#Institutional Problem

[eybefioro]

Bubbling Love

Me and @isiaiowin entry for week 4 of the GOAD Poetry Pillow Fight: Bubble Bath!!

Michael introduces Dagon to a bubble bath. Will they dive in?

Excerpt:

Un deep pond without fish, bubbles rise up and break, but no ocean scent left to trace — it's strange. --- Relax. Take a deep breath, and for once don’t question; the warm water is rather nice, you see?

Read it on Ao3! 💛

@goodomensafterdark

[actual-changeling]

"Sooooo," Michael drawls, leaning back in their chair.

It's only the third time they are holding their earthly meetings in public, and if you were to ask them why they had suggested it, the answer would be something vague like 'research' or 'keeping up with what's happening with humanity. The real reason, however, is much simpler and closely connected to the almost casual outfit the Archangel has chosen for today; a bit overdressed for the café, but neither they nor Dagon have much of a grasp on human social norms.

Dagon, who is sitting opposite them in a dark blue blouse, and, here we are getting very close to said reason, soft, pale human skin.

"Grand Duke of Hell, huh?"

"You heard?" They wrap their hands around their mug, still cold-blooded and seeking warmth, and yet there is a slight blush rising to their cheeks. Michael's eyes are drawn to it like a moth to the flame, flickering from side to side and biting back a smile when it spreads further down their neck.

"I have my sources," they respond lightly, basking in the sharp glance Dagon shoots them.

"Oh, don't be jealous, you know you're my-"

Ah.

Reaching for their own cup, Michael interrupts themselves and blinks rapidly. Now it is their turn to study the pattern on the wall behind Dagon's chair and ignore the flush claiming their face. Leaning into their personal space, Dagon jumps on the unfinished sentence like a predator pounces on their prey. A curtain of shimmering ginger hair moves with them, rippling like the ocean surface in a sunny breeze.

"I'm your what?"

Michael's gaze snaps back, landing not on silver-blue eyes but the genuine, amused smile tugging on their lips, and while the urge to taste it is by far not a new one, the intensity of it still catches them off-guard every single time, a fact Dagon is well aware of.

"Oh, shut it," Michael bites back, but there is no real heat behind it, and hides their shaky exhale with a sip of coffee.

Good stuff, coffee; humans did something very right with that. Bitter, and comforting, and nothing like the salty-sweet chill they have definitely NOT imagined for Dagon's lips.

The newly promoted Grand Duke of Hell does indeed 'shut it', falling back in their chair and stretching out one leg under the table.

Michael swallows a choked sigh and tips their heeled foot against Dagon's just once, an acknowledgement of something they both cannot quite name.

Neither of them says a single word for the next two hours, draping them in an amicable silence, and yet when they part outside the café, Michael turns around and says, "Good talk. Same time next week?"

Dagon tilts their head curiously, a measured look in their eyes, and gives them a once-over that leaves Michael covered in a comfortable warmth they know will linger even in the cold sterility of heaven.

"Same time next week, angel."

[captainblou]

Muriel introducing themselves as "no one" hurts me so much.

They're such a sweetheart, I would kill to protect them

[53rdcenturyhero]

The system is broken maintain the façade

GOOD OMENS 2.03 • “I Know Where I’m Going”

[eybefioro]

Yesterday @isiaiowin and I shared our contribution for GOetry pillow fight week 4 (you can read it here !). Together with the poem, both of us also painted something, and this is mine :D

[Timelapse and rambling under the cut, as usual]

AAAAAAAAAA I HAD SO MUCH FUN WRITING WITH MOON. She's incredible at this, and jumping ideas with her was sooooo good! And then the back and forth of sharing the poems was so nice 😭 I wrote Michael’s POV in this one... she was supposed to be more snarky and bossy at first but then I got too sappy 😂 I'm not mad about it though, all the love talk in the poem fits very well with the pillow fight, and honestly, I was in need to writing something very soft. This ship is also soooo good. I love Angelfish (or Institutional problem, as I like to call it 😂) so much. I should write more about them in the future. Maybe a human/office AU...

Anywaaaays. This is a different style than all my other drawings. I always tried to go for clean and smooth lines, and never messy/sketchy ones. The thing is, as I worked on the sketch I really start to like how it was looking, and when I tried to make the linear using it only as a base (as I usually do) it lost all charm. The line art wasn't looking good this time. So I just... abandoned it and embrace chaos lol

I cleaned up a bit the sketch,and defined better the shapes with a thicker pen, adding more details with finer lines here and there. I reeeeally love the result; I mean, I know it can be better, and that I can take this further, but for a first try with this kind of style I think it looks surprisingly nice.

