#killing eve essay

[drwafton]

Made fanart of you-

I'm sorry if this version of you I made you a God-

"I have to say this art is well done! I wouldn't exactly call myself a god though. Still I appreciate it."

[frontlinebicepsoftheninth]

I saw you tagged killing eve in the 'worst series finale' poll - how *does* it end? I watched the first two seasons and then lost interest. (also I hope you're having a good day!)

first of all thank you i am and i hope you are too!!

but alright here we go ⚠️⚠️ MAJOR SPOILER WARNING MAJOR SPOILER WARNING ⚠️⚠️ for anyone who does want to watch for themselves bc tbh the first few seasons are excellent but i honestly don't know if i can recommend them anymore in good faith after knowing where it all ends up

so okay. you know how the whole crux of the show is this intense psychosexual relationship between eve and villanelle. and how there's an obvious romantic tension between them. well from what i remember (cause it's been a while) they started actually working together in season 3, but then because they realized they make each other worse they had this whole dramatic moment where they walked away from each other on a bridge and weren't supposed to look back but of course they both did turn around at the last second and then the season ends.

flash forward to season 4 and you can tell time has passed and they aren't working together and it's implied there was some big falling out and we have no idea what it is. eve is just annoyed and done with villanelle and villanelle is like trying to prove she's not a bad person and goes to church and stuff and actually that plot was extremely hilarious and she imagined up a drag jesus version of herself for advice and they were acting like exes and it was playing into the whole comedic surrealism aspect of the show really well. but after the first few episodes it just kinda fell apart like i just remember feeling lost all season and not understanding where we were going and this is definitely due to the changing showrunners (they should have just kept pwb for the whole thing!!!!) but they kept adding new characters out of nowhere, some of which were really well done but then we were following plots that were thrown in randomly and it was just a bit of a mess.

but eventually by the LITERAL SERIES FINALE eve and villanelle have both given in to the fact that they enjoy being in each other's company as the worst versions of themselves (which is honestly such a fun direction to go that i really enjoyed especially for a sapphic pairing). and after they've been apart for a vast majority of the season finally they have this good banter going and it's all domestic and then there's a scene where they're walking down an empty road together and this romantic music comes in. and they finally literally actually have The Moment. like they had kissed before in the previous season but not in an explicitly romantic way, they were physically fighting each other on a public bus and eve kissed villanelle to throw her off before headbutting her (SO GRIDDLEHARK OF THEM THAT SCENE IS ACTUALLY SO GOOD) anyways. villanelle kisses eve on the cheek and then eve stares at her and grabs her and they make out for a solid FORTY-FIVE SECONDS. it was so intense and they're kissing as they're stumbling down the road and they run back to the camper van they were travelling in and it's for sure implied that they have sex in there. so everyone was like oh my fucking god they actually did it. like this is where the show was always going, it's a whole I Can Make You Worse thing where both people were like "fuck it i'll be worse then" and gave in to the tension that had been building for years not just within the plot but FOR VIEWERS SINCE 2018.

so i don't exactly remember what happens next but the whole season they've been trying to kill The Twelve which was the assassin group in charge of villanelle, and we find out carolyn was a founding member actually, and i will be honest that plot was always confusing to me but iirc she wasn't with them anymore. so eve and villanelle infiltrate this wedding party boat that's a cover for a meeting of The Twelve (this is like the last 10 minutes of the show now) and they kiss again and there's a scene where it's like they're indirectly talking to each other through the wedding speech that eve somehow ends up giving and that's so romantic too and then villanelle slinks off, finds the meeting, and murders everyone. so yay the protagonists are together finally and villanelle killed her abusers and they are finally in happy gay love. then out of fucking nowhere as they're standing outside on the boat villanelle starts to get shot at. (this is literally the last five minutes of the entire show now) and she falls into the river or maybe jumps in to get away i don't remember and she's still getting shot and eve is swimming to try to catch her. and it's all this dramatic slow-mo beautifully shot stuff that's like horrible in context cause the blood is blooming in the water and eve can't reach villanelle and they do a whole creation of adam hand reach before villanelle slips into the depths.

