Cassandraic

Have a listen to my choral setting of text post memes that originated right here on tumblr!

My piece, Copypasta (performed here by the First Readings Project) is in three movements and uses these texts:

Spiders Georg by @reallyreallyreallytrying

Hot Plum by @utopians

I Think That's Beutiful by @nerdgul

Sheet music is available here.

Have a listen to my choral setting of text post memes that originated right here on tumblr!

My piece, Copypasta (performed here by the First Readings Project) is in three movements and uses these texts:

Spiders Georg by @reallyreallyreallytrying

Hot Plum by @utopians

I Think That's Beutiful by @nerdgul

Sheet music is available here.

Terry Pratchett has gone on the record saying that Agnes Nutter was solely his creation: “By agreement, I am allowed to say that Agnes Nutter, her life and death, was completely and utterly mine.”

In retrospect, it’s probably not too surprising that Neil Gaiman wanted nothing to do with a kooky old witch beyond what Terry had already written for her.

Agnes Nutter is the personification of defiance in the face of an ugly, unnecessary death. "If I'm going out, I'm taking you fuckers with me as karmically as possible."

Or my sister.

Or his wife, our mother.

The RIGHT way to do this would have been to have a month-long event that went to twelve different cities, with Philadelphia hosting during July because that was our capital (insofar as we had one) in 1776; the other eleven stops could have their own significant-in-the-Revolution days (for example: Washington crossing the Delaware on 25 December, the start of the First Continental Congress on 5 September), and you could get commemorative items from your stop's specific event.

All fifty states AND FIVE TERRITORIES should have been invited to attend, not charged for it. And we should have done it Colombian Expo style: respected thinkers and educators speaking, concerts, "come look at our wild new inventions," and cultural events. If I was in the Oval Office my first thought for this would be to contact ethnic leaders to see who wanted to tell their story. Tribal leaders. Civil rights leaders. Local arts groups. Let us celebrate your food, your art, your dance, your place among our people; and let us also recognize that the flip side of the coin of amazing inventors and economic prosperity on a global scale has been devastation and exploitation. You can't tell the story without both. It's not fair to leave out things we've done for good (Mark Twain! Jonas Salk! Airplanes! Comic books! Musicals!), but it's equally unfair to leave out the lives we've taken and futures we've destroyed. We can't do better if we don't look at these things and say "no. Not again. Not on our watch."

The state fair format is extremely American; I think that was a good choice, I'll give credit for that where it's due. But "that was a good idea" is as far as it goes. Because this doesn't look like a state fair. It looks like a church revival on the third day when all the tents are out of food and everyone is hot and tired and wants less Jesus and more air conditioning.

In 1976, the Bicentennial was everywhere. There was merch. You could decorate your home with it. In the city where I lived, the Girl Scouts were asked by the city to go around painting all the fire hydrants red, white, and blue. American history was the hot topic in publishing and people were buying history books and even talking about them. One of the TV stations used commercial breaks to air "Bicentennial Minutes," 60-second spots in which actors from current shows (I specifically remember Loretta Swit from MASH and Nancy Walker from Rhoda) told us little snippets of social history, like the state of garbage collection in the Colonies, with appropriate visuals like political cartoons and paintings from the time period. High school proms had Bicentennial themes. You never saw so many people put flags out. Every town worked hard on their firework displays and some had more than one.

Yeah, we all knew it was overblown and a bit tacky but also people were into it. The energy rose for months to the climax and lingered into the next school year -- I remember all my pocket folders for that year were glossy prints of classic patriotic paintings, The Spirit of '76 and The Declaration of Independence and so on.

For the 250th, nobody cares. Because it doesn't feel like we're living in the United States of America, where freedom was for everyone and our freedoms were expanding every day and history was a vital living force.

You can't celebrate history without teaching it.

Simply David and Michael thanking all the fans 🖤😈🩶😇🤍

Source: Good Omens on Facebook

What I hate about this is that That Guy's essential horribleness plus the finale's divisiveness means a great deal less cosplay, some measure less fannish creation (how much less I don't know), much less attention from media and at cons... meaning that so much of what Michael particularly seemed to enjoy about being part of tv!GO will vanish like -- yeah, you all know what it's vanishing like.

I put together four Good Omens cosplays. Fucking four. I doubt I will ever wear any of them again -- and I never even wore Agnes Nutter's once!

