#the gray garden kin

[deepsea-kinniies]

hiii!! could i maybe get some black and white/grayscale dialo icons with an old photograph theme? circle please! love y’all’s stuff!! <3

I hope these work! (The original colored ones are there just 'cause)

Free to use with visible credit

[problematickincalls1]

I’m Ivlis from Okegom / The Gray Garden. Looking for anyone, but especially Satanick, Rieta, or my kids. Interact and I’ll reach out, doubles are also welcome, because I know you probably need someone too.

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[findthebae]

hiya .!! im emalf from the gray garden B)

looking for anyone aged 15-18. i’m 16.

i already know ivlis, yosaf and poemi however they’re all okay w/ dbles ^^

i’ll be watching the notes like a hawk…. feel free to msg me on @emalfirl .!! tysm <3 🦇🦇

! ! !

[findinyourkin]

I’m Ivlis from The Gray Garden and other funamusea / dsp works. I’m looking for my children, Rieta, or anyone I was close with - but I’ll be happy to find absolutely anyone from the source. I’m an adult so I prefer response from anyone 18+, and I’ll reach out to anyone who likes.

!!!!!!!!

[findmykins]

I’m Ivlis from The Gray Garden and other funamusea / dsp works. I’m looking for my children, Rieta, or anyone I was close with - but I’ll be happy to find absolutely anyone from the source.

Poster specified in a second ask that they are an adult and are primarily looking for anyone 18+!

[kincalling]

hi .!! im emalf from the gray garden :)

i’m looking for anyone from my source, mainly rieta.

i’m 16. please dont interact if you’re under 15 or over 19. thank you sm .!!

🎧

[paradoxical-catastrophe]

I love how one of my new interests are Deep Sea Prisoner stuff and yet I never completed Wadanohara or The Gray Garden

[emalfirl]

bestiesss !!

[rotworld]

10: Motel Hell

(previous)

desperate to get out of nelton, you make a risky decision and find somewhere to stay along the road.

->contains gore, graphic description of corpses.

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.

.

Home is west. Northwest now, so far away it feels like the edge of the world. 

You’ve tried to get there a few times. Every now and then, you’ll get lucky. The Drift will have mercy and you’ll end up so close you think you can taste it, the pull urgent but not so taut and uncomfortable. Somehow, it’s always eluded you. You get turned around, your inner compass spinning haywire. The road spits you out just east, too far north, not at all where you mean to go. Lost—that’s what you are. But you never feel that way until you try to find home.

And even if you ever reached it, would it be worth the trouble? Would anyone see you as kin, or would it be a town full of strangers? You don't try anymore. Home is best left abstract and distant.

Night is falling. The shadows grow. The sign seems to lunge through the fog, sudden and vicious. “DRIFT INN. NEXT EXIT.” It’s not close enough to spot off the highway, but you do see a spatter of streetlights and neon. Not enough for a town, just a small place between things for the unlucky and desperate. Anything is good enough for you now. The exit is an uphill zigzag, a silent intersection with a light that takes too long to change. 

You see two long gray slabs with red roofs. Nothing around but concrete and tufts of hardy grass growing in the cracks. The parking lot is sparsely occupied, a couple windows aglow behind drawn curtains. Still, you hesitate. Your recent misfortunes have left you somewhat wary. You consult your map. You’ll make the final push for the University tomorrow, get there by dusk. South, then east? Or start heading east now? For once, you find yourself hoping there’s no town in that vast distance, no unexpected detours. 

Something flits past the window as you’re planning your morning route. It’s gone when you look up but you were sure, for just a second—

And then you see it. Another, drifting silently into your windshield. Landing on the glass and melting to nothing. The sky is the color of a coming storm. Your heart starts to race. 

[NOW PLAYING ON THE RADIO: SATURDAY NIGHT BY THE MISFITS]

The automatic doors wheeze open. A single fluorescent tube buzzes overhead. The floor is grimy-looking tile and the walls are off-white. Nobody’s sitting behind the check-in desk. All you can hear is the whirr of an electric fan in the corner and a crackling radio on the counter.

A tiered shelf against the wall displays travel brochures coated in a fine layer of dust, advertising the orchards and public gardens of Green Valley. These must be old. There is no Green Valley anymore—it’s been called the Stillwoods since before you were born, although the occasional antique road sign marooned along the highway might still bear the old name.

