#I'm gonna have lots of thoughts about them later

[radiantmists]

For @charles-rowland-week Day 3: Bag of Tricks Backpack!

I have a lot of thoughts about the backpack (I love a bag of holding) so here's one scene from what will hopefully be a whole fic someday, set at some point before Charles has quite figured the bag out.

***

"I do wish you wouldn't do that in the office," Edwin says from his seat at the desk. He's been reading the same book for more than a day now, some thick alchemy tome that's apparently fascinating enough to hold his interest despite being written using Linear B, which even Edwin finds challenging.

Charles, setting the sparkly rock he's just pulled out of his backpack next to the pair of sunglasses and ornately painted saltshaker that had preceded it, grins up at him.

"You don't want me to bring the bag on cases, now you don't want me to mess with it in the office," he says. "Where am I meant to practice, on the roof?"

"I didn't want you to bring it on cases because I worried you would put case-relevant materials in by accident and not be able to retrieve them in time," Edwin replies primly. "Now that that ship has rather dramatically sailed, I don't want you to use it here because I worry that you will retrieve certain case-relevant materials."

"I told you, I'm pretty sure it ate the demon bats," Charles says. "I mean, digested and all. We're never gonna see them again."

He's only mostly joking about that. Nothing he did should have given the bag the ability to digest magical creatures, but he's got the strong feeling that it has a sense of humor, and if it can develop one of those on it's own, a stomach isn't much of a stretch, is it?

"For all your insistence on that point, you're very willing to put your arm inside of it," Edwin says, not sounding particularly concerned. "Do you not worry that it will gain a taste for ghost, next?"

"Mate," Charles gasps theatrically, "our backpack would never."

"That abomination is entirely yours, as far as I'm concerned."

This is somewhat fair, considering that the bag probably wouldn't have the audacity to withhold Edwin's books if he'd been the one to enchant it instead of letting Charles do it. However, the comment runs counter to Charles' current strategy: sweet-talking the bag into compliance.

"Don't worry," Charles tells it in a conciliatory tone, "he loves you really."

He glances up at Edwin, expecting a comment about misguided anthropomorphizing or something, but no, he's back to the book.

With a sigh, Charles reaches into the backpack again, focusing on his boomerang. It had been pretty cool, enchanted to return right to your hands when you threw it, even after it hit something. He and Edwin had spent weeks poking at the spell to figure out how to reproduce it for Charles' bat.

But at some point after that, it had occurred to Charles to wonder what would happen if he threw it into the backpack, and, well. Here he was a year later, groping around in the void.

(Chucking random magical objects in was probably not making the backpack's behavior more predictable, but Charles never managed to think about things like that until after he'd followed through on the impulse.)

He'd realized (again, shortly after doing it) that the problem with enchanting a bag to be infinite inside was that it now contained infinite amounts of empty space. It's taken him years just to consistently find something when he reaches in. Now he just has to work out how to find what he's actually looking for.

After a few seconds of grasping blindly, his fingers brush against something. It's small, flat and thin like a piece of paper, but a little sturdier-- maybe one of the cards he'd put in as a test a few months back? He'd been pretty sure the whole deck would stay together, but maybe if something else he put in had bumped it…

As far as he can tell by touch, there's nothing else 'nearby' in the void, so he pulls the object out and finds that it's not a card but a bookmark, one of the celluloid ones that Edwin prefers. It's in the shape of a train car, with a little advert for the rail company on the back; Charles thinks he remembers Edwin saying he used to collect these, as a child.

"Think it's trying to tell you something, mate," Charles says, holding it up for Edwin to see.

"Charles, the bag doesn't have ears," Edwin says, but he does finally look away from the book. He cocks his head as he recognizes the bookmark, expression going thoughtful. "If anything, I would say this is an indication that it's responding to your desires."

"Feel like it would be a bit easier to use if it were doing that," Charles grumbles, and Edwin's mouth quirks a bit.

"I suppose I will take the hint, wherever it originates," he says, rising and coming around the desk to retrieve the bookmark. "I admit I could use a change of scenery."

