~Always Keep Fighting~

Artist rendition of how cats spread their little feeties when they stretch

it's always "you gnawed off your own leg to escape like an animal caught in a trap" and never "why didn't anyone try to help you out of the trap" or "why weren't you provided with any other resources to escape the trap with except for your own teeth"

[ID: tags reading "maybe even 'why was there a trap there in the first place']

thinking about their peaceful morning in the cottage

I've read a lot of fic about Aziraphale learning to sleep, or Crowley convincing him to try sleeping when Aziraphale has never seen the point, but for me this piece plays off a very poignant idea that--now that I'm seeing it--seems very obvious, especially for Show Omens, but that I've never once seen explored: maybe Aziraphale doesn't sleep because it's not safe.

We know Hell "never check[s] up" on Crowley and is severely understaffed, which explains how Crowley has been able to develop a sleeping habit: he's not any less safe from Hell asleep than he is awake. And we know demons can't enter the bookshop without invitation.

In fic and meta this is presumed to be due to "wards" Aziraphale has placed over the property, i.e., continuously acting miracles; but we see in canon that miracles require an occult or ethereal will to occur: as far as we can tell from what we're shown in the series, they're discrete events consciously willed into being by their directors. Aziraphale pulls power "down" from Heaven and Crowley pulls power "up" from Hell (and before the creation of the cosmos, the Starmaker pulls power from everywhere around themself) to make them happen.

There's no indication either way of whether a miracle like a ward is discrete or ongoing; if it's continuous, like an electrical field, that may require the continuous will and conduit of the miracle-doer. If that's the case, what happens to the ward if the miracle-doer falls asleep?

Even if that's not a concern, we do know for sure that before Aziraphale rebels against Heaven and establishes the bookshop as an "independent Heavenly embassy," Gabriel and Sandalphon can and do barge right in anytime they feel the need to put the frighteners on Heaven's misfit angel.

And then there's the symbolic meaning of the bookshop's oculus--not just the omniscience of God, but an eye always staring down from Heaven even into Azirphale's private space, the panopticon's someone could be watching at any given time.

And there's that Heaven-white Roman head, occupying the centre of so many of the S2 bookshop scenes--again, Heaven (specifically the Metatron, as he's the other floating head) spying on their own. (The head is also a reference to iconic British tv series The Prisoner, in which Cold War superpowers use busts and most notably a Roman bust as a/v surveillance tools against their own agents.)

Gabriel's already got a Thing against Aziraphale eating, which Aziraphale has to excuse as blending in and doing as humans do and defend by pointing out Gabriel's own love of human tailoring. What would the Supreme Archangel and his enforcer do if they found their Earthside employee sleeping on the clock?

Season 2 of Show Omens establishes that, although Crowley and Aziraphale now associate openly, they still understand themselves to be in danger from both their respective erstwhile employers--enough danger that Aziraphale moves to protect Crowley from demonic intrusion by assuming partial ownership of the Bentley and Crowley prefers to let the bookshop remain "technically" Aziraphale's even though Aziraphale gives him to understand that it belongs in fact and use (just not in contract) to both of them. The places a human would consider "home" or "safe" are neither for Aziraphale and Crowley, and they both know that. So even after Aziraphale stops working for Heaven, it may still not be safe for him to sleep.

All of this crystallized for me because of this piece. Because look at Crowley's face. You can see from @eklmrlos' previous pieces that they're very fucking good at putting exactly the facial expression on Crowley they want us to see, and that, along with the picture's caption specifying this is at the South Downs cottage, makes me wonder if maybe this is a depiction one of the first times Crowley has ever seen Aziraphale asleep.

Whether it is or not, it's unquestionably about the fact that Aziraphale is sleeping: he's what's presented to the viewer (and what Crowley's looking at), and the first two sketch panels show us that Crowley has touched him and even kissed him on the ear and Aziraphale hasn't woken up. So the significance of the picture lies in the fact that Aziraphale is asleep and doesn't wake up to mild interference.

I would argue that this is specifically about the vulnerability of sleep, too. The two sketch panels illustrate the need to sleep with someone trustworthy because you don't have control of what they do to you while you're sleeping--and if they do it softly enough you may not ever even know about it. @eklmrlos also chooses to depict Aziraphale with his belly exposed to the viewer, an expression of vulnerability that runs so deep humans share it with thousands of other species. You don't even have to be a mammal to understand what an exposed belly means.

And Aziraphale's belly in particular is shown here as softer than the appearance currently demanded by our diseased culture; it's also a part of himself that Good Omens fans are aware he covers with at least three layers of clothing, and these specific notes make the vulnerability of its exposure--and the significance of the moment being shown--hit even harder. (It tickles my nerdheart so much when artists achieve a layer of meaning with their art that only exists because it's fanwork.)

