#but the idea’s good in theory

[4ranghaes]

myung jaehyun x reader [fluff, fem!reader]

a/n - this is also kind of inspired of the phone call with myungjae’s mum in the new what?door! ep where she calls him ‘my adorable puppy’🥺🥺

10:47 - “oh i’m so nervous!”

jaehyun chuckled, cupping your face with a coo, “don’t worry, my girl, they’re gonna love you. just relax. they’re just extensions of me, really!”

you nodded, taking a deep breath as jaehyun pushed open the door to his childhood home.

“mum, dad! i’m home!”

“my adorable puppy!” jaehyun’s mum cooed, rushing from the kitchen and placing her hands on either side of her son’s face. you giggled with a loving stare, recognising the exact action from jaehyun done to you many times. “oh! and y/n, it’s so good to finally meet you!”

she rushes to you, pulling you into a hug. you smiled, hugging her back, though you’re sure not as tightly as she was hugging you.

“mum, let her go, you’ll suffocate her,” jaehyun’s older brother spoke with a laugh.

“hyung!” jaehyun exclaimed, leaping into his big brother’s arms.

“wow, good thing mum cooked, you don’t weigh anything at all!” he exclaimed, carrying your boyfriend through into the house. their mum rolled her eyes, linking arms with you.

“why don’t you go through okay? i’ll bring the food out in a minute. i made seaweed soup especially,” she said with a friendly smile, rubbing your back.

“do you need help with anything? i feel bad just sitting around!”

she shook her head quickly, “no, no! just sit. you’re the guest of honour.”

“guest of honour? it’s my birthday!” myungjae pouted.

you smiled, sitting next to him on the couch where his brother had dropped him, ruffling his hair a little, “don’t be so pouty. you told me they’d love me, anyway, hmm?”

his brother laughed, studying jaehyun’s face as he looked at you.

“where’s my puppy?!”

“dad!” jaehyun laughed suddenly at the voice coming down the stairs, running to hug his dad. his brother came and sat next to you meanwhile.

“nice to finally meet you,” he smiled, as you nodded exchanging the same sentiments, “jaehyunnie…” the two of you watched the boy in question, jumping repeatedly off his dad’s back as they walked to the kitchen to bother his mum together. his brother looked at you and smiled, “he seems happy.”

you nodded, watching after him, “things are going well at the moment, definitely. and he was crying with happiness when he found out he got this time to come and see you guys.”

he shook his head, “no, not that, he—”

“ya! get your hands off my girlfriend!” jaehyun yelled, a teasing smile on his face as you turned to look at him. he flopped down, cuddling against his brother. “how was that? i was scary, right?”

his brother rolled his eyes and nodded, ever one to play along with his little brother’s antics. “of course, hyun, you’re the scariest.”

“okay! food’s ready,” his mum announced, beginning to carry through dishes, you and jaehyun rushing to help as the guests. “stop it, you two! quickly, eat!”

jaehyun laughed at his mum, putting the dishes down on the table and quickly taking a seat, dragging you to sit beside him, “thank you, mum!”

“yeah, thank you, mrs. myung,” you smiled, watching as she sat down. she shook her head, both of you turning to jaehyun and watching as he started eating.

he moaned at the first mouthful, turning to you with a disbelieving look.

“it’s been so long…” he hummed, “here, eat this, y/n. it’s mum’s best dish.”

you nodded with intrigue, helping yourself to the banchan he spoke about, making a noise of surprise as you ate. “that’s so good!”

“right?” he smiled, giving a thumbs up to his mum. she just smiled proudly.

“here, myungjae, have some meat,” you said, placing some of the freshly cooked meat onto his plate.

“ohh, thank you,” he spoke in english for added flair. you laughed as he turned to look at you, giving you a wink.

jaehyun’s dad nudged his mum, pointing to the gifted meat with a knowing smile. she just nodded, leaning in to whisper, “we don’t have to worry, i think.”

he nodded in response, smiling at you.

“oh! i forgot the main event!” she exclaimed suddenly, the family watching as she dashed to the kitchen.

jaehyun looked at you in confusion as you just shrugged, before watching as she carried a beautifully decorated cake out of the kitchen, lit with various candles.

“for our beautiful puppy, our youngest son, who finally made it home for his birthday,” she smiled, bringing the cake in front of jaehyun. he smiled between everyone at the table, but you could see from the seat next to him as tears rose to his eyes.

“blow them out before you start crying,” you said, a comforting hand playing with the hair on the back of his head. he nodded, blowing the candles out in one go before standing up to hug his mum.

“thank you,” he whispered.

“don’t thank me! your girlfriend’s the one who bought it!” she smiled, giving her youngest son a kiss before he turned to look at you tearily.

“ya! stop crying!” you laughed, standing up and pulling him into a hug, stroking the hair on the back of his neck, “you happy?” he nodded, sniffling into your shoulder. “happy birthday, baby.”

[chloesimaginationthings]

The true meaning behind FNAF princess quest

[5ummit]

SAURON, LORD OF THE WEREWOLVES

[canisalbus]

Building on the favourite animal ask, another Very Important Question: favourite PREHISTORIC animal? And why? (I've always loved gorgonopsids and pterosaurs like anurognathus, but a new favourite is aquilolamma the eagle shark. They're just very cute).

I feel like my top favorites are pretty pedestrian, but I like prehistoric deer a lot!

Megaloceros giganteus aka Irish elk

Sinomegaceros ordosianus & Sinomegaceros yabei

Eucladoceros dicranios

Cervalces scotti

[cybernaght]

The fandom echo chamber: fanon, microanalysis and conspiracy brain 

As someone who has been in fandom spaces, on and off, for 20 years, I find some fascinating trends popping up in the last decade that I thought to be fandom-specific but clearly aren’t. So, I would like to do a little examination of where those things come from, how they are engaged with, and what it says about the way we consume media. This is a think piece, of sorts, with my brain being the main source. As such, we will spend some time down the memory lane of a fandom-focused millennial.