so literally eve had just thrown away any chance at a normal life to embrace the side of her that loves violence and loves villanelle so they could spend the rest of their life together and that was such a slay. and then she loses villanelle which like, if they wanted a tragic ending it would have been kinder to kill them both, it's so much fucking worse to leave eve spending the rest of her life mourning the one person who understood her and let her give in to her carnal desires. and it is directly after letting the two queer characters finally achieve happiness that one of them is killed off which is the DEFINITION of the bury your gays/dead lesbian syndrome tropes, there have been literal academic papers written on how the phenomenon is like a punishment for queer joy etc etc. this shit has been in the discourse for decades and they fell dead center into the trope which is just so disappointing because at the start ke was such a unique story and one of the first mainstream shows that embraced morally gray queer characters in a way that wasn't homophobic.

oh! and guess who shot villanelle? carolyn!!!! and it was still NEVER CLEAR WHY! she worked for MI6 now so it being in revenge of The Twelve didn't really add up, some people thought she wanted to kill villanelle as like a prize for MI6, it was kind of implied that konstantin told her in this note he spent his last breaths writing (yeah he also died which was the saddest tbh) that villanelle had killed carolyn's son kenny (this was a major plot point of season 3 and carolyn was trying to get revenge, he fell off a building under mysterious circumstances) but that made no sense because it was implied to be konstantin since he was on the roof with kenny and also villanelle was literally in fucking spain or something the episode when it happened.

like i get it. this is a tragic show. people die every episode. but from a writing standpoint it makes absolutely zero fucking sense to kill off one of the two main characters of your show, in the last five minutes of the show, after finally cashing in on your flagship queer romance between them, and leaving the motivation for killing her completely ambiguous.

anyways i'm so sorry that ended up this long jesus christ but tldr: killing eve ends in the worst bury your gays i have ever seen after a season that didn't even have good plot or pacing

[matcha-b]

after 50 billion years here is another ref for my eve oc

[verymuchablog42]

i love how when i get obsessed with a new piece of media my best friend is always there like

our hyperfixation

[merevide]

they are sooo similar it’s crazy (doesn’t elaborate. iykyk)

[slagclaren]

tumblr usera eslagclaren! this is a normal ask, sí? nothing out of the ordinary. no, no. just echecking in

😭😭😭😭😭😭 "eslagclaren" 😭😭😭😭😭

[imdoingsortagay]

AHHHHH IM ON THE TRAIN HOME I CANT BE CRYING NOW 😭😭😭

[bredforloyalty]

guys i'm gonna be honest. about two things. 1. playing super mario bros on the switch pisses me off 2. i have literally no idea how i'll write 10 pages on moral development by jan 2

[ethereal-ocean-eyes]

fic comms & beta reading | slots open

hii everyone! it has been a while but i am once again opening slots for fic commission. due to having a full schedule in uni, it has been difficult to find a job that can help with rent and monthly study fees. i can only work at night which is basically my only free time. with this, i’d love to dedicate my time to do something i am passionate about, which is making your dream narratives come to life! if you’d like to commission me, please send me a dm! any help or offer is appreciated greatly. please ♻️ or ❤️ for boost!!

fandom: i’m open to any fandom!

pairing: any pairing,

canon & non-canon

character x character

character x oc

character x reader

what i will write:

smut, nsfw, mature, and explicit content

original stories

fics (drabble, short stories, fanfic)

non fic (essays, analysis)

what i don’t write: (you can always ask!)

themes of with heavy/detailed violence and gore

beastiality, necrophilia, pedophilic acts

payment: through paypal

fic pricing:

SFW works: 20$ for the first 1500 words, additional 5$ for every 500 words after

NSFW works: 40$ for the first 1500 words, additional 10$ for every 500 words after

writing references:

check my writing here.

