#we're sort of at the point where the years on this are a guideline rather than a rule since i am DEFINITELY not keeping track

[sabraeal]

Get On and Move Your Body

[Read on AO3]

Written for the irreplaceable (and irrepressible) @bubblesthemonsterartist, who officially becomes OLD(er than me) today! As she already has a few more golden tickets to keep me putting chapters on her favorite niche AU this year, she elected to instead ask for another piece of what we like to call the “Secret Subplot” in WFB. Which means...more Six Flags shenanigans >:3c

For as much as Chief’s planned this whole trip down to the breath, trouble finds them not even minute out the door. Unlike every other SUV His Highness has been carted around in, Big Guy’s Mazda is a mid-size, only enough seats for four grown adults and one guy with the same dimensions as a piece of paper.

“Aw, c’mon, Boss,” Obi cajoles, leaning a hip against the hood. “What’s the problem? We all love each other.”

The problem is that it doesn’t match Romeo’s vision of tucking into the back row and making eyes at each other over the bench seat. But that’s not something he can say, not when Doc is already bouncing on her heels eager to go. 

“There’s not enough room,” Chief grits out instead, glaring at him like he’s the one who made the specs. “There’s no way you can fit three people on that.”

Not without knocking elbows, sure. But Obi’s been in smaller places participating in more...athletic activities. “I dunno, some guy with an engineering degree sure thought you could.”

“It’s really not that bad,” Big Guy insists, like a person who’s never sat bitch in his life. “There’s lots of leg room back there!”

He and the Little Prince exchange looks. Both of them say, this man’s legs have never been anywhere behind the front row.

“We can take my car,” Obi floats; an imperfect solution, but since Danny Ocean here made an imperfect plan, it’s the best they got. “I just vacuumed it last week and everything.”

The correct answer here would be, wow, Obi, thanks, you’re a real one. Or maybe, I’ll name my firstborn after you. He’s not picky. But what he gets is a lip curl so aristocratic it would make guillotines in Paris salivate.

“Why would I go in that death trap?” he sneers, tossing it a gaze so scathing it nearly scratches the paint. “It’s got the same amount of seats.”

Same amount of seats, different driver. One that didn’t have a girlfriend to ride shotgun, which meant if Big Guy did some personal origami, he could fit himself there, and Princess could slide right into the back. And if they convinced Doc to be the cream in their golden oreo, well, maybe it wouldn’t be the pink-stained Wes Anderson aesthetic of pining, but at least his thigh would be all pressed up against hers. That would be like a whole ass base in their weird game of no-contact dating, wouldn’t it?

Alas, the bossguy doesn’t see his vision. So someone’s gotta take a dive.

“All right, all right.” Obi holds up his hands, all charming resignation. “Chief’s got a point. We can’t possibly all fit. So in the best interest of this whole posse, I will--”

Kiki grips his shoulder, hard enough to creak. “Don’t even try it.”

“A-ack!” he hiccups, knees weak under the pressure. “Miss Kiki, I was only trying to--”

“You have to come, Obi!” Oh, it’s not fair that Doc’s been pulled into this, all shining eyes and earnestly clasped hands. “There’s no point in going if we don’t all go!”

“Ah...” He scrapes a palm over the back of his neck, letting it settle over the ache in his shoulder. “Well, I suppose if you’re going to insist, Doc...”

Bossman’s sigh hisses through his teeth, the fight slipping right out of him. “So are we taking two cars, or...?”

It’s with a predator’s smile that Little Miss Shotgun slips past both of them, leaning right in to suggest, “I think you can just suck it up.”

His jaw drops. “But...ugh, fine. I call a window, though.”

Obi’s sure to be all smiles when Romeo throws himself into the rear seat, scowling. 

“No problem at all, Chief.” He waits until bossman’s buckled, committed, before he turns all the potential energy stored up in his limbs to kinetic, springing into the bitch seat with a smile that can only be called unhinged. “I’ve always wanted to be an Obi sandwich.”

Chief’s always had the prettiest eyes, but they’ve never looked more beautiful than this, all wide and wild and ready to wrap his hands around his throat. “But-- you-- I-- Shirayuki--”

“Don’t worry. I don’t mind.” Obi reaches out, giving his knee a nice pat as Doc tucks herself in beside him. “I wasn’t loved enough as a child.”

