Spotted In The Wild Yesterday.

My take is that both have a finite amount of commitment in them, and put it all into each other. They don't have enough left for a pet, long-term goals, or an address

since Arthur isn’t a fan, would John be inclined to any animals in particular? he strikes me as a cat-lover, maybe for the shared temperament

No, neither like animals

EDIT: neither are pet people should be a better way of saying this. They can empathize with any creature (lily) and they care about creatures, but they’ll never have pets.

the relationship between Vetinari and Vimes is sooo funny, because it is extremely aggravating for literally everyone involved. Like at some point they have this kind of companionship, and neither of them are really happy about it ?? they have mutual respect for each other and for both of them it's the most annoying, head-ache inducing thing in the entire world. they are besties and both of them are mad about it. it's " help my weird boss keeps promoting me against my will and teaching me the ways of Evil" and " help my commander that I employed to annoy the rich is making my city better and teaching me the ways of Good". their lives are so entangled with one another they literally couldn't be any closer. their mutual dislike is so important actually because it helps them to hold one another accountable. that little bit of mutual distrust is CRUCIAL. they are actually the epitome of love, and wow do they hate it. they absolutely loathe it. my favourite relationship to be portrayed anywhere ever.

Ma modeste contribution en ce funeste mois

While I generally agree, I am going to go against type and share one thing that did always bug me about the Discworld: a lot of the ordinary protagonists turn out to be scions of important families. Vimes is first introduced as an alcoholic cop, but by Feet of Clay he's the descendant of the man who led the revolution against monarchy and killed the last king. Angua is an "ordinary" werewolf in Men at Arms but the daughter of one of the three most important families in Uberwald by The Fifth Elephant. Even the Weatherwax family is several times referred to as one with a lot of innate power (I am excluding Carrot from this because the fact that he is The One True King was always the joke).

It doesn't mean that there aren't characters who are, in fact, common folks. Or that these changes aren't very interesting directions for the characters. But it's definitely a pattern.

I think that the real reason that Terry Pratchett is my favourite fantasy writer is that he’s the only one who really centres working people in his stories. I mean, Game of Thrones is almost entirely about the antics of rival aristocrats; Harry Potter is heir to two family fortunes and the subject of a prophecy and goes to an elite boarding school; even the Hobbits (save Sam) in The Lord of the Rings are minor gentry. Meanwhile, who are the main protagonists in Discworld? A recovering-alcoholic cop; an old peasant woman who lives in a cottage; a conman who was forced to take over the post-office. Pratchett writes entire novels about classes of people that other writers treat as background characters. He’s not condescending in his depictions; he’s willing to show enlisted soldiers as people, rather than arrow-fodder; and he’s aware that even ‘simple peasants’ know detailed information about things that wizards and knights can’t be arsed to care about; that everything about the world takes a hell of a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes and that most people never see, And he makes sure that you know this, too.

I've always read this part of Good Omens as a bit of moral cowardness on the part of the duo. A life against the universe is a very utilitarian way to see things, and if you subscribe to this philosophy, it's not wrong. Both would like it to be no antichrist, but neither are willing to do the deed themselves.

And they both have their reasons to not engage too deeply with moral matter. Aziraphale principal failing is having much more in Heaven than is warranted and believing them (or trying to believe them) to be right. Tautologically. (There's a reason why the sarcasm in "You're an angel, I don't think you can do the wrong thing." doesn't register). So as much as he doubts the righteousness of the Flood, or the Crucifixion, he can fall back on "Well, if Heaven thinks it's okay...". Hence why he's so desperate to have their approval way after it's obvious to everyone that they're not interested in stopping the apocalypse.

Crowley has it a bit easier, since his side is supposed to be wrong, and not liking any of them assholes is perfectly acceptable. So if Hell is peeved at him for being more annoying than murderous, it just means he's succeeding at being annoying. Which is a justification for not being murderous. But not having a convenient excuse for not wanting everyone to die, he's much more ready to throw in the towel.

Because Crowley is on the right side of the argument when it comes to their relationship (for starters, by acknowledging they have one), it's easy to forget that in the bandstand scene, he's arguing for giving up on Earth. I think that's Illustrative of Crowley's main problem: with one notable exception, he's not comitted to anything.

He didn't mean to fall, he just sauntered vaguely downard. He's shocked by the Flood, but he doesn't do anything about it. He didn't invent the Spanish Inquisition (and, in the book, gets drunk for a week when he finds out about it) but he'll take the credit. On his day to day, his demonic activities consist of putting a large number of people in a bad mood, which admittedly is more efficient, but also means that he doesn't have to do or witness any of the really nasty stuff that could result from it. And he wants the Antichrist to be gone, but he doesn't want to have to kill him himself.

