In My Own Boat Sinking At My Own Pace

Char | she/her | queer | fandom blog mostly, but this is my main blog so it goes wherever it goes with very little actual direction | current obsessions: Ted Lasso, OFMD, Good Omens, The Locked Tomb

[aduckwithears]

Periodically, it hits me like a ton of bricks that this scene exists:

With the windows framed as their wings, the hand fluttering to the back, the most emotionally devastating kiss ever to be filmed...

I am still not well.

[xjade-lotusx]

I want crowley to become the new duke of hell not because I want him evil and I know how much he'd hate it but because just think of the drama of it all. The Shakespearean epic that would be Duke of Hell Crowley and Supreme Archangel Aziraphale. I want to be torn to shreds because of those two

[ominousflags]

Not to be the person that’s like “this piece of queer media is like x piece of queer media” but—more popular than Good Omens is the Heartstopper franchise, especially among young people. I think in terms of “who is worse: Crowley or Aziraphale” (which to me is a bonkers argument to even have) we can learn a bit from how social realist media (aka Heartstopper) portrays queer love facing barriers.

Part of Nick Nelson’s character development is his realization that even with the best intentions and his deep care for Charlie, he is inadvertently hurting him by keeping their relationship secret and not being ready to come out, which is *still* a valid need of Nick’s, as someone figuring out and coming to terms with his sexuality among an often hostile peer group.

He decides ultimately that whatever his own hang ups are, they aren’t worth the pain it was causing Charlie to be kept a secret. But crucially, the narrative never demonized Nick for having those difficulties in the first place even if his actions seemed from the outside quite uncaring and similar to Charlie’s former abusive relationship with Ben. The narrative allows them both the grace to take that next step together and places the blame not on Charlie for being too sensitive or on Nick for being hesitant to come out right away, but on the outside forces making it hard for them to be openly in love.

So I think the grace the reader and the narrative gave to Nick and Charlie is the same grace that Good Omens is trying to get us to feel for Crowley and Aziraphale. It doesn’t mean they don’t both say and do things that hurt the other, or that they are both perfect examples of emotional maturity (part of the comedy actually comes from how emotionally immature they each are), but that even they deserve the chance to figure it out. The blame shouldn’t be placed on Aziraphale as an abusive partner (because come on) or on Crowley for being a demon or too sensitive or a victim, but the entire show is about how the blame lies with the institutions of Heaven and Hell and how we can read those allegorically as a stand in for the same social barriers facing actual real queer humans today. Idk I’m just like I think it’s pointless to be waging a Crowley vs Aziraphale war when it comes to which character deserves our sympathy and grace because like, the entire point is that they both do. They both deserve the grace they each show humanity and that their respective “offices” never showed them.

[thechargrey]

[empireofthesin]

This whole conversation about smite/smitten/smote between Aziraphale and Crowley is funny when you realise that Aziraphale was most likely told to smite the Serpent, and instead ended up becoming smitten with the Serpent, and he probably told Almighty that the instructions were perhaps not clear enough and so Almighty hit him with a dictionary and gave him a Bookshop.

[awellreadmannequin]

Blue Eye Samurai is perhaps the best show I’ve ever watched for learning interpret a text. Every scene of every episode is dripping with details to latch on to. Every character has levels of ambiguity that allow a critical viewer to draw their own meanings out of their actions. For instance, Mizu can be equally read as:

A parable about how a woman who has learned to speak the language of the violence that a patriarch society has constantly inflicted upon her can understand and enact violence better than the men who are habituated to inflicting violence

A tran-man who uses violence to claim his place in a violent world

A non-binary person who has always sat on the outside of the gendered world and thus has a better understanding of the violence inherent in gendering than anyone else

A bi-racial person who sees their only way to claim an authentic racial identity is to seek revenge in keep with cultural expectations regarding right action

An ōnryo — a vengeful spirit — created by the ways the weight of their history as embodied by their gendered and racial identities has consistently destroyed the hope of positive relations with others

A queer woman upon whom gender and sexual norms have constantly been inflicted as violence lashing out at a heterosexist society in turn

An artisan, single handedly pursue the art of vengeance at the expense of their humanity

A person whose relationship to themselves, their gender, their race, and their body has always been violently defined for them by others defining these for themselves by violently resisting the further imposition of external attempts to define themselves to themselves

And more. So much more. They contain multitudes unlike any character I’ve seen on tv before.

