"Oh," said Aziraphale. "Be-bop."
Dec. 15th, 2025 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI was talking with Athos on the phone yesterday, as I generally do on a Sunday afternoon; and we got onto the subject of a mutual friend who is no longer with us, and hasn't been for quite a few years now. Athos was able to get to his funeral, but I wasn't; so Athos was telling me about the music, which was... quite suitably unusual, from the sound of it... and incidentally involved Mitch Benn on guitar, since our late friend was a dedicated and enthusiastic supporter of the club run by that worthy, the name of which I forget. And there was this one particular song Athos mentioned that he expected me to have at the very least heard of, and probably to know.
I hadn't. I can't even remember what the title was with enough confidence to record it here.
I am, I have to say, pretty much with Aziraphale from Good Omens on this one. While I don't have a blanket dislike of all pop music, it is nonetheless a pretty good bet that I will dislike (possibly even intensely dislike) any given pop song, because there are certain very common tropes in pop music that I really can't stand. One of them is shouty lyrics. I like my lyrics sung, not yelled into a microphone, and I also want to be able to hear them clearly, or else what are they even there for? And the other one is an over-dominant bass and/or percussion line. I generally tell people, as I told Athos, that my limit as far as that is concerned is Sultans of Swing (which I do, in fact, very much like, as I do most of Dire Straits). If the beat's any more intrusive than that, I'm out.
That does still leave a reasonable amount; but, of course, it's finding it, isn't it? I dislike the other stuff too much to want to bother wading through it to find something I do enjoy, especially when I know very well I can listen to practically any early music (or folk, or 1920s - 30s dance band music, or a few other reliable genres) and I'll enjoy all of it. I do know I like OMD, since my friend Robin tried them out on me at university (he had amazing parents who let him listen to whatever he liked when he was growing up, so he'd already got a very good idea of his own personal taste). Where they really excel is in building up a track layer by layer. He also played me the Human League (some of that I liked, some of it less so) and Kraftwerk (intriguing in small doses, but a bit repetitive at full length). I found Dire Straits via another friend, Wendy, who was convinced I'd like them and turned out (as usual) to be quite right. And I'll quite happily take any other personal recommendations and give them a whirl. My ex-lodger, incidentally, was into Genesis and Pink Floyd, both of which, again, I quite enjoyed in small doses; too much of either, though, had an oddly depressing effect. Especially the Pink Floyd.
As for Aziraphale... well, it may be worth putting in my two penn'orth on Good Omens fanfic, and, indeed, fanfic in general, at this point. My attitude to fanfic is "you do you, but if it contradicts the official canon I'm not going to write it, and that's particularly true for established characters". That does still give a huge amount of room for manoeuvre: you can always put the characters into a situation they haven't encountered before and see how they react. For my Girl Genius fanfic, in particular, I've done a vast amount of post-canon stuff, because apart from anything else I'm very interested in how the characters mature and develop as they get older. (My version of Ardsley Wooster continues to develop mentally and spiritually, though his health isn't so good in later life.) But I have an absolutely ironclad rule that you do not make anyone act out of character; if they're going to do something they wouldn't normally do, they'd better have a very good reason for doing it. I'll never forget writing a Blake's 7 fanfic in which I had to get Avon to back down over something. It took me three rewrites of the relevant section before I could get that to happen in a way that was still totally credible for the character.
I think you see where this is going. Everyone and their dog ships Aziraphale and Crowley. I do not. It specifically says in the book that Aziraphale (and, therefore, by implication, also Crowley) is not gay - he's just usually mistaken for it. And if he's canonically Not Gay, then he's not having a wild fling with Crowley. Stands to reason. I have not seen the TV series, but I understand that Neil Gaiman was heavily involved with that and rather went back on what was written in the book; well, fair enough, but if you're shipping those two you're doing it from the TV series and not the original book. I'm going by what I know; and, honestly, they're entirely fun enough as a pair of unlikely friends. Nothing more than that is needed. My one Good Omens fanfic (to date) can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72992726 You will notice I've rather pointedly not shipped them.
