ok so i read The Goblin Emperor recently (absolutely recommend) and it's given me some thoughts about a:tla specifically post canon zuko
he is the very young very new leader of a nation that's very abruptly lost its previous monarch. He's spent the last few years away from court and almost certainly isn't used to using his court manners even if he does technically know them. He's taking the country in a very different direction than his father with bold new political ideas and radical friends. The only heir to speak of is someone he'd really rather not pass the throne to. While he does have some support from his elders he was absolutely Not trained to take the throne and certainly not with so little warning.
sound familiar?
so now I'm thinking of a post-canon zuko fic of epic proportions that goes into as much detail in the world building and politics as TGE does.
Zuko finding a good secretary jesus christ please
Zuko slowly learning how to talk to his cabinet members as an adult, trying to balance being their Fire Lord, trying to be seen as an equal in competency and not a boy king, and acknowledging that he really isn't up to speed.
Zuko learning all the servant's names
Zuko's struggle not to lose himself in the overwhelming force of being The Fire Lord
learning regular teenage emotional regulation but instead of telling your dad you hate him because he asked you to turn the music down you're screaming at your minister of agriculture in front of the whole cabinet and you can't remember why it was important
he was expecting the assassination attempts and even the coups. He wasn't expecting the more subtle attempts to lock him out of his own government
look i know we all love ignoring the political implications of gay shipping, but zuko is absolutely not in a stable enough position to be the first fire lord to get gay married. we're ignoring the opportunities presented by a well suited marriage of convenience. are they co-conspirators in world betterment and shenanigans? does the fire lady get him to take a fucking break for once? is it a slow burn where they eventually fall in love but like, 7years into being married? do they have elaborate arrangements of 'cultural informants' and ladies in waiting that are just a stream of consensual lovers? some options for your consideration under the cut
Yue (in a yue lives au)
most reassuring to an international audience
nonthreatening to a domestic audience
the optics of marrying the NWT princess are great and logical without requiring too many mental gymnastics
has spent her whole like preparing to do something unpleasant for the sake of her tribe and would probably consent to the marriage
politically powerful but a non-bender, very low chance of a waterbending heir
zuko has grown up around girls that could kill him and respects women, the fire nation might be an improvement on the NWT
once she breaks out of her shell she'd be a snark machine
the in world artists would get a kick out of the water/fire symbolism. there would be so many plays and paintings and poems
i understand that her death has symbolic and narrative importance but let me play here
Mai
relatively reassuring to a domestic audience
minimally objectionable to international audiences
marrying into a family that was powerful and favored in Ozai's time would pacify traditionalists without requiring zuko to actually make traditionalist political decisions
Mai can play the court game even if it drives her mad
azula would have an internal fit but they may be able to maneuver it such that it manifests as azula being driven to make Mai the most successful fire lady that ever was
Random Earth Kingdom Noble
afiak neither bumi nor kuei have children. idk what the heir situation is but i know there's an earth prince in alok so idk
'marrying an earth kingdom noble is a very logically and politically sound move' says zuko's cabinet. 'ok' says zuko, 'which one?' chaos ensues
someone tries to propose mai as an earth kingdom noble because her father was governor of New Ozai. the eyeroll is audible
great potential for OC shenanigans
Suki
sokka would throw a fit
potential for lovely zukki ot3 a la many of erisenyo's fics
allying with an important figure from mostly neutral kiyoshi island might translate to a mostly neutral political move and minimize outrage on all sides
she can make very heavy handed speeches about 'if we can forgive him so can you' when the earth kingdom representatives start getting mean
gives her an excuse to stay and keep and eye on zuko (and keep some warriors around to keep an eye on him too)
even if she didn't grow up in court suki is sharp, she'd pick up on the important bits quick and the rest she could pass off as her quaint provincial upbringing
imagine how the fire nation court fashion would respond to the Fire Lady in the Kiyoshi Warrior Gear. the heat exhaustion alone
Toph
objectively hilarious
i don't actually think it fits with her character arc about independence and growth but it's not significantly worse than making her a cop sooo
i really don't ship them so i'm imagining this for practicalities and logistics only but you do you
it would be absolutely hilarious for the bei fongs to go from 'no we have no children' to 'yes we would like to propose that our daughter marry the fire lord' overnight. even funnier if it's toph's idea and she has to wrangle proof that she is actually the heir of one of the wealthiest families in the earth kingdom
relatively reassuring to an international audience
the domestic audience doesn't know what to think. on paper she's a foreign merchant's daughter which is fine. in reality didn't she destroy like 10 war balloons? is that a war crime? she won't stop jump scaring the treasurer?
