sayuri-of-the-valley

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?

#fandom #shipping #ships #fandom culture #M/M #F/F #statistics #MATHS #✨

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

Summer in the South Downs...

#good omens fanart

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

Dear Good Omens fandom friends,

can we please agree to keep our sand in our sandbox?

We have a great sandbox. It's big and full of people building castles and villages and roads and stuff. Some of that is big and complicated and detail-oriented, some of it is strange and weird and funny, some if it is off-the-rails in any and all senses of the word. All of it is lovely. Some of it tries to rebuild Neil Gaiman's sandcastle as faithful as possible, either to build onto it or to try and find out where the secret rooms might be hidden. Some of it looks a lot like his but has its own little turrets and courtyards and gardens added everywhere. Some of it looks completely different and doesn't try to hide it. Some of it isn't even meant to be taken seriously and just exists to make people laugh. But there is so much of it that everybody can find something for themselves; and if we don't we just find a free space and start shifting sand ourselves.

Neil Gaiman has his own sandbox. He has built something brilliant and beautiful in it, and he is currently busy building another storey onto it. He doesn't want anybody to see the new part before it is finished, and I know that sometimes the excitement of finally wanting to see it is hard to bear.

But that is why we have our sandbox. To make our own stuff until he reveals the rest of that sandcastle we all love so much. To pass the time, to have fun with it, to meet new people and find more brilliant little sandcastles. Never again will there be as much creativity, as much activity, as many people around in this sandbox than there is now, in the time before the last bit of his castle is revealed. I am sure most of us will be delighted and surprised at what he will have created. Some will be disappointed because they were expecting his sandcastle to look different, some will be disappointed because they saw a castle in our sandbox they liked much more, but most will be delighted because after all we came up with he will still have managed to surprise us.

Our sandbox. His sandbox.

The two are separated for a reason.

Because if you keep throwing sand into his box to get his attention, or keep trying to get a good look at what he is doing over there, or keep yelling at him to look over to ours and tell you which one looks like the one he is trying to make, or which one is the best, or how stupid one of the others looks (last one would also make you a dick), you are quite simply risking the new part of his sandcastle to collapse. Or for him to have to remake it in a way he didn't plan to, or simply dislikes, or that we will all dislike.

And just because he is glad we are enjoying ourselves and proud that his work inspired us to create all these things, doesn't mean he wants to see (all of) it. Some things he definitely wouldn't want to see; other things the creators definitely don't want him to see.

I'm proud of our sandbox. It's huge. It's brilliant. It's creative. It's collaborative. And it's ours.

Have fun in it. But keep it apart from his. Keep out of his. And keep him out of ours. Stop trying to drag him over. He has stuff to do. Important stuff. Stuff I, for one, am waiting very impatiently for.

And he will never show us the parts of the castle that aren't finished yet, no matter how often you ask. And just because he is making an effort to be funny about it doesn't mean we aren't annoying him when we keep asking.

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

A peek through a bookshop's blackout curtains

#good omens fanart

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

There is something about proudly proclaiming a show "tumblrista catnip" that makes me emotional.

Something about how for years tumblrinas were ridiculed by show creators.

Something about Supernatural having a meta episode set at a convention with all the weirdo fans that made the main characters uncomfortable. Something something about Becky and the message that fangirls are gross and obsessive.

Something about Sherlock and the way fans were portrayed as crazy obsessive nutjobs for trying to figure out how he faked his death.

Something about creators mocking fandoms, dismissing them as freaks. Something about queer people not being welcome to engage in their creations because "why do you have to make everything gay?"

Something about the malicious culture of queerbaiting throughout the 2000s/2010s, followed by Bury Your Gays tropes across the media landscape because hell, you should be grateful we even gave you queer characters to begin with - and everyone dies in our show! You ain't special!

Something about Destiel questions being banned from conventions...

And then...

Something instead about Good Omens, and letting the story adapt naturally, embracing the fanbase and leaning into the fanservice.

Something about Our Flag Means Death, and the genuine outpouring of love and affection between cast, crew, and fandom that culminated in an explosion of fanworks that were never once mocked or deemed gross or wrong.

Something about Sandman, and staunchly digging in their heels on the queerness of it all, refusing to give in to the homophobes and instead avidly mocking THEM on social media rather than us.

Something about the writers hearing about fandoms favourite ships and excitedly stating that YES! We DID lean into that because it happened naturally and made sense.

Something about a firefighter coming out as bisexual after 7 seasons...

So yeah, something about a new high quality show made FOR US. By creators that love US. Respect US, and WANT our love.

Something about US FINALLY being a target audience for the best shows being made on TV now.

