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Maybe strange women lying in ponds *should* start distributing swords again. 🗡️

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Petition to bring back the boop function next year for the ides of March where instead of a paw on the screen it’s a little knife that Caesar gets stabbed with

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In case you need it for your D&D games or siege actions— here's what the ballistic trajectory of a flaming pumpkin fired out of a trebuchet looks like.

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america electing a fascist and the german government collapsing all in the same day

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It is insane to me that timestamps are optional on this webbed site. A major context clue is just opt in so I’ll reblog something from four years ago and people think it’s happening right just now like babe. Enable your timestamps. Why are you stumbling through the world with one eye closed?

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“We are here, and this is now.” Constable Visit, a strict believer in the Omnian religion, occasionally quoted that from their holy book. Vimes understood it to mean, in less exalted copper speak, that you have to do the job that is in front of you.

--Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

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Posting a good omens bracelet every day until the finale starts filming, day 319: Big Spooky Fan, Me

Happy Halloween! 🎃

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Survival During Turmoil

This semester I've been teaching an Ancient Civilizations class for college freshmen—that's how it's listen in the course catalog: Ancient Civilization. But that's not how I've personally been referring to the class.

I've been calling it Ancestral Civilizations and stressing at every turn that, while these civilizations no longer exist, they are not entirely gone. To call them dead or extinct or lost negates the fact that through every time of turmoil and collapse, people have lived.

People lived through the Bronze Age Collapse or the fall of the Mayan Empire or the dissolution of a Chinese dynasty. They got up in the morning and combed their hair and tended their crops and nurtured their children. They were uncertain then just as we are now, and nevertheless, they persisted. So will we.

The archaeological record is full of evidence of that day to day persistence, just like it will be full of ours. Everything you do is important—every moment of joy you snatch or quotidian defiance matters. Your life and your history matters.

Talk to your friends and loved ones. Make something. Come up with plans for the future. Keep living during tumultuous times. Persist.

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does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

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Covid, David Tennant, the Performing Arts and the Fan World – A Long Post

Okay, while we try to wrap our heads around the US election – I live just outside DC, this is going to affect everything about my life on all levels, I can’t even start – I’d like to address the slow-moving crisis we already have.

Lots of Good Omens fans here, right? Lots of people who love, love David Tennant and everything he does. Accounts that follow his furniture-abusing habits, his bromance with Michael Sheen, every role he plays, every fan event appearance and glossy photoset. So a lot of you probably know that David was absent for four nights of the West End production of Macbeth. People who’d traveled to attend were shattered. Random get-well wishes popped up here and on Xitter. His co-star, Cush Jumbo, had still not returned as of 11/7 and in total, a half dozen roles were assumed by understudies. “Illness within the company” was the most specific thing the theatre referenced.

We’re not stupid here, are we? It’s Covid -- the thing we know is circulating worldwide, is now ramping up in the UK in a particularly brutal variant called XEC, and is both contagious enough to run right through a theatre company and injurious enough to put this many people out for days.

Protect The Heart Of The Arts, a grassroots organization focused on the threat Covid poses to performers and workers in the arts, has lobbied for mitigations in this production alone for over a year, beginning when the play was being staged in the tiny ~250 seat Donmar Warehouse. They offered HEPA air cleaners, leafleted outside the theatre and handed out masks. They have done the same with the current production. So far as I know, the response has been crickets – even though the list of performers of all sorts who have died from Covid, been permanently disabled, or had to cancel performances is staggering. And because exertion soon after infection increases the risk of Long Covid -- as does repeat infection -- David and the rest of the company are playing with fire so that the show can go on.

It has often been said that insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Are you okay with the performers you love risking their lives, or being sickened into disability, through repeat exposure to a vascular pathogen that damages every part of the body and can permanently affect even the young and healthy , even those who are fully vaccinated? When you attend a performance or a fan event, do you mask up? Do you check ahead to learn if mitigations like air filtration are in place?

If you are involved in organizing fandom events:

Do you require masking, provide masks, or at a bare minimum arrange for mask-only sessions within the event?

Do you assess CO2 levels (an index for how much exhaled, potentially virus-laden air is circulating)? Some buildings with large event rooms use “demand control ventilation” that amps up air exchange when CO2 reaches unacceptable levels; ask.

