Re-reading Editor Au Chapter 4 Has Me Cackling.

Re-reading editor au chapter 4 has me cackling.

Obligatory:

LMAO FUCK THAT'S IT, THAT'S THE FIC

hi bilvy!

I wanna start getting into writing fics, and i know the general idea of all my stories, but I'm not sure how to plan them beforehand while keeping my motivation for the actual writing at the same time. do you have any tips for a fellow Aussie?

you gotta let yourself be self indulgent about it!! plan your favourite scenes first so you can day dream about em and look forward to writing them (like me replaying “you’re gay?” “yes..?!?” in my head for weeks, and how much i’m looking forward to the final scene of editor hehe)

get tropey, collect silly tumblr posts into a tag for inspiration, make pinterest boards, make playlists!! anything that gives you a rush of giddiness or dopamine that you can uncork whenever you need some extra inspiration

and sharing snippets with a friend or two can be really motivating as well. i live for @niltia’s live reacts to my WIPs and getting to listen to @eviebane recording themself reading the completed chapters is such a huge motivator for me to get them finished 🤌

Here is a brief summary of what is happening in Wikipedia right now:

In the last few years (3-4 years) the WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, which was originally created to improve the quality and coverage of native issues and native articles on wikipedia, has been hijacked by a small number of users with an extremist agenda. They have been working diligently over the last few years to change the definition of both what it means to be an Indigenous American and even what it means to be state and federally recognized.

The four or five key players (Mainly Editor Yuchitown, Bohemian Baltimore, ARoseWolf, (now retired editor CorbieVreccan, Netherzone and Oncamera) who are part of the “Native American Articles Improvement Project” started implementing these changes slowly, but they started pursuing their goals aggressively after November 2023, when state-recognized tribes retained their voting rights in NCAI. Essentially, after the movement to delegitimize state-recognized tribes failed officially, the key players doubled down on altering and controlling the flow of information about Native Americans through Wikipedia.

The talk page of Lily Gladstone’s article has a relevant discussion here. Initially, the leaders of the WikiProject removed any reference to her being a “Native American Actress” and instead had her as “Self-identifying as Blackfoot” and “Self-identifying as Nez Perce” because her blood quantum was too low to be enrolled in either tribe.

You can see some of the discussion here:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lily_Gladstone

Eventually they relented and changed her category to being “Of Nez Perce Descent” but you can see in the discussion that they are referring to an article that these editors (Yuchitown, Bohemian Baltimore, and CorbieVreccan) themselves appeared to have mostly written and revised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_identity_in_the_United_States

This statement is very much at odds with even the government’s description, as seen below;

The DOJ Office of Tribal Justice Office on their webpage “Frequently Asked Questions About Native American”, question “Who is an American Indian or Alaskan Native” states:

“As a general principle, an Indian is a person who is of some degree Indian blood and is recognized as an Indian by a Tribe and/or the United States. No single federal or tribal criterion establishes a person's identity as an Indian. Government agencies use differing criteria to determine eligibility for programs and services. Tribes also have varying eligibility criteria for membership.”

In addition, “List” pages have been created on Wikipedia for federally and state recognized tribes. The Wikipedia “List” page for state-recognized tribes is inaccurate in its interpretation of state recognition and not supported by expert reliable sources--(1) Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law 2012 edition, (2) NCSL.org current stand on state recognition (not the archived list from 2017 which NCSL no longer supports), (3) Koenig & Stein’s paper “Federalism and the State Recognition of Native American Tribes: a survey of state-recognized tribes and state recognition processes across the United States” (both 2008 & updated 2013 in book “ Recognition, sovereignty struggles, and indigenous rights in the United States: A sourcebook”)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-recognized_tribes_in_the_United_States

State-recognized tribes who have received recognition through less formal but acceptable means have been moved from the Wikipedia list page on state-recognized tribes to the Wikipedia list page of unrecognized or self-identifying organizations.

The Wiki page "List of organizations that self-identify as Native American tribes", in particular, is being used to purposely defame legitimate Native American individuals who are members of the tribes/Native communities that are on this list. 