“Now isn’t this nice,” Big Guy says with a glance in the rearview. “You three look so cozy!”

Chief’s mouth works, a half-dozen complaints circling the runway before fizzling out at the tip of his tongue. With one last sigh, he manages, “Ugh.”

“You know what I like about you, Chief?” He casts him a dreamy look, chin-in-palm and all. “Your eloquence.”

“Obi?” His name sounds so nice grit between Young Master’s teeth. “Go fuck yourself.”

It’s strange, not being the one with the plan. Not that Shirayuki doesn’t appreciate the effort! It’s just...

They’d barely left the roundabout of their driveway before Zen had pulled up a park map, reaching over Obi’s lap to show her that it’s a straight shot from the entrance to the comic themed area. It’s just a smattering of numbers and symbols to her, but it’s clear that for as flat as this map is on his phone, it’s a real place in his head, one he knows well enough to walk in his sleep.

Kiki, for her part, snubs every Dunkins until the last exit. As soon as they’re off the highway, she directs Mitsuhide into a small strip mall parking lot-- just seven shops with the Dunkins sandwiched in between, not even enough room for a drive-through-- and has him walk in with their order.

What’s the deal? Obi had laughed, taking a sip from his iced mocha. They put solid gold in these or something?

Her cup sat in the holder, steaming. Timing.

It’s already warm this morning, but the moment Zen and Kiki step out of the car they both take the first sips from their cups and sigh.

“Perfect,” he sighs, eyes fluttering open to fix on her. “How about you, Shirayuki?”

Her iced hot chocolate has already melted, forgotten after the first sip, and there’s no way she can politely explain that there’s something lost in translation when it comes to taste. So instead she settles for, “Good!”

“Great.” His whole face softens, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way she wishes she could touch, but-- but that’s not a good idea. Not when there’s people behind them in line taking pictures, and someone else with their phone out in the next line over, trying to get their barcodes on the screen.  “Oh, here, I’m the one with the tickets, let me just--”

There’s too many people crushed close for him to comfortably shuffle through; even with Kiki and Mitsuhide stepping out of the way, he still has to stretch between them to reach the turnstile. The ticket taker-- er, guest service representative stares down at him, taking in the mirrored sunglasses and nondescript baseball cap, and a frown brews at the corners of her mouth.

“Ah, here, Boss.” Obi, close enough to rest his hip on the stile itself, plucks to phone out of his hand and offers one of his lop-sided smiles. “Sorry about that. There’s five of us.”

The gaze she sweeps up Obi is slower, dragging around his waist and again at his shoulders, but finally it settles right onto her reflection in his Aviators. It’s not quite a smile that she gives him, but there’s a definite lightness when she says, “I’m going to need you to flip through them.”

It’s nothing that should make her uncomfortable; Obi always jokes that he has a magnetism, that he really knows how to light a flame, and it’s not as if she doubted him, it’s just-- it’s strange to see it in action. To watch a complete stranger twirl her hair and lean close as she scans some barcodes, glancing up at him between each screen as if she’s hoping to catch his eye. And yet the only time he does is when she’s done, letting his smile pull a scooch wider as he says, “Thanks.”

Shirayuki doesn’t think she imagines the disappointment in the girl’s rote, “You can all go in now. Please enjoy your day at Six Flag’s New England.”

“Unbelievable,” Zen mutters as they walk out from under the turnstiles’ shade, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “I smile and make nice, and she acts like I’m a felon. You go off and do the same thing and she practically trips over herself to help you.”

“What did I tell ya, Chief?” Obi lowers his Aviators to give him what Shirayuki can only call a saucy wink. “It’s the charisma. Raw animal--”

“It’s the height,” Kiki says with all the subtlety of smashed keys on a piano. “And the scar.”

Zen turns to him, assessing, and scowls. “You’re not that much taller than me.”

Obi’s all mirrored glass and teeth when he answers, “It’s not the size, Boss, it’s how you use it.”

“Three inches,” Kiki interjects, with all the interest of watching paint dry. “And Obi doesn’t skip his core workouts.”

