#posts that seem weird as hell out of context

[notmonaca]

shout out to the people who felt the need to make fun of native spanish speakers who don't know certain words in spanish

not my fucking fault no one ever called shrimp gamba in front of me

dialects are thing

anyways ive always called shrimp camarón and that should not mean that im a failure at spanish

[notherpuppet]

I know they’re probably not going to go into this (which i understand, there’s only so much time in an episode and they’re telling a different story) but I think about Al’s background a LOT. Get ready if ur in the mood for a read.

To be a mixed Black person in America is a…bizarre experience. You come to realize that due to the coincidence of your genetic makeup, white folks may divulge information that they keep so closely guarded from the ears of “more obvious-looking” black folks. Im gonna bring it back to Alastor, but lemme give some personal context. I’m mixed with Filipino, so I’m pretty obviously not white, yet my ambiguous ethnic makeup in a predominantly white suburbia seemed to make white peers and people feel much more at ease in relaying their criticisms or prejudices of black people to me. I would hear someone feel comfy enough to spew vitriolic racist shit with me, then toe the line like a circus acrobat when around someone a few shades darker in skin tone and a few coils curlier in hair texture. It was constantly infuriating and holding my tongue was a practice to both investigate someone’s true nature and preserve my own safety. I did abandon that method of navigating life in America, and experienced the switch-up white folks made when I started ‘broadcasting’ my blackness. (E.G. beyonce pre vs. post Lemonade). The criticisms and prejudice confessions just came less often, til I saw them being caged up completely after white peers experienced backlash from me. After they realized “OH this bitch is a n*****!?”

Now this is from someone who is brown, but i also wanna talk about my white-passing cousin with a similar racial makeup as Al, who is from the south and oh BOY. (Let’s call him J for this post’s purposes). J’s navigation though simple daily life is such a constant contradictory experience, of which he is still working through in therapy. I think of one moment when he was manager at retail gig and his boss told him that whenever a Black customer enters, it’s policy to give them “exceptionally attentive customer service”. Essentially, “follow that n***** around”. This is just one modern incident of when J would hear the quiet part out loud, despite his Blackness, because his appearance was white enough to make white folks drop their guard. Eventually, my cousin and I took to the same direction where we used our advantage of disarming white folks against them when the time came. We would keep note and record of racism and unlock a sort of “this you?” when the opportunity to expose that person’s true nature came. It’s pretty vengeful thinking ngl, but it is really REALLY hard to resist exposing an asshole rather than attempting to teach an asshole to change their ways. Especially given that such an attempt is an ARDUOUS uphill battle. The experience of KNOWING the truth about what someone thinks of your people, and being opened to opportunities and information that you would not have access to if the chance of your genetics was only slightly different is bIZARRE, horrific, and fuel for constant inner turmoil. (It sucks y’all)

Now back to Alastor; to have been a mixed person in the Deep South in 1930s America—it’s not too difficult for me to imagine how traumatic and convoluted that experience must have been. Especially when legally and socially, things were so much more Black and White. And when you’re on the line in between that, when society does not prepare a place for your existence, it can be SO isolating. You may consider the absurdity of such an arbitrary method of determining class, status, and/or caste much earlier in life than peers, which only further isolates you. You hold a resentment of society now that you know exactly how the other side is operating to ensure your oppression.

And then I think of Al’s weird ass moral code. How he arrived in Hell and (according to Mimzy) began killing overlords with reckless abandon. This is someone who likely had to develop the cunning to navigate 1930s Deep South America as a mixed, murdering, psychopath without getting caught by authorities who are already gunning for you. And now he is in Hell where the rules of society have gone up in smoke and he can fully embrace his rage, resentment, and vengeance. A desire to burn down the powerful people of the world can be accommodated and ANY previous inhibitions can finally be released. The morality of rising above someone by cutting them down (instead of developing emotional/spiritual healing) has become the easier and satisfying option. Finally the opportunity to show the power-secure villains of the world how easily you can tear them down when nothing is holding you back any longer.

TLDR; The trauma of racism in America is pretty sufficient cannon fodder for a severe psychotic break, the development of socially debilitating behaviors and isolation, and a quest for profound vengeance. So maybe that can explain some of the enigma that is Alastor.

And this is just ONE facet of Al. I didn’t even get to bring up the isolation that comes with being an aroace nonbeliever in the 1930s Deep South. Like FUCK. I’m a mixed, aroace nonbeliever from a modern day conservative town and yall….what a weird experience for sure lol but anyway lemme get back to my life. Whole point of this was—-WHAT AN INTERESTING FUCKEN CHARACTER TO THINK ABOUT

[bomberqueen17]

tone indicators

I reblogged this post without adding any commentary bc queue and not a lot of computer time lately but like okay here's the thing about tone indicators:

they're yet another in-group set of coded speech. like an inside joke, or a meme, or a conlang. if you are in a group that uses them, they're great and perfectly comprehensible.

but if you don't happen to have come from inside a group that uses them, they are exactly as exclusionary as any other heavy jargon or inside joke or acronym. I mean have you ever listened to soldiers talk? The US Army communicates in heavily jargon-ified speech, liberally laden with acronyms, so much so that it's a self-referential joke to make up obscene or deliberately-obfuscated ones to slip into official reports since the sorts of people who'd kick up a fuss about obscene language won't understand them.

It is exactly the same thing. Except that's exclusionary on purpose, and tone indicators are exclusionary in effect but tout themselves as inclusionary.

So if I, an outsider to this, am reading along, and after a sentence, there's a / and then between one and three letters, that is not enough information for me to use to look it up.

This is absolutely inaccessible if you are not alreadhy in the group that uses it.

I wouldn't mind if the people who used them were just like 'oh ha sorry jargon, i'll try to explain if it's not clear, sorry i forget you guys don't know them' just like any other inside joke or meme or whatever.

But I was in a discussion with someone on a Discord and when I was puzzled about them including these weird slash-acronyms after their statements they were like oh how nice for you that you're not neurodivergent and don't need to use these.

Uh no. The opposite actually. I'm the kind of neurodivergent that needs context. I handle being excluded from conversations very poorly. And that's where I get pissed off, that people seem to be holding these up as the new be-all end-all of Finally Solving The Problem Of Ambiguous Tones In Social Interaction. The hell you are, kids. They're just another layer, and I'd say the worst one yet, out of many many many attempts to solve this exact problem. They are fundamentally inaccessible. Don't mistake the fact that you learned them (somewhere, in some context inaccessible to me) for them actually being universal.

Considered against the many different solutions that have been offered since text-only speech was invented, tone indicators stack up as among the very least-accessible of the lot, since they contain so little context in and of themselves-- if a key is not provided then they're totally inaccessible, and are exceptionally difficult for non-native English speakers, and in general require so much memorization or cross-referencing as to be prohibitively hostile to outsiders.

And that's fine, if what your'e doing is just meant for talking to your friends. But don't come into my conversations and berate me for not having memorized whatever incomprehensible set of acronyms you've newly-decided are the new universal truth. And what drives me the most insane is how many of these acronyms someone has now decided to assign a whole new meaning to are acronyms that are well-known and already existed and are in heavy use. So if you try to look them up guess what you get! is it gonna be the newly-created version or the one that's been in use for fifty to seventy-five years??

For one, P.O.S. has had a specific meaning in written and spoken English for a really damn long time and if you call me a piece of shit in the actual language I speak I am absolutely not going to interpret your conlang as having intended something nice. (YES REALLY THEY'RE USING THAT ONE TRY TO GUESS WHAT IT MEANS. NO. NO! I know. Fuck! That's wild. Absolutely the fuck not.)

[noneorother]

All the music you didn’t hear: The Good Omens soundtrack is lying to you. *Part 1*

The Bonkers Meta Series part 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I so rarely get a chance to misuse my experience in classical music, but here we are. When I realized on my most recent watch-through of the series that the David Arnold score was brilliant, but also really wonky in some parts and I couldn’t put my finger on why, @embracing-the-ineffable suggested I listen to the album soundtrack to compare.

And when I tell you what I found hidden in there, you’re going to need Eccles cakes...

1) The Song is the Clue

So right up top we have this banger. The 12th track on the album is the orchestral backdrop to the scene in the Job minisode where Aziraphale reveals Crowley’s crow/goats. The duration is 2:22 (the only track with multiples on the album), and if you look at the track by itself it doesn’t mean much. But the song just before it is actually from this fucking scene:

You know, the one where there’s a song that’s a clue to a mystery. Except Clue is capitalised, and Aziraphale pronounces it. I’ve seen guesses that this is a reference to the movie Clue, but I would put a lot of money on the fact that we are supposed to read the title of the song currently playing at that moment in the show *as a Clue*, which is super convenient, because the word Clue is capitalized in the track listing. 

Seems like the overlords of Good Omens have a message for us : The song is the Clue. It’s what God wants. Cool cool cool. WHAT SONG?

2) Symmetry in all things 

Before I straight up tell you, we have to go back and look at season 1.

Now I’m far from the first to notice tons of parallels between the story, details and even lines in both seasons. It got me thinking that maybe there are some fun synch-up parallels between the two season’s soundtracks, seeing as they are both 6 episodes long. Here’s the end of S1 and then S2

Oh that’s a bummer, I thought to myself. 

They don’t even add up to the same number, or playtime, and neither of them is exactly 60 tracks. But do you want to hear a secret? S2 is actually missing 3 tracks on the album. And because there are 2 discs in S2 (cute), the numbers of the tracks start over again from 1. Remember how much God likes sevens? Check out where all the weirdness is happening in disc 2 (I’ve added the missing track listings in red to add context):

After checking each track with the show and listening side by side (for reasons that will become clear in another post) I can definitively say that there is something *very weird* going on at the end of episode 4. 

First is track 7, Zombie dressing room, which seems to actually reach over two distinct scenes of the photo evidence in the dressing room and then Shax in hell even though it only has one title.

But *between* these two scenes we get an eerily silent wine date with Aziraphale & Crowley.

There’s really no music or even sound here besides the dialogue and room tone (until after the cheers), and it seems like a very intentionally silent version of a ritz date from season 1.

My best guess is that we are supposed to divide that track into two tracks of 7, before and after the date to get a second track 7. Or maybe the silent one is missing music? The third track number 7 is the weirdest one. It’s this scene here, when Nina parks her bike, and Aziraphale parks the car at the end of S2E4.

If you take a close listen to the music, it’s a jaunty little piece, with an oom-pah base in 3 ⁄ 4 time. The thing is, this music does not exist in any Good Omens album. Please feel free to correct me, but I’ve tried to find any part of any song that this could even be a reprise of, and I Shazammed it to be sure it wasn’t anything else. This song does not exist anywhere except in this scene. (It quickly morphs into a reprise of the original theme once Nina leaves Aziraphale). It’s an invisible song.

So we have 3 tracks at the end of S2E4: a long one, a silent one and an invisible one. Only one of which is numbered 7, but that all fit into that place in the track listing.

Which, when we add the two extras to the original total of fifty-nine we get... sixty-one! Hey wait a minute.

How are we going to get to 62?

3) The real missing track. 

So the real reason we had to go back to the S1 album was because it contains the missing track that God is talking about. Let’s compare the last tracks on each album.

I’ve highlighted the mismatch between the in-show music and the album in S2, which means I had to add A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square back into the S2 album because guess what, it’s not in the S2 album. Even though it plays in the show. 

You want to know how not in the album it is? Amazon had to track it in the show as a season 1 song. They had to give Tori Amos credit for her song on Good Omens in the X-ray bonus features because that’s how not in the album this song is.

So my fellow beings, if the song is the Clue, then It’s what God Wants.

And if God wants a happily ever after with Aziraphale and Crowley on their own side, then by Job, I think Neil is going to give it to her.