Obviously, many people differ. Which is fine. You want to write fanfic where the most unlikely pair of characters jump into bed, go on, knock yourself out. I won't be reading it, but I'm sure you'll find plenty of people who will. Nonetheless, I will not be able to stop myself from thinking: why not just write an original story?
I hadn't. I can't even remember what the title was with enough confidence to record it here.
I am, I have to say, pretty much with Aziraphale from Good Omens on this one. While I don't have a blanket dislike of all pop music, it is nonetheless a pretty good bet that I will dislike (possibly even intensely dislike) any given pop song, because there are certain very common tropes in pop music that I really can't stand. One of them is shouty lyrics. I like my lyrics sung, not yelled into a microphone, and I also want to be able to hear them clearly, or else what are they even there for? And the other one is an over-dominant bass and/or percussion line. I generally tell people, as I told Athos, that my limit as far as that is concerned is Sultans of Swing (which I do, in fact, very much like, as I do most of Dire Straits). If the beat's any more intrusive than that, I'm out.
That does still leave a reasonable amount; but, of course, it's finding it, isn't it? I dislike the other stuff too much to want to bother wading through it to find something I do enjoy, especially when I know very well I can listen to practically any early music (or folk, or 1920s - 30s dance band music, or a few other reliable genres) and I'll enjoy all of it. I do know I like OMD, since my friend Robin tried them out on me at university (he had amazing parents who let him listen to whatever he liked when he was growing up, so he'd already got a very good idea of his own personal taste). Where they really excel is in building up a track layer by layer. He also played me the Human League (some of that I liked, some of it less so) and Kraftwerk (intriguing in small doses, but a bit repetitive at full length). I found Dire Straits via another friend, Wendy, who was convinced I'd like them and turned out (as usual) to be quite right. And I'll quite happily take any other personal recommendations and give them a whirl. My ex-lodger, incidentally, was into Genesis and Pink Floyd, both of which, again, I quite enjoyed in small doses; too much of either, though, had an oddly depressing effect. Especially the Pink Floyd.
As for Aziraphale... well, it may be worth putting in my two penn'orth on Good Omens fanfic, and, indeed, fanfic in general, at this point. My attitude to fanfic is "you do you, but if it contradicts the official canon I'm not going to write it, and that's particularly true for established characters". That does still give a huge amount of room for manoeuvre: you can always put the characters into a situation they haven't encountered before and see how they react. For my Girl Genius fanfic, in particular, I've done a vast amount of post-canon stuff, because apart from anything else I'm very interested in how the characters mature and develop as they get older. (My version of Ardsley Wooster continues to develop mentally and spiritually, though his health isn't so good in later life.) But I have an absolutely ironclad rule that you do not make anyone act out of character; if they're going to do something they wouldn't normally do, they'd better have a very good reason for doing it. I'll never forget writing a Blake's 7 fanfic in which I had to get Avon to back down over something. It took me three rewrites of the relevant section before I could get that to happen in a way that was still totally credible for the character.
I think you see where this is going. Everyone and their dog ships Aziraphale and Crowley. I do not. It specifically says in the book that Aziraphale (and, therefore, by implication, also Crowley) is not gay - he's just usually mistaken for it. And if he's canonically Not Gay, then he's not having a wild fling with Crowley. Stands to reason. I have not seen the TV series, but I understand that Neil Gaiman was heavily involved with that and rather went back on what was written in the book; well, fair enough, but if you're shipping those two you're doing it from the TV series and not the original book. I'm going by what I know; and, honestly, they're entirely fun enough as a pair of unlikely friends. Nothing more than that is needed. My one Good Omens fanfic (to date) can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72992726 You will notice I've rather pointedly not shipped them.
Obviously, many people differ. Which is fine. You want to write fanfic where the most unlikely pair of characters jump into bed, go on, knock yourself out. I won't be reading it, but I'm sure you'll find plenty of people who will. Nonetheless, I will not be able to stop myself from thinking: why not just write an original story?
