You Might Never Have Heard Of Sudan, Or Even Know Where It Is Located. But You Know Me. And I Am From

You might never have heard of Sudan, or even know where it is located. But you know me. And I am From SUDAN 🇸🇩 and one week ago my brothers, fathers, sisters and mothers have been shot dead, these people exactly like me and you, they hope for a better country, they hoped for a brighter future, today they are all in heaven smiling at us.

Peacefully they protested demanding for a change, a new government that guarantee equal rights, no corruption and decent life.

160 unarmed people were murdered, that we know off so far, hundreds are severely injured, and much more arrested.

Please I beg you all, watch the news be informed and share, let the world know even if you don’t care just try.

Pray for Sudan 🇸🇩✌🏽

In a weird place between wanting quarantine to end because my mental health is absolutely spiraling, and hoping quarantine continues because I can’t imagine going back into functioning society again.

Neil Gaiman did a ‘where are they now’ for the Good Omens characters and apparently Crowley and Aziraphale are living out in a remote cottage in the English country side.

I believe in my heart that Crowley and Aziraphale tried really hard to make the cottage work. They really, very definitely honestly did. Fell Cottage* had a kitchen that was barely touched, a parlor that saw a great deal of traffic by  villagers fascinated by the arrival of two eccentric Londoners—it was a very small village, and Aziraphale had given up scowling at people since it seemed to have little effect—and a library full of poetry, prophecy, and various first editions that defied the actual breadth of the space it occupied.**

Aziraphale took to gardening, in that he spent a lot of time puttering in the garden and it definitely had plants in it. Some of them ate the small dogs who had the bad sense to widdle on them. Unfortunately, Aziraphale had very little structured knowledge of plants (it was mostly ethereal instinct) and absolutely no concept of restraint; a botanist stumbling into Aziraphale’s garden in —shire would very likely be baffled and then either delighted or driven mad by the sheer impossible biodiversity.

“I think that’s cheating,” Crowley said once when they were talking a walk through the garden. He nodded to a bush blooming with deep purple flowers that hadn’t been seen on Earth since another and rather more famous garden was around.

Aziraphale blushed. “Oh, well. There was a bush right by the Eastern Gate, I always liked them.”

Crowley had a thriving side-business doing what might, in a very posh sense, be called Automotive Repair. In an actual sense, he did things with cars. Cars, unlike houseplants, were high-strung things that didn’t tolerate a regime of fear; as a consequence, Crowley spent a great deal of time reading books like Nervous Nellie No More: How I Beat Anxiety and figuring out how to speak in a calm, soothing voice. A lot of Ford Fiestas in the village of —shire were really only desperate for a bit of teatime chat about how Mrs. Margo leaned too hard on the breaks pedal and Johnny Margo ruined the suspension cruising over speed traps. Really, what Crowley had done was single-handedly invented the motor oil klatch.

And for a while, it was better than Heaven.***

But despite being bucolic and domestic (&tc other things ending in ‘ick’) it doesn’t last. To both their surprise, it’s Aziraphale who gets itchy feet first—Crowley catches him popping back from Poland, because he heard there was a new restaurant there one had to try. Shortly afterwards, Crowley nudges Aziraphale’s foot with his own, and asks whether he’s ever been to the actual Casablanca. Aziraphale asks if he’s ever had borscht from…? And Crowley replies, well no, but I always wanted to see…

It devolves from there. Neither Heaven nor Hell is speaking to them these days—they’re not not speaking to them, since that would imply something had happened; but there’s a silence. So Aziraphale and Crowley go on what Aziraphale refers to as a ‘grand tour’ and what Crowley refers to as a honeymoon. The cottage sits empty for decades, collecting dust and horror stories, and then, quietly, dissolves into the grass one moonless night. Everyone in the village talks about it, since they can remember the—well, not their faces, or their names, but they know someone lived their once. Someone full of green, and magic.**** 

“Do you miss it?” Crowley asks once, when they’re in Japan. Aziraphale had wanted to try real sushi. “Fell Cottage? I miss it sometimes.”

“Not often,” Aziraphale says, helping himself to the nori. He isn’t especially thinking when he says, “You were always the best part of it, and you followed me here.”

When he looks up, Crowley’s eyes are yellow and bright over the rim of his sunglasses. “Well,” Crowley says, and his voice is raspy, low. “When you put it like that.”

(The next morning, they’re in Morocco. They watch the sun come up, and Crowley says, like that first one, and Aziraphale says, yes.)

* Crowley had picked it. “Does this mean you’re taking my name?” Aziraphale had asked, with a painfully studied casualness. Crowley tentatively touched his shoulder to the angel’s—they were working on that, the touching thing—and said, “More like, that’s what we share. You’re Fell and I’m Fallen.” (…as readers, we shall draw a veil over what happened next. It was private.)

** As this describes most libraries, no one much noticed.

*** No one had to watch The Sound of Music.

**** There is an unexpected resurgence in fairytales and folklore in South Eastern England; it’s baffling, unless you know that  there were a couple strangers in a cottage in —shire, and they made the world interesting, before they went.

I think probably the saddest part of season 5 for me is that Merlin is so closed minded about Mordred, even when he knows there’s nothing he can do. It makes me so sad because they were so similar and in such similar situations that they could have been great friends.

And all that was taken by Kilgarrah’s prophecy or Merlin’s destiny or whatever the hell you want to call it.

