#(But really it’s about the Bastille it’s always been about the Bastille)

[grahamdefamily]

A transfem Adrien and some Alyanette fluff for @nothingbutartstuff !

[krummholz-go]

The Final 15 - Aziraphale’s Perspective

I see a lot of empathy for Crowley’s experience during the final 15 minutes of season 2 and it makes sense that we feel deeply for him. What he is experiencing is very human - acknowledging the depth of his own feelings, plucking up the courage to say something, having it come out all wrong, feeling utterly rejected, and then walking away in a mix of pain and anger. Who among us hasn’t been there?

But Aziraphale is experiencing something more complicated, something fewer of us have analogs for. Aziraphale has internally acknowledged his feelings for Crowley for some period of time, probably at least since 1941. Michael Sheen confirms this mental state in a NYCC 2018 interview:

“I decided early on that Aziraphale just loves Crowley. And that’s difficult for him because they are on opposite sides and he doesn’t agree with him on stuff. But it does really help as an actor to go, ‘My objective in this scene is to not show you how much I love you and just gaze longingly at you.’”

Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale’s struggle isn’t acknowledging his feelings. His struggle appears to be two-fold: 1) believing that Crowley could ever love him back and 2) even if Crowley did love him, believing a future for the two of them together could exist within the restrictions of his larger world view.

Can Crowley love?

Angels are, traditionally, beings of love. We see Aziraphale embody this time and again, showing kindness and support to almost everyone he meets, including the amnesiac Gabriel who has treated him abominably in the past. He is attuned to love, remarking on how the area around Tadfield “feels loved” twice in Season 1. As for how Aziraphale personally understands and expresses love, he shows his love to others through verbal affirmation and, to a lesser extent, physical touch. There are many examples of Aziraphale expressing his love for Crowley through positive verbal affirmation, typically by praising him for instances where he has been kind, nice, or good. And on the rare occasions when Aziraphale receives verbal praise, he absolutely interprets it as an expression of love, blossoming with happiness.

But from Aziraphale’s perspective, it may be unclear if Crowley can feel love in the same way. Can demons love? Did he lose that capability when he fell? Crowley can’t feel the aura of love in Tadfield that Aziraphale remarks on, and his reactions to Aziraphale’s praise are always to shrug it off, tell Aziraphale to “shut up,” or in the most extreme case to physically slam him against a wall and get in his face about it. In this last instance he tells Aziraphale, “I’m a demon, I’m not nice. I'm never nice. Nice is a four-letter word.” A four-letter word, like love, that is not in Crowley’s self-defined vocabulary.

If Crowley can feel love, does he love Aziraphale?

Even if Aziraphale believes Crowley is capable of feeling love, he does not always recognize how Crowley expresses it in the moment. Crowley shows his love for Aziraphale through actions, but Aziraphale often misconstrues Crowley’s motivations. In 1793 when Crowley rescues him from the Bastille, Aziraphale initially assumes Crowley is only there because he is responsible for the Reign of Terror. Similarly, in 1941, Aziraphale’s reaction to Crowley’s appearance is to assume he’s just part of the Nazi gang, saying,“I should have known. Of course. These people are working for you!”

Crowley doesn’t help matters in this regard because he is constantly muting and undercutting his signals to Aziraphale. Every time Crowley expresses his love for Aziraphale through actions - rescuing him, saving his books, even taking him to lunch - he does so in a nonchalant, dismissive manner, indicating he ascribes little value or importance to the actions he has performed. “I just didn’t want to see you embarrassed,” he says when he appears in 1941. And when Aziraphale positively glows with happiness about his books being saved, Crowley tells him to “shut up."On top of these confusing signals, Crowley is almost pathologically incapable of expressing his feelings in the verbal love language that Aziraphale can understand. This is heartbreakingly demonstrated in this scene after the bookshop fire:

Crowley can’t even say “I lost you.” Instead he speaks of Aziraphale in the third person while sitting in front of him, saying, “I lost my best friend.” The little hitch on Aziraphale’s face when he hears this is just devastating. Who is Crowley talking about? The last conversation they had before this scene was when Aziraphale called while Hastur was in Crowley’s apartment and Crowley said, “Not a good time - got an old friend here.” Aziraphale is left to wonder - is that who Crowley means when he says "best friend?" Crowley is everything to Aziraphale, but what is he to Crowley?

How Would It Even Work?

Even when Aziraphale does get flashes of the possibility that Crowley may care for him he immediately runs up against his second mental block - there is no world he can imagine where they could be together. When Crowley first suggests running off together in the bandstand scene in S1E3, Aziraphale collapses under the thought: “Friends? We aren’t friends. We are an angel and a demon. We have nothing whatsoever in common. I don’t even like you.”

While he is obviously in denial, Aziraphale is also under tremendous stress in this moment and is desperately trying to hold onto some stability by falling back onto his world view and ideology. In this state he backpedals all the way to “I don’t even like you.” In his understanding of the way the universe is supposed to work, he and Crowley are hereditary enemies and should not even be friends, much less in love. Aziraphale expresses this core belief throughout the series. What kind of existence could they ever have together in reality?

The Final 15

With this as a background, we can better understand what Aziraphale experiences in the final 15 minutes. Even before the Metatron enters the scene, Aziraphale begins to have his fundamental beliefs challenged which puts him off his footing. The revelation that Gabriel and Beelzebub are in love is deeply impactful. When Beelzebub says “I just found something that mattered more to me than choosing sides” and takes Gabriel’s hand, Aziraphale immediately reaches out to make contact with Crowley, a look of incredulity on his face. Here is proof that demons can feel love and that an angel and a demon can carve out a space together. The road may be difficult, but it is not impossible.

Before Aziraphale can digest this revelation the stakes are ratcheted up: Michael threatens to erase Aziraphale from the Book of Life due to his part in hiding Gabriel. The future that Aziraphale has just barely glimpsed is already under siege. It is at this point that The Metatron enters, offering Aziraphale not just survival and protection, but a version of everything he has ever wanted.

If Crowley is reinstated as an angel, Aziraphale will no longer have to wonder whether Crowley is capable of feeling love. And if they are both angels, there will be no conflict inherent in having a life together. In one fell swoop, the Metatron entices Aziraphale with a future where there are no remaining blockers to an eternal, loving existence with Crowley. It will be “like the old times, only even nicer” because they now have millennia of their shared history to build on together. Of course this logic is horribly flawed and does not take into account at all what Crowley wants, but in the moment it must feel like an enormous gift to Aziraphale.

Unfortunately, not only is Crowley’s reaction to this “incredibly good news” not what Aziraphale expects, the conversation quickly takes a baffling turn for him. Crowley shuts down the talk about returning to heaven and attempts to say what he wants to say. Sadly he once again utterly fails to speak in a way that Aziraphale can understand.

The audience knows what Crowley is trying to say because we have the context of his earlier conversation with Maggie and Nina. But Aziraphale lacks that and thus can’t understand where this is coming from or what it means. Rather than expressing his feelings as Beelzebub and Gabriel did, Crowley recites facts: we’ve known each other a long time, we’ve been on this planet a long time, I could always rely on you, you could always rely on me. He can’t even say the word “couple” when he describes them, referring to them more as colleagues with words like “team” and “group.” And the one time he does try to express his feelings and desires he is physically unable to get out the words: “And I would like to spend—.” He then retreats into his old plea to turn away from heaven and hell and run off together. Nowhere in Crowley’s confession does Aziraphale hear “I love you” or even “I want to be with you.” What he hears instead is what he’s heard multiple times before - Crowley wants to abandon both heaven and hell and default to just the two of them. From Aziraphale’s perspective this will not solve anything for them. They will still be an angel and a demon, at some level fundamentally separated by their very natures.

Having failed in his speech, Crowley then does two things in rapid succession that must be excruciatingly painful for Aziraphale. First, he does the opposite of verbal affirmation by calling Aziraphale an idiot. We have seen Aziraphale become physically radiant in the rare instances where Crowley has praised him, so a direct insult like this must feel poisonous. Then Crowley makes a last desperate attempt to communicate through Aziraphale’s other love language - physical touch - by initiating the kiss. But without context or understanding of what is behind it, Aziraphale can initially only experience it as forceful, angry, and shocking. With more time to parse it I think Aziraphale will come to understand Crowley’s meaning, but in the moment it must feel manipulative and borderline cruel.

The Results

In a very compressed time frame, Aziraphale has to move quickly and radically through multiple mental and emotional states. For 6000 years he has believed he and Crowley cannot be together. Suddenly, with the revelation of Gabriel and Beezlebub, that foundational belief is challenged. Before he can work through what that could mean for him and Crowley, the Metatron offers an even cleaner solution - they can be protected from retribution and be on the same side again. When Crowley rejects reinstatement wholesale, it makes Aziraphale feel that he and his loving offer of a life together have been personally rejected. Then that rejection is further confused through the shocking experience of the kiss which Aziraphale does not have adequate context for or time to understand and integrate. In his emotional turmoil, Aziraphale falls back on his default crutch for dealing with sadness and anger - forgiveness - which further cuts him off from Crowley. Taken all together, this is a tumultuous rollercoaster of whiplash emotions that pull at every part of Aziraphale's self- and world-views.

Compared to what Crowley is going through, I think Aziraphale is going to have the tougher road in Season 3. Crowley may still need to better reconcile and integrate his feelings for Aziraphale, but Aziraphale has 6000 years of foundational ideology to challenge and evolve to reach a place where he and Crowley can be together as their authentic selves.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Copyright takedowns are a cautionary tale that few are heeding

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

We're living through one of those moments when millions of people become suddenly and overwhelmingly interested in fair use, one of the subtlest and worst-understood aspects of copyright law. It's not a subject you can master by skimming a Wikipedia article!

I've been talking about fair use with laypeople for more than 20 years. I've met so many people who possess the unshakable, serene confidence of the truly wrong, like the people who think fair use means you can take x words from a book, or y seconds from a song and it will always be fair, while anything more will never be.

Or the people who think that if you violate any of the four factors, your use can't be fair – or the people who think that if you fail all of the four factors, you must be infringing (people, the Supreme Court is calling and they want to tell you about the Betamax!).

You might think that you can never quote a song lyric in a book without infringing copyright, or that you must clear every musical sample. You might be rock solid certain that scraping the web to train an AI is infringing. If you hold those beliefs, you do not understand the "fact intensive" nature of fair use.

But you can learn! It's actually a really cool and interesting and gnarly subject, and it's a favorite of copyright scholars, who have really fascinating disagreements and discussions about the subject. These discussions often key off of the controversies of the moment, but inevitably they implicate earlier fights about everything from the piano roll to 2 Live Crew to antiracist retellings of Gone With the Wind.

One of the most interesting discussions of fair use you can ask for took place in 2019, when the NYU Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy held a symposium called "Proving IP." One of the panels featured dueling musicologists debating the merits of the Blurred Lines case. That case marked a turning point in music copyright, with the Marvin Gaye estate successfully suing Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for copying the "vibe" of Gaye's "Got to Give it Up."

Naturally, this discussion featured clips from both songs as the experts – joined by some of America's top copyright scholars – delved into the legal reasoning and future consequences of the case. It would be literally impossible to discuss this case without those clips.

And that's where the problems start: as soon as the symposium was uploaded to Youtube, it was flagged and removed by Content ID, Google's $100,000,000 copyright enforcement system. This initial takedown was fully automated, which is how Content ID works: rightsholders upload audio to claim it, and then Content ID removes other videos where that audio appears (rightsholders can also specify that videos with matching clips be demonetized, or that the ad revenue from those videos be diverted to the rightsholders).

But Content ID has a safety valve: an uploader whose video has been incorrectly flagged can challenge the takedown. The case is then punted to the rightsholder, who has to manually renew or drop their claim. In the case of this symposium, the rightsholder was Universal Music Group, the largest record company in the world. UMG's personnel reviewed the video and did not drop the claim.