HEPA filters or a homemade Corsi-Rosenthal box can make even your small fan get-together safer. My CR boxes, made with MERV 13 filters and box fans, have cost me about $80 apiece, and the 10��� size made with this incredibly quiet fan can go anywhere.

Public health and governments have failed us at every turn, downplaying the seriousness of the situation and choosing not to push out the information we should be getting. But study after study has shown the damage Covid does, to bodies, minds, lives – and ultimately all of us, as those who do the work of the world or bring joy into it are forced out of their careers.

Be a responsible fan. Don’t just post get-well wishes:

Get comfortable with wearing a mask in public spaces and outdoor crowds.

Be the change you wish to see – normalize masking at live performances, movie theatres and fan events.

Ask for mitigations at events where your favorite performers and creatives appear - don’t love them to death. (As time goes on, I see more and more fandom creators complain of "being sick AGAIN" or "fighting a bug," often after attending cons -- covid weakens the immune system.)

Look into additional personal mitigations like nose sprays and personal filters, since the first step to not spreading infections is not getting infections. (Here[US] and here [UK] are links to the brand of personal HEPA/UV air sterilizer I use, which is about the size of a soda can and can sit on a display table, forex.)

Recognize the extra risk faced by disabled and chronically ill fellow fans; be inclusive.

Circulate the Heart of the Arts message, follow online and support their work if you can.

Speak up whenever and wherever you can to advocate for the basic protections -- here are some facts about masks, air filtration, and far-UV (which is already quietly being placed where the powerful and rich assemble). Push for their use, not just in theatres etc. but in places people cannot avoid like schools and healthcare settings. 2019 is not coming back. We need to deal with it.

Mask up

Clean the air

Ask for safe venues

Self-educate

I'm tagging my usual list because I think this is so important and so little discussed in fan spaces; don't worry, you're not going to get a weekly stump speech. Just let’s care for the performers we love, and for one another.

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I feel like at some point somebody should do an adaptation of Hamlet involving a zombie outbreak as a major part of the plot, if only because "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" as the tagline is too good an opportunity to pass up.

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Anyone else wondering if Michael, abandoning Twitter and joining Bluesky, might also have found his way to this dark and deranged corner of the internet?

*peers out into the gloom*

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Michael Sheen is on BlueSky!!!!!

I'm in the process of setting up a BlueSky account, and will be trying to minimize my usage of Twitter going forward. I'm not deleting my Twitter, because when you delete your Twitter account, apparently your user name (handle) will become available for anyone to use in only 2 weeks or so, so I'm going to keep the account, and just not use it very much. I am gypsi-kat on BlueSky, if you want to follow me there. I intend to stay on Tumblr as well, as it has turned out to be my favorite social media site. Anyway...

While I was bopping back and forth between Twitter and BlueSky, I saw a post made by Michael Sheen on Twitter (8 hours ago, but oh well) that has a new BlueSky address for him. Here's a screenshot:

If you wish to repost Michael's post without my note attached to the top of it, here is a direct link to his post on Twitter:

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Hi! So, I've only ever written short 1—3k one-shots and it's part if my new year's resolution to finally write a longfic. I already have an idea of what I want to write, a complete rewrite of one of my favorite shows' horrible seasons, but I have no idea hoe to outline a big story or what to do! Please help a gal out?

Fan-Fiction: Embarking on a Longfic

Start with a brainstorm... if you haven't already, sit down and do a big ol' brain dump about what happened in the horrible season and what you'd do differently. List every single thing you would change and how you would change it. Think about how each change will ripple through the story and affect other things.

Make some decisions... re-writing a bad season can mean everything from sticking with the original season arc but making changes here and there, or creating a whole new story arc. You might even decide to cover some episodes but not others. Look back at your brain dump and figure out what you're going to do the same and what you're going to do different.

Create an outline... there are all different ways to outline, but one of the simplest ways is a beginning to end summary. For a TV show, you can think of each episode you want to keep (or the event in the episode) as a chapter, then summarize each "chapter" to create an exhaustive beginning to end summary. You may need to do a little planning and plotting as you go to fit things together if you stray from canon a bit. If you create a whole new season arc with all new events, you will need to do some old-fashioned plotting.

