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ethereal-not-occult · 3 years

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patience and the mulberry

"With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown."

Fandom: Good Omens Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) Characters: Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale (Good Omens) Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Fluff and Angst, Character(s) of Color, Sericulture, silkworms, past religious trauma, but nothing bad happens in this fic I promise, mixed bookverse w/ TV elements, references to Chinese culture Notes: Originally written for the @goodomensfashionzine !

“I'll only be a minute, dear.” Aziraphale kissed Crowley's cheek as he opened the door of the Bentley. “You don't have to see me to the door if you don't want to.”

Crowley tightened his grip on the wheel. “Sure, angel. Sounds good to me.” The sibilants slid far too quickly past his clenched jaw, and he bit his tongue to stop the instinctive hiss from escaping.

Aziraphale gave him a sympathetic look, but shut the Bentley's door behind him and soon disappeared through the doors of the church. Once he was out of sight, Crowley slumped forward slightly, sliding his sunglasses up and rubbing at his eyes. A few deep breaths later, and he felt composed enough to exit the Bentley himself in blatant disregard for the “NO PARKING” sign on the curb.¹

[¹ Given his new job position (or lack thereof), lawbreaking was no longer a necessity, but old habits die hard.]

The bright afternoon sun made him wince a bit, and two robins in a nearby bush were getting frisky in a way he would never be able to unhear, but they made it easier to forget the distant wail of air sirens. Even standing out on the road, Crowley's skin prickled faintly with the remembered sting of consecrated ground.

He pushed the feeling aside and walked resolutely forward. Aziraphale was bound to take his sweet time as he mooned over the church's dusty old tomes, but Crowley had his own investigations to conduct while he waited. No rest for the wicked and all that.

The concrete pavement under his snakeskin shoes gave way to grass, and the tingling sensation in his soles faded. Soon he found himself at his intended destination—an Edenic grove of mulberry trees, clustered together in a ring in the church's backyard. He'd spotted them on the drive over and couldn't resist the temptation of a closer look.

Crowley wandered into the garden with a scrutinizing eye. They were young, for trees, but growing well despite their callowness. A particularly stocky sapling hardly flinched when Crowley gave it a token glare, much to his disappointment. Then again, outdoor plants were rarely as well-behaved as properly cowed houseplants. It seemed this attitude persisted even in ecclesiastic gardens such as these.

He cast a surreptitious glance over his shoulder, then reached a hand up into the tree's umbrella-like branches and tugged. The season wasn't quite right for fruits, but he still withdrew clutching a handful of dark ripe mulberries. Hardly apples, but his lips twitched upwards nonetheless. He plucked a berry from the pile and raised it to his lips.

“Zaoshang hao!”

Only a hasty miracle saved Crowley from choking as he jumped and swiveled around. Hovering right outside the churchyard was a middle-aged human, well-dressed and smiling pleasantly at him. Judging by her formal clothing and the Bible she carried, she was a part of the congregation, maybe even the priest herself. Crowley swallowed and stepped backwards.

“Ni shi jiaohui de xinshou ma?” the human called again, picking her way across the dewy grass in his direction. Crowley eyed the Bible she held, willing himself not to break out into hives.

“Um. Wo bu—er, no. I'm not new. Not here for church at all, actually.” He fidgeted and clasped his hands, still full of pilfered mulberries, behind his back. “Just waiting for someone.”

The human raised an eyebrow. “You're welcome to wait inside, if you like,” she said, also switching to English. “I reckon we still have biscuits left from the children's morning service—”

“No!” Crowley said too quickly, and perhaps too sharply. He winced. “I mean. That won't be necessary. I'd much rather stay out here, if it isn't too much trouble.”

The human gave him a Look. Crowley's cheeks heated and he averted his eyes, willing his sunglasses a few shades darker.

“Beautiful, aren't they?”

Crowley's head shot back up. The human had turned her back to him and was running a hand through the glossy green leaves of the nearest mulberry tree. Crowley could practically see the branches stretch out in delight beneath her touch, like a purring cat.

“Volunteers from our congregation take care of them,” the human continued, smiling at the young tree. “The kids here like raising silkworms, you see, and we welcome them to pick leaves from the trees each week to feed them.”