By the parameters set up on Wikipedia, only the colonizer’s governments can acknowledge who is Native American through either federal recognition or state recognition. If an individual is not a member of a federally or state-recognized tribe, then it is determined that they cannot be Native American and are, instead, considered “self-identifying” or only “a descendant of ...” (example Lily Gladstone). As a result, Native individuals are currently being tagged as “self-identifying” and their names are put on “list” pages that strongly imply they are “pretend” Indians.

These editors have indicated that they would like “self-identification” to be the default setting for any people who they deem do not fit within the parameters that they themselves created within Wikipedia.

Moreof, these editors are admin and senior editors within the Wikiproject Indigenous Peoples of North America, and are being called in specifically to weigh on Native Identity, and any project involving any Indigenous Group.

Any attempt to correct misinformation, add information, or change any of these articles is often met with being blocked, reported for various offenses, or reported for having a Conflict of Interest, whether or not that is actually applicable. They have use this strategically in many different pages for many different individuals and groups within the scope of their Wikiprojects.

While changing things in Wikipedia does not change the truth, it is a way to control how most people take in information, and thus they hope to manipulate the narrative to better suit their goals.

This is quick and messy but:

Here is a link to the google document with the other state recognized tribes (Including yours) that were edited by these editors. This is an incomplete list so far that only goes back to September 2023 but I am going to add to it. If you can add to your own part of this list, and send your complaints and information to the arbitrator committee (the email is below) with the involved editors, this will help our case.

The  more tribes who complain, and the more Wikipedia editors complain, the better our case will be. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YNDEjLTrrZ_mMIRCVxtvt69FwCYpJWKs71lBhWa5a9M/edit?usp=sharing

The place to make complaints on Wikipedia is oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org , and

arbcom-enwikimedia.org . It is most helpful to have an editing account on Wikipedia, because Yuchitown and the others will try to defend themselves using Wikipedia methodology and make anyone who confronts them look like the aggressor (see the other tribes who tried to fight back on Wikipedia I found).

The more people and tribes make complaints the more likely it is that this will work and we can rid ourselves of these monsters.

Some of the tribes I have spoken to are taking legal action against these editors. Any groups affected by their policies should also reach out to the news to make knowledge of this more widespread.

Thank you

- quoted with permission from an email sent by an associate of my tribe. Message me for their email address if you'd like to reach out to them.

The T-shirt David was wearing :) <3

It is from Stevie Brocksom (orders only through Stevie's website, any you see on amazon is a fake so report there :))

Goodbye, Lynn. Thank you for your constant support and encouragement since the day I started these comics. It has meant the world to me, and I wish I could have told you. We will remember you forever.

Me only thinking of the fact that both of them inexplicably have mentioned ducks- I clearly do not have the brain for this

My (Definitely Not Entirely Original) Good Omens Sister Theories— Crowley and Muriel Were the Same Rank, Once Upon a Time

My sort of lazy process of analyzing media usually goes like this— I watch and rewatch a thing a billion times, read a shit ton of theories about it, pick out the parts I agree with and ignore the bits I find outlandish, and Frankenstein my own personal theory together. I’ve done this before with other fixations, and that’s what I’ve done here. Like, I haven’t stumbled across a theory EXACTLY like this,* but I connected these dots by reading a lot of other people’s thoughts. If I can, I’ll reblog this with the posts that inspired it, but it was a lot of posts over a who-knows-how-long period of time that led me here, plus some of my own observations.

*Spoilers… for my theory, I guess. I have now definitively seen someone else agree with the thought that Muriel was demoted/mind wiped in this post. Thank you fyp! Now, go read some bullet meta if you want!

One thing I’m always irked by because I’m picky and pretentious is the lack of consideration I see for “Archangels” versus THE Archangels. Neil Gaiman’s hierarchy in Good Omens is its Own Thing, obviously inspired by different interpretations and faiths. People have asked him about it, and while he links some other hierarchies often, these are the most important answers to note.

Here’s the GO hierarchy, simplified in this post of his:

(Metatron not showing up on an organizational chart sounds intriguing, but not what my theory is focused on.)

Here, he mentions that there is a difference between the Fancy Archangels and the less fancy Archangels.

He also says this in another post—

So, I’ve made the choice in the past to refer to these less fancy Archangels like Sandalphon as lower case archangels, but there is the possibility that in Good Omens, archangels are just angels below Aziraphale’s rank. For simplicity, I think calling those less fancy Archangels archangels instead makes the most sense— At least, for this post where we’re talking about the archangels just above Aziraphale and the Archangels Gabriel and Michael and Uriel. Because it Matters.

