Hyperfixated on Good Omens since 2019, but also reblogs other things. Sometimes NSFW. 40+ she/they. Love wins, here. On AO3 as tehren. Fuck NG. I do not acknowledge the Finale as canon; ymmv.
So it's effectively a Spiderman/Edward Rochester fic now?! Brilliant!
Once, back in school, my bff and I changed an entire Harlequin novel into a Stargate: Atlantis AU Rodney McKay/John Sheppard fic by changing names and pronouns. Some passages were hard to read for all the scribbles. The novel was called "Jewel of Atlantis", which was what inspired us to do it in the first place. We even manipped the cover and inserted Rodney's face in place of the woman's. We took turns reading it to each other out loud. Good times.
Are you all ready for this? This is maybe the prettiest book in the entire batch of 12. I've made some damn pretty books but this one? Oh my god. Look:
This is Innocuous by flamethrower and it is a canon-compliant, post-s1 Good Omens fic from 2019. Without getting too spoilery, Heaven and Hell are getting up to mischief again and our favorite pair are not nearly as at-liberty as they think. They have to think their way out of a trap that they don't even realize at first that they're in.
Alright, for cover materials we have lineco tan book cloth on the spine, textured turquoise cardstock for the base, chiyogami with a floral mosaic pattern for the ornamental parts, and gold foil HTV for the title. I included two photos to show off how shiny it is. The chiyogami is actually a couple of scraps from way back when I bound The Rose and the Serpent back in 2024. I used it for the endpapers in that one and this is nearly every bit of what was left. There's more on the back, so have a look under the cut!
This is the back. It was a painstaking process to cut this out with a fine-bladed xacto knife but it was worth every second. The scraps I had were identical, but it was really important to me that the front and back were not the same, and this is what I landed on. The cover (and the endpapers too, when we get to those) were inspired by a scene later in the fic when Crowley is showing off a rooftop garden paradise that he's made. This seemed like the kind of cool, lush, luxurious thing he might have in there. And I have to say it exceeded my wildest expectations. I didn't know I had it in me to make this.
And then the HTV got warped going onto the spine and I ended up with a wonky "o". We must remain humble. It's honestly still lovely though, I forgot it was there until I started writing up this post. I got a very good round on this text block, almost no swell (even after rounding, my books often have some swell, though it's only noticeable when I stack them). And the endbands came out unusually well. Those are, as always, custom made. They look good with the cover, though they were designed to match the endpapers:
These are that thick soft artisan paper that Joanne's used to sell. The gold bits are shiny foil. Again, secret rooftop Eden luxury vibe here. I have no regrets about this bind, though if I had it to do over again I might choose a solid color instead of a pattern here. Maybe. Maybe not. On the one hand I really like the pattern but on the other it is kind of a lot with the cover.
Couple of quick shots of the interior. I kept it a bit simple, honestly, which makes a nice contrast with the cover. That wasn't intentional but I can't say it doesn't fit. Feels balanced. Let's see, what else? There are, I kid you not, over 450 footnotes in this fic and those took some wrangling to get in line. I think that's the most footnotes I've ever dealt with in one story. Oh, and there's an extra chapter at the end which is a deleted scene that I had to track down on the author's other fanfic account (listed in the notes at the top of the fic) because they'd removed it from Ao3. It's public, it just needed a bit of extra leg work.
And there we have it! This was one of the earliest long fics I ever read and it is really pleasing to give it the fanbinding treatment. It was interesting rereading it after several years and seeing how trends had shifted in things like characterization and the types of plots chosen. I'm not sure if that's a wider fandom trend or a shift in my reading taste or both. Gave me some perspective, anyway.
Iām laughing, but thereās a super useful corollary, which my husband callsĀ āthe Red Balloon.ā He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if youāre like, on your first offense, theyāll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it theyāll take the conviction off your record.Ā
And he would tell his clients,Ā āLook, everyoneās going to tell you not to do drugs. Theyāre going to say it over and over again. And itās like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, youāre going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people itās yoga. For others itās woodworking. For some people itās scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, itās a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.ā
So yeah,Ā āwatch yourselfā is one thingā¦ but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if itās fanfic about werewolves fucking.)
Itās a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful.
Itās easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain Iām inā¦ but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons.Ā
There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but itās true:
The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.
You may not intentionally be practicing ābeing grumpyā but if you donāt put effort into practicing ānot being grumpyā then Iām afraid thatās what youāre doing. Itās hard! Itās really hard! Sometimes, for some things, itās pretty much impossible and that sucks!
But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.