The doors open again behind you. There’s a woman standing there, hands in the pockets of a gray peacoat. She’s wearing heels and her hair is meticulously pinned into a neat bun. 

She gives you a quick, appraising look. “Hey there,” she says. “Checking in?” You nod and she slips behind the check-in desk, noticeably keeping her distance and never turning her back towards you. She doesn’t give you a price or ask how you’ll pay, simply reaching for a room key off the back wall and setting it on the desk. You don’t think there was a courier sign on the door. Your visible apprehension makes her grin. “So…I don’t actually work here. But I saw you pull up and thought you might appreciate a hand. There’s four of us here tonight.”

You take the key, the plastic tag attached reading 108. “Is the place abandoned?” you ask. That wouldn’t surprise you. This motel was clearly attached to the Stillwoods once upon a time, but now it’s out here in the middle of nowhere. That happens sometimes, during a particularly violent shift or an anchorware malfunction. That’s how the University became its own city, too.

The woman makes a noncommittal sound. “Not exactly. At least, it wasn’t when I got here. It’s like this, see?” 

She leans back and turns the handle of the door behind the desk. As soon as it’s cracked open, the smell of blood comes rushing out. She opens it just far enough for you to glimpse the back room and the body inside: head so badly bludgeoned that you don’t realize it’s lying face-up for a while, jaw broken and wrenched open so wide the mouth is more like a gaping wound of teeth. There’s blood pooling on the floor and arterial sprays arcing on the walls. Fresh enough to drip. 

The woman yanks the door shut again. She looks unbothered, you think, unusually cheerful considering the situation. She adjusts her small, rectangular glasses on the bridge of her nose. “See what I mean? Kind of a mess. I’d have taken off by now if not for how the sky looks. Rather take my chances here than out in a Drift storm.” The snow is heavier already, a thin layer blanketing the pavement outside. “Anyway, wanna get settled in? 108’s right with the rest of us. Gotta keep an eye on each other, after all. Hard to say who’s a mimic and who’s not.” 

You frown. A mimic wouldn’t waste that much food.

The woman is friendly, at least, and endlessly talkative. She’s a University graduate. She’s been living in Splitrock Junction for the past few years, testing the water and soil for “intrusional particles,” but she’s looking for a career change. “Anchorware! That’s where the money’s at,” she tells you. “That’s the future of the Drift, you know. It’s caught on in all the major industries but it’ll get more affordable later. The lab where they build that stuff makes the University look Stone Age. God, if I could get my hands on some of that equipment…” 

You barely say a word as she leads you outside and across the parking lot to the adjacent building. Four rooms are occupied in a row, lights on, muffled voices coming through the doors. You walk up in time to catch part of a conversation—an argument, more accurately. They’re talking about mimics.

“So you’re telling me the one that’s see-through and foggy like frosted glass isn’t called a glass mimic?” 

“Glass mimics are literally made of glass, man. Or something kind of like it. It shatters if you hit it hard enough.” 

“Kind of like it? So they’re not actually made of glass. They don’t even resemble glass.” 

“I didn’t name them, okay?” 

The woman pauses to knock on 106. “We’ve got another,” she says. 

106 opens just slightly, the door halting on a chain lock. The face that peers out at you is obscured by a surgical mask and a pair of sunglasses. “Shit, Chatterbox made it back in one piece,” he mutters. “So either it left you alone or you’re the mimic.” The doors on either side of him creak open. A man pokes his head outside of 105, looking nonplussed. Nobody comes out of 107 but you hear a quiet huff, a quick exhale of laughter.

“Well, this is all of us,” the woman says. “We’re a little short on trust right now so you’ll have to settle for nicknames. That’s Newbie in 105. He’s from outside. Like, outside, you know?”

“Outside the Drift?” you ask, startled.

Newbie frowns. He’s blond and clean-shaven, wearing an open suit jacket and loosened tie. “Couldn’t we have picked our own nicknames? God, it’s freezing all of the sudden.” 

“This totally normal, not at all suspicious guy lurking in 106 is Glasses.” 

“Bite me,” Glasses snarls. “Half the mimics out here copy faces. You’re not getting mine.”

