“Fuck!"

Really bloody excellent omens...

Many, many years ago (it was Hallowe'en 1989, for the curious, the year before Good Omens was published) Terry Pratchett and I were sharing...

NEIL’S BLOG ENTRY ABOUT GOOD OMENS SEASON 2

Many, many years ago (it was Hallowe'en 1989, for the curious, the year before Good Omens was published) Terry Pratchett and I were sharing a room at the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle, to keep the costs down, because we were both young authors, and taking ourselves to America and conventions were expensive. It was a wonderful convention. I remember a huge Seattle second-hand bookstore in which I found a dozen or so green-bound Storisende Edition James Branch Cabell books, each signed so neatly by the author that the bookshop people assured me that the signatures were printed, and really ten dollars a book was the correct price.

I could afford books. Good Omens had just been sold to UK publishers and then to US publishers for more money than Terry or I had ever received for anything. (Terry had been incredibly worried about this, certain that receiving a healthy advance would mean the end of his career. When his career didn’t end, Terry suggested to his agent that perhaps he ought to be getting that kind of advance for every book from now on, and his life changed, and he stopped having to share a hotel room to save money. But I digress.) Advance reading copies of Good Omens had not yet gone out, but a few editors had read it (ones who had bid for it but failed to buy it) and they all seemed very excited about it, and thrilled for us.

On the Saturday evening Terry left the bar quite early and headed off to bed. I stayed up talking to people and having a marvelous time, hung in there until the small hours of the morning when they closed the hotel bar and all the people went away, and then headed up to the hotel room room.

I opened the door as quietly as I could and tiptoed in the dark across the room to where my bed was located.

I’d just reached the bed when, from the far side of the room, a voice said, “What time of the night do you call this then? Your mother and I have been worried sick about you.”

Terry was wide awake. Jet lag had taken its toll.

And I was wide awake too. So we lay in our respective beds and having nothing else to do, we plotted the sequel to Good Omens. It was a good one, too. We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD™ and there wasn’t ever a good time.

But we never forgot it.

It’s been thirty-one years since Good Omens was published, which means it’s thirty-two years since Terry Pratchett and I lay in our respective beds in a Seattle hotel room at a World Fantasy Convention, and plotted the sequel. (I got to use bits of the sequel in the TV series version of Good Omens – that’s where our angels came from.)

[Terry and I, in Cardiff in 2010, on the night we decided that Good Omens should become a television series.]

Terry was clear on what he wanted from Good Omens on the telly. He wanted the story told, and if that worked, he wanted the rest of the story told.

So in September 2017 I sat down in St James’ Park, beside the director, Douglas Mackinnon, on a chair with my name on it, as Showrunner of Good Omens. The chair slowly and elegantly lowered itself to the ground underneath me and fell apart, and I thought, that’s not really a good omen. Fortunately, under Douglas’s leadership, that chair was the only thing that collapsed.

So, once Good Omens the TV series had been released by Amazon and the BBC, to global acclaim, many awards and joy,  Rob Wilkins (Terry’s representative on Earth) and I had the conversation with the BBC and Amazon about doing some more. And they got very excited. We talked to Michael Sheen and David Tennant about doing some more. They also got very excited. We told them a little about the plot. They got even more excited.

[Rob Wilkins and David Tennant on the second day of shooting.]

I’d been a fan of John Finnemore’s for years, and had had the joy of working with him on a radio show called With Great Pleasure, where I picked passages I loved, had amazing readers read them aloud and talked about them.

(Here’s a clip from that show of me talking about working with Terry Pratchett, and reading a poem by Terry: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06x3syv. Here’s the whole show from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OsS_JWbzQ with John Finnemore’s bits too.)

I asked John if he’d be willing to work with me on writing the next round of Good Omens, and was overjoyed when he said yes. We have some surprise guest collaborators too. And Douglas Mackinnon is returning to oversee the whole thing with me.