But it's Crowley's face that drives home that the safety of this moment is special. Because that's the expression you wear when you're in a museum looking at the painting you've always wanted to see in person but never thought you'd get to, or a zookeeper lets you feed a tortoise bigger than you are, or you look up at the sky at night: it's a face so intent on drinking in what it's seeing that it almost, but not quite, forgets to show its owner's happiness.

Morning comrades who wants to see some wacky art deco vehicles

Always

Don't let it be said I don't give you nothing

These are less vehicles and more creatures. Like I feel the bottom right I could encourage to eat seeds and berries out of my hand

Petting the radiator grill whilst making hushing noises, such a gentle thing

Vehicles you need to gently feed an apple before you can drive them

I don’t think humans should be living in studio apartments or little one bedroom apartments you can barely turn around in. It’s like how the minimum tank size requirement for a betta fish is technically 2.5 gallons but you’re a monster if you put them in anything less than 5 gallons. I think people deserve at least one extra room in their house.

I get wanting to avoid urban sprawl, wanting to use space efficiently or whatever but goddamn. You should have space for potted plants, for a pullout couch for when your mother comes to visit, space to pursue your hobbies. I don’t think that’s a greedy thing to want.

I see some of the apartments listed in NYC and it’s like. that should be illegal. I’ve seen snakes with enclosures bigger than that

Thought about this some more. I imagine this is a lot more tolerable if you have a healthy variety of spacious third places with a mix of socialization, solitude, and eating options, for reasonable prices. Like libraries and local pubs where you can happily spend hours alone or with friends. But for those to truly expand the space of one's enclosure they need to be within easy walking distance and free or easily affordable, so making use of them never provokes the anxiety they exist to relieve.

This is, uh, not how the cities with these little bolthole apartments are typically designed.

subtle ways to include foreshadowing

Some more things:

It's easy to miss stuff that you're not looking for. Start foreshadowing early - before the point where most of the audience would pick up on your story's trajectory or start asking the main question. Let incidental foreshadowing details become "a part of the background" that the audience is desensitized to, which they will only recognise as important when they look back with fresh eyes.

Keep the audience looking elsewhere. Hide foreshadowing for the long-term story beside information that is relevant to a more immediate problem, beside other things that are more visually interesting/ unusual, or in the background of an attention-grabbing interaction.

Bury the lede. Conceal important clues/ objects/ dialogue/ information inside lists of less-important information, observations, conversations or character/ setting descriptions. (This will be more effective if your style already has a precedent for using incidental description to flesh out your story/ scenery, otherwise the sudden appearance of description when you try to hide things might become a tell in and of itself).

Use repetition and/or consistent imagery to reinforce recurring details. Developing a "signature description" or set of descriptions for specific clues or characters can let you subtly identify them and/or establish an identifiable pattern without having to actively call attention to it. For example, if you set up association between a specific feature (e.g. hair colour/style, their profile, a signature piece of clothing) and a specific character, then mentioning that feature in a crowd scene can subtly signal to the audience that they are also present. Alternatively you might use a specific phrase/word as a unique identifier for a particular clue - a repetition that the audience may unconsciously feel before actively noticing.

Your cast isn't a hive-mind. Use rotating perspectives to give your audience a head start on finding patterns in recurring details that each perspective character only personally encounters once or twice.

Context and purpose can give things multiple meanings. Characters can come to a situation with different goals, priorities and/or background information, which can change how they (and through them, the audience) interpret events/ details or what they think a conversation is about. It's possible for characters to have a superficially coherent conversation where they each think they're talking about a different topic, or - in less extreme cases - for one character to be talking about two things at once/ using one topic metaphorically/ trying to leave hints that are missed by the other character being hyper-literal or focused on only one subject. This is one of the tricks you can use to hide and direct attention away from foreshadowing, or have have information pull double duty in being useful now and set-up for later.

Once people have a solution they don't look as hard for other ones. You can use context and red-herrings to feed the audience a partial answer or direct them towards a reasonable but incorrect inference, while continuing to hide other details that support a "true reveal" to come later.

Small things can echo later bigger things. Your protagonist(s) might solve (or witness the solving of) a small/ low-stakes problem in a way that goes on to mirror (or even inspire) the strategy they will use to solve a larger, higher-stakes problem later. Alternatively, they might run into unexpected problems by not noticing a flaw in their strategy, only to turn that flaw against an opponent in a later strategy.

Of course all of this only works if you...

Know what you're building your foreshadowing towards. This is especially important if you're actively using mystery elements. A lot of criticism has been leveled at the "mystery box" approach to writing and much of it is fair - if you start throwing out foreshadowing without knowing what you're pointing towards, you risk ending up with a collection of pieces that seem intriguing in isolation but fail to cohere into something that makes satisfying sense; indirectly punishing audience members who were trying to piece things together by basically wasting their time. No-one likes being made to feel like a chump for getting invested. For planner-writers this means planning at least as far as the resolution of the current arc and the broad strokes of your final endpoint if this is a multi-arc story. For panster-writers it means editing your draft so that the second version supports the ending and reveals you have found, and to remove excess foreshadowing for paths your story didn't end up taking.

