#v: end of all things | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thesherrinfordfacility · 9 months

Text

the thing that is actually making me giddy with the possible angst is that i really think that we are about to see the most monumental shift in not only how we saw these characters but also how they previously saw each other.

the fact that we literally now have confirmation that a) they knew each other before the fall, b) aziraphale has had heart eyes since before time began, and c) crowley... possibly not so much, completely changes the context on not just the eden scene but also all the historic scenes that followed.

aziraphale knew crowley as an angel, and knew even then when crowley was meant to be 'perfect' that crowley was maybe a bit different, always asking questions and toeing the line. maybe out of a bit of bastardy himself, or out of begrudging awe of his ability but also his audacity, or just plain attraction, aziraphale immediate takes to him. but this has meant that aziraphale has placed crowley, perhaps unconsciously, upon a pedestal. and the pedestal that aziraphale puts crowley on from that moment may have wobbled throughout their history together, but it's stayed relatively intact.

this worries me, that aziraphale may not have quite let go of the fact that crowley just isn't that person any more, maybe never was to begin with, and continues in some measure to idolise him. my interpretation of this is that yes, crowley can be a bit of a dick (because, well, obviously) and aziraphale knows this, has done since the beginning, but aziraphale continues to hold crowley to an overall moral ideal that is so firmly ensconced in aziraphale's first perception of him as an angel that crowley will never be able to live up to it. not because he isn't a nice person, or because he can't live up to it, but maybe... he just simply doesn't want to.

but the issue is that throughout the ages (including the job minisode which ive had corrected for me, so Crowley Anger is now simply simmering), crowley's actions have only reinforced to aziraphale that despite being technically a demon, he has a huge heart and is not a horrible person. bit of a bastard, but not cruel. all of this just feeds and feeds into this image of crowley that aziraphale has built of him, and when crowley has his flashes of, in fact, not being honourable or kind, this threatens to upset the pedestal altogether.

these wobbly moments - when he thinks crowley is going to kill the children, when crowley snaps at him in rome, when crowley first proposes the arrangement, the prospect that he came up with the french revolt, the holy water request, the bandstand, "how can someone as clever as you be so stupid?"... moments where just for a second, in a small or huge measure, aziraphale's faith in crowley... flickers.

and of course aziraphale has been here before, right? he's had his faith, his devotion, his loyalty tested to the absolute limit of angelic endurance. so when his faith in heaven (never lost it in god) was obliterated, well - it had to cling to something. something that wouldnt mean that aziraphale has to lose the concept of faith altogether. so we're back to the old standby of idolatry, that aziraphale's heavenly faith is replaced by his faith in crowley, this angel that despite never originally giving aziraphale the time of day, aziraphale cannot see - for all of crowley's faults and bastardy and the frustration he poses - crowley as anything less than something to be worshipped.

this is exactly why i think that one of the main points of s2 is going to be a rift between them both. obviously i haven't talked about crowley's perspective of this and maybe i will in another post, but i do think that crowley is going to do something, a bad thing for the right reasons, but aziraphale isn't going to see it like that. that crowley will do something awful to protect aziraphale, but all aziraphale will be able to see is the betrayal or the cruelty or the despair, he can't see wood for the trees, and just lose that last vestige of faith he had altogether.

i feel like once all the disillusion and disenchantment has been swept away, and they're both laid bare at each other's feet... that they may not quite like what they find. from aziraphale's perspective, that whatever crowley does in s2 might be crossing aziraphale's line in the sand, and now aziraphale is starting to see crowley as someone that is truly grey, fluctuating between doing things that are Good, and things that are Good for Crowley.

and it's not as if aziraphale was blind to this before, but instead now... he kind of finally sees who crowley is? who he has been all along? the film has lifted from his eyes. realises that love and worship are not the same thing. what he loves, who he loves, doesn't equate to worshipping it/them, idolising them. there's a very big difference that echoes down to the very core tenet of who aziraphale is and his experiences with having and losing faith, but love having remained.

so stripped of the pedestal, crowley is now just simply... crowley. a person, not an angel, not a demon. and there is the distinct possibility that aziraphale might be completely blindsided by what he finds.