The woman rolls her eyes. “Shrug is in 107. He’s kinda quiet. Second most likely to be a mimic, if we’re making accusations.” 

107’s door opens slightly wider. The man standing there doesn’t show his face, keeping his head down and his hood up, hands stuffed in the pockets of an oversized sweater. He’s on the shorter side. “Hm,” he says, and shrugs.

“And I guess I’m Chatterbox.” The woman laughs. “I’m in 104. The walls are really, really thin, we mostly just yell at each other. Nobody else around so it’s not like we’re bothering anyone.” 

You unlock 108 and find a small, musty-smelling room. There’s stiff, crusty carpet, a single bed with sheets that feel like packing paper, and a closet-sized bathroom. You put your backpack on the bedside table and add the Drift Inn to your map.

“So what are we calling you, stranger?” Chatterbox yells. She’s right, the walls are really thin. Four rooms down and you can still hear her fairly clearly. 

“Courier,” you say back. 

The wind picks up outside, growing from a whisper to a vicious howl. You peek through your curtains and find your footsteps in the snow have nearly been filled in already as more blows across the motel parking lot. You scan the row of cars parked out front apprehensively. The one you saw in the blizzard was an SUV, you think. Silver. Hard to make out in the haze and all the white. You don’t see it out there now. You’d like to tell yourself that those two things can’t possibly be related, but there’s a corpse behind the check-in desk, beaten so badly the face barely looked human.

You don’t want to think about it. You let the curtains fall back into place and sit on the edge of the bed. “Newbie, you’re from outside the Drift?” you ask. “What made you decide to come here?”

You hear him clear his throat nervously. “I’m doing market research, you could say. There’s a lot of interest in developing the Drift, getting it connected to the rest of the world. You guys are missing out on a lot of things. Phones are only local, right, so you can’t call Prismville from the University. And mail takes forever since you don’t really have a reliable delivery service. Uh. No offense, I mean.” 

“Didn’t some outsider company already try getting a foothold here a while back?” That sounds like Glasses. “Like a decade ago or something. Putting all those cables in the ground, then acting surprised when they got fucked up after a couple shifts.” 

“Ohhh, that’s right! They started growing skin and then they all slithered off,” Chatterbox says.

“Is that what those are?” you ask. “I’ve seen those before. They’re farm pests, mostly. They really like eggs.” 

“Mhm,” Shrug adds.

“Can I ask about that? What’s up with the eggs?” Newbie says. “Why are they everywhere? I keep seeing people eat them raw, shell and all.” 

Chatterbox laughs. “So those aren’t actually eggs.” 

“You’re pulling my leg.” 

“No, I mean, they look just like eggs, right? So we call them eggs.”

“Oh, so these get called by what they look like, huh?”

“Okay, look, there are different kinds of shifts, right? Depending on how things are intersecting, or if they’re intersecting at all, and sometimes—”

The wind shrieks and the windows shake in their frames. Snow drifts under your door, melting on the carpet. Through the space beneath the curtains, all you see is white. “It’s getting bad out there,” Glasses says quietly.

“I, ah, thought the Drift didn’t get snow?” Newbie asks.

“It doesn’t,” Chatterbox says. “Unless the Road Ripper’s around.” 

There’s a pause. You’re holding your breath. Glasses is the first one to speak up again, scoffing, “That shit’s an urban legend. Nobody could live out on the road that long.”

“Hm,” Shrug agrees. Or maybe disagrees. You’re not sure.

“What if he doesn’t, though? What if he does come into town sometimes, drifts in and out before anyone realizes who he is?” Chatterbox insists. “It’d be easy. He could slip out with some couriers and nobody’d know. Maybe he is a courier.”

There’s another, longer pause. “Wh—really?” you say, incredulous. “I’m not a serial killer.”

Chatterbox makes a thoughtful sound. “Well, a serial killer would probably say that.” 

“I was the last one here! How could I have killed somebody?” 

“Not saying you did it, just saying maybe you should leave first in the morning,” Glasses mutters. 