One time I was at this music camp and every time I saw her I waved really enthusiastically at her (okay so maybe I’m the weird funny kid in this situation) and I sort of thought she was scared of me but towards the end of camp she started to wave back and on the last day after the performances she formally introduced herself and said she hoped we’d be at the same camp again some day and it was !! So! Cute!!!

How does anyone hate kids they are so funny I sold tickets to incredibles to this little girl and her mom and she’s like mom are we sitting next to each other and the moms like ya and the kid screamed YES so loud it broke my ears

Crowley & Aziraphale: Book vs. Miniseries

(and just to be REALLY CLEAR, I love them both. But the differences are fascinating, since it’s the same author adapting his work after almost 30 years. And how often do you get to see *that*?)

Crowley

Okay. So Book!Crowley is healthy. Just, absurdly well-adjusted. This is a man (demon) just happy with who he is and where he is in life. Sure Hell is annoying, but they mostly leave him alone, and he’s supposed to do paperwork, but… doesn’t. (They never check on the other end, it’s fine.) Aziraphale might be a little hung up on Heaven & similar, but he’s coming to his senses. Slowly. It might be another couple thousand years. But Crowley can wait. 

But Series!Crowley is *trying* so very hard. To be cool, successful, appreciated. Book!Crowley gets an award for the M25 motorway, Series!Crowley gets blank stares and stupid questions. This is someone who wants recognition, who wants love, and isn’t getting it. He’s erratic and fragile, kind of chip-on-his-shoulder, and part of this is David Tennant himself (who has never *once* played a character I would describe as “emotionally stable.”) But part of it is the way Series!Crowley is written. 

I’m thinking of the paintball scene where Aziraphale calls Crowley “nice.” Book!Crowley rolls his eyes and says, “All right, all right. Tell the whole blessed world, why don’t you?” (”Yes, Az, I know, but I’m on the clock right now and my boss is not happy.”) Series!Crowley, well. Memorably slams Aziraphale into a wall with, “SHUT IT. I’m a DEMON. I’m not NICE. I’m never NICE. NICE is a four-letter word.” @everentropy has a very nice meta about Crowley’s issues with the word nice, but no matter how you slice it, this says (loud and clear) that Series!Crowley is not comfortable with his softer side. Not even a little bit. He is “Cool Demon Crowley” because at least that’s safe.

The terrified houseplant joke also gets a different varnish in the show. In the book, it’s as if Crowley skimmed a magazine, read an article about talking to plants, read another article about the benefits of screaming into pillows, and then sort of combined them? This comes right after the joke about Crowley’s speakers (which his expensive sound system doesn’t have, because he wasn’t aware it *needed* speakers). This makes “threatening the houseplants” feel more like an “angels and demons trying to understand humanity, but subtly missing the point” sort of joke.

But on the show it’s more sinister. In Crowley’s big moments of pain and anguish, he is surrounded by those plants. With the show-specific “de-motivational” posters lining Hell, I think it’s fair to day that Crowley treats his plants this way because that’s just how he thinks motivation works. That’s how it works in Hell. 

Series!Crowley is real danger of saying “Screw it. These jokers (Hell) (Aziraphale) don’t APPRECIATE what I do. What is the point of any of this. I’m OUT.” And then, actually leaving. 

Aziraphale

Book!Aziraphale is a little mysterious. We don’t spend *that much* time inside his head, and the time we do get mostly revolves around his books. But we do learn that his taste in books is kind of… subversive. Here’s an angel who likes to collect books of prophecy (accurate and inaccurate) and bibles with printing errors. Aziraphale says he’s loyal to the Great Plan and the Word of God and all that, then turns around and attributes the entire book of Revelations to bad mushrooms. And when he’s drunk, he turns into a clever little rules lawyer. Nope, Book!Aziraphale has absolutely been Doubting Heaven, sneakily, for a long time. And he lays on the angelic Sweetness and Light a little thick for Crowley’s benefit. 

Book!Az is tough, and a little ruthless. He’ll do things like glare at customers, and scare mobsters away from his shop. Killing the Antichrist is his plan, not Crowley’s. But Series!Az is just pure sweetness, and pure light. There’s no part of him that isn’t the sugary lemon meringue frosting you get on the surface. And the show makes it very clear that that is strength. You don’t have to be tough to be strong. 

And that’s the difference. The 1990 novel was about questioning authority, questioning structures, questioning whatever role society hands you. The Antichrist just… refuses to be the Antichrist, and that saves the day. Crowley is our model: neither angel nor demon, critical of both, happy in his own world. Az is the one who needs to finish shaking off his programming. And when I was a teenager, that was exactly what I needed to hear. 

But now… Adam says that Satan cannot punish him, because Satan did not love him first. This series is about the terrible risks of loving, and the strength that comes from being honest, being vulnerable (”I’m just a kid” “That’s not a bad thing to be.”) The importance of letting yourself be known. Series!Az and Series!Crowley switch bodies at the end. How much more *known* can you get? 

But, it’s hard. It’s so hard for both of them. It’s hard for Crowley to take down all his defenses, and publicly acknowledge that he would rather die than never talk to Aziraphale again. And it’s hard for Aziraphale to stay sweet and pure and emotionally honest, and in love, because it can hurt so much. But they do it. It’s worth it. And that’s the message I needed now, Mr. Gaiman. Thank you.