"Brills," says Charles, climbing to his feet. "Wanna take the bag to the roof and see what happens if I turn it inside out?"

"Absolutely not."

[witches-dream]

The trailer is just. Gorgeous. In every way. The feeling of dizziness, infinity and confusion it gives is impeccable, i love the way everything flows together, i love the gorgeous 3d models and the horror of not really knowing what's real and what's fake. And ofc Japanese Shmilk is ohhhh my god 😳😳😳

Ok so pv doesn't appear to be going alone, he's accompanied by GingerBrave, Strawberry and Wizard who appear a bunch of times, and White Lily, who in pretty sure only appears in the beginning. But in a lot of scenes pv is alone, making me think that he's gonna get separated from the rest after some point.

With the epic releases we've had accompanying the beast and awakened ancient releases, there's been a pattern of the first epic being someone who's on the beasts side and second being someone who's on the ancients side. It's only happened twice though so both of Shmilks epics might be on his side tho. The cookie with dark hair gives me butler vibes. The one with white hair looks like the type of character who appears cute and sweet, but it's secretly fucked up, sorta like Haetae. That's all i can say about them for now

Other than that, the rest of my thoughts are pretty scattered, so let's see

1. Love the music

2. Love the chess and the taro cards and the circus and the eyes theming. Not enough mirrors tho

3. Love whatever the hell this thing is

I really really hope we get some answers about either Blueberry Yogurt Academy or Dark Moon Magic, ideally both, which is what i think this is about

4. This Cookie reminds me of Crimson Moon Acolyte but i may be tripping lol

5. If anyone still had doubts about whether we were gonna get glimpses of pre corrupt Shmilk, i think it's pretty obvious now that we are

6. If this update doesn't make pv's character any more interesting to me I'm gonna be sad (i think he's boring)

7. Again. Where the heck White Lily gone

She appears at the start a couple of times, but the very next scene after the puppeteer one, she's gone. She also doesn't appear in later instances of the rest of the gang appearing, then running up the stairs, getting sucked into the nefarious vortex and on the chess scene. I wonder if Shmilks gonna gaslight pv about that, knowing how important she is to him. Plus Blueberry Yogurt Academy connection again

8. THE STAIRS. I've been listening to Stairwell by Nick Lutsko religiously waiting for this update you don't know how happy i am to see the goddamn stairs. This song to me is from Shmilks pov, singing about pv and "she" is Lily

9. Since when is Shmilk snake-coded. I'm living for it tho

10. I just realized i think the reflection is showing a Shmilkified version of pv. New costume anybody? (Don't have too many hopes for this tho lol)

11. The title screen, again, is gorgeous, probably one of my all-time favorites

So what can we see here? Once again, like with the other beast updates, the presence of the beast is overwhelming, and the hero appears small and insignificant. We can expect this turning the other way around in the second half of the update, though i imagine it will be a bigger change than with Mystic Flour/Dark Cacao and Burning Spice/Golden Cheese. Simply because i can't see pv being in the same position as sm here tbh

We only see one of the new cookies? Where's the second one?

There's cutouts of the other ancients in the picture (and they appear elsewhere in the trailer too) which makes me think that, just like Shmilk compares pv to his past self, he's gonna do that shit about the other ancients too. Just to say like ohhh you have this potential to become evil too you know, all of you.

My theory from a while ago was that Shmilk was gonna show pv the past of the beasts, showing that they too were good and driven by a desire to help others and spread kindness, which could make pv sympathize, because he's a softie like that. Which would then either corrupt pv or make him want to try to "redeem" the beasts and want to help them, which the beasts could obviously abuse. From The devs pov, that's a good way to hype the fans and tease pre-corruption costumes, which i think are 100% coming at some point. (Btw i don't think the coty costume Mystic is gonna get will be her pre-corrupt one, simply because i think that's planned regardless. She's gonna get a different, unique one. Plus, coty costumes are legendaries I'm pretty sure, and i think pre-corrupt costumes are gonna be epics, maybe specials, but deffo not legendaries. Watch me be wrong tho). Similarly to how Dark Cacao got so miserably helpless in his story and Golden Cheese was so physically and mentally drained in hers, i think Vanilla will be in a similar state before awakening too, but he's gonna have to break out of the illusions Shmilk feeds him, so maybe like. He's gonna get very very close to corrupting as a result of Shmilks influence. I hope I'm making sense here lol