Additional plotting... once you have your beginning to end summary, you might want to flesh things out further by making a timeline combined with a scene list. This can help you layout when things need to happen, and then you can do a short summary of what needs to happen in each individual scene.

You can head over to my Plot & Story Structure master post for more help with plotting and outlining. Happy writing!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

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Trickery Post #0 - Introduction

Hello world.

I'm Cathy.

This series of posts I'm going to do was originally planned as a YouTube series, but for various reasons, that idea has not worked out.

I watched Good Omens season 1 and season 2 roughly in late October 2023. While I left the season 2 ending unsatisfied, I still managed to become quite obsessed with David Tennant as Crowley.

I love his portrayal of Crowley so much.

And, through this obsession, I found these very interesting-to-me and very silly puzzle games that exist in Good Omens 2. These games give me a way to keep the obsession going and busy.

This series is going to be about me playing those games, especially the earlier stages.

So, here are a few things I think you might want to consider before you decide if it's worth the trouble of reading these posts.

There are multiple reasons I'm doing this series but a really big one is the situation with season 3. Due to the allegations against Neil Gaiman, season 3 was changed from planned as a six-episode series into a 90-minute movie. I was very upset to learn that news myself because I was really looking forward to season 3 as 6 episodes.

Now a part of me is thinking that's why I should let go of this idea. The games can be null and void. They can be cancelled in this process. They can be retconned out of existence since they are hidden games to begin with. They can be undone. Another part of me is, "Actually, that's all the more reason to do it."

That is to say, the games could very easily be lost and left without being found beyond what work I've already put into them and posted already here on Tumblr.

So, that's something, right? I can just leave those Tumblr posts intact, and the work is there, even if season 3 leaves whatever was originally intended for the games behind. They're already here.

That's all true.

But...in the process of how I've found it is best for me to do things on Tumblr, something ends up lost in the progression of my play. I have found it best to just post some thoughts and ideas, think on them, and then a lot of times, go back and edit those posts to something I hope is more coherent and presentable for my overall point. By doing that, the actual sense of play is lost in translation because the mistakes and realizations as they happen are not left intact.

So, this series is a way for me to commemorate that play because it meant a lot to me as it happened.

I want to store these memories sooner, rather than later, before time helps them slip away from me that much more quickly. I think YouTube would have been more suited to do such a thing, but the work involved is more than I can give at this time in my life.

I am not making season 3 predictions. Conclusions I made are now all the more available to be ignored in season 3 for the sake of simplifying the story or just making it new and different from what it was going to be anyway.

All of that is to say that, I'm making this series for me, even if I'm inviting you into see what it meant to me in these posts.

So, if you don't like the series or feel like it has nothing of any value to you, please move onto other things as soon as you realize that's how you feel about the posts.

Even though this series is focused on my own personal experience, I will be talking frequently in the second person or as "we" and "us" because I like describing the play as a shared experience. It's more fun for me that way.

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We are going to be playing a long game. These puzzles took months to find and solve.

Don't expect to get things right away. If that happens, great. If it doesn't, please keep in mind that many solutions I found took time to sink in as I found them.

Alright, so I'm going to talk about me because even I forget that I had these parts of my life leading into how I am able to play the games the way that I do. Based on general observation, no one else seems able to play quite like I do because I have a knack for finding certain important names, phrases, and ideas.

I am not someone who has ever worked on a movie or TV show or any entertainment field really as a professional. It's something I used to want to do, especially as an actress. I took drama in high school. I wasn't very good, but my teacher saw potential in me, so I was still invited to go from Drama 1 to Drama 4, instead of Drama 2 after my first year in the class. In my senior year, I was assistant director for a student-directed play at my high school. I was also in charge of lighting. In addition to that, I was assistant to my drama teacher for his first two periods. My acting did improve finally by my senior year, and my teacher said as much. I had a Technical Theater class as well.

I took honors English in high school.

I declined a theater scholarship to USC when I realized I was too scared to move from home.

I ended up not pursuing a career in the entertainment industry at all.

Instead, I ended up in Information Systems as a major while remaining in my hometown. I won't give my actual title, but it might be easiest to understand that I'm a programmer and a bit of a low-rank programmer at that. So far as my IT experience goes, no one has ever worked under me, and I don't mind that in the least. Even so, I have nearly 20 years of experience in what amounts to problem-solving.