99.99% of the time, that's where the story would end, for many reasons. First of all, most people don't understand fair use well enough to contest the judgment of a cosmically vast, unimaginably rich monopolist who wants to censor their video. Just as importantly, though, is that Content ID is a Byzantine system that is nearly as complex as fair use, but it's an entirely private affair, created and adjudicated by another galactic-scale monopolist (Google).

Google's copyright enforcement system is a cod-legal regime with all the downsides of the law, and a few wrinkles of its own (for example, it's a system without lawyers – just corporate experts doing battle with laypeople). And a single mis-step can result in your video being deleted or your account being permanently deleted, along with every video you've ever posted. For people who make their living on audiovisual content, losing your Youtube account is an extinction-level event:

https://www.eff.org/wp/unfiltered-how-youtubes-content-id-discourages-fair-use-and-dictates-what-we-see-online

So for the average Youtuber, Content ID is a kind of Kafka-as-a-Service system that is always avoided and never investigated. But the Engelbert Center isn't your average Youtuber: they boast some of the country's top copyright experts, specializing in exactly the questions Youtube's Content ID is supposed to be adjudicating.

So naturally, they challenged the takedown – only to have UMG double down. This is par for the course with UMG: they are infamous for refusing to consider fair use in takedown requests. Their stance is so unreasonable that a court actually found them guilty of violating the DMCA's provision against fraudulent takedowns:

https://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal

But the DMCA's takedown system is part of the real law, while Content ID is a fake law, created and overseen by a tech monopolist, not a court. So the fate of the Blurred Lines discussion turned on the Engelberg Center's ability to navigate both the law and the n-dimensional topology of Content ID's takedown flowchart.

It took more than a year, but eventually, Engelberg prevailed.

Until they didn't.

If Content ID was a person, it would be baby, specifically, a baby under 18 months old – that is, before the development of "object permanence." Until our 18th month (or so), we lack the ability to reason about things we can't see – this the period when small babies find peek-a-boo amazing. Object permanence is the ability to understand things that aren't in your immediate field of vision.

Content ID has no object permanence. Despite the fact that the Engelberg Blurred Lines panel was the most involved fair use question the system was ever called upon to parse, it managed to repeatedly forget that it had decided that the panel could stay up. Over and over since that initial determination, Content ID has taken down the video of the panel, forcing Engelberg to go through the whole process again.

But that's just for starters, because Youtube isn't the only place where a copyright enforcement bot is making billions of unsupervised, unaccountable decisions about what audiovisual material you're allowed to access.

Spotify is yet another monopolist, with a justifiable reputation for being extremely hostile to artists' interests, thanks in large part to the role that UMG and the other major record labels played in designing its business rules:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

Spotify has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to capture the podcasting market, in the hopes of converting one of the last truly open digital publishing systems into a product under its control:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/27/enshittification-resistance/#ummauerter-garten-nein

Thankfully, that campaign has failed – but millions of people have (unwisely) ditched their open podcatchers in favor of Spotify's pre-enshittified app, so everyone with a podcast now must target Spotify for distribution if they hope to reach those captive users.

Guess who has a podcast? The Engelberg Center.

Naturally, Engelberg's podcast includes the audio of that Blurred Lines panel, and that audio includes samples from both "Blurred Lines" and "Got To Give It Up."

So – naturally – UMG keeps taking down the podcast.

Spotify has its own answer to Content ID, and incredibly, it's even worse and harder to navigate than Google's pretend legal system. As Engelberg describes in its latest post, UMG and Spotify have colluded to ensure that this now-classic discussion of fair use will never be able to take advantage of fair use itself:

https://www.nyuengelberg.org/news/how-explaining-copyright-broke-the-spotify-copyright-system/

Remember, this is the best case scenario for arguing about fair use with a monopolist like UMG, Google, or Spotify. As Engelberg puts it:

The Engelberg Center had an extraordinarily high level of interest in pursuing this issue, and legal confidence in our position that would have cost an average podcaster tens of thousands of dollars to develop. That cannot be what is required to challenge the removal of a podcast episode.

Automated takedown systems are the tech industry's answer to the "notice-and-takedown" system that was invented to broker a peace between copyright law and the internet, starting with the US's 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA implements (and exceeds) a pair of 1996 UN treaties, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the Performances and Phonograms Treaty, and most countries in the world have some version of notice-and-takedown.

Big corporate rightsholders claim that notice-and-takedown is a gift to the tech sector, one that allows tech companies to get away with copyright infringement. They want a "strict liability" regime, where any platform that allows a user to post something infringing is liable for that infringement, to the tune of $150,000 in statutory damages.

Of course, there's no way for a platform to know a priori whether something a user posts infringes on someone's copyright. There is no registry of everything that is copyrighted, and of course, fair use means that there are lots of ways to legally reproduce someone's work without their permission (or even when they object). Even if every person who ever has trained or ever will train as a copyright lawyer worked 24/7 for just one online platform to evaluate every tweet, video, audio clip and image for copyright infringement, they wouldn't be able to touch even 1% of what gets posted to that platform.

The "compromise" that the entertainment industry wants is automated takedown – a system like Content ID, where rightsholders register their copyrights and platforms block anything that matches the registry. This "filternet" proposal became law in the EU in 2019 with Article 17 of the Digital Single Market Directive:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

This was the most controversial directive in EU history, and – as experts warned at the time – there is no way to implement it without violating the GDPR, Europe's privacy law, so now it's stuck in limbo:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/eus-copyright-directive-still-about-filters-eus-top-court-limits-its-use

As critics pointed out during the EU debate, there are so many problems with filternets. For one thing, these copyright filters are very expensive: remember that Google has spent $100m on Content ID alone, and that only does a fraction of what filternet advocates demand. Building the filternet would cost so much that only the biggest tech monopolists could afford it, which is to say, filternets are a legal requirement to keep the tech monopolists in business and prevent smaller, better platforms from ever coming into existence.

Filternets are also incapable of telling the difference between similar files. This is especially problematic for classical musicians, who routinely find their work blocked or demonetized by Sony Music, which claims performances of all the most important classical music compositions:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/08/copyfraud/#beethoven-just-wrote-music

Content ID can't tell the difference between your performance of "The Goldberg Variations" and Glenn Gould's. For classical musicians, the best case scenario is to have their online wages stolen by Sony, who fraudulently claim copyright to their recordings. The worst case scenario is that their video is blocked, their channel deleted, and their names blacklisted from ever opening another account on one of the monopoly platforms.

But when it comes to free expression, the role that notice-and-takedown and filternets play in the creative industries is really a sideshow. In creating a system of no-evidence-required takedowns, with no real consequences for fraudulent takedowns, these systems are huge gift to the world's worst criminals. For example, "reputation management" companies help convicted rapists, murderers, and even war criminals purge the internet of true accounts of their crimes by claiming copyright over them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

Remember how during the covid lockdowns, scumbags marketed junk devices by claiming that they'd protect you from the virus? Their products remained online, while the detailed scientific articles warning people about the fraud were speedily removed through false copyright claims:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#copyfraud

Copyfraud – making false copyright claims – is an extremely safe crime to commit, and it's not just quack covid remedy peddlers and war criminals who avail themselves of it. Tech giants like Adobe do not hesitate to abuse the takedown system, even when that means exposing millions of people to spyware:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/13/theres-an-app-for-that/#gnash

Dirty cops play loud, copyrighted music during confrontations with the public, in the hopes that this will trigger copyright filters on services like Youtube and Instagram and block videos of their misbehavior:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#bhpd

But even if you solved all these problems with filternets and takedown, this system would still choke on fair use and other copyright exceptions. These are "fact intensive" questions that the world's top experts struggle with (as anyone who watches the Blurred Lines panel can see). There's no way we can get software to accurately determine when a use is or isn't fair.

That's a question that the entertainment industry itself is increasingly conflicted about. The Blurred Lines judgment opened the floodgates to a new kind of copyright troll – grifters who sued the record labels and their biggest stars for taking the "vibe" of songs that no one ever heard of. Musicians like Ed Sheeran have been sued for millions of dollars over these alleged infringements. These suits caused the record industry to (ahem) change its tune on fair use, insisting that fair use should be broadly interpreted to protect people who made things that were similar to existing works. The labels understood that if "vibe rights" became accepted law, they'd end up in the kind of hell that the rest of us enter when we try to post things online – where anything they produce can trigger takedowns, long legal battles, and millions in liability:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/08/oh-why/#two-notes-and-running

But the music industry remains deeply conflicted over fair use. Take the curious case of Katy Perry's song "Dark Horse," which attracted a multimillion-dollar suit from an obscure Christian rapper who claimed that a brief phrase in "Dark Horse" was impermissibly similar to his song "A Joyful Noise."

Perry and her publisher, Warner Chappell, lost the suit and were ordered to pay $2.8m. While they subsequently won an appeal, this definitely put the cold grue up Warner Chappell's back. They could see a long future of similar suits launched by treasure hunters hoping for a quick settlement.

But here's where it gets unbelievably weird and darkly funny. A Youtuber named Adam Neely made a wildly successful viral video about the suit, taking Perry's side and defending her song. As part of that video, Neely included a few seconds' worth of "A Joyful Noise," the song that Perry was accused of copying.

In court, Warner Chappell had argued that "A Joyful Noise" was not similar to Perry's "Dark Horse." But when Warner had Google remove Neely's video, they claimed that the sample from "Joyful Noise" was actually taken from "Dark Horse." Incredibly, they maintained this position through multiple appeals through the Content ID system:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/05/warner-chappell-copyfraud/#warnerchappell

In other words, they maintained that the song that they'd told the court was totally dissimilar to their own was so indistinguishable from their own song that they couldn't tell the difference!

Now, this question of vibes, similarity and fair use has only gotten more intense since the takedown of Neely's video. Just this week, the RIAA sued several AI companies, claiming that the songs the AI shits out are infringingly similar to tracks in their catalog:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/record-labels-sue-music-generators-suno-and-udio-1235042056/

Even before "Blurred Lines," this was a difficult fair use question to answer, with lots of chewy nuances. Just ask George Harrison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Sweet_Lord

But as the Engelberg panel's cohort of dueling musicologists and renowned copyright experts proved, this question only gets harder as time goes by. If you listen to that panel (if you can listen to that panel), you'll be hard pressed to come away with any certainty about the questions in this latest lawsuit.

The notice-and-takedown system is what's known as an "intermediary liability" rule. Platforms are "intermediaries" in that they connect end users with each other and with businesses. Ebay and Etsy and Amazon connect buyers and sellers; Facebook and Google and Tiktok connect performers, advertisers and publishers with audiences and so on.

For copyright, notice-and-takedown gives platforms a "safe harbor." A platform doesn't have to remove material after an allegation of infringement, but if they don't, they're jointly liable for any future judgment. In other words, Youtube isn't required to take down the Engelberg Blurred Lines panel, but if UMG sues Engelberg and wins a judgment, Google will also have to pay out.

During the adoption of the 1996 WIPO treaties and the 1998 US DMCA, this safe harbor rule was characterized as a balance between the rights of the public to publish online and the interest of rightsholders whose material might be infringed upon. The idea was that things that were likely to be infringing would be immediately removed once the platform received a notification, but that platforms would ignore spurious or obviously fraudulent takedowns.

That's not how it worked out. Whether it's Sony Music claiming to own your performance of "Fur Elise" or a war criminal claiming authorship over a newspaper story about his crimes, platforms nuke first and ask questions never. Why not? If they ignore a takedown and get it wrong, they suffer dire consequences ($150,000 per claim). But if they take action on a dodgy claim, there are no consequences. Of course they're just going to delete anything they're asked to delete.

