Questioning Lilac

And Carmilla is like "Okay so we need to figure out how we're going to forcibly close the portal to heaven— Alastor, you've been very quiet and thinking, do you have an idea?"

And Alastor just looks up at Velvette and gestures towards the figurine very calmly but with a twitching eye and goes "Why do you have this?"

HEL:DPGLPSHKPSGSDPOKO ANON I'M CRYING. can we bring this back into the lucifer commission saga and say lucifer was commissioned by vox to make that figurine. add this on to lucifer deciding to join an overlord meeting just to try and keep more in touch with the sinners and he's like "oh! I made that" and alastor's like "you WHAT" and velvette goes "YOU'RE the one vox commissioned this from??" and alastor's like "vox WHAT??????????" and then they sing a reprise of "you didn't know?"

‘It matters now.’”

  Okay, bear with me, I want a timestamp on my wild prediction of the year:

At the End of the Show, it’s gonna be revealed that ShowCarcer is actually Carrot and ShowCarrot is actually Carcer.

Mostly I just want to make sense of why Carcer is here. If he has been wronged and wants to “hijack destiny”, there’s no reason for him to be Carcer, thats not what that guy does. Could be any other Ankh Morpork based character, either villain (Wonse or D'Eath would make sense) or if they wanna keep the revolutionary/nightwatch angle, Ned Coats is right there.

If that’s just what Carcer is telling people, and he actually is book accurate, then casting a black man as a psychotic liar fishing for sympathy in a social justice movement is really really tone deaf. Like, on an unbelievable level.

But. What if this is a case of stolen identity? Young Carrot who’s been raised by dwarfs makes his way to the big city, the moment he arrives he gets jumped by Carcer. Carcer takes his letter of recommendation and his sword and with that pretty much steals his identity. The whole “long lost rightful king has returned home” is too good a sob-story to pass up, and the new “Carrot” joins the watch to see how far he can take this game and to get some power. That would fit with his storyline in nightwatch.

So now the real Carrot is out of pretty much anything, and has to figure out how to get some justice without the help of the Law, because the law took in the guy who robbed him. And Carrot is just really good at inspiring people, so if he wanted to go around and stirr people up into a revolution, he could totally do that. And over a few run ins, Carrot and Vimes built up some begruding respect, mostly for thinking a about the people nobody else seems to care about.

Whereas Carcer keeps going full lawful evil, because that’s how you Get Away With It. Colon and Nobby have to think really hard on why it’s okay to get some free coffee, but not okay to then arrest the barista for bribery. If it’s legal, then it can’t be wrong, right? Right?

There’s a big dramatic reveal on like, a rooftop or something. Real Carrot has imposter Carrot cornered, Vimes runs up with a swamp dragon and shouts “Ironfounderson!” and the guy we thought was the designated villain for the last five episodes turns and snaps “What?!”

in conclusion:

The therapist nodded. She wasn’t taking notes, simply leaning back in the comfortable chair across from him, and she was always doing something with her hands. It’s crocheting today, she says she’s making a baby blanket for a friend. Sometimes it was origami, or knitting, sometimes she’d be sewing, and once she was doing some kind of leather work. Braiding something for some reason. 

He’d sat on about every chair and couch in the room before settling on the overstuffed couch. He could sit sideways and not look at her react, or sit up, or whatever. Sometimes he didn’t want to see her face when he said something, and sometimes he had to. 

“Was there anybody who did?” she asked. Her voice was smooth and soothing. She was paying attention to her work, but also paying attention to him. She said that if she’s writing it makes some people nervous, but if she’s doing something else then the conversation feels more casual, even if it’s not.

Every once in a while, she got this look on her face that he suspected means he said something extremely interesting (or upsetting, or whatever) and was trying not to show it, but it never showed in her voice. He liked that about her. 

He nodded. “When I was younger, we had this nanny. I used to just call her Nanny, I don’t remember if I ever knew her name. She was Scottish. She was real weird, but she’d spend as much time with me as I liked. She was always there, if the gardener wasn’t.”

“A gardener as well?” 