This is largely brought about by Good Omens. But it’s also not really about Good Omens at all.

Part one. Fanon.

The way we see characters in any story is always skewed by our very selves. This is a neutral statement, and it does not have a value judgement. It’s simply unavoidable. We recognise aspects of them, love aspects of them, and choose aspects of them to highlight based entirely on our own vision of the universe. 

Recognition comes into this. There is a reason so many protagonists of romance novels have a “blank slate” problem. Even when they do not, we love characters who are like us or versions of us that we would like to be. And when we say “we”, I also mean, “me”. 

(I remember very clearly this realisation hit me after a whole season of Doctor Who with writing which I hated utterly when I questioned why I still clung so incredibly hard to Clara Oswald as my favourite companion. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh. Well. That would do it, wouldn’t it?)

Then, there is projection, and, again, this is a neutral statement. Projection exists, and it is completely normal and, dare I say it, valid way of engaging with — well, anything. Is the character queer? Trans? Neurodivergent? Are they in love? Do they like chocolate? Are they a cat person? Well, yes, if this is what the text says, but if the text does not say anything… You tell me. Please, do tell me. Because, in that moment of projection, they are yours. 

And then, there is fandom osmosis, and that is the most fascinating one of them all, the one that is not very easy to note while you are inside the echo chamber. It’s the way we collectively, consciously or not, make decisions on who or what the characters are, what their relationships are, and what happens to them.  

(Back when I was writing egregiously long Guardian recaps on this blog I actually asked if Shen Wei’s power being learning actually was stated anywhere in the canon of the show. Because I had no idea. I have read and reread dozen of fanfics where that is the case, and at some point through enough repetition, it became reality.)

We are all kind of making our own reality here, aren’t we? 

Back when things were happening in a much less centralised manner - in closed livejournal groups, and forums of all shapes and sizes - I don’t remember there being quite as much universally agreed upon fanon. Frankly, I don’t remember much of universally agreed upon anything. But now, everything is in one place: we have this, and we have AO3, and it’s wonderful, it really is so much easier to navigate, but it’s also one gigantic reality-shifting echo chamber, with blogs, reblogs, trends, and rituals. 

Accessibility plays its part, too. If you were, say, in Life on Mars (UK) fandom between seasons, and you wanted to post your speculation fic, you had to have had an account, and then find and gain access to one of the bigger groups (lifein1973 was my poison, but ymmv), and then, if you feel brave you may post it, but also, you may want to do so from your alt account if you wanted to keep yours separate, and then you would have to go through the whole process again. And I’m not saying that fan creations then were somehow inherently better for it than fan creations now (although Life on Mars Hiatus Era is perhaps a bad example - because some of the Speculation Fic there was breathtaking), but there is something to say about the ease of access that made the fandoms go through a big bang of sorts.

(I mean, come on, I can just come here and post this - and I am certain people will read it, and this blog is a pandemic cope baby about Chinese television for goodness sake.)

The canon transformations that happen in the fandom echo chamber truly are fascinating to witness as someone who is more or less a fandom butterfly. I get into something, float around for a bit, then get into something else and move on. I might come back eventually when the need arises, but I don’t sustain a hiatus mind-state. This means that when I float away and return, I find some very intriguing stuff.

Let’s actually look at Good Omens here. Season two aired, and I found it spectacular in its cosy and anguished way; deliberately and intelligently fanfic-y in its plot building; simple but subversive, and so very tender. (I will have to circle back to this eventually, because, truly, I love how deliberately it takes the tropes and shatters them - it’s glorious). And, to me - a person who read the book, watched the first season, hung around AO3 for a few weeks and moved on - absolutely on-point in terms of characterisation. 

So imagine my surprise when the fandom disagreed so vehemently that there are actual multi-tiered theories on how characters were not in possession of their senses. Nothing there, in my mind, ever contradicted any of the stated text, as it stood. This remained a strange little mystery until I did what I always do when I flutter close to an ongoing fandom.

I loaded AO3 and sorted the existing fic by popularity. And there it was, all there: the actual earth-shattering mutual devotion of the angel and the demon; willingness to Fall; openness and long heart-aching confession speeches. There was all of the fanon surrounding Aziraphale and Crowley, which, to me, read as out of character, and to one for whom they became the reality over the last four years, read as truth. 

Again, only neutral statements here. This is not a bad thing, and neither this is a good thing, this is just something that happens, after a while, especially when there are years for the fandom-born ideas to bounce around and stew. I can’t help but think that so much of what we see as real in spaces such as this one is a chimaera of the actual source and all the collective fan additions which had time and space to grow, change, develop, and inspire, reverberating over and over again, until the echoes fill the entirety of the space. 

Eventually, this chimaera becomes a reality. 

Part two. Microanalysis 

Here are my two suppositions on the matter:

1. Some writers really love breadcrumb storytelling. 

Russel T Davies, for instance, on his run of Doctor Who (and, if you are reading it much later - I do mean the original one), loved that technique for his seasonal arcs. What is a Bad Wolf? Who is Harold Saxon? Well, you can watch very very carefully, make a theory, and see it proven right or wrong by the end of the season. 

Naturally, mystery box writers are all about breadcrumb storytelling: your Losts and your Westworlds are all about giving you snippets to get your brain firing, almost challenging you to figure things out just ahead of the reveal. 

2. We, as humans, love breadcrumbs.

And why wouldn’t we? Breadcrumbs are delicious. They are, however, a seasoning, or a coating. They are not the meal. 

