actually i'm gonna be calm now

Are you trying to tempt me?

The reference and inspiration for this piece was sculpture of Acis and Galatea from the Medici Fountain!

I'm gonna put a cut here because it can be taken as a spoiler.

Be warned.

i’m not going to claim to be any sort of media studies expert bc i’m not, but i think it’s fair to say that while tv or movies or books etc are open to all interpretations, those conclusions still have to have a basis on what is actually on the screen or page. and so much of what i see from people who tout the beauty of go3 just does not line up with what i saw on screen (or in the book, if we want to look there too). it’s like someone having an opinion based on false information. if someone said they love the first jurassic park movie bc in the end the humans and the dinosaurs sort out their differences and stop hurting each other so everyone gets a happy ending, you would say “ok but that literally did not happen”.

i don’t know how to change that for myself. i’m trying to just view it as a difference in opinion, but instead i find myself continuously thinking “that’s nice, but that literally didn’t happen”. at the same time, i know i’m not going to change anyone’s mind even if i wanted to try. so like. what do i do, just ignore everyone who talks about how perfect the ending was and how much they love it? even people that i otherwise enjoy interacting with? that doesn’t feel fair either. it all makes me feel like i’m coming off as an elitist asshole who only values my own ‘correct’ opinions - which is the last thing i want!

The Arrangement.

The Arrangement is 1,000 years old by the current day. They have done each other's jobs countless times. So they both absolutely know that the differences between angels and demons and between heaven and hell are no more than cosmetic. They both have had plenty of time to realize and accept that.

It was okay for S1 to throw in some extra panic and posturing when everything was going to shit and Gabriel and Hastur kept popping up, but I always assumed they still knew, deep down, that they were more alike than different and that their respective head offices were more alike than different. (The book makes this even more apparent when they each consider defecting to the other side).

i’m not going to claim to be any sort of media studies expert bc i’m not, but i think it’s fair to say that while tv or movies or books etc are open to all interpretations, those conclusions still have to have a basis on what is actually on the screen or page. and so much of what i see from people who tout the beauty of go3 just does not line up with what i saw on screen (or in the book, if we want to look there too). it’s like someone having an opinion based on false information. if someone said they love the first jurassic park movie bc in the end the humans and the dinosaurs sort out their differences and stop hurting each other so everyone gets a happy ending, you would say “ok but that literally did not happen”.

i don’t know how to change that for myself. i’m trying to just view it as a difference in opinion, but instead i find myself continuously thinking “that’s nice, but that literally didn’t happen”. at the same time, i know i’m not going to change anyone’s mind even if i wanted to try. so like. what do i do, just ignore everyone who talks about how perfect the ending was and how much they love it? even people that i otherwise enjoy interacting with? that doesn’t feel fair either. it all makes me feel like i’m coming off as an elitist asshole who only values my own ‘correct’ opinions - which is the last thing i want!

Fandom creators spend hours of their free time to create something to make fandom thrive...for free and for the love of the game.

And what do they get? A wholeass heap of fuck all. No reblogs, no comments, no nothing. And people are surprised that creators are dropping out left, right, and centre??

"Why is there no long fic anymore?" "Why did my favourite writer stop?" "Why is my favourite artist not posting anymore?"

crowley ended up at the center of the entire story. the film constantly frames him as a tragic, miserable figure, but a lot of his actions barely make sense. after losing his miracles and bentley, why didn’t he stay in the bookshop? the idea that "it hurt too much" doesn’t really work for me considering how much that place meant to him and how much he cared for it. and after winning at the casino, why refuse the money? it felt less like character writing and more like the story trying to force sympathy: "look how much aziraphale ruined his life." which makes even less sense when they reconcile almost immediately afterward

and then there’s aziraphale. he basically becomes the scapegoat. heaven dislikes him, people on earth blame him for leaving whickber street and crowley, and suddenly he’s treated like some selfish careerist who never truly loved crowley and only cared about his angelic side. the line "you were the best angel" ... fuck. seriously?

sometimes I’m reminded that there are still people who don’t know ao3 was literally created by incest shippers — and the site’s sole purpose is to 1. be completely against censorship and 2. host all kinds of dark, taboo fics that are banned on other platforms — and the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.

you are in the house that was created by freaks. for freaks (affectionate). every disgusting thing you can think of is rightfully allowed and welcomed on ao3, because they are exactly the reasons why ao3 was created in the first place.

ao3 was created because its creators got tired of censorship, they got tired of dark and taboo fics getting banned on pro-censorship platforms, and they wanted a place that was safe for ALL FICS THAT WERE DARK AND TABOO.

ao3’s main principle is being against censorship and being proship / profic.

there are some things in fiction that make me uncomfortable, but instead of shaming people who are just minding their own business and not harming anyone in real life, I choose to curate my own internet experience by blocking/muting what I don’t want to see. ao3 has excellent tagging system, so instead of being a bitch, use their tagging system properly and you won’t see the things you don’t want to see.

it’s your job to curate what you see. it’s not other people’s jobs or responsibilities to censor themselves for your personal comfort. the world does not revolve around you.

also you cannot censor “only the things you personally hate” without expecting everything else, that isn’t of conservative beliefs, to be censored too. because censorship is a slippery slope and a fascist tool. I promise you there are people who think “why do tags for queer love even exist on ao3? they’re grooming children”.

if you allow the things that you hate to be censored — because someone with enough power gets to control what other people can and cannot create/consume, it will not stop at the things that you hate.

I was already aware of this fact, but it really struck me today. They set up a story, introduced all the characters and the stakes and the themes, then pressed the reset button in the final few minutes and introduced us to entirely new characters and showed us how their, entirely unrelated story had a "happy" ending.

And just to drive the point home, they made sure to have our main characters reject the offer to have their world reset as it was and then underlined in bold that they were agreeing to a world where they must cease to exist. Like part of the point was to kill as much hope as possible and force an acceptance that no other options are valid.

Storytellers ask us to care as they lay out the pieces. For some unfathomable reason, Good Omens stopped right before the finish line, took everything it asked us to care about, and literally snapped it out of existence. And then it asked us to dump that same care into new, pale echos of what it destroyed while making sure we can't forget that they are very much not the originals.

...Hey, it's kinda fucked up how both GO1 and GO2 emphasized how terrible it was for Gabriel (as a representative of Heaven) to tell Aziraphale to "shut your stupid mouth and die already" and then GO3 acts like it's a beautiful culmination of his character arc to... not speak up before agreeing to go to his death, right? I'm not the only one seeing this, right?