Also putting her in the actual plot rather than just the universe of Good Omens simplifies things nicely, the nuns aren’t needed anymore at all. Boltie will be the first to tell you that without her Systems and her assistants, she’s perfectly capable of misplacing a baby on her own.
I just want to mention here that she dresses like the exact midpoint between Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe with a slightly more infernal color scheme and her sunglasses are those red plastic heart kind
Also, because I do the same shit in every AU, she has the exact relationship Crowley has with Queen with, GUESS!!, Dolly Parton
I definitely think one of the most interesting things about this (it’s one of the things I think is most interesting about canon Good Omens too although they never go a l l the way down this road) is that Shade quietly suspects that Bolt is better at being Good than her. Oh sure she loves all God’s creatures but Boltie can get them to love her back. It seems that, unless someone has hurt her personally, one of her main motivations for pushing back against heaven IS compassion
Bolt for her part feels immense guilt about the fact that the only reason she EVEN lets this crap happen anymore is out of bitterness. She hears heaven offers humans unconditional love, even now that they have free will. Where was that deal when she wanted free will, huh?
From that setup on out, you don’t REALLY have to change anything--about EITHER source text! But it’s kind of fun to customize certain stuff for them
I feel like in that scene where they’re drinking in the bookshop they’d get into an exchange that’s like
Bolt, sitting with her legs slung over the arm of a chair, her pantyhose all bunched around her ankles, her high heels in one hand and a glass of red in the other: And that’s the other thing, if we go back they’re not gonna let us be cute anymore
Shade, sitting at her desk with her tie loose and her collar open beside a half-empty bottle of very nice whiskey (I told you the aesthetics were reversed): My goodness Boltie that’s really what you’re on about at a time like this
Bolt: Well take a second to appreciate what you’ve got down here angel, we look fine as all get out! If they send us back I’m gonna probably be back to bein’ a snake for all eternity and you’re gonna have to be a, a flaming wheel or some shit. You know you’re not gonna be able to get made-to-measure for THAT
Shade: …Damn, you’re right
Is this a good time to mention that in my head, Shade sounds decidedly English and Bolt sounds like she’s from Cleveland
Except also I really want Shade to carry Boltie across consecrated ground like in that one post
I just came across an album called "Do you want the truth or something beautiful?" and if it is possible to write a more Braxiatel sentence than that one I have never yet read it.
fatalcookies said: Holy crow hon D:
natalunasans said: wow?!?!?! glad you’re okay
doctress said: D: Good grief.
yeah i am uh very very grateful to @charamei for maybe saving my life bc i was skyping her and about to go to the loo, and she told me she going to bed in a minute anyway, so I hung on a minute and then just as I was about to go to the loo, the ceiling right above it fell in and yeah, if u are happy i’m still alive then u have charamei to thank, thank you charamei for ensuring i was not in there at the time aaaaaa
I think of your writing as: Clear, carefully-picked prose, never a word out of place. Incredible subtlety of emotion, beautiful imagery, and a sense of care having gone into every word that makes the writing seem very refined, delicately-constructed, and lovely in its portrayals, be it a moment of quiet emotion or a raw and gripping instant of time. <3
I mean. Also just, PearlRose, revolutionary makeouts, and the most lovely and carefully-arranged mutual respect between characters, it’s frankly wonderful. But also, all the other stuff. <3
[writing ask meme]
Honestly I personally drive myself up the wall with my horribly irritating need to painstakingly pick at and agonise over and endlessly fiddle with every single word in anything I write, but here you are complimenting that and… it’s just... so nice? Thank you <3
The other half of your ask is basically a big ol’ These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things, and I’m glad I can do them even a bit of justice.
fatalcookies
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I feel like all of you guys who have known DT as a...
as someone who loves writing Jade because of how sharp her edges are… I Feel This
Love And Support Mean Fictional Women With Good Principles 2k19
DT just destroys me because she works for her cause/the Bell Towners’ safety with the same all-consuming devotion and careful distance that they were all taught to give their assignments, because even though she knows they all deserve to be free, she just genuinely doesn’t know any other way to handle something she cares about. And at first she doesn’t know how to motivate people besides the way she was raised with, i.e. making them feel like they have to live up to her standards to prove their worthiness (though she does stop short of equating worthiness with objective worth).
