#Writings of the Watchman

[watchmanis216]

A Deliverer Comes - Age of Delusion

A Deliverer Comes and the Age of Delusion are Psalms of the Watchman Dana G Smith. He comes out of the land of Promise, herein the Psalm below addresses the fact and prophecy of that deliverer. The Messiah, Yeshua. This is one of the Psalms of the Watchma

A Deliverer Comes and the Age of Delusion are Psalms of the Watchman Dana G Smith. He comes out of the land of Promise, herein the Psalm below addresses the fact and prophecy of that deliverer. The Messiah, Yeshua. This is one of the Psalms of the Watchman that come from His never before published writings, psalms, and prose. From the Writings of the Watchman Dana G Smith come these special…

[chiropteracupola]

another fic for the wolf and the watchman -- post-canon anna stina/johanna, this time around!

[read it here]

[dathomirdumpsterfire]

quinlan/maul (with obi-wan/quinlan & other bg polyship) - 13k+ words - sith emperor obi-wan timeline ~ in progress

~Chapter three snippet~

Quinlan steps up beside the pilot's seat, holding on to it and watching the displays.

“Sit down,” Maul says after a few moments, pressing buttons in agitation.

“Where?” he asks, bemused. "There's no copilot or passenger seats on a ship this small."

The sith just growls.

“Am I making you nervous, standing at your shoulder?” the kiffar asks.

“You could not make me nervous on the best of days, jedi. Your lurking is merely obnoxious.”

He translates that as ‘yes, you're making me nervous’.

“Ohh, well how about,” Quinlan starts, sitting down on the floor with his back to the console, close enough his shoulder is almost touching Maul's leg. “-this?”

Yellow eyes look down on him as they come out of hyperspace with a small jerk. “You would sit at my feet like a barghest? How little pride you have."

Quinlan smirks, responding to the attempted insult with equivalent bothering. He leans his head on Maul's knee, hooking an arm around his leg. “Does that mean you'll pet me if I beg?”

Maul makes a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat, eyes torn upward as the landing sequence demands his attention. “No.”

friends, i am on my bullshit again (still). it's up on ao3. 👇🏽

[wallboys]

jon crazy girl moments

[dxppercxdxver]

ahahaha whoops. here's a fic for a book with no fandom that i accidentally got Extremely attached to

[elegyforiphigenia]

THE WATCHMAN.

a piece of writing relating to the character of 'the watchman' from punchdrunk's the burnt city. includes spoilers for his loop - also includes details of his 1:1, without directly stating it. predominantly inspired by ferghas clavey's interpretation & performance of the role! triggers for spoilers / mentions of death / sacrifice / murder.

Mycenae is a colourless checkpoint of beige and navy. Peeping through occasionally are hulks of grey, positioned within the beast to make it more of a machine, pumping out futile attempts at warfare. It forgets to exhale out. Oxidization is permitted, the world allowed to rust and weather, but it never breathes out; carbon dioxide never escapes the lungs and so nothing ever seems to grow. Sometimes the seeds found there seem themselves damned to retain that sallow colour they have before nourishment. Everywhere he treads is a wasteland of sorrowful sand, specks and specks and specks that stick in his shoes after as a reminder: this city is my cradle and I am its prisoner.

   He is not alone in that. All the boys who dreamt of pretty little horses as children are swiftly made prisoner to their city soon enough. A greatcoat is thrust upon their shoulders, the burden enough to break backs. Blacks and bays, dapples and greys – when a child of Mycenae grows up, all the pretty little horses are ruined for them; horses are meat and horses are caged and horses are diseased and horses die. He still sees them in his dreams, however. Slumping across his desk, he will fall asleep upon sheafs of paper bearing the symbol of Troy. In the gods they trust, and they stamp horses in honour. In truth, though, he cannot label them dreams simply because they come in sleeping; his city sleeps in a waking nightmare that comes to him at night also.

