#because how could I write good omens without footnotes??

[ialwayscomewhenyoucall]

I Have Spent All My Years In Believing You

Good Omens

Aziraphale/Crowley

for @reverseprompts #17

“Isn’t it just lovely?”

Crowley can feel Aziraphale beside him, wings vibrating with excitement, unnecessary heart beating a pitter-patter in his chest. Aziraphale is lovely, tartan waistcoat and all; Crowley doesn’t even have to turn to know his eyes are bright and his cheeks pink and his smile rivals any sun ever hung in the heavens. He’s like a renaissance painting, tartan notwithstanding. He would, however, rather face another apocalypse than actually tellAziraphale any of these things, so instead he just mumbles something incoherent about sand and water and lets Aziraphale go on beaming.

They’re on a secluded beach, waves crashing onto a stone outcrop across from where they stand. He’s not sure exactly where they are. Spain, maybe? They’ve been on this mad tour of Europe for months now, and Crowley tries not to pay attention when Aziraphale drives.* Pay attention to the road, that is. He pays plenty of attention to Aziraphale. His hands on the steering wheel, resting just where Crowley’s hands have been so many times over the years. The way his eyes dart from mirror to mirror and peer through the windscreen. His teeth, anxiously gnawing on his lower lip when he gets nervous.

Oh yes, he watches Aziraphale.

But all the Aziraphale-gazing means he has no idea where they’ve gotten to. He thinks they were in Spain when they woke up this morning. Not that it matters, in the scheme of things. Aziraphale is beside him, happily taking off his shoes and socks and—

“Angel?”

“Yes, dear?”

Crowley burns, being called dear. Fire in his veins, pumping from his heart. He wants more.

“Are we going swimming?”

What he’d wanted to ask was, Are you taking off your clothes, but he wasn’t sure he could have said that without combusting. And though both sides are thoroughly terrified of them, he didn’t want Aziraphale to have to go through the paperwork of having to get a new body for him. Besides, he’s partial to this one; he’s had it for a very long time.

“Goodness no! It’s May, the water’s still far too cold for that. And don’t give me any of that ‘you’re an angel’ business, you know I like to keep up appearances. No, I just wanted to feel the sand between my toes! You should try it, you’ll see.” Aziraphale wriggles his toes into the sand for emphasis. For a fleeting moment Crowley wants to be the sand. “Go on, dear. I do think barefoot will be the best way to make the climb.”

“Climb?” He’s vaguely aware that he’s been speaking in questions for the past few minutes, but Aziraphale doesn’t seem to notice. He only beams up at Crowley from where he’s sitting on the sand, gesturing at something behind Crowley.

“You didn’t think I could just leave that alone, did you?” Aziraphale’s smile is transcendent; Crowley knows he’ll do whatever Aziraphale wants. Take off his shoes and socks. Fling himself into the sea. Weave seaweed friendship bracelets, whatever.

He turns to see a sprawling walkway of boulders and concrete slabs. “Couldn’t we just fly to the top?” he asks weakly, already knowing the answer.

“Oh no! It’s not about the view, it’s about the experience!” Aziraphale gives him a pleading look and tugs at the leg of his jeans, at which point Crowley decides this is absolutely his favorite pair of jeans and he’s never throwing them out. “Please, Crowley?”

Heaven, Aziraphale should not be allowed to just look at him like that.

He wants Aziraphale to look at him like that every day.

Mutely he sits in the sand, slipping out of his shoes and socks and rolling up the cuffs of his jeans. Aziraphale has done the same, and when it feels oddly exhilarating to see Aziraphale’s exposed ankles he reminds himself that this is the 21st century and Aziraphale is no blushing maiden. But it makes him realize, out of nowhere, that the angel is always completely covered in layer upon layer of clothing. How many times has Crowley even seen Aziraphale’s bare arms?

The thought makes him shiver.

Crowley isn’t sure why they need to scrabble up the rocks like lizards, to grip the sandy stone with fingers and toes and unsteadily leap across some of the larger gaps. But Aziraphale glows brighter with every passing moment, a sun rising to his zenith, so Crowley just follows along and listens to the angel’s stream of chatter about the sea and the clouds and the gulls and the fish and the waves. Oh, the waves.

At the top Crowley expects they’ll walk along the path, but Aziraphale takes his hand** and leads him to the edge, where they perch on a large slab of concrete, legs dangling into empty space. They’re so close Crowley can feel the heat from Aziraphale’s thigh almost touching his own.

“This is why we did it, you know. Yes, we did it for music and food and books and those pesky humans we can’t get enough of, but this is truly why we did it.”

Crowley glances at Aziraphale, but the angel is gazing back so intently he has to look away before he loses all control and starts to blush. Or blubber. “We did it for beaches then?”

There’s a hand on his cheek, searing into his skin; Aziraphale turns Crowley’s face so they’re nose to nose. “We did it for us, you old snake,” Aziraphale says fondly, pulling Crowley’s sunglasses off. “For days like this. So I can kiss you in the sunlight.”

Crowley can’t blink, can’t look away. He almost panics before he remembers he only breathes because it's a habit.

“Did you—I thought I heard you say—I think there must be sand in my ears, angel, because I—” His head is spinning. Aziraphale said he wants to kiss Crowley. But he’s an angel. He’s so good. How could he—

“It’s quite alright, Crowley.” Aziraphale pats Crowley’s cheek gently before letting his hand fall to rest in his lap. “I don’t have to kiss you now, dear. Or ever, if you’d rather I didn’t. But I would like to. And I thought you should know.”

Crowley spent over six thousand years sweet-talking humans. He’d been so good at his job for two reasons: imagination and improvisation. Most demons didn’t have either of those, or if they did, had no idea how to use them. And if heaven had known the way to completely shut down Crowley’s talent was a few sentences from an angel, they’d have sent Aziraphale after him millenia ago.

The silence goes on a beat, and then two, and then a beat too long. He feels Aziraphale begin to droop beside him, a flower wilting for lack of care, and his own stomach begins to drop in reaction. Before he can think too hard he puts his own pale hand atop Aziraphale’s; the angel goes still, and Crowley gets the impression that he’s afraid if he moves Crowley will bolt like a frightened rabbit. Which is ridiculous. Crowley hasn’t been afraid for one microsecond of his existence.

Has he?

His brain goes into overdrive, running through six thousand years in a few seconds. It only takes that long to reach his conclusion: he has been afraid…but only of losing Aziraphale.***

“Angel,” Crowley says, his voice fragile, cracked.. But he looks at Aziraphale—his beautiful, golden Aziraphale—and he can’t find any more words. Perhaps, just this once, actions might be better.

Alright, he tells himself. You can do this. And of course he can. He’s Crowley. He just has to figure out how to do it without his face turning red, or his mouth tumbling out a load of rubbish.

And without any further thought he grips Aziraphale’s hand in his own and pulls the angel close. Just before their lips meet Aziraphale says, “Oh, my darling!” and then Crowley is launched into another universe.