This is how platforms always handle liability, and that's a lesson that we really should have internalized by now. After all, the DMCA is the second-most famous intermediary liability system for the internet – the most (in)famous is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

This is a 27-word law that says that platforms are not liable for civil damages arising from their users' speech. Now, this is a US law, and in the US, there aren't many civil damages from speech to begin with. The First Amendment makes it very hard to get a libel judgment, and even when these judgments are secured, damages are typically limited to "actual damages" – generally a low sum. Most of the worst online speech is actually not illegal: hate speech, misinformation and disinformation are all covered by the First Amendment.

Notwithstanding the First Amendment, there are categories of speech that US law criminalizes: actual threats of violence, criminal harassment, and committing certain kinds of legal, medical, election or financial fraud. These are all exempted from Section 230, which only provides immunity for civil suits, not criminal acts.

What Section 230 really protects platforms from is being named to unwinnable nuisance suits by unscrupulous parties who are betting that the platforms would rather remove legal speech that they object to than go to court. A generation of copyfraudsters have proved that this is a very safe bet:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

In other words, if you made a #MeToo accusation, or if you were a gig worker using an online forum to organize a union, or if you were blowing the whistle on your employer's toxic waste leaks, or if you were any other under-resourced person being bullied by a wealthy, powerful person or organization, that organization could shut you up by threatening to sue the platform that hosted your speech. The platform would immediately cave. But those same rich and powerful people would have access to the lawyers and back-channels that would prevent you from doing the same to them – that's why Sony can get your Brahms recital taken down, but you can't turn around and do the same to them.

This is true of every intermediary liability system, and it's been true since the earliest days of the internet, and it keeps getting proven to be true. Six years ago, Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that allowed platforms to be held civilly liable by survivors of sex trafficking. At the time, advocates claimed that this would only affect "sexual slavery" and would not impact consensual sex-work.

But from the start, and ever since, SESTA/FOSTA has primarily targeted consensual sex-work, to the immediate, lasting, and profound detriment of sex workers:

https://hackinghustling.org/what-is-sesta-fosta/

SESTA/FOSTA killed the "bad date" forums where sex workers circulated the details of violent and unstable clients, killed the online booking sites that allowed sex workers to screen their clients, and killed the payment processors that let sex workers avoid holding unsafe amounts of cash:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/09/fight-overturn-fosta-unconstitutional-internet-censorship-law-continues

SESTA/FOSTA made voluntary sex work more dangerous – and also made life harder for law enforcement efforts to target sex trafficking:

https://hackinghustling.org/erased-the-impact-of-fosta-sesta-2020/

Despite half a decade of SESTA/FOSTA, despite 15 years of filternets, despite a quarter century of notice-and-takedown, people continue to insist that getting rid of safe harbors will punish Big Tech and make life better for everyday internet users.

As of now, it seems likely that Section 230 will be dead by then end of 2025, even if there is nothing in place to replace it:

https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/bipartisan-energy-and-commerce-leaders-announce-legislative-hearing-on-sunsetting-section-230

This isn't the win that some people think it is. By making platforms responsible for screening the content their users post, we create a system that only the largest tech monopolies can survive, and only then by removing or blocking anything that threatens or displeases the wealthy and powerful.

Filternets are not precision-guided takedown machines; they're indiscriminate cluster-bombs that destroy anything in the vicinity of illegal speech – including (and especially) the best-informed, most informative discussions of how these systems go wrong, and how that blocks the complaints of the powerless, the marginalized, and the abused.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/27/nuke-first/#ask-questions-never

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/yt-fu-1b.png

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[minervas-hand]

Right to fear, wrong to believe

Just had a horrible realization and needed to meta it out.

How different they were before Edinburgh, when Crowley was sucked down into Hell.

Look at this flirty babygirl in the Bastille:

I mean could he climb that tree any faster?

(This is why I really like fics that place a more physical relationship here, pre-Bastille or just post-Bastille, because c'mon look at them. )

In S1 the next thing is 1862 and Crowley asking for insurance (with a cane ffs). And Aziraphale freaking out with his "fraternizing" BS. It's jarring, until we get 1827 filled in for us in S2.

@takeme-totheworld notes in this post:

Crowley sure went from "our respective head offices don't actually care how things get done" and "nobody ever has to know" to "walls have ears" FAST after Edinburgh. And Aziraphale went from looking at Crowley with hearts in his eyes to "I've been FrAtErNiZiNg" just as quickly. I'm more convinced than ever that Edinburgh was the first time Crowley ever actually got caught and punished for fucking around with Aziraphale/doing good deeds/whatever it was they yanked him back down to Hell for, and it scared the absolute shit out of both of them and changed the whole tone of their relationship after that.

Yes! - it's clear to me as well that the Edinburgh graveyard was a very bad turning point, where they both saw that Hell was listening and would intervene. And it did change their relationship drastically, for over a century and a half (really, until looming Armageddon loosened up the stakes for them).

But what about Heaven?

See the thing is, we know Azi's been worried about Heaven watching him for the past 6000 years.

But they haven't.

[GIFs posted by starrose17]

All this time, and Heaven had not seen them together. Hadn't noticed. Had not even LOOKED.

I want to mention what @starrose17 says about this here in this post:

What I love about this is her choice of words, “went back through the Earth Observation files.” This implies that these photos were already filed somewhere meaning somebody had to have been watching them which meant somewhere in the depths of the bureaucratic heaven there’s an underpaid angel clerk tasked with watching angels on Earth, and he’s been hording photos of his favourite Angel/Demon couple not reporting them to Michael because he wants to see what happens.

And that's exactly what this fic covers!: Spying Omens by @ednav

(Give this a read, it's fabulous.)

While I am here for this being exactly how that happens, the other scenario is colder and worse - there's no one watching, at all. It's just filing automatically and never seen until some Scrivener is called to pull a file.

From @fuckyeahisawthatat's comment here :

I found this scene to be quite chilling, actually. Not only is the idea of Heaven as a surveillance state brilliant (way to make “God is always watching” sound way more ominous) but this is exactly how modern surveillance states work. They don’t actively watch everybody all the time. That’s not physically possible for humans, and even if it is metaphysically possible for Heaven, it’s not a very efficient use of resources. Surveillance states watch people they deem “suspicious.” And once you’ve been put in the category of “suspicious,” they have massive amounts of data that they can comb through to collect a lot of information about you–to retroactively build a case justifying why you’re suspicious, to collect information about where you go and who you associate with, etc.

Yes.

So we either have secret collusion in the rank and file, or we have a surveillance state that is constantly reinforced to its subjects for fear's sake, for control.

(Well, it obviously could be both.)

BUT my point is… Up until Edinburgh, Hell has not been watching (or caring at least). And up until near the end of Armageddon't, neither has Heaven.

Oh, my poor Angel. Thousands of years, of denying yourself, of pushing Crowley away, of carrying around a tension that is it's own constellation.

After 1827 you might have reason, but for the 5000+ years before that?

Thousands of years and Heaven was not watching nor cared.

You were right to fear. And you were wrong to believe.

And that just breaks my heart.

[cobragardens]

CORRECTED & UPDATED Clothes + Equivocation = Romance: The Husbands in 1793 (Part 2)

From Part 1:

Crowley and Aziraphale share clothes as a common interest. They don't have the same style, but they're both aware of current fashions, and Heaven and Hell aren't. You can't tell me Hastur or Uriel would recognize the significance of Crowley saying "Dressed like that, he's asking for trouble" about someone else while wearing black stockings and cravat and waistcoat himself. And that means Anything the husbands communicate to each other through clothing choices goes undetected by their masters.

SO. With all this in mind, let's go through the 1793 scene again and look at what the husbands communicate to each other without using words or actions to do it, and how their clothing choices help them do that.

Hello. I'm here and I know you're in a spot of trouble. I like you.

It's you! I'm so happy you're here!

Sheen's voice and face when Aziraphale says Crowley's name in this moment makes me think that Aziraphale is in love with Crowley--the demon Crowley, not the angel who became Crowley--long before he consciously realizes it in 1941. The way Sheen has Aziraphale say Crowley's name is so soft.

The way you're he way you're lounging there and what you're wearing are uncomfortably sexy and also incredibly inappropriate for the Bastille at this moment in history. I suppose this is very on-brand for you.

Crowley: I listen when you talk about your interests and goals and keep track of your general whereabouts and pursuits.

Either they've spoken with each other recently or Crowley has been keeping tabs on Aziraphale. Aziraphale isn't upset that Crowley knows what he's been up to, which suggests the former, which in turn suggests they're in semi-regular (every few years or decades) contact at this point.

Also we've now got a general idea for when Aziraphale opens his bookshop.

Okay, brief tangent while I point out two things here.

One, my favorite thing about Aziraphale is that he is a sensualist. This is libertine behavior, y'all. He 'popped across the Channel' during the Reign of Terror because he wanted a specific carnal experience of a specific really lovely food.

And two, even when Aziraphale does weird, frivolous, silly, ill-advised things like this, things that clearly baffle Crowley...Crowley never makes fun of him. He never laughs at him. He always has this look of disbelief on his face, like Am I hearing this?--

--but Crowley never, not once, shuts Aziraphale down.

Until Aziraphale asks him to go back to Heaven.

Anyway. Back to our scene.

Aziraphale: I am unwilling to abandon my sartorial sensibilities even when it threatens my corporation, and I am insane, so I think this is reasonable. At least I'm not wearing a Slutty Monarchist outfit.

You're happy to see me, aren't you. You're relieved to see a demon. Go on, say it.

Tennant's delivery of this line cracks me up. It is so gloating and flirtatious and smarmy and indulgent of Aziraphale.

I am very happy to see you and lucky you're here, and I am willing to say so sincerely even though you are gloating about it.

And then there's the exchange where Crowley very carefully doesn't answer Aziraphale's question about why Crowley's in the area but also reassures him that he didn't cause the French Revolution and Aziraphale can still like him.

We can't speak openly about this. It's dangerous for me.

Message received: I won't mention what you did again. But I want to show my gratitude and spend time with you; is it safe for us to get lunch together?

Yes, but one of us is going to have to change so we can walk the streets of Paris without getting arrested again, and I'm the one doing the rescuing here so it's not going to be me. Your 'standards' will have to take the hit.

Fine, you've got me over a barrel. But hey, if I have to wear the silly hat anyway I might as well go all the way and wear your colors. Except not monarchist. And not slutty.

Oh, I don't know, I thought you looked pretty slutty too. (Meaning 2) I'm having this guy killed for touching you, btw. I will kill anyone who tries to hurt you. Immediately. I see you are having the guy who assaulted you killed in a copy of the clothes he would have killed you for wearing. I wholeheartedly approve of this (Meaning 3), your sexiness in those clothes notwithstanding. The utter insouciance of Crowley's little sniff and the inquiry about what they'll have for lunch drive home hard that Crowley could not be more unbothered by Aziraphale having the man who tried to harm him beheaded.

What really tickles me about this line is not only that Crowley's joke has three distinct meanings, but that Meaning 1 (the meaning that exists without reference to Crowley's clothes) is the opposite of Meaning 3--Anybody wearing clothes like that deserves what they get (Meaning 1) versus It rocks how you just killed someone who tried to kill you for wearing those clothes (Meaning 3)--and yet because of the clothes he's wearing, both meanings come through with perfect clarity, dependent only on whether the listener(s) can see his clothing and know its significance. Aziraphale can, and does, so he receives Crowley's real meaning. Hell/Heaven can't, and don't, so they just hear Meaning 1.

And then we get Aziraphale's pleased little smile and look of tranquil interest as he watches Jean-Claude dragged off to his death. Its such an interesting facial expression for an angel watching a demon have someone killed having someone killed, isn't it?

Crowley has just told him they're probably being listened to by Hell. That means Aziraphale, Crowley, and the audience all know this is the most Aziraphale can safely react. Aziraphale can't show any overt approval of anything an agent of Hell does, because by definition anything a demon does is demonic and angels must be against That Sort of Thing. In light of the fact that Aziraphale is the one who causes Jean-Claude's death, I now argue that this responsibility not to react too positively to something the other side has done falls on Crowley, and that the reason he makes this joke is primarily to tell Aziraphale I see what you've just done, and I like it without identifying aloud what exactly has just happened for their presumed eavesdroppers because an angel arranging a human's murder is the sort of thing in which head offices might take undue interest.