“I’m not skipping, I’m just busy--”

“Don’t worry, Chief, she’s going to be kicking herself when she find out just which GQ motherfucker she snubbed in the ticket line--”

It’s not on purpose that Shirayuki lets them slip ahead; no, she simply gets to the welcome gate, a massive stretch of red brick and Greek columns that reminds her of nothing more than the State’s Pavilion at the Big E, and it hits her-- it’s been a long time since she’s been to a park like this.

She was supposed to go...two years ago now. The senior trip, an overnight to Dorney Park that had everyone buzzing about room assignments, about the last time they went in eighth grade, and ha ha, wasn’t a trip like this for kids? It hadn’t stopped them from getting excited, from spending every moment between periods making plans about which rides to go on, which times they might be able to sneak away and meet boyfriends on balconies or behind Staff Only signs.

Oma had already been sick, then. She’d been slipping between home and hospital every few months, and by March, it became weeks, the bills from previous stays stacking up on the sideboard. A trip to the other side of the state wouldn’t break the bank, but it was still money that they wouldn’t have, another hassle for Opa to handle. It’d been nothing to hide to permission form, to tear it to pieces the next time Opa was out of the house and bury it at the bottom of the kitchen trashcan. Two days in the school library had seemed a small price to pay to keep another worry off his plate. That’s what they did; look after each other.

Or rather, that was what Shirayuki thought they were supposed to be doing, anyway.

The school had been willing to take her even still; her homeroom teacher even taking her out of lunch the day before to explain they had a budget for situations like this, that she could still come and enjoy being a senior like everyone else in her class, but--

But she’d told them she got motion sick. A hard thing to argue with, so they left her alone instead. She’d been good at that. At getting people to look away. It helped that most people wanted to.

There’s a tap on her hand, long bone to long bone-- metacarpals, her textbook would say-- and it’s too firm to be a mistake. Not an accidental brush, but a solid reminder, and as she looks up into the furrow at Obi’s brow, she wonders where she lost the knack of going unseen. “You good, Doc?”

“Yeah.” It’s a struggle to bring her smile to the surface, to try to submerge those raw pieces of herself. “Just...been a while.”

Obi’s not one for extended eye contact outside of a threat, but when he looks at her now it’s like she’s made of puzzle pieces instead of physical features, trying to put them together in an expression that fits in the hard boundaries of her face. And then, with one slow blink, he turns away. Purposeful, even though he doesn’t once fall out of step beside her, and, oh-- he’s letting her compose herself. Letting her choose what she’d like him to see. “I get you.”

For the first time, Shirayuki’s beginning to suspect that might be true.

With a sigh, he adds, “Not long enough, though.”

There’s a small rise to get up to Main Street, and her feet stutter to a stop there, dying to ask why. In books the mysterious companion is always stoic, always silent, a fortress of secrets that no word escapes from. But Obi-- Obi never stops talking, to the point that she wonders when he breathes. And yet it’s never about himself, and she just-- she just wants to know him. To understand why somewhere designed down to the dishware to be one of the happiest places on earth makes his skin crawl. Why he chose to come here even when--

“Oh, there you are!”

Shirayuki can be the first to admit: she’s not paying attention. Even still, she gasps when Zen appears beside her, cupping a hand around her elbow. The cup becomes a catch, fingers latching firmly to tow her through the crowd. “Wait...”

“Come on.” He grins, all eagerness and excitement beneath polarized glass, and it’s infectious. “If we’re going to ride Superman, then we need to get there before the crowd.”

There’s no time to temper her expectations; the last time she walked into a park, it was with Oma on one side and Opa on the other, the buildings along the fairway towering over her, coasts nothing but a distant thunder rumbling deeper in the park, a monstrous set of snakes dueling just over the horizon. She’s taller now though, a grown adult, and for one breathless moment at the top of the hill, she wonders if it’s enough for time to have made places to make someplace like this small.

The worry lasts less than a blink; just a turn of the corner, and-- and--

Red tracks loom over the park, a bright blue car hurtling past with so much force behind it that the pavement rattles beneath her. It flies into a loop, screams trailing seconds behind, and oh, she doesn’t have to wonder why it’s called Superman when it’s got a rise like that, one big peak stretching high enough that the cart doesn’t so much ride up it as it is ratcheted up it, a click click clunk she can hear from the top of the stairs.

