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[benjamental]

Ludwik Stasiak - Dandelions (ca. 1900)

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you came back wrong and i am racked with guilt because i cannot bear to see you like this and i should have let you rest. i loved you so much that i defied death itself but i do not think either of us are happy

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Vilhelm Hammershøi Sunbeams; Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams 1900 oil on canvas

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My Gabriel hot take is that the reason he’s Like That in season one is because God designed him to be someone who is really passionate about, like, operating charcoal grills and experimenting with microbrewing, and he’s not getting appropriate enrichment in Heaven, which is leading to behavioral issues.

My ideal season 3 Gabriel plotline would be that he has chilled out into a friendly, weirdly well-adjusted guy whose deepest desire is to host barbecues. I also think he should have decided, apropos of nothing, that Aziraphale and Crowley are his best friends, with seemingly no understanding that Crowley holds a grudge and would immolate him at the first opportunity. He calls them frat bro names like “Big Z” and “Crow Man,” and wants to invite them over for board game and charcuterie nights and Beelzebub has to be like “babe they absolutely do NOT want to come over for board game and charcuterie nights.”

[benjamental]

𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐒 x 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐉𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐀 || part 2/5 psd || insp.

[benjamental]

Thomas Wilmer Dewing, The Song, 1891, oil on canvas, 26 1/2 x 34 in. The Lunder Collection, 2013.111

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I am beside myself with glee at being dedicated this delightful crack fic by the spectacularly talented mayhawk. Over the past few months, I’ve become an ardent admirer of mayhawk’s Good Omens stories on AO3, which are beautifully written and inventive, diverse in genre and consistently surprising. Each one is a wonder, and I can’t recommend them enough.

clawed dreams all (an always crashing digression)

you guys I am so sorry about this but:

Hell’s annual offices parties have been in the form of a carnival for, oh, millennia. Except it’s Hell, so, you know. This year, the prizes are somebody’s idea of a sick joke, the only kind Hell knows, really. The only prizes available at this year’s carnival are...a host of stuffed angel effigies arranged on the back walls, each of them bearing an unsettling resemblance to one angel or another, all of them unspeakably vulgar. Crowley’s got to win the Aziraphale one, just so he can see the angel’s face when he brings it back.

A completely gratuitous, self-indulgent spinoff of footnote #34 in always crashing (in the same car). For Benjamental, who keeps encouraging my weird head-canon of Hell’s annual office parties.

(I promise, back to our regularly scheduled programming soon)

One of the advantages of the annual Hell parties was that, being Hellish, they were always ahead of the trend. 1 Sometimes too far ahead. For instance, the dance rave in 1346 complete with plague masks and real live plague rats. Crowley’s never been sure, but he thinks Pestilence had let a few plague rats escape the buffet line when Beelzebub’s back was turned, and, well, there you were. There was the sock hop Hell had in 902 BC. 2 Or the MTV themed party in 32. At least the variety was something. Rather unmercifully, somewhere around the 1500s, Satan had developed a mania for carnivals, so the yearly ‘do became a carnival, and did not stop.3 Satan had particularly enjoyed the American mid-2000s carnivals, full of flashing neon lights and nauseating rides and a bevy of fried foods. All the bands played “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” with new and improved lyrics. Hell’s carnivals had all kinds of things: carousels, 4 freak shows, 5 the holy water dunk tank of Erics. The hall of mirrors was not to be thought of.

All Hell turned out. It was compulsory.

In the mid nineteenth century, Crowley had shown up as bidden. 6 Demons of every shape and size swarmed the midway, clutching ice cream cones that melted down your hands (or claws, or talons, or flippers) as soon as you took them, ganged up to jeer back at the demons running the booths (torture duty, it was considered, manning them). This particular year, though, Satan, tired of winning all of the games, every year,7 had sat the year out. Satan had told them all at the opening ceremonies he wanted to see a little more initiative out of the demons. “It should hurt you if you don’t win,” he’d said, grinning.

Crowley’d skulked around the edges of the carnival, considering and passing up in turn the ring toss (Cerebus was not letting anyone win that one), the shooting galley (the splatter was disgusting) and the duck game (Dagon was a shoe-in; she rose to the surface as Crowley passed, hissing, her teeth full of feathers). Besides, the prizes were, as far as he could tell, the same across every booth. It was somebody’s idea of a sick joke, the only kind Hell knew, really.8 The only prizes available at this year’s carnival were …a host of stuffed angel effigies arranged on the back walls, each of them bearing an unsettling resemblance to one angel or another, and each of them unspeakably vulgar. They’re being handed out by the surly demons behind the counter who took your tickets and a bit of your skin, or scales, or feathers with them.9

Continue reading the rest and footnotes at:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/55403731

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Poetry King 👑

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I literally spit water all over my screen.

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jazz-induced psychosis

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‘Study of a Young Man, Seated’ by John Singer Sargent, c. 1895.

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I fundamentally disagree with Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. "Never use two words when one will do," "don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do," I'm going to turn a single sentence into an essay and it's going to cost five hundred dollars per word because those are the right words to get across what I mean without ambiguity and misunderstanding, thankyouverymuch

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Burt Glinn, San Jose, 1979

Magnum photos

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Léon Spilliaert (Belgian, 1881-1946) - Digue et plage, Chalet Royal et galeries d'Ostende, Indian ink, ink wash and colored pencil on paper, 64.8 x 49.6 cm (1908-09)

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Unknown, 1900