so I started a new anxiety medication this past week and so far it’s been going very well except that I have extremely vivid dreams and apparently sleep texting. I seem to have sent this at 3am and i have no memory of it
okay this reminded me. i’m disabled and i’ve gone to the hospital a lot and one time in college during finals season i had to write my professor an email excusing my absence but the dilauded kicked in and well
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.
As someone who did protest in 2020 and 2022 it makes my blood boil when people say we need to protest like the French. We did!!! And the police tried to kill us and everyone else decided that we were thugs and terrorists.
We need journalists to cover protests the way they do in France. We need a public that doesn't automatically assume cops are telling the truth and justified in their actions. The problem is not with the protesters it's with the overwhelming anti-protester propaganda in this country.
she's outright saying she believes queer people are murderers when all we want is to be treated equal. from the murders of queer people, we know murder does not create equality
If you 1) haven’t read Potter or 2) received a lackluster Holocaust education or 3) both, let me provide you with JUST A SMATTERING of the parallels between the Death Eaters and the Nazis:
Death Eaters considered muggleborns “not witches/wizards” and confiscated their wands/Nazis considered Jews “not Germans” and confiscated their travel documents
When Death Eaters took over the Ministry of Magic, a whole new department was formed to print propaganda materials about the “dangers” of muggles and muggleborns/Nazi propaganda is downright legendary for how all-encompassing it was, but indeed, the idea that Jews and “degenerates” were “dangerous” was very prevalent in it
The Death Eaters are obsessed with “preserving blood purity”/the Nazis were obsessed with “the Aryan race”
Scenes of a trial in the DE-run Ministry of Magic are almost word-for-word recreations of pre-deportation interrogations of Jews
Muggleborns are no longer permitted to attend Hogwarts/Jews were forced out of academic institutions and denied access to radios, which were a major form of receiving news at the time
What remained of Hogwarts was being systematically dismantled and destroyed/mass book burnings and shutdowns of “subversive” academics and educational centers were common
Voldemort is half-Muggle/there’s a common myth that Hitler was half-Jewish
Hermione, a muggleborn, is forcibly branded with the slur “mudblood”/Jews were forced to wear yellow stars emblazoned with the word “Jew” (which is a normal descriptor, but can also be used as a slur)
World Cup scenes in the fourth book are reminiscent of pogroms like Krystallnacht
…..AND THIS IS ONLY WHAT I CAN REMEMBER HAVING LAST READ THE FINAL BOOK WHEN IT CAME OUT. As you can see, it’s not subtle. It’s 100% a Nazi analogy.
And now I will remind you that TERFs have recently suggested that to win, they need to say trans people and their cis allies are Nazis. That’s only very slightly a paraphrase, by the way. If Tumblr’s blog search wasn’t so broken I could search my own blog and I’ve taken a screenshot of this LITERALLY SOMETIME IN THE LAST SIX WEEKS.
She has gone full fascist. Deplatform her NOW. And if you want to whine about “but it’s my childhood” “but it’s my special interest” “but it’s fun” fine. Did you know a lot of members of the Nazi party joined it not because they hated Jews but because they liked Hitler’s economic messaging, or who joined reluctantly in order to hang onto jobs or prestige? Do you know what we call those people today?
here is the link to the petition, i think since it is a parliamentary petition it should only be signed by canadian citizens, but if I am wrong please correct me.
I feel like we don’t talk enough about how having chronic illness and/or chronic pain makes you irritable. It makes you grumpy. It can make you a not very fun person to be around.
We don’t talk enough about the ugly sides of chronic illness/pain. The parts where you feel like a bad person not because of the pain in of itself but because everyone else thinks you are pushing them away. The times when you don’t bear it like a saint and the roughest edges of your personality come out. Where maybe you do hurt other people’s feelings. Its a complicated side of the experience thats resists an easy answer.
Another aspect of this is that people eventually start to run out of sympathy, or patience, or whatever else drives them to be forgiving at first. For me, when my conditions developed, people were ready to help without question, would say they understood when I did get grumpy and snap at them, or when I would have these meltdowns from being so overwhelmed with the constant pain.
The sympathy most folks have for people is built on the idea that people get better. But when it’s chronic, that isn’t a thing anymore. You can learn to manage it, to live around it best you can, but there’s rarely if ever a cure for these things. It’s just a new normal.
So eventually, when it starts being clear that you aren’t going to magically get better and go back to things before, that sympathy runs out. It’s your normal life, why are you struggling? This is your every day, so why are you angry? Why are you still complaining? Just get over it and live your life. But just like every life, there’s still bad days.
It makes it all pretty hard to talk about the bad things when they are so easily dismissed with time.
Sorry as someone who teaches rhetoric this is a wonderful response to the Paradox of Tolerance. I cannot tell you how many times my students have had debates about this. This is the response. This does indeed fix it. I cannot wait to tell this to my classes now. Philosophically and rhetorically this completely resolved the Paradox of Tolerance and I am floored by its simplicity and angry I never saw it before.
tangentwithtanner
titsay
stormborns
ellievsbear
blakekathryn
