Quiet, Gentle, And Romantic

Reblogging GO and whatever strikes my fancy PFP by @and-his-hands-were-24-crows (AKA Pocket)

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

Honestly I love my early-stage WIPs because they really run the gamut between "moderately high detail" and "janky pencil outline that may or may not get used."

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

-Too Simple (II)-

Just. Y'know. Another thought.

Details under the cut.

[faildyke]

Thinking really hard about Ianthe. She convinced her one-sided lesbian situationship to give her a new arm after she got dismembered by a saint. She and her twin sister love to dip their toes into incest sometimes but not in ways you’d expect. She also uses her magic to make herself look sickly so her sister can breast boobily. She and Jesus might be fucking but neither of them probably enjoys it. She voluntarily wore a maid dress in a game show inside her own mind. I hate her. She’s awesome. What is wrong with her.

[faildyke]

Oh yeah and there’s also the cannibalism. I guess.

[darwinsleastfavourite]

She’s the character ever. She routinely dresses for and inserts herself into scenes as the sex appeal, knowing she looks like a drowned albino rat. She’s smart enough to know going mad with power has consequences and she’s okay with it because she’s also smarter than most of the consequences. She’s canonically cannibalized people and it’s the least interesting thing about her. She’s even gay.

[thememedaddy]

[venusvhs]

i'm like if coronabeth tridentarius grew up without ianthe there

[may12324]

Dyke Knights ⚔️

[may12324]

✨️HAPPY PRIDE✨️

[may12324]

Hilda and Wulfrun sneaking a moment away together, taking a break from staging a coup of their cursed convent

[cheeseplants]

Fic: Let Me Tempt you - part two

And now for something that has nothing to do with S3 whatsoever.

Fancy some ineffable Romans? Gratuitous oyster eating? Crowley being a mess? Some hurt and comfort and some good old fashioned smut? And a good ol' happy ending?

I bring you Chapter two of Let Me Tempt You after a two year hiatus.

Summary:

Oysters are known aphrodisiacs after all.

Rating: E

Wordcount: 8,716

Excerpt (from chap two)

“You sure you want this, angel?”

“You are the original tempter, are you not?”

Aziraphale stared up at Crowley, all wide open, hopeful. 

He had seen the look before; quick drinks turned into sunrises, Aziraphale’s teeth ripping into a rack of ribs, Aziraphale’s eyes woozy from half a bottle of wine, Aziraphale tongue’s licking the last spray of seawater from his lips as his sun-kissed cheeks bloomed under Crowley’s gaze.

Crowley had fought the urge to lead Aziraphale down this path for so long, like Neptune turning the tide, he had pushed with all his might. Instead, he allowed himself tiny temptations to hold in his hands like gemstones; precious, delicate things that sparkled, and shone in the darkness. 

Those small morsels fed him when the cold and lonely days of demonhood weighed too heavy on his shoulders. Crowley’s stomach constricted, like a rope had wrapped itself around his belly. 

Read more on AO3

Start from the beginning

Dive in to Chapter two

Thanks to @happynachohologram and @groovynightstrawberry for the beta.

This was also inspired by 24 Crows art from a Christmas exchange many moons ago, so send them love for their art!

@goodomensafterdark

[zqssq]

I think this is the funniest scene of the show this far

[maruti-bitamin]

dew

ink + watercolour

cara/insta/bluesky/ store

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

Several years ago, I was emotionally shattered (positive?) by the episode of The Magicians "A Life in the Day." The crux of the episode was two characters solving a mosaic puzzle that took them the entirety of their natural lives. They needed to solve the puzzle to find a key that would help them save the world. You watched their relationship grow and change and evolve every day as they grew older. They fell in and out of love, with each other and with other people, they argued and laughed and got angry and were comforted.

They grew old. One of them died. The puzzle was solved, and the surviving man gave away the key to somebody else who needed it. The key that it had taken an entire human life to acquire.

I think about this episode sometimes. Today, I am thinking about it because I think the last scene in the bookshop could have been like this. Aziraphale and Crowley with their shelves and shelves of empty books. Sitting together and rewriting the universe. As they write, they argue. They share jokes. They finally have those confusing, messy conversations that they desperately need to have. They write and they find their way towards reconciliation. They touch hands while reaching for a new blank book. One of them needs some space, and they write on opposite ends of the bookshop. They drift back together. They make tea. They sit shoulder to shoulder. The write the world together every single day.

And maybe when they finish, they hand the world off to the humans they made it for.

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

Aziraphale is thinking about hats.

It isn't on purpose, at first. He is remembering the hat that Crowley wore in 1941. He quite liked that hat. Very dashing. Rakish, even. And if it covered up that lovely hair... well. It always came off, eventually.

Aziraphale surreptitiously looks at Crowley over the top of a blank volume and begins to write about that hat. He imagines the tilt of it. The way the fabric felt under his fingers. (Of course he touched it. He's always been a sensory creature.) From there it's only a short jump to writing about other hats. The ridiculous tall thing from Edinburgh. Its just barely more sedate cousin a hundred years later in London. And there were his own hats, of course. He'd always been secretly fond of his gardener's sunhat. He wonders where it got to.

Before he knows it, Aziraphale has written the entire history of hats. It fills several volumes. Crowley has twigged to what he's doing, whether from glancing over his shoulder or from Aziraphale occasionally reading aloud as he writes.

