#but true story™

[cyndakiller]

Me: why I'm feeling so sad and lonely

Nice person: hi

Me automatically:

[tame-a-messenger]

lol someone on Twitter posted the podcast clip of Angela and Damien commented under

https://x.com/shourtneey/status/1775774250185482288?s=46&t=LBN-nTL3dHZAbWOFkeCnKg

LMAOOO NO WAY

(Twitter link)

I wont lie, my heart genuinely DROPPED yesterday when I read the first reply, I thought something was wrong! but then I thought about it and realized he was being /j /hj lmao (tone indicators man.)

THEN I started to think about why he would reply to this tweet in the first place. "From my perspective, this story contains FALSEHOODS" I'm going to BET you it has something to do with her asking him what she had said at the party. (or maybe she did something silly and left it out? ie. her throwing up, spilling something on him, her talking about something she likes [nerdy][[derogatory]] ?) (OR OR she embellished on him saying "that talk really meant a lot")

BUT THEN,

THIS MUTHAFUCKA ^^^ (within the first TEN MINUETS OF STREAM) TALKS ABOUT THE TWEET, AND ABOUT HOW PEOPLE ALWAYS THINK HE'S BEING PASSIVE AGRESSIVE. (<-context) someone replied to Damien's first reply thinking he was being /s) -GOES TO BED, WAKES UP, GOES BACK TO THE TWEET TO REPLY AGAIN, SO THAT PEOPLE WILL KNOW HE'S BEING /j

.... this man....

Since I believe he was only /hj (half-joking)... I want to know exactly what Damien meant by "FALSEHOODS".

So, I'll wrap this up with-

Why would he @ BOTH of them?

If it was something small she got wrong I could see him just @ ing her. But BOTH the Host of the Podcast and Angela sounds like whatever she got wrong/different was BIG. (and most DEFINITELY something funny)(based on Damien's vibe)

NOT TO MENTION HOW MUCH HE SAYS "Whoa" IN THE FIRST REPLY !!

YOU CANNOT TELL ME WHATEVER SHE DIDN'T SAY WASN'T SOMETHING HUGE !

He also mentions in the Twitch clip that "we got to talk about it a little bit" in what I believe to be him earlier on his stream referencing , that he had been at Smosh that day. (remember, this was the day they were BOTH confirmed(based on social posts) to be ONSET at Smosh) Meaning he talked TO HER IN PERSON ABOUT WHAT SHE SAID ON THE PODCAST.

[YOU HAVE ENTERED "THE DELUSIONAL ZONE", CONTINUE OF YOUR OWN FREEWILL]

VVV

So I'm theorizing (being delusional)(but also really hoping) that they're planning on talking about it on camera somewhere. I'm thinking, if anything, something for (the Host) Miles' Podcast? since Smosh fans only know about it tangentially, and the story was told on his Podcast.

I think it would be better that way anyway :) (PODCAST VERSION OF ANG AND DAMES??? AN HOUR!!?? THE FOOTAGE DOESN'T CUT?? YES PLEASE!!)

(other idea- how fucking funny would it be if DAMIEN (or I suppose Angela) called into the podcast about a "silly little co-worker" that told "FALSEHOODS" about a Christmas Party..?)

[YOU HAVE SURVIVED "THE DELUSIONAL ZONE", NOW BACK TO REALITY]

VVV

It is nice that by default, we are a BILLION PERCENT going to get mentions of whatever it is she did sometime in the future at Smosh (I'm hoping the longest we'll have to wait is next month!)

I CANNOT WAIT for whatever it is the "FALSEHOODS" are!!!

PLEASE TELL US ANGELA AND DAMIEN!!! 🔊🔊🔊

[greekromann]

the version of tashigi that lives in my head is soooo much cooler than anything oda could ever hope to write about women. oda doesnt understand her I Do Though

[adhd-merlin]

I'm home for the holidays for a couple of weeks – I was sitting at the table on my laptop, looking for a Merlin gif, when my Aunt walked past, stopped, looked at my screen and said:

"That's Merlino".

"What?"

"That's Mago Merlino*. I've watched the whole series, I really liked it."

And walked away.

Like what am I supposed to say to that...

*Merlin the wizard

[yoshifawful64]

honestly i'm a little, i don't know, unsettled? by how many people seem to hate heartstopper for… what, being too "wholesome"? like yeah it's maybe not god's gift to queer fiction or whatever, but it shouldn't need to be some subversive masterpiece to justify its existence. and it's not like it's free of conflict or anything either, there's still more serious plot points in there too

[paulmccartneyexplodingonstage]

Jamming so hard to Walls and Bridges I break my arm

[questing-wulfstan]

I think the original thesis was that one's art will inevitably lack the character and authenticity that compels and invests people if it's created precisely to cater to people's expectation, rather than what compels and invests the artist. Which I entirely agree with and genuinely see no legit counterargument to.

But that's what has somehow mutated into the 'you should make art for yourself and yourself alone, people's engagement is simply a nice bonus' thesis that regularly crosses my dash lately. And I get the sentiment behind it, I do !! Especially in a time, it seems, of people engaging less and less with fanworks. I however have much more reservations towards this statement, and would go as far as suggesting that it is counterproductive, in a time of people engaging less and less with fanworks.