-----------

And there's more where that came from! Part 2 coming shortly.

[demonicchicken1121]

Alastor, Rosie, and Cannibal Town: an Analysis (I’m fucking at it (Alastor Posting) again)

Ok I know that a lot of people have already been talking about this, but I really want to analyze Alastors behavior in cannibal town and how it’s so much different than how he behaves literally anywhere else.

Alastors true motives, personality, opinions, etc are widely debated in the fandom. Does he actually care about Charlie or the hotel? What’s his beef with Lucifer? Why did he make a deal and who was it with? Al is such a mysterious and closed off character, and his demeanor changes so frequently that no one in or out of universe really knows much about him. I personally think that the closest we get to seeing Alastor in his truest and most authentic self is when he’s in cannibal town.

From the moment they arrive, Alastors demeanor changes dramatically, even from a few moments before, when Charlie was venting about her relationship issues. He seems genuinely excited to be there and see Rosie, to the point where he seems to forget he brought Charlie here for a reason (hell I think he forgets Charlie is even there at a few points.)

Al and Rosie HAVE seen each other since he returned to hell, at the overlord meeting, but they didn’t really have the time to interact. Even so, they are so in tune with each other. This man was gone for seven years and here they are gaslight gatekeep girlbossing like nothing happened.

But once they actually have the opportunity to interact outside of the overlord meeting they’re super excited to catch up. The only other time he shows this much enthusiasm to see someone is with Mimzy, but things quickly goes south when she puts the hotel is danger. Alastors friendship with mimzy feels very onesided, and it seems that she only shows up when she needs something. While Alastor and Rosie clearly ask each other for favors, it feels a lot more equal in a way where they each get an equal amount of benefit.

And while we haven’t seen much of them yet, I get the vibe that they hang out in their free time and respect each others boundaries and schedules. I think Al went through cannibal town hoping to see her in the prequel comic, but figured she was busy after the extermination and instead asked some of the residents to say hello on his behalf. But that’s just a theory, a gam-

Also just a little thing I noticed, when rosie is joking about Charlie being too young for Alastor, Charlie looks visibly annoyed, but Alastors body language and expression don’t change. He tends to react relatively strongly when anyone (Angel) makes a move on him or assumes he’s dating anyone, but I think he knows Rosie well enough to know she’s joking.

Alastor lets his guard down so much in this part of the episode. He’s really in his element and his behavior seems so natural and genuine.

I love how he’s so willing to just roast Susan. Every iconic duo has that one person they fucking hate and will not be subtle about how much they fucking hate them. It’s especially funny with alastor, who’s usually really pretentious and passive aggressive when he insults someone, but with Susan it’s just

“✨Ornery old bitch?✨” also this is the only time in the entire series that alastor swears in a genuinely humorous way. In almost every other example, he is trying to intimidate someone or piss them off, and also when his staff was broken.

And speaking of his staff, I think it was actually a big deal that Alastor let Charlie use it, even tho it was for a very short time. This does show that whether or not he actually cares about her, Alastor does have a certain amount of trust and respect for Charlie. Despite that, I don’t think he would have done this if he wasn’t in cannibal town and with Rosie. The staff is clearly very important to him and likely holds some amount of his power, given how he reacted when it was broken.

As weird as this sentence is out of context, I think Alastor feels very safe in cannibal down. Rosie and probably the other cannibals genuinely like and respect him. it speaks volumes that not only he let Charlie use his staff, but he put himself in the position that would leave him vulnerable to Rosie if Charlie were to turn on him. While he knows it’s highly unlikely that would happen, I think it’s still worth noting that he intentionally left himself in such a vulnerable position in cannibal town and nowhere else.

Something else interesting I noticed, is that “ready for this” is one of the only songs that Alastor is interacting with another character, and isn’t competing for the spotlight. He is walking all over Vox in “stayed gone”, and getting walked all over by Lucifer in “Hells greatest dad”, but here, he’s very in tune with everyone else. He and Rosie are on equal footing and he feels secure enough to fade into the background a bit, harmonizing with the cannibals and letting Charlie take the lead.

So yeah, I feel like Cannibal town is alastors home in hell. His relationship with Rosie is probably the most positive relationship he has in the whole show. I think viv has mentioned that Alastor wasn’t a cannibal before he died, and I’m not sure if that’s still canon, but if it is, I can definitely see him becoming a cannibal when he became friends with Rosie. I can also see Rosie being one of his first friends in hell, maybe they even rose to power together. I’m clearly getting into some more speculative headcanons because I do what I want, but I’m putting them in their own section.

Now for headcanons with little to no substantial evidence ✨✨✨

I do actually really like the idea that they became friends very quickly and rose to power together. I like the idea that they were friends before Alastor became this super powerful force in hell. It also makes sense that he would trust someone who wanted to be his friend back when people weren’t constantly asking for favors or testing his power. Bc I do think that there was a short period of time between him arriving in hell and rising to power. (I have a lot of ideas about how he got his powers which probably will get its own post, but to brief, he wasn’t super powerful when he arrived in hell.) it makes sense that him and Rosie would have become friends in that period.

When he did start rising to power, I think Rosie would have guided him, given that he was a relatively new sinner. She would help him find overlords to target, possibly even letting him recruit cannibals to help him take them down. After he was finished broadcasting their screams, he would return their bodies to Rosie for her to sell. Maybe any cannibals who helped him would get discounts or first pickings.

This makes sense to me bc not only would it help explain why Alastor has never seen Rosie as a rival or a target, but also it would help explain why they’re so close. Nothing builds a friendship better than overthrowing incredible forces of power. Also they totally square dance on the weekends.

Viv please I need an episode that’s nothing but these two dicking around in cannibal town for twenty minutes.

[azirafuck]

GOS2 Spoilers Masterpost (ONLY EP. 1-2)

alright, you read the title, you know what's under here - gonna tag everyone who helped this if I know them, thanks to everyone for their contribution and for being agents of chaos the way satan intended. love you all

[Last update/edit: 24/07 - 14:10CET]

first of all, we got some amazing posts from @incorrectquoteswwdits mostly about the first scene in heaven with crowley as an angel:

angel!crowley creating stars and aziraphale thinking he's calling him beautiful

more on that

aziraphale's lies make the lesbians have problems, apparently

communist aziraphale be like OUR CAR

isolation and doubts

THEN we have a detailed recount of the first episode by a kind anon! again, thank you @incorrectquoteswwdits for sharing <3

@goodomens-hints posted a lenghty and detailed recount of the first episode as well with some little hits at future episodes (nothing too big on the post itself, but BE CAREFUL, the blog is actually posting some other spoilers from episodes past the second one!)

@goodomensjail gave us a detailed recount of the first scene, with angel!crowley starting to question stuff and eventually shielding aziraphale with his wing

@mikubinders gives us SOME GOOD GOURMET SHIT by telling us that:

"Beelzebub kidnaps and threatens Crowley, tells him that ze could put a price on his head but ze doesn't want to. After that Crowley comes back to the bookshop and Good-old-fashioned lover boy plays while he drives there. "I'm back" happens. Aziraphale makes Crowley do a silly little apology dance so he forgives him and so they work together"

after thinking this last spoiler was fake, an anon came through and confirmed its real! we also have new context! (sent by an anon to yours tuly)

anon came through with some details about the Everyday record, told us Queen is actually tied to CROWLEY and not to the Bentley, and gave us more context to the OUR CAR and OUR BOOKSHOP bit (sent by an anon to yours tuly)

as for what happens during the Job flashback, after which the sitting five feet apart on a rock in front of the sea happens, a bunch of different versions of what actually happens are going around. @thesherrinfordfacility kept up with the madness surrounding it, so im gonna post here the last two versions of events/details.

first one:

In the Job section, Aziraphale is questioning gods decision of punishing Job. Then u see him in heaven w Muriel here and they are looking thru a long scroll that has instructions from god and he's trying to make sense of it. Muriel is telling him that god and satan made a bet about what Job would do and that's why they are testing him. And az is like whatttt why would god do that that's mean!

When Az finds out they're going to kill Jobs kids, he goes down to Earth to save them while using his angel voice until he realizes he's speaking to Crowley. He sees Crowley about to enter the kids room and tells Crowley "I know you, you wouldn't do this" and Crowley tells him he doesn't know him really. (

AND TY TENNANT IS SASSY AND FLIRTS W AZ??!??!? (*) And THATS when crowley goes "well he seems nice" from the clip. He wasn't jealous tho, like he thought it was funny since they are literally there to supposedly kill these kids and one of them is flirting lol.

The moment of 'weird-beard Crowley' was actually more focused on azi and him questioning God. Crowley tempts Azi w food and u see him struggle but then he gobbled it down and he cries bc he thinks crowley is going to bring him to hell (that's the scene where they are sitting on that thing with the pretty horizon) Crowley tells him "you're just an angel who follows gods as will as much as he can" and Az says that sounds lonely, and Crowley agrees, which is a callback to when he asked Crowley if he was lonely being on what Crowley calls "his own side", and Crowley said no. Crowley then tells him "i'm a demon. I lied"

(*): it was told this isn't actually canon canon, it's up for interpretation - some reported Ty's character is just the classic bratty teenager UPDATE: NOPE anon cleared it up and apparently it DOES read as flirty because ty's character is a little bitch, love that for us

and then we have the second one:

"Episode 2 is half present day things [...], and half the Job story/flashback. Crowley is the demon sent by Satan to torment "God's favorite human" Job to see if Job will curse God, in one big bet between God and Satan. Aziraphale comes to try to stop him, discovers they recognize each other but haven't seen each other since "the flood" and that Crowley seems to have changed since the flood, because he is willing to sacrifice the goats, and ruin Job's house. Crowley says he "has a permit" to torment Job FROM GOD. Aziraphale brings this up to the archangels that gleefully explain that yes it's a bet with Satan and that Job will suffer, but he will get everything back 3-fold by the end. And he will get NEW children. This disturbs Aziraphale, he does not want the CURRENT children to die, he understands the familial love that the archangels do not. He goes to stop Crowley not with power since he has the permit but to reason with him. Aziraphale says things to the effect "I KNOW you don't want to harm them I KNOW you and you don't want to kill children" and Crowley is defiant, but then…. It is revealed that he never killed any of the goats either, he transformed them into pigeons to hide them. And he is hiding the children away in the basement but destroying the house to make it look like they died. He transforms the three kids into lizards to hide them, then when the Archangels descend to give Job his rewards and tell him his wife will bear 7 new children, Job and his wife are in despair because they love their children. Crowley comes in pretending to be a human doctor and he and Aziraphale LIE to the angels faces about how babies are made and trick the angels into thinking Jobs three original children are NEWLY BORN children. Which fools Gabriel, who has only ever seen God make Eve fully grown from Adam's ribs. Crowley then meets Aziraphale at the rock. Aziraphale is crying and says "im ready for you to take me to hell" because he has LIED to angels and foiled God's plans. Crowley is gentle and comforts him that he is still an angel and "I won't tell anyone if you won't" and they reminisce that it's lonely being a different kind of demon and a different kind of angel that sort of do what they feel is right. Heavily implying that they are the same and have each other now. The end of episode 2.

that's what's going around for now, but ill add stuff if we find anything new - also feel free to add to this yourself or send me stuff!

[pippin-katz]

Arthur’s Love Confession

The word choice for Arthur’s confession is really… interesting. As many people have pointed out, if you remove the pronouns from the conversation, everything Arthur says can be true for Merlin as much as Gwen.

Here’s the thing: I’m a writer. I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it when it comes to posts like this.

If I was writing a love confession from one of my characters, I wouldn’t have what they say be so vague that it would be unclear who they were referring to when taken out of context.

If you showed this conversation to someone who had no idea who these characters were other than a knight and a servant, it would be completely believable that the knight is talking about the servant he’s with.

