#actually in fact fundamentally changed what the story being told even was

[neon-sunsets]

it’s actually insane to me in retrospect that viktor got the arc he did. I need to go back and count his screen time minutes, but it’s clear that he’s up there numerically, and his story has so much weight within the narrative outside of just numbers as well.

beyond that, though, is the fact that viktor's narrative is fundamentally one about internalized ableism and the systemic structures that encourage it.

(obligatory disclaimer #1 that I have a significant mobility disability and a progressive chronic illness, but I am only one disabled person.)

imagine this: you are a child. you are disabled. the world you live in is one where you cannot afford healthcare; no one is there to teach you how to even use your cane correctly. your world is inaccessible and, worse, even the people who would normally show class solidarity with you don't, because you are not even able to do what they expect from you. characters like vi, powder, claggor, ekko, and mylo are all shown care and solidarity that viktor isn't — because they are able-bodied and therefore able to "pull their own weight."

this, at least, is an environment that can probably be overcome or mitigated by age and meeting people in your community who do care about you. this is an environment comparable to that of many, many, many disabled people who manage to thrive in a deeply unfair and ableist world.

but then you encounter a man who sees that you have talent and tells you as much. he does not ask much of you and he does not care that you are disabled. all he asks is for some help, which you give, and in return he teaches you the things he knows. what comes of this, after all is said and done and your understanding of the world has been fundamentally changed, is that you do have something you can give to your community, to the world. you have a talent which you can use to make yourself useful. you're not strong or sturdy but you can make machines, and that is always in need.

but you can't skate by on being useful like a normal child. the onus is always on you to prove that you're worth the air you breathe and the space you take up, that it's worthwhile to keep you alive. and the place to go to make yourself the most useful, where the most change can be made, is not a place you have any traditional way of accessing. you, through tenacity and grit, manage to get there anyways. (the show doesn't depict this, but any way viktor would have managed to get to the academy would have involved significant difficulty and possibly deception).

and when you get there, to that towering city of bronze, you find that nothing you do actually matters all that much.

everyone looks at you and sees your disability. everyone looks at you and sees where you're from. no matter how smart or accomplished or helpful you are, your behavior will always be, in their eyes, representative of your people. you could handle the stares, the rejection. but their judgement is dangerous to you and your people.

so, in order to survive, you must be perfect. you must project confidence or at least indifference to their cruelty. you must do as you're told and accept meager promotions and toil away as an assistant. you might be the only disabled zaunite they'll ever meet, so you have to make it count. if you fail, if they decide everyone from the undercity is lazy and useless, it's your fault.

you tell yourself you won't let them get to you. you tell yourself that you believe in your abilities.

it's a convenient narrative, and it's wholly untrue.

you, after all, are only a human being. a lifetime of the chips stacked against you is nearly impossible to overcome.

and so the image you build of yourself is that of a man far more self-confident than you, one who is quiet and reserved but proud of his accomplishments. the man you actually are, though, is one desperate for acceptance. desperate to assimilate. you chase your dreams, yes, but you can't bear to take credit, can't bear to be the face of them. you don't let yourself get close to anyone except the man you've built all of this with, who you love more than anyone else. you don't let anyone touch you (except him) and you don't touch anyone. you convince yourself you don't deserve his love or anyone's, that you're not whole enough for that.

you take it so far that, when you finally have the technology you think can cure your terminal illness, the first thing you try to fix is your leg. not the thing eating at your lungs and cutting short the time you thought you had, but the leg which has marked you as Other your entire life. and even though it doesn't quite work, even though it still causes you pain with every step, you force yourself to run on it — faster and faster until you're outrunning the ships and screaming because you may have visibly "fixed" your leg but it still hurts the same.

and when the system is not only oppressive in the material sense but also set up to make you hate yourself, there is almost no escaping this cycle of self-hatred. throw in the fact that in season 2 viktor keeps getting tossed from resurrection to resurrection against his will and it's no wonder the man did the things he did. it doesn't excuse them by any means, but arcane is not interested in excuses — it's interested in what makes people do the things they do. everything that he did to the people in the commune was a reflection of his own self-hatred, both because he still possessed it after death but also because, since he was programming the hexcore to try and save his life but started with "fixing" his leg, it is designed to make people as physically "normal" as possible. the faceless, identical machine people are a metaphorical representation of the ideology viktor has bought into in his pursuit of self-hatred and internalized ableism. his whole arc across both seasons is a demonstration and condemnation of the ways that systems of oppression reinforce self-hatred in the people they are oppressing.

obligatory disclaimer #2 that I don't think arcane did everything right. I'm frustrated with the direction of season 2 away from the piltover/zaun class conflict and towards the broader league of legends universe. but I do think, as a disabled person with a very similar experience of my disability to viktor, that this arc is well-done and very compelling. in the end, what saves the world is viktor accepting that he is deserving of being loved. I'm going to be thinking about this one for a good long while.

[boypussydilf]

*vibrating in place* i love media analysis i love to think about storytelling conventions, the means by which stories are told, the impressions given by sharing information a certain way and the reasons to share it in that way, the author’s intent and the way they did or did not communicate it and the reasons they either succeeded or failed,

[tenitchyfingers]

still not over the end of Barry

[psychoticallytrans]

There's this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they're abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that's not common.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don't know what's normal and what isn't. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.

[inkandarsenic]

I had a dream last night that could have been a fic and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t.

It was Buck and Eddie like after the last episode after Eddie was like “this changes nothing between us” and at first, everything was fine and normal but then it became very apparent after like six months that something very much had changed between them, like Buck was still dating Tommy and Eddie was still dating Marisol and in the field they were as in sync as ever but then everywhere else there was this weird distance between them? Like they were still best friends but like fundamentally they were Buck and Eddie instead of BuckandEddie like they used to be and everyone else in the 118+ could see it and they couldn’t

And then suddenly they could see it, because Buck was at Eddie’s and something happened and he needed to change his shirt but he realized that for the first time in years, probably since Eddie got shot, Buck didn’t have anything of his at the Diaz house. A couple weeks later, Eddie was telling the 118 a story about Chris and Buck had no idea what’s going on in the story and they (Buck and Eddie) were talking about it and they realize that it’s been a while since Buck picked Chris up from school or just like had a day that was just the two of them. And then there was some gathering at Eddie’s house instead of Bobby and Athena’s, and Buck makes cookies at his loft and brings them and Maddie points it out, and Buck has a mini crisis as he realizes abruptly that he is a guest in Eddie’s house and he was looking around and the couch was new (Marisol had convinced Eddie to buy a new one) and he hadn’t even realized.

And then Eddie and Marisol and Buck and Tommy were going on a double date at Olive Garden of all places but Marisol couldn’t make it, so it was just Buck and Eddie and Tommy and it was awkward and Tommy was like “look i haven’t known you guys as long as everyone else around you but even I can tell that there is something not right here and you need to talk it out and fix it because you’re both not the same with your lives being almost completely separate, it’s like not natural for you two.”

And they start talking except it kinda devolves into grocery store fight 2.0, about Buck not being there for Chris and not being around except this time it’s kinda on both of them and it’s really no one’s fault but it’s kinda both their faults. And this argument makes its way into their work life where they’re just not as in sync in the field.

And then something happened on a call (unclear what) that wasn’t really anyone’s fault but Buck blamed himself and the current issues he’s having with Eddie, and asked Bobby to be put on B-Shift for awhile and it was just super awkward in the firehouse and Bobby was talking to Eddie and was like “I don’t know what’s going on but whatever it is you need to fix it” and Eddie was like “I dont know what’s going on either, Buck and I just aren’t the same since he started dating Tommy” and Bobby was like “maybe you need to evaluate that because that’s something that only seems to be affecting you.”

And then like a week later, Eddie and Marisol broke up, and Marisol was all “it’s because of Buck isn’t it, you love him more than me.” And Eddie did not work through that, he just went to Buck’s despite still sort of being in a fight and they got drunk on Buck’s couch and Eddie kissed Buck just kinda out of the blue and then was like “fuck I didn’t mean to do that” and left.

Buck told Tommy immediately the next time he saw him (because he learned his lesson from Taylor) and Tommy was pretty cool about it but he was also like “hey maybe you should think about that because you don’t actually seem all that upset by the fact that Eddie kissed you just that he kissed you while you’re dating me and I feel like that says something” because Tommy is a real one.

After like two weeks wherein Eddie goes to great lengths to avoid Buck outside of calls despite being on the same shift again, and Buck talking through it in therapy and with Maddie, Buck breaks up with Tommy (who again is very chill about all of it and is like “we can all still be friends just give me a little space for a while”) and then he drove to the Diaz house and Eddie saw him pulling up and met him outside and it was raining so they really should have gone inside but I digress. And Eddie was like “Buck it’s like midnight what are you doing here” and Buck was all “i broke up with Tommy because you kissed me” and Eddie was like “fuck I’m sorry I didn’t mean to do that I never meant to get in between you two” and is just sort of spiraling and Buck can’t get a word in so instead Buck kisses Eddie and Eddie is just like “Oh. So you aren’t mad.” And Buck laughed and was all “No I’m not mad I’m in love with you”

And then my neighbor’s kid started screaming and woke me up so I didn’t even get to see the ending and I’m kinda mad about it because I wanna see how everyone else reacted to all of this

[skaldish]

I'm about to give you all the single most powerful piece of advice that was ever told to me:

It is important to be a principled person.

This is more important than being a good person. But don't take this to mean I think we should be bad people.

The reason why "being principled" has more weight than "being good" is because the definition of "good" is arbitrary. It changes depending on who you ask, which means the standards of achieving goodness are always going to change and pose contradictions.

Principles are different. They are more actionable and concrete. Principles are ideas and concepts you personally value, in that you find them valuable to your lived experience. This makes them different than something like a commandment, because they're not a doctrine. Their source is your personality—who you are and the experiences that have shaped you—rather than your goals and ambitions alone.

To give an example, here are a few of my own principles:

I value self-sovereignty. I think it's a person's inherent right to be free of undue influence, and to act as agents of their own free will. (Not to be confused with acting with impunity; people have the right to experience the consequences of their own actions the same way they have the right to act upon their own free will.)

I value people. I show people courtesy as a baseline, even during arguments, until it becomes clear the other person simply wishes to engage in the spirit of hostility. And even then I don't really lash out—I just leave. At no point do I lose sight of the fact that the people I'm interacting with are as real as I am, who have feelings and complex lives the same as I do. This means I also really value trying to understand where people are coming from, and to look at things from their perspective, even if I don't agree with it.

I value being accurate, as opposed to being right. This has been a more rewarding approach for me, by comparison.

I value discernment. I want to know what things are, which means differentiating them from what I think they are from what they seem to be, and from what they are not. The reason why I practice discernment is due how I think—my brain understands things based on how they are, rather than based on what they are—but the reason why I value discernment is because it allows me to interact with the world in a much deeper way.

I value being a mammal. Life becomes easier when I (to quote another Tumblr post) let the mammal that is my body love what it loves. Fighting against this in the past proved to be a pointless and joyless endeavor.

I have more, but these are just the things that come to me off the top of my head. And keep in mind, these will likely change as I change as a person, because that is how principles work.

To be honest, I've never put much thought into whether other people should have the same principles as me; people have different personalities and lived experiences than I do, so it makes sense to me that we would all prioritize different things.

But what I do know is that I fundamentally disagree with people whose principles are antithetical to my own, principles like conquest (of self or other), conformity, purity, and controlling others. Whether or not someone realizes they're embodying these principles is another story, but in any case it's how I know who to avoid engaging with. This is regardless of someone's political alignment or identity.

In my opinion, thinking this way makes it easier to stay grounded in a rapidly-changing world, and to remain focused on what's actually important to you in the face of the unknown. It allows you to find stable ground within yourself.

[vidavalor]

Ah, I remembered!

My question was: what are your thoughts on Crowley saying ‘I lost my best friend’ when he’s directly talking to Aziraphale’s non-corporate ghost in season 1? I always thought that line was strange. Is it that he can’t say ‘I lost you directly’ because others might be listening?

Hi @procrastiel ooh, nice! I *love* this scene so I'm super happy to share an opinion on it. Thank you. :)

Meta on the meanings behind what they call each other, what they intentionally *don't* call each other, how they actually said they loved each other and came up with a shorthand for it in 1941, and why they still don't just use those damn words already...