I think Crowley and Muriel were both archangels, once upon a time. Crowley fell, either losing the majority of his memories, all of his memories, or has a hazy memory of the time before he fell. Meanwhile, Muriel was demoted to the very lowest rank of angel after, some time after the scene in Job, directly voicing disagreements with Heaven. (Or a specific angel. Or God Herself) All of their memories were erased along with everyone else’s memories of them, most likely through the Book of Life by the Metatron.

Let me make my case now!

First, why do I think Crowley is an archangel? I see a lot of posts taking an Archangel from one or multiple cultures, sometimes one that has been depicted as fallen in a certain culture/s, and making a case for how that could be Neil Gaiman’s inspo for the Starmaker. I prefer these over the arbitrary Raphael theory— not to be a dick, but don’t get me STARTED— but I don’t buy that Crowley was an Archangel on the level of Michael or Uriel. Here are my reasons.

1. Saraqael specifically recalls working with Crowley. Saraqael technically took the place of Sandalphon this season, who we know is an archangel

This implies to me they were of an equal rank, archangel, working together.

2. Lower case archangels are commonly seen accompanying the Archangels, whether it’s Sandalphon in season one often being seen with them or Saraqael in season two. This means archangels would certainly work very closely with Upstairs, like Crowley mentions doing in the first scene of season two. Upstairs could have referred to God Herself (when She used to actually interact with her angels) or the Archangels + probably Metatron and God. I think Upstairs would collectively mean them, but that’s just me. Either way,

3. Crowley did not know about Earth while Aziraphale did. Aziraphale knowing is fair, considering that he was going to be a part of the Garden of Eden, but if Crowley were an Archangel, he surely would’ve known before the other Archangels told Aziraphale. If he were an archangel, and as I’ll go on to show, I think there’s quite a lot of archangels, it makes sense he wouldn’t know right away. I think him not knowing was intentional to show he’s not ALL the way up at the top. It’s more likely than the other Archangels just forgetting to tell him before he went and made his Nebula. It seems like he was just assigned a task as an archangel and carried it out because archangels are normally designated to assist the Archangels (+ Aziraphale who is apparently their only human expert. Lol)

As for memories? I think memory is super important to the discussion of these characters’ lives and pasts— crucial, really. And I am NOT at all the first person to talk about it, but I have to here.

I have a feeling that the Book of Life has been misrepresented, actually— Unless I’m dumb and everyone else has already figured this out. When they say the Book of Life means “you’ll never have existed,” I believe it means no one will remember you exist, which erases my problems with the implied existential paradoxes of “never existing” to be honest with you, but that’s just me and we don’t need another unnecessary rant about how much I overthink things. It seems right to me; it means you might as well have never existed because if no one remembers, did you really? In the process, you may also be put in a form where you’re a nobody (rather than ceasing to be). Maybe a 37th degree recording scrivener. But, we’ll get back to Muriel shortly.

The Book of Life, to me, has been used in two ways— To tweak an angel’s existence/status (like turning them into a demon), or erasing the memory of them entirely. I think when turning an angel into a demon, the memory of them as an angel is NOT erased. Clearly, Saraqael remembers the Starmaker, for example, and so does Aziraphale. Everyone knows about the Fall and Great War and whatnot. Meanwhile, I think the fallen angel’s memory is, at the very least, severely damaged by falling. Crowley seems to know what it feels like to try and remember, looking where the furniture isn’t, when talking to Jim. Whether or not he forgot everything isn’t clear, but he’s far enough removed from the Starmaker that he tells Aziraphale he basically doesn’t consider that angel to be him whatsoever. So, Crowley being an unreliable narrator of his time as an angel (I believe Neil himself has said/implied this) may not be because he’s embarrassed about being arrogant or whatever. It’s probably all too hazy in his mind to take his word directly.

So, that’s Crowley, the in-my-theorized-opinion-that-you-can-freely-disregard archangel. I have even more to say about Muriel.