Hell, Merlin’s reaction to Arthur being unable to say he’s in love and how certain he is that nothing could happen seems a bit strong considering the conversation is about Gwen, not him. He’s her friend and would understandably try to convince Arthur that they could be together, but the dialogue does it in such a round about, vague way before they get to the point. There’s no reason for them to be vague. They both know full well who they’re talking about.

I suppose I have to say this is an opinion of the writing because I can’t claim that the writers did anything with underlying intentions. It’s just seems strange to me how perfectly the description aligns. Even the lines not here could easily have the pronouns swapped and still make sense.

“How can I admit that I think about her (him/you) all the time? Or that I care about her (him/you) more than anyone? How can I admit that I don’t know what I’ll do if any harm comes to her (him/you)?”

It still works. We can’t prove that Arthur thinks about Merlin all the time, but there’s a damn huge amount of evidence that he cares for him deeply and can’t handle him being hurt. Anyone wanting to argue with me on this, go watch The Poisoned Chalice again, which is the FOURTH EPISODE by the way.

Other than that iconic episode, there’s plenty of other things. He doesn’t let Merlin drink the “poison” during the test at the labyrinth. He denies any accusations of him having magic whenever they come up, which is because he genuinely doesn’t believe he has any, but it also has to do with the fact that he would be executed. He always protects him in dangerous situations and tells him to run when things get too dicey. We all know how he acted when Merlin was believed to be dead.

Like I said, it’s weird how well the lines match up. And Arthur looks at him like this before the conversation:

And like this after this conversation:

Maybe I’ve just never had a “true bestie” because I have never looked at someone or had someone look at me like that. Arthur looks so flirtatious in that second gif man.

But anyway! That’s just some thoughts I was having about the love confession!

[keysorsomething]

Before the Sun Rises / Caught

1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 7

The double feature chapters I wrote :) Just wanna say thanks to everyone who's supported these fics, it makes me very happy to see all the likes and reblogs !!

Cross-posted on ao3

Before the Sun Rises

You awake the next morning with no pressure on your chest and nothing in your arms. Still half-asleep, you look around the room. You’re disoriented, like when you take a three-hour nap in the middle of a weekday and wake up covered in sweat and unaware of the concept of time. One thing you catch is that the room is still dark, but you would guess that it’s always dark in here. You haven’t seen a window, after all. You start to rub the sleep from your eyes, fighting a yawn as you try to find the man who seems to have disappeared into the night. Melting into the darkness, as he had each time before.

“Nikto?” You ask, sitting up. Or at least you try, before strong hands meet your shoulders and shove you back into the pillow. You spot his blue eyes staring down at you almost ridiculing, clearly not pleased with your attempt to get out of bed. It’s almost startling, the speed and force with which you’re slammed back, not the hardest you had been slammed into something, but it was sure lacking any form of gentle grace you would expect from the motion. In this context at least. But you’re too tired to really think about the strength in him like you had before or to think about how he had seemingly teleported into your sight and personal space with no sign of where he was prior.

“Stay,” Nikto’s voice growls out. You look up at him, confused and groggy. He lowers himself back on the bed, and then back onto your chest. “I was not done,” He huffs, taking the sleeve of your shirt between two fingers. He pulls on the fabric, turning it over in his hand. His eyes narrow at it, as if your sleeve had offended him.

“Okay,” You mumble, letting your eyes fall back shut. You spend a while like that, enjoying it. Laying on your back with him on your chest, feeling the gentle pull of his hand as he busies himself with your shirt sleeve. It’s a moment of peace, expanded when he stops pulling at your sleeve - it was actually kind of annoying - and instead, his hand rests on your bicep, unmoving. He lets out a soft sigh, and you assume he closed his eyes too. Your breathing synchronizes, as your hand goes back to rubbing his shoulders like you had been doing the night before.

“You will come back tonight,” He states firmly, breaking the shared moment of silence. Your eyes shoot open and your hands pause, unsure how exactly to respond. You did want to come back again. Hell, you wanted to move in with him. You dare to even think you want the world to melt away, for time to be this moment and this moment alone, always and forever, but should you really let him boss you around like that? Should you just agree? Should you agree enthusiastically, with a ‘yes, sir!’? Or do you say no on principle?

“Can you ask nicely?” In a patronizing tone is what comes out of your mouth instead. Like a mom talking to a toddler who just demanded ice cream or something. You don’t have many references for modern-day parenting in the army. Maybe you shouldn’t compare those two things, that was kind of weird. But it wasn’t mansplaining patronizing - and you knew mansplaining, since that was the only thing that came out of Graves’ mouth - it was the other kind. You had no other words for it.

Nikto groans, presumably rolling his eyes, “You will please visit us again tonight,” He corrects, but he doesn’t seem all too happy about it. “пожалуйста?” He breaks out the big guns. How do you deny a masked man who’s speaking in his mother tongue? It may be your biggest weakness.

You sigh, conceding, “Okay. I will,” And he lets out a pleased rumble. A sound you could very much get used to.

“Now go back to sleep,” He huffs grumpily. “пожалуйста..?” You almost listen instantly, but then another thought pops into your head.

“What time is it?” You ask, the thought of being caught once more nagging at the very back of your psyche. He lets out another less-than-pleased huff of a breath at you, this time through his nose. But, hey, is he really blaming you for worrying about both your careers? His head shifts so his eyes meet yours better, and you see a small smudge of eye black left over from him watching it on his right eyelid, hugging the lash line. It almost looks like eyeliner. You also see the curve of his nose. That is skin that is clearly scarred, looking like it would be rough to touch. Healed burns, probably. Chemical burns that stretch over from the right of his face. You aren’t too sure how the mask is doing that, as all of the points where it attaches to the blast plate seem intact, and it’s only a small dip from where it normally sits. You decide not to comment on it, however.

“Early. Four-fifty or so,” He replies firmly. “I would not let you overstay your welcome,” His words are aggressive in phrasing but soft in tone. An odd combo he seems to use often, which you can’t be sure if that is just him or because he isn’t a native English speaker. But, his brows soften too, his hand sliding up but hesitating to make contact with your face or hair. It retreats away. When you look into his eyes, you feel like he wants nothing more than to touch you, and you feel he agrees that this moment is ever so precious. But he doesn’t want to touch you. Perhaps he’s afraid, or perhaps he doesn’t like his face being touched, so he won’t touch yours. The Golden Rule and all that. But you still smile softly down at him, gently rubbing his back. A silent encouragement to do as he pleases, one that is not listened too. After just a beat, you speak again. There’s no point in making the fleeting movement a whole ordeal.

“Well, wake me up when I have,” You tell him, trying to keep your voice low and comforting, the way he likes. He nods in response, eyes staring up at you warily. You both share for a moment the fear of being found out, but you don’t voice it to him. And he does not voice it back.

“Of course,” Nitko mumbles, sliding back into the position he was before your question. You chuckle, wrapping your arms tight around him as he matches the gesture, and lean your head into his. You take a deep breath, letting the whole moment sink into you. The warmth and weight of the man on your chest, the sound of his breathing, the feeling of the cold, hard blast plate against your cheek. It’s all the best thing to ever happen in this place, and you have a feeling it’s the best thing to have ever happened to him.

You sigh, it's nice to share this moment with him. Every moment over the past few days had been precious. You let your head fall back - you had been keeping it up to look at him - but keep your eyes on him as best you can. You still your hand on his back, letting your arm fall limp. He shifts his head slightly on your chest, fully committed to using you as a pillow. The image of him and his peacefully rising chest is wiped away by your eyes falling back shut.

---

Caught

You reawaken to a soft patting of a gloved hand on your cheek. Your eyes open to Nikto just a few inches from his face, his hand gently twapping your cheek to wake you up. You groan, your muscles stretching as best you can under the weight.

“It is time you leave,” He mumbles, but you can see the disappointment in his eyes. “You do not have much time to get back to the barracks before the rest wake up.”

You pout, blinking up at him, “…How come you get a room all to yourself? It’s not fair,” You mumble, closing your eyes. His bed was so much more comfortable than your cot. And it was so much better than sleeping in a room with multiple other people. Just you and him. There’s a moment where you desire much more of this. So much more of this, in a much more domestic manner, but that fantasy is short-lived by a second round of pats on your cheek that don’t relent until your eyes open back up.

“It was a specific request,” Nikto replied, eyes narrowed on you as he tries to keep you from falling back asleep. As always, they are an icy blue that doesn’t match the feeling of having them on you at all. But by now they feel so much cooler than before, like a warm hug or a heated blanket instead of a hot iron. “I told them I would not take the job if they did not accommodate me.”

You nod, rubbing your eyes with a huff. That makes sense, you think. He seems like the guy to do that. Your eye opens now that your hand isn’t over it, and he hasn’t moved. Something a part of you deep inside is grateful for. You don’t know how well you could cope if he was gone just like that. Like how he had appeared earlier. That thought doesn’t last long, none of them do. He was just so much to think about. His eyes are wide, wild as they look down at you. He seems to think that you’re a lot to think about too. Or perhaps you’re assigning that to him, like when people speak for dogs and cats. You’ve been doing that with him a lot more often since that night in the armory. His eyes get a little less wide, and then even less wide. Until his eyes look closed, but you can tell they’re still partly open. God, he has pretty eyelashes.

He then, all at once, presses his still-masked face into yours. The fabric of the mask covering his mouth is rough against your lips. There’s no movement under it, almost as if he’s just smooshing his lips into yours like he isn’t sure how to do it. You feel the cold metal of the blast plate pushing into your forehead like a headache. It almost hurts, but there’s no way it’s enough. Somehow being too much and too little, but not just right. Your hand goes up to cup his cheek, but you don’t get the chance too. You didn’t even get the chance to close your eyes or lean into the kiss. It’s gone all at once, the same way it came. The pressure on your chest where he was laying there, on your forehead where the protruding parts of the metal dug into your skull, the rough fabric almost painfully hot on the skin of your lips, all of it. He pulls away before you can fully process it, before you can take it in for all of its glory. He rolls off of you, laying on the bed next to you facing away, partly curled up. You have to take a moment before you can do anything. You just kissed the Nikto. No, you were just kissed by The Nikto.

“Nikto?” You ask, voice soft and wavering, like if you speak too loud you’ll create a rip in space-time and it will have never happened. He cuts you off before you get any more in.

“Go,” He responds gruffly, and you nod, pulling off the bed. You’re a little stunned, and you do have places to be. You’d be worried that he was upset with you, but you have a feeling he’s just processing it, the same as you. Maybe he’s worried you’re upset with him? You almost feel like you need to cover up, and are subconsciously pulling the covers with you as you try to. You notice when you almost trip, but you catch yourself and throw them back on the bed. You take a deep breath, trying to ground yourself before speaking. And before leaving. You had appearances to keep up once you got back to the barracks and you had the three musketeers riding your dick.

“Okay,” You squeak, backing away. Your voice sounds so much more pathetic than you wanted it too, and you really can’t be having that. “See you tonight,” You say very quickly, hoping he’ll know you aren’t upset with him. You then promptly spin on your heels, and swing the door open. You go to step out of the room when you come face to face with a chest. You look up with a soft curse, only to find judging blue eyes staring back at yours from under a makeshift mask. The eyes are hard, angry. You’re in trouble.

“Oh, good morning, Colonel,” You manage to get out through a panicked breath. His arm is raised, you had interrupted him mid-knock. He lowers it, and it’s easy to tell his scowling down at you, eyes narrowing further. He bends slightly at the waist, and you hear the fabric shift and Nikto starts to speak when the room behind you goes silent. König looks behind you, and then back down at you, inching ever closer.

Then, you hear your voice hissed through teeth, a heavy Austrian accent filling your ears.