So that’s the plan. We’ve been keeping it secret for a long time (mostly because otherwise my mail and Twitter feeds would have turned into gushing torrents of What Can You Tell Us About It? long ago) but we are now at the point where sets are being built in Scotland (which is where we’re shooting, and more about filming things in Scotland soon), and we can’t really keep it secret any longer.

There are so many questions people have asked about what happened next (and also, what happened before) to our favourite Angel and Demon. Here are, perhaps, some of the answers you’ve been hoping for.

As Good Omens continues, we will be back in Soho, and all through time and space, solving a mystery which starts with one of the angels wandering through a Soho street market with no memory of who they might be, on their way to Aziraphale’s bookshop.

(Although our story actually begins about five minutes before anyone had got around to saying “Let there be Light”.)

finally made my archive of doctor who Confidential able to be shared! here you got the full episodes, the youtube videos, and such! all is here according to the Tardis wiki episode list! (even some of the episodes are in hd, the ones i managed to find in full!

Actually I will be as furious with Aziraphale as I want to be. I understand his motivations and that his relationship with Heaven is messed up but if he comes near Crowley again and it’s not to beg for forgiveness then I will be getting my shotgun.

Dionysus and Apollo

My biggest Rick Riordan pet peeve (I love his books but I have many many gripes with some things…)

Uh Apollo isn’t the god of fucking rock n roll stars and ‘bad’ poetry. That’s Dionysus. Apollo is the god of ballet, of studied poetry, the kind that has rules and form while Dionysus is poetry that says ‘fuck you’ to all that and scribbles on a page. Apollo is the god of ballet, a type of dance so grueling and studied that there are schools recognized for their disipline all over the world… Dionysus is the god of breakdance and dubstep not becaus they are any less hard but because it was born on the streets and taught there still. Apollo is the god that showed Michael Angelo wisdom while Dionysus drove Van Gogh to paint a night with stars no one had ever seen before and who drove Pollock mad with drink and who showed Dali that dreams could be painted. Apollo might have inspired Mozart to learn piano and read musi but it was Dionysus who drove him mad with creation. 

Apollo and Dionysus are two sides of a coin, of art and genius, of academia and emperial learning.  Apollo is the god of rational thinking and order, appealing to prudence and purity. On the other hand, Dionysus is the god of irrationality and chaos, appealing to emotions and instincts. The Greeks did not consider the two gods to be opposites or rivals, although often the two deities were entwined by nature. In fact, Dionysus’ temples were always built next to Apollo’s as you cannot have one without the other. 

Also, it is Dionysus who is the literal god of theatre, not Apollo. 

So you seriously don’t know what podcast to listen to next? On tumblr? Alright…

Buckle up bc this is the storytelling fiction-podcast Megapost. These are all fiction podcasts that are not Talkshows or dnd podcasts, but storydriven. Some i have listened to, some I havent. Most, if not all of these, you can probably find on YouTube or Podbean.

DONE: (7)

These are podcasts that i have finished or caught up with as of March 2020. I can’t speak for newer seasons, but I’ll try to give an impression of them:

Welcome to Nightvale

(a classic and many people’s hook into podcasts. Tells the story of a strange desert town through local radio. Complete with all kind of LGBT+ representation, a gay canon main character, absolute weirdness and a lovably terrible antagonist, this still running podcast is an absolute must-try)

The Penumbra Podcast, Juno Steel Plotline

(The story of a genderfluid depressed detective on mars and his dangerous dance with a mysterious master thief, told in a beautifully sound-designed ongoing podcast.)

