Wannabe Royalty, here to blog nonsense...

Louis XV:

cleopatra is writing her PhD thesis and is sick of people undermining her intelligence

nefertiti is a child star who fell from grace but rose again like a pheonix

alexander the great is ***NOT GAY*** and on academic probation

14 stress plants™ whose dirt has absorbed so much anxiety it would send anyone who touched it to hospital

1 lectern from exact geographical location of angelic rescue, retrieved when no one was looking as bomb sirens were malfunctioning for some reason

1 table that has inspired zero (0) fantasies of being plowed vigorously upon it by any angels at all 

1 throne, only incidentally covered in carved winged creatures, which was there when occupant moved in

1 bed, 6000-year-old white feather decoupaged onto headboard at owner’s request

1 pair of Vantablack sheets, obtained without the permission of artist with whom current owner is in bitter longtime dispute 

1 television/1 not television, depending on the time of day

1 sculpture depicting recreational masculine sport, for fitness inspiration

0 lights

1 sketch by artist with lustful designs, whose attention needed to be diverted for very important infernal reasons

1 safe containing 1 thermos of holy water, which has remained in safe for 50 years and has never been taken out occasionally and cried over

1 copy of Extremely Big Book of Astronomy, with “Holiday with Angel?” scribbled and then crossed out and then scribbled again five times in margins of section on Alpha Centauri

1 pair of snakeskin Louboutins

5 bags of cat food for Gorgo, the neighborhood cat whose cuddling and purrs are very annoying

He brings Dangerous Spike* in as “the muscle”. But he appears to have no real idea what “the muscle” usually means in situations like this.

“The muscle” is supposed to be there to *fight*, to intimidate.

Instead, Crowley’s taken the description literally. Spike’s the muscle, ergo Spike can be the one who uses said muscles to haul the ropes so that Sally can do the Mission Impossible-style descent to steal the holy water.

Not that Spike appears to mind this, he seems entirely up for it. :-)

And it’s also worth noting that Crowley’s paying his team well, treating them with obvious respect, welcoming questions. Even the very bizarre ones from Shadwell.

I just… this is so Crowley. He’s planning a Caper so he has to do it Properly, so he has his team of criminals meet in a back room of a dodgy Soho pub**, and one of them is the Muscle and one of them has to Descend on a Rope. Because it needs to be Very Very Cool.

And it’s like the least-harmful burglary of all time. No violence, no serious damage, the target item very easily replaced. Employees treated politely and well. And it’s genuinely a little touching to know that even though the caper will be cancelled thanks to Aziraphale giving him the holy water anyway, Spike, Sally and Shadwell will all still get to keep the upfront payment. :-)

I just… that scene says so, so much about Crowley. The person he thinks he’d like to be, and the person he actually is. :-)

*Full name as per the script book. :-)

No.

No, they do not.

That torture chamber she was in is WAAAAAAAY far outside the bounds of what normal corsets are like.  That is not a functional piece of clothing, it is a torture chamber.

A few examples: traditional corsets were never so rigid their wearers couldn’t bend at the waist.  Most were fairly flexible.  The ‘boning’ was made of ‘whalebone’ which was actually baleen, which consists of keratin (the same stuff your fingernails are made of).  Women could and did ride horses in them, play hockey in them, climb mountains in them, and even do acrobatics in them.

Second, historical women who wore corsets didn’t wear them so tight as to cause breathing problems or rib deformity.  I mean, some women did tight-lace, wear the corset so much that it squeezed them a lot and caused problems, but that was actually a fairly tiny proportion of women who wore them.  It was only women who were rich, young, and at the forefront of society and fashion–and not even very many of them.

Even if they wanted Seven in a corset and catsuit, they could have done it without endangering the actress.

CORSETS THAT FIT CORRECTLY ARE COMFORTABLE. IF YOU CANNOT BREATHE OR MOVE PROPERLY IT IS WRONG FOR YOU OR YOU LACED IT WAY TOO TIGHTLY OR BOTH. THEY TORTURED HER FOR A FUCKING LOOK.