[mightbesmall]

Twisted Tsum-Tsum?!

Genre: Crack

Characters: Tsum.

Warnings: Tsum.

Summary: You wake up in a coffin that got burned, when you step out you see tiny burrito things???

Additional Note: Based of a post I saw on Tumblr.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was dark, really dark. You then saw light in the form of pathetic blue flames. You opted to kick the door, freeing yourself from your prison. 

"Now where am I?" You asked yourself looking around. 

"Squeak! Squeeeak!!" What was that annoying squeaking?? You looked left then right and eventually down. There was a weird grey burrito thing with blue-fiery cat ears, blue eyes and a pitch-forked tail.

"What. The. Fuck." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After being chased (you walked) to the library by the weird creature, you met another burrito that you just decided to call a Tsum, this one was melodramatic and had that crow theme going on, it also whipped and tied up the grey one you think was called Grim? That was all you could understand from the squeaking. You think you were being lectured but you can't tell.

Now you were in front of some doors that were probably big for the Tsums but you had to crouch to not headbutt the ceiling. 

"SQUEEAAAKK!" Crowley -the crow Tsum- squeaked (that's all he can do tbh).

"Squee, Squeak." Said a red-haired Tsum who looked very polite. Crowley then turned and pointed a stubby paw? leg? at you saying, and I quote: "Squeeak, Squee. Squeaaak." You didn't know what he said but Grim got offended by it. He then pointed at a mirror. Using context clues, you walked up to the mirror.

"Squeak."

Inspiring. You understood that surprisingly.

"[Name]." Cue confused squeaking. You guess they Tsums' didn't understand why you weren't squeaking.

"...Squeak." Wow an ellipsis in bold, Brrr doesn't usually do that! The silence must've been loud then. 

"SQUEEEEEEAAAAKK!!!!" A chorus of annoying squeaking sounded out, was it that big of a deal to not have magic???

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"S-Squeeak!" Grim squeaked, though it sounded more like a wheeze.

”Squeaak.” The upside down Tsum, Lilia you think, floated down onto your table.

“Squeak!” He then exclaimed. You all looked over to the Diasomnia table only to see cute fierce glares being sent you way. You were absentmindedly patting Lilia on the head, he seemed to be enjoying it. Huh, maybe THAT’S why the green one looks like he wants to strangle you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"SQUUEEEAAK! SQU-SQUEAAAAAKKK-" You picked up the overblotted Riddle.

"Hey, stop that." You said shaking him slightly as you stomped on the blot incarnate. The others, Ace, Deuce and Cater were clinging to your legs while Trey stood looking at Riddle with worry. Honestly this was probably a serious situation but you just couldn't help the amusement as Riddle nestled into your palms as he slept. 

"Squeak..?" You glanced down at Trey who looked concerned for his friend. You crouched down and patted his head to which he leaned into your touch.

"He's fine Trey, just resting." You have become more fluent in Tsum over the past few days.

When Riddle woke up, you obviously pampered him and he surprisingly didn't swat you away rather he leaned into it, which resulted in a jealous Ace yell-squeaking at Riddle about him apologising as Cater sneakily climbed onto your lap. The cuties.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

”Ruggie stop that snickering!” The little hyena was the one behind the ‘attacks’ and the one who injured Trey! He stuck his tiny tongue out and hopped away.

You strolled after him whilst ADeuce and Grim sped after. Ha suckers.

”Squeeak!” Ruggie said, an insightful conversation but please, there’s a flaming cat that demands tuna all day and you are broke as hell! You need the money dammit!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You stomped down on the inky lion whilst holding Leona by the scruff at arms length. You made sure the blot was dead before turning to the overgrown house cat.

"Bad cat. You could've killed Ruggie." You scolded as you held said hyena-Tsum close to your chest. Poor thing almost got turned to sand. He was trembling in your hold as you rubbed his head soothingly.

"Squeaaak." Was the lions lazy, drawled reply though he did sound remorseful. Rugged just looks away with a little squeak. Seems he hasn’t forgiven him yet.

”Well he hasn’t forgiven you Leona but perhaps with some-“ You cut yourself of due to the fact that the lazy lion has wriggled out of your grasp and is now sleeping on your palm.

“Oh you are sooo lucky you are cute.” You sat down on the floor and immediately Ace and Grim started fighting to crawl into your lap. Cater once again beat the lot and snuggled into your thigh, Deuce soon followed and was laying on your other thigh looking up at you. You nodded your head and Deuce cheerfully squeaked and nestled in his spot. 

“You guys are so fucking cute I can’t-“

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

”Wow this is a museum?” You said, staring at the underwater Atlantica something. 

“Squeak!” Ace huffed/squeaked. He was still bitter about the sea anemone on his head, which is fair but it was his fault in the first place.

You then heard distant squeaking… and was that… BOSS MUSIC??? Turns out it was just the Leech twins who turned out to not be leeches but moray eels. Interesting but you could still beat them in a fight, your height is the advantage here.

“Squeeak, squeakk!” Floyd was explaining why these guys suck and his Unique Magic. Nice.

”Squeeak.” Jade was kinda disappointed but he was proud how great Floyd’s magic was today.

”SQUEEAK!” Jack yelled, you all then retreated. You could just go in and grab the picture but then you might get tied down by tiny ropes or something, you don’t want to be poked and prodded by tiny spears!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

”Shhh shhh… it’s alright baby!” You cooed at Azul who was crying and overblotting. You once again, stomped on the blot monster in favour of comforting the poor unfortunate Tsum. You could relate to him, you also got shamed for your looks quite a bit (this is Brrr projecting-) so you only want to help the poor baby! You pulled him to your chest and started singing some gibberish, these guys can’t understand it anyways (You also didn’t understand it).

”Hyamanmaa Gyahuhahhh Labadabadeee!” You sounded fucking amazing, The Voice has never seen this much talent before.

Azul calmed down from the crying so you sat down, Cater wasn’t here so Ace saw the perfect opportunity… only to be beaten by Floyd AND DEUCE- 

Floyd napped aggressively peacefully on your shoulder whilst Deuce once again rested on your thigh. Ace was going to loose his fucking mind! Before you patted you other thigh while looking at him, he smirked triumphantly and waddled over… only for Jade to curl up there and Grim take your other shoulder. HE IS GOING TO KILL SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST LET HIM SLEEP ON THE GIANTS THIGH MY GOD! 

You picked him up by the back of his shirt and put him on your head, Leona and Ruggie then also joined the cuddle pile, pushing Deuce over for room on your thigh. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Ha bye bitch!” You waved Crowley goodbye, he still can’t understand you so he thought you were being nice to your oh so gracious Headmaster. You weren’t.

”Squeak? (Should we tell him?)” Deuce asked. 

“Squee. (No it’s funnier this way.)” Ace responded.

Eventually all the students and faculty, minus you, the ocean mafia and Grim, have left for the holidays.

You made your way back to Ramshackle with Grim after waving bye to your boys to sleep for like 100 years. Briar Rose who?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

”Cmon, stop that.” You once again stomped down another overblot, at this point your legs are getting toned. Jamil was held in your palm, he was wriggling a little trying to escape but of course that was not in question. 

“If you don’t stop moving I will drop you.” He was thrashing now. You held him tighter (not too tight don’t worry) and started patting and stroking his head and spine. He instantly melted into your touch so you guess he had never been pampered or dare I say it… have the baby girl treatment. So you sat down as usual and massaged, patted and cuddled Jamil. He looked a lot better already.

Kalim jumped onto your thigh, peeking up at Jamil asking if he was okay.

”He’s fine Kalim, just sleeping.” You say as you pat his head as well. Floyd and Jade once again snuggled onto your thighs, having to share this time as Kalim was on one already, as Grim took your shoulder and Azul just stood there awkwardly. 

“C’mere Azul!” You say as he slowly hopped over and took his place next to the sun himself, Kalim. 

Adorable, all of them.

[thesherrinfordfacility]

i did not break my own heart last night thinking about the missing 1941 scene and have it sat in my brain all of today spinning around like a fucking microwave in order to not make you lot suffer with me. and i somehow feel i may be right about this so buckle up and lets break it down.

so yes, following on from this post, i think that there is going to be a third 1941 scene. twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. it's been literally set up like that by even bringing back 1941 into s2 in the first place. but we're missing a crucial detail because it does not - at all, really - explain how they went from evading danger from hell and having a cosy candlelit bottle of red to celebrate, to the bastard 1967 scene. we all know this, this is nothing new.

the symbolism of nightingales is probably going to cast a shadow on this. these two excellent analyses look at the meaning of nightingales in the context of R&J, and the relation that the song has to this point in time, respectively. in summary; it's a song that should be around in 1941 courtesy of vera lynn and others, and the nightingale itself carries the meaning of love being hidden and forbidden by way of it singing under the cover of darkness, before being replaced with reality and soberness - represented by the lark. the Dinner of '41 scene is set in the bookshop at night; this would parallel - that they are safe and concealed, and truths can be shared, but the writing is on the wall that stepping outside would be to shatter the illusion, so to speak. it might be that the song itself gets miracled up onto the record player, or a wireless lying about - whatever. note: i don't think they'll dance though, not given crowley in ep5, "you don't dance"... but then again, if there ISNT a kiss in s3-1941, an aborted dance seems like the next best option... the cowardly one, but i'll take it

this would also track with aziraphale having his epiphany after the church in s1-1941; specifically, in my eyes, that he doesn't necessarily just realise he loves crowley, but that crowley by way of saving his books loves him too. this is only supported by the whole of the s2-1941 scene of trusting in each other as the only way to pull off the trick, the subterfuge. this is then, again, also important in the context of what i think happens in s3-1941.

i do think aziraphale is going to bring the books up again, and what crowley did, because it needs to be addressed. the Nazis/furfur confrontation has scared him, regardless of whether he saved them both, more than he realised. its put things into startling perspective. i think he's going to bring up the books, and actually question crowley a little more as to why he did it. the repeated use of, and subsequent weird reaction crowley has to, the use of the term "friend" in s2-1941 would indicate that this is going to be a focal point in s3-1941. are they just friends? is crowley disappointed that aziraphale is still referring to him as that, after what he did? 'saving' aziraphale in the church, and then saving his books? or is aziraphale just saying 'friends' so hesitantly in both instances because he's not completely sure where crowley stands?

we as the audience know the answer to this, but they obviously do not. if one of the crucial themes of s3 is going to be resolving miscommunication, it makes sense for this scene to be the first, and last, time they communicate properly... at least, until they sort out the issues that culminated in the Final Fifteen.

so let's say they start getting into a very roundabout way of discussing what they mean to each other. there will need to be the sobering, ice-water-over-the-head realisation however, as s2-1941 demonstrated, that they cannot belong to each other, because they manifestly belong to heaven and hell respectively. crowley is still being spied on, and it firmly places aziraphale in their line of sight too. it's going to bring up the holy water discussion; why crowley asked for it - to protect himself, whether by taking out demons or taking out himself, as long as it means he - and most importantly, aziraphale - does not get hurt.

they actively confess that they want to be together, in a way that is more than they are now. aziraphale wants to, but says that they can't, because it's too dangerous. crowley suggests that no one ever has to know, they can hide it (there, in the bookshop, whilst the nightingale is singing), and even if they are found out, they can run. "hell won't just be angry; they'll destroy you..." // "no one ever has to know".

aziraphale doesn't want to have to hide it, doesn't want a halfway measure- is still thinking in black and white. crowley however thinks that something is better than nothing - thinking in the grey. but ultimately, as long as they are still shackled, they cannot do what they want, and it puts the other in danger. "surely the great thing about being a demon is that you can do whatever you want" // "you sound jealous, angel...". instead, aziraphale promises that the day that they are no longer tied to heaven or hell, they can be together; crowley scoffs, thinking that that will never happen, so they will never happen, "you're so clever! how can someone as clever as you be so stupid?!"

the reason they can't right now is because they could be caught. they would have to skulk around, be ashamed, feel guilty - and aziraphale is tired of feeling like that. because only having crowley in secret would hurt more. not being able hold his hand, or dance with him, or kiss him, unless it was in the bookshop. if hell were to find out, crowley would be killed, true, but if heaven were to find out, aziraphale could be cast out. and if crowley survived hell long enough to see aziraphale fall - he'd never forgive himself, and in a way, i don't think he'd ever forgive aziraphale either.

it's tearing them to pieces, but they have to stop whatever is happening between them in its tracks. it's acknowledged, but it's not named. this gives them plausible deniability; if they called it 'love', it would be undeniable. so, aziraphale asks for crowley to go; asks him to leave before they do something they can't come back from. crowley doesn't listen - crowds him, gets in close, and aziraphale is powerless to stop it. doesn't want to stop it. he's selfish by nature, a selfless kind of selfishness, but he wants this with all his being. and then - "this is too fast, crowley, please don't..." // "im sorry, angel. please... please, forgive me". aziraphale never gets to answer, to grant him that, because boom - the actual first kiss.

so. now that i've had to make you read that, i'm going in for the kill. let's look at everything that follows - and look at how the above might recontextualise it.