“We’re going on that?” The last coaster she went on was in the kiddie area, a little wooden thing that went click-clack beneath her sneakers and relied on centrifugal force to keep them in their seats. Still, it seems safer than this, five-point harnesses and all.

“It’s the biggest coaster in the park.” He hardly needs to tell her that; it’s heads and shoulders above every other ride in sight, save for the drop tower. “When you go down that peak, you experience the same amount of g forces as astronauts on reentry. More than any other coaster in the country until they built Kingda Ka.”

Obi lingers two steps back, hands hooked behind his head, and whistles. “Been studying up, eh, bossman?”

Kiki snorts, shouldering in beside him. “He sure knows a lot for someone’s whose last few experiences with coasters ended with--”

“I was fourteen,” Zen informs her primly. “And that wasn’t even a coaster, it was a tower, which is a much different motion that plenty of people have issues with, and--”

“Shouldn’t we work our way up to this?” Shirayuki would love to sound mild and casual, like she’s only thinking of the group, but instead she’s just...shrill. “Maybe start on, er, that one?”

She flings out an arm, pointing to the track that curls around Superman’s struts like a cat. It’s green, built so low to the ground that it almost disappears into the trees studding the course, and it’s not until everyone looks that she realizes small children are standing in the line to wait with their parents.

“Catwoman’s Whip?” Kiki cocks her head. “That’s a kiddie coaster.”

“And the line never gets that long,” Zen assures her, as if that’s some argument against it. “If you don’t hit Superman at the start of the day, you’ll have to wait hours in line for a single ride.”

“Oh...right.” She swallows, smoothing her palms over her skirt. “Of course. Then I guess...why not?”

“What’s the matter, Doc?” Obi slinks up beside her, all slants and angles. “Throwing yourself out a window is fine but somehow coasters give you cold feet?”

“N-no! It’s just--” there’s a difference between spur of the moment heroics and planning to throw herself from a dozen stories up for fun, and all of it has to do with anticipation “--really big.”

“Ahhh, right. And you’re tiny.” An unnecessary observation, in Shirayuki’s opinion, but with the way has to stoop to make his smile even with hers, she can’t really say it’s wrong. “You know, I can always hold your hand if you get scared, Doc. I’m long enough I could even be a human seat belt, if you--”

“Hey.” Zen’s arm swings down between them, cleaving a space for him to slide into. “I’m the one that’s going to be holding her hand, thank you very much. Ah, that is, er--” he glances at her, a sheepish blush blooming across the flat of his cheeks “--if you actually want to go. We really don’t have to, I just though--”

“No, no!” Her fingers knit through his, palms close enough to kiss. He’s just the right size for it to be the perfect fit. “Holding hands will be nice.”

The thing is: Obi doesn’t really do friends. Or at least, he didn’t. Sure, he’d had kids he hung around in school to pass the time, or other fighters he’d be friendly with until the moment money-- or their girlfriends-- got between them, but not...this. He wasn’t the kind of guy who got six am smoothies at Starbucks after a spar, or who worried about if their roommate would catch them skipping leg day, or who anyone would notice if he missed a meal.

But then Richie Rich pluck him right out of the trash, and suddenly he can’t escape it. Big Guy piling extra fancy ham into a perfectly golden sandwich melt. Princess hunting him down to drink beers on the roof. Bossman cornering him about the state of his resume. And Doc...

Well, it’d be easier to list what Doc didn’t do. So he doesn’t mind getting dragged to some theme park, and he’s determined not to mind being the odd one out. He’d known the score when he agreed to come, known how this would all shake out no matter how many times they told him, it’s not a date--

But they still separate out into pairs without a thought when the lines split for loading. Doc and Chief in one, Princess and Big Guy in the other. One glance at the diagram posted on the wall tells him all he needs to know: two seats to a row, two rows to a car. Best he can do is slip in to the one right behind them and shout across the gap.

The carts roll up, and none of them even give it a second thought as they slide in, two cozy couples with eyes only for each other. It’s cute. Objectively.

The operator scuffs up beside him, giving him one long, measuring look before she calls out, “Singleton here! We need one more!”

His teeth grit down, wincing as Doc looks back, guilt written in broad strokes across her face. He may not be able to hear her over the crowd, but he can see her mouth, “Obi doesn’t have a partner!”

God, being fifth wheel sucks. Good thing they’re worth it.