Too much metaphor?

Let’s unpack it and start from the beginning.

Pattern recognition colours every aspect of our lives, and it colours the way we view art to a great extent. I think we truly underestimate how much it’s influenced by our lived experiences.

If you are, broadly speaking, living somewhere in Western/North-Western Europe in the 14th century, and you see a painting in which there is a very very large figure surrounded by some smaller figures and holding really tiny figures, you may know absolutely nothing about who those figures are, but you know that the big figure is the Important One, and the small ones are Less Important Ones, and the tiny ones are In Their Care. You know where your reverence would lie, looking at this picture. And, I imagine, as someone living in the 14th century, you may be inspired to a sense of awe looking at this composition, because in the world you live in, this is how art works. 

If you, on the other hand, watch a piece of recorded media and see the eyes of two characters meet as the violins swell, you know what you are being told at that moment. You don’t have to have a film degree to feel a sort of way when you see a green-tinged pallet used, when cross-cuts use juxtaposing images, or notice where your focus is pulled in any given shot. This stuff - this recognition of patterns - has been trained into us by the simple fact that we live in this time, on this planet, and we have been doing so long enough to have engaged recorded media for a period of time. 

As humans, we notice things. Our brains flare up when they see something they recognise, and then we seek to find other similar details and form a bigger picture. This often happens unconsciously, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes we do it on purpose: finding breadcrumbs in stories is a little bit like solving a mystery. It allows us to stretch that brain muscle that puts two and two together. It makes us feel clever. 

So yes, we love breadcrumbs, and, frankly, quite a lot of storytelling takes advantage of this. It’s very useful for foreshadowing, creating thematic coherence, or introducing narrative parallels and complexity. It’s useful for nudging the viewer into one or the other emotional direction, or to cue them into what will happen in the next moment, or what exactly is the one important detail they should pay attention to.

Because this is something media does intentionally, and something we pick up both consciously and not, it is very hard to know when to stop. We don't really ever know when all of the breadcrumbs have been collected. It becomes very easy to get carried away. There is a very specific kind of pleasure in digging into content frame by frame, soundbite by soundbite, chasing that pleasure of finding. 

But it is almost never breadcrumbs all the way down. They are techniques to help us focus on the main event: the story. I truly believe those who make media want it to reach the widest possible audience, and that includes all of us who like to watch every single thing ever created with our Media Analysis Goggles on and those who are just here to enjoy the twists and turns of the story at the pace offered to them. And I think, sometimes in our chase to collect and understand every little clue we forget that media is not made to just cater for us.

One can call it missing a forest for the trees. But I would hate to mix my metaphors, so let’s call it missing a schnitzel for the breadcrumbs. 

Part three. The Conspiracy Brain. 

If you are there with me, in the midst of the excited frenzy, chasing after all those delicious breadcrumbs, then patterns can grow, merge together, and become all-encompassing theories. Let’s call them conspiracy theories, even though this is not what they truly are.

So, why do we believe in conspiracy theories?

One, Because We Have Been Lied To. 

All conspiracies start with distrust.

If you are in fandom spaces - especially if you are in fandom spaces which revolve around a queer fictional couple - especially-especially if you have been in such spaces for a period of time, you have most certainly been lied to at one point or another. 

We don’t even have to talk about Sherlock - and let’s not do that - but do you remember Merlin? Because I remember Merlin. Specifically, I remember the publicity surrounding the first season, with its weaponised usage of “bromance” and assertions that this whole thing is a love story of sorts, and then the daunting realisation that this was all a stunt, deliberately orchestrated to gather viewership. 

And, because we were lied to in such a deliberate manner for such an extensive period of time, I genuinely believe that it forever altered our pattern recognition habits, because what was this if not encouragement to read into things? Now we are trained to read between the lines or see little cries for help where they might not be. Because we were told, over and over again, that we should.

(Yes, I think we are all existing in these spaces coloured by the trauma of queer-bating. I am, however, looking forward to a world where I can unlearn all of that.)

Two, Cognitive Dissonance.

The chain reaction works a bit like this: the world is wrong - it can’t possibly be wrong by coincidence - this must be on purpose - someone is responsible for it.

Being Lied To is a preamble, but cognitive dissonance is where it all originates. In so many cross-fandom theories I have noticed a four-step process:

A) this is not good

B) this author could not have made a mistake 

C) this must be done on purpose

D) here is why 

(Funny thing is, I have been on the receiving end of the small conspiracy spiral, and it is a very interesting experience. Not relevant to this conversation is the fact that a lot of my job revolves around storytelling. What is relevant is that my hobbies also revolve around storytelling. And one of them is DnD. Now, imagine my genuine shock when one of the players I am currently writing a campaign for noticed a small detail that did not make a logical sense within the complexity of the world, and latched on to it as something clearly indicating some kind of a secret subplot. Their thinking process also went a bit like this: this detail is not a good piece of writing — this DM knows how to tell stories well — this is obviously there on purpose. It was not there on purpose. I created a clumsy shorthand. I erred, in that pesky manner humans tend to. And, seeing this entire thought process recited to me directly in the moment, I felt somewhere between flattered and mortified.)

This whole line of thinking, I think, exists on a knife’s edge between veneration and brutal criticism, relentlessly dissecting everything “wrong”, with a reverent “but this is deliberate” attached to it like a vice, because it is preferable to a simple conclusion that the author let you down, in one way or another. 

Three, Intentionality 

I believe that there is no right or wrong way of engaging with stories, regardless of their medium, and assuming no one gets hurt in the process. While in a strictly academic way, there is a “correct” way of reading (and reading into) media, we here are largely not academics but consumers; consumption is subjective.