1967: the offer of the picnic, the Ritz? ie. the literal lyrics of berkeley square? aziraphale has caved in the interest of giving crowley a weapon to use if all else fails, to protect him, but that's as far as he's willing to progress. everything else is still too painful; he's on the brink of tears, promising that one day they'll be able to do what they want, to be open about how they feel, but not yet. they can't. crowley tries to push, "ill give you a lift, anywhere you want to go..." (him offering again to run away? a second chance to leg it?), and aziraphale reminding him that they can't, he can't... don't make him go too fast again, it's not fair. it also sets up perfectly that aziraphale and crowley don't speak for the next 40 or so years (as far as we're aware) until armageddon is threatened.

bandstand: mostly this is still centred around the apocalypse contextually, but i think with the above hypothetical scene in mind (the offer to hide, to run away, to be together), aziraphale is sent back to remembering their mutual confession that they've nonverbally agreed not to bring up, because it's not safe, and it's too painful. they've skirted around it, and returned instead to a tentative kind of friendship at the beginning of s1, but they're still not safe to address why seeing each other again, being so close to each other and not being able to touch is so painful. anyway - aziraphale refuses their side, but the above scene would re-view this as 'our side can't exist yet, you know this! you know why it can't!', and crowley leaves, again after pushing a bit more than aziraphale can stand.

alpha centauri: basically a facsimile of the above; same steps, same dance. but this time, crowley harks back to aziraphale's foolish (?) hope that they will be together, without having to run away, when the day comes that they don't have to answer to heaven or hell. and aziraphale smacks him right back, echoing crowley asking for aziraphale's forgiveness in kissing him, "i forgive you." crowley knows exactly what aziraphale is getting at, there - he's answering crowley's whispered plea to forgive him for pushing, for trying to force him, for acting in desperation. but he's also not answering that - he's skirting around that very thing, forgiving him like a knife would, slicing back at crowley for not only insulting aziraphale on something that is likely a genuine insecurity of his, but also putting him back in his place, for their safeties, because them being together just cannot happen. not yet.

and "please forgive me" in 1941 might seem out of character, but idk if it is; crowley knows that doing what he's about to do will hurt aziraphale, aziraphale has (hypothetically) told him as much, but he needs to do it - and seeks not benevolence or forgiveness as crowley-the-demon, but actually seems aziraphale's forgiveness, as crowley-the-person. the echo would certainly match the tone given here, in multiple ways:

the ritz: i mean, what is there to say? yes, their song is literally playing on the piano, and heralds the shift in their being out from heaven and hell, the day has finally come where they can - again, going by this entirely hypothetical scene that ive concocted - actually be together as they want to. and the nightingale literally singing outside, but as @shoemakerobstetrician beautifully pointed out, god remarks that it's covered up by traffic. so actually, if we again refer back to R&J interpretation of the nightingale, the love is still hidden, still somewhat under wraps, but can only just about be heard over the noise of the streets outside. the prohibition of them being together, of loving each other, is dwindling. and one day, it'll stop singing altogether. that day is coming, it will come, and then they can do what they please. so whilst the ritz scene may well be a mark of them starting the next chapter, it's slow to take hold, there's still hesitancy - which absolutely makes sense when we see that they are still very tentative with each other come the beginning of s2.

s2 general: aziraphale realises their freedom first; he gets excited by the dance, and being able to show his love to crowley, completely and without barriers, in the form of the ball - what he has read to be the best way to do so. he touches crowley more. he shares his bookshop with him, gifts it to crowley as being his as well as aziraphale's, this safe space that is so wholly theirs that crowley has the power to grant entry. the same with the bentley - aziraphale sees it as theirs, and crowley silently agrees, granting aziraphale the same power. crowley is comfortable in the bookshop to remove his glasses, has a place for them. the bookshop becomes tidier, more minimalist, to make crowley more comfortable in it (it is more cluttered in s1, im certain of it). it might just be the grading between s1 and s2, and lack of clutter, but the yellow is more prominent - his literal favourite colour. everything just screams that aziraphale is ready to make good on his promise from s3-1941.

crowley... for once, is the one not quite catching up. not realising the little dates here and there are literally poses them as a couple (although yes, the coffee shop one is to prep crowley for the goob jumpscare), that aziraphale has granted him the power to grant entry. aziraphale literally asking, practically begging, crowley to help him hide goob. the mf colour of the walls. the colour of the bentley. it's not until nina outright asks him if they are together that he realises how careless they've been - but wait, is it careless if they have nothing to be careful of? well, arguably crowley does, hell are still hanging around him like a bad smell... but this is what he wanted! this is what he was pushing aziraphale for! so, does he risk it? he's not sure, but he's certainly realising that aziraphale is ready, if nothing else. and by the time the ladies stage their little intervention, crowley finally realises that the confession he started in 1941 now can be fully aired, can come out into the open.

the Feral Domestic: *fingers at temples* i know i have been fairly vocal about my interpretation of this scene, and frankly - until we get this hypothetical s3-1941 scene, i stand by it - but let's say this speculation about the scene is true, and re-examine the key points in the Final Fifteen that would completely turn on their heads in terms of meaning:

literally, harking back full circle to what aziraphale promised in 1967 as what they would do when they could fully acknowledge their love, and what they did as soon as - on paper - they were free at the end of s1. this is however before he's spoken to by nina and maggie, so maybe this is what crowley was planning in terms of confessing fully to aziraphale, but after their meddling he realised that yes, they need to actually talk about it again. he doesn't understand why they're telling him what they are - because he's existed so long in gestures and gifts and not talking, literally dismissed it now as a viable option, that it doesn't even occur to him to try talking again.

which is why he does something brave, and tries to tell aziraphale instead (say it out loud, make it undeniable, put a name to it, "i love you", something that i think was crowley's actual intention before aziraphale interrupts him) when he comes back to the shop... he's so nervous, because it's vulnerable, and because the last time he did, they ended up hiding for 50-ish years.

next up:

now, im reluctant to think that aziraphale lied in the Feral Domestic, because i do think the key thing at work is his paramount need to do the Right Thing (ie. make a difference in heaven). whilst metatron obviously manipulates him, im not entirely convinced that aziraphale wholly sees through it. i don't think he knew that metatron was up to something, i think the shaking off of this naivety is going to be part of his s3 character development. but this sentence - again, especially in context of the hypothetical s3-1941 scene - must on some level frighten him. especially if you take this meta into account, aziraphale must realise at least that they were never safe, even when they were denying what they were and how they felt, it didn't make a bit of difference. now, metatron could have just been talking about the arrangement, not referring to any romantic elements of any kind, but the threat of it? no wonder he pushes for crowley to join him in heaven; he could keep crowley safe there. they could be together, and heaven - in his eyes - would be able to say a word against it.

then:

the fear sets in; crowley was too late in telling him, acknowledging that they could be together, realising what aziraphale was saying to him without words, and now heaven has come for him. plonked them right back where they were in s2-1941, but perversely mirrored; instead of hell coming for crowley with violence, heaven came for aziraphale with kindness. crowley doesn't have a magic trick he can just do on the fly, perform it perfectly when the need for it is greatest, and has to cling to the hope that aziraphale still sees them as the barrier to them, the reason they can't be together. and in true miscommunication fashion, i think aziraphale does see it, but what metatron said lingers, and in addition to being inside the institution, changing it from the inside out, in order to make a difference... he knows that whilst it's exactly the opposite of what they wanted, he needs to make them safe. better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

but aziraphale doesn't tell crowley what metatron said, because instead he either deliberately tries to deny the implications of it (cognitive dissonance king behaviour), or he doesn't want to panic crowley and is trying to convey to crowley that he can't speak his concerns, not when the metatron could still be watching, and instead just needs crowley to trust him, take his hand, and join him in heaven where they can be safe. doesn't tell crowley that heaven hasn't captured him in shackles again, but he's willingly held out his wrists because it's the safest thing for him, and them, to do.

so it's one thing to look at what crowley's saying, but aziraphale's reaction? before, i just found it to be out of confusion, him not really understanding what crowley was saying, but tbh i never paid much attention to it (david stole this bit of the scene - not to put down my beloved michael here, but he did). and i know others have remarked here that aziraphale is flitting his eyes to the window and looks scared and stressed, but i don't completely think that its because he's scared that metatron is watching (although, now, i will accept with the rug thing and hypothetical s3-1941 in context it is definitely playing a part), but also because he's just starting to recognise that this is a repeat of the s3-1941 scene, "this sounds familiar, we've been here before... oh, we've definitely been here before... oh shit. i still can't do this, not unless he comes with me. we still can't be together, not in the way crowley wants. the way he's trying again, now, to ask for."

but the issue is: crowley wants to run away together. again. and i totally get why, but once again, going back to 1941: it's exactly the solution that will not work. they cannot run from this. heaven, and hell, will find them. they will come for them. it wasn't an option in 1941, it wasn't an option in 2019, and it isn't an option in 2023. aziraphale begins shaking his head - crowley is confessing, but a) aziraphale doesn't run from things, it isnt in his character, and b) it's just putting them back where they started - something that they have to hide. it defeats the purpose.

and this? yeah, im sure on neither side it was meant the way im about to interpret it, more of an unspoken thing, idk... but if the bookshop is indeed their place of safety, and is where they (as far as crowley sees it) can speak and keep their love, it makes sense that crowley is telling aziraphale he needs to stay. the bookshop can be interpreted so many ways - it represents their relationship, or that crowley means him, himself - but what if we looked at it like crowley is trying now to covet it, because it's protecting them? what if he's saying, "well, if you won't run away with me, we can't be free to have our relationship as we wanted it, not unless we stay here... heaven has come for you, has come for us, and whilst they're here we can't move. so what other option is left remain in this bookshop? to never leave it, and what we have inside it, because there's no other option in which we can be together if you won't run with me."

and what if aziraphale is saying, "no, i have an option, and that's to be together in heaven! they won't be able to do anything, not when im in the position the metatron has offered me, that can be our new bookshop... nothing lasts forever - this bookshop won't last forever, it's compromised, and we can't continue to secret away what we feel inside it, it's time to move forward."