(for nsfw references, i can send some samples through dm as i don’t post them online.)

i am also open for my beta reading service! i will provide feedback for any written work, proofread, and post a comment/review on a different platform if necessary! pricing starts at 20$ per chapter provided that it contains less than 5000 words, and 30$ for a chapter with less than 10000 words.

[the-unofficial-village-idiot]

Thinking about the parallels of Prime showing C-137 the universe and Rick offering to do the same for BP

[ferrettooth]

Oh my god it keeps on going!!!! (said at passage of time)

[bri-cheeses]

Jerseys vs. Hoodies - Part 2

| Rosekiller microfic | Word count: 730 | Part 1 can be found here |

-

“I. Am. Famished,” Barty announces as soon as he catches sight of Evan and Regulus, who are still sitting in their little booth in the library. They haven’t talked much since the whole jersey-hoodie incident, instead choosing to work quietly.

At least, they had been working quietly until Barty showed up.

He brings his usual amount of life and energy with him as he flings himself onto the space next to Evan, then slumps down so that his legs reach out far underneath the table.

He has the hood of his sweatshirt up, Evan notices with a small amount of fondness, making him look softer than usual. It’s cute, and Evan wishes that he could tell Barty that just because he wanted to.

But, of course, he can’t say that, so he settles for a simple, “Dinner’s in half an hour, I’m sure you’ll survive.”

“But Evie,” Barty whines, “a half an hour is a whole thirty minutes. Do you really want me to starve to death?”

He looks up at Evan with a pout on his face, and Evan’s lips twitch into a smile at the sight. Why does he have to be so… Barty? It just hurts sometimes, that’s all.

“You’ll manage,” Regulus chimes in from the opposite side of the table. His essay is almost done, perfect cursive taking up six and a half sheets of paper.

Evan looks down at his own, which is currently only at four pages, and sighs. It’s going to be a long night for him.

“Merlin, you two are so mean.” Barty slumps even further, this time leaning to his right so that he can rest his head against Evan’s shoulder. The unexpected gesture startles Evan, causing him to look down at Barty in surprise.

“What?” Barty asks, tilting his head up to make eye contact with Evan.

Those eyelashes should be illegal, Evan thinks.

“You just… surprised me,” he murmurs.

Barty smiles and nuzzles further into Evan’s shoulder.

It’s so domestic that Evan could cry—at least, until he could until he catches sight of Regulus’s unimpressed face from across the table.

“Bee,” Evan says, wanting to get Regulus back for ruining this one nice moment, “have you noticed Reg’s fashion statement for this evening?”

Evan regrets having said anything almost as soon as Barty lifts his head, severing that point of contact between them, but it’s worth it to see the way Barty’s eyes widen as he takes in Regulus’s outfit.

“Is that a Gryffindor jersey?” He asks incredulously. “You know that they’re the enemy, right?”

“Enemy is such a dramatic word,” Regulus mutters.

“It’s the right word,” Evan assures. Regulus cuts a glare towards him.

But Barty is not to be distracted, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Where did you even get a Gryffindor jersey in the first place?”

Evan starts to laugh—this is, after all, the best part.

“It’s Potter’s,” Evan tells him.

Barty turns toward Evan with wide eyes, looking back and forth between Regulus and Evan. His expression is so comical that if it were anyone else, Evan would assume they weren’t being genuine. But it’s Barty, and this is just how he is.

“Really?” he finally squeaks out.

Reg sighs. “Yeah. Surprise.”

“I—wow. Just… wow. When did that happen?”

“None of your business,” Reg snaps.

Barty narrows his eyes at him and Evan can sense this turning south, so he quickly supplies, “Reg’s very private, Bee. It’s not anything personal and you know it, so don’t get mad at him.”

Barty huffs. “Fine. But I’m still curious.”