The awareness that their conversation is not private means the audience and Aziraphale know they need to be watching and listening for multiple meanings from Crowley, and it also means the audience and Crowley know we need to be watching Aziraphale's face closely right now. And that little smile shows us that Aziraphale has received Meanings 2 and 3 of "he was asking for trouble."

Or, at minimum, Meaning 3; even if Aziraphale picks up on Meaning 2--You looked really sexy in your vintage clothes, you crazy weirdo--that's not a message he can afford to react to at all. But he does react to the other coded communication Crowley is sending when he says "Dressed like that, he was asking for trouble" while dressed for trouble himself: I will kill anyone who tries to hurt you. Immediately. People who think your clothes give them the right to hurt you can go to Hell, and I am delighted you just sent one of them there.

You just had someone beheaded for assaulting me, I acknowledge and am pleased by your delight at my cleverness. and I could not be happier. Would you like to come enjoy one of my very favorite sensual pleasures with me?

***

EDIT: To be honest I like this reading better than my original, incorrect understanding of the story despite the fact that it is slightly less romantic, both because I love the idea of Crowley as a thirsty witness to Aziraphale quietly being a vengeful badass, because it gives us a glimpse of something important about Aziraphale's character that we don't get to see elsewhere: Aziraphale doesn't have a problem with killing per se.

We learn from the business with the Antichrist that, like Crowley, Az. can't bring himself to kill children. We learn from his perturbation at the Flood and the Crucifixion that he doesn't hold with killing innocents. He gave away his flaming sword. But this scene establishes that Aziraphale will actively cause someone's death if he feels they deserve it. That seems like an important character note for him that may become relevant in Season 3 (feathers crossed that it happens).

And I think there's something else in there too, something about how Aziraphale kills Jean-Claude, not with outright violence but with a trick. One party thinks he's in control of the situation; with a wave of his hand, suddenly a turnip has turned into an inkwell an executioner has turned into the condemned--or at least it seems that way long enough to get the job done. It's a bait-and-switch, like stage magic, and it slots right in to the motif in Good Omens of sleight-of-hand, of characters wearing other characters' appearances (for more on this, see fan theories re: Maggie is possessed), of supplying false meanings to an audience to disguise the true actions going on behind the scenes.

[rvzcvx]

I see your post we're you bored and idk what to write so another Idea :

Can you do Tom x(dom) m! Reader or non-gendered is not important (I prefer x m! Reader because I'm a guy obviously )During the 14th of July and we arrive in the evening at the time of the fireworks and Tom is really scared about firework (IDK LMAO, no judgment.) and reader tries to reassure him Fluff and maybe bonus where reader and Tom had sex because Tom can't calm down! As you wish

BYEE,LOVE YOU 💋

ANXIETY

pairing: tom kaulitz x male reader

warnings: smut

a/n: idk if thats what you meant, but i hope youre gonna like it!! its kinda long but I hope it will be a good to read!! you can send me more requests if you want me to write something

As the sun dipped below the horizon, we were walking through the crowded streets of Paris, my heart racing in anticipation of the evening ahead. Tom and I had planned this trip months ago, carefully timing our visit to make it in time with bastille day. But as we made our way towards the seine, where the crowd had gathered, Tom's grip on my hand tightened, and I could sense his growing unease.

We arrived at a place near the eiffel tower. People were everywhere, their excitement palpable. Tom's eyes darted around nervously, his usual confident demeanor replaced by an nervous tension. I squeezed his hand gently, hoping to provide some reassurance.

"You okay?" I asked, my voice low enough to be lost in the crowd. Tom forced a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah, just a bit overwhelmed. I forgot how crowded it gets here."

I knew it was more than the crowd. Tom had never been comfortable around fireworks. The loud, unexpected bursts and the lingering booms always seemed to unsettle him. It was something he rarely admitted, but tonight, as the first rocket flew into the sky, I saw him flinch.

"It's gonna be fine" I whispered, pulling him closer. "We'll stay back here, away from the thick of it."

He nodded, but his body remained tense. The fireworks began in earnest, vibrant explosions of color and light that painted the night sky. Each burst was met with oohs and aahs from the crowd, but Tom's reaction was a stark contrast. His jaw clenched tighter with each boom, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to block out the noise.

"Hey" I said softly, turning to face him and gently cupping his face in my hands. "Look at me, not at the fireworks." Tom's eyes fluttered open, meeting mine. "I'm trying" he muttered, his voice strained.

"Focus on my voice, on my touch." I ran my thumb soothingly over his cheek. "You’re safe. We’re safe."

He took a deep breath, his shoulders relaxing slightly as he concentrated on me. "Thanks" he said, his voice barely audible over the people around us.

I kept talking, sharing random stories and memories, anything to distract him from the noise. Gradually, his breathing steadied, and some of the tension got off him. As the grand finale approached, the fireworks intensified, the sky a chaotic symphony of light and sound. Tom winced, but he didn't look away from me.

When the last firework faded, I could see the relief on his face. "Let's get out of here" I suggested, threading my fingers through his.

We walked back to our hotel, the cool night air a welcome change from the crowded riverbank. Tom was quieter than usual, his earlier anxiety still lingering. Once we were inside our room, I closed the door behind us and turned to him.

"Sorry I wasn't much fun tonigh" he said, flopping onto the couch. "Don't apologize" I replied, sitting next to him and placing a hand on his leg. "I knew fireworks weren't your thing. I just wanted to be with you."

He gave me a grateful look. "You always know how to make me feel better."

I leaned in and kissed him gently, letting my lips linger on his. He responded eagerly, his hands finding their way to my waist, pulling me closer. The kiss deepened, and for a moment, all the stress and tension melted away.

"I don't know what I'd do without you" Tom murmured against my lips. "You don't have to find out" I whispered back. "I'm not going anywhere."

We stayed like that for a while, wrapped up in each other, the world outside forgotten. Eventually, Tom pulled away slightly, his eyes searching mine. "Can we just stay here tonight? Just us?"

"Of course" I said, brushing his thick dreads from his face. "We can do whatever you want."

He smiled, a real smile this time, and pulled me down onto the bed with him. We lay there, holding each other, the faint sounds of the city outside a distant hum. Tom's breathing slowed, his body relaxing completely for the first time that evening.

"I love you" he whispered, his voice filled with emotion. "I love you too" I replied, kissing his forehead.

We lay there in comfortable silence, enjoying the peace of the moment. The anxiety from earlier seemed like a distant memory now, replaced by a deep sense of contentment. Tom's hand found mine, our fingers intertwining as we simply enjoyed being together.

After a while, I felt Tom's lips on my neck, his breath warm against my skin. "You make everything better" he murmured, his voice low and husky.

I shivered at his touch, my body responding instinctively. "I try" I said with a smile, turning to capture his lips with mine.

We kissed slowly, savoring each moment, the tension from earlier completely forgotten. Our hands roamed over each other, exploring familiar territory with renewed intensity. Tom's touch was both soothing and electrifying, a combination that never failed to drive me wild.

As things heated up, I felt the urgent need to be even closer to him. We moved together in perfect sync, our bodies responding to each other's every move. The connection between us was intense, fueled by the events of the evening and the deep love we shared.

Eventually, we paused, breathless and flushed, our foreheads pressed together. "Let's take this to the bedroom" Tom suggested, his eyes dark with desire.

I nodded, my heart racing in anticipation. We stood up, still wrapped around each other, and made our way to the bedroom. I pushed open the bedroom door, my heart racing with anticipation.

I laid him gently on the bed, placing my weight on his body. "You're so beautiful" I murmured, leaning down to press a soft kiss to his lips. He responded eagerly, his arms winding around my neck as he deepened the kiss.

I could feel the heat radiating off his body, and I knew that he wanted me as much as I wanted him. I broke the kiss, my lips trailing down his jaw and neck, peppering him with kisses as I went. He tilted his head back, giving me better access, and I couldn't help but grin at his eagerness. "You like that?" I asked, my breath hot against his skin.

"Yes" he moaned, his voice ragged with desire. "Don't stop."

I continued my assault on his neck, my hands roaming over his chest and stomach, feeling the muscles tense and flex beneath my fingertips. I could feel his cock, hard and throbbing, pressed against my thigh, and I knew that it was time to take things to the next level.

I pulled back, my eyes meeting his, and I saw the hunger and need in them. I reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head, exposing his toned, muscular chest. I couldn't help but let out a low whistle as I took in the sight of him.

"Fuck, you're so hot" I said, my voice filled with awe.

He blushed at the compliment, but I could see the pleasure in his eyes. I leaned down, capturing one of his nipples in my mouth and sucking hard. He cried out, his back arching off the bed as I teased and tormented him with my tongue and teeth.

I moved my attention to his other nipple, giving it the same treatment, and he moaned and writhed beneath me. I could feel his cock leaking precum, and I knew that he was just as turned on as I was.

I stood up, my eyes never leaving his, and stripped off my own clothes. He watched me, his eyes dark with desire, as I revealed my own hard, throbbing cock. I climbed onto the bed, positioning myself between his legs, and I leaned down to capture his lips in another searing kiss.

I reached down, wrapping my hand around both of our cocks, and I began to stroke them together. He moaned into my mouth, his hips bucking up to meet my movements. I broke the kiss, my lips trailing down his chest and stomach as I made my way to his cock.

I wrapped my lips around the head, swirling my tongue around it, and he cried out, his hands fisting in my hair as he held me in place. I took him deeper into my mouth, my throat working as I swallowed him down.

He was moaning and thrashing beneath me, his hips bucking up as I sucked and licked at his cock. I could feel my own orgasm building, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to hold back much longer.

I pulled off his cock with a pop, my lips wet and swollen from his abuse. I looked up at him, my eyes filled with lust and desire, and I saw the same need reflected back at me in his gaze.

"I need you inside me" he gasped, his voice desperate.

I nodded, reaching for the lube and condom that I had stashed in the bedside table. I quickly sheathed myself and slicked up my cock, my eyes never leaving his.

I positioned myself at his entrance, my cock throbbing with need. I looked up at him, seeking his permission, and he nodded, his eyes filled with trust and desire.

I pushed inside him, my cock sliding in easily, and he cried out, his hands reaching up to grip my shoulders as I filled him up. I began to move, my hips pistoning as I drove into him again and again.

He was moaning and writhing beneath me, his cock hard and leaking as I fucked him. I leaned down, capturing his lips in another kiss as I continued to thrust into him.

"You feel so good" I murmured, breaking the kiss. "So tight and hot."

"Yes" he moaned, his hips meeting my thrusts. "Harder, m/n. Please."

I increased my pace, my hips moving faster and faster as I drove into him. I could feel my orgasm building, my balls drawing up tight against my body.

"I'm close" I gasped, my breath coming in short, sharp pants. "Me too" he moaned, his nails digging into my shoulders.

I reached down, wrapping my hand around his cock, and I began to stroke him in time with my thrusts. He cried out, his back arching off the bed as he came, his cum spurting out in hot, sticky ropes.

The sight of him coming, of his body trembling and writhing beneath me, was enough to send me over the edge. I groaned, my cock twitching as I came, filling the condom with my hot, sticky load.

I collapsed on top of him, my chest heaving as I tried to catch my breath. He wrapped his arms around me, holding me close. I took off the used condom and threw it somewhere, wrapping my arms around him too.

"I love you Tom" I said, resting my head in the crook of his neck. "I love you too" I heard him say and I smiled, feeling myself fall asleep after a while.

