Didn't really understand why a friend of mine kept comparing me to Murderbot. I mean, I relate to it a lot, but, like, I'm not aro, and I'm ace but not that kind of ace, and I'm neurodivergent but not that kind of neurodivergent, and I'm agender but not that kind of agender. These all seem like pretty key parts of Murderbot's character.
But recently there was a slightly violent emergency situation near my home, and afterward when I told people about it they were all like, "That must have been so scary!" My response each time was, "No, not really. During the emergency I was just focused on what I knew I needed to do to help, and, when it was over, I was just angry about everything that must have led to the incident and the fact that I couldn't trust anyone besides my housemates and myself to respond to it."
And now. Now that I've stopped to think about it. I might be starting to see what my friend has been getting at this entire time.
TL;DR: Thank you, tumblr and AO3 people for keeping the charm and fun of Good Omens alive despite... ~waves hands about~ everything.
It's been two months since Good Omens "season" 3 aired and I still feel sick to my stomach when I think about it.
My first experience was reading the book in the very late 90s. I thought it a charming story, but the only thing that really stuck with me over the years was the gag about all cassettes left in one's car turn into the "Best of Queen".
Twenty years later, I saw an advertisement for a television adaptation staring David Tennant (*heart eyes*) and Michael Sheen ("ooh. he's great"). I watched the first episode, got distracted by a shiny object, and forgot to go back. Season two dropped. I realized I hadn't watched all of season 1, got distracted by another shiny object, and forgot to go back.
The teaser for season three appeared in my YouTube suggestions page in early May and it captured my attention. I decided to give the show another shot because third time's the charm, right? I burned through season 1 and cheerfully started up season 2. S2 felt... weird. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until about midway through when I realized that it was, at its heart, fan-fiction. Sheen and Tennant were still acting their faces off, but I simply didn't care about the modern-day plot. The flashbacks, though, made the series worthwhile.
And then I got to the Final 15. Crowley's anguished groan after "And I would like to spend..." broke the handle on my waterworks and I was a snotty, teary mess who cried so hard I gave myself a headache. That was May 10.
Honest to goodness, I don't know how the fandom made it through the break. Y'all had three years to stew. I had only three days. Oof. As broken-hearted as I was, I didn't know if I could handle the 90 minute finale, BUT the trailer looked like a fun romp and I dove straight in.
It was not a fun romp. The waterworks started in the garden and didn't let up. I didn't sleep that night. I discussed it with a Brit friend who tried cheering me up with "but they had dinner together!" It still didn't sit right. I spent the next week and a half in a daze, trying to figure out why I couldn't let go of the terrible, awful, soul-crushing feeling.
Exactly two weeks after the finale, my husband and I were in London and one of my must-see spots was AziraCrow's bench in St. James's Park (it wasn't a must-see but when we passed the stairs and terrace where Crowley still owes Aziraphale lunch, I got giggly). Seeing and sitting upon the bench made me so happy because it was a S1 location. Deep down, though, was a puddle of sadness that I still couldn't name.
I floundered a bit longer and then I remembered one of the main homes of fandom: tumblr. I dusted off my old account and looked up everything with a Good Omens tag. There it was! A shared dissatisfaction. And grief. I finally had a name for that gnawing pain. And pointers to fix-it fics! It was time to dust off my AO3 account and dive into *good* fanfiction which made silk purses out of the canonical turd.
It's two months since GO3 aired and the pain is lessening every day. The 14th century is in the rearview and I have you marvelous bloggers and writers and artists and fanvid-producers and creatives of all kinds to thank for healing my heart. Thank you.
I am sharing this on behalf of my husband. These are his words, his memories, and his story of survival.
It was an ordinary day… or so I thought.
On August 30, 2025, I returned home after a long day of work, dragging the weight of the hours behind me like a shadow. The afternoon had begun to fade, and the sun was casting its golden threads across the walls that held the details of my life. I entered my home, greeted by the smell of food—the scent of safety, the scent of a life I once believed would never change.
I ate my lunch quietly, as if rewarding myself after a tiring day. My wife and children had already left to visit my father’s house, and we had agreed that I would join them after getting some rest. There was nothing unusual about it… just a day like thousands that had passed before.
I lay down for a while… closed my eyes… not knowing that this moment would become the line dividing two lives.
Suddenly…
A sound unlike anything I had ever heard. It wasn’t just an explosion… it felt as if the sky itself had shattered and fallen on top of me. In an instant, calm turned into hell, and the walls that once protected me became rubble collapsing over me.
I didn’t understand what had happened.
All I felt was a crushing weight on my chest, dust filling my lungs, and a strange silence after the chaos… a terrifying silence, as if it were the end of everything. I tried to move… to scream… to understand… but my body was no longer mine.
I was beneath the rubble… between life and death.
Seconds felt like eternity. Faces disappeared, sounds blurred… until everything began to fade away.
Then… I woke up.
Not in my home… not between my walls… but on a white hospital bed, surrounded by exhausted faces, the sounds of pain, and the smell of a place that knows suffering too well. That’s when I realized I had survived… but what kind of survival was this?
I asked about my home… no one answered directly.
I asked about my life… and I understood the answer from their eyes before their words.
My home… was no longer a home.
My work… no longer existed.
And my life… was no longer the same.
In a single moment, everything had been turned upside down.
I was no longer the person who returned home in the afternoon to rest for a while and then join his family. I had become someone else… someone who carries within him the memory of an ordinary day that turned into an unforgettable story, and a wound that cannot be seen, yet never heals.
But despite all this… I am still breathing.
And deep inside me, there is something small… telling me that life, despite everything, is not over yet.
Ever since I was a child, I've always suspected that something was a little.. off.. about me.
Whenever I was introduced to the term, “therian,” it all began to make sense.