welcome to the line that breaks my heart the most in this whole goddamn scene - and tbh i think is fairly self-explanatory in the hypothetical s3-1941 context. that aziraphale is trying, once again, to tell crowley that he is offering himself, letting them be an 'us', as crowley says shortly after - that before he couldnt do it, and these arent the best of circumstances, but they can finally do it and not have to hide in the bookshop. but crowley reminds him, "hey, i was in your shoes, remember. i wanted us to be together then, and you told me you couldn't, didn't want a halfway measure - well, now i don't either. and this will be a halfway measure, because i don't think us being together in heaven is going to go the way you hope it will. i understand a whole lot better than you do." in any case, it would explain why aziraphale choses this moment to look so devastated. this is what he promised crowley, but now crowley - to his mind, in the things left Unsaid - doesn't want it... him.

and then... back to the nightingales. they're not singing at all, not even under the rumble of traffic, like they were at the Ritz. they're completely absent - day has broken, the things unspoken have now been said, and there's no denying them anymore. from crowley's point of view, there was nothing to stop them this time, but if aziraphale won't run with him, then they have to go separate ways, because there is no other way. aziraphale knows there's the possibility that the only place they could actually be safe is heaven itself, that the bookshop was never as safe as they hoped it had been, but that crowley might actually come to see that. but the fact that crowley is resigned to just... returning to 'reality', to a world that's still turning where they aren't together? despite everything they've just said? "we could've been... us." well, that hurts.

and then... the kiss. now. im still of the mind that the kiss was an Issue. i definitely think it was meant out of love and desperation, and out of possibly being a goodbye. this would echo the hypothetical s3-1941 kiss... but it was hurtful. it was abrupt, and harsh, and not at all romantic (imo). it was possessive, and almost cruel. i do think still it was a last ditch attempt, a temptation, to get aziraphale to change his mind, before crowley leaves the shop and returns to the 'real world'. but it hurts aziraphale in many different ways - but with 1941 put in there, too? crowley is just testing his resolve, trying to push him, come around to giving in. crowley asked him to forgive him the last time he kissed aziraphale, and this time - this time, aziraphale is giving him what he asked for.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for arguing with someone over ships?

🧀⛵ so i can find this later

Yes, this is ship discourse AITA #294729472 you can scroll away, english isn't my first language, my apologies.

So I (16M (But 13-14 at the time)) am in a very niche fandom. As in, we didn't have any new content for the past 5 years and media is old af (2013), very few fans, most of us know each other already.

I used to have these mutuals Cheese (Not their real name) (around my age i think?? I can't remember) and Breadstick (Not his real name) (18M).

We all had our little ships, ok? I like the little (dumbass golden retriever boy) x (badass traumatized man) ship, Cheese liked the little (badass traumatized man) x (literally the same thing but evil and abusive) and Breadstick liked both ships.

I met Breadstick before meeting Cheese so we were already friends before i met Cheese. I thought "Cool, another person likes this little niche thing i'm hyperfixated on!" So we became mutuals.

I didn't anticipate that we would argue about ships, but oh well. So, i'm a very chill person regarding ships, literally any, although i do have NOTPs, i'm not really toxic about my hatred, i just go "Ah, not my thing" and scroll away not without blocking the person, but really nothing personal and no hard feelings, i can perfectly be friends with someone who loves my notp.

In fact, that was the case with Cheese. They shipped my NOTP, like A LOT. But I was okay with it, i mean these are just characters and all we're doing is being silly. I didn't take this THAT seriously. However, when I seemed to talk about my ship, Cheese seemed uncomfortable in some way.

When I was talking about my fankid (call me cringe idc) of my OTP, Cheese got very confused and asked who was i talking about. Breadstick came in and introduced my fankid to them, since he knew about it before. Cheese just started being rude, literally saying swear words (Not against them but, the context didn't really call for it? No one was being mean or mad), saying, and i quote as best as i can, "I don't know what the fuck made you think i knew who the hell [Fankid] was".

I got very mad about it, so i privately dm'ed Breadstick about Cheese's attitude. We began trash talking about them, which, i admit was a very trashy thing to do and definitely asshole material™.

Reason why may i be the asshole: over time, Breadstick just started complaining a lot about Cheese, and I could honestly agree, it came to the point of us disliking them to some degree but not telling them and not breaking the mutual, that could be considered two faced behavior.

This was partly influenced because of another incident. So Cheese and Breadstick where rambling about an OT3 (3 person ship) they had in common, basically sharing ideas and stuff. I thought it would be fun and went "Hey, I have an OT3 too, maybe i should post about it too". So I went and posted about it, but Cheese felt very uncomfortable with that, since basically my OT3 was exactly like Cheese's OT3 but one character is different, "basically".

They said "You have your thing, let US have ours". Felt bad and honestly, maybe i shouldn't have intruded their ot3 rambling. I didn't expect such negative reaction out of them.

In other occasions they complained about me posting a little too much about my ship, even though they did the same thing with theirs. And they also had a mutual that said "If you ship [this character] you suck and i fucking hate you. [character] is too abusive to be shipped with anyone and you can't just make an AU, that would just change him as a character completely" which, dear god, that language wasn't needed, right?. And despite that crazy person saying that, Cheese agreed with their take, despite literally shipping the character in question with another one. And abusively too, which like you do you, lord knows i do that too, but agreeing with a take like that while doing exactly what it is complaining about is weird. On the other side, that person wasn't my mutual, so it's unrealistic of me to expect Cheese to control their mutuals over me, Cheese can mutual whoever they want, but i can still be weirded out right?

That is without including them telling other people to kill themselves over shipping, so it was clear that Cheese took this shipping thing seriously while me and Breadstick to some degree didn't. Honestly another reason why i might be an asshole, clearly they felt their otp was personal and me not liking it + ignoring it caused a bad environment, mala mía, but what else could i have done?

So, clearly Cheese is kind of an asshole to some degree. But i think what makes ME an asshole too is when I trash talked behind their back and cut them off way later than i should've. And also, i guess i shoved my ship down their throat taking by how mad they were about it? I didn't do it intentionally though and i could definitely say they did the same thing too when 80% of the fandom and character tags was them posting about their ship. Again, small niche fandom for old unpopular media, we are keeping it alive ourselves.

What are these acronyms?

[starry-bi-sky]

honestly your dpxdc clone au gives me life, its adorable as all hell and im a sucker for found family but with that being said, its so freaking hysterical to me that Danny is going full feral liminal menace at Wes any time hes near and Wes himself is still 100% into it the freak (affectionate) and thats not even pointing out the paralles it could possible create since danny and dames gives massive parallels to dick and damian and dick does have a thing for redheads.

yeesSSSSS! I was planning on hoarding this to myself but i can't not reply. and i'll be able to find this again with the clone^2 tag so win WIN. i'm so glad you are as delighted by this as me. It's so hilarious to me that Danny just becomes a complete freak whenever he spots Wes, and I'm the one who wrote it into existence. Like- like i don't know how to explain my vision in words but like, its like Danny sees Wes and immediately goes 'what can I do to make his day worse'. And then he goes and does it.

(honorary read more because i talk a lot)

He's relatively normal around his friends too, which makes him going full-fledged unhinged around Wes even funnier to me. Like, Danny will spout weird shit sometimes to Sam and Tucker, but usually its prefaced with him talking about patrol or there would be context before he said anything. With Wes? Though?? he will just. say anything, completely unprompted. Slings an arm around his shoulder like they've been buddies since primary school and then spits out a weird new fun fact he learned about the bodily anatomy while researching his latest cold case. All vaguely-threatening but utterly insane things to say as way to start a conversation.

And sometimes its not even that, he'll walk up to Wes and ask him if he saw the latest daytime fight between Phantom and Skulker. And then he'll say "yeah i missed it myself but I saw clips of it being posted online" and then watch Wes mentally explode him with his mind. or he'll disparage Phantom for having such a young partner with him, "Can you believe he'd let a kid fight ghosts with him? I'd never let my brother ghosthunt with me if I was Phantom."

All of this with such a deceptive look on his face but the most delighted, shit-eating gleam in his eyes. Wes is chewing glass and he wants to yell that he does let his brother fight ghosts with him. Also you told him yourself that nothing would've stopped your demonic (Wes' words) little brother from joining you.

Damian gets in on the fuckery occasionally, but since he's not around often with Wes about, it doesn't happen nearly as often as it does between Wes and Danny. Sam and Tucker know he's screwing with him too, and both of them are a little wary about him being careless with his secret id. But he's been doing this since he was 14-ish and it hasn't backfired yet. So. They're not actively stopping him.

Danny walks back to his lunch table after terrorizing Wes and Tucker just asks him what he said, because Wes was about as red as a tomato when he walked away. Danny offhandedly sighs and innocently says he tried to have a conversation about Phantom with him. Wes didn't seem to like it all that much. Weird.

And yes, yes. Wes is totally into it and is slightly enraged about this fact, because not even he knows why he's into it. The freak (affectionate). Danny gives him this troublemaker smirk, and i did say smirk, and Wes doesn't know whether or not if he wants to smack him or kiss him. Or both. Like, yeah, pine, white boy, pine.

(And this is a dramatized image but I'm also highly entertained by the idea that Wes keeps getting routine dirty looks from various peers because they, too, have a crush on Fenton. Except Fenton doesn't talk to anyone else unless its his friends and sometimes Valerie, and Weston, the guy who keeps accusing him of being the local vigilante, is somehow routinely having conversations with him?? And BLOWING IT?? Like everyone else thinks he's fumbling so bad, and yet fenton keeps tALKING to him.)

And yes!! i'm always so pleased whenever someone brings up the parallels D+D have to Dick and Damian, because that was lowkey my intention when I was making the solo clone damian au. Although it was supposed to be more implied since I don't really know much about Damian and Dick other than they're very close and Dick was Damian's Batman for a year. And then of course the very smaller parallel (??) 'what if' between Bruce and Damian and D+D in clone^2 considering who they are both clones of.

And man this just makes me want to talk about when batfam meet D+D because I just want them to see D+D be so brotherly towards each other. Like I want them to see Bby Dames wearing his goofy fun fact shirts and stealing Danny's hoodies/flannels/etc and blatantly lying about it when Danny asks. Only for Danny to then throw him over his shoulder like Tadashi from BH3 and jump around.

And also. I do not know what Damian Wayne's (DW as I'll call him) stance on being called "Dami" is - the general consensus I've seen is that its usually used as a playful nickname in order to get a rise out of him, and he doesn't really like it.

But baby Dames being called that freely, and often, and its sometimes used to get a rise out of him but thats typically what nicknames do. Its used as easily as his full name is with the same amount of affection. And its like his main go-to nickname. "Dami" and "Dames" with the occasional "Bud/Buddy", "Squirt", "Little man", etc. Not once is he ever called 'demon-spawn'

(which i know is a fanon nickname but its a relatively popular nickname)

but yeah, uhhh. i think thats all of my thoughts on the matter. for now lmAO

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE B

Yoon Jongwoo Propaganda:

So technically not a narrator but he's the main char/protagonist who we follow from majority of the show. But, he is slowly losing his mind due to: fear, paranoia, ptsd, being drugged, and lack of sleep. Big big spoiler for the last episode but we originally see him only killing in self defense and the main villian being the one to kill off/brutally murder the henchpeople BUT later on after the fight it comes out that HE was the one who killed them and he actually was even talking to himself at one point. It throws the whole episode into a new light and then makes u wo der how much of the rest of the show may have also been different than what we originally saw. How innocent is he??