You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking
You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this thing about manifesting getting fucked by a pack of werewolves also has to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice
Remember! When companies lay off all their staff because AI is cheaper, this sort of shit is what you can leverage for a better contract when they are inevitably forced to hire everyone back :)
there are a lot of Extremely Married moments in good omens, but I maintain that the Most Married moment is when crowley says out of nowhere, āducks! theyāre what water slides off.ā and aziraphale heaves a deeply put-upon sigh and says, āā¦.just drive the car.ā
a close runner up is when Aziraphale wants to do magic at Warlockās birthday party and Crowley just goes, āMake you disappearā, and Aziraphaleās not put out in the slightest
For me itās always the bit on the airfield where Aziraphale is going āI was technically on apple tree dutyāā and setting up for a very long explanation akd Crowley just looks at him and makes a little gesture and shakes his head a bit with āSweetheart this is really not the timeā written all over him.
On the matter of tags: an earnest attempt to communicate
As a random member of the Good Omens fandom community, Iād just like to toss my hat into the ring and attempt to clear up some misunderstandings. I also want to encourage some honest, good-faith dialogue in a severely fractured fandom.
This is not an attempt to convince anyone to interpret the finale a specific way. This is a practical conversation about how we discuss the finale in fan spaces.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will be focusing on tags as they are used on social media platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram. AO3 tagging is considerable more complex and warrants a whole convo in its own right, so I won't focus on that here.
THIS POST INCLUDES DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE.
So, tags. Tags have become a thorny issue in the Good Omens fandom. I suspect this issue is so pertinent now, two months after the finale aired, because most of us have dropped āGO3 spoilersā tags, which people would have been filtering out if they did not wish to see anything from the finale. The finale is no longer a fresh commodity, so we are all trying to determine for ourselves what the next phase of our engagement with fandom will look like.
In fandom spaces, tags are a courtesy. No one can force anyone to use tags, of course. But tagging is a long-running standard of fandom etiquette across multiple online platforms. Tags are tools that help us find or filter out specific content. But what happens when we disagree on what tags should even be used in the first place? When tags themselves are a battleground?
I have seen assumptions that finale dislikers are demanding that all content with Asa Fell and Professor Anthony Crowley be tagged with āsuicide.ā It's possible that Iāve missed some significant conversations, but as someone on the disliker side, I have not seen anyone demand that Asanthony shippers use a "suicide" tag on all their posts featuring Asanthony. If anyone has asked that, I agree that it would be unreasonable! But I strongly suspect this perception comes from a game of fandom telephone in which different conversations are being conflated.
What IS being asked:
All content featuring Asa and Anthony should be tagged with their names or their ship name, Asanthony.
The "ineffable husbands" ship name should not be used for Asanthony.
Content warnings are strongly encouraged when sharing visuals of the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphaleās request to be removed from existence, specifically the moments as they disintegrate, as this decision is interpreted by many fans as a suicide.
Letās address that first point now.
Tagging Asanthony as "Asanthony" makes sense. I think most people are already doing this. If youāre not doing this, wellā¦ I strongly advise you to reconsider. Tags arenāt just for those filtering out content, but for those seeking it. Someone who doesnāt want to see Asanthony can use this tool to avoid them, and someone who is specifically seeking out Asanthony content can use the tag to find them and share some appreciation.
Where we have some disagreement is the second point listed above: whether Asanthony deserve to be tagged with the general āineffable husbandsā ship name as well. I donāt think weāre ever going to agree on this one. Some people do see them as the same ship, and others do not. Personally Iām someone who does not see Asanthony as "ineffable," but I am okay to concede on someone using the general ship tag for them, as it really does boil down to one's own interpretation. In my view, so long as "Asanthony" is also used, tag them as you see fit.
Now for the third point. This is where I'll be talking about suicide.
Suicide is obviously an incredibly sensitive and distressing subject, one that is highly likely to carry a personal resonance for many fans on all sides of the GO3 debate. I understand why people are upset to have to bring this subject up in their tags when they do not see the final scene that way.
But if you do find it upsetting to even consider using that tag... that means you agree that this topic is distressing, yes? The ineffables' decision was genuinely genuinely distressing for people who interpreted their choice as a suicide. I am pleading with you to understand this: there are members of our community who struggle with suicide ideation, and that scene genuinely triggered some of these people.
You donāt like to see this tag imposed. Well, others donāt like to suddenly come across visuals that in their view shows a suicide. Not seeing Crowley and Aziraphale's decision as a suicide is just as much an interpretation as seeing it as a suicide is.