Tumblrista catnip. Creators saying "we made this for you. You are important. Your voices have been heard."

It just... all got a bit overwhelming for a moment there.

#dead boy detectives #neil gaiman #representation matters #the sandman #good omens #tumblrista catnip #fandom history #tumblr #fandom

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

Honestly, same.

I subscribed to Netflix again only for Dead Boy Detectives, and some months ago I subscribed to Prime only for Good Omens. At this rate I'm only paying stream services for Neil Gaiman.

#dead boy detectives #sandman #good omens

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

What’s your favourite line from good omens?

The invisible and unbreakable one that joins Crowley and Aziraphale.

#UNBREAKABLE #my heart #😭😭😭 #neeiilllllll #Neil's asks #ineffable husbands #aziracrow

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

I made a thing and I’m really proud of it

@dee-morris @sayuri-of-the-valley

#good omens #sherlock #Aziraphale

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

“I… I forgive you.”

#good omens fanart

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

Has anyone done a meta about the bust in the bookshop? I would also accept a catalogue of scenes it's in. I have some suspicions about celestial eavesdropping when the bust is in the scene.

Edit: There is some information here by @youryurigoddess which also names the exact statue used and a paragraph of some assumptions on its meaning/purpose.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #bts #record shop #record #the small back room

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

Hi, I’ve only read one meta by you yet, but you seem to be just the right person to ask this: did you notice how many people in the scenes outside the bookshop are wearing orange, in series 2?

Any idea what that’s all about? Is it just esthetics, an echo of the bookshop‘s columns, or does it have a filmographical significance? Everytime I watch the show there seem to be more orange clothes, once you start seeing that, it’s crazy how many there are!

Hey thanks for the ask! I mean, you have until 2026 to read more of my drivel so; pace yourself! Orange clothing is definitely an *interesting* choice for extras in film. You almost never see it in background actors clothing because... it draws the eye! The fact that they included so much orange, yellow, and loud patterning in the extras in season 2 is a real decision to throw film tradition and S1 cannon out the window.

I would like to submit my own theory that the choice was made as a deliberate nod to time travel. But first, a little background.

Compare two crowd scenes on Whickeber street from each season: It's kind of nuts that even at microscopic resolution we get such a HUGE difference.

That's not to say orange is missing. Here are the only two extras wearing orange in S1, and they happen to be in the same scene in episode 2, when Newt and Shadwell meet for the first time, discussing occult beings "hiding in plain sight". (witches in this case)

We also get some pretty obvious bright orange in main characters in S1: Madame Tracy and Beelzebub. We meet Tracy in orange as she immediately reveals to Newt multiple hidden identities, see her again wearing orange hair when she communes with spirits, and finally all decked out in orange when she is being possessed by an angel (a person hiding inside a person). Beelzebub wears an orange sash and medal as a high ranking Duke of Hell, so orange is maybe their house colour, or a prestigious colour for hell in general, but after season 2 we know Beelzebub doesn't always have the same face, and is hiding intentions of their own.

Orange doesn't have much biblical significance, mostly because the colour orange was mostly seen as "fire" or "bright" coloured until way after the bible was transcribed, and orange dye wasn't really a thing in the European world until significant trade with east Asia developed. Here's the only other bright orange thing to appear all season, (in a deleted scene): Crowley hiding in plain sight, posing as a maintenance worker.

I think we might be able to draw the conclusion from season 1 that orange is a colour associated with the "Hidden Occult/Power". Not necessarily only hell, but more as something otherworldly, that's hidden in plain sight. (Interestingly, we never ever see Anathema or Agnes Nutter in orange. So I wouldn't say it's related to witches at all.)

In season 2 however, orange is everywhere. More specifically on extras' clothing and the outside of Maggie's record shop.

Maggie seems to be the only main character to wear bright orange herself (E2).

But this is by far my favourite one: in the back of the crowd of demons getting a Shax pep talk in S2E5, there's a regular human extra wearing bright orange sitting amongst the army, completely unnoticed by both demons and audience, observing the plan.

This really set off alarm bells for me, because there's a very Terry Pratchett precedent for powerful and unnoticed orange-wearing characters in the discworld series : the time monks.

Terry's character Sweeper seen here on the original cover of Night Watch. The time monks' clothing and general philosophy is based on Thai buddhist monks, who (like in many buddhists sects) wear donated, saffron-dyed robes in orange and yellow/red to symbolize flames of purity, and to separate them from the world of gross matter, like a fallen leaf from a tree.