This goes everywhere, just FYI lol. I think I started with "no nightingales" and took a scenic route through 1600, 1941 and bits of S2 before coming back to the scene you asked about but I've been told it makes sense. Thanks for indulging me. :)

There are certain things that Crowley & Aziraphale feel that they can't call one another and can't say to one another directly. It's not just because they could be overheard if they're in public, though that's always a concern. They don't say them when they're alone, either.

It's because it hurts too much.

They've always tried to be optimistic about surviving Armageddon and being able to be together somehow but they're terrified that they won't and the odds, in their minds, aren't great, being that it's the whole will of God and all. As a result, they've lived their whole relationship expecting it to end in tragedy. They could both live for all of time, forced apart by Heaven and Hell. One of them could die and leave the other alone for eternity with nothing but the memory of the other. Meanwhile, in the now? It's not a great situation, either.

They can't really be together. They are together but not openly and they can't promise each other everything and they absolutely would if they could. Heaven and Hell could literally murder them if they got caught together so they have to be careful and keep it a secret. This means that even as the human world they live in opens up and starts to change to a point that queer humans like them are living more open lives with one another, Crowley and Aziraphale still cannot at this stage in the story.

So, it all becomes then an unspoken question of: what would make this easier? (As if it could ever really be made easier?) They don't wish to cause each other any additional pain. What would make it easier, they think, is if they don't say certain things so that what they can't have now or what might be lost to them in the future is and will be easier to bear.

This is delusional but they're doing it anyway because it gives them some measure of control over things they can't totally control.

They think it is easier to deal with not being able to be together if they just never say directly aloud what they are in terms that are surface-level undeniable. They speak in a coded language with one another and they say all the things in those words. But the doublespeak gives them some cover. Not to ever deny any of it but it softens the edges of it.

It's also because they live with the fact that they can't fully be together but they also both are fundamentally optimists and want to think that maybe, someday, they could find a way to have what they want to have with one another. That's also why they don't say the things fully. A part of them thinks that if they just don't right now and they wait until some time comes when it seems like they could have a life together, then they still get to have those moments. They're almost saving some of it for a life they hope they get to have but aren't sure if they will.

As a result, they are romantic as all fuck towards one another but they don't use words like romance or love aloud. If they do find they have to talk about it, they've shorthanded it in a way that they both understand because it's based on their past together. We already can see bits of it uncoded-- nightingales, dining at the Ritz-- but there are more than that that we can see if we deep dive a bit here so let's do that...

What's evident in the scene in 2.06 wherein Crowley decides to try to abandon the doublespeak is how deeply ingrained this way of speaking is for both of them. Also, how they don't abandon it when they're alone (the 1967 scene also illustrates this.) Crowley actually reverts back to their doublespeak *three sentences* into his proposal. He doesn't get much further than establishing that they've both been on this planet for a long time before he starts evoking coded messaging. He flicks his hands between them during the "you and me" line in a way that is echoing how Aziraphale gestured at him to mean "couple" in 1941. He winds up using coded language all over the place, peaking with the "no nightingales" moment that is actually coded language twice over because of "nightingales" being their word for romance and the asking Aziraphale to listen for birds evoking the Job minisode and the moment in the courtyard when they came up with the doublespeak.

Part of why Crowley can't get through the proposal without it is because he doesn't want to do it like this. Both the doublespeak and the idea of someday loosening it a bit mean things to them. They like their private language. Maggie and Nina are not exactly correct in assuming that they never say how they really feel. They're not wrong, either, but they're not fully right. Crowley and Aziraphale do talk. They just do it in a way that hurts them less because they can't bear to hurt each other because they're batshit crazy in love with each other. Maggie and Nina are correct in saying that Crowley and Aziraphale don't say how they truly feel if saying how you truly feel means using traditional language but they are wrong to say that they don't express these feelings at all because we have literally been watching them do so this entire time.

Notice how Crowley, even risking more with breaking their code in 2.06, still doesn't say some things. Amazing how he said all of that and he didn't say I love you, isn't it? He could have. He is, in what else he's saying, but the words they don't say are still there on the table. Aziraphale, later in the scene, almost does. He almost does because he is a mess over the situation and he wants to give Crowley something but then he doesn't and he spits out a self-aware I forgive you instead. That horrid, complicated version of it that he's used before and is code they both kind of hate. He's angry that this is all happening the way it's happening because it's taking some of the things they leave unsaid for hopeful, better days and it's saying them in a less than ideal moment.

That they both leave out that I love you, though, is the most I love you thing they could have possibly done.

They think it will be easier to not be free to be together and unafraid in the present-- and to maybe lose one another in the future, if they eventually have to-- if they pretend they're not a team or a group of the two of them and one way to do that is to never say words like the one we were all silently screaming at Crowley to say in that scene in 2.06 lol: "couple."

Are they a couple? Yes. Are they lovers? Yes. Are they partners, the term Nina used? Yes. Do they refer to their relationship using any of the terms in this paragraph? Oh God no...

That is why Crowley freaks out when Nina tries to get him to use uncoded, normal, human person language to help her understand what Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is. She calls them partners and this is Crowley:

We're in agreement with Nina then when she responds with:

Nina isn't wrong here. She's just from a different world than Crowley. Nina lives in a world like ours in the year 2023 and she's puzzling Crowley and Aziraphale out through that filter. She doesn't know at this point that they are an angel and a demon who could be murdered by Heaven/Hell for being together. Her best rationale for why she's never seen Crowley and Aziraphale in her cafe together and didn't know until this week that the bookseller has a fella is her theory that Crowley is married and that he and Aziraphale are having an affair. To her, it explains why they've got chemistry for days but they're secretive. Crowley denies that-- defending Aziraphale's honor like the good old fashioned lover boy he is :)-- but the reason why he quickly denied that he and Aziraphale are partners, even if they absolutely are, is twofold. They are used to hiding it, it's dangerous for them to get caught out, and he probably feels uncomfortable with the idea of telling someone what they are exactly without talking with Aziraphale about it first-- that's all one reason.

The other reason is that he and Aziraphale don't use that word. It's not that it's an inaccurate one; it's probably the most accurate one, actually. They have a word, as we'll see, but partners isn't it because partners is the same thing as a couple and these are embargoed words to them. They don't use those phrases, even if that's what this is, just as they don't say I love you because if they don't call it love directly, they'll never lose that love, in their minds. If they don't know what it's like to hear the other say it, they don't ever have to bear the pain of never hearing it again. Better to hold those words back and only use them if they ever can somehow really be fully, openly together without fear. If Crowley doesn't use those words with Aziraphale, then he's not about to use them with the Coffee Shop Human he's only just recently met.

Along these same lines, they refrain from traditionally romantic terms of endearment on the surface. No my love, no darling, no sweetheart. Angel was there at the start and it stays because while it's always really angel (romantic), it's also angel (species/occupational), so it works well enough with their code. But its equivalent in reverse is Crowley. It's intimate, in the sense that only Crowley and Aziraphale know what it means. Only they were there in Job's courtyard. That's the coded layer of it-- it's Crowley's name to everyone else on the surface but it's that and a pet name to Aziraphale. It's why Aziraphale just calls him that constantly. Crowley changed his name to something only Aziraphale also really understands, making the use of it by Aziraphale then a way of expressing affection. When Nina asks them both separately about their relationship, both Crowley and Aziraphale actually revert to using what they call one another in an effort to explain it, even though they know that it doesn't translate fully in human terms without more words. Crowley says Aziraphale is an angel he knows; Aziraphale says:

Ironically? They are actually making it all *more* intimate by speaking in their own, private, coded language. They can't give each other everything but this they can, right? The language is their own, little world and not being able to explain their relationship to humans that well in 2023 doesn't mean they don't know what they mean to one another, which is more important. Since they can't make each other promises of forever that they can't keep and they can't have a life in the present that they'd choose for themselves, something they can do is use their little language to be sweet towards one another and they do. By having to work a little harder at conveying meaning through doublespeak, they wind up with something ironically actually at least as romantic as the traditional words, if not more so.

Anyone can call a lover darling and it can be lovely but can just anyone make my dear fellow romantic? Aziraphale can. This one was all him. He loved standing there in front of a dozen deadly human soldiers in the Kingdom of Wessex in 597 A.D., getting away with a pet name under the guise of stealing the "old sport"-style of male, moneyed, British speak and turning it romantic. This scene is great with the pet names because it opens with Aziraphale being a bit of a tease with "is that you under there, Crawley?" which he only does so that Crowley will roll his eyes and correct him. Aziraphale loves that Crowley changed his name to something coded between them based off of the moment they started their doublespeak. It was very romantic and this scene shows that Aziraphale sometimes, in earlier days, would call Crowley the old name just to get Crowley to correct him, which is all just a coded way of getting Crowley to say that, yes, he still feels the same way and yes, he still wants Aziraphale to call him that. This same scene, a few sentences later, then has Aziraphale's my DEAR fellow-- heavy emphasis on the 'dear'-- which is then answering Crowley's admission by just skipping any and all of Crowley's names entirely lol and calling The Black Knight my dear in front of a bunch of bloodthirsty soldiers and mercenaries.

The my [] fellow is perfect in their little language because of how it sounds all "I say, old chap!" on the surface but contains words that are romantic to them in their doublespeak. It's intentional that it's *not* "old chap" or "old sport" that they appropriated for their own purposes, it's my [] fellow. Fellow as in human, which is how they see their relationship (because it is) and that's something that comes up when Crowley uses a variant of this in 1941, which we'll get to in a second. My adds an intimate element to it of admitting that they are each other's in whatever ways they can be.

Aziraphale, like we said a moment ago, will sometimes sauce Crowley with the pet names a little and he does in S1 when he calls Anathema my dear when reassuring her in a scene in which he and Crowley are having a playful coded argument over Crowley's driving. Aziraphale miracles a bike rack onto the back of The Bentley and unnecessarily codes the word "bicycle" ("a perfectly normal velocipede"), smirking when Crowley grumbles "bicycle" at him. It's joking with him a bit at the lunacy of their little language *in* their little language. (Crowley playing back during this sequence is also calling Aziraphale angel (romantic) in front of Anathema, which was also a strategic decision to signal to her that he might look like a murder hornet but he's really just long-suffering gone on the sunshine-y one. Very we're just an old gay married couple, hen. We won't hurt you. in tone.) Anyway, Aziraphale using my dear with Anathema-- and his little smirks towards Crowley around it-- was really just underlining the way he uses my DEAR fellow with Crowley by using the same core phrase with a human in normal, uncoded, human conversation.

Other than this and the big one we're going to get to, there are really only two other things we've seen them use to refer to one another. In S1's Eleven Years Ago/2008, there's the moment when Crowley and Aziraphale have arrived back at the bookshop and Aziraphale is flirting with Crowley and says this, tongue firmly in cheek:

I mentioned this in another post about the wall slam in Tadfield but this is a very much intentionally blasphemous specific sexual request that is more at home in the sex meta post you all have me working on lol but for the purposes of this conversation, "foul fiend" is Bible for "wicked demon", so this is Aziraphale just kind of flirtily, jokingly calling Crowley a wicked demon in the one area in life where Crowley would probably happily own that description lol. It also has the other layer of humor in it in that Crowley calls Aziraphale angel (romantic) all the time, more often than he uses Aziraphale's actual name, and you'd think he wouldn't want to because Heaven hasn't exactly done right by Crowley and he's not especially fond of it. By calling Aziraphale angel with love behind the meaning of it, he's calling Aziraphale a good angel. He's saying that Aziraphale is what an angel is *supposed*to be, something that Aziraphale struggles with. It's both sweet and reassuring at the same time. As a result, Aziraphale has never just started calling Crowley "demon" for the same reasons-- he thinks if being a demon is being demonic and truly evil, then Crowley is a terrible demon because he's a lovely person. He is, however, positively wicked in bed, and Aziraphale likes to mock their whole situation with blasphemous Bible innuendo when requesting a little hellfire.

The other thing to briefly mention before we get into the friend discussion is a scene not long after the one we just talked about, when they're both smashed in the bookshop in S1. When he's drunk and attempting to say "bouillabaisse", Crowley gets distracted staring at Aziraphale for a moment and calls him baby before going back to his attempts at saying a word (in French, their romance language, per S2) and we get the "fish stew-- anyway!" segue back into the rest of the scene. Aziraphale was too drunk to notice enough to react so this opens up the question of whether or not the rules can get slightly more lax in bed. Does Crowley call Aziraphale baby in more intimate moments or does he just want to and it slipped out when he was drunk? It's a fairly normal phrase so it both would and would not be a surprise either way but it's still something of a question mark by the end of S2.

But there's one thing that they use that pertains to your question from the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene (told you we'd start to get here eventually lol) and that's how they use the word friend.