12. Last thing i think. The decor set is gonna be sick

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

A Collection of Times that Batman has Killed

Batman is a character very famous for having a hard line no killing stance - but there are a lot of times when he has absolutely killed people! I think it'd be interesting to take a look at how and why authors choose to make him kill, and especially at what Watsonian/in-universe logic is used to justify him killing. I partly think it'd just be neat, but also I have a very strong suspicion that the most common reason used is going to end up being "they weren't human" and that in turn that pattern is going to result in a pattern of Bruce himself failing to value non-human sentient people.

As such I'm gonna just informally start jotting down the context and data every time I see him go for the kill

In this post specifically I'll be laying out my assumptions and thoughts about this and do a lil short analysis of each of my first three starting points

Cosmic Odyssey #1

Watsonian Context: One of Darkseid's troops got stranded and started dragging people into the sewers for food and eating them. Batman knows without a doubt that this alien is sentient, he's seen the advanced tech he was using and the chair he make-shifted for himself. The clear justification within narrative is that this is a cannibalistic monster, a nonhuman with no redeeming qualities - which is kinda odd given that this juxtaposes with the tale of the "humans" who waged an unjust war against a bunch of aliens simply because they thought they were evolutionarily superior. Bit of a mixed message there.

Doyalist Context: Written by Jim Starlin in 1988 or at least that's what the copywright listed on my copy said. Starlin has made Batman kill at least one other time so we should keep in mind that killing simply isn't beyond the pale for this version of Bruce.

Batman (1940) #415

Jaybin shooting at the cops <3 also the way they dispatch this robot is like beat for beat the way that Bruce dispatches the Amazo robot that Jason later siccs on him and Dick Grayson, a beautiful little parallel in the use of that small shaped explosive device

Watsonian Context: This is a Manhunter posing as Jim Gordon. Batman doesn't necessarily know that these are sentient at this point, but he also doesn't know for sure that they aren't sentient either, and again, he's basing calling Fake Gordon an 'it' on the fact that he's not human, and just look at the panels dog, that's very obviously the reason we're not supposed to feel like it's a big deal that Jason and Bruce are dismantling him with a shotgun and a small bomb.

Doyalist Context: Written by Jim Starlin in 1988, again there's a point at which Starlin has Batman killing a human, so it's not beyond the pale to begin with, but also Robots are generally a shorthand way for authors to give us mooks and goons that it's okay for the Good Guys to kill indiscriminately. There's not supposed to be any moral conflict here at all, and it's basically not even treated as a killing; they straight up throw this guy's head in the literal garbage when they're done pulling out his memories. Harsh!

Batman (1940) The Funny Weed Number (issue #420)

I've already talked about this one before, so I'll keep it brief: Batman very definitely attempted to kill the KGBeast

Doyalist Context: Written by Jim Starlin in 1988. Distinct from the two non-human kills, the KGBeast's death is given a heck of a lot more weight and is clearly a much more grave and gritty decision for Batman to make. We also don't see the killing blow as it were, there's no gore or destruction on panel, he just traps him in a scenario that's liable to be deadly.

DC vs Vampires

Watsonian Context: "You can't kill them. They're already dead." Is the line that got me curious about all this in the first place, especially combined with the idea of the "no metas in Gotham" rule. It's unavoidable here; vampires are fully sentient beings with every capacity to be decent people and they simply do not count to Bruce because they are biologically different than base humans. Now one could make a good argument that the scale of the threat pushed him more towards killing outright, and that's probably at least a little true, but in the Injustice series his conviction to kill is left intact and he's up against an equivalent scale threat there.