And it’s really strong of her that she’s even able to mentally put herself in the drivers’ seat like that, in a way she’s miles ahead of where the others were when they first rebelled, but she’s also figuring out by trial and error how to be a leader and she actually doesn’t understand how much of the lifting she’s doing by affirming people’s competence and trustworthiness, for example, or by projecting individual dignity for herself in a way that makes other escapees say “hey I could have that too”--she doesn’t understand how much her lowkey, natural positive contributions are getting done--until she begins to build up a found family who point those things out to her. She just thinks everyone does the near-impossible to accomplish their goals with no prompting besides Expectations, because that’s what she does, and her experiences of the general population of the universe were heretofore limited to 1. herself and 2. people who unintentionally egged her on by making her feel like shit
Like...she literally just has no idea how to be a person and she’s figuring it out with a truckload of internalized oppression and a disability that causes her fairly constant pain and a small town’s worth of lives in her hands, and she’s trying so hard and I love her so much
Tell me about the high school AU for the bell town babes. =D
The high school AU is like. the only thing where I don’t try to draw parallels with them being the working class of their society in canon this is all at some kind of snooty exclusive private school because it makes EVERYTHING funnier and pettier
1. Shade is a straight-A student but tightly wound and miserable about it. Her parents are both highly accomplished and very strict and she feels like she has to be perfect to please them. Despite being a visibly anxious introvert with no time for anything she’s president of the school’s LGBT org. Possibly she was elected without actually running or maybe the faculty advisor just appointed her because she never misses a meeting. She’s actually very kind to and protective of the underclassmen and will listen to them and give good advice, she just seems sorta unapproachable and isn’t sure she wants to change that.
2. Bolt is a cheerleader and a freshman orientation leader and on the prom committee and she knows everybody and she considers every single girl in the school her friend and won’t hear a bad word about any of them. Girls will rip on her to be edgy and call her a ditz and stuff but everyone who gets to know her knows she’s actually that nice and she’s on homecoming court and stuff every year. She’s a senior now and scared of what’s going to happen when being everybody’s friend isn’t enough. Her grades are fine, they’d be good if she put forth a little more effort, but when the guidance counselor suggests getting on track for a nursing masters’ she’s like ???!!! are you kidding? I’m way too dumb for that, I’d kill somebody. Shade is the one who eventually talks her into it, and because she’s Shade she has Specific Evidence for why she should do it, like “Remember on choir tour when you gave that girl her EpiPen?” “Those are designed so that literally anyone can do it” “Yeah but everyone else was just freaking out and you stepped up and like HANDLED IT”
3. 2 weeks later they both realize that this kind of detailed compliment is Shade’s version of flirting, she doesn’t make that kind of effort for just anyone
4. Rugsy is the captain of the field hockey team and has an entourage of awestruck underclassmen girls who follow her everywhere and drives a sweet vintage car that breaks down in the school access road twice a semester and has neon pink hair and is basically a teenage lesbian goddess. DT does all the nerd extracurriculars like debate team and mock UN and yet somehow still is the closest thing the school has to a Queen Bee™; her parents are local big shots so in addition to being the smartest and hottest girl in her year she has this aura of money and power around her. The two of them–DT and Rugsy–keep the rumor mill running AROUND THE CLOCK with their dramatic on-again-off-again, love-hate-love relationship.
5. Like IMAGINE Rugsy and DT’s belligerent sexual tension but between overwrought hormonal teenagers. Hell on wheels. Also I enjoy the opportunity here to just for a little tiny while ignore everything that makes DT a complex, Important™ character and just let her be an unashamedly spoiled diva? Like she’s still very smart and critical of the system and a genuinely hard worker (though lbr nowhere near on par with what she’d need to be to escape society’s most reviled tier) and still has her thing where she’s extremely devoted and caring as long as she can be 100% emotionally distant, but I feel like she’s grown up being constantly reassured of her Ivy League Legacy destiny and doted on and rolling her eyes and facepalming while her mother tells her about her harrowing misadventures in trying to find out which of the other snooty rich ladies in town have gay daughters who are single
6. The culmination of this is that DT’s family throws some kind of, idk, debutante ball thing, during which sneaky underage drinking on the back veranda is occurring under the adults’ noses, and she and Rugsy get into it and Rugsy pours an entire bottle of Wild Irish Rose down the front of DT’s brand new SNOW white Versace dress and DT storms into the main party On A Mission and her dad’s like “Well what do you want me to do pumpkin run her out of town?” and she’s like “at least make her LEAVE she’s ruining EVERYTHING” and they both go home and cry into their pillows and it’s actually the last time they see each other for a while before starting college
7. But then they both move back in a few years and baffle everyone by just getting married and settling down like nothing happened
8. (What happened is they both matured a lot, worked through their internalized homophobia surrounding physical and emotional intimacy with another woman, and lived in the real world for a while)
9. (Rugsy still has the car. It strands them at a gas station on their honeymoon.)
10. Also Shade really comes into her own in college and ends up much more confident and extremely dapper and androgynous and confusingly attractive to almost everyone but she only has eyes for Boltie, ever