I like how it gives a bit of a pencil drawing quality to it, something that I'd probably doodle in the back of my notebook, but it was lacking texture. The pen I was using for the lines didn't have any, just a clean straight one I use for sketches and the final line art, so I tried to compensate in the colouring.

I discovered some really good pens for texture that are native from ibis paint, and I used them here. I think it worked well enough. I didn't want to paint everything in solid colours, but rather give the idea of colour like I'd do with colour pencils. So I just filled in near the borders, making it soft and not completely opaque, showing the white of the "paper" behind.

Speaking of colours... aaaaaagh the combination of Dagons blue/green skin with her guger hair is soooo nice. I never stopped to appreciated it before and I was so wrong for it. I love her outfit, and the makeup they used for her in the show, and her scales... and the same goes for Michael. Her hair in the show is just perfection, and the subtle gold in her makeup drives me crazy, so I tried to put it in the spotlight for a but here. In my head Michael’s skin is golden and no one will convince me otherwise now <3

I'm thinking of playing with this style of drawing more now. It made me very happy to not aim for a perfect line art, and the soft colour are so pleasing to me.

Go read our poem!! I loved writing it, and I hope you will enjoy it too. I do feel like this art fits with the feeling of the poem, and so does Moon's art. It's incredible the way she paints skin!! I am still looking at those ears aaaaaaaaaaa

[ego-sum-ex-altiora]

As an afab enby person, I’m tired of the reactions I get to growing my hair out. No I’m not detransitioning, and no I’m not “embracing my femininity”. I’m growing my hair out to be more like Jonathan Sims. Nothing else.

[essektheylyss]

I do find the uptick in folks who got upset that some of us felt like there wasn't enough follow-through on narrative consequences suddenly turning around wanting the Hells to be hunted by Vasselheim very funny, because I'm just like... so what I'm hearing is that you want your faves to be on the run from religious leaders because the choices they made had such massive ramifications and so aggressively spurned that religion it demanded exile if not outright execution, because it makes for a more interesting story with more interesting characters.

I understand the canary in the role mine now: you're jealous of me. You want what the Essek stans have.

[the-shifting-long]

I intended for the post these tags are on to be the last thing I say about fandom misogyny for a While because I felt like I covered everything already but oh my god YES I agree So hard

In general, while I do think Princess/TLQ are permanent partners, they're also not...human. they certainly act human, but they don't carry the same societal baggage that we get saddled either by virtue of being born surrounded by other humans.

And then "marriage" as a concept is one that is so vastly different in so many cultures and time periods, and at least for the kinds of marriages I'm familiar with, there are a Lot of benefits for abusive partners and Especially men to obtain legal and financial power over their partner through marriage. Like, so much of marriage, on top of its symbolic and romantic value, is also its legal and financial ones, as well as social positioning/maneuvering-"wife" carries more weight than "girlfriend", serves as a status symbol. I don't think the Princess and TLQ would really care for that.

HEA doesn't touch on the complicated socioeconomic issues that come with marriage, especially traditional/heterosexual marriage, but it does touch on so much of the domestic unhappiness that comes with it, especially in regards to how you, the player, and the Smitten keep her in this unhappy, stale situation she's Supposed to be happy with. Opportunist even calls her "our queenly wife."

So like on top of marriage being a distinctly human construct/invention I'm not sure those two would vibe with when they can literally merge their souls together at any given moment. HEA in particular would fucking hate it. She's already Been trapped with a partner in a situation all too similar to the Traditional marriage. I could see arguments for other princesses. for a modern-AU Prisoner using marriage for tax benefits and secretly being delighted when she signs the papers, for Tower or Nightmare to make the player legally her pet in a similar fashion, for the Wounded Wild to accept it...

Never HEA. And yet the majority of StP marriage content is HEA, because she's their favorite and she's wife. Never mind how much she hated it. Never mind that her whole route is about how much she hated it. She's wife! We love her! She loves us! Of course she'd marry us, there's no other option! We HAVE to symbolically own her and tie her to us forever! Right???

[did-alice-dyer-kiss-a-girl-yet]

Has Alice Dyer Kissed A Woman Yet:

No.