The rules of their language apply-- what is said on the surface is what one of the meanings of what they are saying is. It has to be what it sounds like on the surface to also be a coded thing. Aziraphale is Aziraphale's name and angel is what he is and Crowley is the name Crowley chose for himself. That angel and Crowley have hidden meanings-- that angel is given a tone that turns it from referring to Aziraphale by his species and more into angel (romantic); that Crowley is the name everyone calls Crowley now-- from angels to demons to humans alike-- but only Aziraphale knows that it's an in-joke referencing Crowley having to playact at being demonic and evil to hide his truer, sweeter nature... this is what makes these terms acceptable in their mutual language. My [] fellow is then also meeting the rules of the language because of the humor of taking a non-romantic phrase and using it for this romance of theirs that they don't refer to as one. It sounds like a perfect common thing for British men of any kind of relationship to use in conversation on the surface but it's romantic to them underneath.

So when they say friend, by their own rules of this language, it has to first contain the surface meaning. It has to be true on that level to reoccur in their language. So 'friend' does mean 'friend' in a friendship sense. They are friends. They are good friends-- best friends. Using the word is an admittance that they are each other's closest friends, which is both lovely in its own right and healthy in a romantic relationship. You want to be friends with your romantic partner. It doesn't mean you can't have other friends, of course, but if you're not friends with your partner, it's not really going to be a terribly satisfying relationship and since that is what they are-- the longest-running of long-term relationships lol-- that they are friends is important and a good thing. It's also a big deal for them to admit to it, since they are actually *supposed* to be mortal enemies. Their whole enemies-to-lovers thing never really got off the ground because they adored each other on sight but that they're friends despite the danger and the conflicts is a big thing in its own right.

But that's not the *only* meaning of friend to them, so let's look at how they evolved that bit of their language.

From what we've seen so far, it started in 1600 in The Globe Theatre scene with this:

In 1600, Burbage drops some human, queer coding into the secret language. Friend, the way Burbage is using it, is something that's actually implying lover. The surface word is technically related to friendship but the tone changes the meaning of friendship in this context to be that of a sexual relationship. Burbage's tone implies that he thinks Crowley and Aziraphale are fucking (which Crowley, laughing, silently agrees with is obvious, since he's been ignoring Burbage in favor of buzzing around Aziraphale and clearly trying to flirt his way into his bed).

Burbage is pissed that these two-- who, as we know, are basically the entire audience-- have been ignoring his monologue in favor of flirting with each other so when Aziraphale tries at a modicum of politeness (that somehow is even bitchier subtly than Burbage lol-- "I love all the... talking" is the best he can come up with), Burbage slings back by trying to drag Crowley into it by calling him Aziraphale's friend, with that loaded tone that makes the question really: 'and what does your lover think?'

Aziraphale gets the innuendo-- he's not exactly a novice at this in 1600-- but his immediate response is just to panic at the idea of anyone noticing him and Crowley together and, as Aziraphale does when stressed, he lies in increasingly absurd levels of untruth. (See also: the scene with Shax in The Bentley in S2, when he spirals up into ludicrously claiming to *not even know who Gabriel is* in an effort to say that he has nothing to do with his disappearance.)

Crowley is bemused by Aziraphale's increasingly desperate attempts to deny what is abundantly obvious to everyone around them and by Burbage's attempt to make a thing out of them to try to assuage his bruised ego. He chooses a little violence with this particularly amusing bit of go fuck yourself, you insecure little twerp:

Anyway lol what this scene then does is give us a moment in the story wherein we see them in a situation where friend (loaded) is defined as friend used euphemistically for lover and they both know it. This isn't coding they came up with but that they will wind up appropriating from the humans around them and repurposing for themselves, though they won't for awhile still to come yet.

What's worth noting here is that friend (loaded) in this human code is euphemistic for a pretty wide array of loaded friend relationships. There's no separation in it for friends with benefits versus someone you're seeing but aren't comfortable admitting that versus someone you've been with for awhile versus the person that is basically your secret spouse, etc.. All of these things are friend (loaded) in human code because the main purpose of it is to identify a pair of people who are involved as such without directly saying so on the surface, even if it's implied heavily via tone.

So what happens when Crowley and Aziraphale eventually decide to repurpose it for themselves?

They've got to be clear on what it means. They'll need to define it more specifically amongst themselves in order to use it.

For awhile still after 1600, they just aren't defining their relationship. They don't need friend (loaded) because they have things they call each other, right? They've got angel and Crowley and my dear fellow and the like. They're not usually around a lot of other humans together that are going to do what Burbage did and try to force a definition of it. (This changes, as we know, in the modern era-- especially S2-- but back in the day, it was true for them.) As a result, they've never had to define this and that's absolutely fucking perfect, as far as they're concerned.

Not defining this? Lovely. Yes. More of that. Makes the fact that they can't just call each other my love hurt a lot less, they're convinced. It helps now for sure and it'll make it less painful if they lose each other. They totally will not at all continue to spend thousands of years wondering what it would sound like if they said the things. They don't each have fourteen million fantasies about being able to use the traditional words and how they'd do it-- absolutely not lol. *Not* using the traditional words isn't at all making both the allure of those words-- and the ones they *do* use-- hotter and more romantic or anything. Not in the slightest...

So then we eventually get the Holy Water Arc, right, and in the middle of that scene, we see them run into a definition problem. In 1862, what actually causes them to fight isn't the holy water request. It's Aziraphale giving it all a word and that word being "fraternizing." First rule of We Don't Say It Club is that we don't say it... but it's also that if you're going to say a word that means the two of you and what you have, maybe don't use the one that Heaven would-- the one that means 'socializing with the enemy.' In Aziraphale's defense, they're both a mess and half-broken up in this scene and there's more going on it than we're going to get into here but the point is that suddenly not having a word caused big drama and caused the whole holy water conversation to de-evolve into an argument that broke them up for the eleven or so minutes that they can stay broken up.

But they still hadn't really resolved the whole holy water argument debacle by 1941, even if there is evidence in the show that they saw one another between 1862 and 1941, and the reason why they haven't is because holy water is irretrievably linked to defining what they are.

Crowley asking for it meant they had to consider what they are to one another and talk about it and 1862 proved their language didn't have words for that at the time. There is a level of panic to it because the request contains a certain level of acknowledgement about how they feel about each other. Aziraphale jumps onto holy water being a suicide pill not just because he's terribly worried that that's why a visibly anxious and depressed Crowley wants it but because if it's not what Crowley wants it for, then Crowley is saying he wants it for defense and whose defense, right? Not just his own, potentially. It's very much saying that he wants it to protect not just himself but Aziraphale from Hell and now we're talking about Crowley being willing to risk the wrath of Hell and maybe get himself killed trying to protect Aziraphale from harm and now, we're closer than ever to that I love you under the surface and they panic and they avoid it for 80 some odd years entirely until World War II...

...and then we arrive at The Blitz in 1941. We are now a scant one hundred years or so until 6,000 years being up since the creation of Earth and Armageddon was always going to happen in "*about* 6,000 years" so, for all they know, this is it... and Crowley in 1600 told you how he feels about sad endings:

So while rescuing Aziraphale is nothing new, Crowley turned up in 1941 with the intent of making a better ending, in case they had now found themselves at the start of the end of the world. They were almost out of time either way and he didn't want it all to end without them having said the things but also they didn't know *for sure* if this was it... and they still can't be together if it isn't... so Crowley can't just show up and be like so, angel, I've been meaning to tell you in the actual words for the last six millennia-- I'm madly in love with you. He has to find a way to do it in their language of doublespeak. And so, here's Crowley using friend (loaded) in front of the Nazis in 1941:

By using my friend in the church, Crowley is then actually euphemistically calling Aziraphale my lover by calling back to The Globe Theatre and stealing the human coded term that Burbage used. Crowley does not care what the Nazis think. The comment isn't for them; it's for Aziraphale. So is letting Aziraphale find out about his first name, which is also calling back to The Globe Theatre. ("Anthony", pronounced "Antony", as in Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra', the play in which Shakespeare put the love poetry he stole that Crowley wrote for Aziraphale.) So is referencing the unguarded holy water in the church, which is then trying to talk about it a little by connecting it to this romantic grand gesture here and acknowledging why they panicked over it all those years ago. It's all saying I'm in love with you in their little language in the best way Crowley can in this moment.

But what did we say about friend (loaded)? We said they have to define it, right?

Because it can mean different things. Crowley isn't wrong to use it and Aziraphale understands it the way he does in the church. He understands it to euphemistically refer to them as lovers, which they are. It's just that all of this combined with Crowley saving the books then makes Aziraphale realize that it's one thing to say my friend (loaded) but if you say it and then there's holy water referencing and then there's more of the Shakespeare scene in there with Anthony and the little "you don't like it?" pout and then there's the entered a church for you and... you put all of that together with little demonic miracle of my own and saving the books...

...and Aziraphale realizes that Crowley is taking the thing that they always were-- my friend (loaded)-- and using it in the middle of saying that he's in love with him.

Crowley is trying to give it a word.

The word he's using meets all their language rules. It's from a moment in their past. It has a true surface meaning and a loaded undertone and subtext for days. He's not asking Aziraphale to use it. He's not saying the actual thing, as that would be breaking their rules, but he is absolutely saying it in their language.

He's not asking Aziraphale for it in return. He's just saying that this could all be over soon and he needed Aziraphale to know and in some ways, it's an apology of sorts. He's sorry they fought. He's sorry they lost years over it. He's sorry for the pain of it. He was in love, you see. The sex while pining got to be a lot. All of this got to be a lot. You get it now right, Aziraphale? Yes? Good. Lift home...

The phrase my friend (loaded) takes on a different meaning after Crowley saves the books and after their conversation inside and outside The Bentley. That's the point of the two "shut up"s-- the one from Part 1 and the one right after it where Part 2 picks up. Why have this conversation twice? Because it's actually two different conversations.

The first one outside The Bentley is Aziraphale in a love stupor, just telling Crowley that saving the books was a nice thing and Crowley responding with a half-effort "shut up" while he cleans his glasses. It's the only scene in the entire series to date in which Crowley is cleaning his glasses and he is in this moment to give Aziraphale his eyes for a moment. But The Blitz, Part 2 shows us this again... and then gives us the scene in The Bentley with what starts out sounding like the same conversation on the surface to start. It is, though, not the same conversation *under* the surface...

There's a reason why Aziraphale says a second time that saving the books was a nice thing. They're now in The Bentley, which is a little more private, and Aziraphale can't let this drop because he needs to know for sure what Crowley is saying with this and if Crowley's sure he wants to be saying what it seems like he's saying. This is basically Aziraphale's version of Crowley's "are you sure? are you sure you're sure?" in the magic shop later on. Aziraphale knows Crowley just said he's in love with him but Aziraphale also knows *Crowley*, right?

He's been with Crowley for a long time. He knows him very well. He knows that Crowley is anxious and emotional and hopelessly romantic and that the world is literally ending around them as they're driving through bombs raining down over London and part of Aziraphale is thinking of the fact that even in this seemingly apocalyptic Armageddon that could be starting here, Crowley was coded in what he just did. He left the traditional words on the table. He said the things in their language and that is, in some ways, even more romantic, but he's left them the things they leave out of hope for a better future, just in case. There's a caution to that and while Aziraphale appreciates the caution, he also can sense that Crowley was nervous about doing this. He is a little concerned that Crowley's going to have said he loved him and then regret it and pull away from him again and Aziraphale can't do the first bit of the Holy Water Arc all over again. He's really wanting to start to move into a lighter era here lol. He also really wants to be sure that he's understanding what Crowley is saying entirely.

And he wants to hear it again.

If Crowley isn't going to shut down on him entirely now, Aziraphale very much liked all of this and would like more of it but he first has to be sure he knows for sure what Crowley means and he can't just ask directly or he's both saying the things they leave unsaid and he'd be undoing Crowley's effort so he has to find a way to ask without directly asking and in such a way that an already sensitive about all of this Crowley won't take offense or be embarrassed and that gives them a way back from this if Crowley shows signs that he feels like he might have gone too far.

So Aziraphale offers Crowley an out.

He tells him again that it was such a nice thing Crowley did for him. He means this and it was a nice thing but this is also saying that he heard that I'm in love with you that Crowley was saying by saving his books and that he liked hearing it, that it was nice, that it was okay that Crowley did that, but that it's also okay if he feels like he made a mistake with it.

