#weird research I have done

[kaesaaurelia]

Difficult choices in editing the 1926 fic. You see, I've been trying to pare the thing DOWN without taking out any of what I like, but also there's this scene early on where Crowley is explaining his 4 different Chicagosonas to Aziraphale, and one of them (the least-present in the fic) used to work for infamously corrupt mayor William Hale Thompson, but since the fic takes place in 1926, during a window of time between Thompson terms, he's not mayor.

Why am I fixating on this? Well, Thompson ran again in 1927 and uh his campaign heavily featured. Well. Claiming there was a vast and evil British conspiracy against America, and the best way to handle it was to burn library books. I feel like Aziraphale would have opinions.

Per other quotes of his, he was also apparently not aware there were multiple Kings George, and thought that the one reigning in 1927 was the same one reigning in 1776. Which raises several questions I do not plan to address in the fic, but maybe I should talk about the book-burning and the British conspiracy theory? At the very least it seems like a good way to a. get in a joke about Crowley doing accents badly and b. to have Aziraphale know everything about this one weird local political thing because it involves books, but still not have heard of Al Capone.

Anyway, it is technically one year off, but they're having this conversation in my version of a restaurant that would actually not have been built until the 1960s, so I guess that part I'm willing to handwave. But I'm annoyed with myself for trying to cut words and then, oh, what about this stupid thing I just read about? I need to put it in!

[icewindandboringhorror]

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

[jasperthejester]

me: finally accepting theres a good chance im autistic and starting to work up the courage to ask my parents to see if i could get a diagnoses but being scared to

my mom: do you ever think you have adhd? if you want to do a screening for add next time your at the doctors you can

me:

[thegreatyin]

this nemesis ambition started out a little slow but I am getting closer to finding that bastard who killed my wife, and I’ll not rest a minute now that im far closer to on his trail

sorry got in character for a second

Anyways fun ambition so far very fucked up though

congratulations on joining the murder club anon!!!! depending on who you ask the name refers to either people who have murdered or people who have witnessed murder. usually both. actually extremely often both. it's a swell time you'll feel right at home (don't mind our collective skyglass knife collection in the back)

[anewp0tat0]

*kicks the door down* IM NOT LATE

Happy Birthday to our collective son!!

I feel pretty cruel for making dark art on his bday. but I mean yana said it first, it's not typically a day to celebrate. so I'm just following.. ;)

[mocktortis]

Dankovsky sometimes gets so invested in research he forgets to eat food until he tries to stand and nearly passes out.

[miralines]

While we’re talking about war crimes. With the massive caveat that I am not an expert on international law, I think that legally speaking, Tim blowing up the moon may not technically qualify as a war crime. Because most of the provisions about excessive destruction specify that you have to knowingly be causing excessive destruction, and I’m not sure whether it’s clear Tim meant to blow up the entire moon, or just the Kaiser’s palace. So if hypothetically speaking I were Tim’s lawyer (though I am still not an expert) I’d probably be arguing that the cannon setting off a chain reaction with the rest of the bombs on the moon was an unforeseeable side effect, and thus an accident, and that it does not legally qualify as a war crime.

That said, the rampage of Tim Goes Crazy is very clearly a war crime (or series of war crimes) based on the Geneva Convention’s provision that quarter must be given.

[crispycreambacon]

Dear Nephew Gobo, today I discovered that silly creatures give out striped colorful flags. I’m not quite sure why flags are such an important gift in Outer Space, but the silly creatures seem to be really happy about getting one. One of them handed one to me, and I must say, this one really speaks to me. I hope I can get one for you and your friends eventually.

—

Aka *throws my “Traveling Matt has NPD” headcanon in the pit and skitters*

[moonsorchid]

I did not expect myself to write a fanfic in 2024 and to research about the characteristics of orchids, but here I am.