[are-you-fucking-with-me-rn]

okay so I always wanted to work on a show soundtrack so here's some songs I would put in s2 because since its probably maybe not gonna happen these can be canon in my head

Stupid Cupid by Connie Francis - okay so imagine if you will. The episode starts out jarring, maybe some payneland smooching out of nowhere, makes you go back to the last episode thinking you missed a scene. But then Edwin opens his eyes, he's lying on the ground or something, and is immediately thrust into the middle of a fight scene(this is where the song starts playing). He had just been temporarily knocked out and had some dream sequence or something idk. The fight scene is in a fancy restaurant or smth and it's close to Valentine's day and it's all decorated with hearts and stuff. This song is diegetic, playing in the restaurant.

Flaws by Bastille - I'd probably put it during end credits/end of the episode. It feels very transitional to me. It's a song on the Charles playlist so of course it's gonna play after a scene with Charles heavy lore or something. Maybe Charles's dad dies, and the song starts at the beginning of the funeral scenes. Then, long after everyone's already left, Charles goes and stands in front of the gravestone and his mom is just there kneeling in the grass in front of him and doesn't know he's there and yeah. It's like, the start of Charles's Actually-finding-peace-and-confronting-trauma arc or smth.

Girls on Film by Duran Duran - good for a montage of like Crystal adjusting to having rich, showy parents. She thinks maybe if she helps them out with their big projects, which she assumes the old her didn't do, maybe they'll start seeing her and caring about her like parents should. Going to grand openings and being photographed/interviewed, being in the public sphere all the sudden. Crystal's overcompensating for being a major jerk in her past life and is now bending over backwards to be nice to everyone (which, from experience, isn't exactly healthy either)(aka she's gone the "obsess-over-being-good-enough" route that Charles's gone down)(yikes).

The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen - I honestly have no vivid images for this one. I just like the song, I think it matches the mood of the show. Maybe something about Crystal and David? A final confrontation? Cus I saw someone (I'm sorry I forgot who) say they thought it would be interesting if Crystal's powers get "contaminated" by David cus he's still buried by the tree. So like a final standoff.

Swan Upon Leda by Hozier OR Eurydice by Eugénie - I think s2 would be more about Charles' journey the way s1 was more about Edwin BUT i'm also curious about Edwin's life. Something happens where Edwin maybe ends up at his old house, or relives his memories and it's all in slow motions and more calm than Charles's in ep4. They're not all bad, but Edwin was different and outcasted and the likes. George Rexstrew said himself that he thought Swan Upon Leda described Edwin really well, but also Eurydice gives off a sort of melancholy floatiness that fits with a boy 100+ years dead reliving an upbringing that now seems to foreign to him, and yet is ingrained in every part of himself.

Since listening to music is my #1 hobby, I will probably find more songs down the line and add on, but this is what I got for now.

[every1sno1fangirl]

Happy Hifuumo Friday everyone!

As much as my time has been consumed no-lifing Library of Ruina, I have in fact still been going out and doing things now that I'm not sick.

Last week, I went to a party.

It was for Bastille Day. It was mostly an excuse to catch up with old family friends and get drunk, and boy was that a fantastic excuse!

I had a really good time too seeing people I hadn't in a long time. It was a little awkward as a result, but I did my best to ignore it.

I like to think I succeeded; It remains to be seen completely however. There was actually someone there who I've had a rather frosty relationship with for quite some time; I think we've started to thaw though, which is good!

It got me thinking about my in-person personal relationships quite a bit though. Namely, the fact that I don't really have them. It's for a lot of different reasons but I guess it ultimately amounts to not knowing how.

I think I'd like to change that.

It'd give me more reasons to get out of the house, even if my walks and trips just for these pictures are still quite fun. I feel like it'd be a good idea.

Work starts up for me in mid-August. Maybe I'll work out a budget and try to make friends at a bowling rink?

It's something I've had fun playing, but I've only really been able to on rare occasions. I'm sure I can try and figure something out; I might also see if there's any TTRPG groups in town who play games I like.

Though it might be worth it to just try and make more of an effort to hang out with the people I already know...

I'll figure it out.

As always, I love you all, have a good day/night!

[wordsinhaled]

augh, y'all. The Ball episode is so lovely?? ?? it is just the most episode. i'm emotional about it so you're gonna hear about it.

okay, it's the way crowley is indignant that anyone could ever suggest anything against aziraphale's pureness of heart, even while knowing aziraphale's a bit of a bastard and finding that wonderful about him. and his vehement objection that he'd ever relegate aziraphale to anything less than the most important person in his life. the way crowley is like "oh. i have had. a Realization," after talking to nina, and he has to go and get day-drunk to deal with the enormity of it, and he asks aziraphale if he wants a glass, probably thinking - maybe aziraphale will sit with him and maybe they'll Talk About It. and... "smitten, I believe."

and the way the whole time after his conversation with nina crowley's just subtly different around aziraphale from then on - watching him just a tiny little bit differently, partially like he just can't look away and partially like the realization is sinking in, "this is actually the person who's walking around with my heart and doesn't know it, and i actually have to grapple with that" - you know??? the way crowley's always marveling at aziraphale from beside him - "can i watch?" and then the way aziraphale ushers crowley out of the bookshop so he can make his preparations. the sweeping music while aziraphale miracles the beautiful glowing chandelier and crowley stopping in his tracks outside the window to look at it...

the way crowley rushes into the bookshop from outside and stops short by the door just boggling because the entire place is transformed and aziraphale did all that. aziraphale is absolutely freaking out about asking crowley to dance just before he does it; his eyes dart all over and voice goes all funny with nerves and everything, because he's thinking oh god, i planned this whole thing just for this, and now is the moment. the way aziraphale knows every step of the dance and crowley doesn't really follow the steps of the dance beyond the bare minimum (there's a point where he even sort of shrugs, when that's not the dance step) but he's still taking every opportunity for them to touch. the way they almost hold hands and their fingers nearly twine together each time, while they barely touch the other shopkeepers only as much as necessary.

crowley's "i won't leave you on your own," and aziraphale's answering "i know." the confirmation that aziraphale can stand up for himself perfectly well, but knows it makes crowley happy to be a rescuer and indulges that about him in their relationship - coupled with crowley's "he's unpredictable" from earlier which shows crowley knows his madcap angel can get out of anything but that he enjoys letting himself be rescued. (it's an echo back to the bastille scene too, really, where crowley's basically like you called me here for this??? because you wanted to have crepes??? and aziraphale's like and so what if i did? it's their thing, their thing they both enjoy so much.)

the way their love in so many ways is about knowing one another and understanding one another and giving each other what they need. and the fact that even with all their roadblocks in communication they STILL know and understand one another best, because they've each been witness to the other's first moments of genuine joy and pleasure. (i have a separate set of thoughts about that that i won't go in here because this has gotten long, but -- )

they!!!

[vidavalor]

I don't think that Aziraphale fell in love with Crowley during The Blitz. I think Aziraphale *realized for sure that he was capable of romantic love* during The Blitz... because Crowley had shown that he was. These are two different things...

This is a bit long... Controversial opinions below...

Aziraphale has always had a thing for Crowley, since the beginning or damn near it. We see evidence of liking his attention and enjoying talking with him in the Garden. We see joy at seeing Crowley and nervousness about getting his attention ("still a demon then?") in Ancient Rome. We see him absolutely *loving* having Crowley wrapped around his finger at the Globe Theatre and we see naked lust and damsel fantasies when he's checking him out in The Bastille. Having feelings for Crowley is not something that just suddenly happened during The Blitz, imo... they are fundamental to who Aziraphale has always been... but Aziraphale does not think himself a very good angel.

To Aziraphale, an angel is a being of love so why *wouldn't* he love Crowley? He loves *everyone*-- fallen or not, human or animal or etheral or supernatural. His *entire identity and only job* is built around love and spreading it. At some point, he began to realize that what he felt for Crowley was different than what he felt for others and, as his study of humanity progressed, he would note the things it seemed to be like. Aziraphale loves humanity to absolute bits and that includes all the fun things they've uncovered to get up to, from books to super gay gentleman's clubs to Parisian crepes. Aziraphale absolutely noticed that he's attracted to Crowley. He absolutely knew that the things he felt about Crowley were things that these humans were writing about in love songs, except that *it couldn't be, not really, because that would be wrong* because he's *not* a human.

He's an *angel*.

And Crowley is a fallen angel-- a *demon*.

They are beings who cannot feel these things of humans, not fully. Is this denial on Aziraphale's part? Oh, heavens, yes. Because what kind of angel would he be if, instead of just spreading love everywhere, he actually went and *fell* in love with, of all creatures, a *demon*? What kind of angel wants to roger said demon into next Tuesday? The same kind of angel who likes to indulge in pleasures in a way that is definitely not de rigueur in sanitized, open floor plan Heaven. Does *Crowley* care that Aziraphale eats too many sweets and loves the pleasures of a good book? Of course not but Crowley is a demon so he should be into indulgence. Aziraphale doesn't expect Crowley to understand that the things they share in common-- the love of music (if different types), of the stars, of words (books, plays), of food (Aziraphale eating it, Crowley watching Aziraphale eating it) and really just *humanity* as a whole--... these things make Crowley a perfectly fine demon but Aziraphale a very, very bad angel. While Crowley rather likes that Aziraphale is different from other angels, *Aziraphale* doesn't like that about himself all the time. This is why it takes until The Blitz for Aziraphale to let himself admit that the romantic love he feels for Crowley is, in fact, romantic love... he can't admit it until Crowley, through Crowley's own actions, shows him.

It happens during The Blitz because *Crowley* shows him that *demons* are capable of romantic love. Not only capable of it but really rather quite *good* at it, if they are of such a mind. Crowley's act of saving the books is what does it. Aziraphale knows that Crowley will always come to rescue him. The Bastille proves it. He not only knows it but he goes out of his way to set up scenarios for Crowley to come to his rescue. What sets The Blitz apart is Crowley saving Aziraphale's books. It is an act of such pure, unselfish, unconditional love that Aziraphale cannot see it as anything *but* that. Crowley has been bringing Aziraphale presents for millennia. He's rescued him more times than either of them can count. They've spent centuries in one another's company and performed literal miracles to make one another happy and safe and comfortable but the reason why it's the books during The Blitz that changes everything for Aziraphale is because everything else, if Aziraphale was of mine to, could be spun as Crowley being a demon and trying to keep Aziraphale close for his *own* reasons.

Aziraphale isn't really an idiot. He knows the wily ol' serpent feels the same way about him as he does about them. It's been centuries upon centuries. He's noticed Crowley's love and adoration and desperate, pining want-- he's just never *allowed himself to assume that these things aren't just demon-y traits*. He thinks Crowley *is just like this* lol. That everyone gets this version of Crowley. And since they barely interact with one another in front of other people lest they get caught fraternizing, there's not really anyone to ever argue against this point.

Ever notice how Aziraphale thinks Crowley is the smoothest, slickest tempter known to man? He's *Asmodeus* to Aziraphale. He's a seductive snake who lured all of humanity out of the garden. Aziraphale thinks himself just an angel (the one who failed at guarding said garden, mind you) and not an especially good one at that. Crowley is *tempting*... because he's temptation personified. (Demonified?) Aziraphale thinks he is *tempted* by Crowley because he is weak and a bad angel. To Aziraphale, Crowley isn't *capable* of things like romantic love because Aziraphale has been taught that all angels are just beings of pure love of God-- a kind of non-sexual, generalized love for all of God's creatures-- and Crowley is a fallen angel. Not only was he not capable of romantic love when he was an angel but he certainly couldn't be now that he's a *demon*, right?

But then Crowley saves the books. Oh, the books...

And the only reason he would is for Aziraphale. The books are old but there are other copies. It's not all the world's knowledge; it's just Aziraphale's favorites from his prophecy collection. Just his own, very human, very earthly, possessions, rescued from a fire by the romantic hero who has also come to rescue him. Just a little miracle of Crowley's own-- using his powers and risking the wrath of Hell to comfort Aziraphale and make him happy.