However, this all changes when intentionality is ascribed. 

The one I find particularly fascinating is the intentionality of “making it bad on purpose” because, as open-minded as I intend to always be, this just does not happen.

It certainly does not happen in long-form media. Even in the bread-crumb mystery box-type long-form media. 

When television programs underdeliver, they also underperform, and then they get cancelled.

If all the elements of Westworld Season 4 that did not sit together in a completely satisfactory way were written deliberately as some sort of deconstruction for the final season to explore, then it failed because that final season will now never come.

(There will likely never be a Secret Fourth Episode.)

And look, I am not here to refute your theories. Creativity is fun, and theorising is fantastic. 

But, perhaps, when the line of thought ventures into the “bad on purpose” territory, it could be recognised for what it is: disappointment and optimism, attempting to coexist in a single space. And I relate to that, I do, and I am sorry that there is even a need for this line of thinking. It’s always so incredibly disappointing that a creator you believed to be devoid of flaws makes something that does not hit in the way you hoped it would. It’s pretty heartbreaking. 

Unfortunately, people make mistakes. We are all fallible that way. 

Four, Wildfire.

Then, when the crumbs are found, a theory is crafted, and intentionality is ascribed, all that needs to happen is for it to catch on. And hey, what better place for it than this massive hollow funnel that we exist in, where thoughts, ideas and interpretations reverberate so much they become inextricable from the source material in collective consciousness. 

Conspiracy theories create alternate realities, very much like we all do here. 

So where are we now?

I am not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong; what is true, and what is not. We are all entitled to engage with anything we wish, in whichever way we wish to do it. This is not it, at all. 

All I am saying is… listen.

Do you hear that echo? 

I do. 

[welcometogrouchland]

(ID in alt) I literally said I was gonna post this month's ago and then never had the wherewithal to describe it and so I didn't Lmao (said with pain). But since I'm thinking of opening my commissions I figured I should remind ppl that I. Yknow. Can draw.

Lots of Steph here (I had major art block making all of these and my brain worms for her kept me going) + some sprinkles of stephcass for Cass nation to enjoy!

[swan2swan]

The more things change, the more things stay the same, eh, Darius?

[starryaike]

Bit of dialogue that I love.

[watcher0033]

"He took the malevolent shrine in the divorce" is the fucking funniest concept I've heard today

Let Yuji have the house or the fucking shadow dogs, 2k23. 😭🙏🏼 Honestly, it’s the least that Sukuna could do to pay for all the damages.

[imakatperson22]

I got this idea from a mlm romance novel I read but hear me out:

Eddie stops by at Tia Pepa’s while Abuela is staying with her visiting LA. He just came by really quick to drop something off or maybe pick something up that he left there.

While he’s in the house, he can overhear Abuela on the phone with someone in the next room saying things like…

“Make sure you go down to that place on Century to get the masa harina not the stuff in the grocery store…”

And

“Let the mole simmer maybe 20 minutes?”

And

“This is why grandmothers always want their grandsons to marry someone nice. Someone to look after them and make them good food. They usually can’t do it for themselves. You’ll make him some nice tamales!”

And Eddie doesn’t think anything of it, probably just Abuela giving some young girl from church advice… until he gets home. Buck is in the kitchen with Chris and there’s tamales in a steamer basket and Eddie realizes Abuela was on the phone with Buck and she was telling him how to make tamales.

That’s when it hits him like a freight train.

[booksandmate]

the idea of aziraphale’s eyes turning purple makes me so sick but it also makes sense. it was implied that it was something that came with the job when gabriel's eyes became normal when he resigned and momentarily got them back when he remembered. jkajsj anyway

[katyahina]

Godwyn and Fortissax fucked + I have an idea WHY Godrick's genes are so weak (his closest relatives' too)

Short post but I really like this topic hfhfdsf Okay so I double-checked the description of Draconian Tarnisheds and Godrick's dialogue, and:

The notion about Tarnisheds with dragonic roots having shorter lifespans makes me think that this is the reason; dragons and human(oids) are not the best mix! Godrick's closest ancestors might have had actual connections with dragons! Since it IS possible:

Dragons can shapeshift, so yeah.. existence of dragonian Tarnisheds likely implies that Godwyn and Fortissax fucked fsdhfdhs I assume her not just because of them being close, but also because she is unique amongst Ancient Dragons in being dark-colored and these Tarnished have coal skin,

At first I wondered if Fortissax' color might have been an effect of corruption, but then, again: if all Ancient Dragons are just stone grey, Draconic Tarnisheds could have had stone grey skin then because whatever connection made Draconic people had to happen before Godwyn became Prince of Death! Her corruption should then be referring to her losing a lot of her skin, with so much more gold insides showing through, and dark skin of this type of Tarnished revealing her actual color! (+ also post ( x ) on WHY I believe Fortissax is a she)

As for Godrick's and his close relatives and ancestors like Godefroy! Whereas Ancient Dragons refers to the rocky dragons from Farum Azula, there is another kind of dragons - feathered Greyoll's kind of dragons!

I used one of the babies around Greyoll and Agheel as volunteers, but you can see the dragon's body Godrick uses is certainly the same type of the dragon! Again, wings of Ancient Dragons for comparison, are also rocky and lack the feathers:

This makes sense that the branch of dragons Godrick is apparently related to is that of Greyoll's! We never see him use anything bolt-like, however, he does use wind-based attacks, like the rest of the Stormveil. His children do so too!