she'd get a kick out of redesigning all the parts of the palace that make zuko sad
the agni kai arena is now her earthbending practice ground, i hope you weren't attached to those tiles!
zuko's cabinet is free of secret loyalists in a week. toph spends her first month there roaming the halls listening for lying hearts
minor concern of earthbending heirs? she gets a kick out of all the anxiety
toph and azula would be hysterical to see interact. like introducing two cats through a bathroom door. maybe they fall in love idk. they almost certainly fuck at least once. their sparring matches threaten to destabilize the architecture and also the rim of caldera city
In honor of AO3 being down and also realizing that I never posted this fic to tumblr, here’s my Good Omens fic, Unconditionally. [AO3 link]
4254 words, M, Ineffable Husbands, hurt/comfort, mentions of past dubcon but lots and lots of fluff, ace affirmations. I made myself cry rereading this
Aziraphale was just as soft as he’d expected, maybe even more so. Kissing him (gently at first, and then more deeply) was like sinking into bed at the end of a long, long day. Was like sitting on a rock in the sun. Was almost like Grace, except without all that pesky guilt.
Six thousand years, and they could finally do this. Six thousand years of watching him from across the garden, the desert, a city square, a table at the Ritz. Six thousand years of looking over his shoulder, of fluffing up reports, of carrying out a job to the letter so that Hell didn’t have any reason to check up on him. Six thousand years and an almost-apocalypse and he could finally kiss his angel.
He brought his hands to Aziraphale’s hips and nudged him backwards towards the loveseat he kept in the living space above the shop. A loveseat, wasn’t that perfect? It had been the object of much frustration over the years, having to watch Aziraphale sit there and read with just barely not enough space for him to share without touching. Well he thought now’s our chance, isn’t it?
So he walked Aziraphale back until his knees hit the loveseat and he had to sit down, breaking the kiss with a breathless, surprised noise.
“Change of scenery, dear?”
“Figured it might make things easier, y’know. Won’t have to worry about falling over.”
“Excellent idea, my boy. Now get down here, or I’ll get lonely.”
“Can’t have that,” Crowley murmured against his lips as he crawled into Aziraphale’s lap.
Crowley was no stranger to kissing. He was no stranger to the bits that came after, either, but this was different than any temptation of a king or deflowering of an important virgin. This was Aziraphale. These were Aziraphale’s hands on his waist, on his neck, in his hair. Aziraphale’s lips on his, more precious that he could ever have imagined. This felt right and warm in a way no temptation ever could, and he marveled at what he had missed. It was no wonder humans spent so much time kissing, he was quickly finding that it was one of the best sensations on earth, so long as you actually liked the person you were doing it with.
His thoughts were getting away from him a bit. Aziraphale’s kisses were deeper now, harder, and so was the grip on his waist. Crowley groaned quietly at the rush of sensation (of love too, though he didn’t dare say it yet). Aziraphale broke the kiss with a grin and met his eyes, bare for once, before diving back in and working kisses across Crowley’s jaw, behind his ear, down his neck, dipping into his collarbone. He was having quite the difficult time not blaspheming, because the sensations never stopped, they honestly just kept getting better. Amazing what kissing could feel like when it wasn’t part of a job.
Crowley wrapped his arms around the angel’s neck and settled more deeply in his lap, pressing their chests firmly together. His angel was warm, and lovely, and when he wrapped his arms around Crowley tighter still, it made something bright bubble up in his chest. It made his heart skip and his eyes get hot, and so he sat there reveling in it. Thank anybody that he could simply miracle away the ache in his knees from bending them like this, because he wouldn’t move from this spot, from Aziraphale’s arms, for anything short of another apocalypse.