The idea of falling asleep here unnerves you, but your car won’t be warm enough. You consider shoving a chair under the door. It’s flimsy, certainly nothing that’ll deter somebody hellbent on killing on you—somebody with the kind of strength you saw—but you’ll hear it fall over at least. You take a quick shower and crawl into bed, too tired to care how stiff the mattress is. The others are loud but the wind drowns them out after a while and the conversation dies down.

Maybe you won’t sleep, you think. You’ll just lay here on your side, facing the door and the windows. Listening for footsteps in the snow, or a car pulling up.  Just a few hours, you think, checking the clock. A few hours until dawn, at least. Maybe the blizzard will have moved on by then. You try to keep yourself moving, shaking your foot or tapping your fingers. The room is frigid, the heat barely able to keep up with the cold air seeping under the door, but exhaustion is slowly gaining on you. It becomes a struggle to keep your eyes open.

“…I heard that’s a thing he does,” Chatterbox is saying, sounding muffled and far away. “He picks somebody and follows them around for a while, but he lets them go a few times before he actually kills them. And it’s not like he just leaves other people alone, but that’s kind of different. It’s like he’s whetting his appetite or something. Picks off other people so can hold himself back from whoever his main target is. Maybe it’s a mimic thing? Do you think he shapeshifts? I had a friend back at University who specialized in mimics, I think some of them do similar stuff…”

Your eyelids flutter. Just a few hours, you remind yourself. A few hours and then…

You can’t breathe. 

It’s dark, a deeper black than night in every direction, and you can’t breathe. There’s something—something around your neck. Squeezing too tight. Wanting to split you open, wanting to tear into the soft flesh of your throat. It wants to, yet it never does. But even when it lets you go, uncoiling slowly, slinking out of sight, your lungs are on fire. You heave and you choke and you try to scream but you can’t get any air, can’t breathe. You can’t remember how.

There’s something in this darkness with you. You can’t see it but you can hear it breathing in deep, echoing sighs. You can sense its vastness, the crushing weight of its attention. You’re trying to run but your legs are weak and sluggish, flailing, going nowhere. The air ripples and it’s here, above and all around you. Silent. Observing. Your neck throbs where it touched you, skin tender and throbbing with your heartbeat, and still you can’t breathe. 

There is a dark moon above you. It’s a misshapen pearl, a silvery stone with a hole punched through its center. It’s growing as it sinks from the sky. It’s bigger than you, bigger than your car, so close you think you could reach out and touch it.

It blinks.

You gasp and jolt awake. It must be morning. Weak light trickles under the curtains. You’re cold, but not as cold as you were last night. The stench of blood is thick and cloying. Your door is open, the chair you wedged under it knocked aside. 

You sit up slowly. The room is red. Every breath draws in the smell of rust and rot. There’s hardly a surface in the room that hasn’t been spattered in gore. The walls are glistening with it. There are dark red puddles hardening into the carpet. The bedspread is soaked through beside you because there is a body there, posed atop the sheets as though it climbed into bed with you. It doesn’t have a face, just a head so badly bludgeoned that it could be a split pomegranate, soft and gooey and oozing chunks of meat through cracks in its skull. 

It’s wearing a peacoat, gray wool spattered with blotchy red stains. 

You scramble out of bed, lunging for your shoes. The carpet is so saturated it squishes wetly under your steps. There’s another body curled up at the foot of the bed in the same unsightly condition, intact except for the gristly paste where a head should be. Blood and brain matter spill across the floor in a pinkish smear, bits of vertebrae poking through the taut, torn flesh of the neck. Newbie’s tie is half-submerged in the slurry, tightened into an uncomfortably small knot.

The third corpse is propped up against the door, seated with its back against it. You shove it aside. You try not to look. But you see red, you see a scalp split apart and a broken shell of skull fragments underneath, little white slivers floating in a soupy clot. A gush of thick, partially coagulated fluid spurts out when it thunks against the ground in your haste to leave, dislodging the sunglasses folded neatly in its lap. 

The morning air is crisp. It’s just cold enough that some of the snow has stayed, the shallow layer left revealing the spotted prints of snowboots, a trail of blood, and smooth drag marks. Every door is wide open, a mess of red slush inside. The gruesome trail wanders out of your room and then rounds the corner, vanishing into a section of the parking lot you never thought to check. Nothing is parked there now but you still feel nauseous with fear.