[star-mum]

after all the "pre work" work I did, it's finally time to start writing the discussion of my thesis (aka actually analyse all the shit I said I was going to analyse and write "think pieces" on it) and Im gonna start pulling hair out

[kaesaaurelia]

So I talked about this on Discord and on FFA but I think I've written the last scene of the 1926 fic. For new followers or people who maybe forgot because it's been so goddamn long, "the 1926 fic" is a Good Omens fic I've been writing since 2019. It is mostly set in 1926 (the first scene is New Year's Eve, 1925) in Chicago and surroundings, it is going to be called Hustler's Blood, and this is the summary I think I'm going with:

Heaven tasks Aziraphale with tracking down the nefarious demon Crowley in Prohibition-era Chicago. The city is on the brink of a gang war, in the midst of a violent turf war between taxi companies, and many there are still suffering from the lingering trauma of the Great War. But there are good times to be had, so while Aziraphale figures out what he's going to tell Heaven, he and Crowley indulge in some Roaring Twenties decadence.

But when Crowley vanishes, Aziraphale must find him without tipping off the city's own assigned angel, Vehuel. She's determined not to let things in her city get any worse, but Aziraphale just wants his demon back.

Meanwhile, Crowley must contend with the cruelty of Hymie Weiss, Al Capone's rival on the North Side. Weiss is determined to kill Capone and avenge the murder of his best friend, and he's not above using a captured demon to do it.

As of now the draft is 426,128 words. I know, I know, that's so long. It covers nine months of spy intrigue and whump! And lots of (sadly no-longer-canon-compliant) Crowley backstory! An angelic swordfight over the Loop and a demonic brawl on the shore of Lake Michigan! Someone lies about a birthday to get free cake at a pirate theme restaurant! But, yeah, it's a long goddamn fic. Hopefully that word count will come down a bit but alas, I write long, so I really hope people like my writing enough to read that much of it.

In addition to Aziraphale and Crowley, there are two "main" original characters, because Aziraphale and Crowley spend most of the fic forcibly separated so they each needed someone else to argue with. So Heaven has sent Aziraphale help in the form of the Principality Vehuel, an angel who distinguished herself in the War Between Heaven and Hell, protected such combustible celebrated cities as Akrotiri, Troy, and Pompeii, and is returning from fifty years' mental health leave after the Great Chicago Fire. Meanwhile, Crowley is being guarded by Danny Kilpatrick, a WWI veteran turned mob accountant who stopped believing in God a while ago and isn't about to take some guy's word for it that he's a demon just because he can turn into a big snake.

It also features several historical figures, most notably Al Capone and Hymie Weiss, but Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, and Fats Waller have fairly prominent cameos.

Anyway, I have a few more scenes to write:

- I think I will expand the final scene a bit, which involves the hazards of surprising your friends with malort while you're stargazing on Lake Michigan.

- I'd like to write a scene at a Chicago American Giants game, but their actual 1926 summer schedule is kind of hard to find from a cursory google. (They won the 1926 Colored World Series that year, but that was that fall; this would have to be in the summer.)

- I need to write a little interstitial scene at Hull House, but I didn't go and didn't go and then the pandemic happened. (I have actually been to Hull House since then but it was for a Ghost Files screening and I didn't see the building that part is set in.)

- I'd like to write a scene where Vehuel is asking Fats Waller about Aziraphale and Crowley, who met him earlier in the fic and made a strong impression on him as really fucking weird. Vehuel is also really fucking weird, of course, but in a completely different way.

- One more weird sex scene, as a treat. (They hook up fairly early in the fic but the confession of feelings goes uh, a little less smoothly.)

- I also have to go back and figure out when they're taking public transit and when they aren't. A friend of mine hooked me up with some solid public transit maps, but for expediency's sake in the first draft I wrote a lot of the fic with them just taking taxis or walking when plausible, and I'd like to go back and fix that.

- I think I might run the car chases by my dad, since he knows about old cars and I cannot even drive.

So yeah. I just wanted to brag about Maybe Almost Finally Being Done With This Fic because it's been so long. I'm really tempted to just throw it onto AO3 with no editing but if it's worth writing, it's worth writing well, so I am going to reread the whole thing, which should be fun, actually, because I really do like my own writing. But. Shkfkdjghg here's hoping it doesn't take another year to get this thing ready to post.