Doyalist Context: Written by Matthew Rosenberg and James Tynion IV in 2021. Batman's refusal to kill is by this point an incredibly well embedded character trait. The genre of this comic though is specifically apocalyptic. It's got a lot in common with Marvel's zombie books or heck even DCeased - The vampires are specifically a world ending hoard, and that kind of story just doesn't mesh well with someone who refuses to kill? I dunno, I feel like that had to have been a factor in the decision making process, but at the same time, I think they could have kept Bruce's conviction not to kill just fine if they'd wanted to.

Some extra thoughts:

So, the fact that Starlin is up here so much is interesting. I have a hunch that Batman's no kill rule is in large part a direct response to The Killing Joke and A Death in the Family making it really weird that Bruce hasn't killed the Joker. If that's true then it's not exactly surprising that Starlin has such a high kill count for him; he'd have been the last writer that didn't have to deal with that question and he was prone to 'grittier' 'darker' stories to begin with. On the other hand, I might just happen to be obsessed with Jason Todd and that means reading a lot of 1980s comics *shrug*

One assumption of mine that's going strong though is that Batman simply values non-human life less than human life. Most authors do too. Most stories need disposable badguys and inhumanity is the easiest way to produce them, yet at the same time totally non-sentient enemies are often pretty lame. Gone are the days when we all just want to see a dozen buff men getting into fisticuffs with big gorillas lmao. So you get hordes of zombies, robots, vampires, demons, hive mind aliens - basically anything nonhuman is ten to twenty times more likely to end up as an "it doesn't count" kill.

Anyhow, that's it for my rambles for today

Please feel free to add on if you've got more of these! I know he killed people TONS in the very earliest comics lol and I'd be interested in hearing about when that stopped being such a thing for him if anyone knows

[unsat-and-strange]

I started malevolent (aka I found a new blorbo to chew on)

[oxventure-text-posts]

I'm gonna be honest with you guys, the urge to do the same thing I did with the oitd silhouettes, aka slap text posts onto the art with no knowledge of their canon personality other than what they did in the trailer and pulling from the fandom's perceived personality for them, for the new oxventure characters revealed in that trailer is so real

[lighthouseas]

alright friends i'm not gonna lie i wouldn't mind if the byler kiss had will leaning in first. or like. will kissing mike first on impulse during a heated moment. and then he regrets it immediately after because he thinks mike doesn't reciprocate (even though he obviously does) because mike just stands there for a second like 🧍🏻‍♂️ before swooping in to kiss will back

[sassyfever]

Now that the new mini arc is finally starting Imma make a couple predictions. Angelina is now a bizarre doll and ✨coincidentally✨at the hotel. Grelle is also there. For drama's sake you know how it goes.

[vault81]

found my notepad list of locations to get screenshots of for the travel log series!!!! I thought I lost this lol

[daz4i]

how and why is there discourse about whether or not certain queer identities exist/if people should be allowed(???) to use them. why is "people know their own identity better than you ever could, and they're the only one who get a say on what they are" such a tough concept to grasp

i think if you find yourself offended by the label someone uses (especially if they're a stranger) or think it invalidates your own, it's a good idea to look inside yourself and question why that may be. more often than not, it's a result of insecurity or uncertainty of your own identity (or many other things, but i won't make a whole list here). whatever reason it is, until you resolve it, you shouldn't take it out on people for having an identity you don't understand

many have said it before but it's worth saying over and over. infighting only helps our oppressors. conservatives don't care if you're a cis gay or a xenogender aegosexual aplatonic lesbian, they hate all of us either way. trying to fit in by going for people who are easier targets for them isn't gonna help you, it'll just alienate you from your own community, and you're never gonna please them. the momentary rush you get from hearing you're not like "one of /those/ gay people" is not worth it and is gonna do more harm in the long run, i assure you

also, it is important to me to say this, but having some less than nice kneejerk reaction caused by confusion about an identity you don't understand doesn't mean you're a bad person or anything. as long as you aren't mean to that person, and you take a second to think smth along the lines of "wait a minute, this isn't any of my business" after having said reaction, you're good 👍 a lot of reflexive reactions we have to things are ingrained into us simply by. well. living in a society 🤡 and you're not terrible for having those thoughts. it's your actions that matter, and your second thought (the "wait, why did i just think that?") is more defining of your actual character and morals than your reflex. i know that having thoughts like this, even tho they're unwanted, can very easily make one spiral, so it's important to me that whoever needs to hear this knows this doesn't make you a bad person 🙏 you're good, keep taking actions to be good, accept other people even if you don't understand them, and you're on the right track :)

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[thethingything]

debating booking a dentist appointment with a private practice that's got really good reviews that keep mentioning the dentists being really understanding and gentle with patients that have anxiety.

