Winter and Beyond

Except I accidentally captioned it, “guys check this out, I’ve got the one and only AO3 grandfather cock.”

My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.

The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.

I distanced myself from the Good Omens fandom lately, and i’m sure this is not a surprise to many of you reading this post. i want to be very clear: neil gaiman had a lot to do with it. I didn’t want to show my support for a show made by an abuser. And yes, i see and hear people claiming Good Omens belonged to the people and the fans, but realistically the rights and royalties belong to ng, and participating in the promotion of it all just felt wrong to me. So, my choice was to love my favorite characters of all time from afar, and for free: reading and writing and engaging with fanworks.

That being said: I really fucking hated the fuckass movie. I wish i didn’t see it, i wish the show stopped at season 1, and if you liked it, good for you. I did not, and I want to tell you why. Feel free to ignore me.

Is that a hole in your plot?

The writing was bad. Content aside, what I wanted for this characters aside, my feelings on ng and the other writers begrudgingly aside, it was a badly written piece of television. I counted too many plot holes in the first thirty minutes aside, but i will point out what felt the biggest to me.

The opening flashback: it was hot, and that was it. Where does it fit in the timeline we already know about? It doesn’t fit with their first meeting as angels, nor with their first meeting on the wall. Why keep rewriting the first time they met? We already know how they met, twice, and besides the sexual tension, what did this new flashback bring to the story? Arguably, nothing; another case of bad wigs, maybe, nothing more. Perhaps, another instance of contradicting the book and the first ever episode: “it starts, as it will end, with a garden.” Well, apparently not.

Skipping all that nonsense in the middle (Aziraphale leaving crowley in the alley? Jesus having two lines after being promoted as the main focus of the season? The book of life burning not immediately snapping aziraphale and crowley away? Crowley having no reaction to Aziraphale confessing undying devotion to him?) let’s get to the very end. The decision the main characters come to is to erase themselves and all traces of their universe to create a new, fresh universe where angels and demons do not exist, and free will reigns above all. Two minutes after, the movie presents us two human versions of said characters meeting again, 13 something billion of years later, falling in love and all that good stuff. What we are supposed to take away from this is: they were destined to meet and fall in love in every universe, no matter the circumstances. Where is the free will in a soulmate trope? Where is the free will in this condoning of predeterminism? If they were meant to be, then free will isn’t ruling this universe. Fate is. Was it all for nothing then?

Who are these characters?

The characters fell flat. The side characters were useless at best, annoying at worst. Michael going rogue was predictable, Jesus was a nothingburger, the entire Whickber Street ensemble was just… not relevant. And the main characters were subjected to the worst character assasination my eyes have ever seen. The worst of it? That entire scene with God and Satan: Crowley never once looking at Aziraphale, not even at the most heartwrenching confession; Aziraphale talking about Crowley being amazing in the past tense; Crowley choosing something that’s not Aziraphale, after his whole entire monologue and character arc in season 2; Aziraphale accepting complete erasure after fighting 3 years in heaven against it, just because lobotomized Crowley wanted it. What the fuck?

Also, Asa and Anthony. They were cute. Adorable, really. Two cute old men (with bad hair, but i’m willing to move past this) falling in love and getting married. Cute cute cute. Who the fuck were they? They were not Aziraphale and Crowley: they were an English librarian and a Scottish professor, not the angel and demon I loved and yearned and was obsessed with for years. And again, if it were them, why weren’t they recognizable at all? In all the human AUs i enjoyed the characters were perfectly recognizable: Crowley was still moody and a bit rough around the edges, yet soft and almost overwhelming in his loveliness; Aziraphale was still witty and smart and a bit (or a lot) of a snob, yet kind and warm and loving to a fault. These two human beings were cute, but they weren’t them. Who are these characters?

The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall

The loser, in this case, being queer people everywhere. Put your daggers down and let me tell you this: it is not acephobic to think a kiss was needed in this finale.

You’re right when you say that physicality is not needed to show love and connection; in this case, however, physicality between them was already a given – they already kissed. Out of desperation, out of despair, out of sadness, but they kissed. They crossed that bridge and their relationship jumped to the other side of strictly platonic and now, for a simple rule of balance and equity in pieces of media, the ‘ugly kiss’ desperately (pardon the repetition) needed a ‘good kiss’. The finger thing could have been cute, but it lacked the depth and emotional weight to carry the conclusion of a third act.

If that was all the goobye we are going to get, it is simply not enough: they wrapped up 6000 years of history (a history they previously spend two seasons fighting tooth and nail to not erase, mind you) with a finger kiss and an awkward smile. Am i supposed to say it was good?

Also, implying that people wanted some physical intimacy between two queer characters (after it was already established) just to satisfy some sort of fetish is too disrespectful to even comment about.

A straight couple would have gotten a teary goodbye, an explicit I love you and a kiss before turning to dust. The gays get buried — or erased from existence, in this case.

Human incarnate, or the lack of it

All in all, the finale felt cheap, flat, soulless. A comedy desperately grasping onto the physycality of it but not really committing to the bit, a love story relying on the chemistry between the mains without letting them have a single meaningful conversation, a show about humanity reducing human beings to comedic reliefs, over-the-top antagonists and afterthoughts easy to erase with a snap of two fingers.