“I know,” Evan soothes, “but we’ll find out soon enough.”

Regulus looks at him sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Evan just pantomimes zipping his mouth shut, and Barty cackles joyously.

“This is gonna be fun,” he laughs, leaning back into Evan. Evan catches Barty’s weight easily this time, glad to have his warmth back.

“I’m going to kill you both if you decide to get involved,” Reg threatens.

At that, Barty gasps dramatically and clutches onto Evan’s arm, sending a swooping sensation through Evan’s stomach.

“Save me, Evs,” he pleads. Evan pats him on the head with his free arm.

“Of course, Bee,” he sympathizes. Barty wrinkles his nose at the patronizing gesture but tightens his hold on to Evan’s arm regardless, contrasting with his facial expression.

“Merlin, you two are hopeless,” Regulus mutters under his breath.

-

(Part 3)

[carvalhais]

Active life without any contemplative dimension is incapable of friendly gentleness. It finds expression in accelerated production and destruction. It uses up time. Even in the time of leisure, which is still subject to the compulsion of labour, the relationship with time is no different. Things are destroyed and time is killed. Contemplative lingering gives time. It widens that being that is more than being-active. When life regains its capacity for contemplation, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness. If all contemplative elements are driven out of life, it ends in a deadly hyper-activity. The human being suffocates among its own doings. What is necessary is a revitalization of the vita contemplativa, because it opens up spaces for breathing. Perhaps the mind itself owes its emergence to an excess of time, an otium, eve to a slowness of breath. Byung-Chul Han. The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017.

[cobragardens]

God Is a Creepy-Ass Meta Mfer:

A Good Omens Essay

This essay features fan theory and speculation. DO NOT TAG NEIL GAIMAN IN ANY POST THAT INCLUDES OR REFERENCES THIS ONE.

The rest of this depends on accepting the premise that God's Plan is not always inscrutable in hindsight, i.e., that parts of that Plan can be discerned or identified as such once they have happened, even if the next moves of the Plan and its ultimate Purpose remain ineffable.

If you are willing to accept that premise, then I suggest we can conclude with reasonable certainty that Thesis Statement 1: Aziraphale's act of giving Adam the First Man the flaming sword is part of God's Plan, and so was Eve and Adam eating the Fruit.

The argument for the latter has been in circulation making even the beardiest of old Christian men scratch their heads for centuries, and in Good Omens, Crowley is the first being ever to make it:

The presence of the Tree in the Garden placed by an omnipotent being with literally infinite orchard space and security technology is a clear indication that God intends humans to interact with the Tree and sets humans up in a divine entrapment operation, giving God the opportunity to curse humanity and evict them from the Garden.

Diversion onto Thesis Statement 2 bc the Essayist Got Distracted: This establishes both the Bible and Good Omens as works of literature in the cosmic horror genre (not that Good Omens doesn't do plenty of its own work in so establishing itself).

In both these stories God is a being beyond humanity's understanding, functionally omniscient and omnipotent, who first creates and then interferes with humanity for unknown reasons and who does not necessarily have humanity's best interests in mind at any point. His/er reasoning and objectives for humanity are opaque, and S/he manipulates circumstances to create excuses to do humanity as a species and sometimes specific humans harm.

If you're not already familiar, go read all the shit God curses humans with when Eve and Adam snack on the Tree's Fruit. It's frighteningly cruel, if not outright psychopathic. So is God's behavior the Book of Job, His demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, Mosaic Law, and the sacrifice of His/er Son. Human lives are no more significant to God than the lives of ants are to humans. This whole history of Earth? It may not even be about us. Our entire species' history may just be part of the backdrop to something else, like two angels falling in love and reuniting Heaven and Hell, or like raccoons. It could all be about the raccoons. Who knows! All of this is absolutely 100% pure undiluted cosmic horror.

