“‘What will it matter in 100 years time?’
‘It matters now.’”
~Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
“Here and now, we are alive”
-Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
“We are here, and this is now… Vimes understood it to mean, in less exalted copper speak, that you have to do the job that is in front of you.”
~ Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
Crossposting from reddit, join me in my conspiracy tent
Okay, bear with me, I want a timestamp on my wild prediction of the year:
At the End of the Show, it’s gonna be revealed that ShowCarcer is actually Carrot and ShowCarrot is actually Carcer.
Mostly I just want to make sense of why Carcer is here. If he has been wronged and wants to “hijack destiny”, there’s no reason for him to be Carcer, thats not what that guy does. Could be any other Ankh Morpork based character, either villain (Wonse or D'Eath would make sense) or if they wanna keep the revolutionary/nightwatch angle, Ned Coats is right there.
If that’s just what Carcer is telling people, and he actually is book accurate, then casting a black man as a psychotic liar fishing for sympathy in a social justice movement is really really tone deaf. Like, on an unbelievable level.
But. What if this is a case of stolen identity? Young Carrot who’s been raised by dwarfs makes his way to the big city, the moment he arrives he gets jumped by Carcer. Carcer takes his letter of recommendation and his sword and with that pretty much steals his identity. The whole “long lost rightful king has returned home” is too good a sob-story to pass up, and the new “Carrot” joins the watch to see how far he can take this game and to get some power. That would fit with his storyline in nightwatch.
So now the real Carrot is out of pretty much anything, and has to figure out how to get some justice without the help of the Law, because the law took in the guy who robbed him. And Carrot is just really good at inspiring people, so if he wanted to go around and stirr people up into a revolution, he could totally do that. And over a few run ins, Carrot and Vimes built up some begruding respect, mostly for thinking a about the people nobody else seems to care about.
Whereas Carcer keeps going full lawful evil, because that’s how you Get Away With It. Colon and Nobby have to think really hard on why it’s okay to get some free coffee, but not okay to then arrest the barista for bribery. If it’s legal, then it can’t be wrong, right? Right?
There’s a big dramatic reveal on like, a rooftop or something. Real Carrot has imposter Carrot cornered, Vimes runs up with a swamp dragon and shouts “Ironfounderson!” and the guy we thought was the designated villain for the last five episodes turns and snaps “What?!”
in conclusion:
Has anyone done a White Collar style Discworld AU? With Moist as the white collar criminal using his expertise to solve white collar crimes and Vimes as the old cop who hunted him down and goes from barely tolerating him to treating him as a brother?
Me, finding out the Watch Series cast Sybil Ramkin Vimes as young, thin, and has her being a “vigilante”
Sometimes I just sit and think about how Aziraphale and Crowley spent several years giving some ordinary human kid THE weirdest possible upbringing of all time.
uhhhhhhh fic of Warlock as an adult where he mentions things offhandedly in therapy sometimes and his therapist is EXTREMELYY???????? CONFUSED????????????
“My parents couldn’t always make the time for me. Well, Mum couldn’t, for a lot of reasons. Dad… didn’t. It was hard to tell the difference from that age, and she made excuses for him, but I understand it now that I’m older.”
The therapist nodded. She wasn’t taking notes, simply leaning back in the comfortable chair across from him, and she was always doing something with her hands. It’s crocheting today, she says she’s making a baby blanket for a friend. Sometimes it was origami, or knitting, sometimes she’d be sewing, and once she was doing some kind of leather work. Braiding something for some reason.
He’d sat on about every chair and couch in the room before settling on the overstuffed couch. He could sit sideways and not look at her react, or sit up, or whatever. Sometimes he didn’t want to see her face when he said something, and sometimes he had to.
“Was there anybody who did?” she asked. Her voice was smooth and soothing. She was paying attention to her work, but also paying attention to him. She said that if she’s writing it makes some people nervous, but if she’s doing something else then the conversation feels more casual, even if it’s not.
Every once in a while, she got this look on her face that he suspected means he said something extremely interesting (or upsetting, or whatever) and was trying not to show it, but it never showed in her voice. He liked that about her.
He nodded. “When I was younger, we had this nanny. I used to just call her Nanny, I don’t remember if I ever knew her name. She was Scottish. She was real weird, but she’d spend as much time with me as I liked. She was always there, if the gardener wasn’t.”
“A gardener as well?”
He nodded. “He always had time for me. No matter what. He’d drop whatever he was doing to talk to me. He was from… I don’t remember. Very rural, this fellow.” He thought about it. “I don’t know what happened to them. I think they left to do other things, not too long before my eleventh birthday. I never saw them again. He was kind of boring, sometimes, but he always talked to me like I was the most important person he ever saw.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Nanny would too, actually. I sometimes think that they’re why I’m, you know, not as fucked up as I could be. That just knowing I could go find the gardener and he’d tell me what the rabbits were doing today, whatever he was doing, that I could tell him about… whatever. Or Nanny. She used to tell me to smite my enemies, I was never sure how to take it.”
