Expanding a thought from a conversation this morning:

In general, I think "Is X out-of-character?" is not a terribly useful question for a writer. It shuts down possibility, and interesting directions you could take a character.

A better question, I believe, is "What would it take for Character to do X?" What extremity would she find herself in, where X starts to look like a good idea? What loyalties or fears leave him with X as his only option? THAT'S where a potentially interesting story lies.

In practice, I find that you can often justify much more from a character than you initially dreamed you could: some of my best stories come from "What might drive Character to do [thing he would never do]?" As long as you make it clear to the reader what the hell pushed your character to this point, you've got the seed of a compelling story on your hands.

wait... so s1 says angels don't dance, except for aziraphale, who learned the gavotte in the late 1880s

but then we learn in s2 that aziraphale did at least one other dance earlier !

so what i'm wondering is,, how did it even start? like did aziraphale go "gosh I'm really sorry fr 🥺😬 allow me to prove it with this incredibly human ritual no angel has ever tried before"? or did crowley go "oh, how to make me feel better you ask? do a little dance go on 😈🐍🥰"?

anyway the point is crowley canonically got to see aziraphale dance for that very first time !

1650: the first time an angel ever danced, and it was to apologize for some silly dumbfuckery so his demon spouse would drop the pout & join him for lunch

I don't know who needs to hear this, but as a creator -

I am fine with "the audience" -

downloading my fics

printing my fics

copy/pasting or screenshotting my fics

sharing your saved copy of my fics with anyone else who might want them in the unlikely but never impossible case that my fics are no longer available on ao3

making a book of my fic(s) and running your fingers across the pages while lovingly whispering my precioussss

doing these things with anything I create for fandom, such as meta, headcanons, au nonsense like 'texts from the brodinsons,' etc

I am not fine with "the audience"

doing any of the above with the purpose/intent of plagiarizing my work or passing it off as their own in any capacity

feeding my work into ai for any reason whatsoever

Save the fandom things. Preserve the fandom things. Respect the fandom things.

Enjoy the fandom things.

Love ships where its like some guy with autism and his special interest is his wife

oh i love leaving comments on ao3, you gave me pretty words and i give you my little words, oh i loved it, oh i have to tell you i loved it, ohhh do you know which was my favourite part? i'm gonna tell you, also it was a wonderful job and and and

SMASH

There’s a reason Aziraphale has a barber.

people on here interacting with neil gaiman is so. ur like this cannot possibly a real human being off anon!!! sitting down typing out an ask like that knowing the creator of the work will see it. and then ur like well dont be an asshole maybe it's just a 14 year old engaging in fandom for the first time! but then u click on the blog to see its a 35 year old actual real adult who went hello mister GAYman (hihihaha) thank u so much for making my coffeeshop au background relationship / rarepair endgame / slow burn true love sunshine sunshine protector dynamics of my dreams come true! u really had crowley say SMUT 👍🥳🤣🙌 but why was there conflict :/sometimes people argued and???? was that really necessary??? pls tell me rn that this is in fact a happy ending fic scenario otherwise I will have to kill myself immediately in exceedingly violent fashion and it will be ur fault (if michael sheen and david tennant don't kiss again in s3 u will feel my wrath. i know ur home address) anyways. are u aware of the omegaverse trope 😜 just blink twice if that is something we can look forward to in s3 😝😂🤭 also crowley wore different clothes during different episodes?? is that a continuity error?? or will that be explained in s3?

(x)

@hibyefics and @plumbum-art proudly present

🚀🚀🚀

Launch Sequence

a M-rated prelude to the Relationship for Beginners series by @hibyefics

"It wasn't too much, though? Really?"

"Agh," said Crowley, butterflies still a riot in his belly. "I mean - yeah. Just takes some getting used to. The - spit.

Nothin’ more humbling the rereading the first fanfic you wrote

NU UH

Jack Fenton, dialed his younger sister's phone number as he gazed apologetically at the family of bats, that was hanging around in his living room. he impatiently waited for the other party to pick up.

The Bat family remained stoic as they observed the man, they had or Batman had ordered to put the call on speaker, if ever the phone was answered, Robin had stared at the doorway leading to the kitchen there stood Jack's supposed oldest daughter Jazz. who only stared amused at her father's antics much to Robin's confusion.

finally after a grueling 10 seconds wait, the call was finally answered.

Robin held his breath awaiting for the voice he was expecting for.

"Yes, Ahki?" Talia's voice resonated, from the phone. making everyone's eyes except the Fenton family widen.

'what? mother never told me she had a brother.' Damian thought as he took a peek at his father's face who was scrunched up in confusion. same for the rest of his family.

"Talia, my dear ukht, I've heard from a few birds and bats that you have taken my son. on his fieldtrip." Jack said, his nervous and outgoing personality vanishing and what took place was a serious and angry tone of a father as soon as heard the caller's voice, making everyone in the room shudder at the sudden cold atmosphere while the oldest daughter remained composed and unbothered as she watched.

Silence came from the other side of the phone, before answering "It seems i have." Talia answered back, you can here the voice of a boy in the background asking if it was his dad.

"Stop with this false innocence of yours, bring my son back immediately, partly alive and safe." Jack stated, much to the Bats and birds confusion.