It's obviously not the first time Crowley has done so but it's the first time that Aziraphale has had *no other excuse* in his mind for why Crowley did what he did for Aziraphale. The Arrangement? Benefitted Crowley. Spending time with Aziraphale? Benefitted Crowley by keeping Aziraphale invested in The Arrangement. Flirting with him, bringing him little gifts? The Arrangement, The Arrangement, The Arrangement... But the books?

Crowley didn't have to do that. He had come to rescue him. The dashing hero kink was already fufilled for Aziraphale. But saving Aziraphale's beloved books and the soft "little miracle of my own" and "lift home" and Aziraphale realized that, Demonic Chief Seductress of Hell or not, Crowley was in love with him.

Not just fond of him. Not just flirting with him or bemused by Aziraphale's lust and indulging him. Not just friends, even.

In love with him.

Demons could fall in love.

And if demons could be in love, then angels...

The Blitz is also *way* different from the era circa The Bastille, when Aziraphale decided that maybe millennia of being flirted with by Asmoseus himself was too much for any one angel to withstand without actively indulging in a bit-- and their long history and everything up to that point confirming that Crowley was soft for him (FOR HIM, a terrible, little, nobody angel!) made him feel safe enough to play a bit more of a heavier hand... even if that, too, was a bit terrifying. When Crowley asked Aziraphale to lunch in the modern era in S1, telling him they could go anywhere Aziraphale wanted to go (a call back, we would learn, to the Soho car "I'll take you anywhere you want to go" scene), what does Aziraphale say?

He doesn't say London in the '40s. (Admittedly, who would want to be there then, romance with Crowley notwithstanding?) Nor any other time. He says:

"Paris. 1793." to which Crowley replies with a little knowing smile:

"Ah. The Reign of Terror."

Yeah, Crowley's not *just* referring to the actual, historical Reign of Terror here. He's referring to *Aziraphale's* reign of terror. *Their* reign of terror. Aziraphale's whole lusty arc, from crepes to "learning The Gavotte" here as he upped the ante on their relationship for the first time...

"Was that one yours or mine?" Crowley asks, putting Aziraphale a bit at ease after knowing that admitting to Paris 1793 was a bit of open honesty by telling him that Aziraphale wasn't the only one scared out of his mind then. (Was that bit of our history primarily my terror or your terror? is what Crowley's really asking. Which one of us was fucking it up then, do you remember?... Not that they don't remember. They both do. Crowley is trying to say that the fear isn't one-sided-- that Aziraphale isn't the only one for whom all of this has always been terrifying.)

Aziraphale says he can't remember (might not be true) but that it doesn't matter because "the crepes were lovely" and Crowley smiles.

Because Aziraphale is calling him lovely. Says their date was lovely and he was lovely. Crowley all like...

The reason why Aziraphale wants to go back to lunch on the post-Bastille date is not just the crepes (though they were really good but you cannot tell me that the French haven't gotten better at making them since the 1700s lol. I'm sure there's a better creperie he and Crowley could have lunched at in the modern era.) He wants to go back there because, in a way, as complicated as it felt, it was *simpler* because Aziraphale thought he understood what he and Crowley were then.

He thought Crowley was temptation personified and that he, Aziraphale, had finally gone full Eve and wanted to give in. He thought it was lust. A little bit of rescue kink. Eyes raking him over. the fun, daring game of playing at the seduction *of temptation itself*. The power of knowing that Hell's Seductress in Chief was weak *for him*. That's a sexy lunch. Those are some *damn good crepes* lol.

Finally, Aziraphale had it figured out, right? He was a being of love since he was an angel so he loved all beings and that included Crowley but not in the way the humans sing and write about, no, cannot be, because he's an angel... but... angels-- bad ones, like himself-- did appear to be open to temptation and Aziraphale has been on Earth since the beginning and struggles to define the difference between temptation and pleasure. Is moaning over this blueberry muffin sinful-- or is it marveling at the work of God's creatures? How could his favorite symphony not be of God? How could God have created sexual attraction between the humans and not made it holy? Still... none of that meant that having these human-like feelings *as an angel* made them okay. Angels were supposed to think like Gabriel. They weren't supposed to want to sully the celestial temple of their corporations with gross matter-- in any way, shape or form. So what did it say about Aziraphale *to* Aziraphale if he liked art and food and if he got all sorts of hot about how Crowley looked at him?

And then not that long after that (not that long for them) came the 1800s and Crowley wanting holy water, right? Aziraphale defaulted to the idea that Crowley's motivations *had* to be selfish on Crowley's part. He was a demon so they *had* to be. It couldn't be about protecting the two of them. Holy water could kill Crowley-- it could kill other demons. Crowley's request was a subtle suggestion that *he might be willing to kill other demons to protect Aziraphale, an angel* and that went against *everything* Aziraphale knew to be true and he completely panicked. He made it entirely about Crowley's own, occasional, suicidal ideations (which do exist) and ignored the other potential reasons because it was too much for him to admit that Crowley's hurt-- his loneliness, his terror-- might be because Aziraphale had gotten this all very, very wrong. He might have just spent the last few decades leading Crowley on, thinking that the fraterization was what the demon would want, not thinking that anything more was possible. Because it *couldn't* be possible for Crowley to feel those things *because then Aziraphale would be capable of them, too*. So long as Aziraphale pretends that Crowley the Fallen Angel is incapable of more than mischief and self-serving arrangements and demonic lust, then Aziraphale can remain comforted in his feelings that he isn't capable of feeling not *angelic, generalized* love but *romantic, very much unplatonic* love for *his hereditary enemy*. A *human* would have been easier for Aziraphale to understand and maybe even solicit more sympathy should anyone find out but *Crowley*?

It would mean he wasn't just a bad angel, by Heaven's standards.

It would mean he doesn't know what an angel *truly is*.

When Crowley shows Aziraphale during The Blitz that he loves him-- that he's *in* love with him-- that every longing look was just that, that every spark of desperate lust in his yellow eyes was just that, that demons are fallen angels and angels can feel these human things and that that's what they are feeling-- these human things-- Aziraphale doesn't fall in love.

He was already in love.

He allows himself, for the first moment in their history, to *be* in love with Crowley, even if it's existed the whole time.

But...

By Soho in the '60s, he and Crowley both know. They know the other knows how they feel. Crowley, back in the '40s, thought Aziraphale was more ready than he was after the whole Reign of Terror through the Holy Water Incident. He thought he just had to show Aziraphale that how he felt was pure and true and he did do that. It's just that it completely upended everything Aziraphale thought he knew about himself and his place in the universe and challenged everything he had ever known or been taught. He needed time to work through that. He asked Crowley for time. He brought him the holy water-- in that cute little tartan Thermos-- to say he understood.

You're mine, see, and I'm yours. I'm just not ready for this. And I'm not sure if I ever *should* be ready for it... is the general attitude he conveys.

He didn't give up on the idea of him and Crowley and that is really beautiful when you consider that the no-longer-deniable truth of it basically was killing Aziraphale, as it made him feel like he failed at the only thing he was ever supposed to be, which means he failed at his whole purpose in life.

Maybe one day we could go for a picnic... or dine at the Ritz.

It's still a pipe dream for Aziraphale in the '60s. These are very romantic things he wants to do with Crowley. These are dates they could go on. This isn't just lust and it's not just friendship anymore. He knows Crowley's in love with him. Aziraphale has never denied having feelings of his own in return but he might never have said them more directly than with his little tartan Thermos and his daydream date ideas. The general vibe is I wish we could have this but I don't really see how and you wanting to just try it scares me. What if I fall? What if it turns out that everything I know isn't true?

It already was untrue and Aziraphale knew it. In a way, in the future, he'd tell Crowley he wanted to go back to 1793 Paris for that crepe date and start it all over again. They had 11 years-- nothing, to them-- until the end of the world. He's telling Crowley they shouldn't work together to stop it-- It's ineffable! It's God's plan! I've already interfered enough being an angel who is hopelessly lusting after and madly in love with bloody Asmodeus! If you think I'm stopping Armageddon so I can keep drinking wine and hanging out in my bookstore with you, you're mad!...

...but he's also saying to Crowley at the same time...

...I now know we are almost out of time and I regret thinking I would have countless more millennia with you to work this out. I wish we could go back and try again. I wish I had known what it was like to be with you before it was all over.

To which Crowley responds by taking him to the damn Ritz lol. (Twice, by S1's end.)

As if he's saying: can't time travel to 1793, Angel, but we can definintely make the most of every moment left.

After which... Aziraphale invites him back for Chateauneuf-de-Pape, in a situation we think might connect to S2's post-Blitz scene, based on the trailer. Just as Aziraphale is saying to Crowley that he wishes he had done things differently and Crowley gives him the opportunity to do things differently going forward by dining with him at the Ritz, it goes back to the Blitz as they walk to the bookstore, because it always will...

...because that is the first moment Aziraphale admitted he was in love because it was the first moment he truly knew that Crowley was in love with him and that the things they both felt are, in fact, romantic love.

[tf2-bhs]

fun facts about the most important characters for the AU

Scout: Every teacher knows him as _____'s little brother. No exceptions. Is always treated with suspicion whenever they discover his surname.

Soldier: He and Demo always try and summon a ghost whenever they have a sleepover. He's trying to convince Merasmus to come along for one of them, as he believes with his super cool wizard powers they'll finally make contact with the undead.

Pyro: They write almost everything in a glitter gel pen

Demo: He gardens extremely well, and reads poetry. (He’s especially fond of Robert Burns’ work, and has a tendency to burst into recitals whenever he’s drank a little too much)

Engie: Has not been seen since 25/7/XX

Heavy: His bedroom used to belong to a young girl, so he's got model weapons next to a mural of My Little Pony characters. He can name all of them.

Medic: He has somehow tamed all of the seagulls at school. He is the seagull man.

Spy: Doxxes people online for fun, or to get back at them for arguing with him online (keyboard warrior), and he once doxxed Sniper without knowing.

Sniper: He streams on 'Itch'. He’s weirdly popular, but he doesn’t show his face or have a microphone. It’s just five hours straight of someone getting perfect headshots (Until he's backstabbed by a certain someone.) He also looks almost identical to the Assassin in BB2, who he mains. The only difference is that the Assassin has much longer hair

Miss Pauling: Colour-codes her notes and organises them extensively instead of revising her subjects.

Administrator: Shows up every 4 years at Christmas time and gives lavish and not at all personalised gifts to her grand nieces and nephews, before vanishing into the night.

Saxton Hale: Used to be the PE teacher while his dad worked as headteacher. He was GODLY to have on your team.

Bidwell: He paints in his free time, and posts his art online

Charles Darling: Head of the posh boarding school at the area. There’s been an intense rivalry between the Darlings and the Hales for quite some time.

Zhanna: Has a massive collection of plushies

Grey Mann: like 95, and has an 18-year-old daughter somehow. And is also still working???

Olivia Mann: Homeschooled for most of her life, but went to Darling Boarding School as a semi boarder for year 11.

Merasmus: Rarely wears eyeliner but always manages to get the perfect wing whenever they apply it.

Scout's mother: She gets almost everything from Facebook marketplace, charity shops, and Vinted. Furniture, clothes, appliances, everything. Also a massive temu victim.

Chevy (C!Heavy): Ooh he's mysterious - mickey

Beatrice (C!Pyro): Her old school ws set on fire. Despite almost everyone knowing that it was Beatrice, it could never be triased back to her.

Greg (C!Demo) and Greg (C!Scout): They are in all of the same classes and also share a last name (Smith), so it gets confusing at times.

Ross (C!Soldier): Does cadets with Soldier, and plans to go straight into it after secondary school

Virgil (C!Sniper): Like Mundee, he will and can headshot you 10 times in a row on Band Bastille 2.

Fred (C!Engineer): Before the summer he was mainly just good friends with Virgil, who was a part of the 'Classic' friend group before he fully joined at the start of year 11

Matt (C!Spy): No one knows why he doesn't go to Darling Boarding School, as his parents are quite posh.

