keeperofcats

[keeperofcats]

Updated Parallels to the Wizard of Oz

So back after Episode 5, I made a post exploring the parallels to the Wizard of Oz that Agatha All Along has.

If you want, you can view it here.

Anyway, I wanted to post an updated theory, because I believe I have a deeper understanding than I had before.

Agatha Harkness: The Wicked Witch of the West. The Antagonist/Villain of the Wizard of Oz, in this case reversed and she is our protagonist. She is responsible for each of the deaths on the road in someway. But unlike the Wicked Witch of the West, she's not actively seeking out to murder Billy and his friends, she wants to protect him. She wants to give him the chance she never got, and she wants to help. Also another reversal, in the Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West is killed when Dorothy splashes her with a bucket of water, which causes her to melt. In a strange twist of fate, it's the water witch that is the path ahead for the coven.

Billy Maximoff: The Wicked Witch of the East. This is a bit of a reversal as in the Wizard of Oz, it is the Wicked Witch of the East who is killed when the house is dropped on her by the Tornado, but in this case the car crash instead gives the Wicked Witch of the East a chance at life. In this

William Kaplan: Dorothy. Is the one who seeks out the Wizard of Oz in the story, in this case, his death gives Billy the chance to be reborn.

The Car Crash: The House Dropping on the Wicked Witch of the East. In this case this event is reversed and it has killed Dorothy instead.

The Hex: The Tornado. When it's dropped the wicked witch of the east is transported to Reality (aka, Oz).

William's Body: The Ruby Slippers. This body is what protects Billy from full on death, and just like Dorothy in the story, Billy takes the ruby slippers from the corpse of William. In this case literally.

Jennifer Kale: Glinda the Witch of the North. Her trial is the first for the coven, she appears at the beginning giving Teen the warning about being careful around Agatha, similar to Glinda in the Wizard of Oz appearing before Dorothy to help her first prepare her for the Wicked Witch of the West. Her first action in her trial, the very beginning of the road, is to help defend Billy from Agatha. She does so by warning him of her danger and her history, and that he should approach her with caution. Of course, with all the reversals in the story, Agatha is not out to kill Billy but is instead projecting both herself and her dead son onto him. But still Billy does take the warning to heart, and the wisdom keeps him from truly revealing himself just yet. Plus she is described by the Lilia as the way forward. Glinda appears at two points in the Wizard of Oz. Once at the beginning to help Dorothy on her journey, and once at the end to help surmise her journey, and teach her how to obtain what she needed on her own. In the end, Glinda helps Dorothy finally get home. Also above irony that the water witch is the way forward for Agatha. I wouldn't be surprised if Jennifer's knowledge is the secret to helping Agatha get her powers back/learn to control them. The High Priestess is said to possess spiritual knowledge, and Agatha is the coven's Spirit Witch.

Sharon Davis: The Scarecrow. She just thought they were having a party. As she walks the road she does try to learn more about witchcraft and her new coven, but in the end, her lack of experience and knowledge doesn't prepare her for the first trial. She is killed by downing two glasses of wine without question and thus not being conscious to put her hair in the potion. Agatha is responsible for her death because she brought her into the coven and the journey down the road despite knowing she knows nothing about witchcraft. She is also the maiden death as well, as she is new/inexperienced to witchcraft.

Alice Wu Gulliver: The Tin Man. Alice came on the road thinking she was looking for her mother, instead she found the closure she needed to reignite her passion and heart for the world. Her death comes from her blasting Agatha with her powers in an attempt to save Agatha from her mother. This act of compassion got her killed as Agatha responded by draining her of all her power/life. Thus Agatha is also responsible for her death. She is the mother death as well, as in life she was always looking out for the maiden of the coven, Billy. And her death came about in a brazen act to save a member of her coven.