I'm still not sure we can even handle an appointment but at the same time it feels like our wisdom teeth are getting increasingly painful and I'm scared something's gotten infected

[sysig]

Your Weekly TV Guide

On Monday you can expect:

2:30 PM: Skeleton Zine

And Tuesday:

2:30 PM: Sonas ft. Undertale

Wednesday:

2:30 PM: Halfway Autumn

Thursday:

2:30 PM: Handplates

Friday:

2:30 PM: Sona reacts to Handplates

Saturday:

2:30 PM: Undertale (Handplates?)

Sunday:

2:30 PM: Handplates

Thanks for tuning in! (Patreon)

[non-un-topo]

Had to say goodbye to my favourite professor yesterday, who’s retiring ;_; Tears were shed, hugs were had. And she said she’d like to keep in touch with me and now I’m freaking out because I don’t know how dfgfds

[medicinemane]

I don't know, I get tired of a lot of positivity

Like yes yes, the world's wonderful and I'm so strong or whatever generic thing is being said (because it's always so generalized to the point of meaningless), but you know shit is what it is, and the only way forward is with changes I manage to make... which you're not helping with at all

And as for like... my internal mood, I'm deeply isolated, sorry if hollow platitudes don't sooth the gaping maw inside me

It is what it is, and I probably get my shit together enough to do stuff like teach out of my basement like I'd like, it's just I believe that I'll be alone in a crowd like I've always been

But positivity... I just... I kinda get sick of it. There's this guy on youtube I watch who talks about economics stuff, he's recently started doing positivity and... I just fucking know his personality enough where it's like sorry mate but I'm not interested in hearing you spout Secret light kinds off drivel

...I don't know, I suppose it boils down to this

One, I can barely fucking take in positive things said directly to me, about me. Generalizations don't help even a little... I'm a mess, I'd really like someone to toss me a life preserver instead of always tossing confetti at me while I struggle to stay afloat... doesn't help

Two, the world is a terribly imperfect place, and rather than taking a mentality of "everything will work out", I think it's important to acknowledge that sometimes good people live alone, die alone, and they never got the break they needed and slowly bled out

I think it's worth knowing that if you can't step in and help yourself, then maybe no help'll come at all

...I don't know, I suppose in the end the core of what I'm saying is a lot of positivity seems like self help tier stuff and... I get tired of that, and I see so many good people struggling and... eh... either I can at least come in and say something positive custom fit to them, or I can keep my mouth shut

Just fucking let me rot. Help or let me fester on my own, you know?

I got rid of the trailer, I maybe did something like cleaning though I can't tell... at what point will my pace on trying to make things better be good enough for people, and I'll be able to stop having people tell me to fix my life... as if I hadn't thought of that already

...everyone means well, it's just tiring

[the-acid-pear]

Yesterday I had 3 thoughts but I was like I'll remember tomorrow I won't wake up to type them now and I forgot two BUT I remembered one of them so that's huge

[mollyrealized]

How Michael Met Neil

original direct link [MP3]

(Neil, if you see this, please feel free to grab the transcript and store on your site; I had no easy way of contacting you.)

DAVID TENNANT: Tell me about @neil-gaiman then, because he's in that category [previously: “such a profound effect on my life”] as well.

MICHAEL SHEEN: So this is what has brought us together.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: To the new love story for the 21st century.

DAVID: Exactly.

MICHAEL: So when I went to drama school, there was a guy called Gary Turner in my year. And within the first few weeks, we were doing something, having a drink or whatever. And he said to me, “Do you read comic books?”