Silkworms. Of course. Despite himself, a hazy memory rose to the forefront of his mind: Sichuan, China, several hundreds of years ago. A family farm, weathered and cozy and oozing enough sheer goodness to make the average demon ill with it. Crowley wouldn't normally be caught dead in such a place, but he had owed a favour to the angel. His fingers twitched at the phantom memory of butter-soft silk fibres against his skin; long, winding threads that stretched out thin and fine, tangling so easily around his uncertain fingers. With this memory came the golden, moon-round face of a child he hadn't thought about in centuries, grinning toothily as they held out a box to him, a box filled with small pale larvae that wriggled among the spade-shaped leaves. “Zhe jiao can.”

Crowley forced himself to return to the present. The human was speaking to him.

“—waiting on Mr. Fell?” she asked.

Crowley blinked. Shook himself a little. “Yeah. He's helping out with the restoration of some old manuscript or other.”

The human smiled again. It was an unnervingly piercing expression. “I'm aware. I was the one who requested his help. Such a lovely man. Are you a friend of his?”

Crowley tensed. “His husband, actually.”

He braced himself, but the human only brightened. “Goodness, then you must be Mr. Crowley! Mr. Fell talks ever so much about you. Finally gone and tied the knot then, have you?”

Before Crowley could stammer out a reply, something dinged loudly, making him jump. The human pulled a phone out from her pocket and squinted at the screen.

“Sorry, I have to run back inside. But it was lovely meeting you, Mr. Crowley.” She stuck out a hand—thankfully not the one that had been holding the Bible—and after a brief hesitation, Crowley shook it. As quickly as she had arrived, the human disappeared from the garden, leaving Crowley alone and off-kilter amid a grove of mulberry trees.

---

Aziraphale emerged from the church around an hour later to find Crowley seated on the curb next to the Bentley, basking in the last rays of the afternoon sun as he scrolled through his phone.

“My dear,” the angel sighed. His joints creaked as he eased himself down to sit next to Crowley on the roadside. “Don't tell me you've been sitting here the entire time.”

“Nope,” Crowley said, popping the ‘p’. “I toured the gardens for a bit. Swiped some fruits, too. The mulberries aren’t half-bad, for a bunch of church plants, but they’ll need a good deal more threatening before they're really up to snuff.”

Crowley stopped when he saw Aziraphale chewing his lip, brow furrowed as he studied Crowley's face. Now it was Crowley's turn to sigh.

“Really, angel. It's fine. I was hardly bored.”

The expression didn't leave Aziraphale's face. A soft brown hand reached out and brushed aside stray wisps of hair from Crowley's forehead. The demon hadn't bothered to cut it since the Apocalypse-that-wasn't, and it was growing longer and more unruly by the day.

“I'm fine.” Crowley caught Aziraphale's hand and held it, carefully. He pressed his lips against the well-manicured fingers. “It was years ago, angel, and we both came out of it all right. You don't need to worry about me.”

Aziraphale still looked vaguely distressed as Crowley drew him close. With the sun setting behind him, framing his face and curly dark hair in a golden halo, he was the most beautiful thing Crowley had ever seen.

He kissed him then, right there on the road, in full sight of the church and probably Someone Else, too, if She happened to be watching at that particular moment. Once, he would've been terrified of such a public display, but he hadn't gone through hellfire and holy water to care anymore about what others thought of them.

As he helped Aziraphale into the Bentley, he noticed abruptly that the angel was carrying what appeared to be a shoebox, of all things, along with his usual camelhair coat.

“What on Earth is that?”

“Oh!” Aziraphale carefully pushed the box over to Crowley. “Mrs. Lao gave it to me once I'd finished with those manuscripts. She said it was a gift for you, actually. Have the two of you met before?”

Crowley stared down at the box, baffled. “We talked for a bit in the gardens just now, but I can’t imagine why…”

He trailed off, and his mouth dropped open as Aziraphale eased open the lid and beheld the contents with a raised eyebrow.

“Good heavens. Are those caterpillars?”

“Silkworms,” Crowley corrected automatically, leaning in for a closer look. There were so many of them, somehow both smaller and larger than he remembered, all white and wiggly and chomping away busily at the layers of mulberry leaves filling their box. None of them paid any attention whatsoever to their occult observers hovering above them.