It was just a moment and gone, a single expression of sheer bafflement, which made Warlock laugh a little.
im unironically very pro-divorce i think its a beautiful thing!
like……. having the freedom to legally sever all ties to someone with whomst you no longer have a relationship built on mutual love trust and respect? love that!!!
The legalization of no-fault divorce across the US directly correlated with a decline in women’s suicide and with domestic violence, divorce is rad
I wish there was less stigma around divorce
If you and your partner practice frequent, non-sexual consent, your relationship will be healthier and easier.
“Are you comfortable with me ranting about my day for a few minutes?”
“Oh, this is your poetry? Would it be okay if I read it?”
“Do you mind if I use your phone for a few minutes?”
“Wow, your meal looks awesome. Could I try some?”
It will save a lot of grief, especially in a developing relationship. Eventually, with consistent “yes’s” and “no’s” you can figure out more permanent boundaries and guidelines.
“I need to ask before ranting about my day or taking their food, but my partner is okay with me using their phone whenever. However, my partner does not like me reading their poetry unless they offer first.”
And this goes for friendships too! Even just stuff like “do you mind if I leave this door open?”
…I never fully realized it before but this is a big part of why my relationship with my husband is so conflict-free. Both because him doing this all the time made it easy to trust him, back when we were a new item, and because it helped ME break out of the toxic idea that you should never ask about a partner’s preferences because if you Really Loved Them you should be able to intuit what they want, all the time, about anything.
acceptable human au jobs for crowley:
thats it probably
Excuse you
I was like “Aziraphale has weird gardener covered and this couple abhors redundancy” but no, that’s old-fashioned weird. Crowley is the kind of weird gardener who invents his own orchid strains, and then you have to order them online. And they arrive in alarmingly futuristic plant-preserving capsules.
@turnipdragon replied to your post “acceptable human au jobs for crowley: department of city planning…”
garden husband au where they run a store called eden
Oh my god.
…Neither of them actually wants to SELL a plant ever, do they.
Anthony J. Crowley, Astronomy enthusiast
It makes so much more sense why he’s somewhat obsessed with space when you realise he helped to build it.
Demons have no place in creation. When he says “I helped build that one,” he’s remembering his life Before. It meant so much to him. Being an angel meant so much to him, and he’s still absolutely devastated that he isn’t one anymore. He’s so Loud about it.
He’s the one puts forward the Arrangement that will allow him to perform holy miracles and blessings again.
He’s the one who decorates his apartment so that it looks as little like the crowded, messy, dirty Hell as possible.
He’s the one who recreates his own little Eden within that apartment, where he can play God and relive his trauma over and over again with himself in the position of power, rejecting any and all of his subjects deemed not to be worthy, without mercy. Because that’s how he sees the Almighty.
He’s the one who is so utterly convinced that God is not listening, because why would he believe they would? He’s been wrestling with his Fall and regret for 6 millenia and God has never come to help him.
He’s the one who insists on the idea that Adam can be reshaped through the power of Influence (read nurture over nature) because that means we always have the power to change and evolve, something he needs to believe in desperately. (Something he turns out to be right about btw).
And his obsession with space, this is the big one. The one aspect of Creation we know he had a part in. When he wants to escape it’s the first and only place he thinks of. Not Heaven, with it’s corporate charity, not Hell, where he never belonged. Space. Among the stars. Where he once walked as he does in his apartment surrounded by floating pages, a dull imitation of the real thing. Among the stars he helped create, where he could forget, and pretend he was an angel once more, surrounded by light.
Source For more facts follow Ultrafacts
YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Those are the countries. It will be drought-resistant species, mostly acacias. And this is a brilliant idea you have no idea oh my Christ
This will create so many jobs and regenerate so many communities and aaaaaahhhhhhh
more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
it’s already happening, and already having positive effects. this is wonderful, why have i not heard of this before? i’m so happy!
Oh yes, acacia trees.
They fix nitrogen and improve soil quality.
And, to make things fun, the species they’re using practices “reverse leaf phenology.” The trees go dormant in the rainy season and then grow their leaves again in the dry season. This means you can plant crops under the trees, in that nitrogen-rich soil, and the trees don’t compete for light because they don’t have any leaves on.
And then in the dry season, you harvest the leaves and feed them to your cows.
Crops grown under acacia trees have better yield than those grown without them. Considerably better.