I've been working on this post for a while and I am running out of time! So here goes: Today I want to talk about the dark side of Good Omens. This is a long post, sorry about that, but there are so many twists and turns. We all love GO, the romance, the banter, the comedy, the humanity of it. But it does a have a subtle dark side underneath which is usually overlooked. It has to do with the race to stop Armageddon, how their different views brought them to the bandstand conflict, and how Aziraphale ultimately came around at the airbase. It was a rocky road. In the book, when Crowley receives the basket and is on his way to the hospital, he has a thought. We didn't see this in the show so it may or may not have happened there, but it happened in the book. Ultimately Crowley didn't go through with it, but it did occur to him.

So Crowley kept driving and eventually came up with Plan A: Raise the antichrist together behind Hell's back. Surely as a normal, balanced human being the kid wouldn't want to destroy the world, easy and straightforward, right?

Aziraphale's orders are to keep Crowley under observation and so he does. But he also tells Heaven he will "influence the child towards the light". Heaven humors him as long as he keeps doing his job: monitoring Crowley and the antichrist.

However as the scheduled time gets closer, Crowley realizes that the only way to be 100% certain there won't be an Armageddon is to not have an antichrist at all (like 11 years ago). And he brings up Plan B: Kill the child, for the first time.

Aziraphale didn't like the idea of killing Warlock outright if there were other options. So he came up with Plan C: stop the dog. That... was very short-lived.

And here is where things will start to get murky. While both know they need to find the antichrist, they don't really know what to do afterwards.

Crowley probably thinks that whatever they do, they'll do it together, that Aziraphale will be on board with it. Aziraphale on the other hand still thinks Heaven are "the good guys" so he separately comes up with Plan D: Tell Heaven where the antichrist is. If Heaven gets rid of Adam, all will be fine. Heaven knows better and thy are going to win anyway. At this point, Aziraphale is fine with eliminating the antichrist, he just doesn't like the idea of doing the deed himself, let Heaven handle it. So he lies to Crowley about finding Adam.

And he lies again about having found the antichrist when they meet at the bandstand. Aziraphale has made his mind. As they talk, Aziraphale's reasons that if Crowley were to kill the child instead of Heaven, it would be a better solution for everybody. Again, he is fine with eliminating the antichrist, but not with doing it himself, Crowley can do it. Should this be a very short lived Plan E?

Crowley on the other hand, just like at the Crystal Palace, insists that Aziraphale do the deed. Aziraphale would not have it. Either Crowley does it or Heaven does it, but not him.

The book is more clear about how Crowley is afraid of Hell's punishment if he fails. In Crowley's mind, if Aziraphale kills the child it would be ok, Aziraphale gets brownie points in Heaven and Crowley gets punished for maybe only being incompetent.

But if Crowley kills the child, he would be in really BIG trouble, punished as the worst traitor there could be. (this quote comes from a later passage but it is the sentiment that counts)

Both agree that the antichrist needs to go. But Crowley won't kill the child and Aziraphale won't kill the child either. So they come to an impasse.

Aziraphale proceeds with his Plan D anyway and his conversation with the Metatron goes as pear-shaped as could. And this is where he decides to talk to Crowley and reconcile. That didn't work out either.

After a short trip to Heaven, Aziraphale finds himself on Earth and ready to follow Crowley's Plan B. However he still doesn't want to do it himself, so this time he is recruiting humans to do it (Plan F!). Humans are good at killing other humans, they have been doing it for a long time ;)

Said humans are on board with it until they realize that the antichrist is an 11-year old boy and Plan F goes up in smoke.

Crowley is not giving up though and Aziraphale, fully committed now that every other option failed, follows Crowley's lead. Third time is the charm, right? Aziraphale doesn't hesitate anymore and shoots when Crowley urges him to do so.

And, as we know Madame Tracy saves the day and Adam (although for all we know Adam is bulletproof at this point ;) ) So yeah, interwoven with all the fun there are these glimpses of hidden darkness, our demon who keeps pushing Aziraphale to kill the antichrist for lack of a better plan and our angel who doesn't want to taint his hands and keeps looking for other people to do the deed instead. There is certainly a lot more nuance to this, Crowley and Aziraphale are not selfish, detached entities who end human lives willy-nilly, not at all. But in a desperate hour, they will, if that means the survival of the whole world. As Crowley put it back at the Crystal Palace "one life against the universe". He was ready to sacrifice that life from the very beginning. Aziraphale meandered his way to get there, but at the end he got there and shot at the child.

It is certainly very fortunate that they were not very competent at this. It would have been awful killing Warlock and then realizing he wasn't the antichrist after all. And Adam is a nice and smart kid who found his very own human solution to the problem without intentionally shedding any blood. They both deserve to live, and our walking disasters deserve to get their world and their humans without having to pay for it with the life of a child.

SHAKING AND CRYING AND FROWING UP!!!!! shoutout 2 my friend crane for turning calcifer!john into a gif!!!

I don't remember the context, except that it's definitely in a book by either Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett, but there was a hair salon that went through a litanie of names, all of them some sort of pun. I also don't remember any of the puns in English, but one of them in French was "Je fais ce que Cheveux". It's been my answer ever since when someone asks rude question about my hair.

Anyway I want to know all of the puny coffee shop names now. They're second-hand names. They should be in a pun shop.