“Why would she give you such a thing? Not that they aren't dear little creatures,” Aziraphale added hastily, glancing into the box, “but I doubt I have the means to keep them in the bookshop.”

“No need,” Crowley said before he could stop himself. “I can raise 'em in my flat.”

Aziraphale gave him a curious look. “You know how to care for these… insects?”

“Yeah.” Crowley gently shut the lid of the inhabited shoebox and curled a hand around the Bentley's stick-shift. “I've done something like this, before. I know what I'm doing.”

“If you say so.” Suddenly Aziraphale chuckled. At Crowley's affronted look, he demurred, “I'm not making fun, my dear. It's only that you still manage to surprise me, even after all these years.”

Aziraphale leaned in and pecked Crowley's cheek, making him blush red and sputter. Much to his disgruntlement, the Bentley chirped a light-hearted rendition of Haydn's Crazy Little Thing Called Love all the way home.

---

Crowley had spent the past eleven years co-parenting the Antichrist with Aziraphale.² They had faced this challenge head-on, and in his opinion, it hadn’t gone too shabbily. Now, without the threat of the Apocalypse hanging over his head, becoming a surrogate parent was far less daunting the second time around.

[² Even if young Warlock hadn't really been the son of Satan, it was the principle of the thing.]

Still, Crowley worried. He had always been something of a worrier, and that hadn't changed even after the First Day of the Rest of Their Lives.

After dropping off Aziraphale at the bookshop, Crowley returned to his flat, where he commenced the preparations for introducing his unexpected twenty-odd guests to their new home. This was accomplished by miracling up a small glass aquarium onto his desk, lining the bottom with paper towels, and carefully (read: nervously) placing the silkworms one by one into the tank. Once this was done, Crowley scattered the half-eaten mulberry leaves from the box around the aquarium. The silkworms set upon their interrupted lunch with all the enthusiasm of Aziraphale devouring a meringue pie at the Ritz.

Crowley slumped into his chair, took off his sunglasses with a wince, and rested his chin on his desk, staring into the glass tank.

“I raised your ancestors once, you know,” Crowley informed the wriggling creatures. “Tiny farm in China several centuries back. We'd weave branches together into a tray and let you loose inside. Bit like how manmade beehives work, or something.”

Crowley paused. Watched one silkworm slowly inch its way across a stem to tackle a new section of leaf. “‘Course, humans use wire mesh nowadays, but the general premise is the same. Always thought it was bloody clever, what humans could come up with. If you gave me a bunch of moth larvae and told me to make a living out of them, I definitely wouldn't think to make clothes.” He snorted. “Whoever came up with that, I'd like a glass of whatever they were drinking.”

The silkworms munched on. They ate much faster than they crawled, that was certain. In the quiet walls of his flat, away from prying human eyes, Crowley loosened the knot of his silk tie and tugged it off, easing the tightness around his neck.

“You're the ones who made this, in a sense,” he said, waving the tie at them. He laid the tie beside one glass wall of the tank at just the right angle for the inhabitants within to see. Several silkworms looked up curiously.

Crowley tossed his suit jacket aside, then unbuttoned his shirt collar. He had always prided himself on his sharp, modern attire over the years, the better to tempt humans with—or so he claimed. Despite repeated scoldings from his superiors, his Lust quotas had never been quite up to par.

Sufficiently dishevelled, and feeling all the freer for it, Crowley sank back into his chair to watch the silkworms.

“The only thing I didn't like about the process was the boiling,” he murmured. “Logically, I can see why it was done. And you would all be in cocoons, so it's not like you'd be in any pain. Not like I was.” He exhaled, the sound becoming a low hiss. “But still. Never liked it. Always felt like an awful lot of trouble just for the sake of some silk threads.”

One particularly adventurous silkworm had nosed its way upwards and was now creeping over the edge of the tank opening. Crowley made a mental note to devise a lid of some kind and stuck his finger against the lip of the tank. The silkworm crawled onto his hand without any hesitation. Tentatively, he drew it closer. Its many feet stuck stubbornly to his skin, and it reared up as he approached, swaying slightly, its mandibles twitching.