“You know,” Aziraphale breathed against his skin. “If we were humans, this is the part where we would have sex. Do you want to?”
Crowley froze. A prickle of frost crept down his neck, and then melted to shiver down his spine and into his lungs. He… honestly hadn’t considered that. And wasn’t that the understatement of the century, he hadn’t even known that was an option! Would it even work with a demon and an angel? He supposed they’d had no problem with the kissing up until now, so it was probably fine, but he wished he’d thought of it sooner. He wished he’d had time to prepare, to do a bit of research, maybe, to brace himself.
“Crowley, dear?”
And that was worry in Aziraphale’s voice, wasn’t it? He’d been quiet too long.
“Yeah,” he managed, voice rough. “Yeah, ‘course”
He caught a small smile flash across Aziraphale’s face and relaxed slightly. He was ok then, hadn’t messed it up yet. With humans it was as easy as dipping your feet into a pond to see their minds, their desires. Tempting was easier when you could make yourself the perfect temptation, after all. But angels were different, and Crowley had had to rely on body language, tone, and blessed verbal communication to get this far, and it felt like he was stumbling around in the dark.
“Beautiful,” Aziraphale whispered into his collarbones as he undid the top button of his vest. “You really are beautiful, my dear boy.”
Crowley huffed out a breath at that, distracting Aziraphale with a kiss deep enough that he seemed to forget Crowley’s buttons entirely. He skated his hands down Crowley’s sides slowly, and goodness that did feel nice. This is what it’s come to he thought to himself he’s reduced me to words like “goodness”.
But the cold, wet feeling in his chest was still there, and it seemed to have doused that bright, bubbly thing from before. Why was that? He had no reason to be nervous. In fact, he had every reason to be confidant, to take the lead and show his angel the time of his life. He didn’t know if Aziraphale had ever made the effort before, but he doubted Heaven would have approved. Crowley on the other hand, had thousands of years and hundreds of temptations worth of experience to draw from. He could give his angel everything, and he couldn’t possibly fail. He just had to listen, to read it right, find the small grin or raised eyebrow that meant that he was on the right track, and he would be fine. He could do this.
Aziraphale’s hands wandered back down to his hips and traced the waistband of his skin-tight jeans, fluttered over his belt, dipped under the fabric to caress the skin of his hips. Those beautiful hands dipped lower, below the waistband of his underwear. They may have bent reality a bit to allow those hands to take gentle handfuls of Crowley’s ass and pull his hips closer still.
Crowley gasped raggedly, breaking the kiss as Aziraphale pulled him close and he could feel it now. Regardless of any effort made in the past, his angel was making an effort now and that was. Perfect. That was perfect, that was exactly what was supposed to happen. Crowley didn’t know why he hadn’t made the effort himself yet, Aziraphale was bound to notice soon.
Ducking his head into the safety of his angel’s warm shoulder, he set his mind to it, called a cock into existence with all of his considerable will and imagination. It didn’t come. It had always come before. Instead of a cock there came the pinpricks in his fingers and toes, crawling up his arms and legs. Those were normal by now, but usually he at least had a cock to go with them.
He felt Aziraphale latch onto his neck again, the other side this time, but it felt far away. His heart started tripping again like it always did before sex, less like skipping though a meadow and more like stumbling down a steep rocky hill. It went quiet for long moments at a time, trying to find the safest path before jerking to a start and sliding a few feet on loose dirt. The cold wet thing in his chest was spreading, dripping down to his stomach. It slipped down his arms in goosebumps that turned them to lead around Aziraphale’s neck. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to find the gentle warmth from before. With a cold start he realized that with his eyes buried like this, he couldn’t actually tell Aziraphale apart from any of his jobs. He should have been able to. Aziraphale felt nothing like James I, or Alexander the Great, or Elizabeth I, or Nzinga, or Julie d’Aubigny, or, or, or.