So, this isn’t just about stopping the advancement of the Sahara - it’s also about improving food security for the entire sub-Saharan belt and possibly reclaiming some of the desert as productive land.
Of course, before the “green revolution,” the farmers knew to plant acacia trees - it’s a traditional practice that they were convinced to abandon in favor of “more reliable” artificial fertilizers (that caused soil degradation, soil erosion, etc).
This is why you listen to the people who, you know, have lived with and on land for centuries.
^ The bold.
I’d like to have this all in one place, with a nice convenient post to add things to later, if I find them. But for the moment! I’ve seen the NYCC interview from Michael Sheen and David Tennant where they say outright that they played their characters as though they love each other.
Michael: “I decided early on that Aziraphale just loves Crowley. And that’s difficult for him because they’re on opposite sides and he doesn’t agree with him on stuff. But it does really help as an actor to go, my objective in this scene is to not show you how much I love you. And just gaze longingly at you.”
David: “But then Crowley absolutely loves Aziraphale. He hates that he loves him. It’s really annoying for him.”
Michael: “There is a sort of wonderful love story. I think a lot of the fans of the book like that when they think about the characters, there’s an interesting love story going on. It’s never explicit, but it’s there.”
But also! I got my copy of the tv companion book today, and found this extra tidbit from Douglas Mackinnon (transcript follows):
“[…] but clearly it’s about their relationship, and some would say their love affair. I know Michael Sheen is a hundred percent sure that Aziraphale falls in love with Crowley,” Douglas offers, “and that moment occurs when the bomb drops on the church.”
And I’ve got a few gifs to just really drive home what the look was in Aziraphale’s eyes during that scene (with a link to the post with the full gifset I sourced these from). And remember, Michael Sheen said he was trying to gaze longingly without showing Crowley how much Aziraphale loves him. And this is him watching as Crowley walks away from him in the destroyed church (so, crowley can’t see him watching like this). Right after he jumped in and protected not just Aziraphale, but also–without being prompted in any way–protected the rare books that Aziraphale cared deeply about. This, we are told, is the big emotional point of no return.
That’s love, babey
I like the idea of Crowley thinking that they are together but he doesn’t want to go too fast so he waits like 2k years just to hold his angel’s hand :”)
I honestly think that we would eliminate one of the major causes of ableism if we stopped basing people’s worth off how much revenue they generate.
Climate change is like someone comes up to you and tells you your super strict aunt is visiting, but your house has seen 3 parties over the weekend and is a mess. You’re not quite sure if the person is serious or not, some people say ‘QUICK! We need to tidy the house NOW! She’ll be here in an HOUR!’ and other people say ‘Your aunt isn’t visiting, it’s all a huge lie, and besides, the house is still habitable!’
Sure, you can work around the pizza trodden into the carpet, maybe lay a rug over the teenager vomit, wear shoes so the spilled beer doesn’t soak into your socks.
But if you spend a little time and effort cleaning the house, even if your aunt isn’t coming, you still have a lovely clean house! If you keep measures in place to keep it clean, no more wild parties, a few storage baskets, invest in a roomba, it’ll stay clean for when your children live there too.
And if your aunt is actually coming, and you DON’T clean the house, you’re totally and utterly and without question, fucked.
By the way during this whole extended metaphor your aunt is, at that very moment, knocking on the door. And people are still yelling that she’s not actually coming
It’s that typical story all over again: you are a princess. You get kidnapped, some random guy saves you, and then your father gets you married to him. No. Not this Time. You have watched a million versions of the same random guy beat a demon and become your husband even though you don’t love him, so this time, you kill the demon. You kill your father, the king. It doesn’t matter to you… After all, he’s only a program in the video game that is your life.
You will stop at nothing to break this game.
Funnily enough, it’s not the kidnapping that breaks Phaedra. Oh, it’s terrifying every time–the sound of breaking glass in the dark of her bedroom, the feeling of vulnerability as blades tear into the curtain around her bed, the terror as she’s struck and thrown and tumbled over her assailant’s shoulder–but it’s not what keeps her shivering long past the story has ended.
The attack always goes quickly. The demon screams past her guards and takes her in claws and wings and flees out the window. Her captivity sometimes goes quickly, sometimes takes a while longer, sometimes lasts forever. Sometimes the demon makes her cook and clean for him. Sometimes he tries to make her fall in love with him (as if this were that type of story). Sometimes he hurts her, badly, over and over and over again.
She’s no longer afraid of pain. She’s no longer afraid of mind tricks. She’s no longer afraid of him.
She hates being saved. She hates going home. And she’s always so afraid of the moment her father announces her hand belongs to her savior.
“Wait but don’t ask another guy I’ll do it” is making me laugh
I’m baby