It is a show that resists clear and simplistic interpretation, necessarily requiring the audience to carefully consider their relationship to the events it depicts. What the show is trying to say is very much decided in dialogue with the audience’s interpretive lens. For me, the aspects of the show that stick out the most are those pertaining to the role of women in a violently patriarchal society. Mizu embodies much of the feminine (and lesbian) rage I see and have felt towards a social world that demeans women and refuses to see us as existing outside of our relationships to men. Her position on the margins gives her, and thus us as the audience, a unique perspective on gendered relations that I recognize and relate to. But nothing in my reading leads me to believe that this is the only way to interpret the narrative. There is simply too much interpretative space to fill for one reading alone to be exhaustive. Blue Eye Samurai demands not just reading but rereading. I feel it impossible to grasp the totality of what it says and what it wants to say in a single watch. It is almost academic. And I love it for that.

[medusummer]

yeah

[mimisempai]

As this gif says...

[unreachedgalaxy]

thinking about “harrowhark, i gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it” because while that line literally had me lying on my living room floor to process for like 5 straight minutes, what hurts is that it’s true.

like, harrow never needed gideon to die for her. harrow has never lacked people ready to die for her, and she bears people’s sacrifices like crosses. she’s already two hundred dead children of her house. crux would die for her. aiglamene would die for her. her great aunts would die for her. no, harrow did not need death from gideon - harrow is surrounded by offers of death.

what harrow needs is affection. all those people would throw themselves on a blade for the reverend daughter, but none of them were willing to really love harrowhark - she’s never had gentleness or love any more than gideon has, really. gideon’s sacrifice is different because she really was dying for harrow, not for the reverend daughter, but harrow doesn’t differentiate like that. gideon died for her, and in the moment there was very little choice, but harrow really just needed gideon to stay with her and love her. to live for her.

she didn’t want gideon’s whole life. she just wanted gideon. and what’s heartbreaking is that gideon - or kiriona - is starting to realize that (see: the scene with crux, right at the end of nona the ninth). kiriona realises that her sacrifice wasn’t unique, that harrow has always had people who would happily throw themselves on a blade for her.

what kiriona doesn’t see is that harrow doesn’t think it was meaningless. harrow knows the gravity of gideon’s sacrifice. what kiriona doesn’t see is that all harrow really wants is to have her back.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Hi! I saw you posted a "how to get a s3" post, and a lot of people we're asking how to contact Amzon Prime, and I'm pretty sure this is their headquarters address:

410 terry ave north seattle wa 98109

I'm not 100% sure but I thought it could be helpful! Also neil said that handwritten letters are the best. Thanks for everything you do and have a great day!

Hiya! Thank youu, I have also tried to write to Amazon chat to ask (tho honestly I am not 100% sure I haven't chatted with a bot :D)

They said Amazon.com, P.O. Box 81226, Seattle, WA 98108-1226 (yes the best is the physical letter :))

+ [email protected] as an email

does anyone know what is the best address (both physical and email to use? <3) to write amazon to end the strike and make s3? :)

@neil-gaiman ?❤ (only asking you what is the best address to write amazon to end the strike, nothing about S3 O:))

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Watch S2 on repeat (entirely to the end (you can have it playing in the background)

Introduce new people to the ineffability and have them watch S1+S2

Write to amazon to negoriate with the strikes and make S3

[myrskytuuli]

Okay, so now that it is canon (in the promotional materials) that Crowley listens to Hozier, I assume that in the GO universe Hozier frequents a pub that Crowley also frequents just to write down his drunk ramblings and then turn them into songs, and Crowley does not put the pieces together and instead listens to Hozier songs crying like, I can’t believe how this song understands me.

[lo-ganavnu-klum]

so basically Agnes Nutter wrote a fanfic so good god said "yeah sure this can be canon"

[havelocks]

[elly-sweetheartcrowley]

Episode 5 is called "The Ball" so we have two possibilities:

[akajustmerry]

crowley is sooooo angry aziraphale is helping gabriel because crowley experienced how awfully gabriel treats aziraphale for himself when he was pretending to be aziraphale!!! he loves him so much. it's not even that he's jealous per se, because he knows that az doesn't like the angels that much. no, crowley is absolutely livid that aziraphale is showing kindness to someone who would never in all of time extend that same kindness to him. like imagine knowing first hand this person would literally kill your boyfriend on any given Tuesday afternoon and you come home to find your boyfriend helping that person because your boyfriend just believes in being kind to everyone who needs it, even if its someone who hates you. crowley being angry because aziraphale is doing the exact thing crowley ultimately loves him for, the thing they saved the world with, which is seeing the good even in the most supposedly awful people who don't deserve that grace. you know, kind of like how aziraphale did that with someone else, kinda like how aziraphale believes in crowley, but if crowley knows gabriel doesn't deserve that from aziraphale, maybe he's angry because he thinks that deep down, he doesn't either. where's a sniper to take me out btw

[doctorchemicalx]

good omens season two just feels sluttier somehow, I mean crowley living in his car?? aziraphale starting a war?? hot girls behavior