In kindergarten, I'd wander the playground at school on all fours and communicate via barks, growls, and strange hissing sounds. My peers never really said anything about it, they simply avoided me like the plague; because, honestly, who wants to talk to a five or six-year-old who can barely string together coherent sentences without adding in some offputting animal noises?
During the frequent family roleplays that commenced between my peers, I would always beg and plead to be the pet. They'd always allow it, because I swore not to make it a big thing and it wouldn't interfere with anything else.
My teachers were confused, obviously. My habit of eating food from the floor began around this time, as did the bullying from my peers for my strange behaviors.
However, that's normal for a child, right? I was still developing, figuring out how the world works. No child is normal during this time. I know this, you know this, we all know this.
It first started to become an actual “problem” for those around me throughout my elementary school years.
The first year or so was normal. Like other kids my age, I was disruptive and socially inept. I made friends with a girl who claimed to be a vampire (I still think of her often, I hope she's well) and a boy who said his mom was the president. A child's imagination is near-incomprehensible to the adult mind, even though we've all experienced it in the past.
Around the time that third grade was starting, everyone around me seemed to be.. growing up. They were forming large friend groups (most of which ended up lasting until highschool graduation), becoming aware of their surroundings, and understanding human body language.
I felt as though I was stuck in time.
Unfortunately, my way of expressing feelings and emotions had yet to progress. I was still making weird sounds and scrunching up my face to showcase discomfort. I violently wiggled my lower body as a sign of excessive happiness. Basically, I hadn't figured out what the human equivalent to these signs were.
At the creek near our house, surrounded by my family, I'd remain horizontal. I despised walking on two legs, for it took me longer and it made me feel strangely tall. I was never meant to solely use my hind legs, none of us were.
I'd fold my hands to imagine them as paws and use them to dig large holes in the dark sand. Once I had a big enough hole, I defended it with my life and referred to it as my den. Some would call this early signs of derangement, but I refer to it as the early tells of who I truly was.
My family would stay at the creek for hours upon hours. On all fours with me, for the most part, was my younger brother and cousin. They were simply copying what I was doing. Whenever they pleased, they felt comfortable stopping these behaviors and returning upright. I did not.
The drive home was always devastating for my younger self. Everyone else was fine with it, ready to rest after a long day of wasting away beneath the sweltering sun. I missed my den.
If it were up to me, I'd have spent my entire life down by the water in my little den.
It wasn't up to me, though.
In the fourth grade, my cousin, brother, and I formed a sort of wolf pack. I was the leader, because I knew the most about how packs functioned in the real world, and because I was a very controlling child during this time.
We acted out this wolf pack every time we saw eachother, for hours on end. It was always my idea. They were younger, so they complied.
This continued for several years. We had extensively discussed our characters, lore, and pack dynamics. It was the highlight of my childhood, and I look back on it quite fondly.
Around this time, my family took note of the behaviors I hadn't seemed to grow out of. They told me to stand up, speak correctly, and act “normal.” So, I did just that.
Middle school attacked me like a freight train before I could even comprehend that life was moving on in the first place.
Classes got longer, recess was completely scrapped, and I no longer saw my brother and cousin as often as I once had.
Those years went by in a haze, as did my time in highschool. Dissociation kept me standing and (somewhat) mentally sane.
I was absolutely miserable, though. I felt like an animal forced to go through all the motions of being a human. These feelings persisted for so long that I believed they would become my normal.
At seventeen years old, I fully dropped out of highschool in pursuit of an early finish. I got my diploma equivalent in eleven days and, within a month, I was enrolled in college.
College was.. a lot, especially during my first year. The workload was nothing like what I had ever experienced before and studying took up most of my free time. I quickly became depressed and, as a result, spent the last bit of my free time in online communities for my favorite games.
In one of these communities, I met someone online. For the sake of their anonymity, I will refer to them as Clover.
Clover was an elk therian. At the time, I knew close to nothing about therianthropy, so I had plenty of questions for them. And, luckily, they were kind enough to answer every question that I broached them with.
Upon learning about Clover's identity, I grew curious. That little wolf-child within me who had been silenced and locked away for their own safety and sanity had begun gnawing at the bars of their mental jail cell.
The next year passed slowly as I grew to accept every part of myself again, and show myself the love in which I deserve. Over this period of time, I created this account to make likeminded friends and learn more information about the community.
Finally, I had a reason as to why I acted the way that I did whenever I was younger. I wasn't just some strange child with an inability to move on. No, no. I was a pup, lost and confused and raised by humans who refused to accept me for who I was.
All therians will, at some point, start off this way; as pups, or kits, or hatchlings, or chicks, or whatever the term may be.
As they grow, they will turn into the incredible creatures that they are. Their wings will carry them far, their paws will spread out to encompass the world, and their antlers will reach the treetops.
Therianthropy is a beautiful thing, one that shouldn't be feared or slandered. One day, I hope that everyone will understand it, or, at the very least, respect it, more.
Short essay written by user WULFBONES on Tumblr, 2026.
When I was in college I took this online intro sociology course and one of our daily prompts or whatever was to find something mundane that was influenced by patriarchal thinking, and I wrote about this poster of the justice league in my room, which had 12 heroes portrayed but only three of which were women (supergirl, hawk woman, Wonder Woman) and only one was a person of color (cyborg).
And to stimulate critical thought and class engagement you have to respond to your classmates posts, and one of the people who responded to mine was this woman who was like “I don’t see how it’s pertinent that there are only three girls when super heroes are for boys anyway”
And I’m just like wow you really should lock in for this class.
Answer: Abusers don’t respect boundaries. Saying no often leads to more manipulation, guilt-tripping, or even threats. It's not about simply refusing—it's about survival in a situation where your choices are controlled by fear.