   Troy bears him bad dreams, but he knows Troy would argue him to not be a prisoner – if he truly is one, he is a prisoner complicit in the chaining. He is a soldier, though unlike the others, he is an outcast to the brutality. The one who encircles death is still a monster. He watches it all, fetches and carries, and so he is a murderer. He is a soldier and others become captive under his work. Prisoner he must be, though, he swears all the soldiers are – for he is walking now with vacant grief in his face back from Troy, trundling his storage cage through the wafting darkness, and even with a girl strung under their doing, he thinks all his fellow men stumble the same as him.

   Neoptolemus could not even do the honour of sacrificing her. So stricken with the realisation of Mycenae’s foul deeds that he slipped into the role of coward. The knife hesitated in his hands. It came to this: she took the death blade betwixt her own hands and plunged it bold into her bared chest. Her name was Polyxena, he remembers, and he prefers to think of himself as nameless as he pushes his crate back to where it resides. Inside it is the mat he made her sacrificial altar. Inside it is the basin of water. Inside it is the stick he used to tell Troy that the winds whirled around them, crafting a circle that would not protect their city. No chalk or votives would protect them: playtime was over and their palladium would no longer ensure safeguarding.

   So it is: Troy has fallen. He will call himself the watchman. That is what he did: he watched. Watched the women of Troy stand mighty together and clap their chests. Whilst his fellow men stood proud against pride, he stood by his crate. Whilst he remembers, he treads over to the almighty Czech hedgehogs. It amuses him always to witness them – Mycenae were always the attackers, fighting on the home soil of others. Yet they made their own sand militant. The soldiers used to laugh amongst themselves that the only joy allowed within their city was in the form of the young Iphigenia; Neoptolemus, second-in-command to Agamemnon, attested to this whenever he returned from visiting the man and his family. He told them all that the white-and-pink of her room was the death of hostility, and in that, it was blissful life. A stark contrast to even the rest of those quarters – even the tables bled greyness.

   Iphigenia, the watchman was told, was teddy bears and soft linens, with a smile bursting hope. Iphigenia was. He stands at the foot of one of the hedgehogs, the one nearest his office, where a reminder that she was the first bookmark of war lies crumpled. A wedding veil for a girl who only married death. Holding it tenderly in his hands, he knows that there is only one place to lay it to rest: there is a shrine in the barracks. Faded hopes and prayers cram the small space, thickened with the fumes of incense and rotting offerings, rotted as the results of those pleas. It is a bright space, though, and shimmers like how he imagined her smile was said to be. Admiring the shrine, he understands this: even Agamemnon is a prisoner. All of them, even that raised-above man, are prisoners to the gods.

   In the gods we trust. That refrain gallops again through his mind. Troy infiltrates him constantly. His fellow men stayed behind there. He dutifully returned to Mycenae, for too much spiralled slowly throughout him for him to partake in their neon pleasures. The gods are on his mind. He is like any good boy – the worshipping mortal who trusts in the mighty unseen. Some have described the distance between god and man as a veil, misty fog one cannot decipher, but blindly stumbles through for they trust. However – the watchman believes himself to witness on a slightly higher plane. For him, there is another layer to the mist. His eyes are permanently widened, seeing something others do not understand. Others exist in the mist but they cannot see it; he can see the fog but does not entirely conform to their lack of sight.

   Or maybe it is that he has added another god to the grandiose pantheon. Most speak of those on the mountain – the detail of nature is consistent with his newfound devotion, at least. He worships those, but he sees each flicker of inconceivable grass the same way as he would a god, now. Amongst the flickers of humankind, in the hope of them, in the flooding nature his home and prison denies to him, he understands godliness once more. It is reborn amongst ash and came before the weapon. He dreams of horses pretty in their verdant pastures. That is his hope. His constant dream. It will conquer the darkness and the nightmares.

   Down in the meadow of his dreams, there’s a poor little lamby, but she’s not crying out: she is safe with her mother and she will not be slaughtered by father.  Bees and butterflies flit around. He does all he can whilst awake to return there. Blacks and bays, dapples and greys, and he pours himself a drink.

[sezja]

Sanaii's dads!

In order: R'enze, R'azit, and Zephyr.