^ Worth to mention that Dragon Communion has connection with Godfrey (lion face is his mark), but the dragons laying in these churches are the Ancient types! These might be remnants of war with Gransax and others, since they did try to "defeat dragons by becoming them" as set of Dragonic Sentinels suggests! @fantomette22 offered another idea that maybe these Ancient Dragons instead were 'keepers' of these churches, and somehow had conflict with Greyoll's line of dragons. So, these churches came after Godwyn made peace between Ancient Dragons and Golden Order, and people were supposed to specifically consume hearts of Greyoll's dragons, not Ancient!

I don't know which idea I am leaning towards more, but I wanted to bring the Dragon Communion up just in case! Still, Godrick calls the dragon a relative and shows frail health, whereas act of eating dragon hearts gives you serpentine's eyes and makes you into a wyrm (most likely gradually lol). None is seen on him or his children, so I assume relation refers to mixing blood, not to the act of him or his ancestors consuming the hearts! In other words, if Ancient Dragons could turn into humanoids and have children (+descendants like Draconic Tarnished), maybe Greyoll's type could do this as well? 🤔

@val-of-the-north on the other hand, suggested an idea that rather than Greyoll's type of dragons being directly involved, it is all the same kind of genes of Ancient Dragons but having "evolved" into being like Greyoll's type! So, like her kind of dragons are more 'earthly' type, that evolved from Ancient Dragons straying further from perfection and divinity but instead adapting to whatever effects them (looking at you, Dark Souls!), similarly Ancient Dragon genes IN Golden Lineage changed too. And in roughly the same from-stone-to-feather manner, to mirror evolution (or corruption?) of the dragons themselves! I think this idea is very good in terms of how Fromsoft can't have enough of reusing the concepts!

^ Grafted Scions are also showing grey hair, despite being very young! It is not all grey yet and original color is likely black; same as hair of wandering nobles, which would make sense for whatever women Godrick slept with apparently to be noble too. Early grey hair could be manifestation of this poor health and shortened lifespan! Maybe humans with dragon blood in mix die early because they age early, but for Demigods it is just early aging.

(Video by Zullie the Witch ( x )) ^ At this rate I wonder whether these wings and feathers were actually grafted though, of they are sort of a side-effect of this "heritage" xd Like, sure, Stormveil is very much associated with the hawks, but modern Dragons ALSO having feathers makes me wonder! Especially since Godrick himself doesn't have any wings and feathers grafted on him, but the Noble Scions do.. Imagine feathers just showing on them because they are young, and maybe Godrick also used to grow feathers but they fell out by now due to simply his age!

______________

Conclusion: don't have children with the dragons while Godfrey isn't looking or something they will turn out kinda sick and frail idk

[tanglepelt]

Dc x dp idea 82

Bernard has a new online conspiracy theorist friend.

Tim is at least happy bernard has less conspiracy theories about the bats. However him going off about a whole branch of the government deemed as guys in white is a bit much.

Now. He sure the two are just feeding off one another.

But it gets a tad too specific at times. Bernard going into detailed accounts of different ghost then ways they may have died?

A tiny ghost in a suit of armor. He is even claiming that his online friend is actually king of an entire dimension of elite ghost warriors? But his friend hadn’t realized it yet.

Honestly if his friend whose username is d3as0rAliv3? wasn’t coming to visit Gotham. Which he has no idea why anyone would come here he’d be hunting him down right now.

He’ll still do his research of course. Tim will also accompanying Bernard for the meet up. Just to be on the safe side.

Now when they got to the library. He most certainly wasn’t expecting a kid their age with a black eye and bruising around the wrists.

Especially not that Danny actually had proof of this GIW and the fact they were actively hunting down beings from a dimension called the infinite realm.

Maybe it wasn’t all a conspiracy theory. How on earth did Bernard find the one person who could prove their was a secret government agency hell bent on breaking the meta protection acts.

[novelconcepts]

The more the show progresses, the more I want to see the 90s cast infiltrating the modern timeline. We've gotten hints of it with Shauna and her younger self, her Jackie hauntings. We've gotten a little more with adult Lottie seeing teenage Nat (and Laura Lee), and with Natalie getting teenage Lottie in her final moments. I want more. I want the teen cast to be absolutely invasive on pivotal adult moments, infecting their adult counterparts when least expected. I want Taissa's argument with Van to dissolve into their teenage selves, their bond endless and timeless and inescapable. I want Misty absolutely wrecked by young Natalie lurking around corners, watching from mirrors. I want to see these women unable to navigate adulthood without the specters of their teenage selves cropping up absolutely everywhere, more and more as they let the memories in, as they stop being able to repress the trauma. They didn't grow up. They never could. You are always doomed to regress around your high school teammates. You are haunted by the phantom elements of your misspent youth. It is a comfort, and it is a gift, and it is a trial, and it is a curse. I would love to see that reflected with greater intensity, until the lines blur, until the timelines have no choice but to intersect. They haven't escaped themselves at all. They didn't grow up. They just got older.

[dear-ao3]

thinking about that one interview where lando norris says he wears four of the most basic man colognes at once. why does he do this. how does he not give everyone around him a major headache. what is the thought process behind this.

[indigovigilance]

Continuity Errors

Crowley can stop time. We’ve noticed buggy things about time. Let’s talk about it.

I’m going to start with an overview of every time he has definitely frozen time in order to establish the mechanics of Crowley’s time-stopping power in the GO universe. Then, I’m going to talk about other events where Crowley may have stopped time, and it wasn’t (directly) shown to the audience.

or read this 3,500 word beast of a meta on Ao3

edit: if you're deciding whether or not to read this, check out the reblog notes!