[cloudysfluffs]

Don’t listen to haters, everything ever spread about Vivzie was disproven. Your art is cute.

LMAOOOOOOOO NO IT WASNT????????!!??!?!?

[wrishwrosh]

having evil ideas (elaborately researched justified au set during harlan county war)

[jupitersflytrap]

i just read the curious incident of the dog in the night-time and hopped on here to see what the general consensus was about it and oh dear i was not expecting to see so many people hating it

[inkybinkyboink]

oh fellas it's essay writing time you know what that means

[rapha-reads]

So I've decided to ignore sleep tonight (though it's already 6am so whatever), because several reasons I won't get into. Anyway I'm reading Prince Lestat and I am LOVING it. There is just so much lore?! So many new characters, fascinating characters?! A whole world of vampires whose stories are connected or totally not to the Coven of the Articulate?! There's just so much.

In my last post, about how I skipped quickly Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, I wrote that I was finding it academically fascinating to read several decades worth of an entire literature world in the span of a month only. To continue in this vein (pun intended), reading PL after having binge-read the original VC books is a deep dive into how history has sped up since the 80s.

I'm not just thinking about because I'm reading Gregory's chapter and that's what he's observing, and also because the changed world and what it means for vampire society ("the tribe", and how I adore that terminology) is the big main theme of this final trilogy. It's something I've been thinking about since TVL at least. How for how these novels pertain to the horror and the fantastic genres, they are also a mirror of the society and time during which AR was writing. And because she kept writing decade after decade, and kept observing the world around here, each new book is its own little observation about the early 80s, then late 80s, then first half of the 90s, second half of the 90s, and now we're right smack in the middle 2010s and these immortal characters are feeling the weight of this rapidly changing world.

And it makes me think of actual human beings born in the 40s or 50s, or even 60s, or my own grandfather born in 1931, and how, just like a lot of these vampires recounted in PL, they sometimes can't follow all the changes brought in the last three decades (the biggest thing is technology, intradiegetically Lestat himself saying he keeps forgetting how to use his smartphone, but extradiegetically, it's how AR writes "to go on the computer" and other phrases like that, that sounds weird to the ear of someone who's grown up with this tech). And AR was over 70yo when she wrote PL, so I'm imagining that she was also writing her own impressions of this 21st century world that she saw developing under her eyes.

And in light of all the historic events we live week after week these past handful of years only (the 2020s want to bury us), it's quite interesting to apply that way of thinking to our generation too (millenials and younger, the 80s-90s-early 00s kids). Saw a post earlier saying "do you think one day we'll get to live in precedented times", in answer to the classic "we're living in unprecedented times", and I think of how the VC are the stories of one handful of characters in a world full of other characters who are not or relatively not concerned by these big stories. And how the Coven of the Articulate is considered as legendary amongst the rest of vampiredom, while they themselves don't really realise their fame, or when they do, they reject it. And how in the actual world, there are still a huge percentage of the world population that's not concerned at all by things that here make us all go frothing at the mouth because "omg we're witnessing history". Yes, "we" are witnessing something that will appear in the history books, but it is so because we have decided to put ourselves in the narrative. So many people are not even caring a little bit about big news that seem so important to us, because their lives have other matters to care for. And it's not that they're wrong or we're wrong, it's not about that, it's mostly about how the rapid changes of the world in the 21st century has made a category of people (all ages all nationalities alike) the Main Character, concerned by the narrative and trying to control it or change it (voting, protesting, activism) while so many others are still going on about their lives as usual, maybe seeing the same things as the first category, using the same tools, but not seeing the connection between it and them (the "mavericks" as AR calls them), or others starting to realise and not knowing how to join the narrative (Antoine, Gregory), while yet others have picked up a whole other way of being part of the narrative while not being part of it (Fareed).

I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe I do need to go lay down for a couple of hours after all.