Lilia Calderu: The Cowardly Lion. Lilia came on the road because she was hoping to avoid Death, but in actuality needed a coven and community. Her death is finding the courage to face her coming Death head-on, and sacrificing herself to save her coven. Agatha is responsible for her death because she's the one who places the Death Tarot down sealing her fate. Lilia is also the crone death, as her death comes at the end of her long life, and she uses her time to impart a final bit of wisdom on each remaining member of the coven to help them fulfill the roles they'll need to take on after she's gone. For Billy she returns his Spellbook, encouraging him to continue learn and continue practicing the craft. For Agatha she gives a warning about an upcoming battle in order to help her survive. And for Jen, she spends the entire episode preparing her to fulfill the role of the coven's wise woman once she's gone. Encouraging her, building her up, and informing her she's their path forward now.

Evanora Harkness: The Illusion of Oz. Where Oz was just an illusion in the Wizard of Oz, Evanora is very real. While in the story Oz manipulates Dorothy and friends to go out and kill the Wicked Witch, an act to get someone to deal with the biggest threat to Oz. Evanora is just a bitter ghost taking advantage of the road and the trial to abuse her daughter beyond the grave.

Rio Vidal: Oz behind the Curtain. While Oz was just a fraud pretending to be great and powerful, Rio is actually great and powerful. Divine. Death waits at the end of the Road, just as the Emerald city.

The Salem Seven: The flying monkeys. In the Wizard of Oz, the flying monkey's are the Wicked Witches minions that she sends to kidnap Dorothy, here they are a hive-minded coven hell-bent on getting revenge on Agatha for her self-defense massacre of her coven.

[keeperofcats]

Parallels to the Wizard of Oz

Teen: Dorothy. Walking the road for reasons unknown, but seeking something greater than power. Jennifer: The Scarecrow. Needs a reminder her true power is knowledge. Alice: The Tin Man. Needs to learn how to open her heart again. Agatha: The Cowardly Lion. Afraid to face the ghosts of her past. Lilia: Glinda the Witch of the North. Imparts knowledge divined from time and her understanding of people, unfortunately she's best at predicting tragedy. Rio Vidal: The Wicked Witch of the West. Seeks the power of the Ruby Slippers, and is trying to kill Dorothy to obtain them. The Salem Seven: The Flying Monkeys. Sent after Agatha by Rio.

[keeperofcats]

Tumblr Tuesday: Our Flag Means Fanart

OFMD fans, how we doing? To celebrate this season's high tides, here’s some art of our most beloved crew.

Avast, ye! Here be spoilers! We tried to be so restrained that it hurt a little bit, and then we gave up. If you’re caught up but haven’t yet checked out all the fanart, what are you doing may we gently nudge you in that direction. If you haven't been watching season 2, please enjoy it at your leisure, and only then return to this excellent array of art.

@toboldlymuppet:

@geherino:

@mistysblueboxstuff:

@umulata:

@smoothedsmoothie:

@akitalockwood:

@joannabarnum:

@starbramble:

@lookinglass-fic:

@vafrosaon:

@warren-keplers-funk-band:

@a-curious-squirrel:

@lovetositinsilence:

@hansoeii:

@akitalockwood:

@meep--tm:

@piratingsoup:

@shapelytimber:

[keeperofcats]

This is happening again.

[keeperofcats]

Be not afraid 👁️👁️👁️👄👁️👁️👁️

[keeperofcats]

[keeperofcats]

New #SafeSpaceShip requested in Gender Fluid flag colors & another Calypso's Birthday parasol that glows in the dark. (I didn't get photos of the glow this time because I had to ship it out.)

[keeperofcats]

SOMETIMES I draw Crowley like this. SOMETIMES I draw Crowley like that.

Both are accurate.

FIGHT ME.

[keeperofcats]

Something that’s been very interesting to me, in this new wave of post-miniseries Good Omens fandom, is the apparent fannish consensus that Crowley is, in fact, bad at his job.  That he’s actually quite nice.  That he’s been skating by hiding his general goodness from hell by taking credit for human evil and doling out a smattering of tiny benign inconveniences that he calls bad.