Crowley's response to again being told that it was nice is to again tell Aziraphale to "shut up", this one a bit more emphatically than he did outside The Bentley a few moments before. It's unclear to what extent this language, at this time, is sexualized, but by 2019/S1, this back and forth of Aziraphale calling Crowley "nice" and Crowley responding with some bite is a self-parodic sex game that they're playing in Tadfield.

Much of what happens in Tadfield is playing on other parts of their story-- think about the paintball bit with the gun but now with knowledge of The Bullet Catch in The Blitz, Part 2-- and there is a big difference in the ways Aziraphale calls Crowley "nice" in 1941 and in 2019. In Tadfield in 2019, Aziraphale is literally smirking in a way that implies that this is a little game they play and he's saying a series of things that he knows will prompt this intentionally outsized reaction from Crowley, who is playing it with him. The game is likely tied *to* this bit of 1941 that we see in The Blitz, Part 2 in S2, in that it's referencing it a bit (if very obviously going in a different direction lol), but also because Aziraphale's phrasing and tone in 1941 is not smirking. It's softer and quieter and not designed, through their language, to prompt a certain response out of Crowley. It's not yet a sex game, it's still a kind of conversation they've had in the past that will serve as inspiration for said sex game in the future.

While it's a bit unclear if a version of this already existed in 1941 or if 1941 is part of the evolution to what it becomes by 2019, there's a tone to it in The Bentley in 1941 that says that, at the least, Crowley suspects that Aziraphale is trying to lure him towards sex by calling him nice and that's reinforced by the next thing Aziraphale says, which continues it, but is also doing so to provide Crowley with an out to his confession of love, in case Crowley wants to take it.

Aziraphale's out comes in the form of offering him sex, which is absolutely what this is:

Oh, gee, Aziraphale, whatever could you do in this moment here in The Bentley? You aren't at all telling him you'd do literally anything he says he wants right now, right here, in his damn car, are you?

But while Aziraphale would so absolutely yes because lawd, 1941 Crowley is sldjwkejele... look at what he's *really* saying as well...

What he's saying here is we can pretend you just did all of that for sex, if you want to. I know you didn't and you know you didn't but we are good at pretending and if you're silently having an anxiety attack behind your glasses over there, we don't have do this...

Crowley's response?

The quiet "forget it, will you?"

Meaning: I don't want to take it back. I'm in love with you. I wanted to say it. I meant to say it. Everything might be going to go pear-shaped and I wanted to have said it somehow. I don't need you to say it. I don't know what I expected but I also maybe kinda didn't want the response to be 'aww, you're sweet... do you want a blowjob?' so maybe let's just drop this. We're going to never speak of this again now. Moving onto spreading the demon drink...

Crowley turns down Aziraphale's offer to make it about sex and, in doing so, Crowley says indisputably that it's about love. If he had taken up Aziraphale's offer in that moment, then it would have been agreeing to pretend that he's never said he's in love with Aziraphale and to instead pretend that the romantic-looking things were all an effort to get into Aziraphale's pants. When he turns down sex, Aziraphale smiles softly because, to him, *this* is then really the moment that Crowley said he loves him.

Aziraphale knows for sure now what Crowley was saying and my friend (loaded) now has a definition between them that means the whole deal. Since Crowley said the thing that meant lovers euphemistically as part of saying he's in love with him, then my friend (loaded) is now forever part of the night during The Blitz in 1941 when Crowley said he was in love with him, which means that they can't use any version of friend (loaded) with each other without that being part of it. Friend (loaded) always meant lovers (sexual partners) but now it also means lovers (romantic partners) as well. It's not that they just suddenly became romantic partners because it's been a romance all along but now they're acknowledging it in a way they can't go back from and they do so by giving what they are to one another a word in their secret language.

Aziraphale then wants to return the feeling. Crowley is saying that he doesn't need him to by telling him to forget it about it and wanting to move on from it but Aziraphale can't accept that. Crowley might be right-- this could be it-- and like Aziraphale's going to let Crowley potentially soon go to his grave without telling him he's not alone in how he feels. That's not happening. However you think the events happened to give Aziraphale the opportunity to rescue Crowley from the wrath of Mrs. H-- divine fate, Aziraphale miracling the bottles broken, The Bentley shipping it and helping Aziraphale, all of the above, etc..-- he gets the chance not ten minutes later and he takes it... and, of course, what does he use?

My good friend (loaded af lol).

They've already just redefined my friend (loaded) by this point, so to turn around and use it is to tell Crowley I feel the same way. I love you, too. This is Crowley's change in expression in reaction in that above gif. It's one thing when Aziraphale volunteers to help-- that is sweet and Crowley's all eyebrows raised in intrigued surprise. His whole expression then slips from that into being stunned when he hears my good friend and he realizes that Aziraphale is now grand gesturing *him*. He's realizing that the bit in the car really was just an offer of an out, not just that plus Aziraphale saying he was uncomfortable with what Crowley had said and needing it to stay a lot more hidden beneath a cover of sex. It was Aziraphale needing to be sure he understood and needing to be sure that Crowley was sure he wanted to make this change in how they are but now that he's sure on those things, Aziraphale is actually all in for it.

Worth mentioning that my good friend (loaded) is a mashup of my friend and my dear fellow, which makes it extra sweet. Just as Crowley started this by calling back to The Globe Theatre by using my friend (loaded), Aziraphale is calling back to the my dear fellow rhythm of what he's called Crowley for centuries. It says I love you and every 'my dear fellow' was not just fondness but an 'I love you', if you didn't already know. I've loved you forever.

It's also quite literally calling Crowley 'good', which is not something that he really believes about himself but is something Aziraphale believes about him. His good friend, as in close friend, but also his good friend, as in good person. He also does nothing to discourage Mrs. H's inevitable understanding that he and Crowley are a couple. He gestures between them to indicate it. He uses my good friend in such a way that it's just the same thing queer humans of the time would have said to someone low-risk (a theatre person) in London during WW2. It's completely inverted from his response to Burbage in a different theatre in 1600, in the moment this whole friend thing became a thing for them, which is also intentional. It's telling Crowley he understood all the things Crowley was saying in the church and he feels them, too.

Then, there's this, once they're back the bookshop:

Here, we're acknowledging what friends means now by pausing and emphasizing it. "That's what friends are for" is not a phrase that would require the pause and the tone on friends if friendship was all "friends" meant to them. It's not now and this is acknowledging that.

Note Crowley's little lip twitch/almost-sad-smile at what Aziraphale is saying. It's agreement. It's assent. This is them confirming that they understand what the other is saying and giving this new word a home in their language.

This is then what they call each other now when they need to talk about it and it's my friend on the surface and it's my love underneath.

There's a sadness to it. How nice it would be to just be able to say it... It's also a moment of realizing that they aren't sure they can use this word all the time. It's good to have a word and a shared understanding of what it means and they have no desire to take back these confessions of love here but while it's lovely to have said this now, it's also a bit heartbreaking.

Aziraphale's heartbreak, his little Crowley move of putting on his (transparent lol) glasses, his brave smile, and then how quickly they both transition from this conversation into The West End, The West End and I'm a lonely G.I... and The farthing *has vanished*! It shows you how accustomed they are to burying the pain under trying to live in the moment for one another.

A few moments after this, Aziraphale will be showing Crowley some of his human magic tricks in preparation for performing on stage and when they get to the point where Aziraphale is telling Crowley about Goldstone's Magic Shop, he then tells him that it's not for him because it's "for professional conjurers only."

This is somewhat unintentional metaphor on Aziraphale's part that Crowley then acknowledges and turns into coded language in his response. Aziraphale's love of human magic is metaphorical for his love of humanity and living in a way as to indulge his humanity in a way that angels have been taught not to do. The reason why Aziraphale's love of magic is this metaphor and not, say, his love of books or music or food, is because all of the other things that Aziraphale likes about the human experiences can be dismissed by him as relating to understanding the human experience *so as to be a better angel.* He's really not a student of humanity just to learn how to better guide them. He admits to Adam in front of Crowley in S1 that he thinks that humans are the ones who get it when he tells him that he hoped Adam would be good and worried he'd be evil but that he's something better than either of those-- he's human incarnate. Aziraphale can justify most of his indulgences as being related to learning human ways to relate to them to help them-- food, books (his home and his book collection can be justified as necessary cover for his angelic embassy), music, etc.... but the love of human magic?

Aziraphale just loves it. It's for him. It's his hobby. He thinks it's a little selfish and probably a lot unbecoming of an angel. He'd completely just want this for a job and he's not supposed to want a job other than to be an angel, which is supposed to be the bestest job imaginable lol. What kind of angel wants a silly human job? What kind of angel with actual magical powers is obsessed with human magic? Aziraphale is. He's endlessly fascinated. It makes him happy. It brings him joy. It's the part of living as a human that he's done in such a way that it's just for him and in such a way that it conflicts a bit with his role as an angel. The only other way Aziraphale loves like this, in this human way? The only other thing he studies at to be a better human over being a better angel?

Crowley.

So when Aziraphale says that he can't go to Goldstone's because it's "for professional conjurers only", Crowley knows that what Aziraphale is really saying is that the shop is "for actual humans only". He knows Aziraphale is admitting that he's sometimes insecure about his ability to be human because of how his humanity is tied to being an angel. Crowley knows that they're talking about Aziraphale and his human magic love on one level but that they're also talking about them and their relationship on another level. This is Aziraphale saying that he loves human magic with a passion but he's not sure he's as good as it as he could be or as he wants to be because maybe he doesn't know everything about being a human in the way that the "professional conjurers"-- humans-- know... and everything we just said he's unsure about with relation to human magic is also how he feels sometimes about loving Crowley.

This conversation is happening in an overlapping way with their friend confessions and Crowley hears that Aziraphale is saying in there that he loves Crowley with a passion but he's not always sure that he's studied enough, that he knows enough, about being human to be what Crowley deserves. He would love to go to this magic shop but he's afraid that it's not meant for him. He struggles, as Crowley already knows, with how he's not supposed to want it but oh he wants and he can't help but love magic and he can't help but love Crowley... all of which prompts Crowley to reassure him, using a now-familiar bit of their language:

"You, my Nefertiti-fooling fellow, are about to perform on the West End stage. If that doesn't make you a 'professional conjurer'... I don't know what does."

Meaning:

You, my human-passing man, are so good at this that you fooled the Ancient Egyptian Queen. You're about to perform your human magic on stage-- to make yourself vulnerable in a way that scares humans. You are always willing to take risks like that and try something new and learn more about being human and that makes you human. It's human to not totally know how to be human, I think. You're doing all of this tonight because you love me. It doesn't matter if you're a good magician or not. This love of ours is human and you're very good at it. You love me very well. If loving me doesn't make you a 'professional conjurer'... I don't know what does.

Crowley uses my [] fellow to emphasize my friend (loaded) by using the term of endearment that Aziraphale himself started that has human connotations to make the point that their love makes them human and to tell Aziraphale that he's very good at their love.

Aziraphale, understandably melting over that:

And then? They just keep using my friend. For decades. Through S2.

What makes it work for so long is the fact that it's human-coded in origin so if they run into a situation where they need to refer to one another like this, they can use it and it doesn't get a lot of questions. After the partners scene with Nina, Crowley uses my friend without thinking twice about it, telling her that she'll be safe in the bookshop because "my friend would never let anything happen to you." Nina already gets that they're friend (loaded) and she doesn't know what using friend means to them because only they know about 1941 but it's a phrase that they can use with the outside world if they need to but that mostly stays between them because only they know that, in their language, my friend = my love.

So when Crowley says I lost my best friend in the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene in S1, he means that he lost his best friend but he *also* really means I lost the love of my life.

The first thing my best friend means is just the actual, uncoded definition-- what the words really mean as they are. Aziraphale is Crowley's best friend. Whatever else they are to one another, they've always been that. The idea that he'd have to go through the end of the world and whatever came after without his best friend devastated him. In a lot of ways, it's sweeter than saying anything else, even if they weren't in a public space, because it's saying that what he'd miss the most is just having his partner in crime in life. The other layer of it is the coded layer. Since they are a couple that uses my friend in an euphemistic way for my love, then Crowley's my best friend in 2019 is the same thing as Aziraphale's my good friend was in 1941. It is my best friend on the surface and it is that but it's also my love beneath it.

This scene is also then the same thing in meaning:

And by S1's present of 2019, they're at a point of using it in an argument, which provides them the means to talk in a way they didn't have in 1862. Yeah, they have their dramatic little breakup spats but this is actually a marked improvement over where they were before the holy water mess. So now watch this bit of the bandstand again here below for the friend (loaded)...