Crowley has never been kissed before this moment. How often does a demon have opportunities for something so tender as kissing? But he’s quite certain that even if he’d had ten kisses a day since the dawn of creation nothing could ever measure up to kissing Aziraphale.

Aziraphale’s mouth is soft and warm, and he tastes like…like time, and patience, and sunlight. Before this moment Crowley didn’t know those things even had a taste, but now he knows they do, and those flavors are on his angel’s lips.

His angel. He feels it so strongly in this moment: the knowledge that Aziraphale is his, and that he is Aziraphale’s. They belong together. Not just because they saved the world together, or because of any Arrangement. Not even because of a long ago conversation in the Garden. No, they belong together because…

Crowley breaks the kiss, clawing at his chest. “What is this?” There’s a bit of a panic rising in him, but it’s nothing compared to the other thing. “It’s warm and bright and soft and I—”

Gentle hands still his frantic motion. “It’s alright, dear,” Aziraphale says softly. Earnest eyes look up into his own, and Crowley’s heart pounds in his chest. “That thing you feel. It’s…” He stops, and he gives Crowley the sweetest smile. “It’s love, dearest.”

“Demons can’t feel love.” The response is automatic, dry and bitter in his mouth.

“Rubbish,” Aziraphale says, firm but not unkind. “You are no ordinary demon.” Crowley makes a face. “No, don’t get defensive with me, I don’t want to hear a word of it. We’ve both known from the start that I’m not the everyday angel and you’re not the everyday demon. We’re different, and that’s why we—”

And then Crowley kisses Aziraphale again. He’s not exactly sure what point he’s proving, only that he’s got to be the one to prove it.

This kiss is less chaste. Crowley has been watching humans kiss for thousands of years so he knows how this works; he licks into Aziraphale’s mouth and is rewarded with a sound he’s never heard the angel make before, a sort of pleased moan. He does it again, and Aziraphale makes the same sound, only lower and more drawn out, and it makes his heart flutter in his chest. After a long moment he pulls away, panting, and buries his face in Aziraphale’s neck.

“Love you, angel,” he murmurs. The words are almost painful on his lips, but he knows he will say them again and again, anointing himself with the blessings of his angel.

Aziraphale runs clever fingers through his hair. “I know, dearest, I know. And I love you too. I have for, oh, a good long while. But don’t worry, it will be alright. I don’t think it will hurt too badly.”

Crowley chokes out a laugh. He doesn’t move; Aziraphale smells good, like old books^ and sweet apples, so Crowley just rests there, breathing in the calming scent of his friend. Of his… Well. Whatever they are to each other is far beyond any kind of human definition. Is there a word for someone who has been your everything for six thousand years and then suddenly tells you he loves you? It doesn’t matter, they’ll make it up as they go along.

They always do.

~~~~~

*The fact that he lets Aziraphale even sit behind the wheel of his Bentley, let alone drive it, says far more than it doesn’t about Crowley’s current feelings about the angel, but Aziraphale doesn’t bring it up…so neither does Crowley.

**which he has not been imaging for several thousand years. Absolutely not. A demon would never.

***or of the end of the world…which is the same thing, as far as Crowley is concerned.

^How does he smell like old books when they haven’t been to the bookshop in months? In so many ways, Aziraphale is a mystery.

~~~~~

The title is, of course, from Queen's Somebody to Love 💜

[gingiekittycat]

I miss the narrator

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I miss the narrator from Good Omens season 1.

I will admit, when I first watched the show it threw me a bit. Sure, the narrator's jokes were funny, but I thought that as a story-telling device it was distracting. There was just so much of it all the time, and it often felt out of place. And when I went to look up reviews online, it seemed a lot of people agreed: if there ever was a season 2, the narrator had to go.

But THEN.

THEN.

Then I read the book.

And I realized: the narrator is the footnotes. It's the little jokes in between the plot. In descriptions, in metaphors, in transitions. The narrator is what makes the magic of the novel.

The narrator is the authors.

More specifically, the narrator is Terry.

Terry's influence on the novel, on the story; Terry's influence in the way he and Neil wrote the book. Neil has said before somewhere (I will find the source eventually and add it) that he was writing in Terry's style when he co-wrote the novel. And it shows; to me, when I read Good Omens, I was reading a Terry Pratchett novel. At the time, I had no previous experience with reading Terry's work, and the only novel I'd read of Neil's was American Gods. And in my opinion, Good Omens reads nothing like American Gods.

In subsequently reading more of Terry's work, it became even clearer to me that the narrator in the show was Neil's way of keeping Terry in the story. And maybe it WAS clunky in a visual medium, maybe it WAS distracting, jarring. But it was also hilarious, and whimsical, and playful, and fun. And I don't see how Neil could have done without it and still stayed so true to the novel. The jokes, the metaphors, the descriptions, the footnotes; this is what makes Good Omens what it is.

There was no narrator in season 2.

I will say up front that, overall, I enjoyed season 2. It had so many funny moments, and so many thought-provoking, poignant moments too. It used some dialog from the first book (looking at you Resurrectionists minisode) to remind us why Good Omens is not just a romp between an angel and demon, but also a philosophical, thought-provoking piece of media. It had a lot of Pratchett-esque moments; the Job minisode stood out to me here. The end was, of course, emotional and gutting, but I like emotional and gutting (anyone who has read my fics knows this). But... I found myself missing the narrator. 

I missed Terry.

And maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was even on purpose. Maybe the lack of narrator really is illustrating the fact that, when Terry died, he left a hole in the world that can never be filled. You can't make the same show you would have made had Terry been alive. You can't even try. You can make your own thing, you can make it amazing in its own right, but you can't make it the same. And, all said and done, I think that's a very important commentary on grief. When you lose something, or someone, you're not the same as you were before; and it hurts, but you change, you adapt, you grow. Eventually, you make something new.

So... do I want there to be a narrator in season 3?

That's a good question. I think I would accept both outcomes. However, knowing that season 3 is supposed to be the sequel Neil and Terry plotted, I think it would be appropriate to have a narrator this time around. True, we have no novel to base it off of; we don't have any of Terry's footnotes, his metaphors, his jokes. But we have Neil, whom Terry influenced while writing the original novel; we have Neil writing in Terry's style, putting himself in Terry's shoes for a moment (his hat, his scarf). We have Neil, who loved Terry, who has in part made this show as a labor of love, because he promised Terry he would, and he's going to keep that promise. We have Neil to remind us why we love Good Omens in the first place.

And I think having a narrator in season 3 would be a wonderful way to illustrate that. 

[ao3cassandraic]

Angels, demons, language, and culture part 4: Literalism and metaphor

Part 1 (angels are never children, and that matters), Part 2 (written language is mostly coded human rather than ethereal/occult in Good Omens), Part 3 (human writings contain useful social rules, which is partly why Aziraphale values them)

It may be time to restate @thundercrackfic's original questions?

