#i understand when Neil said

[tumbld-out-of-my-bed]

Y'all. I still can't believe they KISSED. Like, they actually, actually KISSED?????? LIKE, FOR REAL?????????? IT IS THERE IN THE SHOW?????????? WHATTT???????????

[niko-sasaki-dbd]

something something I love so much to think about charles knowing every detail of edwin's body language and not just that, but also about the things edwin does to stim or ground himself, and never questioning those little habits or rituals and just getting along with it, until it becomes normality for them both.

[toadlilyaus]

Incredibly self-indulgent quick sketch of the ot3 rare pair (trio?) that is Jean/ Neil/ Andrew; cause I feel like y'all ain't seeing the vision lol

If it ends up winning the poll maybe I'll get around to cleaning this up a bit and adding color and such, but for now this is all we get 😘🦊🦊🐦‍⬛🔑

[sugaroto]

Neil would be so dissapointed

[jeanmoreaux]

just had to read the words “I’ve been told that there actually ARE aftg folks on tumblr I just haven’t found them yet.” with my own eyes and it took a decade off my life. are we a joke to you??? like bestie WDYM WE TUMBLRINAS ARE THE OG AFTG FOLK

[spaceswifty]

seeing a lot of posting about bella ramsey supporting z*onism and neil druckmann being pro ap*artheid? And they are being called trash? I see tumblr is being its usual self

[biillys]

a c in english and a c- in spanish. yeah. well, that's not normal for you. if you say so.

STRANGER THINGS — 4.01: the hellfire club

[verymuchablog42]

i do not care what nora says, there is no way andrew minyard is misoginistic

[sindarinsmoke]

I AM SORRY FOR THE GOOD OMENS SPAM I JUST- I GJHUH- IHHGHUH-

[retrofeelinqs]

No one will ever understand how much neil perry means to me and how much i can relate to him and how much he means to me

[deadliestpieceontheboard]

The thing that gets me with Thea is that, beyond being overall heartbreaking to leave Kevin with someone still stuck in the cult mentality, it just makes no goddam sense.

We know Thea is 4 years older than Kevin. Her last year is the same as his freshman one. Nora says it takes months of playing together until Riko is like "omg just fuck already". Then Nora says once Thea graduates she tells Kevin to "get lots of practice" and call her once he graduates and is out if the Nest.

Do you see where I'm going?

Kevin and her are not dating. By the time Thea storms in the dorm they've been apart for two full years. SHE HERSELF SAYS HE HASN'T CONTACTED HER SINCE HIS TRANSFER AND THAT WAS ONE AND A HALF YEAR BEFORE THAT.

They were "together" for at most 10 months*, split up with an understanding to try to do it right in four years, never talked again and then... got married I guess?

*quotations because... like. Them banging a couple times, then realising they actually liked each other, then slowly getting the courage to being a secret, which mostly means passing notes here and there and having sex while Riko is in the room. All that is included in those *at most* 10 months. Wouldn't really call that dating.

I profoundly hate Thea's one scene in the books and most things in Nora's extra content, but this reply to an ask about Thea makes my blood boil:

Like????? Kevin marries someone who thinks "no harm no foul" about the abuse he suffered at Riko's hands??? Nah, you guys stay safe, I'll just keep pretending this doesn't exist, my boy deserves so much better.

[alexjadedraws]

My favorite animal is Neil Josten tearing Kevin a new one after Andrew leaves to get off his meds.

"'As if you feel any differently," Kevin sent Neil.

Neil fixed Kevin with a stony look. "Maybe if you'd stuck around a moment longer, you'd understand why I don't care anymore. When you came upstairs, did you hear him laughing, Kevin? He was," he said, ignoring the way Nicky flinched and the quick look Dan shot Matt, "before Drake even hit the ground. So yes, even I would give up this season. And after everything he's done and every risk he's taken for you, you'd better feel the same."

"It's not that simple," Kevin started.

"Then simplify it," Neil cut in."

-The Raven King, pg. 262-263

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The season's second episode features appearances from both David's son Ty and his father-in-law Peter Davison, with the latter play biblical figure Job and the former playing his son Ennon.

However, David has revealed that he didn't find out about Ty's casting until after the fact, when he was shooting on the new season.

Speaking with Variety, David said: "I don't know how that happened. I do a bunch of self-tapes with Ty, but I don't think I did this one with him because I was out of town filming Good Omens. He certainly wasn't cast before we started shooting. There were two moments during filming where Neil [Gaiman] bowled up to me and said, 'Guess, who we've cast?'"

David continued: "Ty definitely auditioned and, as I understand it, they would tell me, he was the best. I certainly imagine he could only possibly have been the best person for the job. He is really good in it, so I don't doubt that's true.

"And then my father-in-law showed up, as well, which was another delicious treat. In the same episode and the same family! It was pretty weird. I have worked with both of them on other projects, but never altogether."