In the discworld novel Night Watch, the time monks are responsible for monitoring and cleaning up the timeline, pruning it like a bonzai tree. They are everywhere and yet unnoticed, inside the flow of time yet not of it. And they are the ones who guide the main character through the process of being stuck after falling back through his own timeline, into his own past.

(Excerpt from the book where Sweeper is explaning time travel to Vimes).

Extras circling in the background are called "background actors" because they exist to not be noticed. Put in extras wearing orange/yellow and bright red, and suddenly you can track them, and notice how they are part of the crowd, but stand apart from it. You can notice when they go missing from one cut to the next, or appear to circle or jump between frames. Many extras, including the demon army watcher, also seem to be circling, and monitoring the goings-on in the world of Good Omens. Based on the meaning of orange from S1, it would seem these mere background actors are more than they appear to be. Could they even be checking up on unwarranted time distortions or timeline ruptures happening around a certain Bookshop...?

#good omens meta #time loop #orange #extras #night watch #time monks #discworld #gnu terry pratchett

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

🥺❤.

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

#tumblr #tumblr search

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

"[...] said Aziraphale, who had never done other to get rid of demons than to hint to them very strongly that he, Aziraphale, had some work to be getting on with, and wasn't it getting late? And Crowley had always got the hint."

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

#good omens #good omens 2 #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #Aziraphale #Crowley #Ineffable Husbands #book omens #good omens book #aziracrow #gnu terry pratchett #gifs

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

💛 beautiful tomorrows 💛

#good omens fanart #dancing #yellow

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

I enjoy saying, "I feel like Aziraphale in this situation, because of the time he did this or that." I cannot, with any accuracy, say, "Aziraphale feels like me in that situation and that's why he did this or that."

Well said, @dee-morris !!!

If I may add just a little something: the way I see it, Aziraphale panics not bc he doesn't know Crowley, but exactly bc he DOES know him and knows how he'll react to it all. They are a romantic couple, yes, but there's A LOT unsaid there and when there are unsaid things, this kind of situation is what happens.

Aziraphale is caught between the real problem (Gabriel), the situation he didn't prepare for (Nina, and Crowley's reaction) and the personal codes he's used with Crowley for millennia that have an underlying meaning ("he's not my friend" = "we sre absolutely friends and you are the most important person to me") that he can't use to explain the situation to Nina bc Crowley is right there and might think it means something else like it does for them! (which btw Crowley absolutely does when Nina says that Maggie is not her friend, so...)

It still killing me (in a good way) by Aziraphale’s reaction to Nina's practically accusing him of treason.

Imagine living together for 6,000 years and knowing everything about each other. All situations must’ve happened. It's almost an eternity, and I'm sure there were many cases of misunderstandings and reasons for jealousy. It seems they should have dealt with it a long time ago, but just look at these scared idiots.

One is afraid to admit that the second will think he has someone else. The second is afraid this someone else will appear. And Crowley's reaction is more understandable (however, it’s no less illogical), but… AZIRAPHALE!

His gaze, oh Gods! He screams with his panicking eyes: "Crowley, it's not the way you think!" It was as if he was caught in betrayal, and he was trying to justify himself. "Darling, calm down, I'll explain everything now."

If a naked man came to me (obviously not a friend) and I had to explain the love of my life, who it was and that he had nothing to do with me, I would take everything calmly, because I didn’t do anything wrong. But Aziraphale panics so desperately, as if he himself was guilty, and Crowley will throw a tantrum in a moment and leave him forever. All those running eyes — a test of Crowley's reaction and trying to make sure that the explosion is still far away.

Listen, Aziraphale hasn’t good reason to justify himself to Crowley. They’re a couple, yes. A couple of friends who lived together for 6,000 years. And I’m more than sure, everything has been captured for them for a long time: understatements doesn’t mean they are stupid and don’t understand what is happening between them. Therefore, this panic on both sides is absolutely meaningless. This makes the scene a little illogical. But I like to think they are so afraid for each other that they succumb to these emotions. And most importantly, both have the same fear — lose each other.

But Aziraphale’s reaction… God, I adore this little silly, but he's gonna take me to the grave.

#good omens meta #projection #jealousy #naked man friend #aziraphale defense squad #aziraphale defence squad

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

Just like Aziraphale chose to drive to Scotland 😂

I love them, your honour

I always think it's funny when people try to justify why Aziraphale and Crowley do things the human way in fics. Like. Of course they could just miracle it! But if they were the type to just miracle everything, they wouldn't have stayed here and fallen in love with humanity in the first place, now, would they? They're allowed to have their own pace, their own style, their own hobbies, etc. They're such adorable little celestials with their hobbies and human RP.