[cloudy-dayys]

psalm 23:5 - you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

@finalfridayss the writing you did with gabriel nd watchman was SO good i had to draw angst

[druidx]

Unashamed Adoration tag game

Tagged by @spacetimewraithwrites! TY, this is such a neat game <3

Tagging back: @strosmkai-rum @spacetimewraithwrites @wildswrites @tetrodotoxincs @odysseywritings @ayzrules @morganwriteblr @my-writblr @bexminx @writingingraves @dreamwishing @aalinaaaaaa @wardenoftheabyss @pleaseloathemyveryexistence @jaguarthecat @catharticallysarcastic @bread-of-death @bluegreystarstuff

Rules: Pick lines from your WIPs out of context that you love

From Talis wants some 'Shrooms:

As it was, my pantry consisted of a bread loaf you could bludgeon someone with and a single desiccated onion.

From Who Watches the Watchman:

[Millie said] "He said he was happy to wait, because he wanted to meet you at the start of your day, to, and I quote, 'get a feel for the noble Lady's temperament at the rawest point of our time together'." The noble lady in question was giving her assistant a look that indicated she wanted to say a few choice words about that idea, but Millie could see her Captain biting it back.

From Crown:

Where the candlelight hit, it flashed like it was filled with white fire, the hues flickering and sparking as she took measured steps around the plinth. [...] It was the pinnacle of dwarven craft as a whole – to take an ugly, dull lump from the ground and fashion it into the superlative creation that sat here now. The miners, the lapidaries, the jewellers – everyone through the chain – should be lauded for bringing such a stupendously fine-wrought thing before her.

These are from What Alexis Did Next:

"But he was your friend! You took his life!" "I was going to give it back!"

~~~~

[Edwin] kept up his babble of prayer, his words trickling over themselves like a stream over rocks, and poured the water on the herbs. The light increased in the room, as if the sun was filling the space, and I noticed whorls appearing within. Small eddies of green light flowed and coalesced, reaching down to the diamond. The tendrils gently touched the gem, and it swelled with light. The magic burst out, refracting over the table. Filaments of light curled and spun, pooling into unseen pockets and reaching out for the finger and the blooded cloth. As I watched, those involutions latched on to the anchors of Fai's body, and from them the light began to take shape. An outline began to form, soft green light tracing the shape of his body and the contours of his face - an exact replica of the man I knew.

~~~~

I shrugged and took a swing. "Not my tower, not my animated crockery," I said. Bazra closed her eyes briefly and sighed. "I don't even know what that means," she said. "Means I don't care," I said.

From TES vs TB:

"'M tired." Alan bit his lip, mentally rifling through the Big Book of Rescues for something convincing. Scott and John would have demanded, Virgil good-naturedly bully and Gordon tease. But none of those approaches would sit right on him. Then he had it. "Please? Try to stay awake. For me?" She cracked an eye, and Alan turned the full power of his winsome baby-blues at her. Alpha Golf's face sagged. "F-f-fine. Only c-cuz you asked n-n-nice."

[rookwritesrarely]

The Watchman stood atop the highest tower of a castle overlooking a valley, and watched a battle unfold. "How fares the fray?" Asks a voice behind him. He does not turn to look at the intruder as the Lady comes to stand beside him, leaning on her cane. "It will be a decisive victory, but it will require finesse and bravery on our part." Says the giant man, still not turning away from the valley. 

"I'm not sure if you ever explained, but I've never understood why you never speak in absolutes", asks the lady, staring at a valley green and empty of combat, 

"Can't you see the future?" 

"The future is never certain, I can see possibilities, but each and every one of us has the capability of changing their fate." 

"That is both reassuring and frightening" 

"Ha! I suppose so, but even then, we must play the hand we've been given. As they say, today is a gift. That is why it's called the present."

"That sounds like something parents came up with to teach their children some lesson or some such nonsense."

"Maybe, but it is a useful lie."

"Useful how?"

"It ensures that we will be there tomorrow, making use of the gift we were given yesterday."

[shortstories4al]

The chair with a world around it

The story of a watchman and his chair.