I get the urge towards that headcanon, and I do think the Crowley in the miniseries comes off as nicer than the one in the book.  (I think miniseries Crowley and Aziraphale are both a little nicer, a little more toothless, than the versions of themselves in the book.)  But maybe it’s because I was a book fan first, or maybe it’s because I just find him infinitely more interesting this way–I think Crowley, even show!Crowley, has the capacity to be very good at his job of sowing evil.  And I think that matters to the story as a whole.

A demon’s job on Earth, and specifically Crowley’s job on Earth, isn’t to make people suffer.  It’s to make people sin.  And the handful of ‘evil’ things we see Crowley do over the course of the series are effective at that, even if the show itself doesn’t explore them a lot.

Take the cell phone network thing, for instance.  This gets a paragraph in the book that’s largely brushed off in the conversation with Hastur and Ligur, and I think it’s really telling: 

What could he tell them?  That twenty thousand people got bloody furious?  That you could hear the arteries clanging shut all across the city?  And that then they went back and took it out on their secretaries or traffic wardens or whatever, and they took it out on other people?  In all kinds of vindictive little ways which, and here was the good bit, they thought up themselves.  For the rest of the day.  The pass-along effects were incalculable.  Thousands and thousands of souls all got a faint patina of tarnish, and you hardly had to lift a finger.

In essence, without any great expenditure of effort (look, I’d never say Crowley isn’t slothful, but that just makes him efficient), he’s managed to put half of London in a mental and emotional state that Crowley knows will make them more inclined to sin.  He’s given twenty thousand or a hundred thousand or half a million people a Bad Day.  Which, okay, it’s just a bad day–but bad days are exhausting.  Bad days make you snap, make you fail at things, make you feel guiltier and more stressed out in the aftermath when you wake up the next day, makes everything a little worse.  Bad days matter.

Maybe it’s because I’m a believer in the ripple effect of small kindnesses, and that means I have to believe in its opposite.  Maybe it’s just that I, personally, have had enough days that were bad enough that a downed cell network (or an angry coworker because of a downed cell network) would honestly have mattered.  But somebody who deliberately moves through the world doing their best to make everyone’s lives harder, with the aim of encouraging everybody around them to be just a little crueler, just a little angrier, just a little less empathetic–you know what, yes.  I do call that successful evil.

It’s subtle, is the thing.  That’s why Hastur and Ligur don’t get it, don’t approve of it.  Not because Crowley isn’t good at his job, but because we’ve seen from the beginning that Hastur and Ligur are extremely out of touch with humanity and the modern world and just plain aren’t smart enough to get it.  It’s a strategy that relies on understanding how humans work, what our buttons are and how to press them.  It’s also a strategy that’s remarkably advanced in terms of free will.  Hastur and Ligur deliberately tempt and coerce and entrap individuals into sinning, but Crowley never even gets close.  We never see him say to a single person, ‘hey, I’ve got an idea for you, why don’t you go do this bad thing?’  He sets up conditions to encourage humans to actually do the bad things they’re already thinking of themselves.  He creates a situation and opens it up to the results of free choice.  Every single thing a person does after Crowley’s messed with them is their own decision, without any demonic coercion to blame for any of it.

You see it again in the paintball match.  “They wanted real guns, I gave them what they wanted.”  In this case, Crowley didn’t need to irritate anybody into wanting to do evil–the desire to shoot and hurt and maybe even kill their own coworkers was already present in every combatant on that paintball field.  Crowley just so happened to be there at exactly the right time to give them the opportunity to turn that fleeting, kind-of-bad-but-never-acted-upon desire into real, concrete, attempted murder.  Sure, nobody died–where would be the fun in a pile of corpses?  But now forty-odd people who may never have committed a real act of violence in their entire lives, caught in a moment of weakness with real live weapons in their hands, will get to spend the rest of their lives knowing that given the opportunity and the tiniest smidgen of plausible deniability, they are absolutely the sort of people who could and would kill another human being they see every single day over a string of petty annoyances.