Doc wiggles in her seat, head swinging frantically from side to side, but it’s not until she glances back, distressed gaze fixed on him, that he realizes she’s looking for the release. That she’s actually going to climb back here and--

“There’s five of us,” Kiki informs her mildly, both close enough and loud enough to be heard. “No matter what we do, someone is sitting alone.”

“But...” Doc stills, and all right, Princess might be the reasonable one here, but Obi still wishes they were in the same car, if only so he could kick the back of her seat. “We promised...”

“Oh, I-- I don’t have one!” A girl breaks free from the group behind him, scurrying up to the operator. “Can I take it?”

Objectively, she’s hot. Tan skin, dark eyes, and long legs framed by even shorter shorts, just the kind of girl he would have taken back to his place after a fight and forgotten about by morning.

She slips in next him, smile nervous as she tells him, “Sorry, my friends are behind us. They’re gonna be--”

“Julie, he’s hot,” one hoots from two rows back. Another adds from right behind them, so helpful, “Get it!”

“--Loud,” she sighs, flushed. “Sorry again.”

“Don’t be.” In another life he’d be interested-- hell, he probably should be in this one-- but all he can think of is red hair and a sweet smile. “They seem fun. This your first time?”

She casts a wary look up the rise. “I’ve done coasters, but...”

He grins. “Well, if you gotta grab on to someone, you won’t break me.”

The look she turns on him is speculative, and, ah, he might not be interested, but something tells him the feeling isn’t mutual. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

After being flung around a track like a hamster in a wheel, Zen doesn’t expect to find the exit ramp the hardest bit. The shaking legs don’t help, of course, sending him careening into a wall with all the grace of a drunk gazelle, but one or two more breaths gets him steady. Lets him find his sea legs, as it were. Just...on land.

Whatever it is, he’s just glad that handful of dramamine worked. Last thing he needs is for Shirayuki to see him hurl into a trashcan for twenty minutes. Especially when he’s got a dozen coasters to get through today, and that’s just the good ones.

“Oh, my...” Shirayuki stumbles up next to him, leaning into his side like a crutch. “Wow.”

It take a second for him to calm himself enough to manage, “Did you have fun?”

She beams up at him, eyes shining and cheeks flushed, and oh, he’s glad he brought more of those pills in his pocket, because he’ll ride a hundred of these to keep her looking at him like that. “So much. Are there more?”

“A ton,” he assures her. Her smile only gets brighter as she braces herself against the rail.

“So, Catwoman’s Whip next?”

“No, no. That’s fast but there’s not much to it.” He chucks his chin out across the park, toward the general direction of South End. “We’re going all the way across the park. The Dark Knight.”

“When’s Mind Eraser?” Kiki leans over his shoulder, squinting at the map he’s pulled from his pocket. “That one’s good. Lots of loops.”

“Right after.” He points to the red track sandwiched between the Superman and Batman’s peaks. “It’s just around the corner once we’re off. Then I thought we might run across to Goliath, and--”

“Hey.” Mitsuhide frowns up the ramp, hands on his hips. “Have any of you seen Obi?”

Zen blinks, folding the map back into his pocket. “I thought he was right behind you guys.”

That thoughtful frown deepens. “He was. But then I turned around and--”

“There.” Kiki nods up to the land landing. “Fashionably late, I see.”

Obi glances up, tucking something in his pocket. “Yeah, I like to keep up the suspense. So chief, where to?”

[queerfables]

The Rules of the Twist

Given the themes of deception and sleight of hand in Good Omens season 2, I think most of us agree it's at least possible there's some kind of twist waiting to be revealed in season 3. We're bouncing around a lot of theories, but I wanted to take a step back and look at the general shape of what we might expect.

The big twist we've seen before in Good Omens is Crowley and Aziraphale's body swap. (Okay, technically it was an appearance swap. But that just doesn't sound as pithy.) Rather than anticipate an exact repeat of this trick, I'm considering the swap as a sort of model. What does it tell us about the rules Neil plays by when he pulls a twist in this story? What clues can we expect, and what can we not count on? Sure, there's no guarantee that a season 2 twist is going to map exactly onto what we've seen in the past, but I think it's a reasonable place to start. Take these as guidelines and take them with a grain of salt, but if you're sorting through all our fascinating Good Omens theories and trying to decide what you think, you might find them helpful.