He was starting to tremble. He could feel it, barely, just like he could feel Aziraphale move away from his neck and nudge him backwards gently.
“What do you want, my dear boy?”
Crowley pulled his brain back into his head and met Aziraphale’s eyes. They were dark with arousal, and so deeply adoring that it nearly took his breath away.
“I… what?”
A wry grin crept onto Aziraphale’s face. “What would you like to do, Crowley? Don’t get me wrong, kissing you is a dream, but if we’re going to do things the human way, there’s a lot more to it than kissing.”
Crowley managed a chuckle at that. He was overreacting, clearly. Aziraphale was here, and he was himself. Crowley could feel the warmth slowly seeping back into his legs from where he sat on the angel’s lap.
“Have a lot of experience doing things the human way, do you?” he asked, throwing a grin back.
“Well,” Aziraphale finally seemed a bit flustered at that. “You know how much I enjoy the comforts of earth. I figured, if I’m going to be living here, I’ll need to be familiar with the experience. That was the excuse I prepared for Head Office anyway. After a while, it was just because I enjoyed it.”
“Angel!” Crowley laughed in mock astonishment. “An angel of the lord inciting lust amongst men! The scandal of it all!” This was good. Crowley could do banter, and his heart had stopped slipping down hills
“I don’t know how much ‘inciting’ I was doing, they seemed to have it all worked out on their own.”
A wide grin stretched Crowley’s face as something occurred to him. “So you did fuck Wilde then!”
“I…” “Well Crowley I never…” “A gentleman does not kiss and tell!” was what Aziraphale finally settled on.
“I always thought it was odd that you had three signed copies of The Importance of Being Earnest. You were the Jack to his Algernon, only you actually got to fuck.”
“Crowley really,” he said, but he was grinning. “This is hardly the time to talk about what Oscar and I may or may not have been up to. I was asking about you!”
Aziraphale’s perfect fingers began tracing the crease in Crowley’s jeans where his thigh met his hips. Right next to where his cock would be, if he had managed to make the effort. His heart stumbled another few feet, and had trouble finding solid ground again.
“What about me, angel?” he asked with a teasing grin. He was sure he could manage it if he just had a moment, just another moment.
“What do you like, dear? What would you like to do?” Aziraphale’s voice was lower and a bit rumbly, and any other moment Crowley would be thrilled. “Or what would you like me to do to you?”
His fingers were creeping closer to Crowley’s zipper, nails dragging against the weave to send tiny vibrations through the denim. He was going to feel it, the lack of it, any moment now, and Crowley will have really fucked things up.
“I… I don’t,”
“Crowley, my dear?” And there it was, because Aziraphale’s voice was back to normal, maybe even a bit higher, and his eyebrows were drawn together. “Is everything alright, dear boy?”
The pet name nearly broke him. He felt his eyes grow hot and his lip tremble and honestly considered praying for deliverance.
“Oh my sweet boy, what’s wrong?” Aziraphale was pulling away now, putting space between them, and Crowley should have seen this coming but it still hurt to have lost him.
“Crowley my dear, please talk to me. You know I can’t read your mind.”
And wasn’t Crowley grateful for that, it was a mess in there at the moment.
“I don’t think…,” he managed eventually. “Would you believe me if I told you this was a bit fast for me?”
“Oh my dear, of course I’d believe you!” Aziraphale face seemed to break open, partly from relief at getting a full sentence out of Crowley, and partly in dread. Would he believe…?
Crowley drew back further, as much as he didn’t want to, and Aziraphale set to making him a comfortable spot next to him on the loveseat. He settled there gratefully, pulling his feet up and resting his chin on his knees. He nearly reached for his glasses, but Aziraphale had miracled them away earlier, and he didn’t know where they’d gone.
“My boy,” Aziraphale said eventually, turning to face Crowley on the couch. “You’ve been patient for however many centuries, I can be patient too. We can do this at whatever pace you’d like.” He reached out and gently stroked Crowley’s hand where it rested on his ankle. “I can wait as long as you’d like.”