How good is Aziraphale’s reading comprehension? How much does he understand subtext and metaphor? Because his behavior this season struck me with the impression that he didn’t really understand the books he collects. He’s clever at puzzle solving, and contains vast knowledge; but he always seems to take things at face value (when he’s not willfully misunderstanding), and refuses to give up black-and-white thinking, which would make it very difficult to analyze texts.

I think there are definite reasons to believe that reading comprehension of human literature (as defined in the question) is difficult for Aziraphale. One of them, as stated in part 1, is that Aziraphale doesn't get the tremendous advantage of childhood and its brain plasticity, which (among other things) is known to help with learning language. I'm not surprised his French is pretty bad. Learning another language from the ground up as an adult can be a cast-iron PITA (yes, experience speaking).

Another is simply that Aziraphale is not human. He's an outsider to humanity. He's fairly empathetic, and he does learn (unlike almost all his fellow angels!), but that leaves him without much of a yardstick to gauge when human literature is being literal and when it's not. There also seems to be a general angelic tendency to believe what they're told? Muriel definitely has it, Michael seems to as well, and even s1!Gabriel can only (and barely) muster skepticism on one occasion that I recall (the photo incident). I can see this making Aziraphale's reading, especially early in his existence on Earth, a good bit harder for him than reading is for, say, me. I'm used to unreliable narrators and figurative language and other sorts of clever fun productive lying. Aziraphale's acquaintance with lying is -- well -- his lies don't usually involve much metaphor? I suppose one could argue that "big sharp cutty thing" is a kenning, but not really in the human way of kennings because he only uses it the once.

Moreover, it appears (based on the s1e3 cold open, mostly) that he bops around the world quite a bit until finally settling in London (with the occasional jaunt elsewhere when he gets peckish). Nothing at his creation other than the auto-polyglottism She bestows on Her angels seems to give him any tools for navigating the bewildering variety of human cultures and customs... and literary metaphor (along with lots of other literary things) is commonly culturally-bound, culturally-specific.

I mean, if you read something (maybe in high school (or analogue) or college) that was written A Long Time Ago and/or Very Far Away, didn't it probably have a ton of what lit-critters call "apparatus" in it? Explanatory introductions, bibliography, and above all footnotes/endnotes/margin notes, many of which explain figures of speech that otherwise wouldn't make sense? Not to mention stuff like (just as an example) which local then-current political morass Dante threw this particular historical person in this particular circle of Hell for. Stuff that if you're not there, not embedded in the culture and the time, you're just plain gonna whiff. Hell, even Shakespeare editions have a ton of apparatus, and Shakespeare's in Early Modern English for pity's sake!

(Which is not to say that something has to be ancient or not-from-here to benefit from some apparatus. What is The Annotated Pratchett File if not apparatus for Discworld?)

So our peripatetic angel reading literature of whatever time he's actually in (which mostly won't have apparatus he can rely on for help) will often find himself not clued-in enough to a given human culture to completely understand its literary figures, metaphors included. And sure, that's going to lead to some misreadings and misunderstandings and overliteral takes! I can't read Dante's Inferno and understand everything in it! It takes Italianists years, if not decades, to do that!

And to make the problem even more difficult, literature feeds on itself, and on other arts as well. (Hi hi hello, comparative literature major, I totally studied various flows of literary and artistic influence in college and wouldn't trade that major for anything ever, it was the best major.) Think about all the time and effort GO meta-ists have spent of late teasing out callbacks and allusions and references in GO s2. That kind of work is also part of what Aziraphale has to do to understand fully what he reads... and it's a lot of work, even for a reader as voracious and possibly sleepless as our angel.

So yeah, in sum, I don't think Aziraphale has a perfect -- or even good -- track record on understanding what he reads. I adore him because he reads anyway! He never gives up on trying to understand! That's absolutely praiseworthy! (Crowley has something of an analogue to this in his love for human inventions. He doesn't understand how anything actually works, for the most part, but he loves it all the same.)

I think there's also an outstanding question about what Aziraphale gains from reading, a sense of social rules (Part 3) aside? Well, it's known that reading (especially fiction, especially fiction about characters who are Not Like The Reader) increases empathy. I don't know if Aziraphale reads specifically for that reason, but I'm absolutely willing to believe that fiction works on him that way, just as it does on us, even if he doesn't fully understand everything he reads. Did you fully understand everything you read as a child? Or even as an adult? I would never claim that of myself. Yet I certainly will claim that I picked up a lot of what I suppose I will call my character -- it runs deeper than personality -- and my general understanding of life (insofar as I have one) from reading.

If I had to answer why Aziraphale reads, though? I'd think back to my own childhood, as a bullied child with somewhat neglectful parents who held outsized expectations of me. Reading for me was peace, was escape, was enjoyment, was something to think about that wasn't my own unhappiness, was -- now and then, honestly not often enough -- seeing myself reflected in a book and feeling less alone. I hope and believe that human literature and music served similar purposes for our poor angel.

[adverbian]

Tag Game

Tagged by @voluptatiscausa and @kotias! ❤️❤️

How many works do you have on ao3?

19!

What's your total ao3 word count?

81,653. Less 2,655 for BooB Omens (the bad porn crack fic collaboration).

What fandoms do you write for?

Good Omens, entirely and completely.

Top five fics by kudos:

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Crowley’s been giving Aziraphale space to adjust to being on his own, finally free of Heaven. Now, a gorgeous American philanthropist has started hanging around the bookshop. Has Crowley left things Too Late? (Spoiler alert: There’s a very happy resolution.)

Is This Desire?: A smutty, sex-pollen meditation on desire and consent.

O You and Me At Last: News of one of Aziraphale’s past admirers has Crowley feeling a little… possessive.

one more river (and that's the river of jordan): They are alone now — they are free. They are both nervous, but eager, newlyweds. (My very first posted fic ever!)

In contenti e in allegria: Completely shameless PWP, honeymoon in Paris edition. With 69, galettes, and cheering from the peanut gallery.

Do you respond to comments?

Oh gosh yes! I love to say thank you and generally flail.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh gosh. I don't write much angst; my soft heart can't take it. I guess Revolver, a double drabble set in the late 1960s, ends with unresolved pining: "Aziraphale loosened the knot of his tie slightly, and swallowed. He wasn’t actually certain he could withstand The Firebird, not with Crowley so close. Maybe the be-bop had been the lesser evil, after all."

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oh lord have mercy. I think nearly everything I've written has been deliriously happy in the end, because of who I am as a person (and the fact that I started writing fic because I actually could not stand the heartbreak of S2 for one more second without losing my entire mind; I was genuinely not okay).

Set Me As a Seal Upon Your Heart is probably the longest, happiest, most glowing ending.

Confiteor may have been the biggest relief.

Do you get hate on fics?

I have gotten exactly zero so far. People have been so lovely.

Do you write smut?

I write a lot of smut. I have.... 3 T-rated works, 4 M-rated works, and the rest are E.-rated. I'm actually surprised it's 3 T-rated. I thought it was 1. I guess I wrote a couple of non-smutty drabbles.