Ramesh settled down in his chair, stretched his legs and arched his back. The chair was in the middle of a patch of grass. This patch of grass was referred to as ‘The Lawn’ in the housing society documents. Every day of the week, Ramesh, the society watchman, would sit on his chair for a minimum of ten hours. He would change the location of the chair in sync with the shadows the building made as…

[watchmanis216]

A Deliverer Comes - Age of Delusion

A Deliverer Comes and the Age of Delusion are Psalms of the Watchman Dana G Smith. He comes out of the land of Promise, herein the Psalm below addresses the fact and prophecy of that deliverer. The Messiah, Yeshua. This is one of the Psalms of the Watchman that come from His never before published writings, psalms, and prose. From the Writings of the Watchman Dana G Smith come these special…

[chiropteracupola]

fan-fiction wip guessing game! song, sword, and rest :)

from my second fic for The Wolf and the Watchman, an Anna Stina/Johanna fix-it:

She still wears mourning for a man she had hardly known, but sometimes catches herself stepping quicker to see her skirts spin out. Even if her dress is steadfast charcoal black, it’s finery the like of which she has never had before, rich even in its grimness. If she is a widow, she is by no means the merry one out of the plays and songs, but she has her happiness, and of that, more than she had ever expected. Anna Stina does not know where her mother was truly laid to rest, and as for Kristofer Blix, who had chosen to make his grave at the bottom of a wintered-over harbor, there remains very little with which to make a funeral. The man who she had married had not been dredged from the icy water, and Anna Stina had been perfectly satisfied to place a churchyard stone over an empty grave rather than to dress his cold blue body for the coffin.

from the foth wormsfic:

He had never seen himself fully since his death, but the house had all the accoutrements that it ought to, silver and carved wood and antlers above the fireplace, books and worn leather and a mirror hanging in the hall. Keith pauses there in passing, having gotten a flash of his own reflection out of the corner of his eye. The man who looks back at him is recognizable, but only just. The whites of his eyes are yellowed and bloodshot, rolling glazed and dull in dark-circled, red-rimmed sockets. What is visible of his hair beneath the binding around his chin is lank and lifeless, dark against his pale, damp face. And his face itself — it barely looks like the one he remembers as his own. There is more wear on his face than he had recalled that his years of sword-service had laid on him, the scars on nose and chin and brow turned stark and silken with the years.

from the sharpe ladyhawke au:

Harris had heard poets describe love as a thing that glowed, bright and warm as a second sun. Having had but little experience of the sort of love that wasn’t paid for out of scraped-together small change, he had consequently never put much stock in such descriptions. But now, watching Sharpe and Teresa, he saw what was meant by a sort of joy so radiant that that they shone with it. Steadfast, sure-footed Teresa… Sharpe had lifted her off her feet, and she leaned into him and laughed like a waterfall of light. He spun them once, twice, Teresa’s boots swinging out into space, and then dropped her back to earth with an oath and a grimace, and pressed his hand to his lower back. And so it was that his face was caught in a mixture of surprise and pain and delight when Teresa reached up and kissed him there, and it was that expression that Harris thought he’d remember for the rest of his days.

[lowdown0]

Ten Years and 200 Articles on The Lowdown Truth

The Lowdown Truth (LDT)started with its first post on Dec. 9, 2013. That was over 10 years ago. It was the first blog I started; I’ve created eight blogs since. LDT is still my favorite blog, yet I write more now on Business and Society Articles (BSA). BSA is more palatable for the masses — what I write there is syndicated on Medium. There used to be Adsense ads on LDT. Around three years ago…

[cats-and-cacti]

SOMETIMES U JUST HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE SOCIAL NETWORK OST AND FUCKING JAM

[mollyrealized]

How Michael Met Neil

original direct link [MP3]

(Neil, if you see this, please feel free to grab the transcript and store on your site; I had no easy way of contacting you.)

DAVID TENNANT: Tell me about @neil-gaiman then, because he's in that category [previously: “such a profound effect on my life”] as well.

MICHAEL SHEEN: So this is what has brought us together.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: To the new love story for the 21st century.

DAVID: Exactly.