Crowley stared at the silkworm. The silkworm stared back, and seemed disappointed when Crowley had nothing else to offer. Just to prove it wrong, Crowley materialized a single large mulberry leaf in his other hand and presented it to the insect, who fell upon it with gluttonous enthusiasm.

Staring at the miracled leaf, an idea formed in Crowley's mind. He smiled, slowly.

“I need a hobby, now that I'm jobless,” he said aloud to the silkworm, letting it creep onto his palm. He ran a careful finger over its smooth back. “I think I'll take up sericulture again, for old time's sake.” He reached back into the tank and gently encouraged the silkworm to crawl back inside.

“Humans have to boil you alive to get those nice unbroken threads off your cocoons,” Crowley mused, withdrawing his hand. “Fortunately, I don't have to do things the human way.” He lowered himself until he was eye-level with the inhabitants of the tank. The silkworm he had carried paused in its perpetual eating and turned its head, almost like it was looking at him.

“How's this?” Crowley asked. “You'll be able to grow into a fuzzy, fully grown silk-moth, and I can take your cocoon after you've finished with it and miracle the threads whole again.” He paused and mulled it over. “I guess I could take it a step further and just miracle the finished silk together, but there's still something to be said about the human way of doing things.”

The silkworm bobbed the front half of its body as though in agreement. Crowley smiled again.

“We can make silk, and no one gets hurt. I'm a few hundred years out of practice, but I'm sure I could make it work, somehow.”

The silkworm turned its attention back to its meal. Crowley didn't notice. He was too busy wondering if Aziraphale had any old texts on silk-weaving that he could borrow, just so he could refresh his memory.

The angel would appreciate having a new silk bowtie to add to his collection.

---

Thank you for reading! Replies and reblogs are always much appreciated. <3

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #go fanfiction #good omens fanfiction #go tv #otp: ineffable #li writes #zine fic #insects tw

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ethereal-not-occult · 4 years

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Light poured in through the opening in the covers, and Crowley hissed and feinted a strike at the hand that reached in. He missed, but the hand still withdrew, and a round face framed with cloud-like curls peered in through the opening instead.

“Really, dear,” Aziraphale said severely. “It’s only me.”

“Leave me alone,” Crowley muttered, coiling up into an even tighter ball. “M’sssleeping.”

The mattress creaked as Aziraphale sat on the edge of the bed. “I can see that, and I don’t mean to interrupt you. I don’t particularly want to miracle up a second bed, however.”

“Hmph,” Crowley said, but wriggled half-heartedly until he’d flopped over to his own side of the bed. When Aziraphale got beneath the covers, Crowley shed his snake form, the better to wrap his arms around the angel and burrow in like a particularly stubborn limpet. Aziraphale had exchanged his usual waistcoat for something soft and flannel-like, which, as Crowley discovered, was especially good for nuzzling.

“’S bullshit, it is,” he said into Aziraphale’s shirt.

“Mhm,” was the agreeing response.

“Like Someone’s gone and played a bloody great cosmic joke on us all.”

“Quite.”

“Why is it that I haven’t done a ruddy thing in months, but still feel like I’ve run a marathon?”

Aziraphale sighed heavily enough that Crowley was obliged to wriggle closer to give him a comforting kiss. “That, I believe, is what the youth nowadays would call a ‘mood’.”

They lay there in silence, exhausted and put out, but together, for all that.

#otp: ineffable #aziraphale #crowley #fic

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ethereal-not-occult · 4 years

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Holy shit thank you for this. As a person of colour who experienced both pre-show and post-show fandom, I’ve seen so many white artists feed into these stereotypes when drawing fanart for GO and it made me super uncomfortable.

Most people aren’t doing this to be intentionally malicious, but I think it’s important for white artists to critically consider why they automatically picture the angel as white and the demon as ~ambiguously POC~ (and I specify white artists bc it’s one thing for folks of colour to channel their own feelings and experiences into these kinds of HCs, but it feels like another thing entirely when white folks are uncritically creating this kind of content, if that makes sense??) Not trying to dictate what people can and cannot draw, of course, but it’s worth thinking about.

I don’t believe that people should be saying “don’t draw Crowley as a person of colour ever”, because that,,, isn’t where the problem lies. I personally like to hc him as Chinese, myself. I think it’s mostly the “Aziraphale the angel being explicitly blonde-and-white” issue alongside the whole “only person of colour is literally a demon” issue that makes some people uncomfortable, and understandably so.