Kim Dokja Propaganda:

I haven't read orv but he's fucking gotta be from what I've osmosised

He tries to remove his emotions out of the narrative soooo much, literally the most repressed guy ever. Okay so for context orv is about how this guy, Kim Dokja, has been the only reader of an obscure post-apocalyptic webnovel for years and the novel suddenly becomes reality. And at first you'll probably get the weird impression that his behavior is pretty strange for, you know, a literal apocalypse happening in his world - like yes, he is concerned with survival but he doesn't seem all that scared and he kinda treats it like a video game where he has to grind to make himself stronger and he also treats his companions like a party in an rpg. Then there's also the way he approaches the protagonist of the webnovel, from the start he just kind of describes him as a ruthless psychopath and jerk that is unfortunately a pretty useful ally. And also there's the fact that he carefully omits any mention of his past and when somebody asks if he's worried about his family when the apocalypse starts he just kinda... brushes it off? Anyway so yeah, this bastard is definitely traumatized, although I don't know how much of spoiler territory that would be, considering the fact that literally when he first reveals his trauma he's also unreliable about it. And turns out he does indeed, care A LOT about this world and the people around him. Because well, he kinda didn't care to mention that this webnovel that has become reality was like... literally his whole world before it literally became his whole world. Like, it was the only thing keeping him going for 10+ years and the protagonist that he likes to call a stupid jerk was his comfort character who he pretended to be when he felt like he couldn't handle something in his life by being himself. The protagonist is also canonically the person he loves the most according to a prophecy and he literally can't fathom the thought of him dying, even the timeline versions of him that directly oppose him. And I haven't even mentioned the Fourth Wall yet but I feel like this propaganda is a little long already

misreading the intentions of his companion (yoo joonghyuk) so many time.

YOU DON'T UNDERSTANDDD DOKJA IS SUCH A UNRELIABLE NARRATORRRRRR GOD I COULD WRITE AN ESSAY BUT I KNOW YOU LOVE DOKJA TOO BUT OMG HE'S JUST SO AAAAAAAAAAAH

he is the worst like actually. he starts the story talking about how normal and average he is. he is not. he is constantly mischaracterizing his friends and he's so good at lying to the readers that you don't even realize it at first. almost every single time he cries we have to be told by other characters because he never says it himself. there is literally a scene where his narration says "i wasn't crying" and then the in-universe entity that narrates the actions of people (orv is really weird and meta) says that he was, in fact, crying. honestly genuinely anything he says about himself (or doesn't say) cannot be trusted. he is just so frustrating. he drives me mad. i love him dearly. but he drives me so mad.

Rest of Propaganda under cut!

Dictionary definition of unreliable narrator. Does not tell the reader anything and then things happen and he's like oh yeah btw there was also this and this earlier but i just didn't feel like mentioning it. There's even a thing called the "Fourth Wall" that is able to see through kdj's bs so occasionally you get gems like, Kim Dokja: I didn't cry The Fourth Wall: [Kim Dokja was crying] Imagine being so unreliable as a narrator you need a more powerful narrator to call out the actual narrator.

This goes into spoiler territory, but; Kim Dokja is in possession of a skill called the Fourth Wall, which on the surface seems like it appears because he read the book that reverse-isekai’d into his own. However, as the story goes on it becomes clear that it’s pretty much a souped up version of his pre-existing dissociation. You cannot trust him to be honest about his feelings, his past traumas or his feelings about his past traumas, not to mention his tendency to just outright omit information that only gets revealed later on either when it becomes relevant or when an outsider POV reveals what’s actually happening. Exhibit A: he says (in 1st person POV) that he’s not crying. The Fourth Wall immediately contradicts this (as it is literally words of the novel) by saying (in 3rd person POV) ‘Kim Dokja was crying’. Exhibit B: Fails to mention entire actions when it shows him emotionally honest even in the slightest; we had to read from another character entirely when Kim Dokja was being physically affectionate with his companion. It’s so bad that there’s this entire paragraph about Kim Dokja describing himself hiding his eyes in his hands in jerky, weirdly specific detail and just AVOIDING EVERY WORD THAT MIGHT SHOW HE’S CRYING. The brilliance of ORV is that when you re-read the entire thing you get hints that ‘yes, this WAS hinted at the entire time’ but you have to dig it out of Kim Dokja’s repressed, depressed self-hating internal dialogue with your own two hands.

i am a simple man (not a man). i see a tumblr text post with the words “unreliable narrator in it”. i read nothing else. i reblog & tag #kim dokja okay but in all seriousness i’m just going with the musty basic example: so there’s this moment where he sacrifices himself to save this guy. as he lays on the ground bleeding out, he says “hey, you don’t like me, right? you should kill me to get some money” the guy says “no kim dokja i cant do that (going through the five stages of grief except there’s only one and it’s anger)” the constellations (twitch viewers irl) are like omg he (the guy) doesn’t want to kill his companion (kim dokja) and shower him (the guy) with money kim dokja: oh, he’s not killing me for the money. smart! as i quote a brilliant youtube video (all of omniscient reader’s viewpoint in 6 minutes) “yoo joonghyuk sees kim dokja as a c_____” yoo joonghyuk: companion kim dokja: cunt

Hides his true feelings, tells the readers what he thinks is convenient for the plot and that his own personal feelings don’t matter or are not so significant. Has unreliable thoughts abt his companion and is a liar. And is also an omniscient reader.

Kim Dokja always perceived his companions in this like nonchalant way like “oh yeah we get along but really we’re just fighting to survive (apocalypse setting) it doesn’t run that deep” when they all do genuinely care for him and he does in turn. He just, doesn’t think of it as an equal relationship? Dokja’ll sacrifice a lot for them but will get seriously flabbergasted if they do the same thing, so fricking problematic. Not to mention Yoo Joonghyuk, his “Life and Death Companion” (read: husband). Kim Dokja always seems to think that Joonghyuk has it out for him, which is kinda true, but he is literally blind to the fact that he’s attached to him. Like, it’s so obvious??? Also they have hella sexual tension but that’s another thing entirely

se get some many pov changes where kdj in his pov just assumed things based on what he knew the characters would do. however because of his interference the characters have changed and he wouldn’t know that if it hit him in the face

He's an unreliable narrator because he lies to himself and thus the audience. He literally rewrote his own childhood core memory. If someone says, "this guy is my friend!" He will go through so many hoola hoops in his mind just to rationalize it. Because he fundamentally believe that no one could love him and even if they did they couldn't know him and he's just gonna hurt them. He cries sometimes in canon but a lot of those times it's not even mentioned as crying he's that unreliable of a narrator. No joke, one time this guys he has a gay thing with called him his "companion" to someone who had just killed him (long story) and this bitch thought "oh wow he's doing it for the coins (another long story) he's so smart i wish I'd thought to that. He's terrible. He literally has an exchange with something called the Fourth Wall (an even longer story) where it said "you're crying" and he said "no I'm not" but he was crying. He makes me insane because the reader is supposed to project onto him. He made me see how much of an unreliable narrator I WAS. ORV is just like that tho.

[meimesworld]

I know everyone should focus on the allegations of Lily orchard because ultimately that’s the most important, I’d like to raise a point and swing back to the fanfiction to ask a question to die hard Lily supporters.

No need to get into specifics, Stockholm was a story created by Lily under her dead deadname that involved abuse, pedophilia, etc etc.

What i can’t seem to fathom when there’s an argument against her lying is…why? Lily has constantly changed her story of the fanfiction multiple times.

Starting with the most well known quote of “can’t use Stockholm, I wrote that one” Lily has multiple sources where she directly acknowledges that she was part of the stories creation

The most interesting part of this, is that multiple times she has addressed the work by its name, Stockholm.

Then she went on to deny ever creating the piece in the height of the drama with Josh, where he flat out states that she wrote it, only for her in audio to say that he “could’ve pulled it from any fanfiction site” and show a censored screen shot blurring any information pointing to the exact contents of the story. While that tweet directly had been deleted, this tweet, posted on the same day he showed a screenshot of the fanfiction, proving exactly what the contents involved were.

She then some years later posted that, no, actually, it was originally called Scars, and the sex scenes were only added in because haters gonna hate man. So now it was “I didn’t write Stockholm, I wrote something else” despite, for years, only ever acknowledging it as Stockholm

All of these things are flown out the water when you remember that the @the-last-alicorn is still up and if you search her name on the blog it directly shows her account (now nuked) tied to the series.

And now, in its conclusion, both in KP’s video and in a recent stream she did, she finally admits that she did write Stockholm, addressing it by its actual name, and that it was taken out of context and, in stream, that she simply was just dumb and shouldn’t have wrote the things she did.

So my apologies, that’s actually five different stories, not 4.

This is where I have to ask supporters: at what point do you acknowledge that Lily is simply a liar? Instead of from the jump just saying “I wrote something that I don’t agree with now” as she did in her recent stream, she went on for years blaming haters, bronies, AI even when it wasn’t in public use yet. I’m pretty sure the amount of dragging she got for that alone wouldn’t have been as severe as it has been. Yeah there prolly still would ppl be weirded out by her but at least she wouldn’t be a liar. And in turn, if she can lie about something as simple as this, why in the hell is it so unbelievable that she could lie about molesting her sister, or being an abusive friend, or anything else?

Personally, I don’t even buy the idea that her tumblr just suddenly got mass reported so bad it was deleted, I genuinely think she started to realize just how much shit is housed on her account that she simply deleted it herself, but I could always just be a biased lil shit waffle constantly inclined to think the worst.

[vinnystarman]

EDDSWORLD LORE ANALYSIS BUT I'M ABSOLUTELY DERANGED!!!!

"Wait this thing has LORE????" Yes!!! IT HAS LORE

I just rewatched eddsworld for the 2334idfk443th time in a row and realized I haven't seen (not that there isn't I just haven't seen) people talking about the fact that the series seems to have a really weird (and quite frankly fragile) canon, this goes to some minor details like differences between the stages of the series (retro, classical, legacy and beyond) and other stuff like how I think we actually kind of know what in the actuall hell was Tord even doing in those 8 years between his original departure and the end in eddsworld legacy BUT I'M GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF before we start I want to make some points clear for the sake of clarity:

☆ I will be talking about the series and it's characters specifically in the context of the series, for example: I know why Tord the irl person left the series but I would be speaking only about Tord's (the character) departure, the same goes to any other irl event that had an impact on the series

☆ keep in mind this is only what I think (even though I think i'm absolutely right about everything) so if you disagree in any of my points that's absolutely fine!

☆ I will be speculating about future stuff so take all of those bits with a grain of salt because i'm a great observer but (unfortunatelly) not god so I can't acurrately see the future lolz

so…. how do we start?

well… we could start strong by one of the most interesting points I thought about!

as ridiculous as it sounds, i'm pretty convinced that Tom always knew about Tord's laboratory! and I have proof of it actually

one of the most solid proof I have appears in the episode "The Snogre" to be fair, that episode is gonna come up A LOT in this so you might want to re watch it first :3

in the minute 1:57 Tom apears with a "snow tank" that he uses to defeat the snogre, later, him and Edd have this exchange:

How'd you build that snow tank so fast?