Right, okay, so back to Thesis 1: In Good Omens, Aziraphale's gift to the first man of the flaming sword is an objective God wants. Here's my chain of reasoning:

The Eating of the Fruit and God's punishment were both objectives of God. See above.

2. Once those objectives had been accomplished, humankind would not have survived outside the Garden of Eden without the sword. They literally would not exist at all.

Adam the First has to kill the lion, either to keep it from killing him and Eve or to keep him and Eve from starving. No flaming sword = no humanity.

3. We know "no humanity" is not God's Plan, because--

--God says her Plan is Armageddon and the Second Coming in 6,000 years. So humanity needs to exist for either of those to occur (or for there to be any reason for adventures about averting them to occur). And God does a whole Crucifixion and Resurrection of His/er Son. So God wants humanity around and is even prepared to welcome them back into His/er grace, providing they meet certain conditions.

4. We know God is not displeased about Aziraphale's gift of the sword to humans because God asks Aziraphale about the sword, and Aziraphale lies and says he's lost it, and God, who is omniscient and therefore knows this to be a lie and knows exactly where the sword is, lets the entire thing pass unremarked. (More on this anon.)

5. It is not a reach too far to suspect this of God. She tells us Herself that she is a trickster and that we can't trust her not to deceive us:

She also tells us

i. The universe is a game she is playing for her own amusement:

🎵cosmic horror alerrrrrrrrrt!🎵🎶

ii. No one, including angels and demons, has been told the real rules of this game:

"FOR EVERYONE ELSE." Not just humans.

That's why Crowley and Aziraphale each have to wonder if they've done the right or the wrong thing: nobody's told them what the rules are. Aziraphale even thinks that Crowley's temptation of Eve is "all part of the Plan," i.e, that Crowley did the right thing by doing the wrong one. They have no way to tell, and it may be both right and wrong at the same time. (Wrestling with impossible moral conundra raised by a brief look into a story happening on a much greater level than your own? You could be suffering from our old pal Thesis 2: Good Omens is cosmic horror!)

So Aziraphale's Promethean gift to humanity was one of God's objectives, just as cursing humans and yeeting them out of the Garden with the knowledge of Good and Evil and maybe a couple apple seeds in hand was His/er objective.

BONUS! Thesis 3: So why does God bring up Aziraphale's misappropriation of the sword at all? To show us, the audience, that Aziraphale lied to Her and that his gifting of the sword to Adam is part of Her Plan.

Remember from her whole deal with the Tree: God likes to set up situations so that She can react to them. Here she lampshades her awareness of what Aziraphale has done, listens to him lie to Her about it, and then very pointedly does nothing in response to that. She wants everyone watching--i.e., Aziraphale and us--to note that she has noticed the transfer of the sword and is not displeased by it and has noticed the lie and is not going to do anything about that either.

Remember as well, God is the one controlling the narrative we see in S1 of Good Omens. She introduces and concludes the story, and she narrates the scenes of the baby-swap. She's in control of which scenes we see and the order in which we see them. Since she is the one who asked Aziraphale the question about the sword, she's also responsible for this scene's existence.

So why do I think this scene is meant for us and not Aziraphale? Two reasons. Firstly, the conversation with God doesn't do Aziraphale any good. He worries about eventually getting in trouble about the sword until 2019, around 6,000 years later.

God is both omniscient and omnipotent, so it's not possible that She failed to communicate to Aziraphale in such a way that would ease his anxiety. Therefore the conversation was not for his benefit. Again, she's omniscient, so it wasn't for Her benefit either. That leaves the only other party to this conversation: us. The audience.

The next obvious question is, Why does God want us to know that Aziraphale's gift of the flaming sword was both of his free will and part of Her Plan?

I don't know. But I think it may become important, and here is where we delve into hypothesis territory: I think Good Omens is going metafictional. I mean this in a Doki Doki Literature Club, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch way: God, the character in Good Omens, is telling us, the audience, a story.

