Thoughts And Things

I’ve been more than two decades (20+years) reading Terry Pratchett. I’ve read the whole Discworld series several times. But not only that, I’ve read other series and solo books (Good Omens among them). If there is something that Terry Pratchett's books leave behind when you finish them is a feeling of fairness and hope. There’s always a satisfying ending. Even when tragedy happens sometimes (Spoiler: when Granny Weatherwax died I cried my eyes out for two days) there’s always a motive for it and it leaves hope behind (after Granny’s death, Tiffany Aching will lead the witches to a new future). There is always fairness in the end. The weak ones always get justice, even if they don't always get everything they want. The powerful don’t get away with their evil plans, but get thwarted. Don’t get me wrong, his books are not all happiness and flowers. He writes about hard topics (misogyny, trans rights, discrimination, racism, death, corruption…), his characters are in many cases troubled (Sam Vimes, Death). But there is always hope in the end. Things get better and, at the very least, there is fairness. And that fairness is a big part of the satisfying sensation you get after reading his books. Another thing to be said about his books is that they are always charged with big doses of morality hidden frequently behind a thin veil of misanthropy (humans will be humans).

I’ve also been reading Neil Gaiman’s books for more than 20 years (btw, fuck Neil Gaiman to alpha centauri and back). The sensation they leave behind in most cases is not a pleasant one, but of unease. There’s injustice, frustration or heartbreak in many of his books. They are much darker and unfair. And the morality in them is more nuanced.

That unfairness is the reason why I know the ending we got in go3 had nothing to do with Terry Pratchett. Nothing short of Terry Pratchett himself coming back from the dead, walking back the black sands of the Dark Desert to tell me personally that this was his desired ending, would convince me of the contrary. Suposedly gos2 and go3 were made to finish the story as Terry Pratchett had wanted, they were doing it for him and for the fans, but they couldn't have made anything less in common with Terry Pratchett.

This was no tribute to Terry Pratchett. This didn’t honour his legacy. To have his story, 75% of it written by Terry Pratchett, butchered and emptied of meaning, fairness and sense in this way is outrageous. Because not only it doesn’t make any sense, it negates everything the book and s1 teach us. The fate the characters, that Terry Pratchett created and loved, suffered was worse than anything we could have imagined (consensual murder-suicide is still murder-suicide). Not to talk about the fact that the universe created by Pratchett has not only been destroyed, no, it has been erased and it has never existed. They tried to erase Terry’s work.

I recon I’ve been played for a sucker. I wholeheartedly believed it was going to be okay. It never crossed my mind, even for a second, that Aziraphale and Crowley were not having their happy ending. Back in 2005 the authors said that Aziraphale and Crowley were in the South Downs. They had been talking about their whereabouts and had come to that realisation. When asked what were they doing in the South Downs NG answered simply that they were sharing a cottage. And some of you may argue that is exactly what happened in go3, but no. Two very nice, I'm sure, and physically similar men got to spend their retirement married sharing a cottage in the South Downs. And I’m very happy for that sweet couple, and that scene is so beautiful and warm and nice I want to cry remembering it. But those weren't Aziraphale and Crowley. Period. Aziraphale and Crowley were evaporated along with their whole universe and they have never existed. Their 6000+ years of love and pining and hiding and fighting for humanity just disappeared into nothing. And that, my friends, is not fair. As it’s not fair the fact that the abusers, Gabriel and Beelzebub*, got to live their happy ending and their love for a few years at least, while Aziraphale and Crowley never could (they had been 6000 years dancing around each other while Gabriel and Beelzebub just what? About 4 years). And it isn’t fair that god herself, the ultimate responsible for the abuse they had to endure, is the one cornering them to decide to agree to a murder-suicide and execute it too. While it’s not fair that the meaning of s1 was completely turned around and humanity, the world and the universe were suddenly not worth saving, too broken to fix.

And you know what else is not fair? To spend years (20 years more or less) saying that this story has a happy ending, a very specific happy ending, and then not only not delivering it but killing the main characters in the most OOC decission ever seen and destroying the whole universe. To have a comedy, turn it into a rom-com, and then a drama without any warning.

Terry must be turning in his grave. What a horrible “tribute” to his work.

*As cute as we want to make that couple be, we can't forget that both Gabriel and Beelzebub abused Aziraphale and Crowley their whole existence and were the ones judging them and sentencing them to death in s1. Have we forgotten the "Shut your stupid mouth and die already”?

Nothing else today. Just be kind to each other.

Sir Pratchett’s work dives into dark humour, difficult subjects and necessary sacrifice, but he never once, EVER, played on the nihilistic and juvenile trope of “it’s all hopeless anyway so the only real solution is to burn it all down and let someone else rebuild from the ashes”.

This is the thinking of someone who has never had to work through hard things and persevere and make a conscious decision to fucking LIVE. Out of spite if nothing else. It is utter bullshit for lack of a more elegant term.

It is the thought process of privilege. Of having the world ordered around who you are, who you present as, the hierarchy of power, that you cannot imagine having to fight for the right to exist in any meaningful way.