Strangely, 107’s snow is clean. You notice as you’re leaving, starting your car, headlights flashing into the open rooms. Everything else is slick and splattered, dark red puddles frozen to the bed, except 107—the room right next to yours. The footprints, you notice, come out of that room clean. They go only in one direction; only leaving. 

You try desperately to remember Shrug’s face but you never saw it. He was careful, keeping his head angled down and his gaze lowered. Maybe it’s just hindsight, fear coloring your memories, but thinking back, you thought he might’ve had a small smile on his face when you looked at him.

(next)

[deepsea-kinniies]

Emalf blinkies for Mod Kichi!

Free to use with visible credit (pls don't flat out repost them tho)

[problematickincalls1]

I’m Ivlis from funamusea / the Gray Garden / okegom / deep sea prisoner (the creator uses a lot of names for the work and themselves). Looking for anyone I was close to or who even wants to speak to me. I’m 20, so 18+ is preferred.

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[findthebae]

Hi, I’m Ivlis from The Gray Garden and other funamusea / okegom works. I’m looking for anyone from this general source but especially my children, Rieta, or Satanick. I’m an adult, so for those like Siralos or Satanick I’d prefer only to interact with other adults. I’ll reach out to anyone to likes / replies / etc.

! ! !

[marietheran]

LotR reread - book 1, chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Past

This is where things start to get darker, and Tolkien was very vocal in reminding that it got written well before September 1939

"Merry and Pippin suspected [Frodo] visited Elves at times, as Bilbo had done"

"There were rumours of strange things happening in the world outside... Elves, who seldom walked in the shire could now be seen passing westward through the woods in the evening, passing and not returning; but they were leaving Middle-Earth and were no longer concerned with its troubles. There were, however, dwarves on the road in unusual numbers. The ancient East-West Road ran through the Shire to its end at the Grey Havens, and dwarves had always used it on their way to their mines intbhe Blue mountains... But now Frodo often net strange dwarves of far countries, seeking refuge in the West. They were troubled, and some spoke in whispers of the Enemy and of the land of Mordor... That name the hobbits only knew in legends of the dark past, like a shadow in the background of their memories; but it was ominous and disquieting." - Oh, this passage used to move me so, for some reason, though I'm afraid it's grown stale!

"But it was an old tradition that away over there stood the Gray Havens from which at times elven-ships set sail, never to return." :(

Though it is strange that it feels so so sad that the Elves are leaving... when for many it is a return home, and to kin they haven't seen for thousands of years, once dead and now living... but we see it from the perspective of Middle-earth.

"Lestways" is a neat word I should remember.

Tolkien's work with sound... the silence and Sam who can be heard working in the garden... is marvellous in this chapter.

Oh, and here comes the first allusion in the LotR tradition... "chance, but not chance", "meant to find the Ring and not by it's maker" indeed!

Tbh even the Silm which is usually more open about things, goes "a great Doom was upon him" or something whenever matters of Providence are discussed, so that's just a peculiarity of Tolkien's.

Not that every single time "fate" is discussed it means that, imo, but never mind.

"What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!" "Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy not to strike without need"... "He deserves death." "Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement." - very student-of-Nienna-coded.

[excalibutt]

Hello! List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers :D

in no particular order...

The feeling of being enthralled by a City at night. When you're out a little later than you intended to be, and even if you're alone—you're surrounded by the mellow but joyful thrum of people in your peripheral. It's dark, but you're awake, and alive. When you breathe in—you breathe in a little hint of hedonism. A simple little gift from the great body of the City that surrounds you. A gentle 'I love you' dancing on the tip of your tongue. A soft whisper of belonging, tingling the shell of your ear, because even if you cannot see someone—you know you're not the only one awake.

Unsolicited affection. The joy of someone who seeks you out simply out of fondness. Someone who sends you things either out of sheer joy for the subject matter or because they were reminded of you. A brush of the hand, a kiss to the temple, and shoulder touch. Remembering how you like your coffee or your tea. The slow-blinking cat, the dog that can't stop wiggling. Someone who seeks you because they feel you are alike, you are kin, because they LIKE you. You, in whatever way, are wanted. You are loved, even if it always surprises you.