Remember that Aziraphale lies increasing bits of absurdity when stressed and that Crowley knows that. He dismisses what Aziraphale says with that "you doooo" when Aziraphale tries the *utterly ridiculous* "I don't even like you" lol. They're both panicked about the end of the world here in Ineffable Divorce: Round One and Crowley's trying to get them to run away again, which is a terrible idea, but in the process of suggesting it, Crowley is calling them friends (now eternally loaded, as we just spent this meta proving lol) and...

...*how long* have they been friends does he say?

So, how long have they been in love, per their language, per Crowley in the bandstand scene?

Six thousand years.

Since the start.

Vavoom. Sorted. :)

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

There was no Redemption or Damnation. Chloe Doesn't Actually Have an Arc at All

Does Chloe have an abandoned redemption arc?

No. Absolutely not. She also doesn't have a “damnation” arc or really any arc at all. She is a font of wasted potential for both redemption and damnation who never gets a true chance at either path. To explain what I mean, I have to first discuss the two types of redemption arcs and also how damnation arcs work. I’ll be doing this by discussing the guy who started the redemption arc trend, Zuko, and why his story doesn’t work for people like Chloe.

The Two Types of Redemption + Some Bonus Damnation

There are two general paths to redemption: redemption through a change in worldview (the easy path) and redemption through a change in self (the hard path).

Redemption through a change in worldview is what happens when you take a character who is a fundamentally good person and give them a messed up worldview, usually through their upbringing. The story will see that worldview challenged, resulting in the character changing how they view the world, but that’s about it. They don’t really have to make major changes to themselves at a fundamental level.

This is Zuko’s path. He’s born in the Fire Nation and raised to think that the Fire Nation is good. He also has a strong sense of honor and wants to do right by his people. When he’s included in a war council and told that the army leaders are going to willingly sacrifice Fire Nation troops, he stands up and says that’s wrong. This act results in him getting banished. During his banishment, he gets to see the rest of the world and learn that the Fire Nation is, in fact, NOT good. This ultimately leads to him switching sides because he has a strong sense of honor and wants to do right by his people. Who he is and how he acts never really changes.

Chloe is not like Zuko. She is a selfish, egotistical, petty, spoiled brat. For her to be redeemed, she has to accept that fundamental aspects of her character are deeply flawed. This might involve some changes to her worldview, but that’s only a tiny piece of what needs to change and I’m honestly not sure that she really has a messed up worldview. There are multiple instances where it’s clear that she knows that she’s being mean or bad and just doesn’t care.

This brings us to the topic of damnation arcs. For something to be a damnation arc, a person has to be presented with a choice between good and evil and they have to choose evil. Zuko actually has one of these. At the end of the second season of Avatar, Zuko is given the choice to join the good guys or to join his sister and be accepted back into his family.

He chooses his sister.

That’s a damnation arc because Zuko truly had a chance to change sides. The scene would play very differently if Zuko had to choose between staying in exile and joining his sister. Joining his sister would still be the wrong move, but it’s no longer damnation. It’s just doing a bad thing vs doing nothing (though it can be argued to be somewhat damning since Zuko is going against his own morals). Along similar lines, Zuko is redeemed when he chooses to abandon his family to do what’s right even though it costs him everything he wanted: his family, his girlfriend, and his home.

This is where Chloe’s “damnation” and redemption arcs fall apart. There is no point in the series where she’s actively given a choice between good and evil. She only ever makes choices between inaction and evil or inaction and good. Does that make her a good person? Hell no! But it does make the argument that she had an arc fall very flat. She never gets better, but it's hard to say that she gets worse.

Chloe’s Choices: The Good and The Bad

Chloe becomes Queen Bee without anyone saying she was fit for the role. She just finds a miraculous and uses it. The way she uses it is selfish, egotistical, and petty. In other words, it’s just Chloe being Chloe. While the actions she takes are horrible and definitely deserve punishment, they’re in character. She’s not acting worse than normal, she’s just being herself, but with superpowers. If she’d been given the miraculous and been charged to be a hero, then her actions would be damning because she would be choosing to go against her charge. But she’s not. She has no charge.

To really assess if Chloe has potential to change, you have to look at what she does when she’s given the choice to be good and this is where things get messy.

This is how Chloe’s first encounter with her miraculous ends:

Ladybug: I have to get the Miraculous back, Chloé. (in the background, Nadja's van arrives) Chloé: Give me a second chance, please! Nadja: (holding a tablet with Audrey on it) Audrey Bourgeois, tell us live how you feel about what just happened. Audrey: (on the tablet) According to me, Chloé just clearly demonstrated that there is nothing exceptional about her. Cat Noir: (puts a hand on Chloé's shoulder) I know that you did the things you did to impress your mother. Ladybug: Anyone can make mistakes, even a superhero. What matters is how you fix them. I personally made one by losing that Miraculous. Don't make the mistake of not giving it back. Act like a hero. Cat Noir: And show everyone how exceptional you can be. (Chloé hands Ladybug the Miraculous) Ladybug: Thank you. Chloé: (the duo are about to run off) Ladybug? Cat Noir? (the cameraman moves closer) I'm sorry.

Chloe doesn't fight to keep her miraculous. A few quick lines are all it takes for her to hand it over. When Ladybug gives Chloe the chance to act like a hero would, Chloe acts like a hero. The same can be said of every subsequent time when Ladybug gives Chloe the bee miraculous. Every time Chloe is called upon to be Queen Bee, she does the job to the best of her abilities and acts as a functional member of the team. She's not incompetent. She doesn't put the team in danger so that she can be in the spotlight. Heck, the very next time she gets it, Chloe willingly admits that her father’s akumatization was her fault.

Chloé: It— it was me. I hurt my daddy's feelings. Because I want to leave Paris, forever. Ladybug: Because of what happened in school? I'm sure Marinette probably didn't exactly mean what she said. Chloé: Oh, it's not just her— actually, I don't even care about her— it's because I have no reason to be here: nobody likes me; I have no friends. I'm… useless. Ladybug: (remembering what Adrien told Marinette earlier at school about Chloé) A friend once told me: nobody is useless, Chloé. Chloé: It's easy for you to say that. You're Ladybug, a superhero. You serve a purpose. Ladybug: Yes, I can fix up all the messes. You said it yourself in your documentary. Chloé: (gasps) You saw it?! Ladybug: (nods) Mm-hmm. Chloé: Oh! I'm so embarrassed. That film's ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. I realize that now. Ladybug: Don't worry Chloé. You can fix your own messes, if that's what you want. You, too, can serve a purpose, but you have to want to. Chloé: (sniffles) I do want to.

When Ladybug asks Chloe to be a better person, Chloe is a better person.

This is why I say that Chloe has a perfectly functional view of the world. She knows when she’s doing something wrong and is able to do good when challenged to do so. Even on the civilian side, we see that Chloe is willing to be a little better when given the proper motivation. In Despair Bear, Adrien says he’ll end their friendship and so Chloe actively tries to save that friendship even if she hates every minute of it. Similarly, in Zombiezoo, Chloe sacrifices herself so that Ladybug can win.

Now, none of this is a redemption. It is, at best, the foundation for a redemption. We see that Chloe has the potential to be good when challenged to do so by the right person or circumstance, but she’s not trying to be better outside of those moments when she’s challenged. For her redemption to really start, she has to choose good over evil. She has to start improving when Ladybug isn’t watching or when Adrien isn’t threatening their friendship. For it to be a damnation, she has to choose evil over good.

She is never truly given that choice.

The two big scenes where Chloe gets “worse” are at the end of Queen Wasp and at the end of Hearthunter. However, in both of those scenes, no one gives her a choice to be better even though she’s primed and ready to make that choice.

Queen Wasp: When the Civilian Moment Should Have Happened

At the tail end of Queen Wasp, Marinette has the choice to go to New York with Audrey or stay in Paris. She chooses Paris, but brings Chloe with her to try and repair the relationship between mother and daughter. Here, Marinette gets to really see just how little Audrey cares for Chloe.

In a show where Chloe has a character arc, this should be the moment when she’s given a choice. She’s just spent the whole episode trying to get her mom to love her and it’s gone nowhere. Marinette, our hero, is standing right there, fully capable of saying, “You know what Chloe, your mom sucks and you don't need her validation. I know some people who already think that you're awesome. Come on, let’s get you back home and I’ll call Adrien and Sabrina to meet us there.”

Instead, this is what happens:

Marinette: I think you're wrong. A huge part of your life is here in Paris, too! (she steps aside, showing Chloé and Butler Jean) Audrey: Chlorene? Uh— Chloé? Chloé: (looks at her mother, then at Marinette in a guilty manner, then back at her mom) Why don't you love me, Mom? Audrey: But… Uh— Of course I l-l-love you. Marinette: (groans) You're also wrong about your daughter not being exceptional. In fact, Chloé is exceptionally mean. She's the worst person I've ever met. She may be more heinous, pompous and selfish than you. Compared to both of you, even a rock seems more capable of love. (Audrey and Chloé are furious with Marinette for telling mean things to them.) Chloé and Audrey: (shouting) How dare you⁈ (gasp and look surprised at each other) Marinette: See? You're both much more alike than you think. (walks off; humming)

…our hero, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I’m not saying that Chloe’s poor behavior is Marinette’s fault. Chloe’s choices are her own, but it’s hard to say, “why didn’t she change?” when even Ladybug doesn’t seem to want her to. If no one is actively encouraging Chloe whenever she does better, then it's 1000x harder for her to get better. Fake it til you make it is a huge part of self improvement. Being a better person for validation or selfish reasons often leads to meaningful change and is a legitimate way to start a self-driven redemption arc. (Go watch The Good Place if you want a prime example of this.)

Hearthunter: When the Hero Moment Should Have Happened

Hearthunter and Miracle Queen are supposedly the end of Chloe’s “damnation” arc. The moment where she makes the wrong choice and, to be clear, Chloe does the wrong thing here. Helping Hawkmoth is a bad move and she deserved to face some consequences. However, the choice to help Hawkmoth has the weirdest setup for a “damnation” arc that I’ve ever seen.

In Miraculer, we get this line from Gabriel: all I need is for [Chloe] to lose all hope in Ladybug. To become angry enough so I can akumatize her.

This is also the episode where Chloe rejects an akuma (Chloé: No, Hawk Moth! I am a superheroine! I am Queen Bee! Ladybug will come and get me when she needs me! I WILL NEVER JOIN YOU!), the episode where Lila helps manipulate Chloe into doubting Ladybug, and the episode where Ladybug tell’s Chloe that she’ll never be Queen Bee again, setting up the tension for the season final.

However, even though that tension is set, the thing that turns Chloe to the dark side is… her parents being akumatized. Not some random akuma that Chloe wants to help with. Not Hawkmoth just randomly showing up with the bee. No, we have both of Chloe's parents as the victim of the day and Ladybug actively chooses Ryuuko over Queen Bee, making Chloe the first and only hero who doesn’t get called in when a loved one is in trouble.

All of that leads to this:

Hawk Moth: Chloé Bourgeois, rejections hurt! (Chloé turns to face him) Your talents deserve to be recognized! Ladybug and Cat Noir's reign has gone on long enough. It's time for Paris to have a new queen, and the Queen Bee on my chessboard is you. Chloé: You've akumatized my parents! If I had my Miraculous I'd- Hawk Moth: (puts up his hand and interrupts) You're right, but I did it for one reason only. So that you would finally realize that Ladybug will never give you the Bee Miraculous again. I, however, always keep my promises. (shows her the Bee Miraculous in his hand) Chloé: This isn't real! How do you have it? Hawk Moth: Try it and see for yourself. You're Ladybug's greatest fan. You've helped her, you've trusted her, and what has she done for you in return? Chloé: (gets angry) Nothing! She couldn't care less about me! I'm done with her. She's irrelevant, utterly irrelevant! (reaches out to grap the Miraculous, stops) I want you to deakumatize has my parents first!

Just like with Queen Wasp, Chloe does the wrong thing. She didn’t have to take the bee. She didn't have to stay selfish, egotistical, and petty. But at the same time, this isn’t really a damning act. It's an act that makes her unsuitable to be Queen Bee again, but she wasn't going to be Queen Bee anyway. She wasn't choosing to be a villain over a hero. She was just choosing to be selfish at a time when she's been actively manipulated and when her parents are in danger.