Craziest crossover:

Lololol there is a very smol Lord Peter Wimsey crossover in a footnote to one more river. That is so far the only crossover.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If I have, I'm blissfully unaware <- same as two prev....

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet, although I got (and said yes to) a request to translate Da Pacem, a sestina about Aziraphale and Crowley stealing hours to meet under cover of darkness to plan their resistance (and perhaps to engage in... other activities).

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Other than BooB Omens, no! (Which was an extremely loose and wild collab that just kinda happened one evening; I spent all of like 15 minutes writing a deliberately stupid paragraph.) I would love to collab more!

All time favorite ship?

Aziraphale/Crowley, always. I do not know why, but they have taken over my entire brain in a way that nothing else ever has. And I was there for Picard/Crusher, Mulder/Scully, and Buffy/Angel, which were a lot.

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Hnnnng I really want to write one followup to the Auprès de ma blonde timeline, but it's so so patchy and poorly developed as of the last uh six months.

What are your writing strengths?

I am told that I am good at multi-sensory smut, and humor, and that there is a smoothness and flow to my writing.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I do not know what I am doing with any sort of complicated plot! So far, the most plot I have ever managed was a very very simple and short-lived apparent love triangle in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. I am trying to write more of a plot for a fic containing Leonardo da Vinci, but that WIP has been superseded by Event Fics for the last few months. It will happen!

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

Sure? I can almost do it if it's French (as long as I am allowed to look things up). (French friends, privately tell me how bad did I fuck it up in Auprès de ma blonde; I will sneakily fix it. I am sorry that I did not know you when I was writing it or I would have asked you to beta-read it!)

First fandom you wrote in?

Ahahahahaha, Baby-Sitters Club, if you count handwritten fic in a notebook that never saw anybody's eyes but my own. We're talking original-era BSC books here.

If you mean posted on the internet.... it was Good Omens.

Favorite fic you've written?

Oh gosh. I cannot pick just one.

Is This Desire? is probably the one that I feel the most accomplished about.

O You and Me At Last has what might be my favorite smut scene.

Exsultet was probably the one that took the most effort to write -- I still have a completely-different alternate version in WIPs that is getting closer to seeing the light of day.

And my newest fic, Gibraltar May Tumble, is probably the most I have ever had to trust the process while writing; it started out so larval and had to go through a whole metamorphosis.

Gosh I don't even know who to tag that hasn't already played. Er, @onedappercat, @wingsofopal, ???

[jenroses]

Dear Good Omens Fandom *

*And others.

It’s time to talk about footnotes.

Okay, so there are a number of different ways to augment text in a print book to provide more information. When expanding on an idea, on a page, one often puts a footnote to a SHORT paragraph that appears on the same page. In digital versions, all the footnotes are often at the back of the text and linked to via some variant of a hyperlink. 

Functionally, in a print book, most people will read the paragraph or sentence the footnote is in, drop their glance to the bottom of the page, and look up again. Grade: B+, perfectly serviceable.

Functionally, in a properly coded digital document such as an Ebook or web page, one clicks the footnote symbol or number, reads, and then either clicks it again or hits the back button to get back to where they were. Grade: C-, if you exit on the bookmark you may never get back to where you started, if you hit a back button, the document may reload if your browser is being techy, but if it is coded right, you probably can usually get back to where you need to be. 

If it is not coded properly or at all, F-, not functional, will not read.

When providing references or receipts, one uses references, often a numerical list or alphabetical list at the back of the book, chapter or article. The point is that if someone wants more information, they can get it. In a nonfiction article, this works well. 

You provide your reference in whatever style is appropriate to the publication, people can find what they need, the document is rarely long enough to care about flipping back and forth. Online, even easier. People can click through, open in a new window, whatever.  Grade for nonfiction: A+. Provides extra information in an accessible way. 

Grade for fiction... eh. Just use an appendix in a print book, author’s note, end note, whatever. Footnotes for receipts pull me out of the story. Grade: B- (or C+)

And online? Use an end note or chapter note. You rarely need to provide links in the text in fiction, just use an end note and say, “By the way, if you were wondering about such and such, here’s where it came from and what it’s about.” Easy peasy, flow is fine. Grade: A

So in a fandom which grew up with a fully footnoted actual physical book such as Good Omens? The temptation is to stick with the original for style, but please, my darlings, I beg you, do not do this. YES, you can absolutely provide snarky asides, quips and expanded information. You can do it without interrupting yourself mid sentence. 

But it will be more functional in a digital environment, ESPECIALLY for people who use “whole work” viewing rather than chapters, people who download for reading later, and people who are visually impaired who need screen readers... if you use another method.* You do not have to send people on a wild goose chase to find footnotes, which many will simply give up on and ignore, and in which case, why did you bother? *It works like this. Put an asterisk in where you want your aside. Finish your paragraph. Break your paragraph. Add another asterisk and italicize your text. Voila.

Using this alternate method has multiple benefits. Your quip, witticism, background note or digression does not interrupt the flow of the writing. People read the footnote just about precisely where they need to. They do not get lost. They don’t have to follow links. Screen readers are 100% fluent with this method. And it copies from Google Docs to AO3 (if you use rich text paste and not html) seamlessly with nothing getting lost in the transition. 

The eye sees the asterisk,* scans down for another asterisk, finds it, reads, and scans back up a very short distance. 

*Like this.

Since pagination doesn’t happen in AO3 or google docs or websites or screen readers set on “scroll”... you simply do not have one of the components required for proper footnoting. Footnotes go at the foot of the page. And a 100,000 word fanfic doesn’t have pages. It has chapters.

And that’s a problem on Archive of Our Own. You see, people tend to upload one chapter at a time. Footnotes are often numbered within chapters starting from 1. But if you do that, and someone has loaded your entire story, the minute they get to chapter 2, those careful footnote links you crafted bounce them up to chapter 1′s footnotes. 

The Asterisk method completely avoids that. It removes the coding stage. It removes all bouncing around. It works no matter how people load your work. And that, mes anges,* is functional. And it looks fine. It’s intuitive. And it doesn’t make me want to throw my phone out of the window of a moving car because we’re out of cell range** and I’m having to follow hundreds of footnotes back and forth and I couldn’t load the whole document because the footnotes wouldn’t work that way and now I can’t get the next chapter of your fucking amazing writing.

*my angels, French **true story, happened today Nov. 24, 2019. The wanting. I didn’t actually do it because I’m a goddamn grownup.

Grade for using the asterisk method? Five huge sighs of relief, and an A+ from every single person who uses a screen reader or can just about manage a scroll but can’t deal with finding the back button in the dark for whatever reason*.

*rheumatoid arthritis, stiff hands, lotsa lying down reading here.    

The show did not have footnotes. It had occasional voiceovers. It’s okay to adapt your technique to the needs of the technology. 

Bless everyone who has painstakingly gone through and linked to footnotes and back again. I know you worked really hard on it. Please stop doing it. This method is so much easier. 