This is how I know this wasn’t STP. Terry’s work was filled with the language of resistance. Of throwing truth in the face of power like Molotov cocktails. Of the triumph of inching towards change by hard-fought increments and in battles that most people never saw. Yes, there was sacrifice, but it was never hopeless. You never succumbed. It was defiance until death. It was victory built on the shoulders of your comrades, not the remains of them.

Eva Stratt:

I adore that so much of the subtext of PHM is how about someone for whom his greatest gifts have always been the thing that separates him from his fellow humans finds the acceptance and support he needs to fulfil all of that incredible potential in something as simple as friendship.

PHM isn’t a romance. It isn’t purely an action flick. It’s a story about how differences tend to alienate some of the best of us, how quick we are to sacrifice those people and how being truly seen by even one person can change us irrevocably.

Stratt wasn’t necessarily wrong in her choices, she wasn’t right either. There wasn’t a right choice to be made, but Grace as the sacrificial lamb is very much in line with how our society treats those of us who don’t easily fall into the fold. They found use in his intelligence and knowledge even as that big, beautiful brain was the thing that ultimately made him such an outsider that no thought was given to violating his autonomy or choice.

Every step of the way Grace makes the choice to trust. He trusts that his help will make a difference. He trusts, naively that his “no” will be honoured. He trusts that the message in a bottle isn’t meant to harm him before he has any real proof otherwise. He trusts that Rocky is being honest with him, even when others haven’t been. And he does all of this with missing information and underlying trauma and a history of being othered. And Rocky is the one who finally sees Grace for everything he actually is, and not just for the use he has and who chooses him.

And in the end it’s that, that makes all the difference. Grace was always brave. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t have kept reaching out, he wouldn’t have kept trying. It just took Rocky to see it in him so that he could see it in himself.

Choke. Just think about it, seriously. Think about what choking is and imagine speaking while it’s happening. That would fuckin’ hurt, man.

Hiss. Look, it’s just not possible, okay? No matter how “evil” you want your character to seem.

Snarl. Animals snarls. The Beast from Beauty and the Beast snarls. The Hulk snarls. You know who doesn’t snarl? PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE SPEAKING.

Shriek. Come on, 99% of the time, “shriek” is not the word you want.Let’s face it: if you put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, your reader gets the picture. Don’t bring to mind banshees and screaming toddlers.

Hiss is a low, threatening whisper. Raw, guttural, vicious. It is NOT a literal hiss like an animal, it is a tone of voice that serves the same function. Someone will hiss that they’re going to cut your throat- a message from one person to the other.

Snarl is the same kind of thing. Not literal, it’s a tone of voice that serves the same function. It’s raw and gutteral like a hiss, but more savage than vicious. It’s loud, it’s showy, it’s intimidating. It’s very alpha male, big man, look at how fucking dangerous I am. I’ll take ALL of you on. Even if they’re snarling at one person in particular, nobody better back them up or they’re gonna get fucked up too.

Shriek. Come on, seriously? We’ve all heard people shriek either in fear or outrage. High pitched, loud, out of control, feminine. Men can shriek, but it’s funny and emasculating. Think angry italian women throwing pots and pans or ladies on tables who just saw a mouse.

~ the prettiest star 💫~

inspired by this beautiful frame from the good omens s2 opening title sequence

Asa isn't a guardian angel wrapped in self-indulgence who's just enough of a bastard to be perfect.

Anthony's co-workers probably actually like him. He probably drives a perfectly reasonable car and when he turns on the stereo it almost certainly plays music that hasn't been transmuted into Queen.

Asa is excited at the thought of selling books. He offers discounts as a form of flirting. He doesn't own a bookshop with incomprehensible opening hours.

They'll never drive through London at 90 miles an hour while bickering. They'll never show up at the Ritz expecting a table has just miraculously opened up. They'll never reminisce about something that happened thousands of years ago that no one remembers except for them. They'll never talk through their issues. They'll never retire into a peaceful life full of the love that they both saved up over all the years when they had to hide how they really felt.

They semi-cancelled Timothee Chalamet for simply saying he found opera and ballet boring, by the way.

How does Hollywood work these days?

Being a bit of a naive, foolish young man and (wrongfully) calling opera and ballet irrelevant?

“You must apologise immediately! No Oscar for you.”

Acknowledging you stole terrified teenage girls from their bedrooms?

Embarrassing as it is, this other man admitted to war crimes.

You can’t have it both ways. Either EVERYONE is required by law to donate their bodies to others, or NO ONE is.

Source

[Fallen]

After 11 hours of work and gallons of tears, I finally finished my Renaissance like painting of Crowley's fall!!

Probably my best artwork for now (pls reblog it~). It was supposed to be a sketch. AH. AH. Anyway, I'm really happy about the result! It feels good to challenge myself with some impossible projects 😈

Btw it's Patreons monthly A5 print! You have until end july to join and get it in your mailbox 😊

If you want a bigger version, it will also be available soon on my shop.