Strange Art. The bizarre. The mind-boggling. The repulsive. The vivid. The symbolic. The fury of a staring at a canvas of a singular color, only to realize that you see no brush-strokes, and that this hue had never been captured before to such a scale. The monsters. The Metaphors. The imagery that sticks behind your eyeballs and waits for you when you close them and breathe. The surreal. The strange. The silly. The ugly. The challenging. The cringe. The camp. The refutation and condemnation of laws we take for granted. Pure, unbridled confusion. I want something that makes my eyes buzz with excitement, and something that breaks my heart.

Green. From the Douglas Fir to the Weeping Willow, to the grass-sedges, herbs, and weeds. Give me mint, give me matcha, give me a sickly wicked-neon glow. Give me malachite and emerald, give me houseplants, frogs, tortoise and cacti, give me kiwis, grapes, gardens. Give me swamps and lakes and snakes and rivers... give me glass... give me life. Give me green.

Study. Every single day I learn something new. I walk along broken concrete and I see a hundred crows all lighting around me, giving life and complex society to a gray and industrial place. I learn their behaviors, I study plants. I read, I write, I make. I open my eyes and see the mist settling over a distant hill, shrouding spires—and feel my heart melt at the beauty of it. I get to breathe, see, smell, hear and touch this place and become part of it. I get to experience the ephemeral and abstract as much as the physical and tangible. I can read stories of people long past, and I can feel their joy as vividly as my own when I read their words. There is joy in education... the easy-wonder and nostalgia of childhood remains within reach.

[asters-random-sideblog]

hey guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my name is aster.

my pronouns are she/her/they/them.

my main is @anxiety-lemsbian

If you want other blogs to follow my art/music sideblog is @phoebes-bridges

i love musicals, especially hamilton, matilda and heathers

my comfort movies are mamma mia and high school musical

likes: cats, phoebe bridgers, finland, vintage teacups, watercolours, music, bracelets, queer people, radio silence, taylor swift, rain, cardigans, knitted vests, embroidery, green, lorde, dangerfield, drawing, quirky stuff, ducks, stars, girls, tumblr, tacos, art, ballgowns, long skirts, oversized shirts/jumpers, sweetpeas, rainbows, alice oseman, daisies, mochi, lily of the valley, eliza and the delusionals, pale sunlight, typewriters, rotary phones, earrings, like three people, lavender, floral scented soaps/conditioners, peppermint lip balm, blue eyes, the texture of velvet, being alone, apple pie, gilmore girls, people using my correct pronouns, heartstopper, little women, reading, nice pink watermelon, british accents, a flower fairies treasury, sarcasm, sunflowers, the ocean when it’s raining or dark, stuff that’s naturally grey (rainclouds, etc.) lemon iced tea, frances janvier, spanish, macarons, bubble tea

dislikes: math, global warming, migraines, the sun, tight clothes, pimples, homophobia, spiders, racism, transphobia, shitty people, terfs, aphobia, tiktok, wasps, watermelon when it’s too red and floury, my father, school, most people, being bad at spanish, being alone when I feel people will judge me for it, depression, anxiety, people being ignorant, my mother, drunk people, smokers, feeling uncomfortable, most men, vomit, rejection, being delusional

i’m a minor

i speak un peqeño español and i love cats

my pronouns page:

i love osemanverse but im especially addicted to radio silence, solitare and loveless (i kin frances sm)

im gay (in a sapphic way)

BETH MARCH STAN OMG

love love love darcy olsson and sam kerr lol

i loveeeee enola holmes

im in love with the one bracelet i own

i have depression and anxiety, and probably asd and adhd

feel free to drop into my inbox at any time i love getting asks

i like sleeping

this is a list of songs i claim as my own:

liability, ribs, no better, stoned at the nail salon and sober II (melodrama) by lorde

happiness is a butterfly and cinnamon girl by lana del rey

not strong enough, anticurse, letter to an old poet and true blue by boygenius

meteor shower by cavetown

the story of us, seven, illicit affairs, you’re on your own kid, would’ve could’ve should’ve, if this was a movie , hoax, i don’t wanna live forever, right where you left me, i can see you, invisible string, the lakes, mirrorball and this is me trying by taylor swift

motion sickness, moon song, graceland too, garden song, kyoto and i know the end by phoebe bridgers

watch you sleep and rue by girl in red

there it goes and you’re just a boy (and i’m kinda the man) by maisie peters

summer child by conan gray

all-american bitch, brutal, deja vu, lacy, bad idea right?, hope ur ok, teenage dream, get him back! and good 4 u by olivia rodrigo

just exist and cigarette by eliza and the delusionals

ok i think im done

am i done?