This metafictional aspect has been with us the whole time---more precisely since 01:13 of S1E1, when God switches from third-person to first-person and addresses us the viewers directly:

And there are several more metafictional; notes in S1 and S2 that I've found so far:

Season 1

That giant eyeball up there floating in space with a bunch of arcane shit around it is a reference to the opening credits sequence of The Twilight Zone, a metafictional show in which an omniscient narrator introduces and concludes each story by addressing the audience directly.

S1E1 27:20

Season 2

1. Maggie and Nina are fictional characters, but the characters share their names with actors Maggie Service and Nina Sosanya.

2. The final credits sequence, with the split screen showing Crowley on one side and Aziraphale on the other, references David Tennant and Michael Sheen's previous/simultaneous lockdown tv series project, Staged! which is intensely metafictional and in which Tennant and Sheen play characters based on themselves and with their names.

3. Sloppy plot synopsis or something more sinister?

4. An interviewer points out that Good Omens references Doctor Who as an extant concern in-universe, which obviously stars David Tennant in the past and currently.

If you find more, please drop them in the comments!

We the audience, are meant to understand ourselves and our reality as being indirectly involved in this story. And God wants us to know 1) that Aziraphale lied to Her about giving away the sword, knowing it was futile, and 2) that his gift of the flaming sword was part of Her Plan. The former is a major character note, and probably a foreshadowing one; but I have no guesses about God's purpose in showing us that the gift of the flaming sword was also to Plan except that whatever it is will probably make me dislike Her approach to parenting even more than I already do.

What I do love about this though is that it suggests that Crowley and Aziraphale both did the right thing by doing the wrong one, i.e. achieved a kind of Schroedinger's obedience, which is nice and disturbing and surprise! pretty cosmic horror. More sweetly, though, it suggests that the two foundational gifts to humanity from the divine were motivated by Crowley's low-effort mischief and Aziraphale's kindheartedness, which is lovely to think about.

DO NOT TAG NEIL GAIMAN IN ANY POST THAT INCLUDES OR REFERENCES THIS ESSAY.

[oksanas-sun]

She's not a monster. She's just a girl.

Credits for the quotes (I tried my best to find the origins but if I made a mistake, pls let me know): Killing Eve | Essay on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley | Demons by Imagine Dragons | Monsters - Poem by Nikita Gill | Promptuarium.wordpress | Arrested Development | Start here by Caitlyn Siehl

[olderthannetfic]

I've heard folks explain their m/m preference with "I'd ship more female characters but they're just never written well or in a way I prefer" which is... fair, I guess... but then you look at that person's original fiction and those are all complete sausagefests anyway. Somehow there's zero interest to fill the void by creating these "compelling women" that they're so badly "craving for". I wish people had the confidence to admit they have a gender preference for characters. It's not inherently sexist. But since people are afraid of appearing sexist, we get them rather pretending that good female casts simply aren't a thing and nobody knows how to write them.

This annoys me as someone who was always laser focused on female-led media since I was little. Sailor Moon, Xena, Sex in the City, Desperate Housewives, OITNB, Steven Universe, Killing Eve, Locked Tomb, several anime series, the list goes on... It's absurd to hear over and over again that maybe they're just not Good Enough Quality for the yaoi crowd. Do the rest of us have shitty taste then? Lol.

--

Many people who say this genuinely believe it's true. Now, yes, some of it is probably wishful thinking and self delusion, but a lot of it is also the same problem from Joanna Russ's essay What Can A Heroine Do? or Why Women Can’t Write.

A lot of writers in general and fic writers in particular are remixers first and foremost. They're not trail blazers, and they're only going to write something they have a well-used template for. True, there are more examples out there than they acknowledge, but it's still the case that we're bombarded by certain media tropes much more than others.

(Of course, the solution—should one want a solution—is to more proactively seek out examples and lots of them until one does have that background of how other people wrote a thing in one's mind.)