If you want to see how this works in a full fic, I happen to have one here. Mitzvah

End note

There is no real correlation between the quality of the story and the quality of the footnote method. I see a wide variety of methods in many stories throughout the fandom. You’re not wrong per se, if you don’t do it my way. But you’re doing more work than you need to, and wasting time you could be doing literally anything else. This is probably best taken as a “going forward” recommendation, because no one, literally no one expects you to go back and redo hundreds of footnotes. 

If you reread your own work, and you have a lot of footnotes, it is wise to read it on multiple devices and in multiple ways. Does it make sense without footnotes? Some people will never look at a single one. If someone tries to use the footnotes, do they work in subsequent chapters if they’re not in chapter by chapter mode? If someone just reads in order, text first, footnotes last, are they going to have any idea what the footnotes are referring to? I have done literally all of these things in different fics in the fandom.  

[thelasthomelyurl]

thelasthomelyurl’s Good Omens fic masterlist

Please excuse some blatant self-promotion. Hi, I’m on AO3 as amerande and I’ve written a handful of Good Omens fics and I thought it’d be good to make a little list of them for your delectation and delight. 

All of these are Aziraphale/Crowley-centric. 

And I Would Hide My Face In You (E) 9k words, oneshot

Summary: The one where they share a body. Built on the conceit that our favorite demon and angel have gotten very used to the foibles of their fleshy corporations and when Aziraphale gets discorporated, he has cause to remember how different it is without one. Smut: yes! POV: Aziraphale

Excerpt:  For a moment, Crowley seemed to chew on that thought, his taut posture unchanging. Then he nodded his head decisively. “Well—why not this one?” he asked. Aziraphale looked around. “This one,” Crowley said again, emphatically, indicating himself. ”Oh! I mean, surely that’s obvious,” said Aziraphale by way of answer.

Review: “They love each other so much, I just can't... handle all the love...” -AO3 user shit_happens_bitchachos7

This Halfway Thing (M) 23k words, multi-chapter

Summary: A hurt/comfort story spanning the last few hundred years before the end of the world, starting with an unexpected encounter that leaves Crowley badly hurt and starting to realize that perhaps things cannot continue as they have always been.  Smut: A little tiny bit. Not explicit.  POV: Crowley

Excerpt: “Is that all this is, to you? A business arrangement?” Aziraphale answered his question with another one. “Isn’t that precisely what you proposed?” Crowley floundered, caught off-guard. That’s all I thought you would accept, he could not say. That’s all I dared hope for, and more than I deserved. He had thought that just an acquaintance, just a taste, just the barest of connections, would be enough. He’d grown greedy. Hundreds of years of this arrangement, of little conversations and compromises and clandestine meetings, until he’d allowed himself to wish, to let tiny tendrils of hope wind their way around his heart. All things he could not say. This was it: the doom he’d known he’s been consigning himself to when he stayed and let Aziraphale nurse him to health. He’d been starved for so long, and then gorged himself, and now turned up his nose at the scraps that would once have seemed a banquet. 

Review: “WTF, I have secondhand pining.” - tumblr user @curlycrowley

he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me as of a dream) (M) 2k words, oneshot

Summary: This is a simple oneshot that takes place around 1200 BC; Aziraphale is at a wedding to give a blessing and runs into Crawly, who is a woman at the time. Features genderqueer/genderfluid Crowley using she/her pronouns. This is a significant departure from the writing style of the other fics. Smut: Not explicit, heavily poetic. As a fun note, I tried to keep references to Crowley’s body configuration phrased in such a way that you can pick what set of genitals you think Crowley should have for this.  POV: Aziraphale

Excerpt:  They talk, and she brings him wine, and he places dates, raisins, and apricots on a plate for her. He laughs when she shares half of each with him. They are sweeter, coming from her hand—sweeter still is the brush of her fingers against his lips. He shares wine from his own cup; her lips meet it like a kiss and she drinks deeply. As he watches her, the glint of her golden eyes, the flash of her teeth when she talks, the dance of light on the angles of her strong face, he feels sated beyond any need for food or drink. There is something like a hunger, but it is instead a fullness which might overwhelm him if he lets it.

Review:  “This was gorgeous. So atmospheric and tender.” -AO3 user juniperphoenix

The Second Coming of the Apocalypse (G) 3k words, oneshot

Summary: This one’s weird! Buckle in for some theological angst and one idiot’s stab at interpreting how the whole God thing and Ineffable Bureaucracy could work out.  Smut: no! There is hand-holding though.  POV: Omniscient narrator who dotes on Crowley

Excerpt: God turned Her attention to the angel. MY AZIRAPHALE. “Almighty,” he choked. Well, he had asked three years ago for a chance to speak directly to the highest authority. It seemed his opportunity had arrived. GABRIEL CALLS YOU FALLEN, She said. “I rather think that Gabriel and I disagree on some fundamental points of theology,” he said as delicately as he was able. THEOLOGY? “It’s a human term,” he explained. “For the study of...You. And what You mean for the rest of us.” Silence. “Not what You meant, of course,” Aziraphale said apologetically. “You see, I think Gabriel said that because he believes that in working against the orders he was working under, I must have been doing the wrong thing. Which, you know, an angel can’t do...at least not if they’re going to stay an angel.” Silence. “It’s just that I thought that maybe orders calling for the destruction of the world and all the life in it might be worth...questioning.” 

Review: “[jumps up on the table] GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!” -twitter user stabletorus

The Angel of Eastgate: A Prologue (T) 10k words, multi-chapter

Summary: The fic that started it all (for me). My first entry into the GO fandom, which started with the thought “hahaha that sign says Eastgate, what if Aziraphale lived there” and then turned into a study of why our beloved angel is so damn angsty.  Written with copious footnotes.  Smut: No but there is yearning.  POV: Aziraphale

Excerpt:  Aziraphale had always clung to the Ineffable Plan, to the knowledge that everything would eventually work together for Good. Until Crowley had influenced him, given him this thirst to know, it had been enough that the Plan existed and that the Almighty knew its every turn. She knew the particulars, and She passed what knowledge was needed unto her closest servants, and eventually Aziraphale’s orders would reach him, and as long as he followed them, everything would be okay. The possibility which Crowley had planted in his mind—that he, the principality Aziraphale, might take actions and not just hope that they were insignificant enough to escape notice (as with The Arrangement) but actually pursue the dictates of his own conscience—was deeply compelling. It was also, of course, entirely heretical.

Review: “This is special. And your footnotes are hilarious.“ -AO3 user Katzamboni 

I’ll update with more as I write them! 