One way I’ve seen people countering this is by making both Aziraphale and Crowley people of colour, which is always nice to see.

But again, these are only my two cents, and as a light-skinned person I can’t speak for dark-skinned folks. Please call me out if I’m stepping out of line, here.

Hi Good Omens fans, ever since making this blog, and trawling through the archives for old art, I have been thinking again about trends from before the TV-show, and the way people draw Aziraphale and Crowley. I wanted to make this post addressing it but this is not “discourse” or to start a fight, in fact I would be perfectly content if all I did was make people think critically about what I am about to say and not even interact with this post at all, but I feel like I need to say it.

Talking about any racist undertones to the way people draw our two favorite boys usually makes people dig their heels in pretty fast. This is not a callout post for any artist in particular, this is not me trying to be overly critical of artists especially since they have more talent and skill than I do, and I’m going to address some common counterpoints that I frankly find unsatisfactory. Let’s just take a moment to set aside our defensiveness and think objectively about these trends. It took me a while to unlearn my dismissive attitude about these concerns so maybe I can help others get over that hurdle a little faster. Now let’s begin.

I’ve been kicking around the Good Omens fandom since maybe 2015 and for art based in book canon, whether it was made before the TV show came out, or because the artist is consciously drawing different, original designs, I’m going to estimate that a decent 75% of all fanart looks like this

Aziraphale is white and blonde and blue-eyed while Crowley is the typical “racially ambiguous” brown skin tone it’s become so popular to draw podcast characters as nowadays.

And the question is why? With the obvious answer being “it’s racist,” but let’s delve a little deeper than that.

A common thing I hear is that people get appearance headcanons fixed in their mind because the coverart of the book pictures the characters a certain way. My first point is this only shifts the question to why the illustrators drew them that way, when there aren’t many physical descriptions in the book. My second point is that while there definitely are cover arts that picture Aziraphale as cherubic, blonde, and white and Crowley as swarthy, dark-skinned, and racially ambiguous…

(side note: why is Crowley’s hand so tiny? what the hell is going on in this cover?)

It’s much more common for the covers to simplified, stylized, and without any particular unambiguous skin tones

I don’t know about the UK but the most popular version in the United States is the dual black and white matching covers

And while you could make an argument that the shading on Crowley’s face could suggest a darker skintone, it seems obvious to me that lacking any color these are not supposed to suggest any particular race for either of these two, and the contrasting colors are a stylistic choice to emphasize how they are on opposite sides. If anything, to me it suggests they are both white.

In short I simply do not buy the argument that people are drawing Aziraphale and Crowley this way because that’s how they were represented on the cover art of the book. If you draw them the way they are on the cover then whatever, I don’t care, but I don’t believe that’s what’s driving this trend.

The second thing people will say is that Good Omens is a work of satire, and it’s based in Christian mythology which has this trend of depicting angels as white, and it is embodying the trope of a “white, cherubic angel” paired with a dark-skinned demon for the explicit purpose of subverting the trope of “white angel is good, dark demon is bad” since Aziraphale is not an unambiguous hero and Crowley is not a villain. “It’s not actually like that because Crowley isn’t a bad demon, and Aziraphale isn’t actually a perfect angel” is the argument. This has a certain logic to it and allows some nuance to the topic, but to this I say:

Uncritically reproducing a trope, even in the context of a satire novel, is not enough to subvert it. Good Omens is not criticising the racist history of the church, and while the book does have some pointed jabs at white British culture (such as Madam Tracy conning gullible Brits with an unbelievably ignorant stereotype of a Native American) it is not being critical of the conception of angels as white and blonde or the literal demonization of non-white people. That’s just not what the book is about. So making the angel white and the demon dark-skinned, playing directly into harmful tropes and stereotypes, is not somehow subversive or counter-cultural when doing so doesn’t say anything about anything.