Opening obligatory "do not put anything about this in Neil Gaiman's askbox"

Crowley freezes time locally, selectively exempting individuals

S1E2

In S1E2, Crowley freezes time at the corporate training ground to interrogate Mary Hodges, formerly Sister Mary Loquacious (played by Nina Sosanya, actor for Nina in S2). It may seem like she’s just hypnotized and time is progressing normally around all of them, but that isn’t the case. Immediately before Crowley hypnotizes Hodges, we can hear gunfire in the background; a few seconds before Hodges is released from the trance, we hear shouting and sirens. But during the time that Hodges is entranced, all we hear is three things: the dialogue, music, and what sounds like the ticking of a kitchen timer. 

We could do a little bit of extrapolation from the fact that the beginnings of gunshots and siren sounds are temporally very close together, especially depending on how we measure time. Crowley turns the paintball guns into deadly weapons at 36:59. Crowley freezes Mary Hodges at 38:47. A ticking sound starts the same moment. We also hear what we will come to recognize as the “pause time” sound, a sort of wobbly sound. The ticking sound seems to stop around… 40:07? Right before the line about lovely little toesy woesies? It’s unclear with the overlapping tracks. At 40:11 Crowley says “let’s go” and we can hear sirens in the background start now. Aziraphale then snaps his fingers and unfreezes Hodges at 40:17.

So during 191 seconds of screentime, 84 seconds of it was spent with time frozen, if I accept the ticking sound to be the indicator. If time was only frozen locally, meaning just the paintball grounds and not the nearest police station and roads leading to it, then emergency services had just over three minutes from the time the first live round was fired to arrival. If time was actually frozen globally except for Crowley, Azirarphale, and Hodges, then emergency services got there in 85 seconds, or less than a minute and a half. Maybe Britain is doing something wildly different than here idk but I think the more likely explanation for the event timing is that Crowley is only freezing time in a local bubble. The shooters stop shooting but the police are still driving towards them while Crowley and Aziraphale are interrogating an entranced Mary Hodges.

The case with Hodges is kind of confusing because the audience is presented with a false dichotomy between “frozen in time” and “hypnotized.” It’s actually both. Crowley has frozen time around the three of them, but Hodges, like Aziraphale, was exempt. It just so happens that she was also entranced at the same time, which explains as well why Aziraphale can release her from the trance, since our best evidence indicates that he can’t control time.

S1E3 & S2E3

In S1E3, Crowley freezes Jean Claude, the executioner at the Bastille. Immediately before, we can hear the guillotine, screaming and jeering outside the cell. As soon as Jean Claude is frozen, however (13:29, complete with wobble sound), there is complete background silence, except for the dialogue between our ineffable aristocrats. When Crowley restarts time, background noise restarts as well. This evidence indicates that Crowley froze time for the surrounding area as well as inside the cell.

In S2E3, Crowley freezes Mr. Dalrymple. We don’t have definitive information about how much of the rest of the world is affected since the scene takes place indoors on a quiet night and there are no external cues of time starting or stopping.

S1E6: Freezing Out Satan

In S1E6, not only are Crowley, Aziraphale, and Adam pulled out of the normal flow of time: it seems that they are also pulled out of normal space. They appear to be in an ethereal desert where we can see their wings, but we don’t actually know where they are. The way we enter, inhabit, and then exit this time-stop is completely different from any of the other three explicit timestop scenes: Crowley must use his whole body to summon the power to cast the miracle, they travel elsewhere, then he must use his crankshaft to exit the time-stop.

I take this to indicate that freezing time when Satan is near takes a lot more power than freezing time around Mary Hodges, Jean Claude, or Mr. Dalrymple. Presumably, the power a being has, the more power it takes to lock them out of a bubble to stopped time.

Time Stop Mechanics

Here are my key takeaways from analyzing these four scenes:

Crowley isn’t so much freezing all of time as pulling himself and Aziraphale (and sometimes Adam) out of the flow of time. The effort this takes is dependent on the entities that they are “pulling away” from. It is easy to pull away from humans, so much so that they don’t have to pull away very far and can occupy the same space in a bubble of paused time. When he is “pulling away” from Satan, however, he must pull away much further, all the way to another plane.

Crowley’s ability is so powerful that he can use it to escape Satan. He could use it to lock out other powerful beings, if he wanted to, but it would take a lot of effort.

Aziraphale, a being with power somewhere on the spectrum between human and Satan, could be frozen by Crowley’s powers. The fact that Aziraphale is still present and active during all of these scenes, unaffected by the time stop is only indicative of Crowley’s choice to exempt him, just as he does with a hypnotized Mary Hodges and Adam.

Crowley has stopped time on Aziraphale

In a previous post I have addressed the possible symbolic meaning behind the Honolulu Roast sign that suddenly appears behind Crowley in the S2E1 coffee shop scene. This addresses the symbolic meaning of Honolulu with respect to Aziraphale, but fails to address the “roast” part, which I have the opportunity to do now. I begin by establishing two premises:

Crowley loves Aziraphale and after 6,000 years knows him very well.

Crowley is a dick.

Crowley sits down at the table across from Aziraphale and asks him what the problem is. At this point, there is no “Honolulu Roast” sign behind him. The camera flips to Aziraphale as he (badly) tries to deny that there is any problem. When the camera flips back to Crowley, a “today’s special: Honolulu Roast” sign has appeared behind him.

What does Crowley do next?

Crowley roasts Aziraphale.

Crowley proceeds to read Aziraphale to filth, rattling off all his tells and putting him in his place for even daring to think that he could mislead Crowley about his internal emotional state.

While we’ve seen a lot more of his soft side this season, we cannot forget that the demon Crowley, at the end of the day, is a prick. He really did pause time just so that he could go get a chalkboard, write a pun on it, and hang it on the wall behind him like a display card for open mic night. He’s still going to help Aziraphale, of course. But he’s going to make fun of him first.