i think imma make an aesthetic board actually

lets do it!!!!

also pls tell me if ur uncomfortable being called babe/darling/love

general DNI's apply, terfs, homophobes, transphobes, NSFW accounts etc etc

have a wonderful day i love you :)

[remidrawsstuffs]

AZIRAPHALE

This will be the first of the many rants I'll be posting about good omens, beware of spoilers and I will only reference the show and not the books as I have not read it yet.

Also disclaimer, These are what I picked up from the show and what I observed, but feel free to leave your thoughts and correct me if I missed something :3

ANYWAYS

Aziraphale is a literal ray of sunshine but he is a conflicted mess, I seriously see myself in him and I kin him so hard it hurts. Like, he's conflicted about how things can be good and bad at the same time, how something can be morally questionable but still be done with good intentions. Even after 6000 years, he still has some inkling of a black and white kind of thinking when it comes to doing things. He still thinks that there is a clear line of where good and evil lies, because of his religious trauma and people (angels and heaven) belittling him for all the things he did.

He strives to be the bigger person, he runs on being on a moral high ground and when he does something morally questionable, he tries to justify it, still trying to preserve that moral high ground that he's very proud of. But he meets crowley, someone who is, most of the time, morally questionable in some sense but still has some inkling of niceness in her. This is where Aziraphale gets more conflicted!

Think of aziraphale as a child who has been brainwashed and conditioned into thinking that everyone outside of their circle (angels and heaven) are evil or beneath them in some way. Aziraphale has been molded into thinking that if they aren't on the side of angels and God, they're demons and traitors.

Then, the start of the universe and earth came. the garden of eden and humans were made, and aziraphale had to guard the garden, along with adam and eve.

He had observed how humans are like since the very first creation and he has seen how the humans are influenced by the entities. But then comes crowley, the one who has been on earth as much as aziraphale has. He went through earth side by side with a demon. Someone who he has always been taught are bad people.

But he's surprised to see how caring crowley is, even if he acts somewhat rude, and how much he questions the morality in everything that heaven does. He sees her help humans, he sees him try to make only small demonic miracles and temptations and mischief because she loves the humans.

Aziraphale saw a demon care.

So, within the 6000 years they've been together, the people that they met, how they observed humans and how they have their own thoughts, how they have their own way of thinking, which in turn, changes aziraphale's perspective. Not everything is black and white anymore, it could be gray, not everyone is gonna always be on the white or light gray side of things all the time

But aziraphale is scared, he's scared that he's changing, that his mindset is changing. He scared that he's questioning the almighty and her plans, he's scared that what happen to crowley will happen to him, he's scared that he may be acting traitorous.

A little side note, people have been theorizing that crowley is a seraphim, which is the highest ranking angels who work just right under the almighty God.

So in ep 1 s2, he talks to crawley (now known as crowley) like he's excited, because it's a higher up (aziraphale is seen to treat the higher ups with utter respect, even if uncomfortable or how rude they can get)

He had a chance to work for someone who was only below God in authority and power. And he was estatic.

But he was skeptical, gobsmacked even, when he heard crawley complain and question why the universe is only going to run for 6000 years, and that's what scares aziraphale. Because he has the same curiosity and questions as crowley, but the only difference is that aziraphale doesn't ask those questions

He's terrified, because even a (theorized) seraphim was casted down to hell as a fallen angel for her questions. Aziraphale has trauma.

He's scared that he'll end up like crowley, and lose the moral high ground he so desperately clings on to.

Okay back on the main topic, he's scared that he's changing, he's terrified that he's going "native" as some of the angels and demons call it.

Aziraphale is scared that he'll be casted down after being tempted or interfering with the almighty's plan. He's terrified that he's slowly turning into something similar to crowley

So he clings to that moral high ground, but his grip is loosening. Specifically, I think it started during that time with the girl in the graveyard and her friend. He saw someone die because he let someone do something wrong. He started questioning how it was fair for the poor, how it was fair that someone gets an unfair life and untimely demise.