So then, what are the rules?

Broadly speaking, Neil plays fair with twists. He foreshadows and includes enough hints for the audience to make a reasonable guess at what's going on, or at least to look back after the reveal and go, "oh, of course". But he still keeps some cards close to the chest.

During the body swap, there are two big gaps in the information we're given:

Key events happen off screen The swap happened between scenes, during a time that it was only suggested, not confirmed, that Crowley and Aziraphale would be together. The transition between these scenes also used film and tv conventions to make that passage of time "invisible" - we see Crowley and Aziraphale get on the bus, and then we see them in the morning going about their days separately, and we're conditioned to think nothing important could have happened in between.

Key tools (eg abilities, items, information) haven't been shown before The swap was not something we'd ever seen Crowley and Aziraphale do, and it wasn't something they'd ever talked about either. It fit comfortably into the established world building but it hadn't been specifically signposted as a possibility.

The other big twist that Good Omens pulled was the romance between Gabriel and Beelzebub as the explanation for Gabriel's disappearance from heaven. Both of these information gaps are involved here too. The offscreen event is obviously the meetings between Gabriel and Beelzebub that lead to them falling in love - up until Gabriel's flashback sequence, the only indication they'd ever met each other was a brief conversation at the airbase during Armageddon. The tool that we haven't seen before is Beelzebub's ability to create a fly vessel for Gabriel's memories (protecting him in much the same way that Crowley and Aziraphale protected each other with their body swap, in fact).

These are pretty big gaps, really. And given that Neil knew there'd be years between seasons 2 and 3, I expect he would have leaned pretty heavily into them if he wanted to hide something. So how do we predict a twist if we can't know where it is and haven't seen what it might involve?

Unanswered questions

This is the big one. Looking at where the furniture isn't, you might say.

What's interesting is that the questions that point to a twist aren't usually subtle or ambiguous. For the body swap, the two converging questions were: what did Agnes' last prophecy mean, and how could Crowley and Aziraphale survive their executions? In season two, some of the unanswered questions signposting Gabriel/Beelzebub were: how did Gabriel lose his memory, why was he carrying a box, what was the significance of the song he kept singing, who was he at the Resurrectionist with...

I think guesses about upcoming twists are most convincing when they seek to tie up loose threads from the show. For this reason, I'm a little skeptical of theories proposing the kiss between Crowley and Aziraphale involved some kind of twist. It isn't impossible, I just don't see any unanswered questions there. (Savvy readers may note that I too have speculated about a twist hidden in the kiss. I do find the possibility fun, but it's not a theory I'm seriously committed to). If I was going to really buy into one of these theories, I'd want it to explain one of my big unanswered questions other than "but how could they get into a fight that hurts me so deep in my soul?" That's definitely a question I have, but not technically a mystery.

It's worth noting that in the case of the body swap, we were initially given a false answer to the question "how did they survive their executions?" The angels and demons watching attribute it to Crowley and Aziraphale having "gone native", believing that their natures had fundamentally changed, making them immune to holy water and hellfire. It might be the case, then, that some of the apparently resolved questions this season warrant further investigation. Is there more to the story of Gabriel's disappearance than we know, for example?

2. Unexplained details

If examining an unanswered question is looking at where the furniture isn't, then this is where we take all the pieces of furniture piled up in storage and see if we've got anything that fits. Everything is fair game here: script, acting, music, props, sets, costumes, editing, camera angles, audio effects, visual effects, everything. If it's on the screen or coming through the speakers, it was put there on purpose by multiple teams of highly skilled and attentive creators all working together to create the final product.

I think you could probably do an entire meta on all the little details pointing towards the season 1 body swap, but here are some of the big ones:

"Crowley" sees the restored Bentley, but takes a taxi instead of driving it

"Aziraphale" circles "Crowley" when they order their ice creams, the way Crowley more typically moves around Aziraphale

"Crowley" says "tickety boo", an extraordinarily Aziraphalean phrase

The collar on "Crowley's" jacket is a beige tartan rather than its usual red

There are general differences in the ways David Tennant and Michael Sheen embody the characters throughout the swap

Similarly, Gabriel and Beelzebub's romance has lots of small details pointing to it. The big one that keeps showing up is the connection between Gabriel and flies. He mentions them and interacts with them repeatedly, and although it isn't obvious at first glance, there's a fly in the box that he carries to the bookshop. This all culminates in the reveal that it's the same fly, Beelzebub's gift to him.