The Magnus Archives

(This still-running podcast starts relatively slowly but really takes off after the first season, telling one short horror story per episode and building a intricate metaplot about an asexual archivist with big dumbass energy and his assistants)

Wolf 359

(A walking pop culture refrence, a mom-friend boss, a crazy russian scientist and a glitchy AI live and work in a space station about 7 light years from earth. Besides a plant monster, mutiny and betrayal, this finished podcast also has a well-rounded and memorable cast that you’ll be sure to love)

Eos 10

(Dr Ryan Dalias is transferred to Eos 10 as part of the medical team, which formerly had been led by a drunk misanthrope and a nurse with a very particular skillset. While trying to deal with a hypochondriac royal, an abnormal Christmas tree and a terrorist, this rather lighthearted podcast has its genuine moments)

Gay Future

(a more or less sarcastic podcast based on the fanatic homophobic ideas of Mike Pence, this short podcast is set in a dystopian future in which everyone is gay and makes fun of YA books, heteronomy and a bunch of other stuff along the way)

Alice isn’t dead

(an extremely atmospheric podcast from the same people that made nightvale which follows an anxious truck driver looking for her wife. A lot of American Gothic, excellent atmosphere and genuinely heartfelt comments on love, humanity and freedom make this a true experience)

ARCHIVE 81

(For those of you that loved Nightvale and TMA but wished they were both a little weirder, comes Archive 81. What i can only describe as the american version of The Magnus Archives, Archive 81 is a interesting horror podcast following several plotlines including but not limited to an archivist, a man mostly made out of radio, a dark ritual and a man made out of static.)

IN PROGRESS: (7)

Podcasts that i am currently listening to/catching up on and thus can already reccomend, but not fully comment on.

Within the Wires

(one story per season, the first being subliminal messages being told through relaxation tapes)

The Bright Sessions

(the recordings of therapy sessions for supernaturally talented humans)

Kingfalls AM

(the Radiostation of Kingfalls, a weird little town in america)

The White Vault

(a rescue team is sent to a remote outpost in the arctic)

The Habitat

(a team of trainees is sent to live isolated in a simulation of a space station. Not fictional, real life recordings)

Start with this

(a podcast about making podcasts)

TO DO:

Podcasts that have been reccomended to me but that i haven’t tried. Feel free to add reviews or podcasts.

Wooden Overcoats

The Black Tapes

The Adventure Zone

Palimpsest

Starship Iris

Limetown

Ars Paradoxica

Kakos Industries

SAYER

The Amelia Project

Inkwyrm

uncanny County

Star Stripper

Radiolab

the Truth Podcast

Alba Salinx

The Penumbra Podcast (Second Citadel Storyline)

Zero Hours

Outliers

Death by dying

Mission to Zyxx

RABBITS

Station to station

caravan

The 12:37

Under Pressure

What’s the frequency

We fix Space Junk

beef and dairy network

the bunker

the far meridian

girl in space

mabel

Editing for some additions:

the adventures of sir Rodney the root

I am in eskew

the godshead incidental

Limetown

hello from the magic tavern

the culling

the empty man cometh

the big loop

Old Gods of Appalachia

The Critshow

Unwell

And, not to be a dirty, dirty, self promoter or anything, but if you liked the Magnus Archives, Alice isnt Dead or Within The Wires, i'm myself working on a podcast focused on possibly-fae related disappearances and a old journal and will update on my tumblr when it starts airing

all i know is that if noel and mischa got married, noel would take mischa's surname. mischa would be like "no, no, i want to make sure that you know how you’re an equal partner in this relationship” blah blah blah and noel just takes mischa’s face into his hands and says “my whole life, i’ve had to bear the name of my father who abandoned me. to exchange it for the title of the man i love is the greatest perceivable honour” and like also he does it so mischa can keep any possible tie to his homeland from which he was ripped. but mischa doesn’t need to know that. on the inside mischa is a wounded child wandering through the forest, but he now has a guiding light in his husband.

Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:

This shot through my brain like a chain of firecrackers, so, without derailing the original post, I have some THOUGHTS to add about why this concept is not only hilarious (because it is), but also...

It. It kind of fucks. Severely.

And in a delightfully Pratchett-y way, I'd dare to suggest.

I'll explain:

As inferred above, both Crowley AND Aziraphale have canonical Biblical counterparts. Not by name, no, but by function.

Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.