Let me reiterate: Crowley literally paused time, got up from the table, put up this sign, then sat back down in (as close to) exactly the same position (as possible) to fool Aziraphale into not noticing the pause, because this joke is entirely for Crowley’s own amusement. We have some cinematographic evidence of this besides just the sign itself: the lamp behind him has moved slightly, and the camera angle focusing on Crowley has changed. Literally, the left hand side of the frame gets cut off due to the repositioning. From a production perspective, this scene would have been shot all at the same time, so should not have changed angles. That said, they did a by-hand follow-in of Crowley walking in and sitting down, then switched to a dolly, but… I have faith that they could have matched the shot line-up practically pixel for pixel if they wanted to. All to say: changing the camera position before and after, alongside the other conspicuous changes, seems like it was a deliberate framing choice used to indicate that Crowley tried his best to get back into exactly the same position, but was just a little off.

But Crowley’s prank is troubling from a perspective of honesty and agency. Based on the way the dialogue progresses, it seems pretty clear that Aziraphale doesn’t know that he was frozen. Whether or not Crowley could freeze Aziraphale was beside the point until this scene where we learn that Crowley would, even for a really dumb reason like making a joke at Aziraphale’s expense.

Before moving on, I want to note that the sudden appearance of this sign could be characterized as a continuity error, even though it was the result of a deliberate action by an in-world character. Jettison your traditional understanding of “continuity error” as “production made a mistake.” In this universe, we can have continuity errors by virtue that Aziraphale is experiencing time as if it is continuous, not noticing that he functionally blacked out for a few minutes and that things have changed around him. This is not a show-level continuity error. This is an Aziraphale-level continuity error.

Crowley can reverse time

Credit where credit is due: it was this comment on the Ao3 version of my meta, The Erasure of Human!Metatron, that became an earworm that got me thinking specifically about Crowley's abilities:

So thank you, LoveIsLove <3

Let’s go back to the Mary Hodges scene, or actually a few minutes before. Our ineffable idiots get shot by paintballs.

“Look at the state of this coat. I've kept this in tip-top condition for over 180 years now. I'll never get this stain out.”

“You could miracle it away.”

“Hmm… Yes, but… well, I would always know the stain was there. Underneath, I mean.”

Aziraphale finagles himself a favor without ever actually asking for it. Full points, princess. But let’s examine the actual content of the dialogue. This cannot be a complete 100% bluff; Aziraphale is not going to tell a straight lie to Crowley that they both know is false about the respective nature of their powers. It must be the case that there is some truth to this statement. There is a fundamental difference between what Aziraphale can do about the paintball stain and what Crowley is actually going to do about it. Furthermore, what Crowley does is something different than a miracle.

Crowley then blows on the stain, it disappears, and Aziraphale looks quite pleased. Yes, yes, he cajoled Anthony J Acts of Service Crowley into doing his signature move, but also, he’s genuinely thankful that Crowley did something for him that he couldn’t do for himself, because miracles don’t work like that. Notably, Crowley doesn't snap his fingers or make any other gesture that we normally associate with miracles, and we don’t hear the miracle sound, which is further evidence that this is not a miracle, but something different.

If you haven’t already, please read my meta entitled Jimbriel, Satan, the Book of Life, and what it means for Crowley. It explains in depth and with evidentiary support my theory about how erasure works in the Good Omens universe. The Cliff’s notes version is that erasing something, whether it be a name from the Book of Life or a paintball from a coat, is akin to erasing a pencil mark on paper; it’s technically gone but you’ll always know it was there. Underneath.

What Crowley has done, then, is not erasing the paintball stain.

He’s reversed it.

When he blows on the paintball stain, he is reversing time in a microcosm of the universe, truly making it so that the paintball never hit the jacket. In a world full of rubber erasers, Crowley has the only Control-Z. When things are “erased” by the Book of Life, they are changed, but when Crowley reverses something, they never happened (making Beelzebub’s description of the Book of Life actually a more accurate description of Crowley’s power). It is something unique that Crowley can do that Aziraphale can’t, and we haven’t seen any evidence of any other celestial being pausing or reversing time. Please feel free to reblog with links to relevant meta if I’m wrong about that.

In true Neil Gaiman style, Crowley using this power to do something mundane like get rid of paintball paint was an incredibly benign and subtle way to indicate that Crowley has an immense, untapped power that we have not yet seen him use for any major purpose. 

I repeat: we didn’t see him use it. Because usually, like Aziraphale, we the audience are exempt from the time freeze, and we get to watch what happens. But this time, we were frozen out with Aziraphale.

Clock Theory revisited: a reinterpretation of “continuity error”

A summary of clock theory

Neil Gaiman’s ask and answer on clock theory

Neil Gaiman responded to an ask about the clock jumping forward from 9:25 to 9:40 before and after the kiss with a single sentence: “It’s a continuity error, I’m afraid.”

In the usual manner, Neil is not lying, but he is relying on you making an incorrect interpretation of his seemingly straightforward and innocuous but actually ambiguous and incredibly meaningful statement. As I stated with regards to the Honolulu Roast chalkboard sign, do not interpret “continuity error” as “production made a mistake.” Interpret “continuity error” as “Aziraphale believes that his experience of time is in lockstep with the actual flow of time and doesn’t realize that 11 minutes passed while he was frozen.”

Let’s consider the evidence:

Image at timestamp 41:04 “[Hold that thought!]” the clock reads 9:25

Image at 45:04 “If Gabriel and Beelzebub can go off together, then we can” the clock still reads 9:25

Image at 47:56 the clock now reads 9:40. 

Image at 48:14 the clock reads 9:40

There are two four-minute gaps, from the perspective of the viewer, and we have views of the clock face at both ends of each gap.