Please consider fully the ramifications of the conception of white and blonde people as innocent and cherubic and dark-skinned people as infernal and mischievous, especially in modern contexts…

Black people are more likely to be viewed as violent, angry, and dangerous. Priming with a dark-skinned face makes people more likely to mistake a tool for a gun. Black people are viewed as experiencing pain less intensely by medical professionals. Black men are viewed as physically larger and more imposing than they actually are. The subconscious racial bias favoring light skin is so ingrained it’s measurable by objective scientific studies, on top of the anecdotal evidence of things like news stories choosing flattering, “cherubic” pictures of white and blond criminals while using unflattering mugshots for non-white offenders.

This is why I say that if you’re going to invoke the “whites are angelic” trope, you better have a damn good subversion of it to justify it, because this idea causes real harm to real people in the real world. And Aziraphale being a bit of a bastard despite being an angel, I just don’t see that as sufficient. I am especially cautious of when it’s my fellow white fans that make this argument, not because I believe they do this out of any sort of malice or hatred of people with dark skin, but because I know first-hand it stems from a dismissiveness rooted in not wanting to think about it for too long because it makes us uncomfortable. Non-white people do not have the luxury of not thinking about it, because it’s part of their life.

Now the strongest textual evidence people use, in the absence of much real descriptor, is this:

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong; Heaven is not in England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort"

This piece of art has circulated in the fandom for so long I don’t know the original artist and it’s been used for everything from fancovers to perfume. This is where I found it and it’s one of the first things that come up when you google this quote about Aziraphale.

Doesn’t it just feel like this is the man that’s describing, some blonde effeminate gay man? Well guess what, there’s the “blonde as innocence” trope rearing its ugly head again, because the stereotype of gay men and effeminacy as being a white and blonde thing is–ding ding ding you guessed it–racism. And why would intelligent suggest a white and blonde person, except if the stereotype of a dark-skinned person is less intelligent?

Now the point of “people assume Aziraphale is British” is another sticking point people will often use, claiming that the stereotype of a British person is white and blonde. I guess this has some merit, since the British empire was one of the biggest forces behind white colonial expansion, and it seems disingenuous to assign “British” as “nonwhite” as soon as we’re being satirical, in the same way I found it distasteful that the TV show made God female when so many of the criticisms of the church are about its misogyny and lose their teeth as soon as God is no longer male.

However consider that 1.4 million Indian people live in the UK. I heard a man say aloud once that the concept of a black person having a British accent was a little funny, as though Doctor Who doesn’t exist and have black people on it. And I’m not overly familiar with the social landscape of the UK, but I understand they’re experiencing a xenophobia boom and non-white Brits aren’t considered “really British.” The stereotype of non-white people not being British only exists because of reinforcement in media. If you really want to be subversive, drawing Aziraphale as Indian goes way further than drawing him as white IMO.

Now let’s talk about Crowley. He is almost always drawn with a darker skin tone than Aziraphale, even when they are both white, and while I’ve outlined above how this is problematic on terms of linking light skin with innocence, I think it does have an extra layer. I think it also has to do with the exotification and fetishization of brown skin and non-white people.

This artist’s tumblr is gone now but their art is still on dA and while it’s definitely beautiful and well-done, I think this is a very good example of what I’m talking about.

Crowley and Aziraphale necessarily contrast each other, so describing Aziraphale as “British” might suggest that Crowley is “foreign-looking.” I also know *ahem* that the fandom generally thirsts over Crowley to hell and back, so making him a swarthy, tall dark and handsome is not necessarily surprising.

An interesting thing happened when the TV show came out, and everyone started drawing Michael Sheen!Aziraphale and David Tennant!Crowley more and more often: It’s not ubiquitous, but it does happen that sometimes artists will draw David Tennant’s skin darker than it actually is. The subconscious urge to see Crowley with dark skin is for some reason that strong for many people. And I really encourage people doing this to think about why. Not naming any names but I’ve working with fanartists before for collabs who I had to ask to lighten “bad guy” demon’s skin tones because it looked like they were making the skin darker on purpose to make them look scarier. This person is a perfectly pleasant person who tries not to be racist! And we both still fell into it accidentally, and it took me a while to notice and point it out, because the ingrained stigmatization of darker skin is pervasive yet often goes unnoticed.