Steven (C!Medic): Was one of the nicest students in school before he left, no one really knows why he hung out with Chevy or any of that gang in fact.

if you want anyone else, just comment them. ill reply, probably

[thiswomanshouldbewriting]

It's so important that in this season we got the flashback to Crowley tempting Aziraphale into eating.

Aziraphale has been taught that human food is gross, wrong. Sinful even, if you consider wine. His initial reaction of disgust isn't born out of his own feelings, but out of those teachings. Yet he tries the food. Maybe because he trusts Crowley, maybe because deep down he always wanted to try it, maybe because Crowley is a damn good tempter. And after that initial disgust, he immediately realizes how wrong his assumptions were, and fully immerges himself in the experience.

Can you think of something else to which Aziraphale reacted with extreme negative feelings, despite obviously wanting it just as much - if not even more - than Crowley himself?

Of course, the situations are quite different, and yet the base structure is the same: Crowley proposes something extremely human and quite forbidden to him, Aziraphale rejects the idea, then he changes his mind. We haven't seen the "changes his mind" part explicitly yet, but that quivering hand on his own lip? That's a realization. Aziraphale liked the kiss, and he may try to lie to himself and pretend that he didn't, but he did. He has wanted that kiss for an insane amount of time, but he believes that's a line that he's not allowed to cross, that he's not even supposed to want to cross. He's pushing down his own wants in the name of what he feels is the greater good. He's sacrificing himself.

As besotted as Crowley is, Aziraphale has been looking at Crowley with barely contained desire for centuries. Think of all the touches we saw this season, the way he reacted to him in the bastille, the fact that he asked Crowley to dance (something that angels specifically do NOT do!) right after talking about how much of a romantic setup a ball is.

This is why I think in S3 we will get the equivalent of Aziraphale devouring the food: at one point, he's gonna break and give in to what he truly wants, and I really hope we get a scene of him telling Crowley just how long he's been holding back, and how much he has struggled to do so.

[littlespoonevan]

catch us in the mirror and it looks a lot like love

6x11/6x12-ish spec (except not really), hurt/comfort, 1.2k

if you saw me use those lyrics as a fic title before no you didn’t!!!!!!! i couldn’t not use another place by bastille for this fic ok it was a necessity. i have been tagged in an abundance of wip wednesdays and seven sentence sundays recently with nothing to show for it (but please keep tagging me ok ily 💖) but nothing like a lightning strike to galvanise me into writing hurt/comfort again!!!! so here is some gentle buddie in the hospital bathroom 💛

-

Buck holds onto the sink with one hand as he tries to shrug his hospital gown off his shoulder. He definitely shouldn’t be out of bed unsupervised yet; he’s only been awake for a few hours and the doctors – or one of his friends – will probably rip him a new one if they find out. Still, he was unconscious for a day and a half and the nurse had told him his scar will probably be all but gone by the time he wakes up tomorrow.

She’d said it with so much reassurance – as if, by tomorrow, no one would ever physically be able to tell what happened to him.

He doesn’t know how to explain that he wants to see it. That he wants the physical proof, even if he only gets it for a day.

Because…because he gave his bone marrow to Daniel and it left so little an impression on him that he’d never even known it had happened. Because he donated his sperm for Connor and Kameron and there’ll be a baby at some point but Buck still won’t have anything to show for it.

Because he keeps giving so much of himself away that sometimes he expects to see an entirely different person when he looks in the mirror.

And at least, just this once, it won’t feel like he’s making all the pain up in his head.

Eventually, he manages to get one arm out of the gown and then the other, letting it pool around his waist and pressing his hips against the sink to hold it in place. It’s mostly a pointless endeavour but he’d like some modicum of decency if someone does come in. At least they’d left on his underwear.

He stare at himself then, at the way the mark starts at his neck and spiderwebs out across his shoulder towards the centre of his chest. Towards his heart.

He’d researched Lichtenberg figures once, after he’d read a book where a character had survived a lightning strike. It doesn’t prepare him for seeing it in person across his own skin. Lifting a hand, he touches it carefully with his index finger, following the path of the mark with a delicate touch. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but that could just be the cocktail of pain meds he’s on.

He drops his hand once he reaches the end of the mark where it peters off between his ribs but he can’t make himself look away from it.

It’s the same place where Eddie got shot, he realises after a beat. And then he wants to laugh because if there was ever an emotional trauma he had nothing to show for, it was that one. Maybe that’s what this is. Some kind of reminder that something irrevocably changed in him that day and he’s never been the same since.

Talk about the universe screaming at you.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Eddie appears in the doorway behind him. He doesn’t say anything as he leans against the doorjamb but his eyes meet Buck’s in the mirror and Buck’s knees suddenly feel a little weak.

He’s still reeling from the dream he’d had while he’d been sedated. It had been the perfect life – everything he’s always said he wanted – but Eddie and Christopher weren’t there.

It’s that, he thinks, that has him blurting out, “We match,” without thinking.

Eddie’s reflection blinks and Buck watches as he pushes off the doorframe and steps further into the room. The bathroom is tiny, just a toilet and a sink and a shower, and Eddie stands so close to his back Buck thinks if he let go of the sink Eddie would catch him.

“What d’you mean?” Eddie asks, voice so soft it makes Buck’s chest ache in a way that has nothing to with the lightning strike or his cracked ribs.

“The scar,” he explains, wetting his lips against the sudden dryness in his mouth. “It’s the same shoulder as your scar from-“

He doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t need to when Eddie’s eyes immediately flicker down to where both of their shoulders are lined up, one behind the other. And Buck knows that one patch of skin on Eddie’s shoulder like the back of his hand – has pressed down on it with enough pressure to keep him alive, has covered it with dressing and cleaned it to prevent infection, has rubbed ointment on it to stop it from scarring too bad. Has touched it just because he wanted to remember Eddie’s alive.

“What are we measuring here, Buck?” Eddie catches his gaze again in the mirror, the corner of his mouth twitching. It’s different from the last time he asked that question – tense and frustrated in the back of an ambulance. Now, it’s quiet and fond and filled with that nudging kind of gentleness Eddie always uses on him when he feels fragile.

Everything is different from the last time he asked that question, really.

Buck doesn’t quite manage a laugh but the breath that puffs out of him could be one on another day.

“Nothing,” he says. “I just…”

“I know,” Eddie says and Buck is dying to know what he’s thinking, is dying to ask what Eddie’s been thinking while Buck was unconscious.

“I missed you,” he confesses – because his dream is still clinging to the corners of his mind and he can’t explain the way it’d left a gaping hole in him until he’d finally had Eddie at his side again when he’d woken up.

Eddie visibly startles at the words and Buck watches the way he silently tries to pick them apart before he speaks.

“You were unconscious,” Eddie points out finally.

Buck shrugs, ignoring the way his shoulder twinges. “Still missed you.”

Eddie’s expression softens and he seems to sway forward without realising, until the fabric of his sweater is brushing Buck’s back. “I missed you too,” he murmurs.

Buck gives in then, lets himself let go of the sink and lean back until his back connects with Eddie’s chest. He hardly has to move an inch.

Eddie’s hands land at his sides instantly, as if to steady him, but all he does is let them rest there. Eddie’s temple brushes his own and Buck closes his eyes, feeling something akin to peace settle over him for the first time in too long.

He doesn’t know how long they stand like that but, eventually, Eddie pats his side, his voice low at Buck’s ear. “Come on. Let’s get you back to bed.”

Buck opens his eyes and finds Eddie staring back at him in the mirror. Wordlessly, he lets Eddie help him pull the gown up over his chest, covering the scar once again. Eddie takes hold of him then, one hand at Buck’s elbow and the other clasped in Buck’s as they make the slow walk back out to the hospital room.

And when Buck is back in bed and Eddie’s thumb sweeps across the back of his hand right before he lets go, Buck thinks the perfect life his dream had tried to sell could never have gotten this right.

[baldursgrave69]

Promise Me

Summary: Agnes worries about the Urge, what if she can’t control herself? She asks Astarion to do the unthinkable if the need arises.

Pairing: Astarion x fem!durge (named)

Word count: 890

Tags: angst

While writing this I was listening to: Oblivion by Bastille

Find me on Ao3 here

Agnes sat between Astarion’s legs on the rooftop of the Elf Song tavern, his arms draped over her shoulders. They had finally made it to the Lower City. The last few days had been eventful to say the least. Agnes finally knew what she was. Who she was. A child of Bhaal. The sickening Urge within her had a name, an origin at last. That didn’t make it any easier to resist. In fact, she played with the idea of embracing it. Of fulfilling her destiny and becoming Bhaal’s Chosen. The idea of killing her sister Orin and taking her place gave her butterflies. Agnes was still struggling to process her meeting with Enver Gortash. He had revealed to her that not only had they been partners in the planning and implementing of the Absolute, they had been more than that. Enver Gortash had shown her correspondence between the two of them, detailing their story. Their love story. Agnes shuddered, trying to push the thoughts from her mind. She didn’t want to think about that night. Or what she had done. Astarion stirred behind her, holding her closer. “What is it, love?” he asked, resting his chin on her shoulder. Agnes let out a huff, leaning against him. “I’m… scared,” she admitted. “The Urge, it’s bothering you again, isn't it?” he asked, shifting behind her. She nodded. He wrapped his arms around her middle, pulling her closer to him. “What if I don’t resist it? What if I can’t?” she asked, feeling a knot of worry in her stomach. Astarion frowned, this was so unlike her. She was always confident, always ready to take on whatever horror came next. “Do you want to?” he asked, cautiously, pressing soft kisses to her neck. Agnes paused for a moment. “Yes,” she finally said, hoping it sounded convincing. “Then you will,” Astarion said, leaning back against the cold wall behind him.

“How can you be so sure? What if your confidence is misplaced?” Agnes asked, pulling her knees close to her chest. “I’m rarely wrong,” he sighed, turning her to face him. “Besides, I know you. You won’t hurt me.” he said confidently. Agnes frowned, turning her back to him once more. Astarion sighed, pulling her closer again. He knew she wouldn’t hurt him on purpose, but he also knew that she didn’t always have control. If she did, Alfira would still be here. “You shouldn’t have to constantly watch your back around your partner. You shouldn’t have to worry that I’ll murder you in my sleep. That’s not fair to you,” Agnes started, moving to look at Astarion. “We should just end this now. Before it goes too far,” Agnes said quietly, leaning her head against her knees. “Are we really doing this again?” Astarion growled, leaning towards Agnes. She looked over at him, a wounded expression on his face. “I mean it, Astarion. I don’t want to hurt you,” she hissed, tears forming in her eyes. Astarion rolled his eyes, leaning back. “What, you think I’ll just disappear if you break up with me? Come now, darling. I told you, I’m not going anywhere.” Agnes let out a sigh, a small chuckle leaving her lips. “Gods, you’re stubborn,” she said as she looked up. Astarion smiled at her, a tear running down his cheek. Agnes leaned forward, wiping the tear from his cheek as he pulled her closer to him. “I waited 200 years for someone like you, I’m not letting you go that easy,” he sighed, burying his face in her hair.