Gap 1, from 41:04 to 45:04, the clock hands do not move at all, nor do they in any of the intervening shots.

Gap 2, from 45:04 to 47:56 (or 48:14, as you prefer), the clock hands move 15 minutes.

The Occam’s razor, Doylian explanation for why the clock hands don't move from 41:04 to 45:04 is that the clock is a prop. It does not have any timekeeping mechanism, the hands don’t move unless some human being opens up the glass, reaches in there, and manually adjusts it. They weren’t going to interrupt filming this moving scene to move the clock hands minute by minute, so it seems pretty plausible that the fact that it doesn’t move is just an artifact of production limitations.

The Watsonian explanation, which I do not favor, is that Crowley has frozen time for just the two of them. They are in a microcosm all their own. If true, this would have an abundance of implications, such that they are actually free to speak to each other freely, which they don’t. So I feel like with that alone, we can set this aside, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise.

If we accept the “clock is a prop” explanation for Gap 1, it doesn’t really hold for Gap 2 that they moved it a full fifteen minutes. So much care and attention to detail was given for all other parts of this show; I don’t realistically believe that a production staff member moved the hands a random amount. The music carries us from Crowley’s exit to Metatron’s entrance seamlessly, yet more time seems to have passed in-world than on-screen. There are two possible explanations:

There was more material that was supposed to be filmed to account for 15 minutes that got cut

We are supposed to figure out that there’s some “Greek play” style shenaniganery afoot

I will debunk explanation #1 with simply this: David’s contact lenses would sometimes rotate so that the slit pupils were not vertical. This error was fixed by VFX in post.

You might assume, when watching Good Omens, that Crowley’s serpent-like eyes are created using contact lenses. Or perhaps you’d presume they’re CGI. Actually, they’re a mix of both.

“The CGI versions were usually because the contact lenses had swiveled in David’s eyes … and we had to fix it,” says Mackinnon.

If they could fix Crowley’s eyes in post, there is absolutely no reason to expect that they couldn’t or wouldn’t have fixed the clock hand positions in post, especially if it was someone’s job to reach in there and change the positions to try to maintain set continuity in the first place. Additionally, there is deliberate use of clocks to symbolize various themes across both seasons. A Doylian error like this is not something that would have been overlooked and survived into publication.

So we are left with explanation #2. Time has passed that we, the viewers, don’t observe. What was happening during that time that we missed? More importantly, who knows that this time has passed? Aziraphale doesn’t seem to, and it’s unclear what the Metatron does or doesn’t know.

Some fans have posited that the Metatron is doing the time manipulations, but canonically, the only entity we have observed manipulate time is Crowley. We assume the Metatron is powerful because the angels are all afraid of him, but we’ve never actually seen him do anything, and so have no primary evidence for this. All over, he’s got some big “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” Wizard of Oz vibes happening; I’m not convinced he could miracle his way out of a wet paper bag, and there’s a chance that in Season 3 we’ll find out that he’s all bluff. Not so with Crowley.

My hypothesis is that Crowley froze Aziraphale and everybody else for a one block radius, including the Metatron, and did something important in the bookshop before it lost its protection. Please see my meta on Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the Bookshop for an evidence-based argument on why the bookshop was the only place in the universe that Crowley could have safely hidden something. Since Aziraphale is no longer the head of an independent embassy, whatever Crowley was keeping safe in there isn’t safe anymore, and needs to be moved. Universe time continued to pass and the clock reflects that, but Aziraphale and the Metatron aren’t aware that they were paused.

Which also gives us a new interpretation for the kiss.

The Kiss, revisited

Crowley didn’t want to send Aziraphale a message.

Crowley needed a plausible cover for the immense effort it was going to take him to freeze time against Aziraphale and the Metatron that he knew was standing outside.

How do I know he knew?

No nightingales.

Juliet. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Romeo. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

No nightingales could be the end of a romance. I argued as much in my inaugural meta just six weeks ago (and what a six weeks it has been, people!) But “no nightingales” could also be a secret signal to two people who have a unique bond through Shakespeare that Crowley has realized he is not safe, and he needs to leave, and he’s trying to tell Aziraphale that without letting their spectator in on the message.

Now he has to stop time to secure whatever item he’d been keeping safe in the bookshop. But keeping Satan at bay required him to lunge upwards, using his whole body to freeze time. He can’t get away with anything like that here in the bookshop, that would give up the ruse.

But what if he lunged at the person everyone knows he’s in love with and violently kisses them on the mouth, his entire body tense with the effort of freezing time in the presence of two ethereal beings? No one would notice the difference, or think anything nefarious of it; a Class A surreptitious time-stop.

One last crackpot theory.

Aziraphale knows what Crowley did. Well, he knows that he froze time, and for the first time realizes that Crowley has locked him out, and that he used the kiss as a cover. The violation of agency, trust, and their romantic bond are all breaking across him in the instant that time restarts, after Crowley has gone away for 11 minutes and returned to almost, but not quite, the same position inside Aziraphale’s arms. It is an intimate act that Aziraphale is fully tuned into, and for the first time, he’s noticing the continuity errors.

His horror-filled expression is one of broken trust. But his bond to Crowley is too strong for even this to break it. He knows that whatever reason Crowley had to pull this trick on him, it must have been a good one. It must have been to protect him.

“I forgive you.”

***

One more completely crackpot theory based on the Gavin Finney interview at The Ineffable Con last weekend.

The camera was supposed to circle them. Finney says that this was to show that they are the center of their universe, and their world is spinning.

Okay, okay. But could it not also have represented the spinning of clock hands? I’m just saying.

Closing obligatory "do not put anything about this in Neil Gaiman's askbox"

Find my entire collection of metas here