MICHAEL: So when I went to drama school, there was a guy called Gary Turner in my year. And within the first few weeks, we were doing something, having a drink or whatever. And he said to me, “Do you read comic books?”

And I said, “No.”  I mean, this is … what … '88?  '88, '89.  So it was … now I know that it was a period of time that was a big change, transformation going through comic books.  Rather than it being thought of as just superheroes and Batman and Superman, there was this whole new era of a generation of writers like Grant Morrison.

DAVID: The kids who'd grown up reading comic books were now making comic books

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, and starting to address different kinds of subjects through the comic book medium. So it wasn't about just superheroes, it was all kinds of stuff going on – really fascinating stuff. And I was totally unaware of this.

And so this guy Gary said to me, "Do you read them?" And I said, "No."  And he went, "Right, okay, here's The Watchman [sic] by Alan Moore. Here's Swamp Thing. Here's Hellblazer. And here's Sandman.”

And Sandman was Neil Gaiman's big series that put his name on the map. And I read all those, and, just – I was blown away by all of them, but particularly the Sandman stories, because he was drawing on mythology, which was something I was really interested in, and fairy tales, folklore, and philosophy, and Shakespeare, and all kinds of stuff were being mixed up in this story.  And I absolutely loved it.

So I became a big fan of Neil's, and started reading everything by him. And then fairly shortly after that, within six months to a year, Good Omens the book came out, which Neil wrote with Terry Pratchett. And so I got the book – because I was obviously a big fan of Neil's by this point – read it, loved it, then started reading Terry Pratchett’s stuff as well, because I didn't know his stuff before then – and then spent years and years and years just being a huge fan of both of them.

And then eventually when – I'd done films like the Underworld films and doing Twilight films. And I think it was one of the Twilight films, there was a lot of very snooty interviews that happened where people who considered themselves well above talking about things like Twilight were having to interview me … and, weirdly, coming at it from the attitude of 'clearly this is below you as well' … weirdly thinking I'm gonna go, 'Yeah, fucking Twilight.”

And I just used to go, "You know what? Some of the greatest writing of the last 50-100 years has happened in science fiction or fantasy."  Philip K Dick is one of my favorite writers of all time. In fact, the production of Hamlet I did was mainly influenced by Philip K Dick.  Ursula K. Le Guin and Asimov, and all these amazing people. And I talked about Neil as well. And so I went off on a bit of a rant in this interview.

Anyway, the interview came out about six months later, maybe.  Knock on the door, open the door, delivery of a big box. That’s interesting. Open the box, there's a card at the top of the box. I open the card.

It says, From one fan to another, Neil Gaiman.  And inside the box are first editions of Neil's stuff, and all kinds of interesting things by Neil. And he just sent this stuff.

DAVID: You'd never met him?

MICHAEL: Never met him. He'd read the interview, or someone had let him know about this interview where I'd sung his praises and stood up for him and the people who work within that sort of genre as being like …

And he just got in touch. We met up for the first time when he came to – I was in Los Angeles at the time, and he came to LA.  And he said, "I'll take you for a meal."

I said, “All right.”

He said, "Do you want to go somewhere posh, or somewhere interesting?”

I said, "Let's go somewhere interesting."

He said, "Right, I'm going to take you to this restaurant called The Hump." And it's at Santa Monica Airport. And it's a sushi restaurant.

I was like, “Right, okay.” So I had a Mini at the time. And we get in my Mini and we drive off to Santa Monica Airport. And this restaurant was right on the tarmac, like, you could sit in the restaurant (there's nobody else there when we got there, we got there quite early) and you're watching the planes landing on Santa Monica Airport. It's extraordinary. 

And the chef comes out and Neil says, "Just bring us whatever you want. Chef's choice."

So, I'd never really eaten sushi before. So we sit there; we had this incredible meal where they keep bringing these dishes out and they say, “This is [blah, blah, blah]. Just use a little bit of soy sauce or whatever.”  You know, “This is eel.  This is [blah].”

And then there was this one dish where they brought out and they didn't say what it was. It was like “mystery dish”, we had it ... delicious. Anyway, a few more people started coming into the restaurant as time went on.