Here's the problem, of course: if everything in the show is intentional and crafted with meticulous attention to detail, how do we know what actually matters? This is why I think it's so important to look at the unanswered questions first. There's a joy in seeking out Easter eggs and connecting all the dots, and sometimes you might strike gold this way, but there's also a lot of noise in the signal. It's helpful to know the general shape of what you're looking for, so you'll know when you've found it.

You can reverse engineer this. Start with details that jump out at you and then look for a puzzle they might explain. This works, but it's a little easier to get lost in the weeds, struggling to sort out what's significant and what's a fun reference to another piece of media or a hint to a question that's already been resolved. Going back to the twists we've already seen on this show, the unanswered questions around them were really big and obvious, so I think it's a good idea to ask: if I hadn't noticed this detail, would I have thought this was a mystery that needed solving?

Okay, but what do we do with this?

Well, maybe nothing. These criteria can't confirm or rule out any theories, after all. I'm laying it out like a rubric but it isn't really, I'm just describing a few storytelling patterns we've seen before and making some rough guesses about how they might show up again. If I were really serious about this I'd probably take a look at other examples of Neil's work and see how well my model holds up there, but the truth is I'm not really familiar with enough of his other works to do this. (Confession time: I was always more of a Pratchett fan).

The main reason that I've laid everything out like this is it informs my thinking when I stress test my own theories, and I figured other people might be interested in it. I'm also hoping it will help me to be able to refer back to this when I write meta in the future. For my own purposes, I find a breakdown like this helpful because it gives me a sense of how a writer approaches their story, where they'll tip their hand and where they'll hold things close. It's no guarantee and it wouldn't be any fun if it was, but in a lot of cases we're not aware of our own patterns, so it can be surprisingly illuminating.

[newsmutproject]

I was in the process of writing a piece and I wanted to ask about what sorts of language and profanity were allowed. obviously, I don't want anything that could be seen as a slur, or something offensive, but I want to know where the line is to avoid making something that seems either too crude, or undeveloped.

Good morning! Co-editor T.C. Mill here.

So initially I admit I was surprised by this question. We are the New Smut Project, after all. Our target audience is not those busybodies who rate books 1 star on Goodreads because a character says "Jesus fucking Christ!" at some point.

But as I woke up more and considered it, I see where you're coming from, Anon. There is such a thing, for our purposes (not everyone's! Sexy is subjective. But we're cultivating particular kinds of sexiness here), as "too crude." It's a matter of more than word choice, though.

In previous guidelines we noted a preference for "tasteful" word choice and specified liking "come" over "cum". That last bit's still our preference - and our house style - but we can always change "cum" to "come" in copyedits, along with adding serial commas (and in all honesty, we can be argued out of either change in individual cases to fit an author's artistic vision. Maybe the characters are sexting and there's no way they're typing four letters when they can type three. Etc.)

"Tasteful," I realize now, is too vague. I love the word "cunt" much more than "pussy." Other people feel the exact opposite and to them, that's tasteful. Mood matters too. What's tasteful in the heat of the moment can feel crude on the first page of the story (not always, though! A first page that opens with something really raw and passionate will get my attention!). If the story's a piece of IKEA erotica with flat(-pack) characters going through the motions, just about any word choice will sound cringe.

Also for a combination of reasons "fuck" doesn't even parse as profanity to me anymore, so there's that.

If you look at our tag for Terms and Language you'll see a range of people's ideas, opinions, and favorite vocabulary - everything from discussions of identity labels to synonyms for "cock."

In our author interviews for Cunning Linguists (to some people, that title is probably too crude), we asked about people's favorite and least favorite words in sex writing, and received some fascinating, funny, and steamy answers!

Finding the right word to fit the moment is always one of the writer's challenges and privileges, whether writing sex or anything else. That said, some advice that I think could be helpful here: NSP Co-Editor Alex Freeman's article "Sex Writing 101."

