Sauntering Expeditiously Downwards

#imagine what their strikes are like #it'd be especially funny if they did the version of striking where they do actually keep doing their duties #but they refuse to take payment #(i've heard of some transportation or medical workers doing this in the past but i'd have to look up sources idk)

#my point is you summon a demon and try to enter into a contract and they're like #you can have it for free i'm just here so i don't get bored during the strike #the boss doesn't get his cut this way but i can still traverse the planes and fuck shit up

#and you're like?? this has to be a trick?? #but then the walls start bleeding and satan starts writing angry strike busting threats on the walls ominously #and the demon is like just ignore that he can't do shit without us it's all talk let's get back to the details#now who were you wanting to fuck over with my evil specialized skills that absolutely deserve fair compensation?

#and you're just nervously glancing over to the increasingly furious scribblings from the king of hell on your wall while stuttering #uhhh this asshole jerry from work #and the demon is just like say no more! i gotchu #enjoy keeping your soul i'm sure it is so juicy and would be so fun for satan to torture for eternity oh well#sucks to be him he should really come back to negotiations then huh

Me: "Why does it feel familiar? WAIT there was fanart by @talhisgofanart --!"

Paging interested parties: @biggest-gaudiest-patronuses @talhisgofanart / @wheeloffortune-design

I posted it on AO3 and also right here. Enjoy.

~~~

Unionize Hell 1080 words

Tomás finished the incantation, and the words seemed to echo through his cheap apartment. He clutched the notecard covered in Latin while he watched the pentagram on the floor. Since he hadn’t wanted to ruin his carpet, it was made of blue painter’s tape. The candles at the points of the star were real, though — handmade black beeswax from Etsy — and he’d used his best plate to hold the blood in the middle. It was red and said “You Are Special Today.” Tomás figured the color had to count for something.

The smoke from the candles was drifting towards the center, and as soon as he realized that, it billowed into an unlikely spiral that grew darker with every breath.

Tomás stepped back, dropping the notecard. He could see a shape taking form in the smoke.

It swirled away to reveal — a man. Tall and thin, with red hair and a red leather jacket over tight black pants. Sunglasses. Sharp grin.

Before Tomás could speak, the man announced, “Today’s your lucky day! Hell’s on strike.”

They said they’re all scared and tired. The amount of anxiety is through the roof and asked for fan art of Aziraphale and Crowley protecting the kids to help boost morale.

So I did. It’s the very least I can do right now. To all the #goodomens fans across America fighting the good fight, thank you! You are the REAL patriots.

Call your reps. Donate. March. But most importantly, keep showing up whether it’s art, music, baking, writing, coffee with friends, reading books to kindergartners.

KEEP SHOWING UP.

Share this with any good omens fans who need it.

Fuck ICE

Lovely new article about Michael in Paste magazine. Article is behind a paywall, so here is a transcription (with thanks to the person on FB who transcribed it, and the parts in bold are my own emphasis).

There’s so much to love about Prime Video’s Good Omens. A delightful adaptation of the popular Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett novel of the same name, the series is romantic, thoughtful, hilarious, and heartfelt by turns. The story of the almost-apocalypse and what comes afterward, it wrestles with big concepts like destiny, free will, and forgiveness, all framed through the lens of an unorthodox relationship between an angel and a demon whose love for one another is a key to saving the world.

As anyone who has watched Good Omens already knows, nothing about this series works without the pair of lead performances at its center. Stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen—who play the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale, respectively—have the kind of lighting-in-a-bottle chemistry that’s the stuff of legend, and their characters’ every interaction conveys both their deep affection for one another and the Earth they’ve made their home. Their romance is the emotional linchpin around which most of the series turns, and their heartbreaking separation in the Season 2 finale is so devastating precisely because we’ve seen how necessary the two are to each other’s lives.