When I'm not working at my job, I've had hobbies that go along the lines of playing video games, watching anime, writing fanfiction, and reading books. I don't watch movies nearly as much as I used to and the same goes for TV though my obsession before this one with David Tennant as Crowley was for Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

I've also worked on audiobook readings of fanfic, both some of one I wrote and some of my favorite overall series, Austraeoh, by Imploding Colon aka shortskirtsandexplosions.

All of these traits inadvertently amount to someone who can put together some pieces of a puzzle to recognize a game, ask some of the right questions, and then actually find some of the right answers.

Now another thing about me is that I go through obsession phases. I used to be really obsessed with Devil Jin from Tekken. He used to be my favorite fictional character for many years. That changed in 2018 when Rainbow Dash suddenly became my new favorite.

Crowley's a bit of an odd situation because my favoritism for him strongly stems from the actor, David Tennant. It's not just Crowley, and it's not just David Tennant. It's the combination of these two that I love so deeply. David Tennant is perfect for Crowley.

Plus, these games help keep the obsession going.

So, a few things about my approach to the storyline and the characters.

In October 2018, I saw a promotional image for Good Omens that featured David Tennant with black-feathered wings. You do that, and you have my attention.

I decided to read the book. I had mixed feelings about Neil Gaiman's writing but had heard nothing but good things about Terry Pratchett's work.

I left the book with mixed feelings too. Some of it was funny. Some of it was really racist and took homophobia rather lightly, I thought. I was a bit bored with the kids (The Them) and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I thought Crowley and Aziraphale were a lot more interesting than everyone else. I was already fond of the idea of David Tennant playing Crowley, and thought oh yes, he will be perfect for this character.

I wasn't sure if I would watch the show because it might be too gross for my liking.

Five years passed, generally.

In October 2023, I finally decided to watch the first season of Good Omens. I was satisfied.

After that, I hesitated on watching the second season since I was at least aware the story was incomplete.

I read up on spoilers and decided to give it a go.

The ending didn't really sit right with me. I was annoyed and confused.

But, annoyed and confused as I was, I could not get enough of David Tennant as Crowley. So, I went to Tumblr to get some pictures and could at least read about what other people thought.

Here are my own thoughts on the types of fan interpretations I like of Crowley as a character.

I highly prefer to think of Crowley as clever, creative, resourceful, and imaginative. I do not think using the term "idiot" is cute or funny. I have no affection for it myself. I accept that it's part of the show and that Crowley uses it the way he does, but I don't like it. Over the years, I've read that "idiot" is an ableist slur. While I've tried to get better about my avoiding use of the term, I haven't quite reached a point where I find it my business to tell other people they shouldn't. Sometimes, in context, I get it. Even if the word weren't considered ableist, I generally don't like to affectionately insult characters I like anyway.

For me, these games show that Crowley is a more active and strategic participant in his own story than an initial viewing of season 2 might lead one to believe.

I don't really like Aziraphale much in general, so I'm perfectly good with reading posts that are more critical of him as a character. I don't seek them out, and I actually don't see them much to begin with.

My bias is rather obvious and plain so that I don't like to read those posts on Crowley. I don't say, even on my blog, that people shouldn't. I just don't want to read them. It's really not hard to criticize Crowley. I'm happy to rise to the challenge these games bring in seeing something more to him instead.

Even though I don't like Aziraphale, I appreciate the pairing itself. I also think it's important that the characters have some difference, some separation from each other as people, and I do think season 2 provides that.

If you want spoilers on the games, you'll find them all over my blog. A good central place to find them is my Good Omens 2 Compendium post. And if you don't want those spoilers on the games, they're hard to avoid, but we will be moving forward through this series of posts while trying to minimize or avoid them all the same. As noted earlier, that's to help show the journey itself, to get a sense of the play that's been lost from me just shoving so many answers up front in my collection of GO2 meta posts.

The series is planned to be 10 posts long (0-9).

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We're going to be using our imaginations and playing with words to progress through the puzzles. (For reference: Trickery)

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Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water

it will not Fix You but like. maybe. maybe.