The Middle Distance

But!

The Good Omens Holiday Exchange has wrapped up its 15th year!

The story written for me:

What Happens To the Heart by irisbleufic
Aziraphale/Crowley
Mature
Author's Summary: “[My father] was hell-bent—or heaven-bent—on completing it, and we just were unable to get a musical accompaniment that he was satisfied with. I think it’s one in a long line of songs that have his essential thesis in life, which is the broken hallelujah. Everything cracks, and this is what happens to the heart.” —Adam Cohen, regarding Leonard Cohen's posthumous album release, "Thanks for the Dance"

Absolutely beautiful slow-burn story in several vignettes, each based around a different Leonard Cohen song. (I had requested something A/C inspired by his lyrics). I strongly recommend listening to those songs while reading it, or just before or just after. Over decades, these songs help Aziraphale and Crowley really see other, and really come to terms with what they are too each other - the cracked, the holy and unholy - and eventually the light gets in.

I wrote:

The Year Without a Summer
Aziraphale/Crowley
For Ineffablemercury
Explicit
Author's Summary: Once upon a time in 1815, a mountain exploded and covered the world in cloud, cold, and darkness for so long that 1816 had no summer in the West, and crops failed, causing panic and famine. That same year, a demon decided to steal away an angel to an Underworld hideaway. Coincidence?

I mashed-up two of my recipient's requests: they wanted something inspired by Hades/Persephone, with Crowley abducting Aziraphale to Hell, OR something historical from a list of periods including Regency. What they got was Regency A/C, and Aziraphale gets taken to the old Hellfire Club caves to hide from Heaven. There is a pomegranate and there's ravishing.

It's been a TERRIBLE year for me for writing, and I'm so glad I was able to shake off the cobwebs.

So...we finished Year Fourteen of the Good Omens Holiday Exchange! You know, just sticking with something this long is a reward in itself. The new TV series will change this fandom a lot (oh please Someone no purity wankers we do NOT need or want that), and I think it will bring in a lot of fresh blood and a lot of new takes on the characters, and that's going to be exciting to watch from the ground up.

But not that the fandom needs that help. For a fandom for one book published in 1990, it's still extremely healthy, from my POV.

Here's this year's Reveal/Masterlist. 46 brand-new works!

Here's the story that was written for me: A Man Upon the Land by Lilyaceae (Aziraphale/Crowley, other characters, rated T). The author combined two of my prompts - something nautical-themed, something inspired by folklore or fairy tales - and gave me a fantastic romantic high seas adventure, with Pirate Captain!Crowley and Selkie!Aziraphale. Beautiful, so very exciting and sweet and so much fun. (Also...Crowley's ship is called the Bentley. And it burns! Pirate Captain Hastur's ship is called the King In Yellow. I mean....!!! being that perfect should be illegal.)

Here's the story I wrote for Staubengel: The Other Thing With Feathers (at AO3; A/C, rated T) (original post at DW: https://go-exchange.dreamwidth.org/234735.html). I also combined two prompts - something involving bodyswap and something with a lot of focus on WINGS!! In the aftermath of an unfortunate bodyswap incident, Aziraphale and Crowley discover some things that still need some recalibration - including the nature of their relationship. Wing-grooming, yo.

Huge thanks to all the participants, and the other mods, and all the beta-readers and pinch-hitters, all of whom make this possible and still a joy after all these years.

Dreamwidth only this year: https://go-exchange.dreamwidth.org/201411.html

Can you believe I've been in this every year since 2005? Huge thanks to everyone who's been on the journey so far. This year lunasong356 comes on board as co-mod, with some BRILLIANT programming that looks to make everything so much simpler and smoother, and I could not be more thrilled.

The fandom is going to be changing for sure, what with the upcoming Amazon TV adaptation - we'll be here, barring apocalypse.

Go here!


Year Twelve! This is one of the longest-lasting jobs I've ever had. :D

Let me take this opportunity to rec the hell out of the story that was written for me: Sherbert Holmes and the Elephant of Surprise, by miscellanny

Yes, it's a Good Omens/Sherlock crossover, and the prompt filled was: "Mrs. Hudson leaves Baker Street. England falls." But of course I wanted the Good Omens cast doing their usual great work at Apocalypse-foiling, and what I got was so, so much better than I could ever have imagined. It's metafictional, it's multilayered, it's rich and hilarious, and it does a much much better job than either canon does with female characters: Madame Tracy, Anathema, and Mrs. Hudson are hilarious, clever, and beautifully drawn. And if you're wondering where Adam Young comes in . . . read it, just read it. You won't be sorry.


I wrote The Widening Gyre, for tomato_greens. T-G wanted a story involving the poems "Easter, 1916" or "Leda and the Swan" and said that a historical setting and W.B. Yeats himself as a character would be extra-great, so that's exactly what I did. Historical fiction set shortly before and after the 1916 Easter Rising, a bit of compare-and-contrast between the developing, ever-changing relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley, and the never-consummated but lifelong weird relationship between W.B. Yeats and Maud Gonne. (All the best lines are Yeats's, not mine of course - though the meanest ones definitely come from A. Crowley. No, not that A. Crowley. The other one.)

The Widening Gyre on AO3

Right here! Signups close this Friday night, September 19, at midnight EST.

Year Ten. I've been at this since 2005, when waxbean and I started it. Did we imagine it would run this long? I don't think we really gave it that much thought at the time.

I wrote:

The Corsair of Carcosa
For: hoshi_ryo
From: vulgarweed
Rating: PG
Characters: Crowley, Aziraphale, Hastur, The Them, Randolph Carter, Dream, Cassilda the Cat
Fandoms: Good Omens/The King in Yellow/The Cthulhu Mythos/Sandman

Summary: Forbidden literature is forbidden because stories can change the world. For good and for ill.
Prompt: “Aziraphale gets his hands on a rare copy of the play The King in Yellow. Reading and its consequences ensue.”

Author's Notes: “The King in Yellow” doesn't really exist – it's a sinister play that's alluded to and plays a role in the events of four Robert W. Chambers short stories: The Repairer of Reputations, The Yellow Sign, The Mask, and In the Court of the Dragon. H.P. Lovecraft was an admirer of Chambers who alluded to these stories in his own, and the KIY cycle has been adopted pretty thoroughly into the Cthulhu Mythos (by August Derleth more than HPL himself). So I incorporated a lot of elements from Lovecraft stories, particularly “The Cats of Ulthar” and “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath,” to the point where it wound up being pretty much a crossover. Sandman, also – all things that take place in the Dreaming come under the rule of Morpheus. (There are also allusions to a couple other Neil Gaiman works, and shoutouts to several other writers as well.) I hope it all holds up as a story despite this patchwork.

AO3 link
GO Exchange link


***

I also want to rave and gush about the story that was written for me!

We Must Bear Witness, by hsavinien

I've wanted a Lord of the Rings/Good Omens crossover for years, and they are not easy to come by. Thought of writing one myself, but haven't gotten around to it yet. (Crowley and Aziraphale would be snarky Maiar, of course). And hsavinien wrote this one, and took it in such a fantastic direction. I had asked for a story where Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves on different sides of an historical conflict (real or fictional history), and here they are, as Istari among the Gondorians and the Haradrim, respectively, during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. I love everything about this. I love the fact that they're genderswapped/woman-shaped. I love the insight into both cultures. I love their relationship, and the way it unfolds. I love the depth of the Tolkien lore in play here. I love everything. Read it and give it love!