Then the conversation with the doctor and the story about the 7 year old who died because of a tumor. He questions how a child is punished so harshly, why they don't get a chance at life as much as everyone else does. He starts questioning if heaven is actually all that kind and holy.

Overtime, he realizes how heaven doesn't care about earth, especially during the beginning of Armageddon (that they stopped by the way). He realizes that heaven doesn't care, that they don't care about the conditions of the angel or the creations that they make. They don't care.

They only care that things are being done. Hell and heaven are like that. "as long as they get the paperwork, they don't care how it's done"

And going back to the time where aziraphale lied to the angels and stopping God's will, he fully expected that he was gonna be escorted to hell by crowley because he lied.

And going back to temptations, the first time aziraphale was tempted to eat food, it's like he lost all morals somewhat when it comes to food, it's like aziraphale wondered why they were told it was bad.

It's like.. when someone tells you not to eat candy then you ask why and they only answer "because I said so" that's the entire dynamic of heaven and their angels. They follow the rules, they don't question it, and when they do, they get guilt tripped. You can see it when aziraphale asks about why Job is being punished and tested even though he has stayed faithful to the almighty!

He asks why and he finds out it's a bet, to "test" job's loyalty. But that's where it gets messy, isn't a test the same as giving a temptation? Why was God trying to, in a way, tempt job into losing faith in her? Even though she designed and created the humans and is all knowing, wouldn't she have known that job would stay loyal?? That's where aziraphale also gets confused

But, because of how badly mistreated and very "scripted" the angels are when answering questions, aziraphale is forced to stomach and push down them down.

"Are you questioning the almighty's decisions?" Sounds a lot like "are you questioning the will of God?" When it comes from those overly religious people when you just want to get answers.

I saw a post that the reason why the angels have automated responses to questions, is because the higher ups themselves don't know, so to stay on that good moral standing, they give generic bland basic answers and a somewhat threatening question in return (I don't remember where I read this take, but I love it)

Aziraphale is a victim of being shunned and belittled to the point he tries so hard to be worthy of the position as an angel. He tries his best to hold on to that assurance that he is good and just, that he is still worthy of heaven.

He learns that people can be both good and bad but still be considered a nice person. And that new mindset is battling with his old mindset, making him question himself.

Crowley has always supported and assured him that he is still an angel, which helps him feel validated, the validation that he never got from heaven. Until the season 2 finale.

He was finally noticed. He was finally acknowledged by the angels, better yet, the metatron himself, who serves as the voice of the almighty, who can speak for God.

He feels extremely validated that even if he doesn't prefer coffee, he savors every single drop of validation from metatron like it's the last thing he'll ever recieve.

Because his efforts are finally being seen, by someone as high as the metatron himself, no less. And he wants to keep receiving that, and not only does he want to do that, but he also wants to take the things he learns on earth, to heaven. To make it better, to make it how it's supposed to be.

He wants equality for everyone, and at the same time, he wants to be validated so badly

But he can't leave crowley behind, so he asks her to come with him to heaven, to become an angel again, because he knows that other than him, crowley is the only person who cares about the earth and fairness.

But he can't have everything, and what's worse is that it's obvious he's being love bombed!

That validation will not last forever, it will gradually leave until he's far too deep into being the supreme archangel that he can't back down. He's trapped, he'll be trapped to search, long, and work for the validation he craved so much for 6000 years or even more

This is why i kin him so bad. The conflict between what's good and what's bad is horrible, because there's almost a transparent line that divides good and evil that it's so hard to differentiate

There's no certain answers of what is good and bad, sure some situations are but not all of them. An example is when aziraphale gave away his flaming sword to adam and eve because he thinks it's the right thing, but it was not in God's plan, so surely it was bad right?

He follows along this arc of questioning and still has a lot to go when it comes to his character development.

He is still a ball of sunshine, but that ball of sunshine burns himself with his moral battle

If you reached this far, thank you! I know some of that didn't make too much sense and I probably made some mistakes with info and stuff, but I would love to hear your opinion about this! I'll try and make a more coherent rant when I rewatch the show :3