#good omens #good omens season 2 #ill let you in on a secret - no idea where i was going with this #but what im essentially saying is that aziraphale has this shiny picture of crowley in his head and heart #and when crowley continues to do crowley things aziraphale kinda steps back and is like #“huh... has it been this was all along?”#and if I'm wrong well honestly THANK GOD #but i feel like there is going to be a real reckoning at the end of s2 where faith and love is concerned #that the two are very different but aziraphale kinda confuses the two #anyway #good omens spoilers #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens... speculation? Sure why not #not a shitpost but its good omens babyyyy #im saying theyre in somewhat of a toxic and disillusioned relationship and its likely going to (temporarily) end v badly im afraid #rhi needs to stop manifesting

226 notes · View notes

blood-choke · 5 months

Note

hiiii… i wanted to ask more about this particular val scene where mc and her talk about that portrait and mc is a bit stuck on the word husband and wants val to know theyre not a man. can i ask what inspired that type of convo? i wanted to know if it’s something you’ll touch up on again? is this underlying feelings mc had before their entombment… worried that val sees them as a man just because mc is masc? cause i know that’s kind of broader discussion in the lesbian community iirc….. was that why you wanted to incorporate it? this ask has so many questions LOL but basically i wanted to say i was intrigued and it did made me think more on those type of dynamics (thinking back to those resources you rb’d a while ago that go more into depth about diff things in the lesbian community)

oh boy get ready for another long-winded answer from me!

a lot of the feelings mc has about their gender are inspired by Leslie Feinberg's work (mainly Stone Butch Blues)

Feinberg was someone who lived & passed as a man for years of hir life, and wrote a lot about the complexities of hir gender and what it was like being a "gender outlaw."

there was actually a scene in particular from sbb that kinda put the kernel of an idea in my mind that led to this narrative of the mc feeling overshadowed by Standard and anxious about being perceived as a man. it's towards the end of the book when Jess (sbb's protagonist) meets Ruth (a trans woman that Jess falls in love with)

Jess offers to help Ruth carry groceries up to her apartment, and Ruth takes this the wrong way & is offended, partly because she thinks Jess is a man.

One Saturday afternoon I found her clutching two huge bags of groceries and fumbling with the downstairs front-door lock. I pulled out my key.

“Here, let me.” She didn’t say thank you. She hurried ahead of me on the stairs.

“Can I help you carry those?” I offered.

“Do I look weak to you?” she asked.

I stopped on the stairs. “No. Where I come from it’s just a sign of respect, that’s all.”

She continued up the stairs. “Well, where I come from,” she called out, “men don’t reward women for pretending to be helpless.” Once I heard her apartment door close I kicked the stair in anger and frustration.

later, after they get to know each other better, they have this interaction:

I laughed and picked at my salad. “Do you know if I’m a man or a woman?”

“No,” Ruth said. “That’s why I know so much about you.”

I sighed. “Did you think I was a man when you first met me?" She nodded. "Yes. At first I thought you were a straight man. Then I thought you were gay. It’s been a shock for me to realize that even I make assumptions about sex and gender that aren’t true. I thought I was liberated from all of that.”

I smiled. “I didn’t want you to think I was a man. I wanted you to see how much more complicated I am. I wanted you to like what you saw.”

i think the inspiration here is quite obvious, hahaha. i figure anyone that's read sbb can sense the similar through-line here in my work. though the conversation between mc and Valentina has a much different tone.

there's another scene later as well after something happens to Jess and she has to have her jaw wired shut. she's working at a new job and is unable to speak, and she's also passing as a man at this job. she overhears some of her female coworkers talking about her and they refer to her as a "creep" and speculate that she's always watching one of them. Jess overhears all of this and then walks out of the job, goes home and pulls the wires out of her mouth herself:

After I was sure I’d gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity.

butches & gnc women still face this kind of dehumanization; compared or likened to men in a derogatory way, accused of being "heteropatriarchal," the predatory stereotype of the fat ugly lesbian, and on the other side they're also hypersexualized, especially online and in queer spaces. butchphobia is a specific kind of misogyny that hits from all sides, even from the people that are supposed to be a part of your community. and this attitude especially effects trans women and women of color, who are already experiencing all of these things due to transmisogyny and racism.