There are many scripts online you can follow, many ways to tweak your message to fit your senator (ESPECIALLY if they are up for reelection this year). Whether it's a recording you reach or a real person, be straightforward, don't argue, just let your rep know that you are a constituent and you oppose the KIDS act, etc.

A piece of Good Omens show fanon that never fails to irritate me is "Aziraphale and Crowley were useless!" The scope of their supposed uselessness changes -- for some fans it's the whole season, for some fans it's the airbase situation -- but either way, canon doesn't support it.

You can't take any of the humans, Aziraphale, or Crowley out of the airbase situation and end up in a win scenario:

Anathema: gets Newt into the command center

Newt: stops nuclear annihilation

The-Them-minus-Adam: deal with three of the four Horsepersons

Shadwell: arguably the most useless, but still the source of the Thundergun and the reason Madame Tracy is hosting Aziraphale

Madame Tracy: hosts Aziraphale and (crucially) stops him from murdering Adam

Adam: deals with Satan

Aziraphale and Crowley: pep-talk Adam, and stop the angel-demon war that would otherwise decimate Earth

No, there's a point being made here, and not subtly: no one can do it alone, for just about any value of "it."

That's another reason the finale of the finale is a big fat fail. It's vastly unfair, unbalanced, and counter-thematic for Aziraphale and Crowley (especially if you think of them as what TV Tropes calls "The Dividual") to be cornered like rats by God and Satan, without a single ally available.

They need friends (even beyond one another). We all do, pretty much. They need humanity. We all do! And they don't deserve to face the two Big Bads (sorry, everybody who trusted GO!God or wanted Her redeemed; She is as horrible as ever, the one consistent element across the entire show) alone, as much as they've done for humans.

Maybe that's it. If it's just the two of them, an Us, they really only cancel out the other. And that's a great mechanic in a narrative, isn't it? But if they only have each other to influence, the world gets held in stasis.

What makes it *interesting* is that there are real live humans to influence. And people make real decisions within the context of free will that's always existed.

I would like to add, Crowley and Aziraphale are influenced not just by each other, but also by the humans. I was hoping that was going to the be the full circle moment in s3. I was invested in this idea since Maggie and Nina were essentially the catalyst of the Final 15, they influence Crowley to do something he had never even considered doing in all his existence and he listens to them.

Something they said resonated and made him brave enough to do it and that floored me, that was one of the coolest parts of s2 in my opinion.

Which is a very human sort of heroism, and one I hope many of us aspire to and achieve.

A piece of Good Omens show fanon that never fails to irritate me is "Aziraphale and Crowley were useless!" The scope of their supposed uselessness changes -- for some fans it's the whole season, for some fans it's the airbase situation -- but either way, canon doesn't support it.

You can't take any of the humans, Aziraphale, or Crowley out of the airbase situation and end up in a win scenario:

Anathema: gets Newt into the command center

Newt: stops nuclear annihilation

The-Them-minus-Adam: deal with three of the four Horsepersons

Shadwell: arguably the most useless, but still the source of the Thundergun and the reason Madame Tracy is hosting Aziraphale

Madame Tracy: hosts Aziraphale and (crucially) stops him from murdering Adam

Adam: deals with Satan

Aziraphale and Crowley: pep-talk Adam, and stop the angel-demon war that would otherwise decimate Earth

No, there's a point being made here, and not subtly: no one can do it alone, for just about any value of "it."

That's another reason the finale of the finale is a big fat fail. It's vastly unfair, unbalanced, and counter-thematic for Aziraphale and Crowley (especially if you think of them as what TV Tropes calls "The Dividual") to be cornered like rats by God and Satan, without a single ally available.

They need friends (even beyond one another). We all do, pretty much. They need humanity. We all do! And they don't deserve to face the two Big Bads (sorry, everybody who trusted GO!God or wanted Her redeemed; She is as horrible as ever, the one consistent element across the entire show) alone, as much as they've done for humans.

Maybe that's it. If it's just the two of them, an Us, they really only cancel out the other. And that's a great mechanic in a narrative, isn't it? But if they only have each other to influence, the world gets held in stasis.

What makes it *interesting* is that there are real live humans to influence. And people make real decisions within the context of free will that's always existed.

It is absolutely immoral, completely counterproductive to the goal of learning things, and turns out incredibly subpar work.