And I said, “No.”  I mean, this is … what … '88?  '88, '89.  So it was … now I know that it was a period of time that was a big change, transformation going through comic books.  Rather than it being thought of as just superheroes and Batman and Superman, there was this whole new era of a generation of writers like Grant Morrison.

DAVID: The kids who'd grown up reading comic books were now making comic books

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, and starting to address different kinds of subjects through the comic book medium. So it wasn't about just superheroes, it was all kinds of stuff going on – really fascinating stuff. And I was totally unaware of this.

And so this guy Gary said to me, "Do you read them?" And I said, "No."  And he went, "Right, okay, here's The Watchman [sic] by Alan Moore. Here's Swamp Thing. Here's Hellblazer. And here's Sandman.”

And Sandman was Neil Gaiman's big series that put his name on the map. And I read all those, and, just – I was blown away by all of them, but particularly the Sandman stories, because he was drawing on mythology, which was something I was really interested in, and fairy tales, folklore, and philosophy, and Shakespeare, and all kinds of stuff were being mixed up in this story.  And I absolutely loved it.

So I became a big fan of Neil's, and started reading everything by him. And then fairly shortly after that, within six months to a year, Good Omens the book came out, which Neil wrote with Terry Pratchett. And so I got the book – because I was obviously a big fan of Neil's by this point – read it, loved it, then started reading Terry Pratchett’s stuff as well, because I didn't know his stuff before then – and then spent years and years and years just being a huge fan of both of them.

And then eventually when – I'd done films like the Underworld films and doing Twilight films. And I think it was one of the Twilight films, there was a lot of very snooty interviews that happened where people who considered themselves well above talking about things like Twilight were having to interview me … and, weirdly, coming at it from the attitude of 'clearly this is below you as well' … weirdly thinking I'm gonna go, 'Yeah, fucking Twilight.”

And I just used to go, "You know what? Some of the greatest writing of the last 50-100 years has happened in science fiction or fantasy."  Philip K Dick is one of my favorite writers of all time. In fact, the production of Hamlet I did was mainly influenced by Philip K Dick.  Ursula K. Le Guin and Asimov, and all these amazing people. And I talked about Neil as well. And so I went off on a bit of a rant in this interview.

Anyway, the interview came out about six months later, maybe.  Knock on the door, open the door, delivery of a big box. That’s interesting. Open the box, there's a card at the top of the box. I open the card.

It says, From one fan to another, Neil Gaiman.  And inside the box are first editions of Neil's stuff, and all kinds of interesting things by Neil. And he just sent this stuff.

DAVID: You'd never met him?

MICHAEL: Never met him. He'd read the interview, or someone had let him know about this interview where I'd sung his praises and stood up for him and the people who work within that sort of genre as being like …

And he just got in touch. We met up for the first time when he came to – I was in Los Angeles at the time, and he came to LA.  And he said, "I'll take you for a meal."

I said, “All right.”

He said, "Do you want to go somewhere posh, or somewhere interesting?”

I said, "Let's go somewhere interesting."

He said, "Right, I'm going to take you to this restaurant called The Hump." And it's at Santa Monica Airport. And it's a sushi restaurant.

I was like, “Right, okay.” So I had a Mini at the time. And we get in my Mini and we drive off to Santa Monica Airport. And this restaurant was right on the tarmac, like, you could sit in the restaurant (there's nobody else there when we got there, we got there quite early) and you're watching the planes landing on Santa Monica Airport. It's extraordinary. 

And the chef comes out and Neil says, "Just bring us whatever you want. Chef's choice."

So, I'd never really eaten sushi before. So we sit there; we had this incredible meal where they keep bringing these dishes out and they say, “This is [blah, blah, blah]. Just use a little bit of soy sauce or whatever.”  You know, “This is eel.  This is [blah].”

And then there was this one dish where they brought out and they didn't say what it was. It was like “mystery dish”, we had it ... delicious. Anyway, a few more people started coming into the restaurant as time went on.

