Holmes & Moriarty: Hobbies + Habits

pixel skylines
$LAYYYTER

blake kathryn
wallacepolsom
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
trying on a metaphor
cherry valley forever
Peter Solarz
Stranger Things
🪼
Claire Keane

roma★
macklin celebrini has autism

⁂
Three Goblin Art
we're not kids anymore.

if i look back, i am lost
hello vonnie

Andulka
AnasAbdin

seen from Colombia

seen from Peru
seen from Paraguay
seen from Brazil
seen from Türkiye

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Portugal
seen from France
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Guatemala
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
@painaddictedme
Holmes & Moriarty: Hobbies + Habits
I should give Elementary more credit for changing my brain chemistry when I was 16;
I mean, how could I not after hearing:
One of the major ways Elementary stands out from other Holmes adaptations to me is how they wrote Watson. Like it would've been so easy to write her like any other Watson, brilliant, yes, undoubtedly, but forever attached to Sherlock. Watson is there because Sherlock wills it so, because Sherlock needs a rock and because Sherlock Holmes is a man forever in need of a partner. Usually.
But they broke that. They said this is Dr Joan Watson, and she is incandescent and ruthless. She's a surgeon and there's an episode where Sherlock says surgeons have a healthy dose of god complex and you think sure buddy and then Joan threatens Moriarty in the middle of a restaurant and you go, huh. She learns to pick pockets and watches out of boredom. She changed careers over and over again till she found the one that fit. She became a detective and could and would absolutely kill a man and vouch for someone killing a man because it's Sherlock and she loves him very much. She's a partner, in the very literal sense. She kept track of murders as a teenager. She enchanted the most dangerous woman on the planet and EARNED her protection. She's a cancer survivor. She threatens gangs and online hacker conglomerates in free time. She's a mother. She's half of two people who love each other very much. She moved across oceans for him and she would do it again.
on the way home, I wrote a poem, you say "what a mind", this happens all the time
@pscentral event 23: arcs
saw this post and got inspired
Alastor Episodes 7 and 8 Thoughts
These two episodes really gave us a lot in regards to Alastor and I cannot wait to see where they go with him in season 2. What I find most fascinating about what they established with him in these episodes is how I think this perfectly sets up Alastor to directly challenge the show’s main themes of redemption.
Alastor is the only character in the main cast that I think could effectively challenge Charlie’s idea of redemption by making her face the question of “where the line for who can be redeemed and who is too far gone is?”
Even Vaggie and her past as an exorcist couldn’t challenge Charlie’s ideals in the same way because Vaggie so clearly wants to be better and is trying to be better. She could only challenge Charlie’s idea of who could be redeemed. She couldn’t truly challenge the line of when someone is too far gone unlike Alastor.
And to explain this I'll just jump right in.
…pretty sure these are all canon
Template credit: @methodwriting
True love is when you love the person as a whole. Even...
If he doesn't agree with you,
If he does silly things,
If he talks too much,
If he doesn't talk to you at all,
If he repeatedly embarrasses himself,
If he makes bad decisions,
If he comes with I-told-you-so,
If he asks the impossible,
If he acts like he doesn't care.
...
And if you do it right, he will look at you like you are the only one in the whole wide universe.
Thoughts on Angel Crowley & Healing from Trauma
(Minor Good Omens S2 Spoilers)
As someone who’s endured my own Trauma and dealt with the resulting PTSD, watching Crowley’s journey from a joyful, silly, and entirely innocent angel to a withdrawn, lonely, hyper-vigilant demon as a result of the Fall both shattered my heart and confronted me with the fact of myself, and I’d like to talk about it.
When you* experience Trauma, you experience an existential disorientation and a profound sense of grief over the world you thought you knew–one where you were safe and nothing bad had ever happened to you. “Innocence died screaming,” and all that.
You're also therefore mourning the loss of who you were, and struggling to make sense of who you are now. Which is why this conversation is so gut-wrenching:
“I know you.” “You do not know me.” “I knew the angel you were.” “The angel you knew is not me.”
This dialogue admittedly still makes my eyes swim. It’s reminiscent of the many conversations I’ve had with people close to me who knew me Before and After. Not only are you grieving the loss of your own innocence, so are those around you, and it feels like you’re wearing their loved one’s face like a mask.
And then underneath the grief, there’s a river of–what you’ll later discover is misplaced–guilt. They want you to be who you were. Fuck, you also want to be who you were -- to not have experienced what you did -- but you can’t.
And when they catch a glimpse of something that reminds them of Before-You -- because it's not like that you has just up and vanished, you've just changed -- they say things like, “I feel like I have you back!” Like the After-You is a consolation prize, something to be tolerated while they wait for the Before-You to return.
It’s not malicious. They love you. They want you to be happy. But it just serves as a reminder of your loss and suddenly you’re acutely aware of how alone you are with the Thing that hurt you.
After trauma, you’re lonely and you're afraid. But those emotions make you feel quite naked, because both of those things would require you to depend on other people to feel better and, at this point, the thought of doing that is far too scary, so to the world, you’re angry. Thus begins the cyclical self-fulfilling prophecy.
And that cycle goes a bit like this: People see the mistrust and the bitterness and the volatility (the shield that keeps people at an arm's length and helps you feel safe). They don't see the profound sustained fear underneath, the desperate need to feel seen and accepted. And so people pull away.
And that real or perceived abandonment feeds the monster that’s taken up permanent residence in your ribcage and screams at all hours that you’re not worthy of love, that you’re irreparably broken, and you’ll always be alone. And you pull away from the people that love you. And the cycle repeats. And you start to believe all of the bad things about yourself that the monster tells you.