Crowley should have been relieved, he wanted to be relieved, but the courage that he’d mustered up shriveled in his chest. Aziraphale seemed to notice, because his eyebrows pinched again, and he leaned forward.
“My dear, will you tell me what’s the matter?”
Crowley couldn’t meet his eyes. Aziraphale’s gaze nearly burned on him, but he didn’t seem angry, so maybe he could salvage this.
He moved to rest his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder instead, and felt the angel wrap a warm arm around his body, felt the other come to rest on his knee. “You ever get tired of blessing priests, or whatever it is that Heaven sends you to do?”
Aziraphale took a moment before he spoke. For all his faith was sometimes naïve, he really was quite clever. “I suppose they got a bit tedious at times, but I don’t think I ever got tired of the blessings themselves,” he said quietly, carefully. “Especially the ones that I got to choose. The seventeenth order to bless this or that bishop or monastery definitely got repetitive, but once I got there, got to know people, it was always rewarding. And then I could usually afford to bless a few people on the street, because Upstairs was already expecting to process a few miracles.”
“And now, after everything, do you still…?”
“I still bless the occasional stranger,” he said gently. “Even more now that Heaven won’t come chasing me down.”
“Oh.”
Crowley could feel Aziraphale watching him out the corner of his eye, but his angel didn’t ask. Just sat there and held him. He waited. That more than anything is what prompted Crowley to talk.
“For us,” he started, a bit roughly. “For demons, you know, a lot of the jobs are Deadly Sins. Most sins you can trace back to a Deadly Sin if you’re generous. Corruption is really just Sloth. Bribes are really just Greed. Even the M25, I called that Wrath on the report.”
He felt Aziraphale smile and press a kiss to his hair. He pushed on.
“’Course, some of them are more specific. ‘Convince this person to kill this person at this place and time’, ‘Attend this party and cozy up to this or that noble’, ‘Join this queen’s harem and whisper these ideas in her ear’.”
Aziraphale’s hand (the one not resting gently on Crowley’s arm) was picking at the fabric of his trousers, deep in thought. Crowley carefully moved his own hand so that it just brushed Aziraphale’s leg.
“And, you know, ‘sex sells’. I’m pretty sure that was one of ours, that whole strategy, but it was hell’s policy long before it hit advertising. Lust’s the quickest, easiest way to cause trouble, usually, and it comes wrapped up with Greed, Envy, Wrath, and Sloth too. Somebody’s husband gets angry, somebody else wants to be fucking whoever you’re fucking, somebody abandons their duties in favor of ravishing the new toy. Nobody’s going to trust some weird new guy in the odd glasses with government secrets. But get the weird guy in your bed, wait to see if he kills you, after that you can probably trust him. And even if you can’t you at least want to keep him around.”
With the utmost care, Aziraphale brushed his free hand over Crowley’s, and when he didn’t pull away, held it gently but firmly.
“Y’know, for a long time, I didn’t know it was called ‘love making’. I thought people were talking about something else, I dunno. It was a tool for me, I figured it was a tool for everybody else.”
Aziraphale hummed quietly. Crowley gripped his hand a little tighter.
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked. “With Oscar, or whoever?”
“I did,” Aziraphale said quietly after a moment.
“Huh.”
They were both quiet for a long time before the angel spoke.
“Did you not? Enjoy it, I mean.”
“I dunno.” Crowley thought for a long moment before he managed to put it into words. “It was never for me to enjoy, y’know? It wasn’t about me, it was about the temptation. And you know humans, they’re so transparent. Five minutes and I knew everything they had ever wanted, every fantasy they had ever had. It was easy to just do that and not think about it. It got the job done. And at least when I got to be somebody else for a bit, it was less… I dunno. ‘Scary’ makes me sound like a toddler. ‘Painful’, maybe.” He was quiet again, but this time the hand not in Aziraphale’s started picking at the couch.
“I kind of figured that angels and demons weren’t like that,” he said at last. “We haven’t even got the bits unless we make them, I figured nobody really wanted it, and everybody else was just better at sucking it up and doing the job, y’know?”