But it’s Sheen’s performance in that final scene that really twists the knife. As Aziraphale’s face crumples following his and Crowley’s long-awaited kiss, the actor manages to convey what feels like every possible human emotion in the span of less than thirty seconds as the angel realizes what he has both had and just lost. The moment is emotionally brutal to watch, particularly after sitting through five and a half episodes of Aziraphale looking as lovestruck as the lead in any rom-com. Sheen makes it all look effortless, shifting from giddy joy to devastated longing and everything in between, and we really don’t talk enough about how powerful and underrated his work in this series truly is.

Though he’s half of the central duo that makes Good Omens tick, Sheen’s role often tends to get overshadowed by his co-star’s. It’s not difficult to see why, given that Tennant gets to spend most of the show swanning around in tight trousers looking like the Platonic ideal of the charming bad boy, complete with flaming red hair and dramatic eyewear. Tennant also benefits from Crowley’s much more sympathetic emotional arc. I mean, it’s hard not to love a cynical demon with a heart of gold who’s been pining after his angelic best friend for literal millennia even after being cast out from Heaven. Of course, viewers are drawn to that—likely a lot more easily than the story of an angel who’s simply trying the best he can to do the right thing as he wrestles with his role in God’s Ineffable Plan. Plus, let’s be real, Tennant’s sizeable Doctor Who fanbase certainly doesn’t hurt his character’s popularity.

As a performer, Sheen has a long history of playing both real people (Tony Blair, David Frost, Brian Clough) and offbeat villains (Prodigal Son’s Martin Whitly, Underworld’s Lucian, the Twilight Saga’s Aro). In some ways, the role of a fussy, bookish angel is playing more than a bit against type for him—Gaiman himself has said he originally intended for Sheen to be Crowley—but in his capable hands, Aziraphale becomes something much more than a simple avatar for the forces of Good (or even of God, for that matter). With a soft demeanor and a positively blinding smile, Sheen’s take on the character consistently radiates warmth and goodness, even as it contains surprisingly hidden depths. The former guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden who gifted a fleeing Adam and Eve his flaming sword and befriended the Serpent who caused their Fall, Azirphale isn’t a particularly conventional angel. He enjoys all-too-human indulgences like food and wine, runs a Hoarders-esque bookshop that never seems to sell anything, and spends most of his time making heart eyes at the being that’s meant to be his hereditary adversary.

Given the much more difficult task of playing the literal angel to Tennant’s charming devil, Sheen must find a way to make ideas like goodness and forgiveness as interesting and fun to watch as their darker counterparts. It’s a generally thankless task, but one that Sheen tackles with gusto, particularly in the series’ second season, as Good Omens explores Aziraphale’s slowly evolving idea of what he can and cannot accept in terms of being a soldier of Heaven. His growing understanding that the truth of creation is colored in shades of grey and compromise is often conveyed through little more than Sheen’s deftly shifting expressions and body language.

Our pop culture consistently struggles to portray the idea of goodness as something compelling or worth watching. Explicitly “good” characters, particularly those who are religiously coded, are frequently treated as the butt of some sort of unspoken joke they aren’t in on, used to underline the idea that faith is a form of naivety or that kindness is somehow a weakness. For a lot of people, the entire concept of turning the other cheek is a sucker’s bet, and believing in something greater than oneself, be it a higher power or a sense of purpose, is a waste of time. But Good Omens is a story grounded in the idea that faith, hope, and love—for one another, God, and the entire world—are active verbs. And nowhere is that more apparent than in Sheen’s characterization of the soft angel whose old-fashioned waistcoats mask a spine of steel and who refuses to give up—on Crowley, on humanity, or on the idea that Heaven is still something that can be saved.

Though he and Tennant have pretty much become a matched set at this point (both on and off-screen), Sheen’s performance has rarely gotten the critical accolades it deserves. (Tennant alone was nominated for a BAFTA for Season 2, and Sheen was categorized as a supporting actor when the series’ competed in the 2019 Saturn Awards.) But it is his quiet strength that holds up so much of the rest of the show around him, and Sheen deserves to be more frequently recognized for it. That he makes it look so easy is just another sign of how good his performance really is.

Please enjoy this absurd fic based on some ridiculous drawings I did of Crowley being really bad at shape shifting 

Statua di Sant'Azraphel

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