In other words, this is just Chloe being Chloe. She’s acting the same way she did when she first got her miraculous. If no one is going to believe in her, then why should she be a better person? Why shouldn't she just stay the same? She's arguably no worse than she was in Queen Wasp, the consequences are just greater because of Hawkmoth's plan and the powers he gives her. The only real change is that she no longer idolizes Ladybug so Ladybug no longer has a chance to encourage Chloe to be a better person, but Ladybug never did that anyway, so what does it really matter?

Once again, none of this is to blame Marinette. She doesn't have to try and make her bully a better person. That's a huge ask. But with no one actively trying to make Chloe better even when she shows that she can be better when given the right motivation, it's silly to say that Chloe had a damnation arc or really any arc at all. She ended where she started and, if that's all they wanted to do with her, then they should have just left her as a one-dimensional mean girl instead of making her one of the most developed characters in this bloated mess of a show.

Personally, I would have liked to see a redemption arc because I enjoy morally grey characters and it would have been nice to have someone on the team who wasn't a kind, sweet, goody-goody (for a team with 18 freaking members, there's really no moral diversity, which is boring). It also would have stopped Chloe and Lila filling the same basic role for 3 seasons, which was stupid. (Why do you think Lila showed up so little? It's because Chloe could do almost everything she could do and do it better.) Second choice would be don't develop Chloe, leave her as a petty mean girl and give her focused screen time to Nino and Adrien. Their relationship is barely a thing and that's disappointing considering its strong setup. Cutting Lila and giving Chloe a true damnation arc would have also been far more satisfying.

[psychomusic]

so. I've been reading some posts on the jedi order tag AND i won't talk about my opinion on "are jedi good or bad discourse" BUT i wanna point out some lore to everyone who's complaining about the jedi taking kids into their order: (in the EU) it wasn't always like this.

if you take swtor era (more than 3000 years before the prequels) there were many jedi who joined at an older age. like, for example there was a guy who broke his engagement to become one. most jedi remember their families because they were old enough when they decided to go.

THEN in darth bane's book trilogy (circa 1000 yesrs before the prequels) there is a passage where two sith lords are talking about taking bane, already an adult, to study at korriban. one doubted him because he was too old, ans the other told him he sounded like a jedi, and that ONE DAY jedi will have to accept only kids into their ranks if they really want to find "pure" people that can learn their lessons quicker.

one day!! so it wasn't always like that!! the ongoing wars with the sith, who corrupted and killed many of them, had pressured them into taking always younger people into their ranks.

also, consider a thing that this video explains super well: training to become a jedi is not like exercising, because there is a transformative lesson at the end of the training that changes everything. you can't just do as much as you can, but not finish.

the transformative lesson, as the video explains, is that through the force, everything is the same - from rocks and ships to life and death. at the end of the training you have to understand this fundamental truth.

yoda says "you have to unlearn what you have learned". during times where they were constantly killed off or corrupted by the dark side (and if you haven't learned this lesson you are more susceptible to this corrupting), younger people were taken in to actually finish their training (a training that was ultimately about being a good person AND that you could leave at any point if you weren't sold on that, too)

(remember that for the sith failure = death. like. that was the alternative for force sensitive kids. it's not like sith had any moral problem with taking kids away without consent. sith don't have moral problems: they believe that them being stronger in the force means they can do whatever they want as long as their strong enough to go and do it. there are MANY passages in many different star wars stories, even in different mediums, that say this out loud)

AND (this is more of a critical thought than just stating the lore) the fact that they started doing it out of necessity doesn't mean it's 100% good BUT you know. the whole set up of the prequels is that we're starting off the story in a period of crisis and decadence all around. most of the systems of the times were about to fall. OF COURSE they had problems. if they didn't, we wouldn't have the story to begin with.

that doesn't automatically mean jedi = bad and sith are better, tho. you wouldn't take the last, chaotic and decadent period to jugde something, would you? it's like deciding that the athenian democracy sucked because people at the times of Demosthenes failed at recognizing the new schemes in which the world was evolving into, and still believed that their city would be important as it had been in the previous century. They just didn't fucking expect the Macedons would conquer half the world known and more, and have the subsequent political power. Still, their experiences in the 5th century with democracy were very good, even better than ours on many fronts, if you contextualize a little. the jedi had flaws, and most importantly, they didn't fucking know the future and everything that ever happened, ever, so they made mistakes. that doesn't automatically make the system ill, or bad, or not-working. systems can have setbacks when the world changes. (just like athenian democracy had one when they lost the empire that was funding the democracy. they even had a tyranny for a while and then fixed the problems. that doesn't diminish retrospectively their democracy)

[yyawnjun]

LOVE GUIDE (SAY YES)chap15

The "measurements" are perhaps the quickest and most fundamental moment you faced at the beginning of the year. You were with your friends, and you took the required measures to create an outfit for you to wear at your first fashion show in the new year. It was a quick thing, and with their help, you soon wrote the measurements that now lay in your portfolio.

The measurement notebook - part of your annual portfolio - now it's before your eyes, together with all your modeling photos taken during your university years.

In less than ten minutes, you'd have had to leave to meet with Hoshi to take your measurements...the ones that were already neatly put in the notebook. You knew it was rash to lie to him about losing it so you could have an excuse to see him. But now you had, and the funny chat that followed made the message worthwhile. And while you were still contemplating your decision, you had already taken off the pages with your measurements from the portfolio. 

Now you'll truly need some new ones.

You took a deep breath, put on your headphones, and after checking three hundred times that the front door was closed, you headed towards school.

It was the end of May, and the heat was beginning to be felt. You regretted not wearing sunglasses, but you went under the shadows of rooftops and trees to avoid being blinded and feeling the heat too much.

You continued going till you reached the entrance to the university campus.

The closer you get there, with the music at full volume, the more you let your imagination and the beat of the song flow. Because it was early and lessons started late on those days, there were a few people at the camp. Subconsciously, you began humming your songs and moving to the beat. You walked to the rhythm, shook your head, and allowed your emotions to guide you. You were happy with the music, you were in your music theater, and no one could stop you.

No one except Hoshi. 

Or perhaps not even him?

Actually, he didn't want to take away you from the comforting atmosphere that music took you to. He had seen you from a distance and was catching up with you as you arrived on campus. But suddenly he found himself getting closer to you, dreamy eyes sparkling at your joy on that late spring day.

As soon as you noticed him getting closer, you stopped in embarrassment.

He noticed the change in your movements, which he was mesmerized by. During those seconds, you continued to wonder about what you could have done to avoid an embarrassing situation. As he approached you, the perfect idea came to you. You removed your headphones and placed them over his ears. Before you could say hello, your music blared in his ears. His eyes widened in confusion, and his charming smile vanished for a minute in awe at your unexpected gesture. 

You didn't know what song had just played in his ears, you knew it was from your playlist of happy songs. You also knew that whatever it was,  you would be glad to dedicate it to him. Was it that feeling of lightness that Hoshi brought? Was that the feeling you were looking for?

Little, did you know that it was the playlist that Hoshi had dedicated to you (to which you had added other songs) that became your "happy songs playlist"? 

Embarrassed, you tried to ignore the fact that he had seen you immersed in the world of music, but he couldn't stop thinking about how beautiful you looked in that moment. You began walking together toward the school entrance, and the discussion lightened as you talked about many things and complained about the excessive heat.

You soon arrived at the classroom, and it hit you that you were alone with Hoshi...after realizing your feelings for him.

You felt your heartbeat quicken as he continued to think about your beauty and how lucky he was to be in the same room with you.

Two turbulent lovers hiding their obvious love, what could be the story?

“Uh, first let me show you the sketches I drew!” he told you, taking out his portfolio.

The portfolio included a drawing of a tiger in the center and many more amusing drawings and comics around it; the background was dark green, and the entire portfolio was built on a dark color palette with strong contrasts to bright colors. After he permitted you, you spent some time flipping through his old sketches, and you were amazed by his talent. All of his traits were flawless, and under each model, there was a miniature comic that he used to rate his works. His cartoon figure wore a top with a tiger drawn on it and had the same distinctive expression as Hoshi.

All of his previous collections had the colors of forest undergrowth, but there were also bright colors that drew his attention right away. He was able to combine all of the opposites into outfits that could mesmerize anyone by using numerous accessories and layering techniques. You noted that there were female and male models, and their poses were the most different among the models. You realized his expertise even more when you saw the three sketches he had made for your project.

While you were captivated by his portfolio, he could only observe you and your reactions as you looked at his work. He nodded and silently thanked you for every compliment. He could have stayed like this forever.

“Hoshi, these sketches are amazing, I'm speechless.” 

The first sketch was like a women's suit. The two pieces included long, loose trousers, which tapered below the knee but then continued to flare. The fabric looked similar to velvet, a black velvet that contrasted with the sand-colored accessories of the shoes. But the even more gorgeous part was the piece above. A brick red shirt, with puffed sleeves and a large lace decoration on the back, while the front left room for a corset full of sandy yellow spirals - like the shoes. Your décolleté was adorned with a pearl necklace with a large black diamond, and many small pearls surrounding it. It all ended with a sort of "red skirt", which thanks to a large slit on the front allowed the trousers to be visible. Furthermore, two more golden earrings with pearl decorations ringed her face, leaving her with minimal makeup and a braid in her hair.

The second sketch was inspired by Raphael's portrait from the late Renaissance to the early Baroque period. A long golden veil began at the head and formed a long train; beneath, a white pleated shirt could be seen, while a magnificent dress emerged from the cleavage down. The dress stopped above the knees, and a large skirt delicately surrounded the thighs. The decorations on the frame looked like spirals - typical of baroque decorations - they were golden, and all the jewels alternated between pearls and amber. The necklace was made of simple amber, while the shirt had curls at the top. The model's shoulders were bare and sleeves extended from just above the elbow to your hands. The sleeves were wide, tapered at the ends, and the same milky white as the shirt.

You were hypnotized by the wonder of the sketches that had been presented to you; you had a thousand compliments to give and a thousand curiosities to ask; not to mention that all the attention he had paid to the small details made you want to get up and do what you thought he could do to express his gratitude to him... maybe with a kiss. Resisting that temptation was quite tough, especially after viewing the last of the three sketches he had done.

Yet if you had only raised your head a little you would have given in and ended up kissing the face of that boy who was a few centimeters away from you. As you observed every detail of his creations, he observed every detail of you. And while you smiled at the beauty of the clothes he designed, he smiled at your reactions.

In that air that smelled of love, you ended up remaining enchanted for endless minutes watching the third sketch.

The third sketch illustrated the ability of Baroque sculptors to pay particular attention to the consistency of fabrics. And how they manage to bring the lightness of a feather from hard stone - for example, what Antonio Corradini did with "La Velata". And with this idea, Hoshi created a dress that clung to the body and appeared almost "wet". It was a dirty white and delicately accompanied the model's entire body. It was simple, with horizontal pleats and ankle length. It seemed to be able to be seen a lot, yet everything was graceful and not inappropriate. The central feature of that outfit was a slit in the back, which was hidden by two "angel wings" that stayed linked to the model's back. They were wings wrapped in white feathers, as was customary for baroque headdresses, with red and black gems that matched the heeled shoes. The wings were not large, but they were also not small. They were the appropriate size to not overpower the dress while yet highlighting all of its vivid decorations. Also in this case, the make-up was minimal, and the hair was wrapped with a thin thread band and brilliant gems.

How could one person create all of this? The ability felt almost inhuman to you, no matter how beautiful the three sketches were.

"Hoshi, it's an honor for me to be able to work with you. I feel like continuing to praise these outfits isn't enough, but I promise to do my best to show the world how brilliant they are. These sketches capture your talented soul and charm. Thank you for working with me."

"Yn, they were all created with you in mind - and, of course, the baroque theme. All I can ask for is to see them on you on a runway, and then I can die in peace."

WAIT, WAS THIS A CONFESSION?

chap14 // chap16 ; m.list

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summary: It is clear to everyone that Kwon Soon-young has a huge crush on the model student Yn. But can Hoshi, a passionate and funny stylist make her fall in love in just a month? What if he followed a weird LOVE GUIDE, that he found in the school bathroom?

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a.n. HEY GUYS!! that's the second written part of this smau, hope y'all like this pure sweet and gentle scenario. it's not over yet, i still have some chaps for this smau 🤭 but I am here for the biggest shotout to @sobun1est !! LIA MY FAV GIRL !! and best proodreader <3 this chap is here also thanks to her work and supportive comments😭 (1.8k wc)

[kaelio]

I’ve been loving your IWTV stuff but I haven’t watched the show or read the books. What is it about Anne Rice’s writing that makes it so insane?

Okay, I'm going to do a relatively long post probably.