It breaks down a sex scene into different 'ingredients' - action, reaction, dialogue, sensory details, and so on. If that sounds a bit technical, I'd encourage you to look at it as descriptive rather than prescriptive -- it's possible to write a great sex scene without any dialogue, for instance! But looking at where dialogue appears in the example sex scene and what it adds can spark some ideas that help any story to feel more vivid and interesting. That help to build an erotic mood.

The same word might feel "too crude" if it appears in an underdeveloped scene and, in a piece where intimacy and erotic tension have been built, it might feel absolutely fucking perfect.

It's not tastefulness we're looking for so much as the right combination of juicy flavors.

As a closing thought: the deeper you get into your character's POV throughout the story, the more freedom you have to use whatever language they would use.

Wait, I lied, one more closing thought: If your story has a title like "I Had Sex With My 18-Year-Old Babysitter Last Night," we are going to be turned off by it before we read the first page, even if none of those words are individually crude. Though the fact is the people sending us those stories probably haven't bothered to read any part of our site except the email address to send their stories in to. If you're making an effort, you'll come in ahead of them. (Note: this is not a reference to any one submission we've received, but rather a whole number of them - pieces that are very artless, cliche, and often make use of power dynamics in a way we really aren't about.)

[thalsrph]

‘Something tragic occurred,’ the experts repeated over and over. ‘It was a Rapture-like phenomenon, but it doesn’t appear to have been the Rapture.’ — Hello there Thalia! I was hoping we could get an opinion, please? We're a brand new town and skeleton roleplay based on The Leftovers series on HBO, where two percent of the world's population just mysteriously disappeared. Thank you very much!

I would be more than happy to! I urge you to remember that the following text is solely my opinion and is not meant to be offensive in any way!

First off, I would like to say that I am absolutely in love with your theme. It is so aesthetically pleasing combined with the graphics you have chosen. I love the minimalist feel you have chosen to go for, absolutely spot on ! 

I know nothing about The Leftovers so I found that your plot was descriptive enough so that I as well could understand the basic jist of the roleplay. Though, I have to say, I am a little surprised about the plot. When I first came onto the page I thought this was going to be one of those “ a person in town died and somehow it affected everyone’s lives “ sort of roleplay, but this is definitely more interesting in my opinion. I have one little note to make about the plot page layout, it looks a little off with the image cutting into the text like that. Perhaps it would be easier on the eyes if the image was elongated so the entire plot fit beside it rather than being separated by the image and then just having the summary below the image and the plot. Also, in your summary you say it has been 5 years since the rapture and in the full plot you say 4 years – it’s a little confusing. 

Your navigation is easy on the eyes and well structured. I like that you have chosen to add that it is an 18+ roleplay there as well as there may be triggering content, as people might want to know that before continuing to read about the roleplay. 

As to your guidelines, I am a little confused why it says “ship rules” at the top of the page? They are generally very oversee-able and easy to read which is good. I like that you have a week of activity before the whole un-following deal. I can’t say I love the ooc discord rule, since discord chats tend to create a cliquey feel for a roleplay and some may not want to actually partake in a discord chat. But, that’s again a preference thing from one admin to another. On another note, you have no rules regarding face claims which I feel you should implement since you allow OCs as well, the usual stuff like: no underage face claims, no deceased face claims, no one that asked not to be played, and define if you are allowing problematic face claims (or to what degree you will allow them – where would you draw the line?) 

Your character templates are absolutely lovely and I adore the diversity in the face claims as well as their age range. However, I have noticed quite a few problematic faces among the list which puts me off quite a bit (Jason Momoa, Noah Centineo, Ryan Guzman, Shay Mitchell, Ben Barnes, Naomi Scott, Park Sojin…) BUT I would also like to say I love the fact that you have Elyas M’barek the love of my life !!!! 

Your trigger list is great, and I am glad you have one ! 

Your application is short and sweet and seems to provide with all the points that need to be addressed for your character templates. 

All together, I feel that this roleplay has a lot of potential and it is clear that you have put a lot of work into it. However, I cannot say I would recommend it due to the problematic face claims and forcing a discord server on the members. Simply because I know that when I see these things in a roleplay myself I immediately click off of it as I don’t want to roleplay with characters where I am reminded again and again of the way that their face claims act in real life. Most of all not in a roleplay where potentially triggering sub plots are involved as it magnifies the discomfort.