Aziraphale sucked in a deep breath. It only shook a little.
“I didn’t know,” he said after a moment.
“I mean, neither did I, I can’t blame you for that.”
Aziraphale finally turned to look him in the eyes. His angel looked heartbroken, and oh, he did that.
“Oh no,” he said, pulling him into a hug. “No it’s fine, angel it’s fine, it’s nothing. What’s that face for, get rid of that face. I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean to upset you, I’m sorry. I can fix it, I promise.”
Aziraphale started at that, and pulled away, though not far enough to let go of Crowley.
“My dear, sweet boy, you will do no such thing,” he said with the most force he had used all night. “There’s absolutely nothing to fix. Except perhaps having a stern word with your superiors. My boy, I never would have asked if I’d known.”
“Oh G-S-whatever, angel, believe me, a stern word won’t do much down there. And it’s fine, I’ll get over it. I just need a bit of time and it’ll be fine. Humans do it constantly, I’ll figure it out.”
Aziraphale had that look again, and Crowley scrambled for something else to say before he cut him off.
“Crowley, that night, after the trials, you said that you’d wanted to kiss me for thousands of years, do you remember that?”
Crowley was blushing furiously, but he managed to nod.
“In all that time, have you ever imagined having sex with me?”
Crowley’s stomach dropped, and he went cold all over. He refused to meet Aziraphale’s eyes.
“My dear, I don’t mean to upset you. It’s not a trick, I just want to know.”
“Once,” he whispered.
“Once?”
“Yeah.”
“And what was that like?”
Crowley’s brain ground to a halt. What had it been like? It hadn’t been like much of anything because he couldn’t get his brain to go past taking off his angel’s waistcoat. It all just stopped.
“’t was after I woke up. When I figured out you and Wilde had been a thing,” he said after a while, still not making eye contact.
“You really are hung up on Oscar, aren’t you?” Aziraphale chuckled.
“Yeah, I was.” That was angrier than he had meant it to be but, well.…
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Whatever for?” Aziraphale asked eventually.
“Well you never shut up about him. Kept talking about his bloody plays, and his book, and that damn cigar lounge. And he’d had quite a reputation.”
“I know gossip is a sin, but I thought you were better than to go around judging people-”
“Not like that, angel, just…. I think that was the first time I wondered if I was meant to enjoy it. You seemed to have liked him so much, and he had that reputation so it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that you and he might have…. And it couldn’t have been a job for you, so you must have enjoyed it. And anyway, I thought, well, maybe I could enjoy it. If I tried. So I tried. And I couldn’t. It wouldn’t work.”
“What wouldn’t work, my dear?”
“My blessed brain couldn’t even imagine it properly! Completely bloody imaginary and I still can’t get it right.” Crowley was tense all over, nearly shaking from anger, or frustration, or whoever knew what.
“Dear boy,” Aziraphale said, gently pulling Crowley back to rest on his shoulder. “I don’t think it’s something that you get ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I think it just is. If thinking about it upsets you, then it’s not right for you to think about it. It’s meant to be a thing of love, it’s not supposed to upset you.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m figuring out,” he mumbled into Aziraphale’s neck. He was still strung tight, but the atom bomb in his chest felt a little less like it was going to explode when he was being held like that. “If that’s it though, then it’s just me, right? Like, you enjoy it, which means that other angels and demons probably like it, which means it’s just me.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s just you, my love.” The pet name made him go warm, but he didn’t dare interrupt. “And even if it was, it would hardly matter. There is nothing on this earth nor beyond it that could make me willingly upset you. It doesn’t matter how much I might enjoy it, it’s nothing if you’re not enjoying it too.”
“I can figure it out,” Crowley mumbled, but he was losing steam. He didn’t know how a punch to the gut like Aziraphale’s could feel so good, but it did, and he wasn’t about to argue.