i also really wanted to use this to touch on the kind of gender essentialism that we see in a lot of these cis feminist discussions - to these women at this job, Jess had committed no real crime other than being quiet and being the “wrong” kind of man. something about this scene has always stuck with me and really bothered me, but it's hard to put into words; on one hand i can admit i have probably been one of those women who made some kind of similar remark about a man i barely knew, but i've also been someone on the receiving end, too, because of the way i look. the mc in blood choke is put into this box, but they can't fit in, as someone who has been on both sides and doesn't really understand where they belong because of it; how can she stand beside Valentina or Hana or Clear when they might see her as a perpetrator, someone who can't be trusted? how does this mindset harm both the women and the men of the council and everyone in between? how can we break this cycle?

one of the films i mentioned recently when talking about the character designs was The Same Difference, which is specifically about the Black lesbian community and the discrimination within that community based upon gender roles (though this is not something limited to just the Black lesbian community)

a lot of the women in that doc talk about the boxes they're put in as AG or stud lesbians - they can't have their hair long, they can't wear makeup, they can't do this or that, they have to be aggressive and hard or else they're not real studs. they discuss stud on stud (or butch4butch) and how other lesbians look down on those types of lesbians, as well as the disdain for bisexual women for "betraying" the community. it explores the way misogyny and the patriarchy still oppress these women and forces them into this restrictive gender role despite their refusal to adhere to the other role originally assigned to them, and the way racism specifically intersects and exacerbates it for Black lesbians. there's a stud that's an exotic dancer and wears a weave, and a lot of other studs have a problem with this because a weave is "a female thing." another section follows a pregnant stud, and how the community shuns her for that, because she "dresses like a man and acts like a man" so why is she getting pregnant when she should be "the man"?

mc doesn't remember how they felt before entombment, but waking up they feel this need to prove themselves - both in that they are hard and aggressive like a butch should be, but also in that they want to be this person for Valentina or Clear or Hana (or all of them) that is safe and comforting. but they aren't sure how to do that when the world perceives them as this one specific thing - as a husband, as Standard, as a man, specifically this man who hurt Valentina.

of course we've already seen this to not be true of the companions with the last chapter as the mc learns more and spends more time with everyone. but this is kind of the foundation of where this whole idea came from. it started with my novel & i chose vampires for that story & this one because there is a long history of lesbian vampirism (and also because it's sexy) but there's this "curse" that both Hana & Valerie talk about in their respective stories, the first one being the racism she's had to face, the transphobia, along with this alienation and perception of lesbians as predatory and conniving and aggressive, as vampires, which i just think really lends itself to expanding upon these issues lesbians & trans women face both in general and within the community.

anyways if you want to read more i suggest Stone Butch Blues, which you can get for free on Leslie Feinberg's website, as well as S/he, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, available on the internet archive, Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon also on the internet archive, and you can rent The Same Difference for $10 on vimeo.

#im gonna be real idk if this makes sense to anyone but me. lmfao #but basically leslie feinberg is a huge inspiration for me #and just exploring the way homophobia and transphobia and misogyny all intersect when someone is gnc #and the expectations put on them #i think about butch al a lot and the things she says to jess and the way that section of the book plays out #and then in the end when the cops raid the bar #al and jess are fags except for what the cops did to al and the way they dehumanize her #how the mc is considered a man in certain instances - when the girls throw a brick at her or when the woman yells at her in the bathroom #or when atlas shakes hands with her and calls her their man #but other times she's a 'proper lady' with V or when that man gives her and Hana a dirty look in the elevator #or when cassius says 'ladies first'#mc is always one or the other whatever is convenient and degrades her the most in the moment #you know?#i dont know. im just saying stuff #basically i want to explore these gendered expectations & stereotypes and how they harm someone vulnerable like mc #how they feel alienated even from V & hana & clear for not being butch enough #but also for being butch and trans in the first place and feeling like an infiltrator #ask #anonymous

44 notes · View notes