Or, perhaps, from the variety of hats that have made spontaneous appearances around the bookshop. Those certainly hadn't been there before.

Crowley catches Aziraphale's eye and, with a little flick of his wrist, deposits that hat from the Blitz--his church hat, his bootlegger hat, his bullet catch hat--onto his head. He smiles a little, blink and you'll miss it.

He returns to the volume he is writing about birds.

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

Crowley is thinking about fire. The bookshop on fire. The streets of London on fire.

His car on fire.

(His body on fire.)

The burning of Heaven.

The eternal flame licking up the pages of the Book of Life. A flaming sword (flaming like anything). Libraries and cities and civilizations and witches and people who were not witches and little matchsticks in the dark and fires in caves and oil lamps in the early hours of morning and the surface of every bright, bright star.

Hell doesn't actually have as much fire as one might think.

Crowley is thinking about fire and he doesn't know what his heart is doing. And he doesn't look up from the page, but he starts talking. It is easier to talk, when he doesn't have to look. He says,

"Those angels burned you, you know."

Those angels made you walk into fire. They brought Hell to you and washed you in it. Like cleansing eternity of you was somehow right.

He may be imagining the quietly breathed "oh," somewhere out there in the stacks. He can't look up. Something has made the page in front of him wet.

[akajustmerry]

In light of the no.1 trending topic on this site, I'd like to inform youse that Kitty Kendall, one of the survivors who bravely spoke out against Neil Gaiman and accused him of rape in 2025, has said here and here that if you are looking to support her and other survivors, you can make a donation to OurVOICE (the counselling service Kendall herself used) or your local rape crisis centre. If you can't make a donation, you can help to ensure people do not forget what Kendall and other survivors have gone through and continue to go through as they pursue legal action, and that Gaiman has already spent a lot of money in the attempt to sue these women for speaking out.

[quileane22]

GO3

Ok but if Crowley didn't have his miracles, then that must mean Aziraphale is responsible for this slutty little outfit?! 🤣

[velvetvulgarities]

Those trousers should be illegal

[starmaker-astral]

CROWLEY KISSED (HIS FINGERS) BACK

I hadn't realized that on my first watch. My day is so much better now

Aziraphale reciprocated, Crowley understood the symbolism and kissed back ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

That kiss is so them it's perfect

[rjcee-art]

I've been saying this to basically everyone the last 48 hours: When I was orthodox and consistently going to church, one of the ways we were taught to venerate icons was to kiss our fingers and then press that to the icon. Not only is Aziraphale reciprocating the kiss, he's doing it in such a reverent way. To quote my dad when I was explaining this to him: "It's a different kind of love."

I'M SO INSANE ABOUT THESE TWOOOOOOO

[starmaker-astral]

AZIRAPHALE KISSED CROWLEY LIKE A BELIEVER KISS AN ICON TO VENERATE THEM

[suzzy-5]

the intimacy of calling your partner by adding a little "my" before it, my baby, my darling, my sweetheart, my life>>>

[paperclipninja]

Muriel having "bad" written on their cheek is one of the most in-character things I've ever seen in my life

[highlyincorrect]

Honest (SPOILER) thoughts regarding the GO finale, I think a valuable piece of writing people are kinda overlooking is the INCREDIBLE subversion of their main motivations

Like we as the audience are lead to believe from the start that Crowley is this jaded, cynical little fucker who’s fond of one person and one person only. The typical “nothing in this world matters except you” grumpy who doesn’t give a shit about a universe that rejected him. Aziraphale, likewise, is pretty easily seen as the bigger picture guy, it’s obvious he loves Crowley deeply but it’s the mission of the larger world, the good of the people, that draws his time and energy- he chooses that responsibility more than Crowley. These are the roles we’ve seen them play and the archetypes we’ve kinda locked them in to. It matches with their grumpy vs sunshine attitudes, their aesthetics etc

Then in s2 we started noticing some cracks in it. We’ve met Angel Crowley who is a beautiful sunshiny dreamer who cares so deeply about the gorgeous world around him. Aziraphale starts to get a bit wrapped up in his own self interest from time to time, caring more about his bookshop or Crowley or even Jim than his larger mission. These little moments added depth to their characters, but ultimately didn’t shake our ideas of them. But THEN-

When they were asked by God what they would save, everything in the world has been stripped from them. The universe is lost- all that remains is each other and the final question of “what in the whole of existence matters to you most?” And we think we know what they’ll say, we think the way we’ve been taught all this time- Crowley is the selfish lover and Aziraphale is the heartbroken rejector.

But instead we meet their cores. We meet the truest stripped down versions of themselves and we learn the truth. Aziraphale picks Crowley. His lover, his life, the being that completes him. He makes the selfish, or loving, choice, no matter what it means to the world. And Crowley- Crowley is crying for the world. He is so utterly helplessly desperate for humanity to have their chance that he’s willing to throw away everything out of his sheer love for them. We’ve met the old part of him again, the artist and the lover, the selfless one he’s had within him all along. And for Aziraphale we’ve finally met the lover in him too, the one who’s finally willing to put his love for Crowley above all else.

I don’t know but I think it’s absolutely beautiful to get to know characters that you thought had these black and white motivations, only to discover that when it all comes down to it, they are capable of throwing everything we assumed about them out the window. There’s no black and white or even grey, but a whole world of mixed up colours and choices that make them whole. The sinful Angel and the selfless demon to the last.