Snow tank? (the snow falls off the ACTUALL TANK TOM CASUALLY IS OPERATING???)

this tank has the (i don't know how to call it so let's just say) serial number "CDT-01" which at the time was a nice little nudge to "moving targets" since it's the same tank the guys use in that episode but in this post "The end" world it should be noted that the "CDT-01" tank also appears in the minute 3:25 meaning up to that point the only way to access the tank was getting into Tord's laboratory and figure out what to press to get it (This tank might also be the one portrayed in movie makers but it's most likely that they are the same tank since they have the same serial number and in moving targets, this tank is stolen from Paul in that same episode AND THIS IS RELATED TO SOMETHING ELSE THAT I'M GONNA SAY HERE SO IT'S NOT A PLOT HOLE OK? BARE WITH ME)

the second one is that the lab was in Tom's room aka Tord's old room, this is the primary reason why Tord came back anyways, to get back to his laboratory (OR IS IT)

This is what I think happened:

Tom found a really suspicious button behind two frames (or one) maybe when he was moving his stuff into it and painting the walls (I highly doubt Tord had blue walls on his room), made a little mess trying to figure out what the actual fuck was going on, realized what it was and decided not to tell the guys because well… as we can see they LOVE pressing buttons and Tom knew it was gonna end up in catastrophe and shut his mouth because of that

that aside of ourselves, my second point:

The real reason why Tord was so hostile to Tom in the end wasn't (or at least not exclusively) because of his rivarly with him but more so because Tord wanted to capture monster Tom!

what do I mean by this? well to understand my point we need to understand how (i think) Tord and his army were operating at that time:

The red army as a whole has only been described once at this point in time and it was in the episode "Fun Dead" in the second 0:08 by the news lady as "Armed vigilantes" that were controlling the Zombie situation (that they [even though accidentally] caused) this meaning that as for now they aren't seen as a threat, on the contrary! They were helping the population! and maybe i'm giving Tord too much credit for this but I bet THAT (beeing seen as vigilantes and not some terrorist group) was intentional, you see, Tord is smart and a little manipulative, the most "evil" thing to do was letting the zombie infection run free and then take control of the post apocaliptic, in shambles world but he didn't, Why? you may ask; because he is more treacherous than Judas, that's why, maybe i'm looking a little too much into this but if this is the route he is going he would need more than one threat right? this is where monster Tom comes into play, I DON'T KNOW WHY ANY OF YOU HAVE EVER ASKED IT BUT WHY DID TOM BECAME A MONSTER RANDOMLY IN POWEREDD? I know it was hinted before that maybe he is half demon somehow??? BUT LIKE… MAYBE I'M DUMB BUT THAT'S WEIRD. And as the scientist he is (why don't I see more scientist Tord fanart?) Tord asked himself the same question, we know that because when we took a look into his laboratory we saw that he was studying monster Tom as it's shown in the end part 2 in the minute 2:42 (THIS GUY'S LAB IS SO MUCH TO UNPACK) this indicates that it isn't crazy to assume he was trying to take Tom out of his senses to get to monster Tom, because as we can see in that same episode he is wanted by the authorities for a large amount of money, probably because they got caught doing some sketchy stuff so, in an attempt to hype up his organization's reputation once more he tried to cause another problem for them to solve

this is what I think happened: Tord somehow knew about monster Tom and realized he could use him not only as another way to make his organization look like heroes to the public eye but also for studying (and maybe experimentation but not really sure since at that point Tord already had that weird chemical that gave life to stuff and converted people to zombies) he assumed the way to get to the monster was making Tom furious so that's what he tried, that's why he was specially hostile to Tom, that's why he was so surprised when Tom left the house (because i've seen people assume that was his objective but if it was then why did he looked so taken aback?)

continuing with Tord my next point is: We kind of know what Tord was up to all along and i'm not so sure he created the red army

WHAAAT???? VINCENT YOU ARE CRAZY FOR THAT ONE!!! WHAT MADE YOU THINK THAT TORD DIDN'T CREATED THE RED ARMY? THAT'S LITERALLY HIS TRADE MARK!!! HE IS THE RED LEADER, EVERYWHERE HE GOES THE RED ARMY SYMBOL APPEARS!!!

well yes, that is true but just because he later on becomes the red leader it doesn't mean he created the red army as it is.

let me explain: in the episode "moving targets" not only do we are shown Tord's fondness of militaristic activities but also in the minute 6:12 we see Paul and some unnamed enemy base guard (that i'm pretty sure had a fanon name but I completely forgot oh well) and you may ask "ok so what?" ... Sir that's Paul, this openly states that before he joined the red army, Paul was with this other random army which if you look closely has a suspiciously similar design to the red army's uniform, not only that but again, in Tord's lab we can see a picture of 4 people (minute 2:42) and these people are: Tord, the enemy base guard marked with a big X (maybe he's dead or simply left the army), Paul and Patryck, this meaning that Tord knew them from before, now, as always, here is what I think happened: After his departure in the episode 25ft under the seat, Tord at some point found the enemy army from the episode moving targets and considering how the gang messed them up they weren't in the best conditions, so at some point between the episodes movie makers and space face Tord takes control of this army and makes it HIS red army, this could've been by force or (what I see more plausible but who knows) joined the army as it is and began working his way up until he ended up leader of it CONTINUING WITH TORD BECAUSE HE IS A SNEAKY BASTARD (i love him i hate him so much) WHAT IS GOING ON WITH HIS LAB??? Tord's laboratory even though solves some questions it opens up even MORE questions like these: HOW DID HE KNEW ABOUT MONSTER TOM IF HE ONLY APPEARED IN POWEREDD AND THAT EPISODE AIRED LONG AFTER HE LEFT?? WHY DOES HE HAVE BARRELS OF THE WEIRD LIFE-GIVING CHEMICAL FROM "THE SNOGRE" AND "FUN DEAD" IF THAT ALSO HAPPENED LONG AFTER HIS DEPARTURE??? WHY DID HE INSTALLED A SECURITY SYSTEM IN THE HOUSE???

WHAT DOES THE MAP WITH THE NOTE MEAN???

well I have answers for 3 of those 4 questions, so, hear me out on this one: Tord kept using his laboratory even after he left. THIS SOUNDS CRAZY AND IT IS BUT HEAR ME OUT.

in the end part one, even though he was let in by edd Tord tried to sneak into Tom's room anyway, and he did it in a way that showed that maybe, just maybe it wasn't his first time doing it and if we look at it from a strategic perspective it's basically the perfect place to hide something like that.

it's a place that no one would search him in because well... at that point it had been years since he left, it's just a normal house where three friends live, nothing suspicious going on with that so if he had his laboratory right there it would be convenient... Really convenient, this is the reason he has stuff from stuff he couldn't have possibly had from before, that's why he had time to build his giant robot, he had all the time he was living there and also when he wasn't, that's what he knew about monster tom. that's why he had pictures of his army friends, that's why he had the chemical, because he never truly left.

this would also make my first idea even more possible because Tom wasn't even surprised to see Tord's laboratory in his room and Tord wasn't surprised either to see Tom there, this meaning that maybe somehow they had seen eachother before, maybe while Tord was sneaking in or out and Tom in an act of friendship decided to not get Edd or Matt involved for their own good

AND NOW, LET'S STOP SPEAKING ABOUT TORD FOR A MOMENT BECAUSE I NEED TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT EDD.

IS FUTURE EDD GONNA PROTAGONIZE THE COMICS MATT SPOKE ABOUT IN HIS UPDATES VIDEO?????

I HAVE PLENTY OF REASONS TO THINK THAT WE ARE GOING TO SEE MORE ABOUT THE FUTURE BRIEFLY POSTRAYED IN WTFUTURE BECAUSE IF WE TAKE AN ACTUALL LOOK AT THE TEASERS MATT SHOWED THEY SHOW A FUTURISTIC CITY WITH DRONES AND SOMEONE WITH EDD'S DISTINCT HAIR AND FUTURE EDD'S COAT ENTERING A BUILDING THROUGH THE WINDOW SO IN MY OPINION WE ARE GOING TO GET EVEN MORE INSIGHT ON HOW'S THE WORLD DOING UNDER THE RED LEADER'S LEADERSHIP WHOHOOOOO long live cola

that aside because I got overly happy when I remembered that

WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE LOBSTERS.

in the episodes "the surf and turf wars pt 1 and 2" we are presented with a new problem, for the ones that haven't seen it or don't remember, in the episodes, Matt gets turned into a lobster monster by a chemical with dubious origin, we actually have a name for this chemical! it's named "NM-8" and ok, this is maybe a far FAR stretch BUT I CAN'T POSSIBLY BE THE ONLY ONE WITH THE THEORIE THAT MAYBE, JUST MAYBE THIS CHEMICAL IS AN ADVANCED FORMULA OF THAT LIFE-GIVING CHEMICAL OF TORD'S I say this since both substances have similar effects, and according to this, in the same episode, the barrel of nm-8 ends up there anyways because while transporting the chemical THAT IS WIDELY STATED THE ORIGIN OF IT IS HIGLY CONFIDENTIAL NO QUESTIONS ASKED the ship hits a bump and when the captain asked "what happened" is sent to the brig because he broke the rule of not asking questions, this leading to the barrel falling overboard and ending up in the beach where it's found by Matt and the episode continues

who would need such level of secretism? who would need that much confidentiality? well I have certain people in mind, if we think about it from a narrative perspective it would make sense for the chemical to be property of the same guy (or guys) that made the other chemical to be responsible for it, maybe in some elaborate scheme to finally get back at the world after the giant robot fiasco and hey, maybe it was impossible before but now with the Tord Youtooz? WITH TORD APPEARING IN MATT'S VIDEO AS AN INTERRUPTION WITH THE STYLE OF A STOLEN TV SIGNAL???? IT'S PLAUSIBLE AND IT WOULD MAKE A LOT OF SENSE! but as always that is only speculation, I can't see the future, just theorize and communicate what I think and let's be honest, the next episode will probably be about the guys cleaning up the lobster mess (WHICH IS AMAZING AND I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE) but always remember, Tord ends up taking the world in the future anyways so stopping him right now, whatever he is up to is not really an option unless someone comes back from the future to help

AND THAT'S ALL SORRY IF IT'S MESSY, I STARTED WRITING THIS AT 3 AM AND HAD TO WRITE IT IN SEPARATED MOMENTS SO YEAH THE CONTINUITY IS NOT GREAT AND ALSO ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LENGUAJE SO YEAHHHHHH

[decepti-thots]

That post about aileron reminded me of how I think of nautica trying to erase skids from her memory like she just doesn’t know how to cope with death and loss cause she was removed from the wild ass war! It’s a weird beat in the comic but it speaks loudly to me

Ohhh yeah. These two are definitely a couple different perspectives on a theme, as it were.

While I have critiques of Nautica's arc in execution there (it's… got a LOT of flaws and IMO does not stick the landing at all, to put it pretty mildly; hence why I find exRiD overall better at exploring these ideas), I think it's a real shame that unlike so many other arcs in MTMTE/LL with issues or incomplete resolutions or whatever, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in taking the core emotional idea and running with it in fandom spaces? It feels like a really toothy emotional hook to latch onto that a lot could be done with as a part of the canon that is definitely a font of massive missed potential and lingering threads. (God, it really kills me ever since it was first pointed out to me how Nautica and Brainstorm's relationship might change because he's watching her do what Chromedome kept doing.) Nautica gets stuck in a kind of Cheerful Generic Girl Best Friend mode in fandom that skips past uhhh. A lot of her actual canon presence, when you really look at it!

It's especially interesting to think about because as a species their feelings about death are very different, right? Which IDW1 does address, and MTMTE specifically mentions this, with Cyclonus talking about how there's one version of the Guiding Hand myth that states Cybertronians are "immortal" because they killed Mortilus. Like. They don't have a lot of context for death as a regular, natural part of life that everyone comes into contact with in the day to day. Caminus isn't just full of civilians in the way you or I might be a civilian during peacetime; if you're a civilian for these folks, death is an abnormality period, a freak accident or whatever at most. (And even then: you're so hard to kill, it can't be common.) Cybertronians in the war are the weird ones for being used to it as a regular occurrence, and for both Aileron and Nautica it's not just that their friends experience traumatic and violent deaths, but that they die at all. It's got to be existentially destabilising in a way so many of the characters on that ship just can't relate to. (Tailgate likely could, but he's uhhhh, he's got other stuff going on at that point, so we will forgive him being too busy, lmao.)

Hell, I mentioned Brainstorm. He's an MTO. MTOs are the first of the currently living generations of their species to grow up with no memory of a society in which people do not regularly die; even once peacetime sets in, we see that they have reached the point in their species' lifespan where death by old age is becoming increasingly common and thus part of their cultural landscape. Those are a lot of Nautica's friends, who maybe want to help but have no easy way to really understand why she's reacting so strongly, you know?

Ohhh I love Nautica so much. Can you tell. Someone hug that poor woman good lord.