Tyro Graphic

Hello! This is my little cottage built as a retirement present for my beloved Ineffable Husbands. It is a customized version of a kit bought online, with lots of little nods and Easter eggs to ensure both occupants are duly represented. Technically, this is designed for Crowley & Aziraphale, but I absolutely can see this working for two retired Professors as well. I welcome all adorable husbands/partners/spouses here!

The living room is a place of compromise in design, comfort, and style. They were sure to bring the bookshop with them, of course, just in miniature.

Who says you can't have a picnic in your own front garden? A little wine, some cheese and crackers, maybe some fruit, and a nice chocolate cake for dessert.

A kitchen should be as warm and inviting as a good meal. Don't forget to restock the bird feeders so the feathered visitors get nice snack, too!

It's important for couples to have their individual spaces. To pull a completely random example, cozy reading library for one and a stargazing garden for another. Harry the Rabbit likes burrowing among the stacks of books, but careful not to tip over that mysterious snowglobe!

Bedrooms are cozy little sanctuaries, perfect for spending long, lazy mornings together, or even longer, less lazy days together.

Over time, the cottage spent enough time with its occupants that it learned a song or two. It was bound to happen...

Crowley has never said look at this lap I have harder than with this posture, and Aizraphale's response is just ~bounce~bounce~bounce~

Okay I see what you all were talking about when you said wait till you get to Mirror Dance. Omg.

Lord Mark Vorkosigan. What an icon. Mark who was built as a weapon while in captivity and becomes a tool on his very own initiative only needs four to seven people to care about him as a human before he remakes his entire self and becomes a goddamn hero. Mark figures out how to do Internal Family Systems therapy on himself while being tortured horribly for five days. Hobbies include personal finance, scheming, and responding "round is a shape" when Aral and Miles say to get in shape. By the end he's setting up to the the Mycroft to Miles' Sherlock.

Mark suffers so much abuse and makes So Many Bad Decisions with So Many Consequences and only to end up literally writhing on the floor in the Unprecedented Agony of Being Perceived and Loved. (This is the part that broke me… I saw it coming and was like: Oh noooo, this part is gonna break me. And then it did, and it was perfect.)

Also, the entire, pervasive, complete and total Cordelia-ness of this novel whether or not she's in the room or even on the planet. She gives Mark the assignment of figuring out how to be Mark and there we goooo. And even after Miles has died and gone amnesiac, there's Cordelia's voice: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR BABY BROTHER?? This is the thing that gets the memory cascade going! It's Cordelia. And she's got Elena too: "But mostly because someday Countess Vorkosigan will ask me what I did for her son... Mark... she'll mean you." It's Cordelia All The Way Down and I am HERE for it.

I am also really... happy for Cordelia that Mark is here. Because Mark has Cordelia's number in a way that I'm not sure either Aral or Miles does, as deeply as they do know her and adore her. Until Mark, maybe Gregor is the only other person who can even begin to read her the way she reads everybody else (and Mark clocks that too!) and Gregor is way too busy being emperor to give Cordelia the runaround she deserves.

Just finished Brothers in Arms and AHHHHHHH IT'S SO GOOD. An incomplete (due to So Many Things) and disordered (due to excited flailing) list of things I love about this book:

-- that LMB is the kind of writer who uses words like wight and swive in a sci-fi novel

-- that Himbo Cousin Ivan is the hostage! Himbo Cousin Ivan makes an excellent damsel tied to the railroad tracks. so good.

-- Duv Galeni coping with grief through nigh-superhuman violence (I wanna see him again asap)

-- the fact that one of Miles' most far-fetched lies yet turns out to be an actual far-fetched plot that is occurring

-- the fact that said far-fetched lie throws otherwise perceptive people off the scent of the actual plot (Miles losing at winning again, womp womp)

-- Miles and Mark reading one another for filth over and over again from grand plans to the minutest gestures and both being salty about it for different reasons

-- the part where Miles manically recites all of Richard III to thwart truth drugs (choice of play is on the nose annnd I love it sooo much... also it's a minor miracle that this is Miles' first go with fast penta)

-- Miles' continued preference for tall stronk women (well done, short king.)

-- Elli Quinn's "Gods, I've fallen in love with a man who thinks he's an onion."

-- Elli Quinn's summary refusal of Miles' proposal of marriage

-- Elli Quinn's enthusiastic consent immediately thereafter to be Miles' Bodyguard with Benefits

-- Elli Quinn's saving evvverybody's asses and possibly averting millions of deaths by being extremely competent at what was supposed to be a mundane task, that Miles forgot he even told her to do

-- Elli Quinn's whole deal tbh

-- the fact that even though Cordelia is physically worlds away she is present in this book in a Deep Spiritual Sense: "My mother's theology actually... persons before principles."

-- "Yeah, invisible, like air. If it disappeared you'd hardly miss it. Till the next time you came to inhale." (!!!!!!!!!)

-- "He yields to logic. My mother is one of the few people I know who has almost completely conquered the will to be stupid."

-- "MILES, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR BABY BROTHER??" (I neeeeeeed to see Cordelia and Mark meet! aaaaghghgh)

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, which -- thanks to @curiouspupsicle, @rogue-bard, @sakascal, @quitequaintrelle and now @ineffabildaddy and @scribblerinthestars (and I've probably missed someone) -- is now apparently A Thing! (I have yet to catch up with all the er tempting fics that have been posted. Damnit, real life, really.)