“That’s just it though, there isn’t anything to figure out, is there?” Aziraphale nudged Crowley enough to meet his eyes. “This isn’t something that you should have to ‘figure out’. I’ve enjoyed sex in the past, but it’s certainly not a requirement. I also enjoy sushi, and I collect misprinted bibles. But I don’t expect you to eat things you don’t like, and I certainly don’t expect you to help me repair books that will hurt you.”
“You don’t need a partner to eat sushi.”
“No, but it’s nice. And to be honest, you don’t really need a partner to get off either, do you?”
“Angel!” he chuckled quietly. “Surely you’re not advocating for the deadly sin of lust!”
“Hush, you.” Aziraphale pulled at one of Crowley’s hands and laced their fingers together. “I have loved you for centuries. I have wanted to kiss you for decades at least. I may have been a bit slow on the uptake, but I know that for sure. There are thousands of things I want to do with you that don’t involve sex. There are no conditions on loving you. If all I ever do is kiss you and hold your hand, it will be more than I ever thought I could have, and more than enough to keep me happy.”
Crowley fought back tears that really shouldn’t have been possible with snake eyes, but fuck it.
“Angel?”
“Yes, my dear?”
Crowley managed a deep breath and a shaky exhale. He just needed one more thing.
“What if I never figure it out?”
“My love, then I will continue to be the happiest I have ever been.”
Crowley lost to the tears then and did his best to press them into Aziraphale’s shirt instead of letting them run down his face.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly, pulling him into a tight hug and easing them both down to lay on the loveseat. “There is nothing in Heaven or Hell that could stop me loving you, least of all this. God Herself could come into this shop and tell me to be rid of you, and I would have no problem disposing of Her like I do every other impolite customer. There is nothing wrong with you, and so there is nothing to be ‘figured out’. If you want to try having sex someday, let me know and we can try. But if that day never comes, I won’t be any less for it, and neither will you.”
The bright bubbly feeling was back. The bubbling was slower, and his chest was stuffed up from crying, but warmth radiated from every inch he touched his angel, and he had this figured out, at the very least.
“I love you, angel.”
“I love you too, my dear, sweet boy. Unconditionally.”
ok so i can't include screenshots because netflix is a little bitch but in the first episode of ATLA (around 15:20) when zuko is shown doing his katas on deck, Iroh throws fire directly at his face in order to demonstrate a lesson
i know zuko gets characterized a lot in fic as flinching or panicking when people come at his face and I love that hc
i also love the idea that either he trusts iroh enough not to flinch, or has some very impressive control when he's in a typical situation
I love a good fic where the gaang learns about zuko’s bonkers adventures prior to joining the team
i love fic where zuko has to awkwardly remind the nobility that he was a fugitive for several years
do you also love these fics? Consider, It's not an international incident if it's off the record, a 1.3k fic where Zuko tries to diplomatically tell Chief Arnook that those turtle seal tunnels are a security concern, I’m sure there will be no awkwardness at all, don’t worry about how he knows that
I am baffled that I haven’t yet read a single post-canon “somewhere else” fic where the London Jon and Martin leave behind is referred to as “Other London”
among many things i’m having A Lot of Feelings about rqg howard carter and what an ADHD mood he’s been revealed to be
like, 177 cemented it for me but basically:
things we knew about carter
He will keep throwing himself at a problem even if he shouldn’t/ it’s a danger to him
He’s more mellow when he has something to do/ a problem to occupy himself with
his generally annoying behavior is to “bring people in”
and now in 177 (though it’s a bit abstract for obvious reasons)
he feels like everyone’s always yelling at him
he feels useless
he has trouble acknowledging the things he’s good at (art) as valuable
he keeps waiting for azu to get fed up with and abandon him
he feels caught in a loop of “people ask me to do the thing--> i can’t do the thing--> people ask me to do another thing--> i can’t do that thing either-->etc.”
the place he imagines is the safest is somewhere where he has to make himself small and quiet and invisible or someone will be angry with him for reasons he doesn’t totally understand
when azu explains that her support of him is unconditional and he’s not going to mess it up and drive her away, he blooms
like i might be projecting and i already knew this campaign doesn’t have innocent comic relief and I knew the zolf and oscar conversation was going to destroy me but oh man sometimes rpgs really are therapy huh?