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[odetojupiter]

i started rambling in the tags without realising how long this shit got and now i can’t add more tags, so since i can’t apologise there ill apologise here: sorry, it’s a lot, i just feel very passionately about this 😭😭

accidentally wrote another paragraph here but i deleted it cause i don’t wanna chat too much lmao

Just to make it clear, because apparently I need to, I'm not invalidating Riko Moriyama's trauma at all. I'm just saying that people justifying him doing what he did to multiple people because "he's traumatised too" isn't the argument you think it is

me being abused didn't cause me to assault anyone else, it made me go actively out of my way to not do that to someone else and got therapy to sort my shit out after years of trying to please everyone whilst trying to look tough as shit to not get fucked with

I never did half the shit Riko did because of my trauma, even when I was actively encouraged to and yet Riko, who got punished for punishing Jean, did and people justify that as "oh but he's traumatised"

Kevin and Jean are definitely dicks but only in the way that they're closed off from everyone else, they've never gone out of their way to hurt someone who did nothing wrong

trauma affects people in different ways, yes, but justifying the shit that riko did is Not it

[diamondcitydarlin]

Just fair warning- I said on my personal post about this that I wasn't going to talk about Neil Gaiman anymore, but as it's becoming clear that him and his publishers and anyone else who makes money off of him is circling the wagons and trying to bury these allegations, as well as some fans still defending and trying to 'rationalize' this information, I feel like, actually, we need to keep talking about him (as much as I cannot stand him and feel physically disgusted now when I so much as see his face somewhere). Specifically, the fact that he's a liar, master manipulator and should not, under any circumstances, be given access to his fans like he has in the past. At the very least. (And if you need to blacklist his name or even unfollow me so as to not be triggered, I completely understand, but I will always try to tag these posts accordingly and I think it's crucial right now that the truth be put where people can see)

This post specifically is in response to those 'rationalizations' I've seen, some that have gone as far as to blame the young fans/groupies that hooked up with him for being 'golddiggers' or just making a mountain out of a molehill for something they now regret. It's not that simple, yall. (And, again, this requires some amount of completely ignoring the story about him extorting his tenant for sex under threat of eviction of her and her three young children, I'm not sure how you 'rationalize' that under the best of circumstances)

So let's be clear here. What we know is that NG has routinely, for possibly an upwards of 30 years, pulled sexual 'partners' from his fan groups, most of whom are 18-22 year old young women (though possibly younger, accounts are coming forward of 16 year olds having allegedly been inappropriately touched/flirted/propositioned by him, which ig is the age of consent in the UK but still?? 16 year olds!!). This wasn't one or two times in the course of three decades, this was a constant pattern of behavior for him and for a very insidious reason.

This isn't to try to infantilize those fans or young women/young people in general or try to suggest that they couldn't have consented to sex with an older person or famous person. In fact, the onus isn't on them at all. This is about an older guy with a lot of fame, power and wealth choosing to sleep with people that he had already conditioned to idolize him and using that power imbalance to coerce them into doing things they didn't want to.

Regardless of one's age or gender identity, it can be difficult to impossible to say 'no' to someone like that. After all, you've been 'chosen' by the chosen one, you're special and not like everyone else, and if you don't do what the popular person everyone trusts is telling you to do you could end up ostracized. Alienated. Or worse. And you know what? Gaiman knew that! He knew it when he was crafting his 'approachable dad' persona on tumblr. He knew it when he was cultivating a fandom of personality. He knew it when he was having huge meetups to try to ensnare more victims. I hate to even think it, but I'm starting to believe he knew it when he was writing children's books too.

It's been talked about again and again in separate issues, but needless to say something not being strictly illegal does not make it inherently, morally okay. It does not erase the fact that this man has been essentially grooming his fandom to feel safe meeting/speaking with him so he can coerce those he can snare into sexual acts they're not comfortable with. That is predator behavior, whether strictly 'illegal' in the eyes of a court or not (but ofc I think he should be criminally punished even if I'm not naive enough to think he actually will be, because this IS rape and rape should be criminally punished)

I'm not personally advocating for anyone to give up being in his related fandoms, but what I am personally advocating for is that people don't forget who he is and what he's capable of, especially when he tries to crawl back to where he was (I'm almost certain he will eventually, as I've said).

Again, at the very least, we need to use what little influence we do have to keep him from infiltrating fan spaces again. He should not be on tumblr yukking it up with young people, he should not be at public appearances hitting on teenagers, he should not be given the unrestricted access to fans that he's 'enjoyed' for the past 30+ years because he is not a safe person. While I wish there was more in the way of restorative justice that could be done, I think at very, very least we should do what we can to limit his proximity to people he could hurt in the future. Make sure no one forgets, because sweeping this under the rug means Gaiman gets to hurt more people.

Lastly, no one is the wrong for having been manipulated by him. Let's make that very clear. What we're NOT gonna do is blame ourselves, each other, the victims, etc, for evil acts that Gaiman chose to do himself, time and time and time again. It doesn't help the situation and it certainly doesn't protect future potential victims. We were all duped because we're human and we attach and a lot of us want to believe there are good people out there, particularly those who make art that means so much to us.

And there are. But let's also use this a teaching/learning tool about how much faith we place in famous people in the future, regardless of how 'approachable' and 'safe' they might seem. Let's remember to have a healthy suspicion of creators/famous people that are oddly immersed in fandom spaces- yes, even the ones you still currently like that seem fine, as difficult as that may seem.

At the end of the day, we don't know them or what they're capable of doing or what they might be plotting to do to us. Support victims. Amplify their voices. Don't forget.