And we're sort of getting near the end, and I said, "Neil, I can't eat anymore. I'm gonna have to stop now. This is great, but I can't eat–"

"Right, okay. We'll ask for the bill in a minute."

And then the door opens and some very official people come in. And it was the Feds. And the Feds came in, and we knew they were because they had jackets on that said they were part of the Federal Bureau of Whatever. And about six of them come in. Two of them go … one goes behind the counter, two go into the kitchen, one goes to the back. They've all got like guns on and stuff.

And me and Neil are like, "What on Earth is going on?"

And then eventually one guy goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't ordered already, please leave. If you're still eating your meal, please finish up, pay your bill, leave."*

[* - delivered in a perfect American ‘serious law agent’ accent/impression]

And we were like, "Oh my God, are we poisoned? Is there some terrible thing that's happened?"  

We'd finished, so we pay our bill.  And then all the kitchen staff are brought out. And the head chef is there. The guy who's been bringing us this food. And he's in tears. And he says to Neil, "I'm so sorry." He apologizes to Neil.  And we leave. We have no idea what happened.

DAVID: But you're assuming it's the mystery dish.

MICHAEL: Well, we're assuming that we can't be going to – we can't be –  it can't be poisonous. You know what I mean? It can't be that there's terrible, terrible things.

So the next day was the Oscars, which is why Neil was in town. Because Coraline had been nominated for an Oscar. Best documentary that year was won by The Cove, which was by a team of people who had come across dolphins being killed, I think.

Turns out, what was happening at this restaurant was that they were having illegal endangered species flown in to the airport, and then being brought around the back of the restaurant into the kitchen.

We had eaten whale – endangered species whale. That was the mystery dish that they didn't say what it was.

And the team behind The Cove were behind this sting, and they took them down that night whilst we were there.

DAVID: That’s extraordinary.

MICHAEL: And we didn't find this out for months.  So for months, me and Neil were like, "Have you worked anything out yet? Have you heard anything?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

And then we heard that it was something to do with The Cove, and then we eventually found out that that restaurant, they were all arrested. The restaurant was shut down. And it was because of that. And we'd eaten whale that night.

DAVID: And that was your first meeting with Neil Gaiman.

MICHAEL: That was my first meeting. And also in the drive home that night from that restaurant, he said, and we were in my Mini, he said, "Have you found the secret compartment?"

I said, "What are you talking about?" It's such a Neil Gaiman thing to say.

DAVID: Isn't it?

MICHAEL: The secret compartment? Yeah. Each Mini has got a secret compartment. I said, "I had no idea." It's secret. And he pressed a little button and a thing opened up. And it was a secret compartment in my own car that Neil Gaiman showed me.

DAVID: Was there anything inside it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, there was a little man. And he jumped out and went, "Hello!" No, there was nothing in there. There was afterwards because I started putting...

DAVID: Sure. That's a very Neil Gaiman story. All of that is such a Neil Gaiman story.

MICHAEL: That's how it began. Yeah.

DAVID: And then he came to offer you the part in Good Omens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, we became friends and we would whenever he was in town, we would meet up and yeah, and then eventually he started, he said, "You know, I'm working on an adaptation of Good Omens." And I can remember at one point Terry Gilliam was going to maybe make a film of it. And I remember being there with Neil and Terry when they were talking about it. And...

DAVID: Were you involved at that point?

MICHAEL: No, no, I wasn't involved. I just happened to have met up with Neil that day.

DAVID: Right.

MICHAEL: And then Terry Gilliam came along and they were chatting, that was the day they were talking about that or whatever.

And then eventually he sent me one of the scripts for an early draft of like the first episode of Good Omens. And he said – and we started talking about me being involved in it, doing it – he said, “Would you be interested?” I was like, "Yeah, of course."  I went, "Oh my God." And he said, "Well, I'll send you the scripts when they come," and I would read them, and we'd talk about them a little bit. And so I was involved.