(note on the serpent of Eden: In Genesis 3:1-15, at least, the serpent is not identified as anything other than a serpent, albeit one that can talk. Later, it will be variously interpreted as a traitorous agent of Hell, as a demon, as a guise of Satan himself, etc. In Good Omens --as a slinky ginger who walks funny)

Lesser known, at least so far as I can tell, is the flaming sword. It, too, appears in Genesis 3, in the very last line:

"So he drove out the man; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." --Genesis 3:24, KJV

Thanks to translation ambiguity, there is some debate concerning the nature of the flaming sword --is it a divine weapon given unto one of the Cherubim (if so, why only one)? Or is it an independent entity, which takes the form of a sword (as other angelic beings take the form of wheels and such)? For our purposes, I don't think the distinction matters. The guard at the gate of Eden, whether an angel wielding the sword or an angel who IS the sword, is Aziraphale.

(note on the flaming sword: in some traditions --Eastern Orthodox, for example-- it is held that upon Christ's death and resurrection, the flaming sword gave up it's post and vanished from Eden for good. By these sensibilities, the removal of the sword signifies the redemption and salvation of man.

...Put a pin in that. We're coming back to it.)

So, we have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword, introduced at the beginning and the end (ha) of the very same chapter of Genesis.

But here's the important bit, the bit that's not immediately obvious, the bit that nonetheless encapsulates one of the central themes, if not THE central theme, of Good Omens:

The Sword was never intended to guard Eden while Adam and Eve were still in it.

Do you understand?

The Sword's function was never to protect them. It doesn't even appear until after they've already fallen. No... it was to usher Adam and Eve from the garden, and then keep them out. It was a threat. It was a punishment.

The flaming sword was given to be used against them.

So. We have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword: the inception and the consequence of original sin, personified. They are the one-two punch that launches mankind from paradise, after Hell leads it to destruction and Heaven condemns it for being destroyed. Which is to say that despite being, supposedly, hereditary enemies on two different sides of a celestial cold war, they are actually unified by one purpose, one pivotal role to play in the Divine Plan: completely fucking humanity over.

That's how it's supposed to go. It is written.

...But, in Good Omens, they're not just the Serpent and the Sword.

They're Crowley and Aziraphale.

(author begins to go insane from emotion under the cut)

In Good Omens, humanity is handed it's salvation (pin!) scarcely half an hour after losing it. Instead of looming over God's empty garden, the sword protects a very sad, very scared and very pregnant girl. And no, not because a blameless martyr suffered and died for the privilege, either.

It was just that she'd had such a bad day. And there were vicious animals out there. And Aziraphale worried she would be cold.

...I need to impress upon you how much this is NOT just a matter of being careless with company property. With this one act of kindness, Aziraphale is undermining the whole entire POINT of the expulsion from Eden. God Herself confronts him about it, and he lies. To God.

And the Serpent--

(Crowley, that is, who wonders what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway; who thinks that maybe he did a GOOD thing when he tempted Eve with the apple; who objects that God is over-reacting to a first offense; who knows what it is to fall but not what it is to be comforted after the fact...)

--just goes ahead and falls in love with him about it.

As for Crowley --I barely need to explain him, right? People have been making the 'didn't the serpent actually do us a solid?' argument for centuries. But if I'm going to quote one of them, it may as well be the one Neil Gaiman wrote ficlet about:

"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization." --Robert G. Ingersoll

The first to ask questions.

Even beyond flattering literary interpretation, we know that Crowley is, so often, discreetly running damage control on the machinations of Heaven and Hell. When he can get away with it. Occasionally, when he can't (1827).

And Aziraphale loves him for it, too. Loves him back.

And so this romance plays out over millennia, where they fall in love with each other but also the world, because of each other and because of the world. But it begins in Eden. Where, instead of acting as the first Earthly example of Divine/Diabolical collusion and callousness--

(other examples --the flood; the bet with Satan; the back channels; the exchange of Holy Water and Hellfire; and on and on...)