Muriel seems clueless. Weirdly so. I don’t mean that they’re just naive, like people seem to think Aziraphale is, but they are very nervous on Earth and seem to know very little about how anything works. This makes some sense, but they don’t even know what a ‘cuppatea’ is and seem very unfamiliar with what reading a book is. They do, in some way, feel like Rapunzel or Ariel, having just now gotten to go out and explore the world and are learning as they go with unbridled enthusiasm. That could explain it, and I feel like we’ll see an evolution in their understanding of human behavior and objects in season three after running the bookshop throughout whatever timeskip there is. But on the surface, it implies they learned almost nothing about Earth up in Heaven— kept clueless, like many other sheltered angels likely are.

But… They seemed to know plenty in the Job minisode. Right? Aziraphale goes to Muriel (meaning he knows them at least a little) with the Job contract thingy right before he goes to THE Archangels, and they’re just as lovable and bubbly as ever of course. But they are quite privy to the going ons of Earth, being able to make the comparison between geese and ducks, calling geese “big cross ducks.” This implies they’ve been to Earth, right? But it was their first time in the present, they told Aziraphale and Crowley as much. How did they go from being familiar with different types of animals from hardly knowing what a book is?* Oh, and they clearly knew what geese look like, so who showed them a picture of a goose back then if they had never been down to Earth until very recently?

*’But how could they read?’ I don’t know, how could Jim read? How could he walk? Like in many memory wiping stories, people with wiped memories retain basic things like being able to read, walk, and talk.

More questions. Why did Aziraphale go to them when they were presumably the lowest ranking angel possible, then straight to THE Archangels? It seems like he went to them knowing they were a viable angel to verify the legitimacy of the permit/contract— is that just because they’re a scrivener? I guess it could be, but they’re seen as so useless in the present (only to Heaven, we love Muriel in this house on this blog) that the Archangels didn’t even know who they were. Why would Aziraphale go to the very last possible option of scrivener? And how did the very lowest ranking angel have a fair amount of knowledge on the Bet between God and Satan? Was it gossip they heard from other low ranking angels? How did they know about it when Aziraphale didn’t? They assumed he knew, even, and then had to explain it.

Real quick— I want to point out these angels in this Job scene. The ones accompanying the Archangels to congratulate Job. Here’s two (partially three) of them-

The robes worn by the angels throughout this minisode, specifically the rims, are all slightly different. Aziraphale’s is my favorite, of course.

And, here’s Muriel’s.

Their rims look similar to this angel’s-

So, I don’t have confirmation that the background angels here are archangels. I thought I remembered it being mentioned that they were other archangels, but was that confirmed by Neil? I don’t know. But considering they’re accompanying the Archangels, I feel like, chances are, they are archangels. A rank above our beloved principality, who shows up a bit late. Would’ve been super convenient if Muriel’s robe and these background angels’ robes were all the same, but they’re at least comparable. And if they are archangels, that fact’s interesting. Only a small thing to point out, all things considered, but I wanted to.

So, my point with all of this is that there’s a big difference in Job minisode Muriel and present day Muriel. Muriel in the Job flashback seems calmer, more sure of themself, and talks to Aziraphale pretty confidently. Present day Muriel calls themself a nobody and is seen to be very anxious around most other characters. Maybe living in a shitty place like Heaven breaks you down like that, but combined with their current lack of knowledge that is at least somewhat comparable to Jim’s, I find it all suspicious.

Now. Them being the lowest ranking angel seems funny in a sad way at first. But then it’s brought up when we find out Gabriel’s punishment is having his memories erased and demoted to the rank below Muriel. And Muriel makes a comment about it— they didn’t know there was one lower. There wasn’t, and was there always a 37th scrivener? I’m not sure.

I think Muriel was given the same punishment— I don’t know when, but it was after Job and before the current day. They were quietly erased via memory and demoted, and whether or not the Archangels were involved in this process, most likely, their memories were also erased by the probably power-hungry Metatron. (Michael has to ask who they are)

One more piece of evidence that makes me think this is the case? Aziraphale doesn’t remember them. Maybe he really didn’t know them all that well, but I don’t have a great reason to think he has a bad memory. He could have/should have recognized them by voice or face, but he doesn’t. He can only tell they’re an angel in disguise because they’re not amazing at playing pretend.

This is the best I’ve got, for now. I have plenty more to say about the Metatron and whatever the hell his deal is, but I don’t know how to start with that piece of shit. So, I’m good. I hope this was at least somewhat interesting to chew on.