What Are Your Favourite P&p Fics Set In The Regency Era? X

Some countries have trained builders in the informal sector in safe building techniques.

domestication syndrome is one of the coolest findings from recent genetics

when i watched good omens, i didn’t expect to love tv crowley, and it fuckin blindsided me. all at once, i thought, oh gosh, damn, and fuck, roughly in that order, and here’s why.

where tv crowley and book crowley most significantly diverge is the bookshop fire. in the book, “Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.” in the tv show, instead of cursing him, he calls out for him desperately before falling to the floor with a quiet “you’ve gone.” for book crowley, az is “Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.” for tv crowley, aziraphale is his “best friend.” naturally, in the bookshop fire, tv crowley is in fucking agony. this is not how book crowley reacts.

see, one of book crowley’s most basic traits is his optimism. “Because, underneath it all,” the book says, “Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times—he thought briefly of the fourteenth century—then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.”

it’s a really beautiful passage. and i can’t relate to it at all. 

after the fire, book crowley thinks he might “get completely and utterly pissed out of his mind while he waited for the world to end.” where book crowley only considers it, tv crowley actually does it. he does go to wait out the end of the world while drunk, and does give up, and he does break down, and he is not an optimist; he is a mess. that struck me. i’ve never seen a heroic character so blatantly need help before. but crowley gets help; he finds a friend and confesses how much aziraphale means to him; he gets back in the car and forges onward through the fire, even though he’s clearly Not Okay.

and there, on the flaming m25, book crowley and tv crowley diverge again. tv crowley is not an optimist; he’s not holding the bentley together with the hope that it’ll all work out. but he does it anyway. tv crowley doesn’t have optimism, but he has something that is, to me, even more important. in the show, “Crowley has something no other demons have, especially not Hastur: an imagination.”

an imagination. strangely enough, in the book, crowley admits to lacking it: “They’ve got what we lack. They’ve got imagination,” book crowley says. but tv crowley has that imagination, and that is what saves him–and that, to me, makes so much sense.

tv crowley is traumatised. when he fell, some part of him broke, and while he claims he “sauntered vaguely downwards,” he really took a “million-light-year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulphur,” and it hurt. tv crowley is hurt. and so am i. 

i also give up. i also break down. i don’t, and can’t, ever believe that the universe is looking out for me–or for anyone. i am not an optimist. but you know what? i have imagination. i have friends. and if it came down to me to help save the world, that is exactly what i would rely on.

José Olivarez, “Let’s Get Married”

Ding!

Archangels Gabriel and Michael sat glowering at the nearby hovering screen. It was emitting chimes practically nonstop.

13:24:45: [Aziraphale] Moved one (1) plastic cup to trash bin. 13:24:47: [Aziraphale] Moved one (1) cigarette butt to trash bin. 13:24:48: [Aziraphale] Moved one (1) plastic straw to trash bin. 13:24:49: [Aziraphale] Moved one (1) styrofoam container to trash bin. 13:24:52: [Aziraphale] Moved one (1) left sock to trash bin.

“Why doesn’t he just miracle all of them in at once?” Michael asked in frustration.

“You damn well know why,” Gabriel muttered. Ever since that horrifying day that Aziraphale stood in a column of demonfire and then belched out a gout of it at them, it seemed that he was going out of his way to just piss off the management with incessant spam.

Gabriel sighed in relief when he saw that the onslaught of messages stopped for a bit. “Anyway. I was thinking that if we do want to arrange for the Big One™, we might want to–”

Ding!

13:25:49: [Aziraphale] Removed one (1) Swastika graffiti.

Michael glanced at the screen. Then she shrugged and shared a nod with Gabriel. “Fair.”

“… we might want to have you get a few more ‘contacts’ in low places, if you know what I mean,” Gabriel continued.

Michael took a breath to respond.

Ding!

13:25:58: [Aziraphale] Applied one (1) graffiti reading ‘Gabriel <3 Beelzebub.’

Michael stared at Gabriel, her eyebrows twitching up questioningly.

Gabriel shifted uncomfortably in his chair, “… well, now he’s just being petty. Come on, Aziraphale.”

Michael decided to ignore it and move on, “I may be able to make some arrangements. Even if the holy water didn’t work out as planned, the exchange was still marked as satisfactory…”

Ding!

13:26:15: [Aziraphale] Applied one (1) graffiti reading ‘Gabriel = Gross Matter.’

The two archangels scowled at the readout. “Something needs to be done about him,” Michael said.

Gabriel raised his eyebrows in a doubtful look. “Soooo… you saying you wanna be the one to confront him about it?”

Michael sat quietly for a moment, glancing aside nervously as she recalled the image of Aziraphale’s gleeful, hellfire-engulfed features.

“… on second thought, we have better things to do,” she murmured.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! …

13:26:49: [Aziraphale] Created one (1) grain of rice. 13:26:50: [Aziraphale] Created one (1) grain of rice. 13:26:51: [Aziraphale] Created one (1) grain of rice. 13:26:52: [Aziraphale] Created one (1) grain of rice. 13:26:53: [Aziraphale] Created one (1) grain of rice. 13:26:54: [Aziraphale] Created one (1) grain of rice. …

Matilda (1996), dir. Danny DeVito

it occurs to me that many fans have never experienced the illuminated-capital illustrations in early Good Omens books.

@kaanhakisakhi, India :)

Agnijyotsna–Daughter of Fire [xxx]. 

Dear Mahabharat Fandom (and anyone else who may be interested in this post), I am conducting a survey on the worldwide influence of Mahabharat. If you have ever been impacted by anything or anyone related to the epic (books, shows, stories, Draupadi, etc.), please like/reblog this post. If you choose to reblog, do consider attaching your url and the country in which you reside to it. 

For example:  GhadiaKanya, USA.

I will dearly appreciate any and all help. Loads of love! -Surbhi

David Tennant reads the bookshop scene from Good Omens during Playing in the Dark: Neil Gaiman and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Posting here to memorialise this even after the BBC takes it down from their website. Originally performed 12th Nov 2019 at the Barbican, London. 

…his Aziraphale voice is so delicate oh my word, I’m ready to offer my life savings and possibly a kidney in exchange for a full-length audiobook