Because, writing in this very case, but that goes for art in general, is meant to be shared. Art is about making connections, it’s a conversation. It’s saying ‘this is how I see the world, is this how you see it too ?’, and it expects a response. Stories were told long before they were written, and we started writing them to ensure they would be passed onto future generations, because we wanted to share them beyond our finitude. But to our peers that were there now, we kept telling stories because it’s not simply about transmission, it’s about reaction. Why would you tell the epics of great heroes if not to galvanise your audience ? Why would you elaborate horrors that chill your own bones if not to frighten your audience ? And why would you tell these stories if not to know whether they did galvanise or frighten your audience ? Why tell these stories if not for the comfort that your peers find courage, or fear in the same things that you do ?

Of course it’s an easy thing to overlook in our epoch where stories are most often recorded, in solitude, and then ‘consumed’ asynchronously, often also in solitude. Stories nowadays are written and read much more often than they are told and heard, and I see how we’ve come to disregard the need for response. However, something I have been formally taught as a librarian in that same epoch, is that people read because they seek something, and not for sole distraction. I believe people write for the same reason.

I can promise you as a writer that I make up stories for my own entertainment entirely. I wish you could see side by side the history of my first 5 years on AO3 and the monumental amount of potential fics I have elaborated in the same timespan. The act of writing was Difficult for me for various reasons during that time, so I never gave this myriad of stories a shape that allowed to share them on the internet. Because I was content enough vividly imagining these characters and situations; essentially, telling myself these stories. I believe other writers may need to tell themself their stories in a more tangible manner so they write them out, and then do so for themself solely.

However, if I have started to write regularly as of late, to compose and shape my stories into a form to convey to the best of my ability what my brain envisioned to a reader’s brain; if we writers put our stories out into the world for anyone to see, it’s because we want to share them, we want them read, we’re extending ourselves out to say ‘this is how I see the world too, this is how I feel too’. And we want to know that we aren’t alone in seeing the world as we do, in feeling as we do. We put our stories out instead of keeping them to ourselves because we want, and need response. As have all the storytellers that came before us.

So I honestly won’t suffer seeing another post on my dash telling writers that they need to write for themselves and disregard engagement because we do !! We write for ourselves !! But we share our writing publicly because we want, well, to *share* it. Because that’s an integral part of being human.

And if you are a reader who think that commenting on a fic is solely an ego boost for the writer and that a much-less-time-consuming kudos is ego boost enough, or that a story is between a writer and themself solely and that voicing your feelings about it is superfluous, I’m begging you to reconsider, your vision and what writers are truly offering.

[frommybookbook]

tell me you're watching a Hollywood adaptation of a pulp detective story without telling me you're watching a Hollywood adaptation of a pulp detective story

[land-of-departure]

me during important cutscenes:

[imabiscuitinthousandworlds]

bad news: today might actually be the worst day of my life, no hyperbole

good news: i no longer want to tear out my hair and scratch off my skin and curl up in a ball and cry

[bylrndgm]

“yo, bro, who got you smiling like that?”

byler. definitely byler.

[dabookgoblin]

[neil-gaiman]

Hi Neil,

I hope this doesn't get buried in the ask box, but if it does, I'll still be glad I sent this, just to know this little lengthy slice of complement and thanks existed in your inbox is enough. I apologize for the length, I am pretty sure the grammar is in tatters...and probably just the general awkwardness in advance.

Frist of all, congratulations for Good Omens Season2, it's a roaring success even here in this...I don't know, bottomless pit? I myself and some others fondly call it the PRC. The show didn't made pass the firewall officially, neither was Prime Video. People still managed to watch it eventually by VPNs, shared accounts and when times are desperate...sorry, piracy. Chinese fans, including myself, using every tool in the shed to try to fool Amazon™ and our goverment, just to watch this on Prime and try to help to manifest S3, is one hell of an experience. This kind of experience is pathetic, ridiculous....and somehow hilarious in a dark, gallows humor way, almost like some bad spy comedy, I just have to share it. Worth all the trouble by the way, the reward at the end of the back channel is...well, some divine comedy to say the very least. All in all, it's a brilliant show and a solid job well-done.

Then some of my personal gratitude. They say good art resonates with your soul, I now know this is just as true as matter and gravity. Since I know Good Omens certainly resonated with mine. I'll redact the typical "depression and anxiety reduced me to a husk, a shadow of my former self" story and get to the result for brevity's sake. I can't write anything meaningful while I know I took joy in writing, I can't finish reading anything longer than a brochure while I know I was such a bookworm in the past. Then I was compelled to get up in the middle of the night, wrote a full 5000 character long analysis after marathoned S2, and then write even more analyses in both Chinese and English. I picked up American Gods because I know I need more Neil Gaiman in my life and then impressed by myself for actually finishes it the second time 5 years later. I didn't know how exactly that happened through one watch of a TV show, but I know I am changed for the better. I grasped life again, and can start living again, somehow. The resonation just keeps on giving.