--they refuse. Without even necessarily knowing they're doing it, they just refuse. Refuse to trivialize human life, and refuse to hate each other.

To write a story about the Serpent and the Sword falling in love is to write a story about transgression.

Not just in the sense that they are a demon and an angel. That's part of it, yeah, but the greater part of it is that they are THIS demon and angel, in particular. From The Real Bible's Book of Genesis, in the chapter where man falls.

It's the sort of thing you write and laugh. And then you look at it. And you think. And then you frown, and you sit up a little straighter. And you think.

And then you write some more.

And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.

(...A lot of Pratchett reads that way. I believe Gaiman when he says Pratchett would have been happy with the romance, by the way. I really really do).

It's a story about transgression, about love as transgression. They break the rules by loving each other, by loving creation, and by rejecting the hatred and hypocrisy that would have triangulated them as a unified blow against humanity, before humanity had even really got started. And yeah, hell, it's a queer romance too, just to really drive the point home (oh, that!!! THAT!!!)

...I could spend a long time wildly gesturing at this and never be satisfied. Instead of watching me do that (I'll spare you), please look at this gif:

I love this shot so much.

Look at Eve and Crowley moving, at the same time in the same direction, towards their respective wielders of the flaming sword. Adam reaches out and takes her hand; Aziraphale reaches out and covers him with a wing.

You know what a shot like that establishes? Likeness. Commonality. Kinship.

"Our side" was never just Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley says as much at the end of season 1 ("--all of us against all of them."). From the beginning, "our side" was Crowley, Aziraphale, and every human being on the planet. Lately that's around 8 billion, but once upon a time it was just two other people. Another couple. The primeval mother and father.

But Adam and Eve die, eventually. Humanity grows without them. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who remain, and who protect it. Who...oversee it's upbringing.

Godfathers. Sort of.

It's okay ( I cried till I couldn't breathe)

It's okay ( I got trust issues)

It's okay ( I can't fall asleep)

It's okay ( I hate myself)

It's okay ( I feel like I am not good enough)

It's okay ( I know I am the problem)

It's okay ( I got ptsd and trauma)

It's okay ( I lost my self confidence)

It's okay ( I find comfort in depression)

It's okay (I can't love anyone else)

It's okay ( I am cold-hearted now)

It's okay (I am not myself)

It's okay ( I lost myself)

It's okay It's okay It's okay

I am fine I am fine I am fine

I will live the rest of my life strongly believing (with no evidence) that their names are Dorothy and Leopold. The names just sprung into my brain one day and wont leave. 

Also Snape/Hermione’s dad? i’m so here for it!!!!

i don't want jkr to speak ever again unless it's to tell us the canonical names of hermione's parents so that i know what to call my truest and most beloved ship, snape/hermione's dad. they're perfect for each other bc i said so and no one has any conflicting evidence ty.

i'm begging you guys to start pirating shit from streaming platforms. there are so many websites where you can stream that shit for free, here's a quick HOW TO:

1) Search for: watch TITLE OF WORK free online

2) Scroll to the bottom of results. Click any of the "Complaint" links

3) You will be taken to a long list of links that were removed for copyright infringement. Use the 'find' function to search for the name of the show/movie you were originally searching for. You will get something like this (specifics removed because if you love an illegal streaming site you don't post its url on social media)

4) each of these links is to a website where you can stream shit for free. go to the individual websites and search for your show/movie. you might have to copy-paste a few before you find exactly what you're looking, but the whole process only takes a minute. the speed/quality is usually the same as on netflix/whatever, and they even have subtitles! (make sure to use an adblocker though, these sites are funded by annoying popups)

In conclusion, if you do this often enough you will start recognizing the most dependable websites, and you can just bookmark those instead. (note: this is completely separate from torrenting, which is also a beautiful thing but requires different software and a vpn)

you can also download the media in question (look for a "download" button built into the video window, or use a browser extension such as Video DownloadHelper.)