Being confronted with a character who you adore and who you also relate to closely is bittersweet in that it’s both immensely painful, but also offers you an opportunity to interrupt that cycle, to explore a different -- perhaps more forgiving -- lens through which to view yourself. To practice self-compassion by proxy, if you will. After all, we tend to extend far greater empathy and forgiveness to others than we do to ourselves.
Angel Crowley, "who squeaked and squealed when he was happy; who flailed his arms around and made explosion noises with his mouth to explain nebulas; who preened when told his stars were pretty,” (joycrispy) reminded me a lot of “Angel T,” or rather myself before Trauma.
And Crowley's story is tragic. I was heartbroken and angry for him; I felt the depth of the betrayal he experienced at the hands of someone he loved who he'd believed loved him; I found myself wanting to protect him, to comfort him. Crowley did not deserve what happened to him.
And, over a decade later, I realized that I’d finally accepted that I’d been an innocent, just like Crowley had, and I didn't deserve what happened to me, either.
And -- if you find yourself relating to this post -- neither did you.
Once we can tell ourselves that and actually believe it, we can start to lower the shield. We can allow people closer, including ourselves. We can bring the parts of ourselves we may have hidden away back to the surface. We can soften again. We can truly start to heal.
Crowley, at his core, remains the same. He is still kind, deeply loving, playful, silly, and – against all odds – hopeful. But his trauma has changed him; his innocence is gone.
He struggles to trust others; fears abandonment; engages in unhealthy coping mechanisms; finds it easier to prioritize and tend to Aziraphale's needs and desires than his own; and has difficulty expressing his emotions.
But he also gained an abundance of empathy, a deep love for humanity, and a strong sense of justice.
We adore Crowley exactly as he is now; we don't wish for him to be who he was before the Fall. And neither does Aziraphale.
In kind, we won’t be who we were — nor should we try to be — but we can be something new, a different version of ourselves that is equally good, equally worthy, and equally deserving of love.
After over a decade, I think my Trauma wound has mostly healed, as much as Trauma wounds can, anyway; it’s a dull ache rather than an acute pain. Yet Crowley's story assuaged that remaining hurt like a salve I hadn’t realized I needed.
So thank you to @neil-gaiman for giving us such a beautiful story, and to David Tennant, Michael Sheen, and the rest of the cast and crew who bring the characters we love to life on screen.
Good Omens truly is a gift. May it continue to inspire us to offer kindness and love to ourselves and one another. 🖤
* I am aware that I say “you” when I should use the singular first-person “I,” but I still struggle with this when talking about my own trauma. So I’m using “you” and you, reader, will deal with it x
reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something
Crowley + his love for animals (insp)
Bonus, Aziraphale knows him so well:
Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:
This shot through my brain like a chain of firecrackers, so, without derailing the original post, I have some THOUGHTS to add about why this concept is not only hilarious (because it is), but also...
It. It kind of fucks. Severely.
And in a delightfully Pratchett-y way, I'd dare to suggest.
I'll explain:
As inferred above, both Crowley AND Aziraphale have canonical Biblical counterparts. Not by name, no, but by function.
Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.
(note on the serpent of Eden: In Genesis 3:1-15, at least, the serpent is not identified as anything other than a serpent, albeit one that can talk. Later, it will be variously interpreted as a traitorous agent of Hell, as a demon, as a guise of Satan himself, etc. In Good Omens --as a slinky ginger who walks funny)
Lesser known, at least so far as I can tell, is the flaming sword. It, too, appears in Genesis 3, in the very last line:
"So he drove out the man; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." --Genesis 3:24, KJV
Thanks to translation ambiguity, there is some debate concerning the nature of the flaming sword --is it a divine weapon given unto one of the Cherubim (if so, why only one)? Or is it an independent entity, which takes the form of a sword (as other angelic beings take the form of wheels and such)? For our purposes, I don't think the distinction matters. The guard at the gate of Eden, whether an angel wielding the sword or an angel who IS the sword, is Aziraphale.
(note on the flaming sword: in some traditions --Eastern Orthodox, for example-- it is held that upon Christ's death and resurrection, the flaming sword gave up it's post and vanished from Eden for good. By these sensibilities, the removal of the sword signifies the redemption and salvation of man.
...Put a pin in that. We're coming back to it.)
So, we have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword, introduced at the beginning and the end (ha) of the very same chapter of Genesis.
But here's the important bit, the bit that's not immediately obvious, the bit that nonetheless encapsulates one of the central themes, if not THE central theme, of Good Omens:
The Sword was never intended to guard Eden while Adam and Eve were still in it.
Do you understand?
The Sword's function was never to protect them. It doesn't even appear until after they've already fallen. No... it was to usher Adam and Eve from the garden, and then keep them out. It was a threat. It was a punishment.
The flaming sword was given to be used against them.
So. Again. We have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword: the inception and the consequence of original sin, personified. They are the one-two punch that launches mankind from paradise, after Hell lures it to destruction and Heaven condemns it for being destroyed. Which is to say that despite being, supposedly, hereditary enemies on two different sides of a celestial cold war, they are actually unified by one purpose, one pivotal role to play in the Divine Plan: completely fucking humanity over.
That's how it's supposed to go. It is written.
...But, in Good Omens, they're not just the Serpent and the Sword.
They're Crowley and Aziraphale.
(author begins to go insane from emotion under the cut)
yeap, it's september and i'm still hyperfixated on good omens
i'm totally normal about that
That's what being human means. Choices.
[insp.]
+ happily answering Aziraphale's questions
Well, if I was the one running it all, I'd like it if someone asked questions. Fresh point of view.
crowley + glasses