First off, I want to make it clear that my love of her writing is completely unironic. I genuinely think that she is great. So I do want to lay that down because it's foundational to everything else I'll say.

Her writing is insane for a few reasons. The most basic of these reasons is that, I really think that she was intrinsically out of step with contemporary standards of mental wellness. On the other hand, I am not convinced she was as chemically or... neurologically?... insane as she's generally described. She had a lot of Experiences and those experiences fed into a perception of the world that is notable and characteristic, if borderline indecipherable, and it comes through in what she produced.

These books are steeped in very real trauma, and very real trauma that the world directly rewarded her for experiencing. I'm not sure if the rawness of that trauma was why she was so brazen about exposing it in IWTV, but whatever the reason, "story about how my child died and my marriage can't survive and I can't see any reason for living" made Anne Rice a bona fide recognizable author and commercial success. If "vampires are made from trauma", well consider that metaphor to have carried into the real world. Vampires did in fact give Anne Rice power and wealth (and furthermore, I'd argue, for her, they became essentially household gods).

There's that post that goes around about how Van Gogh made his best work (and really most of his work, period) when he was most stable. I'd posit that the world told Rice the opposite in explicitly material terms, and maybe there was a feedback loop there. Hard to say.

She did write shamelessly and almost aggressively. Her writing doesn't feel carefully tailored or polished for "an audience". It rejects many of the patterns you see in modern fiction (despite being wildly influential for several genres!). It highlights patterns you take for granted in other fiction because of how fundamentally it violates them. I'll splice together bits of a conversation I was having in another window:

me: And I do think that there's an interesting point to be made that the self-infatuation and the people-pleasing actually go hand-in-hand

Because there's a congratulatory aspect to having written something that you know will please other people

Like congratulating yourself ahead of time for the good person that other people are going to tell you that you are

3rd: and that also means you're afraid of writing anything that challenges or stretches the audience

which means you're writing pap

a friend and I were discussing R.F. Kuang whose book Babel was pitched as a 'response' to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and ... is not only not in the same league as that book but isn't even playing the same sport

This wasn't us discussing Anne Rice at all, she just feels relevant to it. We're getting increasingly streamlined stories which hit the "right" beats, but they're unsatisfying because they have no authentic skeleton. Why do people still respond to Toy Story but Inside Out is nearly forgotten? I despised Inside Out on its release because it perfunctorily landed all of its beats, but it's only pretending to have something to say. What it does pretend to say is... palatable. But it isn't interesting. It won't change you and it won't inspire a change in you, or give you the material to change yourself.

I go back to this comment over and over by @fofoqueirah because it's genuinely perfect. Peerless distillation:

But people often genuinely cannot write this way! It's overly revealing. We reflexively balk. How or why she didn't is hard to say, but it's gallingly, often horrifyingly, unapologetic. It's unapologetic for things it should probably be apologetic for.

Anyway, her writing is also maddeningly inconsistent, book-by-book, page-by-page, paragraph-by-paragraph, but it's thrilling in part due to its inconsistency. But when it's on, it's so fucking on. However, it's not didactic in any comprehensible way. There are quotes about how she trusted her meaning to come through in the end, which is hilarious because...?? I think you can derive more thematic meaning from a random pattern than you can from these books!! These books are less thematically straightforward than nonsense!

And she herself would regularly dump comments and lore and various things which made it all even weirder. God, I don't even feel like I'm scratching the surface here.

This woman had some kind of relationship with power, capitalism, BSDM, gender, family, religion, brain-eating, and dolls and God help us because she tried to tried to explain it to us and held back nothing and some times you're still. just. a wee babe in the woods.

[drivingsideways]

I'm just here to post a terribly earnest rec for AMC's Interview with A Vampire, which, er, you may have noticed, I've become a little insane about in the recent past (has it even been ten days?!)

Side note: You don't have to know the Anne Rice books or the previous movies to enjoy this show. In fact, the show makes some great and fundamental changes to canon which really elevated it , imho.

Ok here goes:

1) It's a really fun gothic melodrama, which really enjoys being all three things, but especially the last. And it's good at being all three, very good, actually. And it's really fun. Did i mention that. FUN.

2) If you like twisty, non linear narratives told by unreliable narrators, this show is near perfect at it. The entire story is structured around multiple layers of performances - stories within stories within stories- but never in a incoherent way that will leave you hanging. It's very clever and has fun being clever without being obnoxious about it, if that makes sense. The theatrical feel isn't a coincidence- the show runner and much of the writer's room are or have been playwrights, and many in the lead and supporting cast have theatre backgrounds, and that makes it incredibly compelling and just- fun.

3) There's so much to nerd about! It's non apologetically literary and artistic, but in such a joyful way. It's costume design- ranging from late eighteenth century to contemporary- is just delightful; and I can't sing enough praises about the set/production design in the way it enriches the storytelling and the characters. Every little detail seems to have been thought about, from a crew that's really just having a blast, I think. In fact, I'm doing an entire rewatch of two seasons just to savor all the stuff I rushed through the first time as I got more and more caught up in the whirlwind pace of the story.

4) The performances are great! Both the leads are charismatic and great performers- and yeah, there's a lot of extraordinarily pretty people in this- but it's the total commitment to their characters that really shines through. There's a casting change for a major character in season 2, but oddly enough, it's a change that fits MARVELLOUSLY into the story itself. Season 2 especially brings in some amazing guest performances, to add to a crew that's already firing on all cylinders.

5) It's queer as hell you guys! Not a single straight couple in it, but its queerness is not just about specific ships or couples, it's just fundamental to the story itself; a point of view rather than sexual orientation.

6) What I very much love about the main romances in the show is that the queerness is essential to their story but it's not everything. There's more to these people and their difficult and often toxic loves than being queer in a homophobic world; they are allowed to be failures at love, to be angry, happy and sad, and most of all: they are all horrible people! They just are. It's GREAT.

7) On a more shippy note: there are so many great canon ships. My personal fave is the problematique "Loustat" ( Lestat/ Louis), which is also the abusive, toxic , dramatically epic love story around which the show revolves, because ngl, " they make each other worse" is where it's at in 2024, but there are other, possibly even more toxic ships to enjoy! 🍾🎊🍹💕

8) Watch it so you can come scream with me about it. To quote show runner Rolin Jones, " It's made to make you insane. Feels first."

[justatalkingface]

Making Izuku Worse, But BETTER

*walks in* *drops post* *explains nothing* *leaves*

So, a while ago, I made a post talking about how, among (many, many) other things wrong with how Izuku was developed over the story, that his fundamental character was just... slowly and systematically chipped away by Hori, until his unique personality was gone, and all that was left is a shell of a shonen protagonist.

Well. I'm here today to tell you that... fuck. I can do that shit better than Hori did.

Here's my revolutionary idea: lean into it. See, while he's growing in a bad direction, while as a person he's getting worse in a lot of ways, that isn't bad, as, like, character development, or as part of a story.

So. The thing is, while Izuku changes, it's never really... acknowledged in the story. (This is, of course, a different part of his problem, that while he changes throughout the story, by and by large his improvement, how far he's come, and what he's done, is never acknowledged; in fact, he's actively criticized for not doing everything perfectly, because of course.) Because Izuku is, over all, improving, that means he never gets validation for his work... but, flipping it, with this? He never gets it pointed out that he's doing worse.

And it doesn't even need to be a person, is the thing; you can have it never directly told to Izuku, but shown to us, the viewers, in story, and that's fine, as long as it's acknowledged.

So, the first thing I'd do, to make this whole idea work right is... actually spend more time on Izuku's quirks as a character. He's smart, curious, enthusiastic, mildly obsessed with Quirks, and look! Here he has a Quirk. There's no possible way to work with that, right?

Start there. Show, at the very least, one panel scenes of Izuku... geeking out. Experimenting. Being Izuku, basiclly, and scatter them every once and awhile in the story. Maybe have him suggest something to someone else, show that person's improvement under his guidance (and, you know, have Izuku interact with other human beings... as a human being. Yet another problem Hori has with Izuku; as far as we can tell from what we are shown, he is strangers with his entire damn class, even though the story has tried to push the vibe that he is, in fact, friends with all of them. And don't get me started on his mother, who barely even exists...).

It doesn't have to be big, is the thing, or elaborate, it just has to be there, to help firmly establish these characteristics in our minds as readers. And that's important, because that means it'll be noticeable when it stops.

Ideally, I'd think it'd be best to do this post-Kamino, because it's such a big thing that Izuku having a radical change in response makes sense. All Might's gone, the mantle is his now... no pressure, right? And, in the same way the foundational aspects were set up, it can start small: those few scattered panels? They're gone.

*ratchet sound effect*

It's not something pointed out or anything, they're just... gone. Maybe replace them with more training, maybe not, but we don't see Izuku spending his free time being Izuku anymore, and that's it. It stays at that new normal for awhile.

Then the stress kicks up a gear; conveniently, after Kamino we have... *sigh*. I can't believe I'm saying this, but conveniently, we have Sir Nighteye. And the thing is? Sir Nighteye is an asshole; he's perfect for just.... bringing the stress up just an extra notch. And here's where more work has to be put in to sell this idea, not just showing less happy Izuku, but showing more upset Izuku, showing how things are getting to him, not just in the moment, but consistently, even when nothing is actually happening to him at that exact point in time. A scene of Izuku... head in his hands, maybe. Training, and pushing farther than he should, and maybe there's something bleeding. Not a lot, not yet, but the cracks should be showing at this point.

*ratchet sound effect*

For the purposes of this, we'll assume that by and by large the story is happening as usual, so Mirio loses his Quirk, and there's that guilt, hitting Izuku like a truck.

*ratchet sound effect*

Show those stress scenes just a little more now, work in some conversations with Mirio where he acts happy, but the second he walks away everything crashes down on him; you don't even need to have anyone saying anything, just the visual of his smile vanishing in an instant will carry it.

Because if I'm writing this I'd want her to be a character, show Izuku's mom slowly growing worried as they meet (with her actually being more of a character at all before hand; show her growing happier and less burdened as Izuku improves before all of this, only now they see each other less and less, and every time he seems less happy than he was before, grimmer).

After that, just let things bake for awhile; nothing really changes, Izuku is just more miserable, and people are slowly starting to notice that he's acting different now, even if they don't really understand why...

And then Joint Training. Fun fact: canonly, the Vestiges, as introduced to us? Are assholes; which, honestly, isn't that surprising, because just about everyone is an asshole to Izuku! Stress Factor 5975 that is never really acknowledged in story: some asshole yelling at Izuku for instantly failing at his Quirk because he had no idea how to even use it, much less that it was even there, much less that it would happen in the middle of a fucking training exercise.

*ratchet noise*

And then, important moment here, have someone.... All Might, Ochako, whoever, notice that Izuku is getting a new Quirk (...or developing a new facet of his Quirk, or however that was explained to everyone), but he isn't enthusiastic about it. There's no brainstorming, no experimenting... this thing that should have been a source of joy is just.... there. At worst, it is actively causing him stress. And it this obvious difference that is ringing some warning bells in people's minds.

*ratchet noise*

So, all this time, along with all the story points that are supposed to be happening, from Kamino on I've been slowly weaving together a new one: Izuku increasingly barely holding his shit together in the face of his clusterfuck of a life. Then the War Arc kicks in, and that's where the pay off for all this slow build, because here's where everything goes to shit.

War Arc hits Izuku like a train, and leaves him wrecked in the aftermath, absolutely destroyed... which, organically, leads into the Dark Deku arc, only here, we actually do it better.

Here, him going 'rogue', is an organic evolution of various things that have been going on for probably years now, Izuku slowly depriving himself of all things that gave him joy, in favor of training for his Mission, TM, this Grand Purpose that was thrust upon him.

Here, his classmates going to save him makes more sense because we've seen them interact, we've seen their growing concern over how he's been changing.

All of these things happen, and come together for this moment where the story finally admits what it's been dancing around all this time: Izuku is not OK. And at last, finally, starts to actually resolve it.