This is a quiet, gentle and romantic story, it is soothing, accepting, filled to the brim with love and kindness, and it makes me feel safe and accepted and loved in a way I never felt before. I thank you for it, and hope thart I may have the privlige to witness more of this miracle. Thank you Neil, Sir Terry Pratchett and the team for this miraculous book and this miraculous show.

谢谢。(I just had to say thanks with my mother tongue, it feels more earnest this way)

Thank you so much! I'm impressed by everything you and your countryfolk have gone through to watch it as legitimately as you could.

[fran-kubelik]

1970s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers having the male psychologist be deeply patronizing and dismissive of the women trying raise the alarm and accuse them of simply being commitment-phobic toward their husbands/marriages, then revealing he’s an evil pod person... based.

[musical-chick-13]

...I’m really not sure what this movie was trying to say.

[paperclipninja]

Middle of the night GO thoughts after reflecting on a couple of comments that the 'you're being silly' scene is actually not just the adorable soft exchange I have been caught up in. I mean it is, but it also isn't.

And it got me thinking that the whole of season 2 is like this, almost the entire time we have two truths in play. The whole season is one of duality.

A few examples (there are many more woven throughout but just to illustrate the point):

Right off the bat, the opening scene, it's both ominous and hopeful. Aziraphale is restrained while angel Crowley full of abandon; one angel is aware of the danger of questioning, the other is naïve. Both are experiencing the same moment in rather different ways. It sets the tone of the season immediately and puts in motion this layered truth within the story.

The minisode with wee Morag and Elspeth, the entire graverobbing premise presents us with the dual truth that digging up the dead is bad but the selling of the bodies to the surgeon, thus contributing to saving lives, is good.

Aziraphale grapples with the duality here, justifying the actions of Elspeth by convincing himself that one truth is greater than the other. We also see that Crowley is far more able to recognise the complexity of multiple truths being valid depending on circumstance. This whole minisode feels like Neil showing his hand a little bit, the duality is so explicitly addressed, meanwhile we, the audience, are engaged in a larger unfolding story in which we are observing similar layered truths playing out in different ways.

Now the scene that made this whole thought process unravel, still one of my favourite scenes and will remain so, is the "smitten, I believe...you're being silly" exchange. It is both tender and awful.

Here we have Crowley, expressing his very real fear of JimGabriel, opening up to Aziraphale that he doesn't feel safe in the bookshop because of the constant fear he will wake up, and Aziraphale just looks at him with heart eyes and tells him he's being silly. This flags so loudly that we're watching two characters who are experiencing very different versions of their current reality, due to past experience, yes, but also, Aziraphale and Crowley each have their own idea about the right way to react to the current situation.

It's been pointed out by many before me, but the ball is another example of incredible juxtaposition and an extraordinary display of two truths existing at once. It is both incredibly romantic and an actual nightmare.

It is reflected, once again, in the way Aziraphale and Crowley are experiencing it, we know one character is caught up in the romance, the other in the horror show, but as a viewer, we are being tasked with holding both truths in our mind simultaneously. And both are true.

Aziraphale the entire season is both giddy in love and completely dismissive of Crowley. It is adorable and infuriating at the same time.

And yes, it is a reflection of the very duality the entire premise of Good Omens presents us with - that something can be good and bad at the same time, pure and corrupt, that the entire binary of Heaven and Hell/good and evil is flawed because those concepts can and do co-exist.

But the way it is seen in the interactions on a personal level this season is what has leapt out at me. It's why I think we see people falling into different interpretations of a lot of the scenes and moments, because they are more than that, they are observations. We are often observing two sides of the same coin, and both are true. The sheer genius of it and the way it is a mirror to the characters and the entire concept of the show we are observing is, quite frankly, mind boggling.

And it all comes to a head in the final fifteen™. There is so much duality in play here that it is no wonder there are hundreds of posts untangling bits of it and trying to extract the meaning from within the many layers. It's because we are given two truths in this final scene that are both heartbreaking.

Crowley loves Aziraphale and wants them to be together, free at last. Aziraphale loves Crowley and wants them to be together, free at last.

BUT

Aziraphale wants to use the system to keep them both safe. Crowley wants to escape the system to keep them both safe.

And then all the moments of duality between them throughout the season reach a critical juncture: Aziraphale in love but dismissive, Crowley understanding that Heaven = good is too simplistic and trying to compel Aziraphale to remember the lesson from Edinburgh ("when Heaven ends life here on Earth, it'll be just as dead as if Hell ended it"), Crowley trying to use the notion of romance to counter the nightmare with a desperate kiss.

It's a complete inversion of those two truths in the opening scene of the season, the entire scene is at the same time ominous and hopeful, but it is Aziraphale who largely being naïve and Crowley who is aware of the danger.

I mean, it was all spelled out for us really, this duality and the fact that those multiple truths in play were always going to come to a head. It was all there, wrapped up in this quote:

"What does your exactly mean, exactly? I feel like your exactly and my exactly are different exactlies".