He nodded. “He always had time for me. No matter what. He’d drop whatever he was doing to talk to me. He was from… I don’t remember. Very rural, this fellow.” He thought about it. “I don’t know what happened to them. I think they left to do other things, not too long before my eleventh birthday. I never saw them again. He was kind of boring, sometimes, but he always talked to me like I was the most important person he ever saw.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Nanny would too, actually. I sometimes think that they’re why I’m, you know, not as fucked up as I could be. That just knowing I could go find the gardener and he’d tell me what the rabbits were doing today, whatever he was doing, that I could tell him about… whatever. Or Nanny. She used to tell me to smite my enemies, I was never sure how to take it.” 

It was just a moment and gone, a single expression of sheer bafflement, which made Warlock laugh a little.

“Are you comfortable with me ranting about my day for a few minutes?”

“Oh, this is your poetry? Would it be okay if I read it?”

“Do you mind if I use your phone for a few minutes?”

“Wow, your meal looks awesome. Could I try some?”

It will save a lot of grief, especially in a developing relationship. Eventually, with consistent “yes’s” and “no’s” you can figure out more permanent boundaries and guidelines.

department of city planning worker trying to bring down everyone around him

instagram influencer

herpatology expert at london zoo

director on a dating-based reality tv show

aziraphale’s trophy husband

garden husband au where they run a store called eden

Oh my god.

Demons have no place in creation. When he says “I helped build that one,” he’s remembering his life Before. It meant so much to him. Being an angel meant so much to him, and he’s still absolutely devastated that he isn’t one anymore. He’s so Loud about it.

He’s the one puts forward the Arrangement that will allow him to perform holy miracles and blessings again.

He’s the one who decorates his apartment so that it looks as little like the crowded, messy, dirty Hell as possible.

He’s the one who recreates his own little Eden within that apartment, where he can play God and relive his trauma over and over again with himself in the position of power, rejecting any and all of his subjects deemed not to be worthy, without mercy. Because that’s how he sees the Almighty.

He’s the one who is so utterly convinced that God is not listening, because why would he believe they would? He’s been wrestling with his Fall and regret for 6 millenia and God has never come to help him.

He’s the one who insists on the idea that Adam can be reshaped through the power of Influence (read nurture over nature) because that means we always have the power to change and evolve, something he needs to believe in desperately. (Something he turns out to be right about btw).

Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Those are the countries. It will be drought-resistant species, mostly acacias. And this is a brilliant idea you have no idea oh my Christ

They fix nitrogen and improve soil quality.

And, to make things fun, the species they’re using practices “reverse leaf phenology.” The trees go dormant in the rainy season and then grow their leaves again in the dry season. This means you can plant crops under the trees, in that nitrogen-rich soil, and the trees don’t compete for light because they don’t have any leaves on.

And then in the dry season, you harvest the leaves and feed them to your cows.

Crops grown under acacia trees have better yield than those grown without them. Considerably better.

So, this isn’t just about stopping the advancement of the Sahara - it’s also about improving food security for the entire sub-Saharan belt and possibly reclaiming some of the desert as productive land.

Of course, before the “green revolution,” the farmers knew to plant acacia trees - it’s a traditional practice that they were convinced to abandon in favor of “more reliable” artificial fertilizers (that caused soil degradation, soil erosion, etc).

Michael: “I decided early on that Aziraphale just loves Crowley. And that’s difficult for him because they’re on opposite sides and he doesn’t agree with him on stuff. But it does really help as an actor to go, my objective in this scene is to not show you how much I love you. And just gaze longingly at you.”

David: “But then Crowley absolutely loves Aziraphale. He hates that he loves him. It’s really annoying for him.”

Michael: “There is a sort of wonderful love story. I think a lot of the fans of the book like that when they think about the characters, there’s an interesting love story going on. It’s never explicit, but it’s there.”

But also! I got my copy of the tv companion book today, and found this extra tidbit from Douglas Mackinnon (transcript follows):

“[…] but clearly it’s about their relationship, and some would say their love affair. I know Michael Sheen is a hundred percent sure that Aziraphale falls in love with Crowley,” Douglas offers, “and that moment occurs when the bomb drops on the church.”

And I’ve got a few gifs to just really drive home what the look was in Aziraphale’s eyes during that scene (with a link to the post with the full gifset I sourced these from). And remember, Michael Sheen said he was trying to gaze longingly without showing Crowley how much Aziraphale loves him. And this is him watching as Crowley walks away from him in the destroyed church (so, crowley can’t see him watching like this). Right after he jumped in and protected not just Aziraphale, but also–without being prompted in any way–protected the rare books that Aziraphale cared deeply about. This, we are told, is the big emotional point of no return.