[dingodad]

ok i am hearing a lot of similar responses to my previous posts so i may have jumped the gun in assuming just how much my followers already understand my thinking on the topic LOL. so let me go a bit deeper with this

i am familiar with the idea, as many of you have put forward, that a classpect is applied to a hero based on their personality, rather than something that is assigned at birth and determines their personality. i see obvious holes in this. there is no suggestion, for instance, that if a character grows and changes as a person, their class or aspect would change to fit their new personality. a common response i'm getting to this complaint is that sburb "just knows" who you will grow up to be, and assigns a classpect according to this prediction; but at this point i fail to see the practical difference between "sburb gives you a classpect at birth and you have to grow into that role" and "sburb knows what you will grow up to be and any timeline in which you fail to grow into this role will be deemed a doomed timeline". not only is the distinction purely philosophical, it's purely academic; we do not know, and will never know because we cannot know, whether dave strider was a "knight of time" from the moment of his birth, because homestuck is not concerned with this question of free will and determinism. homestuck is concerned with the fact that free will and determinism are NARRATIVES put forward by NARRATORS.

it is a mistake to think of sburb as impartial. i think it's a mistake to think of any concept as nebulous as ""the game"" as having any kind of sentience, or "knowing" anything at all, but that's another discussion entirely: the point is not that sburb is necessarily malevolent, or necessarily benign, but that is a machine designed for a particular purpose, and that all the mechanisms that make up that machine ultimately serve that purpose. and sburb's ultimate purpose is to tell a story! the idea of a young girl developing as a person to become a powerful seer of light, or realising her potential as an heir of breath, are deeply compelling NARRATIVES, and any label that "the game" assigns to one of its player is going to be in the interest of telling a compelling narrative. whether that narrative is actually "true" to the core of that person's self is inconsequential! and that's why i see sburb's class system and alternia's class system as fundamentally the same system, merely told by different narrators. where sburb uses the circumstances of your birth to generate a captivating RPG-style adventure populated by rogues and mages and witches, alternia is a world seized by a malevolent narrator only interested in telling the story that most efficiently leads to his birth; as such, rather than a "class" being something they grow into as they mature, a troll's "class" decides their place in the brutal hierarchy that runs the alternian machine.

i don't think it takes a particularly long or hard session of thought to realise "sburb knows best" as a justification for classpect realism is gross, and i think the comic is well aware that it's gross, because the relationships of expectation and control between children/characters and their parents/authors are one of homestuck's very frontal and central themes! being assigned a class and an aspect works within the context of a friendly game of sburb where a class and an aspect might help you to play the game. but the moment you start to believe that someone's class and aspect are in any way "truths" outside of that context, it becomes no different to pretending sollux and aradia's personalities and life trajectories are determined by the colour of their internal organs, even outside of the alternian society that enforces classes based on those colours; and most crucially, no different to a baby having a gender assigned to it on the day of its birth because its parents "just know" what the "right" gender for it might be in the future. even if that baby's parents could see into "the future", would it be fair to make that decision? even if the parents could see into every possible future for that baby, would it be their call to decide which futures for that baby are "doomed" and which one is the "right one"? it's all a matter of the narrative being told!

on an individual level, a parent rarely has ulterior motives in gendering their infant child, just as a hero is rarely assigned a class or aspect purely as a form of personal torture; but on the societal level, on the level of universe-spawning video games or galaxy-conquering lords of time, the gender binary is upheld because its perpetuation performs a crucial service to society, just as the caste system is upheld because it keeps the gears of empire oiled, just as the classpect system keeps the universe-spawning process as efficient as possible. that's what i mean when i say they're equivalent

[bestworstcase]

what do you make of ozma’s motivations given that he initially rejects the god of light’s offer and only takes it once he knows it’s the only way he can see salem again, but then once they’re actually reunited he places the mission from the god of light above being with her? did he aways have that much faith? is it just that salem’s faith was broken so completely that she’s the only one who can see the gods clearly?

ozma's like. fundamental dilemma in TLF is whether or not to trust salem. as much as he dearly wants to be with her… "salem lives, but the woman you hold dear in your memories is gone. heed this warning: where you seek comfort, you will only find pain."

think about what must have run through his mind when he heard the god of light say that to him. he's just learnt that the god of darkness did something so bad that all of humankind was wiped out, and that the brothers have chosen to depart. but light also tells him that humanity will return, diminished, and that he wants to send ozma back into the world to prepare for a day of judgment. "if your kind is unchanged, if you demand our blessings while still fighting among yourselves, then man will be found irredeemable and your world will be wiped from existence."

light doesn't say it in so many words, but the implication that Humans Fucked Up is crystal clear. if your kind is unchanged, you will be found irredeemable and destroyed.

then he tells ozma that salem is still alive, but unrecognizable as the woman he once loved, and that she will hurt him if he seeks her out.

what light's implying here in essence is that salem provoked the god of darkness, causing the "tragedy" that led to the brothers' departure. (and that is what happened, as far as he's concerned.) ozma picks up on that implication, but what he hears is "the woman you love is damned, but there is still a chance for redemption."

after all, why else would the god of light ask him to do this? at this point ozma has no reason to doubt what light tells him, and light presents himself as a benevolent authority hopeful that humanity can redeem itself.

"i'll do it!"—he wants to save her.

notably, ozma does in fact heed the warning for quite some time; he travels for years, hearing whispers of a dangerous witch wherever he goes, before deciding he "need[s] to see what she had become."

but then he sees her again, and… she's herself. physically she has changed, sure, but he recognizes her; she recognizes him. she still loves him. she's overjoyed to see him again—she even still remembers what he said to her on the day they met, and echoes it back to him with tears in her eyes.

so like ???

is it over? has whatever curse or madness befell her broken now they’re together again? or… was the god of light wrong…?

she tells him her story, but there are pieces missing. the gods are to blame for ending the world, she says. it is impossible to miss how much she hates the brothers.

what did she do?

"though time passed and all seemed well, ozma's conversation with the god of light still lingered in his mind. he had found happiness, but humanity seemed more divided than ever before." <- he begins to worry that maybe it's not that salem will hurt him; maybe by choosing to stay with her now, he's jeopardizing the chance for redemption.

but he isn't willing to leave her because, of course, he wants to save her. so he cautiously tests the waters by commenting on how divided humanity is.

and her answer seems really promising! "are you surprised? this world is quite literally godless. these humans have no one to guide them. perhaps that's all they need."

that… actually sounds very much like she thinks the brothers' absence is the source of the strife and suffering, just as the god of light told him it would be. and it catches ozma off guard, because he didn't expect that from her. so he asks what she means.

"we could become the gods of this world; our powers surpass all others. our souls transcend death. we could mold these lands into whatever we want…" <- okay, that's more in line with what he might have expected based on her opinion of the brothers, and it's not great. but then she warms to the idea:

"what you want! create the paradise—" watch how ozma's face changes as she says this. his expression softens. he smiles. he's hearing that—blasphemy notwithstanding—salem really wants to support him in this. that's the part she's enthused about. what you want.

and then she finishes the thought: "–the old gods could not."

it isn't just that she hates the brothers; salem envisions a paradise without them. she doesn’t think this world is damned at all; as far as she's concerned, the brothers' absence is a cause for hope.

(and what does that mean for her?)

this:

is not a "you convinced me" face. this is an "i can fix her" face.

the problem of course is that he can't. salem hates the brothers because when she prayed to them they forced her to watch her lover burn to death in her arms twice over and then sentenced her to eternal suffering to punish her for lashing out. she hates them because she is the sole survivor of their genocide. no matter how long ozma goes along with her, no matter how long he lets her believe that this is what he wants, he's never going to be able to coax her out of that hatred.

which doesn't stop him from trying.

he's able to keep the deception going as long as they're building a following, and establishing a prosperous new kingdom, and having children together. but he told her he wanted to unite the world—end all division and bring everyone together under one creed. salem is, er, right to point out that the only way to do that is by conquest.

and that's the point where ozma has to admit to his ulterior motives, because salem was not kidding when she said she would do this for him. so he pumps the brakes and tells her everything, still hoping to somehow do the impossible and save her.

"don't you see? none of that matters anymore! why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans when we could replace them with what they could never be?"

[obligatory note: i think she means "replace the gods" here, as a reiteration of her extremely longstanding ambition of doing exactly that; the goal of her rebellion was for humans to "destroy their old masters" and "claim the powers of their creators for themselves," she tells ozma "we could be the gods of this world" and that they can "create the paradise the old gods could not" like this has always been what she's about.]

cue ozma:

he really does think about it.

i think this is the point where he faced the reality that he had to choose between joining salem in rebellion or sacrificing her for the world's sake. and… he wants to take her hand, he wants to stay with her, but the consequence of hiding this from her for so long is he's never actually thought about her utter rejection of the gods in a substantive way; he's warped their whole relationship through the lens of that hatred being a problem he needs to solve. it's not that he had faith in the god of light so much as it is he never had faith in her.

if it were ten or fifteen years ago and she was asking him to forget the mandate and stay with her in their cottage, it would still be frightening to take the hand she offered him, to trust that she is right to blame the gods and say these humans do not need redemption.

but now? when he's sunk so much time inching down the road to war in the name of saving her from those ideas, and he has to not only trust that she's right about the brothers but also that she'll be willing to turn away from the tyrannical path they've walked down together? he's done nothing but play along all these years in the ever-fainter hope that one day she'll be more amenable to the mandate; he has no idea how she'll react if he pushes back, and he thinks of her as damned.

so… he can't, in the end. when she confronts him with the choice he falls down the path of least resistance to conclude that he can't save her and that he'll bring the world to ruin if he keeps trying. so he leaves.

and then he's locked into that choice because they murdered each other and killed their kids and destroyed their kingdom about it and even if he could admit the desire to himself how can he possibly make amends for doing that to her? any apology or gesture of reconciliation he made, she has no reason to trust and every reason to see another attempt to deceive her again. the mandate is really all he has left, so he clings to it even as he gradually distorts it more and more into this existential struggle between himself and her.

[scorchedthesnake]

March 7, 2011

I moved to New York City in August 2010. My life before New York was something I’d grown completely unsatisfied with: I had moved to Connecticut for graduate school in 2001, had weathered two recessions in the relative security of academe but could see the writing on the wall for the doom of that profession and so had, via my teaching assistants union, begun to work for our international union as a communications staffer. This had given me a way out of Connecticut, though escaping the cultish environment of the union would still take a few more years.

The person I was back then was very unlike the person I am now. I wasn’t very much fun those first nine months in the city because I was just so afraid of everything. Bars scared me; too many strangers. Clubs scared me; too dark and too many unknowns and unpredictable scenarios. I was happy to be in a new place but petrified by what that freedom actually meant, and I had yet to find any place to belong or feel at home in.

I worked on 7th Avenue back then, around 27th Street. I remember sitting in my dreary cubicle that Monday, when I got a message from my best friend Matt, asking me if I wanted to go to a show that evening. No, I said, I really just want to go home and hide from the world. It’s the show John (O’Malley) is working on, he said, and he got us comps. Well what kind of show is it, I asked? “We’re gonna, like, chase sexy dancers around a warehouse.” Oh god that sounds so stupid, do I have to? “Just come with me, if you hate it you can leave.” 

So around 7pm I walked over to 10th Avenue and the block was so dumpy back then – junkyards, warehouses, not much else. I saw a small line of people gathered at the address I’d been given, so I approached and was handed this card:

I don’t remember anything about checking in or what it was like seeing Manderley for the first time, though I do remember Maximilian being there, giving a short speech and then we were taken to the elevator. I remember getting off the elevator on 3, and taking far too long to explore an empty Macbeths bedroom before, I suppose, figuring out I should investigate the other floors.

I’ve told this story often, though: at some point I came across an extremely attractive man moving quickly, so I did what it seemed like many others were doing: I followed him. We were in the 2nd loop by now, and I had realized it was a loop; but my target soon was running down High Streeet and through a darkened door and it slammed in my face and, to my surprise, was locked.

Oh, there are secret things all over here, aren’t there?

So I picked up his trail again as soon as I could, and stuck as close as I could. Including when we stumbled down all the flights of stairs and I wondered, should I call for help? Is the performer injured? But I stuck to him like glue and when he again approached that darkened door I was close enough to get inside.

And so the highlight of my first show was seeing Luke Murphy in interrogation.

After the finale I reconnected with Matt. We had, of course, seen completely different shows. As we exited we saw John. “Did you get any one on ones,” he asked? One on whats? “Well, I had one where the man in the lobby took me into a room and started putting on makeup.”

No we hadn’t seen anything like that. We immediately set about buying tickets for later in the six-week run. And we wandered the streets for a couple hours after that, comparing notes, feverishly reconstructing what we had just experienced. 

Obviously I did not sleep that night.

So much of the time you don’t know when everything has changed. You realize it long after the fact and in retrospect. Not this, this I knew was a fundamental shift. I’d never felt my senses at full alert like that, my mind racing trying to make sense of something so visceral. The music rang in my ears for hours, days later, and I knew when I came back, I’d need a plan.