Silence once again, as the phone remained quiet seemingly put down on a table with a few whispers and shuffling. before it was picked up once again.

"Nu uh." was the only thing Talia said as she hang up.

everyone paused.

"The fuck you mean 'Nu uh'?!" Jack yelled, at his phone. While his wife walked their daughter's side who was laughing her ass off, confused she looked at the bats then at her husband and then just sighed.

"Dinner's Ready." she only said as she retreated back at to the kitchen.

Several weeks ago, my retirement-age mother requested that I play Baldur’s Gate 3 for her because she has trouble with controllers/keyboards and wanted “to see what all the fuss is about with that cute wizard boy.” For context, my mother and I have done this sort of thing in the past with certain RPGs (dragon age, mass effect, etc.), but it’s been a few years since she’s personally requested a game like this. Basically, I control her Tav but let her make all the choices so she can determine how the story plays out without worrying about mechanics. She treats it like a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Anyway, here is a list of some of the things my mother has said and/or chosen to do throughout the course of BG3 in no particular order:

She is (obviously) romancing Gale. She is quite smitten with him and his passion for books and learning; she also thinks he’s polite and qualifies as “relationship material.” She also REALLY likes the things he’s said about his cat so far (my mom is a cat lady), so I know she’s gonna flip shit when we meet Tara in Act III.

She’s playing a normal druid Tav with a generally good alignment. Her favorite spell is Spike Growth because she thinks it’s hilarious whenever enemies walk into the AOE and die. I usually end up having to cast it at least once per battle per her request. Sometimes twice.

Contrary to her alignment, my mother tasks me with robbing every single chest, crate, barrel, and burlap sack we come across; this also includes people and their pockets. The party is always at max carrying capacity. ALWAYS. She doesn’t like selling things because “what if I need them.” The camp stash is in literal shambles. There is no hope of organizing it. She’s got like fifty seven sets of rags and a billion pieces of random silverware.

She MUST talk to every animal and corpse in the game. I think five hours of her total playtime so far (47ish) has been spent speaking to animals as many times as humanly possible. Like, I was thorough in my own playthroughs, but this is on a whole other level.

She did NOT get Volo’s lobotomy, but she did let Auntie Ethel take her eye in hopes of a cure for the tadpole. I did not understand the logic then. I still do not understand it now.

She is far more interested in fashion than equipment stats. Do you have any idea how much gold I’ve had to spend on dyes just to make things match? SO much. Same vibe as that “please someone help me balance my finances my family is starving” tweet but instead of candles it’s thirty thousand fucking bottles of black and furnace red dye.

We broke the prisoners out of Moonrise, but they got on the boat too early and bugged the fight by leaving Astarion and Karlach behind. Wulbren Bongle somehow got stuck in combat mode even after engaging the cutscene on the docks below Last Light; he he kept trying to run ALL THE WAY BACK TO MOONRISE nine fucking meters at a time while I frantically tried to finish the fight with the Warden, otherwise Wulbren would have run straight into the shadow curse. (I would’ve let him go; fuck Wulbren Bongle, all my homies hate Wulbren Bongle. But my mom didn’t know that, and she wanted to keep him safe. So.)

She had me reload a save like eighteen times to save the giant eagles on top of Rosymorn Monastery. Wouldn’t even let me do non-lethal damage just to get past things. I think getting that warhammer for the dawnmaster puzzle took us like an hour and a half alone. (Yes, I know you can use any warhammer, but SHE didn’t.)

She’s started keeping an irl notebook to keep track of her quests between play sessions. She writes down ideas and strategies when she thinks of them during the week, then brings them to her next game session at my house. I think she wrote about three pages on possible approaches to the goblin fortress alone.

She insists that I pet Scratch and the owlbear cub before every single long rest, no exceptions. Sometimes I have to do it multiple times until she is absolutely sure that the animals know exactly how much she loves and cherishes them. She has also commissioned a crocheted owlbear plush from a friend of hers and is very excited.

I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting, but those are some fun things I thought of. She’s enjoying the game and is telling all of her retired friends to get it and play it for themselves. She asked me “what is Discord” yesterday and I think my life flashed before my eyes.

anyway shout out to my mom for being neat

Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5

I have decided to unleash The Day Muriel Had Enough comic unto my wonderful Tumblr Followers!

Thank you for the support and hilarious comments! It means so much to me and makes it easy to keep at it!

Happy holidays with all my love and nonsense!

things i headcanon Crowley invented:

only one sock disappearing in the washer/dryer. you know the one

youtube ads

gum on shoes

that one wobbly wheel on every shopping cart

you know when you're in traffic and one lane is going faster than the one you're in, so you switch to that one, but now this one's going slower than the other? that. it's one he often regrets.

back when wired earbuds were a thing - only one of them going bad

Nessie - an accident. he went swimming in his snake form once and someone took a blurry picture

unsynced audio or subtitles on media

pineapple on pizza - he did it to piss of Aziraphale

instagram poetry

pens/markers than run out of ink by the 3rd day (i'm looking at you Sharpies)

airplane food

the very common phenomenon when you forget your old password, go to reset it, and then get told your "new password can't be the same as your old password"

long red light/short green light

shower knobs that can't ever get the right temperature, it's either 3rd degree burns or hypothermia

crocs

feel free to add your ownnn