It’s long been my personal headcanon that martin will have to kill jon at the end of the show (or allow him to die, or prevent him from living, etc) for a few reasons
At this point we know Jon has a self sacrificial streak, jon dying wouldn’t be much of a surprise. But we also know that Martin is rather protective and has already gone to great lengths to keep Jon safe (going after him in S2, working with peter, etc)
and in s5, there’s been an emphasis on martin’s agency that I’ve really enjoyed with respect to them being equals in their relationship, but I think there could be more to it
I’m especially thinking of their conversation in 169 about whether to go into the burning building. The “don’t make it my decision” and both of them learning that they need to communicate their feelings and desires better. martin refused to make that decision and it was a bad time for both of them (in that their relationship was strained, martin was hurt, and killing jude perry did nothing for her victims). Martin knows that standing back and letting things happen isn’t useful at this point
and time and time again, martin has shown an ability to contradict the world as it is now.
He pushed for jon to leave the cabin
he wanted to talk to the soldiers in the slaughter domain
tells jared to lay off of jon in ‘The Gardner’
he is able to break jon out of statements (if with some difficulty) which we know jon can’t do by himself but can with martin’s help
with annabell cane’s first phone call he just fully “nope’d” out of a conversation with an avatar of the web
he sits on the extinction couch! the whole point was the fear of inevitable degradation and pollution and he’s just like ‘yeah its a bit gross but im tired’
he apologized for bumping into people in the processing line
after he’s grabbed by trevor we learn that the reason he could be killed was because trevor was the prey, not the hunter, even with his knife to martin’s throat
he’s able to find his anchor and leave the house in 170 even after being drawn into the lonely’s effect again (something that we’ve not seen from any other victims, even basira’s on her own hunt now)
he had a fairly normal rational conversation with the embodiment of his own suffering and misery and was able to walk away fairly easily
there are others, but it feels a bit like martin’s in the wrong genre, basically. jon is such a part of the apocalypse that he couldn’t escape if he wanted to, melanie and georgie are immune to the fears’ effect for very good in-narrative reasons, but martin just repeatedly opposes the apocalypse in many small ways that would otherwise feel very out of place if he hadn’t been doing it all season, and the more we learn the more important it feels.
I think martin’s trip with annabell told us a lot of things, but among them is that martin’s not scared to venture out on his own. He’s scared of losing jon, sure, but he doesn’t feel dependent on him for safety and is at least somewhat comfortable leaving him and doing things that he knows jon would disagree with. Over the course of the season he’s developed his own firm opinions re: eyepocalypse, evidenced by the evolution of his feelings about jon killing people.
some very good screenshots by @lumberyjack point out that jon has been referred to both as “the archive” and “the eye’s pupil” in the past, and if what annabell said is true and they have to be destroyed simultaneously, then either jon and martin are going to have to split up to do it (which seems unlikely as they’ve just been reunited), or they’re in the same place
the importance of anchors has been well established in breaking the fears’ control of a situation, jon has already said that martin is his “reason” for being able to go on and stay human and as we got closer to the watchtower he’s been able to keep jon from slipping into a statement or replacing jonah in the eye. Martin is the reason Jon’s resisting his place at the top of the watchtower, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that he could combat the apocalypse itself
Martin is one of the only people to actively defy the new world order in S5 and in ways that continue to break genre tropes. He loves Jon and is protective of him, but he’s already said he won’t doom the world over it. And Jon’s comment of ‘nobody gets what they deserve, not even me’ still feels like it’s yet to come back around and bite us. Jon may think he deserves to die to save the world but I doubt he wants to die by Martin’s hand and Martin certainly doesn’t want to kill him. I just think he’s the only one who can.
tl;dr martin has repeatedly set himself apart in this new world as someone who won’t stand for its bullshit. i’m fairly sure jon will have to die, or at least that destroying the archive will kill him. I think that martin is going to be the only one capable of killing jon and making sure that he stays dead