“Fine, but you have to promise me something,” she said, suddenly serious again. Astarion pulled back to look at her, a somber look on her face. “If it happens again. If the Urges take over and you can’t restrain me,” Astarion cut her off, hugging her tight. “Promise me you’ll end me before I hurt anyone,” she said quietly as he held her. Astarion held Agnes tight, his mind reeling as he thought about what she was asking of him. Agnes pulled away from Astarion to look at him. He averted his eyes, trying to hide the tears beginning to form. “Remember that first night in camp? You asked me how I’d want you to do it,” she said quietly, pressing her forehead against his. He let out a laugh, wiping a tear with the back of his hand. “You said there were too many choices,” he laughed. He had called her dramatic at the time, he thought she must be insane. “A knife, clean across the neck,” she said quietly, looking into his red eyes. Astarion closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Promise me,” she whispered, placing her hand on his neck, caressing his bite scars. “Agnes, I can’t. Don’t ask this of me,” he pleaded, avoiding her gaze. “I trust you to make the right decision if the time ever comes,” Agnes said quietly. “Alright,” he replied, refusing to look at her. Agnes pulled back from Astarion, lifting his chin so he would look at her. His eyes were rounder than normal, sad. “I’ll keep fighting it, I’ll do whatever I can,” she reassured him. He nodded, his expression still somber. “Enough of the heavy stuff,” Agnes huffed, kissing Astarion on his nose. Astarion wrapped Agnes in his arms, holding her as tightly as he could.

[shineonyoucrazyyandere]

Bad Horsie - Yandere! Johnny Joestar x Reader x Yandere! Gyro Zeppeli

Reader’s horse has a stand and of course is protective of their owner, both Gyro and Johnny fume over this as this animal blocks them at every move. This was supposed to be a joke post for April fools awhile go, less comedic than I was intending so it’s not gonna be right on April fools. Horse’s name : Bastille

Stand : Bad Horsie (Namesake ; Steve Vai - Bad Horsie)

You and Bastille probably had one of the strongest bonds one could possibly have with each other. Even Mountain Tim himself made an observation of this, which made you proud. Your father had given him to you a few years prior to entering the Steel Ball Run. A horse that was supposedly stubborn with other riders, just happened to click with you. So, you made sure to treat him right, give him the love he deserved and the both of you could communicate with grace.

Something that came heavily in handy in this arduous journey across the United States. Though it wasn’t just the two of you alone not like you thought it would have been. You wished it was that way, but life had thrown you a terrifying hardball consisting of two racers. The British born Johnny Joestar and Italian Gyro Zeppeli, who you only had considered allies to get you through this disaster of a race.

Bastille was your rock keeping you sane around those two, their romantic interest suddenly blossoming in a hell-scape of stand users. Your lovely horse knew this, the nervousness in your heart as you handled the reigns. He’d always eyeball the two of them when they were camping down for the night or when you hit a checkpoint. So he made it known to you to give as much pets as you wanted.

However as the trek went on, the atmosphere became suffocating. Bastille could feel it even as the two of you kept in sync, trying your best to either ride behind or in front of those two men. As much as there was to worry about venomous snakes or other apex predators, they seemed easier to deal with in this scenario. Perhaps this horse couldn’t get the complete situation down, but if you were in danger it would help instinctively or otherwise.

You knew your lovely companion had a stand but never divulged this to the men you were traveling with. You felt rather guilty relying on your own horse for protection, but if he wanted to you knew there wasn’t stopping him. Just retroactively planning things carefully so you and him could cross that finish line.

While you tried to keep your distance from these two, as much as they would allow they would take advantage of this to talk about your horse. This was literally the only reason for the past few weeks that you managed to get any kind of break. They knew for certain your furry friend knew this even if you didn’t consciously realize.

“The way their horse acts it’s interesting isn’t it?” Gyro said breaking a small silence the two of them.

Johnny’s blue eyes glanced over briefly “It’s not too hard to differentiate, horses do have emotions but I can tell there’s something more to him”

Gyro nodded along “How long have you been suspecting him being something more?”

The blond admitted he couldn’t shake a certain feeling from the very start of the race. Gyro’s eyes in turn widened a bit before resettling.

“Tch…so I’ve been getting dirt flung in my face on purpose by that cheeky prick for a little while now” The male smirked with a small gleam of his teeth.

Joestar himself sighed, he was frustrated by Bastille himself. He never really counted on being on the defensive against a horse of all things. Considering they were chasing corpse parts, this should hardly be any surprise to either of them. Johnny would never hesitate in taking a humans life to keep you to himself, Your horse complicated things for the race at least.

“Think it has a stand?” Gyro tossed another question out “If he wants to protect them that bad, I can’t rule that out as an impossibility”

“Wouldn’t be surprised, y/n loves that horse to death and of course they wouldn’t bother telling us about it”

“Damn, that’s true…” He clicked his tongue in annoyance, not for the potential fact your horse could’ve helped during certain face offs. Or the fact it was only focused on you and vice versa stung his heart. You’re cute trying to hide everything from him and Johnny though. As for Bastille, he wasn’t about to let a damn horse of all things keep him away from his darling.

The two of them decided to stitch together a timeline of sorts of your mighty steed’s actions. Johnny recalling a few times during the night he’d see your horse move it’s pitch closer when it could tell when he was staring at you during the night. Not to mention the close proximity of blocking his view of you by the morning. Or it pulling back when if felt your discomfort at him getting close to you while running.

Biggest thing Johnny had happen to him was almost having his head crushed in. He’d admit he was being nosy in attempting to get a hold of a diary you had, just to see if you were trying to write something to a potential significant other. Which he’d promptly burn without care if you had one if he had actually gotten a hold of it.

Gyro on the other hand had as he said dirt flung in his face various times. The intense flirtatious comments he’d make occasionally would sometimes occur. Almost getting knocked off balance if you tensed up enough. Or his belongings on Valkyrie getting strewn about, to distract the Italian from being in your presence. Or somehow slipping into a waterhole even though he knew for certain he had good balance and grip.

Johnny wouldn’t lie, he kinda chuckled at that last one at the time.

In literally any normal scenario anyone would take a hint. But Johnny and Gyro didn’t quite see it as protecting you. They were pouncing for more attention from you than they already greedily lapped up.

That evening when you all decided to pitch up camp for the night however would unknowingly unravel everything.

That evening you were the one to start the fire, the wood and kindling already gathered. You felt nervous that you weren’t able to catch another respite from these two. Keeping you right in their line of sight. Sighing you informed Gyro the fire was ready and he decided to start dinner with steadfastness. However he insisted you help him this time around.

“You know, that horse of yours sure does love you” Gyro abruptly brought up while tending to cutting up something with his knife.

“uh yeah I’d think so?” You do your best to shrug off the comment

“Something seems interesting about yours behavior wise” He responded cryptically.

“What’s your point?”

A smirk rises on his face, his green eyes cutting into your own.

“I’m just saying your horse seems to act on things with purpose”

You could feel your heartbeat race a bit faster than usual, this wasn’t the first time but this was a little different. A snort came from the distance, Bastille looking to your eyes clearly disgruntled. Shortly after you saw Gyro pointing towards him.

“There’s only so many times something could be an accident, and you know it don’t you?”

You swallowed nervously when Gyro projected his voice a bit louder. You knew who he was referring to, and when his eyes settled down back to yours you went cold.

“It’s not very nice keeping things from your lovers you know” Your eyes darted over to Johnny whose own stare was ice cold.

“Now, I’m a little more forgiving than Johnny is…Bastille would probably be dead by now if we weren’t searching for the corpse parts or were in a race” Something you absolutely took to be true when you saw the blond facing down an enemy.

Out of the corner of your eye you saw something pierce the ground, causing Bastille to move erratically in dodging. Quickly rising to your feet to attempt to assist him. But the sensation of a steel ball on your leg made you twist in a way you never felt before. Gyro quickly sought to catch you and hold you back into his vice grip.

“Bastille stop! Stop!” You shouted as he stomped his hooves aggressively, knowing he would try to attack Johnny. Gyro too if he hadn’t been so preoccupied. It pained you to say such a thing when you knew for certain they started this on purpose.

“You could give it up all right now and try to fight Johnny and I off, abandon the race completely” The Italian man stated with smugness.

“But I’ll make sure you’re unable to run in anyway I can” He hummed “I can hurt you just enough that I need help you like I do Johnny~, but not enough to disqualify you from the race”

You bit your lip as he squeezed his arms closer around your body.

“So what’ll be? Can’t wait to hear your answer”

[areyoudreaminof]

This Life and the Next: A Nessian Playlist

It's finally @nessianweek! And of course for Day 3 I had to make a playlist!

We love their banter, their angst, their passion, and their deep undying love for one another. To watch Cassian and Nesta find each other despite their own personal challenges was such a beautiful and satisfying love story. For this playlist, I tried to follow a somewhat narrative structure that fell in line with ACOSF. I wanted to represent these two people finding one another and lifting the other up. This playlist also has a fun little bonus track for your fun Nessian writing needs. LISTEN HERE and take a look at some lyrics behind the cut.

As The World Caves In-Matt Maltese

My feet are aching And your back is pretty tired And we've drunk a couple bottles, babe And set our grief aside And here it is, our final night alive And as the earth burns to the ground Oh, girl, it's you that I lie with As the atom bomb locks in Oh, it's you I watch TV with As the world, as the world caves in

Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene-Hozier

Feeling more human and hooked on her flesh, I Lay my heart down with the rest at her feet Fresh from the fields, all fetor and fertile It's bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet

Lose My Cool-Amber Marks

I was so full of pain just stuck in my head There was no one that could get me out of it Yes I think the drinking was a bit excessive Just to be frank the drinking ain't what caused me to be aggressive My heart has been taken over Everyday I get colder to 'em I realize need to let go expression from the get go to 'em Feeling it like I just need to speak my brain

Banquet-Bloc Party

And if you feel A little left behind We will wait for you on the other side 'Cause I'm on fire 'Cause you know I'm on fire when you come

Homage-Mild High Club

Please just have a laugh with me 'Cause you know I'm borrowing by now These sounds, have already crowned Come on it's a silly dream Dreaming of the imagery unfound The view sits nice from that cloud

Make You Better-The Decemberists

I'll love you in springtime I lost you when summer came And when you pulled backwards I wanted to, I needed to Oh-oh, to make me better

Andromeda- Weyes Blood

Treat me right I'm still a good man's daughter Let me in if I break And be quiet if I shatter Gettin' tired of looking You know that I hate the game Don't wanna waste any more time You know I been holdin' out Love is calling It's time to give to you

Skulls-Bastille

I don't want to rest in peace I'd rather be the ghost that annoys you I hope you can make me laugh Six feet down when we're bored of each other A match is our only light

When our lives are over and all that remains Are our skulls and bones, let's take it to the grave And hold me in your arms, hold me in your arms I'll be buried here with you And I'll hold in these hands, all that remains

Leather-Tori Amos

Look, I'm standing naked before you Don't you want more than my sex? I can scream as loud as your last one But I can't claim innocence Oh God, could it be the weather? Oh God, why am I here? If love isn't forever And it's not the weather Hand me my leather

waves-Miguel & Kacey Musgraves

Put it out, I'm on fire, fire That’s what I’m about, take me higher, higher, tonight I'm gonna ride that wave

the last beautiful thing I saw..-Paris Paloma

And I looked up, and saw the sun It separated all the colors And the ice, into my eyes It fell and left me blind That was the last thing that I saw The fractured glass and its downpour I felt the blood mix with the water And I didn't see no more

Rut-The Killers

So I'm handing you a memory I hope you understand That steadily reminds you of who I really am

This city's always breathing, I wish that it would die The kickbacks and the bachelors, the fever for the velvet rope The money from my mother's men I'm not like her, you're not like them

Tell Me You Love Me-Sufjan Stevens

My love, I've lost my faith in everything Tell me you love me anyway, tell me you love me anyway My love, I feel myself unravelling Tell me you love me anyway, tell me you love me anyway My love, I feel the darkness on my back

Eternal Flame-Saint Sister

I believe it's meant to be, darling I watch you when you are sleeping You belong with me Do you feel the same? Or am I only dreaming? Is this burning an eternal flame?

Milk & Black Spiders-Foals

Oh, I hope you can hear me All those million miles away, you'd stay 'Cause I'd love you dearly All those billion miles away 'Cause I've been around two times And found that you're the only thing I need

BONUS TRACK: Smut-Tom Lehrer

Give me smut And nothing but! A dirty novel I can't shut If it's uncut And unsubt-tle

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