What is the solution? I don’t know, and as a white person I’m not really qualified to make that call. Do we draw them both with the exact same skin tone? Is it better to make them both white? Should we make both of them non-white? Should we only make Aziraphale non-white? I am consciously aware of the fact that the Good Omens fandom is mostly white people, so most of the art we make is being both made by and consumed by white people, so I don’t feel comfortable saying “draw these characters of color specifically” because that can also veer into fetishization territory very quickly. This is not specific to good omens but I think we should pay attention to what fans of color say in all fandom spaces and weigh our choices even if they seem insignificant. And it’s important to realize that fans of color will not be a monolith in their opinion either, and it’s our responsibility to recognize that everyone can be affected by racism and social issues differently, the same way all women are affected by misogyny differently so just because one woman says such as such is misogynistic and another says it’s not. I’m sure there are non-white fans who think it’s perfectly fine to draw Aziraphale as white and Crowley as ambiguously non-white. I’m not saying they’re wrong. And I’m not saying you can’t reblog this kind of art, or that people who make or made it should feel bad about themselves. But so often this sort of thing goes unaddressed just because people don’t like thinking about it, and well, avoiding hard questions never really goes well I think.

#this is a complex issue with lots of opinions and im not qualified to speak for anyone #just trying to offer my view

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ethereal-not-occult · 4 years

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#op you are KILLING me #art #otp: ineffable #au

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ethereal-not-occult · 4 years

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headcanons from the south downs cottage

- There is, of course, a large library that doesn’t seem like it can fit as many books as it does (it’s bigger on the inside)

- And, of course, a spacious garden for Crowley to terrify the most gorgeous greenery in England. Their cottage is set far away enough from other houses that people aren’t usually disturbed by the obscenities flying across the yard, but Aziraphale miracles up a high fence around the back anyway. Just in case.

- The cottage’s interior design is an absolute trainwreck of mismatched aesthetics. We’re talking 1800′s velvet chairs with severely modern art hung behind them and black leather couches with Heaven’s Dress tartan blankets tossed over the back

- The Statue is left in the garage with the Bentley. No, Crowley, it can’t go in the bedroom, we have standards

- They go to the farmer’s market on Sundays for cheese and fruit and whatever else they could use for the week

- Every Sunday, Crowley sneaks off to buy a small bunch of flowers for Aziraphale from the nice young lady who runs the flower stall

- Every Sunday, Aziraphale acts surprised when he is presented with said flowers and kisses him on the cheek

- Crowley cooks, Aziraphale bakes.

- Crowley swears there’s something about Aziraphale’s pastries that set them leagues above the rest, and no, angel, it isn’t love, stop being ridiculous

- (it’s love)

- Their first winter, Crowley has a minor meltdown when he comes home from a trip to the garden center and there’s smoke coming from the cottage. Aziraphale had forgotten to open the grate when lighting the fireplace, so no real harm done, only it takes Crowley the rest of the evening, three pots of tea, and no shortage of hugs to recover from memories of burning books and screaming Aziraphale’s name to no one

- When they get their first chickens - three young egg-laying hens - Crowley gleefully names them Tisiphone, Magaera, and Alecto, after the winged furies of greek mythology

- Aziraphale is not amused (but is a little amused deep down)

- This post where Crowley also calls them ‘fat little monster trucks’ and ‘horrid beasties’ and Aziraphale calls them ‘the ladies’ or ‘the dames’

- Crowley and the hens got off to a rough start (snake vs chickens) but after a while they come around. Aziraphale most pointedly does not bring up how sometimes he hears Crowley gently cooing at them whilst collecting eggs

- Aziraphale makes friends with the local knitting circle almost immediately. Most of the time ‘darling Anthony’ is too busy at work to join them, but occasionally he comes to skulk Martha’s house when he doesn’t want to be far from Aziraphale

- This always backfires, because the ladies start fussing over how dreadfully thin he is and eventually, somehow, Crowley ends up holding Aziraphale’s yarn without even realizing it

- Bad thunderstorms tend to remind Aziraphale of Heaven (Gabriel showed up in a lightening strike in ep 6, among other examples) and in the country there’s no metal-wrought cityscape to soften the blow of thunder and lightening

- During particularly bad storms, Crowley makes sure the living room is full of lit candles and soft blankets and tasty snacks he’d bake that morning or otherwise picked up from the farmer’s market. They play card games and scrabble or watch a movie if the power hasn’t gone out and cuddle on the couch til it passes

#go tv #hc #otp: ineffable

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