[ineffablegoodhusbandsomens]

You can ignore this if you want. I just wanted to go on a positive rant about the Good Omens book, and how fucking great it is and why

After reading Good Omens (cover to cover) 5 times in 6 months, back to back, I can honestly say, it’s my second favorite book of all time, beat only by Fahrenheit 451 (which is just an utterly fantastic book). I had decided to buy the book for myself last December after watching the show a bunch of times, not to far from Christmas, so I considered it a Christmas gift to myself. I began reading it as soon as it showed up, cause I’d bought it off of Amazon. And instantly, it just pulled me in. (Also, ironically, a few hours after it arrived, my family and I went to one of the local chapels downtown, to enjoy a night of carols, and I’d taken the book with me. Felt a little blasphemous, sitting in that chapel, reading Good Omens, but I didn’t mind) As soon as I finished my first read, I turned back to the front cover, and started the whole thing over again. I started taking it to work with me, and I’d read it during very slow hours. I reread that book 3 times at work. (Everyone I work with grew kind of attached to the sight of me reading my Good Omens book behind front desk, and they always got exasperated, when I told them I was starting over again) After only 6 months of owning the book, I’ve read it 5 times, and I’d technically started a 6th, because I wanted to read it out loud to my brother. But we both kind of gave up on that. I just can’t stop reading it! It’s such a unique book! The tone of Good Omens is unlike any book I’ve ever read. It’s funny, but also very serious, but also action packed, but very calm all at the same time. I’ve never seen a book use footnotes, aside from textbooks, and in such an amazing way. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett thought out so many details of this book. The characters are so well thought out, and some of the most unique characters I’ve ever seen. It handles religion both respectfully and humorously. As an Atheist, I was really concerned about the religious aspects of Good Omens, both the show and the book. But the show handled it so well, and the book was no different. The theological discussions the characters have are very deep and thought provoking, and the jokes are incredibly funny without being offensive. There are some very very small aspects of the book I don’t like, but it’s literally a sentence here, or a line of dialogue there, and it truly is a product of the time, not the authors. There are just, so many random parts to this book, enough to keep me both entertained, and interested, wanting to see what crazy thing happens next! The language used in the book is very intellectual at times, and incredibly adult, intellectually speaking. But at the same time, there are whole pages where the writing is very word vomity (for lack of a better term). But it never deters me from the book itself. Maybe it’s my ADHD, but it’s always the same places where I just get lost sometimes, not understanding what the hell is happening. But, it just adds to the book, instead of taking away from it. It’s just such a great book. I’m honestly kind of sad that I’d never even heard of Good Omens until May of last year, when every other post on my Tumbr dash was about Good Omens coming to Amazon Prime. I kind of wish I’d read the book before watching the show. There’s something beautiful and just, chaotic about the book, in the best way possible, and I love every part of it. I’ve only had my copy for 6 months, but I’ve  read it so many times, taken it to work so many times, that the front cover has so many bend and folds, the spine is very worn, and there are a few small tears here and there. I was a little upset the first time I bent the front cover, straight down the middle because it had gotten a little messed around in my bag. I wanted to keep it in really good condition, because I like to pride myself on the condition of my books. Most of them have any bends, and the most read ones are very well taken care of. But after a while, I found I didn’t care. The condition of my Good Omens book is a tribute to how much I love it, and how many times I’ve read it because of how good it is! This book is honestly a classic, and I know I’ve only had it for 6 months, but I could tell, after my very first cover to cover (kind of, because there are a couple of interviews with Neil and Terry at the end of my book, but I don’t usually read those) read through, I knew I was going to love this book for a very long time. And I still think that. Here’s to hoping that one day, I’ll get to read this to my kids (when their like, 12, cause this is a bit too adult for a 5 year olds bed time story)

[notbecauseofvictories]

I........just finished Good Omens miniseries ("GOTV”), and (a) I can’t believe how easily Tennant and Sheen won me over, given how resistant I was to that casting; (b) I think it was a missed opportunity.

[negativity below the cut, fair warning]

Let me preface this by saying: it was fine. I had a good time watching it. I have no objections.

I just also think that it was a missed opportunity to try something that might have been....different. A conservative, sometimes painfully literal adaptation that felt more like a paint-by-numbers than a thoughtful adaptation.

And look, Pratchett’s voice (which is a prominent part of Good Omens) is hard to adapt to the screen. It just is. Nested puns, amusing character descriptions, and using footnotes to make wry asides is not something that you can easily translate to a visual medium. This is something the Discworld adaptations also suffer from---most of them import the Pratchett narrator wholesale, and what is immensely funny in prose gets lost in voiceover.

Now, I think a really clever and innovative writer/showrunner would sit down with their creative team and say, “All right, how do we translate this sense of humor into a visual medium? What can we do to convey the spirit of wry asides, puns, and amusing character descriptions without having to read them aloud?” And maybe they would have punched up the dialogue and made it more like a stage play, cracking with dramatic irony and wit; maybe they would have used close-up camera work and let the actors run wild with reaction shots. I’ve seen too many British comedies to think it’s impossible to convey all that dry humor and silent judgment.

They even might have decided to keep the narrator! You can do very interesting things with narrators---Jane the Virgin and Fleabag both deploy narrators to great success in completely different ways. The intro of the first episode of GOTV was actually bang-on imitation of the 1980s Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV show, which also had little asides, featuring “encyclopedia entries” from the titular guide. (Douglas Adams, however, got his start in radio, which is more similar to film than to fiction prose, in terms of structuring scenes and writing dialogue.) GOTV’s introductions of the Them made me think of Amelie, which also had a narrator that would break the fourth wall and discuss characters’ backstories in an omniscient third person way. Breaking the fourth wall in clever, unexpected ways can be a major asset to a show; there’s nothing that says you couldn’t have a Pratchett narrator be one.

The point is, I think if you’re smart and strategic, you can adapt Pratchett’s distinctive but difficult-to-translate voice for the film.

But faced with a particular challenge, GOTV chose.......none of the above. God-as-Narrator quotes whole passages of the book rather than conveying that information visually. (And some of it is backstory or action that would be served by the visual medium! B99 is not but cutaway shots for comedic effect! PUT SOME INFORMATION IN THE FRAME.) God-as-Narrator is also never acknowledged, or woven into the story more than as the omniscient third person talking to the audience. As a consequence, GOTV’s use of narrator feels neither strategic nor smart---she doesn’t add anything to the story being told.

Not only does it make for a lost opportunity to do something interesting with the adaptation, but it also takes out a lot of the humor and heart of the book. GO is funny largely because these characters bounce around in an absurd, ridiculous world that only we see absurdity in; a lot of the pleasure of GO hinges on the dramatic irony of Newton Pulisfer’s terrible Japanese-made car, the kraken avenging sushi dinners, War waltzing through a bar full of war correspondents, the ducks having a preference for certain international breads. With a visual medium there are other ways to convey this irony. GOTV was most successful when they actually did this---characters would turn off radios talking about the nuclear core disappearing, televisions showing footage of the kraken. Adam and Them talking about whether Atlantis and Tibetians in tunnels are real. Shadwell talking about how he’d sent Newton to be subjected to the “wiles” of a witch, and then cutting to Newton and Anathema.

I mean, I think by far the effective, most interesting part of the whole miniseries was the 30 minutes of Crowley and Aziraphale throughout the centuries---and I don’t think it’s incidental that it was (1) new, and (2) without narration. 

