I suspect that I’m about to step into something I would be wisest to keep well away from. But what the hell, it’s that time between Christmas and New Year’s. And nobody’s yelled at me over the internet since I said that the TV Aziraphale doesn’t use a cell phone. *
Canonically, which is to say using the text in the book, you don’t get any description of Crowley’s sex life. The only thing the book says is “angels are sexless unless they specifically make an effort”. You can infer, and (more to the point) you can imagine, and lots of people have chosen, not unreasonably, to ship him with Aziraphale, but you are still Making Stuff Up. It could be Making Stuff Up that happens between paragraphs, or Making Stuff Up that isn’t mentioned at all, but it’s still Making Stuff Up.** (And using the kind of eagle-eyed textual analysis that Bible scholars used to decide exactly what a piece of four thousand year old verse definitely meant also counts here as Making Stuff Up.)
Which is the fun of fanfiction, and part of the tradition of fanfiction. As is, I’m afraid, grumbling at people who do not see that your ship is the only true ship, and choose to ship anyone else with anyone else.
If anyone decides that The Relationships in Their Fanfiction Are the Only True Fanfiction, it seems to me they are missing the point. The point is Fanfiction exists so that you can imagine, enjoy and fill in the gaps. The point is that you can change things and have fun with them. And the stories are absolutely true… for you.
The TV series gets deeper into Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship. It’ll be canonical for the TV series, and not canonical for the book.***
If I were to Pronounce on things that are not explicitly stated in the book, I still wouldn’t be telling you if Crowley was Canonically Gay. I would be telling you what I think, because it’s not canon unless it’s in the book. It won’t be TV canon unless it’s on the screen.
So, do not worry what other people think, and do not worry about what they say. These are not things on which people can be right or wrong, or on which anything can be “settled”.
Make fun fanfiction. Enjoy yourself. Make things up. Share them. That’s the point.
*People would only bother him on it. And if anyone gave him one as a present, it would be still be in its box, on the same shelf as the still-unboxed Kindle.
**Which was what Terry and I did when we wrote the book. And what I had to do for the TV scripts when I needed to take the story into places the book hadn’t covered.
***They don’t contradict each other, but there is territory covered by the TV series that isn’t covered by the book, particularly about Crowley and Aziraphale in bygone years. Also the Present Day in the book is probably the early 1990s, and the Present Day in the TV series is 2019ish, although 11 years ago in the book wasn’t particularly 1978, and 11 years ago on TV is post-ubiquitous cellphones but pre-smartphones.
Then again, Good Omens is just Black Books fanfiction and there’s no denying it.
Not just fanfiction, but the special magic kind of fanfiction you can only make happen when you write it over a decade before the thing that it’s fanfiction of exists. That’s what makes it so special.
For nearly two months, Viktor had avoided Yakov. As much as a student
could avoid their coach, anyway. It was surprising how Vitya had held
out this long, considering other instances the teen had been upset at
him. But then again, Yakov’s previous offenses hadn’t been so severe.
ok, so i just saw the most convoluted method for this ever, and i see a lot of convoluted methods for isolating/transparent-izing your lineart, and listen, you guys, my method is so fast i can literally do it in less than five seconds. here are some pictures to walk you through it.
here’s your lineart. see, it’s only one layer, and that layer is the background layer.
make a new layer.
return to your background. select the whole thing. copy it. go to the new layer. paste it. now you have a background layer with your lineart, and a new layer with your lineart. now, make sure you’re on your new layer, not the background layer, before you do this next part.
so you’ll note in my little hovery tool box thing i keep “layers” and “channels” together. this is the main reason i keep “channels” in a tab. so, you’re going to see that list of things – red green blue etc – and then at the bottom, there is a wee dotted circle. see? click that circle.
holy mother of god what’s happening here!!! a whole bunch of dotted lines vaguely outlining your lineart should appear. look down at your keyboard. find the delete button. hit it. then, go back to your “layers” tab.
see how on the new layer, the lineart seems to have disappeared? it hasn’t. look where it says “lock” just above the layers. while on the new layer, hit the square directly next to “lock.” then click anywhere in your image to deselect and make those lines go away. switch to your background layer and just turn the whole thing white. you can use a big brush or whatever, i like to select white and white and then just run a gradient across it.
either way once your background is pure white, you’ll see what’s happened to your lineart. it looks kind of faded, right? that’s because what you just did was delete every ounce of white from your lineart. awesome, right? sure. but you don’t want your lines to look faded like this. this is easy to fix.
switch to your new layer. select a color – any color you want your lineart to be. i like to use colors other than black, like dark blues and reds and so on. get a big brush. run that brush over every inch of your lineart. see how it darkens up again?
so now your lineart is transparent, and just as nice and dark and vivid as before. make another layer, between the background and the lineart layer.
color that shit however your heart tells you to.
the end.
there are honestly way more pictures in this tutorial than, like, the amount of effort that goes into this. i usually just open picture, copy paste, delete, lock, recolor, and it’s over. genuinely less than five seconds. try it out!
this method also enables you to recolor your lines if you like – if you want to make the hair lines hair colored, or whatever. it’s really flexible and i like it a ton better than just using multiply. hope it’s helpful!
return to your background. select the whole thing. copy it. go to the new layer. paste it. now you have a background layer with your lineart, and a new layer with your lineart. now, make sure you’re on your new layer, not the background layer, before you do this next part.
switch to your new layer. select a color – any color you want your lineart to be. i like to use colors other than black, like dark blues and reds and so on. get a big brush. run that brush over every inch of your lineart. see how it darkens up again?
color that shit however your heart tells you to.
