Ok But If Bruce Wayne Somehow Came Upon Zuko Fresh Out Of Banishment He Would Lose His Mind.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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 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.

The crumbled chair.

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.

Me and Michael and Ash aged nearly 2.

What it was mostly like shooting Good Omens: peering into screens while something happened round the corner.

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.)

L to R: With Great Pleasure. John Finnemore, me all beardy, Nina Sosanya (Sister Mary in Good Omens) Peter Capaldi (he played Islington in the original BBC series of Neverwhere).

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”.)

from https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2021/06/really-bloody-excellent-omens.html

WHICH ONE OF YOU DID THIS AKSKSLSLSLSLAKALSLLDKFJFJSKAKKASK

she deserves the world

I love her little TROT.

DP characters as things my friends and family have said (part 2)

"There has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?"

Well, Zemo. You're wrong.

There is another superhuman who hasn't been corrupted by the serum. In fact, you are looking at him right now. Bucky.

When Zemo said this line I realized this narrative felt off somehow. Because going by what he said before about all superhumans being supremacists and inevitably ending up down that path, it would mean Bucky is like Karli, or like all the other "corrupted enhanced individuals". And there's nothing farther away from the truth. This may get a bit long so bear with me.

After Bucky was first captured and tested on back in Azzano, he already had a version of what would become the super-soldier serum. It was the one thing that allowed him to survive the fall. If we take Zemo's words as true, it means Bucky had to have been already different (personality-wise) ever since then. So, did he become a machine of hatred and jealousy? did he start killing people left and right? No. You know what he did? He followed his best friend and kept fighting alongside him against the nazis. He may have had to kill back then, but it was war so what are we expecting. Until the moment he fell off the train, there was no indication of something "evil" lurking inside him.

I have an issue with the way certain storylines regarding the Winter Soldier have been dealt with. Starting with the "make amends" notebook. You make amends when you've wronged someone. But Bucky's situation is different. Even if it was him physically doing this stuff, it was beyond his control. HYDRA is the one and only responsible for those horrible things, and yet no one so far (not even his therapist) has actually told him that, or at least reminded him of it. The only person who has ever said this to Bucky was Steve, back in Civil War. He even owns the insult "my people" as if he had truly been part of HYDRA willingly, even if he acknowledges he was captured, he still sees himself as a villain. Those killings were forced upon him. And still, we see him making amends for something he had no say on.

The single moment Bucky regained a small piece of his will, he saved someone. He saved Steve. The first moment he was able to be himself again, even if everything was confusing and scary, he still jumped after this man and pulled him from the river. Flashforward two years, in Bucharest. Is Bucky doing something heartless and evil like going on a murder spree? has he joined any fascist group? No. he's buying plums, living in a small apartment room, and writing his memories on tons of notebooks, trying to cling on to the only thing that reminds him he was, he is good.

And now, with Zemo's comments implying Bucky too is corrupted by the serum... it doesn't sit well with me. I don't know if this is Zemo being Zemo, or if this is the actual approach taken by the writers. Although I'm inclined to believe the latter, given that no one has said anything against it nor corrected Bucky or Zemo about it.

Which I find troubling. Because Bucky isn't bad. He wasn't corrupted by the serum. He's still this loyal, nerdy man troubled by his past. He has never done anything evil by his own decision. Hell, the first thing he did after running away from the countries trying to kill him was to ask to be put on cryo again. "I can't trust my own mind. So until they find a way to get this stuff out of my head I think going back under is the best thing. For everybody." And even in this episode, when he asks Ayo if she's sure about this. She replies with "I won't let you hurt anyone." Because that's what he feared the most. Hurting those around him.

So, I honestly hope this was just Zemo messing with his head again. And I hope the writers manage to acknowledge this before the finale. Because no, Steve wasn't the only superhuman who remained true to himself after the serum. Bucky is too.

A reminder that Steve’s first instinct was to defend, not attack.

Even when he doesn’t have a shield, he literally makes one.

standing up too quickly gives me temporary access to shrimp colours

at some point you finally get to the "this might as well happen" stage. except that stage has happened several dozen times this year alone idk if my heart can take much more you guys

thots on horses?

I think those are called cowboys