We will never agree on our interpretations of Crowley and Aziraphale's final request to God and how it played out. The fact remains that the scene where they make this choice and it is granted is triggering to a significant portion of the fandom. This is not a niche opinion.
We won't be able to reconcile our views on this. But we do have to share fandom spaces together. Blocking others who have a different approach to discussing this scene is always an option. But maybe we can also attempt to reach a middle ground in the form of a tag.
I have chatted with others about this, and an idea I have seen discussed is for the fandom to come up with a neutral term for the scene where God grants Crowley and Aziraphale's request, akin to how we settled on āthe Final Fifteenā for the last fifteen minutes of season 2. This term should not favour one interpretation over another.
Some suggestions:
The Final Half Hour (orā¦ the Final Twenty? How long is this scene? Anyone clocked it?)
The Decision
Weāve Come to a Decision (WCTOAD? Well, I do like toads)
Please chime in if you have other suggestions!
Like I said at the top, no one can force anyone to use tags. This is ultimately down to one's own discretion.
But I think it's fair to say that our fandom is currently in crisis. The community has fractured ā or perhaps it is simply going through some very nasty growing pains. Maybe we can grow with it.
We will never be in a place where we all agree on GO3ās choices. Right now, we are all figuring out how we want to navigate this story and fandom we have all come to love. However we feel about the finale, we are all trying to find new ways forward.
We can argue about whoās right. We can block as we see fit. We can tag or not tag according to our own interpretation to make a point.
We can also decide to make productive choices that will help us all navigate our fandom spaces moving forward. Above all else, we can choose to be kind.
If you've read this far, thank you for hearing me out.
I concur wholeheartedly. Agreeing on some tags to use fandom-wide as a courtesy to each other would go a LONG way in regaining some mutual respect and kindness towards each other as a fandom. I don't think it's asking too much, and I think it would be beneficial to those that enjoyed the finale and those that found it upsetting alike.
Two months in and I feel like tensions are running higher, rather than fizzling out. Some people are actively seeking out conflict with each other, but there are also plenty of fans (on BOTH sides of the divide) that just want to keep doing their thing in peace.
The only way we can do that is if we tag our content appropriately, so that everyone has the chance to curate their own online experience.
It really just seems like basic fandom etiquette to me, and it's frustrating that we even need to argue about this.
Thereās a tornado warning out (two, technically), so of course I went for a walk outside to see if I could spot it.Ā Never have I seen so many of my neighbors at one time, when there wasnāt a firework show or a picnic.
Red pandas make that pose when theyāre trying to appear threatening, because animals make themselves look bigger to make it clear that āIām scary and will beat you upā
Unfortunately for red pandas, they look like a toddler in a fur suit asking to be carried.
Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:
This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after Iāve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, āUm,ā from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.
And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. Weāre justā¦ in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?
She didnāt even have garlic bread in her cart.
I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.
Well, the registers donāt like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but sheās not by her pager.
At this point, both myself and the lady are justā¦ dumbfounded. Sheās not even mad. Iām not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. Thereās a bit of laughter, but itās mostly justā¦ confusion.
I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because sheās not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.
āWhatā¦ did you do?ā
āI genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.ā
She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasnāt scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.
My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, āI think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.ā
And thatās when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didnāt take a damn picture, because she has proof and I donāt. But I swear to God it happened.
TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.
A picture is worth a thousand words, a library card is worth $4000 worth of garlic bread, if we can figure out how many words the average library card can check out at once, we can probably work out a picture-to-garlic bread conversion here, too.
As Halloween approaches, Aziraphale uncovers a threat to the members of his club. Invoking The Arrangement, he reaches out to Crowley for the first time since their holy water fight over 27 years ago. Crowley comes to the rescue in grand style with a masquerade ball that breaks the silence between them and tempts Aziraphale into his arms.
A Haunting Refrain by @sparkle-in-the-stars
Art-fic collaboration for Halloween Good Omens fanzine '23
Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky
Champagne Supernova - Oasis
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I'm posting my PHM fanarts rather backwards haha but this was the first one I drew back in May right after I saw the movie and I remembered being overwhelmed with feelings after it was done. (I was also so happy they put my fav Oasis song in the PHM trailers, it suits the story so well T_T)
It's been a long time since a movie has hit so many checkmarks for me in terms of story, themes, and the inner astronomy nerd in me. I've watched Ryan Gosling since his Notebook/Crazy Stupid Love days, but Drive was when I started to truly become a fan and he's honestly been on a generational run since then, PHM is no exception.
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(Small/large prints are also available on my etsy ā¤ļø)
