#it`s no good

[hinamie]

morning glory

[camilleflyingrotten]

[farshootergotme]

Occasionally I picture Nightwing calling Red Hood "little wing" in front of others and people looking between this huge, 6'0 feet tall man with growing white hair, and then Nightwing, a shorter man who has flawless skin, probably around his 20's, and a fit but not too buff build and they just- don't know what's happening. Is it some kind of inside joke they aren't aware of? Why is Nightwing acting as if he's years older than Red-fucking jacked-Hood?

Nightwing: Little wing, you actually were decent in that fight! I'm impressed.

Hero, who was helping during this fight as well, listening in to the conversation: little...?

Red Hood: Wow, feeling very appreciated right now. Got any other backhanded compliments in there?

Hero: Wait, excuse me-

Nightwing: As a matter of fact-

Red Hood: Nope! I'm outta here. Screw you!

Nightwing: You know you love me!

Red Hood: In your dreams, dickhead!

Nightwing: Hey! We don't use that-

Red Hood: Not listening!

Nightwing: Jeez, kids these days...

Red Hood: I'm an adult and fuck you too!

Nightwing: What? Thought you weren't-

Red Hood: See you never, I'm out.

Hero: ...

Hero: what the actual fuck?

[sweetcherri17]

“Cmon, I know you can take it” as he spreads me open and slides it in, placing a small kiss on my forehead.

[andstuffsketches]

finally watched Reign of the Supermen

[macksting]

I've met him in person btw and he's a fucking sweetheart

[ID: Text-intensive Twitter thread from the Shapeshifters chest binders Twitter account in reply to a post by artist and author Ursula Vernon. Vernon says, A non-zero number of you apparently did not know that The Last Unicorn was a book before it was a movie. It is by Peter S. Beagle. It is made of spun glass and fairytales and iron knives and there are individual lines that I would give my lungs to have written. Shapechangers replies, I saw him every year at NYCC for several years straight, bought something at his table, asked him to sign it, and we spoke. He remembered me from year to year, no small feat at that con. He remembered which stories he'd told me. One year I came back with a different gender on. He squinted at me a bit and said thoughtfully, "I've seen you before in this place." All I had to say was, "last year you told me the story about the inoshishi." And his face cleared, and he leaned in with a grin and told me about a German guitarist who he traveled with, twice. Who transitioned between the first and second time, so he'd gotten to meet this person all over again on the second round. It was a wonderfully kind way to let me know that everything was fine. I was fresh out of the closet and I needed that, and maybe he could see it. The Last Unicorn is the best book in the world and I will defend it and its author til I die. the end. /end ID]

I don't usually talk about celebrities; artists, when I do, and I'm keenly aware that one needn't be a good person to be a hell of a heartwrenching artist. But Peter S. Beagle has written a few of my favorite things in the world, he's an excellent singer and filker, and this Twitter thread was dreadfully important to me. I don't want it going away as Twitter becomes Shitter, because it's so often bad news, isn't it? It's important to me to share trans joy.

[stuffielover19]

another one from the drafts of me humping my teddy cuz it felt so good on my cunny 🥰

[o0kawaii0o]

Wet cheese

[hinamie]

spiraling

[ryssbelle]

Drew a bunch of Marinettes in a bunch of different artists styles it was a lot of fun!!

Artists who's styles I mimicked: @buggachat @hamsternamedmarinette @ladybeug @sabertoothwalrus and @anna-scribbles all epic artists 🤟😎

[joycrispy]

One thing I love about Crowley --never stated, but consistently shown-- is that he is, at heart, an engineer.

I have a few different things to say about that. Let's unpack them.

As the Unnamed Angel, we see his designs for the Pillars of Creation are millions of pages long, comprised of cramped text, footnotes, diagrams, schematics, etc. It's very...Renaissance polymath, in the way it implies a particular intersection of artist and inventor.

Also: in the naked romanticism with which he views his stars.

We already knew he made stars, but in s2 we learn that he did NOT sculpt each of them by hand. He designed a nebula ("a star factory," he says) that will form several thousand young stars and proto-planets, and all --aside from getting the 'factory' running-- without him lifting a finger. We also learn that these young stars and proto-planets stand in contrast to those made by other angels, which are going to come 'pre-aged.'

...I'm reminded of Hastur and Ligur's approach to temptations. Damning one human soul at a time, devoting singular attention to it over the course of years or decades, and how that stands in contrast to Crowley's reliance on, quote, 'knock-on effects.'