And we're sort of getting near the end, and I said, "Neil, I can't eat anymore. I'm gonna have to stop now. This is great, but I can't eat–"

"Right, okay. We'll ask for the bill in a minute."

And then the door opens and some very official people come in. And it was the Feds. And the Feds came in, and we knew they were because they had jackets on that said they were part of the Federal Bureau of Whatever. And about six of them come in. Two of them go … one goes behind the counter, two go into the kitchen, one goes to the back. They've all got like guns on and stuff.

And me and Neil are like, "What on Earth is going on?"

And then eventually one guy goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't ordered already, please leave. If you're still eating your meal, please finish up, pay your bill, leave."*

[* - delivered in a perfect American ‘serious law agent’ accent/impression]

And we were like, "Oh my God, are we poisoned? Is there some terrible thing that's happened?"  

We'd finished, so we pay our bill.  And then all the kitchen staff are brought out. And the head chef is there. The guy who's been bringing us this food. And he's in tears. And he says to Neil, "I'm so sorry." He apologizes to Neil.  And we leave. We have no idea what happened.

DAVID: But you're assuming it's the mystery dish.

MICHAEL: Well, we're assuming that we can't be going to – we can't be –  it can't be poisonous. You know what I mean? It can't be that there's terrible, terrible things.

So the next day was the Oscars, which is why Neil was in town. Because Coraline had been nominated for an Oscar. Best documentary that year was won by The Cove, which was by a team of people who had come across dolphins being killed, I think.

Turns out, what was happening at this restaurant was that they were having illegal endangered species flown in to the airport, and then being brought around the back of the restaurant into the kitchen.

We had eaten whale – endangered species whale. That was the mystery dish that they didn't say what it was.

And the team behind The Cove were behind this sting, and they took them down that night whilst we were there.

DAVID: That’s extraordinary.

MICHAEL: And we didn't find this out for months.  So for months, me and Neil were like, "Have you worked anything out yet? Have you heard anything?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

And then we heard that it was something to do with The Cove, and then we eventually found out that that restaurant, they were all arrested. The restaurant was shut down. And it was because of that. And we'd eaten whale that night.

DAVID: And that was your first meeting with Neil Gaiman.

MICHAEL: That was my first meeting. And also in the drive home that night from that restaurant, he said, and we were in my Mini, he said, "Have you found the secret compartment?"

I said, "What are you talking about?" It's such a Neil Gaiman thing to say.

DAVID: Isn't it?

MICHAEL: The secret compartment? Yeah. Each Mini has got a secret compartment. I said, "I had no idea." It's secret. And he pressed a little button and a thing opened up. And it was a secret compartment in my own car that Neil Gaiman showed me.

DAVID: Was there anything inside it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, there was a little man. And he jumped out and went, "Hello!" No, there was nothing in there. There was afterwards because I started putting...

DAVID: Sure. That's a very Neil Gaiman story. All of that is such a Neil Gaiman story.

MICHAEL: That's how it began. Yeah.

DAVID: And then he came to offer you the part in Good Omens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, we became friends and we would whenever he was in town, we would meet up and yeah, and then eventually he started, he said, "You know, I'm working on an adaptation of Good Omens." And I can remember at one point Terry Gilliam was going to maybe make a film of it. And I remember being there with Neil and Terry when they were talking about it. And...

DAVID: Were you involved at that point?

MICHAEL: No, no, I wasn't involved. I just happened to have met up with Neil that day.

DAVID: Right.

MICHAEL: And then Terry Gilliam came along and they were chatting, that was the day they were talking about that or whatever.

And then eventually he sent me one of the scripts for an early draft of like the first episode of Good Omens. And he said – and we started talking about me being involved in it, doing it – he said, “Would you be interested?” I was like, "Yeah, of course."  I went, "Oh my God." And he said, "Well, I'll send you the scripts when they come," and I would read them, and we'd talk about them a little bit. And so I was involved.

But it was always at that point with the idea, because he'd always said about playing Crowley in it. And so, as time went on, as I was reading the scripts, I was thinking, "I don't think I can play Crowley. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." And I started to get a bit nervous because I thought, “I don't want to tell Neil that I don't think I can do this.”  But I just felt like I don't think I can play Crowley.