And no, no one got a second chance: Adam rewrote the universe for nothing, Aziraphale tried to fix Heaven for nothing, Crowley asked questions for nothing. It was all erased anyway, and the ones who get to live simply aren’t them. Some version of them that was paradoxically destined to meet, going against the free will they gave up everything for.

Good Omens was always about knowing your fate, and choosing your own anyway. Loving despite, loving because of, loving even if. The love between to immortal beings being what kept everything together. The characters I knew and loved would have kept choosing each other and their world, not another new one, despite everything, because of history, and even if it was the hardest thing.

They loved their world, their Earth, and deserved to live in it. On their own side. Just the two of them.

So I really didn’t like the movie, and the message it sent. I did not find it bittersweet, just bleak. And this is why.

Going forward, I’ll finish every fic I started. After, I don’t know. It may take me a while.

She spent over 30 years doing this. For 30 years she didn’t work outside the home. She didn’t know the terms of their lease. She didn’t have the passwords to “their” bank account(s), “their” assets.

He left her when she was in her fifties.

He said that he needed time to reflect and moved out of their house, but told her to focus on getting their last kid through high school (still homeschooled!) and he would take care of everything.

She reached out to the landlord months later asking where the lease renewal was only to find out it wasn’t getting renewed. Because her husband hadn’t paid the rent in OVER NINE MONTHS. The whole time he was promising her he was still taking care of her.

She and her sixteen year old youngest son found out they had to move out of their house with 3 weeks’ notice. She didn’t have a job or work experience or a degree or any idea how to get these things in 3 weeks. She didn’t own her own car. If she had not had friends to take her in, she and her son would have been literally out on the street.

It ruined that friendship, too. It’s a lot to ask someone to put you up indefinitely while you try to put your life together. She burned a lot of bridges taking what anyone would or could give because she had no other choice.

She did, eventually, hard years later, get on her feet again. But it will always be hard and she will never be where she could have been in life if she’d done things differently.

Second of all, I'm starting to understand why my incessant posting annoys some of you so much.

what does this have to do with boiling your surgical tools? well look, the boiling water releases bubbles of steam which carries the malign influences up to heaven. you boil a knife, you send all the miasmic particles off with the steam to heaven. if you rinse the knife off in a bucket the water isn't hot enough, the particles go into the water and then right back on to the knife. you gotta boil it to get the particles all the way away. how can a tool or rag or a bed have miasmic particles on it when you can't smell them? humans have a lousy sense of smell. look at your dog on the hunt. are there no rabbits in the woods just because you can't smell them? we know that miasma is carried on the air, and is what makes stench so dangerous, and we know that humans can't smell worth a damn compared to dogs cats horses etc. a dog can smell if a rat died in a corner of the room last week. you can't. do you think licking the spot where the rat died is going to go well for you? luckily, what humans lack in snout we make up for in brains. we have extra brains where our sniffers should have been. God set that up for a reason.

and why does a rinse with wine spirits work? man, look how fast alcohol evaporates. my guess is that because wine contains a lot more vice than water, it evaporates a whole lot faster, in sort of an equal and opposite way that a rock falls faster than a feather. if you want the miasmic particles to get off there FAST, you dunk it in something that's going back to heaven at a gallop.

All of the “true” “complete” “unshortened” versions of quotes you see on this site or in other places online are the real misconceptions, and the more familiar and well-known versions of the quotes are usually the original ones.

1. The blood of the covenant

So this one goes that the quote “blood is thicker than water” (meaning: family ties are more important than other bonds) is actually an incomplete version of the quote “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” (meaning: bonds created between people are more important than family ties)

This “complete quote” is actually a modern interpretation by two authors named Albert Jack and R. Richard Pustelniak in a webpage from 1994, and has no historical evidence supporting it.

2. But satisfaction brought it back

This one is an extension of the quote “curiosity killed the cat” warning against experimentation and investigation by adding “but satisfaction brought it back” to subvert the meaning and make it about the reward of investigation and experimentation rather than the risks.

Like the previous “complete quote”, this extension has origins in modern media rather than in tradition that was changed or altered. Specifically in newspapers of the early 20th century.

3. But fools seldom differ

Another extension to a well-known quote. “Great minds think alike” used whenever two people come to the same conclusion independently, ammended with the phrase “but fools seldom differ” or sometimes “but small minds rare differ” to turn the phrase’s meaning.

Once again, while the original quote is centuries old, the “complete” version is a new invention, originating most likely from a 1996 book by Gregory Titelman.

Somebody noted on a popular post going around tumblr -which lists these “complete” versions and many other- out how while the shortened versions of the quotes tend to promote conformity and conservatism, the “original” quotes promote freedom and choice.

 And while the idea that conformists tried to change and altered these “true” quotes to promote their ideas, it’s really most likely the other way around.

Open IbisPaint go to a canvas (any canvas, or make. a new one)

Select the font tool (if you don’t know what or where that is, press the tool icon (normally a paint brush or eraser) and press the T button

From there you should be able to create a text box (writing is not important…). Find the font button and add a new font. I can’t remember what it’s called but you’ll know when you see it

It’ll automatically search for you “free fonts.” Do not follow this. Your app is misdirecting you. Instead search up whatever it is you’re looking for in the search bar, and that should work