But it was always at that point with the idea, because he'd always said about playing Crowley in it. And so, as time went on, as I was reading the scripts, I was thinking, "I don't think I can play Crowley. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." And I started to get a bit nervous because I thought, “I don't want to tell Neil that I don't think I can do this.”  But I just felt like I don't think I can play Crowley.

DAVID: Of course you can [play Crowley?].

MICHAEL: Well, I just on a sort of, on a gut level, sometimes you have it on a gut level.

DAVID: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL: I can do this.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Or I can't do this. And I just thought, “You know what, this is not the part for me. The other part is better for me, I think. I think I can do that, I don't think I could do that.”

But I was scared to tell Neil because I thought, "Well, he wants me to play Crowley" – and then it turned out he had been feeling the same way as well.  And he hadn't wanted to mention it to me, but he was like, "I think Michael should really play Aziraphale."

And neither of us would bring it up.  And then eventually we did. And it was one of those things where you go, "Oh, thank God you said that. I feel exactly the same way." And then I think within a fairly short space of time, he said, “I think we've got … David Tennant … for Crowley.” And we both got very excited about that.

And then all these extraordinary people started to join in. And then, and then off we went.

DAVID: That's the other thing about Neil, he collects people, doesn't he? So he'll just go, “Oh, yeah, I've phoned up Frances McDormand, she's up for it.” Yeah. You're, what?

MICHAEL: “I emailed Jon Hamm.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And yeah, and you realize how beloved he is and how beloved his work is. And I think we would both recognise that Good Omens is one of the most beloved of all of Neil's stuff.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: And had never been turned into anything.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so the kind of responsibility of that, I mean, for me, for someone who has been a fan of him and a fan of the book for so long, I can empathize with all the fans out there who are like, “Oh, they better not fuck this up.”

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: “And this had better be good.” And I have that part of me. But then, of course, the other part of me is like, “But I'm the one who might be fucking it up.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I feel that responsibility as well.

DAVID: But we have Neil on site.

MICHAEL: Yes. Well, Neil being the showrunner …

DAVID: Yeah. I think it takes the curse off.

MICHAEL: … I think it made a massive difference, didn't it? Yeah. You feel like you're in safe hands.

DAVID: Well, we think. Not that the world has seen it yet.

MICHAEL (grimly): No, I know.

DAVID: But it was a -- it's been a -- it's been a joy to work with you on it. I can't wait for the world to see it.

MICHAEL: Oh my God.  Oh, well, I mean, it's the only, I've done a few things where there are two people, it's a bit of a double act, like Frost-Nixon and The Queen, I suppose, in some ways. But, and I've done it, Amadeus or whatever.

This is the only thing I've done where I really don't think of it as “my character” or “my performance as that character”.  I think of it totally as us.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: The two of us.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like they, what I do is defined by what you do.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that was such a joy to have that experience. And it made it so much easier in a way as well, I found, because you don't feel like you're on your own in it. Like it's totally us together doing this and the two characters totally complement each other. And the experience of doing it was just a real joy.

DAVID: Yeah.  Well, I hope the world is as excited to see it as we are to talk about it, frankly.

MICHAEL: You know, there's, having talked about T.S. Eliot earlier, there's another bit from The Wasteland where there's a line which goes, These fragments I have shored against my ruin.

And this is how I think about life now. There is so much in life, no matter what your circumstances, no matter what, where you've got, what you've done, how much money you got, all that. Life's hard.  I mean, you can, it can take you down at any point.

You have to find this stuff. You have to like find things that will, these fragments that you hold to yourself, they become like a liferaft, and especially as time goes on, I think, as I've got older, I've realized it is a thin line between surviving this life and going under.

And the things that keep you afloat are these fragments, these things that are meaningful to you and what's meaningful to you will be not-meaningful to someone else, you know. But whatever it is that matters to you, it doesn't matter what it was you were into when you were a teenager, a kid, it doesn't matter what it is. Go and find them, and find some way to hold them close to you. 

Make it, go and get it. Because those are the things that keep you afloat. They really are. Like doing that with him or whatever it is, these are the fragments that have shored against my ruin. Absolutely.

DAVID: That's lovely. Michael, thank you so much.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

DAVID: For talking today and for being here.

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.