I bring up the narrator specifically because I think it’s a good example of the problem at the heart of the adaptation:  GOTV is entirely too faithfully married to the text of GO. So much so that it can’t seem to even translate itself fully into television. It seemed unwilling to create new scenes that might have conveyed what the book conveyed in description, or recontextualize plot points in a way that might have gotten their purpose across better, or bend the narrative to suit a six-episode miniseries. Those times it did so were the more interesting ones: incidentally, mostly scenes with Aziraphale and Crowley.

I have other issues with GOTV. (Why wasn’t it funny, goddamn it? did NG never think to consult with a single comedy writer? was he afraid to lean into the ridiculousness of it all? THE CRIMINALLY UNDERUSED JACK WHITEHALL IS A FUNNY COMEDIAN, HE COULD HAVE GIVEN SOME POINTERS.) But that I think is the main thing. Good Omens the book was clearly treated as sacred, rather than a source to draw inspiration from. Which is ironic when you consider the subject of the thing.

EDITED TO ADD, ALSO the joke about Crowley’s car and Queen music is that all music in the car gets turned into Queen. The joke in its entirety was not made ONCE, making Crowley someone who just likes listening to Queen all the time, and I resent the hell out of ruining a perfectly good joke.

[hub-pub-bub]

Whether you like to read fiction, non fiction, magazines, airplane magazines, posters, user manuals or just signs, you should read Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter.

Here are three reasons why:

It’s a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the coming of the End of Times that stars a demon, an angel (also a rare book dealer), a witch, the Four Horsemen, the Antichrist (a nice 11 year old boy) and his dog.

It’s been nominated for a World Fantasy Award and has been adapted into a soon-to-be-released tv series starring the incredible David Tennant and Michael Sheen (This way, you can impress your friends and wow your acquaintances by talking about how it differs from the book)

It’s one of the greatest feats of literary collaboration in a pre-Internet, pre-Google Docs era which showcases what seamless collaboration can do to literary projects.

The first two reasons alone should be interesting enough to pick the book up but if you are curious about the third, you’ve come to the right place.

Good Omens was authored by two people, Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett. It was Neil Gaiman’s first novel – he went on to author some bestsellers that you may or may not have read/watched like American Gods, Neverwhere, Stardust and The Ocean At the End of The Lane. It was not Sir Terry Pratchett’s first novel but it is one of his few works outside his remarkable 41 book fantasy series, Discworld.

Types of literary collaborations

Typically when books are co-authored, the arrangement is dreamed up by the publisher. Publishers bring authors together to create and draw from their combined pool of influence. After all, a co-author might reach an audience that the author hasn’t influenced yet.

The collaboration can also proceed along many routes as there are many different types of writing partnerships – James Patterson, for instance, hires a writer, usually someone with some published credits, and gives them a lengthy, detailed treatment (somewhere in the 60-80 page range) of the book. After that, the writer… writes the book and Patterson rewrites or just gives feedback. Mark Sullivan, who co-wrote several of Patterson’s Private series as well as Cross Justice, described weekly phone calls, blunt criticism and a pursuit of the intelligent thrill ride. The novels are Patterson’s ideas, his characters, so it naturally involves a lot of input from him.

Then, there’s the style that John Green and David Levithan used when they co-wrote Will Grayson, Will Grayson together. The authors split it evenly by half – John Green wrote all the odd numbered chapters from the perspective of capitalized Will Grayson while David Levithan wrote the even-numbered chapters from the perspective of lower case will grayson. They’d decided on the plot outline – how their characters would meet – and shared outlines and feedback with each other but it was largely a solitary process.  

Collaborating via the Royal Mail and Floppy Discs

Good Omens, on the other hand, was a truly collaborative novel. For one thing, it wasn’t facilitated by a publisher but by the authors themselves. Neil Gaiman got the ball rolling by writing the first 5,000 words about a demonic baby swap and sent it out to his friends for feedback. It amused Terry Pratchett so much that he picked it up and wrote the next 5,000 words, borrowing attributes about Neil Gaiman that amused him and giving it to a main character.

The first draft of Good Omens was written in nine weeks – over phone calls. They’d plot and read each other what they’d written, trying to make the other one laugh. They rewrote each other’s bits, competed to get to the best bits, left footnotes, threw in characters and handed it off when they got stuck. No one kept count but Neil Gaiman reckons that Terry probably wrote around 60,000 “raw” and he wrote 45,000 “raw” words of Good Omens.

Draft 2 was also plotted over long, daily phone calls and involved the duo sending floppy disks to each other (this was 1988). Towards the end of the book, Neil Gaiman went to stay with Terry Pratchett to patch it all together and finish it.

Much has been made of this unusual yet completely-makes-sense creative partnership but I see three major points here:

Technology is your friend. Sometimes, it’s worth taking the time to finding the right tech to make your collaboration work. In an era when writers were still holding fast to their notebooks and typewriters, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman realized they’d be able to collaborate better if they sent each floppy disks with their bits so they could easily edit each other and not spend hours reading their pages to each other (Imagine all that they’d have accomplished with Google Docs!). Finding the right collaboration software for your team can really make all the difference when it comes to efficiency and productivity.

Trust can make or break a relationship. Without mutual respect and trust, a collaborative relationship can break down really quickly (usually at the first sign of criticism). It’s only because they trusted each other to give good feedback and respected each other’s skills that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett were able to make this collaboration work. Creative conflict is inevitable in a collaboration and they wouldn’t have been able to weather it if they didn’t trust each other.

Remote is great but face-time is also invaluable. Even though they were able to write a bulk of the novel without being together in the same place, there’s a lot to be said for in-person collaboration. Spontaneous interactions can randomly occur in person, something that can’t be facilitated even by the best collaboration software.

Even the title is a collaboration – when the time came for them to find a title, Neil Gaiman liked Good Omens and Terry Pratchett liked The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter so they compromised and picked one as a title and the other as a subtitle.

The two never collaborated on a book again (impossible now) – their paths diverged wildly as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman became an enormous success and Discworld made Terry Pratchett the UK’s best selling author in the 1990s. As Justine Jordan put it, “In retrospect, it seems amazing that two such singular and prolific creative energies could share the writing of a novel: an extraordinary congruence of hard work, good timing and readerly luck.”

As Sir Terry Pratchett put it, “In the end, it was this book done by two guys, who shared the money equally and did it for fun and wouldn’t do it again for a big clock.”

Image credits to Swetha Kanithi. Cheers to Girish Shenoy for feedback.

Aishwarya Hariharan

Content strategist by day, armchair adventurer by night.

[phynxrizng]

SCRYING FACTS

SOURCE, PAGAN PATH.COM BY, FRIDAY

Scrying pool, mirror, and crystal gazing … reflect on these ideas …

Scrying is a form of divination, but is also much more than that. By gazing into a crystal, pool, mirror or other reflective medium, a Witch is able to enter altered mind states and gain access beyond the veil. Because every person you meet will have a different way of accessing their mind states, you will hear many different scrying techniques. Some of the techniques I’ve come across border on the realms of superstition (which I define as fear through lack of knowledge and/or acceptance).