DAVID: Of course you can [play Crowley?].

MICHAEL: Well, I just on a sort of, on a gut level, sometimes you have it on a gut level.

DAVID: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL: I can do this.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Or I can't do this. And I just thought, “You know what, this is not the part for me. The other part is better for me, I think. I think I can do that, I don't think I could do that.”

But I was scared to tell Neil because I thought, "Well, he wants me to play Crowley" – and then it turned out he had been feeling the same way as well.  And he hadn't wanted to mention it to me, but he was like, "I think Michael should really play Aziraphale."

And neither of us would bring it up.  And then eventually we did. And it was one of those things where you go, "Oh, thank God you said that. I feel exactly the same way." And then I think within a fairly short space of time, he said, “I think we've got … David Tennant … for Crowley.” And we both got very excited about that.

And then all these extraordinary people started to join in. And then, and then off we went.

DAVID: That's the other thing about Neil, he collects people, doesn't he? So he'll just go, “Oh, yeah, I've phoned up Frances McDormand, she's up for it.” Yeah. You're, what?

MICHAEL: “I emailed Jon Hamm.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And yeah, and you realize how beloved he is and how beloved his work is. And I think we would both recognise that Good Omens is one of the most beloved of all of Neil's stuff.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: And had never been turned into anything.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so the kind of responsibility of that, I mean, for me, for someone who has been a fan of him and a fan of the book for so long, I can empathize with all the fans out there who are like, “Oh, they better not fuck this up.”

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: ��And this had better be good.” And I have that part of me. But then, of course, the other part of me is like, “But I'm the one who might be fucking it up.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I feel that responsibility as well.

DAVID: But we have Neil on site.

MICHAEL: Yes. Well, Neil being the showrunner …

DAVID: Yeah. I think it takes the curse off.

MICHAEL: … I think it made a massive difference, didn't it? Yeah. You feel like you're in safe hands.

DAVID: Well, we think. Not that the world has seen it yet.

MICHAEL (grimly): No, I know.

DAVID: But it was a -- it's been a -- it's been a joy to work with you on it. I can't wait for the world to see it.

MICHAEL: Oh my God.  Oh, well, I mean, it's the only, I've done a few things where there are two people, it's a bit of a double act, like Frost-Nixon and The Queen, I suppose, in some ways. But, and I've done it, Amadeus or whatever.

This is the only thing I've done where I really don't think of it as “my character” or “my performance as that character”.  I think of it totally as us.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: The two of us.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like they, what I do is defined by what you do.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that was such a joy to have that experience. And it made it so much easier in a way as well, I found, because you don't feel like you're on your own in it. Like it's totally us together doing this and the two characters totally complement each other. And the experience of doing it was just a real joy.

DAVID: Yeah.  Well, I hope the world is as excited to see it as we are to talk about it, frankly.

MICHAEL: You know, there's, having talked about T.S. Eliot earlier, there's another bit from The Wasteland where there's a line which goes, These fragments I have shored against my ruin.

And this is how I think about life now. There is so much in life, no matter what your circumstances, no matter what, where you've got, what you've done, how much money you got, all that. Life's hard.  I mean, you can, it can take you down at any point.

You have to find this stuff. You have to like find things that will, these fragments that you hold to yourself, they become like a liferaft, and especially as time goes on, I think, as I've got older, I've realized it is a thin line between surviving this life and going under.

And the things that keep you afloat are these fragments, these things that are meaningful to you and what's meaningful to you will be not-meaningful to someone else, you know. But whatever it is that matters to you, it doesn't matter what it was you were into when you were a teenager, a kid, it doesn't matter what it is. Go and find them, and find some way to hold them close to you. 

Make it, go and get it. Because those are the things that keep you afloat. They really are. Like doing that with him or whatever it is, these are the fragments that have shored against my ruin. Absolutely.

DAVID: That's lovely. Michael, thank you so much.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

DAVID: For talking today and for being here.

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.