WHAT THAT FUCKER DID TO THAT POOR WOMAN SHOULD BE CONSIDERED CRIMINAL AND FRANKLY THE FACT OTHER DESIGNERS TOOK HIS “ADVICE” IS FUCKING WORRYING BUT NOT AT ALL FUCKING SURPRISING. I HOPE ALL THEIR DICKS ROT OFF.

Also, thank you to OP for the art lesson.

Take my hand, take my whole life too ♪

This it the sappiest thing I’ve ever done and they’re to blame ❤

Hey you know how I said I was going to make a workbook on the kind of bullshit you need to do when someone you love dies? I actually did that.

HERE IS THE VERSION WITH LOTS OF SWEARING AT THE USELESS, SHITTY SITUATION YOU’RE IN.

HERE IS THE VERSION WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF BLACK HUMOR BUT NO CURSEWORDS.

Featuring Helpful Sections such as:

Death Certificates – What you need, why you need them, and how to get them

Prepare to spend a long and miserable time on the phone

What the Everloving Fuck is Probate

Some Simple Dos and Don’ts

Shitty Mad Libs – Templates for writing Obituaries and Memorials

How to plan a non-religious death party

So you suddenly have to become some sort of hacker or some shit

This is an eighteen page book that you can print out, download, share, and give away; it is meant to be used to collect information about funeral planning and account management after a death OR you can use it BEFORE you die and give people information so they’re not stuck playing Nancy Fucking Drew while trying to keep seventeen cousins who crawled out of the woodwork from gutting each other in front of the fucking casket as they argue about who’s inheriting grandma’s favorite dentures.

It’s not exactly cheerful and it’s full of things that are probably going to feel really fucking raw if you’re processing a fresh death.

I’m sorry! I love you! Death is shitty! I’m trying to laugh about it a little and I hope you can laugh a little too because otherwise we’re all just going to cry together.

Good luck!

Now that I've got my copy, this is the guest piece I made for @nim-lock's Good Omens artbook!!

I hope you can tell how much fun I had with it!

Usually, it's more like "I know it's not my fault, BUT I wish I'd done something differently." They recognize that they didn't CAUSE the problem, and they don't THINK they're blaming themselves, but they torture themselves wishing they'd done something else.

"I know it's not my fault your car was scraped in the parking lot and now you need a new bumper," (we're going for something nice and light here for the example, feel free to add your own angst) "but if I'd just walked home instead of asking you to pick me up, it wouldn't have happened. I should have told you to park further from the building; I know how badly people drive here. Next time, I'm just gonna not be lazy and I'll take the bus."

It makes it harder to argue because what they're saying might be OBJECTIVELY true, but it's the fact that those thoughts are causing them further anguish that makes it "blaming themselves" even if they recognize that it's "not their fault." Thus, the solution lies not in convincing them that it's not their fault, but in reassuring them that people ask for favors all the time and bad things happen all the time and that you can't spend your life worrying about how if you'd just happened to text a person 10 minutes later than you did, then they wouldn't be repainting their car.

Connotation is an important concept to understand when diversifying your vocabulary to have better fiction. You can’t have two words that mean roughly the same thing, but one is associated with good things, and the other with bad things. Consider how these words differ from each other:

Curious - Nosy

Economical - Cheap

Mature - Elderly

Challenge - Difficult

Determined - Stubborn

Unique - Weird

Laid Back - Lazy

The ones on the left are positive or neutral, and the ones on the right are negative. (Here’s where I found these examples, it has more and more in-depth explanations).

So how can you use this knowledge? While scrolling through Thesaurus.com (which is a wonderful resource you should absolutely use) looking for a synonym to punch up your sentence, keep in mind whether you want to give a negative or positive impression, and ask yourself how each word matches up with that impression. If you don’t recognize a word or know its connotations, click on it and see what synonyms it has (the list will be slightly different from the one you were looking at). If those words are mostly negative, this one probably is too, and vice versa. You can also use list-hopping as a way to drill down to the perfect word. If nothing on the list for the original word you used is exactly what you’re looking for, click on the word that comes the closest and look through that word’s list for better matches.