Crowley understands the path between bad thought and evil action.  He knows it gets shorter when somebody is upset or irritated, and that it gets shorter when people practice turning one into the other.  He understands that sometimes, removing a couple of practical obstacles is the only nudge a person needs–no demonic pressure or circumvention of free will required.

I love this interpretation, because I love the idea that Crowley, who’s been living on Earth for six thousand years, actually gets people in a way no other demon can.  I love the idea that Crowley, the very first tempter, who was there when free will was invented, understands how it works and how to use it better than maybe anyone else.  And I really love the idea that Crowley our hero, who loves Aziraphale and saves the world, isn’t necessarily a good guy.

There’s a narrative fandom’s been telling that, at its core, is centered around the idea that Crowley is good, and loves and cares and is nice, and always has been.  Heaven and its rigid ideas of Right and Wrong is itself the bad thing.  Crowley is too good for Heaven, and was punished for it, but under all the angst and pain and feelings of hurt and betrayal, he’s the best of all of them after all.

That’s a compelling story.  There’s a reason we keep telling it.  The conflict between kindness and Moral Authority, the idea that maybe the people in charge are the ones who’re wrong and the people they’ve rejected are both victim and hero all at once–yeah.  There’s a lot there to connect with, and I wouldn’t want to take it away from anyone.  But the compelling story I want, for me, is different.

I look at Crowley and I want a story about someone who absolutely has the capacity for cruelty and disseminating evil into the world.  Somebody who’s actually really skilled at it, even if all he does is create opportunities, and humans themselves just keep living down to and even surpassing his expectations.  Somebody who enjoys it, even.  Maybe he was unfairly labeled and tossed out of heaven to begin with, but he’s embraced what he was given.  He’s thrived.  He is, legitimately, a bad person.

And he tries to save the world anyway.

He loves Aziraphale.  He helps save the entire world.  Scared and desperate and determined and devoted, he drives through a wall of fire for the sake of something other than himself.  He likes humans, their cleverness, their complexities, the talent they have for doing the same sort of evil he does himself, the talent they have for doing the exact opposite.  He cares.

It’s not a story about someone who was always secretly good even though they tried to convince the whole world and themself that they weren’t.  It’s a story about someone who, despite being legitimately bad in so many ways, still has the capacity to be good anyway.  It’s not about redemption, or about what Heaven thinks or judges or wants.  It’s about free will.  However terrible you are or were or have the ability to be, you can still choose to do a good thing.  You can still love.  You can still be loved in return.

And I think that matters.

[keeperofcats]

why is this the hottest thing i've ever seen

[keeperofcats]

[keeperofcats]

A day late for Frenchie Friday.

Source (Season 1)

[keeperofcats]

🎨🖌️ day 48 of OFMD colouring pages 🏴‍☠️🏳️‍🌈

[keeperofcats]

I found a purse in the perfect "Buttons Blue" at a thrift store, so I used it as a base for this: Basking In Moonglow purse. The moon & reflected moonlight glow in the dark and floresce in blacklight. I used Lit, Blue Lit, and Ultra by Culture Hustle. I thinned pearlescent acrylic paint to create a translucent shimmering top coat. This purse is a shining tribute to the beauty of the moon over the ocean.

[keeperofcats]

(x)

[keeperofcats]

I have this headcanon (is it a headcanon if it doesn't happen in the series?) that Neil Gaiman asked for hundreds of extras/background actors as demons for the scene of the attack of the bookshop, but when he talked to the Budget Department the dialogue was like the one between Shax and Furfur and then that scene was born.

[keeperofcats]

now the time stands still we can drink our fill out of silver that will never tarnish like we will