(I've done a post series about outlining, "story bibles" and storybuilding/ structural editing/outlining tools if you're interested in learning more).

So Malmö arena has armed guards with them this year, just so, so nice.

Here’s the article but it is in Swedish

What the actual fuck

you there. high quality production youtube channel with a team of people. why are your captions autogenerated.

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is such a weird theory because it's like there's a very obvious explanation for why middle school kids who didn't have dysphoria before might suddenly have dysphoria. Like huh weird I wonder what very obvious and widely known change that could cause kids to suddenly become very uncomfortable in their gender or sexual identity starts in between the ages of 10 and 14. Guess we'll never know. Must be peer pressure to *checks notes* become the only gender minority in your whole school singling you out for harassment by your peers. Couldn't be puberty suddenly giving you new body parts/bodily functions that are wrong for you.

Turns out Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is a natural consequence of the often comorbid Rapid Onset Gender

I think the way people assume any post about transphobia against trans men is about trans women being transphobic towards trans men is just..... wow. Y'all's transmisogyny is showing. Trans women aren't cartoonishly evil and out to get trans men. it would be nice if I could make a post about trans men without a bunch of transmisogynistic trans guys and cis women who pretend to care abt trans men commenting weird shit on my posts.

Dont make me pull out the banner again

last night my partner held a somber little passover seder to show me what it’s about and when they got to the part where they were supposed to open the door for elijah they paused, frowned, and said “oh. huh. there is a clown.” and I looked out. and sure enough. there was a clown.

Why are Palestinians not allowed to have any allies? This is the same vein of people who lament about how “oh I only trust Palestinians to talk about Palestine” - we as Palestinians are asking you to speak up. It will always be just an excuse not to care or do anything. (And yes, what’s happening in Palestine actually does involve Americans!)

'Secure in the knowledge that push won't come to shove' they're being beaten and tazed and shot in the face, there's snipers on their University campuses. There's zionazi soldiers using tactics they copied from the genocide to attack them.

Zionazis and liberals' only tactic is to gaslight their targets into believing that fascism and authoritarianism isn't already underway.

People in Palestine have been loudly and unambiguously saying “protesters on American college campuses rock, keep it up.” In fact, Zionists use that against the protesters, citing these endorsements as at BEST ‘terrorists love these uninformed kids’ and at WORST ‘these kids are getting funding from terrorist groups.’

If Palestinians want American college kids out there, if they take time to make signs featuring the protesters, how is that in any way play-acting revolutionary fantasies? It’s all “listen to Palestinians” until actual Palestinians go ‘this rocks actually.’ It’s all “listen to Jews” until Jews are loudly anti-Zionist. Then the ‘well actually’ starts. You can’t win.

Depression is such an effective tranquilizer that it creates a great opportunity for plot twists in your real life. I have a pretty consistent opinion of myself which is "low" and "never ending guilt and shame for reasons I don't understand."

Recently received feedback from two different editing clients that started with "Please pass along to Jacquelynn that she is phenomenal at her job" and "I was blown away by the evaluation I received."

You always hear about how depression (and anxiety) lies to you and distorts reality, but there is logically knowing that and then there is like, physical proof of it and you are suddenly Neo in the Matrix jumping out of the fucked up little tube machine.

Look, medication and therapy are essential, but I think we shouldn't underestimate this form of treatment

(Source)

No amount of money will ever top the time I was talking to one of our grouchy old welders and he just casually said "ya know, I was talkin' to the engineers about you. You got a lotta respect around here, kid."

Discord has introduced microtransactions to make only specific users hear sound effects. Skype is back as a livestreaming platform. X is now marketing “twitter” as a paid-only private area to post in on X. There are clouds gathering above the field now. There’s an ache in your tooth when you eat something sweet, sharp and stabbing, but you put it off. The wind makes the puddles in the mud ripple after it rains. When you look out, you like to pretend they are deeper, deep enough to drown in. You wonder if you’d still be able to see just how big the cloud-heavy sky is as you fall beneath the surface. You wonder if you’d hear the first drops of rain. You wonder how the wind always seems to find you out there. The field is large, and it is cold outside. Come inside now. It’s getting late.

person online: you have to say in your bio if you’re afab or amab. also you have to specify if you’re transmasc or transfem. also you have to say if you’re transmisogyny exempt or transmisogyny affected. also you have to say if you’re a (trans) man or (trans) woman. also y-

the majestic and kindhearted northern yellow bat (lasiurus intermedius), as photographed by Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation: