A group of rough looking boys walked past me today and all I heard of their conversation was āheās got that anxiety disorder bro so I went with him so heād be more comfortableā and it made me realise the world isnāt all that bad
The pet store I worked at had a pen with rabbits near the front door. On every side of the pen were huge signs saying āYou can pet me, but donāt pick me up!ā
One day two absolutely huge guys came in and one immediately reaches into the pen to grab a rabbit. Before i could say anything his friend grabbed his arm and asked him ādid you see the sign?ā
He said āyeah! it says that you can pick them up but donāt pet them!ā
Then he went quiet for a moment and softly said āI didnāt read it right did I?ā
And his friend just puts his arm on his shoulder and said āits ok, i know youāve got that thing where words get mixed up. Let just pet these cute lil shitsā
And I still havenāt gotten over that interaction.
I was walking my dog through Boston bc he likes the likes car rides. Heās a little thing tbh we call him short and long.
So this huge scary man with a full beard approaches me like āhey can my buddy and I pet your dog? He gets nervous around dogs but yourās is so small I think itās a good place to start.ā
Ofc I was like āyes heās very friendly!ā So this guy brings his equally big friend over and they sit on the floor while this man looks terrified of my tiny dog so big man number one asks ācan I pick him up?ā And i say yes so he picks him up and puts him on man number twoās lap and man number two is abt to freak out and his friend straight up just goes āhey man, itās okay just relax Iād never let anything hurt you. Heās a good boy.ā Iāll never forget it ever bc I know that man looked at me (5'3 , glasses, probably wearing a sweater vest) and my dog (kinda goofy looking little thing) and was like āah yes the two least intimidating living things Iāve seen in Boston all day heāll feel relaxed around themā and went out of his way to help his friend. It makes me so happy
My husband had this Dungeons and Dragons group ages ago, and one of the guys was TERRIFIED of cats.Ā The moment he sees one he freezes up and can barely breathe.Ā Said guy is almost seven feet tall and solid wall of muscle.Ā Whenever he came over Iād put the cats in the bedroom and chill out with a book because my cats donāt like being shut away without one of us.Ā
One of my cats was pawing at the door and meowing loudly, an indication she REALLY needs to use the litter box.Ā I let her out and decide, hey, Iām hungry, and decide to the kitchen.Ā I forgot to shut the bedroom door.Ā
Next thing I hear is the group going completely silent.Ā My husband very calmly asks me to come over and help him gather our two cats up.Ā I go over to where the group is and my black cat, Cacoa, is rubbing up against the guyās leg, purring, and doing her ālet me on your lapā meow.Ā The other cat, Jasper, is sitting at the window, chilling out.Ā I go over and pick up Cacoa and tell the big dude sheās harmless, loves laps, and would be thrilled if he pet her.Ā Very slowly he touches my catās face, and she leans right into his hand.Ā He then pets her back and sighs because sheās really soft and purring like mad.Ā After a few minutes he asks how to pick her up and if itās okay if she sits on his lap.
He spent the next six hours spoiling my cat.Ā The next week he showed up with cat treats and toys because he fell in love with the cats.Ā He told me he was doing some research on house cats, and even talked to a vet about them.Ā A couple months later he adopted two cats and was as thrilled and excited as a new parent.Ā
I used to work at this stable for icelandic horses and every now and then this man would turn up by the field to just watch the horses. One time I walked by him as I was going to get the horses inside, and he went āI always wanted to learn how to ride but Iām afraid of horses because theyāre so huge. If I could ride ponies like this, maybe Iād dare but now Iām too big and heavy for them.ā You should have seen his face when I told them that actually theyāre not ponies, just small horses and they could totally carry him. His face just lit up. Next thing Iām helping him to get on back. Today he knows how to ride.
A few years ago my sister and I were in Daytona Beach, and we saw this huge, burly biker. Looked like the stereotypical biker: big black beard, the goggles, leather, and a bandana. He also had a baby carrier, and in that baby carrier was a tiny little orange Pomeranian. We complimented his dog and he said, in one of the deepest voices Iāve ever heard, āthanks, his nameās Little Bear!ā And he told us about how heād take Little Bear out on his motorcycle everyday and how much the dog loved it.
Chapters: 3/4
Fandom: Game of Thrones (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Tormund Giantsbane/Jon Snow, Jon Snow & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow & Arya Stark
Characters: Jon Snow, Tormund Giantsbane, Edd Tollett, Ghost | Jon Snow's Direwolf, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth
Additional Tags: Timeline What Timeline, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Protective Tormund Giantsbane, this is an attempt, Not Beta Read, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, playing fast and loose with canon, Hurt Jon Snow, emotionally and physcially, mainly a story of recovery and fixing some stuff from canon, Sibling Bonding
Series: Part 1 of to win a kingdom
Summary:
This world is much easier to walk, with you by my side.
After Jon comes back from the dead, things are put into perspective for him. He's tired of fighting, but he might just have some fight left in him to protect the ones he loves.
--
A fix-it fic of sorts to help fill the jonmund sized hole in the world. Set after Jon is revived in Season 6, Episode 2!
Your time spent enjoying the creative process is infinitely more valuable that any final project you create. So stop putting yourself down for never finishing or posting those WIPs because every moment you spent creating something you loved is a moment not wasted. Your progress and talent is measured by your passion not your number of posts.
Chapters: 2/4
Fandom: Game of Thrones (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tormund Giantsbane/Jon Snow, Jon Snow & Sansa Stark
Characters: Jon Snow, Tormund Giantsbane, Edd Tollett, Ghost | Jon Snowās Direwolf, Sansa Stark
Additional Tags: Timeline What Timeline, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Protective Tormund Giantsbane, this is an attempt, Not Beta Read, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, playing fast and loose with canon, Hurt Jon Snow, emotionally and physcially, mainly a story of recovery and fixing some stuff from canon
Summary:
This world is much easier to walk, with you by my side.
After Jon comes back from the dead, things are put into perspective for him. Heās tired of fighting, but he might just have some fight left in him to protect the ones he loves.
ā
A fix-it fix of sorts to help fill the jonmund sized hole in the world. Set after Jon is revived in Season 6, Episode 2!
Chapters: 2/4
Fandom: Game of Thrones (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tormund Giantsbane/Jon Snow, Jon Snow & Sansa Stark
Characters: Jon Snow, Tormund Giantsbane, Edd Tollett, Ghost | Jon Snow's Direwolf, Sansa Stark
Additional Tags: Timeline What Timeline, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Protective Tormund Giantsbane, this is an attempt, Not Beta Read, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, playing fast and loose with canon, Hurt Jon Snow, emotionally and physcially, mainly a story of recovery and fixing some stuff from canon
Summary:
This world is much easier to walk, with you by my side.
After Jon comes back from the dead, things are put into perspective for him. He's tired of fighting, but he might just have some fight left in him to protect the ones he loves.
--
A fix-it fix of sorts to help fill the jonmund sized hole in the world. Set after Jon is revived in Season 6, Episode 2!
So I fully fell down the jonmund rabbit hole and even started writing a fic! Feel free to take a look, I'm hoping there's more chapters to come, but we'll see!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
(sidenote, any and all canon era jonmund fic recommendations are always accepted!)
Just finished watching Game of Thrones for the first time and my biggest takeaway is that I am shocked there are only 494 fics on AO3 for the ship of Jon and Tormund.
Aside from that, I think it was actually really fun to watch, especially when I could just skip past all the really fucked up incesty yucky stuff I did not want to watch.
I hate it when people ask me what genre of music i listen to because i genuinely have no clue. It's called Music I Like genre. The best genre out there
Reading is the greatest escape of all. When you pick up a book and fall into a story the rest of the world falls away and you are left in a brand new world. Every page you turn brings a new and exciting adventure. Every adventure drags you deeper and deeper into this alternate reality. It gives you the freedom to be anyone you want, to see anything you want, and to escape our world for a better one. By reading these combinations of letters strung together on a page you could travel to the faraway lands of Narnia, or take a jump into the world of Greek myths and legends with Percy Jackson. There are infinite possibilities and itās a beautiful experience.
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)
In Good Omens, humanity is handed it's salvation (pin!) scarcely half an hour after losing it. Instead of looming over God's empty garden, the sword protects a very sad, very scared and very pregnant girl. And no, not because a blameless martyr suffered and died for the privilege, either.
It was just that she'd had such a bad day. And there were vicious animals out there. And Aziraphale worried she would be cold.
...I need to impress upon you how much this is NOT just a matter of being careless with company property. With this one act of kindness, Aziraphale is undermining the whole entire POINT of the expulsion from Eden. God Herself confronts him about it, and he lies. To God.
And the Serpent--
(Crowley, that is, who wonders what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway; who thinks that maybe he did a GOOD thing when he tempted Eve with the apple; who objects that God is over-reacting to a first offense; who knows what it is to fall but not what it is to be comforted after the fact...)
--just goes ahead and falls in love with him about it.
As for Crowley --I barely need to explain him, right? People have been making the 'didn't the serpent actually do us a solid?' argument for centuries. But if I'm going to quote one of them, it may as well be the one Neil Gaiman wrote ficlet about:
"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization."
--Robert G. Ingersoll
The first to ask questions.
Even beyond flattering literary interpretation, we know that Crowley is, so often, discreetly running damage control on the machinations of Heaven and Hell. When he can get away with it. Occasionally, when he can't (1827).
And Aziraphale loves him for it, too. Loves him back.
And so this romance plays out over millennia, where they fall in love with each other but also the world, because of each other and because of the world. But it begins in Eden. Where, instead of acting as the first Earthly example of Divine/Diabolical collusion and callousness--
(other examples --the flood; the bet with Satan; the back channels; the exchange of Holy Water and Hellfire; and on and on...)
--they refuse. Without even necessarily knowing they're doing it, they just refuse. Refuse to trivialize human life, and refuse to hate each other.
To write a story about the Serpent and the Sword falling in love is to write a story about transgression.
Not just in the sense that they are a demon and an angel, and it's ~forbidden. That's part of it, yeah, but the greater part of it is that they are THIS demon and angel, in particular. From The Real Bible's Book of Genesis, in the chapter where man falls.
It's the sort of thing you write and laugh. And then you look at it. And you think. And then you frown, and you sit up a little straighter. And you think.
And then you keep writing.
And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.
(...A lot of Pratchett reads that way. I believe Gaiman when he says Pratchett would have been happy with the romance, by the way. I really really do).
It's a story about transgression, about love as transgression. They break the rules by loving each other, by loving creation, and by rejecting the hatred and hypocrisy that would have triangulated them as a unified blow against humanity, before humanity had even really got started. And yeah, hell, it's a queer romance too, just to really drive the point home (oh, that!!! THAT!!!)
...I could spend a long time wildly gesturing at this and never be satisfied. Instead of watching me do that (I'll spare you), please look at this gif:
I love this shot so much.
Look at Eve and Crowley moving, at the same time in the same direction, towards their respective wielders of the flaming sword. Adam reaches out and takes her hand; Aziraphale reaches out and covers him with a wing.
You know what a shot like that establishes? Likeness. Commonality. Kinship.
"Our side" was never just Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley says as much at the end of season 1 ("--all of us against all of them."). From the beginning, "our side" was Crowley, Aziraphale, and every single human being. Lately that's around 8 billion, but once upon a time it was just two other people. Another couple. The primeval mother and father.
But Adam and Eve die, eventually. Humanity grows without them. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who remain, and who protect it. Who...oversee it's upbringing.
Okay so in my rewatching of Good Omens season 1, I noticed something interesting. In episode 3 when Aziraphale is telling Gabriel and the other archangels that the antichrist isnāt Warlock, Gabriel makes a comment saying āThere was war in Heaven long before the Earth was created. Crowley and the rest were cast outā¦ā
And it just struck me as interesting that he mentioned Crowley by name and no other demon, like say Beezelbub? Or Satan? So needless to say, Iām starting to believe the theories out there that Crowley was really high up in Heaven before he Fell. Which we of course get further evidence of in season 2. Idk it just stuck out to me during my rewatch.
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