Alice has been thinking about Gwen for:

422 days (of showing up late for work due to ADHD)

[scribefindegil]

I love my partner for his kindness and devotion and also his academic journal access <3

[sarahthecoat]

yep.

the "if it happens twice, it's an institutional problem. which it isn't" line being so emphasized makes me so convinced that aziracrow and beelzebub and gabriel are absolutely NOT the only angel and demon pairings. like i would bet money half of heaven is dating half of hell

[flum3n]

a small detail i appreciate in the pjo series is that when clarisse was fighting percy, he was cut and he bled. they even included her line about how the only consequences for maiming him would be loss of desert privileges. there are some things i think the show is going to tone down (eg. the hellhound being cut in favour of annabeth pushing percy into the water, genius) but i think it's important that there are moments that make clear the physical and emotional pain these kids go through as part of their daily existence. after all, if we find it uncomfortable to watch sometimes, what does that say about the gods who have watched their children suffer and die at a distance for centuries?

[szaryherbatnik]

Top ten people not invited to my future wedding

1. barnabos the dreadwake

[sarahthecoat]

ouch, yeah. gabriel still has a lot of personal growing to do. just hearing adam's speech, and connecting with beez, is not going to magically transform him into a completely different person.

ie, it's cute to us, but a massive dick move to the barkeep at the resurrectionist, to keep changing records into everyday. he could just wait his turn and play that song on his own dime.

hmm, given that i am trusting three act structure to ensure aziraphale and crowley's happy ever after, could it also indicate that gabe and beez peaked too soon and are in for the opposite trajectory? (if there is a role for them in s3, it will be interesting to see...)

gabriel going to find aziraphale because he knows what it's like to fall in love with your demonic counterpart......because he knows aziraphale is a principality and will protect him when he's vulnerable........because he knows aziraphale is better than heaven.

and the metatron uses that play, that knowledge, to trap aziraphale in gabriel's stead. i'd bet gabriel didn't foresee that, but i doubt he'd have cared even if he had.

if one angel falls in love with a demon, that's a good story. if two angels fall in love with demons, that feels like an institutional problem. gabriel is just betting that he'll beat aziraphale to first place.

[catboythanatos]

juno by sabrina carpenter plays.

"this is sooo them," i say.

the them in question:

[solreefs]

I do think making Santi high commander is a huge leap and I’m not really a fan of the pacing of it all, but on some level it is truly a perfect encapsulation of who he is as a character. I’ve said before that he doesn’t change and his lack of character development fascinates me, and this sort of exemplifies said lack of character development.

Wolfe and Santi have both seen what horrors the library is capable of, they’ve both helped enact those horrors, but they start out with this unwavering loyalty towards it. we see this with Wolfe in Stormcrow (which is fascinating on its own given that he is literally the result of systemic sexual abuse carried out by the library but I digress) and that loyalty gets tested by what happens in Moscow. when we first meet Santi in Stormcrow, he already has the attitude that Wolfe comes to adopt by the story’s end: the library as an institution is broken but fixable if someone can find the right way. may it change.

and Santi, crucially, keeps that view throughout the entire series, without seemingly doing much to act on it. for example, while the creation of a printing press solves a legitimate question of efficiency, it’s also undeniably an act of humanity. the idea that a printing press will fix everything (or at least most of it) is held by a lot of characters in the series. and even when that’s pretty decisively shown to not be true, they still hold onto the hope that it could be a solution even if it’s not the solution. not Santi, though. his relationship to the printing press is “thing that got Wolfe tortured and almost killed but if it’s important to him I guess it’s important to me too”. this holds true for a lot of his “betrayals” of library; it’s for Wolfe and nothing else.

Wolfe, though, eventually arrives at a different conclusion about the library: whether or not it’s always been there is a matter of debate, but there is something horrible at the center of this institution, and it might not be reparable. he’s offered his own huge leap in power with the title of archivist, and he immediately turns it down (again his choice to name Khalila instead is its own post). for a lot of reasons, certainly, but I don’t think it’s much of stretch to read that as at least a partial rejection of the library as an institution.

Santi keeps the position of high commander, and while we do see changes made (particularly with the iron tower), I don’t know how much real military reform he’ll actually be motivated to do. it’s less of “we’ll stop doing atrocities now that I’m in charge” and more of “the atrocities will be justified now that I’m in charge”. what he sees of Rome affects him, certainly, and I do think he genuinely wants to make sure what happened to Wolfe doesn’t happen again, but to what extent?