I started doing Throwback Thursdays a couple of years ago, featuring favorite fics from the first year or two of the Good Omens fandom, or my own fics that hadn't gotten traction when I shyly poked my foot in the door. Post-s3, these delightful writers have joined in to reflect on their early fic and let us enjoy. I love it.

About a year after s1 aired, I got, shall we say, medically beaten-up. A lot of staples and things were involved, along with a stern admonition to make no whoopee for six solid weeks. It's not as if I hadn't written smut before that, but... umm, I went kind of crazy, and for the first time took a fly at gender-switching our Ineffables, in F/M and F/F combinations. First it was a three-part arc featuring Naughty Nanny Ashtoreth, and then -- well, Mistress Aziraphale deserved a turn. Last week I re-read the first of four fics featuring her in all her buxom glory, and realized it suited the moment we face after season 3 *makes apotropaic gesture*.

Faith, or, Serpent In My Bosom - rated E, ~3,300 words

They're free of Heaven and Hell, the Earth and their earthly corporations are theirs to enjoy, and it's time to experiment (with an occasional spice of tender blasphemy). And if Crowley still worries that Aziraphale might long to reconcile with Heaven, his angel is quick to reassure him.

(Redeeming Social Value. We need that right now. Don't we?)

“Alexander’s mother was supposed to have nursed her snakes. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”   “Wasn’t even in the area. Not a snake thing anyway. Urban legend.”

“No one would know it to look at you, dear.”

“Entirely selfless, what I’m doin’ here. Mmhm. Spirit of charity. Atonement for my many sins.”

“Oh, certainly.”

Read On AO3

Tagging in the replies as usual; drop a note if you want on or off the list.

Just imagine how terrified Adam must have been when he realized that his act of courage and free will had all been for nothing. Imagine how scared he was when his family disappeared. Or think about Warlock, who never got the chance to live a life free from his father’s control. Or Anathema. Or Newt. Or Mr. Shadwell and Madame Tracy. Imagine them all disappearing, and how terrified they must have been in those moments.

Good Omens has always treated every life as equally valuable. There are no lives that matter more or less than others. It has always shown how even the smallest decisions matter, the smallest details, the seemingly insignificant people (like Elspeth and little Morag). It has always shifted the focus away from something vast and abstract onto something small, personal, and yet no less precious or beautiful.

Recently I have seen some posts about how people who dislike the finale should behave. This comes from some individuals who enjoyed it. (I don’t want to say this concerns all, most, or even a large portion of such people. I am really just talking about particular ones.)

I am a bit unsettled by it. Because they essentially say that we can be unhappy, sure, but that we are spoiling others' happiness, so we have to tag everything as "anti" or whatever. (I do tag most of my rambling with "anti" tags so that I can be easily blocked. But I doubt that you can convince me that this is necessary.) At the same time, they don’t really apply a corresponding "pro" tag to themselves.

For me, this implies that happiness (not only about GO3) is treated as the default baseline. That you should not join "the party" or other social spaces if you are not in that state, if you are grieving or feeling sad, because that "mood" might be contagious. So, essentially: feel free to grieve, but do it in a dark corner of your house so no one accidentally interacts with you.

Doesn’t that mindset terrify you as well?

"If you were going to go, you might as well go your own true shape."

I can't listen to 'Time After Time' anymore (obvious reasons).

Can't listen to 'The Winner Takes It All', 'The One That Got Away' (too many edits and the lyrics work too well), or 'Glimpse of Us' (lyrics fit too well). Do not even try to play 'Purple Rain' around me (edits, plus I AM A STRANGER THINGS FAN TOO).

I'm still angry and disappointed. I counted on this finale to give me comfort and peace during a pretty messed up time in my life, and it only made it worse. I can barely watch a single edit without tearing up. I read fics, but they're only a temporary fix, because try as I might, I can't make my brain forget what happened on my screen on May 13th 2026.

People who like the finale keep saying "their love created our universe", but the thing is, THEIR universe already felt like OUR universe. Besides the Bible bits made real, it had all important historical events of our timeline included. The World Wars, the pandemic, the French Revolution. It used OUR locations - France, London, St. James' Park, Edinburgh. That's why they felt so close to us. Because we could imagine them everywhere at any time. We could imagine them being in South Downs right now, looking over us. We could visit their bench and feel like they sit there when we're not watching. It was easy to create when any setting could work. We could see a minor inconvenience and casually say that Crowley made that happen. We could see something nice and smile, thinking that Aziraphale did something good again. We were comfortable with angst because we knew that they would always be fine at the end of the day.

All of that was taken from us. The world feels empty now, because we still have the history of both World Wars, the pandemic, the French Revolution; we still have France, London, St. James' Park, Edinburgh and even South Downs. But we don't have THEM. We've never had them. Everything's exactly as it was but without the comfort of our guardians looking out for us.

All of that makes their 'sacrifice' worthless. Because we don't see ANY difference between both universes. There's never been one. Except that now the magic is gone.

I can imagine and fool myself as much as I want to, but my brain, my subconscious, KNOWS. And it hurts more than anything ever has.

There are some bits I like about the finale. I'm forever grateful that Rachel agreed to direct it, that the cast came back and got involved again. But looking at the mess the writing has created, I can't help but wish it never aired.