Ligur: It's not exactly...craftsmanship. Crowley: Head office don't seem to mind. They love me down there.

Hm.

I'm also reminded of the M25.

The M25 may not be as grand as a nebula (sentences you only say in GOmens fandom...), but LIKE his nebula it's an intricate, self-sustaining engine that does Crowley's work for him, many times over. Again.

That's some pretty neat characterization --and so is the indication towards Crowley's disinterest in victimizing anyone tempting individual people. It takes a considerable amount of planning and effort (and creeping about in wellies), but in accordance with his design the M25 generates a constant stream of low-grade evil on a gigantic scale.

Cumulatively gigantic, that is. Individually? Negligible.

But no other demon understands human nature well enough to parse that one million ticked-off motorists are not, in any meaningful way, actually equivalent to one dictator, or one mass-murderer, or even one little influential regressive. That's the trick of it. Crowley gets Hell's approval (which he NEEDS to survive, and to maintain the degree of freedom he's eked out for himself), and at the same time ensures that any actual ~Evil Influence~ is spread nice and thin.

It's some clever machinery. And he knows it, too:

The Unnamed Angel and Crowley are both proud of their ideas.

(musings on professional pride, Leonardo da Vinci, the crank handle, and 'the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale' under the cut)

In the 1970's Crowley gives a presentation on the M25, projector and all, to a room full of increasingly impatient demons. Maybe the presentation was work-ordered; the 'can I hear a WAHOO?' definitely wasn't.

Before the Beginning, the Unnamed Angel can barely contain his excitement about his nebula. Aziraphale manages a baffled-but-polite, "....That's nice... :)"

11 years ago, Hastur and Ligur want to 'tell the deeds of the day,' and Crowley smiles to himself because (according to the script-book) he knows he has 'the best one.'

(Naturally, his 'deed' has nothing to do with tempting anybody, and everything to do with setting up a human-powered Rube-Goldberg machine of petty annoyance. Oodles of 'Evil' generated; very little harm done.)

Hastur and Ligur don't get it, of course. That's also consistent.

Nobody ever knows what the hell he's talking about.

It didn't make it on-screen, but, in both the novel AND the script-book, Crowley was friends with Leonardo da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance polymath. That's where he got his drawing of the Mona Lisa --they're getting very drunk together, and Crowley picks up the 'most beautiful' of the preliminary sketches. He wants to buy it. Leonardo agrees almost off-the-cuff, very casual, because they're friends, and because he has bigger fish to fry than haggling over a doodle:

He goes, "Now, explain this helicopter thingie again, will you?" Because he's an engineer, too.

(It is 1519 at the latest, in this scene. Why the FUCK would Crowley know about helicopters, and be able to explain them, comprehensively, to Leonardo da Vinci?

...Well. I choose to believe he got bored one day and worked it out. Look, if you know how to build a nebula, you can probably handle aerodynamics. And anyway, I think it's telling that this is his idea of shooting the shit. 'A drunken mind speaks a sober heart,' and all. He probably babbled about Aziraphale long enough to make poor Leo sick)

Apart from Aziraphale, Leonardo da Vinci is the only person Crowley has any keepsakes or mementos of.

Think about that, though. Aziraphale's bookshop is bursting with letters, paintings, busts, and personalized signatures memorializing all the humans he's known and befriended over 6000 years (indeed: Aziraphale has living human friends up and down Whickber Street. He's part of a community).

Crowley doesn't have any of that. It's just the stone albatross from the Church (for pining), the infamous gay sex statue (for spicy pining), the houseplants (for roleplaying his deepest trauma over and over, as one does), and this one piece of artwork, inscribed, "To my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V."

To me, at least, that suggests a level of attachment that seems to be rare for Crowley.

...Maybe he liked having someone to talk shop with? Someone who was interested? Someone engaged enough to ask questions when they didn't immediately understand?

...Anyway.

There's also the matter of the crank handle.

This thing:

This is one of the subtler changes from the book. In the book, Crowley knows Satan is coming and, desperate, arms himself with a tire iron. It's the best he can do. He's not Aziraphale; he wasn't made to wield a flaming sword.

The show, IMO, improves on this considerably. Now he, like Aziraphale, gets to face annihilation with what he was made for in his hand. And it's not a weapon, not even an improvised one like the tire iron.