You might read that unless a crystal sphere is true quartz crystal, it will not work. You might hear that a perfect sphere without any visible flaws is necessary. You may hear that your scrying mirror or crystal must never be touched by sunlight. These are simply not true. There are legitimate reasons for each of these ‘rules’ but it doesn’t mean that you have to follow them in order to scry effectively. Let’s break down scrying into the basics so you can understand why these rules exist. In this way, you can determine for yourself if you wish to adhere to them, or toss them aside as rubbish.

If you wish to begin scrying, you will need some sort of a reflective surface. More about this later, lets look at what you will actually be doing with this reflective surface first.

Scrying works on the principles of what is named by some as the Ganzfeld effect or state. If you have ever had to sit in the corner as a child, staring at a blank wall until you began to hallucinate and have stories, patterns, or images appear to you, you know what the Ganzfeld effect is. If you’ve ever stayed awake in bed staring at the ceiling until these same things happened, then you also know what a Ganzfeld state is.

Ok, so maybe I’ve spoiled the mystery of scrying by breaking it down into the basics and telling you what it really is. However, scrying has a very occult side. It isn’t how you get to the mind state of scrying that’s important, it’s the mysteries that are unveiled to you once you are there that are important. Interpreting what you see when you scry is very much like dream interpretation. There are many books that will define each image you glimpse, but essentially it boils down to what those images mean to you.

A key element in quickly attaining the correct state for scrying is flashing light. (If you are epileptic, disregard this section, if you eliminate the flickering but keep the gaze similar, you should still be able to scry.) Place flickering candles around the room you are working in. Keep them out of your direct line of vision, but at the same time, be certain that the reflection of the flame can be seen in the scrying surface. To get these 'flickering’ candles, you can open a window a crack to let a draft help you out. Or, there are some candles you’ll find on the market, especially inexpensive ones, which have a flame that rises and falls rhythmically. These work quite well for scrying. (I got some from a botanica in New Orleans [ F&F Botanica ] that smell strongly of petroleum. Not very attractive sounding I know, but they flicker nicely. I’ve also gotten some good flickeries at drug stores when they are having their after holiday sales. They go are usually 5 for a $1….black and orange after Samhain and red, green and white after Yule. These cheapies flicker nicely sans drafts.)

Try this for example:

For Scrying You will need:

A black mirror, a cauldron filled with water (or an herbal infusion such as mugwort), or a crystal, or a shallow dish of water (made black by the addition of ink), a ring with a nice stone (like moonstone) a black stone like obsidian, a black tile, or whatever reflective medium you wish to use. Five candles

To Begin Scrying:

Place the scrying medium on your altar so that you can look at it from approximately a 45 degree angle while in a very comfortable position. Arrange the candles throughout the room so that they are elevated above the scrying medium but remain outside of your direct line of sight. You may wish to cast a circle at this time or recite a blessing or charge over the medium and over the entire scrying session.

Breathe deeply and rhythmically while gazing at the medium. Imagine you are looking through a red lens so that everything you see is tinted with red. Move on through the chakra colors in a “"Crystal Countdown” fashion. The color sequence is as follows: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. (The rainbow, easily remembered with the initials as a name…ROY G. BIV)

When you feel that you are relaxed, keep looking at the medium. Your first sessions may last 10 to 30 minutes, but work up to hour long sessions. Do not be critical of yourself or your results. If you fall asleep that’s ok, if you daydream that’s ok too. Just let whatever happens, happen. In this way you will quickly refine your skills. Relax your gaze as if you were attempting a 3D magic eye hidden picture. If you have trouble with those darned 3D things, don’t worry, scrying is similar only in that you relax your eyes and don’t really look AT the surface.

Scrying Follow Up:

After you have completed your session, jot down a few rough notes. Do what you need to do to ground yourself or clean up the area. Sometime during your day, go back to your notes and fill in more details as you remember them. I use two columns, one for the description of images seen, and one for my translations.

Go over each image that you saw. You might consult a symbol interpretation list for dreams, you know, the kind that say a bird is an omen, a knife is a……well, you get it. You could also analyze each image by checking what it means to you. For example, a red rose may mean passion in the books, but if your best friend requested them in the hospital, your personal associations are going to be different. The conclusions you draw from your scrying sessions must eventually be your own and as you continue to practice, you will understand yourself and your visions more and more.

Insightful scrying to you!

Recent Addendum to this Scrying Article

I’ve found that with practice, the mind becomes more comfortable in this state and you can maintain it for greater lengths of time with practice.

There are also tools that can help you become more familiar and comfortable with the state. They can also speed the achievement of the state so that practice is more convenient and frequent.

These tools can range in price from free up to thousands of dollars. One of the lower priced tools we’ve used specifically for the Ganzfeld field effect is a set of 'glasses’ or goggles.

These tools are non-invasive sensory depravation devices designed to create a smooth, monochromatic field of light. We have enjoyed comparing these modern tools to some of Gardner’s Eight Paths or Ways to the Center or Eight Ways of Making Magic in our personal Book of Shadows. If you purchase these, they can cost around $60 U.S. but you can also make a similar tool for next to nothing!

The color chosen for the field of light can be selected according to color therapy, magical references, or whatever you are drawn to and what works best for you. After a few minutes using this type of tool, you won’t 'see’ anything as your optic nerve becomes paralyzed and you 'see’ black. With your mind’s eye however, you will see much more!

A simple Ganzfeld 'goggle’ can be made by slicing a ping pong ball in half and smoothing the cut edges with sand paper. (You can also pad the edges with headphone cushions with the centers cut out.)

Paint both halves of the ping pong ball the color you have chosen. Place them over your eyes and lay down under a bright light (or the sun with sunscreen on :) ) Keep your eyes open and stare straight ahead. After a few minutes you should no longer be able to see the color. Don’t be afraid, this is normal.

Avoid making imperfections in the paint, allowing any cushions to be visible (try without them at first) or any flecks of darkness on the halves. Experiment with different variations of light brightness. Your eyes shouldn’t feel any pain or sensitivity to the brightness, but there should be even, bright light.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present. A Defence of Poetry -Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772-1834.

References & Resources

1. Wikipedia entry for Ganzfeld Effect 2. Power of the Witch by Laurie Cabot, 1990 - ISBN-10: 0385301898, ISBN-13: 978-0385301893

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Author: Friday Website: http://PaganPath.com Email: Friday@PaganPath.com

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Friday is devoted to writing books and articles on a variety of Pagan subjects, and is the instructor of the online PaganPath Academy. She has studied and practiced the Craft since 1987, and worked as a professional tarot reader and vice president of a national psychic network for several decades. Currently, she is now a practicing herbalist and ordained minister. As a Master Gardener with a deep interest in permaculture, she is developing the PaganPath Sanctuary with her partner. This long term community project is an edible landscape demonstration, orchard and educational facility for future generations.

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