He made stars with it.

[both gifs by @fuckyeahgoodomens]

If you Google 'crank handle,' you'll get variations on this:

Crank handles have been around for centuries. Consisting of a mechanical arm that's connected to a perpendicular rotating shaft, they are designed to convert circular motion into rotary or reciprocating motion.

Which is to say they're one of the 'simple machines,' like a lever or a pulley; the bread and butter of engineering. You'll also get a list of uses for a crank handle, archaic and modern. Among them: cranking up the engine of an old-fashioned car... say, a 1933 Bentley. That's what Crowley has been using his for, lately. But he's had it since he was an angel and he's still, it seems, very capable of it's angelic applications.

Stopping time. For instance.

(This is conjecture on my part, but, I like to imagine that Crowley has the ability to stop time for the same reason I can --and should-- unplug my computer before I perform maintenance on it. Time and Space are a matched set, after all, and in his designs in particular, one feeds into the other.)

I know everyone has already said this, but: I REALLY LIKE that when he needs to channel the heights of his power, he does so not with a weapon but with a tool. Practically with a little handheld metaphor for ingenuity. One from long-lost days when he made beautiful things.

(And he loved it. Still loves it --he incorporated that metaphor into the Bentley, didn't he?)

Let Aziraphale rock up to the apocalypse with a weapon: he has his own compelling thematic reasons to do exactly that. Crowley's story is different, and fighting isn't the only way to express defiance. And if you've been condemned as a demon and assumed to be destructive by your very nature, what better way than this?

He made stars. They didn't manage to take that from him.

Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale are fighters, really --they have no intention of fighting in any war. They'll annoy everyone until there's no war to fight in, for a start. But between the two, if one must be, then that one is Aziraphale. Principality of the Earth, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Wielder of the Flaming Sword... all that stuff. Even if he'd prefer not to, it's very clear that Aziraphale can rise to the occasion, if he must.

Crowley was never that kind of angel. He wasn't a Principality. He doesn't have a sword.

...And yet.

It's Crowley who protects. He's the one who paces, who stands guard, who circles Aziraphale and glares out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near.

In light of everything else I've said here, I think that's interesting.

Obviously part of it is that Aziraphale enjoys it and, you know, good for him. He's living his best life, no doubt no doubt no doubt. But what about Crowley? What's driving that behavior, really?

Have you heard the phrase, 'loved to the point of invention'? Well, what if 'the point of invention' was where you started? What if where you end up involves glaring out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near? What is that, in relation to the bright-eyed thing you used to be?

What do we name the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale?

...Thinking about how an excitable angel with three million pages of star design he wants to tell you all about...becomes a guard dog. Is all.

[insignificant457]

sorry i’m just thinking again about kaz brekker, perpetual cynic, and his surprisingly optimistic view of fathers and sons. just. kaz knowing that the one thing that would ruin pekka rollins, the man he hates more than anything, who he couldn’t think less of, would be to threaten the safety of his son. kaz telling jesper that his father cares more about him than any farm. kaz saying “call me sentimental, but i didn’t believe a father could be so callous.” kaz’s fatal misunderstanding of van eck being that he couldn’t conceive of a world in which fathers don’t love their sons. thinking about what all this says about kaz’s own father, and everything he lost before he and jordie ever stepped foot in ketterdam.

[sweetcherri17]

I can just imagine myself on my knees while he’s at his desk working, my head resting on his bulge gently.

After patiently waiting for him to finish he looks down, caresses my cheek and coos;

“Oh don’t worry I’ll give it to you baby, you waited so well”

[nedlittle]

genuinely i think it's important for adults, especially in the plague times, to play pretend in our day-to-day lives. when i rub my back down with tiger balm so i can sleep without pain, i imagine i am a valiant knight tending to an old injury i received from a dragon. when i go to the store to pick up eggs and milk, i am a lone cowboy riding into town on a mission. when i turn my collar up against the wind i am a femme fatale who's killed 4 husbands and is scoping out a 5th. when i stomp around in the snow i am a doomed polar explorer. if being a little bit silly about my walk to the pharmacy helps me remember that life can be full of joy and whimsy, then so be it.

[petricorah]

when your uncle realizes your feelings for your best friend before you do (from @bisexuallsokka) happy prince and the fool day! [ids in alt]

[stuffielover19]

i’m sorry daddy i couldn’t help it, it felt so good…